I've made some changes to the health mechanic a little but to try and give characters a bit more longevity. I have been using a mechanic similar to Cairn, where damage gets applied to a character's stats and when that happens they have to make a saving throw to see if they are still up. After a couple of playlists from a few months ago, I felt that characters were going down too quickly, in some cases after a single hit. I think for a game like Cairn that is fine, but for my game where players may be in the wilderness for days or weeks without a way to heal, going down that quick may be a bit too harsh.
I've instead added a wound mechanic, inspired a bit from Mothership. What will now happen is that a character will make a saving throw when they take damage to one of their Characteristics and if they fail they will take a wound based upon how much damage they receive. I'm keeping the wounds very open to interpretation here so the players at the table can determine what makes the most sense based upon the damage received.
I have to play test this still, but hopefully this gives some more longevity to characters and also a bit more role-play drama to an adventure. Characters will not become Incapacitated when their damage received equals their Characteristic. Here's an example: I have a strength of 11, I will be incapacitated when I've taken 11 points of strength damage. This also effectively makes my DC 0 and my ST 20 for that stat.
When Incapacitated players are not yet dead, but they are effectively dying. They will then continue to take damage after combat as companions rush to try and get them to safely. If their damage then tools double their Characteristic number, they are then dead. I've actually used this mechanic in a similar way while playing Cairn and it worked quite well, so this modified version might make sense. Here's a full example.
You can read the full information on the GitHub doc for Combat: https://github.com/masupert/BeyondTheTorchlight/blob/main/09.0%20-%20Combat.md