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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 2690614" data-attributes="member: 10201">Interesting. I guess i can see how that would be. Personally, i have exactyl the same complaint againts hit points: you can hit and do "damage" without having any real impact on the target or their future actions. Until you take away that last hit point, of course.Huh. Hasn't been my experience. IME, piles of hit points that you whittle away but have no other impact only lead to heroic/foolish behavior when the character has tons of them left. Damage save style mechanics, OTOH, either promote this behavior none of the time (if failing is likely) or all of the time (if succeeding is likely).Also, i think that has more to do with the relationships between damage/HPs and attack/damage save, respectively. IOW, one of the features of a damage save is that certain attackers can't hurt the target. Period. A feature of a HP mechanism is that anyone who can hit the target can hurt the target. Now, which of those encourages what sort of behavior depends on who those attackers are (in the former case) and how many hit points you have (in the latter). I captured D&D character should be worried--once they're tied up and helpless (and thus easily hit), even the kobolds can nickle-and-dime them to death. The captured M&MM super, OTOH, is no more vulnerable to the mooks that couldn't hurt her while standing, because they still can't hurt her. Now, this may not be realistic; but it can promote heroic foolishness. Now, looking at particular systems, it seems to be that, usually, HP systems give you enough hps that you can safely withstand all but the most devestating of surprise attacks--but, if you can fearlessly wade through the gang of mooks, it's not so much because you have tons of hitpoints as because you can't be hit--which is a separate issue. And, with a 20-auto-hit rule, even that isn't a guarantee. Whereas it's pretty easy in something like M&MM to set up a situation where the mooks are a non-threat. BUt you could also set the threshholds, etc., so that everything/everyone was a threat.Again, i say that has to do with magnitude, not style. B5 D20 uses hit points--not even a wound/vitality split--to produce a setting where any orc with a knife is a therat. And, IME, what leads to foolish, er, i mean, heroic, behavior by players is not a huge cushion of hitpoints, but the inability to be hurt in the first place.  Either from huge AC/defense scores, or from something like a high damage save that guarantees they won't get hurt if hit.Well, this is an artifact not of damage saves, per se, but of a wide, flat randomizer. If the d20 were more predictable, it would be less of an issue. If the range of the die didn't equal or dwarf the differences in ability, it wouldn't be an issue. Allow me to suggest mid20: roll 3d20, and toss the low and high die. Gives you a full 1-20 range, but a noticably more-centered result. Really cuts down on extreme results.Wow, i'm genuinely impressed. I'm pleased when the conflict goes the way i'd hoped--the PCs triumphing or being defeated/retreating--and i don't have to fudge to get it there. It had never occurred to me to even try and guage how quickly, or by what margin, much less that it might be possible. And that's using the apparently-predictable hit point system, and mid20.On single rolls removing players: i sort of agree. But, on the other hand, the only thing that causes players to do anything *but* wade in swinging seems to be the threat of one-roll failure. Think about how your players react to combat vs. a potential trap on a door (which could paralyze or otherwise incapacitate with a single failed save). I don't object to the former, but i'd like to see some of the latter from time to time. Or, IOW, i don't actually want a player to have to sit out for any real length of time because their character is incapacitated, but i do want the threat of that happening, because it's the threat that gets the players to get emotionally invested in their characters. Or, at least, that's my experience. Now, obviously, if you have a plausible threat, you'll occasionally have the negative result of making good on that threat. I don't know any good way to balance those two, but a properly-balanced damage save comes close. In trying to avoid the negative, i think hit points generally also give up any chance at the positive.</blockquote>

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