D&D General Dumb Idea: Hit Points As Ablative Plot Armor That Doesn't Regenerate

[Reynard]

Ancient dragon Cr23 does 73 damage per turn with 3 attacks. It has 385 hp and AC 21. Your lv 1 fighter has at best +6 to attack and does 2d6+4. So average 11 damage per round. It also hits 25% so every 4 rounds. It would take him 140 rounds to solo a dragon. Now, with little help of friends, say friendly rogue, wizard and cleric, just spamming basic attacks and hiting him 25% of time, that drops to 35 rounds. With dragon hitting every time, no one critting, it would do 2590 damage. So, mage is fine, wizard is half dead, cleric and fighter are dead, but 4 lv 1 characters killed ancient dragon.

Did you forget its breath weapon and legendary actions?

 

[BookTenTiger]

An interesting twist on this might be:

Between adventures, your characters don't have Plot Armor Points (or whatever you want to call them). Only when they take on a quest do they get a number of Plot Armor Points equal to the challenge of the quest. So they might get 25 points for an easy quest, or 200 points for a really challenging quest.

If they run out of points, they are not able to complete the quest. They die or they get injured or are taken prisoner of their wife writes a letter that their child has been born and they must come home immediately!

 

[aco175]

Would/should there need to be a different total number to start at for different classes? Should a fighter get more starting HP than a mage? Would this lead to taking a level of fighter to start with 1200 and then go mage if mage only started with 800?

Another thing a smart party might do is protect some of the PCs to bank their HP until later levels. If the mage can frontline for a few levels and the fighter just shoot bows he can bank a lot of damage until level 10 (or whatever) and have 900 left. The mage might only have 200 left, but now is powerful enough to sit back and blast things letting the fighter go in with less fear.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

 

[jayoungr]

What about it makes it untenable for you?

It would make me feel pressure to strive for absolute perfection because even the tiniest slips are punished by losing an irreplaceable resource and there's no way to fix it. I'd find that nerve-wracking, and I'd beat myself up every time I didn't achieve a perfect session (i.e. if I lost some HP).

It would also prevent me from enjoying the story that my character is creating. Instead of having a good laugh if my character accidentally triggers a trap and falls into a spiked pit, I'd be upset because I've just shortened my character's lifespan.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

So, mage is fine, wizard is half dead, cleric and fighter are dead, but 4 lv 1 characters killed ancient dragon.

Oh, I didn't see, it's a method to increase the supremacy of arcane casters? Then of course I am for it!


Proud member of the Wizard Nerf Lamentation Group since 3.5 ended a barely sufficient equilibrium.

 

[TwoSix]

I wonder if, instead of a large, hard-to-conceive-of number, you could, say, go with a game statistic. Call it Fate, call it kismet, call it "plot armour", call it whatever you like.

Each player character begins with a certain amount of Fate; in honour of cats, let's say 8, so that you have "nine lives" - your starting "life" plus eight more from your Fate. But you could make the number as big or as small as you like.

When a player character reaches 0 hit points, they don't go through the death saves business while unconscious. Instead, they lose 1 Fate and are restored immediately to full hit points.

If a player character reaches 0 hit points while they have 0 Fate, that's it: they die.

Daggerheart has a similar sort of system; whenever a PC looses all their HP, they can choose to not "die" and instead receive a scar. Each scar lowers their maximum Hope by 1, and when they go to down to a maximum of zero, the character must retire. Characters only have 6 Hope to start, so it's a hard lifetime limit on how long a character can go on.

 

[GrimCo]

Did you forget its breath weapon and legendary actions?

It was rough ball park with just basic attacks from both sides and dragon never missing single attack, but PCs hitting only 25% of attacks. But sure, you can add breath (recharge on 5-6) and one extra legendary action (wing or tail attack).

 

[Reynard]

It was rough ball park with just basic attacks from both sides and dragon never missing single attack, but PCs hitting only 25% of attacks. But sure, you can add breath (recharge on 5-6) and one extra legendary action (wing or tail attack).

More importantly, in an actual, not-white-room play situation, the PCs would either flee or be murdered. no dragon is going to stand there for 140 rounds.

 

[Umbran]

Would/should there need to be a different total number to start at for different classes? Should a fighter get more starting HP than a mage? Would this lead to taking a level of fighter to start with 1200 and then go mage if mage only started with 800?

I think, once you've stipulated these plot-armor-points, you need to totally rethink how monsters do damage anyway, seeing as this scheme has very little coherence with a gamist pseudo-sim approach to threats. It is outright gonzo for our normal D&D combat structure.