My HP Fix

[john112364]

I hope you're all happy! You made KM's puppy cry!!!

 

[mlund]

To be fair, making puppies and small children cry is the laziest means I have available to keep my alignment between the navigational buoys. If you forget to kick the dog every once in a while people start forgetting who's the villain around here. People begin to disobey you, and then it's nothing but work, work, work all the time.

- Marty Lund

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Can we get an updated picture of the puppy now?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The OP is not a bad system, but my main objection to all Wound/Vitality point systems is that, once you boil it down, it's merely two kinds of points. And once you say that, then it's hard not to want to simplify by rolling the points all back together--though I admit that I seem to like abstract mechanics better than the average player.

If we have a Wound system separate from hit points--or a Fate system separate from hit pionts--then I'd like for the other system to work somewhat differently. Maybe it is a track. Maybe it restores at a totally different pace and prompt--not merely a different schedule, but works independently of hit points, so that you can be up or down on either one.

I didn't like it in 3E, because of how nasty it could be, the frequency of derived values, and the magic used to restore it, but I still think that Wounds as minor damage to ability scores would be a nice optional module for showing long-term injury--especially if Con damage was separated out from current hit points.

 

[Remathilis]

Meh.

I really fail to see the need to re-invent the wheel. Ignoring any hp fluff, the rules for hp are dead simple. Why are people so adamant on adding wounds, wound points, broken bones or months of recovery time, when D&D hasn't had these things since inception?

 

[pemerton]

Swords and falls and arrows and magic blasts of power and whatever else might be actually potentially deadly can deal HP damage.

<snip>

Warlord Screamy Healing, or Bard Insulty Damage, you're not going to knit my flesh or blow up my enemies, but you can give/drain me Fate, which will prevent my flesh from being more rent asunder, and make my enemies more likely to die horribly later.

Besides the modifications to your proposal suggested by others, I had some further comments on these particular aspects of it.

(1) Without an injury penalty mechanic, nothing in the fiction signals that my flesh is being rent by swords and falls and arrows. Therefore, it is not clear, in the fiction, how losing hit points is any different from losing fate points - it seems a pointless mechanical distinction completely disjoined from any fictional realisation.

(2) It is therefore not clear, at least to me, how your suggestion makes room for the "inspiration helps me recover and/or push on" trope. Adding fate points doesn't seem to represent pushing on - because, in the fiction, it's largely indistinguishable from knitting together flesh, and there are also no wounds to be pushed through. And adding hit points seems in any event to occupy whatever "push on" space there might be to the same extent as hit points.

(3) Under your approach I can't do the Aragorn recovery scene in the second LotR movie -because if Aragorn is unconscious, under your system he is at 0 hp, and being at 0 hp no amount of inspiration from Arwen can restore him. That is a big blow against your system, that it cannot produce this sort of classic fantasy motif.

(4) Under your approach, I can't have a Nordic/Celtic master of words, who simply through his speech can unravel the sustaining essence of a thing, and leave it destroyed and worthless. Vicious Mockery is closer to these classic fantasy tropes than any artillerist or flying mage of the normal RPG variety.​

So at least for me, your suggestion isn't a fix. Because of (2), (3) and (4), it puts limits on the scope of the system to produce classic fantasy tropes (whereas a generic hit point system doesn't, and those who are not interested in those tropes can just refrain from playing bards or using the inspirational healing options). And because of (1) and (2), those limitiations generate no benefit, that I can see, in terms of the relationship between the mechanics and the fiction. So I lose narrative flexibility for no net gain in process simulation.

 

[pemerton]

I still think that Wounds as minor damage to ability scores would be a nice optional module for showing long-term injury--especially if Con damage was separated out from current hit points.

The damage would have to be meaningful - otherwise it's just more points!

But once it's meaningful (penalties to hit in combat, reduction in movement rate, etc) then we have the notorious death spiral!

I think there is a fundamental problem in trying to come up with mechanics (like those in the OP) which simultaneously seem both to assert and to deny that hit point loss represents, in some fashion, debilitating wounds.

 

[BobTheNob]

This isnt the first time I have read this idea (sorry crying puppy), though this is the first time I have read it delivered with such fervor.

I would add it does leave room for some other gameplay "hate-em's".

For instance, SOD. Lets focus on Slay Living. Everyone always hated how its just "oops, your dead". What if, as a spell, it just did low health damage. So that, regardless of the amount of fate you have, it just damage health directly. Chance to insta-takedown, but damage based (even with a save for half). Generally, a couple of "death effects" might do the job.

p.s. every time you agree with me a kitten dies! (sorry, just channeling the vibe of KM's post)

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Meh.

I really fail to see the need to re-invent the wheel. Ignoring any hp fluff, the rules for hp are dead simple. Why are people so adamant on adding wounds, wound points, broken bones or months of recovery time, when D&D hasn't had these things since inception?

Perhaps for the opposite reason you think; to have a playable game that is more believable and intuitive and with more options.

Primarily it is because you don't want the recovery of "hit points" held back time-wise by the believable healing of physical damage. This means that the bulk of a character's hit points are returned so they can get back into the action without having to monopolize the resources of the cleric, or the trite use of a wand of cure light wounds or some other unbelievable crutch. Because hit points still act as a buffer, the character is survivable and thus playable. You can go on effectively without having everyone at 100%.

A benefit of this is that you can save clerical healing for when a character is actually wounded. A cure light wounds spell means exactly that. However, you can have a mundane healer be good enough the majority of the time - it is expected that PCs will push on, even if they have an injury or two that may mean the PC cannot sprint, and perhaps gets disadvantage if the perform anything dexterity related. [Perhaps this is what makes a fighter special, they don't get wound penalties as often as other classes?] But, you don't have months of recovery time because that is when you decide to utilize the divine power of your cleric to perform an overnight Cure Critical Wounds ritual. The point is that you can focus on believable mechanics to heal characters while still retaining a playable game where divine resources are carefully used like the special thing they are supposed to be rather than ridiculously spammed as an adventuring afterthought. That healing ritual becomes an important strategic decision rather than an expected, unappreciated packet of adventuring band-aids that unfairly eats into the clerics divine resources.

Now, the other thing is with physical damage stripped out of hit points, you can allow them to breathe and be fully utilized. This may not be for everyone but you can now affect a combatants hit points through all the different things associated with hit points (luck, toughness, morale, fatigue, divine providence, will to go on, capacity to turn a blow, etc.)

For example, just in terms of Morale:
* The warlord can keep everyone's spirits up when everything looks lost (giving everyone some hit points). However, he can't directly affect a character's wounding (truly squashing that somewhat ridiculous shouting wounds closed complaint). If though, the PC is injured and has a particular penalty related to that wound, the warlord may be able to give them a boost so that for their next action, they get to ignore any penalties they would normally suffer.

* The fighter can demoralize their opponents (stripping them of hit points; the Fighter's Fireball if you will) when she kills their leader. You're not going to kill them with this stuff but you're going to basically turn them into minions (combatants without hit points).

* A PC may have lost someone close to them. If roleplayed as a significant loss, it can also be given mechanical weight by capping a character's hit points at three-quarters or even a half. In return, they may get to perform sporadic outbursts of intensified action. Their grief suitably affects how they act. Capping hit points in this way is an interesting mechanic that can represent many ideas (be it related to luck, morale, fatigue, divine connection and so on).

You could take this in a stack of different directions and you can believably do it because you don't have physical damage and its slow rate of healing uncomfortably tied to the same mechanic. Without wounds to worry about, hit points have the freedom to fully represent what they are supposed to have since day dot. This option isn't for everyone, but I think it could make a large enough slice of the gaming customer pie happy.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The damage would have to be meaningful - otherwise it's just more points!

But once it's meaningful (penalties to hit in combat, reduction in movement rate, etc) then we have the notorious death spiral!

I think there is a fundamental problem in trying to come up with mechanics (like those in the OP) which simultaneously seem both to assert and to deny that hit point loss represents, in some fashion, debilitating wounds.

I agree. The problem with most death spirals is that they are either pretense (i.e. not real death spirals) or too drastic, thus not giving the injured party a chance to do something meaningful before the death spiral gets outs of control. The way to split that difference is to have a slow, minor death spiral, perhaps reserving very serious injuries for appropriately dramatic moments.

D&D, in particular, if it has such a mechanic, even as an option, should have a death spiral more like Die Hard than, say, the typical RuneQuest character, that is lucky to survive the start of the spiral long enough to experience the end of it.