Chipping Away: A Damage Option for D&D to Keep Your Combats Moving

Hit Points aren’t necessarily supposed to represent your actual meat points. You’ll note that in real life, as you move from high school to college (gaining levels), you’re not able to get punched in the face more often before you fall over. In the same way, your HP isn’t there to show the actual number of times you can get stabbed as you gain levels. Instead, Hit Points represent narrow misses, grazes, getting your armor dented, and getting fatigued from defending yourself with your shield; If you’re getting a broadsword from a large ogre swung at you, and you keep blocking it with your shield, you’re going to get worn down.

As such, I’ve come up with a pretty simple rule to help represent this, and also to keep combat moving forward. If a hero misses, they will still deal damage equal to their level. This represents hammering away and wearing down the enemy. It would speed up combat, and help chip away at HP. However, removing a monster from combat still requires a successful hit, so you can’t miss someone to death. Now, you definitely could have this apply to monsters as well, but in this case, any monster below CR 1 wouldn’t deal any damage on a miss, and CR1 and above monsters deal damage equal to their level if they miss. I’d have this as optional, because I’m not sure how much players would like seeing monsters chip away at them as well.

In addition: On a Natural 1, no damage is dealt at all, as you miss so badly you completely whiff it.

Any thoughts? Should something else be added to the rule? How would you change it, and what challenges do you see with this?