Two-Tiered Health and Bastionland

3/7/26

I'm going to paint a picture that may help you understand why I love 2-tiered health systems like the one found in Chris McDowall’s Mythic Bastionland. 

Claws flash, critical hit! You take 27 of your 32 hit points from the dragon's rake and bite attack. There’s blood and jagged wounds, and exposed bone as you struggle to keep your organs on the inside. On your turn, you attack twice and move 30 feet, seemingly unhindered by being on death's door. Then the rogue uses their turn to dash to you and give you a greater healing potion. Your flesh knits back together, bones snap back into place; you're as good as new. After the dragon is vanquished, you repair your armor and you're unchanged from before the encounter, one would never know there was damage.

This is how many contemporary TTRPGs and games in general run HP, as Health Points. It's an abstraction of your physical condition and injuries that has no impact on your performance between 100% and 1%. Additionally, your average adventurer has well over 30 or 40 hp, while your average cow and villager have under 10. 

In addressing the dissonance here, some folks take the origin of HP back to its roots as HIT POINTS. where it abstracts not just your physical condition in HEALTH POINTS, or “meat points”. This interpretation widens to include luck, exhaustion, armor integrity, and grit. So a knight that's lost 30 of her 32 hit points to dragon's breath in one turn is not near-fused to her armor and likely to die in an hour from shock; instead, she's been rocked and delirious from pain, taking heaving breaths but mostly unburned. A cleric spell that heals this knight doesn't perform surgery in 6 seconds, it restores morale, treats pain and addresses exhaustion. 

I find the single-tier Hit Point system preferable to “Meat Points”, but they still share a weakness: characters are just as effective at 120 hp as they are at 1. 

Let's talk about Mythic Bastionland.

1. Roll-under and Stat Damage

   1. To roll for strength (or vigor, in this case), roll a d20. Meeting or rolling below your current Vigor value is a success. 

   2. Stats have a maximum and current value. They can be reduced by numerous factors, but today we're talking about Vigor and taking damage reducing it. 

2. Guard as a stat 

   1. This is your “hp”. Your luck, tenacity, grit. Starts at d6 generally. 

   2. Recovers to full after a moment's rest out of combat

   3. Damage exceeding Guard rolls over into Vigor

3. Vigor as a stat

   1. Strength analogue - roll under your total to bend bars

   2. “Meat points”- when it hits zero you're dead

   3. On taking damage that reduces Vigor to 50% or less, roll Vigor to avoid passing out. 

These facts paint a very different (albeit incomplete) picture when compared to contemporary health systems, but I want to highlight the strength and elegance of design on display here: 

With two numbers, Chris was able to justify several narrative realities at once: 

1. Skill, luck, and grit count. Even when injured.

   1. The seasoned veteran on their last leg after trudging through multiple dangerous encounters(with 3 vigor, easily fellable with a single attack) still has 15 guard that refreshes after every fight.

2. Compounding injuries and weariness have consequences

   1. This veteran can keep up on a fight by running on grit and experience, but they're still nursing critical damage and useless if they need to push a wagon or outrun a pack of wolves. 

   2. The next hit that DOES slip past their guard is probably lethal, no matter how good a fighter they are

3. Incapacitation outside of death is possible, and should be respected. 

   1. Characters -can- plan fight to the last hit point, but taking damage once you're below 50% carries a compounding chance of knocking you out

   2. Players that get hurt (just like real fighters would) consider their actions and capabilities more. 

This breakdown of why I enjoy Mythic Bastionland’s combat probably gives away the fact that I can enjoy low-power games. But the bigger takeaway here is that you can drastically impact play vibe by messing with just a few levers. 

My favorite part of running MBl right now is how the consequences of hard travel (and travel is the entire game really) show up in combat, and narratively. 

So now let's run the dragon encounter back in Mythic Bastionland:

First, you traveled 12 hexes over several days to get here, rushing the last few when you could see smoke on the horizon. Your horses are exhausted from rushing (6/10 and 5/12 Vigor respectively). You've had a fight with some bandits that ended after their first casualty, but your squire was wounded in their initial ambush (3/9 Vigor, but full 7/7 guard because it fully regenerates between encounters).

The Dragon survives your initial assault and swipes wide. Your horse fails its save and takes 5 damage, surviving only because it has armor. It fails the vigor check because it dropped below ½ health and passes out. The next attack hits you for 12 damage and blasts through your 10/10 guard points, into your vigor. You go flying and skid to a stop, mostly uninjured but shocked and dazed at 11/14 vigor. You're still standing but unable to effectively defend against more attacks this battle, they'll get past your guard and do direct, lasting damage that lingers beyond this fight. 

Your squire stands before the dragon and weathers its final attack, taking 7 damage and barely staying conscious (rolling a 2 on a d20 when only a 1 or 2 would pass) after being swatted away as well. 

You rush the dragon and unload all your weapon dice: 2 d6s from your longsword and a d4 from your shield, a d10 from your squire charging with Lance, and a d12 from your smite. 

The dragon ends up taking 10 damage, reduced to 7 by armor, but fails its save against your coordinated efforts to blind it (purchased using attack dice, another article coming soon). Taking damage (however temporary) to an eye makes this equation suddenly not worth the effort (failed morale check, 15 Spirit) and the dragon takes off after taking a moment to memorize your faces and scents. It took zero lasting damage (12 Guard, 18 Vigor).