Hit Points, the DM or the players?

[tonym]

My DM has me and the other four Players keep track of our own damage. In our group, this sometimes encourages roleplaying.

Like after a battle, when the guy running the cleric asks in-character who is hurt and how bad, and we each interpret the severity of our character's damage in the way we think our character would see it.

For example, the guy running the panicky rogue will usually say his rogue is seriously wounded and needs healing if he has taken 25% of his HPs in damage, while the guy running the macho fighter will usually not have his character complain much until he is 40-50% damaged.

Putting your character's damage into words is an easy, fun thing to roleplay, I think.

Cleric: "How badly is everyone hurt?"
Fighter: "That gnoll hurt me pretty bad. He came pretty close to killing me..."

Fun stuff like that.

On the other hand, we also usually tell the cleric the precise amount of damage we took, so he can determine how to distribute his healing magicks. Kinda meta-gamey, I guess.

Now, back when I DMed, I usually had one player (usually the person running the Cleric) keep track of every PC's damage. Not 'secret' track, just record-keeping on a sheet of notebook paper. That worked pretty well. (And when a character died, he could draw a little skull by his name. Whee!)


Tony

 

[EarthsShadow]

The method we use is sort of a compromise.

The players still keep track of their own hit points and a given player always knows how many hit points his character has. But instead of writing it on our character sheets, we each have a small plastic bowl (about 3 inces across and an inch and a half deep) that contains marbles that represent hit points. Therefore, instead of the player saying to the Cleric, "I'm down 16 hit points, could I get a Cure Moderate Wounds over here?", the player can just flash the cleric a look at how full his bowl is. In essence, it is a visual representation of a character's health.

If that were the only reason for doing it, we probably wouldn't. It also saves having to erase and rewrite hit points until there is nearly a hole in the character sheet. Plus there is something sort of dramatic about a character getting hit for lots of damage and dropping a big pile of marbles into the "Pot".

We did this the one time we played a HERO game. We had white marbles for Stun and Black marbles for Body damage, and there was nothing like seeing a person's face when he was told to pop in 30 white marbles and 12 black marbles cuz he got nailed a good one. It really works, and when people have to hear the marbles clinking into the bowl, you get a real sense as to how much damage they really took.

It does cost a lot to get that many marbles though. Colored stones would also work.

 

[MarauderX]

I gotta keep track of it sometime just to get an idea of how not to pick on any one PC too much. Being a DM there is that feeling that somehow I am being biased towards one PC or another, but when doling out damage or attacks from range I tend to go for those who can take some hits first. It's pretty easy as I keep everyone's stats on one sheet instead of separate cards (too hard to flip through quickly) or asking the players to keep track(sometimes they forget, as do i...). Plus players tend to not keep track of subdual damage and add it too regular damage...

I like the idea of the bowl though, perhaps that might be easier to add and subtract from without debating how many times they were hit and for how much.

 

[Ace]

The same thing was tried by an old DM of mine. We tried it for a number of sessions but we dropped it. It was too much paperwork for the DM and the players never felt comfortable with it.

Sorry to DITTO here but a group I was in tried this and had the same results -- I don't recomend it

 

[VGer]

I keep track of the players HP. I also roll the damage rolls secretly.

I use a table divided in 4 parts (light, moderate, serious, critical). They know the max HP and can make a estimate based on what I tell them.

I thought it would be a pain to keep track, but we really love it.

When I tell them "You are critically wounded", they tend to panic.
Specially if they just been hit by an ogre, and saw a 20 followed by a 18. And had full hit points before that hit.

They never know if they are at the start of the critical part, or at the end of it, near the 0.

 

[Rel]

It does cost a lot to get that many marbles though. Colored stones would also work.

Just so's you know, when I say "marbles" I'm not talking about the spherical marbles that kids play, well...marbles, with. I'm talking about the ones that are glass blobs that are rounded all over with one flat side. Those don't roll off the table too easily.

You can buy them by the hundreds at your local craft shop and they only cost a couple bucks per bag. I have them in a bunch of different colors and the way I use them is like this:

light blue marble = 1 hit point
dark blue marble = 5 hit points
dark green marbles = 10 hit points (we only ever used these when our first campaign got about 7-8th level)
red marbles = -1 hit point

When a character goes below zero, he puts an appropriate number of red marbles in the bowl. Each round he doesn't stabilize, he gets another one. Too many red marbles and you're dead.

For subdual damage we pile the regular marbles (the blue ones) next to the bowl. If you get more marbles next to your bowl than in it, out you go.