I freaking Love this idea.
You may have a magic carpet, and you may cast fireballs; but you still have no more than 10HP, or 20HP, etc.
Everything in the game progresses, except for your mortality. Your character will eventually die. You might want to write up a will.
I believe that a Critical Hit from a Greatsword, should be a felling blow for any PC.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098008I freaking Love this idea.
You may have a magic carpet, and you may cast fireballs; but you still have no more than 10HP, or 20HP, etc.
Everything in the game progresses, except for your mortality. Your character will eventually die. You might want to write up a will.
In a point buy system if you want to keep it "realistic" this is the best way to go about it, you only need a table for different levels of game.
[table=width: 500]
[tr]
[td]Difficulty Levels & Target Numbers[/td] [/tr]
[tr]
[td]Description[/td][td]TN[/td] [td]Hit Points[/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Average/Easy[/td][td]5[/td] [td]10[/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Tricky[/td][td]10[/td] [td]15[/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Challenging[/td][td]15[/td] [td]15[/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Difficult[/td][td]20[/td] [td]20[/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Demanding[/td][td]25[/td] [td]20[/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Extreme[/td][td]30[/td] [td]25[/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Legendary[/td][td]35[/td] [td]30[/td][/tr]
[/table]
For instance
I like low HP, but I prefer an E6 approach. Doesn't this make the LFQW problem worse? You're taking away high HP from the fighter classes, which is one of their advantages over the casters. I'd expect everyone would go Codzilla with this.
Quote from: Aglondir;1098022I like low HP, but I prefer an E6 approach. Doesn't this make the LFQW problem worse? You're taking away high HP from the fighter classes, which is one of their advantages over the casters. I'd expect everyone would go Codzilla with this.
Pretty much. You'd need to scale up something else to replace the lost hit points or battles against high level opponents become a contest of who wins initiative and one-shots the other guy. If you want to play hit points as meat points you're going to need to also cap damage and scale defenses to match attack modifiers or the entire thing is going to grind to a crashing halt.
For example... Hit points are capped at 10. A fireball for 6d6 (save for half) will typically kill you even if you make your saving throw (21 damage if failed, 10 if you succeed).
Basically, if you want capped hit points (particularly at an extremely low level) you're going to have to essentially rebuild any D&D game to the point it's no longer D&D.
I'd recommend looking at Mutants & Masterminds or Tru20 as a starting point if you want characters who can potentially be dropped by a single hit regardless of level like the OP seems to be seeking.
Quote from: Chris24601;1098024Pretty much. You'd need to scale up something else to replace the lost hit points or battles against high level opponents become a contest of who wins initiative and one-shots the other guy. If you want to play hit points as meat points you're going to need to also cap damage and scale defenses to match attack modifiers or the entire thing is going to grind to a crashing halt.
For example... Hit points are capped at 10. A fireball for 6d6 (save for half) will typically kill you even if you make your saving throw (21 damage if failed, 10 if you succeed).
Basically, if you want capped hit points (particularly at an extremely low level) you're going to have to essentially rebuild any D&D game to the point it's no longer D&D.
I'd recommend looking at Mutants & Masterminds or Tru20 as a starting point if you want characters who can potentially be dropped by a single hit regardless of level like the OP seems to be seeking.
No, a Fireball would do perhaps 1d6 per caster level. I wouldn't require a caster to be 5th level, before casting the spell. A 1st level caster, "if" they learned the Fireball spell, would do the same damage as a shortbow.
Of course, damage would increase with level for all classes. A martial character would never run out of, I swing with the sword; but a spellcaster would quickly run out of, I cast fireball.
Regarding hit points, one of the best iterations of D20 and dangerous was I thought the atlantean edition of Mongoose's Conan. There was a massive damage threshold that became harder and harder to make according to the amount of damage dealt, and given the sort of damage some of the warriors could lay down on a crit hit, it made combat pretty deadly, and crits could and did end fights in one shot.
Quote from: Aglondir;1098022I like low HP, but I prefer an E6 approach. Doesn't this make the LFQW problem worse? You're taking away high HP from the fighter classes, which is one of their advantages over the casters. I'd expect everyone would go Codzilla with this.
Not if you also include exhaustion points, the caster grows weaker with each spell cast.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098009I believe that a Critical Hit from a Greatsword, should be a felling blow for any PC.
Then you are a moron who has never stepped out into the real world? People have survived far worse.
And again we come back to this persistant absolute brain numbingly moron notion that , "boo hoo hoo! dem meal ol HP is all meats and it makes no sense characters live!"
For fucks sake people take out several loans and buy a clue.
Stormbringer (or Magic World) is what you want when you're hankering for Low HP and High Skills / High Magic.
The problem of "one bad roll kills you" is that roll will come up. The GM just rolls lots more dice than a PC.
But if you're crew is cool with that, rock on. I can't recommend Stormbringer enough (the early editions).
Quote from: Omega;1098047Then you are a moron who has never stepped out into the real world? People have survived far worse.
And again we come back to this persistant absolute brain numbingly moron notion that , "boo hoo hoo! dem meal ol HP is all meats and it makes no sense characters live!"
For fucks sake people take out several loans and buy a clue.
Hey, Piss On You. Twice Even.
A Greatsword is an embodiment of something well beyond a Katana, or Longsword. A Greatsword isn't just "a" sword; it's "the" sword. And I said a Critical Hit. Have a nice day.
You could rule that your HP never increases beyond CONx2.
In BRP, your HP is (CON + SIZ)/2. So even if your Dodge and Parry are 90%, there's that terrible moment when you roll like crap and you take 12 points of damage that cleaves your brain.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098025No, a Fireball would do 1d6 per caster level. I wouldn't require a caster to be 5th level, before casting the spell. A 1st level caster, "if" they learned the Fireball spell, would do the same damage as a shortbow.
Of course, damage would increase with level for all classes. A martial character would never run out of, I swing with the sword; but a spellcaster would quickly run out of, I cast fireball.
Regardless, a 6th level caster auto-kills the entire party with one fireball spell if the hp cap is 10 and there are no other mitigating rules. Just using normal D&D rules with a 10 hp cap, but otherwise unchanged is just about the dumbest rule I've heard in a long time. It's like the "Pile of dead bards" from The Gamers 2, only you're trying to take that approach to PC mortality seriously.
Quote from: Omega;1098047And again we come back to this persistant absolute brain numbingly moron notion that , "boo hoo hoo! dem meal ol HP is all meats and it makes no sense characters live!"
The OPs arguments are the poster child for why I had to call the resource spent to avoid lethal damage in my system Edge instead of hit points... because meat heads (pun intended) like him can't ever see hit points as anything other than meat and I got sick and tired of having to fight the meat head presumptions. I rewrote my falling rules so that they function consistently with spending Edge points to turn lethal situations into near misses just so there'd be no confusion that only the last Edge point is anything more than a bruise or trivial flesh wound.
There's just so much baggage attached to certain terms that you're almost better off using different terms instead of trying to fix people's perceptions of the original term. Hit points is definitely one of those terms.
There is no requirement that PCs live on until 20th level, and build their own Nirvana. Why do modern gamers become so attached to their imaginary characters?
DCC has got it right. The DM / GM shouldn't feel obligated to help the PC's win every battle. Let them cry about it. Haha!!!
Quote from: Razor 007;1098113There is no requirement that PCs live on until 20th level, and build their own Nirvana. Why do modern gamers become so attached to their imaginary characters?
DCC has got it right. The DM / GM shouldn't feel obligated to help the PC's win every battle. Let them cry about it. Haha!!!
There's no requirement your game ever has to have players either or that we should be obliged to call a dumb idea brilliant.
The best part is that, that by not playing your game, we're actually winning the game... our characters aren't doing stupid things in a system designed to kill them... they've decided to remain a blacksmith's apprentice and eventually become a journeyman and start their own shop where they can earn a living without ever having to risk death due to hp-loss.
You wanted feedback. Now you're complaining because it wasn't what you wanted to hear.
Go back to the drawing board and try again.
Quote from: Chris24601;1098118There's no requirement your game ever has to have players either or that we should be obliged to call a dumb idea brilliant.
The best part is that, that by not playing your game, we're actually winning the game... our characters aren't doing stupid things in a system designed to kill them... they've decided to remain a blacksmith's apprentice and eventually become a journeyman and start their own shop where they can earn a living without ever having to risk death due to hp-loss.
You wanted feedback. Now you're complaining because it wasn't what you wanted to hear.
Go back to the drawing board and try again.
Every setting needs a good blacksmith. The PCs will need your goods, if they hope to survive down in the dungeon. There's treasure down there; so if / when the first PCs bite the dust, a fresh batch of new PCs will be sure to follow. Treasure is a strong motivator.
The PCs will likely never live to see 5th or 6th level; but if they do, they will have earned it with their blood, sweat, and tears. Make the game fun and exciting and meaningful from the very first session. Just go wide open throttle the whole time.
"Hey, don't blame the DM. You guys were at half hit points; and instead of resting, you chose to keep on kicking down doors in the dungeon. What did you think was going to happen?"
Etc.
I'm glad you love the idea. That said, you will struggle to find players who do.
If you think that a greatsword should be a threat at any level of play, I think that's a potentially defensible choice, but I don't think that every character should be in danger from every other character.
When Inigo Montoya confronts the six-fingered man as a boy, he has a sword, but he's not threat. Certainly if he had run the Count through, it would have been deadly. But he didn't have the SKILL to land a deadly blow. Instead, he got 'taught a lesson' because the six-fingered man was so secure from what this child could do that he could afford to taunt him and turn his back.
If PCs increase in HP, and their attacks ALSO increase in damage, an equal character opponent might always be a threat, especially with a critical hit. But there are a lot of reasons why that might not be cool.
In our homebrew, we specifically have a mix of 'action hero hit points' and 'real hit points'. Most attacks come off the top, and only if you take a lot of damage are you actually in trouble (wounded). But critical hits are applied directly to wounds (and give you the wounded penalty).
A 5th level character might have 55 of the hit points that represent getting worn out, near misses, etc and they'd only have 23 Wound Points. A Great Sword that deals 2d6+10 (reasonable the way we do it) is just outside of a one-shot threat, but not by much.
For those curious about the math, the non-physical hit points are based on a HD size (ie 8) plus Endurance (ie 3) for 11 HP/level in this example. WP gets Endurance only plus a 1 time bonus. Ie, a 1st level character has 11 Wound Points and 11 Hit Points; a 2nd level character is 14 and 22.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098009I believe that a Critical Hit from a Greatsword, should be a felling blow for any PC.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51fNIb84ESL._SX384_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
Are you trying to cap "Casters"?
Bad example but, what do I know?
Quote from: Razor 007;1098009I believe that a Critical Hit from a Greatsword, should be a felling blow for any PC.
That's a valid idea, but D20 isn't the right system for it. I assumed your idea was a D20 mod, since you were talking about levels and fireballs? Or are you thinking of creating a homebrew system from the ground up? That might work.
Quote from: Theory of Games;1098149Are you trying to cap "Casters"?
Bad example but, what do I know?
Just trying to keep all PC characters mortal. And casters would cast various spells, with appropriate damage or effect for their caster level. I only want to cap HP. I also want to retain a medieval flavor.
Quote from: Aglondir;1098152That's a valid idea, but D20 isn't the right system for it. I assumed your idea was a D20 mod, since you were talking about levels and fireballs? Or are you thinking of creating a homebrew system from the ground up? That might work.
I sometimes use d20 roll high, sometimes d20 roll under, and sometimes 2d6. I'm open minded about dice mechanics. Ok
I've been pushing along, changing mechanics a little here and there along the way for a few years now; trying to nail down "the one true way" for me, and it is always just past my grasp.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098167I've been pushing along, changing mechanics a little here and there along the way for a few years now; trying to nail down "the one true way" for me, and it is always just past my grasp.
The next step is often to just go back to playing by the book, whether in a familiar system (it didn't really need to be changed after all) or an entirely new one (because the old one was just never going to give you what you were looking for). I have to say that some of the most frustrating games I ever encountered were the ones that I wanted to tweak to perfection, so I've learned to keep modifications to a minimum and just play the fucking things (or not if they really do suck).
I am willing to embrace the concept that the average person has 10's. I also like the idea of +2, +1, +1, +0, +0, and -1; arrange to taste.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098008I freaking Love this idea.
You may have a magic carpet, and you may cast fireballs; but you still have no more than 10HP, or 20HP, etc.
Everything in the game progresses, except for your mortality. Your character will eventually die. You might want to write up a will.
RuneQuest does this quite nicely. The more magic you have, the harder it is to die, but the chance is always there.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098008You may have a magic carpet, and you may cast fireballs; but you still have no more than 10HP, or 20HP, etc.
Quite a few games have this concept built into the default.
In GURPS, for example, HP are specifically 'meat points' and so it is rare for anyone to significantly increase their HP as they become more experienced. Survivability comes through increasing defensive skills, equipment and other precautions.
I'd rather cap spells, while allowing HP and skills to increase. The amount of magical firepower characters get in 5e is insane, but limit that resource, while still allowing the characters to fight in other ways, would open up a few more ways to play.
Quote from: Chris24601;1098054Regardless, a 6th level caster auto-kills the entire party with one fireball spell if the hp cap is 10 and there are no other mitigating rules. Just using normal D&D rules with a 10 hp cap, but otherwise unchanged is just about the dumbest rule I've heard in a long time. It's like the "Pile of dead bards" from The Gamers 2, only you're trying to take that approach to PC mortality seriously.
The OPs arguments are the poster child for why I had to call the resource spent to avoid lethal damage in my system Edge instead of hit points... because meat heads (pun intended) like him can't ever see hit points as anything other than meat and I got sick and tired of having to fight the meat head presumptions. I rewrote my falling rules so that they function consistently with spending Edge points to turn lethal situations into near misses just so there'd be no confusion that only the last Edge point is anything more than a bruise or trivial flesh wound.
There's just so much baggage attached to certain terms that you're almost better off using different terms instead of trying to fix people's perceptions of the original term. Hit points is definitely one of those terms.
Being able to see HP as something other than meat doesn't mean that you have to have them be something other than meat in a game you design. There are ways to avoid dying that don't have to HP. Not being hit is good. Armor reducing damage is good. Every game does not have to be a D&D clone.
This is kind of a weird thread. Implementing the OPs idea in a class-based, level-based system sounds unworkable or would at least require so much work as to not be worth the effort involved. After all, hit points that don't increase have already been implemented many times in many systems starting with Traveller in 1977 and Runequest in 1978. Why not switch to one of those systems. Honestly it seems like it would be easier to stick D&D spells on top of Traveller or some version of BRP than it would be to overhaul D&D.
Quote from: Bren;1098285This is kind of a weird thread. Implementing the OPs idea in a class-based, level-based system sounds unworkable or would at least require so much work as to not be worth the effort involved. After all, hit points that don't increase have already been implemented many times in many systems starting with Traveller in 1977 and Runequest in 1978. Why not switch to one of those systems. Honestly it seems like it would be easier to stick D&D spells on top of Traveller or some version of BRP than it would be to overhaul D&D.
Yes. Or alternately, if one really wanted to tinker, go back and use GURPS, Hero System, or similar as the base.
There is no "Just cap the hit points in D&D, and it will work solution." There are going to be several other things that will need to change, and most of them are inter-related.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1098305Yes. Or alternately, if one really wanted to tinker, go back and use GURPS, Hero System, or similar as the base.
Yes indeed.
And I just realized that Barbarians of Lemuria has fixed hit points and already has levels of ability for careers including magic using careers. One could probably add some intermediate career steps and then bolt on some version of D&D Magic to BoL.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1098279Being able to see HP as something other than meat doesn't mean that you have to have them be something other than meat in a game you design. There are ways to avoid dying that don't have to HP. Not being hit is good. Armor reducing damage is good. Every game does not have to be a D&D clone.
A lot of those have some unintended consequences though;
"Not being hit": Scaling defense scores tend to result in mooks becoming a non-threat much sooner than static defenses and scaling hit points do. If the PC has five times the hit points; five times the mooks can still be a threat. If the mooks instead can only hit on a natural 20, you need a lot more of them and the combat itself gets a lot swingier as singular lucky die rolls matter more than actual skill or ability. A particularly egregious example of this is 4E, where the presumption of +1 to hit and defenses per level across a 30 level range (in addition to scaling damage and hit points) led to most opponents being non-threats once the party was 4 or more levels above them (to be fair to it though; they did actually somewhat acknowledge the fact that low level mooks were non-threats in universe... in one of the epic level modules a literal sea of thousands of ghouls was part of a battle... as difficult terrain for the PCs).
I've further found that scaling up "Edge" and damage dealt better reflects the flow of combat where endurance is a factor (i.e. it doesn't work for modern/sci-fi vehicular combat very well, but its great for personal scale melee combat). Once you hit a basic level of competence you can direct a weapon accurately enough that the defender has to expend some effort (Edge/hit points) to avoid it landing; how much effort depends on the difference in skill between the two (the larger Edge/hit point pool reflects their ability to be more efficient with their movements and providing fewer openings that require a lot of effort to counter in addition to increased stamina from training; larger damage values reflects a better ability to force mistakes and wear down the opponent).
It also means that, just like in real life, even massive skill can't counter sheer weight of numbers. Ten guys coming at you is going to tire you out quickly (i.e. you're going to burn a lot of Edge/hit points) until you make a mistake and drop... whereas with scaling defenses (if you don't also have a system of Endurance... in which case you're just measuring non-physical hit points via another score) its just a matter of the luck of repeated dice rolls eventually winning out.
Armor reducing damage: I explored this, but what this ultimately does is add another step to each combat turn, which slows things down a lot in aggregate without adding a meaningful amount of realism to a fight vs. "you were able to use your armor to minimize the hit with no effort" or "you had to spend Edge/hit points to minimize the hit." There's also the issue of scaling a damage reduction system so that it stops enough damage to be meaningful, but not so much that those in heavy armor become entirely invulnerable (see 3.0e DR/energy resistance) or so little that even wearing it is a waste of effort (see 3.5e Unearthed Arcana rules on "armor as DR"). You also realistically need a means of bypassing the DR, because even full plate had points you could exploit (which is generally why in D&D it has a high AC; it is very hard to bypass it in a way that requires much effort by the wearer to defend against it).
In short, there are plenty of ways to model combat in a pen & paper game with accuracy scaling inversely to speed of resolution/complexity. From my experience though, D&D is in the sweet spot for most players in terms of the accuracy vs. speed/complexity of resolution curve. In terms of fantasy, I generally find that scaling non-physical hit points/damage with almost flat hit/defense scores is a lot better for modeling person-based combat without being overly complex.
Quote from: Chris24601;1098324A lot of those have some unintended consequences though;
"Not being hit": ...
Armor reducing damage: ...
GURPS addresses both those topics in detail, suffice to say that numbers (of combatants) tell in the game, and actually the challenge in play becomes how to avoid your group of mooks pounding the 'heroes' into chutney. There are tactical options, advantages to be bought and the application of skill that all help both address resisting large numbers of foes and overcoming heavily armoured / highly skilled opponents.
QuoteIn short, there are plenty of ways to model combat in a pen & paper game with accuracy scaling inversely to speed of resolution/complexity. From my experience though, D&D is in the sweet spot for most players in terms of the accuracy vs. speed/complexity of resolution curve. In terms of fantasy, I generally find that scaling non-physical hit points/damage with almost flat hit/defense scores is a lot better for modeling person-based combat without being overly complex.
My experience of running GURPS Dungeon Fantasy for a group of D&D experts / GURPS noobs is that this can be picked up pretty quickly and becomes fast in play, too. Once the players start to grasp the options available to them it's actually pretty quick resolution. And a high-skill character against a low-skill opponent can be quite a brutal, one-sided affair.
The bigger point here, as several people have suggested, is that the adaptions needed to move to a game where there are reasonable expectations of survivability in a classic adventuring context without ever increasing HP are not small, so you are better off starting from a game that already has these ideas baked in.
Let's say that your PC is suffering 1d6 of ongoing fire damage, per round; until rolling a successful save.
If your PC has 100hp, this is merely a small challenge.
If your PC has 12hp, this is a dire threat.
Quote from: Chris24601;1098324"Not being hit": Scaling defense scores tend to result in mooks becoming a non-threat much sooner than static defenses and scaling hit points do. If the PC has five times the hit points; five times the mooks can still be a threat. If the mooks instead can only hit on a natural 20, you need a lot more of them and the combat itself gets a lot swingier as singular lucky die rolls matter more than actual skill or ability.
I think your ideas here are muddled.
It doesn't take more mooks. You just need better math skills. :p
Example: Let's suppose a hero hits another hero 25% of the time and that a mook hits a hero 5% of the time. Now 5 mooks against 1 hero have the same expected value to hit as does one hero, ergo 5 mooks are dangerous and you don't need more of them to be a threat.
In the 70s and 80s Runequest was famous (or infamous) for the deadliness of many against one combats in the system.
Low hit points will make single die rolls matter more...just like including critical hits in D&D makes single die rolls matter more.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098334Let's say that your PC is suffering 1d6 of ongoing fire damage, per round; until rolling a successful save.
If your PC has 100hp, this is merely a small challenge.
If your PC has 12hp, this is a dire threat.
Yes. And?
Quote from: Razor 007;1098334Let's say that your PC is suffering 1d6 of ongoing fire damage, per round; until rolling a successful save.
If your PC has 100hp, this is merely a small challenge.
If your PC has 12hp, this is a dire threat.
Some types of damage do scale with the threat. In 3.x, suffocation (drowning) is just as much of a danger if you are 1st level or 15th level (ie, regardless of your hit point total).
Quote from: Bren;1098350Yes. And?
If your PC being on fire isn't a dire threat, then your PC has already become a demi-god. I want to see more mortality in the game, than that.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098356If your PC being on fire isn't a dire threat, then your PC has already become a demi-god. I want to see more mortality in the game, than that.
Then I'd suggest that you implement one of the following;
- Pick one of the many, many systems folks here have mentioned that don't inflate hit points.
- Set things like drowning, fire, starvation, and such to damage = level x 1d6 instead of simply 1d6.
I think 1/2 level x 1d6 is better than 1xlevel x 1d6 so that MUs aren't borked and higher level characters have a better chance than 0 level characters to survive fires and drowning while still keeping such things as a significant threat to all character- Divide hit points into Body and Fatigue. Fire, drowning, poison, and critical hits do damage to body. Sword swings and such do damage first to fatigue .
This solution is used by multiple systems. Chivalry & Sorcery came up with it in 1977. Other people considered and provided solutions to the problem that concerns you in the first 3-5 years of the hobby.[/LIST]
Quote from: dbm;1098332My experience of running GURPS Dungeon Fantasy for a group of D&D experts / GURPS noobs is that this can be picked up pretty quickly and becomes fast in play, too. Once the players start to grasp the options available to them it's actually pretty quick resolution. And a high-skill character against a low-skill opponent can be quite a brutal, one-sided affair.
My experience running GURPS 3E and Fantasy Hero (mostly 4E, but some of 1E) is that what you say is true of some styles of fights but not others. In particular, the more detailed the combat the less well the system will hold up as you increase the number of players (and also opponents, though that is secondary). The exact threshold will vary with every group, but there comes a point at which the extra resolution--even if well learned--will cause people to tune out. The same thing will happen in a system like D&D as well, though the threshold occurs so much later, that most groups will never get sufficient numbers of players to hit it. (However, this is one way in which D&D 3E and its derivatives, as well as 4E to some extent, are closer to GURPS and Hero than they are to other versions of D&D.)
Every system (and every group) scales a little differently as the fights get larger and more involved. Individual GM skill in managing the scaling counts for much, as well.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1098419My experience running GURPS 3E and Fantasy Hero (mostly 4E, but some of 1E) is that what you say is true of some styles of fights but not others. In particular, the more detailed the combat the less well the system will hold up as you increase the number of players (and also opponents, though that is secondary).
Sure. We are playing six round the table, including me as GM. The trick, in my experience, is to keep things moving quite quickly in real-time as the game runs on 1 second rounds. That takes adjustment, as people are typically used to rounds of 5-10 seconds game-time or even longer.
In the beginning, as the GM I try to keep options 'under the cover' until the players want them. So, you have to choose a manoeuvre each round, and positioning is important so everyone needs to understand the basics, here. Called shots get brought in once a few rounds of combat have passed and people see that just hacking doesn't work very well. More involved options get brought in like deceptive attacks after a few rounds where the enemy keeps defending. It isn't a fully simulationist view of what the characters would do, but it helps ramp up the complexity and gets people learning.
QuoteThe exact threshold will vary with every group, but there comes a point at which the extra resolution--even if well learned--will cause people to tune out. The same thing will happen in a system like D&D as well, though the threshold occurs so much later, that most groups will never get sufficient numbers of players to hit it. (However, this is one way in which D&D 3E and its derivatives, as well as 4E to some extent, are closer to GURPS and Hero than they are to other versions of D&D.)
Absolutely. Again, it's about keeping pace up as the GM for me, irrespective of the system. I guess the bottom line is, more options, more thinking needed. But the mitigator, for GURPS at least, is that a lot of the complexity comes from providing rules for real-world tactics and gambits, so you can apply your knowledge of the real world or close analogs like cinema and books to help decide what you want to do. Only the GM needs to know these rules initially, and the other players will pick them up as they see them used by the GM and other PCs.
Quote from: Chris24601;1098324A lot of those have some unintended consequences though;
"Not being hit": Scaling defense scores tend to result in mooks becoming a non-threat much sooner than static defenses and scaling hit points do. If the PC has five times the hit points; five times the mooks can still be a threat. If the mooks instead can only hit on a natural 20, you need a lot more of them and the combat itself gets a lot swingier as singular lucky die rolls matter more than actual skill or ability. A particularly egregious example of this is 4E, where the presumption of +1 to hit and defenses per level across a 30 level range (in addition to scaling damage and hit points) led to most opponents being non-threats once the party was 4 or more levels above them (to be fair to it though; they did actually somewhat acknowledge the fact that low level mooks were non-threats in universe... in one of the epic level modules a literal sea of thousands of ghouls was part of a battle... as difficult terrain for the PCs).
I've further found that scaling up "Edge" and damage dealt better reflects the flow of combat where endurance is a factor (i.e. it doesn't work for modern/sci-fi vehicular combat very well, but its great for personal scale melee combat). Once you hit a basic level of competence you can direct a weapon accurately enough that the defender has to expend some effort (Edge/hit points) to avoid it landing; how much effort depends on the difference in skill between the two (the larger Edge/hit point pool reflects their ability to be more efficient with their movements and providing fewer openings that require a lot of effort to counter in addition to increased stamina from training; larger damage values reflects a better ability to force mistakes and wear down the opponent).
It also means that, just like in real life, even massive skill can't counter sheer weight of numbers. Ten guys coming at you is going to tire you out quickly (i.e. you're going to burn a lot of Edge/hit points) until you make a mistake and drop... whereas with scaling defenses (if you don't also have a system of Endurance... in which case you're just measuring non-physical hit points via another score) its just a matter of the luck of repeated dice rolls eventually winning out.
Armor reducing damage: I explored this, but what this ultimately does is add another step to each combat turn, which slows things down a lot in aggregate without adding a meaningful amount of realism to a fight vs. "you were able to use your armor to minimize the hit with no effort" or "you had to spend Edge/hit points to minimize the hit." There's also the issue of scaling a damage reduction system so that it stops enough damage to be meaningful, but not so much that those in heavy armor become entirely invulnerable (see 3.0e DR/energy resistance) or so little that even wearing it is a waste of effort (see 3.5e Unearthed Arcana rules on "armor as DR"). You also realistically need a means of bypassing the DR, because even full plate had points you could exploit (which is generally why in D&D it has a high AC; it is very hard to bypass it in a way that requires much effort by the wearer to defend against it).
In short, there are plenty of ways to model combat in a pen & paper game with accuracy scaling inversely to speed of resolution/complexity. From my experience though, D&D is in the sweet spot for most players in terms of the accuracy vs. speed/complexity of resolution curve. In terms of fantasy, I generally find that scaling non-physical hit points/damage with almost flat hit/defense scores is a lot better for modeling person-based combat without being overly complex.
I have been playing a game with combatants improving by becoming harder to hit (among other benefits) and not gaining hit points, with armor mitigating damage, not preventing being hit. I've been playing it since I switched form OD&D in the early eighties and there are lots of people playing it where I used to live (the New Haven area) and that game, Glory Road Roleplay, like GURPS and Runequest, manages to model combat differently, I don't say more realistically, without slowing the game down. I did not lose players when I switched and some other DMs became GMs.
You probably can't just bolt "hit points don't improve" onto D&D, I will concede, but HP are not the only way to do things.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1098508You probably can't just bolt "hit points don't improve" onto D&D, I will concede, but HP are not the only way to do things.
Never said it was.
What I did say is that D&Ds scaling hit points and slower scaling binary defenses (i.e. hit or miss vs. damage reduction) seems to be in the sweet spot of realism vs. complexity for casual gamers.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098356If your PC being on fire isn't a dire threat, then your PC has already become a demi-god. I want to see more mortality in the game, than that.
Then play using a system that makes it a dire threat.
One of the advantages of D&D is that, at higher levels, you are hard to kill.
One of the advantages of a game such as RQ is that at higher levels you can be killed as easily as a beginner.
It all depends on the type of game you like playing.
My character is a three-headed catfolk monkey ninja barbarian dual-class, with a Balrog's Whip, a Flaming Greatsword, and 20HP. His name is Bartholomew.
Just kidding.....
Quote from: Razor 007;1098356If your PC being on fire isn't a dire threat, then your PC has already become a demi-god. I want to see more mortality in the game, than that.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1098508...
You probably can't just bolt "hit points don't improve" onto D&D, I will concede, but HP are not the only way to do things.
This guy presented a reasonable plan to E6 D&D5
http://purplelizardman.com/5e-heroic/
So you can scale the game to approximate a more gritty feel. Now whether most 5e players will go for it is another thing entirely.
Quote from: Razor 007;1098521My character is a three-headed catfolk monkey ninja barbarian dual-class, with a Balrog's Whip, a Flaming Greatsword, and 20HP. His name is Bartholomew.
Just kidding.....
I thought were were talking about 5e not pathfinder.
Quote from: Slambo;1098550I thought were were talking about 5e not pathfinder.
D & D 5E E6 without Feats, comes closer to being what I want in my games. I suppose I could strip PF 1E as well?
Quote from: Razor 007;1098551D & D 5E E6 without Feats, comes closer to being what I want in my games. I suppose I could strip PF 1E as well?
It was just a joke about how ridiculos some PF builds are.