L&L 5/21 - Hit Points, Our Old Friend

[Bedrockgames]

You are in the same boat that he is in terms of ignorance. .

I have a lot of direct experience with concussions actually. But it wasn't clear to me from your original post that they were what you had in mind. And even so, I don't think it warrants name calling on either side.

 

[mlund]

As opposed to all the other rolls that were hits but not crits? Those were sloppy and weak? Even a non-crit that deals 3 damage when the fighter is at 2 hp is apparently strong enough to kill a fighter.

Damage and HP are game score devices translating danger to players, not a scale of medical severity for characters.

The biggest problem with hit points (ie - "points for tracking hits") is that people naturally infer that the biggest damage roll against a character = biggest wound. I'm not sure there's any fixing that inclination to conflate player-reality and character-reality.

The 20-point hit that brought you to 2 HP over bloodied is more game damage. The 3-point hit that brought you below bloodied is the one that actually busted you open. It did more physical damage to the character than the attack that did more Hit Points in damage - because Hit Points represent the ability to avoid or mitigate physical damage. That's the difference between the game-world reality of the characters and the game-system reality of the players. I guess the confusion comes from the word "damage," really.

Nah, rolling a natural 20 should be a WOO-HOO moment, not a moment where the result is: "Your enemy is badly scratched by your amazing attack."

The problem is the Crit cuts both ways. Have you ever seen the d30 critical hits table from the old Armoury book that went with the d30? It looks awesome - until you realize that monsters are disposable so the enemy team can just ignore having their teeth bashed out and losing 1d6 Charisma permanently, while the players lack that luxury with their characters.

I'm very much in favor of critical hits having remarkable impact - some sort of lasting damage (maybe just for the length of the encounter, since that hits PCs and Enemies equally) beyond HP would be nice. Compromising their defenses or attacks for the encounter by destroying someone's shield, shattering their armored carapace, or impaling the shoulder on their sword arm all work quite nicely.

But, as you say, that's something fixed by a module - and rightly so! That's a layer of complexity added onto the game.

Even if they are just damage and it doesn't reduce a monster to the bloodied / injured state the dramatic narrative doesn't need to be spiked by talk of "scratches" and the like. A barely parried blow that drive an opponent to its knees or leaves them reeling and gasping for breath as death begins to circle them like a vulture works pretty well too.

Also, there's no rule requiring that monsters with a 1-encounter lifespan follow the same HP narrative path that PCs do. If that 20-foot tall spider takes a crit, feel free to have one of her 8 legs come off - no module or rules adjustment necessary.

- Marty Lund

 

[Bedrockgames]

I've knocked myself out before in the most direct manner possible. You won't be ok.

i have been knocked out as well. The longest I ever was out for was (max) two minutes. I have seen people knocked longer than that, but from a single punch that is hard to do to someone.

How okay you are varies greatly depending on lots of things (how many punches were thrown, whether you saw the knock out punch coming, your weight, the opponent's weight, skill, experience, etc). i am happy to talk about how mechanics could better model the variation of real life knock out blows (and how potentially damaging they are). I just think this doesn't need to itself become a street fight.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yeah, adding it after the fact as a module is better IMO becuase it should satisfy both sides of the debate. Star Wars is an excellent example. I wasn't a big fan of adding the wounds into the d20 system. I think you are better off sticking with straight hp or shifting to a more standard wound system. For me classic HP work best for D&D.

My biggest complaint with SWSE's wound system was the ability to inflict wounds without damage. Which is why I enjoyed the Deadlands wound system, if damage overcame your size modifier, you took a wound.

Granted, D&D would need a different system than using a size modifier since it lacks target locations like Deadlands has.

But that's the trick about wounds, it implies SO MUCH more when it's included in a system. Personally I'd love to see a module that gives me a way to target specific body parts with my attacks.

 

[Bedrockgames]

My biggest complaint with SWSE's wound system was the ability to inflict wounds without damage. Which is why I enjoyed the Deadlands wound system, if damage overcame your size modifier, you took a wound.

Granted, D&D would need a different system than using a size modifier since it lacks target locations like Deadlands has.

But that's the trick about wounds, it implies SO MUCH more when it's included in a system. Personally I'd love to see a module that gives me a way to target specific body parts with my attacks.

I agree. I like wounding systems personally, but dont think they are something you just want to tack on top of D&D. I think one of the reasons D&D was so succesful is it stayed pretty simple on this matter. A lot of its early competition tried to be more realistic with wounds and stuff, but not sure that is what most people want in a fantasy game.

 

[Umbran]

Are you dumb? Are you ing insane!!!!!!!! Do you have any idea how stupid this sounds anyone who knows how medicine works?

You are in the same boat that he is in terms of ignorance.

And I'm talking about civility.

Folks, EN World requests and requires a modicum of civility and respect from posters. However ignorant or misguided a post may seem to you, we expect you to treat the person who wrote it well.

Because, really, in terms of trying to educate someone, this approach is unlikely to serve you. What you're doing is engaging heir egos, rather than their brains, and that won't end well.

So, from this point on, I expect *EVERYONE* in the thread to treat each other kindly. "Nice matters," so to speak.

Thanks all. If there's any further questions, take them to PM or e-mail to the moderator of your choice.

 

[Mercutio01]

My wife fell off her bike on Saturday (literally, just this past weekend). Knocked herself out. Has bruises and cuts on her face, and big bags under her eyes. Landed face first on the concrete. No concussion (went to the doctor to make sure). Other than the bruises, you'd never know. Arguably, a face-first fall into concrete at 10mph from 5 ft up is similar to the damage from one hit from a boxer.

And when I say this is a true story, I mean it literally.

No moping about in bed for days. No magical healing potions (just a few ibuprofen), and she's up and moving about and working, and way more worried about her appearance than she is about anything else.


EDIT - And if she was a higher level fighter, or had some martial arts training, she could maybe have rolled with it, and minimized that damage a lot further (perhaps even having no damage at all).


EDIT 2 - All this, just to note that lower-level characters bouncing back to full HP faster than trained warriors makes a sort of sense. Less damage is required to hurt them, so there's less damage that needs to be healed.

 

[I'm A Banana]

A 5% base chance to crit really isn't that far out there. If we were rolling D% and we had to get 100, now that's a good reason for your longsword to fly from your hands and run itsself headlong through that one soft spot in the dragon, fragment on a rib and explode into metal shrapnel in it's body, instantly killing the dragon.

That's kind of a strawman. I'm saying crits need to be significant, and that part of that significance is that they should probably cause actual lasting damage, not scratches and dings. That doesn't mean a one-hit kill, that means that the dragon you just critted isn't just scratched and nicked, he felt that hit. An HP system that sets the threshold for actual injury at half HP easily results in crits that the enemies don't really feel (fighting a solo, for instance), but a natural 20 should always be a big deal in a way that is something special.

Bypassing the HP is one way to ensure that, and not a bad one. It opens up some customization options, too: different characters might do different things on a crit, different monsters might have different reactions.

A crit that deals extra damage + some extra effect (force advantage? ongoing damage? whatever) helps out with that plenty. It's not a perfect solution, but I am not sure much really would be.

 

[Sunseeker]

That's kind of a strawman. I'm saying crits need to be significant, and that part of that significance is that they should probably cause actual lasting damage, not scratches and dings. That doesn't mean a one-hit kill, that means that the dragon you just critted isn't just scratched and nicked, he felt that hit. An HP system that sets the threshold for actual injury at half HP easily results in crits that the enemies don't really feel (fighting a solo, for instance), but a natural 20 should always be a big deal in a way that is something special.

Bypassing the HP is one way to ensure that, and not a bad one. It opens up some customization options, too: different characters might do different things on a crit, different monsters might have different reactions.

A crit that deals extra damage + some extra effect (force advantage? ongoing damage? whatever) helps out with that plenty. It's not a perfect solution, but I am not sure much really would be.

But unless you're going to turn D&D into a crash course medical doctorate, attempting to model actual damage on humanoids would be amazingly complex. Not to mention, how do we model damage for non-humanoids? For creatures that don't even have BONES? Magical creatures that don't really even have physical forms?

Crits dealing additional effects is IMO, a good thing, but attempting to model those realistically beyond the encounter is probably not going to be any more realistic than saying "magic fixes everything".

 

[I'm A Banana]

But unless you're going to turn D&D into a crash course medical doctorate, attempting to model actual damage on humanoids would be amazingly complex.

Damage and HP are game score devices translating danger to players, not a scale of medical severity for characters.

Who's proposing anything like that?

I'm very much in favor of critical hits having remarkable impact - some sort of lasting damage (maybe just for the length of the encounter, since that hits PCs and Enemies equally) beyond HP would be nice. Compromising their defenses or attacks for the encounter by destroying someone's shield, shattering their armored carapace, or impaling the shoulder on their sword arm all work quite nicely.

Crits dealing additional effects is IMO, a good thing,

Glad to see wide agreement on my actual point, anyway.