I think it makes sense. You want to make a WAD where the marine can be killed more realistically. So, you set his starting health to 10% knowing that a couple of poor shots, or one good one will kill him. However, for the entire game, the status bar picture makes it look as if you are walking around as a bloody pulp - even at your max health of 10%. If the game could be made to behave as if 10% was your max - display 100 for full health, drop to 50 after a single Zombie pistol hit etc... It would just be neater. That would only be confusing for people who expect the Doomguy to have 100 Doomguy health points - which are by no means a universal unit. I think you'd quickly learn that he doesn't in the particular mod you were playing. I'm sure there must be other games where there are weaker and stronger characters, and each character has his health shown as a percentage. If a spellcaster has 60 hitpoints and a fighter 100, if percentages are being used, surely the spellcaster would not start with 60% health? He has 100% of his 60 hitpoints.
Even going way back to Dungeon Master on the Atari ST, the different character classes had a health bar. The health bar was full when the character was on full health and disappeared when he was dead. Both bars were the same size but a full bar for a mage dropped a lot quicker than a bar for a fighter because the mage's bar represented a lower maximum number. No-one had a problem with that. Mind you, when Eye of the Beholder came out and had the option to show present hit points against total hitpoints, I always switched off the bars and used the numbers instead.
Is that not what's being asked for?
As for feasibility, I dunno.
Perhaps another solution is to change the % graphic to a HP (hitpoints) graphic in your mod and think of the 100% as 100HP instead. Then a mage would just have 50HP and we'd all know what it meant. A compromise of some sort could be reached with the status bar face. Not that you can see it half the time these days anyway
