Hearts as 4hp in quarters instead of 10? Leaning into Zelda style

Index Card RPG
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So I love the Zelda inspiration for ICRPG hearts. Also, I like magic as a d8, and just running guns as magic, ranged weapons. I am thinking about making hearts be 4 hp (sort of like hit dice) instead of 10, and doubling the number of hearts everything has as written (so each 1 :heart: is now 2 :heart:, and what was 10hp is now 8hp). This would do a few things:

  • On a paper character sheet, printed or inked Hearts can visually fill in by quarter with pencil, like the red disappears in Zelda. Then the pencil can be erased with healing.
  • Hearts can be more adjustable and acquired more often, like after every dungeon/adventure, along with the other loot.
  • D8 Magic effort can still one-shot a standard, two heart thing.

Starting humanoid types could have 3 basic levels, weak=1, average=2, and tough=3, for 4hp, 8hp, and 12hp respectively.

Another effect is that assigning hearts of effort to can start lower and be fine tuned a bit more (when used).

I also like the idea of maybe starting with 3 hearts, which is what link does. Perhaps that is more of a ‘mode’ these days. 3 could be ‘beginner’, 2 could be ‘gritty’, and 1 could be ‘hard mode’. Thoughts?

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I like it! I think, for me personally, I would go with 5hp per heart if i were going to change it at all. But I also prefer magic being the D10, and its easier to erase tally marks on a character sheet than colored in hearts.

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I like the idea of quarters.
Personally I use 6hp per HD. D6s are the dice I have most of, and they can be stacked up into small towers, so it’s easy to place them next to the minis to track damage.

Plus 2 HD (12 hp) is close enough to one HEART to not bother with conversions.

In your case, 2 or 3 hearts of 4 hp would work well too!