Hit Points: Hitting the Wall

[Dausuul]

This is Not Another Hit Point Wars Thread. Or if it is, I'm declaring war on 3E and 4E equally.

A friend of mine recently pointed this out to me about 4E, but it's been true in all editions of D&D to date: Gradual hit point attrition doesn't really exist. Whatever resources you have to restore hit points--a cleric in AD&D, a cure light wand in 3E, healing surges in 4E--they put you back up to full or near-full after every battle. So as long as your healing batteries hold out, you can keep going hell for leather. As soon as the supply of heals is exhausted, however, you hit the wall. The party's fighting capacity plunges rapidly, and it's time to stop and rest for the night because you'll be slaughtered if you go on. It feels artificial, and I think it also reduces tension. Instead of gradually increasing strain, there's a sharply defined "Okay, stop here" moment.

What I would really like to see is a mechanic that allows for gradual attrition instead of the sudden stop. One way would be to say that you get back most of your hit points after each battle... but not all of them. Maybe 1/5 of hit point loss would be "permanent," requiring bed rest or the use of a tightly limited resource to cure. The other 4/5 would vanish as soon as you got a chance to catch your breath. (Figuring out a clean, non-confusing way to track this might be tricky.)

Thoughts, anyone?

 

[RangerWickett]

One mechanic being suggested or hinted at is that magical healing only works a few times a day. You can take 2 short rests per day (which recover 1/4 your max HP each), so if you want to regain all your HP you have to go 2 days straight without taking any damage.

If you drastically reduce the number of spell slots spellcasters have, so that a cleric can only heal once or twice a day (obviously more at high level), you can easily gauge how many HP the party has.

 

[Dausuul]

One mechanic being suggested or hinted at is that magical healing only works a few times a day. You can take 2 short rests per day (which recover 1/4 your max HP each), so if you want to regain all your HP you have to go 2 days straight without taking any damage.

If you drastically reduce the number of spell slots spellcasters have, so that a cleric can only heal once or twice a day (obviously more at high level), you can easily gauge how many HP the party has.

That doesn't really solve the problem though. You still hit the wall, you just hit it sooner. Once you're out of healing, a single serious fight or a couple of skirmishes will put you in a very bad way.

 

[Minigiant]

I made a topic earlier that showed my personal disgust for "hurt and heal" as the default defensive strategy.

I proposed other strategies. One was more support for temporary Hit points where the party attempts to not take any real hit point damage at all. Or make builds that focus on an everweakening Really High defense (AC, DR, whatever)

Or PCs could have 2 Max HP values. One for the start of day after a full rest. And another lowered value that represents a "not fresh" character that magic cannot exceed.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I've struggled with this problem in multiple systems, not just D&D, and I think the trick is that solutions that really work are either fiddly or end up doing something that a lot of people don't like (for a variety of reasons).

Even your "percentage" idea will break down in places, because it will mean that fairly tough fights will do often cause the players to feel like they "hit the wall" due to not being able to restore very much. That is, you have two or three "easy" fights, lose maybe 10% total of your normal hit points to this "permanent" loss, and are still feeling fine. Then you get in this really nasty fight, everyone goes down to single digits during it, and suddenly there is another 20% off.

Getting the percentage correct here is the tricky part, because it has to be precisely strong enough to bite a little on the easier fights but not be a killer after a couple of tougher fights. Realistically, you only get that if the system is built on attrition, and a "tough" fight will routinely do only about 50% of your hit points, even with some bad luck. But in turn, that won't feel very threatening, and will certainly irritate those who like a more dangerous feel from each fight.

As far as how to manage it, I've considered using some kind of "recovery" stat, that gradually decreases with damage (and to get full use out of it, other things, like getting hit with crits, "life draining" magic, exhaustion, etc.). A simple version of it would be something like this:

You have a single number that is your "recovery" ability. Fully rested and healed, this is equal to your hit points. This is how much hit points you can recover to. Certainly, take some damage, lose a bit off of "recovery"--maybe 10% of the damage taken. So far, that's merely another way of handling your percentage, but with a lower percentage to reflect that this is not the only way it decreases. For the other ways it can decrease, you'd probably want several optional ways, and each group can pick. For example, "Get in a fight, lose 1d4 from recovery. Get in a really nasty fight, lose 1d6 or an even bigger die." Then you can make things like that happen before or after healing takes place. Get hit by a crit, lose 1d4 from recovery. Hit zero or less hit points, lose 1d6 from recovery after each attempt to magically heal you. And so forth.

Then the people that want fewer fights per day, even 1 or less, leave the traditional part of hit points alone. Damage stays the same. Using resources to heal works the same. But you use different options for the "recovery" stat refreshing. If you have no more than one fight per day, then make it so that it takes a week or more to fully refresh "recovery".

 

[KidSnide]

Putting aside the question of whether "hitting the wall" is part of D&D, it would be nice to see a hit point / healing system that didn't feature it.

In a way, 3e played without CLW wands has something of this effect. At the beginning of the day, clerics have less useful spell slots to burn on healing spells. But, as the day goes on, they face the choice of using there more useful spells to heal the party. Obviously, there is still a wall there, but there is a declining effectiveness as the day goes on.

I could also see an optional 4e mechanic where, instead of running out of healing surges, they simply became less effective as they were used. (Not that I necessarily want to see healing surges return in 5e...)

-KS

 

[El Mahdi]

For ease of use, I like a nice simple formula of: With a short rest of a few minutes, you recover all lost Hit Points with the exception of 1 per character level. (Exception: if you're at 0 Hit Points or less, you're unconscious and also require mundane care or magical healing.) Your current Hit Points now become your Maximum Hit Points until you either recieve Magical Healing or take an extended rest (8 hours of sleep).

So, If you're a 1st level character with 15 Hit Points, and you are above 0 Hit Points (we'll say down to 6). With a short rest after a combat, your Hit Point total rises to 14 Hit Points. Until you can have an extended rest, or recieve magical healing, 14 is your new Maximum Hit Points.

If you're a 5th level character with 35, after a combat encounter and taking a short rest, your Hit Points rises to 30, and becomes your new Maximum Hit Points.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Or if that seems like to much of a hit as you go up in levels, change it to 1 less for every two character levels.


This is basically what I do with my houseruled system, but I also include a Condition Track mechanic. Critical Hits automatically cause a reduction on your Condition Track, imposing penalties on your future rolls. Reaching 50% Hit Points also causes a step down on the Condition Track. A short rest which restores Hit Points to your new Maximum Hit Points, will also raise you one level on your Condition Track...but only one level. Any other Condition Track statuses require either extensive rest, significant treatment, or magical healing to restore (they are essentially: wounds).

 

[fuindordm]

I like your idea. It's a new direction and integrates well with existing mechanics

Personally, I've tried lots of variant Hp systems and never found the extra 'realism' to be worth the added complexity. I'd be willing to try this one.

Here's how I would implement it: each time a pc gets knocked to 0 Hp or less, their maximum is reduced by 10%. Each extended rest raises their max by 10%.

I think this would soften the wall a great deal. The rule wouldn't affect low-level play very much, which is ok since healing is scarcer and Hp feels real at those levels anyway. But at mid to high levels, it creates a real consequence for playing combats too close to the edge and rewards smart tactics (finding ways to avoid getting hurt, tagging in allies) rather than relying on healing.

Thanks for the keen idea!

 

[RangerWickett]

That doesn't really solve the problem though. You still hit the wall, you just hit it sooner. Once you're out of healing, a single serious fight or a couple of skirmishes will put you in a very bad way.

The idea is that combat does less damage. So a PC might have 20 HP, and he can expect to lose 5 HP in an easy fight, 10 HP in an average fight, or 15 HP in a hard fight. So you can expect to handle 3 average fights in a day, since you'll take 30 HP damage, but can heal 10 HP from resting, plus maybe a bit more through magic.

You don't hit a wall; you see the wall coming from far away.

 

[Sunseeker]

So how do we deal with the fact that this disproportionately punishes the guys up front? I mean, they're supposed to be the guys up front, they're going to take more damage and they're going to take it more often.

IE: if a Wizard loses 10 out of 50 HP, they only "lose" 2 HP without an extended rest. However, if a Fighter loses 75 out of 100 HP, they lose out on 15 HP. Going from 50 to 48 isn't that much of a loss, but our Fighter is now at 85/100 for the next fight. After that fight, he'll be even lower, and he'll get there a lot faster.

This strikes me suspiciously as a variant death-spiral.