Wound Table
Wound Tables or Injury Tables are a mechanic used by simulationist games like HarnMaster and The Riddle of Steel as an alternative to Hit Points.
The general idea is that, on a successful hit, the attacker chooses or rolls for a hit location. Then, on the victim's character sheet, a wound is recorded for that location and with a certain level of severity depending on the damage dealt.
Wounds typically give you bad effects with names like Pain, Shock, or Blood Loss. These effects last for a certain number of rounds or until medical treatment. In the case of Blood Loss, there is typically a counter ticking down to your death.
Wound tables bypass the problems of HP Bloat, since the most serious wounds cause instant death. They also allow for more exciting combat, since you get more feedback on how you're killing enemies instead of just a damage number, and characters get physically weaker with every wound. Despite this, they remain a niche mechanic, since they require the use of a table (or multiple tables!) for every hit, and require the GM and players to keep track of the multiple values associated with each wound rather than one number: HP.