Zaraxx

As someone more or less new to the genre (only played a little bit of BG and BGII back in the day) I can ensure you that there's nothing too confusing about the health mechanic in Pillars. The separation into long-term health (at 0 = dead or optionally maimed) and short-term endurance (at 0 = just KO-ed) may seem somewhat strange on paper first but once you take it to practice it makes a whole lot of sense. Took me exactly the first two fights (vs. the 2 Young Wolfs and vs. the 2 Glanfathans that killed poor Sparfel) to get a grip of it. And after 3 and a half playthroughs I'm now so used to it that it'd be sad to see it replaced with something simplified or streamlined. OP and a few others got it right: Instead of tinkering and trying to improve (for the worse) on an already improved mechanic you (Obsidian) should try to come up with an "idiot-proof" tutorial to cover all kinds of player demographics. The overwhelming majority of the core audience already is familiar with the split mechanic from Pillars anyway.