D&D General Hit Points are a great mechanic

[AlViking]

Can't say that I agree with much of the OP.

I do agree that the "fire and forget" part is nice. Yes, there is an elegance to simplicity. I can buy all that.

However, I find that HP is a barrier to many common tropes:
•Hostage situation? Hostage has enough HP to survive, so no narrative tension.

Depends on the hostage of course but if someone has a knife to someone's throat in my game I use a variation of 3e's coupe de grace. The hostage is considered unconscious which means that the attack has advantage and is automatic critical. In addition in my game if they survive that it's a fortitude save equal to the damage dealt (up to 20).

Even it's a common trope in TV shows and movies to have the bad guy with the gun to the head of a hostage of one of the protagonists telling the other protagonist to drop their gun or they'll shoot (something no one with any training would ever do by the way). The two protagonists look at each other and the captive does something unexpected and gets away with minimal injuries or the other protagonist shoots anyway ... it happens all the time. D&D is emulating fiction, not reality.

•Rushing to save someone from falling off a cliff? Meh, they'll survive the fall damage, so no narrative tension.

After a certain point you aren't going to survive a fall in my game either.

I also disagree with the verisimilitude stance presented, as it conflicts with personal experiences of having found victory in spite of injury.

It's a death spiral and simplicity thing to me. You may have found victory in spite of injury in an encounter. PCs put their life on the line constantly, a death spiral would be deadly and wouldn't work for the game. In addition there are plenty of stories of people continuing to fight despite serious injury, adrenaline is a hell of a drug.

Admittedly my first two are house rules but that's part of the appeal of the game. They are really minor tweaks that make the game work for me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I actually agree with the absence of dramatic tension caused by survival certainty but disagree that HP are the source of the problem.

The problem is the survival certainty, which is easy to remove.

Just eliminate the certainty.

That's exactly why I've used a house rule for decades in my D&D games where max damage dice get rerolled and added to the damage total, so it becomes mathematically possible for a 1d6 damage die roll to inflict hundreds of HP damage if one were to roll a 6, then another, then another, then another, etc.

It's a little change that adds a lot of suspense and dramatic tension at the table. Simple rule, major impact.

Also, when you get hit in real life you get injured, so when you can't get injured why should you care about the gun? Hit points encourage nonsensical behavior in the face of danger, because it's not actually dangerous.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't see how either of these has anything to do with HP.

Even the sponginess aside, both are out of combat situations, and I don't see much reason to use a combat-specific subsystem to be used for them.

So how would you handled potential for harm outside of initiative?

Also, I can't think of a game with hit points that doesn't use them for all situations where physical harm is possible, so the claim above feels a little odd for you to assume.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hit points are a good mechanic.

But Healing Surges added on? That combo is a great mechanic. Because now you can have your cake and eat it too. You can keep all the utility and straightforwardness of hit points, and have the benefits of a light, simple, not-super-punishing "wounds" system as well--all while making HP more tactical AND strategic at the same time.

In what way do healing surges represent "wounds"? There's no impairment, and they go away in two days at the absolute maximum.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is an interesting point. Some sort of "combo point" or "progress bar" system in which you fill it with weaker attacks and can then spend it for more powerful attacks is very common (though almost always alongside the HP) but I can't ever recall seeing something like that in a tabletop RPG. I wonder why? It would solve the issue of the PCs novaing first with the most powerful abilities and then boringly whittling away the enemies with weaker ones with lesser attacks.

I would think it's because game designers assume players wouldn't want to track the combo points or would find it confusing.

 

[loverdrive]

So how would you handled potential for harm outside of initiative?

Also, I can't think of a game with hit points that doesn't use them for all situations where physical harm is possible, so the claim above feels a little odd for you to assume.

Fate would be one such system, there it's possible to inflict consequence aspects (wounds) bypassing stress (HP). Also Dark Heresy, maybe? GM I've played with rolled on a crit table bypassing HP, I think, but I don't know if it's actually permitted by the rules, but even if he wasn't, it's still possible to have HP remaining and have your head blown off there.

But, like, I think about stuff in the abstract. In the abstract, there's nothing about HP that mandates that they must be always used. It's totally possible to treat them as a part of combat subsystem that just isn't applicable outside of combat.

"You take HP damage when you are in a position to defend yourself, and GM just fiats in all other cases" seems like a reasonable approach to me.

Yeah, hit points and "gun pointed at you, so stand down" situations go together like oil and water.

In aforementioned Dark Heresy, guns tend to inflict more damage than most characters have HP total, so it's mostly a question of tuning numbers, I think.

Overall upon further thinking, I'm probably fine with lingering wounds as long as they aren't the only/main way to inflict damage (like they are in Blades). If they happen rarely and aren't easily healed, so I don't have to constantly keep track of them being applied/unapplied, then I don't mind.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Of course a lot of this weirdness is not caused by hit points per se, it is caused by having so many of them and by the weapon damage capping so low. We can easily imagine a system where there are less hit points, weapon crits do significantly more damage (or at least have potential to do so) and attacks against helpless victims autocrit, where these hostage situation issues do not become so weird.

Though I also have no issue with high level characters just being implausible resilient by real world standards, as I see them as mythic heroes that can transcend mortal limits. But I think in the current edition we get to into that territory a bit too fast for my liking.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I would think it's because game designers assume players wouldn't want to track the combo points or would find it confusing.

Yes, probably. But I don't think it would be too bad, if there was just one such "combo counter" to track. A lot of classes already require tracking several resources.

 

[loverdrive]

Related to combo points, in an amazing boardgame Yomi, there's a combo system where moves link into each other (they are labeled as A, B, C etc) and there are also Linkers and Enders that link from anything. So you can go like A-B-C-D-E, or A-Linker-D-E, or A-B-Linker or any of different combinations.

I kind of wish RPGs were less resistant to cards or other bespoke doodads, that'd open up a lot of interesting design space, I think

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course a lot of this weirdness is not caused by hit points per se, it is caused by having so many of them and by the weapon damage capping so low. We can easily imagine a system where there are less hit points, weapon crits do significantly more damage (or at least have potential to do so) and attacks against helpless victims autocrit, where these hostage situation issues do not become so weird.

Though I also have no issue with high level characters just being implausible resilient by real world standards, as I see them as mythic heroes that can transcend mortal limits. But I think in the current edition we get to into that territory a bit too fast for my liking.

That does make it difficult to model the entirely logical scenario of, "bad guy has the gun trained on hero, hero stands down" though, and I really want to be able to model that in a game that doesn't focus on narrative play.