D&D 5E HP thresholds and control: a custom system

[5ekyu]

After almost exactly a year of playtesting the HP threshold system, I'm back in this thread. I've edited the OP to match the current status of the system at this point.

Playtesting started on a group of 5 level 4 PCs, who are now almost level 9.
The PCs are a level 8 battlemaster, a level 8 assassin, a multiclass level 4 thief/4 shadow monk, a level 8 tome warlock of the fiend and a multiclass 7 lore bard/1 fighter.

They are not control specialists, but between the bard and the warlock they do have enough control to turn the tide of battle.
Up to this point, the threshold system has worked well. It doesn't come up often, which is great, but when it does come up, it makes a difference.

The latest example happened last session. The group encountered 2 chimeras, and the bard rolled high initiative. He cast hypnotic pattern on both chimeras, and both failed their save. Normally, that would've turned a challenging battle into a cakewalk. With the threshold system, the chimeras were just charmed, instead of incapacitated. So the fight went on, with the party fighting off one of the chimeras while the bard used his charisma and the charmed condition to keep the other chimera in check, eventually persuading it to go away (good thing he can speak draconic...).

Anyway, I'm aware that this system probably ended up being too cumbersome to be easily plugged into anyone's campaign. It's a complex solution to a complex problem, but it's working great for us, and I just thought I'd share our experience.

Ok so to start i want to look at your described fight and the claim... marked in bold.

Hypnotic pattern full on regular rules:
Both beasts are charmed to the bard and get no actions and have speed zero.
Smart group of PCs then attack *one* beast at a time with **at best** a complete set of attacks on that one before it gets a chance to act (assumes a lot of ready attacks keyed to "when the bard attacks.) Then they have to repeat the attack routine against the other one. Maybe that is a cake walk if they can one shot the chimera but they do end up expending the attack rountines against both because the other one cannot actually leave due to the incapacitate thing (and you have to wonder what will happen after the charm drops. It might just leave on its on.)

With your new interpretation they still squared off against one chimera and instead of them getting a full set of ready attacks it may have gotten off its first set of attacks too. So the net result is the chimera gets **one additional** turn of attacks off (at best.) However, the other chimera being charmed and active - can be convinced to leave during the ongoing duration - in other words the charm can be exploited to remove the creature from the battlefield.

So you traded off allowing the killed chimera one additional turn of attacks with having the other chimera not need to be dispatched - no resources lost, not potential for it to strike back if not killed in one alpha.

So, it seems like it did not make a major difference to how the encounter could have played as far as the cakewalk vs fight off kind of thing. it altered the actions taken but not the difficulty.

A side-point i am seeing here is - there are times when the removal of a negative condition can result in negative results - removing the incap meant the other chimera was not stuck there and let the charmed still be used to keep him "in check" and even get him to leave which is perhaps better than having it still there waiting for the opening to attack once they turn their attention to it.

Second point - you seem to have chosen a number of effects like charm person, charm monster to basically exempt from this rule - while leaving suggestion and others affected. I can imagine its because you judged them as "soft" controls or something. But in fact as you show here, the charm effect without incapacitation can result in just as much impact as any hard control could - it effectively enabled them remove the creature from the fight. So i see here something i saw when i looked at your spells lists in the opening post - seems wrong to exclude charms spells.

That said - I myself recently put up a post pondering the balance concerns of the various "save or..." attacks/spells especialy when they provide ongoing without re-save conditions. My suggested approach to it was not to initiate HP thresholds and track effects vs thresholds as things go along and come up with partial effects but instead to use the existing three way save mechanic - require the targets to keep making saves against a "save or..." ongoing effect (at the end of their turn) until one of three things happens -
1 - the spell duration is ended by time elapse or by defined events
2 - three saves are failed in which case the spell effect goes on without saves needed.
3 - three saves are made at which point the spell ends.
(red poker chips in hand - make save give it back to GM, fail save put it down on table to show effect)

basically as long as you have not made three saves or failed three save the spell/condition is still "taking effect" and not yet set.

Each turn/round where you fail a save you get the effect. Each turn/round you make it it lifts with no condition applied as long as it is still "taking effect" and not "set in."

So the loss of one save is not that severe - one turn of effect vs full duration - and the situation remains in play and i do not have to pick a bunch of lesser conditions or pick which spells to include or not. The only spells excluded would be ones which already allow a re-save each round for ending effects.

Also note that this cuts both ways - a single made save does not mean wasted spell. They still have to make saves and can get affected by any failure or longer term by three failures.

It also keeps HP from being made into even more of a buffer than it is now and prevents CON from being even more beneficial (every PC i have ever seen has cons of at least 12-14 range at start when point buy is enabled it is almost always the second or third best ability. If it played a direct role in resisting control effects, that would jump it up on priority for many players IMO)

So, i see your point about what the problem is and share similar concerns and i applaud you for an interesting approach and one that you seem to think works for your group. However, i find problems with your implementation and see issues with your depiction of the impact (albeit based on just one graph about one use case.)

Many Many thanks for the follow-up - i would not have seen this post/thread otherwise.

 

[Olrox17]

Dude, that's a great response. This is the kind of constructive criticism I hoped to get. Right now I don't have enough time to answer to your post, but I'll get to it asap. You gave me something to think about, thanks!

 

[Olrox17]

Ok so to start i want to look at your described fight and the claim... marked in bold.


Hypnotic pattern full on regular rules:
Both beasts are charmed to the bard and get no actions and have speed zero.
Smart group of PCs then attack *one* beast at a time with **at best** a complete set of attacks on that one before it gets a chance to act (assumes a lot of ready attacks keyed to "when the bard attacks.) Then they have to repeat the attack routine against the other one. Maybe that is a cake walk if they can one shot the chimera but they do end up expending the attack rountines against both because the other one cannot actually leave due to the incapacitate thing (and you have to wonder what will happen after the charm drops. It might just leave on its on.)


With your new interpretation they still squared off against one chimera and instead of them getting a full set of ready attacks it may have gotten off its first set of attacks too. So the net result is the chimera gets **one additional** turn of attacks off (at best.) However, the other chimera being charmed and active - can be convinced to leave during the ongoing duration - in other words the charm can be exploited to remove the creature from the battlefield.


So you traded off allowing the killed chimera one additional turn of attacks with having the other chimera not need to be dispatched - no resources lost, not potential for it to strike back if not killed in one alpha.


So, it seems like it did not make a major difference to how the encounter could have played as far as the cakewalk vs fight off kind of thing. it altered the actions taken but not the difficulty.


A side-point i am seeing here is - there are times when the removal of a negative condition can result in negative results - removing the incap meant the other chimera was not stuck there and let the charmed still be used to keep him "in check" and even get him to leave which is perhaps better than having it still there waiting for the opening to attack once they turn their attention to it.

The chimera fight was just an example, but I should probably explain how it went a little better. Technically, the charmed condition doesn't really do much on its own. For the chimeras, the only consequence of being charmed was not being able to attack the bard, but they could attack the rest of the party at will, at that's what they did on their first turn after being charmed.
Afterwards, the bard player asked me, since he could speak draconic, if he could convince the chimeras to leave. I decided to allow him to use his action to try and convince one of the chimeras to stay out of the fight. He had advantage, because charmed, but he still had to roll the check, and he had to repeat the check on all following rounds. So, basically, I allowed him to keep one chimera out of the fight, but at the cost of all his actions and always at the risk of failing the charisma check.

I'll give another example of a fight that was made more interesting by HP thresholds. The PCs met 3 ettins, I believe they were sixth level. Either the bard or the warlock used the Fear spell on them, and only one ettin succeeded (they had advantage on the save, but only a +0 to the roll). Thanks to the threshold, the ettin could still fight. They had disadvantage to attacks, which made them miss more than normal, but in the end it was a nice fight.

Second point - you seem to have chosen a number of effects like charm person, charm monster to basically exempt from this rule - while leaving suggestion and others affected. I can imagine its because you judged them as "soft" controls or something. But in fact as you show here, the charm effect without incapacitation can result in just as much impact as any hard control could - it effectively enabled them remove the creature from the fight. So i see here something i saw when i looked at your spells lists in the opening post - seems wrong to exclude charms spells.

I was a bit torn about charm spells, but I felt they were already a bit underpowered on their own. After all, the target already gets advantage on the save, and it's not like the charmed condition is hard control on its own...the target can still attack its enemies, just not the caster.

That said - I myself recently put up a post pondering the balance concerns of the various "save or..." attacks/spells especialy when they provide ongoing without re-save conditions. My suggested approach to it was not to initiate HP thresholds and track effects vs thresholds as things go along and come up with partial effects but instead to use the existing three way save mechanic - require the targets to keep making saves against a "save or..." ongoing effect (at the end of their turn) until one of three things happens -
1 - the spell duration is ended by time elapse or by defined events
2 - three saves are failed in which case the spell effect goes on without saves needed.
3 - three saves are made at which point the spell ends.
(red poker chips in hand - make save give it back to GM, fail save put it down on table to show effect)


basically as long as you have not made three saves or failed three save the spell/condition is still "taking effect" and not yet set.


Each turn/round where you fail a save you get the effect. Each turn/round you make it it lifts with no condition applied as long as it is still "taking effect" and not "set in."


So the loss of one save is not that severe - one turn of effect vs full duration - and the situation remains in play and i do not have to pick a bunch of lesser conditions or pick which spells to include or not. The only spells excluded would be ones which already allow a re-save each round for ending effects.


Also note that this cuts both ways - a single made save does not mean wasted spell. They still have to make saves and can get affected by any failure or longer term by three failures.



It also keeps HP from being made into even more of a buffer than it is now and prevents CON from being even more beneficial (every PC i have ever seen has cons of at least 12-14 range at start when point buy is enabled it is almost always the second or third best ability. If it played a direct role in resisting control effects, that would jump it up on priority for many players IMO)

That's a good fix for long lasting save or suck effects, and I think I'll end up using it for some spells. Thanks!
And yeah, I know that under my system CON becomes more valuable. It's not a big problem, I think, because CON is not a primary attribute for any 5e class. Nobody attacks with it, nobody casts with it, it has no skill attached to it.
Barbarians can add it to AC, but only when unarmored (and half plate is basically just as good as a 20 in CON).

So, i see your point about what the problem is and share similar concerns and i applaud you for an interesting approach and one that you seem to think works for your group. However, i find problems with your implementation and see issues with your depiction of the impact (albeit based on just one graph about one use case.)


Many Many thanks for the follow-up - i would not have seen this post/thread otherwise.

And thank you, too. The threshold system is a work in progress, and you brought some interesting ideas and valid concerns that will be useful in its next evolution. Hope to hear from you again.

 

[5ekyu]

Olrox17

i will admit, a big part of the reason i went for the saves approach was to avoid having to do the work you did and opt for a case-by-case approach. I felt it would also add quite a bit more house rule to remember than adopting in the three-way save mechanic - which i already use for any "over-time" task ability checks. 9if it is not done in one action, i divide the "expected time by 1/4 and then give you the same type of three-way checks - so three successes right off the bat with no failures is quicker than normal, one failure gets you to normal time and two failures gets you to a little longer than normal with three fails being failed*.)

*As an aside, in many cases of ongoing skill checks, a failure in my game also means "run dry" or "problem" and you have to change up the circumstances or suffer disadvantages on the future checks.

Example: Researching legends of the ruins on the hill - check library - success (get some info) then fail... Ok so the library seems dry, might find more... but will be disadvantaged... player switches to the local priest since the first success told him it had been a temple... success (new leads) ... fail... Ok so you got more out of him but now he seems a to not have much more time for.... disadvantaged... so now the player might say "well you know, maybe a big donation will help his enthusiasm" (add resources to change circumstance)... so now the cleric decides maybe there is one more old tome he can get to but it will mean... or maybe he sends them to the browns whose family bible has something they should check into... roll... see what happens... etc. For crafting maybe the fail is impure materials and so you now need better stuff (higher cost for next stage) or take more time to purify it (double time for next legs) or maybe he just brings in extra help (purify this while i work here) to counter the disad ... etc etc etc etc...

i find it tends to serve really fine for tasks where there can be search, social, manpower and other resource approaches and making numerous skills come into play - turning what could be solo tasks into group efforts.

 

[Olrox17]

Olrox17

i will admit, a big part of the reason i went for the saves approach was to avoid having to do the work you did and opt for a case-by-case approach. I felt it would also add quite a bit more house rule to remember than adopting in the three-way save mechanic - which i already use for any "over-time" task ability checks. 9if it is not done in one action, i divide the "expected time by 1/4 and then give you the same type of three-way checks - so three successes right off the bat with no failures is quicker than normal, one failure gets you to normal time and two failures gets you to a little longer than normal with three fails being failed*.)

*As an aside, in many cases of ongoing skill checks, a failure in my game also means "run dry" or "problem" and you have to change up the circumstances or suffer disadvantages on the future checks.

Example: Researching legends of the ruins on the hill - check library - success (get some info) then fail... Ok so the library seems dry, might find more... but will be disadvantaged... player switches to the local priest since the first success told him it had been a temple... success (new leads) ... fail... Ok so you got more out of him but now he seems a to not have much more time for.... disadvantaged... so now the player might say "well you know, maybe a big donation will help his enthusiasm" (add resources to change circumstance)... so now the cleric decides maybe there is one more old tome he can get to but it will mean... or maybe he sends them to the browns whose family bible has something they should check into... roll... see what happens... etc. For crafting maybe the fail is impure materials and so you now need better stuff (higher cost for next stage) or take more time to purify it (double time for next legs) or maybe he just brings in extra help (purify this while i work here) to counter the disad ... etc etc etc etc...

i find it tends to serve really fine for tasks where there can be search, social, manpower and other resource approaches and making numerous skills come into play - turning what could be solo tasks into group efforts.

When applied to skill checks, your method sounds almost like skill challenges from 4e. Are you familiar with them?