Life without Hit Points

[amerigoV]

What the hell are you waiting for?!!?!? Get over to Savage Worlds!

Website: Welcome to Pinnacle's Weird Website!

The Making of (which gives a good sense of the workings of the system): http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/MakingofSW.pdf

The Test Drive Rules: http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/TD06.pdf

 

[jedavis]

May I also suggest True20? It runs on a very similar (according to my understanding) damage system to M&M. Each weapon / attack has a damage rating, and each character has a Toughness bonus (contributed to by Con, Armor, some feats, and magic). If you get hit, you roll 1d20+Toughness vs 15+damage, with the degree of failure determining how badly injured you are as a result. Success -> no damage, fail by less than 5 -> injured (-1 to Toughness until healed), up to 10 is Wounded (-1 to Toughness and Shaken until healed, stunned for a round), 15 is debilitated, and 20 is dead, if I recall correctly (It's been a while - there may be one more between Wounded and Debilitated). The main problem we ran into was death spiral; if you get Wounded, you're stunned, ergo flat-footed, ergo getting absolutely murdered next round, so we tweaked Wounded so that you're Staggered for a round; action economy penalty still in place, but you're not necessarily going to die shortly thereafter. These conditions stack, so if you're Injured twice and Wounded once, you take a -3 to Toughness rolls. How long it takes to heal each flavor of damage condition also varies; healing off Injured can take as little as an hour, but healing Debilitated takes... a while. You can, however, burn Conviction (True20's version of Action Points, but renewable via RP; almost White Wolf Willpower-esque) to make checks to remove injuries as well, or to re-roll Toughness and hopefully not be injured in the first place.

I will say of True20's damage system that a guard with a crossbow is a credible threat, especially to unarmored characters. Crossbows do +3 damage, so you're looking at a DC18 toughness check even in the hands of a relative nobody (without damage boosting feats, for example). You'll likely get an injury out of it against most PCs, and if they roll poorly... It's really more a reflection of the nature of damage in True20, though, that PCs aren't invincible and combat is dangerous. The best defense is to not get hit in the first place.

 

[Shades of Green]

Some versions of Traveller, including some of the optional supplements for Classic Traveller (Striker and Azhanti High Lightning) used an abstract wound system - essentially, based on the weapon's penetration, your armour and a die roll, you could either be Lightly Wounded, Seriously Wounded or Dead. You could accumulate multiple Light Wounds (with a penalty each), but multiple Serious Wounds can kill you. Under this system, a small pistol (penetration 0) shooting an unarmoured man (armour 0) has a 1/36 chance of killing that man with one shot; bigger guns will easily kill you if you're unarmored.

 

[3catcircus]

Although it uses hit points, Twilight:2013 takes things in a whole different direction.

Your "base" hp are solely a function of your strength and constitution - I think the formula is (10+Str+2xCon)/4. There are hit locations (head, torso, 4 limbs). There are four wound thresholds (slight, moderate, severe, critical). You can simplify by eliminating hit locations (where everything becomes the torso), but I'd keep hit locations since you can then "realistically" apply some old favorites like the Vorpal Sword or Sword of Sharpness.

A slight wound occurs when any location takes at least 1 point of damage, resulting in a -1 to your actions (can't sprint if the damage is to a leg).

A moderate wound occurs when a location takes at least your base hp (torso or limbs) or 1/2 base (head) in damage. You have to check to see if you go into shock (and a fumble results in becoming unstable.) You also suffer -2 to your actions (with checks to see if you drop a held item or fall down if it is an arm or leg, and you can't move faster than a walk if it is the leg).

A severe wound occurs if you take more damage than base x2 (torso)/base x 1.5 (limbs) or base hp (head). Similar to a moderate wound, but -3 to actions and leg wounds means you can't move faster than a stagger.

A critical wound occurs at base x3 (torso), base x2 (limbs) or base x 1.5 (head). Similar to a severe and moderate wound (but -4 to actions) and you automatically go into shock. A critical wound to the head automatically results in unconsciousness. Limbs are unusable with a chance of catastrophic amputation.

About shock: this essentially acts to prevent you from taking any actions for the remainder of the round. For the remainder of combat, anything that could cause shock instead makes you unstable.

About unstable: this is essentially that the PC is bleeding out. At the end of every round, each location that has a wound becomes one category worse. This continues every round until you go a level above critical, bleed out and die. While this seems harsh, it pretty much represents how a person can be "ok" and then suddenly avalanche into death.

The other interesting thing about this system is that you don't actually add up hit points worth of damage to trip each threshold. You either go above during a single hit or you don't. How you end up killing the opponent is that if you do a 2nd wound of equivalent severity to what the opponent is already at, you increase to the next level (e.g. the BBEG has a moderate wound to his torso and you do another moderate wound, resulting in a serious wound instead. In order to cause a critical wound you'd have to do a second serious wound.)

So there are several ways to incapacitate an opponent: a single catastrophic wound (a critical wound to the head resulting in unconsciousness), attrition (continue pounding on them, resulting in going into shock, followed by another wound causing shock (remember if you are already in shock, anything else causing shock results in being unstable instead), or luck (you cause at least a moderate wound and the opponent fumbles his shock saving throw.)

I don't think you can get around the idea of using numbers, pips, or some sort of tally to keep track of health in an RPG - but I think a system like TW:2013's works very well for realistic combat where you can take a bunch of minor wounds (bruising, cuts, etc.) and still be reasonably effective in combat, but more severe wounds can quickly avalanche into being knocked out or even killed outright.

What makes it work without being incredibly slow and taking many rounds is that the amount you succeed on your attack roll gets added to your damage (i.e. if the opponent has an AC 15 and your attack roll ends up being a 22, you add 7 to your damage roll.)

This might not even require too many modifications to be applied to make it work for D&D since monsters' STR and CON scores already factor in their size (a human with STR and CON 18 would have 16 base hp, a hill giant would have 18 base hp, a great wyrm red dragon would have 28 base hp, and a goblin would have 11 base hp.) So - a human would have to have suffered a single wound of at least 24 hp to the head to go lights out while the ancient wyrm would have to suffer 42 hp in a single blow to the head to do the same thing.)

Where I see the complication would be magic - magic missile would become much more significant at higher caster levels and a minimal-level fireball could end up incinerating every opponent in a single devastating attack.