Hit Point style preference

[Plane Sailing]

I guess an easy third option would be:

Plot Immunized Rocket Tag - Attacks and defenses are fairly static. You have a stable pool of 'Wound Points,' and damage to that represents actual physical wounds. Then you have 'Hit Points,' which represent you turning a hit into a graze. When someone 'hits' you, you lose HP, and if you're out of HP you take WP damage.

You might also make it so HP soaks all but 1 damage, and attacks always deal at least 1 WP (that's the graze).

Design mechanics with this logic. So poison only affects you if the attack deals any WP damage. Falling down a steep hill? Maybe HP mitigates the fall. Falling with no way to catch yourself? WP damage. Caught off guard by an assassin? WP damage. A purple worm has a 'swallow' attack? It only works if the PC's out of HP.

You might recover all your HP after a short rest, and warlords might be able to shout at you to restore your HP, but only rest or magic can fix WP damage.

Monsters would have to be designed with some odd mix of WP and HP. Humanoids would have low WP and get more HP based on level/challenge rating. Big monsters might have no HP and just WP, or a lot of each.

Strangely, this is almost exactly the rules I created for my D&D games in the 1980's!

I liked it a lot, and still do

(I've just had a search and remarkably found it on the wayback machine!)

Bookshelf - FRPG

Cheers

 

[mmadsen]

In the real world, even a master swordsman would lose to 10:1 odds, short of some significant equalizer. That kind of thing only occurs in heroic fiction.

I wasn't disagreeing with you on that, just pointing at that there's more than one way to model it.

For instance, let's assume we model a master swordsman as hitting and killing one guard per round, with 100% certainty, and only getting hit and killed by a guard one time out of 20. Well, if all 10 attackers can indeed attack him, he only has a 60-percent chance of surviving the first round. Each round he survives, his odds go up, as he faces 9, then 8, then 7, opponents, but his cumulative chance of making it to the end is just 6 percent.

That's with a 5-percent chance of landing a telling blow, versus the master's 100-percent chance.

 

[mmadsen]

Rocket Tag - One or two hits will probably drop anyone, and the arms race is between your aim and their ability to dodge. Hits represent actual hits, and damage is actual wounds. A 20 ft. fall always does the same damage, and is always painful. However, a 1st level man in full plate is AC 20, while a 20th level guy might be AC 40.

That bit about falling damage jumped out at me. I'm not sure how we're supposed to interpret, "A 20 ft. fall always does the same damage, and is always painful." A 20-foot fall can kill you outright, if you land on your head on concrete, or it might not even slow you down, if you land on your feet and roll with it. I suppose a typical result would be a twisted ankle -- something D&D doesn't handle well.

D&D's traditional trouble with falling damage comes with its style of hit points. By their nature, hit points form a buffer, so they stop the first threat much better than the second or third.

Something that should have a 10-percent chance of killing you might require a natural 19 or 20 in a save-or-die system, but it does one-tenth of your hit points in a hit-point system -- never killing you unless you're already worn down.

Are ranged attacks too accurate in D&D?

Ranged weapons are far too accurate in the hands of the unskilled, in D&D, and far too inaccurate in the hands of the skilled. Often, in real life, ordinary conscripts can't hit anything that requires true aiming, while masters can hit just about anything, rapidly even in adverse conditions.

Also, because of how hit points work, ranged weapons tend not to stop any advancing foes. No one goes down from one arrow.

 

[nnms]

Another person who likes Rocket Tag.

I think the hybrid methods show just how easy it is to make this modular as well.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

While Rocket Tag is more realistic I prefer plot immunity in my D&D, I really loathe wounds vitatility systems, particularly ones that require tracking two sets of numbers and decrementing both togehter.

On the other hand if we take 4e's healing surges and renamed healing surges as wounds;

Now whenever one looses hit points one can spend a wound. The wounds taken allow the hitpoint buffer to be replenished but impose a condition.

So the first wound you grant combat advantage to all foes save ends.
2 wounds, you are weakened and grant combat advantage, save to end the granting of combat advantage but weakeness remains until the end of combat.

3 wounds adds the dazed condition, save ends, and so on. I have not fully thought it though, it just occured to me recently.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't agree with the name you picked for it, but out of the two I'll take Plot Immunity, mainly so that you can throw a bunch of low-level foes at high-level PCs and not have a lot of "need a natural 20 to hit" or "need a natural 1 to miss." It's a more scalable approach.

 

[nnms]

I think I might start running all my games with "hidden hit points" where all player HP and damage done to them is handled by the DM and the individual wounds, injuries, windings, bonks, driving attacks and misses are described in words rather than than numbers.

 

[Izumi]

I feel the abstract Hit Point system was designed by two very smart wargamers who knew what they were doing. I've not seen any better system designed yet that is more realistic or fun. Hp is combat skill, and only when your skill fails do you die. A simple misunderstanding of the system created a great many attempts to fix something that was never broken. Just my thoughts.

 

[Smoss]

I use a modified form of "Rocket Tag" myself in my RPG system. Heroes can take a number of hits (wounds), often 1 or 2 hits before being downed (And up to around 4 hits). I love the feeling it gives the PCs of "We could very well die, this is QUITE dangerous".

Most of what keeps things feeling that way is also scaling - keeping a weak opponent always a threat. For that reason - no matter what they do - I hope 5e has an option for very low scaling between levels. As an option built into the system, I could imagine dialing it from "PCs die by stubbing their toe" to "Mephistopheles hits with a critical to, um, tickle you I guess" - You get your mix of gritty up to superheroic.

Then Spinal Tap can come in and turn the dial to eleven and everything goes crazy.
Smoss

 

[FireLance]

Of the various systems mentioned above, my preference is for Plot Immunity. I think Rocket Tag is more suited for a playstyle in which the PCs are incentivised to avoid fights due to the inherent danger. It may be more "realistic" but I find combat fun and since I want to get into a lot of fights and survive them, Plot Immunity seems to suit me best.