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The Issue of Hit Point Inflation and Related Materia
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
LostSoul
Adventurer
Jack7, it's an interesting system, but it seems to reduce the number of tactical choices that you can make in combat (as opposed to 3 & 4E).
For example: In a recent fight, my Paladin intentionally drew 2 OAs. HP and healing and the lack of a "death cycle" allows me to make this choice (whether or not it was a good one - trading a chance to lose HP for a chance to deal damage & gain positioning).
I've done the same thing in 3E, drawing AOOs in order to make sure the Sorcerer could get her spell off. (Low Concentration, low AC, needing to get into position to use her spell.)
With a death cycle, I would never consider this. It's not an option - well, that option doesn't come up as often. Getting hit is too big a liability.
Something to consider, and maybe I'm wrong.
For example: In a recent fight, my Paladin intentionally drew 2 OAs. HP and healing and the lack of a "death cycle" allows me to make this choice (whether or not it was a good one - trading a chance to lose HP for a chance to deal damage & gain positioning).
I've done the same thing in 3E, drawing AOOs in order to make sure the Sorcerer could get her spell off. (Low Concentration, low AC, needing to get into position to use her spell.)
With a death cycle, I would never consider this. It's not an option - well, that option doesn't come up as often. Getting hit is too big a liability.
Something to consider, and maybe I'm wrong.
This is an important point, I think. Inordinately high hit points for monsters tend to drive players in the direction of optimization, in no small part due to the fact that high hit point monsters also tend to have high damage capacities and/or other dangerous abilities. It's the same with save or die spells on the wizard's side: if the rogue can equal the wizard's fireball every round (speaking of 3E here) then it's far more efficient to take save or die spells in place of damage spells. Unfortunately, this takes fights from the "entirely too long" end of the spectrum to the "entirely too short" end of the spectrum. It becomes an initiative test when the greatsword wielding barbarian can hit for 100 points of damage, and so can the fire giant he's battling. One of them is going to die in very short order.
Optimization is easier in 3E than it is in any other edition, with the myriad of options available to PCs (especially if one includes splat books), but there have been "munchkins" and "power gamers" throughout the life of the game and will continue to be. But if hit points for monsters are reigned in (such as in 1E), optimization becomes a poor use of limited character building resources and you would likely see less of it.
One of the issues with fights lasting too long due to high hit point monsters is not just boredom (although this is certainly one downside; 4E combats bore me to tears after round 4 or 5, for example), but every round the monsters live, the more dangerous it is for the PCs. No one wants that ogre swinging its greatclub with impunity, so, again, we see optimization and "unfun" spell selection as a means to mitigate the creature's potential to kill a party member because it finally connects.
Jack7
First Post
I don't think you're wrong necessarily.
In my system death is always a real potential threat.
However if you are merely injured then you can mitigate loss of Weal with Will, and death is never an automatic given (well, not anymore than regular D&D in which in most combats somebody is gonna die, if only the monsters).
And in addition monsters suffer the same threats as characters, but in different ways.
So potential lethality is a very real threat to everyone, monsters as well as characters.
In my system the fights are a lot faster, more intense, and far more deadly. But the tactics involved are geared more to being good at being lethal, rather than being good at fighting.
So it's very different kinds of combats with very different motivations and tactics.
I suspect it would be less there are less choices, than that there are different choices with different objectives.
For instance do you increase your Weal for defensive purposes in order to take a sacrifice strike in order to give a partner more time to do whatever they need to do, or do you use Will to increase your offensive effectiveness with the intent of severely injuring your opponent so that he not only suffers damage but becomes less combat effective?
Personally, if I were fighting a basically uninjured monster then I'd use Will to increase my armor class or my Weal so as to better take punishment if I needed to absorb a potential sacrifice strike.
If I were fighting an injured monster then I'd use Will to increase my offensive capabilities because I'd know that already being injured I could possibly kill him myself or greatly reduce his combat effectiveness and further exhaust him. the more damage I inflict then not only the closer to death he gets but the less effective a killer he becomes.
If I were fighting an uninjured human or humanoid NPC then I'd possibly do the opposite because of the way Weal works for characters versus monsters. But then again, depending on circumstances, I might play it out like I would for a monster.
So it would be a different kind of situational tactical demand based on who you are fighting, what you think you could survive, and how lethal you think you can be at any potion of the combat.
One of the real troubles with real long combats is that nobody ever really weakens or becomes less effective and able as a combatant in a hp system, no matter how badly injured or exhausted. They just shed hit points. And with a lot of hit points, for a very long time.
Nothing really exciting is happening as a result of combat.
Just numbers being worn down.
It's like calculator combat, rather than dynamic combat.
LostSoul
Adventurer
Excellent. That sounds very cool. (I was wrong, above.)
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Interesting to see just how dramatic the inflation has been.
That said, I found a long time ago I pretty much had to jump up the hit points of bigger 1e monsters (pretty much everything Ogres and up) so they'd last long enough to be interesting...either that, or I had to run gangs of 'em, and it's far easier to grok there being one big monster nobody's noticed in the hills instead of a whole village of 'em.
And, there is a second useful variable when it comes to making combats go on for more or less time: armour. Yes, the monsters usually have an assigned armour class, which is fine. But you can make a long-term difference to your campaign's combats if you make protective devices and jumped-up armour very hard to find for your PCs. Then, when necessary you can scale back a bit on some of the monsters' AC's as well, and - particularly in a 4e-style system with lots of h.p. - combats just go faster.
Believe me, there's nothing more boring than watching a combat where each side needs to roll about a natural 18 to hit the other...worst I've seen was an all-defense Fighter character fighting her own clone...38 rounds it took, before one of 'em went down.
Lanefan
That said, I found a long time ago I pretty much had to jump up the hit points of bigger 1e monsters (pretty much everything Ogres and up) so they'd last long enough to be interesting...either that, or I had to run gangs of 'em, and it's far easier to grok there being one big monster nobody's noticed in the hills instead of a whole village of 'em.
And, there is a second useful variable when it comes to making combats go on for more or less time: armour. Yes, the monsters usually have an assigned armour class, which is fine. But you can make a long-term difference to your campaign's combats if you make protective devices and jumped-up armour very hard to find for your PCs. Then, when necessary you can scale back a bit on some of the monsters' AC's as well, and - particularly in a 4e-style system with lots of h.p. - combats just go faster.
Believe me, there's nothing more boring than watching a combat where each side needs to roll about a natural 18 to hit the other...worst I've seen was an all-defense Fighter character fighting her own clone...38 rounds it took, before one of 'em went down.
Lanefan
ExploderWizard
Hero
Me too. The basic idea I'm running with is separating hit points from health, and adding levels of training to character level or monster HD as a primary determining factor of attack/defensive power.
Hit points= staying power, and the energy expended warding off the
worst effects of damage.
Health= amount of actual bodily damage a creature can sustain before
dying. Nonliving things have no health, only hit points. Health
equals CON score modified by creature size.
Level/HD= Basic level of competence for attack/defensive power and number of hit points.
Training level= largest variable determining attack/defensive power.
Higher training levels allow a much greater damage
output. These levels can be adjusted independently
from level/HD.
Hit points can be kept at reasonable levels. If we take a low HD mook like an orc, and increase its training level it becomes a minion to a highly trained fighter. It will be a regular 1HD creature that the minimum damage from the trained fighter will drop. The higher training level helps ensure that its attack/defenses are a threat to the trained fighter without having to pile on more HP at a higher HD or giving it a null value for HP.
Jack7
First Post
Sounds like an interesting system if I'm understanding it correctly.
By the way I've done something similar with lethality. Rather than just gaining plusses (+) to hit with level advancement, characters (and monsters) can actually become more lethal. Not just good at "hitting" in combat, but in striking in such a way as to be lethal or far more dangerous. This makes "hit points" (though I'm using Weal instead) far less important than the ability to counteract lethal or near lethal strikes.
I think it would be interesting to have a thread that is an Experimental Workshop.
Where different people could provide links or contact information (on how to obtain copies) to their experimental system developments and then others could come in and get copies of the materials for playtesting.
In this way people could present "prototypes" or 1.0 versions of their materials, others could playtest those inventions, and provide feedback or critiques for improvements, or recommendations and suggestions for further development.
It would be a preliminary testing laboratory and in that way you could test both the system (for functionality and usefulness) and the general market appeal before putting your ideas into a fixed or final form.
It would be early stage R&D work for game component analysis, design, and processing.
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Henry
Autoexreginated
Avasculate. Half your life if you save, half your life if you fail.
Alternately, Forcecage -- the ultimate in "you lose" spells, where it doesn't matter how many hit points you have, or even if you can make a saving throw -- if you don't have one of two specific keys to that lock, you're effectively done. Regardless of hit points, mages do pretty well in the keeping up with "putting the enemy down" department.
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