D&D 5E A New Way to HP

[Dausuul]

...was referring to today's players not having to think, Dausuul. Not so much the growth of hit points. I'll give you a moment to re-read.

If you're asserting that the growth of hit point values has made PCs more durable... no, it hasn't. Damage values have grown at the same pace. A 4th-level AD&D fighter averages 22 hit points, and an AD&D orc attacks for an average 4.5 damage. A 4th-level Next fighter with a (rather generous) 16 Con has 40 hit points, and a Next orc attacks for 8 damage. The Next numbers are bigger, but the ratio is virtually identical, and the ratio is what matters.

If you're saying something else about hit points, I'm at a loss for what it might be.

And if you aren't talking about hit points at all, what are you doing in this thread?

 

[ExploderWizard]

If you're asserting that the growth of hit point values has made PCs more durable... no, it hasn't. Damage values have grown at the same pace. A 4th-level AD&D fighter averages 22 hit points, and an AD&D orc attacks for an average 4.5 damage. A 4th-level Next fighter with a (rather generous) 16 Con has 40 hit points, and a Next orc attacks for 8 damage. The Next numbers are bigger, but the ratio is virtually identical, and the ratio is what matters.

If you're saying something else about hit points, I'm at a loss for what it might be.

And if you aren't talking about hit points at all, what are you doing in this thread?

Along with those larger numbers have come all kinds methods for restoring them to full capacity on as close to a per-fight basis as possible, thus making the decision to just charge right into combat a rather meaningless one. Hit points as stun points more than anything else.

 

[Ashkelon]

Along with those larger numbers have come all kinds methods for restoring them to full capacity on as close to a per-fight basis as possible, thus making the decision to just charge right into combat a rather meaningless one. Hit points as stun points more than anything else.

If you look closely, you will see that my suggestion does no such thing. HP recover slowly and do not completely real up with a single night's rest.

So you can argue all you want against the current setup, but my suggestion seems to do what you want.

 

[ExploderWizard]

If you look closely, you will see that my suggestion does no such thing. HP recover slowly and do not completely real up with a single night's rest.

So you can argue all you want against the current setup, but my suggestion seems to do what you want.

Oh I did more than look closely. I read the whole thing. That is why I know that when you speak of HP, its all semantics because of...........

Step 2: HD
Hit Dice (HD) represent a combination of your fighting skill, stamina, toughness, luck, and general combat capability. HD represent your ability to dodge out of the way, parry a blow, block an attack, or otherwise avoid bodily harm. You gain 1 HD each level based on your class. For example, a 10th level fighter would have 10d10 hit dice.


HD are primarily recovered through rest. A short rest or a long rest recovers all spent HD. Healing potions are another way to recover spent HD. Most healing potions only recover HD and not HP. Only the truly powerful healing potions are able to restore your Hit Points. Herbal remedies, ointments, and salves merely replenish your lost energy reserves instead of truly healing your body.

So no matter what the terminolgy used actually is, it all amounts to a quickly replenishing pool of vitality that refreshes at worst overnight. Who cares if you are down a few hp if you have 10d10 HD to spend ablating damage?

Once again, boiled down these are simply mechanics designed to enable charging in without thought, and without the nasty consequences.

I created a similar wound/stamina system several years ago then realized the abstraction of D&D didn't need it. The GURPS HT and fatigue system does everything I want for detailed combat with stamina and meat points that don't increase with level.

 

[Ashkelon]

And, in addressing the HP issue that would make Con so vital for everyone, you would choose to exacerbate that problem rather than fix it?

In using Con score for your base hit points, you've already included the equivalent of twice your Con modifier, so you can get away with not adding the modifier at each level. That goes a long way toward making someone with less than maximized Con viable at least. And, although it would be less useful than in the base game, Con saves are still quite plentiful, and some class-specific features still reference it, so it would still be more useful than Charisma (to most people).

Con 8 is not now, nor has it ever been, "sickly and frail"; it's -1 to Con checks, which is imperceptibly below average, to the extent that it would only make a difference one time in twenty. Besides, required minimum ability scores went out of style with AD&D.

So I did change things so that those with Con 8 or less always gain at least 1 HP with every level. I do think you are overestimating the importance of Con. At level 10 a 12 Con PC would have 32 HP and a 16 Con PC would have 56 HP. Sure 24 HP seems like a lot, but HP is not the sole contributor to survival in my suggested model. With 10d10 HD, you can negate up to 55 points of damage per short rest. And with only a 20% recover rate for HP, your total HP matter a lot less for individual daily survival. So assuming 1 short rest per day, daily HP for the 12 Con fighter is 114 and for the 16 Con fighter it is 121. That is less than a 5% difference. This difference only decreases as you take more short rests.

This is a major improvement over the current 5e method where a 12 Con fighter has total daily HP close to 100 (including HD), and the 16 Con fighter has daily HP close to 140. A 40% increase in total HP per day for only a 4 point increase in Con is way too much!

So in my version, you actually could play a Con 8 fighter if you really wanted to. In the current 5e method, that would be suicide.

 

[Ashkelon]

So no matter what the terminolgy used actually is, it all amounts to a quickly replenishing pool of vitality that refreshes at worst overnight. Who cares if you are down a few hp if you have 10d10 HD to spend ablating damage?

Once again, boiled down these are simply mechanics designed to enable charging in without thought, and without the nasty consequences.

Well clearly you don't understand some of the nuances of this system.

1. Short rests take 1 hour to complete. You are not able to take them after every single fight. This means that you will rare go into an encounter with all of your remaining HD. You will some every fight until you reach a point where it is safer to retreat and find a place to rest, meaning you are definitely not 'charging in without thought and without nasty consequences.'

2. Sometimes you roll low on your HD, it is an inevitability of chance. This means that you take HP damage. So over the course of one day, or many days, your HP will be whittled away. This makes it very dangerous to charge in when your HP are low, even if you have all your HD. Since you start dying as soon as your HP are at 0, you can technically die with all of your HD unspent.

3. Just because you have a large pool of HD that refresh with an hour of rest, doesn't you are unkillable. In fact it is quite the opposite. Because HD have to be spent per attack instead of being lumped up into a big pool of HP, my version makes PCs less capable of dealing with certain threats than the current method. A group of 10 goblins that each deal 1d6+1 damage would be more of a challenge for a level 10 fighter with my idea than against a level 10 fighter with a flat 100 HP.

All my suggestion does is allow a group who wants to have 10 encounters per day to be able to do so without requiring magical potions, wands, or healers. You still have to be smart about how you face each of those encounters because your HP recovers so slowly, so avoiding taking HP damage whenever possible is key to survival. Rushing in headlong with no thought to the consequences means you are far more likely to die if you use my idea than if you use the current 5e rules.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So I did change things so that those with Con 8 or less always gain at least 1 HP with every level.

It's an obvious rule patch, but a necessary one. With this change, the game is at least playable for someone with below-average Con. Not that base 5E was unplayable with low Con, of course - you're never supposed to take damage - but this module would probably help to make the hit die size more important than the Con score, which has been one of the major problems with HP ever since 3E.

 

[Jester David]

This isn't so much a change to hp but a change to HD, making them more a reactive and used in-combat rather than used outside of combat during a rest.

I like it.

It helps survival, but there's still a choice of action required adding a tactical element to play. It reduces the swinginess of combat by adding a way of reducing the impact of lucky crits, but since the game is balanced for HD being spent over the day, it shouldn't affect the overall power of characters or length of the adventuring day: they use the same number of HD and roughly take the same damage.
It does require some system mastery to use well, as you don't want to use it for small attacks, and there's a chance of rolling well and over-negating a hit, which is damage you would normally have healed but this balances with being reduced to 0 less often and thus being able to fight longer and get more turns.


It's a shame this idea is being bogged down by the meat vs fatigue hp discussions.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6774887]Ashkelon[/MENTION] I agree with [MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION] that there is the kernel of a good idea here.

You and others have identified the two main drawbacks, and I don't know if there's a way around them:

1. Multiple attack vectors are more dangerous than single attack vectors. 10 goblins might actually be more dangerous to an individual PC than a dragon. There is fiction-rules dissonance there, unless there are further rules to limit this, or dragons are designed as multi-attack whirlwinds.

2. There is disincentive for tougher characters to spend HP defending against weak attacks. There is an element of strategic play involved, but the thinking it produces in the player is a bit...alien...or at least very gamey. "I won't defend against goblins now, so that I can defend against the deathknight later."

 

[steenan]

I see two approaches that may prevent the issues you mention. They can even be used together.

1. Use armor as DR, not AC. Then players can let their armor take care of many weak hits and only actively defend (spend HD) against dangerous attacks. If the DR values are scaled correctly, a heavy armor does not make a significant difference against a dragon, but gives a near immunity to kobold and goblin attacks. Which is how it should work, I think.

2. Give the Fighter (and maybe other strongly melee-oriented classes) an ability to get a free hit against any enemy who attacks them and is completely blocked by a HD roll. So a player is incentivised to spend HD against minions not only to prevent damage, but also to kill them faster. Also, there is no feeling of wasted resources when too many HD are spent.