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

[Celebrim]

As a GM, the more I play systems without hit points, the more I appreciate hit points.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I’m currently running DIE for my face to face group. The harm system in that game is very simple, which I like.

You have two stats related to harm: Health and Guard. Health is equal to your starting Constitution score (either 2 or 3) and Guard is equal to your starting Dex score (again, either 2 or 3).

Anytime you take a hit, you reduce Guard. Once your Guard is depleted, you then lose Health. Guard resets at the beginning of any encounter, and there are also weapon qualities and class abilities that may allow you to regain Guard mid-combat. Health is harder to regain… it takes more time, and generally requires safety and rest.

Given that the game works via a dice pool system, you can easily take multiple hits from one attack. So combat is dangerous.

It’s a simple system that works. It’s easy to track, the numbers don’t get insane, and combat remains dangerous.

 

[level2janitor]

i usually just prefer hit points, but i really like how Mythic Bastionland models health - it's a good way to keep the simplicity of HP while more believably modeling the consequences of being stabbed. HP is split into your Guard and your Vigour.

lots of systems/players like saying HP is more about your stamina/luck/dodging ability than actual wounds, but it's pretty rare for game rules to actually treat HP this way (e.g. a "cure wounds" spell restoring HP, being poisoned if you get hit with a stinger attack, etc). mythic bastionland goes all in on it though and that's what makes it click for me. your Guard depletes first, comes back between scenes, and is explicitly not your meat points. there's no to-hit rolls, so no confusion with "well a miss does nothing, but a hit also doesn't actually hit your opponent and just depletes their stamina". attacks deplete your Guard, and miss if they leave you with any Guard remaining.

your Vigour is explicitly meat points - it's also one of your attributes, basically your Strength/Dexterity in one stat. damage goes to your Vigour once you're out of Guard. damage to your Vigour is harder to cure, can knock you unconscious (even if it doesn't drop you to 0), leaves you bleeding out enough you'll die if not tended to, and affects your ability to do anything physical (because it's the stat used for physical checks).

 

[Blue]

But I also hate death spiral systems.

I am with you, hating death spirals. I had an interesting thought along my own design journey when I examined what I didn't like about them, both as a player and a gamemaster.

My solution for that was that I did implement a death spiral of increasing tiers of penalties, but all PCs (and certain major NPCs) had a feature called "When the Going Gets Tough", which basically flipped the penalty of the last conscious tier. Making it that when things were dire, the PCs got a fairly large edge.

It also helped that in this system there was a resistance check against damage, and the bonus would affect that. Besides the obvious effect, I quite liked the concept that players felt the tension of their PC about to go down, but really because they were making resistance checks it was a much larger buffer than intuitive for them. In other words, it preserved the fear while actually staving off players sitting idle due to unconsciousness or character death, which was a design win for me.

 

[Blue]

I do not like death saving throws I prefer insta-death on 0 or a death timer.

Do you realize that death saving throws ARE a timer, but with some built in wiggle to increase engagement and tension and make things less cut-and-dried? Avoids things like "We have eight turns before he bleeds out, no need to spend my action yet when I can hopefully knock down another foe."

 

[Piperken]

What games lean into consequences rather than simply counting wound slots of HP?

Most games with tags (or however the game happens to call them) tend to do this.

 

[Piperken]

Probably closer to Umbran's camp; if things related to health, damage, wounds and death support the game as it's described, I usu. won't quibble a lot. I do like injury tables.

I like games that feel like they operate with less overhead?

Re: Games that lean into consequences; Gallows Corner (Three Sails Studios) has an interesting combat system that just employs a visual diamond, opposed rolls, and narrative control for that combat round (momentum) -- if you gain or keep the last, it can be employed to create cinematic beats or potentially end combat entirely.

 

[SableWyvern]

People keep using the word "consequences" as if it means something very specific in this context.

Is a shattered elbow (and all that that entails) a consequence? The fact that you're currently bleeding out? That your eye is destroyed? That your arm is currently entangled in your opponent's net? That you'll need two weeks of bed rest before you engage in strenuous activity? That you will have a very visible scar? If not, what are people referring to?

 

[Micah Sweet]

People keep using the word "consequences" as if it means something very specific in this context.

Is a shattered elbow (and all that that entails) a consequence? The fact that you're currently bleeding out? That your eye is destroyed? That your arm is currently entangled in your opponent's net? That you'll need two weeks of bed rest before you engage in strenuous activity? That you will have a very visible scar? If not, what are people referring to?

Those are certainly what I imagine when I say consequences.

I really just want a character to be capable of being injured in a mechanically significant way without actually having to be dying or otherwise completely incapacitated. And for that injury to last longer than one night.

 

[SableWyvern]

Those are certainly what I imagine when I say consequences.

I really just want a character to be capable of being injured in a mechanically significant way without actually having to be dying or otherwise completely incapacitated. And for that injury to last longer than one night.

Fair enough. I would describe that as a game with a detailed injury and/or healing system, rather than being more abstract and saying it's a game that "leans into consequences" as someone else said. Maybe that's just because those kinds of consequences have tended to be the norm in the games I play.

Edit: I think I found the original reference, and the context makes more sense now, in that it was directly contrasting lack of consequences. I thought it might be some newfangled "modern" thing.