House Rule: The Good Life (& Bonus HP)

One of the things that make the Hobbit and LotR feel real to me is how important food and accommodation is. Camping in the rain kind of sucks. Catching and eating a rabbit - even at the risk of giving away your location - is an important morale boost. I want a bit of that vibe in my game, and hey I already have a table for determining whether the weather is poor.

Also, as you may recall if you've been reading along, I've done away with Clerics and attendant common healing spells. This puts PCs a bit behind the baseline curve in terms of survival.

One of the ways I'm going to address it is to involve more healing springs and weird shrines where you roll a d6 (or whatever) and maybe you get healed. But that's for later.

This post is about Bonus Hit Points, and how I intend (hope) for them to help things a bit. This is also a way to add a bit of structure to the passage of days, and add some of that "maybe let's not camp in the rain and eat iron rations" flavour if possible.

A convivial time at the Prancing Pony is sure to raise your spirits
(Jian Guo aka breath-art)

Bonus HP

First off, my the general implementation of Bonus HP. 

1. Bonus HP from different sources do not stack. That means if you have 3 Bonus HP and you get d6 Bonus HP from a night's rest, you will have 4, 5, or 6 Bonus HP if you roll that number on the die, and you will have 3 Bonus HP if you roll a 1, 2, or 3.
2. Bonus HP are depleted before regular HP, but cannot be used to heal lost HP.

Many things give bonus HP - primarily comestibles and generally living the good life, but also spiritual blessings and whatnot.

Before the Adventure

If you spend some time before the adventure doing something more normal than scouring the countryside for treasures while fighting who-knows-what, you start with Bonus HP. How much depends on your standard of living and for how long you've been taking it easy.

Quarters	Day	Week	Season
Rough*	1	d4	d6
Common	d4	d6	d8
Fine	d6	d8	d10
Opulent	d8	d10	d12
*Requires gear to counter any weather effects

Rough = Sleeping out of doors and eating thin fare. If it's raining, you better have a tent, and if it's cold you better have some blankets and a fire.

Common = How most people live. As long as you have a decent roof over you head, square meals, and a comfortable place to sleep, this applies.

Fine = You're living the good life, with people attending to your needs, high quality food and drink. Equivalent to the standard of living of successful city merchants, average nobility, and the like.

Opulent = you live like a King, Empress, or someone otherwise in the top 1%.

And yes, this does mean that your standard level 1 PCs just starting out their careers get either d6 or d8 bonus HP in the beginning (because they've probably spent more than a season doing non-adventuring things). It might take the sting out of rolling a one on their hit dice.

Other Sources

Like I said have a some ideas for other sources of Bonus HP. They include things like: boons from religious practices, fancy elf-wine, tasty local specialties of certain villages, and so on. That's something I'll detail later, though.