HP Thresholds

[Pickles JG]

I'd rather they just do with with Charm and Sleep what they want to do with Fireball and Lightning Bolt... make you use a higher spell slot to have more effect.

So keep Sleep as-is where you need to start with 10 or less HP to have it work as a 1st level spell (creatures with more HP can still have the slow effect)... but to have it work on creatures who start with 20 HP, you need to prepare it in a 2nd level slot. Or 30 HP with a 3rd level slot, and so on. So no more knocking creatures below the threshold for the spell to now work... it only works to full effect on those whose total HP are less that what the spell says, depending on the slot you prepared it at.

I like this

Herremann the Wise;5950225]This was not as much of an issue for our group but perhaps rather than a hard threshold [10hp], you could have a randomly determined threshold [3d6hp] for a little more excitement and less meta-combo.

And this.

We had the problem that we were fighting Hobgoblins who we quickly figured out all had 11 hp making the spell pretty much useless. But with one fewer HP it's a mass death spell.* I am not sure that one roll for effected HP is a good idea probably it needs to be by target which might make it too much admin.

*except when I DM monsters wake up their allies. It seems to me the reason Sleep was so massively nerfed going from 3.0 to 3.5 was because this was not happening. It's the sort of table variation I very much dislike & IMO arises from wooly spell descriptions.

 

[jadrax]

This opens up all sorts of weirdness.

It probably does, but lets look at your list.

You can heal sleep spells and charms.

No, you can heal the 'effort' lost to avoid the sleep or charm, the hit points are spent to basically get out the spell's way, in the same way you spend Hit Points to get out of a sword's way.

You can make people more susceptible to charming by punching them in the face.

you can make people less able to get out of the way of your spells by punching them first, yes.

Should HP totals be hidden when you're essentially asking people to gamble their limited resources on trying to achieve a specific effect.

Very good question, I think people will have lost of views. Personally, I haven't bothered really hiding Hit Points for 20 odd years.

Why are wizards suddenly so much more susceptible to magic than everyone else?

They are not, they are just rubbish at dodging.

Why does it matter what you cast when everything essentially has the same effect unless it's a finishing blow. At least fighters have maneuvers to choose from.

Manoeuvres would probably go the exact same system, I.e. only having an effect if they pass a Hit Point threshold. I was already toying with something like this for the Hook Horror's Impale ability.

Obviously, this is all just spit-balling, no-one is objectively right or wrong about such interpretations, but I think can be made to work for a lot of people.

 

[nomotog]

I think I can squint and see what you're seeing, but it's not what I saw the first time I looked!

For balancing sleep, I prefer an approach that makes it depend upon how excited/energised vs weary/relaxed the target is. So it should be easy to sleep the guards goofing around throwing dice in their barracks, but hard to sleep the goblilns fighting for their lives. Even if they have been beaten up a bit, I feel that that makes them sore, not sleepy!

About 18 months ago I got hammered on an actual play thread where I described a skill challenge against a dire bear - two PCs intimidated it, two others soothed it, and the dwarf got hugged and beaten up by it. At the end of the skill challenge, the party succeeded, and I narrated a bear scared of two PCs, seeking solace with the other two, and needing to be kept out of sight of the dwarf (whom it still wanted to eat).

I thought this was fine, but as I said I got hammered in the thread for the unverisimilitudinous bear psychology displayed in my narration. And now I guess I'm doing the same thing - I'm just not clear what is going on, in the fiction, such that getting beaten up on makes you more susceptible to falling asleep. Are you envisaging something more analogous to being knocked out by a blow?

Squint harder! Actually I didn't have to squint at all. It depends a little on how you picture HP. Do you see it as a measure of willpower, or the number of functioning organs left in your body, or some other measure. If you have only half your functioning organs, your going to have a hard time staying awake. Throw in the sleep spell and you have no chance. That also works with low willpower or really any way I can picture HP.

 

[Greg K]

Not a fan of the whole hit point threshold concept (disliked the Hit Die threshold of spells like sleep in earlier editions as well). It is one of the top reasons that I and my friends are passing on the playtest.

 

[fenriswolf456]

There is an important break from the past: now most every spell is potentially highly useful against (almost) any opponent, even low level spells. The big guys can be beaten down.

Instead of being 100% or 0% useful, we have spells like Sleep that are 100% useful against these weak targets, useful in the second 50% of the fight against those tougher targets, and good enough for the finishing strike against really tough foes down to their last 20% of HP. That last one does not sound great, but it only has to be better than an At Will to be an option worth considering.

While I can get behind the intent of making spells useful throughout a character's career, I don't think this should be the way to do it. If your party is consistently having to beat down enemies in order for the caster to use such a spell, it would seem more likely that the caster is just going to use spells that are effective at any time. Wouldn't it be better to just use damage dealing spells and take the guess work out of the fight?

I am pretty unconvinced by it. I get the intention of HP thresholds, but the whole "mage is just less spell resistant because he has less HP" bit bugs me. This isnt the first post on this, and I have read em all. Just cant get past that little whats-it.

I don't think one has to lead to the other. You can make the cleric/wizard more resistant to spells by giving them some kind of SR. It's safe money to bet that the cleric will get some kind ward spell well the wizard will get a counter spell.

My main quibble about HP thresholds as well. It unfairly punishes certain characters and monsters and gives too much of a boost to others. Throwing in 'wards' and 'counterspells' for casters doesn't negate the fact that the potentially low Int/Wis brute is still totally immune to a mind-influencing spell, and doesn't even need to do anything to protect itself, or require any special training.

I'd be much more inclined to go with something like actual attribute thresholds, rather than something as nebulous as HP.