I just read Lucas Rolim’s Mini BX, which uses a dice chain mechanic instead of tracking hp.

I figured the mechanic would work very well for brighter wrlds in a way that is both more intuitive and dangerous:

If you take damage to an ability, roll that ability die. If the damage goes over the result, step down the die size and roll the new die against the remaining damage. Keep at it until there is no damage left, or until you run out of ability dice.

Mini BX is full of super cool ideas, for sure.

My “overflow damage” mechanic is a sort of half measure of this, since I wanted characters in this to be a bit more durable than the average OSR/NSR character. However, I agree that it’s not super intuitive, and ends up being a bit awkward in practice. I’m not sure I want to go all the way to letting damage move all the way down the chain, but it’d probably be worth testing at least. Or at least including as an optional “higher lethality” rule.