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Just to throw something out there, but the game Earthdawn has a wound system which seems to work fairly well. In Earthdawn your hit points are based on your con. You also have a Wound Threshold ( WT from now on) based on that same stat. Increases in your hit points are through the development of Durability which every class has. For the most part your wound threshold doesn't change with the exception of certain classes and magic. As you take wounds, your abilities decrease. You're able to take one wound without any penalty, but after that your abilities take a cumluative -1 past the first wound.

Example: one wound, no penalty, two wounds, -1 penalty, eight wounds, -7 penalty.

A wound is scored if you take X+ amount of damage where X is your wound threshold. Regarless of the damage you take from an attack, you'd only take one wound per attack unless some special circumstance applied. Such a circumstance might be a spell which broke every bone in your body, like the harm spell. Maybe the harm spell would be rewritten to do wounds rather than damage. Something like 8 wounds plus the damage caused from a cause critical wounds.

Example: Your WT is 9 and you take 9 points of damage, that's a wound. Later you take 20 points of damage, that's one more wound. You don't take two wounds from 20 points of damage, you only take one.

Perhaps a wound threshold can be developed for D&D based on your con score, class and total hit points? I can see a possible feat which adds to your wound threshold. Maybe your WT can be your level plus your con and charisma modifier. For every wound past the first, you take a -1 to attacks, damage, saves and skills. These heal at the rate of one per day like temporary stat damage. With successful heal checks you can get back two per day and if you combine it with total bedrest, you can get one more wound healed for a total of three per day. If the wound level is too low, maybe give certain classes a bonus. Every two levels of fighter you can add one more point to your wound threshold.

Example: 4th level fighter with a 16 con and 10 cha has a WT of 9 (4 level +2 fighter bonus + 3 con + 0 cha). Average hit points for the fighter 38 (10 + 5.5*3 + 12). On average he can take 4 wounds before dying. Afte taking his 36 points of damage and four wounds, he's penalized -3 points to his attack and damage. This makes mages very powerful in terms of dishing out wounds. It would also make spells like magic missile not so powerful at high levels since d4+1 won't wound anything other than a normal kobold.

Anyway, feel free to adopt something like this for your own use. I just thought of this on the fly. I give you full permission to canibalize it as you see fit so long as you give me and the Earthdawn makers some credit. FYI, Earthdawn is a property of Living Room Games, not FASA.

Scott