What is it exactly that we're rushing towards?

[KorvinStarmast]

I'd love to co-DM sometime, where I can create campaigns and deep histories and get a plot going, and then let my buddy run the combat.

I did that in AD&D 1e for a bit. I was the Co DM who helped running combat (and as a sounding board for ideas). We handled 8/9 player tables EASILY. Lasted about a year and a half and then folks got assigned to other Naval bases and the group was broken up.

[Schwann145]

I'd love to be a "guy in the chair" for a D&D game. Just be off-screen to look up rules, provide monster stats on the fly, whisper suggestions in the DMs ear, etc.

[rel]

A game with little focus on the character building minigame. If the players all want to spend hours carefully constructing the stat blocks for their characters by cross referencing all the various splat books trying to find the most powerful combination before the game starts then I should be using a different system

To be fair, this is already true for D&D. If you're a full spellcaster, there are hundreds of spells across various different books that all require consideration. If you're a Cleric or Druid it's even worse, as all your spells are always available to be prepared; at least Bard, Sorcerer, and Wizard are limited.

It's certainly true for 3rd or 4th edition, and if we want to play character building minigames without leaving D&D entirely, we have the books and experience and can use those.
5e may have eventually eventually gone in that direction, but it didn't start there. In fact, if you play the game as it was on release like I do; Limiting PC build options to the PHB and not using the Optional rules for multiclassing and feats, it's possible to make new characters in minutes.
And that's before the addition of house rules that might simplify things further.

A game where the tactical combat minigame can be circumvented by player creativity and quick thinking. If a PC dropping a chandelier on the enemies head or pushing a bookcase over onto them is never a substantially better option than casting sleep or swinging a big sword or what have you, then you guessed it; I need a different system.

Another one where D&D has failed. The falling chandelier will do 1-2d6 falling damage, probably fail to make much of an impact at all outside of levels 1-3, and the casting sleep and/or swinging a big sword will need to commence.

You might rule things that way, I certainly don't. In my games an environmental hazard will inflict powerful debuffs and conditions along with the damage, which will usually be more substantial than that done by a spell or weapon attack.
I've heard a similar complaint leveled against consumables like poison - only true if you stick with the stock examples instead of home brewing your own.

[Skrum]

You might rule things that way, I certainly don't. In my games an environmental hazard will inflict powerful debuffs and conditions along with the damage, which will usually be more substantial than that done by a spell or weapon attack.
I've heard a similar complaint leveled against consumables like poison - only true if you stick with the stock examples instead of home brewing your own.

The chandeliers in your world scale with level?

I agree with Schwann. This kind of swashbuckler-y stuff is fun, in the right low level game. But when the enemies go from zombies to necromancers, or bandits to demons...eh. I don't want to beat a Chain Devil or Mind Flayer by knocking over a bookcase on it. That's a tonal clash to me.

[kingcheesepants]

The chandeliers in your world scale with level?

I agree with Schwann. This kind of swashbuckler-y stuff is fun, in the right low level game. But when the enemies go from zombies to necromancers, or bandits to demons...eh. I don't want to beat a Chain Devil or Mind Flayer by knocking over a bookcase on it. That's a tonal clash to me.

You enter the library and finally find the mind flayer the group has been pursuing, roll initiative. Alright Thack you're up first, yes the mind flayer is standing near a bookcase which is not affixed to the floor. Okay that's an athletics check of 18 to knock the bookcase onto him, and he'll get a dex save to avoid being pinned under it.
Thack with his keen danger sense manages to move before the mind flayer, rushes in and using his prodigious strength heaves an entire bookcase filled with heavy tomes onto the aberration knocking him prone and restraining him until he can use an action to attempt to escape.

This is how I would imagine using a bookcase in a fight against a mind flayer to go, you use an action and athletics to knock prone and restrain them and make them waste actions escaping if they don't want to be pinned like that. In what manner is this not fitting the tone of a tier 2 adventure? I guess because you don't want to fight a mind flayer in a library? That seems a little pedantic, but terrain that could be used to similar effect could be found anywhere. The idea that using terrain is somehow less heroic or cool than just bopping someone with your great sword a couple times seems a bit off to me.

[Psyren]

Another one where D&D has failed. The falling chandelier will do 1-2d6 falling damage, probably fail to make much of an impact at all outside of levels 1-3, and the casting sleep and/or swinging a big sword will need to commence.

The chandeliers in your world scale with level?

I agree with Schwann. This kind of swashbuckler-y stuff is fun, in the right low level game. But when the enemies go from zombies to necromancers, or bandits to demons...eh. I don't want to beat a Chain Devil or Mind Flayer by knocking over a bookcase on it. That's a tonal clash to me.

So design better environments. Look at Baldur's Gate 3 - the mindflayer areas have all kinds of exotic features like pools of caustic brine, volatile canisters, fragile conduits, pods with annihilating consoles, long elevator shafts, grenade-like bulbs and so on. If you can't figure out how a swashbuckling type of character might make use of that stuff, you're not trying hard enough - and likely need to watch more movies, read more books, or both.

You have all the rules you need to figure out the levels of damage those types of hazards should inflict - it's right there on DMG 249. Pick an impactful value and radius for your hazard, throw a bunch of monsters in there, then have at it.

[tokek]

The chandeliers in your world scale with level?

I agree with Schwann. This kind of swashbuckler-y stuff is fun, in the right low level game. But when the enemies go from zombies to necromancers, or bandits to demons...eh. I don't want to beat a Chain Devil or Mind Flayer by knocking over a bookcase on it. That's a tonal clash to me.

Quite right. You drop a house on a hag and then move on up for tougher monsters. I’d recommend a nice stone built watchtower for a necromancer

[rel]

You might rule things that way, I certainly don't. In my games an environmental hazard will inflict powerful debuffs and conditions along with the damage, which will usually be more substantial than that done by a spell or weapon attack.
I've heard a similar complaint leveled against consumables like poison - only true if you stick with the stock examples instead of home brewing your own.

The chandeliers in your world scale with level?

I agree with Schwann. This kind of swashbuckler-y stuff is fun, in the right low level game. But when the enemies go from zombies to necromancers, or bandits to demons...eh. I don't want to beat a Chain Devil or Mind Flayer by knocking over a bookcase on it. That's a tonal clash to me.

Different hazards (and consumables) exist for each tier. A more dangerous hazard might inflict a more serious debuff, deal additional damage, cover a larger area, be harder to avoid or escape from, etc.

As to your personal preference, there's not much to be done there beyond accepting that different people like different things.
I've never thought of Mind Flayers as especially strong or agile, a cunning player noting this weakness and defeating one by trapping it under a tapestry or something seems highly appropriate to me.

[Kane0]

I'd love to be a "guy in the chair" for a D&D game. Just be off-screen to look up rules, provide monster stats on the fly, whisper suggestions in the DMs ear, etc.

The benefit of having a group where most of us are also DMs and rotate semi-regularly, at least half the table is capable of doing that backup-DM stuff. Although really it defaults to me when it comes to referencing stuff.

[stoutstien]

The chandeliers in your world scale with level?

I agree with Schwann. This kind of swashbuckler-y stuff is fun, in the right low level game. But when the enemies go from zombies to necromancers, or bandits to demons...eh. I don't want to beat a Chain Devil or Mind Flayer by knocking over a bookcase on it. That's a tonal clash to me.

That's a hp bloat issue not a problem with this type of play. Sort of like falling becomes less dangerous just because you have more blood points even if nothing else has changed.

Tough foes shouldn't be as easy to take out with this because they have tools and methods to avoid it rather than just more number armor.

[Blatant Beast]

I agree with Schwann. This kind of swashbuckler-y stuff is fun, in the right low level game. But when the enemies go from zombies to necromancers, or bandits to demons...eh. I don't want to beat a Chain Devil or Mind Flayer by knocking over a bookcase on it. That's a tonal clash to me.

Watching a Psi Warrior use Telekinesis to levitate a rusty iron bedframe to act as a barrier and makeshift cover through multiple encounters on a floor of a multi-leveled dungeon was great fun to me.

Vader does not need to use his lightsaber, he can defeat you with boxes, (sorry Luke).
People who like Conan Style fighters just believe in getting the job done.

[Theodoxus]

Watching a Psi Warrior use Telekinesis to levitate a rusty iron bedframe to act as a barrier and makeshift cover through multiple encounters on a floor of a multi-leveled dungeon was great fun to me.

Vader does not need to use his lightsaber, he can defeat you with boxes, (sorry Luke).
People who like Conan Style fighters just believe in getting the job done.

I made a Dominator named Darth Phreeze in City of Heroes that uses Gravity Control to "force lift", "Force Choke", and "Toss boxes" at my foes. Then her secondary power is Ice Melee, granting Ice Sword and Circle Ice Sword, that creates red tinged, well, ice swords. It's not as perfect as if Katana was available as a secondary power, but they're still really evocative.

It's really quite fun locking down mooks with gravity strangleholds and then slicing them open with a sword strike.

My next D&D character will definitely be psionic in nature, both Warrior and Knife look quite fun.

[Ionathus]

Tough foes shouldn't be as easy to take out with this because they have tools and methods to avoid it rather than just more number armor.

This was my thought. Successfully dropping a heavy bookcase on a mindflayer should hurt it: mindflayers are squishy. They have an octopus for a head.

The difference between doing it to a "boss monster" like a mindflayer or a powerful necromancer, vs. doing it to a human cultist minion, is that the boss monster should have mitigations available to either make that action harder or mitigate its effects. Mindflayers in some editions can teleport. Necromancers should also be able to teleport or (even cooler) lift the bookcase off them with a dozen skeletal arms. Or maybe they have a reaction ability to halve the damage. Maybe you give them a save to reduce damage and not be trapped. Maybe they can burn a resource to interrupt this attack -- sure the bookcase trick didn't "work" but now the boss monster is in a worse position, so you did accomplish something.

But then, that's also my personal design philosophy talking: I'm a big believer that no boss monster should be taken straight from a published statblock. I always add in a few extra quirks and abilities, a la Matt Colville's "Action Oriented Monsters" video, to make bosses feel truly unique. They should always have 1) a way to mitigate damage, 2) an extra movement option, and 3) a way to gum up the PCs' plans. Ideally each of these can be countered by the PCs: an example is the goblin boss who can redirect any attack to a nearby allied goblin. That's a simple fix: either get him away from his soldiers, or keep attacking until he runs out of scapegoblins

When I give my bosses more tools like this, I'm not as afraid to let the PCs get creative. Is it "unbalanced" to deal 3d6 bludgeoning damage and knock the target prone with a falling bookcase, just because you succeeded on a single Athletics check? Maybe. But it's also un-reproducible, and the boss monster has plenty of ways to deal with it.

[Psyren]

That's a hp bloat issue not a problem with this type of play. Sort of like falling becomes less dangerous just because you have more blood points even if nothing else has changed.

This is why for extreme falls I swap from the falling damage rules to the Deadly Improvised Damage rules.

This was my thought. Successfully dropping a heavy bookcase on a mindflayer should hurt it: mindflayers are squishy. They have an octopus for a head.

I'll add too that you can build in scaling even for mundane things like this. At Tier 1, the bookcase your players might come across might be a typical wooden rack of shelves with tomes on them, but at Tier 3, the "bookcase" might be a steel matrix of jagged Githyanki tir'su slates on a spelljamming vessel, bumping you up a few notches on the Improvising Damage table when you upend that onto a tight cluster of mindflayers.

[KorvinStarmast]

You enter the library and finally find the mind flayer the group has been pursuing, roll initiative. Alright Thack you're up first, yes the mind flayer is standing near a bookcase which is not affixed to the floor. Okay that's an athletics check of 18 to knock the bookcase onto him, and he'll get a dex save to avoid being pinned under it.
Thack with his keen danger sense manages to move before the mind flayer, rushes in and using his prodigious strength heaves an entire bookcase filled with heavy tomes onto the aberration knocking him prone and restraining him until he can use an action to attempt to escape.

This is how I would imagine using a bookcase in a fight against a mind flayer to go, you use an action and athletics to knock prone and restrain them and make them waste actions escaping if they don't want to be pinned like that. In what manner is this not fitting the tone of a tier 2 adventure? I guess because you don't want to fight a mind flayer in a library? That seems a little pedantic, but terrain that could be used to similar effect could be found anywhere. The idea that using terrain is somehow less heroic or cool than just bopping someone with your great sword a couple times seems a bit off to me.

*applause*

[stoutstien]

This is why for extreme falls I swap from the falling damage rules to the Deadly Improvised Damage rules.



I'll add too that you can build in scaling even for mundane things like this. At Tier 1, the bookcase your players might come across might be a typical wooden rack of shelves with tomes on them, but at Tier 3, the "bookcase" might be a steel matrix of jagged Githyanki tir'su slates on a spelljamming vessel, bumping you up a few notches on the Improvising Damage table when you upend that onto a tight cluster of mindflayers.

This is one place where I really think that having multiple pools representing your health and well-being works better than just a singular linear one. It's not very d&d but it's not a New concept by any means.

[Dr.Samurai]

My group doesn't really rush toward anything. Some sessions are giant melee-fests. Others there's no combat, or we finally start an encounter towards the end of the session because we've been scouting or speaking with NPCs the whole time.

We're pretty go-with-the-flow as far as the game goes.

[Theodoxus]

This is one place where I really think that having multiple pools representing your health and well-being works better than just a singular linear one. It's not very d&d but it's not a New concept by any means.

I'm toying with an idea cribbed from Wounds/Vitality, calling it 'Health and Hit Points'. Hit Points stay the same as bog standard D&D 5E. Heath is a combination of your Strength and Constitution modifiers. I'm also creating a blanket damage reduction stat based on the combination of your Constitution and Dexterity modifiers. Damage reduction only works on HP damage, but it covers ALL HP damage, as it's a measure of how well you can absorb (Con) and deflect (Dex) attacks. Unlike Wounds/Vitality, nothing bypasses Hit Points (crits, magic, special attacks - nothing), but once your HP are gone, you have a very small pool of Health. I'm still working through what additional effects going into your Health pool might generate. Making Death Saves, or permanent wounds, a point of exhaustion for each point of damage (If I go that route, I might make it so that Health more like DaggerHeart, and damage won't reduce your Health by more than a couple of points (off the top of my head, maybe any attack that hits Health calls for an immediate Death Save, and on a 20, you take no additional damage, a save, you take 1 Health point, a fail, you take 2 Health points, and on a 1, you take 3 Health points, and the requisite number of 2024 style Exhaustion levels.) Since most PCs through most of their careers won't have more than 10 Health (20 Con and Dex would be rare outside of 20th level Barbarians), it tracks perfectly with the Exhaustion path. On the one hand, PCs with smaller Health pools won't rack up as much Exhaustion, otoh, PCs with smaller Health pools can't withstand as much damage before they're dead...

[Slipjig]

I feel your pain. It needs to be painted in blood: "Be ready for your turn when it comes, up, and for Pete's sake, make a decision!"

Easy fix house rule: "If you spend more than six seconds considering what to do (or looking anything up), you take the Dodge action this round."
Time pauses if the player is asking clarifying questions (e.g. "How tightly packed are the mooks?" or "Are there any shadowed areas?").

[Skrum]

I'm toying with an idea cribbed from Wounds/Vitality, calling it 'Health and Hit Points'. Hit Points stay the same as bog standard D&D 5E. Heath is a combination of your Strength and Constitution modifiers. I'm also creating a blanket damage reduction stat based on the combination of your Constitution and Dexterity modifiers. Damage reduction only works on HP damage, but it covers ALL HP damage, as it's a measure of how well you can absorb (Con) and deflect (Dex) attacks. Unlike Wounds/Vitality, nothing bypasses Hit Points (crits, magic, special attacks - nothing), but once your HP are gone, you have a very small pool of Health. I'm still working through what additional effects going into your Health pool might generate. Making Death Saves, or permanent wounds, a point of exhaustion for each point of damage (If I go that route, I might make it so that Health more like DaggerHeart, and damage won't reduce your Health by more than a couple of points (off the top of my head, maybe any attack that hits Health calls for an immediate Death Save, and on a 20, you take no additional damage, a save, you take 1 Health point, a fail, you take 2 Health points, and on a 1, you take 3 Health points, and the requisite number of 2024 style Exhaustion levels.) Since most PCs through most of their careers won't have more than 10 Health (20 Con and Dex would be rare outside of 20th level Barbarians), it tracks perfectly with the Exhaustion path. On the one hand, PCs with smaller Health pools won't rack up as much Exhaustion, otoh, PCs with smaller Health pools can't withstand as much damage before they're dead...

I was thinking about how to rethink health the other day, mostly out of dissatisfaction with death saving throws and yo yo healing, etc.

Leave hit points the same but maybe change the name to Stamina. Lean into the abstract version of hit points; it's some combination of toughness, resiliency, luck, reflexes, divine power, latent energy, ki, etc. Getting "hit" isn't literally be chopped by a battle axe.

When a character hits zero, they're now bloodied - staggered, hurt, and in a position of weakness. Any further hits will seriously imperil the character. They may continue to act, but may only take a bonus action or move action. They make Recovery Rolls at the beginning of their turn (death saving throws). Melee hits are automatic crits and inflict 2 failed Recoveries.

On one hand this is effectively a buff to the players, as they would maintain some amount of functionality even when at 0. But narratively I like this *way* more than imagining the character literally falling to the ground every time they hit zero, and then getting back up 6 seconds later as they get healing word'd (repeat as necessary! Yo yo's everywhere!!).

[JellyPooga]

This was my thought. Successfully dropping a heavy bookcase on a mindflayer should hurt it: mindflayers are squishy. They have an octopus for a head.

If nothing else, pushing over someone's bookshelf, even if it doesn't land on them, should probably draw their ire.

"No! Now you've done it! Do you even know how long it took me to curate those! Some of those are older even than me. And they call me the monster! Look! This is an original X'kparth the Dread, treatise on Ch'uul migratory habits and how to summon Baalors and look at it's second spine! Ruined! You can never really fix the chitin and the incantations will all be out of whack. *sigh* It's going to take me years to clear up this mess."

It's important to remember that most bad guys are just innocent nerds, often scholars, that turned to evil because the jocks at wizard school or the spawning pool drove them to it by their incessant bullying. Adventurers are those jocks (or their progeny) come back to rub it in. #teamevil

[Psyren]

This is one place where I really think that having multiple pools representing your health and well-being works better than just a singular linear one. It's not very d&d but it's not a New concept by any means.

There are certainly advantages to that approach but I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze honestly. Trying to split those out (+Armor as DR etc) is one of Daggerheart's biggest headaches right now, for example.

[stoutstien]

There are certainly advantages to that approach but I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze honestly. Trying to split those out (+Armor as DR etc) is one of Daggerheart's biggest headaches right now, for example.

Aye it's not worth it in most system due to headspace restraints and the habit that a lot of games with adding complexity for the sake of it rather than as it's needed.

For example 5e has three pools, outside of very specific circumstances like the abjuration wizard or clockwork sorcerer, with THP, HP, and death saves. It works relatively well for what it does because they don't interact with each other and they always flow from top to bottom.

You could just fudge what each of these pools actually represent a little bit and get a lot of play variance without much overhead. For example imagine that if you get attacked and that damage is completely soaked up by your temporary HP then you are unaffected by on hit effects like poison or grapples.

The only thing you have to do is avoid the death spiral which is easy when you just make sure that as they go down in HP/vitality their defensive don't also tank which is the only real issue with death saves as written. You have this great concept that is kind of hard to interact with besides using it solely as a mitigation sink as long as you can bounce back.

[Theodoxus]

I was thinking about how to rethink health the other day, mostly out of dissatisfaction with death saving throws and yo yo healing, etc.

Leave hit points the same but maybe change the name to Stamina. Lean into the abstract version of hit points; it's some combination of toughness, resiliency, luck, reflexes, divine power, latent energy, ki, etc. Getting "hit" isn't literally be chopped by a battle axe.

When a character hits zero, they're now bloodied - staggered, hurt, and in a position of weakness. Any further hits will seriously imperil the character. They may continue to act, but may only take a bonus action or move action. They make Recovery Rolls at the beginning of their turn (death saving throws). Melee hits are automatic crits and inflict 2 failed Recoveries.

On one hand this is effectively a buff to the players, as they would maintain some amount of functionality even when at 0. But narratively I like this *way* more than imagining the character literally falling to the ground every time they hit zero, and then getting back up 6 seconds later as they get healing word'd (repeat as necessary! Yo yo's everywhere!!).

An interesting take I'll ruminate on. I still prefer a 'meat' bar though, of some measurement. You run out of HP, sure, you're bloodied, you're making Death Saves (in this version, 10+ is no additional damage, 20 is 1 HP, 2-9 is -1 point of 'meat', a 1 is -2 points of meat. 0 meat is braindead. But you can still moderately act. Getting hit more while bloodied... I like the failed Death Save route instead of just obliterating your remaining meat. It should take a bit to actually hack off bits of a person before they just die. Less Con means it doesn't take as many swings of the axe, so to speak, but a big healthy body builder of a Barbarian should probably be able to take a bit of a punishment even when bloodied.

Aye it's not worth it in most system due to headspace restraints and the habit that a lot of games with adding complexity for the sake of it rather than as it's needed.

For example 5e has three pools, outside of very specific circumstances like the abjuration wizard or clockwork sorcerer, with THP, HP, and death saves. It works relatively well for what it does because they don't interact with each other and they always flow from top to bottom.

You could just fudge what each of these pools actually represent a little bit and get a lot of play variance without much overhead. For example imagine that if you get attacked and that damage is completely soaked up by your temporary HP then you are unaffected by on hit effects like poison or grapples.

The only thing you have to do is avoid the death spiral which is easy when you just make sure that as they go down in HP/vitality their defensive don't also tank which is the only real issue with death saves as written. You have this great concept that is kind of hard to interact with besides using it solely as a mitigation sink as long as you can bounce back.

I agree with the weirdness that poison on a 'luck' based HP measure can be. I don't think there's an overly simplistic solution though. At best, I like your THP - if you have a stack of THP from something, and you're bit by a giant spider, if the 1d8 bit doesn't reduce your THP to zero, then the 3d6 poison damage just doesn't apply.

You could conceivably do something similar to your HP pool. Bringing back the 4th Ed version of Bloodied (instead of the Bloodied that Skrum and I used above) - if that same spider didn't drop you to below half your HP, the poison again doesn't apply. At this point, there'd be actual mechanical differences between ingesting, injecting, and contacting poisons. Ingesting I'd hazard would affect your HP regardless of any THP or other wards you might have. It deals damage even if you're not bloodied. Injecting doesn't work against THP or outside of Bloodied unless the delivery mechanism penetrates both. Contact, I'd say bypasses THP, but not Bloodied, though that's a purely gamist idea of symmetry. Without that, I'd say it would work exactly like ingested.

My personal take is I think people in general are pretty lucky. There are lots of things that we encounter every day that should wound us, but don't. But once something bypasses that, it's a relatively small amount of meat damage we can take before being rendered inoperable, if not outright dead. YMMV.

[rel]

Another way to run HP as normal, and have it explicitly not be meat points without running into confusion with riders is to have the riders not apply consistently.

Have riders like poisoned, grabbed, etc only apply to some attacks by tying them to the natural attack roll; The condition only applies on a natural even hit, or a natural roll of 15+ or what have you.

Then you can describe attacks that land without a rider as near misses, being forced into a worse position, etc. and describe attacks that do deliver their rider as minor injuries hits that are mostly turned by armour and so forth.

[Schwann145]

Archers who use poisoned arrows.

Abstract defeated.

[Psyren]

I don't see what's wrong with the way 5e represents poisoned attacks. The vast majority of them deal extra damage and maybe apply the poisoned condition; some truly exotic ones might trigger unconsciousness if you bomb the save or fail a separate one or something too. But either way, the more (T)HP you have (whether they represent luck, grit, meat etc to you) then the less effective the poison is, and you can represent that in the fiction however you like ;the Drow House Captain's bolt merely grazing you, or it delivering its payload but you power through it etc. It's not like 5e poisons do ability damage, cause instant death, or otherwise bypass the HP system entirely after all, so there's pretty much no wrong answer.

[Kane0]

It's not like 5e poisons do ability damage, cause instant death, or otherwise bypass the HP system entirely after all, so there's pretty much no wrong answer.

Maybe yours don't
Its easy to tack on exhaustion, max HP reduction and other conditions when you're making custom poisons. My personal favourite is also inducing confusion or enfeeblement (as per the spells)

[Schwann145]

Poisons work fine. They're just a defeater to the argument of abstraction of damage. You can't be poisoned by a dart that "luckily missed," for example. If you do go that route, fine, but you've abstracted your way entirely out of the game at that point.

(I tack on archery as a defeater to the argument of abstraction of attacks, just for fun. While ammo is tracked, you can't say you shoot a bunch of times until you hit with a single "attack roll" - the quiver knows better.)

[rel]

Another way to run HP as normal, and have it explicitly not be meat points without running into confusion with riders is to have the riders not apply consistently.

Have riders like poisoned, grabbed, etc only apply to some attacks by tying them to the natural attack roll; The condition only applies on a natural even hit, or a natural roll of 15+ or what have you.

Then you can describe attacks that land without a rider as near misses, being forced into a worse position, etc. and describe attacks that do deliver their rider as minor injuries hits that are mostly turned by armour and so forth.

Archers who use poisoned arrows.

Abstract defeated.

No, this type of system works quite well for abstracting poisoned arrows;. Here's a simple example:
Let's say HP is explicitly luck, panache, fate, etc and all riders including poison apply on hits where the roll was even.
4 poisoned arrow attacks with a +3 to hit bonus are made against a defender with 15 AC. The rolls 9, 10, 14, and 17.

With a +3 bonus, the rolls of 9 and 10 are both misses (12 & 13). Lucky too, if that roll of 10 had been a hit poison would apply. These two attacks can be narrated as misses by a large margin, bouncing harmlessly off armour, or otherwise being completely ineffective.

The roll of 17 is a hit (20), damage is dealt as normal, but since the natural roll was odd, poison doesn't apply.
This hit can be narrated as a near miss, that forces the defender off balance, puts a hole in their clothing or otherwise degrades their HP without actually doing physical damage. Hence they lose HP, but do not suffer poison.
Given the high roll, perhaps the attack could be narrated as the shot hiting the defender right in the forehead - good thing they were wearing a solid helmet. They are rattled, but unharmed.

The roll of 14 is also a hit (17) so HP damage is dealt, and since the natural roll of 14 was even, poison applies. This hit will have to be narrated as dealing actual damage.
The defenders armour stopped most of the arrows force, but a minor wound was still inflicted by the point, the arrow almost missed but managed to inflict a minor wound, etc.

It generally helps to resolve the entire attack mechanically, then go and narrate what happened.