Hit points as luck

[darjr]

Just a surface level response here.

Giving the player the choice to spend HP to avoid other issues is a neat idea.

Thank you for that!

 

[Celebrim]

Sure, by “luck” I would be happy to mean “any version of luck, experience, magical blessing, and other form of plot protection you think works for the character and the game.”

It makes a difference because a fighter's supernatural skill to slip blows is harder to squeeze into being every other resource in the game than generic "luck". Which, is probably a good thing. You'd not want hit points to be that fungible. You'd want more like, "I can spend 4 hit points to do 6 points of extra damage if my next attack hits." siloed behind something that implied you were a higher level character and you could overexert yourself deliberately to deal psychotic damage to your foes. You'd definitely want to use this only in the context of "gambling" mechanically, and with a certain color and limitations to it.

As for your source, I think there is a difference in saying that D&D's combat was inspired by things like Errol Flynn movies and saying they were intended as process simulation for Errol Flynn movies. I feel like this guy is quoting one conversation he had with Gary that is true as far as it goes, in that Gary didn't like wound charts and did like the cinematic/narrative feel of hit points, but that doesn't mean Gary was exactly going for that one fight as process simulation. D&D as Gary imagined it involved the two fighters getting in more nicks and superficial flesh wounds before the final blow occurred than you could get by the 1930s Hollywood censors (though several things could plausibly imply hit point loss, such as both men stumbling over from blows and near the end Robin clutches his side as if nicked, and possibly shows signs of injury to the brow occurred sometime in the fight before the death blow to Guy). Actual process simulation of that fight would play more slowly and be less gritty than what I think actually plays out in D&D, with active defenses (parry rolls) and more rock/paper/scissors with revealed strategies and tactical choices (and probably some fumbles). That's something like I think Burning Wheel was going for, albeit I don't think BW succeeded really either.

 

[DEFCON 1]

IMO examples of those "narrative points" determined after the fact would include any situation in which the damage type is relevant via the rules (poison is the most famous case), and anytime a creature reaches 0 hit points.

Sure! Good starting point and oftentimes would be worthwhile... but it never needs to be a hard and fast rule. If someone gets hit with a Poison attack first round and then an Acid attack second round and then a Radiant attack third... the one that causes the most damage or came off a crit or was the killing blow or had a failed save or some other major factor would probably be the one that gets used as the exemplifier of what happened in the fight after the fact. So it probably ends up being results oriented as opposed to specific attack type oriented.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure! Good starting point and oftentimes would be worthwhile... but it never needs to be a hard and fast rule. If someone gets hit with a Poison attack first round and then an Acid attack second round and then a Radiant attack third... the one that causes the most damage or came off a crit or was the killing blow or had a failed save or some other major factor would probably be the one that gets used as the exemplifier of what happened in the fight after the fact. So it probably ends up being results oriented as opposed to specific attack type oriented.

I get what you're saying, but as I've said before, personally I need damage types to matter if the rules make them matter.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Well, the poison problem is a big one if you can't bypass the luck pool. I still have a big problem with damage types being meaningless if there's no contact.

I see you as someone who would be better served by a system that just dropped inflationary hit points altogether. What advantage do they confer in your particular style of play?

Me, I'm just as happy to nerf poison and downplay the need for multiple fiddly different damage types. Or at least to push them off to the edges and corners.

 

[John Quixote]

They should have renamed it to "restore vitality" or something long ago. Or changed the way hits, misses and damage are defined explicitly.

I like to conceptualize cure light wounds as curing wounds to both body and soul. The spell both heals bruises with divine magic and lifts weary spirits like a kind word or a bit of sage counsel. Makes it feel like something Gandalf might do to subtly pluck up the mood of a homesick hobbit.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I like to conceptualize cure light wounds as curing wounds to both body and soul. The spell both heals bruises with divine magic and lifts weary spirits like a kind word or a bit of sage counsel. Makes it feel like something Gandalf might do to subtly pluck up the mood of a homesick hobbit.

Morphine and a Red Bull!

 

[DEFCON 1]

I get what you're saying, but as I've said before, personally I need damage types to matter if the rules make them matter.

And that's why you've chosen a game to play that in theory gives you that.

 

[Celebrim]

I like to conceptualize cure light wounds as curing wounds to both body and soul. The spell both heals bruises with divine magic and lifts weary spirits like a kind word or a bit of sage counsel. Makes it feel like something Gandalf might do to subtly pluck up the mood of a homesick hobbit.

I think that's perfectly reasonable and would explain a otherwise conceptual problem in the game which is that if cure light wounds was only curing the physical and not also the spiritual/metaphysical/supernatural, then you would expect cure light wounds to scale with the character level (but not the HD!) of the target. That is to say, since 8 points of damage to a 10th level character represents a much smaller wound that it represents in a 1st level character, then you'd expect the amount of physical healing that 8 points of healing would do to have a correspondingly greater impact on the 10th level character than the 1st level character.

We don't see that in the rules of course primarily because it is horribly unbalanced to scale healing to the character level of the target rather than the character level of the healer, but if you want to rationalize it then I think rationalizing that it works both physically and spiritually (as for example does Aragorn's "lay on hands" in The Lord of the Rings where he uses "magic" (in the Tolkien sense) to heal people) is as good as you will probably get.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think that's perfectly reasonable and would explain a otherwise conceptual problem in the game which is that if cure light wounds was only curing the physical and not also the spiritual/metaphysical/supernatural, then you would expect cure light wounds to scale with the character level (but not the HD!) of the target. That is to say, since 8 points of damage to a 10th level character represents a much smaller wound that it represents in a 1st level character, then you'd expect the amount of physical healing that 8 points of healing would do to have a correspondingly greater impact on the 10th level character than the 1st level character.

We don't see that in the rules of course primarily because it is horribly unbalanced to scale healing to the character level of the target rather than the character level of the healer, but if you want to rationalize it then I think rationalizing that it works both physically and spiritually (as for example does Aragorn's "lay on hands" in The Lord of the Rings where he uses "magic" (in the Tolkien sense) to heal people) is as good as you will probably get.

I don't think it's horribly unbalance good. You balance by the spell (and the level it's being cast at), rather than by the character level of the healer.