Are Hit Points necessary?

[Ariosto]

Obviously not everyone likes it, but "bypassing the hit point system" is to the point of things that do that in old D&D -- not some kind of accident.

Ditto making hit point 'spending' automatic; dealing with gruesome consequences (and record-keeping and rules-applying) of actually getting a perforated gut is avoided on purpose by simply docking 1-6 points per potential impalement.

Different strokes, of course; one might really in the long run prefer something else.

The trick with "How Much For That Grievous Wound in the Window?" is in scaling. If death costs, say, 4 points (analogous to Normal Men with 1d6) ... then how often do you really want to risk "fates worse than death" (whatever those might be). How really "live" is the choice between 50 HP and 25 conditions? It might take a lot of trial and error to get a setup in which The Price is Right.

So, the usual answer (from what I've seen) is to base cost not on actual effect but on probability of suffering the effect -- the chance "to hit" or some such. That might not work so well if variation in that factor is too homogenized (although players would still tend to spend more often to avoid consequences considered worth more).

Champions, however, does quite a bit with (usually set) defensive values versus rolled damage/effect values. One might (or might not) find it worthwhile to hybridize that with point-spending somehow, if building a new system.

The HP scale in 4E might be better suited to Alex319's approach than those in older D&Ds.

Managing dozens of "hit units," by any name, requires more bookkeeping than managing fewer than ten.

Yep. There's nothing special about your method to warrant your claim for it. Doesn't mean your game's not nifty -- but so were (at least to their creators) the however many dozens before it with a similar system.

The original edition of D&D offered dice-worth of hit points as the "Alternative Combat System" to Chainmail's small numbers (usually dice-pool). That became the "Standard" system because people near-unanimously preferred it.

 

[Alex319]

The trick with "How Much For That Grievous Wound in the Window?" is in scaling. If death costs, say, 4 points (analogous to Normal Men with 1d6) ... then how often do you really want to risk "fates worse than death" (whatever those might be). How really "live" is the choice between 50 HP and 25 conditions? It might take a lot of trial and error to get a setup in which The Price is Right.

Good points, but I think you misunderstood a few things:

1. There is no requirement that each condition is always "worth" the same number of hit points. One attack might be "10 hit points or get your leg broken", another, more powerful attack might be "25 hit points or get your leg broken."

2. There is no requirement that worse conditions have higher hit point values. In fact my example showed the opposite. The idea is that for a given power level of attack, higher hit point damage can be paired with less-bad conditions. For example, a basic "coup de grace" or "finishing move" type of attack might be "3 hit points, or target is dead" - kills if it hit, but easy to avoid. A basic "knockdown" attack or somesuch might be "15 hit points, or target is knocked prone" - harder to avoid but not as bad if it lands. Then the idea would be that if the target was very low on hit points you could use your "coup de grace" style attacks to finish him off, while closer to the beginning of the fight you would use your other attacks, to force him to choose between losing lots of hit points or getting put into a vulnerable position.

Also, this system - a continuum of attack where you choose between low hit points/bad condition, high hit points/less bad condition, or somewhere in the middle helps alleviate the "price is right" problem. Since the defender will choose whichever option is least bad for him, the optimal strategy for the attacker is to choose an attack where the hit point and condition effect are relatively balanced given the situation.

 

[1Mac]

There's nothing special about your method to warrant your claim for it. Doesn't mean your game's not nifty -- but so were (at least to their creators) the however many dozens before it with a similar system.

I'm no gaming historian, but I was never claiming total originality. My claim was much more narrow, that you can have less bookkeeping than conventional hit points while maintaining their utility.

The original edition of D&D offered dice-worth of hit points as the "Alternative Combat System" to Chainmail's small numbers (usually dice-pool). That became the "Standard" system because people near-unanimously preferred it.

I may be misunderstanding you, but I don't think this is analogous to what I'm talking about. You seem to be suggesting a choice between 10 hit-units and 50 hit-units, with one hit-unit in both cases being representative of the same amount of damage. The latter system grants a character 5 times the staying power, so of course it would be preferred.

I'm talking about 10 hit-units doing the work of 50 hit points. Each would grant players the same level of survivability, but the former requires less bookkeeping, since it requires a smaller number to work with.