How do you handle hit points?

I do not describe every hit. I do describe the status of the monster (not hurt, slightly hurt, looking rough, at death's door, etc), and I will always mention when a hit made the monster go below 50% HP by announcing that it is bloodied. Exceptions to this rule are the really big hits, like the highest-level spells of the casters or critical hits of the fighters.

The main storyline, scenery and conversations with NPCs are so much more interesting that I really don't want to waste time describing every scratch on a monster.

Celebrim said:

If you choose not to spend them, what happens?

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Like @Hussar said, then your character suffers the full consequences of the attack or hazard. If your opponent wanted to kill you - the most frequent situation - then it succeeded and your character is dying, unstable, and you have to roll death saving throws. If the opponent just wanted to slap you behind the head, then you allowed it to do so, probably without further complications.

The most obvious muddy corner is whether you keep the hp you have when you can't spend enough to negate the attack (i.e. you have 4 hp left and receive 10 damage). We know by this interpretation that you couldn't avoid the consequence and become dying, but do you still have 4hp?

That's where the DM needs to stay consequent with RAW and rule that if character with 0 hp is dying, a dying character has, by definition, 0 hp (otherwise it would be stable and conscious). A character that cannot spend enough hp to negate an attack becomes dying and drops to 0 hp. There might be some mental gymnastics to do with things like zombie fortitude or half-orc relentless endurance ability, but the results should always match RAW.

What it does allow however, like Hussar pointed out, is for characters to suffer consequences other than death without getting killed. For example, in a duel at first blood, first blood is drawn when a character cannot negate its opponent's damage. So a duelist with 4 hp taking 10 damage suffers the consequence; it is bleeding and lost the duel. But it is still alive with 4hp. Same with bar brawls and if you want to go that route, most physical competitions involving some sort of "attack".

perhaps we could even use that to model Elan’s pie-eating contest with the Banjo Island orcs...

Laurefindel said:

Like @Hussar said, then your character suffers the full consequences of the attack or hazard. If your opponent wanted to kill you - the most frequent situation - then it succeeded and your character is dying, unstable, and you have to roll death saving throws. If the opponent just wanted to slap you behind the head, then you allowed it to do so, probably without further complications.

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Then you don't really spend them, do you. I mean, spending implies that they are a resource that you are voluntarily exchanging for something, in the way that in CoC 7e you might spend your luck points, or in a narrative game you might choose to spend some token of narrative influence. "Spend or die" is a false choice, and to the extent that it is not a false choice, the same choice can be made in D&D to stand helpless and unresisting against an attack and allow the attacker to kill you. That works I know in 1e and 3e, it's just not a choice we generally ever expect players to make (for obvious reasons). How often does it happen in your games that the player chooses to not spend his hit points?

I struggling to understand how this spending concept is more apt than the idea of losing it replaces, or how it really accomplishes anything.

What it does allow however, like Hussar pointed out, is for characters to suffer consequences other than death without getting killed. For example, in a duel at first blood, first blood is drawn when a character cannot negate its opponent's damage. So a duelist with 4 hp taking 10 damage suffers the consequence; it is bleeding and lost the duel. But it is still alive with 4hp. Same with bar brawls and if you want to go that route, most physical competitions involving some sort of "attack".

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But this has nothing to do with the concept of spending rather than losing, and could be applied as an idea to the idea of losing hit points. For example, a bar brawl in 3e D&D involving attacks without intent to cause lethal damage will result in pretty much the same idea, where at the end of it the losers will be knocked unconscious having taken non-lethal damage in excess of their hit points.

I can see some utility in using combat mechanics as a general process for handling any physical contest - say a tug of war or arm wrestling - but in this case the hit points being contested might in no way match the person or groups normal hit points used in combat. As for your idea of a pie eating contest, a person's "stomach points" might in no fashion match their hit points, but be based off of skill in consuming vast quantities of food (professional eaters in no fashion need to be professional boxers and vica versa). As such, that idea might be rather more difficult than not, and might require a supplement explaining the particulars of different sorts of contests - actually, I think EN published a supplement of that sort.

As for your idea of doing a duel to first blood using the normal combat mechanics and then resetting things, again I don't see how this has to do with the idea of "spending" hit points, and your description is a little bit weird. Surely a duelist with 4 hit points, suffering 10 points of damage - even if the intent of this damage was to not kill - and which is now bleeding now has somewhat less than 4 hit points? I would be quite wondering how much damage that blow did if it was not 10, and also I might be thinking that duels to 'first blood' were frequently lethal regardless of the intent of the duelists.

HP is measuring how long you keep up the fight. Every time you defend yourself from a successful attack it consumes your HP resource, your fighting spirit. If you don't put up a fight then you don't spend HP. Simple as that. Sure it can be used to model a duel or whatever. But rather than say "I choose to spend HP" it's simply "I choose to defend myself" and that act of defense consumes your HP. That's all. You're cut and bruised simply from being involved in a physical altercation, it just comes with the territory. But you're not suffering gaping wounds and lost limbs. You're consuming HP.

Celebrim said:

I struggling to understand how this spending concept is more apt than the idea of losing it replaces, or how it really accomplishes anything.

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Mostly because players feel more entitled to imagine or narrate what they want - if they want anything at all - in a mindset where a resource is voluntarily spent rather than forcibly taken or lost. You may disagree with that premise too.

I prefer to see the expenditure of hit points as a way to avoid a consequence rather than loss of hit points being the consequence in itself. It's mostly semantics, but it's a semantic that I prefer, even if the end result comes out to be the same. It's far from being a revolutionary concept, but it has worked superbly for us.

I'm not here to convince you of adopting my way of handling hit points, and I don't want to hijack this tread in a lengthy dissertation either. I'm just answering to the subject of the thread...

Celebrim said:

Then you don't really spend them, do you. I mean, spending implies that they are a resource that you are voluntarily exchanging for something, in the way that in CoC 7e you might spend your luck points, or in a narrative game you might choose to spend some token of narrative influence. "Spend or die" is a false choice, and to the extent that it is not a false choice, the same choice can be made in D&D to stand helpless and unresisting against an attack and allow the attacker to kill you. That works I know in 1e and 3e, it's just not a choice we generally ever expect players to make (for obvious reasons). How often does it happen in your games that the player chooses to not spend his hit points?

I struggling to understand how this spending concept is more apt than the idea of losing it replaces, or how it really accomplishes anything.



But this has nothing to do with the concept of spending rather than losing, and could be applied as an idea to the idea of losing hit points. For example, a bar brawl in 3e D&D involving attacks without intent to cause lethal damage will result in pretty much the same idea, where at the end of it the losers will be knocked unconscious having taken non-lethal damage in excess of their hit points.

I can see some utility in using combat mechanics as a general process for handling any physical contest - say a tug of war or arm wrestling - but in this case the hit points being contested might in no way match the person or groups normal hit points used in combat. As for your idea of a pie eating contest, a person's "stomach points" might in no fashion match their hit points, but be based off of skill in consuming vast quantities of food (professional eaters in no fashion need to be professional boxers and vica versa). As such, that idea might be rather more difficult than not, and might require a supplement explaining the particulars of different sorts of contests - actually, I think EN published a supplement of that sort.

As for your idea of doing a duel to first blood using the normal combat mechanics and then resetting things, again I don't see how this has to do with the idea of "spending" hit points, and your description is a little bit weird. Surely a duelist with 4 hit points, suffering 10 points of damage - even if the intent of this damage was to not kill - and which is now bleeding now has somewhat less than 4 hit points? I would be quite wondering how much damage that blow did if it was not 10, and also I might be thinking that duels to 'first blood' were frequently lethal regardless of the intent of the duelists.

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I think you could easily see it as spending them. It’s just a simple reframing.

An orc attacks dealing 8 damage.

Or rather, in a “spend” framework: an orc attacks with an effectiveness of 8. The cost to not die from the orc’s attack is 8HP.

When you spend the HP, you also declare exactly how it is that you didn’t die. You’re buying a narrative. If you see yourself as a capable duelist, perhaps you parried a deathblow. If you see yourself as a mighty tank, maybe you absorbed the attack and fought on.

It’s sort of just focusing on the player’s response to the attack/damage, instead of the effectiveness of the attack itself. The reaction instead of the action.

Neat.

Laurefindel said:

Mostly because players feel more entitled to imagine or narrate what they want - if they want anything at all - in a mindset where a resource is voluntarily spent rather than forcibly taken or lost. You may disagree with that premise too.

I prefer to see the expenditure of hit points as a way to avoid a consequence rather than loss of hit points being the consequence in itself. It's mostly semantics, but it's a semantic that I prefer, even if the end result comes out to be the same. It's far from being a revolutionary concept, but it has worked superbly for us.

I'm not here to convince you of adopting my way of handling hit points, and I don't want to hijack this tread in a lengthy dissertation either. I'm just answering to the subject of the thread...

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I think I get it. It's like someone rolling a saving throw to save themselves rather than an effect imposing a saving throw.

billd91 said:

I think I get it. It's like someone rolling a saving throw to save themselves rather than an effect imposing a saving throw.

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Someone else (in another thread?) mentioned that they have their players roll for the damage done against their characters. This would work well with the "spending HP" approach. How much effort/HP do I have to expend do prevent this attack from taking me down?

Edit: clarity

Laurefindel said:

Mostly because players feel more entitled to imagine or narrate what they want - if they want anything at all - in a mindset where a resource is voluntarily spent rather than forcibly taken or lost. You may disagree with that premise too.

I prefer to see the expenditure of hit points as a way to avoid a consequence rather than loss of hit points being the consequence in itself. It's mostly semantics, but it's a semantic that I prefer, even if the end result comes out to be the same. It's far from being a revolutionary concept, but it has worked superbly for us.

I'm not here to convince you of adopting my way of handling hit points, and I don't want to hijack this tread in a lengthy dissertation either. I'm just answering to the subject of the thread...

Click to expand...

I'm sure it does work for you, and as combative as this all seems, I'm not trying to dissuade you out of anything.

I'm after all the guy that coined the claim that, "How you think about play, and how you prepare to play, has a bigger impact on the game than the rules of the game.", and I would see this shift in perspective you are describing of seeing hit points as being spent rather than lost as an exceptionally good case in point.

My take on things tend to be fiction first, and what we do in the game is merely bookkeeping to track what happens in the fiction. So, my game tends to have this thought process:

1) "Someone tries to stab someone in the fictional reality, which is a doubtable proposition because the person they want to stab doesn't want to be stabbed."
2) "Fortune smiles on someone, and they succeed (at least partially) in the stabbing attempt."
3) "Someone is now stabbed in the fictional reality."

Both of us note that part #1 depends on whether or not the person being stabbed wants to resist. If a person doesn't want to resist being stabbed, we can just skip directly from the proposition to the fictional result. But to me, your idea takes this idea that a person doesn't want to resist being stabbed and makes it a non-exceptional case. The idea of "spending" is that you've added a theoretical step to the combat where for each proposition you need to call out to the potential side, "Spend or not?" Whereas, the idea that you are losing hit points is simply assuming that not resisting is an exceptional case, and that in general everyone is at all times trying to avoid being stabbed as best as they can.

I don't really see a huge difference in a resource being "voluntarily spent" rather than "forcibly taken" if the consequences of not "voluntarily spending" something is death. I'd argue that mindset doesn't make a big difference, as in the real world if someone said, "Your money or your life", we wouldn't think of that person as handing the wallet over voluntarily. "Your hit points or your life" is pretty darn non-voluntary. I don't think your "semantic shift" has changed anything in this sense. What it has done is caused you to reevaluate how you think about the process of play.

And both of us are empowering players to narrate the stabbing if they desire, both in its attempt, and its result. So no change there either.

What you seem to be doing that is actually different beyond semantics is stake setting, that is to say, "Fortune at the End" rather than "Fortune in the Middle".

In other words, your conceptual shift is being used as justification for this take on process:

1) "Someone tries to stab someone in the fictional reality, which is a doubtable proposition because the person they want to stab doesn't want to be stabbed."
2) "We describe two realities, one where someone is stabbed, and one where they are not."
3) "Fortune smiles on someone (or not) and we choose which reality to choose from above."

What this let a group conceivably do, that you can't do in my game, is describe a combat where you win, but where a participant (whether the GM or the player) is in full control of the outcome. In other words, you let someone predetermine what the reality is prior to them rolling. Someone could propose something that would be treated as an invalid proposition in my game, "I want to stab someone, but I want to be sure to leave them alive.", and in your game since consequences can be specified before the fortune roll, that is a perfectly valid proposition and if they succeed in the fortune step the target will be definitely alive in a way that no one is guaranteed to be if stabbed in my game. In my game, I could only say, "Ok, you want to stab someone but try not to kill them, but understand that fortune may not smile on you, and you may end up getting a result other than your intended one." I might treat this proposition as a sort of stunt, depending on what they are trying to achieve and what they are willing to risk, but there would still be the possibility that they'd roll two natural 20's in a row, and stab the heck out of poor 4 hit point Sir Droll.

Bawylie said:

It’s sort of just focusing on the player’s response to the attack/damage, instead of the effectiveness of the attack itself. The reaction instead of the action.

Neat.

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All that is just color though. A player can't buy a result different than the one that they got, other than "death" (or similar loss). A player can't buy a partial result: they can't decide to spend 7 hit points and take 1/8th of a consequence. The dice are still dictating to them, they are only coloring what the dice have dictated.

As such, since we don't need to adopt this framework to allow someone to create color - that is to say no PC needs a mechanic that gives them the right to RP their character - this change isn't a real change.

The real change I see, or at least I think I see, depending on how it actually plays out at the table, is that a participant gets to set the stakes. In other words, I think it lets a participant in the game decide not what 8 hit points of damage means in terms of color after the fortune happens, but lets them decide (at least some of the time) what 8 hit points of damage means before the fortune roll is even made.