A lot of people over the years have suggested that hit points are a bad mechanic. But from the point of view of game design, most of their reasons are dumb, as long as hit points are applied in the right way.
#osr #ttrpg #dnd
I've been saying this for decades.
People who hate HP or think it makes no sense are themselves 99% of the time senseless. Stupid. Ignorant. Or in a rare few cases. Compulsive liars.
HP, along with Alignment and Falling damage, is one of the most mis-represented mechanics in the game. Then other designers muddled the explanation, or outright dropped it. And later designers just compounded on this ad stupidium.
Whats even more hilariously pathetic is when they come up with their own HP-less systems that turn out to be some sort of HP system. This came up over on BGG last month with someone claiming their pet system was HP-less. But then described how damage was tracked by decrimenting dice one step as damage accumulated. d10 becomes a d8, d8 to d6 and so on. Yep. tooooootally not a HP system.
My only complaint about hit points is that, because of all the misinterpretations of them coupled with all sorts of video games that depicted hit point loss as taking an axe to the guy complete with massive sprays of blood... that the term has become almost synonymous with "meat points" and every attempt I've ever made to tailor mechanics based on their stamina, skill, luck and morale aspects has resulted in so much pushback (i.e. how can someone restore hit points by inspiring someone to dig deep and keep fighting? a rousing speech can't reattach someone's hand... never mind there were no rules for dismemberment in combat in the system).
Basically, the only time I've been able to get people to embrace the hit point concept in a form that is closer to how they were originally intended was to call them something else.
It doesn't matter if you think that hit points are dumb or not, they have been around as long as D&D and thus are an industry standard. D&D has been around for so long that it is considered its own genre, so all of its trappings (including hit points) are considered the standards of that genre. Your opinion on whether or not hit points are dumb is irrelevant if your game wants to emulate D&D, they have to be included.
Quote from: jeff37923 on March 18, 2022, 11:04:34 PM
It doesn't matter if you think that hit points are dumb or not, they have been around as long as D&D and thus are an industry standard. D&D has been around for so long that it is considered its own genre, so all of its trappings (including hit points) are considered the standards of that genre. Your opinion on whether or not hit points are dumb is irrelevant if your game wants to emulate D&D, they have to be included.
I don't know if you watched the video or not, but he says more-or-less this. The title is an example of Betteridge's law of headlines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines).
There is a difference between the concept of "hit points" as a resource indicating a character's ability to operate and Hit Points™ as that concept is implemented in D&D. The popularity of D&D is irrefutable, but is it because of, inspire of, or irrespective of Hit Points™? It is a big brand with a legacy and must do some things a certain way because said thing have always been that way and it would fee wrong not to, regardless of the effect on gameplay. I have never cared for D&D's inconsistent abstractions with some aspects being relatable to a physical world, while others are arbitrary or incomprehensibly implemented.
I find Hit Points™ to be little more than number or dice porn. Roll dice for high numbers to watch some other number go do down. Looking at all those numbers is boring to me, especially when they do not mean anything. Hit something hard enough it goes down, get hit hard enough and go down yourself feel believable and dangerous. Hit Points™ are an indemnity from harm to be slowly ablated away. Hit Point™ attrition is not fun to me, but neither is instant death or a mission kill by death spiral, once the death spiral is initiated the conclusion is predictably inevitable.
I strongly prefer Wounds and Vitality over straight Hit Points™, but with Wounds causing Vitality bleed and damage over a damage threshold causing proportional, but not directly equivalent Wound damage. As for what that represents, Wounds are physical damage that takes a long time to heal, but Vitality is a fighting spirit that can be roused with a Red Bull potion, and inspiring speech, an act of faith, or a short rest. Moreover, I would suggest that missed attacks degrade Vitality by the amount of the miss. This could then convert the miss into a hit or not depending on the trappings of the setting.
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 18, 2022, 11:07:41 PM
Quote from: jeff37923 on March 18, 2022, 11:04:34 PM
It doesn't matter if you think that hit points are dumb or not, they have been around as long as D&D and thus are an industry standard. D&D has been around for so long that it is considered its own genre, so all of its trappings (including hit points) are considered the standards of that genre. Your opinion on whether or not hit points are dumb is irrelevant if your game wants to emulate D&D, they have to be included.
I don't know if you watched the video or not, but he says more-or-less this. The title is an example of Betteridge's law of headlines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines).
Nope! I didn't bother to watch the video.
HP are dumb.
There, I said it! And saying that D&D has HP and D&D is popular, therefore HP can't be bad, is the Bandwagon Fallacy, plus the False Cause Fallacy (correlation does not imply causation). I also don't think that claiming that HP represent "Risk" is any better than saying that they represent Luck, Fatigue or anything other than "Meat Points", which is clearly what something meant to track injuries from multiple hits is meant to represent.
All these other terms are BS meant to obfuscate the fact that HP fail to properly illustrate the lethality of certain attacks, cuz when you have 100 HP and a knife does a whooping 1d4 damage there's no reason to be afraid of it. Except that IRL you would be scared of a knife, cuz those things can be lethal, or at the very least carve you up really bad or make you lose a couple digits.
That being said, most alternatives to HP also have their own problems, and are usually harder to track than HP, which is the real reason HP are all over the place. They're easy to track and simple to conceptualize (even if they suck at illustrating lethality), and probably better than anything else at keeping track of cumulative damage that could eventually kill you (just not right away), even if you don't get taken out by the first hit (or the second, or third).
So HP can work, they just don't work well on their own. They can be used to track cumulative damage, but in order to cover lethality there needs to be another mechanism to supplement them. And Pundit pretty much covers that in the video, which is to handle lethality through Critical Hit or similar systems.
I would expand that to include any type of situation that could potentially get you killed, such as taking massive damage from a single hit, being attacked while helpless or completely unaware, or similar circumstances. Any time you could potentially die on the spot you get a save or something, and if you fail you die (or get maimed or something), if not you just take the HP damage and live to potentially die another day.
But HP on their own are dumb, and D&D handles them badly—way too few at level 1, way too many at higher levels, specially in later editions.
Hit points are the worst way to track damage, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 18, 2022, 06:11:29 PM
A lot of people over the years have suggested that hit points are a bad mechanic. But from the point of view of game design, most of their reasons are dumb, as long as hit points are applied in the right way.
#osr #ttrpg #dnd
Depends on what the players want in a game. Truth be told, most players don't know or think about game mechanics.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on March 19, 2022, 02:48:42 AM
Depends on what the players want in a game. Truth be told, most players don't know or think about game mechanics.
I find than many people do not critically evaluate their wants, and fewer still can articulate their conclusions. Players often give unhelpful or useless feedback. They are able to point at something and say "like that," but not why or if the experience would be enhanced with more of one thing or less of another.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 18, 2022, 10:50:53 PM
My only complaint about hit points is that, because of all the misinterpretations of them coupled with all sorts of video games that depicted hit point loss as taking an axe to the guy complete with massive sprays of blood... that the term has become almost synonymous with "meat points" and every attempt I've ever made to tailor mechanics based on their stamina, skill, luck and morale aspects has resulted in so much pushback (i.e. how can someone restore hit points by inspiring someone to dig deep and keep fighting? a rousing speech can't reattach someone's hand... never mind there were no rules for dismemberment in combat in the system).
Basically, the only time I've been able to get people to embrace the hit point concept in a form that is closer to how they were originally intended was to call them something else.
It doesn't help that D&D in the rules wordings, reinforces the idea of hit points as meat points.
Heal, Potion of healing, Cure Light Wounds...
Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 19, 2022, 04:13:24 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 18, 2022, 10:50:53 PM
My only complaint about hit points is that, because of all the misinterpretations of them coupled with all sorts of video games that depicted hit point loss as taking an axe to the guy complete with massive sprays of blood... that the term has become almost synonymous with "meat points" and every attempt I've ever made to tailor mechanics based on their stamina, skill, luck and morale aspects has resulted in so much pushback (i.e. how can someone restore hit points by inspiring someone to dig deep and keep fighting? a rousing speech can't reattach someone's hand... never mind there were no rules for dismemberment in combat in the system).
Basically, the only time I've been able to get people to embrace the hit point concept in a form that is closer to how they were originally intended was to call them something else.
It doesn't help that D&D in the rules wordings, reinforces the idea of hit points as meat points.
Heal, Potion of healing, Cure Light Wounds...
Indeed. Since the points in my system are predominantly stamina+morale, the primary means of recovery are the Rally (which is proportional to the subject and which "healing" abilities trigger more efficiently than PCs doing it themselves) and the potion version is "potion of vitality."
Another important point though is one of the big problems with hit points being equated with meat is the level scaling of defenses that WotC D&D fell into. When AC is mostly static, then it's easier to present increased hit points as improved skill and stamina. You have more points you can go longer in a fight without suffering a serious injury, but can still be overwhelmed by sufficient numbers because your AC is not so high that you can't be hit.
But with scaling AC it was harder to do that because the rising AC's explanation was said be improved parrying/dodging skill (whereas those were a part of hit points in pre-WotC D&D). It also quickly rendered the prospect of losing to even hordes of mooks a virtual impossibility... feeding the superhero/MMO aspects where an orc army that could raze the continent "cons grey" to the PCs and so can't actually be credibly be claimed as a threat.
It likewise means that certain monsters necessarily "con red" meaning PCs basically can't even attempt to fight them because their defenses are so high.
The thing that I think really broke hit points was adding the defense axis to make survival quadratic. A level 10 PC didn't just have 10x the hit points, their defenses were also 10 points higher so instead of the orcs needing a 15 on the die to hit you, they now can only hit on a natural 20 so you're getting hit 6 times less often.
WotC broke a lot of things when they made 3e because, to paraphrase Chesterton, they didn't actually understand why the wall was built. Hit Points was just one of them.
What's broken about HP isn't how people conceptualize them (Meat Points vs Luck/Stamina, etc.) but the fact that regardless how you choose to explain what they are they don't properly illustrate lethality or the threat level of getting stabbed with a knife and other low damage attacks (or even high damage once vs uber high HP characters). Once you solve that, the real problem goes away and what you call them becomes irrelevant. Cuz it was never about what you think HP represent, but the fact that high HP characters can't get killed by a knife or a nasty fall.
But once you go down the re-conceptualizing route (they're not Meat Points, they're really Stamina!), not only are you not addressing the actual issue, but creating the additional issue that now nothing represents wounds that don't outright kill you. And everything is either an instant kill wound, or "you just lost some energy trying to dodge that nasty fall".
Ironically, d20 Star Wars (and later, Starfinder) kind of resolved this by splitting HP into two pools. One was your actual meat, health, vitality, etc, while the other represented your ability to evade serious injury, turn a crippling blow into a scratch, etc.
Hit points aren't a GREAT mechanic, but they do work reasonably well as long as you recite the MST3K mantra about it and don't worry too much.
If it gives you that much heebie-jeebies, go play another system.
I'd say "Hit Points: What are they good for? Absolutely nothing! Except war. "
HP are good for combat but not for falling, starvation, disease, etc.
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Should we get rid of D&D-like HP? I don't think so. It is still too useful for combat, and ditching it might cause more problems than it solves. I like the idea that a common soldier can die in a moment of fighting, while an experienced adventurer might have her fate defined by choice, more than chance. And most of the problems people seem to have with starting HP can be fixed by beginning on level 3 (more about that later).
There are plenty of systems that deal with HP differently, but the way HP works is one of the defining characteristics of every edition of D&D, and if you like D&D, you are probably fond of that, like me.
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/hit-points-what-are-they-good-for.html
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OTOH... if you see HP as "plot armor", it definitely explains a lot of things...
My only real complaint against Hit Points is how they come back 100% after a long rest, and that is just D&D, and even that is easily fixed by making a few mods to the rules.
I do like how Microlite20 handles Hit Points by adding the Strength Stat as a an additional source of damage after the Hit Points or gone (or as extreme damage in my house rules).
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 09:39:35 AM
But once you go down the re-conceptualizing route (they're not Meat Points, they're really Stamina!), not only are you not addressing the actual issue, but creating the additional issue that now nothing represents wounds that don't outright kill you. And everything is either an instant kill wound, or "you just lost some energy trying to dodge that nasty fall".
Actually it does address it because of the most ignored parts of what hit points represent - Luck and Divine Favor.
In short, a knife is not dangerous to a high level character for the same reason a bandit pulling a gun on the Lone Ranger isn't dangerous... they both have Plot Armor. You might suffer some injury, but just like in fiction they're cosmetic... the hero gets shot in the shoulder and winces, grits his way through the danger and afterwards has a sling on for 30 seconds before the episode ends and it's gone next episode).
One thing I do have in my system to reflect this element is that damage scales with level. A knife in the hands of a level 9 opponent will do about 26 damage; enough to instantly drop a level 1 PC with a single strike (ETA: a commoner has only about 5 points and could be killed in 1-2 hits by a typical thug with a knife; PCs are expressly heroic figures with a degree of plot armor already in place).
Similarly, you don't lose plot armor for falling. You lose plot armor to keep yourself from falling ("damage" is based on the difficulty of avoiding the fall). If you actually fall (because you don't have enough plot armor remaining) then you're either dead or dying at the bottom of wherever you fell from.
Hit Points are not entirely accurate to real life where going down to the first good hit and lifelong crippling injuries are the norm, but they can be reasonably accurate to the genre of heroic fiction upon which the settings are based.
To quote Hackmaster 4e Player's Handbook:
"Unlike some wimpy wannabe games, damage in HackMaster is not handled abstractly or approximately. All characters and monsters have a number of hit points...As your character gains levels he gets tougher and can take more physical abuse. Do you think that cop in Die Hard could have taken all that damage as a rookie cop? No way. He'd have probably passed out from the broken glass in his foot alone. But he was a higher level hero and took the hits to complete the adventure."
I honestly can't think of any alternative to hit points that cannot itself be described as a variation on hit points.
Three strikes mechanic? That just means you have three hit points.
Wounds and vitality? Two pools of hit points with different penalties.
Risus' death spiral? Hit points that double as statistics.
True20? Hit points that you track without needing more than one type of die.
Whether any given take on hit points is realistic or not is a completely different can of worms. Realism is too complicated to be represented in a playable fashion: all rpgs are ultimately abstractions and approximations. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as a realistic hit point mechanic: There's only a sliding scale between "gritty" and "cinematic".
I can't really think of a better way of measuring a character's abstract longevity. I don't think they were so well thought out back in the day, but 40 years of hindsight we've managed to categorize them a bit better.
Although, still, they may mean different things to different people.
My only problem with them is when they get into silly numbers. AKA - with very high-level characters. Then combat becomes a chore to deal with and it feels very unrealistic. Basically at that stage, the characters feel like titanic superheroes. Which doesn't suit my style of gritty gaming. Most of the OSR games seemed to have nuked that old-school concept. So even tough characters are still vulnerable in bad situations as they don't have as many hits.
I don't like a 'wounding' system, as it really adds in a whiff factor. Sure, it's probably more realistic. But this plagued Vampire making it a pain in the ass to fight as you'd be missing all the time if you were wounded (and these were bad ass vamps!). I dropped that when I was running it myself.
I think crits work well. But you've got to get that 'balance' right, or you'll be rolling up a new character very quickly.
Hit points are a great mechanic for making the game fun. They're terrible for representing anything that actually happens in real life. Finding a mechanic that does both is hard, which is why we're still arguing about it 50 years later.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 19, 2022, 11:18:33 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 09:39:35 AM
But once you go down the re-conceptualizing route (they're not Meat Points, they're really Stamina!), not only are you not addressing the actual issue, but creating the additional issue that now nothing represents wounds that don't outright kill you. And everything is either an instant kill wound, or "you just lost some energy trying to dodge that nasty fall".
Actually it does address it because of the most ignored parts of what hit points represent - Luck and Divine Favor.
In short, a knife is not dangerous to a high level character for the same reason a bandit pulling a gun on the Lone Ranger isn't dangerous... they both have Plot Armor. You might suffer some injury, but just like in fiction they're cosmetic... the hero gets shot in the shoulder and winces, grits his way through the danger and afterwards has a sling on for 30 seconds before the episode ends and it's gone next episode).
One thing I do have in my system to reflect this element is that damage scales with level. A knife in the hands of a level 9 opponent will do about 26 damage; enough to instantly drop a level 1 PC with a single strike (ETA: a commoner has only about 5 points and could be killed in 1-2 hits by a typical thug with a knife; PCs are expressly heroic figures with a degree of plot armor already in place).
Similarly, you don't lose plot armor for falling. You lose plot armor to keep yourself from falling ("damage" is based on the difficulty of avoiding the fall). If you actually fall (because you don't have enough plot armor remaining) then you're either dead or dying at the bottom of wherever you fell from.
Hit Points are not entirely accurate to real life where going down to the first good hit and lifelong crippling injuries are the norm, but they can be reasonably accurate to the genre of heroic fiction upon which the settings are based.
This is just reasserting your definition of what HP represent, which doesn't really address my point, but expects me to just accept your definition without justifying it.
A knife is dangerous to anyone in the hands of anyone. Most of these are just your own personal conceits of what should/shouldn't kill someone based on their (heroic?) status/level and/or what you consider dramatically appropriate, as far as I can tell. But that says nothing about the lethality of a knife (specially if I want to play anything approaching gritty realism, or even heroic realism where shit can still happen) or what happens if a low level thug places a knife in the back of a bound character that happens to be a "hero". Using Critical Hits or similar mechanics the way Pundit suggests and I expanded upon in my first post does, though.
Also, if you lose Plot Armor to keep yourself from falling, then what is your character doing at the bottom of the 50 feet pit after taking damage from the fall? Cuz that's what always happens in every game I've ever been on or witnessed where characters take falling damage. Telling me that it's impossible to drop a character down a ledge because "Plot Armor" doesn't really address falling damage, or the very real possibility that a character could fall down a cliff and still survive despite taking real, bone breaking damage from the fall.
All of that is just handwaved away in favor of reasserting that HP HAVE to be interpreted as "Plot Armor", period. But where does damage that doesn't kill you go if we're forced to just interpret it as "Plot Armor"? And why should the rest of us ignore the existence of cumulative long lasting injuries just because you personally insist on interpreting the game as an action flick where "cosmetic" superficial scrapes magically disappear the next scene?
And note that I'm not even disputing that HP don't accurately map to real life as I may have done in the past when this discussion has come up (I'm pass that now; Critical Hits and similar stuff fixes the lethality issue). But just because HP don't map 1:1 with real life that doesn't make cumulative damage that's not immediately life-threatening go away. And the fact that you personally choose to handwave it away doesn't address the issue (as you claim at the start of your post). It just means you choose to ignore it exists.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 01:54:16 PMAlso, if you lose Plot Armor to keep yourself from falling, then what is your character doing at the bottom of the 50 feet pit after taking damage from the fall?
There are also other issues, in that HP is generally linked to theoretical in-game 'health/stamina' stats and not a 'plot favor' stat. Being beefy makes you resilient (it should) but at the same time your only tanking hits if your beefy, but dodging them if your not beefy.
There are also other problems, like say being lit on fire, or being poisoned. Where the fire is in a quantum state of not actually burning you, until it suddenly incinerates you instantly.
But I do think HP can be FUN, even if its dumb. RAW in D&D I don't think it corresponds to any kind of system of taking hits be it narrative or 'realistic'. Even things like superheroes generally don't operate on a HP system.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 19, 2022, 02:04:23 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 01:54:16 PMAlso, if you lose Plot Armor to keep yourself from falling, then what is your character doing at the bottom of the 50 feet pit after taking damage from the fall?
There are also other issues, in that HP is generally linked to theoretical in-game 'health/stamina' stats and not a 'plot favor' stat. Being beefy makes you resilient (it should) but at the same time your only tanking hits if your beefy, but dodging them if your not beefy.
There are also other problems, like say being lit on fire, or being poisoned. Where the fire is in a quantum state of not actually burning you, until it suddenly incinerates you instantly.
But I do think HP can be FUN, even if its dumb. RAW in D&D I don't think it corresponds to any kind of system of taking hits be it narrative or 'realistic'. Even things like superheroes generally don't operate on a HP system.
Yeah, and I would even add that I don't mind interpreting HP as "Plot Armor" to some extend (which they kinda are, if you get more from leveling), just not 100%. But there's also a physical dimension to them that gets snuffed away if you just declare "HP are 100% just Plot Armor" and pretend that cumulative injuries don't exist or that just treating HP as Plot Armor fixes anything.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 02:09:55 PMYeah, and I would even add that I don't mind interpreting HP as "Plot Armor" to some extend (which they kinda are, if you get more from leveling), just not 100%. But there's also a physical dimension to them that gets snuffed away if you just declare "HP are 100% just Plot Armor" and pretend that cumulative injuries don't exist or that just treating HP as Plot Armor fixes anything.
I like the way Savage Worlds dilineates plot armor vs 'physical simulation', but I just like SW in general. I think it comes the closest to allowing a PC to both generally not fear and fear a knife at the same time. A tough PC is likely to ignore knives 95% of the time, but there is always a chance it can really mess you up. And then there are further adjustable rules to make it more or less gritty.
Phoenix Command assigns injuries Physical Damage points. The higher the PD the less likely a character is to be willing to continue fighting, and the less likely to survive long term. PD can be anything from 1 for a stubbed toe, to 30,000+ for a decapitation.
High-level D&D combat, for comparison, isn't realistic, and doesn't even emulate films or comic books. Every combatant in the Conan universe goes down with one hit, for example. Conan never "loses hit points" and then suffers physical injury, he just never allows himself to get hit by virtue of his exceptional skill.
I prefer Call of Cthulhu's system, which retains the fact of human frailty.
I would rather start from a realistic system and modify it to emulate the movies, than have to struggle with a non-realistic system to explain what exactly went on in a fight.
Quote from: Mishihari on March 19, 2022, 01:46:30 PM
Hit points are a great mechanic for making the game fun. They're terrible for representing anything that actually happens in real life. Finding a mechanic that does both is hard, which is why we're still arguing about it 50 years later.
This. Plus, there is the aspect that the more complex the tracking of wounds becomes, the longer it takes, and thus the more the mechanical accounting begins to take players out of the imaginary space. There are, of course, different trade offs for different people. I think you can get away with some modest complication on wounds tracking with almost any player, but once you get close to their limit, the negative aspects of complexity begin to hit particularly hard.
Likewise, it affects how many opponents you can have. If you particularly want to have grand battles against hordes of lesser opponents, then something has to give, somewhere. If you'd rather have something a little more aligned with realism, then there's only so far you can go with the numbers. Not everyone is going to make that call the same way, either.
I do agree with others above that escalating hit points mixed with escalating attacks and defense is bad voodoo. Not to say that there can't be movement in both, but at least one of them needs to be kept under tight control, and to the extent that the tight control starts to slip, the other one then has to be reined in to compensate.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 19, 2022, 01:04:48 PM
I honestly can't think of any alternative to hit points that cannot itself be described as a variation on hit points.
Three strikes mechanic? That just means you have three hit points.
Wounds and vitality? Two pools of hit points with different penalties.
Risus' death spiral? Hit points that double as statistics.
True20? Hit points that you track without needing more than one type of die.
Whether any given take on hit points is realistic or not is a completely different can of worms. Realism is too complicated to be represented in a playable fashion: all rpgs are ultimately abstractions and approximations. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as a realistic hit point mechanic: There's only a sliding scale between "gritty" and "cinematic".
There are quite a few out there
Here's one I rather like from an unfinished game project I worked on some years ago.
For each attack, attacker and defender make make a die roll with modifiers, figure the margin of success (MoS) = attacker roll – defender roll
Result:
MoS <= 0 | no effect
1<= MoS < =5 | Impaired: Target gets -1 on all rolls til recovered. Impairment is cumulative.
6<=MoS<=10 | Limb disabled: No actions with a random limb til recovered. Various penalties.
11<=MoS<=15 | Unconscious: no actions
16<=MoS | Dead
It needs more development, but right out of the gate it's a lot more realistic then hit points can ever be. The biggest challenge is making the game fun when any attack could possibly kill your character. It's worth noting that as a combat progresses, increasing impairment makes disabling hits more and more likely.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 01:54:16 PM
A knife is dangerous to anyone in the hands of anyone.
In real life this is true. To Conan its not dangerous at all because he's the hero of his story. At best he gets a few superficial cuts before continuing his adventure after gutting the random thug with his blade.
The distinction is that PCs aren't "random farmer #257." They're heroes. The gods and Lady Luck favor them with plot armor such that no random thug is going to end their adventure with a knife (they could easily end another random passerby though because they only have a few hit points) unless they're also blessed with incredible luck.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 01:54:16 PM
Also, if you lose Plot Armor to keep yourself from falling, then what is your character doing at the bottom of the 50 feet pit after taking damage from the fall?
They AREN'T at the bottom of a 50 foot pit. They stopped themselves from falling remember? They're hanging from the ledge and can try to pull themselves up, just like pretty much always happens to the protagonists in heroic fiction. You burn the plot armor so you DON'T go over the edge.
If they run out of plot armor, they plummet to the bottom of the 50' pit and are either dying or dead. They aren't getting up, gritting their teeth and starting to climb back up with only a few bruises (unless they have an ability like the monk's slow fall or a feather fall spell) because that would be silly and unrealistic.
As I said, hit points aren't realistic to real life... but they're pretty realistic to how things work for the protagonists in heroic fiction.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 19, 2022, 03:03:03 PM
Phoenix Command assigns injuries Physical Damage points. The higher the PD the less likely a character is to be willing to continue fighting, and the less likely to survive long term. PD can be anything from 1 for a stubbed toe, to 30,000+ for a decapitation.
High-level D&D combat, for comparison, isn't realistic, and doesn't even emulate films or comic books. Every combatant in the Conan universe goes down with one hit, for example. Conan never "loses hit points" and then suffers physical injury, he just never allows himself to get hit by virtue of his exceptional skill.
I prefer Call of Cthulhu's system, which retains the fact of human frailty.
I would rather start from a realistic system and modify it to emulate the movies, than have to struggle with a non-realistic system to explain what exactly went on in a fight.
Disagree about Conan, he often suffers wounds that would drop lesser men, and in one story had to be taken from the edge of death by that sweet golden wine after fighting off a horror from beneath the decadent city. Fighting Belit's pirates, he is wounded multiple times, and other stories he takes significant damage (thus the reason he is covered in scars with a well broken nose as king) He gets hit A LOT. Much less than a lesser skilled fighter would (though often, especially in his early years his prowess is derived more from talent than practiced skill) He rarely gets hit with a one shot type hit, and even when he does his helmet or some armor save him. I always though the Mongoose version of Conan the Rpg did a pretty good job of emulating this with the massive damage threshold, your level and class affecting how hard you are to hit, and having armor actually block damage.
I agree 100 percent about high level D&D combat emulating high stakes combat very well though, especially when compared to Conan-like stories or high stakes cinematic fights.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 19, 2022, 07:40:23 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 01:54:16 PM
A knife is dangerous to anyone in the hands of anyone.
In real life this is true. To Conan its not dangerous at all because he's the hero of his story. At best he gets a few superficial cuts before continuing his adventure after gutting the random thug with his blade.
The distinction is that PCs aren't "random farmer #257." They're heroes. The gods and Lady Luck favor them with plot armor such that no random thug is going to end their adventure with a knife (they could easily end another random passerby though because they only have a few hit points) unless they're also blessed with incredible luck.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 01:54:16 PM
Also, if you lose Plot Armor to keep yourself from falling, then what is your character doing at the bottom of the 50 feet pit after taking damage from the fall?
They AREN'T at the bottom of a 50 foot pit. They stopped themselves from falling remember? They're hanging from the ledge and can try to pull themselves up, just like pretty much always happens to the protagonists in heroic fiction. You burn the plot armor so you DON'T go over the edge.
If they run out of plot armor, they plummet to the bottom of the 50' pit and are either dying or dead. They aren't getting up, gritting their teeth and starting to climb back up with only a few bruises (unless they have an ability like the monk's slow fall or a feather fall spell) because that would be silly and unrealistic.
As I said, hit points aren't realistic to real life... but they're pretty realistic to how things work for the protagonists in heroic fiction.
That's the problem. PCs shouldn't survive a dangerous situation because they're heroes. They should survive a dangerous situation because they made good decisions and played well.
A game can be lenient towards player characters, by being generous with hit points, or any other game design decision like that, but it doesn't have to be.
Some games advertise their lethality. Paranoia was built around having characters die in hideous, tragicomic ways. Dark Sun (1st ed) had a "character tree" to make replacing a lost character easier.
Hit Points are a good system because it's simple and easy to understand your situation. Your character has X Hit Points, and when they run out, that character is dead, or incapacitated in a less-lethal variant. You don't have to track each individual wound and it's effect on your character, which would be a far more "realistic" system, but a tedious one, like tracking encumbrance.
Quote from: oggsmash on March 19, 2022, 09:01:45 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 19, 2022, 03:03:03 PM
Phoenix Command assigns injuries Physical Damage points. The higher the PD the less likely a character is to be willing to continue fighting, and the less likely to survive long term. PD can be anything from 1 for a stubbed toe, to 30,000+ for a decapitation.
High-level D&D combat, for comparison, isn't realistic, and doesn't even emulate films or comic books. Every combatant in the Conan universe goes down with one hit, for example. Conan never "loses hit points" and then suffers physical injury, he just never allows himself to get hit by virtue of his exceptional skill.
I prefer Call of Cthulhu's system, which retains the fact of human frailty.
I would rather start from a realistic system and modify it to emulate the movies, than have to struggle with a non-realistic system to explain what exactly went on in a fight.
Disagree about Conan, he often suffers wounds that would drop lesser men, and in one story had to be taken from the edge of death by that sweet golden wine after fighting off a horror from beneath the decadent city. Fighting Belit's pirates, he is wounded multiple times, and other stories he takes significant damage (thus the reason he is covered in scars with a well broken nose as king) He gets hit A LOT. Much less than a lesser skilled fighter would (though often, especially in his early years his prowess is derived more from talent than practiced skill) He rarely gets hit with a one shot type hit, and even when he does his helmet or some armor save him. I always though the Mongoose version of Conan the Rpg did a pretty good job of emulating this with the massive damage threshold, your level and class affecting how hard you are to hit, and having armor actually block damage.
I agree 100 percent about high level D&D combat emulating high stakes combat very well though, especially when compared to Conan-like stories or high stakes cinematic fights.
I guess I haven't read enough Conan. I stand corrected; thanks.
But, does he ever "whittle down" enemies? Or just dispatch them with a single blow?
I've never seen D&D combat to emulate anything except itself. It doesn't create cinematic or literary effects, it's its own animal.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 19, 2022, 10:56:59 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on March 19, 2022, 09:01:45 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 19, 2022, 03:03:03 PM
Phoenix Command assigns injuries Physical Damage points. The higher the PD the less likely a character is to be willing to continue fighting, and the less likely to survive long term. PD can be anything from 1 for a stubbed toe, to 30,000+ for a decapitation.
High-level D&D combat, for comparison, isn't realistic, and doesn't even emulate films or comic books. Every combatant in the Conan universe goes down with one hit, for example. Conan never "loses hit points" and then suffers physical injury, he just never allows himself to get hit by virtue of his exceptional skill.
I prefer Call of Cthulhu's system, which retains the fact of human frailty.
I would rather start from a realistic system and modify it to emulate the movies, than have to struggle with a non-realistic system to explain what exactly went on in a fight.
Disagree about Conan, he often suffers wounds that would drop lesser men, and in one story had to be taken from the edge of death by that sweet golden wine after fighting off a horror from beneath the decadent city. Fighting Belit's pirates, he is wounded multiple times, and other stories he takes significant damage (thus the reason he is covered in scars with a well broken nose as king) He gets hit A LOT. Much less than a lesser skilled fighter would (though often, especially in his early years his prowess is derived more from talent than practiced skill) He rarely gets hit with a one shot type hit, and even when he does his helmet or some armor save him. I always though the Mongoose version of Conan the Rpg did a pretty good job of emulating this with the massive damage threshold, your level and class affecting how hard you are to hit, and having armor actually block damage.
I agree 100 percent about high level D&D combat emulating high stakes combat very well though, especially when compared to Conan-like stories or high stakes cinematic fights.
I guess I haven't read enough Conan. I stand corrected; thanks.
But, does he ever "whittle down" enemies? Or just dispatch them with a single blow?
I've never seen D&D combat to emulate anything except itself. It doesn't create cinematic or literary effects, it's its own animal.
Yes he does actually need to whittle down a few opponents iirc. Like in the rouges in the house im prettt sure he had to hit the ape man over and over but its been a bit since i read it. He also didnt kill the cops in the God in the Bowl in one hit. Many fled maimed though.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 19, 2022, 07:40:23 PMThey're hanging from the ledge and can try to pull themselves up, just like pretty much always happens to the protagonists in heroic fiction.
Except that doesn't always happen in fiction. Sometimes they fall and hit a bunch of tree branches on the way down, somewhat breaking their fall, or they roll down a hill smashing into trees and rocks, etc. Or maybe the fall wasn't high enough to outright kill them regardless, but they still end up injured in the ground. And most of what's involved in avoiding the fall in the first place is already covered by appropriate skill checks and whatnot. HP are for what happens after you failed to avoid injury, not to still avoid the source of injury regardless, to the point where falls don't exist unless they're fatal.
But you're taking a very selective view of heroic fiction that isn't even the only way that things can turn out in the genre and extrapolating it as some necessary thing that has to happen that way in the game, as if we're all trying to emulate that selective view of that specific genre of fiction. Or like this is a movie and not a game with gamey elements where characters are supposed to be able to screw up and face some consequences from time to time. And you're erasing ALL other alternatives and possibilities in the process, and turning it into some binary thing where falls are either always fatal or always avoided entirely, like falling and not getting killed, but still being injured isn't a possibility.
So that nothing bad can ever happen to characters, cuz "heroic fiction", unless they run out of HP, then ALL wounds suddenly become fatal, which are apparently the only types of lasting wounds that can exist. And is apparently more heroic than simply falling and surviving if you have enough HP to mitigate the damage from the fall.
And none of this even addresses the original point in the post that you replied to, which was that the issue with HP is that they don't properly illustrate lethality or the threat level of certain attacks or hazards that could potentially (but not necessarily) outright kill characters. And how simply changing the definition of HP from "Meat Points" (ie actual injuries) to something else not only fails to address that issue, but creates additional issues as well. Then you disagreed and proceeded to prove my point by insisting that HP are just Plot Armor and that nothing bad should happen to characters until they run out of them, to the point where not even falls can exist if characters have enough HP.
So yeah, the problem used to be that a knife wasn't enough of a threat to characters with tons of HP, and that not even a high altitude fall could kill them. But now that HP are 100% Plot Armor, falls can't even exist if they have enough HP left! And ALL falls must be either fatal (cuz you ran out of HP) or they never even happened!
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 19, 2022, 01:26:42 AM
Hit points are the worst way to track damage, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Correct.
There's plenty of silly conceptualising around hit points. The bottom line is that as a gameplay mechanic they work really really well, which is why they are so ubiquitous. I'm quite fond of wound track mechanics (eg D6 System's Stunned/Wounded/Severely Wounded/Incapacitated/Mortally Wounded/Dead) which give a different feel to combat, and I think work better in some genres. I remember playing All Flesh Must Be Eaten and thinking what a poor fit its use of hit points was for the survival horror genre. But for D&D and for many other similar genres (Doom-type shooters, eg) hit points are excellent.
Quote from: squirewaldo on March 19, 2022, 10:51:43 AM
My only real complaint against Hit Points is how they come back 100% after a long rest, and that is just D&D, and even that is easily fixed by making a few mods to the rules.
I do like how Microlite20 handles Hit Points by adding the Strength Stat as a an additional source of damage after the Hit Points or gone (or as extreme damage in my house rules).
100% HP recovery is "just DnD 5E". In AD&D:
"For each day of rest a character will regain 1 hit point, up to and including 7 days. However a character with a penalty for poor constitution must deduct weekly the penalty score from his or
her days of healing, i.e., a –2 for a person means that 5 hit points healing per week is maximum, and the first two days of rest will restore no hit points. After the first week of continuous rest, characters with a bonus for high constitution add the bonus score to the number of hit points they recover due to resting, i.e.,the second week of rest will restore 11 (7 + 4) hit points to a fighter character with an 18 constitution. Regardless of the number of hit points a character has, 4 weeks of continuous rest will restore any character to full strength."
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 11:35:28 PM
So yeah, the problem used to be that a knife wasn't enough of a threat to characters with tons of HP, and that not even a high altitude fall could kill them. But now that HP are 100% Plot Armor, falls can't even exist if they have enough HP left! And ALL falls must be either fatal (cuz you ran out of HP) or they never even happened!
Do you always take what people say in the worst possible light?
Falls "not existing" (until you're out of plot armor) is because ultimately we're not talking about true fiction (where even tracking something like hit points is irrelevant), but playing a team game. Dropping someone down a 50' pit is effectively saying "go take a break until this combat is over" to one of the players... in many systems because of a single bad roll or circumstances they could do nothing about... and that sucks when you're on the recieving end.
So, yeah, my system errs on the side of it working in ways that keep players able to meaningfully participate in encounters. Because it's a game not a story.
Also, you're the one equating 0 hit points to instant death, not me. I mean, that was how the oldest school D&D was, but these days there's typically a significant cushion in the dying range where they might yet be saved or even stabilize on their own because they're just that badass. This is what you see in most heroic stories where a character does survive such a fall and it's how it works in my system as well, with characters having a number of reserves that are depleted when you recover hit points by rallying, when you overcome fatigue, cast rituals, take extra actions, each time you hit 0 hit points and each time you fail a recovery check while you're dying.
If you want the grit dial turned up, then in addition to losing reserves from entering the dying condition, there's an optional rule for the GM to apply lasting injury-based conditions to targets that reach 0 in my system (legs, arms, head, internal injuries of varying severity). Not everyone likes that in their heroic roleplay, but it's there for those who do.
One operation of HPs that I really don't like is 'hit locations'. Because it adds a layer of complexity that I don't think is necessary also it makes them feel far less abstract.
On injuries, the only way I like them implemented is if you go down to 1-3 HPs. Then I might consider adding a minus to hit or agility-based moves. But I'd generally ignore anything above that. Though I might make a character 'stunned' for a round if they received a huge blow and it took away half their HPs or more.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 20, 2022, 08:46:36 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 11:35:28 PM
So yeah, the problem used to be that a knife wasn't enough of a threat to characters with tons of HP, and that not even a high altitude fall could kill them. But now that HP are 100% Plot Armor, falls can't even exist if they have enough HP left! And ALL falls must be either fatal (cuz you ran out of HP) or they never even happened!
Do you always take what people say in the worst possible light?
Falls "not existing" (until you're out of plot armor) is because ultimately we're not talking about true fiction (where even tracking something like hit points is irrelevant), but playing a team game. Dropping someone down a 50' pit is effectively saying "go take a break until this combat is over" to one of the players... in many systems because of a single bad roll or circumstances they could do nothing about... and that sucks when you're on the recieving end.
So, yeah, my system errs on the side of it working in ways that keep players able to meaningfully participate in encounters. Because it's a game not a story.
Also, you're the one equating 0 hit points to instant death, not me. I mean, that was how the oldest school D&D was, but these days there's typically a significant cushion in the dying range where they might yet be saved or even stabilize on their own because they're just that badass. This is what you see in most heroic stories where a character does survive such a fall and it's how it works in my system as well, with characters having a number of reserves that are depleted when you recover hit points by rallying, when you overcome fatigue, cast rituals, take extra actions, each time you hit 0 hit points and each time you fail a recovery check while you're dying.
If you want the grit dial turned up, then in addition to losing reserves from entering the dying condition, there's an optional rule for the GM to apply lasting injury-based conditions to targets that reach 0 in my system (legs, arms, head, internal injuries of varying severity). Not everyone likes that in their heroic roleplay, but it's there for those who do.
I'm just going with what you're saying, since you kept insisting that HP allow you to avoid falls after I explained in my first reply why that doesn't work (no one's ever done it that way, it removes a bunch of possibilities from play, that's not even what falling damage is supposed to represent, what about cumulative injuries?, etc.). But rather than address any of that, or telling me I was taking it too literal if that was the case, you chose to double down on trying to justify HP allowing you to outright avoid falls.
As it stands, if HP allow you to avoid falls, the scene at the start of Jedi, when Jabba triggers the floor trap and Luke falls into the Rancor pit wouldn't even have happened, cuz according to you falling simply doesn't happen in heroic fiction. Even if you want to specify that 0 HP doesn't outright kill you, just incapacitates you, that still leaves out the logical issue that certain stuff, like that scene in Jedi couldn't even happened if HP just allow you to avoid falls, cuz that fall didn't incapacitate Luke. That's the level of ridiculousness that I see every time you keep insisting that HP should allow you to outright avoid falling itself, not just dying or getting incapacitated from it.
If I want to spare a character falling, I just give them an extra chance, or do the "You almost fell but are now hanging by the ledge. Enemies are closing in..." thing from the get go and handle it through additional checks, specially if they only missed by a few points. It usually takes multiple failed rolls in my games for characters to even fall while climbing or whatever. The idea that HP themselves outright prevent the fall, or tying HP as opposed to skill checks to it, doesn't even enter my mind.
But the game isn't always about sparing characters misfortune, or keeping the PCs together at all costs, purely for metagame reasons. Sometimes falling can bring additional opportunities (maybe the PCs find a secret passage or something while trying to rescue the fallen character). Sometimes characters do stupid things and deserve to pay the price. Sometimes falling is even dramatically appropriate (Rancor pit). But all of that is removed from the game if you add so many levels of abstraction that HP outright prevent you from even falling.
And none of this is even covering the fact that you're working from a very specific narrow interpretation of what heroic fiction even is, and proposing it as the way HP should simply work.
For the most part, hit points ARE meat.
That's not without exceptions. The only reason any idea to the contrary was even introduced was to explain away hit points for high level characters. For monsters, animals, beasts, ordinary (0th level) humans--basically, 99% of everything in the game world, hit points are meat.
But player characters get center stage. Even though they're the exception, it's confused with the rule, and people got all hopped up on the idea of hit points as abstract. Which itself isn't without its flaws. As far back as usenet, you could see hit point haters pivot within-thread from criticizing hit points for being meat to criticizing hit points for being abstract.
And so my approach has always been to simply understand that hit points are a convenience. They are what they need to be at the time they need to be it. Or like Pundit cites Gary saying: They don't mean anything. Or at least not any one consistent thing. They're just hit points.
When it comes to how to describe combat in-game, I just float to whichever interpretation makes the most sense for a given situation. Criticism of hit points largely rest on the critic deliberately selecting a mismatched situation to the interpretation. Which leaves me scratching my head wondering. Who approaches a game, something that's supposed to be fun, by deliberately seeking the worst, least fun perspective possible?
If you latch on to either interpretation and start building mechanics on top of it, then the critics can rightly point out the flaws. But if you use a more fluid interpretation as was the original intent, it works.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 09:39:35 AM
What's broken about HP isn't how people conceptualize them (Meat Points vs Luck/Stamina, etc.) but the fact that regardless how you choose to explain what they are they don't properly illustrate lethality or the threat level of getting stabbed with a knife and other low damage attacks (or even high damage once vs uber high HP characters). Once you solve that, the real problem goes away and what you call them becomes irrelevant. Cuz it was never about what you think HP represent, but the fact that high HP characters can't get killed by a knife or a nasty fall.
I don't know about any of that. Outside of discussions on the criticism of hit points, I never hear anything like this. D&D gamers and DMs overwhelmingly are saying just the opposite. That there are too few hit points at low level. And some of the old-school mechanics, like save-or-die poison, are called "buzz kills." Most gamers just don't like the idea of someone losing a character just due to an unlucky die roll.
But that's all besides the point. Different strokes for different folks. I get it. The fact is the hit point system readily allows you to choose your level of lethality. It can be extremely lethal--the 0th level human is the baseline in 1E, and one hit kills are very common. Statting humans with higher hit points was done precisely so they didn't get killed in one hit. It was an intentional application of the hit point system and produced the intended outcome.
The real, real issue from what I've observed is gamers simultaneously want combat to be quick and deadly, but don't want their own character (or any PC from the perspective of most GMs) to die from freakish die rolls. They're contradictory creatures. They'll pound their chests about their own precious personal preferences while being half-ignorant about what it is they even really want.
And there are a few different solutions to this out there to try to accommodate this nonsense that we're forced to contend with. For D&D, I solve for it by firmly rooting the world in 0th level humans, so players see that just about everyone around them can be cut down by a single knife wound. And then on top of that, I make use of assassins, backstabs, and poisons to remind them that, no, daggers are not just limited to d4 damage. There can be no question that weapons are deadly. But then I let them earn their hit point buffers as they level. I do also keep a lid on stat inflation, though, to keep these numbers from getting out of hand. That gives just enough feeling of safety that they're willing to engage in ordinary combat and other dangerous things frequently enough to keep the game from becoming a bore.
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 20, 2022, 10:15:09 AMI don't know about any of that. Outside of discussions on the criticism of hit points, I never hear anything like this. D&D gamers and DMs overwhelmingly are saying just the opposite. That there are too few hit points at low level. And some of the old-school mechanics, like save-or-die poison, are called "buzz kills." Most gamers just don't like the idea of someone losing a character just due to an unlucky die roll.
Well its more you go from: So fragile that you must have 100 pre-existing conditions to be that weak in real life, and then explode into 'I eat grenades for lunch'.
I mean we are talking about the D&D HP system here. If your using some custom thing where HP is heavily consistent and restrained and follows some new internal logic pattern, then we are not talking about rules as written at which point you are reafirming their issues in the core rules.
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 20, 2022, 10:15:09 AM
I don't know about any of that. Outside of discussions on the criticism of hit points, I never hear anything like this. D&D gamers and DMs overwhelmingly are saying just the opposite. That there are too few hit points at low level.
I brought that up in another post (maybe more than one). But in regards to the common claim that "HP are unrealistic" (which I believe was what kicked off this thread and OP's video), it's usually some variant of what I said there. Even Pundit brought up the knife thing in his video.
There was actually an instance in play in one of my games where a PC struck another PC with a sword in the middle of a heated in-character argument cuz the player knew that the other PC could "take it", due to high HP. So they disassociated the significance of actually attacking someone with a lethal weapon over an argument and how that looked from an RP perspective outside the metagame conceit that high HP can soak up a sword strike. In the player's mind that sword strike just like a slap in the face or something. Not intended as a killing blow. But the other player (me) didn't take it that way, so it led to an outright PvP fight. And none of this was clarified till later and we had to do a redo.
There's also been times when PCs have done stupid stuff while they're bound and surrounded or similar and being threatened with a knife, cuz they knew they had enough HP take a few hits. Or when players complained that a knife to the back of an unwary opponent still only did 1d4 if you don't have Backstab/Sneak Attack, which only alerts them rather than at least potentially take them out clean.
Don't disagree about players contradicting themselves. Perhaps multiple layers of "deathness" are needed, rather than "save or die". The less lethal layer could be simple incapacitation, where coming back to play after being patched up is a possibility. The most lethal would obviously be death itself, and the middle layer could be incapacity, plus some type of lasting penalty, similar to exhaustion levels in 5e. That way there's a level of risk and consequence from attacks or hazards that could potentially kill you, without the outcome always leading to rolling up a new character.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 20, 2022, 11:14:45 AM
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 20, 2022, 10:15:09 AM
I don't know about any of that. Outside of discussions on the criticism of hit points, I never hear anything like this. D&D gamers and DMs overwhelmingly are saying just the opposite. That there are too few hit points at low level.
I brought that up in another post (maybe more than one). But in regards to the common claim that "HP are unrealistic" (which I believe was what kicked off this thread and OP's video), it's usually some variant of what I said there. Even Pundit brought up the knife thing in his video.
There was actually an instance in play in one of my games where a PC struck another PC with a sword in the middle of a heated in-character argument cuz the player knew that the other PC could "take it", due to high HP. So they disassociated the significance of actually attacking someone with a lethal weapon over an argument and how that looked from an RP perspective outside the metagame conceit that high HP can soak up a sword strike. In the player's mind that sword strike just like a slap in the face or something. Not intended as a killing blow. But the other player (me) didn't take it that way, so it led to an outright PvP fight. And none of this was clarified till later and we had to do a redo.
There's also been times when PCs have done stupid stuff while they're bound and surrounded or similar and being threatened with a knife, cuz they knew they had enough HP take a few hits. Or when players complained that a knife to the back of an unwary opponent still only did 1d4 if you don't have Backstab/Sneak Attack, which only alerts them rather than at least potentially take them out clean.
Don't disagree about players contradicting themselves. Perhaps multiple layers of "deathness" are needed, rather than "save or die". The less lethal layer could be simple incapacitation, where coming back to play after being patched up is a possibility. The most lethal would obviously be death itself, and the middle layer could be incapacity, plus some type of lasting penalty, similar to exhaustion levels in 5e. That way there's a level of risk and consequence from attacks or hazards that could potentially kill you, without the outcome always leading to rolling up a new character.
I'm reminded of Siembeda commenting about the Palladium game system, where a player reportedly had his character shoot himself in the head to intimidate an NPC, because he had enough "Hit Points" (Actually SDC, but that's hit points by another name in the Palladium system) to soak a gunshot.
I don't have an elegant solution to the issue. And it is an issue because in order to make decisions about situations, player characters have to have some kind of understanding about the consequences of their decsions. Threatening a person with a sword is silly when done to a character or NPC who can easily survive a sword blow.
And yet we don't want to incentivise characters avoiding adventure because it's too dangerous. May as well stay home and farm radishes.
Are stupid people stupid?
Sadly yes as we get once again page after page of the usual suspects bitchfesting about HP.
Quote from: Omega on March 20, 2022, 12:47:24 PM
Are stupid people stupid?
Sadly yes as we get once again page after page of the usual suspects bitchfesting about HP.
Welcome to the internet. You must be new here.
Quote from: Omega on March 20, 2022, 12:47:24 PM
Are stupid people stupid?
Riveting addition to the conversation. Nobody here actually said HP is worthless as a system.
I mean even the OP was about discussion of how to mod the existing HP system to hsve more threat.
Is anything short of rabid support for HP not good enough to qualify as "smart"?
I mean, are other alternatives even POSSIBLE?
Arneson added HP, IIRC, because players got attached to PCs and didn't want them dying in a single hit.
No RPG I can remember kills PCs with a single hit (except Cthulhu Dark?).
Then there are WOUNDS, which are inverse HP (e.g., shadow of the demon lord). Maybe fixed HP for some games I can't remember. Then there is HP PLUS something (stamina, luck, etc). Or some attribute (Constitution etc.) that basically works like HP.
Maybe the only alternative I can think of is differentiated wounds (a light wound being different than a grave wound, etc.), which adds complexity to the game.
So, are HP dumb compared to what? Maybe wounds?
I don't see many options in 99% of the RPGs I play.
Apparently, what is being defended here is "increasing HP with level to represent defense", instead of increasing AC (and maybe increasing saves MORE).
Which is... eh... mostly a matter of taste (and genre).
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 19, 2022, 06:14:08 AM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 19, 2022, 04:13:24 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 18, 2022, 10:50:53 PM
My only complaint about hit points is that, because of all the misinterpretations of them coupled with all sorts of video games that depicted hit point loss as taking an axe to the guy complete with massive sprays of blood... that the term has become almost synonymous with "meat points" and every attempt I've ever made to tailor mechanics based on their stamina, skill, luck and morale aspects has resulted in so much pushback (i.e. how can someone restore hit points by inspiring someone to dig deep and keep fighting? a rousing speech can't reattach someone's hand... never mind there were no rules for dismemberment in combat in the system).
Basically, the only time I've been able to get people to embrace the hit point concept in a form that is closer to how they were originally intended was to call them something else.
It doesn't help that D&D in the rules wordings, reinforces the idea of hit points as meat points.
Heal, Potion of healing, Cure Light Wounds...
Indeed. Since the points in my system are predominantly stamina+morale, the primary means of recovery are the Rally (which is proportional to the subject and which "healing" abilities trigger more efficiently than PCs doing it themselves) and the potion version is "potion of vitality."
Another important point though is one of the big problems with hit points being equated with meat is the level scaling of defenses that WotC D&D fell into. When AC is mostly static, then it's easier to present increased hit points as improved skill and stamina. You have more points you can go longer in a fight without suffering a serious injury, but can still be overwhelmed by sufficient numbers because your AC is not so high that you can't be hit.
But with scaling AC it was harder to do that because the rising AC's explanation was said be improved parrying/dodging skill (whereas those were a part of hit points in pre-WotC D&D). It also quickly rendered the prospect of losing to even hordes of mooks a virtual impossibility... feeding the superhero/MMO aspects where an orc army that could raze the continent "cons grey" to the PCs and so can't actually be credibly be claimed as a threat.
It likewise means that certain monsters necessarily "con red" meaning PCs basically can't even attempt to fight them because their defenses are so high.
The thing that I think really broke hit points was adding the defense axis to make survival quadratic. A level 10 PC didn't just have 10x the hit points, their defenses were also 10 points higher so instead of the orcs needing a 15 on the die to hit you, they now can only hit on a natural 20 so you're getting hit 6 times less often.
WotC broke a lot of things when they made 3e because, to paraphrase Chesterton, they didn't actually understand why the wall was built. Hit Points was just one of them.
No offense Chris24601 but there is no edition of DnD where Orcs are a credible threat to a level 10 PC.
The main problem is people trying to make Orcs into credible enemies when the PCs should be fighting those creatures that were previously con red.
Most of my problems with Hit Points are tuning issues and not fundamental concerns. There are too many Hit Points, which leads to a lot of math and tedious bookkeeping, and the Death Spiral is weak to nonexistent.
The opposite is, of course, wounds a la Savage Worlds. I would say this isn't less faulted so much as having opposite faults; the bookeeping is very streamlined, but you can't emulate glancing blows, and the death spiral in Savage Worlds is exceptionally aggressive. Going too far the other way on all counts doesn't fix the problems, but in this case it does make a more generally usable system.
If you can't tell, I prefer to wind up between these two extremes. Except for Death Spirals; I can appreciate why some players and game designers like them, but I really would prefer that particular mechanic to die in a corner, at least if all you're going for is a vanilla "you get worse as you get hit" implementation.
If you are only talking about a bare-bones game which the game designer hasn't spent time optimizing, wound systems are far superior because they're inherently streamlined. A streamlined game pops out with little effort. That said, I do think that if you took some efforts to streamline out some of the arithmetic and bookkeeping, Hit Points are closer to the ideal. It's just that it takes significantly more design homework to get there.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 20, 2022, 03:32:29 PM
I mean, are other alternatives even POSSIBLE?
Arneson added HP, IIRC, because players got attached to PCs and didn't want them dying in a single hit.
No RPG I can remember kills PCs with a single hit (except Cthulhu Dark?).
Rolemaster's infamous crit system.
It's not likely, but it's possible. And the argument can be made that however unlikely, combat should be dangerous like that.
QuoteThen there are WOUNDS, which are inverse HP (e.g., shadow of the demon lord). Maybe fixed HP for some games I can't remember. Then there is HP PLUS something (stamina, luck, etc). Or some attribute (Constitution etc.) that basically works like HP.
Maybe the only alternative I can think of is differentiated wounds (a light wound being different than a grave wound, etc.), which adds complexity to the game.
So, are HP dumb compared to what? Maybe wounds?
I don't see many options in 99% of the RPGs I play.
Apparently, what is being defended here is "increasing HP with level to represent defense", instead of increasing AC (and maybe increasing saves MORE).
Which is... eh... mostly a matter of taste (and genre).
If I were going to make a system without hit points, I think I'd go with a wound system. Break damage down into a management set of categories, and have each type of wound apply an effect.
Like, slashed tendon, cut wrist, gut wound, etc. Each wound would accumulate a death save. Very unlikely to start, but becomes more likely the more wounds you suffer.
I'd have to work on it. That's just an outline.
Quote from: Fheredin on March 20, 2022, 04:16:37 PM
Most of my problems with Hit Points are tuning issues and not fundamental concerns. There are too many Hit Points, which leads to a lot of math and tedious bookkeeping, and the Death Spiral is weak to nonexistent.
The opposite is, of course, wounds a la Savage Worlds. I would say this isn't less faulted so much as having opposite faults; the bookeeping is very streamlined, but you can't emulate glancing blows, and the death spiral in Savage Worlds is exceptionally aggressive. Going too far the other way on all counts doesn't fix the problems, but in this case it does make a more generally usable system.
If you can't tell, I prefer to wind up between these two extremes. Except for Death Spirals; I can appreciate why some players and game designers like them, but I really would prefer that particular mechanic to die in a corner, at least if all you're going for is a vanilla "you get worse as you get hit" implementation.
If you are only talking about a bare-bones game which the game designer hasn't spent time optimizing, wound systems are far superior because they're inherently streamlined. A streamlined game pops out with little effort. That said, I do think that if you took some efforts to streamline out some of the arithmetic and bookkeeping, Hit Points are closer to the ideal. It's just that it takes significantly more design homework to get there.
I also prefer streamlined systems. What I would like is a system that can both simulate glancing blows and abstracts attack/damage/defense/soak/etc into a single roll.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 20, 2022, 07:18:47 PM
Quote from: Fheredin on March 20, 2022, 04:16:37 PM
Most of my problems with Hit Points are tuning issues and not fundamental concerns. There are too many Hit Points, which leads to a lot of math and tedious bookkeeping, and the Death Spiral is weak to nonexistent.
The opposite is, of course, wounds a la Savage Worlds. I would say this isn't less faulted so much as having opposite faults; the bookeeping is very streamlined, but you can't emulate glancing blows, and the death spiral in Savage Worlds is exceptionally aggressive. Going too far the other way on all counts doesn't fix the problems, but in this case it does make a more generally usable system.
If you can't tell, I prefer to wind up between these two extremes. Except for Death Spirals; I can appreciate why some players and game designers like them, but I really would prefer that particular mechanic to die in a corner, at least if all you're going for is a vanilla "you get worse as you get hit" implementation.
If you are only talking about a bare-bones game which the game designer hasn't spent time optimizing, wound systems are far superior because they're inherently streamlined. A streamlined game pops out with little effort. That said, I do think that if you took some efforts to streamline out some of the arithmetic and bookkeeping, Hit Points are closer to the ideal. It's just that it takes significantly more design homework to get there.
I also prefer streamlined systems. What I would like is a system that can both simulate glancing blows and abstracts attack/damage/defense/soak/etc into a single roll.
RPG Pundit Presents could probably do a random table for that.
Quote from: Mishihari on March 19, 2022, 01:46:30 PM
Hit points are a great mechanic for making the game fun. They're terrible for representing anything that actually happens in real life. Finding a mechanic that does both is hard, which is why we're still arguing about it 50 years later.
This applies to many D&D Mechanics like AC and Saves. Playability was more important to Gygax than realism. Judging by the continued success of HP it seems many agree.
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 20, 2022, 01:18:17 AM
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 19, 2022, 01:26:42 AM
Hit points are the worst way to track damage, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Correct.
Only if you don't place a premium on realism.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 20, 2022, 08:09:39 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 20, 2022, 01:18:17 AM
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 19, 2022, 01:26:42 AM
Hit points are the worst way to track damage, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Correct.
Only if you don't place a premium on realism.
We can do realistic but its not going to be fast or fun and there maybe a seperate dysentery table involved
Quote from: Ruprecht on March 20, 2022, 07:50:06 PM
Judging by the continued success of HP it seems many agree.
I would say it really depends on the effect one desires to achieve. A CON score worth of HP is about as deadly as Savage Worlds while about double that feels Storyteller deadly with about 5 damaging hits to KO. Substantially more HP turns into an ablation contest with nothing at stake for a while. Dying is not fun, but neither is trading blows for no effect. The latter may be cinematic, but cinema is meant to be watched, not played. Two juggernauts duking it out and thrashing the city looks great, but plays like "Well, that did not do much." Critical Hits being a differentiator just leads to the Star Wars d20 problem of keep spamming attacks in hopes of critting to wound.
When it comes to d20 style Hit Points, my preference will go to Know Your Role's Endurance/Trauma system. Something happens, for one or the other combatant, to reduce endurance with every offensive action while particularly nasty injuries cause Trauma.
Quote from: Shasarak on March 20, 2022, 08:21:00 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 20, 2022, 08:09:39 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 20, 2022, 01:18:17 AM
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 19, 2022, 01:26:42 AM
Hit points are the worst way to track damage, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Correct.
Only if you don't place a premium on realism.
We can do realistic but its not going to be fast or fun and there maybe a seperate dysentery table involved
Greetings!
Yeah, Shasarak! *Laughing* I agree. The alleged goal of reaching for increased "Realism" in D&D--in whatever category--often inevitably leads to unplayable results encompassing far too much tediousness and bookkeeping, and ultimately embraces a stupefying point or subsystem "solution" that represents a dynamic of diminishing returns.
There are very good reasons for embracing a simplistic abstraction, like Hit Points.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: Shasarak on March 20, 2022, 08:21:00 PM
We can do realistic but its not going to be fast or fun and there maybe a seperate dysentery table involved
Simulation is a goal onto itself, generally separate from playability. Emulation is far more important. Does it feel like whatever it is intend to feel like or not. I do not find high HP combat to be fast or fun. With the risk buffer filled up, there is no tension to the action and it feels inconsequential. Perhaps HP is better off in two pools, a per encounter and a per day. Any adventurer can go one encounter, but a seasoned one can refill the encounter risk buffer from the daily risk allowance to "safely" fight all day. Each fight can risk a knock out and mission failure, but not character death unless the enemies execute the fallen PC after combat.
As a dedicated non-D&D player I am all for alternates to HP systems that "feel" more realistic.
Our first RPG was Palladium. Yes, it still has hit points, but not many, and they're the secondary set of damage points. Structural Damage Capacity (SDC) was the main points you had. I.E. a character could start with 30 SDC and 10 HP. SDC is easy to recover and is superficial injuries. Lost HP probably means bed rest and doctors.
Or D6 Star Wars. You have 5 damage states. Fully healthy, stunned, wounded, severely wounded, and incapacitated. Your strength attribute is instead used to determine how bad a hit you receive.
I prefer games that don't make you tougher as you level up, but harder to hit instead.
Quote from: Wisithir on March 20, 2022, 08:52:32 PM
Quote from: Shasarak on March 20, 2022, 08:21:00 PM
We can do realistic but its not going to be fast or fun and there maybe a seperate dysentery table involved
Simulation is a goal onto itself, generally separate from playability. Emulation is far more important. Does it feel like whatever it is intend to feel like or not. I do not find high HP combat to be fast or fun. With the risk buffer filled up, there is no tension to the action and it feels inconsequential. Perhaps HP is better off in two pools, a per encounter and a per day. Any adventurer can go one encounter, but a seasoned one can refill the encounter risk buffer from the daily risk allowance to "safely" fight all day. Each fight can risk a knock out and mission failure, but not character death unless the enemies execute the fallen PC after combat.
If you have low HP combat then everything devolves into rocket tag or fantasy Vietnam - if the first people to win initiative hit then they win the combat.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on March 20, 2022, 09:12:45 PM
As a dedicated non-D&D player I am all for alternates to HP systems that "feel" more realistic.
Our first RPG was Palladium. Yes, it still has hit points, but not many, and they're the secondary set of damage points. Structural Damage Capacity (SDC) was the main points you had. I.E. a character could start with 30 SDC and 10 HP. SDC is easy to recover and is superficial injuries. Lost HP probably means bed rest and doctors.
Or D6 Star Wars. You have 5 damage states. Fully healthy, stunned, wounded, severely wounded, and incapacitated. Your strength attribute is instead used to determine how bad a hit you receive.
I prefer games that don't make you tougher as you level up, but harder to hit instead.
The key term being "prefer," as it is really just a flavor preference. Objectively, there's no difference in play between "I roll and miss five times before I hit and incapacitate the enemy" and "I roll and hit the enemy, subtracting hit points each time, until the sixth hit removes all of the hit points and incapacitates the enemy." If anything, there's a psychological aspect that might prefer the feeling of progress (reducing hp) as opposed to simply missing over and over. But the overall effect is the same...
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 20, 2022, 09:29:14 PMObjectively, there's no difference in play between "I roll and miss five times before I hit and incapacitate the enemy" and "I roll and hit the enemy, subtracting hit points each time, until the sixth hit removes all of the hit points and incapacitates the enemy."
No it isn't. HP damage is progress and a chance of a hit is completly different. Because with HP going down your garunteed progress, but also generally denied good tactics.
Maybe I have a low chance to hit my opponent, but trying for tactics that deny them defenses doesn't work because its dependant on my damage scaling. If the Jedi is deflecting all my lasers because of his HP, then I can't throw a grenade to throw him off, or try to make him fall down a pit where his deflection is useless. The grenades damage has to scale, and so does the depth of the pit to the level of the Jedi.
This is the big problem with HP bloat, and HP as a primary measure of defense in the first place.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 19, 2022, 10:56:59 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on March 19, 2022, 09:01:45 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 19, 2022, 03:03:03 PM
Phoenix Command assigns injuries Physical Damage points. The higher the PD the less likely a character is to be willing to continue fighting, and the less likely to survive long term. PD can be anything from 1 for a stubbed toe, to 30,000+ for a decapitation.
High-level D&D combat, for comparison, isn't realistic, and doesn't even emulate films or comic books. Every combatant in the Conan universe goes down with one hit, for example. Conan never "loses hit points" and then suffers physical injury, he just never allows himself to get hit by virtue of his exceptional skill.
I prefer Call of Cthulhu's system, which retains the fact of human frailty.
I would rather start from a realistic system and modify it to emulate the movies, than have to struggle with a non-realistic system to explain what exactly went on in a fight.
Disagree about Conan, he often suffers wounds that would drop lesser men, and in one story had to be taken from the edge of death by that sweet golden wine after fighting off a horror from beneath the decadent city. Fighting Belit's pirates, he is wounded multiple times, and other stories he takes significant damage (thus the reason he is covered in scars with a well broken nose as king) He gets hit A LOT. Much less than a lesser skilled fighter would (though often, especially in his early years his prowess is derived more from talent than practiced skill) He rarely gets hit with a one shot type hit, and even when he does his helmet or some armor save him. I always though the Mongoose version of Conan the Rpg did a pretty good job of emulating this with the massive damage threshold, your level and class affecting how hard you are to hit, and having armor actually block damage.
I agree 100 percent about high level D&D combat emulating high stakes combat very well though, especially when compared to Conan-like stories or high stakes cinematic fights.
I guess I haven't read enough Conan. I stand corrected; thanks.
But, does he ever "whittle down" enemies? Or just dispatch them with a single blow?
I've never seen D&D combat to emulate anything except itself. It doesn't create cinematic or literary effects, it's its own animal.
He does have a few fights where he whittles enemies down (the great ape on the isle of the black ones) the abomination in the city of xuxthal (probably spelled wrong), his brutal fight with the Stygian prince, Strangling the "professional strangler" ( I think Bael Paetor, but memory is fuzzy) while being simultaneously choked, several of the duels he has with either angry nobles or pirate captains are back and forth affairs where neither of them really "take a Hit" but are worn down in a way that could simulate a more D&D abstraction of hit points. For the most part Conan does in fact pull a one hitter quitter on dire foes or in dire circumstances. Again, this is poorly emulated in dungeons and dragons (which I agree 100 percent with you about) but fairly well emulated in the D20 mongoose version of Conan, where massive damage (doing 20 hp or more forces a death check from the recipient at diff equal to total damage or they drop dead, in gory fashion) can kill you in one hit even if you had well beyond what one hit could do. It makes sneak attacks and critical utterly devastating. Which I think can be a bit lost at times in D&D.
I think DCC can also emulate to a degree that feeling of high stakes combat as well with the use of critical tables.
Quote from: Shasarak on March 20, 2022, 09:22:55 PMIf you have low HP combat then everything devolves into rocket tag or fantasy Vietnam - if the first people to win initiative hit then they win the combat.
Perhaps medium HP, equivalent to 5 wound level systems, is the way to go. 3-5 average hits or 1-2 crits to KO. Crit factor could also be based on amount success over DC instead of straight d20 roll. This way skilled attackers could rack up multipliers and wipe low skill opponents easily but exchange only limited HP reduction against skilled defenders.
When it comes to low HP one on one combat, I find Know Your Role would alleviate rocket tag. Declare action in inverse initiative. Make an opposed action check, d20 + maneuver modifier, best result takes place. Thus, poor initiative could declare a safe defensive move with a low modifier, while good initiative gets a choice to respond with a safe counter, or high-risk high reward.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 20, 2022, 09:45:57 PMNo it isn't. HP damage is progress and a chance of a hit is completly different. Because with HP going down your garunteed progress, but also generally denied good tactics.
I agree. For me the question is if gameplay is making decisions or rolling dice. High HP is great for rolling lots of dice and drooling over big numbers, but not much in the way if interesting decisions to be made, mostly "I attack the nearest enemy." I find it far more satisfying to trade superficial damage while maneuvering for a one shot knock out over whittling away the enemy's risk gauge.
When it comes to outmaneuvering a force user, my best was intervening in a fight against an inquisitor. The party was at a stand off because he had a hostage, however, my character realized that he would deflect incoming fire instead of taking it and killing the hostage. Thus, I launched some dummy grenades that got force pushed away, then had one droideka fire and get the blasts deflected. Once the inquisitor was out of action, the other droideka rolled up into a ball and used tackle. No HP ablation to be had at all.
Hit Points are great for what they're designed to do. You're right that Hit Points serve as a risk assessment tool and incentivizes a genre of play.
Differences in play:
I remember many years ago when my old group was split on playing NWoD. One guy wanted to run a gritty, 80's style horror game based around Stephen King's "Fire Starter." NWoD had just released "Second Sight" which had the kind of system and rules he was looking for. One of the players who was reluctant to try it made a hard-boiled detective. He had a variety of skills and merits, was good with a pistol and could rough people up. Early on we were following clues, avoiding capture, and getting a feel of the world. Then we stumbled onto something big. We had to get there before the government and we were running out of time. When we were coming out the place was surrounded. A swat team with rubber bullets came in to subdue us. The hard-boiled detective beat them up pretty bad and got one in a lethal choke hold. A member of the swat team drew his knife and closed in. At first the hard-boiled detective was unimpressed. He kicked him and almost KO'd him. Then he got stabbed. In NWoD there's a rule called "10 again". If one of your dice is a '10' you roll it again, adding to your success. The single success exploded into 4 total, which is 4 lethal damage. That was half of his health in a single attack. The player was shocked. Risk assessment: knives are always dangerous.
Contrast this with D&D and the differences are clear. D&D is designed for heroic play. A peasant with a club? My 10th level fighter will defeat a hundred. We know that 95% of their attacks will miss completely, while 95% of mine will hit. All of my attacks will kill them instantly. Hit Points in D&D incentivizes heroism, like Aragorn charging headlong into a patrol of Uruk Hai. Aragorn suffers minor cuts and bruises but ultimately wins. Other games like Marvel Super Heroes incentivizes super heroic play. When you have Hulk level Monstrous(75) armor, anything less than a battle tank using HEAT rounds is a spit ball.
Then there are games that have a version of Hit Points like "Call of Cthulhu", where Sanity is like a hour glass: once the sands are gone your time is up. Again, it's a different style of play than either D&D or Super Heroes.
Quote from: Wisithir on March 20, 2022, 10:44:04 PMPerhaps medium HP, equivalent to 5 wound level systems, is the way to go.
I know some people complained against it, but I ultimately like Savage Worlds for having bennies or 'fate points' effectively that act almost like HP, but not exactly separately from your own wounds. They represent you getting lucky or tanking a hit in a way that reduces harm.
You can make the game more or less lethal by increasing/ decreasing the maximum number of raises you can get on a damage roll.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 20, 2022, 09:45:57 PMthen had one droideka fire and get the blasts deflected. Once the inquisitor was out of action, the other droideka rolled up into a ball and used tackle. No HP ablation to be had at all.
My man. Good taste. What system?
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 20, 2022, 10:56:01 AM
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 20, 2022, 10:15:09 AMI don't know about any of that. Outside of discussions on the criticism of hit points, I never hear anything like this. D&D gamers and DMs overwhelmingly are saying just the opposite. That there are too few hit points at low level. And some of the old-school mechanics, like save-or-die poison, are called "buzz kills." Most gamers just don't like the idea of someone losing a character just due to an unlucky die roll.
Well its more you go from: So fragile that you must have 100 pre-existing conditions to be that weak in real life, and then explode into 'I eat grenades for lunch'.
I mean we are talking about the D&D HP system here. If your using some custom thing where HP is heavily consistent and restrained and follows some new internal logic pattern, then we are not talking about rules as written at which point you are reafirming their issues in the core rules.
About 30 years ago, I started running pure, core 1E by the book, and that's the only D&D I've run since then. I do not encounter what you're describing here at all. Even this business about to what degree hit points are meat and what degree they're other stuff, there's a fairly detailed discussion of that in the 1E DMG. Everything in my post is straight out of the core 1E manuals.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 20, 2022, 07:18:47 PM
Quote from: Fheredin on March 20, 2022, 04:16:37 PM
Most of my problems with Hit Points are tuning issues and not fundamental concerns. There are too many Hit Points, which leads to a lot of math and tedious bookkeeping, and the Death Spiral is weak to nonexistent.
The opposite is, of course, wounds a la Savage Worlds. I would say this isn't less faulted so much as having opposite faults; the bookeeping is very streamlined, but you can't emulate glancing blows, and the death spiral in Savage Worlds is exceptionally aggressive. Going too far the other way on all counts doesn't fix the problems, but in this case it does make a more generally usable system.
If you can't tell, I prefer to wind up between these two extremes. Except for Death Spirals; I can appreciate why some players and game designers like them, but I really would prefer that particular mechanic to die in a corner, at least if all you're going for is a vanilla "you get worse as you get hit" implementation.
If you are only talking about a bare-bones game which the game designer hasn't spent time optimizing, wound systems are far superior because they're inherently streamlined. A streamlined game pops out with little effort. That said, I do think that if you took some efforts to streamline out some of the arithmetic and bookkeeping, Hit Points are closer to the ideal. It's just that it takes significantly more design homework to get there.
I also prefer streamlined systems. What I would like is a system that can both simulate glancing blows and abstracts attack/damage/defense/soak/etc into a single roll.
I'm actually curious to see what you think of my homebrew's approach because it almost fits your description, except for the glancing blow part. Glancing blows and whittling down with weak hits is often one of the sticking points for HP systems, and I confess I didn't really think about it when I put this together. FYI: This is for a theater of the mind tactics game, if that means anything.
The core mechanic is a dice pool which outputs between 0 and 8 successes (usually 2-4). Weapons have 2 stats; Power and Critical. The Power is the damage the weapon deals immediately on a successful hit, and the Critical is the amount of power each success past hitting can add. For example, if you are attempting to shoot an enemy (2 successes required) and roll 4 successes, and your weapon has Power 5, Critical 2, then you deal 5 + 2 + 2 damage, or 9 damage total.
Then the defender will subtract their character's DR stat from armor and may choose to spend AP and negate further damage with a defensive action (no dice needed; spend 1 AP to prevent 2 damage, etc.) or to mark it onto their character sheet.
The real question is if this is better than dice. One of the key advantages of a large HP pool a la D&D is that it lets you use a wide variety of dice for the damage outputs, which gives you beautiful damage output curves. That said, players do not accurately perceive the output of their dice, and you are adding complexity to the operation, even if you instruct players to roll damage dice with their D20. I generally think the tradeoff for damage rolls is that the the game forces the player to do a whole lot of math so that the game
designer can admire a perfectly boob-shaped bell curve.
The Power and Critical approach above comes in clicky chunks and never deals a trivial amount of damage (although to be fair, it may all get absorbed with DR and active defense, so in practice it can still wind up with low damage connecting to the target in the end which would have been approximated in a D&D-like system with a higher AC.) But the big lacking is it doesn't have that attractive damage output bell curve.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 20, 2022, 10:53:54 PM
Quote from: Wisithir on March 20, 2022, 10:44:04 PMPerhaps medium HP, equivalent to 5 wound level systems, is the way to go.
I know some people complained against it, but I ultimately like Savage Worlds for having bennies or 'fate points' effectively that act almost like HP, but not exactly separately from your own wounds. They represent you getting lucky or tanking a hit in a way that reduces harm.
You can make the game more or less lethal by increasing/ decreasing the maximum number of raises you can get on a damage roll.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 20, 2022, 09:45:57 PMthen had one droideka fire and get the blasts deflected. Once the inquisitor was out of action, the other droideka rolled up into a ball and used tackle. No HP ablation to be had at all.
My man. Good taste. What system?
I love Savage Worlds. It is the only combat system I am happy with out of the box for a pen and paper game. Bennies are the real risk gauge; wounds are just a nasty complication. The world is brutal, combat is fast and furious, but the PCs get bennies to "cheat" reality with. The death spiral can be mitigated or its initiation can be fended off with benny rerolls.
Conversely, I somewhat like StoryPath combat. One roll to make sufficient success to beat the dc, buyoff "yes-but" complications, and spend the remainder on perks. Thus, a great roll might lead to, I shot the heavy weapon guy, no one saw me, so no return fire, and as he fell his weapon went off and hit his buddies. I also like that weapon have descriptors instead of stats and just do bruising, lethal, or aggravated damage, with descriptors affecting how they interact with the world. Conversely, I hate the initiative mechanic, and the describe the damage that goes with the wound level is flavorful but interacts badly with "I didn't get hit" players. Must have been another low to the head causing delusions. Then, the rest of the system goes downhill for me.
Droidekas vs inquisitor happened in Satar Wars: Saga Edition. During that incident my character was literally screaming over the coms "He's not going to die to kill the hostage. Just shoot him!" No one listened, so I had to blast and crash land my way into the building to deploy my droids. A Jedi and two or more soldiers standing around and the medic/mechanic has to take down the bid bad.
One thought I did have for accelerating D&D HP attrition and avoiding miss, miss, miss, hit, too low to beat DR, miss cycle was allowing or making all attacks auto hit at the cost of HP equal to the degree of miss. Missed by X? Take X HP damage yourself and roll damage on the enemy. Beat the target by X? Add X to damage rolled. This would also avoid the Wounds/Vitality death spiral by reducing the risk gauge faster when rolling low due to penalties instead of making the combatant ineffective.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 20, 2022, 09:29:14 PM
Quote from: weirdguy564 on March 20, 2022, 09:12:45 PM
As a dedicated non-D&D player I am all for alternates to HP systems that "feel" more realistic.
Our first RPG was Palladium. Yes, it still has hit points, but not many, and they're the secondary set of damage points. Structural Damage Capacity (SDC) was the main points you had. I.E. a character could start with 30 SDC and 10 HP. SDC is easy to recover and is superficial injuries. Lost HP probably means bed rest and doctors.
Or D6 Star Wars. You have 5 damage states. Fully healthy, stunned, wounded, severely wounded, and incapacitated. Your strength attribute is instead used to determine how bad a hit you receive.
I prefer games that don't make you tougher as you level up, but harder to hit instead.
The key term being "prefer," as it is really just a flavor preference. Objectively, there's no difference in play between "I roll and miss five times before I hit and incapacitate the enemy" and "I roll and hit the enemy, subtracting hit points each time, until the sixth hit removes all of the hit points and incapacitates the enemy." If anything, there's a psychological aspect that might prefer the feeling of progress (reducing hp) as opposed to simply missing over and over. But the overall effect is the same...
In return of objective results, yes it's the same. In terms of subjective fun, not so much. I was in on a discussion at ENWorld some years ago of some research that WotC released. They found that folks had the most fun with a 70% hit rate. So making the game fun is not just about the end result, it's also about the process that gets you there.
Quote from: Mishihari on March 21, 2022, 03:14:31 AM
In return of objective results, yes it's the same. In terms of subjective fun, not so much. I was in on a discussion at ENWorld some years ago of some research that WotC released. They found that folks had the most fun with a 70% hit rate. So making the game fun is not just about the end result, it's also about the process that gets you there.
I agree that the process matters. Disagree that there's any merit at all to the 70% hit rate. I mean, casinos do similar research, and I'm sure far more accurate and in depth, trying to figure out that optimum frequency in which one should win to keep them hooked. I'm not privy to their research. But I'm fairly certain their answer isn't 70%.
But let's talk about the process. Gary wrote two other fantasy RPGs after AD&D. Both of those RPGs, generally speaking, give you a better hit rate and more hit points than D&D, and have critical hits. Both also have armor work to reduce harm rather than make you harder to hit. They check the boxes of the common items that come up in these discussions.
The way these games play out is, you get plenty of hits in that do very little damage that is of no threat to characters with their many hit points. But every now and then, you score a crit that does a ton of damage. It's one of the possible ways to resolve the contradicting feelings gamers have about wanting a measure of safety for their character but still have weapon attacks be deadly.
I know the average stats for Lejendary Adventure really well, so I can give a more concrete example of how it rolls. All weapons do d20 harm--the average human has 20 health. But average starting characters have 65 health, a +5 damage bonus, and 12 points of armor. There is a strong hit rule that anytime damage scored is over 10, there is a minimum of 1 point of shock harm that accrues even if the total damage does not exceed armor protection. So it works out that 25% of hits do no damage at all (only to armor), 15% do 1 damage, and 60% to 2-8 damage. If you're following along at home, that means hits are doing an average of only 3.15 damage each, which means it's going to take 21 hits to kill.
Enter critical hits. Crit type #1 happens on 5% of hits, where maximum damage is rolled on the d20 calling for additional bonus damage rolls, potentially doubling that base damage to 40. Crit type #2 happens on 10% of hits (special hits), and that calls for armor protection to be bypassed. So this average dude can easily go from scoring 3 points of harm per hit up to 45 points.
Now in a lot of ways, this process is more fun and better matches peoples expectations of the flow of combat. And personally I think Lejendary Adventure is a better RPG than D&D. And that's all well and good. And if isolated combat to do a study, it would probably confirm that LA's combat system is a lot more fun than D&Ds.
But I find myself wishing that combat in LA were more like D&D. Because combat is just one challenge to the overall game, and just one act in the overall story. When you're not isolating it, when it's part of a larger whole, there's a certain tedium to whacking away at each other, just chipping away at each other's health, while waiting for the big crit to come.
It's almost like.... how about we speed things up and skip right to the crits?
If you did that, combat would look a lot like (low level) AD&D. Rounds that represent an unusually large block of time. Assumption of many parries and thrusts going on that we ignore and do not represent mechanically. Lower hit probability (because we're only concerned with the crits, not the ordinary hits). We're mostly dealing with single-digit damage rather than double-digit so the math is easier. Armor makes you "harder to hit" because it's possible to do significant damage without a crit if someone has little or no armor absorbing damage.
I do not think they are dumb. I agree with the earlier sentiment that even systems that try to provide an alternative basically just rebrand them. For example, I see a three wound system as roughly equivalent to a one damage per hit, three hit point one.
I believe there is often an issue with execution. HP bloat is a real thing, and can be compounded by combat resolution mechanics such as to hit and damage amount. Also, healing rates in games can suffer from a porridge is too hot or too cold situation by being either too slow, such as one point every other day after a day of rest, or the too fast system used in 5e.
Given anybody with an itch account or google drive can be a game designer, I agree it has become more common to see people attacking HP as a concept while pushing their so called innovation. Often it turns into a focus on the wrong D word; difference instead of design.
I don't know, what have they got to do with elf games?
[I'll get my coat on the way out? 😜]
Hit points are dumb when they're internally inconsistent. Described as more than "meat points" and yet the only way they come back is with rest or magical healing.
Quote from: Shasarak on March 20, 2022, 08:21:00 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 20, 2022, 08:09:39 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 20, 2022, 01:18:17 AM
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 19, 2022, 01:26:42 AM
Hit points are the worst way to track damage, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Correct.
Only if you don't place a premium on realism.
We can do realistic but its not going to be fast or fun and there maybe a seperate dysentery table involved
My combats take no more or less real time than anyone else's. (Maybe I should look into a dysentery table.) Knowing the system more or less by heart, minus the damage tables, helps. Really, how hard is it to roll to hit, find the physical damage based on effective impact strength and armor, make a knockout roll and account for disabling injuries? I find it more fun to know exactly what went on in a fight.
I've toyed with writing a rules lite game that literally had "plot armor" points for characters as initial hit points used up first. Actual hit points are after that, and represent real flesh and blood damage.
Or more specifically, armor, luck, and Force points for a Star Wars ripoff game. I would also use those points as a consumable fuel for that character's unique abilities.
Stuff like that sounds better than just lots of hit points.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 21, 2022, 01:50:45 PM
Quote from: Shasarak on March 20, 2022, 08:21:00 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 20, 2022, 08:09:39 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 20, 2022, 01:18:17 AM
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 19, 2022, 01:26:42 AM
Hit points are the worst way to track damage, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Correct.
Only if you don't place a premium on realism.
We can do realistic but its not going to be fast or fun and there maybe a seperate dysentery table involved
My combats take no more or less real time than anyone else's. (Maybe I should look into a dysentery table.) Knowing the system more or less by heart, minus the damage tables, helps. Really, how hard is it to roll to hit, find the physical damage based on effective impact strength and armor, make a knockout roll and account for disabling injuries? I find it more fun to know exactly what went on in a fight.
That sounds like a great system but on the other hand its not very realistic though.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 21, 2022, 01:50:45 PM
My combats take no more or less real time than anyone else's. (Maybe I should look into a dysentery table.) Knowing the system more or less by heart, minus the damage tables, helps. Really, how hard is it to roll to hit, find the physical damage based on effective impact strength and armor, make a knockout roll and account for disabling injuries? I find it more fun to know exactly what went on in a fight.
3rd Edition Gamma World had corresponding charts for damage types and injuries. If only the combat system was as fun and innovative as the injuries. I'll never forgot when my character was suffered a back injury from a terrible fall. It was devastating. I hobbled around for several adventures until I could get healed by a mutant. It wasn't until 20 years later when I suffered a back cramp after moving into a new house that I remembered it. My first words when asked what was wrong, "Find me a mutant."
My favorite wound tracking system was the one from Classic Traveller, where you took damage to your three physical stats (Strength, Dexterity, Endurance). When you reached 0 in one stat, you fell unconscious, and could be killed with a coup de grace. Damage carried over into the other stats.
Hit points are agreat way to track wounds, but when it gets to the point where you are wading through a hail of bullets, the ability to suspend disbelief becomes stretched to its limits.
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on March 22, 2022, 06:53:28 AM
Hit points are agreat way to track wounds, but when it gets to the point where you are wading through a hail of bullets, the ability to suspend disbelief becomes stretched to its limits.
Less genre-breaking though if you remember all those films/shows where protagonists go running through hails of automatic weapon fire with pings all around him and not taking a single hit.
That cost them plot armor/luck hit points, even if they didn't take a single physical hit.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 07:58:01 AM
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on March 22, 2022, 06:53:28 AM
Hit points are agreat way to track wounds, but when it gets to the point where you are wading through a hail of bullets, the ability to suspend disbelief becomes stretched to its limits.
Less genre-breaking though if you remember all those films/shows where protagonists go running through hails of automatic weapon fire with pings all around him and not taking a single hit.
That cost them plot armor/luck hit points, even if they didn't take a single physical hit.
And then you cast "Cure Light Wounds" or use a healing kit or rest a few days to recover your plot armor/luck...
Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 22, 2022, 09:38:36 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 07:58:01 AM
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on March 22, 2022, 06:53:28 AM
Hit points are agreat way to track wounds, but when it gets to the point where you are wading through a hail of bullets, the ability to suspend disbelief becomes stretched to its limits.
Less genre-breaking though if you remember all those films/shows where protagonists go running through hails of automatic weapon fire with pings all around him and not taking a single hit.
That cost them plot armor/luck hit points, even if they didn't take a single physical hit.
And then you cast "Cure Light Wounds" or use a healing kit or rest a few days to recover your plot armor/luck...
But, hey...at least you don't have to dodge bullets, or wait for enemies to miss your Defense/AC stat (plus any applicable penalties against moving targets and whatnot) to avoid getting hit, cuz your Plot Armor HP got you covered. Amirite? ;D
EDIT/PS/For the Sarcasm Challenged: Point being that defense stats, active defense and/or situational modifiers already cover evading hits without needed to drag HP into it.
Quote from: Shasarak on March 21, 2022, 09:38:06 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 21, 2022, 01:50:45 PM
Quote from: Shasarak on March 20, 2022, 08:21:00 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 20, 2022, 08:09:39 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 20, 2022, 01:18:17 AM
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 19, 2022, 01:26:42 AM
Hit points are the worst way to track damage, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Correct.
Only if you don't place a premium on realism.
We can do realistic but its not going to be fast or fun and there maybe a seperate dysentery table involved
My combats take no more or less real time than anyone else's. (Maybe I should look into a dysentery table.) Knowing the system more or less by heart, minus the damage tables, helps. Really, how hard is it to roll to hit, find the physical damage based on effective impact strength and armor, make a knockout roll and account for disabling injuries? I find it more fun to know exactly what went on in a fight.
That sounds like a great system but on the other hand its not very realistic though.
Methinks you'd have to actually try it out to determine if it's realistic or not. What parts strike you as unrealistic on first blush?
Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 22, 2022, 09:38:36 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 07:58:01 AM
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on March 22, 2022, 06:53:28 AM
Hit points are agreat way to track wounds, but when it gets to the point where you are wading through a hail of bullets, the ability to suspend disbelief becomes stretched to its limits.
Less genre-breaking though if you remember all those films/shows where protagonists go running through hails of automatic weapon fire with pings all around him and not taking a single hit.
That cost them plot armor/luck hit points, even if they didn't take a single physical hit.
And then you cast "Cure Light Wounds" or use a healing kit or rest a few days to recover your plot armor/luck...
To be fair, not every system with hit points has "cure light wounds" or long recovery times for said hit points.
Likewise, if they were just meat, why does it take longer for the 5th level fighter with 1hp remaining to recover to full than a 1st level fighter to do the same?
Further, it's not like there's a scientific measure of luck we can use to determine whether it's rate of return is too slow or too fast. It's entirely arbitrary.
Perhaps the goddess of luck only doles out portions once a day at sunrise. Perhaps they regain it all in hour's time (or at the end of each encounter). Maybe you only get one pool of luck for your entire life or it is a pool of karma that is refilled a bit with every good deed you do. There's no right answer for a "proper" rate of luck recovery... the rate just has to make sense for the setting/genre.
If a game is based around strategic resource management, then "luck" recovering slowly after its been used to save you makes sense. A game based around interesting combat encounters might instead have "luck" reset after each one to make setting up encounters easy (versus having to gauge them relative to variable amounts of daily resources that a group might have left).
D&D-isms surrounding hit points are largely a function of its intially piecemeal construction. It doesn't mean the entire concept is ridiculous, just that some implementations of it are clumsier and less considered than others.
What hit points as defense do well in this regard that a defense target number doesn't without something like a fatigue bar (which is just another pool of hit points) is reflect someone being worn down through exertion; having to keep dodging, weaving and blocking until you're finally too tired to block the hit that does you in.
The HERO system tried to do something like this with its END costs for most actions with the predictable increases in complexity/resolution time. Video games pull it off well since tracking everything is automated... but in the name of keeping a game moving, merging that "stamina points" pool into the hit points pool is a solid compromise in that regard (with the wounds/vitality being a slightly more complex compromise).
It doesn't help that hit point systems usually lack any mechanism for wound penalties as seen in other games. It's basically ablative armor.
I don't think HP are dumb as much as I think they're a relic of an era trying to mechanically describe things that are done better in other ways.
But people hold on to what they're comfortable with.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 22, 2022, 11:25:07 AM
It doesn't help that hit point systems usually lack any mechanism for wound penalties as seen in other games. It's basically ablative armor.
Eh, in my experience most wound penalties are just a fuzzier way of saying "at this point you can't do jack all" than just setting that point at 0 and having negative hit points for the margin between that point and death.
The other factor to consider too is, this is a game so the fun factor is a consideration and "you're not only near death, you're also even less effective at avoiding it" is rarely all that fun to many people. Conversely, surviving a game with just a few scraps of hit points remaining because of lucky dice (or skill when its in a video game) because you haven't been reduced to the effectiveness of a potato is something everyone remembers and talks about fondly.
Quote from: tenbones on March 22, 2022, 11:46:30 AM
I don't think HP are dumb as much as I think they're a relic of an era trying to mechanically describe things that are done better in other ways.
I wouldn't discount the "speed of resolution/ease of tracking" factor of them in terms of calling them a relic or that other things are strictly better. I've yet to see any resolution short of "X hits" rules (which is itself hit points with all weapons doing 1 damage) that matches hit points for speed of resolution (i.e. a compare function followed by a subtraction function... the only thing faster would be replacing the subtraction with addition) because most of those "better" ways involve more steps and many end up being de facto hit points anyway.
Savage Worlds, for example, has both wound points and bennies (that act as psuedo-hit points if used for soaking) so you're still tracking hit points, you're just adding steps to the damage calculation that may involve burning another resource pool to avoid losing points from your other resource pool. You're tracking smaller numbers (3-ish of each resource), but its still ablative reduction of points (wounds/bennies) until death and you can't even start the soak function until you've completed the damage roll - toughness function to know if you even need to use it).
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 12:36:13 PM
Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 22, 2022, 11:25:07 AM
It doesn't help that hit point systems usually lack any mechanism for wound penalties as seen in other games. It's basically ablative armor.
Eh, in my experience most wound penalties are just a fuzzier way of saying "at this point you can't do jack all" than just setting that point at 0 and having negative hit points for the margin between that point and death.
The other factor to consider too is, this is a game so the fun factor is a consideration and "you're not only near death, you're also even less effective at avoiding it" is rarely all that fun to many people. Conversely, surviving a game with just a few scraps of hit points remaining because of lucky dice (or skill when its in a video game) because you haven't been reduced to the effectiveness of a potato is something everyone remembers and talks about fondly.
Quote from: tenbones on March 22, 2022, 11:46:30 AM
I don't think HP are dumb as much as I think they're a relic of an era trying to mechanically describe things that are done better in other ways.
I wouldn't discount the "speed of resolution/ease of tracking" factor of them in terms of calling them a relic or that other things are strictly better. I've yet to see any resolution short of "X hits" rules (which is itself hit points with all weapons doing 1 damage) that matches hit points for speed of resolution (i.e. a compare function followed by a subtraction function... the only thing faster would be replacing the subtraction with addition) because most of those "better" ways involve more steps and many end up being de facto hit points anyway.
I actually agree with all of this. Wound penalties just create a Death Spiral, as Pundit pointed out in the video, which tends to speed up death the moment you get hit, and requires you to keep track of cumulative penalties that make you overall less effective, and do more to add to the complexity of the game more than they do to make it more fun or necessarily even realistic.
I would much rather have 0 HP be that "Oh shit!" break away point, where you're too grievously injured to keep fighting (along with steep penalties for everything) and better try to run away. Then treat actual deal as a "Death Save" you have to make the moment you reach 0 or less HP, plus every time you take more damage from that point. That way you're still creating most of the desired effect without adding the complexity and bookkeeping of shifting cumulative penalties, or the death spiral factor the moment you get hit. Being at "0 HP" is also a more clear and obvious indicator that the game expects you to run away by that point, than to make it cumulative penalties and letting you figure it out once you're dead or spiraling down that path while surrounded by enemies.
I've also come to accept that HP are faster and easier way to keep track of damage (specially small cumulative damage, which other systems tend to fail at) than other systems. And the shortcomings of HP can be sidestepped by introducing trigger events (such as Critical Hits, as Pundit suggests in the video, or taking Massive Damage from a single hit) that require you to make a Death Save, even if you have enough HP to soak it up. That way you can add the lethality element without having to track shifting Wound Status (that don't even account for small cumulative injuries very well) with cumulative penalties and stuff, or "X Hits" mechanics that are really just watered down HP masquerading as something else.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 12:36:13 PMSavage Worlds, for example, has both wound points and bennies (that act as psuedo-hit points if used for soaking) so you're still tracking hit points, you're just adding steps to the damage calculation that may involve burning another resource pool to avoid losing points from your other resource pool. You're tracking smaller numbers (3-ish of each resource), but its still ablative reduction of points (wounds/bennies) until death and you can't even start the soak function until you've completed the damage roll - toughness function to know if you even need to use it).
I haven't really played SW, but I'd much rather have some sort of "Luck/Effort*" mechanic that you can use to soak damage or boost you defenses to outright avoid getting hit as an option than blending it all into a single pool. Because those points can be used for other stuff as well, and their primarily function isn't to soak damage (that's just an option), so they're not really the same thing as tracking HP with extra steps.
*I prefer to think of this type of resource as "Effort", and perhaps use it to activate powers and such as well, if they exist in the game. That way you have one Health/HP pool, and one Effort/Power pool to do cool stuff or add extra juice to your rolls (not just soak damage).
Forgive me for not having read the entire thread. I did read the first post.
I have toyed with the thought of using a fatigue system, which is much the same as a hitpoint system, except that the character has a Wounds level equal to 3 plus Constitution modifier. Once the character is completely fatigued (has run out of fatigue points) is when things get truly dangerous. Any hit after that point inflicts 1 Wound (a perfect time to use the injury charts from Adventurer Conqueror King System). Once a character has reduced their Wounds to 0, then they begin dying. Fatigue can be recovered overnight in most cases, but wounds are permanent unless a healer is sought out immediately.
This system is based (in part) on fights from the cinematic universe. Fighters can keep going and going and going until they get tired or something gets through their defenses (a critical hit perhaps?) Other classes get tired more easily, not used to fighting. Under this system, the mystical curing of wounds is a restoration of valor and willpower, restoring fatigue points.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 22, 2022, 01:16:44 PM
I haven't really played SW, but I'd much rather have some sort of "Luck/Effort*" mechanic that you can use to soak damage or boost you defenses to outright avoid getting hit as an option than blending it all into a single pool. Because those points can be used for other stuff as well, and their primarily function isn't to soak damage (that's just an option), so they're not really the same thing as tracking HP with extra steps.
*I prefer to think of this type of resource as "Effort", and perhaps use it to activate powers and such as well, if they exist in the game. That way you have one Health/HP pool, and one Effort/Power pool to do cool stuff or add extra juice to your rolls (not just soak damage).
Well Chris"s personal system operates on a 3 resource dynamic that works like that, but SW bennies are actually also used for more than soaking. Including rerolling defenses, attacks, initiative, as well as fueling powers.
SW is deathspiraly, but actually harming characters is pretty hard. Getting wounded is more the disengagement point then a mandatory thing like taking hp damage.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 11:14:45 AM
Likewise, if they were just meat, why does it take longer for the 5th level fighter with 1hp remaining to recover to full than a 1st level fighter to do the same?
I wonder.
Suppose for the moment the rule were that you get to recover three-and-a-half percent of your max hit points per each full day of bed rest. Because if it's based on a percentage of max hit points, then it will take the same amount of time to heal from half to full hit points for anyone, no matter how many hit points they have. 1st level fighter, 5th level fighter, 15th level fighter, all the same.
Where do I get this strange percentage?
1E stipulates that any character can be restored to full hit points given 4 weeks of bed rest. No matter how many. That's 100% restored, divided by 28 days, gets you ~3.57% restored per day.
Well, the first problem we run into is we're going to have all these fractions of hit points we have to add up daily. Solution? Drop the fractions. Deal only in whole numbers.
If we do that, the next problem is that most characters (anyone < 28 max hp) are going to end up healing at a rate of 0. It doesn't make sense for characters to never heal naturally. Solution? Stipulate 1 hit point daily as a minimum for bed rest.
Next, we notice, gee, everyone with max hp between 1 and 55 are healing 1 hit point per day. Sans CON bonus, a fighter with average hit point rolls will have 55.5 hit points at 11th level. That's crazy high. So why not just say healing is 1 hit point per day, period. And if you do happen to be in crazy high hit point range, we'll just say you're at 100% in 28 days, per our initial and really only premise here.
Now I'm not saying that's how the rule came about. Just pointing out that if that were the thought process behind the rule, it could alter the perceptions. That the flaw you cite would not be attributable to the hit point system but rather the graininess of using such small, convenient, whole numbers. Which we do all the time in TTRPGs to keep the math simpler. In just about any other mechanic, criticizing anomalies emergent from graininess would likely be considered more pedantic rather than constructive.
I mean, what would the alternative look like?
If you allow captain 5th level with his curly locks and his 35 hit points to so much as heal 2 hit points per day to differentiate him from sergeant 1st level's 1 hit point per day, you're allowing him to restore 6.67% of his max hp daily without even the excuse of just rounding off to the nearest whole number. And sergeant 1st level will still go from 1 hit point to max faster than captain 5th level.
This sure feels like a graininess problem to me.
Another thing.
If all I knew about two different prize fighters is one's had 10 fights and the other had 50 fights, I'm guessing the guy who's had 50 fights can probably take a punch better than the guy with 10 fights, and the guy with 10 fights is probably going to recover from a fight quicker than a guy with 50.
So I'm not even sure if I'm convinced the flaw is actually a flaw.
Although I'm not entirely sold on my own counter-argument here because I don't necessarily want to bake age and potential old injuries into this cake.
I usually look at it more from a more neutral perspective. Let's say each guy gets dealt 5 damage from going 2 rounds with Mike Tyson before he bites their ears in the third round, ending the match. Why shouldn't each fighter need the same recovery time for going the same two rounds with the same fighter?
And if the less experienced fighter with his fewer hit points went 2 rounds with Tyson before getting KO'd, and the more experienced fighter, with his more hit points, managed to go 10 rounds before the KO, why shouldn't it take the second fighter longer to recover from taking 5 times as many rounds' worth of punches?
I don't know that recovery rates are exactly linear to trauma, either. Just wondering why we assume recovery rate should be proportional to a character's full health rather than proportional to the trauma suffered. It's almost fortunate that the graininess of hit points negates the difference between the views. That way we don't have to figure it out and don't have to choose.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 12:36:13 PM
Conversely, surviving a game with just a few scraps of hit points remaining because of lucky dice (or skill when its in a video game) because you haven't been reduced to the effectiveness of a potato is something everyone remembers and talks about fondly.
Those times are memorable because they had the highest element of risk. Victory or defeat was one move or roll away. Something that cannot happen while there is enough HP to provide a safety net. Moreover, skill and lucky RNG provide different sensations. In the former, I feel that I did that, while in the latter I feel I screwed up and got away with it.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 22, 2022, 01:16:44 PM
I would much rather have 0 HP be that "Oh shit!" break away point, where you're too grievously injured to keep fighting (along with steep penalties for everything) and better try to run away.
In my experience, players double down on winning the combat when a PC goes down instead of opting to retreat, so nerfing combat potential is much better at encouraging a tactical withdrawal.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 22, 2022, 01:16:44 PM
And the shortcomings of HP can be sidestepped by introducing trigger events (such as Critical Hits, as Pundit suggests in the video, or taking Massive Damage from a single hit) that require you to make a Death Save, even if you have enough HP to soak it up. That way you can add the lethality element without having to track shifting Wound Status (that don't even account for small cumulative injuries very well) with cumulative penalties and stuff, or "X Hits" mechanics that are really just watered down HP masquerading as something else.
Classically, massive damage and critical hits are both RNG events so neither is initiated by player choice. Gameplay consists of spamming attack that chip way at HP in the hopes of rolling a lucky knockout blow. Arguably, this is much more interesting when there is a limited resource that can boost critical hit probably or allow a keep better result reroll. Now there are decisions to be made, instead of favoring the statistically optimal coarse of action. This gets even better when the moral blows, whether criticals or massive damage, are a function of opposed combat skill rolls that can be augmented form a luck or skill pool, such as Mekton or Gumshoe. How much do I want to buff a roll with a limited resource to encourage or practically guarantee the desired outcome is a compelling decision, while what will give me the best chances of a critical is not. HP could even become the combat roll enhancing currency if combat is changed to opposed rolls with the discrepancy having additional effects like, bypassing DR, adding to damage, multiplying damage, rolling on special damage tables, or direct temporary ability score damage. How much risk are you willing to take, HP sacrificed, to put your opponent at risk of a KO? This HP sacrifice feature could also be effected by class feature or character levels to make some builds more or less threatening as desired.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 11:14:45 AM
Likewise, if they were just meat, why does it take longer for the 5th level fighter with 1hp remaining to recover to full than a 1st level fighter to do the same?
Good point, "healing magic" and natural healing should be a level-based calculation, not a flat figure.
Quote from: Kiero on March 23, 2022, 07:57:24 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 11:14:45 AM
Likewise, if they were just meat, why does it take longer for the 5th level fighter with 1hp remaining to recover to full than a 1st level fighter to do the same?
Good point, "healing magic" and natural healing should be a level-based calculation, not a flat figure.
This is one of the things 4th Edition tried to do and got lambasted for. :) Adventurer Conqueror King has a version of it in the Heroic Fantasy Handbook, and I imagine there are other variations out there in the wilds of the OSR and d20 spinoffs.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 11:14:45 AM
Likewise, if they were just meat, why does it take longer for the 5th level fighter with 1hp remaining to recover to full than a 1st level fighter to do the same?
Being "meat points" only doesn't mean they're necessarily representative of
absolute amounts of meat. Each HP could be a
percentage of total available meat. The more HP you have, the smaller the percentage increments of meat you lose per HP.
Looked at so, the 5th level fighter and the 1st Level fighter take the same time to heal, because they have same total meat.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on March 23, 2022, 08:00:59 AM
Quote from: Kiero on March 23, 2022, 07:57:24 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 11:14:45 AM
Likewise, if they were just meat, why does it take longer for the 5th level fighter with 1hp remaining to recover to full than a 1st level fighter to do the same?
Good point, "healing magic" and natural healing should be a level-based calculation, not a flat figure.
This is one of the things 4th Edition tried to do and got lambasted for. :) Adventurer Conqueror King has a version of it in the Heroic Fantasy Handbook, and I imagine there are other variations out there in the wilds of the OSR and d20 spinoffs.
Agree here with Kiero, regarding natural healing. Magic healing is already scaled ... by
cleric level.
What criticism was leveled at ACKS and 4e over this? I never heard it.
I only mean to say the "Devil in the Details" has arisen as mechanics have emerged to describe things that players seem to want.
How you want to define that, runs from Damage Tracks, Death Spiral mechanics, smaller-numbers to crunch, task-resolution streamlining, etc.
HP is where everything started. It's a relic in the sense that the purpose of them has shifted as our sensibilities have shifted. This is obscure to newer gamers that have come into the hobby even is later editions of D&D - when in the old school zero-HP means you're dead.
But there is exposure to other systems that handle the same things as HP/Armor/Damage differently but ultimately might scratch your personal itch better.
I don't think Savage Worlds is necessarily the *best* way to do it. Personally I like things a little grittier, but rarely run my games like this - I like CP2020's Damage track, heh. It's a short trip, boys. Don't knick yourself shaving, you're gonna need that box.
Quote from: Wisithir on March 22, 2022, 10:31:37 PM
In my experience, players double down on winning the combat when a PC goes down instead of opting to retreat, so nerfing combat potential is much better at encouraging a tactical withdrawal.
While I"m wary of death spiral mechanics, I'm tempted to use a house rule that PCs at 50% or less hit point become "Bloodied", and suffer a -1 to die rolls and AC. As a subtle reminder that hey, maybe consider retreat now instead of stubbornly plowing through a combat to the bitter end.
Quote from: tenbones on March 23, 2022, 11:02:46 AM
I only mean to say the "Devil in the Details" has arisen as mechanics have emerged to describe things that players seem to want.
How you want to define that, runs from Damage Tracks, Death Spiral mechanics, smaller-numbers to crunch, task-resolution streamlining, etc.
HP is where everything started. It's a relic in the sense that the purpose of them has shifted as our sensibilities have shifted. This is obscure to newer gamers that have come into the hobby even is later editions of D&D - when in the old school zero-HP means you're dead.
But there is exposure to other systems that handle the same things as HP/Armor/Damage differently but ultimately might scratch your personal itch better.
I don't think Savage Worlds is necessarily the *best* way to do it. Personally I like things a little grittier, but rarely run my games like this - I like CP2020's Damage track, heh. It's a short trip, boys. Don't knick yourself shaving, you're gonna need that box.
I find using gritty damage rules and lowering the bennies to one per player makes SW a whole lot grittier. It starts to depart from pulpy and enter more the Aliens level of grit.
Quote from: tenbones on March 23, 2022, 11:02:46 AM
I only mean to say the "Devil in the Details" has arisen as mechanics have emerged to describe things that players seem to want.
How you want to define that, runs from Damage Tracks, Death Spiral mechanics, smaller-numbers to crunch, task-resolution streamlining, etc.
HP is where everything started. It's a relic in the sense that the purpose of them has shifted as our sensibilities have shifted. This is obscure to newer gamers that have come into the hobby even is later editions of D&D - when in the old school zero-HP means you're dead.
But there is exposure to other systems that handle the same things as HP/Armor/Damage differently but ultimately might scratch your personal itch better.
I don't think Savage Worlds is necessarily the *best* way to do it. Personally I like things a little grittier, but rarely run my games like this - I like CP2020's Damage track, heh. It's a short trip, boys. Don't knick yourself shaving, you're gonna need that box.
There's also tension within the group, on the question of just how afraid the players should be of combat. I generally want the characters to be in more danger than the players do. Moreover, most of my players are the types to imagine more danger than is really there. So our compromises in various systems tend to involve a lot of perception-altering tricks by me that work for us. Hit points are a lot more acceptable to a player that is not the type to dig too much into the underlying math. (Extreme case, run a hit point based game where the GM tracks all the hit point, automatically ratchets up the tension even for the mechanic savvy, at least until they've got enough experience with their characters to reverse-engineer the numbers they know are there.)
In my own system, I've got two hit point tracks, of Life and Grit, with "grit" taking the usual role of hit points. Life is a low number, such that even a very tough, experienced character would have less than 20, and most starting characters are sitting around 5. A stat's person will calculate the odds and see that until you run out of Grit, the threat to Life is relatively mild. My players see that a critical hit is damaging "life" and they start to worry about it--and then have their characters act appropriately--which is the end goal.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 23, 2022, 01:10:50 PM(Extreme case, run a hit point based game where the GM tracks all the hit point, automatically ratchets up the tension even for the mechanic savvy, at least until they've got enough experience with their characters to reverse-engineer the numbers they know are there.)
Have you ever actually tried this? If so, how well did it work? I've always wanted to give this a shot but never found the right opportunity.
Quote from: Mishihari on March 23, 2022, 01:36:12 PM
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 23, 2022, 01:10:50 PM(Extreme case, run a hit point based game where the GM tracks all the hit point, automatically ratchets up the tension even for the mechanic savvy, at least until they've got enough experience with their characters to reverse-engineer the numbers they know are there.)
Have you ever actually tried this? If so, how well did it work? I've always wanted to give this a shot but never found the right opportunity.
Yes. Did it a few times using AD&D 1E, at lower levels of play. Players built the characters and knew their characteristics, but I rolled and tracked their hit points. We did it explicitly to see how it would play. What really made it scary for them was that I didn't announce damage in numbers, only in general terms.
It works well in some way, not in others. It turns the volume up to 11 on a dungeon crawl game, even for a group that had already learned the hard way to avoid unnecessary fights. However, it's also kind of a diminishing returns kind of deal. Players that like and understand that style will already seek to avoid fights or at least arrange the situation to help them whenever they can. Not knowing their exact hit points doesn't change that. I think the best aspect was actually in the descriptions, since I didn't need to tell them a number on how much damage they took. Since I cared more for the results than the feel, it wasn't buying us much.
Then I started running games for 7+ players (sometimes up around 15) and that part went out the window fast. 4 or 5 players is about the limit for me in that style. Sometimes I run for 4 to 5 players now, but it's a very different group. I think running that style with them, when the hook for the adventure presented itself, they'd decide to stay home. :)
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 19, 2022, 06:14:08 AM
Indeed. Since the points in my system are predominantly stamina+morale, the primary means of recovery are the Rally (which is proportional to the subject and which "healing" abilities trigger more efficiently than PCs doing it themselves) and the potion version is "potion of vitality."
Another important point though is one of the big problems with hit points being equated with meat is the level scaling of defenses that WotC D&D fell into. When AC is mostly static, then it's easier to present increased hit points as improved skill and stamina. You have more points you can go longer in a fight without suffering a serious injury, but can still be overwhelmed by sufficient numbers because your AC is not so high that you can't be hit.
But with scaling AC it was harder to do that because the rising AC's explanation was said be improved parrying/dodging skill (whereas those were a part of hit points in pre-WotC D&D). It also quickly rendered the prospect of losing to even hordes of mooks a virtual impossibility... feeding the superhero/MMO aspects where an orc army that could raze the continent "cons grey" to the PCs and so can't actually be credibly be claimed as a threat.
...
The big disconnect lots of people get from D&D is due to the fact that almost every other game has limited/Fixed HP and explicitly treats them as meat points.
They then have a 'Hero Point' mechanic of some kind to emulate the stamina/morale/luck side of the character. With attack/defense going up in a much shallower skill curve than 3-4e WotC D&D 1-20 level progression.
D&D has generally always treated its HP progression as Meat+Hero points all rolled into one. Which some people have always had issues wrapping their head around.
IMHO this has gotten rather incongruous and muddled with 5e.
They now have 'bounded accuracy' which limits AC and attack bonuses. And they have inspiration and HD expenditure taking on the role of 'hero points'...
But they
still have the 1-20 HP bloat on top of it all!
WTF - make up your minds bros for what mechanic does what.
While I see some good ideas in the 5e rules, reading them has convinced me that the 'professional' game designers at WotC possess no special skill...
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 19, 2022, 06:14:08 AM
...
WotC broke a lot of things when they made 3e because, to paraphrase Chesterton, they didn't actually understand why the wall was built. Hit Points was just one of them.
Yes. It is clear from things that they have written and said since that Tweet et al. made 3e into the type of D&D that they liked to run.
It wasn't streamlined from a top down attempt at understanding how the rules interacted with each other.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 19, 2022, 09:39:35 AM
What's broken about HP isn't how people conceptualize them (Meat Points vs Luck/Stamina, etc.) but the fact that regardless how you choose to explain what they are they don't properly illustrate lethality or the threat level of getting stabbed with a knife and other low damage attacks ...
I would say that most people don't want a 'real life' emulation of lethality in their RPG's.
They want an 'Action Movie' emulation of lethality.
For which hit points work reasonably well. Especially if your game does not have HP bloat.
Quote from: Zalman on March 23, 2022, 10:56:29 AM
Agree here with Kiero, regarding natural healing. Magic healing is already scaled ... by cleric level.
That doesn't cut it. Cleric level is already factored into the power of the healing spell used. They should be healing a proportion of the target's hit points, not fixed amounts based on the spell.
Quote from: Kiero on March 23, 2022, 05:04:58 PM
That doesn't cut it. Cleric level is already factored into the power of the healing spell used. They should be healing a proportion of the target's hit points, not fixed amounts based on the spell.
Why?
Two fighters, one with 25 hit points, one with 50 hit points, swan dive off a cliff just because, taking 20 damage each. A cleric goes to heal them. Why should we expect the first fighter to take more magic than the second one to heal the exact same bump?
We're not even talking about natural healing at this point, where the fact that one character might actually be a faster healer than the other could come into play.
If you're thinking of the same healing spells I'm thinking of, these spells do not simply add hit points. Like if I get hit for 5 damage and you heal me for 8, I don't get to walk away with 3 hit points above my max. They're limited according to the actual wounds taken. Even the name of the spells, Cure X Wounds makes it clear that the wounds themselves are the subject of the spell.
Contrast this with "Heal" (sans "wounds" in the name) which will indeed restore more hit points to the second fighter if both are knocked down to half hit points.
Contrast this with the Heal spell, where the name implies healing the person, not curing the wounds, and lo and behold that healing is proportional to the subject's hit points--that portion happening to be 100%.
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 23, 2022, 08:37:16 PM
Quote from: Kiero on March 23, 2022, 05:04:58 PM
That doesn't cut it. Cleric level is already factored into the power of the healing spell used. They should be healing a proportion of the target's hit points, not fixed amounts based on the spell.
Why?
Two fighters, one with 25 hit points, one with 50 hit points, swan dive off a cliff just because, taking 20 damage each. A cleric goes to heal them. Why should we expect the first fighter to take more magic than the second one to heal the exact same bump?
You're saying that both fighters have the "exact same bump" - implying that both fighters took the same physical damage. That's assuming "hit points is meat". If a fighter has more hit points, then he is just strictly tougher and can keep fighting despite taking the same wounds that would kill a lesser man.
But this is hard to rationalize given D&D hit point escalation with level. The usual explanation is that a higher level fighter isn't taking dozens of the exact same wounds that would kill a commoner. Instead, it's explained that the higher hit point total is from skill and technique in reducing damage. So after a fall, they land better - and after a sword blow, they roll with the blow so it glances off.
By this view, after each taking a 20 damage blow, the 25hp fighter is more physically wounded - while the 50hp fighter landed more nimbly and has less physical wounds on him.
If you assume that all blows of the same damage cause the same physical wounds -- then higher-level fighters are blatantly supernatural because they can keep fighting on despite taking dozens of wounds that would kill an average person.
1) Hit Points don't make any sense under scrutiny.
2) Hit Points are an awesome game mechanic.
These two sentences are not in conflict.
Quote from: Kiero on March 23, 2022, 05:04:58 PM
Quote from: Zalman on March 23, 2022, 10:56:29 AM
Agree here with Kiero, regarding natural healing. Magic healing is already scaled ... by cleric level.
That doesn't cut it. Cleric level is already factored into the power of the healing spell used. They should be healing a proportion of the target's hit points, not fixed amounts based on the spell.
Meh, it amounts to the same thing in play. My gut tells me that the percentage of spell resources that the party cleric needs to expend to heal the party fighter x% will be roughly scaled to the party level. (Watch someone crunch the math now!).
Something I'd like to play around with if I did a Fantasy Heartbreaker of D&D is -
1) everyone starts with Max HP at 1st level.
2) Everyone gets 2HP/level + Con bonus.
But then I'd have to change Healing Magic, and AC, and other things... then I'd be firmly in redoing everything.
I want, ideally, combat to FEEL and BE dangerous, but I want combat-oriented characters to ostensibly be GOOD at it. To me the axis where players FEEL this is Damage Avoidance, and Damage Ablation.
This is why I like games that takes a PC's ability to actually *fight* into account. As a former EMT, I know fully well how fragile people actually are when it comes to physical violence. I'm not *aiming* for that as much as I'm winking at it. I want my PC's to have semi-realistic (but clearly superior) abilities to reflect that in play.
That said - I also want to nod at the trope of the heavily armored/tough sumbitch that plows into combat, and is taking hits, but just won't drop. The problem with HP being tied directly to level, is not granular enough, and it opens up other suggestions that I do not agree with.
So for me I want this tied to skill and gear. The *core* "health" of a PC should be narrow. Braining people with an iron frying pan, can *easily* kill anyone. But against a skilled combatant, it should be difficult to land a blow. Against a combatant with a helm - it might be very difficult to actually harm them.
HP alone is too abstract for me, without a good GM steadily narrating the ebb and flow. Too much has D&D wallowed in this whole point-deduction with easy hits, and that somehow sufficing for the drama of combat. OBVIOUSLY not every GM is like this - but we all know goddamn well that's how it's played. Otherwise all the stupid shit like Damage Per Round wouldn't exist from all the young'uns in how they rate "builds".
I'd take 10+ a PC's To Hit bonus as an AC stand in, and Armor absorbing damage as a starting point. Lower the HP accrual rate, and really nuke Healing magic, as my starting point, with LOTS of tweaks added in for fine-tuning.
Quote from: jhkim on March 24, 2022, 01:41:47 AM
You're saying that both fighters have the "exact same bump" - implying that both fighters took the same physical damage. That's assuming "hit points is meat". If a fighter has more hit points, then he is just strictly tougher and can keep fighting despite taking the same wounds that would kill a lesser man.
It doesn't assume hit points are meat. Even if the damage is 0% meat, 100% ether, that just means it's the same 20 points of ether damage.
The bump in both cases was non-fatal and not incapacitating. Same fall, same height, same result.
If there had been a third fighter, one with only 10 hit points, that one would be dead. In that case, there would be a clear difference in the severity of the bump that fighter took. And in that case, it actually would require more powerful magic to restore the character.
QuoteBut this is hard to rationalize given D&D hit point escalation with level. The usual explanation is that a higher level fighter isn't taking dozens of the exact same wounds that would kill a commoner. Instead, it's explained that the higher hit point total is from skill and technique in reducing damage. So after a fall, they land better - and after a sword blow, they roll with the blow so it glances off.
By this view, after each taking a 20 damage blow, the 25hp fighter is more physically wounded - while the 50hp fighter landed more nimbly and has less physical wounds on him.
This is laid out in a few places, but the 1E DMG has an in-depth discussion of this. Hits are actually hits. Bumps are actually bumps. It's just they're superficial until the last few hit points are exhausted. For some reason, a lot of people leave that part out. The meat is not evenly distributed throughout the whole total. It's concentrated at the bottom.
In other words, it's NOT the case that these two fighters have the same 3 physical hit points of a commoner, and that each hit against the first guy is 12% meat while each hit against the second guy is 6% meat, and therefore we can conclude the first guy is losing more meat than the second guy for taking the same amount of damage. This an inference not in evidence. And this particular inference seems to me to be contrary to the original explanation hit points for high level characters.
QuoteIf you assume that all blows of the same damage cause the same physical wounds -- then higher-level fighters are blatantly supernatural because they can keep fighting on despite taking dozens of wounds that would kill an average person.
I'm not making that assumption.
The system (explanation of hit points included) simply isn't telling me there's anything different about the 20 points of damage Fighter 1 took vs the 20 points of damage Fighter 2 took. The system does tell me there is something very different about the 20 damage Fighter 3 took. So it's certainly not the case that the physical damage for fighter 3 is the same as fighter 1 or 2.
If I heat water that is at 75C or 50C by 20C, I can later cool it down by 20C and end up right back where I started. If I try doing the same with water that starts at 90C, it will start to boil off when I heat it by 20C. If I later cool it down, I will have lost water. Just because starting at 90C is different from starting at 75C doesn't mean starting at 50C then must differ from starting at 75C.
Quote from: tenbones on March 24, 2022, 12:54:43 PM
Something I'd like to play around with if I did a Fantasy Heartbreaker of D&D is -
1) everyone starts with Max HP at 1st level.
2) Everyone gets 2HP/level + Con bonus.
But then I'd have to change Healing Magic, and AC, and other things... then I'd be firmly in redoing everything.
I want, ideally, combat to FEEL and BE dangerous, but I want combat-oriented characters to ostensibly be GOOD at it. To me the axis where players FEEL this is Damage Avoidance, and Damage Ablation.
This is why I like games that takes a PC's ability to actually *fight* into account. As a former EMT, I know fully well how fragile people actually are when it comes to physical violence. I'm not *aiming* for that as much as I'm winking at it. I want my PC's to have semi-realistic (but clearly superior) abilities to reflect that in play.
That said - I also want to nod at the trope of the heavily armored/tough sumbitch that plows into combat, and is taking hits, but just won't drop. The problem with HP being tied directly to level, is not granular enough, and it opens up other suggestions that I do not agree with.
So for me I want this tied to skill and gear. The *core* "health" of a PC should be narrow. Braining people with an iron frying pan, can *easily* kill anyone. But against a skilled combatant, it should be difficult to land a blow. Against a combatant with a helm - it might be very difficult to actually harm them.
HP alone is too abstract for me, without a good GM steadily narrating the ebb and flow. Too much has D&D wallowed in this whole point-deduction with easy hits, and that somehow sufficing for the drama of combat. OBVIOUSLY not every GM is like this - but we all know goddamn well that's how it's played. Otherwise all the stupid shit like Damage Per Round wouldn't exist from all the young'uns in how they rate "builds".
I'd take 10+ a PC's To Hit bonus as an AC stand in, and Armor absorbing damage as a starting point. Lower the HP accrual rate, and really nuke Healing magic, as my starting point, with LOTS of tweaks added in for fine-tuning.
What you are looking for, as to how it plays out according to this, is GURPS.
Quote from: Kiero on March 23, 2022, 05:04:58 PM
That doesn't cut it. Cleric level is already factored into the power of the healing spell used. They should be healing a proportion of the target's hit points, not fixed amounts based on the spell.
Quote from: jhkim on March 24, 2022, 01:41:47 AM
...
But this is hard to rationalize given D&D hit point escalation with level. The usual explanation is that a higher level fighter isn't taking dozens of the exact same wounds that would kill a commoner. Instead, it's explained that the higher hit point total is from skill and technique in reducing damage. So after a fall, they land better - and after a sword blow, they roll with the blow so it glances off.
...
It is these kind of incongruities why I am not a fan of HP bloat.
A lot of problems are solved when you go to a fixed HP model. The OSR in general seems slow to do this, but that is to be expected.
Quote from: oggsmash on March 24, 2022, 01:52:50 PM
What you are looking for, as to how it plays out according to this, is GURPS.
Sure. GURPS, Savage Worlds, FFG Star Wars, Talislanta, Fantasy Craft (you'll note a theme here from me LOL) etc. etc. they all do this in varying degrees.
This is why I say as far as D&D goes - mine would be a Fantasy Heartbreaker. The concept of HP isn't dumb per se, it's a matter of taste. I want a little more nuance, a little more complexity without jumping the shark.
Quote from: Jaeger on March 24, 2022, 02:32:49 PM
It is these kind of incongruities why I am not a fan of HP bloat.
A lot of problems are solved when you go to a fixed HP model. The OSR in general seems slow to do this, but that is to be expected.
Yep, and 80% of the problems go away when you just address HP bloat even short of a true fixed HP model, which is good enough for me. Of the remaining 20% of the issues, I'd rather solve them by other means than slicing that last bit of bloat out of the equation. For example, have a modest increase in the typical damage from weapons. Likewise, keep attribute modifiers under control.
Con modifiers play havoc with HPs, once you get out of the -3 to +3 range of the early editions. And truth be told, I'm not entirely happy with the effects even with the modifiers that low, except in a 3d6 down the line kind of stat generation. It's all trade offs to keep the numbers within ranges acceptable to the design intent. Minimize Con effects on hit points (or just drop Con entirely), start with about double the typical early D&D number, change the typical weapon damage to 2d6 instead of 1d6--now you can scale up to about name level hit dice with not much of a bloat problem. Though as Tenbones said, now you've got to rewrite the whole system from the ground up. At some point, accepting
that is the key, as well as recognizing that the rewrite may only be marginally D&D.
Quote from: tenbones on March 24, 2022, 02:55:24 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on March 24, 2022, 01:52:50 PM
What you are looking for, as to how it plays out according to this, is GURPS.
Sure. GURPS, Savage Worlds, FFG Star Wars, Talislanta, Fantasy Craft (you'll note a theme here from me LOL) etc. etc. they all do this in varying degrees.
This is why I say as far as D&D goes - mine would be a Fantasy Heartbreaker. The concept of HP isn't dumb per se, it's a matter of taste. I want a little more nuance, a little more complexity without jumping the shark.
I meant the nuance explicitly with HP use. It has been a long time since I paged through Fantasy Craft (might hunt down a copy yet), but from memory I thought they had a massive damage threshold death check copied from Mongoose and used armor to absorb damage didnt they? I thought I remembered seeing several things I like a lot about Conan, the higher level making you harder to hit (based on either a parry or dodge defense), the massive damage threshold, and the armor as damage reduction. Does it have those things or has my memory started to Fuse things together?
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 24, 2022, 01:08:23 PM
Quote from: jhkim on March 24, 2022, 01:41:47 AM
If you assume that all blows of the same damage cause the same physical wounds -- then higher-level fighters are blatantly supernatural because they can keep fighting on despite taking dozens of wounds that would kill an average person.
I'm not making that assumption.
The system (explanation of hit points included) simply isn't telling me there's anything different about the 20 points of damage Fighter 1 took vs the 20 points of damage Fighter 2 took. The system does tell me there is something very different about the 20 damage Fighter 3 took. So it's certainly not the case that the physical damage for fighter 3 is the same as fighter 1 or 2.
OK, I'm trying to understand the view here. There's three fighters: Fighter 1 (50hp), Fighter 2 (25hp), Fighter 3 (10hp). They all take a single 20 damage hit. By 1E rules, Fighter 1 and Fighter 2 have identical wounds, and take the same time (or magic) to heal - but Fighter 3 is dead.
Now supposed they both take a 5 damage hit. Assuming 1E rules, Fighter 2 is now unconscious and has taken a much more serious wound. Fighter 1 has taken a lesser wound. They are not equally damaged.
I think I understand this as an explanation. However, under this approach, it is impossible for Fighter 2 to ever get to the state of being equally wounded as Fighter 1 is now in. He is always either less wounded, or much more wounded. This goes in general for all lower-level characters. They always have only minor wounds or grievous wounds with nothing in between.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 19, 2022, 04:13:24 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 18, 2022, 10:50:53 PM
My only complaint about hit points is that, because of all the misinterpretations of them coupled with all sorts of video games that depicted hit point loss as taking an axe to the guy complete with massive sprays of blood... that the term has become almost synonymous with "meat points" and every attempt I've ever made to tailor mechanics based on their stamina, skill, luck and morale aspects has resulted in so much pushback (i.e. how can someone restore hit points by inspiring someone to dig deep and keep fighting? a rousing speech can't reattach someone's hand... never mind there were no rules for dismemberment in combat in the system).
Basically, the only time I've been able to get people to embrace the hit point concept in a form that is closer to how they were originally intended was to call them something else.
It doesn't help that D&D in the rules wordings, reinforces the idea of hit points as meat points.
Heal, Potion of healing, Cure Light Wounds...
Quote from: Kiero on March 23, 2022, 05:04:58 PM
Quote from: Zalman on March 23, 2022, 10:56:29 AM
Agree here with Kiero, regarding natural healing. Magic healing is already scaled ... by cleric level.
That doesn't cut it. Cleric level is already factored into the power of the healing spell used. They should be healing a proportion of the target's hit points, not fixed amounts based on the spell.
That was one of the things that I liked about 4e. (Overall not a fan - but there were good pieces. Just that, IMO, the whole was less than the sum of its parts.) All HP/healing was based upon 1/4 of your total HP rather than a numerical amount.
Overall - I think that HP has its flaws, but it's a good default mechanic to use. Other games going for different vibes can use other mechanics to better fit said vibe. Whether a Vitality/Life system (the 2nd most common?) or something else which better meshes with the rest of the mechanics.
It's like how round-robin initiative isn't perfect, but it works pretty well, and you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else.
And in both cases make sure to build the whole system with them in mind from the ground up. (That's a big pet peeve of mine. You can't slap a new major pillar mechanic into an existing system and expect it to work at all. They need to be meshed with every other mechanic in the game.)
In my homebrew system, I'm using Vitality/Life points and a phase/side-based initiative system. Not because the way D&D does it is WRONG - just didn't fit the vibe I wanted (A swashbuckling space western). But they were among the first pillars I designed, so all of the characters/classes/abilities/weapons were all designed with them both in mind from the ground up.
Quote from: Kiero on March 23, 2022, 07:57:24 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2022, 11:14:45 AM
Likewise, if they were just meat, why does it take longer for the 5th level fighter with 1hp remaining to recover to full than a 1st level fighter to do the same?
Good point, "healing magic" and natural healing should be a level-based calculation, not a flat figure.
Well, in Lion & Dragon heal a number of hp equal to Level+/-CON for every night of rest.
I've toyed with the idea that a charater's meat points are their constitution, you may note that some effects from 1st and especially starting in 2nd ed affect Con instead of hit points. Like dehydration or exhaustion.
If a conversion is necessary, divide HP by Con to get what ratio of actual meat damage has been done. That ratio represents how "lucky" or "heroic" or whatever excuse is happening.
But it's another level of complexity, and you can usually eyeball a catastrophic amount of damage by requiring a simple death save instead. Or using Con damage to represent drowning or dehydration or whatever.
And I agree that hit point bloat is a problem. It magnifies the issue that having a lot of hit points makes a character seem superhumanly resilient compared to an average person.
Quote from: Spinachcat on March 24, 2022, 04:52:06 AM
1) Hit Points don't make any sense under scrutiny.
2) Hit Points are an awesome game mechanic.
These two sentences are not in conflict.
That's a big part of the gist of the video. People assume because hit points don't really make sense that they're "bad game design". They are not. They do make sense, for the player, as a simple mechanic to analyze risk. That's what hp measures for real: the relative degree of risk you're under. Not health. Not dodging. Not bobbing and weaving. Not toughness. RISK.
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 24, 2022, 07:05:26 PM
Quote from: Spinachcat on March 24, 2022, 04:52:06 AM
1) Hit Points don't make any sense under scrutiny.
2) Hit Points are an awesome game mechanic.
These two sentences are not in conflict.
That's a big part of the gist of the video. People assume because hit points don't really make sense that they're "bad game design". They are not. They do make sense, for the player, as a simple mechanic to analyze risk. That's what hp measures for real: the relative degree of risk you're under. Not health. Not dodging. Not bobbing and weaving. Not toughness. RISK.
Hit points also incentivize a play style, which is great mechanic for creating a particular type of RGP (realistic, heroic, super heroic).
Quote from: jhkim on March 24, 2022, 04:14:32 PM
OK, I'm trying to understand the view here. There's three fighters: Fighter 1 (50hp), Fighter 2 (25hp), Fighter 3 (10hp). They all take a single 20 damage hit. By 1E rules, Fighter 1 and Fighter 2 have identical wounds, and take the same time (or magic) to heal - but Fighter 3 is dead.
Now supposed they both take a 5 damage hit. Assuming 1E rules, Fighter 2 is now unconscious and has taken a much more serious wound. Fighter 1 has taken a lesser wound. They are not equally damaged.
I think I understand this as an explanation. However, under this approach, it is impossible for Fighter 2 to ever get to the state of being equally wounded as Fighter 1 is now in. He is always either less wounded, or much more wounded. This goes in general for all lower-level characters. They always have only minor wounds or grievous wounds with nothing in between.
The discussion in the 1E DMG does also have the number of physical hit points vary with CON, level, class, and a degree of randomness. With that much of a hit point disparity, Fighter 1 is certainly also physically tougher than Fighter 2. It would make sense that Fighter 1 could sustain a wound level in excess of what Fighter 2 could ever touch, and still keep going.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 24, 2022, 02:59:19 PM
Yep, and 80% of the problems go away when you just address HP bloat even short of a true fixed HP model, which is good enough for me. Of the remaining 20% of the issues, I'd rather solve them by other means than slicing that last bit of bloat out of the equation. For example, have a modest increase in the typical damage from weapons. Likewise, keep attribute modifiers under control.
Con modifiers play havoc with HPs, once you get out of the -3 to +3 range of the early editions. And truth be told, I'm not entirely happy with the effects even with the modifiers that low, except in a 3d6 down the line kind of stat generation. It's all trade offs to keep the numbers within ranges acceptable to the design intent. ...
Agreed, something like the E6 mod for 3.X did a lot to contain the madness of 1-20 progressive leveling.
I'm a bit surprised the concept didn't filter out more. Quite a few OSR games limit levels as a way to limit power creep - but then they stop leveling at their set limit, with no further advancement of any kind.
The OSR has yet to break from the "HP must go up with level" D&Dism...
Now that I actually think about it; I'm a bit surprised no OSR games in the E6 spirit have been made.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on March 24, 2022, 04:25:25 PM
...
It's like how round-robin initiative isn't perfect, but it works pretty well, and you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else.
...
Round robin Initiative is the #1 culprit that slows down combat at the table. It's horrible.
Now if we're talking about side based initiative; Yes: you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else. ;)
Quote from: Jaeger on March 24, 2022, 11:28:43 PM
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on March 24, 2022, 04:25:25 PM
...
It's like how round-robin initiative isn't perfect, but it works pretty well, and you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else.
...
Round robin Initiative is the #1 culprit that slows down combat at the table. It's horrible.
Now if we're talking about side based initiative; Yes: you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else. ;)
I hesitated to make that point, but since you did I'll back it up. :)
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 25, 2022, 07:33:31 AM
Quote from: Jaeger on March 24, 2022, 11:28:43 PM
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on March 24, 2022, 04:25:25 PM
...
It's like how round-robin initiative isn't perfect, but it works pretty well, and you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else.
...
Round robin Initiative is the #1 culprit that slows down combat at the table. It's horrible.
Now if we're talking about side based initiative; Yes: you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else. ;)
I hesitated to make that point, but since you did I'll back it up. :)
The time combat takes up is a cumulative problem. The time it takes to resolve an action, time for the player to take all actions, time to go around the table, and the number of rounds it takes to complete. HP bloat, not HP itself, and the lack of enemies breaking and fleeing while above 0 HP is what contributes to the number of rounds it take to pulp the hostiles. As a consequence, the opening rounds are uninteresting because the because the engagement cannot be decisively concluded at that time. I prefer something more flexible where an action takes as long as it takes and action economy per turn or round is avoided, but that cannot be grafted onto a system built around action said action economy.
Speaking strictly of HP, a risk gauge is a useful tool, but having it filled up too much becomes too safe to fail, and thus boring.
Quote from: oggsmash on March 24, 2022, 04:09:25 PM
I meant the nuance explicitly with HP use. It has been a long time since I paged through Fantasy Craft (might hunt down a copy yet), but from memory I thought they had a massive damage threshold death check copied from Mongoose and used armor to absorb damage didnt they? I thought I remembered seeing several things I like a lot about Conan, the higher level making you harder to hit (based on either a parry or dodge defense), the massive damage threshold, and the armor as damage reduction. Does it have those things or has my memory started to Fuse things together?
In Fantasy Craft - HP (Vitality) was literally a big fat pad. Wounds (Con score) were your actual health. So the effect of HP here is narratively your ability to deflect/absorb punishment. But the system had methods to bypass this altogether and go straight to Wounds. Which made the whole notion of combat dangerous even for high-level PC's.
Criticals went to Wounds not Vitality. Sneak Attack too. This did not break with the penchant that "fighter types" had high Con scores, now it was more important than ever. So the mechanics really underpinned the narrative of what these scores meant.
I believe Star Wars d20 had something similar.
Fantasy Craft also had Defense Score (likewise based on your Class - so melee types had progressively better scores vs. non-combat types). I'm a huge fan of Fantasy Craft, I wish that was 4e would have become... but alas.
I'm not a HP hater - I just want more mechanical meaning to it in how it's expressed. Just a little more is all.
Quote from: tenbones on March 25, 2022, 11:29:19 AM
Quote from: oggsmash on March 24, 2022, 04:09:25 PM
I meant the nuance explicitly with HP use. It has been a long time since I paged through Fantasy Craft (might hunt down a copy yet), but from memory I thought they had a massive damage threshold death check copied from Mongoose and used armor to absorb damage didnt they? I thought I remembered seeing several things I like a lot about Conan, the higher level making you harder to hit (based on either a parry or dodge defense), the massive damage threshold, and the armor as damage reduction. Does it have those things or has my memory started to Fuse things together?
In Fantasy Craft - HP (Vitality) was literally a big fat pad. Wounds (Con score) were your actual health. So the effect of HP here is narratively your ability to deflect/absorb punishment. But the system had methods to bypass this altogether and go straight to Wounds. Which made the whole notion of combat dangerous even for high-level PC's.
Criticals went to Wounds not Vitality. Sneak Attack too. This did not break with the penchant that "fighter types" had high Con scores, now it was more important than ever. So the mechanics really underpinned the narrative of what these scores meant.
I believe Star Wars d20 had something similar.
Fantasy Craft also had Defense Score (likewise based on your Class - so melee types had progressively better scores vs. non-combat types). I'm a huge fan of Fantasy Craft, I wish that was 4e would have become... but alas.
I'm not a HP hater - I just want more mechanical meaning to it in how it's expressed. Just a little more is all.
That was it, I am going to end up buying that book after all. I guess I do not know why I have not, last I counted the shelf was at just under 200, so one more book shouldnt break the camel's back. I just remembered it being a take on using a d20 and armor I really liked.
Quote from: Wisithir on March 25, 2022, 08:15:25 AM
The time combat takes up is a cumulative problem. The time it takes to resolve an action, time for the player to take all actions, time to go around the table, and the number of rounds it takes to complete. HP bloat, not HP itself, and the lack of enemies breaking and fleeing while above 0 HP is what contributes to the number of rounds it take to pulp the hostiles. As a consequence, the opening rounds are uninteresting because the because the engagement cannot be decisively concluded at that time. I prefer something more flexible where an action takes as long as it takes and action economy per turn or round is avoided, but that cannot be grafted onto a system built around action said action economy.
Speaking strictly of HP, a risk gauge is a useful tool, but having it filled up too much becomes too safe to fail, and thus boring.
The lack of consideration of morale (even when the systems often have rules for it present) is another issue. Sapient enemies with a self-preservation instinct shouldn't be fighting to the death regardless. Yet that's how many combats play out.
The fundamental problem I've found with wound/vitality systems where the pools use identical quantities (i.e. 10 damage will reduce either vitality or wounds by 10 depending on if the hit is a critical hit or not) is that, at least as d20 Star Wars and it's derivatives did things, is that they let the disparity between the two get too big.
The result tends to be then that the amount of damage needed to pound through the vitality portions in a reasonable time without crits rapidly becomes larger than the wound pool meaning it rapidly becomes a game of Russian Roulette waiting for the inevitable crit to wipe you out.
Alternately the damage doesn't scale properly and you're left to whittle through a pile of vitality as you hope for a crit to end the battle in a more merciful period of time.
Much better I've found are where the wounds are indirectly connected... like you have 3 wounds and each time you take a crit or are hit with no vitality remaining you lose 1 (or perhaps 1 per confirmation roll if you wanted instant deaths possible). That way the vitality damage can scale enough to not turn that part into a slog while not causing easy instant ganks every time a crit happens.
Quote from: RPGPundit on March 24, 2022, 07:05:26 PMPeople assume because hit points don't really make sense that they're "bad game design". They are not. They do make sense, for the player, as a simple mechanic to analyze risk. That's what hp measures for real: the relative degree of risk you're under.
Exactly. The way I always phrased it was, "Hit points are basically a mechanic to let you know how close you are at any given point in time to losing the fight."
Another key use for hit points is that they avoid the psychological frustration effect of the Whiff Factor -- or, to use Chris24601's simile above which I actually like better, the "Russian Roulette" effect. Game mechanics can easily be set up to create infrequent hits with large effects which resolve in about the same actual game time as frequent hits with small effects, but the thing about the frequent small-impact hits is that they represent
progress -- they make the player feel like his PC is
tangibly contributing to winning the fight. It's the same reason so many video games display health bars for both players and antagonists -- it's hard to stay engaged with a game if you can't see the tangible effects of your actions, even if they're minor and slow to accumulate.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 25, 2022, 02:38:18 PM
The fundamental problem I've found with wound/vitality systems where the pools use identical quantities (i.e. 10 damage will reduce either vitality or wounds by 10 depending on if the hit is a critical hit or not) is that, at least as d20 Star Wars and it's derivatives did things, is that they let the disparity between the two get too big.
The result tends to be then that the amount of damage needed to pound through the vitality portions in a reasonable time without crits rapidly becomes larger than the wound pool meaning it rapidly becomes a game of Russian Roulette waiting for the inevitable crit to wipe you out.
Alternately the damage doesn't scale properly and you're left to whittle through a pile of vitality as you hope for a crit to end the battle in a more merciful period of time.
Absolutely- your task resolution mechanics at *all* levels have to reflect the reality of those interactions. Fantasy Craft *does* do this. Attacks that bypass Vitality are very specific and situational. The classes that *can* do these things are appropriate to those that you imagine could do them. That's what you want.
This is in direct analogy to the emergent issue of casters ending fights doing "their things" in a single cast. As well as being a means to give non-casters some mechanical heft to having such options available to them within their own realm of expertise.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 25, 2022, 02:38:18 PMMuch better I've found are where the wounds are indirectly connected... like you have 3 wounds and each time you take a crit or are hit with no vitality remaining you lose 1 (or perhaps 1 per confirmation roll if you wanted instant deaths possible). That way the vitality damage can scale enough to not turn that part into a slog while not causing easy instant ganks every time a crit happens.
This is a much more evolved mechanical expression I could get behind. My use of Fantasy Craft as an example that is one deviation from the standard HP rules. But FC does address this a bit by assuming Con represent a difficult number to defeat in a single attack by an unskilled person. This is why Sneak Attack is not as high in FC as it is in D&D. But the essence of your point is taken into account (remember they're trying to do 3e to the max).
But yeah your on the right track on how I'd like to see it too.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on March 25, 2022, 04:12:39 PM
Another key use for hit points is that they avoid the psychological frustration effect of the Whiff Factor -- or, to use Chris24601's simile above which I actually like better, the "Russian Roulette" effect. Game mechanics can easily be set up to create infrequent hits with large effects which resolve in about the same actual game time as frequent hits with small effects, but the thing about the frequent small-impact hits is that they represent progress -- they make the player feel like his PC is tangibly contributing to winning the fight. It's the same reason so many video games display health bars for both players and antagonists -- it's hard to stay engaged with a game if you can't see the tangible effects of your actions, even if they're minor and slow to accumulate.
And this is why that "whiff" factor has never had a solid feel for HP. People look at HP as an absolute value for that PC. People can abstract it all they want - but until D&D starts imparting deathspiral mechanics for HP loss, it will never be really perceived this way by the masses - yes, because of Video Games.
I know it's been said from the beginning that HP *do* represent these vagueries - but it has never really felt that way to me, or anyone else I've played with. I'm not denying it's true - clearly it is - but as those silly memes that have emerged at our tables and from stories (or satirized like Backstabbing with a ballista or whatever) the rules are interpreted typically more literal than intended.
Quote from: tenbones on March 25, 2022, 04:39:26 PMPeople look at HP as an absolute value for that PC. ...as those silly memes that have emerged at our tables and from stories (or satirized like Backstabbing with a ballista or whatever) the rules are interpreted typically more literal than intended.
So would you say that the problem is that what was intended as primarily a Gamist element of the rules is now inextricably entwined with an effective widespread
perception of it as a Simulationist element?
Hit Points are not completely dumb... But the name of Hit Points is dumb.
The name implies Meat Points. The systems that use it work on the engine of tracking them 99% of the time through combat and attacks, spell damage, curative healing, etc. so this further implies Meat Points. To try and explain them away as anything other than Meat Points requires a renaming of Hit Points to something else... Grit, Stamina, Tenacity... Something else that shifts the focus away from Meat Being Hit and Healed.
The name Hit Points is just a really bad name.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 25, 2022, 07:33:31 AM
Quote from: Jaeger on March 24, 2022, 11:28:43 PM
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on March 24, 2022, 04:25:25 PM
...
It's like how round-robin initiative isn't perfect, but it works pretty well, and you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else.
...
Round robin Initiative is the #1 culprit that slows down combat at the table. It's horrible.
Now if we're talking about side based initiative; Yes: you should have a specific purpose in mind before you use something else. ;)
I hesitated to make that point, but since you did I'll back it up. :)
Ew. I've always found the benefits of individual initiative to be worth the time it takes.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on March 25, 2022, 05:24:04 PM
Quote from: tenbones on March 25, 2022, 04:39:26 PMPeople look at HP as an absolute value for that PC. ...as those silly memes that have emerged at our tables and from stories (or satirized like Backstabbing with a ballista or whatever) the rules are interpreted typically more literal than intended.
So would you say that the problem is that what was intended as primarily a Gamist element of the rules is now inextricably entwined with an effective widespread perception of it as a Simulationist element?
Not answering for Tenbones of course, but for me the issue is that I _want_ hit points to simulate something. The less connected the mechanics are to to the game fiction, the less connected I am to the game.
Quote from: RebelSky on March 25, 2022, 06:24:23 PM
Hit Points are not completely dumb... But the name of Hit Points is dumb.
The name implies Meat Points. The systems that use it work on the engine of tracking them 99% of the time through combat and attacks, spell damage, curative healing, etc. so this further implies Meat Points. To try and explain them away as anything other than Meat Points requires a renaming of Hit Points to something else... Grit, Stamina, Tenacity... Something else that shifts the focus away from Meat Being Hit and Healed.
The name Hit Points is just a really bad name.
I have already covered this before to some extend or another in various posts, but you can't really address the issues with HP by redefining what they mean or changing their name. At the end of the day, regardless of what you might call them or claim they represent, you're still going to use them to track damage from physical attacks that are going to inflict damage proportional to the severity of physical injuries they cause. With more devastating attacks capable of causing more grievous injuries (in strictly physical, life threatening terms) inflicting more damage than weaker attacks capable of only lesser injuries.
ALL of that implies "Meat Points", not just the name. The entire structure of how combat and damage operates assumes that we're dealing with physical injuries. Because when you strike an enemy with a sword you're not trying to drain their stamina or reduce the amount of "Risk" they can take in battle before a deadly strike finally hits. You're trying to wound them with your weapon. And the reason that sword causes more damage than a dagger is because a sword is a larger melee weapon with a longer cutting edge capable of generating greater physical force.
All this redefining of terms is just mental gymnastics no more capable of addressing the problem than redefining words changes anything in any other area of life (like the word "woman", which apparently no longer means human female). Changing the meaning of words doesn't change reality. And the reality is that we're dealing with physical damage. So that means that Hit Points mean Meat Points.
Even to the degree that you might argue that there are Plot Armor elements to them, or that they entail to some degree or another the ability to minimize the impact of physical hits (all of which I'm willing to accept to some extend), we're still dealing with physical hits. So trying to erase the "Meat Points" element to them is about as effective as trying to cover the sky with your hands. All you're doing is fooling yourself into believing that reality changed because you changed the terms you're using or their meaning.
No, hit points are not dumb.
Quote from: tenbones on March 25, 2022, 04:39:26 PMAnd this is why that "whiff" factor has never had a solid feel for HP. People look at HP as an absolute value for that PC. People can abstract it all they want - but until D&D starts imparting deathspiral mechanics for HP loss, it will never be really perceived this way by the masses - yes, because of Video Games.
How about implementing HP bleed? Taking strenuous actions would reduce HP by a prescribed amount and incoming attacks would receive bonus damage. Bookkeeping could be minimized by filling out an HP tracking table with check boxes for available HP and the corresponding bleed penalty at time of level up. When taking damage check off the corresponding number of boxes and add the appropriate penalty from the lowest box.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 25, 2022, 07:26:14 PMALL of that implies "Meat Points", not just the name. The entire structure of how combat and damage operates assumes that we're dealing with physical injuries. Because when you strike an enemy with a sword you're not trying to drain their stamina or reduce the amount of "Risk" they can take in battle before a deadly strike finally hits. You're trying to wound them with your weapon. And the reason that sword causes more damage than a dagger is because a sword is a larger melee weapon with a longer cutting edge capable of generating greater physical force.
Yes, and no. Combat is about rendering the enemy combat ineffective by reducing their certain number to zero though different actions that reduce said number by a specified amount. If morale penalties or a successful intimidation reduced that number instead of affecting something else, then said number could not be a meat measure. As long as the name implies meat, then non-meat effects cannot be applied to it and its meat meter status is reinforced. Conversely, only renaming it without any other changes will have no effect, because there was no mechanical effect to be had.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 25, 2022, 07:26:14 PM
Even to the degree that you might argue that there are Plot Armor elements to them, or that they entail to some degree or another the ability to minimize the impact of physical hits (all of which I'm willing to accept to some extend), we're still dealing with physical hits. So trying to erase the "Meat Points" element to them is about as effective as trying to cover the sky with your hands. All you're doing is fooling yourself into believing that reality changed because you changed the terms you're using or their meaning.
I don't think it's impossible; but changing the name and how you describe the mechanic are definitely needed.
In my system's case PC's have Edge; a pool of points that they spend to evade damage. This is reinforced by describing them right alongside the two other spendable resources that PC's have; Focus and Reserves.
Both of those are spent to make things happen, so it reinforces the "you are choosing to spend this" rather than "this is being subtracted by the hit."
Further, Reserves are much more linked to physical injury in the rules as they get lost from being dropped to zero Edge and from remaining in the dying condition.
The system also has optional physical injuries (head, arm, leg and internal/torso) that do not interact with Edge at all (but some prevent recovering Reserves).
Rules tweaks that resulted in also spending amounts of Edge when you failed non-combat physical tasks in order to avoid more severe consequences also reinforces that Edge isn't meant to be seen as damage taken, but as damage evaded by its expenditure.
Non-magic fear-based combat talents could also require targets to spend Edge to avoid fleeing, fainting or playing dead when their Edge drops to 0. Mass combat with mooks spreads any excess damage on a mook to any nearby mooks and those that hit 0 from that damage are also presumed to have fled the battle (*sees other mook cleaved in two by PC* "Frak this! I'm out!" *runs*).
All those combined were enough that the majority of my playtesters did not think of Edge as physical injury points.
This was important since I fully incorporated the 4E warlord concept into the system where an inspiring leader can trigger your ability to Rally (i.e. spending a Reserve and possibly Focus to regain Edge) without needing to spend your actions. Why? Because outside of properties specifically invoking D&D, having injury healing holy men in the hero group and magical healing in general are pretty damned rare... maybe you find a reclusive healer or a temple or something, but if you're looking to emulate settings outside of D&D, non-magical recovery of your key fighting resources is probably going to be pretty important for setting emulation.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 25, 2022, 11:16:08 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 25, 2022, 07:26:14 PM
Even to the degree that you might argue that there are Plot Armor elements to them, or that they entail to some degree or another the ability to minimize the impact of physical hits (all of which I'm willing to accept to some extend), we're still dealing with physical hits. So trying to erase the "Meat Points" element to them is about as effective as trying to cover the sky with your hands. All you're doing is fooling yourself into believing that reality changed because you changed the terms you're using or their meaning.
I don't think it's impossible; but changing the name and how you describe the mechanic are definitely needed.
In my system's case PC's have Edge; a pool of points that they spend to evade damage. This is reinforced by describing them right alongside the two other spendable resources that PC's have; Focus and Reserves.
Both of those are spent to make things happen, so it reinforces the "you are choosing to spend this" rather than "this is being subtracted by the hit."
Further, Reserves are much more linked to physical injury in the rules as they get lost from being dropped to zero Edge and from remaining in the dying condition.
The system also has optional physical injuries (head, arm, leg and internal/torso) that do not interact with Edge at all (but some prevent recovering Reserves).
Rules tweaks that resulted in also spending amounts of Edge when you failed non-combat physical tasks in order to avoid more severe consequences also reinforces that Edge isn't meant to be seen as damage taken, but as damage evaded by its expenditure.
Non-magic fear-based combat talents could also require targets to spend Edge to avoid fleeing, fainting or playing dead when their Edge drops to 0. Mass combat with mooks spreads any excess damage on a mook to any nearby mooks and those that hit 0 from that damage are also presumed to have fled the battle (*sees other mook cleaved in two by PC* "Frak this! I'm out!" *runs*).
All those combined were enough that the majority of my playtesters did not think of Edge as physical injury points.
This was important since I fully incorporated the 4E warlord concept into the system where an inspiring leader can trigger your ability to Rally (i.e. spending a Reserve and possibly Focus to regain Edge) without needing to spend your actions. Why? Because outside of properties specifically invoking D&D, having injury healing holy men in the hero group and magical healing in general are pretty damned rare... maybe you find a reclusive healer or a temple or something, but if you're looking to emulate settings outside of D&D, non-magical recovery of your key fighting resources is probably going to be pretty important for setting emulation.
Just want to say that all this sounds really cool. 8)
Quote from: Jaeger on March 24, 2022, 11:28:43 PMI'm a bit surprised no OSR games in the E6 spirit have been made.
Lots of OSR games only have 10 levels. Considering the power creep of 3e, the 10th level PC in S&W: White Box isn't notably more powerful than the 3e 6th level PC.
Quote from: Spinachcat on March 26, 2022, 05:35:42 AM
Quote from: Jaeger on March 24, 2022, 11:28:43 PMI'm a bit surprised no OSR games in the E6 spirit have been made.
Lots of OSR games only have 10 levels. Considering the power creep of 3e, the 10th level PC in S&W: White Box isn't notably more powerful than the 3e 6th level PC.
It does certainly help in keeping potential bloat down. I kept my own system to 15 levels with most having 25 Edge to start that grows to 95 by level 15. Mooks, by contrast range from about 5-10 points. Really threatening monsters have numbers ranging from those of PCs to elites and champions with 2-4 times that.
In terms of what those numbers mean, most mooks do about 2-5 with a hit. Actual monsters scale from about 8-12 per hit from a standard level 1 monster to about 36-55 for a level 18 monster (monsters can have higher levels than PCs).
Of related note; attack and defense modifers remain pretty consistent across the PC level range. The theory behind that is that once you reach a certain level of proficiency it's more about how well you can exploit an opponent's openings when they happen. A failed attack just means there was no good opening to exploit that round (though some class abilities and talents allow for damage on miss or without needing to make a roll at all... reflecting tactics that are especially tiring to evade by spending Edge even when you're doing everything right).
What scales is damage done when there is an opening and Edge burnt to avoid the opening being exploited. So even low level mooks in sufficient numbers can threaten a high level PC (essentially attacking until the PC tires and then a telling blow is landed) and, by contrast, the massed mook rules allow the PC's excess damage against low level mooks to spread to nearby ones who if "dropped" are deciding to flee for their lives.
I chose the numbers I did because they were the smallest increments where I could achieve the balance I wanted between monster attacks that were light but accurate attacks and massive but easier to avoid attacks relative to PC strength. Spreadsheets were involved in calculating the original values and I make no apologies for it (the result is that GM's wanting to make their own monsters in the system just have an easy table to reference).
The level limit though definitely helps keep those numbers in check.
Quote from: Wisithir on March 25, 2022, 11:05:40 PMCombat is about rendering the enemy combat ineffective by reducing their certain number to zero though different actions that reduce said number by a specified amount.
That's not really what combat is about and not all systems even use a number you have to reduce to zero, nor is that the sole mechanic that can or should be used to handle every eventuality that could reduce an opponent's effectiveness in combat.
The problem with this argument is that you're refuting something I said that has concrete backing in terms of how things already operate in most games that use HP on the basis of additional extraneous elements you would like to add on top of HP that are not necessarily interrelated, and can, and already are, handled through different mechanics in various systems. And there's no reason they need to be handled through the exact same mechanic that's used to track physical damage, specifically, as opposed to something else.
Could HP be used to track psychological factors, like intimidation and morale, on top of tracking physical injuries? I guess. But is that truly their purpose, and do we HAVE to use that mechanic specifically do track these things? All of this stuff is already handled through things like Saving Throws/Resistance Rolls and Opposed Skill Checks, or even Morale checks from older editions of D&D, which are more effective at handling fleeing enemies that are too afraid or demoralized to continue fighting, but still perfectly capable of taking a beating if cornered, or coming back later that same day.
Just because you could further abstract HP more than they already are in order to incorporate all these disparate elements into a single mechanic doesn't mean that you should. All that would accomplish is further muddy the distinction between all these elements and complicate things further by lumping a bunch of disparate elements that represent completely different things and take completely different measures to recover from into a single stat. Physical injuries can have lasting effects that could take days, or even weeks or months to recover from, if recovery is even a possibility at all. Being demoralized can be fixed in a matter of minutes or hours by just taking a breather once you're in a safe location. Those two things are in no way analogous to each other, and just because both could potentially end a fight that doesn't mean that they have to use the same mechanic or that doing so would be effective or not cause further logical inconsistencies.
A fleeing enemy could come back again later that same day, maybe even in less than an hour. A dead or seriously wounded enemy that's been incapacitated by their injuries can't. And an enemy that's been wounded but not incapacitated is far closer to dying than a demoralized but completely uninjured* one coming back to fight. Lumping all those concepts together only makes it more difficult to represent any of those things.
*EDIT: I wrote "injured" originally when I meant to say the complete opposite. :P
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 25, 2022, 11:16:08 PMI don't think it's impossible; but changing the name and how you describe the mechanic are definitely needed.
No they're not. It may work for the way that you prefer to handle your own system, but that doesn't mean that the concept of HP itself has to change for anybody else, or that the things I point out about physical injuries (or the need to track them) aren't an issue. If damage is still based around how deadly an attack or hazard is (in physical, life-threatening terms) then we're still talking about physical injuries, which have some sort of physical impact on the character.
What you describe as "Edge" is basically a Luck Point/Effort mechanic that's heavily used to mitigate damage. And it may have started out as HP abstracted to 11, but that still doesn't change the fact that (from what you describe) they don't quite work the same way or remove the issue of actual physical wounds being tracked. So they aren't really HP conceptually speaking, but something you can use to avoid taking actual HP damage (which I'm guessing is what you call "Reserves") or at least injuries or wounds, assuming that you handle those more as a type of Status Effect, rather than by some numerical figure.
But conceptually speaking, what HP have been used for since their inception, as well as in the vast majority of systems that use them for, is to track physical injuries. And further abstracting what HP are supposed to mean or changing their name doesn't remove that necessity, or the fact that damage from attacks and hazards represents physical injuries of some type. Which implies that somewhere behind what we call "HP" there's "Meat" in there. And the amount of damage inflicted by attacks or hazards represents attempts to get at that "Meat". That you use some extraneous Luck/Effort type mechanic to mitigate the risk or impact of those injuries doesn't change that.
What you want wounds HP to do depends on what your world is running on. Narrativanium, Simulation Juice, or mixes in-between.
There is no perfect system that balances combat taking too long or too short. Each system will have a moment where the villian died 'too fast' or 'too slow'.
Id say HP, the D&D style, works in its own logical universe (that does not make it bad). But I don't think it maps perfectly to neither 'plot' tokens or 'meat' tokens. Both will have their own elements that don't fit.
Because in general beings don't like getting hurt at all. Han Solo may take out more Stormtroopers then he realistically could, but he will still try to retreat and search for cover immediatly if even a group of 3-5 is found or the like. He wouldn't stand around in the open before looking at his HP counter and say 'Oh, I guess its time to go into cover because my plot counter is low'. 'Oh if a Stormtrooper throws a grenade its fine, because I have like 50 hit points left and minion grenades only deal 3d4 damage so Im fine'. Despite being a 'legendary hero' he would not fight his way through any amount of soldiers. Any amount of grenades would warrant a response from him.
Robocop on the other hand has extremly high damage reduction, but if a tank buster is around, he needs to hide immediatly.
Id say hit points (the D&D Kind) match most closley to anime, with its power levels and literal in-universe resource counters. Where fights are literally just battles of endurance. And heroes suddenly getting more power is like a hero point or something.
HP as a risk meter and HP as meat meter are different directions that provide different effects. I think risk is the abstract approach that needs to incorporate more effects to provide for interesting choices while the meat approach should be more explicitly clear as what it is and what the last combat exchange actually was.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 26, 2022, 09:39:33 AM
A fleeing enemy could come back again later that same day, maybe even in less than an hour. A dead or seriously wounded enemy that's been incapacitated by their injuries can't. And an enemy that's been wounded but not incapacitated is far closer to dying than a demoralized but completely uninjured* one coming back to fight. Lumping all those concepts together only makes it more difficult to represent any of those things.
Conversely, a fleeing PC could come back again later that same day, maybe even in less than an hour. A dead or seriously wounded PC that's been incapacitated by their injuries can't. And an PC that's been wounded but not incapacitated is far closer to dying than a demoralized but completely uninjured* one coming back to fight.
Meat points can hinder a character continuity campaign by taking PCs out of action but allow for the satisfying and definitive pulping of enemies. I prefer slightly more abstraction as to allow the GM room to adjudicate instead of "the dice say so," but that is a matter of taste. Meat points for simulation or abstract risk point for narrative or more room to roleplay.
Quote from: Wisithir on March 27, 2022, 12:37:00 AM
HP as a risk meter and HP as meat meter are different directions that provide different effects. I think risk is the abstract approach that needs to incorporate more effects to provide for interesting choices while the meat approach should be more explicitly clear as what it is and what the last combat exchange actually was.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 26, 2022, 09:39:33 AM
A fleeing enemy could come back again later that same day, maybe even in less than an hour. A dead or seriously wounded enemy that's been incapacitated by their injuries can't. And an enemy that's been wounded but not incapacitated is far closer to dying than a demoralized but completely uninjured* one coming back to fight. Lumping all those concepts together only makes it more difficult to represent any of those things.
Conversely, a fleeing PC could come back again later that same day, maybe even in less than an hour. A dead or seriously wounded PC that's been incapacitated by their injuries can't. And an PC that's been wounded but not incapacitated is far closer to dying than a demoralized but completely uninjured* one coming back to fight.
Meat points can hinder a character continuity campaign by taking PCs out of action but allow for the satisfying and definitive pulping of enemies. I prefer slightly more abstraction as to allow the GM room to adjudicate instead of "the dice say so," but that is a matter of taste. Meat points for simulation or abstract risk point for narrative or more room to roleplay.
I tend to prefer some degree of simulation over narrativism, personally. I'm not expecting 1:1 simulation, cuz that would be unlikely and impractical, but at least some semblance of simulation that makes it feel like the game world is an actual world with consequences would be good.
I'm also not a fan of metagame elements or concerns deciding how gameplay or circumstances in the game world unfold. And while PCs being taken out of the action is something I've considered before, that problem will exist with ANY type of damage system, as long as the posibility for death or incapacity is there. And if PCs can't be killed or incapacitated cuz then players have nothing to do, then what's the point of it? Why even have damage systems at all? And where is the element of genuine risk and consequence? I think a better work around is for everyone to have multiple characters, just in case one of them goes down. But sometimes characters die or become incapacitated in almost any system, other than Toon (and even there they get taken out temporarily, IIRC).
I used to hate HP, but one of the main reasons I came around to them is because they're better than Condition Monitor systems with wound levels (Light, Moderate, Serious, etc.) at keeping track of small amounts of cumulative damage that don't immediately kill you, but can stack up over time and are still present and take time to heal nonetheless. But if I'm going to abstract all that away and ignore the reality of minor injuries that still need to be healed, I would much rather get rid of HP entirely and just go with Condition Monitor systems, and maybe remove or minimize the death spiral element, which is the only other thing about them that sucks. Cuz at that point tracking HP becomes useless to me, and Condition Monitor systems do a much better job at tracking the character's current state from a more narrative or descriptive PoV IMO. And even from the PoV of simulation they're better at telling you just how messed up a character is.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 26, 2022, 12:04:01 PMHan Solo may take out more Stormtroopers then he realistically could, but he will still try to retreat and search for cover immediatly
How many hit points do you think Han Solo lost in that encounter?
Quote from: mightybrain on March 27, 2022, 03:32:27 PMHow many hit points do you think Han Solo lost in that encounter?
Thats pretty much exactly the scene Im talking about. All heroes in fiction have a degree of plot armor, but how that armor works dictates the tone.
In a D&D game with HP, Han Solo would blockade the doorway because they can't hurt him all that much, and would only retreat if his HP was low.
In 'The Return of the Jedi' he takes a defensive position near the shield generator, and is again unrealistically fine, but the 'implication' is that he has to retain that position or die.
The Jedi in the prequels on the other hand stand out right in the open all the time. They only change strategies when confronted with heavy artillery, or are encircled with extremly heavy odds.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on March 25, 2022, 05:24:04 PM
Quote from: tenbones on March 25, 2022, 04:39:26 PMPeople look at HP as an absolute value for that PC. ...as those silly memes that have emerged at our tables and from stories (or satirized like Backstabbing with a ballista or whatever) the rules are interpreted typically more literal than intended.
So would you say that the problem is that what was intended as primarily a Gamist element of the rules is now inextricably entwined with an effective widespread perception of it as a Simulationist element?
Well... I don't think those terms "Gamist" and "Simulationist" are helpful due to the charged nature of what they may mean to the people here. But *I* take it to mean (Forge debates aside) - I think the "Gamist" narrative around HP is post-facto as a term. I think HP were *exactly* what people conceived them to be when they were created. They were exactly supposed to represent a broad abstract qualities that Arneson, and Gygax et. al. didn't feel D&D required more elaboration on, and obviously were influenced by their Wargame roots.
What happened *after* that fact, is pretty obvious. Rules skimming and page turning aside - how many times goes Gygax have to be quoted on what he himself has said many times in many places about what HP were meant to represent? The advent of Videogames completely changed the consciousness of people's perceptions. It doesn't matter what people *claim* they're meant to represent, when there are concrete examples of using arbitrary number-piles and direct damage mechanic applications to reduce that number-pile and show characters punching, Hadoukening, Shoryukening set damage values against that pile and people applying that obvious same analog representation to their D&D games?
No amount of "abstracting" or "Gamist" bullshittery is going to make people coming from that background feel good about it. And that notion stands to this day. While I'm old and I'm a first-generation D&D player, my background was never Wargaming, but I was a video-game guy, also from the very beginning. My sensibilities are more kinetic and absolute than abstract.
Call it "simulationist" or whatever (I'm not that - and this is why Forgey categories were never good as anything other than bumperstickers for invested nerds) the brass tacks is you're gonna go with what "feels right" both mechanically and narratively. And those poles can change over time.
HP is simplistic, but in the hands of a very good GM, they work fine. This doesn't mean that players that don't look at them as abstractions feel good when they have the villain with a knife at their throat, and aren't thinking "This guy has 100hp... why is he scared that a 1d4 weapon is at his throat?"
It takes a good GM with trust in his players to flip that mindset. The real question I have is - why not have more discrete mechanics that fulfill all the these needs?
So it's not that HP are dumb - or not. What makes it dumb is when people will insist it's "the only way" or even the "best way". Depends who is using them and the player's buy-in.
Quote from: mightybrain on March 27, 2022, 03:32:27 PM
How many hit points do you think Han Solo lost in that encounter?
Yep, good example.
As an alternative - in the FFG Star Wars game he would have taken no damage, but probably some Strain. And he'd have given a bunch of Strain to the Stormtroopers.
Quote from: tenbones on March 27, 2022, 06:10:20 PM
HP is simplistic, but in the hands of a very good GM, they work fine. This doesn't mean that players that don't look at them as abstractions feel good when they have the villain with a knife at their throat, and aren't thinking "This guy has 100hp... why is he scared that a 1d4 weapon is at his throat?"
I'd say there's two problems with that particular scenario that essentially break the versimultude if you're going with abstract hit points.
The first is mechanical; the ratio of potential damage to hit points is too extreme. If the PC instead had 50 points and the villain's skill with a knife let him do 35 points and 52 on a crit (or a talent to let them do extra damage when their target is disadvantaged in that way) then the threat is much more credible.
Alternately, coup de grace rules existed in D&D for a reason. This is also where poison on the dagger can be useful.
The second problem is in that particular GM's style; specifically putting the PC into a situation where there's a knife at their throat when they have so much plot armor left. If the PC was worn down and off his guard (i.e. down to a handful of hit points) and THEN the villain steps out of the shadows and puts a knife to their throat it's a whole different ballgame.
So too would be the villain and PC grappling (i.e. wearing down each other's hit points) until the PC was down to a few hit points and then the villain gets into a position where he can get the dagger to the PC's throat.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 27, 2022, 07:48:53 PMThe second problem is in that particular GM's style; specifically putting the PC into a situation where there's a knife at their throat when they have so much plot armor left. If the PC was worn down and off his guard (i.e. down to a handful of hit points) and THEN the villain steps out of the shadows and puts a knife to their throat it's a whole different ballgame.
Again Id argue that fits in more with shonen then western hero tropes. In Return of the Jedi, the Emperor took no damage, and Luke didn't wear him down. But in that climactic moment, if it where D&D, the Emperors lightning would have instantly killed Vader, as he would have been at 0-ish HP because he had lost to Luke. Alternatively, if we are using healing surge logic, Vader and Palpatine would have wrestled there for a minute while Luke watched.
Edit: Just to be clear, in a wound system vader might have insta-gibbed luke with 1 shot, so every system has its flaws.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 27, 2022, 07:48:53 PMThe second problem is in that particular GM's style; specifically putting the PC into a situation where there's a knife at their throat when they have so much plot armor left. If the PC was worn down and off his guard (i.e. down to a handful of hit points) and THEN the villain steps out of the shadows and puts a knife to their throat it's a whole different ballgame.
So too would be the villain and PC grappling (i.e. wearing down each other's hit points) until the PC was down to a few hit points and then the villain gets into a position where he can get the dagger to the PC's throat.
This is only a problem if you assume that "Plot Armor" HP is some sort of sacred component that you absolutely, positively HAVE to completely wear down before anything bad can happen to PCs. Which isn't even a cinematic convention, if that's what you're going for, but a purely "Gamist" conceit that places game elements above narrative flow of events.
There is also no break in verisimilitude if you go against game elements in favor of what makes narrative sense in the situation. If anything, placing game elements above what makes sense in a given circumstance IS what breaks verisimilitude, because you're going against what simulates reality or creates the "appearance of being true or real" (what verisimilitude actually means) in favor of some game convention that can't be violated at any cost.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 27, 2022, 08:02:03 PMEdit: Just to be clear, in a wound system vader might have insta-gibbed luke with 1 shot, so every system has its flaws.
Vader was not trying to kill Luke, so he was rolling at a penalty to hit in order to have the option of limiting damage. Dying in the process of throwing the Emperor in to the pit is a heroic sacrifice get one more attack in before dropping dead ability or rule. It looked protracted, because grappling is a protracted endeavor in any system. More importantly, the Emperor probably had enough HP to survive maximum falling damage.
There is also the issue that movies are meant to be watched and games are meant to be played. In video games, I hate it when the computer takes control of my character to execute some prescripted spectacle kill because I did not do that. All I got to do was press X to animate kill, and now I have nothing I can while I wait to get control back.
Rules need to bend to the conceit of the fiction or the world need to be build around the game mechanics as its fundamental laws. It is a lot easier to bend the rules than develop a sensible and recognizable world where house cats pose a mortal threat to commoners and adventures can swim in lava for minutes at a time or walk off hitting the ground at terminal velocity.
It may be" Narravist" to have the rules follow the fiction, but the rules only exist to resolve uncertain outcomes. If success or failure is guaranteed, then there is nothing to roll for. You do not roll hacking to use the default credentials of a device anymore than you would roll save vs death after a decapitation. We can all agree on what happens next, thus there is nothing game mechanic about it.
GURPS would have simulated that light saber duel down and the moments after in return of the Jedi. The only part that is maybe going to stretch the rules is decided what Vader's dying action was, in this case it would seem to be to see his son with his own eyes before he dies, we could also infer taking that helmet off killed vader, who was already in bad shape, and only passing his HT checks due to his armor. In any event, the whole thing, from parries, to acrobatics, to Luke using a series of Beats and all out attacks to break Vader's defenses to get him to miss a parry and taking his hand off, and then the Emperor getting grappled and tossed to his death...hitting Vader with just enough juice as he goes over to essentially kill vader....to Vader declaring his dying action to be to address his son.
Quote from: Wisithir on March 27, 2022, 09:35:24 PMIt looked protracted.
It really didn't. Vader grabbed, moved, and threw the emperor. In systems focused on HP, that stuff is near impossible.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 27, 2022, 10:03:14 PM
Quote from: Wisithir on March 27, 2022, 09:35:24 PMIt looked protracted.
It really didn't. Vader grabbed, moved, and threw the emperor. In systems focused on HP, that stuff is near impossible.
Granted GURPS uses HP, but is more of a "wound" system due to how far under 0 you are in relation to death, but GURPS could do it no problem. Though as you said earlier, the issue with a simulationist system, is with high tech weapons or powerful foes, you can simulate getting your shit pushed past your teeth pretty easily with one crit.
Quote from: oggsmash on March 27, 2022, 10:10:04 PMGranted GURPS uses HP, but is more of a "wound" system due to how far under 0 you are in relation to death, but GURPS could do it no problem. Though as you said earlier, the issue with a simulationist system, is with high tech weapons or powerful foes, you can simulate getting your shit pushed past your teeth pretty easily with one crit.
Oh I know gurps. Only system I know to use multipliers for locational based damage.
Any 'Grit' based system risks the chance of uncerimonous death. Any 'Heroic' based system risks chance of protracted disconnected HP slogs. Any 'Narrativist' based system risks the chance of loosing all tension and just stopping being a game.
There is always a chance for bad.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 27, 2022, 05:38:18 PM
Quote from: mightybrain on March 27, 2022, 03:32:27 PMHow many hit points do you think Han Solo lost in that encounter?
Thats pretty much exactly the scene Im talking about. All heroes in fiction have a degree of plot armor, but how that armor works dictates the tone.
In a D&D game with HP, Han Solo would blockade the doorway because they can't hurt him all that much, and would only retreat if his HP was low.
Do you ever actually play D&D, with other people? Because I can tell you, based on actual events in play where PC's burst in a door and find a horde of monsters, no one has ever said, "Hey, I can hold them here for a couple of rounds an lose half my hit points... no big deal." First, just looking at a large number of enemies does not give you information on whether or not any particular one is a mook or a high-level champion. Likewise, with limited resting and healing, every loss of hp is something to be avoided. So your scenario sounds like what someone would
imagine a situation to play out like, and not anything that has ever happened at a table. Well, that or you have some really crappy players...
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 12:20:13 AMDo you ever actually play D&D, with other people?
You got me. It must just be that I have never played D&D. You have proven to be omniscient as ever. If you personally have not experienced, it must not exist. And if it does it exist it, must be because the players suck. Not just me as a GM, but my players must suck.
I will admit to not randomly re-statting mooks into Balors to spite my players for making estimates based off of previous information. I guess I must be doing it wrong.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 12:20:13 AM
Do you ever actually play D&D, with other people? Because I can tell you, based on actual events in play where PC's burst in a door and find a horde of monsters, no one has ever said, "Hey, I can hold them here for a couple of rounds an lose half my hit points... no big deal."
Isn't that what "tanks" are for? I thought that's why we have the word "tanks" in RPGs. I guess I must have been hallucinating those times the toughest melee fighters in the group blocked a doorway or passage to bottleneck groups of enemies trying to get through while casters and ranged characters sniped them from behind.
If the numbers are inflated enough, and the rate of return is fast enough and happens relatively fast, then players will not care that much about losing a few hit points. Likely, they will act as one would expect. Depending on the sensibility of the participants, this may or may not be desirable. Scaling back or up will change the sensibility.
Hit points aren't dumb. They can be used in thoughtless, even stupid ways, not in accordance with the sensibilities of the group. When this happens, some people involved may mistake them for "dumb".
That's not to say that hit points are the best choice in every situation. They aren't. But likewise, calling them "dumb" is a display of a lack of imagination of the various sensibilities that others may bring to the table, because they certainly work well for many people.
Using hit points at some tables would be dumb. That's not the fault of the hit points, though. :)
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 28, 2022, 01:10:20 AM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 12:20:13 AM
Do you ever actually play D&D, with other people? Because I can tell you, based on actual events in play where PC's burst in a door and find a horde of monsters, no one has ever said, "Hey, I can hold them here for a couple of rounds an lose half my hit points... no big deal."
Isn't that what "tanks" are for? I thought that's why we have the word "tanks" in RPGs. I guess I must have been hallucinating those times the toughest melee fighters in the group blocked a doorway or passage to bottleneck groups of enemies trying to get through while casters and ranged characters sniped them from behind.
Tanks? Oh, wait, you mean the concept borrowed from MMOs and grafted onto later editions of the game, resulting in the least popular edition ever? My AD&D games didn't have tanks (and the front-liners were there because of their AC, not their HP, anyway). You're a 3rd edition fan, right? We're playing completely different games...
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 10:51:42 AMMy AD&D games didn't have tanks. Before 3e showed up it was a happy place. It had flowery medows, and rainbow skies. And rivers made of chocolate, where the children laughed, and danced, and played with gumdrop smiles
Advanced and not Basic? Back in my day, our fighters had d8s for HP before whiners like you felt they needed d10s and that we needed
PALADINS in the core rulebook.
So you take your munchkin fest and go back to your medow.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 28, 2022, 11:08:25 AM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 10:51:42 AMMy AD&D games didn't have tanks. Before 3e showed up it was a happy place. It had flowery medows, and rainbow skies. And rivers made of chocolate, where the children laughed, and danced, and played with gumdrop smiles
Advanced and not Basic? Back in my day, our fighters had d8s for HP before whiners like you felt they needed d10s and that we needed PALADINS in the core rulebook.
So you take your munchkin fest and go back to your medow.
Ehhh, we played basic a little, but what kid can resist the lure of "advanced"? I'd love to return to my medow... as soon as I figure out what that is. And I don't think "munchkin" means what you think it does, either (I think you're looking for "grognard")...
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 10:51:42 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 28, 2022, 01:10:20 AM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 12:20:13 AM
Do you ever actually play D&D, with other people? Because I can tell you, based on actual events in play where PC's burst in a door and find a horde of monsters, no one has ever said, "Hey, I can hold them here for a couple of rounds an lose half my hit points... no big deal."
Isn't that what "tanks" are for? I thought that's why we have the word "tanks" in RPGs. I guess I must have been hallucinating those times the toughest melee fighters in the group blocked a doorway or passage to bottleneck groups of enemies trying to get through while casters and ranged characters sniped them from behind.
Tanks? Oh, wait, you mean the concept borrowed from MMOs and grafted onto later editions of the game, resulting in the least popular edition ever? My AD&D games didn't have tanks (and the front-liners were there because of their AC, not their HP, anyway). You're a 3rd edition fan, right? We're playing completely different games...
Actually, the first time I ever heard the usage of the term "tank" in the context of gaming was back in the early 90s when I was introduced into TTRPGs and was playing D&D. The idea of a commercial internet wasn't even widespread back then, much less MMRPGs (though, they technically cropped up only a few years afterwards). High HP characters were already used as "tanks" before that. Party formations generally revolved around placing heavily armored, high HP warriors in the front precisely because they could soak up damage. And armor alone had little impact on character survivability compared to HP, so it wasn't all about high AC alone.
Try again.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 11:25:39 AMEhhh, we played basic a little, but what kid can resist the lure of "advanced"? I'd love to return to my medow... as soon as I figure out what that is. And I don't think "munchkin" means what you think it does, either (I think you're looking for "grognard")...
No your a munchkin posing as a grognard.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 28, 2022, 11:57:16 AM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 11:25:39 AMEhhh, we played basic a little, but what kid can resist the lure of "advanced"? I'd love to return to my medow... as soon as I figure out what that is. And I don't think "munchkin" means what you think it does, either (I think you're looking for "grognard")...
No your a munchkin posing as a grognard.
I look forward to anyone who can show me how to "munchkin" AD&D...
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 27, 2022, 07:48:53 PM
I'd say there's two problems with that particular scenario that essentially break the versimultude if you're going with abstract hit points.
The first is mechanical; the ratio of potential damage to hit points is too extreme. If the PC instead had 50 points and the villain's skill with a knife let him do 35 points and 52 on a crit (or a talent to let them do extra damage when their target is disadvantaged in that way) then the threat is much more credible.
Alternately, coup de grace rules existed in D&D for a reason. This is also where poison on the dagger can be useful.
Yep. But they don't FEEL good. The idea that HP's are this absolute-until-they're-gone assumption makes little sense without the clear exception-mechanics of Coup-De-grace. I've literally seen players try to argue in the middle of Con's "what is a coup-de-grace" vs. a Backstab (yes yes yes, I know the rules clearly state it) the point is people are warring with the intent of the mechanics vs. the assumptions of the players views on those abstractions. That distance is arbitrary and the balance of that arbitrariness doesn't jive with a *lot* of people.
I'm not saying you're wrong - and I obviously understand your point, I'm merely pointing out where the nuance causes friction (and why this discussion/debate/argument has been flying around for literal decades).
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 27, 2022, 07:48:53 PMThe second problem is in that particular GM's style; specifically putting the PC into a situation where there's a knife at their throat when they have so much plot armor left. If the PC was worn down and off his guard (i.e. down to a handful of hit points) and THEN the villain steps out of the shadows and puts a knife to their throat it's a whole different ballgame.
So too would be the villain and PC grappling (i.e. wearing down each other's hit points) until the PC was down to a few hit points and then the villain gets into a position where he can get the dagger to the PC's throat.
YUP. And unless players give implicit trust to their GM (who should have EARNED that trust) you're left with the vagueries of GM's trying to earn that trust at the cost of potential players who are reallllly bought-into their views of what these abstractions actually mean in their head.
What you end up with is, among other things, disgruntled players that either have to suck it up. Or GM's that for the sake of staving off arguments remove any colorful commentary for the purposes of roleplaying action - down as close to RAW-mechanics and die-throws and on-the-nose description for not offending peoples sensibilities. And yes there is wiggle-room between those, but I've seen it all at this point.
Again - it's about GM trust.
OR - you can try to lower that gap in what HP mean mechanically enough to satisfy the considerations of everyone involved. Be that with a house-rule, or an actual different system.
Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2022, 05:57:11 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 27, 2022, 07:48:53 PM
I'd say there's two problems with that particular scenario that essentially break the versimultude if you're going with abstract hit points.
The first is mechanical; the ratio of potential damage to hit points is too extreme. If the PC instead had 50 points and the villain's skill with a knife let him do 35 points and 52 on a crit (or a talent to let them do extra damage when their target is disadvantaged in that way) then the threat is much more credible.
Alternately, coup de grace rules existed in D&D for a reason. This is also where poison on the dagger can be useful.
Yep. But they don't FEEL good. The idea that HP's are this absolute-until-they're-gone assumption makes little sense without the clear exception-mechanics of Coup-De-grace. I've literally seen players try to argue in the middle of Con's "what is a coup-de-grace" vs. a Backstab (yes yes yes, I know the rules clearly state it) the point is people are warring with the intent of the mechanics vs. the assumptions of the players views on those abstractions. That distance is arbitrary and the balance of that arbitrariness doesn't jive with a *lot* of people.
I'm not saying you're wrong - and I obviously understand your point, I'm merely pointing out where the nuance causes friction (and why this discussion/debate/argument has been flying around for literal decades).
This is only one possible explanation for the friction. There are a couple of others I could think of. Some players are just cheaters/sore losers and will argue disingenuously to get their way. The big thing, though, is I think a lot of people simply have differing opinions on what is reasonable. And as I mentioned earlier up thread, often times it can be the same gamer who wants two contradicting things.
And I can illustrate this conflict of opinion on what is reasonable easily enough. One of the things mentioned in the hit point discussion in the 1E DMG is the example of Rasputin as an extreme case of someone with a lot of physical hit points. He's described as someone who could withstand more than 4 men. Average men in 1E have a d6 hit points, so 4 men amounts to a total of 14 hit points. Rasputin is said to have more than 14 physical hit points.
So let's say you've got Rasputin in a half nelson with a knife to his throat. The problem is Rasputin has 15+ points of meat. It's got nothing to do with how little damage a knife does--it could be a friggin' two-handed sword and he'll still survive a throat slit. That's kind of Rasputin's shtick. And it's got nothing at all to do with how you interpret hit points. We're just talking about the physical hit points in this example. All of the arguments that have come up in this thread are rendered moot.
The question is, what do you make of it?
You might say that's absurd. No one can survive a throat slit.
Someone else might say, dude, this was a real guy who they had to like kill a bunch of times for him to really be dead.
Still another person might say that's obviously more legend than reality.
And yet another will point out that in a world of heroic fantasy, not only can a guy like Rasputin exist. Someone a hell of a lot tougher than Rasputin could exist. Gary laid out exactly that in the discussion on hit points. Specifically, he had it topping out at 21-23 physical hit points, which would be attainable by a fighter of at least 7th level with an 18 CON.
One of the things I love about 1E is it lets you do war game simulations, it lets you play heroes, it lets you play supers, it lets you play the world's movers and shakers, and it lets you play at the level of demigods. And you can choose whichever those styles of game you want and go with it. But it not only does that all in one system. It provides a mode of play where you can do that all in one campaign by having a level system that allows you to begin at the low extreme and then traverse all the different styles up to the highest end.
It gives you the tools to play the game you want to play. You really only run into hit point woes when you simultaneously both want to play at superhero levels but have issues with characters being superhuman. It's like, no shit you can't slit The Tick's throat with a chainsaw while he sleeps. Dude. He's nigh invulnerable. At a certain level of play, this is exactly what you signed up for.
Don't like it? Hey, I hear you. I tend to shy away from it myself. Which is why I keep a lid on stat inflation. I have a clear vision about what I want my game world to be like, and I go and do that.
But one last thing. I disagree that hit points don't jive with "a *lot* of people." There may seem to be a lot of you on certain platforms and in certain venues. But in the bigger picture, the number of people who complain about this stuff is extremely small. Hit points are by far the most popular mechanic among the vast majority of gamers. It's not necessarily the case that it's because it is better than all the alternatives. But you have to at least give it even odds of that being the case. At the very least, it's proven to be a mechanic that works. For regular people. Without needing an extraordinary GM, either in skill level or trust level.
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 29, 2022, 11:47:38 PM
Quote from: tenbones on March 28, 2022, 05:57:11 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 27, 2022, 07:48:53 PM
I'd say there's two problems with that particular scenario that essentially break the versimultude if you're going with abstract hit points.
The first is mechanical; the ratio of potential damage to hit points is too extreme. If the PC instead had 50 points and the villain's skill with a knife let him do 35 points and 52 on a crit (or a talent to let them do extra damage when their target is disadvantaged in that way) then the threat is much more credible.
Alternately, coup de grace rules existed in D&D for a reason. This is also where poison on the dagger can be useful.
Yep. But they don't FEEL good. The idea that HP's are this absolute-until-they're-gone assumption makes little sense without the clear exception-mechanics of Coup-De-grace. I've literally seen players try to argue in the middle of Con's "what is a coup-de-grace" vs. a Backstab (yes yes yes, I know the rules clearly state it) the point is people are warring with the intent of the mechanics vs. the assumptions of the players views on those abstractions. That distance is arbitrary and the balance of that arbitrariness doesn't jive with a *lot* of people.
I'm not saying you're wrong - and I obviously understand your point, I'm merely pointing out where the nuance causes friction (and why this discussion/debate/argument has been flying around for literal decades).
This is only one possible explanation for the friction. There are a couple of others I could think of. Some players are just cheaters/sore losers and will argue disingenuously to get their way. The big thing, though, is I think a lot of people simply have differing opinions on what is reasonable. And as I mentioned earlier up thread, often times it can be the same gamer who wants two contradicting things.
And I can illustrate this conflict of opinion on what is reasonable easily enough. One of the things mentioned in the hit point discussion in the 1E DMG is the example of Rasputin as an extreme case of someone with a lot of physical hit points. He's described as someone who could withstand more than 4 men. Average men in 1E have a d6 hit points, so 4 men amounts to a total of 14 hit points. Rasputin is said to have more than 14 physical hit points.
So let's say you've got Rasputin in a half nelson with a knife to his throat. The problem is Rasputin has 15+ points of meat. It's got nothing to do with how little damage a knife does--it could be a friggin' two-handed sword and he'll still survive a throat slit. That's kind of Rasputin's shtick. And it's got nothing at all to do with how you interpret hit points. We're just talking about the physical hit points in this example. All of the arguments that have come up in this thread are rendered moot.
The question is, what do you make of it?
You might say that's absurd. No one can survive a throat slit.
Someone else might say, dude, this was a real guy who they had to like kill a bunch of times for him to really be dead.
Still another person might say that's obviously more legend than reality.
And yet another will point out that in a world of heroic fantasy, not only can a guy like Rasputin exist. Someone a hell of a lot tougher than Rasputin could exist. Gary laid out exactly that in the discussion on hit points. Specifically, he had it topping out at 21-23 physical hit points, which would be attainable by a fighter of at least 7th level with an 18 CON.
One of the things I love about 1E is it lets you do war game simulations, it lets you play heroes, it lets you play supers, it lets you play the world's movers and shakers, and it lets you play at the level of demigods. And you can choose whichever those styles of game you want and go with it. But it not only does that all in one system. It provides a mode of play where you can do that all in one campaign by having a level system that allows you to begin at the low extreme and then traverse all the different styles up to the highest end.
It gives you the tools to play the game you want to play. You really only run into hit point woes when you simultaneously both want to play at superhero levels but have issues with characters being superhuman. It's like, no shit you can't slit The Tick's throat with a chainsaw while he sleeps. Dude. He's nigh invulnerable. At a certain level of play, this is exactly what you signed up for.
Don't like it? Hey, I hear you. I tend to shy away from it myself. Which is why I keep a lid on stat inflation. I have a clear vision about what I want my game world to be like, and I go and do that.
But one last thing. I disagree that hit points don't jive with "a *lot* of people." There may seem to be a lot of you on certain platforms and in certain venues. But in the bigger picture, the number of people who complain about this stuff is extremely small. Hit points are by far the most popular mechanic among the vast majority of gamers. It's not necessarily the case that it's because it is better than all the alternatives. But you have to at least give it even odds of that being the case. At the very least, it's proven to be a mechanic that works. For regular people. Without needing an extraordinary GM, either in skill level or trust level.
In my experience running a realistic system, the problem comes down to disabling injuries, which can derail a scenario should a hero sustain a broken leg or arm.
Hit point systems don't indicate *what actually happened* to an injured character, so it's hard to visualize, which contravenes the games' promise of looking explicitly like a movie. What does it mean to drop from 20 hit points down to 17?, for example. Some kind of hard-to-visualize huffing and puffing, which again isn't described. I'd say dealing with that fuzziness requires just as good a GM as running a realistic system does.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 05:29:31 PM
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 28, 2022, 11:57:16 AM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 11:25:39 AMEhhh, we played basic a little, but what kid can resist the lure of "advanced"? I'd love to return to my medow... as soon as I figure out what that is. And I don't think "munchkin" means what you think it does, either (I think you're looking for "grognard")...
No your a munchkin posing as a grognard.
I look forward to anyone who can show me how to "munchkin" AD&D...
Buy Unearthed Arcana and use its options (classes, specialization, and die rolling for attributes).
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 29, 2022, 11:47:38 PMBut one last thing. I disagree that hit points don't jive with "a *lot* of people." There may seem to be a lot of you on certain platforms and in certain venues. But in the bigger picture, the number of people who complain about this stuff is extremely small. Hit points are by far the most popular mechanic among the vast majority of gamers. It's not necessarily the case that it's because it is better than all the alternatives. But you have to at least give it even odds of that being the case. At the very least, it's proven to be a mechanic that works. For regular people. Without needing an extraordinary GM, either in skill level or trust level.
Technically yes, at least in the way you see in forum discussions. But I've heard casual players with little experience with RPGs make off hand remarks a bunch of times about how silly HP are in certain circumstances. The difference they don't take it as seriously and don't care as much about the mechanics or the implications of them as more serious, system-oriented players. But even if they don't care, you can still see it in the expressions in their faces, and sometimes even their comments, when mechanics (not just HP, but other stuff as well) get in the way of what makes sense in any given situation. It's that feeling of disappointment when having to ignore verisimilitude, narrative flow and things that sound like they should be able to do if the rules did not state otherwise, in favor of what the rules say.
Quote from: oggsmash on March 30, 2022, 11:43:12 AM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 05:29:31 PM
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 28, 2022, 11:57:16 AM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 11:25:39 AMEhhh, we played basic a little, but what kid can resist the lure of "advanced"? I'd love to return to my medow... as soon as I figure out what that is. And I don't think "munchkin" means what you think it does, either (I think you're looking for "grognard")...
No your a munchkin posing as a grognard.
I look forward to anyone who can show me how to "munchkin" AD&D...
Buy Unearthed Arcana and use its options (classes, specialization, and die rolling for attributes).
Depending on how you define "munchkin" you don't even need to get that far. If you go with something more like "murderhobos" and people focused on "wining" and getting the bigger bonuses (not just from abilities, but magic items and such), you can find those in edition of D&D. The group that introduced me into the game was like that, and they played B/X. Their whole game revolved around killing monsters and taking their stuff, and getting a bunch of homebrewed magical items (often inspired by video games) of ever ascending power. I was basically the guy who introduced the idea of actually trying to talk to enemies and RPing to their game circle.
Quote from: Ratman_tfThat's the problem. PCs shouldn't survive a dangerous situation because they're heroes. They should survive a dangerous situation because they made good decisions and played well.
A game can be lenient towards player characters, by being generous with hit points, or any other game design decision like that, but it doesn't have to be.
If PC's are exceptionally stupid then HP shall end in certain moment. If not... well they play heroic game specifically to feel like book/movie heroes not some dark fantasy rogue scrapping for survival. Which means that Character Skill of being a hero trumps Player Skill of puzzling your way out of turbo-lethal death trap.
Heroic game generally unlike your low fantasy OSR is not survival game, and not-playing well has generally different consequences within fiction than in low-fantasy.
I mean most unkillable mythical heroes did not end well if you think about it - they made bad decisions in plenty.
QuoteThe other factor to consider too is, this is a game so the fun factor is a consideration and "you're not only near death, you're also even less effective at avoiding it" is rarely all that fun to many people. Conversely, surviving a game with just a few scraps of hit points remaining because of lucky dice (or skill when its in a video game) because you haven't been reduced to the effectiveness of a potato is something everyone remembers and talks about fondly.
You must play with vastly different folk than mine. I must admit only time I really remember roll dice in my history of playing was when I betrayed all team in epic campaign finale and lost deciding Willpower roll by 1. 1% becauce it was d100% ;) Otherwise rather narrative events are remembered rather than lucky dice rolls. I guess we're quite jaded these days.
QuoteI would much rather have 0 HP be that "Oh shit!" break away point, where you're too grievously injured to keep fighting (along with steep penalties for everything) and better try to run away. Then treat actual deal as a "Death Save" you have to make the moment you reach 0 or less HP, plus every time you take more damage from that point. That way you're still creating most of the desired effect without adding the complexity and bookkeeping of shifting cumulative penalties, or the death spiral factor the moment you get hit. Being at "0 HP" is also a more clear and obvious indicator that the game expects you to run away by that point, than to make it cumulative penalties and letting you figure it out once you're dead or spiraling down that path while surrounded by enemies.
But TBH point of epic fighting is well being bloodied. You were sort of annoyed the game is basically flowing between super-healthy and dead, now you opt for super-healthy and maybe-dead-but-anyway-ineffective. Give me greviously wounded dying warriors ripping throats of their enemies with last breath, dammit ;) (TBH taking 0 as moment when you take penalties seems as arbitrary as adding penalties every dunno 20hp or smth.)
QuoteAnd the shortcomings of HP can be sidestepped by introducing trigger events (such as Critical Hits, as Pundit suggests in the video, or taking Massive Damage from a single hit) that require you to make a Death Save, even if you have enough HP to soak it up. That way you can add the lethality element without having to track shifting Wound Status (that don't even account for small cumulative injuries very well) with cumulative penalties and stuff, or "X Hits" mechanics that are really just watered down HP masquerading as something else.
That's how we did it with D&D 3.5
If you get more damage in one hit (from one source) than your Constitution score, you had to roll DC15 Fortitude (DC was rising IIRC +1 per 10 hp lost over Constitution - so if you were hit for 30 and you had Con 18 - you had to make DC16 save.
Failure was incapatitation, critical failure was dying.
Quote from: Wrath of God on March 30, 2022, 04:07:20 PM
QuoteI would much rather have 0 HP be that "Oh shit!" break away point, where you're too grievously injured to keep fighting (along with steep penalties for everything) and better try to run away. Then treat actual deal as a "Death Save" you have to make the moment you reach 0 or less HP, plus every time you take more damage from that point. That way you're still creating most of the desired effect without adding the complexity and bookkeeping of shifting cumulative penalties, or the death spiral factor the moment you get hit. Being at "0 HP" is also a more clear and obvious indicator that the game expects you to run away by that point, than to make it cumulative penalties and letting you figure it out once you're dead or spiraling down that path while surrounded by enemies.
But TBH point of epic fighting is well being bloodied. You were sort of annoyed the game is basically flowing between super-healthy and dead, now you opt for super-healthy and maybe-dead-but-anyway-ineffective. Give me greviously wounded dying warriors ripping throats of their enemies with last breath, dammit ;) (TBH taking 0 as moment when you take penalties seems as arbitrary as adding penalties every dunno 20hp or smth.)
I'm not sure how what I proposed in that post prevents you from having the grievously injured warrior ripping someone's throat with their last breath. You could literally do that instead of running away, then probably get killed in the process. The difference is that what I proposed takes less work or bookkeeping and is less complicated than breaking your HP total down into multiple health brackets (which was the point of my post), and keeping track variable penalties depending how wounded you are, which additionally turns the whole thing into a death spiral, since each wound level diminishes your ability to avoid more wounds. In what I proposed that only happens once you're at 0 HP, which traditionally means death, but here I'm giving one last chance to run away (or die trying to reap someone's throat).
And while you could say that 0 is technically an arbitrary number, I disagree that it's AS arbitrary as taking cumulative penalties every 20 HP or whatever, cuz 1) those two things aren't even the same thing and one is more complicated than the other (which, again, was the point of post), 2) the second one creates death spirals (another point of my post), and 3) the number "0" represents the absence of something (in this case HP), which is a less arbitrary point to represent the "you're out of health—RUN!" danger zone than any number higher than 0.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 30, 2022, 07:21:39 PM
Quote from: Wrath of God on March 30, 2022, 04:07:20 PM
QuoteI would much rather have 0 HP be that "Oh shit!" break away point, where you're too grievously injured to keep fighting (along with steep penalties for everything) and better try to run away. Then treat actual deal as a "Death Save" you have to make the moment you reach 0 or less HP, plus every time you take more damage from that point. That way you're still creating most of the desired effect without adding the complexity and bookkeeping of shifting cumulative penalties, or the death spiral factor the moment you get hit. Being at "0 HP" is also a more clear and obvious indicator that the game expects you to run away by that point, than to make it cumulative penalties and letting you figure it out once you're dead or spiraling down that path while surrounded by enemies.
But TBH point of epic fighting is well being bloodied. You were sort of annoyed the game is basically flowing between super-healthy and dead, now you opt for super-healthy and maybe-dead-but-anyway-ineffective. Give me greviously wounded dying warriors ripping throats of their enemies with last breath, dammit ;) (TBH taking 0 as moment when you take penalties seems as arbitrary as adding penalties every dunno 20hp or smth.)
I'm not sure how what I proposed in that post prevents you from having the grievously injured warrior ripping someone's throat with their last breath. You could literally do that instead of running away, then probably get killed in the process. The difference is that what I proposed takes less work or bookkeeping and is less complicated than breaking your HP total down into multiple health brackets (which was the point of my post), and keeping track variable penalties depending how wounded you are, which additionally turns the whole thing into a death spiral, since each wound level diminishes your ability to avoid more wounds. In what I proposed that only happens once you're at 0 HP, which traditionally means death, but here I'm giving one last chance to run away (or die trying to reap someone's throat).
And while you could say that 0 is technically an arbitrary number, I disagree that it's AS arbitrary as taking cumulative penalties every 20 HP or whatever, cuz 1) those two things aren't even the same thing and one is more complicated than the other (which, again, was the point of post), 2) the second one creates death spirals (another point of my post), and 3) the number "0" represents the absence of something (in this case HP), which is a less arbitrary point to represent the "you're out of health—RUN!" danger zone than any number higher than 0.
One way that 0hp works better as a "fall over" point than as a "time to run" point is that it lets each PC decide their "point to run" based on their personal risk tolerance (though the system of recovery will matter; the threshold for someone running is different if they come back after every fight vs. everything in one day vs. a few points a day).
One thing I think 4E did well was its Bloodied value. Fluff-wise it was the first point in a combat where someone actually took a bit of physical damage... first blood in a duel for example. Mechanically it did nothing itself; though it did act as a trigger for some abilities; but it was mostly useful as a way to judge how an encounter was going because DM's were supposed to announce when a creature was bloodied.
If you were bloodied (down to half hit points) and the monster you were fighting wasn't... then you knew things were dicey. By contrast, if the monster has been bloodied and you've not yet reached that point yourself then you've got decent odds of winning the fight.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 30, 2022, 10:58:51 AM
In my experience running a realistic system, the problem comes down to disabling injuries, which can derail a scenario should a hero sustain a broken leg or arm.
Eh. It seems like you're just reiterating what systems with disabling injuries do. The big problem I see in realistic systems, particularly how they relate to my comment that you quoted, goes back to the realism is a foolish aim when you're dealing with fantasy. And I think a lot of people take that the wrong way. They take that as a green light that everything goes. Or that there will be no attempt at all for logic, consistency, or sufficient level of believably to suspend disbelief. And I think that misses the point. It's more like, how specific can you be about injuries in a systematic way that will also be applicable to something like an otyugh, a golem, or a slime?
Think of one of the "realistic systems" you have experience with. Now consider my example of Rasputin and ask yourself, is it possible within this system to have a human that is so tough that he'd be able to walk away, without disability, from a wound that would have killed an ordinary man, as a regular thing?
If no, then I have to ask, if this system can't even handle an rare and extraordinary but ultimately human individual, what chance does it have as being able to handle the pantheon of monsters I might expect to find in a fantasy RPG?
If yes, then you have the exact dilemma I was citing. It can arise regardless of the type of system you're using. People are going to disagree on whether it's possible for Rasputin to be so tough. Those who don't think it's possible will believe your system is flaws for allowing it. So cliches about how they differ don't provide answers to anything. The nature of the problem is not tied to any particular type of system.
QuoteHit point systems don't indicate *what actually happened* to an injured character, so it's hard to visualize, which contravenes the games' promise of looking explicitly like a movie. What does it mean to drop from 20 hit points down to 17?, for example. Some kind of hard-to-visualize huffing and puffing, which again isn't described. I'd say dealing with that fuzziness requires just as good a GM as running a realistic system does.
Well, like everyone else, I've been talking about hit point systems this entire thread. Only I'm careful to speak on specific systems. And what you're saying is not applicable to any of the systems I discuss. Let alone being generally true of hit point systems.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 30, 2022, 12:15:43 PM
Technically yes, at least in the way you see in forum discussions. But I've heard casual players with little experience with RPGs make off hand remarks a bunch of times about how silly HP are in certain circumstances. The difference they don't take it as seriously and don't care as much about the mechanics or the implications of them as more serious, system-oriented players. But even if they don't care, you can still see it in the expressions in their faces, and sometimes even their comments, when mechanics (not just HP, but other stuff as well) get in the way of what makes sense in any given situation. It's that feeling of disappointment when having to ignore verisimilitude, narrative flow and things that sound like they should be able to do if the rules did not state otherwise, in favor of what the rules say.
I play almost exclusively with casual gamers, and I've never seen it. Then again, under normal circumstances, I also don't encounter mechanics getting in the way of what makes sense in a situation. When I have seen examples of this, it's always one of two things. One is, someone at the table is hopped up on all this nonsense that nerds entertain for the sake of having nerdy arguments.
The other is not having a clear vision of what it is they're trying to do. Like, let's have everyone play 15th level characters but then bitch about the characters being so much tougher than anyone we've ever met that the experience is no longer relatable. People who do high level gaming with the understanding that they're doing high level gaming have no problem with any of this. And understanding high level gaming is high level gaming is not exactly a proposition that takes any kind of genius to understand. It takes more effort to not get it.
QuoteI'm not sure how what I proposed in that post prevents you from having the grievously injured warrior ripping someone's throat with their last breath. You could literally do that instead of running away, then probably get killed in the process. The difference is that what I proposed takes less work or bookkeeping and is less complicated than breaking your HP total down into multiple health brackets (which was the point of my post), and keeping track variable penalties depending how wounded you are, which additionally turns the whole thing into a death spiral, since each wound level diminishes your ability to avoid more wounds. In what I proposed that only happens once you're at 0 HP, which traditionally means death, but here I'm giving one last chance to run away (or die trying to reap someone's throat).
I see. I think I prefer more grit. Death spiral does not disturb me - because generally it's imposed both on heroes and villains usually. So yeah bloodied hero is more clumsy, but so is bloodied Doctor Wickedness.
I think I liked system used in Zweihander of all things. IIRC there was no HP but wound threshold determined by your Brawn score.
If damage was less than brown it was minor nuissance, but each multiplication of Brawn score were estabilishing worse conditions - I think like 6 or 7 till you get SLAIN! status.
And you roll for specific wounds with specific conditions so you could get bleeding wound that would kill you unatended but also was relatively slow and you could fought for another few minutes with mortal wound with lil hindrace, because blood loss was gradual. Which I think is kinda both cinematic (famous - pull your coat to show bloodied spot on shirt movie cliche) and realistic - because various mortal wounds can in fact leave you operational for long time.
Mortal wounds that make some bleeding in your intestines. Sure you gonna die from nasty sepsa. In 4 days. And for next 2 you can still fight as healthy.
QuoteThink of one of the "realistic systems" you have experience with. Now consider my example of Rasputin and ask yourself, is it possible within this system to have a human that is so tough that he'd be able to walk away, without disability, from a wound that would have killed an ordinary man, as a regular thing?
I think solution is different damage thresholds. The same numeric value on opponent attack can cause different effect.
Decapitation is gonna kill anyone. It's harder to decapitate someone with thick muscle Rasputiney neck.
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 31, 2022, 01:57:15 AM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 30, 2022, 10:58:51 AM
In my experience running a realistic system, the problem comes down to disabling injuries, which can derail a scenario should a hero sustain a broken leg or arm.
Eh. It seems like you're just reiterating what systems with disabling injuries do. The big problem I see in realistic systems, particularly how they relate to my comment that you quoted, goes back to the realism is a foolish aim when you're dealing with fantasy. And I think a lot of people take that the wrong way. They take that as a green light that everything goes. Or that there will be no attempt at all for logic, consistency, or sufficient level of believably to suspend disbelief. And I think that misses the point. It's more like, how specific can you be about injuries in a systematic way that will also be applicable to something like an otyugh, a golem, or a slime?
Think of one of the "realistic systems" you have experience with. Now consider my example of Rasputin and ask yourself, is it possible within this system to have a human that is so tough that he'd be able to walk away, without disability, from a wound that would have killed an ordinary man, as a regular thing?
If no, then I have to ask, if this system can't even handle an rare and extraordinary but ultimately human individual, what chance does it have as being able to handle the pantheon of monsters I might expect to find in a fantasy RPG?
If yes, then you have the exact dilemma I was citing. It can arise regardless of the type of system you're using. People are going to disagree on whether it's possible for Rasputin to be so tough. Those who don't think it's possible will believe your system is flaws for allowing it. So cliches about how they differ don't provide answers to anything. The nature of the problem is not tied to any particular type of system.
I would say the Rasputin example is absurd. That's not the type of game I'm interested in, which is why I run a realistic system. I buffer it in certain ways, to avoid dramatically uninteresting results, but the idea that someone can "tough out" having his throat slit doesn't even simulate what happens in literature or movies. It takes away even the pretence of danger, and is on the order of high hit point characters swan diving off cliffs. Even Conan parries because his "meat" is inherently fragile. I can't cotton to games that disregard the fragility of man to such an extent. Conan might be so tough he might *continue to fight* after having his throat slit, but that doesn't change it from being a mortal wound to one he can shrug off. Soldiers have kept running after their heads have been shot off, after all, and a sufficiently tough individual might not even notice that he's taken a mortal wound until he's actually bled to death, but toughness as the capacity to continue fighting despite having sustained critical injuries differs from the fact *of* those critical injuries being critical. This is the genius of a system like Phoenix Command, which separates odds-of-dying from odds-of-losing-the-will-to-fight.
Slimes and similar monsters are special cases, where the usual hit-location and physical damage ratings don't seem to apply, and which I sometimes use hit points for, or describe what it takes to disassemble them, such as the cutting force needed to sever a carnivorous plant's tendrils, etc. I want to know exactly how the monster is taken apart, such as chopping at the golem's sigil or hewing away at its limbs. Otherwise, we can run into absurdities like a halfling successfully removing all of a dragon's "hit points." How exactly did the halfling do this? The magic of "high fantasy" I guess. Doesn't work for me.
QuoteQuoteHit point systems don't indicate *what actually happened* to an injured character, so it's hard to visualize, which contravenes the games' promise of looking explicitly like a movie. What does it mean to drop from 20 hit points down to 17?, for example. Some kind of hard-to-visualize huffing and puffing, which again isn't described. I'd say dealing with that fuzziness requires just as good a GM as running a realistic system does.
Well, like everyone else, I've been talking about hit point systems this entire thread. Only I'm careful to speak on specific systems. And what you're saying is not applicable to any of the systems I discuss. Let alone being generally true of hit point systems.
You referred to D&D. I'm referring to D&D or any system where a sufficiently tough character can shrug off mortal injuries as if by magic. To me, Phoenix Command's knockout value system is superior to hit points because it indicates when a character has simply had the fight knocked out of him. Ironically, high KV characters tend to die more often because they *don't* follow their instincts to retreat.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 05:29:31 PM
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 28, 2022, 11:57:16 AM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 11:25:39 AMEhhh, we played basic a little, but what kid can resist the lure of "advanced"? I'd love to return to my medow... as soon as I figure out what that is. And I don't think "munchkin" means what you think it does, either (I think you're looking for "grognard")...
No your a munchkin posing as a grognard.
I look forward to anyone who can show me how to "munchkin" AD&D...
Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 31, 2022, 01:57:15 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 30, 2022, 12:15:43 PM
Technically yes, at least in the way you see in forum discussions. But I've heard casual players with little experience with RPGs make off hand remarks a bunch of times about how silly HP are in certain circumstances. The difference they don't take it as seriously and don't care as much about the mechanics or the implications of them as more serious, system-oriented players. But even if they don't care, you can still see it in the expressions in their faces, and sometimes even their comments, when mechanics (not just HP, but other stuff as well) get in the way of what makes sense in any given situation. It's that feeling of disappointment when having to ignore verisimilitude, narrative flow and things that sound like they should be able to do if the rules did not state otherwise, in favor of what the rules say.
I play almost exclusively with casual gamers, and I've never seen it. Then again, under normal circumstances, I also don't encounter mechanics getting in the way of what makes sense in a situation. When I have seen examples of this, it's always one of two things. One is, someone at the table is hopped up on all this nonsense that nerds entertain for the sake of having nerdy arguments.
The other is not having a clear vision of what it is they're trying to do. Like, let's have everyone play 15th level characters but then bitch about the characters being so much tougher than anyone we've ever met that the experience is no longer relatable. People who do high level gaming with the understanding that they're doing high level gaming have no problem with any of this. And understanding high level gaming is high level gaming is not exactly a proposition that takes any kind of genius to understand. It takes more effort to not get it.
I'm talking about stuff like not being able to sneak around in earlier editions of D&D cuz you're not a Thief or a Ranger, or not being able to let an arrow off at the start of a fight from a readied bow because "initiative". Stuff like that are just pure rules conventions that are jarring to people not used to thinking in terms of game "logic" because you totally could at least try to do them in real life (even if you're not good at them), but in the game you can't (unless the GM makes a ruling and handwaves them away) because the rules say you need a special ability or something. Or you have to wait your "turn", like it's possible for a guy 30 feet away to close the gap and make a melee attack before a guy with an arrow in their bow can let that thing fly.
Every time stuff like that comes up with someone new to the game comments get made, cuz it runs counter to what they would be able to do in real life. I don't even bother with initiative anymore cuz it just gets in the way and you don't really need it to handle order of actions, if you just go by readiness (ranged attackers with fast loading weapons go first) and proximity (melee within reach go before those closing the gap), or even just GM fiat or player coordination (players decide who in the party goes next).
QuoteYou referred to D&D. I'm referring to D&D or any system where a sufficiently tough character can shrug off mortal injuries as if by magic.
I mean yes and now. Simply speaking lost of 17 abstract hp means something different for peasant, and for 14 lvl warrior.
Of course it works only so, so - like for instance when such warrior take dragon breath to his chest without moving around, then illusion is kinda shattered (that's why I despise evasion feats).
But as long as we talking about physical melee damage hp are fine.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 31, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
I would say the Rasputin example is absurd. That's not the type of game I'm interested in, which is why I run a realistic system.
And that's fine. That's my point. People can't agree on what's reasonable and what's absurd. You can't pin that on mechanics. You also can't claim one system is realistic and the other not on this basis alone. The disagreement on what is reasonable and what is absurd is precisely at issue.
AD&D 1E is not altogether unrealistic. You have to understand that the baseline is 0th level men, and that the one-minute melee rounds are sort of like playing on 5x speed. Real life missile fire rates would be 5 times what it is in AD&D. Real life weight of arrows are one-fifth of what is suggested by the 1E encumbrance system. Cost of arrows in 1E are about 5 times what they would have realistically been. Hit rates for missiles are higher than the statistics we have for medieval battles--consistent with what the realistic chance of at least one arrow out of 5 fired would hit. It's realistic but abstracted so that you can play on a timescale that would allow you to actually play out a large scale battle. Given Gary's background in wargaming and how well read he was on the subject matter, I highly doubt it's a coincidence that these ratios hold.
Leveled characters are extrapolated from that baseline. The idea is that ~4th level characters are heroes and ~8th level characters are superheroes. If you don't want to do superheroes, no one is making you do superheroes. The mission statement for 1E was to provide as much fun for as many people for as long a time as possible. It would not have been better served by limiting the range of play to gritty realism.
QuoteSlimes and similar monsters are special cases, where the usual hit-location and physical damage ratings don't seem to apply, and which I sometimes use hit points for,
Well, that's the point of hit points. That they're simple and broadly applicable to enable doing a whole wide range of things. It makes more sense to me that that be the rule and wounds be the exception, which is certainly how D&D handles it.
QuoteOtherwise, we can run into absurdities like a halfling successfully removing all of a dragon's "hit points." How exactly did the halfling do this?
Play it out until you figure it out and come back and let us know. A highly experienced halfling thief utilizing the backstab ability to hit a vital area of a sleeping dragon seems like it would be a promising start.
QuoteYou referred to D&D.
AD&D 1E specifically. Where an attack in ordinary combat that brings a character down from 20 down to 17 actually is a hit, just like the game calls it. The game system also tells us whether or not it's a mortal wound--usually, the system is telling us its not. But hey, if the attack is from something like a vorpal blade, then that could indeed be a mortal wound and one that will indeed kill the character as instructed by the game system. It also tells us whether or not the attack was debilitating. Usually not, but if the attack is from a ghoul or a carrion crawler or a sword of sharpness or a subdual attack, and a whole long list of other possibilities, then it might be. And the system tells us exactly when it is and isn't. So if you were in fact referring to this game, your comment was just incorrect.
QuoteI'm referring to D&D or any system where a sufficiently tough character can shrug off mortal injuries as if by magic.
The word "sufficiently" implies it satisfies the conditions. This will always the case in every system that's robust enough to allow you to stat that sort of thing. And I just don't give accolades for the things a system can't do.
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 31, 2022, 01:15:41 PM
Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 28, 2022, 05:29:31 PM
I look forward to anyone who can show me how to "munchkin" AD&D...
Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User
I have the stats for the whole party of PCs in my current (core 1E) campaign. One of the characters in the party actually is a Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User. And what I love about core 1E is there's a lot of thought given to the checks and balances. So while I can't say definitively that this character is actually the weakest party member, I find it hard to believe very many people would consider him the most powerful.
(Core 1E only allows this class combination for half-elfs, and this character is level capped given his attributes at C5/F6/MU6 in a party that otherwise ranges from 7th-10th level.)
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 31, 2022, 06:50:43 PM
I'm talking about stuff like not being able to sneak around in earlier editions of D&D cuz you're not a Thief or a Ranger, or not being able to let an arrow off at the start of a fight from a readied bow because "initiative". Stuff like that are just pure rules conventions that are jarring to people not used to thinking in terms of game "logic" because you totally could at least try to do them in real life (even if you're not good at them), but in the game you can't (unless the GM makes a ruling and handwaves them away) because the rules say you need a special ability or something. Or you have to wait your "turn", like it's possible for a guy 30 feet away to close the gap and make a melee attack before a guy with an arrow in their bow can let that thing fly.
I run core 1E BtB. I'm not sure if that's an early enough version for you. None of these things are even true for 1E.
Anyone can sneak around and do so successfully without a check. If you're unarmored or in leather armor and have soft-soled boots, you can generally move unheard as long as you stay more than 30 feet away from the subject unless the sentry has extraordinary hearing. If the sentry is specifically listening for you, then I give the sentry a check, but that's a base chance of 10% for one with normal hearing. And anyone can remain unseen simply by staying out of line of sight.
Regarding initiative, you cannot attack and close 30 feet in the same round at all. So the archer will certainly go first. It is possible to do a charge maneuver which will allow for an attack in the same round at the end of the movement. But to close 30 feet will take 2-3 segments (depending on exact movement rate), and so a readied arrow will still go first, though the archer probably will not be able to get both attacks in. Initiative at this initial encounter distance will be mainly for determine order of action for opposing archers.
Quote from: Wrath of God on March 31, 2022, 09:32:52 AM
I think solution is different damage thresholds. The same numeric value on opponent attack can cause different effect.
Decapitation is gonna kill anyone. It's harder to decapitate someone with thick muscle Rasputiney neck.
I was reminded of an example from Gary's Lejendary Adventure RPG which has a hit point system. Thicket Elfs and Grotto Elfs are especially fragile and can be knocked unconscious by ordinary attacks by weapons that deal shock harm. This is only a possibility if the elf's health is below a certain threshold (which is proportional to total Health). And it's also only possible if the attack does over a certain amount of harm. If both of these conditions are satisfied, the Elf gets a check against remaining health to remain conscious.
I find it interesting because, first of all, on this surface, this seems perfectly reasonable and intuitive. You'd expect the tougher/healthier individual elfs would be harder to KO. You would expect a more damaging attack to be more likely to KO the elf. And you'd expect the current condition of the elf to influence the chance for KO.
Second reason I think it's interesting is because there are three variables in play here. Proportion of total health, absolute harm, and absolute condition. But when people try to pin down the meaning of hit points, they strongly tend towards considering only one variable at a time.
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 31, 2022, 09:47:37 PM
Anyone can sneak around and do so successfully without a check. If you're unarmored or in leather armor and have soft-soled boots, you can generally move unheard as long as you stay more than 30 feet away from the subject unless the sentry has extraordinary hearing. If the sentry is specifically listening for you, then I give the sentry a check, but that's a base chance of 10% for one with normal hearing. And anyone can remain unseen simply by staying out of line of sight.
That still leaves out the possibility of moving pass someone closer than 30 feet or sneaking up to them. Which, unless I'm a Thief, Ranger or Monk IRL without realizing it, I can assure is a very doable thing I have done numerous times, even unintentionally.
QuoteRegarding initiative, you cannot attack and close 30 feet in the same round at all. So the archer will certainly go first. It is possible to do a charge maneuver which will allow for an attack in the same round at the end of the movement. But to close 30 feet will take 2-3 segments (depending on exact movement rate), and so a readied arrow will still go first, though the archer probably will not be able to get both attacks in. Initiative at this initial encounter distance will be mainly for determine order of action for opposing archers.
This is the first time I've ever heard that you can't move 30 feet and attack someone in D&D, unless you're wearing heavy armor or are a Dwarf or something. Though, most of my experience has been 2e and 3e.
In 2e humans (and similar sized) have movement rate of 12 and can move 120 feet in a one minute round, but may only move half that (60 feet) and still attack, which well within the 30 feet example I gave.
In 3e and later average movement speed is 30 feet per 6 second round or twice that (60 feet) in all out movement or charge. You may move up to your movement speed and still attack, but may only attack at twice your speed on a charge.
Neither of these editions use segments, so I'm not familiar with them, but none of that stuff you mentioned applies in them.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 31, 2022, 11:39:22 PM
That still leaves out the possibility of moving pass someone closer than 30 feet or sneaking up to them. Which, unless I'm a Thief, Ranger or Monk IRL without realizing it, I can assure is a very doable thing I have done numerous times, even unintentionally.
It doesn't leave it out entirely. Under "normal" dungeon conditions, it's possible to get as close as 10 feet. And there's no limit to what is possible with extenuating circumstances. There's just a lot less certainty to it. That said, there's a big but here. It cuts both ways. It makes no sense to give these players a fair chance at sneaking past someone but not give them a fair chance at hearing someone trying to sneak past them.
Anyone can claim it's possible, they've done it. It's also true that I've heard someone coming at more than 30 feet. But 30 feet is a reasonable basis for a threshold. Beyond that, we're no longer talking about a gap between common sense and game logic; this is no longer something that is common sense but rather it's something that's contended.
QuoteThis is the first time I've ever heard that you can't move 30 feet and attack someone in D&D, unless you're wearing heavy armor or are a Dwarf or something. Though, most of my experience has been 2e and 3e.
Within 10' is the limit for closing to striking distance as a freebie in 1E.
IIRC the "realistic" range at which someone can be a threat to someone with a readied range weapon is up to 21 feet or so. And the charge maneuver holds to that pretty well, allowing someone with a 12" move to close 24 feet in a segment, or someone with a 9" to close 18 feet (which is close enough assuming their weapon is at least 3' in length).
The way I often describe the 1E DMG is it's a collection of oddly specific rules. It's almost as if Gary was saying, "Here's something that we see come up during play. Here's a way of handling it that worked really well." It's more a book of rulings than it is a book of rules. But it's because it's exactly that--seeing what questions come out of actual play and finding answers that satisfy common sense--it actually does have a decent rule for anything that comes up. More importantly, it sets an example, that rules are meant to bend to what seems sensible. Not the other way around.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 31, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
I would say the Rasputin example is absurd. That's not the type of game I'm interested in, which is why I run a realistic system.
This made me laugh. You run a "realistic" system to avoid the sort of "unrealistic" examples that actually happen in real life. OK!
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 31, 2022, 09:47:37 PM
And that's fine. That's my point. People can't agree on what's reasonable and what's absurd. You can't pin that on mechanics. You also can't claim one system is realistic and the other not on this basis alone. The disagreement on what is reasonable and what is absurd is precisely at issue.
Yep.
Quote from: Zalman on April 01, 2022, 10:41:58 AM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 31, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
I would say the Rasputin example is absurd. That's not the type of game I'm interested in, which is why I run a realistic system.
This made me laugh. You run a "realistic" system to avoid the sort of "unrealistic" examples that actually happen in real life. OK!
Care to clarify? Who shrugs off a throat slitting?
Quote from: Lunamancer on March 31, 2022, 09:47:37 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 31, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
I would say the Rasputin example is absurd. That's not the type of game I'm interested in, which is why I run a realistic system.
And that's fine. That's my point. People can't agree on what's reasonable and what's absurd. You can't pin that on mechanics. You also can't claim one system is realistic and the other not on this basis alone. The disagreement on what is reasonable and what is absurd is precisely at issue.
AD&D 1E is not altogether unrealistic. You have to understand that the baseline is 0th level men, and that the one-minute melee rounds are sort of like playing on 5x speed. Real life missile fire rates would be 5 times what it is in AD&D. Real life weight of arrows are one-fifth of what is suggested by the 1E encumbrance system. Cost of arrows in 1E are about 5 times what they would have realistically been. Hit rates for missiles are higher than the statistics we have for medieval battles--consistent with what the realistic chance of at least one arrow out of 5 fired would hit. It's realistic but abstracted so that you can play on a timescale that would allow you to actually play out a large scale battle. Given Gary's background in wargaming and how well read he was on the subject matter, I highly doubt it's a coincidence that these ratios hold.
Leveled characters are extrapolated from that baseline. The idea is that ~4th level characters are heroes and ~8th level characters are superheroes. If you don't want to do superheroes, no one is making you do superheroes. The mission statement for 1E was to provide as much fun for as many people for as long a time as possible. It would not have been better served by limiting the range of play to gritty realism.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this; I see the sense in it, even if it's the type of game I decline to play.
QuoteQuoteOtherwise, we can run into absurdities like a halfling successfully removing all of a dragon's "hit points." How exactly did the halfling do this?
Play it out until you figure it out and come back and let us know. A highly experienced halfling thief utilizing the backstab ability to hit a vital area of a sleeping dragon seems like it would be a promising start.
You're presuming, fairly enough, that the DM is interpreting things realistically. That's different from having a halfling defeat a dragon without using special attacks, as if by hacking at its ankles.
QuoteQuoteYou referred to D&D.
AD&D 1E specifically. Where an attack in ordinary combat that brings a character down from 20 down to 17 actually is a hit, just like the game calls it. The game system also tells us whether or not it's a mortal wound--usually, the system is telling us its not. But hey, if the attack is from something like a vorpal blade, then that could indeed be a mortal wound and one that will indeed kill the character as instructed by the game system. It also tells us whether or not the attack was debilitating. Usually not, but if the attack is from a ghoul or a carrion crawler or a sword of sharpness or a subdual attack, and a whole long list of other possibilities, then it might be. And the system tells us exactly when it is and isn't. So if you were in fact referring to this game, your comment was just incorrect.
I'm not familiar with the special attacks you mention, so I stand corrected.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on April 01, 2022, 11:06:47 AM
Quote from: Zalman on April 01, 2022, 10:41:58 AM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 31, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
I would say the Rasputin example is absurd. That's not the type of game I'm interested in, which is why I run a realistic system.
This made me laugh. You run a "realistic" system to avoid the sort of "unrealistic" examples that actually happen in real life. OK!
Care to clarify? Who shrugs off a throat slitting?
Rasputin -- the person being discussed -- is literally a real life example of someone who "shrugged off" being shot is the chest, stabbed in the abdomen, and downing a 5x dose of poison. That's who.
Quote from: Zalman on April 02, 2022, 11:11:19 AM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on April 01, 2022, 11:06:47 AM
Quote from: Zalman on April 01, 2022, 10:41:58 AM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 31, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
I would say the Rasputin example is absurd. That's not the type of game I'm interested in, which is why I run a realistic system.
This made me laugh. You run a "realistic" system to avoid the sort of "unrealistic" examples that actually happen in real life. OK!
Care to clarify? Who shrugs off a throat slitting?
Rasputin -- the person being discussed -- is literally a real life example of someone who "shrugged off" being shot is the chest, stabbed in the abdomen, and downing a 5x dose of poison. That's who.
The stopping powers of bullets vary widely and their effects depend a lot on exactly where someone was hit. I recall a case where a 400 lb man was shot 12 times with a .22 pistol and lived to tell about it. The same goes for stab-wounds. You don't have to be particularly tough to survive being shot or stabbed. Poisons, I don't know. To sustain significant injuries and continue fighting requires mental toughness, but that has nothing to do with injury lethality. It doesn't mean Rasputin can have his carotids cut and keep on trucking.
Quote from: Zalman on April 02, 2022, 11:11:19 AM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on April 01, 2022, 11:06:47 AM
Quote from: Zalman on April 01, 2022, 10:41:58 AM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 31, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
I would say the Rasputin example is absurd. That's not the type of game I'm interested in, which is why I run a realistic system.
This made me laugh. You run a "realistic" system to avoid the sort of "unrealistic" examples that actually happen in real life. OK!
Care to clarify? Who shrugs off a throat slitting?
Rasputin -- the person being discussed -- is literally a real life example of someone who "shrugged off" being shot is the chest, stabbed in the abdomen, and downing a 5x dose of poison. That's who.
It's more logical to assume that the man's killers exaggerated his resilience to try and mythologize why he was killed (e.g. must have been involved with demonic entities) or boost their own legends (e.g. "The men who killed the unkillable Rasputin") than this story actually happened.
If you search Wikipedia there's a photo of Rasputin's body with a bullet wound to the head. Note that one should always assume information on Wikipedia is untrue, and this photograph could be anyone and we'd never know the difference. But it is a lot more logical to assume he got shot, died, and someone made up a story.
Well I mean Rasputin survived many assasination attempts. That doesn't mean he took a blade to the chin while fighting 20 orcs and kept kicking.
A bullet has actually a low % chance of killing a person with proper medical attention. Doesn't mean that person isn't on the ground clenched in pain.
I see hit points are out of fashion? Well, I agree they don't work too well as 'damage simulation', but then they were never meant to simulate actual bodily damage at all. What they simulate is that heroic 'near miss' leading to a dramatic thrust, slash or blow that finishes the character to a burst of music on screen. Gary Gygax had said that in print.
There are other ways of managing health but all of them are more complicated and none any better because they bog down players with book-keeping. Gygax chose to simplify things in an abstract way because it was easier, allowed more fun in the game, and was compatible with heroism we see in stories, film, and tv, where all too often characters serve a dramatic purpose rather than worrying about whether a guy pummelled for ten minutes could stand up, clench his jaw, and thoroughly defeat his opponent in ten seconds.