D&D 5E Embracing Hit Points as Fatigue

[sheadunne]

I mentioned in another thread that I don't do unconscious at 0. I do shaken (-2 to d20 rolls) and staggered (one action per a turn) below 0. Dead is at Con Score + Level. Wounds then become less than 0 HP. I just call it vitality. After all HP is gone you take vitality damage and the conditions set in. Some spells (necromancy and SoD type spells) and monster attacks (mostly from undead) target vitality directly. Endurance Feat removes Shaken and Die Hard Feat removes Staggered. I'm not a big fan of the pass-out method that 3x onward uses. I much rather people fight to the death, although showing some signs of injury. This system though, can result in a character dying without taking any HP damage, although the average character starts out with 11 vitality (10+1) and there aren't too many things that target vitality directly at low levels.

It's not for everyone, but does allow HP to be more than wounds, while still showing injury.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

While I'm of the mind that all damage involves some physical harm, and all healing removes some physical harm, for the sake of argument I can consider the alternative.

I could see a system where hit points are entirely fatigue and the like, but critical hits bypass hit points and do some form of real harm. But in that case, I would want critical hits to happen on a threshold above AC (say, AC + 4), as opposed to a natural 20. Then I want actual wounds for critical hits.

Doing it this way allows skill to play a factor. Most of the fight doesn't involve injury. You're merely wearing your opponent down. But if you dramatically outperform your enemy, you can do greater harm.

Then, all those other things that never made sense with scaling hit points can be adjusted to fit the new system.

 

[Dausuul]

The core problem with all "hit point as fatigue" explanations boils down to names. Very few people learn D&D by reading the rulebook cover-to-cover and memorizing every line. Most people skim the basics, get some guidance from experienced players, and pick the rest up at the table as they go. As such, they expect that "hit" will mostly mean "physically connect," "damage" will mostly mean "physical harm," and "heal" will mostly mean "recovery from wounds." They grasp that there will sometimes be a little fudging to get the narrative lined up with the mechanics, but they're not going to accept a wholesale rewriting of the dictionary.

D&D has been trying since 1E to put across the idea that "hit" mostly means "near miss." Every Player's Handbook has had a section explaining this. If that narrative were ever going to gain traction, it would have done so long ago, and 4E's approach to hit points would have been uncontroversial. It's not going to fly. When the Player's Handbook fights the dictionary, the dictionary wins.

One solution, of course, would be to change the names of hits and misses and damage, and that would likely have worked if Gygax and Arneson had done it way back at the dawn of days. But D&D has forty years' worth of commitment to the present terminology, and D&DN is trying to avoid radical breaks with the past. So we're stuck with the current names for those. It might be possible to get rid of "heal," though.

I'd say the place to start is to ask why people are attracted to fatigue-based explanations in the first place. From where I'm standing, the value in such a narrative is that it enables short-term hit point recovery without divine magic. Why is that a good thing? Because short-term hit point recovery provides a survival buffer, which lengthens the adventuring day and lets the DM push players harder in any given encounter; and not every party is going to contain a cleric.

So what we're really trying to do is provide ways for non-clerics to provide a survival buffer. That opens up a whole lot of design space, such as temporary hit points, or hit point recovery that isn't called "healing" and has limits on what it can do (e.g., no coming back from zero, can't put you back to full hit points). I think that's the place to focus, rather than trying for a grand reshaping of the whole hit point system.

 

[Ainamacar]

A potentially novel twist on these kinds of systems entered my head earlier this week. Rather than define fixed quantities of fatigue or wound points that can be lost, let this abstract damage accumulate until either the attacker or defender wants to try and turn a particular attack into a wound or similar condition. The target makes a "resistance check" to determine what happens. The more damage present when resolving the change the more serious the wound is, or the more likely death/dying from this particular attack. When that has been resolved the damage returns to 0, but of course starts accumulating again. In short, abstract "damage" is really about one's circumstances and susceptibility to devastating attacks, but after a while that role is handed over to a wound with a more specific effect.

I think it could work something like this:
1. An attacker has the option of declaring an attack to be a "telling blow" before it is made, which forces the target to make a resistance check if the attack succeeds.
2. The target has the option of making a resistance check on any other attack while the attack is being resolved. However, voluntary resistance checks impose a penalty on future resistance checks until the end of the day/adventure/whatever.

The outcome of a single resistance check might look something like this:
1. Critical failure. Target takes a long-term wound and is out of the fight. Target is either dead or dying (choice of instigator, i.e. whoever decided there would be a resistance check.)
2. Failure. Target takes a long-term wound *or* is out of the fight (choice of instigator). Dying.
3. Various levels of success. Various non-lethal wounds, from long-term to those which can be shaken off in a few rounds.
4. Critical success. Avoid a wound altogether?

For this to work in any way smoothly I think that resistance checks should be relatively infrequent, and this should be reflected in the incentives given to characters.
1. For attackers declaring a telling blow gives greater control on the timing and precise effect of wounds, but risks that the attack may not do enough damage to cause a significant wound. Moreover, targets don't accumulate any penalty on resistance checks declared by attackers. In general, attackers should wait until they are fairly confident the target will have a hard time with the check. In any case, this arrangement means there is a tension with the natural desire of an attacker to cause as many wounds as possible as fast as possible.
2. For targets, the advantage of a voluntary resistance check is that high-quality information about the difficulty and possible outcomes of the check is available. Moreover, by making a resistance check the accumulated damage is reset, which keeps fate out of the hands of the enemy for a little while. The downsides are obviously that one might acquire a negative effect before it is strictly speaking necessary, and also that this reduces one's ability to resist future attacks. This introduces a tension with the natural desire for the target to stick to relatively easy checks.

This idea has several interesting properties, in my opinion. First, it doesn't rely on fixed quantities of hp/fatigue/wp to determine outcomes, nor does it use a fixed condition track with some sort of death spiral. Second, death is technically possible on almost any attack (which has its own ups and downs), but because people generally will not declare resistance checks in trivial situations the totally random deaths arising from e.g. a swingy critical hit system are mitigated. Third, both the attacker and defender play a role in determining what attacks are especially significant, but they are asymmetrical in what I hope are interesting ways. Fourth, the in-world impact of attacks is always determined when attacks are being resolved, so there is no need for retconning or "quantum wounds." Fifth, there is no inherent fixed hp budget whether in the form of healing surges or healing spells, which may allow more flexibility with adventure pacing. Sixth, since damage resets to 0 after a resistance check it should be easier to avoid crazy number inflation.

Obviously this is just a rough idea. The major issue in my opinion is how to make sure the dynamics of the game are such that creatures actually die rather than accumulating 10 wounds but trucking on until someone rolls a natural 1 on a resistance check. Another is keeping the number of resistance checks fairly low so the game keeps moving but also so that they have meaning when they do occur. Healing would need careful consideration, although I can think of several ways forward. A light and flexible set of wounds would also be necessary. As with other systems that go beyond hp additional interactions with poison, spells, etc. would need consideration. A narrative difficulty may be why only voluntary resistance checks impose cumulative penalties, and what understanding, if any, the character has when the player decides to make a voluntary resistance check. Finally, this system isn't necessarily easy to use compared to "0 hp is bad", and thoughtless use could doom just about any creature.

For D&D this is probably too wacky, but I feel like there is some mix of RPG design sensibilities where it might work.

 

[bbjore]

Generally I'm in favor of seeing hit points as mostly fatigue, but the rules created mix actually works pretty well when you step back. All the corner cases people talk about (poison, shouting somebody up from unconscious...), require a person to be attached to a very specific idea of what the exact wound is for it to be an issue.

But if you just let things be a mix, with the idea that if the PC is still standing, it was a very minor injury, it works great. Getting hit by an arrow isn't 8 points of actual body damage, it's an arrow that barely penetrated the armor, leaving a little blood and some pain, but not something you would ever have to see a doctor for. The same sort of injuries boxers, football players, & wrestlers sustain all the time, and shake off without a hitch. Essentially, the same sort of injury that would have no effect on your strength or speed, and your warlord friend could just inspire you to ignore so the lost hp go away even if you still have a small cut somewhere.

For instance, imagine a high school football game. All those players have hp, over the course of the game, some of them are drained. Most of it is just fatigue, pain, and bruises, so they don't go down to 0 hp. But every once in a while, a player crits on another player, and takes him out of the game at least momentarily. That player went below 0 hp.

Sometimes the player just needs a moment or two to rest (second wind) or a pep talk from the coach (inspiring word) and he can get back up. Sometimes it's more serious (necessitating prolonged recovery). While D&D doesn't have any specific rules for long term injuries, the closest analogue would be PC death (out of the game in both examples). Since the game doesn't model long term injuries with penalties, just play HP as a mix leaning heavily toward fatigue until the PC is below 0 hp. That's the spot where you can play up or down how much actual physical damage you want a PC to have (house rule a long term injury, narratively decide what losing means, or have the PC die of a fatal final wound). Since the official rules still don't specify what exactly that final blow is, you're still free to find an explanation that fits the in-game actions best. Really, the only thing you need to do is describe less than 0 hp as incapacitated instead of unconscious, so you don't have people complaining that the warlord just shouted somebody awake from unconsciousness (even if it is realistic, and I have personally done exactly that many time in the back of an ambulance)

tldr; a mix of fatigue, skill, luck, and actual injury works great if you weight it towards fatigue and only allow injuries that are minor enough to have no impact on you stats (strength, speed...). If you wound is so minor you aren't slowed by it, you can have a warlord tell you to ignore it even if it was large enough to administer a poison or whatever. So leave it a mix for simplicity sake, and make what happens at below 0 hp where you start to tweak things.

Edit: I almost forgot, by making the blow that brings you below HP that one that matters, it also allows you to set the penalty for being below hp according to the importance of the target. Monster suffer a fatal blow because they aren't important, a PC might suffer a long term injury or be knocked unconscious and captured, so you don't have to due to raise dead/resurrect shuffle. It's flexible enough to let each table twist it to suit the story, and makes the penalty for running out of hp clear (you lose or whatever that means in the current situation).

 

[GX.Sigma]

I don't think HP should be "primarily" anything. They're just HP, and they work best when you don't think about it.

I agree with Rodney: any time something happens that makes you think about what HP represent, that's a problem.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I've been thinking about this some since the recent Q&A, and what I've come to is that HP aren't actually the problem. The actual problem is that D&D lacks any sort of mechanic to track, or even simulate, lasting injuries. That's the root of the problem, the real immersion breaker.

A HP/WP mechanism is a relative straightforward and abstract way of handling it, but not the only way. You could have separate conditions (ie, Broken Leg; can only move while Prone) for a coarse feel. You could have condition tracks (Sprained Ankle -> Broken Leg -> Torn Ligament -> Ruptured Artery -> Dismembered, just an example) for each area for a more fine feel. You can tie in different mechanics - non-magical vs. magical healing, critical hits, Bloodied and other HP-value conditions to simulate taking worse hits when fatigued, and so forth.

Of course, the cost of implementing any such system is primarily (but not only) an increase in complexity with regards to HP tracking. I don't feel this is a terribly high cost on the player side, personally, but some might like the extreme simplicity of hit points. Where it could become a problem is for DMs and tracking monsters. You could simplify it on the DM side (each condition is a cumulative -2 penalty) with some ad hoc fiat involved (broken leg, reduce move to 5' if bipedal). There's also a secondary cost in that there needs to be a way to ameliorate such injuries by the party on the fly, or else the "adventuring day" gets shortened. This could be simple (all magical healing heals injuries) or complex (with a healing kit, a splint reduces the effects of Broken Leg to Sprained Ankle). Or, of course, you could leave it be.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I think you can do an effective HP/WP approach in D&D without tacking on another system just by using CON score as your WP value. Poison directly attacks CON score, not HP. A successful critical hit results in a die of damage (1d4? 1d6?) subtracted from CON, in addition to HP damage rolled. Some spells might do CON damage directly, and some monster special abilities (like the old level drain). Damage below the 0 HP threshold subtract from CON, and death occurs at negative CON.

This does have the added complexity of having to recalculate other bonuses and HP if you subtract from CON -- but only if you choose to do that. I don't think it would break the game to subtract from CON without recalculating, if you take the view that CON damage is ultimately temporary though it may require either significant time or magic to recover.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think the answer is that all attacks have a type that is used to guide the role-playing when a hp drops to 0.

I like this principle.

I think that "HP as fatigue" might need some clarification. The way I see it, "fatigue" itself needs some abstraction so that it doesn't precisely mean "running out of physical energy", but includes also losing concentration, morale or fighting spirit; could be explained as more generically "getting closer to defeat". But maybe it's not so different if the OP really means physical fatigue specifically.

Anyway, I think the idea of generally ignoring the wounds interpretation of damage works best in the context of a "new-school" game of D&D, where the PCs essentially cannot die unless it fits with the story. There are a lot of gaming groups who want to play they RPG like this, tho many of them refuse to admit so. If I were running a game for such a group, I would embrace the "HP as fatigue" explanation, and I would tell the players in a very straightforward manner that if they drop to 0hp they won't die, but there will be a mid-term penalty depending on the circumstances. Then for example, following [MENTION=1122]Frostmarrow[/MENTION] 's principle, the circumstances can equate very much to the type of "last blow" that dropped the PC to negative HP.

I don't think it needs any rules for that. DM's adjudication is better, because the DM can vary the outcome in case the same type of "last blow" happened too often in the last few sessions, and maybe the players are getting bored of receiving the same penalty.

But for those who need rules at all costs, there could be standard effects defined, but also random tables, particularly for normal weapon damage, since the core rules of D&D don't have called shots, so that the random tables can vary the effect to represent that "last blow" hitting different parts of the body.

 

[Kraydak]

Frankly, given that hp-as-fatigue fails hard against pretty much any attack/effect that creates a condition, hp-as-fatigue is a bad idea if you want conditions as more than flavor for "and that was how I died". You could have a rule where grappling was a special effect of taking someone below 0 hp non-lethally, but then you could never grapple someone who hadn't already lost the fight.

The obvious solution is to ditch hp-as-fatigue as a concept entirely, and go with hp-as-meat. It meshes with the rules for every edition of DnD (and frankly, pretty much every RPG ever) so much better. Fighters are supernaturally tough (see any action movie), wizards exhibit unnatural vitality as defensive spells keep them alive even when their bodies are ripped to shreds (see the Black Company) etc...

(HP/VP systems rarely if ever work well in practice. Either you have enough VP that you always lose suddenly to critical hits, or you have so few that you might as well add the two pools together.)