Are Hit Points necessary?

[Umbran]

People erase holes into their character sheets from keeping track of them.

For... decades now, I have always played RPGs with scratch paper at hand for keeping notes about current state. The character sheet is for long-term stuff for me.

It's possible that a damage save and condition track system involves as much bookkeeping, but you can have damage saves without condition tracks.

Condition track systems have roughly the same level of bookkeeping - any time you get hurt, you have to change some notation of what your condition is - I've seen it done with markers, rather than pencil, but it remains that tracking a number that goes up and down is not fundamentally more or less difficult than tracking a condition that tracks up, down, or side-to-side.

The point is that, as bookkeeping hit points may be repetitive, but they are simple - add or subtract, and when you reach zero you are in trouble, and that's it. Condition tracks generally have some effects from the damage - so every time you get hit it's like someone case a de-buffng spell, and you have to keep track of those modifiers, as well as your position on the track

Unless your damage is digital (alive or dead, and nothing in between), you have to track the effects of damage somehow, somewhere.

 

[Woas]

I can't stand hitpoints the way they are used in D&D.

I can get by with a bit of imaginative-Bondo® around the edges of a D&D game so to speak, in terms of suspension of disbelief.
But when it comes to combat scenarios with all the talk of squares and attacks of opportunity and standard/move action dynamic. But as soon as someone starts talking about how they got 8 hit points left, or that enemy just did 10 hit points of damage to them, or this fireball just did 27 damage... suspension of disbelief is utterly shattered.

So that's my personal stance on hit points.

 

[1Mac]

For... decades now, I have always played RPGs with scratch paper at hand for keeping notes about current state. The character sheet is for long-term stuff for me.

I meant people less enlightened than you . The reason you do that is because you would otherwise wear your character sheet to firmament, which is just as indicative of how much bookkeeping hit points require.

The point is that, as bookkeeping hit points may be repetitive, but they are simple - add or subtract, and when you reach zero you are in trouble, and that's it. Condition tracks generally have some effects from the damage - so every time you get hit it's like someone case a de-buffng spell, and you have to keep track of those modifiers, as well as your position on the track

I was trying to make the explicit point that you can have damage saves without condition tracking. Many damage-save systems involve condition tracking, so people assume you can't have one without the other, but that's not the case. Saying "hit points require less bookkeeping than condition tracking" is not the same as saying "hit points require little bookkeeping," and certainly not the same as saying "hit points require less bookkeeping that damage saves."

Unless your damage is digital (alive or dead, and nothing in between), you have to track the effects of damage somehow, somewhere.

Correct, but there's a false choice between hit points and binary damage. You can have something that tracks the effects of damage and is less fiddly. I know, I worked one out. I may even post it, if someone asks nicely .

 

[Psion]

Necessary? No.

But considering how well the True20 toughness save system went over with me (which is to say: not well), I'd have to say if you are going to put something else in, you'd best make sure its worth the trade off.

 

[nightwyrm]

Defeat Points. That is what they measure, how hard it is to defeat you in a fight.

Or plot armor, which is the way I like to think of hp.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Well, to me that's somewhat more than a "sacred cow" - it is more a basic tenet of D&D's genre that damage isn't particularly hindering, and that it can be healed in a day.

Most games in my experience don't have long-lasting damage - it gets in the way of a heroic life something fierce, and tends to act like an extension of the death spiral.

And this is true of fiction in general; people's health and injuries to it are glossed over.

However, genre fiction is moving more towards verisimilitude. I dig scenes of Bruce Wayne stitching up ghastly-looking wounds or of Starbuck with a cane for five episodes after she broke her leg. I want my rpgs to evolve in this direction as well.

For a more fantasy-like example, Dragon Age (the computer game) has a decent concept whereby damage heals quickly out of combat, but people who drop accumulate "injuries" and accompanying penalties. Not directly adaptable to D&D, but I like the thought.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I was just wondering from all of you if you think hit points are a necessary component for d20 games or if you think that a different system for representing a character's overall measure of damage would be better?

Totally unnecessary.

However, they are one of my favorite methods of tracking combat duration in a heroic-style game. Mostly, this is because of pacing. I really like the effect that a decreasing total amount of points has on the players, how it raises tension, and how it makes the conflict have a definite starting point.

I agree that they maybe could use a tighter definition. But if you're looking for a more "realistic" set of rules, this thread is full of good suggestions, and any grim-n-gritty system might do you well.

Just be careful that you're not killing PC's left and right. That's not usually a lot of fun for the players.

 

[Umbran]

I meant people less enlightened than you . The reason you do that is because you would otherwise wear your character sheet to firmament, which is just as indicative of how much bookkeeping hit points require.

Actually, no. I did that because my handwriting isn't so hot, and if I wrote notes small enough in the marginal places on the sheet, I could not read them. Before I started the habit, I didn't erase through the paper - more often the paper became a smudged mass that was difficult to read.

I was trying to make the explicit point that you can have damage saves without condition tracking.

As I said - either it is digital, or you have to track something.

If it is digital, you are always fine until you fail a save, at which point you're dead (or unconscious, or whatever the game uses). If it isn't digital, then there's some state of woundedness (a state or condition) that needs to be tracked. It may be lightweight. You may feel it is so easy to track that it takes no effort at all, but there's still something you have to remember.

If you have a system where, somehow, you aren't either just alive or dead, but still don't have to track something about being wounded, I'd like to hear about it.

 

[SteveC]

Are hit points necessary? First of all, depending on how broad your definition of hit points is, just about every game has them. I'm going to step away from that issue, since it can only sidetrack the discussion.

For a game like D&D, I'd say they, or some variation quite close to them, certainly are. The notion that you have a reserve that tells you how well you're doing in a fight, and how you're going to be after the fight is over is essential to the D&D mindset of the "adventuring day."

True20, for instance, has a small series of conditions, and any given attack gives you one of those conditions, or else has no effect. I would argue that a system like that makes the notion of 4-5 combat encounters before calling it a day both difficult to implement (i.e., it would require a lot of luck not to be dead or incapacitated long before that) but also not very interesting either. To me, I'm not playing a True20 session for a lot of combat.

Now one might say "good riddance!" to that 4-5 encounter a day mindset, but as you do that you're changing another very common notion of what makes D&D, well, D&D.

In addition to D&D I've played a lot of different games, and the ones without hit points encourage a very different playstyle. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I've read more than a few rulebooks where the notion "if your players bring a D&D mindset to this game, they'll die," is commonplace. To me that means without hit points they're accepting that you're playing a different type of game.

So I guess I'd say that, yes, you can have D&D without hit points, but at that point it really starts to be another type of game entirely.

--Steve

 

[1Mac]

I didn't erase through the paper - more often the paper became a smudged mass that was difficult to read.

Similar symptoms of the same phenomenon.

If it is digital, you are always fine until you fail a save, at which point you're dead (or unconscious, or whatever the game uses). If it isn't digital, then there's some state of woundedness (a state or condition) that needs to be tracked. It may be lightweight. You may feel it is so easy to track that it takes no effort at all, but there's still something you have to remember.

By "condition tracking," I was assuming we meant something like what True20 or Storyteller uses, where different degrees of injury have different in-game effects apart from simply being closer to death. With hit points, typically, a character with 2 hit points can do anything a character with 200 can do (except survive lots of damage of course). "Condition tracking" as I define it is designed to alleviate this perceived lack of realism by giving the player additional penalties to actions as he gets hurt, with the tradeoff being additional bookkeeping. I would never suggest condition tracking as a means of reducing bookkeeping (and I always found it strange that True20 implies as much).

You are still perpetuating a false choice: The choice isn't between hit points or "binary damage," nor am I arguing in favor of a damage system where there is nothing to keep track of. I just think a damage system can be non-binary and involve less bookkeeping than either hit points or condition tracking.