Hit Point Alternatives

I've recently been tinkering with a system which runs on percentages rather than traditional hit points.
Every creature has 100 HP. Their attack bonuses, armour etc affect their combat rating. Then essentially it goes:
Attack: Roll d100, add your combat rating. Compare this with your opponent's combat rating. Damage is a strict Attack minus Defence score.

A slight twist on the same (I said I'm tinkering didn't I? ) Is to keep Attack Rating and Defence Rating separate.
Still D100, + attack rating (which doesn't include anything from your armour now), vs opponent's static Armour Rating (or AC if you like)

Combat would look something like: (I used real dice for this and rolled very badly for the fighter)
Orc has 30 AC
Fighter has +10 from level/class and +8 from longsword.
Fighter rolls d100, adds 18 and scores 36. This deals 6 damage to the orc (a very poor hit).
Fighter has Scale and some benefit from just being a fighter (equal to his attack bonus??) giving him an AC of 50.
The orc also has +10 from level/class and +8 from its longsword.
Orc rolls d100, adds 18 and scores 76, resulting in 26 damage for the fighter
Round 2
Fighter rolls 35+18 = 53 -30 = 23 damage to the orc.
Orc rolls 2+18 = 20 which is a miss.
R3
Fighter rolls 9+18 = 27, this is also a miss
Orc rolls 39+18 = 57 dealing only 7 damage to the fighter
R4
Fighter rolls 12+18 = 30, again a miss
Orc rolls 47+18 = 65, dealing 15 damage to the fighter
R5
Fighter rolls 2+18 = 20 which is a miss.
Orc rolls 67 + 18 = 85 dealing 35 damage to the fighter, who is now looking very unhealthy.
R6
Fighter rolls 45+18 = 63 finally doing some decent damage to the orc (33)
Orc rolls 9+18 = 27, a miss

Current HP
Orc = 100-6-23-33=38
Fighter = 100-26-7-15-35=17
A very close battle so far.
R7
Fighter rolls 50+18 = 68 dealing 38 damage to the orc, exactly enough to slay it (yes I rolled this!)


I'm not happy with how swingy the combat is at the moment but that example of play should give you a fair idea of what I'm aiming for.

[MENTION=16077]3catcircus[/MENTION]: any chance you can enlighten us a little more, before we spend $40 on the book?
[MENTION=1544]Zustiur[/MENTION]: combat is swingy because each attack has a 100 point variable. You need to scale the other modifiers to meet this level. Also, 1/100 increments don't do a lot to enhance the game. Your base roll could be as low as a d6, and that's where players would start to notice that the rolls feel a bit stiff (instead of swingy). Note that as your variable gets smaller, you lose resolution on your modifiers. i.e. several different size and weight shields are basically limited to a +1 armor bonus, because anything larger, on a d6 system, is just too much.

DMMike said:

[MENTION=16077]3catcircus[/MENTION]: any chance you can enlighten us a little more, before we spend $40 on the book?

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Lets see...

"Base Hit Points" are based upon that game's equivalent stats to STR and CON - they use a (10 + STR + 2 x CON)/4 formula. So, in D&D, an average human (ability scores of around 13-14) will have right around 12-13 base hit points regardless of character level, the average d20 ogre would have only 15 and a great wyrm red dragon would have 25.

This base then forms the basis for wound thresholds. A slight wound occurs when you take a single point of damage, a moderate wound at your base hit points, a serious wound at 2 x base, and a critical wound at 3 x base. The optional hit location rules provide further granularity for head, torso, limbs for each of these thresholds.

Note that you aren't subtracting hit points - you are comparing damage to a wound level (i.e. take 1 point of damage, slight wound, take 20 points of damage - serious wound, etc.) You can wear some creatures down via wound attrition, but you better bring the pain if you want to stop that great wyrm red dragon with the 25 hp.

A slight wound results in a -1 skill level penalty to your actions (TW:2013 uses d20 dice pools, so reduced skill levels result in less dice to roll).

A moderate wound bumps this to -2 skill penalty and a check to determine if you go into shock (with the equivalent of a fumble resulting in you becoming unstable - i.e. bleeding out).

A serious wound is like a moderate except a -3 skill penalty.

A critical wound is a -4 penalty and automatically entering into shock, with a check to determine if you go unstable.

If you suffer another wound of equivalent level to one you already have, the wound level goes up by one category. That great wyrm red dragon? Yeah - assuming he makes all his shock and unstable checks, you'd need to do a minimum of 25 (moderate) + 25 (moderate -> serious) + 50 (serious -> critical) + 75 (critical -> death) to bring him down via wound attrition, while his single breath attack is pretty much an instant death for anyone as, on average, even with a saving throw, it'll do 60 points of damage - you'd need an 18 in both STR and CON to avoid an insta-kill and even though, you'd effectively be out of the fight.

Once you are in shock, you have to make the equivalent of a morale check a the beginning of a round to act - failure results in unconsciousness. Assuming you pass this check, any future activities that would also put you into shock would instead make you go unstable.

Being unstable is kind of like going into negative hp in D&D. At the end of each round (and this is a different period of in TW:2013 since this is subjective in combat but 1 minute out of combat), your wound level increases by one until you go past critical and bleed out and die.

With the optional hit location rules, the effects are slightly different in that head wounds affect mental actions and torso/limb wound affect physical actions; additionally, head wounds can result in instant unconsciousness as a result of a critical wound or going unstable.

As you can see - you can take a bunch of slight and a few moderate wounds and just suffer reduced combat effectiveness with a risk of going shocky, but once you start taking serious or critical wounds (especially with the hit location option), then you can enter into a death spiral or even a "one shot/one kill instant lights-out" scenario.

Lemme get this straight-
In Twilight 2013, you have a Wound Threshold that determines how serious your wounds are.
Wound seriousness is determined by amount of damage dealt.
So any damage less than the WT is a Slight wound.
Equal or greater than WT is moderate, 2x or more is serious, and 3x or more is critical.
Taking a second Slight wound results in Moderate wounds.

Does that mean taking a Slight wound, when you're already Critical, does nothing?
Is this different from just taking the WT, multiplying it by 4, and calling that Max Hit Points?

On a similar subject, I wonder if D&D's extensive death and dying rules all stem from its avoidance of status penalties, i.e. getting wounded as HP approach zero.

DMMike said:

Lemme get this straight-
In Twilight 2013, you have a Wound Threshold that determines how serious your wounds are.
Wound seriousness is determined by amount of damage dealt.
So any damage less than the WT is a Slight wound.
Equal or greater than WT is moderate, 2x or more is serious, and 3x or more is critical.
Taking a second Slight wound results in Moderate wounds.

Does that mean taking a Slight wound, when you're already Critical, does nothing?
Is this different from just taking the WT, multiplying it by 4, and calling that Max Hit Points?

On a similar subject, I wonder if D&D's extensive death and dying rules all stem from its avoidance of status penalties, i.e. getting wounded as HP approach zero.

Click to expand...

Pretty much that is the case unless you are using the optional hit location rules - if you already have a critical wound, a slight wound does nothing. But - at that point, it wouldn't matter anyway since a critical wound will result in a very high likelihood of being in shock and bleeding out. The effect of a slight wound (-1 on actions) means nothing when you are already at -4. You have to remember that TW:2013 uses a dice pool system, so if you'd normally roll 4d20L (lowest of the rolls is more successful), now you are rolling 3d20L with a slight wound and 2d20H (stuck picking the higher of the two rolls) with a critical wound. In a standard d20 game, the most you'd ever get would likely be 4d20, but TW:2013 allows for up to 6d20 in the dice pool for a skill check (each skill level approximates a year's experience and each roughly 4 year's worth raises your rank by 1 die...)

It is different than multiplying by 4 because you aren't adding/subtracting hit points. The fixed thresholds are trip points for individual attacks. You could potentially take a bunch of damage (with lucky rolls) until you took a critical wound. At that point, you'd automatically go into shock and also be at -4 dice on your (equivalent to a Fortitude save) to avoid going unstable and bleeding out.

As an aside - the dice pool system uses d20s and compares them to the controlling attribute (with modifiers), with successes being rolls lower than the attribute. The amount you succeed by gets added to the effect (in this case, if you beat the roll by 3 points, you'd add 3 points to the damage).

There are a bunch of other ins-and-outs that cause me to really like this system. It just needs to be either tweaked for d20 or d20 tweaked to go to a dice pool system. The skill ranks/controlling attributes are already there in d20 (in a different form); but you'd have to convert BAB to a skill rank...

DMMike said:

http://faterpg.com/dl/FATE2fe.pdf

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You know Fate Core and Fate Accelerated are now available for download, in ePub, Kindle and PDF versions.

http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core-downloads/

on a pay what you like, offer.

I think the idea of hit points is perfect as other methods, such as taking a set wound requires you to add in more ways to avoid those wounds, which though early on is fine, later creates the un-killable quarrel in which took fighters stand there and swing swords at each other doing nothing. I've always found that people like their heroes to be heroic, and what is more heroic than swinging a hefty great sword at an Demon and cleaving his arm of dealing 30 points of damage??? Finally the games where it is very hard to kill things such as they receie a lot of ways to avoid damage become very boring, and of the games I've created the ones where this happens it is always bought up in the play testing phases.

War of the Sendros

If the reason not to use HP is to avoid fiddly numbers, one very simple way is to just use HD instead of HP, i.e. each time you're hit you lose one HD. In essence, you aren't really changing much, except that you deal with much smaller numbers.

Buf if the reason is opposite, i.e. you don't want something simpler but actually something more complicated, then a wounds system is the way to go.

As a matter of fact, it's also possible you want it both simpler and more interesting. In this case, you can use the HD option above, and then roll on a wounds/status chart only when you drop to 0 (so that "falling unconscious" is but one option of many).

Damage and kill dice - Still a hit point system but add a color code dice. Color code, red, yellow and green. roll to hit as normal, then roll a damage color code dice like a d8 where numbers = color; 1 to 3 green, 4 to 6 yellow, 7 & 8 = red. Green = light hit, basically no damage you can take up to you CON in these, yellow more so and only half your CON, and red is just a two hitter. You can change the color dice based on class or level to add a bit variation in the rolls. This system creates a bit of fear of death in players.

Li Shenron said:

If the reason not to use HP is to avoid fiddly numbers, one very simple way is to just use HD instead of HP, i.e. each time you're hit you lose one HD. In essence, you aren't really changing much, except that you deal with much smaller numbers.

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Hey! This is the way I game. Health never increases with skill, though; you start with two hits, and every time you add armor you gain another health point, to a maximum of five. I've never seen five, though. Three is much more typical.