Favorite Non-HP Health/Damage System?

[ART!]

Cortex is of course a very modular system, but some iterations have an array of stress tracks.

Smallville had Afraid, Angry, Exhausted, Injured, and Insecure. Each of those starts at a d4 (traits in Cortex are rated in die type, not numeric values), and the die "size" goes up (from a d4 to a d6, d6 to d8, etc.) when you take "damage" to that kind of stress.

When you're in conflict with someone, they can use one of those stress dice in their dice pool roll against you, and them rolling larger dice is bad for you.

When one of your stresses gets to a d12, if you take stress to that track again, you are out of the scene in some way or aother appropriate to that kind of stress.

If you get someone to help you recover from stress (which I think is the only way to recover - Smallville is one of the Drama versions of Cortex, so it's all about the relationships), you get to add the die type they helped you recover from to your growth pool, which you use to "level up" later.

Cortex is pretty complicated in some ways, but it's kind of amazing how it all makes sense.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I'm not a massive fan of Fate in general, but I do love their stress system, and would love to adapt it into a crunchier game. I prefer it to hit points in pretty much every instance. I'd love to see it in a d20 system ala Shadow of the Demon Lord, but hit points are such an integrated mechanic in most games that changing them out pretty much means rewriting massive chunks of the system.

In order of preference:
1. Fate's Stress & Consequences
2. Savage World's Wounds & Fatigue
3. Genesys's Toughness & Hit Points
4. D&D Hit Points

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I rather liked the durability tracks in Alternity (the old one, not the new one). Stun and Wound tracks based on your hero's CON score, Mortal and Fatigue tracks half that. I like that durability was grounded in your hero's stats, rather than decided by career choice, and then further modified by a stat.

It side-stepped the "well, see, you track subdual damage like your hp, but they're not really your hp, and then if they exceed your current hp -- not your total hp, mind you, but your current hp -- then...."

Accumulating damage actually wore down your hero. Armor actually worked like armor: sure, it might stop a bullet, but your hero is still going to feel the mule-kick of it. Pile on enough bruises/scrapes/grazes, and that stun damage cascades over into the wound track.

Barring a few "buy an extra stun/wound/mortal" achievements, or raising your hero's CON stat.... that was all the HP your hero was ever going to get. No Endlessly Escalating HP. A knife was just as (or maybe only slightly less) dangerous at tenth level as it was at first.

Yeah Alternity has a pretty great set up, though I prefer something simpler these days.

Cortex is of course a very modular system, but some iterations have an array of stress tracks.

Smallville had Afraid, Angry, Exhausted, Injured, and Insecure. Each of those starts at a d4 (traits in Cortex are rated in die type, not numeric values), and the die "size" goes up (from a d4 to a d6, d6 to d8, etc.) when you take "damage" to that kind of stress.

When you're in conflict with someone, they can use one of those stress dice in their dice pool roll against you, and them rolling larger dice is bad for you.

When one of your stresses gets to a d12, if you take stress to that track again, you are out of the scene in some way or aother appropriate to that kind of stress.

If you get someone to help you recover from stress (which I think is the only way to recover - Smallville is one of the Drama versions of Cortex, so it's all about the relationships), you get to add the die type they helped you recover from to your growth pool, which you use to "level up" later.

Cortex is pretty complicated in some ways, but it's kind of amazing how it all makes sense.

Needing another person in order to heal is brilliant. I might Jack that, since my game is partly about how people working together are more than they could be by themselves.

 

[GMMichael]

Cypher System and their ability pools!

This is a cool system. It's nice to see a character's durability diminish in more ways than one. Further, there are actually consequences for taking damage. What still doesn't sit well with me, though, is using damage to power one's special abilities. It's actually a great idea, but it feels like attacking your own character to my Final Fantasy-trained mind.

My (Modos RPG) damage system has some similarities - pools and different damage types - but it's up to the PC to start climbing the Death Tree, and filling (emptying) one pool is enough to knock a character out, unlike Cypher's draining from one pool to another.

Thinking about it, the Modos system also uses damage to power abilities, but this draws a line between physical and metaphysical damage - casting spells doesn't physically hurt the caster. I should probably use the similarities to reconcile my feelings for the Cypher system...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This is a cool system. It's nice to see a character's durability diminish in more ways than one. Further, there are actually consequences for taking damage. What still doesn't sit well with me, though, is using damage to power one's special abilities. It's actually a great idea, but it feels like attacking your own character to my Final Fantasy-trained mind.

My (Modos RPG) damage system has some similarities - pools and different damage types - but it's up to the PC to start climbing the Death Tree, and filling (emptying) one pool is enough to knock a character out, unlike Cypher's draining from one pool to another.

Thinking about it, the Modos system also uses damage to power abilities, but this draws a line between physical and metaphysical damage - casting spells doesn't physically hurt the caster. I should probably use the similarities to reconcile my feelings for the Cypher system...

My system also has a pool of resources, and I've thought about tying health directly to them as well. This is sparking a lot of ideas!

What I'm vaguely think is, there are at least 2 levels of damage from an event, determined by what you roll on a check or what the attacker rolls, etc. Checks are 1d12 + a pool of d6, usually determined by skill ranks, though something like an environmental hazard would simply have a pool based on how difficult to deal with it is meant to be. Damage is equal to the result of the 1d12, plus 1d6 per level of success. There are only 3 levels of success, so max damage will always be 1d12+3d6.

Each character has a Health score that acts like the damage threshold in Star Wars Saga Edition. You gain fatigue from getting hit, failing a check to handle the strain of seeing something impossible or too big to encompass, losing a friend, etc. If the damage exceeds your Health, you also gain a Trauma related to the source of damage.

Now, what I haven't figured out, is how to track fatigue in a simple and satisfying way. Perhaps it is tracked per attribute. There are six, but it might get shortened to 3 eventually. they range from 1 to 4 at CharGen with around 13 total points spread over the attributes, and you gain 1 point per level to put where you want. In this case, hazards would target an attribute, and your Health would be a number + the attribute in question.

Any successful attack gives you 1 fatigue in that attribute, and there are consequences to your pool of Attribute Points falling below the fatigue in that score. Hits that exceed your Attribute Health just also give you a Trauma, and you have to roll to avoid Trauma any time your AP pool falls below your Attribute Fatigue?

I think I'm going to run with that for the next playtest, and see how it feels.

 

[Marc_C]

The original Cortex had condition two tracks. One for physical damage and one for stun damage. You can fall unconscious from stun damage even if you are uninjured. Very good for gritty games. Fortunately stun damage is recovered from quickly.

 

[Blue]

If combining Stress and Consequence, you cannot absorb the hit, you are Taken Out - not necessarily dead, but effectively removed from the current scene. The player (or the GM) who took you out gets to decide your fate.

Really excellent description of Fate health, but I need to add one bit for the others:

If you can't absorb the hit you are Taken Out, and the enemy controls the narrative of what happens to you.

However, up to the point you are taken out, you can instead Concede. You lose the scene, but get to control the narrative of what happens to you, as long as it doesn't undermine what they wanted. (You also get a Fate point, plus an additional one for each Consequence you suffered in this scene.)

For instance, you're in a battle on a bridge trying to hold back foes from crossing. If you are Taken Out, you might wake in chains as their prisoner - their choice. If you Concede, you can describe how your body drops from the bridge and is swept downstream, presumably dead. In both cases the foe gets what they want - to be able to cross. But in one you can wash up downstream, alive, free, and potentially without them expecting you. In the other you pushed to the very end and they have you.

 

[Umbran]

Really excellent description of Fate health, but I need to add one bit for the others:

If you can't absorb the hit you are Taken Out, and the enemy controls the narrative of what happens to you.

However, up to the point you are taken out, you can instead Concede.

And, by the way, the decision point on that is before the dice are rolled. If you see the BBEG take a big wind up to smack you, you can concede before the hammer falls, but not after you see what they dice say.

 

[pemerton]

In Burning Wheel, injury takes the form of debuffs. (The severity of the debuff depends on the toughness of the victim. The worst debuff is death, if the injury exceeds the victim's Mortal Wound threshold.) Healing takes in-game time based on rolls on the Health score, but it it possible for permanent debilitation to result from severe wounds. The main effect of magical healing, if available, is to boost Health rolls.

In Rolemaster most injury also takes the form of debuffs, various specific injuries generated on critical charts. There is a very detailed magical healing system (many many variants on the D&D Cure Blindness and Regeneration-type spells). There is also a detailed system for calculating natural healing times, and again there is the risk of permanent debilitation.

These systems tend to generate a lot of grittiness.

Prince Valiant resolves all challenges via a "death spiral" system - the winner of each round of opposed checks deducts their victory margin from the loser's dice pool. The GM adjudicates the in-fiction meaning of being reduced to zero - in physical conflict, injury is a possible adjudication. Recovery depends upon the GM's decision. The rules state that death of PCs is not normally a big part of Prince Valiant play.

This is quite non-gritty!

Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP is also pretty non-gritty. It uses Stress as a debuff similar to Smallville described above (emotional, mental, physical); a character who is stressed out takes Trauma instead, which works like Stress but is more difficult to recover. Beyond Trauma, lingering debilities would need to be expressed via other aspects of the PC-development/change rules.

 

[Argyle King]

I'm not sure if this counts as different, but a few games sorta have 2 different types of HP.

FFG Star Wars has wounds (physical) and strain (mental stress, fatigue, etc).

GURPS has HP, but they represent "meat" far more than D&D HP. Being at different thresholds of GURPS HP can have tangible effects. GURPS also has FP (fatigue points).

In both of the above-mentioned systems, armor mitigates damage rather than helping to avoid being hit. Star Wars has soak values for armor; GURPS has DR values for armor.