Adding attrition with "Bloodied"

[Morrus]

Can you explain what you mean by "Death Spiral"?

It's a [feature/criticism] of a lot of games.

Basically - you get injured, you become less able to defend against more damage, so you're more likely to be injured again, and so become even less able to defend, and so on. Once you've entered the Death Spiral, you're as good as dead.

 

[Meophist]

It means once you're hurt you're easier to hurt.

Look at some of the other threads talking about this.

Basically: you lose health, which gives you a condition that makes it easier to lose health, which gives you a condition that makes it harder to regain/easier to lose health....rinse and repeat.

I've been seeing it, but... something like that is rather logical. Somebody who's hurt will have greater difficulty protecting themselves from further harm. It makes a lot of sense if you want any sense of attrition.

It's a [feature/criticism] of a lot of games.

Basically - you get injured, you become less able to defend against more damage, so you're more likely to be injured again, and so become even less able to defend, and so on. Once you've entered the Death Spiral, you're as good as dead.

Hold on, this isn't quite a death spiral then, since you can rather easily get out of it.

 

[Sunseeker]

I've been seeing it, but... something like that is rather logical. Somebody who's hurt will have greater difficulty protecting themselves from further harm. It makes a lot of sense if you want any sense of attrition.

But the problem is it just doesn't work well, you'd basically kill your up-front guy in a heartbeat and then be defenseless. Attrition is a concept that works in mass numbers, that's why they're called "wars of attrition". If you wanna give every play 10,000 health and have 100 PCs, then you can have attrition.

 

[Meophist]

But the problem is it just doesn't work well, you'd basically kill your up-front guy in a heartbeat and then be defenseless.

What quite do you mean by this?

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I'm not too sure how well "bloodied" as half hit points works when you start reducing hit point numbers back to pre 4e levels as they seem to be doing. In 4e it is as much a marker point (to say you're halfway there) as it is a condition that powers and abilities can feed off of. A reduced number of hit points plays havoc with the suitability of "bloodied" as a halfway point. Perhaps it should be a condition you get when you hit zero hps that does not go away until you have some sort of significant rest. Rather than being automatically "unconscious", perhaps you should be automatically "bloodied" (with the possibility of being "incapacitated" or "unconscious" as well)?

The big problem for me with bloodied and hit points in general is that they are putting "wounds" AND "everything else hit points represent - fortitude, luck, will to go on, divine providence, inner strength, bumps and bruises" under the same hit point umbrella when realistically, the two should be separated. Wounds are healed differently to how hit points are restored and the recovery process for each should be separated. Hit point recovery should be possible through second winds, warlord/bard encouragement/chastisement, fighter inner strength, paladin heroics as well as clerical blessings and so on. Wounds need a healer during an extended rest be that healer mundane or magical.

While I struggle to see 5e designers dealing with this hit point duality thing in the core game, I certainly hope they try to fix it in a module or something.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Sunseeker]

What quite do you mean by this?

That with older-edition-style reduced hitpoints, you're going to find characters are a lot squishier, and that's going to cause your primary soakers to eat the dirt real quick if you can't heal them out of HP-loss conditions.

 

[Meophist]

That with older-edition-style reduced hitpoints, you're going to find characters are a lot squishier, and that's going to cause your primary soakers to eat the dirt real quick if you can't heal them out of HP-loss conditions.

Right, with older-style reduced hit points, attrition mechanics are rather meaningless. I don't think that's what we're going to get, however, although it's certainly a possibility.

If we have more 4th edition amounts of hit points, attrition mechanics, I think, make a lot of sense.

 

[Morrus]

I've been seeing it, but... something like that is rather logical. Somebody who's hurt will have greater difficulty protecting themselves from further harm.

Sure. It suits a simulationist game. I'm not sure it suits D&D, or that realism is an important factor in a game designed to be fun. But it'll appeal to some and not to others. I'm in the latter category, but I know folks in the former.

 

[Meophist]

Sure. It suits a simulationist game. I'm not sure it suits D&D, or that realism is an important factor in a game designed to be fun. But it'll appeal to some and not to others. I'm in the latter category, but I know folks in the former.

If I wanted to just have the pure combat gameplay, then I would play a video game RPG. Now, I do that anyways, but the point is that I think Dungeons and Dragons is, at the very least, capable of more than that. D&D can get me to feel that I'm a person in a world. I can be a farmer who can barely handle a sword to a demigod who can move mountains.

I know that doesn't quite suit everyone's playstyle, but I do think some sort of attrition mechanic gameplay can be made to support quite a large range of playstyles. You can still set ambushes, have highly tactical battles, but have your characters feel weary because they just fought five battles in a row with the same basic rules.

I don't quite think it needs to be an "or" issue.

 

[Sirot]

Sure. It suits a simulationist game. I'm not sure it suits D&D, or that realism is an important factor in a game designed to be fun. But it'll appeal to some and not to others. I'm in the latter category, but I know folks in the former.

5e taking modular approach is probably the best way to resolve this problem.

If we have more 4th edition amounts of hit points, attrition mechanics, I think, make a lot of sense.

That is the edition I based the system off in terms of survivability. Going back to the more lethal days of D&D with this additional system would be too much like everyone else said.