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.