Condition track - wishful thinking, rumor or confirmed?

[Felon]

In practice it tends to be exactly that. Once the penalties start piling up it becomes impossible to avoid a rapidly increasing pile-on of damage by further attacks. As increasing damage adds on more penalties you take damage even faster and rapidly lose combat effectiveness finding it too difficult to successfully attack the enemy or avoid their attacks. Until you run out of health and the character is dead.


Excluded middle fallacy.

Yes, you're right. Your death spiral arguement is a fine example of excluded middle fallacy. Declaring that in any system that imposes a condition track that it "becomes impossible to avoid a rapidly increasing pile-on of damage by further attacks" is fallacious. Their are many RPG systems that use similar mechanics for damage. In fact, it's quite likely more common than the all-or-nothing fine-or-dead hit point system.

Somewhere during the point where a character takes the penalties, something needs to happen to mitigate it (just as a character will surely die if he never does anything to mitigate hit point loss). Expend a resource such as a spell, a class feature, a magic item, or--as in SWSE--a few swift actions. If you don't mitigate it, then you have to bear it. This is third time I've pointed that out in thread.

 

[Felon]

First, I don't understand why so much love for a death spiral system... the only thing like that in 3ed was level drain, and last time I checked everyone was rejoicing that level drain doesn't exist anymore.

Is "last time I checked" a pithy way of making baseless claims? A lot of DM's think energy drain is a great way to introduce a scare into PC's that are otherwise fearless.

There is no love for a "death spiral" system. That's a hyperbolic label you and others have attached to the condition track.

And there are many ways to suffer lasting penalties in D&D besides energy drain. They've been listed multiple times in this thread.

What a condition track does is introduce a reason for PC's to rest. Players are going to have abilities that don't get used up, so there has to be some kind of pacing mechanic. Hit point loss probably isn't going to be it (it certainly isn't in 3e).

 

[Morrus]

I hope not, if I wanted a death spiral I'd use the Storyteller system. The hitpoints system and its oddities are one of the things I've always liked about D&D.

"Condition Track" doesn't equal "Death Spiral". The second wind option, a positive option, occurs at "Bloodied".

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Yes, you're right. Your death spiral arguement is a fine example of excluded middle fallacy. Declaring that in any system that imposes a condition track that it "becomes impossible to avoid a rapidly increasing pile-on of damage by further attacks" is fallacious. Their are many RPG systems that use similar mechanics for damage. In fact, it's quite likely more common than the all-or-nothing fine-or-dead hit point system.

Somewhere during the point where a character takes the penalties, something needs to happen to mitigate it (just as a character will surely die if he never does anything to mitigate hit point loss). Expend a resource such as a spell, a class feature, a magic item, or--as in SWSE--a few swift actions. If you don't mitigate it, then you have to bear it. This is third time I've pointed that out in thread.

Nice way to misquote a person. Especially AFTER I've already posted in retraction of the "death spiral" statement. Based on the use of the other posters I had presumed it was like the WW "deathspiral" in which penalties applied to both attack and defense. As the penalties apparently are for skill or ability checks and attacks rather than all actions including defenses it does not create the dog-pile of hurt effect that system did.

Furthermore the argument you make regarding prevalence of systems using the escalating penalty mechanic is a smoke-screen. The frequency of occurrence of any particular ruleset has no relevance to whether any individual will prefer that ruleset, and all of our opinions about rulesets are no more than individual preference. I prefer that however conditions are handled they are kept separate from HP and that HP loss itself doesn't inflict conditions, this is no more of less valid than your own preferences.

My Excluded Middle Fallacy came from an entirely different statement in response to an entirely different statement of yours.This was your statment

If it's not fun to get hurt, either mitigate getting hurt, or have the DM consider not even having hit points. Tell everyone they can't really be killed. They're invulnerable and can survive the impossible. Nothing bad and unfun will happen to them. Sounds ridiculous, but think about it: if characters are just losing hit points without suffering any ill effects, and they're supposed to survive the impossible, and those hit points are magically replenished via wand at the end of the encounter, then that's what's happening anyway.

and this was my response

Excluded middle fallacy.
It appears not to have registered but losing hit points IS suffering ill effects. It's a finite resource representing injury and when your character runs out they die. Having a 14th level barbarian able to get pincushioned by twelve arrows and keep fighting without hindrance until he's finally dropped is for me both more fun and more heroic than most of the alternatives.

EDIT: if a damage threshold ala SWSE is used it will need to be pushed up a bit higher than fort-save+10 as in my experience at higher levels that sort of damage can be dealt at least once per round by at least one of the combatants. It would need tweaking to avoid the same problems the massive-damage-save of 3e caused at higher levels.

 

[KarinsDad]

"Condition Track" doesn't equal "Death Spiral". The second wind option, a positive option, occurs at "Bloodied".

One thing I did not like about SWSE is that there is a limit to when Second Wind can be taken. My SWSE PC was 1 hit point above half and I wanted to take Second Wind, but could not according to the rules. A round later, my PC was getting schelacked and nearly died.

The concept of "positive options" that are only available after certain negative events have occurred is, IMO, a bit lame and that will probably be the first thing I houserule away if it is introduced by 4E.

Why can my PC take Second Wind at 20 hit points, but not at 21 hit points? Don't know. Just another silly game mechanic with no basis in plausibility or logic. It's merely that way because that is the way the rule was written. It makes more sense that Second Wind could be taken any time the player wants to take it.

 

[Zaruthustran]

What I like about Saga's condition track is that it's activated by damage that exceeds a character's damage threshold.

For example:

Bob has 50 hp and a damage threshold of 16.

Scenario 1. Bob is hit by two blaster blasts, each doing 10 damage, for a total of 20 damage. Bob now has 30 hp. No change to the condition track.

Scenario 2. Bob is hit by one heavy blaster bolt, doing 20 damage. Bob now has 30 hp. Because the damage exceeded his threshold in a single shot, he moves one place down the condition track.

I like this system because a big, dramatic blow has a suitably dramatic impact. It gives characters a reason to fear heavy weaponry. If it wasn't there, you could challenge a player with an E-WEB cannon and they'd say "What's the big deal? I've got 50 hp--more than enough to take a shot or two." With the damage threshold system, that E-WEB demands respect.

It works for D&D, too. Getting hit by a dragon's fire or a catapult's shot *should* be scary, over and above the basic deduction of HP. 3E experimented with this concept through the "death by massive damage" rule, but I think a damage threshold system is more fun.

 

[The Little Raven]

I didn't say that. I said that I do not want a system that penalizes character for low hit points.

Well, D&D has always penalized you for have 0 or less hit points (you're not dead, but you can't really be very effective), so it's always been a system that has penalized for you low hit points, because it's range goes to -10 instead of killing you at 0.

 

[The Little Raven]

The concept of "positive options" that are only available after certain negative events have occurred is, IMO, a bit lame and that will probably be the first thing I houserule away if it is introduced by 4E.

Well, technically, this is exactly what healing is.

You can't really exercise that positive option (healing) until certain negative events (sword in the gut) occur.

 

[Morrus]

Why can my PC take Second Wind at 20 hit points, but not at 21 hit points? Don't know. Just another silly game mechanic with no basis in plausibility or logic.

Why is he dead at -10 hit points and not at -9? Why does he hit if he rolls a 28 but not a 27?

It's a game, and it uses numbers; there's got to be boundaries somewhere.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Why is he dead at -10 hit points and not at -9? Why does he hit if he rolls a 28 but not a 27?

It's a game, and it uses numbers; there's got to be boundaries somewhere.

This reminds me of a geology class. I was astonished by the sharp lines between layers of sedimentary rock. I marveled that the boundary wasn't more muddled together. My professor said, "Well, at one point, the shoreline of that drying lake experienced its very last wave. The water just never reached that high ever again. This line in the rock shows that moment in time, when the last bit of sand was deposited there."