Chip Damage / Near Miss Rules?
My current game is winding down (running Red Hand of Doom for *Draw Steel!*), and I'm looking at potentially switching to Pathfinder (most liky P8) for my next campaign. One of the things I like about Draw Steel is that there isn't any missing- a tier 1 result just does reduced damage.
I was considering something based on the "Glancing Blow" from Pathfinder Unchained: missing their AC by 5 or less is a glancing blow that deals half your minimum damage, while missing by 6 or more is a complete whiff.
While I haen't run PF1e before, I have a few immediate thoughts for potential results:
Martials Become Stronger, especially against weak foes: The chances for some damage to be dealt increase by 25 percentage points.
Rogues Get Nerfed: A Glancing Blow counts as a miss for abilities, which means their Sneak Attack doesn't trigger. On the other hand, the wood chipper fighter is able to work as normal.
Minions become stronger- by a lot: he hordes of mooks with lots of weak attacks (both summoned PC animals and enemy goons) will probably become much more capable of doing damage.
PC health will deplete much faster: Enemies have 1 combat of chip damage to deal with- PCs have several. I was considering incorporating some version of 5e's short rest (spend an hour to roll any number of HD and recover HP by that amount, restore 1 HD use per day of rest) to compensate.
This ends up being a lot of book-keeping for not much benefit: enjoy bookkeeping- I have ADHD that manifests as enjoying having minutae to track at the table to keep myself engaged. However, I'm worried that this could end up being more cognitive load for my PCs than is necessary.
What do you all think about this as a house rule? Has anyone tried something similar? If so, how did it turn out?