I believe that there needs to be a change in the mechanics of characters when their HP decreases. To me, it doesn't seem realistic that a character at 1 HP is able to perform actions just as well as one at, say, 25 HP. I have a few suggestions to 'fix' this. Idea 1: their card draw could be reduced. Instead of drawing two cards each round (plus one racial move card), characters could just draw one card each round when they fall below half of their HP maximum. Idea 2: their racial move card could be downgraded. Perhaps the move points could be reduced by one when they fall below half of their HP maximum - for example, an elf would draw Run instead of Dash, a human would draw Walk instead of Run and a dwarf would draw Shuffle instead of Walk. This would only work in player characters, not monsters, because of unusual racial move cards like Teleport Self which do not have a 3-move-point variant to be downgraded to. Idea 3: they could become permanently encumbered. This is like the previous idea, but instead of the racial move card a character draws being downgraded to lose move points, they permanently gain Encumber effects when passing certain HP bounds. For example, Encumber 1 when down to half health and Encumber 2 when down to one quarter health. Idea 4: they could gain random handicap cards. At the start of each round when below certain HP bounds, random handicap cards from a select group would be attached to them. Only a few of the handicap cards in the game would be able to be selected (for example, Wimpy, Trip, Vulnerable, Combustible, etc.) to prevent cards like Festering Guts appearing.
Idea 5: Change your mental model of HP in Card Hunter. HP does not represent the degrading health of characters. This is why their performance does not degrade. HP represents how close they are to running out of luck dodging all the sharpened steel and eldritch energy flying around. At 1 HP it's one more stab and it's going through their liver and good night, Gracie. At half HP nothing has touched them yet but the swipes are getting worryingly close. Degrading performance at low health is a bad game mechanic. It's a "the rich get richer" scenario, a positive feedback loop. Those are never fun in practise. Also, what about all the amazing comebacks at minimal health? What about getting through by the skin of your teeth, the victories remembered for months and years to come? Would we want to lose most of those?
Nope. Don't like that. You need a complete damage system (look the GURPS one for reference on that) for injuries to be meaningful. And Card Hunter is just not there. The normal way we handle hp in this game works, IMO. And what do we do with things that aren't broken..?
Burst gonna have a big boosy if any of this happends... and would make low hp characters like elf priest less playable, in the fact that just one attack its enougth to low theirs hp below the half.
Yeah, I'd prefer elf wizards to not receive any additional difficulties. They already start at ~1/2 dwarf warrior HP. $F^ J Elf Wizard + one Strong Hack + Frenzy of any sort = suddenly Elf Wizard gets fewer cards or less movement or finds new handicaps every round. $:^ | EDIT: Is it possible to add another poll option to not change a thing? That appears to be the top contender in this race...
