April 3rd, Rule of 3

[Lanefan]

Why not?

I whack my knee on the coffee table. It hurts, it leaves a bruise. Am I actually down HP? Is that bruise on my knee going to impact my survivability?

Whether or not it impacts your survivability, the bruise leaves you in less than perfect physical condition and thus down (probably only one) h.p. In a world with magical healing you could be right as rain in no time via spell, potion, whatever; but without magical healing recovery pretty much mirrors the real world, and it might be tomorrow or the next day before that bruise stops bugging you to the point that you can forget about it (i.e. you've recovered the lost h.p.)

Isn't that what temporary HP and non-lethal damage both represent? I can get repeatedly punched in the face until I fall down, yet not lose a single HP.

To me, temporary and non-lethal h.p. are still h.p., you just naturally recover them faster. Once again, this points to a need for a BP-FP system...

Lanefan

 

[YRUSirius]

Does anyone really think that mainstream casuals need anything more complex than hit points? The concept of life points is so easy to grasp and so ingrained in the minds of gamers all over the world (doesn't matter which coloeur), every one can understand them.

If you confront a casual gamer with the 'complex problems' that seem to arise because of those 'problematic' hit points they will just shrug and say: "Man, it's just a game.".

Yeah, it's just a game. Get over it and kill some orcs.

-YRUSirius

 

[Hussar]

Whether or not it impacts your survivability, the bruise leaves you in less than perfect physical condition and thus down (probably only one) h.p. In a world with magical healing you could be right as rain in no time via spell, potion, whatever; but without magical healing recovery pretty much mirrors the real world, and it might be tomorrow or the next day before that bruise stops bugging you to the point that you can forget about it (i.e. you've recovered the lost h.p.)

To me, temporary and non-lethal h.p. are still h.p., you just naturally recover them faster. Once again, this points to a need for a BP-FP system...

Lanefan

Problem is, I'm a level 1 commoner (or level 1 magic user). I have 1 hit point. I whack my knee on the coffee table and I'm now dead. Granted, total corner case, but, I'd say that linking any damage to hit points is a very difficult thing to do.

As soon as you start looking at it with any sort of critical eye, it's not hard to see that HP don't stand up to much scrutiny.

 

[YRUSirius]

A level 1 commoner has 1 hit point? And a table does 1 hit point to him if the commoner whacks his knee at it? Wha-wha-what?

Linking damage to to hit points is pretty easy though, an attack with a dagger can kill a 4 hit point commoner, even a 8 hit point commoner if the attacker get's a lucky critical hit in some editions. Hit points just indicate how many successful attacks a person can withstand before the person goes down. You don't need to know more details for D&D. We are no doctors after all.

-YRUSirius

 

[FireLance]

Problem is, I'm a level 1 commoner (or level 1 magic user). I have 1 hit point. I whack my knee on the coffee table and I'm now dead. Granted, total corner case, but, I'd say that linking any damage to hit points is a very difficult thing to do.

As soon as you start looking at it with any sort of critical eye, it's not hard to see that HP don't stand up to much scrutiny.

I think it makes more sense to say that minor cuts and injuries don't even deal 1 hp worth of damage. That's why ordinary people don't die from papercuts and pinpricks even if they are clumsy or unlucky enough to sustain several such minor wounds in rapid succession.

Incidentally, it also means that 4e minions are a lot less fragile than some of their detractors make them out to be. Once we accept that 1 hp of damage is a lot more serious than a cat scratch, we won't have 4e minions dying from housecats. And frankly, if we apply the same logic to earlier editions, we won't have 3e commoners dying from them, either.

 

[pemerton]

I think it makes more sense to say that minor cuts and injuries don't even deal 1 hp worth of damage.

<snip>

it also means that 4e minions are a lot less fragile than some of their detractors make them out to be. Once we accept that 1 hp of damage is a lot more serious than a cat scratch, we won't have 4e minions dying from housecats.

The whole idea that "minion" is an ingame status that implies vulnerability to housecats is bizarre. Anyone who will only look at hp that way just shouldn't use minions!

A minion's 1 hp is so obviously a metagame status it's hard to see how it could be more obvious - it means nothing more nor less than "any time the action resolution mechanics result in a hit against this monster, it goes down".

I use "minionisation" as a result of a skill check as one way of resolving out-of-combat attacks by the PCs against lone NPCs: if the skill check succeeds and the attack hits, the NPC drops; if the skill check or the attack fails, then the PC is in combat and has to cut through the NPCs hp (with all that that implies, including the possibility of the NPC escaping, or other characters intervening in the fight).

But the "minionisation" doesn't mean that anything special has happened within the fiction. It's just a metagame component of the action resolution mechanics.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I whack my knee on the coffee table and I'm now dead. Granted, total corner case, but, I'd say that linking any damage to hit points is a very difficult thing to do.

To be fair... the corners of those coffee tables *are* pretty sharp. ;-)

 

[YRUSirius]

Use common sense, people. A housecat never killed a person to my knowledge. I don't care what the monster manual says about the 'damage' it can do... just use common sense...

And if a 'minion'/'weaksauce monster' gets hit by a fist of a character he get's knocked down in the first round (doesn't mean he's dead). It's the equivalent of John McClane knocking out a minor bad boy on his way to the major bad boy.

-YRUSirius

 

[pemerton]

Use common sense, people. A housecat never killed a person to my knowledge. I don't care what the monster manual says about the 'damage' it can do... just use common sense...

That's fine, but what's the point of the MM entry then?

I prefer mechanics I can use to "mechanics" that I have to ignore.

 

[Balesir]

I prefer mechanics I can use to "mechanics" that I have to ignore.

I can't XP you again, but I'm right with you on this one!

I think the "remedy" is a simple principle, actually:

"In order to cause hit point damage, a cause has to be conceivably either a killing or a knockout blow. Any other "damage" can be considered to cause conditions, etc. - but if it could not kill or render unconscious, it should never inflict hit point damage."

Whatever hit points are taken to represent, the only real definite we have about them is that running out of them causes a creature to be dead/dyig/unconscious (and this applies to all editions). So I commend the design principle, above, to you all (designers included)