Alternative HP systems and other altered d20 mechanics

[LostSoul]

ie.
Base # to hit = '20'
BAB + DEX add to both Attack Rolls AND Armour Class.

eg.
10th-level character with Dex 16
BAB: 10 + 3 (13)
AC: 20 + 10 + 3 (33)
Needs '20' to hit equal opponent.

Do you think a roll of '20' should be necessary to hit an equal opponent? I'd go with a 10. (I've skimmed over parts of this thread, so I don't know if you've answered this already.)

Is this how you are going to keep characters on their feet with their reduced hit points?

 

[Toj]

How in the wide, wide world of carpal-tunnel-syndrome do you roll 11,200 10-sided dice!?

You could just take a 1d10 x 11,200, or if you are unhappy with that you can take 1d100 x 1120

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

...you can take 1d100 x 1120

QUICK...

What's 67 times 1120?

 

[Toj]

We always have calculators at our gaming sessions. It's as common as mountain dew and pencils.

 

[Grommilus]

UK:

Actually glass is as tough as stone (if not tougher!) See the link to mineral hardness site I provided in one of my last few posts.

At the moment I am favouring a Hit Point Multiplier based on material 'absolute hardness'.

I'm well aware that glass is as hard or harder than stone (hardness being the physical property of being able to scratch) Toughness, I think, represents how hard it is to damage with a sudden, powerful blow, instead of scratching which is a weak scrape across the material. As for determining the hardness of most objects, while physics will help, a certain amount of eyeballing is necessary, such as how hard is it to damage an iron ball that weighs 10 pounds as to a 10 foot long iron stick, weighing 10 pounds.

quote:
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Originally posted by Grommilus
But isn't material strength simply toughness? I equate Str as it works in dnd as the ability to move things, bigger the str, bigger the things (force) and inanimate objects don't move, so no str, right?
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I agree. Although still relevant - if you ever do animate it.

Why would an iron golem of similiar volume have to be stronger than a stone golem? The strength of the golem would depend on the animating magic, not the matierial used. basically if i built a robot arm out of plastic, and then built one out of steel, with the same servos, they would have the same strength (altho the plasitic one could damage its self with it's own force).

If you have ever seen the anime Ghost in the Shell, you'd notice a perfect example in it where a cyborg rips off her own arms trying to open the hatch on a tank. She is obviously too strong for her toughness =) If making a creature, artificially or not, I'd definatly limit the strength of my creation in terms of wether or not using it's full strength does physical damage. Maybe make it capable of hurting its self, which is sometimes neccassary (like lifting that car off your foot, even tho you strain your back doing it) but not over do it so that using full strength causes serious harm, like ripping off your own arms.

A clay golem would need to be larger than a stone golem to have comparable strength.

How so? Strength isn't dependant on material, altho the stone golem could have more strength animated into it based on the fact that it would be able to support more weight with it's appendages, but this does not mean the stone golem does have more strength, only that it could. See above Ghost in the Shell reference.

Easily handled now. We give him a higher 'absolute hardness'. Obviously it won't be equivalent to stone - otherwise he would be a stone golem. Maybe even just double or triple skin value?

I was thinking more along the lines of 1.5 times normal flesh value. A stone giant being one and a half as hard to injure as a flesh giant of the same mass sounds about right. Like I said, a certain amount of eyeballing is required to come up with toughness stat. And I prefer toughness compared to absolute hardness or even hardness, because hardness is just how difficult an object is to scratch, whereas toughness is how difficult it is to physically deform.

quote:
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Originally posted by Grommilus
I was talking about magical enhancements kinda, and training, like the iron monks that get hit by boards and such. I've always been a fan of characters that can take hoards of beattings before they go down, which is why I like dwarven barbarians in DnD.
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Don't know if this would use the same rule as 'absolute hardness' since they are both still typical flesh.

I was thinking that (through the skill based advancement) characters could gain some sort of Damage Reduction (perhaps in lieu of BAB?).

I don't know if I would say one of those monks that trains with getting hit with boards, or say a boxer, has typical flesh. I would say it's atypical, because they can take alot more punishment than thier size would indicate.

As for skill based advancement, I've always had a problem with it in that if you make a warrior with skill based, and you want to be good at what you do, you almost always have to be completely worthless when it comes to non-combat skills. Level based advancement is cool because it often seperates combat skills from non combat skills, giving rise to the fighter than can climb and jump, as well as swing a sword.

Could do. Or perhaps in lieu of BAB?

I was thinking that it would take the place of specialty combat skills, aka feats (like in 3e). Feats just make the game generally more fun by providing more options in character creation and in play.

Oh, and just one other thing, I wouldn't be too worried about putting numbers to damage or items, aka monkey work, until ya get the ideas exactly how ya want em.

Grom

 

[jonrog1]

Hey, if it's not too annoying, still playing devil's advocate here. I'm a huge fan of skill-based systems, so I'll nudge on ...

We always have calculators at our gaming sessions. It's as common as mountain dew and pencils.

But you shouldn't need calculators at a gaming table. you should need characters and imagination.

Okay, I fully get the whole fractional armor/damage thing now. "armor reduces damage" vs. "armor reduces your chance of taking damage" is a fine-line argument, and seeing as both are conceptual representations of combat, I think which you prefer is pretty arbitrary. But this one is a decent choice. Although the first time somebody argues that while leather armor absorbs the shock of a baseball bat, a meat cleaver cuts right through it, the system starts to wobble.

I struggled to create a more fluid gaming system myself for ages, but what I kept running into -- indeed, what I think many alternative game systems kept running into -- is that the abstract systems of HP as "survivability" made for an easier, more efficient way to track damage than HP as a physical attribute.

quote:
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Originally posted by jonrog1
Yes, yes he has. Yet mass+str=hp. So basically he's got to strength train in order to be harder to kill than slovenly, couch potato me who outweighs him?
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Your actual mass will affect your strength anyway, so yes.

Yes, but actual mass doesn't affect strength. Or it may reasonably affect it, but it doesn't dictate it. In a system where the whole point is to toss out the streamlined conceptual for the logical, this to me is a huge logic gap. A system that tells me that Jackie Chan has to pump iron 4 hours a day to kick Sharon Gless's ass just seems hinky.

As I see it, two people (equal weight, differing fitness levels) who take an identical sword slash suffer the same actual damage. The person with the greater stamina will be able to stave off the detrimental effects of the wound longer* - but they are still equally injured.

*ie. avoid unconsciousness, numbing loss of a limb etc.

Yes, so this HP system tracks damage more efficiently. But damage is only relevant vis-a-vis a PC's ability to take X-amount and keep functioning. In your explanation stamina means you can take more damage and keep functioning, but it's separate from the actual damage. In 3 ed, more HP means you can take more damage and keep functioning -- with no need to track the actual damage. Why make HP more grounded yet a less efficient way of tracking a character's effectiveness?

I think what you have to do here is just toss out the whole idea of HP -- it's admittedly useless if not used properly, as a mathematical metaphor for PC's ability to function.

The idea of restructuring HP so it more logically can be applied universally, as to tanks and such, is a noble goal. But I must argue, and I don't think unreasonably, that any gaming system that has you tossing around six digit numbers is not one that'll catch on or provide ease of use. Am I wrong to think the first time your normal human opens a rule book and sees "100,000,000 hp of damage" they'll think this game might not be the fun, improvisational game they've heard so much about?

And before I get accused of being one of the same marketing hacks who doomed D&D to old-school ways, let me suggest a half-step. Regardless of system, use HP for organic matter and wound points with DR for inorganic. That seems logical -- organic systems shut down after receiving far less proportional damage than a building can take before it collapses. Using a different scale would allow you to keep the numbers while dealing with inorganics in a reasonable range. Yeah, sure, a tank only has 60 WP, but it has DR 20. And perhaps 1 WP=10-100 HP, whatever playtests out as logical.

This may actually integrate with the "absolute hardness" concept.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi there!

Do you think a roll of '20' should be necessary to hit an equal opponent? I'd go with a 10. (I've skimmed over parts of this thread, so I don't know if you've answered this already.)

Is this how you are going to keep characters on their feet with their reduced hit points?

One of the earliest examples I used was a fight between Driz'zt and Artemis Entreri. But you could equally use any Star Wars Jedi Battles or the Duel between Inigo Montoya and Wesley.

They virtually never hit their opponent! If they land a solid blow thats virtually the end of the fight.

If you make them hit equal opponents on a '10' they are going to land a solid blow 50% of the time! If they generally hit equal opponents on a '20' thats 5%. Much more realistic.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello Toj mate!

You could just take a 1d10 x 11,200, or if you are unhappy with that you can take 1d100 x 1120

I was thinking:

11d10 x 1000
2d10 x100

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi there!

QUICK...

What's 67 times 1120?

...Off the top of my head 75,000?

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

Okay, I fully get the whole fractional armor/damage thing now. "armor reduces damage" vs. "armor reduces your chance of taking damage" is a fine-line argument, and seeing as both are conceptual representations of combat, I think which you prefer is pretty arbitrary. But this one is a decent choice. Although the first time somebody argues that while leather armor absorbs the shock of a baseball bat, a meat cleaver cuts right through it, the system starts to wobble.

I totally agree with your point about conceptualization, it's probably the most important thing when it comes to mechanics--it isn't whether or not a mechanic is scientifically sound necessarily but, rather, whether or not it 'feels' right to the players (of course, the two are not always mutually exclusive ).

As to your example of the bat and cleaver vs leather...

I recently had a 'conceptual breakthrough' of my own for my Basic D&D campaign. Though the details have yet to be finalized, I have a good feeling about it.

Basically, I'm taking a little from both of your points; armour makes you less likely to take a damaging 'hit', but weapons differ in whether they score more or less damage versus certain armours, vis-a-vis other weapon types.

For example...

Damage by Weapon vs Armour (excepting shields)

WEAPON: NONE / LIGHT / MEDIUM / HEAVY

Sword: d8 / d8 / d6 / d4 (fast)

Axe: d8 / d6 / d8 / d4 (average)

Mace: d6 / d4 / d6 / d8 (slow)

So, rather than messing with To Hit modifiers, all weapons are equally likely to score a damaging 'hit', but weapons will differ in how effective they are, relative to other weapons, in scoring damage vs armour types. I think this will add a bit of tactical variety, without slowing down combat.

I know the above seems a bit counter-intuitive at first, but if the conceptual hurdle can be overcome, I think it is a neat little system.

In particular, certain weapons actually doing less damage vs worse armour classes than against better ones requires some mental gymnastics.

It certainly hurts more to be hit with a mace when not wearing any armour, but it would hurt even more if hit by a sword or axe--remember, the damage values are relative to other weapons.

Of course, the mace is more effective at transfering its energy through plate armours than the sword.

While, at first blush, it would appear that the mace is more effective in absolute terms (i.e. not compared to other weapons) vs heavy armour than against light, it must be remembered that it will still be scoring a 'hit' against the more heavily armoured foe less often--so it may actually be scoring 2d6 or more damage againt the unarmoured foe during the time that it takes to land a single d8 hit versus heavy plate.

Anyway, it works for me

I've still got to play around with the numbers a bit.

I'm also considering allowing a character to score an additional point of damage for every -1 To Hit penalty he accepts. So, a character wielding a sword will be able to score as much damage in a single blow as a mace wielder, but he will have to aim carefully at the chinks in the armour (i.e. accept a To Hit penalty). Similarly, a mace wielder will have to be more careful in the placement of his attack versus light armour if he wishes his strike to be as damaging as a blow from an axe or sword.