If D&D did not have HPs, how would you keep track of damage?

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I like the damage save mechanic as then you can make armor add a bonus to the save and not have to worry about an extra stat in DR.

 

[mmadsen]

Hit points derived directly from "hits to kill' where a hero took X hits to be dead, a super-hero took 2(X) hits to die, etc. then it evolved to levels and d6's for hit dice, then Gary found those funky platonic solids in a teacher supply catalog, and the rest is history. So they originally quite naturally derived out of how old wargaming kept track of how tough figures on the battlefield were.

Back in the early days of Chainmail, there were no hit points. The closest analog would be the number of men in a unit and the number of hits/kills scored by an attack. For instance, a unit of 20 light footmen might attack another such unit, roll 20d6 for damage, counting all 6s as hits/kills, and the defender would lose that many men.

The man-to-man (and creature-to-creature) combat rules involved rolling 2d6 vs. a target number to score a hit/kill. This is much more analogous to rolling vs. AC to hit, where hitting means killing, not getting a chance to roll damage against a potentially large hit point total.

Ultimately, every system is a hit point system of some kind, whether it's points, boxes, or shading in a circle.

That is definitely not true. Certainly many combat systems involve a thinly disguised hit point system, but not all, especially not the Damage Save systems:

Even true20's damage save has a cumulative penalty you keep taking until you're unconscious or dead - it's hit points when you get down to it.

A Damage Save system is not even remotely a hit point system, even with a cumulative penalty built in. It's much more like a roll-vs-AC-to-kill system, where the first shot can end the fight, or the fifth or sixth might not.

I honestly still haven't seen a system as elegant as the basic "hit point" system that's both easy to keep track of and avoids the "death spiral" problem that a lot of people don't like.

As far as I can tell, designers haven't been interested in designing a simple, elegant system; they've only wanted to develop more detailed, complex systems, usually with hit points underneath layers of hit location, armor values by location subtracting from damage, penalties at various levels of damage, etc.

 

[Mallus]

Put me down as another fan of the Damage Save mechanic used in Mutants and Masterminds. One of the great things about M&M is that it's easy to adjust the tone, that is to say, the lethality of the damage mechanics.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

As far as I can tell, designers haven't been interested in designing a simple, elegant system; they've only wanted to develop more detailed, complex systems, usually with hit points underneath layers of hit location, armor values by location subtracting from damage, penalties at various levels of damage, etc.

Possible.
But maybe that's just because you can't get easier then hit points? And if you want to use something else, you're not really interested in "simple" systems. (But you might still be interested in elegance - problem might be that elegance is vaguely defined and the kind of "I know it when I see it" thing ).

For examples, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd Edition) has a very simple system. Hit, roll damage, subtract Toughness bonus + Armor. If you go to 0 or less, you suffer a critical effect (ranging from temporary knock-out to gory death). Very simple, really.

Is it also elegant?
I find a certain elegance in the fact that the system can easily be enhanced to use hit locations (you just use your attack roll, reverse the numbers, and get the hit location from a table, and then use the armor for that location against the attack). Very simply and elegant.
I think its biggest flaw is that armor is too powerful. Does this make it not elegant?

Torgs damage system requires you to generate a damage value, subtract the toughness + armor bonus, and use the resulting number to determine damage from a table indicating shock points, wounds and "K" and "O"s. Certainly more complex then simple hit points (yet still avoiding death spirals). There is a great elegance to it because you roll only once the entire round, and use your attack roll also for your damage value. It involves using two tables (using the dice result to generate a bonus number, and the table to determine the damage taken). If you don't like the damage you took, you can spend possibilities to reduce it.

 

[mmadsen]

But maybe that's just because you can't get easier then hit points?

Hit points are easy, and that is their chief strength over most competitors, but it is possible to get easier. After all, we could go back to something more like Chainmail, where "hitting" means killing, or, more likely, disabling.

Is that fun? For henchmen and hirelings? Sure. For our PCs? Probably not. But PCs could have some kind of hit points to keep them in the fight. In 4E terms, everyone would use the rules for minions; having hit points at all would be exceptional, representing luck, divine favor, etc. -- and the rules would be balanced for that, with more emphasis on to-hit modifiers, and less on damage, which would be assumed to near-lethal on a hit.

 

[Ydars]

You could easily design a combat system that was about stripping away your opponents defences (in terms of position, reach, footwork angle of armour) without putting yourself at risk as this is actually how a real swordsman would fight. Then 1 or 2 clean hits to kill/incapacitate would be acceptable even for PCs because it would become obvious if you were about to be hit.

I think it is easier just to keep HP and layer something on top that accounts for what the powers do in 4E so that damage and healing affects that "layer" (call it fatigue or whatever) and not physical damage as portrayed by HP loss.

 

[mmadsen]

For examples, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd Edition) has a very simple system. Hit, roll damage, subtract Toughness bonus + Armor. If you go to 0 or less, you suffer a critical effect (ranging from temporary knock-out to gory death). Very simple, really.

We can make it simpler: roll to hit (vs. defense), roll to hurt (vs. armor and toughness), roll on critical table.

(This can also get around the problem of armor being too powerful, since it no longer subtracts from a cumulative damage score.)

Fate points prevent one bad roll meaning character death.

 

[Wootz]

I like the HP system, just because it's straightforward. And though the game itself doesn't generally think there's a difference between 20 and 1, the lower the player's HP, the less gung-ho they become. So it definitely has an effect even if the rules don't state it.

 

[knightofround]

I would use different dice sizes to represent the "strength" of a blow. So a 1d2 would be the heaviest hitting blow possible, and a 1d20 would be the lowest possible damage. And if you roll a 1, you become bloodied, and suffer penalties. If you're bloodied and you roll another 1, you die.

I would then given stuff like people that have "hardier classes" or "higher constitution" a set number of rerolls they could use per session. So if you're a low-level fighter you might get an extra 1d4 you could use to reroll damage, and when you get higher level it becomes a 1d20. Leveling up would grant you extra 1d2 rerolls.

Basically the same mechanics behind a "modified d20 damage save" but with some extra excitement thrown in.