Low hitpoints, full recovery after encounter

[Dirigible]

This is the seed of an idea I just had, after looking at a General thread aobut a party with no cleric. Let me know what you think of it, especially the general philosophy of the idea, rather than specific numbers.

At 1st level, a character gets max HP. Each level thereafter, they get 1/4* of maximum. At the end of each encounter, all PCs are restored to their full allotment of HP, unless they're dead, dying or KOed.

Monsters and NPCs would probably just have their normal HP.

This is a bit like the reserve point system from UA, but instead of doubling the bookkeeping it reduces it slightly. Think of it like the shield from Halo: damage to the shields (your HP total) doesn't matter because it replenishes, but if they're depleted, you're in trouble.

This would seem to work best for fast moving, action-y games, but would bu terrible for realistic or gritty ones.

* I read somewhere that four encounters of a CR equal to party level will exhaust an average party, so 1/4 hp per encounter seems a reasonable extrapolation.

So, is this an even moderately sane idea?

 

[Bront]

Well, if that were the case, I would have killed over half my party in the last "easy" encounter. It's pretty rough to have so little HP, and makes a high con almost Manditory.

I prefer to simply provide a few extra potions. Perhaps a party item that generates X number of cure potions a day.

 

[Dirigible]

Perhaps 1/2 hit points, then.

 

[Dog Moon]

Yeah, it's difficult sometimes to prevent deaths even when a character rolls well for hp. To have that cut down by 1/4th would be pretty harsh. I could see a lot of deaths occurring. Potions and stuff may not be quite as good as a cleric, but they can still work. Perhaps let party members be able to use wands of curing even though they normally couldn't.

If you don't want to worry or deal with using items, perhaps you could just give the characters fast healing 3 or 5 or something. IIRC, the shields on Halo aren't instantaneous anyway. This allows the characters to heal even during battles and it should only take like a minute or two in game time to heal everyone to full which shouldn't be too bad of a deal.

For the losing hp to make up for it, the worst I'd do is to lower the class die of each character by one.

Still, my group often is without a cleric and we don't seem to do to badly with using potions and stuff. It all depends on how the battles are set up and who you're fighting.

 

[Thia Halmades]

Oh, wow, I read this a different way which would work entirely differently. I've got three general thoughts on this:

- I have an HR which says: Roll HD at level up. You always gain 1/2 of the die value, or what you rolled, whichever is higher. This keeps people from getting completely punked at level up (no one wants to be the guy who rolled two 1's).

- Borrowing from HALO, if you want to incorporate a 'shield' concept (i.e., bruises vs. real HP damage) than you might consider auto-healing your party 1/4 of their total HP after an encounter. For example: I are a 5th level Barbarian. Oonk. I have 60 HP. I get into a fight with (N MOB) and N MOB deals 44 damage to me. At the end of the fight, I'm down to 16 HP. With combat resolved, I'm able to 'shrug off' the bumps & bruises, and regain (60/4 = 15) HP. I'm now at 31, and in much better condition, although still battered.

- There's also a thread which bumps up the Heal skill into something useful, basically turning each 'hit' into its own 'wound' - you then heal wounds with the skill. It's a good concept, needed some common sense applied, but a good skill none-the-less.

- Lastly, I allow one night of rest to heal (Lvl + CON bonus) in HP, instead of just level. Tougher people heal faster.

 

[genshou]

If you are looking into a system which incorporates something akin to "shields", "near misses", or "flesh wounds", check out vitality/wounds. I'm sure someone more link-savvy than I can provide you with a path to where it's displayed on the Wizards website.

 

[genshou]

...Or perhaps they can't (or won't). Anyway, I did some digging and here you go:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20040206a&page=3

 

[arscott]

Another variant I've heard that might work:

Besides adding to AC, armor converts its bonus worth of damage from lethal to nonlethal.

 

[genshou]

Another variant I've heard that might work:

Besides adding to AC, armor converts its bonus worth of damage from lethal to nonlethal.

Hey, I was thinking about that variant recently and trying to remember how it worked. Thank's arscott, creator of my Department-7 logo!