Making a Houserule, and I Need Your Guy's Help.

[timASW]

One other option might be something like what the early 5e play tests did. Save or die, or suck spells do a certain amount of damage. Say roll 1d10 per caster level. If your total surpasses the targets HP it gets affected if not they suffer a lesser affect with the option to save against it.

 

[Oversquid]

"Conviction, Mass" (cleric 3) was pretty much a go to spell for clerics in most 3.5 campaigns I played in. That plus "Alter Fortune" pretty much made the party auto-suceed most saving throws, especially at the high half of the game.

My only hesitation with your house rule is that it becomes just another thing to keep track of. But that's just my preference. My own preference would be, as an immediate action, you can choose to take the "staggered condition" for 1 round and add 1/2 level (min 1, max 5) to the saving throw. But again, that's just my own way of doing things.

That could be interesting, but Staggering is also a rather sucky condition too. They will have to ask if they want to be staggered or if they want to suck a whole other way, but I can see some logic behind this if thought about. Personally, I want the players to lose something when it happens, but I'm not sure I would be game for staggering, but thats just me.

Still though, thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Oversquid]

One other option might be something like what the early 5e play tests did. Save or die, or suck spells do a certain amount of damage. Say roll 1d10 per caster level. If your total surpasses the targets HP it gets affected if not they suffer a lesser affect with the option to save against it.

That could be something, but the biggest issue that comes to my mind is that some characters as a concept don't want to hurt others, and doing damage is just not a good option for them. But I can still see some good ideas come from this nonetheless.

So my idea that I can potentially build off of that is to have 2 sets of Hitpoints. One is the Hitpoints we all know and love, and the other are Mental Hitpoints, which exist as the exact same total of hitpoints. For example, Johnson has 75 Hitpoints. This means that Johnson has 75 Mental Hitpoints too.

When the normal Hitpoints go down, the Mental Hitpoints go down the same number. So when Johnson gets hit by a Longsword that deals 10 damage, Johnson now has 65 Hitpoints, and 65 Mental Hitpoints.

Then lets say that one of the foes that Johnson is fighting, a Cleric named Bob, casts Hold Person on Johnson. Johnson succeeds his Will Save, but he feels more mentally drained from the ordeal, taking, lets say, 12 Mental Damage, leaving Johnson at 65 Hitpoints, and 53 Mental Hitpoints. As Mental Hitpoints go down, Johnson becomes more and more vulnerable to the full brunt of whatever spells or abilities are thrown his way.

I know this needs a lot of tweaking to work, but thats why I'm here. I want something to work.

 

[timASW]

That could be something, but the biggest issue that comes to my mind is that some characters as a concept don't want to hurt others, and doing damage is just not a good option for them. But I can still see some good ideas come from this nonetheless.

So my idea that I can potentially build off of that is to have 2 sets of Hitpoints. One is the Hitpoints we all know and love, and the other are Mental Hitpoints, which exist as the exact same total of hitpoints. For example, Johnson has 75 Hitpoints. This means that Johnson has 75 Mental Hitpoints too.

When the normal Hitpoints go down, the Mental Hitpoints go down the same number. So when Johnson gets hit by a Longsword that deals 10 damage, Johnson now has 65 Hitpoints, and 65 Mental Hitpoints.

Then lets say that one of the foes that Johnson is fighting, a Cleric named Bob, casts Hold Person on Johnson. Johnson succeeds his Will Save, but he feels more mentally drained from the ordeal, taking, lets say, 12 Mental Damage, leaving Johnson at 65 Hitpoints, and 53 Mental Hitpoints. As Mental Hitpoints go down, Johnson becomes more and more vulnerable to the full brunt of whatever spells or abilities are thrown his way.

I know this needs a lot of tweaking to work, but thats why I'm here. I want something to work.

Thats an interesting idea. I should clarify that my suggestion was sort of an all or nothing approach, the dice rolled didnt actually damage the target, they just determine whether it was affected by that one spell or not.

I like yours better though. I can see a few complications, HP are adjusted by CON, which I wouldnt personally have affect mental HP, I would make that WIS or CHR.

There also needs to be a consequence for running out of MP (mental points) rather then HP. For myself I would apply the fatigued condition on top of any possible spell affects. And if it gets reduced to enough to flat out "kill" I would make it the exhausted condition.

To me this is an important consideration because due to divergent ability scores some characters will have more HP then MP. Some spells would damage MP but not reduce to 0. Then later physical damage might drop it to 0. ETC ETC.

On the whole though I like this idea, might use it myself for my next pathfinder game.

 

[Oversquid]

Thats an interesting idea. I should clarify that my suggestion was sort of an all or nothing approach, the dice rolled didnt actually damage the target, they just determine whether it was affected by that one spell or not.

I like yours better though. I can see a few complications, HP are adjusted by CON, which I wouldnt personally have affect mental HP, I would make that WIS or CHR.

There also needs to be a consequence for running out of MP (mental points) rather then HP. For myself I would apply the fatigued condition on top of any possible spell affects. And if it gets reduced to enough to flat out "kill" I would make it the exhausted condition.

To me this is an important consideration because due to divergent ability scores some characters will have more HP then MP. Some spells would damage MP but not reduce to 0. Then later physical damage might drop it to 0. ETC ETC.

On the whole though I like this idea, might use it myself for my next pathfinder game.

Yeah, its not a perfect idea, but with a lot of fidgeting around, it might be worth a shot. I guess making Mental hitpoints to be seperate from Hitpoints themselves wouldn't be as good, or else there is little the teammates can do to help the spellcaster's spells affect the target.

Some stuff to consider perhaps is also the fact that some foes are weaker, and might not need to have Mental Hitpoints apply so much as stronger foes.

I guess its at least worth a shot is all I'm saying. Maybe something good can come of it.

(P.S. If you do roll with it and make it work, feel free to message me what you did to make it work)