eliminating hit points

[scourger]

One of the ways I'm thinking of restarting my Shackled City campaign is by eliminating hit points. I'm getting weary of tracking them for multiple, complex foes. My idea is to make any damage provoke a massive damage save with a difficulty class equal to the amount of damage taken. I want to make the game a little grittier, so the prospect of anyone being reduced to -1 hp by 1 point of damage followed by a natural 1 on a fort save is appealing.

(Plus, I'm just tired of tracking all those HPs.)

Any experiences, ideas or feedback?

 

[Jdvn1]

This means low Fort classes will die much, much faster?

 

[TheGM]

There are systems that do something similar, though less severe - 7th Sea comes to mind.

The way you're thinking of doing it might be grittier, it will likely be a cascading death trap though too if you're not careful. Characters aren't like normal people for a reason - they get hurt too much. Hit me with a sword and my butt is going down.

 

[Tatsukun]

Are you going ot keep the 1=autofail and 20=autopass thing? If so, it'll make some odd results. If 20 commoners go swimming in lava, one will be fine?

-Tatsu

 

[Corsair]

Are you going ot keep the 1=autofail and 20=autopass thing? If so, it'll make some odd results. If 20 commoners go swimming in lava, one will be fine?

-Tatsu

And 20 level 1 sorcerers hitting a dragon would likely kill it in one round.

 

[Odhanan]

You might want to have a look at the True 20 of Green Ronin. This system eliminates hit points completely.

 

[scourger]

You might want to have a look at the True 20 of Green Ronin. This system eliminates hit points completely.

Thanks for the link. I remember reading that Mutants & Masterminds eliminates HP completely. The mechanic apparently made its way to Blue Rose then to True20. I don't think substituting a Toughness save with new calculations achieves my goal of simplicity by using something already in the game, though. That's why I thought to use the MD Fort save-type mechanic. All of the foes in my pre-printed modules already have a Fort save statistic, so I can just use it to determine if they're taken out by a hit or not.

I think it will be more dice-rolling but less paperwork.

 

[scourger]

And 20 level 1 sorcerers hitting a dragon would likely kill it in one round.

The other change I'm contemplating is making magic no longer have effects external to the caster. So, there wouldn't be blaster sorcerers running around--although there could be lots of jumping sorcerers. Most magic items would be ineffective, too. I'm just getting tired of tracking all the minutiae of the bad guys stuff and abilities and the game being a magic item arms race in a war of attrition. So, it's likely that no group of magic-users would take on a dragon. And, I would be okay if a warrior got in a lucky shot that killed a dragon in 1 stroke.

 

[scourger]

it will likely be a cascading death trap though too if you're not careful. Characters aren't like normal people for a reason - they get hurt too much. Hit me with a sword and my butt is going down.

It's been pretty deadly already. I'll probably try to have less emphasis on combat and more on roleplaying encounters. I figure if combat is more deadly, then everyone will fight as a last resort--including the foes.

 

[scourger]

This means low Fort classes will die much, much faster?

I think they will have greater chances of dying if they get hit.