D&D General Hit Points are a great mechanic

[NotAYakk]

That is how I tend to view hit points in the first place. It’s an elaborate version of the classic « pow! pow! You’re dead! », « Nuh-uh, I dodged it! »

« pow! pow! I deal 16 you’re-dead-points »
« I spend 16 I-dodged-it-points to not be dead »

Sure; but by tying it to an actual narrative construct (a skill or an attribute) where the defender has to describe how the skill prevents the deadly blow, I think it can help?

Limiting reuse is ideal, but doing so without making it overly costly is hard.

Hmm: Letting you choose the attribute after you roll actually helps here. Because if you only need a +1 you'll use your weaker attribute to defend. So even if you have +10 con, sometimes you'll use your +1 int to defend if your HD roll already won.

 

[Willie the Duck]

At their basic level, hit points act as a waypoint between perfect health and down (giving you an opportunity to decide to retreat, go defensive, move resources, etc.). There isn't a specific need for any other battle conditions (like wound levels) having to be directly tied to that scale. Hit points, by themself, serve the function for which they are created. By that measure, they are a success. With that and their ease of use, it's easy to see why they are so often used.

Tangentially: they are also pretty verisimilitudous, as far as I'm concerned. "You are perfectly fine and then suddenly you are dead" is a reasonable model for armed fighting -- there aren't many ways to inflict or sustain non-lethal injuries in a swordfight -- you aren't going to survive your hand being cut off. Or your leg. Or head.
Even those you can are bund to become lethal a second later -- sure, you can survive your hand being broken, but now the enemy can do whatever the hell they want with you, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. Unarmed vs a sword is a pipe dream, not going to happen -- you present no threat and they just move in and skewer you.

That's going to depend so wildly on the type of combat and situation as to make it hard to generalize. Boxing this is a hard no. Knife fights -- even the victor walks away with defensive wounds (whether these are at the slow-you-down level or not is again context specific). Sword fights -- so depends on the era and weapons and armor and so on (getting your head chopped off with a sword is dead, but getting a mace blow when in plate is broken bones and a lot of pain and maybe bent and hard-to-use armor). Shoot outs -- yeah, it could well be everyone fine... fine... fine... down (with survival maybe being a second check). Even then, modern body armor can really change this too.

Personally, I think HP work well alongside static or proportioned wounded mechanics such as 'bloodied' at 1/2 hp, which not invoke combat abilities/penalties -- either universal ('-1/2/3 to-hit at 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 hp gone) or at the individual level (berserkers get +4 damage when bloodied). For me, these are still mostly 'hp-like,' at least compared to something like WEG SW or world of darkness wound categories, etc.

I like both systems for different reasons,

There's plenty of reason to like super complex (realistic or otherwise) combat systems, and plenty of reason to like straightforward and simple systems. Honestly, so long as a system has a reason for what it is doing, I'm all for it.

 

[Stormonu]

I actually hate the hit point system. It works for wargames, but it has to be the worst system to put into place in an RPG system - especially the "you're fine...until your not" system we ended up with. I would have way preferred some sort of attrition system that incorporates the possibility of flinching, degrading wounds, injuries and even the possibility of limb loss into the base system. Instead we got a system where each side beats each other with increasingly nerfed bats to simulate drama until one side or the other falls over, having finally had enough of swapping numbers back and forth.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Sure; but by tying it to an actual narrative construct (a skill or an attribute) where the defender has to describe how the skill prevents the deadly blow, I think it can help?

Limiting reuse is ideal, but doing so without making it overly costly is hard.

Hmm: Letting you choose the attribute after you roll actually helps here. Because if you only need a +1 you'll use your weaker attribute to defend. So even if you have +10 con, sometimes you'll use your +1 int to defend if your HD roll already won.

the main issue i see here is what happens if you take damage more then 6 times in a round (like if you're a tank...or a boss)? do you just die? can monks and fighters just circumvent the hp system by throwing out 6 trillion attacks? or do you just not add an ability modifier after that?

another issue is that means you can only ever take a number of hits per long rest equal to your number of hit dice. tanking is basically not a role. i guess healing magic would have to heal numbers of hit dice? but that'd mean it's always better to heal those with bigger hit dice, since those dice are worth more.

 

[James Gasik]

Narratively, hit points are the devil. You can get crit for half your hit point total, but mechanically you're fine. Sure, we can explain this to a degree as your will to live and adrenaline counters any "penalty", but that only goes so far. You can try to explain that hit points aren't wholly physical in nature, but then the question of "when do I take real damage" rears it's ugly head- Micah Sweet likes to bring up secondary effects, like a snake bite inflicting poison, and it's a fair cop. If you didn't actually get bit by the snake, how did it poison you?

On the other hand, games that try to model the actual effects of wounds can be unfun to play, unless the goal is to avoid situations like combat entirely (which is valid for some games, but not others). This quickly leads to the "Death Spiral", where as you take more damage, the odds of you taking more damage increases. Shadowrun, Vampire: the Masquerade, the original Legend of the Five Rings game, Star Wars SAGA, and many more do this.

Alternately, you have systems that have hit points, but delineate which hit points are "real", generally a small pool, and "temporary". Star Wars d20 had to be my worst experience with this. Some attacks ignored your "vitality" and went straight to wounding you- like lightsabers. You know, the thing every starting Jedi is going to have. Critical hits in Fantasy Craft have a similar effect, and there's something disheartening about going from "I'm fine" to "I'm dead" due to random chance (and a GM who has been stockpiling action dice!).

Permanent effects are the devil, especially if the game has no easy way to recover from them. AD&D (both editions) made it very clear in the DMG's how sorry your characters would be by about 5th level or so, missing hands, limbs, eyes, ears, and the like. Since the game was about fighting monsters and taking their stuff (1e gave you reasons to try to avoid combat, but 2e did not), this wasn't ideal.

I first encountered permanent wounds with games like RuneQuest. A friend of mine was trying to sell us on playing the system. He recounted a tale about how, with a mighty blow, his character once attacked a foe, hit them in the arm, penetrated their armor, did enough damage to sever the arm clean off, then continued to inflict damage to the enemy's torso.

"And that can happen to players too?"

"Of course! Isn't that fun!?"

A permanent injury of that severity can, even if you survive, force you to retire a character. There's certainly a time and place for high PC turnover in games- Paranoia is built on this, with readily available clones to replace your characters as they die in ridiculous ways.

But if your game gains value from characters sticking around for awhile, raising the stakes to the point that actually dying is a tragedy, then that's not so hot. This is why I stick with hit points, even with all their warts and flaws- it may be unrealistic, but it suits the kind of games I enjoy playing and running better. Often, you're knocked down in a fight with no real agency- you were in a fight, enemy roll good, you lose hit points. Some people think that you should suffer a penalty for going down, but I've found that to just be unduly punishing- your prize for being in combat is penalties that make you not want to be in combat. Yay.

Some games (I have dim memories of Albedo) also have mechanics for shock and stun due to being in a firefight, where taking damage might force a Coolness Under Fire check, and failing that causes your character to skip turns of combat! That's certainly realistic, but boy, can it lead to players "checking out" of the game, quick!

Again, if the object of the game is to avoid combat: V:tM (though you can't seem to convince the players of this fact...), Call of Cthulhu, GURPS (you can't convince me otherwise!)- hit points and no penalties for damage is probably not the way to go. People do tend to get laissez-faire about their character's fate if they have 99 hit points, after all!

If the game is about fighting giant, fire breathing dragons, and surviving to fight more, well, limited hit points, penalties, and specific injuries might not be.

There can be middle ground, however! FASA's Earthdawn gives you a pool of "hit points", but taking damage above a certain threshold could inflict a wound. Removing a wound took one of your Recovery Tests (think Healing Surges, back in the 90's!). Alternately, you could struggle with a wound, but each wound gave you a stacking penalty on attempts to heal damage, until you were simply forced to take the time to remove them. It's a system I've often toyed with applying to 5e, but I have to figure out how to con...vince my players into buying into it, lol.

 

[NotAYakk]

the main issue i see here is what happens if you take damage more then 6 times in a round (like if you're a tank...or a boss)? do you just die? can monks and fighters just circumvent the hp system by throwing out 6 trillion attacks? or do you just not add an ability modifier after that?

I mean, after you run out of attributes, maybe you add +0? Or maybe ... you loop around!

Looping around isn't bad. The 6th hit is the most constrained, which is a bit artificial.

An alternative is to get rid of the "once per turn" rule and roll 1d6 to find out which attribute can be used to defend. Or roll more than 1d6 and let the defender pick, where extra combat training gives you more such dice.

All of this, of course, slows down attack evaluation. So is probably not a good idea.

another issue is that means you can only ever take a number of hits per long rest equal to your number of hit dice. tanking is basically not a role. i guess healing magic would have to heal numbers of hit dice? but that'd mean it's always better to heal those with bigger hit dice, since those dice are worth more.

That is almost true already, except maybe at very low levels. It is very rare that damage is substantially less than a HD, and becomes less likely in my experience at higher levels.

Healing could act like reverse damage; you heal, then you roll expended HD and recover them until you reach the healing total. Or regain HD.

Tank skills could include regaining HD (like second wind).

As "Tanky" classes seem to have larger HD, making them recover better from healing makes sense and isn't a big problem as far as I am concerned.

We could also offer up the trivial blow option; you use 0 HD and add an attribute.

 

[AlViking]

I don't mind HP when they're unambiguously "meat points". Personal taste and all that.

Instead of critical hits, I'm toying with the idea of "exploding" damage dice.

What version of exploding dice?

The one I've seen is that if you roll max on any damage die, you roll again and repeat. My barbarian with a two-handed sword (2d6 damage) and savage attacker (reroll <edit stupid autocomplete> damage 1/round and use either one) would love it. That paladin with a great axe (1d12) would only see a minor improvement.

 

[kermit4karate]

What version of exploding dice?

The one I've seen is that if you roll max on any damage die, you roll again and repeat. My barbarian with a two-handed sword (2d6 damage) and savage attacker (recollection damage 1/round and use either one) would love it. That paladin with a great axe (1d12) would only see a minor improvement.

That's the obvious argument against it -- a die with fewer sides sees the benefits more often. In my experience using it for years, that's been statistically true but functionally irrelevant.

The mechanic adds so much to gameplay in literally every one of my sessions that the practical benefits outweigh the statistical negatives.

 

[AlViking]

That's the obvious argument against it -- a die with fewer sides sees the benefits more often. In my experience using it for years, that's been statistically true but functionally irrelevant.

The mechanic adds so much to gameplay in literally every one of my sessions that the practical benefits outweigh the statistical negatives.

Without figuring out the exact math every round my barbarian would be adding close to 4 points of damage. The thing is though that my barbarian already does quite a bit of damage and this particular build would benefit more than most others (unless you apply it to sneak attack damage which could get pretty bonkers).

But either it's giving a boost to some builds over others or giving such a minimal boost that it doesn't matter and it's just adding extra rolls for no real reason. I've played with various versions of crits over the years I've never really hit one that stands out as any better.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So after a few years of running a lot of games with different variations of wounds system, I can say only one thing: I hate them. Hate-hate-hate them.

It doesn't matter how cool, interesting, engaging, realistic or flavorful your mechanic is, if it's annoying to actually use at the table, and any sort of wounds mechanic that apply any sort of lingering effect after taking damage is beyond annoying.

The greatest strength of HP is that they are fire-and-forget, you don't have to keep them in mind until they are actually relevant. You never get in a situation like "Hell yeah! Crit! Ah, shucks, wait, I have Level 2 Harm and roll with -1D... Lemme re-roll it" because it doesn't matter if you are at 1 or 101 HP until you get hit.

Tangentially: they are also pretty verisimilitudous, as far as I'm concerned. "You are perfectly fine and then suddenly you are dead" is a reasonable model for armed fighting -- there aren't many ways to inflict or sustain non-lethal injuries in a swordfight -- you aren't going to survive your hand being cut off. Or your leg. Or head.
Even those you can are bound to become lethal a second later -- sure, you can survive your hand being broken, but now the enemy can do whatever the hell they want with you, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. Unarmed vs a sword is a pipe dream, not going to happen -- you present no threat and they just move in and skewer you.

And yet, no hit point game treats an unarmed character as completely at the mercy of an armed opponent unless something else is in play. And if you do drop someone to zero, in a 5e game at least, there is a better than 50% chance they'll fully recover in no more than an hour at most with no intervention.