I Take A Moment and Pause to Rest

Continuing from the last post, which was a few days ago sorry for the wait, I am first going to tackle the proposition of dealing with thirst/fatigue, which I realized can really be combined into one for simplicity. So, what are the key aspects that I want to capture with this new house rule,

1 - I want the players to feel like they need to time their actions properly. Having to take a round of rest where they can say only have a move action, brings better tactics into play. You can no longer simply sit at the front lines hacking away at your enemies on one front, then sprint to the other side of the battle field to help your caster, then back to the front lines as my players are won't to do, if you need to make sure you can pause to take a one round break at some point.

2 - Simplicity, a simply chart with a number or two to reference would be ideal. I personally am going to try to have a chart referencing constitution vs weight carried, or something similar. The chart would simply give a number of rounds to count down before you need a rest.

3 - Engaging. There needs to be some risk involved as well. Simply forcing a player to not take a turn is boring. Giving them small side effects that accumulate over time would be nice and realistic, but to cumbersome. Having them roll for a small status effect is interesting, especially if they get a small bonus if they succeed by a good margin. Some incentive is necessary for them to feel like the system is a good trade off.

So here is my first attempt at the rule, made up as I type. I hope it is not to much of a mess,

"A character can easily fight for a number of rounds as given on [chart as yet to be made]. Fighting for more than this number of consecutively means the character must make a Fortitude save every round. The DC is equal to 10, plus the number of rounds the character has fought for without rest. If the save is failed, the character is Staggered (can either move or attack, not both) for a number of rounds equal to the number of failed saves since they last rested for a round. Every time the DC is exceeded by 5, you gain a +1 to damage. All of these +1 bonuses stack. When the character takes a full round to rest, all bonuses and penalties, as well as the number of rounds fought consecutively, is reset to 0. A character can not rest for a round while staggered from the effects of a failed save"

There, 153 words. One number to keep track of and one die roll to make. No math at all, unless you count having to calculate whether you have succeeded by 5 or not. I've run through this with one player already (they are sitting beside me as I type), and they said they like the idea of it for a grittier campaign I plan on running as a break between sections of my current campaign.

So what do those of you who are reading this think? Does it go to far and make a clunky system to much? It may and I will have to check when I try the rule out eventually. It also reminds me that I should really look into cutting down on some of the crap in the Pathfinder rule set sometime.