My HP Fix

[pemerton]

I still think that a better way to embody the fiction of inspiring someone to get back up after being wounded beyond their usual threshold in the game mechanics is to avoid restoring whatever "points" in use entirely

I described the BW approach upthread. It's an interesting approach. But it rests on a pretty different mechanical substrate than the one that D&D offers.

for some reason it is apparently vitally important for some folks to have permanently restoring some point-pool as the only way to bring you back from the brink of death. I don't really yet understand that myopic fixation on that particular specific mechanical implementation, but the proposal certainly doesn't necessarily invalidate it.

I don't see why those who like 4e or Gygaxian hp are "myopic". Maybe they just have different preferences in gaming from yours.

You don't need "variant" healing rules for meat damage.

Up until 4e, D&D has had uniform recovery rates. Once you decide that the "CON" component of hp is wounds, whereas the "+X" component is something else (luck, or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s fatigue), then you probably don't want uniform recovery rates. Hence the scope for a variant rule - a departure from the traditional uniform recovery rate.

I think that you suggested something similar in the OP.

(4e is a more complex implementation of non-uniform recovery rates. I suggested that as another possible option a bit further upthread.)

Well, looks like you've described the proposal fairly accurately, using only subtly different terminology.

Well, except that I'm treating a D&D's traditinal single pool with a uniform recovery rate as core, and making both the explicit "tier-ing" of hp (as per wound/vitality and the like) an option, and the inclusion of inspirational healing an option.

I'm therefore leaving space for an approach to play in which any given lost hp is narrated as a lucky dodge, or a bit of meat damage, or a bit of both, as context and preference suggest. Any "tier-ing" approach precludes that narrative flexibilty. Which is why I don't think "tier-ing" should be a core presupposition, whatever the scope of the dial that governs the balance between the tiers.

 

[pemerton]

If that is all your doing every session: playing out a battle, then more realism is cool. But if story is your thing, lets resolve the battle quickly and get on with the story.

There's also the option of battle-as-story. Like Helm's Deep or The Princess Bride.

 

[Alarian]

We use a system based off of the DragonQuest rpg (owned by wiz but long dead). Each character has Endurance(HP) and Fatigue. When in combat, unless it's a critical hit, all damage comes off of Fatigue first, once that's gone, you are too tired to block effectively and you start taking real damage. In addition, classes have special moves that also cost fatigue. So if I fighter wants to hit extra hard, he can burn fatigue for extra damage. The more fatigue he's willing to burn the more dice of damage he can do. Mages must burn fatigue to cast spells. (You can also burn endurance if your desperate.) When you rest, Fatigue comes back fairly quickly (based on Con) but basically for most people an overnight rest will easily restore all fatigue. Endurance comes back much slower. Closer to 1 point a day of rest.

We've been using it for years, and its worked great for our groups.

 

[Kavon]

I think the most important thing this Meat/Fate (or Body/Fatigue as Lanefan put it) brings to the table is a possible sollution to the problem of 'healing overnight', in that one part (Fate/Fatigue) is fully restored after a night's rest (and hence, the way it works right now in the playtest - healing spells and such don't need any alteration, since they affect everything regardless), and the other (Meat/Body) requires some serious R&R and medical attention to get back.
This way, you can continue on adventuring only for so long, instead of keep on bulldozering through the campaign day after day, no matter the beating you take (some might like this style of play, but I can imagine quite some people do not)

As Kamikaze Midget has mentioned in this thread, you can change the dial, so to speak, of these two things to fit your personal preference.

The way HP works right now, is that you have all Fate/Fatigue, and once you lost all of this, you receive that one wound that knocks you out and starts you on your journey to the other side.

But then you have the hook horror that runs you through with its hooks and rips you up (while you are still alive and well). Try and explain that with the reasoning that the first serious wound comes only once all HP is lost.
This would require there to be two seperate things - Meat/Body and Fate/Fatigue.

As far as someone sweet talking or shouting an unconcious person, that's bleeding out of a potentially fatal wound, back on its feet.
How would that work, exactly?


The most important point is.. YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE IT.
Just turn the dial all the way to the side you want, and be done with it.
I find it absurd that people hate on this idea, since the entire thing is based on the idea that 5e works from - adapt it to your game, your preferences.



P.S.
On another note, while typing this out, I realized that you can see the whole Meat/Body thing as the negative HP part and the Fate/Fatigue as (positive) HP. This works only if you were to make it so that once your Fate/Fatigue runs out, you are knocked out (this came from the 'shouting a dying person back on his feat' bit I mentioned earlier in this post).
The difference would be, though, that once you hit these negative HP, they are not automatically reset everytime you get back to positive HP. In order to restore them, you need medical attention.
I would guess there might be things to allow you to keep your consciousness while you are at negative HP (like a boar).

Still doesn't solve the narrative for the hook horror cases, though.. Unless those attacks go straight to negative HP.

Edit: P.P.S.
It seems one of the issues here is something about what should be the core assumption of the game.

I would say the core assumption would be the following:
"Characters have HP"

Following that, we have this:
"Here are several ways to handle HP, depending on how you wish to play the game"
*continues on with all the options while explaining the effects they have on play*

Now can we get back to a proper discussion on this idea instead of getting hung up on which way MUST be the default way?
Please?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I described the BW approach upthread. It's an interesting approach. But it rests on a pretty different mechanical substrate than the one that D&D offers.

It's just one way among literally countless ways. I am not really sure I need to keep listing off ways in which this could work.

I don't see why those who like 4e or Gygaxian hp are "myopic". Maybe they just have different preferences in gaming from yours.

It's not that people who love Gygaxian hp are myopic.

It's that people who specifically want inspirational narrative to give you back hit points in the mechanics and who are unwilling to accept other methods of embodying that narrative in mechanics who are myopic.

Myopia is a fine way to play the game, let me say. Not trying to knock it. I get myopic about certain aspects of the game when I play too.

And let me state for the record that I have no horse in the HP Wars race. I arrived at my concept that HP must be at least a little bit meat because of the function of HP in the game, and I've come to understand that some folks don't want any meat mechanics, and that this should certainly be a supported option.

Up until 4e, D&D has had uniform recovery rates. Once you decide that the "CON" component of hp is wounds, whereas the "+X" component is something else (luck, or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s fatigue), then you probably don't want uniform recovery rates. Hence the scope for a variant rule - a departure from the traditional uniform recovery rate.

I think that you suggested something similar in the OP.
...
Well, except that I'm treating a D&D's traditinal single pool with a uniform recovery rate as core, and making both the explicit "tier-ing" of hp (as per wound/vitality and the like) an option, and the inclusion of inspirational healing an option.

If you make the small mental leap that these two pools are actually almost the same thing, the uniformity is apparent. Your total pool recovers by a portion at each rest. The portion that the recovery represents is just made more explicit. It might be like taking 5e's "it takes longer to recover from 0 hp" and extending it so that it also takes longer to recover from bloodied and saying that inspiration can't help you when you're bloodied. Which might actually be a simpler way to do it, come to think, and you can tweak the model from there with more modular options.

I'm therefore leaving space for an approach to play in which any given lost hp is narrated as a lucky dodge, or a bit of meat damage, or a bit of both, as context and preference suggest. Any "tier-ing" approach precludes that narrative flexibilty. Which is why I don't think "tier-ing" should be a core presupposition, whatever the scope of the dial that governs the balance between the tiers.

If that "narrative flexibility" allows inspiration to heal your mortal wounds and allows a night's rest to completely refresh you, it's doing more harm than good. The point at which it is meat and the point at which it is fate need to be made clear in some way, if we include inspirational healing and the option for a night's rest to heal everything.

The division is already a supposition in 5e, it's just not a supposition that's backed with any functional rules fobs. It's a good idea, it just needs some reinforcement.

 

[Sadras]

The tactical battles are the shining star in 4E. If that is all your doing every session: playing out a battle, then more realism is cool. But if story is your thing, lets resolve the battle quickly and get on with the story.

Just had a 4E mini-session last weekend as not all the players could make it, so I had 3 out of the 5. It was an investigative adventure in town with lots of roleplaying, moral decision-making and exploration - with a few die rolls for skills. No combat whatsoever and it was very much player-driven and they loved it, thankfully. Story for the win!
Although one of my players did mention that it might not have been as much fun if the entire party was there. The small group created that intimacy and the speed that was necessary for a story-based adventure.

 

[mlund]

The common theme I'm seeing here is that writers need to be less over-the-top narrating what monsters do. Most physical injuries characters take that simply move them from positive HP to a lower number of positive HP are flesh wounds, bruises, bite marks, etc.

No edition, from OD&D to 4E, modeled HP loss attacks to severe injuries like having a giant meat-hook in your intestines - no one in the base game ever got maimed from losing 99% of their HP. The closest thing to ever crop up were 3E's awful "massive damage" rule with an arbitrary sum of 50HP.

We have seen injuries that effectively maimed characters in 3E - Ability Score Damage. I never saw anyone successfully argue that they shouldn't die at 0 CON because they still had HP left.

Instead of negative HP (since everyone hates negative numbers these days, judging by the Initiative complaints) just have all damage exceeding HP come out of the Constitution score. 0 CON = Dead. Have magical and mundane healing effects designed for physical impact explicitly or implicitly be able to stabilize the dying and restore CON (vital meat) and/or HP (endurance, energy, non-vital meat). Other healing effects based on morale, luck, blessings, etc. can just restore HP.

It isn't a terribly complicated system. The HP / dying rules are as simple or more so than any other edition. The real key to making it work smoothly and simply for players rests on the designers consistently writing a demarcation. "All HP restoring abilities are fungible heals," isn't really a good simplification for players if you wanted to expand the design space into something like large-scale non-magical HP recovery.

- Marty Lund

 

[pemerton]

It's not that people who love Gygaxian hp are myopic.

It's that people who specifically want inspirational narrative to give you back hit points in the mechanics and who are unwilling to accept other methods of embodying that narrative in mechanics who are myopic.

It's just one way among literally countless ways. I am not really sure I need to keep listing off ways in which this could work.

What you're not explaining is why those of us who have a perfectly functional system at the moment, and which we can have alongside those who want hp as meat without splitting hp into two pools, should prefer a different system that will change the way our games play.

So, why aren't you a smiling kitten about this yet?

Is it because I use HP to mean meat and Fate to mean fate and that this definition is intolerable to you? Is this really just a semantic squabble over which half of the Gygaxian HP gets to be enshrined as "The Real HP" and which one is "The Other HP?" That you want Fate-mostly to be the "default" and Meat-mostly to be "an option" and take issue with a proposal that inverts that? Cuz if so, this is a lot of word count blown on a fairly meaningless buzztem.

As I posted upthread (but before you added in this edit), it's because a tier system - first deplete the fate portion, then deplete the meat portion, imposes mechanical limits and narrative constraints that I don't want, and don't currently suffer from.

For example, suppose a PC falls down a pit and takes damage. I can narrate this as a sprained ankle (which is meat hp, on your model). And then suppose the warlord uses "Inspiring Word", or the player spends a healing surge. I can narrate this as inspiration/resolution to carry on despite the sprained ankle. But on your model this isn't possible, because no fate points have been lost, and so none can be restored.

That's not just semantics. It's actual possibilities in gameplay. Your system is a form of process simulation. I don't want process simulation in my hp system. (If I did, I'd use Roger Musson's system, which I've known about for nearly 30 years.)

If you make the small mental leap that these two pools are actually almost the same thing, the uniformity is apparent. Your total pool recovers by a portion at each rest. The portion that the recovery represents is just made more explicit.

Again, pools. And "explicitness", here, equals process simulation.

I recall from an earlier thread that you think that fortune-in-the-middle, and the flexibility in corresponence between narration and mechanics that it opens up, is undesirable in an RPG. So I'm not surprised that you are putting forward a model that leaves no room for fortune-in-the-middle.

But some of us like fortune in the middle. And not because we're myopic fetishists, but because it creates different possibilities in gameplay.

If that "narrative flexibility" allows inspiration to heal your mortal wounds and allows a night's rest to completely refresh you, it's doing more harm than good. The point at which it is meat and the point at which it is fate need to be made clear in some way, if we include inspirational healing and the option for a night's rest to heal everything.

This certainly reads like some of us are playing it wrong - our approach does "more harm than good".

 

[Mercutio01]

What you're not explaining is why those of us who have a perfectly functional system at the moment, and which we can have alongside those who want hp as meat without splitting hp into two pools, should prefer a different system that will change the way our games play.

I agree with your sentiment, but I think Kamikaze Midget addressed this already, in that you don't have to use the "pools" really at all. It's a sliding scale that you can tailor as you like. So you and I would both use "no pool" in effect, which in KM's system might read as "100% pool fate, 0% pool meat" for you and "0% pool fate, 100% pool meat" for me. I'm sure there are some people who would use some variation in the middle like, "50% pool fate, 50% pool meat."

At least, that's what I think KM was getting at.

 

[pemerton]

I agree with your sentiment, but I think Kamikaze Midget addressed this already, in that you don't have to use the "pools" really at all. It's a sliding scale that you can tailor as you like. So you and I would both use "no pool" in effect, which in KM's system might read as "100% pool fate, 0% pool meat" for you and "0% pool fate, 100% pool meat" for me. I'm sure there are some people who would use some variation in the middle like, "50% pool fate, 50% pool meat."

At least, that's what I think KM was getting at.

I think so to, but I think that KM is missing some of the implications of going that way. For example, fate point loss can't be narrated as (say) a strained ankle or an arrow wound below the ribs. And all fate points will recover at a uniform (and rapid) rate.

More generally, the whole notion of two pools, and of choosing which pool, or both, you are in, is trying to impose a process-simulation approach onto hp - which is already taking a side in the great hit point wars.

That's why I think the starting point has to be traditional D&D - a single pool with a uniform recovery rate and two states - alive, conscious and unimpeded, or down and out. This permits maximum flexibility and maximum modularity, as I'll try to explain.

It permits flexible narration. You can narrate "meat". I can narrate "meat" or "fate" as mood and situation dicatate. Some others might want to narrate fate only, at least until the last blow.

On the assumption that the single pool includes CON as a kicker (the playtest has this, as does 4e) then this permits those who want to turn that into the kernel of a wound/vitality system to easily do so without mucking up any of the other numbers in the game.

It also permits options as to what "down and out" means - those who want a B/X feel can narrate it as dead, those who want a 1st ed AD&D feel can narrate it as dying, and wounded even if you are stabilised, those who want a 2nd ed AD&D or 3E feel can narrate it as dying but easily healed, and those who want a 4e feel can adopt 4e's fortune-in-the-middle approach to narrating it. Again, all this can be modularised without mucking up any of the other numbers or assumptions of game play.

It permits a range of options on recovery time, and varying with the default uniform recovery rate. Wound/vitality people will probably want to make the CON component of hp harder to recover. 4e people will probably want a rule that permits quick recovery, but also says that after you've performed a certain number of quick recoveries you have to go for a longer one (this is the short rest/extended rest dynamic).

And it permits the introduction of a range of healing options. All healing effects can be statted up the same way - as restoration of points to the pool. But depending on taste, and the other modules in play, you can say things like "inspriational healing not allowed", or "inspiration healing allowed only if not bloodied", or "inspirational healing won't restore lost wound points", or "cure spells used to restore wound points rather than hit points must be cast using the ritual mechanic". Again, because all the options interface around a single pool with a default uniform rate of recovery, they can be stated in relation to that without the core numbers having to be changed.

Introdcing a fate/meat dial into the core definition of hit points is making one, contested conception of hit points - the process simulation one - part of the core. Whereas keeping a single pool with a uniform rate of recovery (but with that rate itself on a dial) allows the core definition of hit points to encompass the process simulation conception and the fortune-in-the-middle conception without trouble, and allows any of a range of options for departing from the uniform recovery rate to be implemented as options, and allows individual groups to choose how various sorts of healing (natural, inspirational, divine) interact with hit point loss and with those healing rates.

KM said upthread that what I'm doing is just restating his proposal, but I hope I've succeeded in explaining why I'm not just doing that.