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? 


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).