Shiruba´s Big Faq Book - Hitpoints/Stamina

This is another aspect that relies more on the genre of the work than personal preferences.

For example, a heroic game might have one's stamina or endurance represent a damage threshold - anything less doesn't even phase the character. They can take fisticuffs all day, its only bullets that really matter.

Dream Pod 9's in house system has an armor value, with less than = no affect, 1x-2x = minor wound, 2x-3x major injury, and more than 3x = death. In this case the fitness attribute deals with resiting diseases etc, but isn't related to HP.

Some systems track lethal and stun in different pools, others just have one overall wound track.

Another question is whether there are psychic powers/magic in the system. If there are - do these have a separate pool. number of uses - or do they tire/wound the caster?

One preference I will state is that I prefer to either make HP semi-independent of attributes or based on multiple stats to avoid giving greater weight to one ability or the other. Avoiding dump-stats and "uber"-stats tends to be a design goal. Furthermore, rather than tracking exertion points for various activities, I prefer to have a resource that acts as a boost. (ie deadening in D&B can be spent to run faster, but is not used up running normally.)

(In case that doesn't show up much in Brazil "ubermensch" = overman in German, referring to a transcendent individual out of Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zasthura". The prefix has been assimilated into English vocabulary to mean super/large/ultimate example. I'm just full of useless trivia.)

Since your design goal was to emulate some sort of anime, I would probably go for something that gives you a higher total of HP than just the stats alone. Dieing/passing out in the first few moments of a fight isn't very cinematic after all.

Now, by "make HP and Stamina two parts of the same pool, decrease stamina damage bit by bit and decrease life as normal." do you mean something to the affect of take damage to one attribute, and then take injury to a second stat relative to that? (ie for every 5 hp taken, -1 body. Running out of hp = Knock out, out of body = dead?) or am I just tired, and missing the point?
There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

A thought: if you are trying to emulate a dramatic genre, then maybe HP is never the way to go. Instead, wounds should be dramatic and descriptive rather than mathematical. But how to do this?

Space/Time from BTRC came close to this idea by applying modifiers to a character's stats as they were hit. The current exemplar of this philosophy is the PDQ system, whereby points are removed directly from a PC's traits when they take damage. The refinement here is that (in Truth & Justice) the stats you take damage on influence future events.

Star Wars (one of the d6 versions) had a series of wound levels, depending on the damage done compared to a character's resistance. Mutants and Masterminds has a simlar system and is more easily accessible.

WFRP, Rolemaster and Phoenix Command still use(d) HP, but these were not the main concern of players. If anything, it was the criticals that did you in. Of course, this has the drawback thay you have to create entire supplements devoted to removing bits from people.

Of these alternatives, my current favourite is the Truth & Justice method. It has dramatic effect and it encourages players to feed back into the game events.

You can find the PDQ core rules here.