I know the title is misleading but i'm not sure what to call it..
So consider this situation.
You attack someone, it his them, it does damage, the damage is subtracted from their health.
Their health stat changes to the new level.
Rather than have an instantaneous jump from one state to the next when you get hit, maybe we can have the life bar "drain"..
Let me explain.
Consider this.
You attack someone, it hits them it does damage and then the damage is subtracted from their health.
Their health stat changes to the new level.
The life bar moves down one point per x time until the total damage done by the weapon is met.
This in a sense does increase the effective HP of any player, but i think it is an interesting dynamic worthy of consideration.
There are of course many other directions the idea could be taken.. For example each weapon, or some factor based on stats and skill, could make it a mix of instantaneous and "continuous (i.e DOT)" damage. So with a large axe, say, you hit for 40 damage. 20 of that damage is delivered instantly, and the rest is incured as a drain that takes say .7 second to complete... The timing of the drain of course is the main alterable feature, and tricks to play with that might create interesting dynamics. waiting 3 seconds for 10 damage to be done is too high i say, but draining super fast, like 40 points in .1 second is too fast.
The rate i think is that if you hit someone with 60 HP for 30 damage it would take 1.3 seconds to apply all of that damage.