Hero Points / Action Points - Yay or Nay?

[Doug McCrae]

Is D&D a game that supports swinging on chandeliers and running up a tyrannosaur's back? Or is it about prodding with ten foot poles and keeping track of iron rations?

I'm not sure of the answer. Magic is its own style of crazy. Then there's hit points, saving throws, monk high level abilities, the thief-acrobat, evasion, hide in plain sight, barbarian DR, double weapons. Maybe D&D does get cinematic at high level.

 

[chaochou]

It has been argued that hit points in D&D do almost the same job as fate points in Warhammer. Neither has any real game-world analogue. Both are points that, when spent, prevent the PC from dying.

I was thinking about this the other day. The thing with D&D as it stands is that Hit Points have this function, but you can't actively 'spend' them. They're a passive, ablative protection.

I think allowing players to spend Hit Points - or maybe gamble them depending on the maths - to affect stunts or physical contests or feats of daring could open up some really cool possibilities. It could make HP a kind of equivalent to FATE points and the stress track rolled into one.

Which as well as opening up a different kind of risk vs reward gamepley would also offer a seamless way to empower martial classes relative to low HP casters.

There's pretty much zero chance that 5e will take such a direction - which is a pity. It's the kind of thing I would be looking at as a 5e designer to take the game into new territory with new possibilities. Sadly, imo, the whole design ethos seems backward-looking.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I think allowing players to spend Hit Points - or maybe gamble them depending on the maths - to affect stunts or physical contests or feats of daring could open up some really cool possibilities. It could make HP a kind of equivalent to FATE points and the stress track rolled into one.

That's one way to handle it, and for a certain kind of game it does work well. I've tried it, and it did what I thought it would do.

However, there is certainly at least one thread of play, missing in a player-driven currency in D&D (any version), that I've quite enjoyed, and it doesn't work very well if you piggyback on hit points or XP or gold or anything else in the game. At least it doesn't, for the style I enjoy now. It wasn't an issue in some other styles, because you could piggyback on those other elements quite easily.

I'm having a difficult time pinning down exactly what constitutes this style I like now, but it does have the characteristic that it places emphasis on hit points as a combat pacing mechanism, gold as a wealth/influence mechamism, XP as a level pacing mechanism, and so forth. When you place such an emphasis, other functions placed on those mechanics can be counter-productive. (Furthermore, some people actively ignore the role of pacing in any of those mechanics whatsoever--e.g. hit points as all physical damage. For them, a separate "point" currency may or may not be needed in their style of play, but if it is needed, they will typically not want to tie it to hit points.)

Finally, I'll again assert my broad hunch that a big problem in D&D mechanics through the years has been placing too much function on otherwise good mechanics. Every good idea in D&D gets abused, eventually.

 

[Klaus]

I like Action Points. I specially like the simplicity of 4e Action Points: spend a point to gain an action! Further uses of Action Points could be included, though (spend action point to gain advantage, or to avoid failure at a task, or to boost a check, etc).

 

[Dedekind]

I like that an AP could be used to offset disadvantage or create advantage.

 

[Chalice]

Like CleverNickName, I

But if it had to be there, and I liked the game to begin with, it would have to be a module.

 

[77IM]

D&D has always had a large "resource management" component so I understand why some people would not want to add one more resource to the pile. But the reason I like Action Points (or Hero Points, or Bennies, or Fate Points, or whatever) is because:

#1 . They are very explicitly a managed resource. Unlike hit points, you choose when to spend them. Unlike scrolls and potions, you know when you will receive them and how many you should have and whether or not you are "low."
#2 . Everybody gets them, not just spellcasters.
#3 . They are braindead simple. (4e tried to solve #2 by giving everyone spells, but it didn't work because that is too complex for some people's taste.)

So I think some sort of Meta Points would work really well with D&D, instead of using a hodge-podge of existing vaguely-simulationist mechanics to do the same job, but in a more confusing way.

-- 77IM

 

[CleverNickName]

Color me shocked.

Yep. Turns out, our preferred styles of play still haven't changed, even after multiple discussion threads and polls. How strange.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I think allowing players to spend Hit Points - or maybe gamble them depending on the maths - to affect stunts or physical contests or feats of daring could open up some really cool possibilities. It could make HP a kind of equivalent to FATE points and the stress track rolled into one.

While it sounds cool, I haven't seen it work very well. And, the one time I have played with it extensively, it worked really, really poorly (Star Wars d20 Revised).

The benefits of spending a large chunk of HP were never high enough to justify the expenditure, making the trade-off a bad choice.

 

[Doug McCrae]

D&D has always had a large "resource management" component so I understand why some people would not want to add one more resource to the pile. But the reason I like Action Points (or Hero Points, or Bennies, or Fate Points, or whatever) is because:

[URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1]#1 [/URL] . They are very explicitly a managed resource. Unlike hit points, you choose when to spend them. Unlike scrolls and potions, you know when you will receive them and how many you should have and whether or not you are "low."
[URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2]#2 [/URL] . Everybody gets them, not just spellcasters.
[URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=3]#3 [/URL] . They are braindead simple. (4e tried to solve [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2]#2 [/URL] by giving everyone spells, but it didn't work because that is too complex for some people's taste.)

So I think some sort of Meta Points would work really well with D&D, instead of using a hodge-podge of existing vaguely-simulationist mechanics to do the same job, but in a more confusing way.

Good points.

EDIT: Perhaps action points would be a good mechanic to use in a low magic game, where the PCs don't have a lot of spells, potions and scrolls, or a game that isn't using 4e-style martial dailies (I assume they'll be a module in D&DNext).