Expressing Damage without hit points?

[Grazzt]

I'm currently DM-ing a campaign where I track the PCs' hit points. All they get are my descriptions. I base them off the amount of hit points the character normally has and how much are remaining. Here are a few examples from yesterday's session:

"The ghoul bites and claws at you, but you barely even feel it, though you may have lost a little hair." (To a wildshaped druid with 58 hp who lost 5)

"Unable to defend yourself, you feel multiple claws and teeth bite into your flesh, and everything goes dark" (same druid when she was paralyzed, attacked by a number of ghouls and got taken from 28 hp to negatives in one round)

"The orc's greataxe crunches off your armor. Even though it fails to penetrate, you'll be feeling that one for a while" (fighter with 84 hp taking 20 pts from a single hit)

"The ogre brings its club around in a huge arc to bash into your helmet. The blow would have killed a lesser man, and you feel just like a bell that got rung, but you're able to withstand the effects. You doubt you could do that again" (barbarian with 88 hp taking 47 pts from a crit)

Been doing this for the last dozen session, and so far it hasn't caused any problems. Only one player out of five had an issue with it.

That's about how I do it. I have never ever told players how many hp their characters have remaining....keeps the suspense level up, the threat of death in the air, whatever. I've been doing it that way since we started (1981-82). No one's ever really had a problem with it (still have two players from my original gaming group).

 

[Castellan]

This kind of thing has been done in MUDs online, so you might refer to those. For instance, in CircleMUD 3.1 source, the damage text is broken down based on how much damage is done in an attack. You might alter the presentation based on percentage of the target's maximum hit points.

For instance:

01% - 10%: The orc tickles you as he slashes you.
11% - 20%: The orc barely slashes you.
21% - 30%: The orc slashes you.
31% - 40%: The orc slashes you hard.
41% - 50%: The orc slashes you very hard.
51% - 60%: The orc slashes you extremely hard.
61% - 70%: The orc massacres you with his slash.
71% - 80%: The orc obliterates you with his slash.

You get the idea. Obviously, this system can have problems when you're dealing with a high-level PC with lots of hit points, especially if the PC's opponent doesn't do lots of damage in an attack (i.e. lots of tickling, which become silly).

Another possibility is to use this kind of info for conveying amounts of damage to fellow PCs. Instead of saying: "Ouch! I'm down to 10 hit points!" you can say: "I'm looking pretty hurt, here."

Condition (% of max hit points):
100%: So-and-so is in excellent condition.
90%: So-and-so has a few scratches.
75%: So-and-so has some small wounds and bruises.
50%: So-and-so has quite a few wounds.
30%: So-and-so has some big nasty wounds and scratches.
15%: So-and-so looks pretty hurt.
0%: So-and-so is in awful condition.
-1%: So-and-so is bleeding from awfully big wounds.

Ultimately, I'd consider asking your players if they'd be willing to help come up with a system that is more Story-Telling Compliant (TM). If you involve everyone, it might be a pretty cool thing!

 

[Hypersmurf]

Make little Play-Doh voodoo dolls to represent each PC before each session.

Then illustrate damage by doing nasty things to the appropriate doll.

10% damage - carve deep gouges in the doll's torso.

40% damage - lop off an arm or leg.

80% damage - lop off all the arms and legs.

100% damage - pull a hammer out of your bag and smoosh what's left.

The nice thing about Play-Doh is that if someone gets hit with a Cure spell, it's easy to stick a leg back on...

If you don't have access to Play-Doh, do it Hangman-style with a marker on the edge of the battlemat, maybe. A basic Hangman setup has ten strokes (three frame pieces, one rope, head, body, four limbs), so you can represent damage in 10% increments. And again, if they get cured, you can just wipe strokes off the battlemat...

-Hyp.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Hee hee. "You get hit for a whole gallows pole damage" or "You are healed one limb and the body" After hearing something as that, us poor D&D-players will be looked on as weirdoes even more!

 

[Gothmog]

I'm currently DM-ing a campaign where I track the PCs' hit points. All they get are my descriptions. I base them off the amount of hit points the character normally has and how much are remaining. Here are a few examples from yesterday's session:

"The ghoul bites and claws at you, but you barely even feel it, though you may have lost a little hair." (To a wildshaped druid with 58 hp who lost 5)

"Unable to defend yourself, you feel multiple claws and teeth bite into your flesh, and everything goes dark" (same druid when she was paralyzed, attacked by a number of ghouls and got taken from 28 hp to negatives in one round)

"The orc's greataxe crunches off your armor. Even though it fails to penetrate, you'll be feeling that one for a while" (fighter with 84 hp taking 20 pts from a single hit)

"The ogre brings its club around in a huge arc to bash into your helmet. The blow would have killed a lesser man, and you feel just like a bell that got rung, but you're able to withstand the effects. You doubt you could do that again" (barbarian with 88 hp taking 47 pts from a crit)

Been doing this for the last dozen session, and so far it hasn't caused any problems. Only one player out of five had an issue with it.

Yep, I have to agree with you and Grazzt, I do the same thing in the games I run, and have since 1992. My group complained slightly at first, but after we had done it a few sessions, they insisted I continue to keep track of HP during fights, and use colorful descriptors during combat. We have found it builds more suspense to say that "the ogre brings his club down on your left shoulder, driving you to one knee and making your arm go numb" than "you take 12 points of damage from the ogre's club". We find that constantly dinking and obsessing with HP, AC, saves, attack bonuses, etc detracts from actually playing the game, since it becomes more about optomizing the numbers than playing believable characters. And yes, I keep the HP, AC, saves, magic item plusses, and attack bonuses secret from my players as well. In 12 years of doing this, I haven't ever had any complaints, and once they tried it, most players (even grizzled grognards) preferred it.

 

[Umbran]

Been doing this for the last dozen session, and so far it hasn't caused any problems. Only one player out of five had an issue with it.

Yeah, well, that means a full 20% of your audience isn't real thrilled with it. While you can't please everybody all the time, consistently using a method that one person really doesn't like for a fairly central game mechanic is perhaps not the best thing.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Descriptions are the way to go, the blade of the orc slips under your guard drawing a line of blood along your ribs. Your return cleaves into the orc, splitting him from collor bone to heart.

Look for words like slash, cut, cleaves, and think of which projects the stronger meaning, low level damage becomes cuts, mid-level slashes, higher cleave. You then add to them in a 12 word or less sentence.

Also think about taking combat from books, just look how it is told and use it in your game.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I haven't playtested it yet but I drew up some rules using the Cyberpunk 2020 damage system in d20 D&D. Basically every time a PC takes damage he has to make a Stun/Shock Fortitude saving throw. All PC's have damage reduction of a sort equal to their CON modifier (replicates the BTM in Cyberpunk) but then again this is because everyone has the same number of "Hit Points", they just deal with the damage differently. You may not have lost all of your "Hit Points" but as you take more and more hits it will be harder to make your Shock save. IRL police officers have fallen unconscious due to the shock of getting shot in the leg rather than any real life threatening damage and these rules reflect that. The "Hit Points" aren't really even that, they are a scale used to determine the modifiers to the Shock saves. Everyone has 20 "Hit Points" and after every 4 points there is a 1 point modifier added to the DC for the Shock save that starts at 10. If a Fighter with a CON of 18 is stabbed with a Short Sword for 5 points of damage he only ticks off one point because he is so tough his CON modifier of 4 reduced it to 1. he still has to make a Fortitude Shock save against DC 10 but the same Fighter at level 1 is going to have a save bonus of +6 and if he took the Great Fortitude Feat he'll have +8. Barbarian DR stacks with the system. In true Cyberpunk fashion it remains truly deadly. Let's say the same Fighter is hit by a 30 point Fireball. His CON modifies that to 26 so he is still a toasty critter. The 6 points that exceed his 20 go straight against his CON. When he loses all 18 points, he is dead for good.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Oops... for cinematic effect I kind of like Warhammer FRP best. You could use a similar system of reversing a die roll to determine hit location. The closer a die roll is to 1 the deadlier the hit location should be and the closer to 20 the less severe (except in the case of a crit). This reflects that someone who can succeed in landing a telling blow with a low roll is a damn good warrior. Make a chart with the hit location determined by the unmodified to hit roll. Of course Rolemaster was the best for hit locations and crits but all the charts got cumbersome.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I often describe the hits with more than "he deals you 6 points of damage". I have no fixed list for that, but make it up as I go, considering the damage and their HP total, and also if it was a normal hit, a sneak attack, an averted crit or a scored crit.

It's important that you don't do it all the time. Especially if this session features a lot of combats with many participants and all, it will slow down the fighting overmuch. A normal "you get hit with 12 points" now and then is OK. Or, you have very short descriptions like: "he hits you on the arm for 5 points of damage".

This is what I do as well. Description + hp. If you don't tell them how much damage they take, that means, basically, that you have to keep track of it as DM, and that's just a lot of extra bookkeeping.

F'rex..."The ogre's club slams into your chest. You hear bones crack as your ribs crack, and bloodied spittle flies from your mouth. You take 23 hit points."