Let's Talk About Health, Damage, Wounds, Death and Related Mechanics

[Reynard]

[NOTE: This is another in my series fo discussing various mechanics for the purpose of deciding what to dow ith my own personal game design. As usual, this thread is not emant to be abotu what i am going to do, but about the subject in general so i can consider lots of options.]

There are nearly as many "health systems" as their are RPGs, from simple D&D style hit points (you are safe until you are at0) to complicated wound levels and death spirals with soak rolls etc (hell 90s games in general).

So I am curious what folks like in health/damage systems and why. What games stand out to you as having particularly good rules in this regard? What makes them good? Same question but "bad" instead?

While I appreciate why HP work the way they do, I like a little more nuance and granularity in health systems. But I also hate death spiral systems. I like how SWADE does it, with limited soak rules, and how Daggerheart does it, with damage thresholds and armor slots.

What about you?

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

I like the simple HP. I grew up on JRPGs where this was kind of the default.

I thought the way Draw Steel's does HP (Stamina) was pretty neat.

That said, I do like the idea of lower health making your character get slightly worse at things. Some examples I've seen:

1. In Starforged, ENDURE HARM move is roll +max(health, iron), and so you get slightly worse at it as your health drops.
2. I recently watched Dimension 20's Gladlands, which used a system based on Kids on Bikes. I don't know if this is a KoB mechanic or a homebrew, but they had a damage mechanic where when the characters "took damage," they would "burnout" a stat and their stat die would drop down to d4, and if too many of them are burned out, your character retires. They also had Bummerometer and the Good Goo, which were kind of like HP for the world? More about it here: https://dimension20.fandom.com/wiki/Gladlands#System_&_Homebrew_Rules

In the game I am working on, I'm hoping to come up with something like the Gladlands example. I'm also thinking about having an "HP" that represents the adventuring party's relationship with the world (reputation?), which will impact how the world treats them, and when it falls to 0 it will force the party to disband, or TPK.

 

[SableWyvern]

My default answer to this is the same as for everything -- it depends on the game. However, I will draw attention to two systems that I quite like, both aiming for "realism" in very different ways.

Rolemaster has one of the most comprehensive systems for injury and recovery out there. The crit tables are packed full of very specific and detailed injuries with specific effects -- broken bones, lost limbs, fingers, frostbite, burns, bleeding, sprains, muscle tears, organ injury, the list goes on.

The healing system, and especially the healing spells, are built to complement this system, with very specific spells for healing specific sorts of injury. This works perfectly with Rolemaster, where the spell system allows dedicated casters to learn a very wide variety of spell without worrying about opportunity costs -- on the way to learning the spells to heal the big injuries, you just naturally pick up all the lesser ones.

While RM does have hit points, they represent shock, bruising, fatigue and blood loss, not specific injury. Hit point damage can cause unconsciousness, but is unlikely to be lethal unless you're bleeding out. What kills is the axe in your brain, the severed leg or the fact that your body was frozen solid and then shattered into thousands of pieces.

The one thing RM doesn't offer is a great deal of choice as an attacker -- the injury you inflict is largely up to the whim of the dice. Better attacks offer better chances of serious injury, but you have little control over the details.

Mythras, on the other hand, is a system that aims to model every single cut, thrust and parry. On a good attack, you have a great deal of control over the nature of that attack -- picking out body parts, trying to bypass armour, inflicting bleeding, stunning, tripping or driving your weapon deep into flesh. And, if you pick the latter, then later you get to decide if you leave it there, or endeavour to draw it back out again (and that's how you disembowel someone).

Mythras is by far the most visceral combat system I've ever engaged with. Interestingly, despite this detail, at the end of the day, the injuries inflicted are still mostly just represented by hit point loss to specific limbs or body parts, with only three broad levels of injury, making them quite straightforward to deal with after the combat is over. It's worth noting that these hit points are generally low in number, don't increase and clearly and unequivocally represent "meat points".

 

[hawkeyefan]

The system that comes to mind for me is the Resistance System used for Spire and Heart.

Each character has five resistance tracks. These are setting dependent, but the two games share two Resistances, and there is some overlap among the others.

In Spire, they’re:

• Blood- physical harm
• Mind- mental harm or suffering
• Silver- financial harm
• Shadow- harm to anonymity
• Reputation- harm to status

In Heart, they’re:

• Blood- physical harm
• Mind- mental harm
• Echo- corruption from delving in the Heart
• Supplies- gear and readiness
• Fortune- luck

The way these work is that when a player rolls a failure or a success with consequence, they take some amount of Stress. This gets applied to the relevant track based on the action (some actions may allow for more than one). Whenever the character takes Stress, you then check for Fallout. You use a d10 in Spire and a d12 in Heart. If you roll below your current level of total Stress, some of the Stress then converts to Fallout.

Stress is abstract, Fallout is specific. There are degrees of Fallout based on how high the Fallout roll is; Minor, Medium, and Major. So if you had take 6 Blood Fallout and then roll below a 6 on the Fallout die, you’d take a Medium Fallout. This would be something like “broken arm, apply difficulty 2 to all actions” or similar.

What I like about it is the mounting tension as Stress builds and the kind of wildcard aspect that with a bad Fallout roll, things can get bad quickly. The variety of the different Resistances is also nice. And consequences linger. Some Fallouts may be permanent, or permanent until some specific action is taken. It makes things risky, and changes the situation in play.

Probably the system that I’ve enjoyed the most when it comes to harm.

 

[Retros_x]

Most systems that go beyond simple abstract HP are to simulationist for my taste. I like HP with maybe some lingering wounds rules/tables. I do not like death saving throws I prefer insta-death on 0 or a death timer.

 

[aco175]

I like most things to be easy to use and understand as well as fast at the table. HP are simple and easy if they are also basic. Heck, we still have arguments on what they actually are. I could see something that adds to them such as if you are bloodied, you have disadvantage to some checks. There should be some other limit such as bloodied or below 20hp so a 10th level PC now has disadvantage even though he has more HP than the rest of the town guard.

Of course pulling at one string means that now fatigue changes or there is a death spiral with just getting people to bloodied or several other things being affected. Unfortunately, in the end, it might just not be worth it.

It would make in combat healing more needed, but then lead to debate on class roles and dedicated healers.

 

[Breaking Star Games]

I found myself a fan of Blades in the Dark's Harm because you write down the fictional cause then you are constantly reminded about it by putting it literally in front of you. Then we can take that to understand your fictional positioning and follow it. It makes every hit meaningful, dramatic and costly (maybe a bit too much so!) going back to the Coin economy and fitting the theme of Scoundrels living Score to Score. And there are multiple points of drama because if you fill in all the blanks of Level 1 Harm, the next Level 1 Harm is upgraded to Level 2. Each comes with a penalty - Level 1 reduces the Effect of your Actions, Level 2 makes you lose -1 Die from your Dice Pool and Level 3 makes you unconscious or similar where you need to be rescued. Level 4 is death. I think the penalty is important because it's about overcoming that adversity that makes the character look heroic while injured.

Whereas with HP, there really is only 1 time where this drama occurs - when your HP is reduced to 0, which is great for something quite heroic, but it does make injury feel for me so abstract to the point of disconnected from the fiction. I would imagine if it wasn't how D&D (and wargames) originally started it, people would call it a very narrative mechanic for specific genres like how Masks' using 5 Emotional Conditions as it's health system narrative fits its genre.

I actually prefer the original over the Deep Cuts where the players invoke the Harm for XP. I get how that helps incentivize players to remember (Harper says Harm was often forgotten) and makes it less of a death spiral. But I never found an issue of remembering these. As for the death spiral aspect, I don't mind adjusting it (Blades in the Dark GMs often are warned to use Harm rarely as a Consequence), so I did find it a little too severe.

My own system adds another level to be more heroic so Level 1 are just cuts & bruises that act like an armor to any real consequences. Then Level 2 isn't just an Always-On Reduced Effect but only applying such a thing when it fictionally makes sense - a sprained ankle will make that running harder, but it likely doesn't effect you standing still and shooting someone. It is also broadened to be called Conditions to include non-physical kinds of penalties like mental strain or an overwhelming emotion like rage, terrified or maybe a social condition for a situation. I found I liked this flexibility with The Between.

 

[payn]

While I have enjoyed D&D style hit point games with critical hits and death mechanics, i've been leaning much more towards simpler systems. I find as ive aged, I just prefer less accounting, which is odd to say as a Battletech player.

Speaking of Battletech, the RPG has always been a mess. I was looking at the Classic Battletech injury table. During battle in a mech a pilot can take 6 total hits before being killed. An injury happens when the mech is struck in the head location, falls and pilot fails a check, ammo explodes, etc.. I was thinking that when a mechwarrior is out of a mech, why doesnt it work the same? Get punched/stabbed/shot, its 1 injury. Make a check to see if the PC goes down, or keeps going. When they get 6 hits dead. Simple, easy peasy.

 

[Umbran]

So I am curious what folks like in health/damage systems and why. What games stand out to you as having particularly good rules in this regard? What makes them good? Same question but "bad" instead?

I have a little bit of "there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so" in my position. What I like most in a health/damage/death system is that it supports the genre in which it is used.

Like, in a gritty western, we'd want people able to be gunned down in the dust like the dogs they are. In a pulpy western, though, the genre is more heroic, and we'd want a lot more action-adventure and bounce in the characters.

 

[Xamnam]

My own system adds another level to be more heroic so Level 1 are just cuts & bruises that act like an armor to any real consequences. Then Level 2 isn't just an Always-On Reduced Effect but only applying such a thing when it fictionally makes sense - a sprained ankle will make that running harder, but it likely doesn't effect you standing still and shooting someone. It is also broadened to be called Conditions to include non-physical kinds of penalties like mental strain or an overwhelming emotion like rage, terrified or maybe a social condition for a situation. I found I liked this flexibility with The Between.

As someone who shied away from harm after handing it out a bit too freely early on, before realizing how debilitating it could be, I like this adjustment a lot.