Bloodied and why it is cool.

[JamesonCourage]

I don't understand what you're saying here. You're not a fan of what being applied to everyone?

Everyone gets bloodied, it just means "less than half your hit points."

I'm not a fan of everyone getting the condition. Less than half hit points and bloodied can be two different things, even if bloodied is defined by "at half or less hit points." Because, bloodied should only go on certain creatures, in my mind. Other people should have no change, and certain effects shouldn't work on them just because of their hit point total. As always, play what you like

In 4e all races have a "Bloodied" feature. It's specific to their race and can sometimes be modified by racial feats. It's not a generic +1X/-1Y for all of them, in fact I'm hard pressed to think of two that are the same or very similar.

In 5e, which is what I'm commenting on, I'd like to make sure that none of them are +1/-1, and instead just opening new options up. I'm not attacking or defending 4e, and I don't need to be told how it functions currently, other than if that's followed up with "and that's how (or not how) I'd like it to function in 5e."

I'm not trying to say 4e doesn't do things. I'm saying "I want 5e to do things this way, if we're going to borrow a 4e mechanic." As always, play what you like

 

[Jack99]

No one needs to go on an anti-4e tirade. WoTC already took 4e out back and shot it. Its just a matter of whether to bury it next to old yeller with honor or toss it to the pigs now.

But yes. Bloodied is a unnecessary complication. Its not mechanically significant in most cases and do to the balancing out factors it does not meaningfully impart the feeling of "you have been getting your butt kicked, now your bloodied".

If they had called it enraged or something maybe. But like much of 4e they used inappropriate terminology that doesnt convey the meaning of what they were actually doing.

By your flawed logic, 4e is bad because they have more or less stopped supporting it and are working on the next edition. That would make every single edition of dnd bad and flawed. Just because it no longer sells enough doesnt mean that everything about it was crap.

 

[Sunseeker]

In 5e, which is what I'm commenting on, I'd like to make sure that none of them are +1/-1, and instead just opening new options up. I'm not attacking or defending 4e, and I don't need to be told how it functions currently, other than if that's followed up with "and that's how (or not how) I'd like it to function in 5e."

I'm not trying to say 4e doesn't do things. I'm saying "I want 5e to do things this way, if we're going to borrow a 4e mechanic." As always, play what you like

I see, I was unclear on what you were saying originally. I'm not counter to simple bloodied states, but I do agree that making them more interesting would be a good move on the whole.

 

[El Mahdi]

...Or lots of kobolds, lots and lots and lots and lots...of kobolds.

Nah...lots and lots and lots and lots of Tucker's_Kobolds!

 

[Evilhalfling]

I use 3 states: healthy, bloodied and "Clinging to life"
the last is famously subjective, but in general it is single figure hp. At low levels it was closer to <4 and by mid paragon <12. Its a great way to let PCs know that one more hit will kill him, and he will probably go down against incidental damage.

If I was going to assign benefits to the clinging state, It would be something that gave the monster a better chance for a final blow, without allowing them to last any longer. Like Darksun weapon breakage:

"if someone clinging to life misses with an attack, it can convert the attack to a hit, but drops to 0 hp at the end of their turn."
hmm.

 

[Wik]

After two or so years of 4e, I decided there was a lot about it that I didn't like, and went back to 3.5E/Pathfinder.

One of the things I kept from 4e, though, was the hit point system - namely, the higher hit points at first level, and the fact that constitution does not affect hit points beyond first level. That system was genius.

I didn't bring over bloodied, however. I wasn't a fan of the extra bookkeeping, and while it may be flavourful, because there was a mechanic side of things, it became the GM's duty to say when a creature was "bloodied". And what that meant, in play, was that you would interrupt a narrative with mechanical information. Since there is already so much of that going on in play, I decided I didn't want more of it - the less intrusive the rules are, the better, in my opinion.

Now, the argument could be that you don't actually tell the players the monster is bloodied, instead describing it. And this is all well and good, but if you muddy up the mechanics a bit too much, you don't give the players a whole helluva lot to go on. For example, let's say you have a scene described where being on certain terrain makes you unsteady on your feet if you get hit, and a second hit will send you falling to your death. You describe this to the players, a monster wobbling on his feet on a wet log after hit with a crossbow bolt.

Your players say "Well, we hit him for ten points, and he's already bloodied. Let's not bother with this guy, and shoot at the mage, instead".

Essentially, players are misreading narrative cues to form wrong mechanical information, even though their characters would know full well that he's unbalanced and another shot will send him over the edge.

In short, for mechanical states to work and to be fair, you have to explicitly state when they are in effect. And it is my experience that too much mechanical information takes away from the narrative of the game.

So bloodied went. My Players like to announce when they're bloodied, though - more for healing purposes than anything else.

 

[Wik]

Oh, and there's another thing about bloodied I'm not a big fan with - the idea that you can get better when you're hurt. While players can love the idea of getting better as you lose hit points, and actually sometimes wanting to lose hit points to get better, I sort of have an issue with that.

Mostly for the same reason I described above - you start playing the game on a mechanical level, as opposed to a narrative level. "Bloodied" becomes one of the many ways in which 4e contributed to players (at least at my table, trying not to edition snipe, here) felt like they were playing a board game.

 

[Living Legend]

Generally, the more 'game states' you can be in, the more complicated it is to play.

Very true, but I have to say if given a choice between a system like the OP describes and the current negative HP-death save system I would much prefer the bloodied thing (though not sure I agree with the amount of bonuses he describes). I don't feel like negative hp and death save stuff adds anything to the game, it just pampers us. A detailed bloodied-state system could add to gameplay, and could eliminate the negative hp thing entirely.

I would love to see characters just die when they reach 0 hp. A great way to make this not suck would be to have the "quarter of total hp" state require you to make some kind of save to avoid going unconcious. If you fail you pass out and probably live, if you don't pass out you keep fighting but run the risk of getting killed. You would have to rework hp numbers a bit, assuming that once you hit 1/4 hp you have let's just say a 50% chance of passing out, so effectively half of the hp in that state don't really count, so the classes hp total would have to reflect that.

If you pass out maybe you can make another save on your next turn to get back up, but if you take damage again you have to repeat this save or pass back out, or maybe this could be a feat or class feature for fighters or similar.

Something like this feels more intuitive to me, but that might just be me.

 

[Sunseeker]

Oh, and there's another thing about bloodied I'm not a big fan with - the idea that you can get better when you're hurt. While players can love the idea of getting better as you lose hit points, and actually sometimes wanting to lose hit points to get better, I sort of have an issue with that.

Mostly for the same reason I described above - you start playing the game on a mechanical level, as opposed to a narrative level. "Bloodied" becomes one of the many ways in which 4e contributed to players (at least at my table, trying not to edition snipe, here) felt like they were playing a board game.

The problem is of course, with any system in which you only get worse is of course a "Death Spiral", you hit less, get hit more and generally die faster. But again, part of my vision for a 5e Bloodied is not wholly mathematical, such as opening up the use of new abilities, but always gaining AND losing in fairly equal measure, but never only one or the other.

You WILL take damage, it's part of the game. There's no reason to punish players for the expected, much less the normal.

Personally I like board games.

 

[Wik]

The problem is of course, with any system in which you only get worse is of course a "Death Spiral", you hit less, get hit more and generally die faster. But again, part of my vision for a 5e Bloodied is not wholly mathematical, such as opening up the use of new abilities, but always gaining AND losing in fairly equal measure, but never only one or the other.

You WILL take damage, it's part of the game. There's no reason to punish players for the expected, much less the normal.

Personally I like board games.

I like board games, too. I just don't like when my RPGs get a bit board-gamey. I like games with a bit of ambiguity - my personal acid test for a game is when you can explain the core of it in less than fifteen minutes and have people playing it like pros within four hours (the D6 System and Savage Worlds are both great examples of this).

The problem (in my opinion, of course) with having bloodied bring both good and bad is that either the good and bad benefits affect different aspects of a character (ie, my AC drops, but my damage skyrockets), or that they influence the same aspect. Neither of these are good.

The first problem leads to characters seeing an already crappy stat get crappier, in favour of a strong stat getting better. If each class has their own bloodied parameters, it makes sense to make your strong and weak areas sync up with that parameter. The end effect is that the strong overpowers the weak aspect, since it was weak already.

The second problem ultimately results in an added layer of complexity for little to no gain. In essence, the same area of a character is affected, which means that the benefit for using that affected area in play isn't substantially better or worse; just different. If when I'm bloodied, my AC goes down, but I get minor damage reduction, is that a good or bad thing? Because it just affects how I get hit, after all. And while this can be fun for rules-interested players who like to fiddle with the system, if you're a casual player, what you've really done is intimidated them or, worse, alienated them.

***

As a sidenote, I actually like death spirals. They encourage PCs to avoid getting hit, and when they do get hit, to take cover and proceed cautiously. I particularly love games with death spirals and exploding damage dice or otherwise swingy mechanics, because they result in shorter, more intense combats. Plus, a death spiral that is the same for every character, NPC, and monster across the board is much more interesting to me than having each character having his own mechanical interpretation of being hurt.