Dealing with damage.

One thing that has always bugged me in D&D, and many other games that follow the hit point 

system, is how damage is handled. Typically characters and npcs just soak up punishment 

until they hit the 0 hit point threshold then drop out dead or unconscious. For the purposes 

of book keeping this is a simple and workable system. However for me it is a bit more 

abstract than I care for on a regular basis, or at least for certain types of games. 

Sometimes I like something a bit grittier. The problem with that is that the more detail you 

go into about combat, or any system, the more it will slow down. Any way here is a system I 

have been tinkering with for older editions of D&D and their clones, or even a custom system 

I have been tossing around in the old noggin for a while.

Hit points will be reckoned as being a measure of the characters ability to soak up minor 

blows without serious consequence, call it luck or whatever abstraction you prefer. The 

characters Constitution score becomes the actual measure of their ability to absorb 

substantial physical damage. Divide the players Con score by three and round down or up as 

needed.

The score provided is a measure of how many actual wounds the player can sustain. So for 

instance if Player A is out of hit points and takes another hit for for 3 hit points, he 

will compare to his Con score, in this case 9, so this would be one wound suffered. This 

would leave the player with a total of 6 Con points, and thus two more wounds he can sustain 

before falling out. Now what happens if Player A had sustained say, 6 Con points of damage 

instead of 3? Instead of counting this as two wounds at once this is considered one Shocking 

injury. This is an injury that has immediate effects, not merely the running of blood from a 

deep cut or a broken bone. When a Shocking injury is sustained the player must make a check 

against their Con score by rolling 3d6. If the roll is higher than the players Con score the 

character falls unconscious. Now what happens if say enough damage is sustained to go over a 

Shocking injury and incur a third? At that point the player simply collapses, and must be 

stabilized by either magical or mundane means or lose 1d4 Con points per round.

With this system in place a natural 20 on a to hit roll would mean that the damage rolled is applied directly to the players Con points. Basically a critical is an attack to precise and well timed to be shrugged off as a glancing blow. Now of course I plan to make a table of effects for both regular and Shocking wounds, with effects from regular wounds being less severe and immediate than those from Shocking wounds. All of this needs more fleshing out of course and certainly some testing. I also haven't sussed out what exactly happens when wounds are all maxed out. Does the player drop dead? Or are they out of the fight with Con checks needed each round to prevent death until they are stabilized? Perhaps once a PC has been pushed to this point they may suffer a permanent effect? 

This system will most assuredly end up being more fiddly than the standard system, and I'm ok with that. Sometimes it's fun to play with toys that are a bit more complicated. Of course I am also sure that I'm not reinventing the wheel here and that someone else has done something along these line only better. I'm ok with that as well, sometimes tinkering with rules is just fun. Thoughts?