As we all know, LotFP is not about combat and killing monsters for xp's sake. The rules make it clear. I nevertheless have a question with hit points : is their fast increase, when PCs level up, the best way to handle this low combat ambiance ?
I was thinking about how True20 handles health, which is to avoid hit point entirely. I'm not sure I'm sold on the mechanism as is, but I really dislike the hit point mechanic turning higher level characters into "10 goblins stab your wizard and you just laugh" so it's something worth raising.
The attack roll is d20 + your attack bonus (your appropriate stat bonus + attack bonus for class). Your target number is the target's defense: 10 + *their* combat bonus + dodge/parry. Other things like blindness, size, range, clumsy weapon etc. modify your attack roll as usual.
Success means you add the weapon's damage bonus (a flat stat such as +2 for a medium weapon, which is not unlike the basic dice accorded weapons in LotFP) plus any str bonus.
So you roll your TOUGHNESS versus target of 15 + that Damage Bonus, and you do that by rolling d20 + armor + Constitution. armor is +1 for the lightest to +6 for full heavy plate, the kind you can't move around in.
This means that you fail your Toughness, you get bruised and hurt. Fail by 5, you're also stunned and wounded. by 10, you're staggered and disabled, and by 15 you're unconscious and dying. Each "level" of injury is -1 on future Toughness saves, and it's cumulative: you fail two Toughness saves from two separate attacks and you are at -2 (stunned and wounded).
Armor in True20 is damage-ablative: it soaks damage rather than resisting the attack directly. This makes it a little easier to deal with Touch and other similar attacks, though.
However, such an approach would require a house rule similar to the ones suggested in another thread where attack bonuses for all classes do increase, just more slowly.
Any feedback on how this might be usable for LotFP?