Hit Points and D&D

[Mallus]

This is a problem with RPG's in general, but its something I expect point buy systems to specifically address because its such a bad problem in point buys.

In general, point-buy systems (like M&M) are better at character modeling, and quantized ability package systems (like D&D) are better at niche-protection and maintaining internal balance.

The system gave the illusion of making everything playable, but certain powers were so useful you'd be almost nuts not to take them.

This isn't a system critique, it's a player issue. Applying the same logic to D&D, you'd have to be nuts not to play a cleric...

One that would be interesting enough to bother playing?

Again, funny. Let's try this again...

Superhero RPG's invite min-maxing. Agree or disagree?

The problem I saw is that the game would be extremely lethal if the bad guys just dropped the whole Bond villain convention and played for keeps.

We're talking about a game that simulates comic books... and Golden/Silver Age ones to boot... you know, mostly "POW!", "ZAP!", KABOOM"! Not a genre known for its bloody, ruthless portrayal of violence and its consequences. The game is bound by the conventions and conventional assumptions of the genre it tries to emulate. Play against those assumptions and it gets ugly. Same as with D&D.

Consider Champions for a minute, the original gold standard for superhero RPG's. You could build a hero with high-damage, penetrating RKA's, let's call him Super-Sniper, with some sort of invisibility or phasing power. The system allows you do that, even though it runs counter to the spirit of the game...

And the problem with the Bond Villain convention is that once it becomes obvious in the mind of the players, it becomes ridiculous and shatters suspension of disbelief and the enjoyment of the game.

It shatters your suspension of disbelief in a superhero game if villains don't routinely murder the heroes?! Or trap them in convoluted, nigh-inescapable deathtraps, or any of the other myriad, absurd ways comic book villains fail to kill their nemisis-es.

In case you didn't notice, Bond villains share some traits with supervillains. And not just hteir penchant for lairs...

One never gets the sense from the comic books that the villains are trying not to kill the protagonists, because if one did get that sense it would ruin the comic book for you.

Perhaps you should bone up on the staple comic book conventions. There's some very informative material in the M&M2ed rulebook...

Yes, the meaningful difference is (assuming his AC is low enough that he can be hit)...

So, in practical terms, no meaningful difference...

Which doesn't change the fact that against even opponents, rolling a 1 is a very bad thing and the only thing you have to save you is your limited supply of hero points.

Yes it is. So? In baseline D&D, its very bad when the DM confirms a crit while using an NPC with a big fixed damage modifier, say like a power-attacking giant.

David didn't kill Goliath with a sling stone...

You knew what I meant... why deny it?

Maybe David has a feat that lets him stun an opponent with a critical hit. Maybe David has a feat which lets him forgo his iterative attack in order to make one single deadly strike. Maybe Goliath just doesn't have as much hit points as you think he does. Thirdly, when making a Biblical point, you are leaving out the fact that you potentially have a divinely guided missile fired by someone with divine favor. Maybe David 'cast a divine spell'/'spent faith points' that upped the critical multiplier/damage bonus of his sling stones, so that one hit did 50+ damage.

You can heap 'maybes' onto my point to obfuscate, well, my point, but that doesn't help your case any.

Because 'Save or Die' situations aren't fun for either players or DM's.

No, they're not. But you said 'without saving throws', not 'without save-or-die saving throws'. I agree with you on that one.

David does his thing to incapacitated Goliath with a sling stone...

Except that you can't do that in the RAW. Not with a single shot.

It works just fine in D&D, especially with a bit of focus on making a sling a dangerous weapon.

Yes. If you add rules/spells/feats that aren't part of the game, you can do David and Goliath...

But making every combat a significant risk of death for the PC's will definitely change the game and definitely goes beyond 'a little more threatening'.

Wouldn't it go all the way towards making the game challenging?

There is very little in the way of emulation that can't be assumed to be a critical hit or a coup de gras attack.

So how does a finese/precision damage fighter get a meaninful critical againt a foe with a lot of hit points?

 

[Kestrel]

This discussion reminds me of my first and only experience with Rolemaster. I spent two hours making a highly complex character (ruleswise and backstory) and in the very first combat roll, a goblin killed the character with a critical. I thanked the GM for the sodas and his time, and headed home. Told him to call me when he started running a different game.

Being dead is not fun, unless it took a helluva a lot for the bad guys to get you there.

 

[Desdichado]

Wounds/Vitality means that any PC can be taken out by any low level mook at any time. A 20th level character I have been playing for years on end gets killed by Peon #3 at the start of the session.

The rat bastard in me is struggling not to mock this entire point of view. But for the sake of argument, I won't.

With the increased chance of getting killed by a no-name nobody comes the chance of getting taken out earlier in the session (as happened multiple times in our Star Wars campaign) which causes problems of boredom by the downed PC's player if the group can't give them good medical attention (healing can be a serious problem in Star Wars - not sure how the alternate rules work for D&D).

In D&D, healing is still available, so you don't have that problem. I wonder if our inadvertent house rule of having the "dying" condition work like D&D--i.e., lose a point until down to -10, really changed the dynamic? Keep in mind also--Star Wars has weapons with a bit more damage output potential than D&D tends to.

In my experience, this is much less of a problem than you are putting it forth as.

My main problem is the first one I brought up. I'm in this for the story and I don't want the story that I have worked with the DM on for years to come to a abrupt end when the DM rolls a lucky critical. It's not my character dying that I'm opposed to. If it brings my story to a satisfying conclusion than I will be more than willing to offer my PC as a sacrifice. But getting gacked by a low-level goon at the start of a session won't be the good ending to my characters story that I want.

That I can see, although I still don't sympathize with much. I like the idea that mook #3 could take down a high level character with one lucky shot--but that he probably won't. You're (or whoever did so) correct in pointing out that in D&D opponents with greater damage potential start popping up as you progress in level. But those aren't mooks, so the complaint is a moot one. Even scoring a critical hit in D&D, a mook isn't going to be killing characters outright, and with D&D healing, it's a bit of a non-event anyway.

Again, the whole thing comes down to style preferences. It is a feature, not a bug---but not everyone wants that feature.

The system works against itself. On the one hand, players have tremendous plot protection, via vitality points. On the other, they can be killed in one shot, with no recourse. Now, with a few precious hero points to use up on those criticals, it might all work out fine, if not elegantly.

How is that not elegant? I actually think that's another fairly elegant way to solve the "problem" if you percieve it as one. WFRP does essentially that, for instance.

 

[XO]

ICE, Arduin, etc...

The previous post (about getting killed in ICE) was echoed by one segment of my ICE campaign where one player spent most of two or three fights in a state of unconsciousness. He had a few choice words about ICE.

For hp in D&D, if you want something more workable than 1 hit at 1st level (what do you with cats? they die from the evil eye?), try:

Con + (1 hp/level)

It gets close to hargrave's Arduin, and I can guarantee many, many TPKs

 

[Desdichado]

This discussion reminds me of my first and only experience with Rolemaster. I spent two hours making a highly complex character (ruleswise and backstory) and in the very first combat roll, a goblin killed the character with a critical. I thanked the GM for the sodas and his time, and headed home. Told him to call me when he started running a different game.

Being dead is not fun, unless it took a helluva a lot for the bad guys to get you there.

Are you trying to say that that couldn't easily happen to a 1st level D&D character? If so, I'd definately argue that, if not, I'm not sure what your point is.

 

[Harm]

First of all, I reject your criteria. To me, that PC's and important NPC's cannot usually be dropped by a single attack and predictably are not is a significant boon and a sign of good design. If the game had a 1:100 or 1:256 or 1:400 chance of instant death or whatever on each and every attack it would sharply curtail the life expectancies of PC's and change the sort of games you could play under the rules.

A failed save in DnD can often mean death or something equivalent like petrification, stunning etc. And a 1 is a fail. At higher levels a lot of attacks are 1:20 death. Worse actually because I find that player's saves go up slower than monster special attack DCs, so a fort save for a wizard or will for a fighter etc. will often be less than 50% of making it.

These might be enjoyable games, but I've refereed those sort of games and I can tell you that the instant random death aspect to them is a sharp drawback.

It definetly is a drawback and DnD is rife with it. Wizards get d4/level HP but do d8/level with a third level spell which can be enhanced further with feats. Horrible, horrible, horrible system. It's hard to be heroic when you have to team up on monsters who are weaker than you for fear of them blowing you away with a single spell. DnD's HP and magic systems are the worst of any RPG I can think of.

 

[Gentlegamer]

It may be a feature or a bug depending on what kind of game you want to run. To me, personally - it is a bug.

Wounds/Vitality means that any PC can be taken out by any low level mook at any time. A 20th level character I have been playing for years on end gets killed by Peon #3 at the start of the session.

With the increased chance of getting killed by a no-name nobody comes the chance of getting taken out earlier in the session (as happened multiple times in our Star Wars campaign) which causes problems of boredom by the downed PC's player if the group can't give them good medical attention (healing can be a serious problem in Star Wars - not sure how the alternate rules work for D&D).

My main problem is the first one I brought up. I'm in this for the story and I don't want the story that I have worked with the DM on for years to come to a abrupt end when the DM rolls a lucky critical. It's not my character dying that I'm opposed to. If it brings my story to a satisfying conclusion than I will be more than willing to offer my PC as a sacrifice. But getting gacked by a low-level goon at the start of a session won't be the good ending to my characters story that I want.

It means you have to respect even goons, and avoid unnecessary fights.

 

[Kestrel]

Durn...I liked my anecdote.

I guess I was just saying that being dead is not fun, unless you had fun getting there. More to the topic, why bother with the intricate stats in DnD if a pc can be dropped by a random arrow? Why not just move to a much more simplistic system? Why bother with levels if you never really become better than a schmoe with a sword?

 

[Desdichado]

Durn...I liked my anecdote.

I guess I was just saying that being dead is not fun, unless you had fun getting there.

No, of course not. But flirting with death is fun.

Losing money playing cards isn't fun either. That doesn't stop millions of people playing card games week after week. Much more than play D&D. Because playing is fun, and it wouldn't be without the built in risk vs. reward experience.

More to the topic, why bother with the intricate stats in DnD if a pc can be dropped by a random arrow? Why not just move to a much more simplistic system?

Because 1) the stats aren't really that intricate for one thing, and 2) because the system can be fun in it's own right in a way that a more simplistic system isn't.

Why bother with levels if you never really become better than a schmoe with a sword?

Levels is not equivalent to hit points. That's only one of a whole bunch of perks you get as you level up.

 

[mmadsen]

How is that not elegant? I actually think that's another fairly elegant way to solve the "problem" if you percieve it as one. WFRP does essentially that, for instance.

I think hero points (by whatever name) are an elegant solution, but tracking vitality points (and recovery of vitality points) separately from wound points, which still don't allow for a lethal attack from most weapons, etc. is rather inelegant.

I think a simple damage save, combined with hero points, is more elegant. It allows just about anything to happen, yet our plot-protected characters remain plot-protected.