Monte Cook's HP House Rule: Health & Grace

[eschwenke]

Has anyone here looked at Monte's idea for clarifying HP abstraction and combat description with Health and Grace Points? Here's the link: http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?montejournal

Someone asked me about hit points and how do I explain them. I gave him the standard answer, that they're a mixture of abstract luck/skill and actual physical stamina and toughness. But right there in the middle of the event, a small but nifty idea came to me. I decided to give everyone an additional number of hit points equal to their Con score. That number, plus their level, represents the actual physical damage a character can take. The rest of their hit points (from their HD) represent training and luck. I'm going to call the former "Health" and the latter "Grace," I think. (Different types of creatures will have a different ratio of health and grace, so for example almost all of a giant's hit points represent toughness.) You lose Grace before you lose Health. First and foremost, this enables me to verbally describe what's happening in a combat in such a way that it conveys information to the players. If they hear me say that a blow seemed to really do some actual damage to a foe, they'll know that he's probably close to defeat.

This small change not only gives starting characters a few more hit points, but it helps solidify how I've always seen hit points and how they reflect action in movies pretty well. The main character (or the main villain) seems to take an absurd amount of punishment throughout the film and not be too affected by it. But right at the end, the punches (or falls, stabs, whatever) suddenly really seem to matter a lot more. He's lost all his grace and he's down to just health. In other words, movie fights are based on the principle that you wear someone down until you can move in for the really cool finishing blow. This helps set that up without changing anything mechanically, because mechanically, a hit point is still just a hit point. I don't want to go the old Alternity/Star Wars route with vitality and whatever it was called. However, I may do a few funky tweaks with healing and hit point recovery and how it interacts with these Health and Grace.

I really like this and am thinking of using this with just a few tweaks:

1) Non-lethal damage is identical to normal damage so long as the creature has remaining Grace. Only once Grace is depleated is non-lethal damage counted seperately.

2) Grace recovers naturally at the same rate as non-lethal damage.

3ai) Healing magic is twice as effective as normal for healing Grace.
3aii) as 3a but only out of combat.
3bi) as 3a but Maximized.
3bii) as 3aii and 3bi

I'm pretty sure I'll use 1 and 2. The variants of 3 I'm still mulling over. I'm reluctant to change more than that as it could easily get out of hand and be counter productive.

Ideas?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

This ideas still doesn't explain all the hit point issues, such as:

1. How can a character's skill 'run out'? Sure, combatants get tired, slower and clumsier but associating a finite resource with combat skill is just counter intuitive at its basic level.

2. The age old problem of 'How can the NPC's dagger inflict me with its poison if I dodged the blow?' (lost grace points) still remains.

 

[Nifft]

Monte Cook discovers VP/WP!

There are a lot of variants on this, and it's been around for a while. Let me just say that doubling the value of Con is not a great idea IMHO. I prefer a fixed number of "real wounds" that's the same for everyone, like the Condition Track from SW Saga.

Cheers, -- N

 

[eschwenke]

This ideas still doesn't explain all the hit point issues, such as:

1. How can a character's skill 'run out'? Sure, combatants get tired, slower and clumsier but associating a finite resource with combat skill is just counter intuitive at its basic level.

2. The age old problem of 'How can the NPC's dagger inflict me with its poison if I dodged the blow?' (lost grace points) still remains.

1. The skill doesn't run out. Energy and luck run out and this loss is enough to make skill insuficient to defend as well. I don't see this as a problem.

2. You have a point here. I might have to say that poison only takes effect if the attack caused health damage.

 

[eschwenke]

Monte Cook discovers VP/WP!

There are a lot of variants on this, and it's been around for a while. Let me just say that doubling the value of Con is not a great idea IMHO. I prefer a fixed number of "real wounds" that's the same for everyone, like the Condition Track from SW Saga.

Cheers, -- N

He knew about VP/WPs, but these don't work like that. This is primarily for descriptive purposes. You can't bypass Grace to do Health damage.

I don't have Saga. What is the Condition Track?

 

[SKid4]

Isn't this health & grace/luck/training concept already inherent in how hit points are generated? A character's Constitution modifier applies to every Hit Die--there's health. After 1st level, Hit Dice are rolled and the character gets a random result for each--sounds like luck to me. If you want, this can be used as a guideline when describing the effects of damage and you don't have to add a load more hit points (characters already get max hit points at 1st level--do fledgling characters really need anymore luck?).

 

[Nifft]

He knew about VP/WPs, but these don't work like that.

Vitality points

Vitality points are a measure of a character’s ability to turn a direct hit into a graze or a glancing blow with no serious consequences. Like hit points in the standard d20 rules, vitality points go up with level, giving high-level characters more ability to shrug off attacks. Most types of damage reduce vitality points.

Characters gain vitality points as they gain levels. Just as with hit points in the standard d20 rules, at each level a character rolls a vitality die and adds his Constitution modifier, adding the total to his vitality point total. (And, just as with hit points, a character always gains at least 1 vitality point per level, regardless of his roll or Constitution modifier.) A 1st-level character gets the maximum vitality die result rather than rolling.


Wound Points

Wound points measure how much true physical damage a character can withstand. Damage reduces wound points only after all vitality points are gone, or when a character is struck by a critical hit. A character has a number of wound points equal to her current Constitution score.

0 Vitality Points

At 0 vitality points, a character can no longer avoid taking real physical damage. Any additional damage he receives reduces his wound points.

MC's "new" rules are a strict subset of VP/WP.

And I still don't like how Con gets more important.

Cheers, -- N

 

[eschwenke]

Isn't this health & grace/luck/training concept already inherent in how hit points are generated? A character's Constitution modifier applies to every Hit Die--there's health. After 1st level, Hit Dice are rolled and the character gets a random result for each--sounds like luck to me. If you want, this can be used as a guideline when describing the effects of damage and you don't have to add a load more hit points (characters already get max hit points at 1st level--do fledgling characters really need anymore luck?).

The point was to be able to describe hits better. That way if it's just doing Grace damage it is described as a near miss. If the hit does health damage it is described as actual physical damage. This way people aren't described as taking large numbers of sword wounds while still standing.
The extra health at the beginning was to make 1st level encounters a bit more survivable. I frequently see all sorts of house rules for giving more HP at 1st level so that wizards and commoners aren't taken out by a single good hit by a house-cat.

To Nifft:

Yes, they are similar, but the point is that WP/VP have a whole lot of mechanical differences, like crits bypassing VP and doing WP damage, and Wounds starting a death spiral. This is very different from Monte's purely descriptive rules. Even the tweaks that I was going to make don't make HP/GP as nearly as deadly as WP/VP, probably less so.

 

[Will]

I always like my idea... if HP represent luck and fortune and so on, let's make it based on Cha!

Imagine the howls.

 

[BRP2]

I always like my idea... if HP represent luck and fortune and so on, let's make it based on Cha!

Imagine the howls.

I've been considering this! (And have Con modifier become a natural DR ontop of Armor DR)