D&D 4E Life Points - 4E Mechanic?

[Blackstaph]

Hi all,

I was at a WOTC sanctioned (and run by a delegate) 4E demo this weekend and he discussed a mechanic that I hadn't heard or read about - life points.

He described them as follows:

A character has "life points" equal to 1/2 their total maximum hit points. When a PC gets damaged below 0 hit points, s/he loses both hit points and life points. Hit points can be healed, but life points are longer-lasting (there was no mechanic for life point regeneration stated). Once a character loses all of their life points, they die.

Attacks against sleeping/held/otherwise incapacitated creatures do life point and hit point damage, regardless of what their current hit point total is.

In practice, it worked as follows:

- A character has 36 total hit points.
- That character takes 46 total damage over the course of a fight, which brings them to -10 hit points and -10 life points.
- That character is healed by a cleric for 10 hit points. The character now has 10 hit points, but keeps -10 life points.
- That character is now hit by a single attack that does 20 damage. The character has -10 hit points, but now has -10 + -10= -20 life points. Since this is more life point damage than the character has (36/2 = 18), the character is dead.

Has anyone else heard of this mechanic? It seems strange that I haven't seen it in 4E discussions up until this point, especially with all of the other demos going on.

 

[withak]

Sounds like a house rule to me. It runs completely contrary to everything Wizards has spoiled about hit points, healing surges, etc.

 

[smathis]

Gah!

Never heard of it. 'Life Points' weren't mentioned in the 'Design & Development' article on Death & Dying either.

Sounds like the Delegate took the gist of the Death & Dying rules and filled them in with whatever struck his/her fancy.

 

[malraux]

Yeah, that sounds wrong to me as well. What it looks like is that someone was confused about how negative HP work in 4e. You do have a negative HP range equal to 1/2 your total HP. So if you have 36 HP, you can go down to -18 before death. Also, you don't have to heal those negative HP, they go away. So the 36 HP PC is at -12, and then the cleric uses a healing word on them, they would be at 13+1d6 HP (9 from his healing surge, 4 from the healing word, plus the 1d6). Any healing brings you to zero. Either your demo person misunderstood the rule, or didn't explain it well.


... or he could have been talking about the fail 3 times saving throw mechanic. But either way, those persistent life points really don't fit.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Sounds to me like the guy was full of it.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Actually, sounds to me like the delegate had an outdated rules set. There was a "life points" mechanic in an old draft of the playtest rules, but we're talking many, many months ago.

I mention this only because there really are delegates out there who are absolutely full of it; but I'd hate for one the ones who's not (or possibly not ) to get lumped in with them.

 

[Stormtalon]

And the Rodent of the Night once again provides proof that sometimes the stuff that was considered, tried and then cut is as intriguing as the stuff that made it all the way thru....

 

[JohnSnow]

And the Rodent of the Night once again provides proof that sometimes the stuff that was considered, tried and then cut is as intriguing as the stuff that made it all the way thru....

It is my fervent hope that a few years down the road, we'll see a Fourth Edition version of Unearthed Arcana with all of the variant rules they considered. And with any luck, they'll only release the ones that worked, but changed the "feel" of the game in ways that made it not feel like D&D.

 

[Mercule]

Actually, sounds to me like the delegate had an outdated rules set. There was a "life points" mechanic in an old draft of the playtest rules, but we're talking many, many months ago.

Or, he just decided WotC should have kept life points. *shrug*

 

[SteveC]

It is my fervent hope that a few years down the road, we'll see a Fourth Edition version of Unearthed Arcana with all of the variant rules they considered. And with any luck, they'll only release the ones that worked, but changed the "feel" of the game in ways that made it not feel like D&D.

Amen to that. When I hear about some of the different rules they had thought of for 3.0 and chose to discard, I was hoping for much the same thing back in those days.

--Steve