Balance: A Posture-Type HP-Less System

My post output is entirely dependent on my anxiety at being beaten to a punch vs my anxiety at engaging with a community of people way cooler than me vs my anxiety at sharing fully realised ideas as opposed to quick thoughts

Anyway all of the cool HP-less systems lately have forced me out of my lurking to share one thats been cooking in my head since this great post at Was it Likely? though I don't know if what I made counts as true cottonmouth as much as posering

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I currently use a First In, Last Out Initiative system. Its definitely clunkier at the table but I like the texture that it adds to confrontations, especially as it lets players support each other by interrupting slower enemies leading to those Anime-type turnabout moments or like MtG counter spell duels

To push that back-and-forthness further, I've been currently working on a sorta Sekiro-style Posture-based HP system for a spin-off version of my current house rules that (almost) completely cuts out dice and math in general play. Until I get the full version drafted up in a week or two, here is the gist:

- Successfully landing an attack on a target makes them "Unbalanced" and interrupts whatever they were doing

- Successfully landing an attack on an "Unbalanced", restrained, sleeping, etc. target lets you select a body part of theirs and damage it; resulting in injuries or death

- Each piece of Armour that a character is wearing can protect a specific body part from  specific sorts of injury (e.g. a metal helmet might protect your head from getting slashed or stabbed, but maybe not getting crushed or lightning'd)

- As an Action on a character's turn, if they are not interrupted by a faster character, they can "Steady" themselves to regain their Balance

- Certain super deadly techniques or big monsters can just skip Unbalancing or bypass Armour and just straight up injure and kill targets

- Injuries themselves can be your standard injury table stuff, or also unique status effects and such too

- The FILO Initiative system also plays a big part in team-based play. You might jump in to help protect a slower ally while they try to recover or finish off an enemy after an ally broke their poise sure- but also a LOT of character abilities can play with the timing of things to create fun defensive or offensive abilities. Even just like a single Parry can drastically change the tempo of a fight

- Another consideration of this sort of setup: Speed is king. A consistently faster target can just run circles around a slower one, interrupting them and taking them down. But a heavier armour slow boy then can soak up hits and stay in fights too? In theory anyway the naked guy with a sword is super deadly and thats a feature not a bug

- Unarmored Spellcasters in theory then would also be on the faster side. To make things more interesting instead though, casting a Spell automatically bumps you to the bottom of turn order. This prevents the sort of OP wizard scenario, and also leads to a lot of situations where everybody has to protect the vulnerable wizard as they charge up their spell

- I also intend on using a second similar set of statuses as well for tracking how overwhelmed a target is mentally as well. So a sort of "Shaken" status caused by experiencing the menacing as well