D&D 5E Keepiing Current HP from players...

[Maxperson]

Rule 1: Monster Damage is hidden from players. Hits will be narrated by the DM but damage numbers not given.
Rule 2: Players will only be told when their hp is at hp maximum so they don't waste resource for nothing at that point. Players will know their hp maximum since their is no way to hide that from them.

So I think it would be fun to run a game this way sometime. Has anyone ever tried? What was your experience? If you haven't would you like playing in a game with these rules or not?

I tried it. It created more tension(good tension) in the players, but it was such a pain in the arse for me to track in addition to everything else, that I stopped.

 

[ClearlyTough69]

I tried it. It created more tension(good tension) in the players, but it was such a pain in the arse for me to track in addition to everything else, that I stopped.

Did you give players any information about their hp status, for example by using descriptions consistently (eg scratched, battered, wounded, losing consciousness, unconscious, dead). And did you give them any information about monsters? I'm hoping to learn from your experience.

 

[Maxperson]

Did you give players any information about their hp status, for example by using descriptions consistently (eg scratched, battered, wounded, losing consciousness, unconscious, dead). And did you give them any information about monsters? I'm hoping to learn from your experience.

Yes. As a rule of thumb, I used the PCs constitution scores as a measure of their physical hit points and everything above that was skill, luck, etc. Say a PC had 40 hit points with a 10 con. 30 of those would be non-physical hit points. If that 40 hit point PC took a hit from an orc for 7 points of damage, I would describe the "hit" as being blocked, dodged, etc. It might possibly do a bruise or scratch.

Once the hit points dropped to the point where they were in constitution territory, the descriptions involved more serious wounds. Cuts or deep cuts to a limb. Feeling light headed, and so on. A hit that knocked a PC out was fairly serious. The same was also done for the monsters. That way the players had an idea of where they and the monsers stood with hit points, without knowing exactly.

I also varied the descriptions based on damage done. So if that orc above hit the 40 hit point PC for 7 points of damage, I might describe the blow as, "You see the orc's axe coming straight for your head, but at the last moment you manage to duck and it removes a few hairs." That conveys a hit. A miss would have been something like, "The orc swings at your head by you easily duck the blow". If however it was an ogre swinging for 22 points of damage, the description of the hit would have been different. Something like, "The massive club in its hands come crashing down towards your skull. You throw yourself to the left to avoid being crushed to a pulp. One knot on the club brushes your armor as you move out of the way. You're pretty sure that will leave a mark. You feel the ground at your feet tremble with the impact." That conveys that the ogre hit took a great deal more of the 40 hit points than a small orc hit would.

If you talk to the players before the campaign begins and give them some ideas on how hits and misses will be narrated, that will also help them remain aware of the approximate hit points their PCs have. After a few fights they should be pretty good at it. A PC is going to be approximately aware of what condition it's in, and what condition the monsters are in, so it's important to consistent in your descriptions. The more you play this way, the better you become with your descriptions and the smoother they flow.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes. As a rule of thumb, I used the PCs constitution scores as a measure of their physical hit points and everything above that was skill, luck, etc. Say a PC had 40 hit points with a 10 con. 30 of those would be non-physical hit points. If that 40 hit point PC took a hit from an orc for 7 points of damage, I would describe the "hit" as being blocked, dodged, etc. It might possibly do a bruise or scratch.

Once the hit points dropped to the point where they were in constitution territory, the descriptions involved more serious wounds. Cuts or deep cuts to a limb. Feeling light headed, and so on. A hit that knocked a PC out was fairly serious. The same was also done for the monsters. That way the players had an idea of where they and the monsers stood with hit points, without knowing exactly.

I also varied the descriptions based on damage done. So if that orc above hit the 40 hit point PC for 7 points of damage, I might describe the blow as, "You see the orc's axe coming straight for your head, but at the last moment you manage to duck and it removes a few hairs." That conveys a hit. A miss would have been something like, "The orc swings at your head by you easily duck the blow". If however it was an ogre swinging for 22 points of damage, the description of the hit would have been different. Something like, "The massive club in its hands come crashing down towards your skull. You throw yourself to the left to avoid being crushed to a pulp. One knot on the club brushes your armor as you move out of the way. You're pretty sure that will leave a mark. You feel the ground at your feet tremble with the impact." That conveys that the ogre hit took a great deal more of the 40 hit points than a small orc hit would.

On first reading both your hit narrations conveyed a narrow miss to me; they're the sort of thing I might say if my to-hit roll missed by 1, were I in a narratative sort of mood.

A 22-point shot from an ogre into a 40-point character might sound more like "Its massive club crashes into you and you stagger backward a few steps. Boy, that took some starch out of you! You're still in reasonable-ish shape...but even then you're not at all sure you can take another shot like that."

If you talk to the players before the campaign begins and give them some ideas on how hits and misses will be narrated, that will also help them remain aware of the approximate hit points their PCs have. After a few fights they should be pretty good at it. A PC is going to be approximately aware of what condition it's in, and what condition the monsters are in, so it's important to consistent in your descriptions. The more you play this way, the better you become with your descriptions and the smoother they flow.

Agreed; though perhaps even more important than narration of hits and misses is the narration of the character's condition at any given time.

Lanefan

 

[Maxperson]

On first reading both your hit narrations conveyed a narrow miss to me; they're the sort of thing I might say if my to-hit roll missed by 1, were I in a narratative sort of mood.

A 22-point shot from an ogre into a 40-point character might sound more like "Its massive club crashes into you and you stagger backward a few steps. Boy, that took some starch out of you! You're still in reasonable-ish shape...but even then you're not at all sure you can take another shot like that."

If a 10 foot tall, 1000 pound pile of muscle crashed into you with a small tree, you'd be paste, not staggered back a few steps. Staggering back a few steps would be what happened if it barely clipped you.

 

[Tony Vargas]

. Players will know their hp maximum since their is no way to hide that from them.

You could roll HD behind the screen when they level up.

So I think it would be fun to run a game this way sometime. Has anyone ever tried? What was your experience? .

Back in the day I knew a DM or two to run that way. Little extra bookkeeping for the DM, another, source of miscommunication and arguments, and the upside is 'Immersion,' since it's not realistic for people to know exactly how hurt they are, let alone track their remaining luck.

Anyone who's ever complained of imerrsion breaking or dissociation should be lining up.

 

[Lanefan]

Back in the day I knew a DM or two to rum that way.

Rum?

Did someone say rum?

Lan-"why is the rum always gone?"-efan

 

[Mad_Jack]

For me, it'd be like watching television or a movie - any suspense or tension is there because I'm viewing the character in the third person. I don't know what's going on with them physically or in their head, and that causes the tension because I don't know how they'll react from second to second except by watching it happen. I can only make guesses.

The problem with those rules becomes that, in the game, I am the character, the one making those second-to-second decisions, and not just reacting to what I'm seeing on the screen - it's an entirely different kind of immersion.
One is a passive thing - the emotional investment is due to the character's previous actions and decisions (which were determined by someone else) and the tension is because of the uncertainty of what will happen next and the fact that I have no control over it.
The emotional investment in the other is due to the fact that I was the one who made all the previous decisions and that is what has brought the character to the current moment. The tension is due to having the responsibility of deciding what the character does next and the possible consequences of it.

In D&D you just can't remove the game from the game, no matter how hard you try. Those numbers are my immersion.
Now you could argue that the mechanical numbers don't mean anything until I hit zero and drop, but the narrative reason that I don't suffer any penalties is because the character is a Big Damn Hero in a life-or-death situation who's going to keep going 100% and give his all until he literally has no more to give.
Is that unrealistic? When I was fifteen, I got into a fight. A guy almost cracked my skull with a tire iron. I knew damn well he'd just given me a concussion and I was about to pass out. I could have just fallen down and laid there on the ground, but he was going to go after my friends next. Friends who weren't as tough as I was, who couldn't fight as well as I could. Instead of falling down, my adrenaline surged and I shrugged off the blow temporarily and took the tire iron away from him - who knows, maybe I've taken a level in fighter or barbarian.
Rocky Balboa spends every single fight stumbling around, getting the crap beaten out of him, before he finally remembers in the one-hundred-and-tenth round that he hasn't used his Second Wind and Action Surge yet. I need more than a vague description of how hurt I am to accurately portray my character - "39 out of 60" is a shorthand code worth paragraphs of description to my imagination, but "starting to get winded" doesn't tell me very much about how my character should react... Does that make me fight even harder? Do I consider retreating?
If I know for a fact that my character is going to go down on the next hit, I'm a hell of a lot more likely to try something suicidally brave and heroic, or to flee for my life, then if I'm "on my last legs". If I decide to fight defensively or try to withdraw based on my best estimate of how badly I might be hurt, and the opponent simply kills me anyway, it's not nearly as memorable.
I look at those numbers and then make my choices based on what my character would do in that specific moment. As an actor, you're taught that you can't play adjectives, only verbs. I can't play "Heroic" (would I just stand there striking a pose?) but I can portray "Struggling Heroically". How am I supposed to honestly portray the scene if I'm not given specific circumstances upon which my characters motivations can act?
Now, I'm all for not necessarily knowing precisely how badly other characters or monsters are hurt, since that's something my character can only make an educated guess at. He can't know the precise circumstances of that situation because he's just watching it (like it was on tv) - he can only make an educated estimate based on his own perceptions of it.
But not knowing how many hit points my own character has left in a similar situation, not having that crucial bit of detail... It's the difference between an actor in the scene telling me, "I say something that makes you angry.", and him yelling, "Your mother's a ##&$&$*$!!!!"...

 

[Blue]

Players are already cautious enough. They can spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to open up the door because they heard something behind it AND have come across two other trapped doors in the complex. Having them become even moreso is the exact opposite of the heroic adventure I am trying to engender.

In other words, FOR ME AND AT MY TABLE, this is actively harmful.

 

[Blue]

Boxer: yes. D&D characters: definitely not boxers. A boxer knows...well I'm not a boxer. But having taken a few punches, I know that when the world gets wobbly, or your vision starts to fade, it's a bad sign. However, even at 1 hp, a D&D character takes no penalty on his perception checks, nor athletics as far as I know. So, are you still sure about this?

Because D&D characters don't get hurt. They just lose HP, and then they fall down.

"Hey, I noticed that the system has no penalties to picking locks in gauntlets. Since there is no mechanical penalties of the sense of touch, obviously characters can't feel anything."

The idea that D&D characters have no way to gauge their wounds because the system doesn't penalize their actions mechanically at low HPs is an ... interesting ... leap of logic that I do not believe is warranted. The rules support the narrative and are subservient to it, they do not define nor encompass the entirety of play.