So this isn't as crazy as it sounds. All of the West End Games D6 Star Wars and the generic D6 games that came later can fit here. They don't use hit points. You had a damage status. Unharmed, wounded, badly wounded, incapacitated, and dying.
I've also been playing around with a little combat system I made myself. It works by using opposed rolls accumulating penalties until you wind up rolling on a critical hit table, and that table can kill you.
It wasn't until today I realized that it doesn't need hit points. Just keep playing until that critical hit table kills you or him.
So now I'm curious about other games out there that don't use hit points.
Savage worlds doesn't, heroes and hardships also doesn't, burning wheel are the most obvious, technically traveller or Cepheus engine games don't use hit points. Shadow run uses a wound track, just off the top of my head
Is a wound track hit points? Is tracking received hits and rolling a save based on attack's damage and hits taken so far negative hit points? Is wounds and vitality and alternative to hit points or just two kinds of hit points?
Wound levels are simply a limited and generally non-improvable version of hit points, they just add a dice modifier penalty to it.
"Keep going till you get a crit" is simply a system where everyone has one hit point.
There are only so many ways to do things, really.
HarnMaster. The old Warp World game by BTRC doesn't either IIRC.
The Riddle of Steel (and successors like Blade of the Iron Throne or Song of Swords).
Though if you count the points of the HT (or analogous) Attribute that a character loses as he bleeds out from failed Bleeding rolls, one could argue that these are still hit points, just a very limited number which take a lot of processing time to remove. But I think that may be broadening the definition to the point of uselessness.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 25, 2022, 08:06:32 AM
Though if you count the points of the HT (or analogous) Attribute that a character loses as he bleeds out from failed Bleeding rolls, one could argue that these are still hit points, just a very limited number which take a lot of processing time to remove. But I think that may be broadening the definition to the point of uselessness.
True. OTOH, things like the Burning Wheel wound track involve so much tracking, that it might as well be hit points. The only reason it's not hit points is that it uses a table lookup to be able to say that technically it doesn't have hit point.
Having flirted with such systems, my general view is that they fall into two camps: Simple alternatives that fit the game they are in. And systems that go round and round the maypole desperately trying to avoid what hit points would do better. Nothing wrong with using something different. Desperation to avoid a mechanic is not a good motivation.
Well, off the top of my head, Mutants and Masterminds is a big one. Uses a similar system that you described, actually. Just hit them, until you hit them so hard that they aren't moving anymore. You can optionally hit them again after that to kill them. For a less classic take on hit points, you've got World of Darkness/Exalted that use a damage track. Exalted also uses your initiative as a sort of hit point pool, which is kind of cool. FATE uses a weird damage track, that, once filled, you then start taking injuries that your opponent can exploit to make things worse. Also works in social encounters in FATE as well, which is cool.
Quote from: jaseoffire on October 25, 2022, 08:46:03 AM
Well, off the top of my head, Mutants and Masterminds is a big one. Uses a similar system that you described, actually. Just hit them, until you hit them so hard that they aren't moving anymore. You can optionally hit them again after that to kill them. For a less classic take on hit points, you've got World of Darkness/Exalted that use a damage track. Exalted also uses your initiative as a sort of hit point pool, which is kind of cool. FATE uses a weird damage track, that, once filled, you then start taking injuries that your opponent can exploit to make things worse. Also works in social encounters in FATE as well, which is cool.
Yeah, I'd put World of Darkness firmly in the "uses hipoints" category. Here's a basic breakdown of what I have seen.
1. Uses hitpoints.
a) Just hitpoints and lots of em.
b) limited hitpoints with penalties when you get low. nWoD
c) multiple hiptoint like tracks -- typically a physical and mental track but may have more.
2. Just conditions/negative modifiers of some sort/losing options.
a) Roll less dice, or loose other resource (card, token, runes).
b) Opponents can use the condition against you
c) Just damage attribute - but this may be better under 1 depending on implementation.
3. Irrelevant to play, or if you are injured run/surrender or die
a) there's no real fighting / damage -- mostly narrative story-games like say Wanderhome or The Quiet Year. In the later case you aren't even one person.
b) Injured? run/surrender or die - here the GM is really warning you that you are over-matched, perhaps Amber Diceless fits here.
4. ??
I here Mutants and Masterminds has some sort of save mechanic. But I don't really understand it.
Note that systems can use both -- Fate Core is 1c + 2b.
I worked on a fantasy heartbreaker that used roll under Stats for most tests. Damage reduced stats so each wound had an instant effect. I don't remember exactly but most wounds reduced CON, some reduced STR. Burns reduced CHA. It all made sense but I never got it really where I wanted before I abandoned the idea.
Anyway, would stat reduction count as HP?
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 24, 2022, 10:42:51 PM
I've also been playing around with a little combat system I made myself. It works by using opposed rolls accumulating penalties until you wind up rolling on a critical hit table, and that table can kill you.
Are you familiar with the game "Warlock!"? It does something similar. Stamina (hp) gets reduced without consequence until you are at 0 or less, then you start rolling on crit tables. Stamina recovers quickly.
Quote from: Ruprecht on October 25, 2022, 11:55:51 AM
I worked on a fantasy heartbreaker that used roll under Stats for most tests. Damage reduced stats so each wound had an instant effect. I don't remember exactly but most wounds reduced CON, some reduced STR. Burns reduced CHA. It all made sense but I never got it really where I wanted before I abandoned the idea.
Anyway, would stat reduction count as HP?
In this implementation I think it's fairly distinct. I put that under my number 2, "reducing options/efficacy."
IMO HP are any mechanic where there is a progression along a track or numerical continuum, where once a certain point is reached the character is dead or disabled.
They make a game fun, but I find their lack of realism very unsatisfying. In an actual fight you can end up dead or disabled at any point.
I have a non-hp mechanic, but it's from an unfinished project of mine from a few years ago, not a published game. Here's the first take on it.
Attacks are resolved by opposed rolls with the results on the defender determined by the margin of success of the attack, according to this table:
Margin Result
Less than 3 No effect
3-5 Disadvantaged, -3 to all rolls next round
6-8 Body part incapacitated, roll randomly for head, torso, arm, arm, leg, leg
9-11 Body part destroyed, randomly determined, this is a kill on the head, and gives dying status on the torso
11+ Dead
I found this hard to tune, as if the numbers were too big, fights will take too long, and if they're too small PCs die too quickly, so I added a damage mechanic to the low end of the table.
Margin Result
1-2 defender takes 1 point of damage
Damage is global modifier on every single roll for the PC. It's cumulative, so if you've been damaged 3 times, you have a -3 on every roll until healed. With damage in the mix I could raise the numbers whilst still keeping the length of combats under control
Damage is not hp because there's not a threshold you reach and you get a new status like dead or wounded, it instead affect probabilities. Theoretically your character could take a any amount of damage and still be fine in the next attack provided the enemy doesn't get at least a 6 margin.
I quite like this mechanic, but sadly am not using it for my current project as it does not fit the style of the game.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 24, 2022, 10:42:51 PM
So this isn't as crazy as it sounds. All of the West End Games D6 Star Wars and the generic D6 games that came later can fit here. They don't use hit points. You had a damage status. Unharmed, wounded, badly wounded, incapacitated, and dying.
That is a system with four hit points.
4 hit points = Unharmed
3 hit points = wounded
2 hit points = badly wounded
1 hit points = incapacitated
0 hit points = dying.
Quote from: Jason Coplen on October 25, 2022, 07:45:57 AM
HarnMaster. The old Warp World game by BTRC doesn't either IIRC.
In Harnmaster you suffer injury. Which degrades your skills and attribute rolls including saves. But in theory, you can take infinite injury. There is no max, you just keep tallying injury levels as you get hit.
But... every time you get hit, you have to roll a save, often multiple saves depending on the hit locations. The amount of injury you suffered factors into the save. This means late in a fight you can pass out from a minor scratch (1 or 2 injury levels). Because your total cumulative injury is so high that you add +10, +11, +12, etc. to your 1d6 (or 2d6) shock roll and you still blow your attribute save. Or in some editions of HM the injury levels you suffer add additional dies to the shock roll or other injury rolls.
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-walk-through-harnmaster-combat-part-2.html
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 24, 2022, 10:42:51 PMSo now I'm curious about other games out there that don't use hit points.
James Bond 007 doesn't use hit points but has Light Wounds, Medium Wounds, etc. It is from 1983 so it has to be one of the first.
However, the game also has Hero Points which can be used to avoid damage. That's another issue where a second set of points can do a stand in job for hit points even though hit points aren't part of the damage process.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 24, 2022, 10:42:51 PMIt wasn't until today I realized that it doesn't need hit points. Just keep playing until that critical hit table kills you or him.
Years ago, I took the Critical Hit table from FFG's Edge of the Empire (their Star Wars RPG) and converted it to a deck of cards. Well, four decks actually, representing the four main levels of injury you can get in that game. The advantage of using the cards was that you could give each character the card when he takes the wound and, not only did that provide a reference for what effects the wound has, but it also contains the rules for removing that effect and flipping the card over (as you do with critical hits from X-Wing if anyone's played that). Plus, the number of wound cards a player has provides the bonus to the die roll needed to determine which deck to draw from for any future wounds. Unfortunately, The Last Jedi happened and I never wanted to play a Star Wars game again.
Still, I think card based injuries would work with any game that has a critical injury table or Death Chart.
Quote from: estar on October 25, 2022, 04:25:58 PM
Quote from: Jason Coplen on October 25, 2022, 07:45:57 AM
HarnMaster. The old Warp World game by BTRC doesn't either IIRC.
In Harnmaster you suffer injury. Which degrades your skills and attribute rolls including saves. But in theory, you can take infinite injury. There is no max, you just keep tallying injury levels as you get hit.
But... every time you get hit, you have to roll a save, often multiple saves depending on the hit locations. The amount of injury you suffered factors into the save. This means late in a fight you can pass out from a minor scratch (1 or 2 injury levels). Because your total cumulative injury is so high that you add +10, +11, +12, etc. to your 1d6 (or 2d6) shock roll and you still blow your attribute save. Or in some editions of HM the injury levels you suffer add additional dies to the shock roll or other injury rolls.
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-walk-through-harnmaster-combat-part-2.html
HarnMaster has wonderful combat. Alas, it takes too long for character creation. My players get bored.
As always, Twilight:2013 can show you the way on this.
I've seen alot of games claim they had no HP system...
Then turn right around and use some sort of HP system. Anything from wounds accumulated to decrementing dice. Sorry. That is still a HP system that you are wither whittling away at, or depleting. And sorry, no. Moving a counter on a track or stacking, or unstacking, cones is still a HP system. Damage is done to stats only? Still a HP system.
Honestly I can not think of a single RPG that does not use some sort of incremental or decrimental system for tracking how close a character is to unconsciousness and/or death.
About the only ones that do not are the ones where your character is either standing. Or dead. With essentially no middle there. Tracking wounds and then dead. Sorry. No. Thats still a HP system. But if wounds only impair and can not kill then thats not a HP system.
I find all this hoop jumping to get rid of the mean evil ol' HP to be pathetic, with vanishingly rare exceptions where someones system just somehow didn't need it.
Quote from: Omega on October 25, 2022, 10:02:39 PM
I've seen alot of games claim they had no HP system...
Then turn right around and use some sort of HP system. Anything from wounds accumulated to decrementing dice. Sorry. That is still a HP system that you are wither whittling away at, or depleting. And sorry, no. Moving a counter on a track or stacking, or unstacking, cones is still a HP system. Damage is done to stats only? Still a HP system.
Honestly I can not think of a single RPG that does not use some sort of incremental or decrimental system for tracking how close a character is to unconsciousness and/or death.
About the only ones that do not are the ones where your character is either standing. Or dead. With essentially no middle there. Tracking wounds and then dead. Sorry. No. Thats still a HP system. But if wounds only impair and can not kill then thats not a HP system.
I find all this hoop jumping to get rid of the mean evil ol' HP to be pathetic, with vanishingly rare exceptions where someones system just somehow didn't need it.
D&D's hitpoint system has only two states, perfectly fine or dead. (Ok you could be bleeding out, or making death saves.)
Many people will see anything that works differently than this as not a hitpoint system -- one of which is if every time you are hurt your capacities degrade (my #2), then it
is certainly different.
Again you can have mixed ones -- looking at you nWod: 7 lifepoint, the first 4 don't impede you and the last 3 start subtracting dice. That's hitpoints with a death spiral/capacity degradation.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 24, 2022, 10:42:51 PM
So now I'm curious about other games out there that don't use hit points.
The better RPGs.
Quote from: Jason Coplen on October 25, 2022, 08:31:00 PM
Quote from: estar on October 25, 2022, 04:25:58 PM
Quote from: Jason Coplen on October 25, 2022, 07:45:57 AM
HarnMaster. The old Warp World game by BTRC doesn't either IIRC.
In Harnmaster you suffer injury. Which degrades your skills and attribute rolls including saves. But in theory, you can take infinite injury. There is no max, you just keep tallying injury levels as you get hit.
But... every time you get hit, you have to roll a save, often multiple saves depending on the hit locations. The amount of injury you suffered factors into the save. This means late in a fight you can pass out from a minor scratch (1 or 2 injury levels). Because your total cumulative injury is so high that you add +10, +11, +12, etc. to your 1d6 (or 2d6) shock roll and you still blow your attribute save. Or in some editions of HM the injury levels you suffer add additional dies to the shock roll or other injury rolls.
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-walk-through-harnmaster-combat-part-2.html
HarnMaster has wonderful combat. Alas, it takes too long for character creation. My players get bored.
There is a free character creation software available online, if that interests you/your players.
http://columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/harn/cfg/single.cfg?product_id=4111M
Also a spread sheet to calculate skills:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11ioQW6WoxajkDGNq4EYeV0BL3xMUUxg224tiV5jDcW8/copy?usp=sharing
And these are just from top of my head.
All the Cortex System games starting with Smallville don't use Hit Points. Most Fate system games don't either. Torchbearer 2e uses Status Effects instead of HP. That's all I can think of.
Injuries involving crits and hit locations are probably the most realistic option. Hit points as such only make sense for creatures such as constructs and, perhaps, zombies.
Quote from: Jason Coplen on October 25, 2022, 08:31:00 PM
HarnMaster has wonderful combat. Alas, it takes too long for character creation. My players get bored.
90% of the steps amount to the same thing as Mythras or Runequest. The slowdown I found is calculating the Skill Base which is taking the average of the three attributes.
Using this cut the time down by a lot. Just add the three attributes together and look up the SB value.
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Harnmaster_Triple_Values.pdf
The follow on question to the OP would be "Why would we want to use a non-hp system" since tbh hit points work pretty well for D&D.
For me the answer is that I don't like the unrealism and I don't like the effect it has on player behavior, specifically doing things that should kill the PC because the player knows he has enough hp, and the lack of tension at times when everyone has plenty of hp.
Quote from: Mishihari on October 26, 2022, 04:00:36 PM
The follow on question to the OP would be "Why would we want to use a non-hp system" since tbh hit points work pretty well for D&D.
For me the answer is that I don't like the unrealism and I don't like the effect it has on player behavior, specifically doing things that should kill the PC because the player knows he has enough hp, and the lack of tension at times when everyone has plenty of hp.
I've been kind of a fan of save versus death or instant death. Hit points are great for ability to parry, block, take a hit but any real mortal wounds occur at zero. So things that would otherwise just kill you outright should be a save versus death at best.
Quote from: Angry Goblin on October 26, 2022, 05:53:07 AM
Quote from: Jason Coplen on October 25, 2022, 08:31:00 PM
Quote from: estar on October 25, 2022, 04:25:58 PM
Quote from: Jason Coplen on October 25, 2022, 07:45:57 AM
HarnMaster. The old Warp World game by BTRC doesn't either IIRC.
In Harnmaster you suffer injury. Which degrades your skills and attribute rolls including saves. But in theory, you can take infinite injury. There is no max, you just keep tallying injury levels as you get hit.
But... every time you get hit, you have to roll a save, often multiple saves depending on the hit locations. The amount of injury you suffered factors into the save. This means late in a fight you can pass out from a minor scratch (1 or 2 injury levels). Because your total cumulative injury is so high that you add +10, +11, +12, etc. to your 1d6 (or 2d6) shock roll and you still blow your attribute save. Or in some editions of HM the injury levels you suffer add additional dies to the shock roll or other injury rolls.
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-walk-through-harnmaster-combat-part-2.html
HarnMaster has wonderful combat. Alas, it takes too long for character creation. My players get bored.
There is a free character creation software available online, if that interests you/your players.
http://columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/harn/cfg/single.cfg?product_id=4111M
Also a spread sheet to calculate skills:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11ioQW6WoxajkDGNq4EYeV0BL3xMUUxg224tiV5jDcW8/copy?usp=sharing
And these are just from top of my head.
Thanks a bunch. I'll be checking these out (waiting for columbia games to send me the link to the generator) for several days. If they look half as good as I think, I'll be doing a HarnMaster campaign again.
I would argue that hp systems are 1 for 1 linked to damage; 5 points of damage is 5 hp barring an intervening damage reduction mechanic. With wound levels as presented in D6 system this is not the case, damage is an x variable that may not be correlated to the same wound degree from one resist roll to the next, that is to say 15 damage on the same character in two cases doesn't equal the same wounds or wound levels with such system as it would with HP. To call this HP is to reduce HP as a concept to something else entirely, "if i note that i am unhurt or dead that is HP" is reductionist and absurd to me.
Imagine a corridor filled with acidic/poison gas that does 1 point of damage per time interval, with HP you know exactly how long you can stand in the hall, with wound levels as D6 presents them this is not the case unless the GM is going to enforce cumulative stun for the meaningless 1 point of damage. Very different outcomes in practice between the two concepts.
Quote from: Thondor on October 25, 2022, 10:56:02 PM
D&D's hitpoint system has only two states, perfectly fine or dead. (Ok you could be bleeding out, or making death saves.)
Many people will see anything that works differently than this as not a hitpoint system -- one of which is if every time you are hurt your capacities degrade (my #2), then it is certainly different.
Again you can have mixed ones -- looking at you nWod: 7 lifepoint, the first 4 don't impede you and the last 3 start subtracting dice. That's hitpoints with a death spiral/capacity degradation.
One interesting thing is that Arneson and Gygax both tried a variant systems and they never caught on. Theres also been a few tries in Dragon over the decades. And I am pretty sure one at least made it into 2e. I'd have to go digging to find it. Obviously hardly anyone used it.
What we learned was that, as you say above, this creates a death spiral. One that plagues about any game where as your HP deplete, your performance drops too. It means that whomever strikes the first wound may very likely have a slowly growing advantage over their opponent.
Star Frontiers has this as a feature and it works as the degradation of ability inly kicks in once are down to 50% health.
Albedo and my own system has its system where you accumulate wounds from being shot and these often cause bleeding and as this accumulates effectiveness drops. They fit there because these are not combat friendly settings. Sometimes death spirals are actually useful for a system.
Unfortunately too often they get generated by designers with no idea what the fuck they are doing other than "tee-hee! Me better than D&D!" which, sorry kid, ya aint!
5e's of all things presents a few options, like the woefully underused fatigue system and its optional wounds system.
I saw a Mecha game that didn't use hit points. It just treated all machines as collections of working parts. Each weapon, each sensor, each limb, the reactor, even the pilot compartment.
Every hit was one of those things knocked out. If you hit the pilot on the very first time taking damage, it was over.
However, Omega is really on the ball here. A lot of games that claim they don't use hit points are deluding themselves. They just renamed what a hit point is.
My own experiment was using only critical hit tables, with progressive hits giving you more and more modifiers to roll on the "bad" end of the table that includes the worst result of "dead". The other end of the spectrum were annoying things that are not permanent. The key was to use a dice system that still works even if all combatants are barely functioning. Right now I still have no way to make a come back, so maybe my experiment has run its course, if for no other reason than I'm never going to write my own RPG.
Quote from: Omega on October 27, 2022, 05:12:59 PM
What we learned was that, as you say above, this creates a death spiral. One that plagues about any game where as your HP deplete, your performance drops too. It means that whomever strikes the first wound may very likely have a slowly growing advantage over their opponent.
Folks complain about death spirals, but I actually think they're good for a game. I suppose it would be bad for the theoretical fighter vs orc death match in a 10x10 room, but who actually plays like that? A death spiral encourage players to change tactics early if things aren't going their way rather than slogging it out until they're too low on hp to run away successfully. If things aren't going well, run, evade, break out some spells, use some resources, negotiate, grapple, play dead, surrender, use combat maneuvers, whatever; don't just keep doing what you're doing.
Aggressive death spirals can turn combat into attack spam to chance a crit and nerf the opponent by initiating the death spiral. They may also penalize non combat tasks like running away making escape impossible. However, suffering no performance penalty for taking damage and knowing exactly how far one is from being combat ineffective can lead to boringly safe stand there and trade blows to out DPS the opponent instead of something dynamic like fire and maneuver. As such sustained damage/condition track causing HP bleed may be preferable to escalate the threat. I think True20 did something similar to Mutants and Masterminds with a save vs knockout for each successful attack received modified by the cumulative attacks received. Not knowing how many more hits you can take and having the possibility to on hit KO an opponent leads to the possibility of high risk high reward play instead of boringly predictable HP attrition.
Surprised Amber Diceless, Lords of Olympus, and Lords of Gossamer and Shadow have not gotten a mention.
Quote from: Mishihari on October 27, 2022, 08:34:47 PM
Folks complain about death spirals, but I actually think they're good for a game. I suppose it would be bad for the theoretical fighter vs orc death match in a 10x10 room, but who actually plays like that? A death spiral encourage players to change tactics early if things aren't going their way rather than slogging it out until they're too low on hp to run away successfully. If things aren't going well, run, evade, break out some spells, use some resources, negotiate, grapple, play dead, surrender, use combat maneuvers, whatever; don't just keep doing what you're doing.
There's nothing wrong with a death spiral, inherently. It does need to be calibrated appropriately for the game.
Moreover, there are other kinds of death spirals besides an individual character's health. With any version of D&D, it's the overall party health that has the built in death spiral. When every action is important, then losing actions is a huge penalty all by itself. With early D&D, this is even more true, because of the various henchmen and hirelings, morale, magic effects, etc.
Quote from: zircher on October 27, 2022, 10:07:55 PM
Surprised Amber Diceless, Lords of Olympus, and Lords of Gossamer and Shadow have not gotten a mention.
Probably because I've only heard of Amber Diceless, and the term diceless is a huge no-no.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 27, 2022, 06:36:02 PM
I saw a Mecha game that didn't use hit points. It just treated all machines as collections of working parts. Each weapon, each sensor, each limb, the reactor, even the pilot compartment.
Every hit was one of those things knocked out. If you hit the pilot on the very first time taking damage, it was over.
However, Omega is really on the ball here. A lot of games that claim they don't use hit points are deluding themselves. They just renamed what a hit point is.
Even the above example is a sort of HP system as the components act as the HP. I rather like those systems actually as they work really well for combats where the 'parts' are the actual 'meat' rather than effectively fatigue, skill, foorwork, etc.
There are other times it just doesnt fit which is why I like D&D's abstract. You can call it whatever and run.
I enjoy and endorse the death spiral as i find it quite realistic; of course I use a system (D6) that puts the impetus on the players to actively play to parry or dodge and not get hit, whereas something like becmi has you trading blows hit after hit unimpeded until somebody runs down to zero hp and falls over...tink, tink, tink, thunk, crack, tink, tink....boom!
Technically in anything older than say 2e, just being in combat should be a fail state if we are focused on gold for xp and the original games dungeon-delve cycle, and so i'm sure Gygax would say that the abstract hp system not tied to injury is to reinforce the goals of the game rather than get you distracted playing table-top mortal kombat.
Regardless, an hp only system just falls far short for me personally if i'm going to run the game for sure, and irks me pretty good besides even if I'm just playing and not GM'ing. It's not even that I oppose hp, I'm perfectly happy with hp in Pendragon for example, and in our last D6 Fantasy-Dragonlance playtest we added damage dice from dnd to the normal D6 damage roll (so a greatsword was doing str damage + 3D +1d10) and hit dice/hp from dnd to the equation (treating hp as ablative DR resting under armor but above wounds) and the presence of such merely gave the typical creature an additional hit or two before the normal death spiral begins. So it's not a matter of hating hp or them being wrong, more like they are incomplete, as someone stated above they function on the binary of all is fine or shit i'm dead... I want the in-between layers of harm that wound levels provide.
In a game w/o the mechanical option to do anything other than soak hits (such as becmi which is my current favorite source to steal from) then a death spiral is dismal and no fun, as there is nothing one can do under that mechanical umbrella but stack ac or hp and pray for good rolls...not even a meta currency available to influence the rolls if we wished. If we look at Pendragon, which uses hp sort of tied to wound levels, we see that the death spiral and the injury and the slow healing etc are all part of the design and intended experience, and if we alter it, like altering gold for xp in becmi, we wind getting an entirely different experience very far afield of the rails we launched on. I would posit that most rpg's could be improved by a wound lvl system. If nothing else I would suggest the critical hit system from 2e's combat and tactics book if i could not contrive another method to reasonably include injury states between fine and dead. Of course no one likes losing an arm to a dragon bite either i guess...
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 27, 2022, 11:17:22 PM
Probably because I've only heard of Amber Diceleas, and the term diceless is a huge no-no.
How so? The official Amber Diceless forum is right her on this we site, isn't it?
Quote from: Mishihari on October 29, 2022, 11:56:36 AM
Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 27, 2022, 11:17:22 PM
Probably because I've only heard of Amber Diceleas, and the term diceless is a huge no-no.
How so? The official Amber Diceless forum is right her on this we site, isn't it?
Covered this in the 8the reply to this thread. It's my number 3.
I do enjoy me some ADRPG
Quote from: Thondor on October 25, 2022, 10:42:03 AM
Quote from: jaseoffire on October 25, 2022, 08:46:03 AM
Well, off the top of my head, Mutants and Masterminds is a big one. Uses a similar system that you described, actually. Just hit them, until you hit them so hard that they aren't moving anymore. You can optionally hit them again after that to kill them. For a less classic take on hit points, you've got World of Darkness/Exalted that use a damage track. Exalted also uses your initiative as a sort of hit point pool, which is kind of cool. FATE uses a weird damage track, that, once filled, you then start taking injuries that your opponent can exploit to make things worse. Also works in social encounters in FATE as well, which is cool.
Yeah, I'd put World of Darkness firmly in the "uses hipoints" category. Here's a basic breakdown of what I have seen.
1. Uses hitpoints.
a) Just hitpoints and lots of em.
b) limited hitpoints with penalties when you get low. nWoD
c) multiple hiptoint like tracks -- typically a physical and mental track but may have more.
2. Just conditions/negative modifiers of some sort/losing options.
a) Roll less dice, or loose other resource (card, token, runes).
b) Opponents can use the condition against you
c) Just damage attribute - but this may be better under 1 depending on implementation.
3. Irrelevant to play, or if you are injured run/surrender or die
a) there's no real fighting / damage -- mostly narrative story-games like say Wanderhome or The Quiet Year. In the later case you aren't even one person.
b) Injured? run/surrender or die - here the GM is really warning you that you are over-matched, perhaps Amber Diceless fits here.
4. ??
I here Mutants and Masterminds has some sort of save mechanic. But I don't really understand it.
Note that systems can use both -- Fate Core is 1c + 2b.
Quote from: Slipshot762 on October 29, 2022, 09:36:03 AMOf course no one likes losing an arm to a dragon bite either i guess...
In my experience, players get far more upset at their character being crippled or imprisoned, than their character being killed. You can after all simply roll up a new character who is not crippled or imprisoned.
Phoenix Command uses measures wound severity in physical damage (PD). The more PD one accumulates, the higher one's chance of incapacitation, disability, and death, but there is no theoretical limit to how much PD one can take and continue functioning*. I've never seen any other game that does it like this.
*Someone on enough adrenalin and who lucks out on the knockout roll can get his head blown off and keep on running for a few seconds.
If theres no theoretical limit then that does sound like an actual HP-less system.
How does it work then? Like an escalating chance the character passes out or flat out dies?
Sounds similar to my system that used a table you roll on to discover how badly you're hurt.
For example. A table that runs from 1 to 6. The 1 is something annoying, and 6 is dead. Roll a D4 when hit, but next time you roll the next biggest dice, the D6, then 3rd hit is a D8, 4th is a D10, and 5th+ hits are a D12.
Theoretically you could die in just 2 hits, or you may never die as you keep rolling 1's.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on November 12, 2022, 09:25:19 AM
Sounds similar to my system that used a table you roll on to discover how badly you're hurt.
For example. A table that runs from 1 to 6. The 1 is something annoying, and 6 is dead. Roll a D4 when hit, but next time you roll the next biggest dice, the D6, then 3rd hit is a D8, 4th is a D10, and 5th+ hits are a D12.
Theoretically you could die in just 2 hits, or you may never die as you keep rolling 1's.
That is pretty cool. I like that.
Quote from: Omega on November 12, 2022, 03:46:29 AM
If theres no theoretical limit then that does sound like an actual HP-less system.
How does it work then? Like an escalating chance the character passes out or flat out dies?
Physical Damage (PD) is multiplied by ten and divided by the character's Health characteristic (3-18 scale) and entered into the medical table, cross-indexed with the best medical aid the character has available to him. That gives a time period and a recovery %. Once the time limit expires he rolls to see if he's died or not.
Gravely injured characters will automatically die after the critical time period without advanced aid being rendered. For him the time period will be very short, on the order of a few seconds. Just enough time to be shot with a high tech drug to slow his metabolism and give him a chance to be bound up for the airlift to the hospital.
Whether he passes out or not is governed by the knockout rules, which compares PD to a value derived from his Will characteristic and his combat experience, multiplied by five if he's on an adrenalin rush.
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on November 12, 2022, 08:33:39 PM
Quote from: Omega on November 12, 2022, 03:46:29 AM
If theres no theoretical limit then that does sound like an actual HP-less system.
How does it work then? Like an escalating chance the character passes out or flat out dies?
Physical Damage (PD) is multiplied by ten and divided by the character's Health characteristic (3-18 scale) and entered into the medical table, cross-indexed with the best medical aid the character has available to him. That gives a time period and a recovery %. Once the time limit expires he rolls to see if he's died or not.
Gravely injured characters will automatically die after the critical time period without advanced aid being rendered. For him the time period will be very short, on the order of a few seconds. Just enough time to be shot with a high tech drug to slow his metabolism and give him a chance to be bound up for the airlift to the hospital.
Whether he passes out or not is governed by the knockout rules, which compares PD to a value derived from his Will characteristic and his combat experience, multiplied by five if he's on an adrenalin rush.
Phoenix Command has a reputation for being realistic but with a very burdensome amount of calculations. How well does the above work in play? Does it slow things down as much as it sounds like?
Quote from: FingerRod on November 12, 2022, 12:59:09 PM
That is pretty cool. I like that.
Yeah, it sounds better than my original idea of just using D6's only, and having every roll add a +1 to the die roll each consecutive time you needed to roll an injury.
Also, you could modify this and have the table be from 1-7, so you literally cannot be killed on your 2nd hit, but going to a D8 for your third injury means death is more likely (25% in fact).
Something like this. First time you roll a D4, 2nd time you're injured is a D6, 3rd time a D8, and so on, up to a D12.
1. Stunned. You're not injured badly, but you are given a temporary skill penalty for one combat round.
2. Stunned. Same as above.
3. Minor injury. The same as above, but the skill penalty remains until you heal for a few days.
4. Major Injury. You will need basic medical care and suffer a significant penalty until you heal.
5. Internal Injury. You need surgery or this will eventually kill you. Plus, major skill penalties until healed.
6. Loss of a limb. You need surgery or this will eventually kill you. Plus, major skill penalties until healed.
7. Dead.
Quote from: Mishihari on November 12, 2022, 10:07:44 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on November 12, 2022, 08:33:39 PM
Quote from: Omega on November 12, 2022, 03:46:29 AM
If theres no theoretical limit then that does sound like an actual HP-less system.
How does it work then? Like an escalating chance the character passes out or flat out dies?
Physical Damage (PD) is multiplied by ten and divided by the character's Health characteristic (3-18 scale) and entered into the medical table, cross-indexed with the best medical aid the character has available to him. That gives a time period and a recovery %. Once the time limit expires he rolls to see if he's died or not.
Gravely injured characters will automatically die after the critical time period without advanced aid being rendered. For him the time period will be very short, on the order of a few seconds. Just enough time to be shot with a high tech drug to slow his metabolism and give him a chance to be bound up for the airlift to the hospital.
Whether he passes out or not is governed by the knockout rules, which compares PD to a value derived from his Will characteristic and his combat experience, multiplied by five if he's on an adrenalin rush.
Phoenix Command has a reputation for being realistic but with a very burdensome amount of calculations. How well does the above work in play? Does it slow things down as much as it sounds like?
In functional play it depends a lot on the ability of the GM and players to remember the various tables or have them on hand. Phoenix Command left a lot of calculations in, while Living Steel (which used a simplified version of the system overall) had a couple tables that you would enter with the location of the wound and the damage class of the weapon (in PC these would degrade with range, but that additional lookup step was a bit cumbersome and really only mattered at distances where normal combat didn't take place). The PD from the wound table was then input to the wounds & healing table to determine the CTP and odds of survival. Once you determine if you've survived the injury or not, you take a Combat Action penalty based on the injury.
Functionally, the system is no more complicated to use than CP2020; the primary difference being that you need to have the tables on hand to use it.
Quote from: Mishihari on November 12, 2022, 10:07:44 PM
Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on November 12, 2022, 08:33:39 PM
Quote from: Omega on November 12, 2022, 03:46:29 AM
If theres no theoretical limit then that does sound like an actual HP-less system.
How does it work then? Like an escalating chance the character passes out or flat out dies?
Physical Damage (PD) is multiplied by ten and divided by the character's Health characteristic (3-18 scale) and entered into the medical table, cross-indexed with the best medical aid the character has available to him. That gives a time period and a recovery %. Once the time limit expires he rolls to see if he's died or not.
Gravely injured characters will automatically die after the critical time period without advanced aid being rendered. For him the time period will be very short, on the order of a few seconds. Just enough time to be shot with a high tech drug to slow his metabolism and give him a chance to be bound up for the airlift to the hospital.
Whether he passes out or not is governed by the knockout rules, which compares PD to a value derived from his Will characteristic and his combat experience, multiplied by five if he's on an adrenalin rush.
Phoenix Command has a reputation for being realistic but with a very burdensome amount of calculations. How well does the above work in play? Does it slow things down as much as it sounds like?
I use the simplified Living Steel version for skills, firearms damage and melee attacks, but I use the Phoenix Command proper melee damage tables. It's just not the same without them.
There are plenty of options like whips, surface cuts, chainsaws, fumbles, cutting through parries through sheer power, damage bonuses, glancing, etc., but the basics are not hard to master.
The most calculation is just (a) applying damage bonuses to melee attacks, and (b) figuring out knockout chance.
For (a), take the impact damage rolled for a hit, and multiply it by the attacker's DB, and that enters into the armor line on the relevant melee attack table, cross-indexed by hit location.
For (b), it helps to write out the physical damage knockout ranges for a character. Based on how much physical damage a character sustains, he'll have a 0%, 10%, 25%, 75% or 98% chance of incapacitation, meaning he collapses, runs away, surrenders, etc, as the GM decides.
If people can handle a Dungeon Master's Guide full of rules, it shouldn't be a problem. My players have never complained of the speed of play. We've had lots of fun with it.