Quote from: gleichman;641328Why not use fatigue rules? Or just rename HP fatigue?

To your first question, hp "look" more like fatigue in either case, but especially when "meat" damage is handled by wounds. To your first question, inertia and familiarity? The possibility of distinct "fatigue" in the (currently unwritten) hex crawling rules? There is every possibility the name changes eventually, but finalizing names is about the last thing I want to do.

QuoteThat's basically what LotRO does, it calls HP morale. Thus a player never dies, instead he's considered to have fled the battle. Well, it at least sounds better than D&D.

I wouldn't go so far as barring death. I figured you'd at least prefer it to D&D, but brought it up mostly as a small tweak to the hp-pool-system that could easily make it more representational and less abstract.

Gleichman, how about a bullet point version of your health system? Just saying "If you win means you have taken no damage" isn't really telling us much. Is it wound levels with crits or something else?

Quote from: Wolf, Richard;641331WotC's d20 Call of Cthulhu had the damage threshold and IIRC that predates d20 Star Wars by quite a bit.  The threshold was also really low in that game, like 10 HP, making combat fairly lethal at all levels of play.

It actually worked well there as higher level characters could go through more 'adventuring' that caused HP loss before backing off, but something actually trying to kill you didn't need to unload a pocket full of bullets or swing you about the room with it's tentacle for a dozen rounds to whittle down your HP.

What I meant was that I, personally, pulled it from Saga. I'm not entirely sure where it was first implemented, and haven't played D20 CoC. Good to hear that it worked well there too, though.

Quote from: Catelf;641334Your statement isn't true in practice.

I'd run the numbers to verify, but have long since dumped my copy of VtM. So I'll take your word for it.

Quote from: danbuter;641336Gleichman, how about a bullet point version of your health system? Just saying "If you win means you have taken no damage" isn't really telling us much. Is it wound levels with crits or something else?

Seems reasonable. A bit hard to compare with D&D without some sense of the mechanics and a bit hard to know if the propabilities match gleichman's description of how combat tends to play out without some numbers.

Quote from: gleichman;641326So you're willing to say that I exclude all games even when I'm clearly not?

Why in the would you think any thread no matter how silly justifies lying about what someone says?

You're not.  But you should.  Even HERO.

Quote from: danbuter;641336Gleichman, how about a bullet point version of your health system? Just saying "If you win means you have taken no damage" isn't really telling us much. Is it wound levels with crits or something else?

The high level version:


Closest published system with a similar mechanic would be 1st edition Runequest.

It's been decades, but as I recall RQ used location specific (head, chest, arms, legs, etc) 'hit points' (nothing like the D&D sense) that were rather small and fixed values like 3-6 points and weapons that did commonly 1d10 damage. Armor directly subtracted, but there were degrees of success on the attack roll that could easily overwhelm the armor protection.

Equaling a location's HP in a single strike would 'disable' it, and higher damage levels would result in more serious wounds capping out at lost limbs and death.

Age of Heroes is very similar to that. Where it differs is how strikes and parries/dodges are determined as AoH was designed to scale much better than Runequest did (scaling was always RQ's biggest failing).

Reduced to the most simple concept, the goal of combat in Age of Heroes is to manuever on the grid and work with your team in ways that enhance your character's skill such that you're never struck in combat while of course striking and disabling your foes (ideally preventing them from good manuever and teamwork along the way).

If successful, you win the battle completely undamaged. If not, many injuries are minor and you may still win. And there is of course the chance that you're seriously jacked up if you have a failure in tactics or a run of horrid luck.

Quote from: This Guy;641344You're not.  But you should.  Even HERO.

Then I'd quit the hobby.

However I've found two really good games that have lasted me for 32 years and counting. I'm happy.

Quote from: gleichman;641345The high level version:


Closest published system with a similar mechanic would be 1st edition Runequest.

It's been decades, but as I recall RQ used location specific (head, chest, arms, legs, etc) 'hit points' (nothing like the D&D sense) that were rather small and fixed values like 3-6 points and weapons that did commonly 1d10 damage. Armor directly subtracted, but there were degrees of success on the attack roll that could easily overwhelm the armor protection.

Equaling a location's HP in a single strike would 'disable' it, and higher damage levels would result in more serious wounds capping out at lost limbs and death.

Age of Heroes is very similar to that. Where it differs is how strikes and parries/dodges are determined as AoH was designed to scale much better than Runequest did (scaling was always RQ's biggest failing).

Reduced to the most simple concept, the goal of combat in Age of Heroes is to manuever on the grid and work with your team in ways that enhance your character's skill such that you're never struck in combat while of course striking and disabling your foes (ideally preventing them from good manuever and teamwork along the way).

If successful, you win the battle completely undamaged. If not, many injuries are minor and you may still win. And there is of course the chance that you're seriously jacked up if you have a failure in tactics or a run of horrid luck.

How similar are non player characters and player characters in your game? (In terms of how many wounds they can sustain, their attack rolls, their defenses, etc). Are one hit kills possible?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;641113As opposed to what, though?

In my case I use a chart. Cubicle 9's dice pool system uses 6's as success with every adition success adding +1.  I'd like a new solution, but so far the only game to offer one was Warhammer 3rd edition.

Quote from: beejazz;641335I wouldn't go so far as barring death. I figured you'd at least prefer it to D&D, but brought it up mostly as a small tweak to the hp-pool-system that could easily make it more representational and less abstract.

I wouldn't either, but a MMORPG like LotRO really has to.

To be honest, I'd be much happier with a version of D&D where they renamed hit points (and the other terms in their 'damage' section) to things that represent better concepts like fatigue.

But once they do that, they have to treat it like what it is. Fatigue can be recovered quickly and doesn't need healing magic to do so. The degree of restructuring would be significant.

Add in that the fatigue buffer would be more effective than it should (without your addition of a damage mechanic that actually inflicts real wounds)...

All in all, while better- it would be a lot of changes that would best be done IMO by going to a different system.

Quote from: gleichman;641161You (unless I'm mistaking your for other people here- easy enough to do because I really don't care much about you and your gaming style) and others here are all into fast and simple combat that is hopefully over in five minutes or less, making up rulings along the way that override the game rules, free wheeling entire sections of the rules that would require effort such as maps and minis, avoiding actual genre style conflicts in favor of 'clever' end runs that avoid engaging the rules.

You guys hate the *game* of your RPG so much that you do everything you can to avoiding actually playing it, using instead as a othing more than excuse for doing other things.

You really should just do other things and drop the game mechanics. They only get in your way.

I mean look at what you're saying here- really look at it: "I Sacrosanct really believe that the game part of a RPG doesn't have to be fun and interesting"

What a sad and depressing statement. It has to come from someone who was basically defeated by nothing but horrible gaming experiences.

Funny, I thought the same thing about your list.

I don't believe anyone's saying what you're saying there though. The "interestingness" of a game system as fine as long as it doesn't interfere, overshadow, compensate for, or tries to replace the role-playing, which is the primary point. The system exists to diminish or avoid "reality clash" when roleplaying. Playing a system by itself is meaningless, basically a form of mathematical masturbation.

Quote from: gleichman;641176Please do point out a factual error I've made, and I'll immediately own up to it.

How about where you claimed Call of Cthulhu had mechanics that "control or limit roleplay choices"? That leads me to believe you've never read nor played Call of Cthulhu, and your claim that Call of Cthulhu fails "to scale for the entire human (normal and heroic) range", which is not only not true, but also contradicts your point about games not supporting the genre their "supposed to emulate". Or where you said the "pace of decision" is too low in D&d. Maybe that applies to WoTC editions of D&D, but not even remotely to any TSR edition of D&D.

I don't even know what you mean by mechanics rewarding "non-genre behaviour", but your claim about OD&D "focusing on trivialities" bears no resemblance to any reality I live in.

Quote from: gleichman;641354To be honest, I'd be much happier with a version of D&D where they renamed hit points (and the other terms in their 'damage' section) to things that represent better concepts like fatigue.

But once they do that, they have to treat it like what it is. Fatigue can be recovered quickly and doesn't need healing magic to do so. The degree of restructuring would be significant.

Add in that the fatigue buffer would be more effective than it should (without your addition of a damage mechanic that actually inflicts real wounds)...

All in all, while better- it would be a lot of changes that would best be done IMO by going to a different system.

I don't have much to add except that I'm implementing a lot of what you describe, including changes to healing. I'm basically making the different system it would be better to go to if one wants to overhaul HP as you describe.

Quote from: TristramEvans;641357How about where you claimed Call of Cthulhu had mechanics that "control or limit roleplay choices"?

The insanity rules do that, but they are also in genre, so I'm fine with them.