My latest, greatest take on Hit Points

[loseth]

It can if you're Welsh.

My Dad's Welsh...

 

[1 hp]

Very good point. That hadn't occurred to me. My first though was 'Yes, trents, golems, elementals etc. do seem to take physical damage as they run out of HP.' But then I realised that, even if visually the trent has chunks flying from it, it's still going from 100% functionality while it has HP to a sudden 0% functionality (or very low functionality using my pwnage tables) the moment it loses that last point. That still seems a lot like APA.

So, I think perhaps the best way to accomodate creatures like this is to say that for a certain subset of creatures (zombies, living trees, living rocks, golems, etc.), thier APA consists not just of luck, skill etc., but of an actual physical barrier (their flesh/bark/whatever). In a combat scene, this wouldn't make any functional difference (just a difference in narration), but after the fight the difference would become apparent: standard living creatures would just need to rest a few minutes to recover their composure, catch their breath and go back up to full HP (maybe minus a few HP to account for scratches and bruises), while creatures with physical APA would take much longer to heal unless they received magical healing or repair.

Perhaps physical APA cretures could also be given the right flavour by making them suffer a small to-hit/move/AC and/or other penalty as they get down to their last 10/20/30% or so HP. This would represent the fact that they're taking actual physical punishment. As compensation (because we'd need to make sure they don't move down a CR or two) we could give them milder pwnage tables to represent the fact that these things are bloody tough in terms of the raw damage they can absorb. For example, scoring a 5 on the normal slashing table might mean your opponent's arm comes off and he's bleeding and freaking out, but scoring a 5 against a physical APA creature might mean that his arm/branch/appendage has come off, but he's not especially bothered by that fact: no bleeding, no morale failure or to-hit penalty--he just can't do anything that involves using that arm/appendage. That would help to give PCs the feeling that 'you're going to have to literally hack this thing apart to stop it.' The trick would be balancing the penalties for getting reduced to low HP against the reduced effects of being pwned.

Uh oh. To-hit penalties, physical APA creatures vs. normal APA types, healing APAs and not healing APAs.

Too complicated! Abandon ship!

 

[the_bruiser]

Hit Points

The thing that's always gotten me about ANY escalating hit point system is the aspect of healing - why should you need to heal your 'skill'? I can see how someone really tough can withstand more damage, but for it to take 20x the healing to 'fix' a high-level fighter compared to a commoner that are 'equally' hurt has always seemed weird. This is one of the reasons I really like the core concept of grim & gritty.

 

[1 hp]

The thing that's always gotten me about ANY escalating hit point system is the aspect of healing - why should you need to heal your 'skill'? I can see how someone really tough can withstand more damage, but for it to take 20x the healing to 'fix' a high-level fighter compared to a commoner that are 'equally' hurt has always seemed weird. This is one of the reasons I really like the core concept of grim & gritty.

I know what you mean. One solution might be to have only ONE healing spell. It would be a high-level spell, like 4th or 5th. This healing spell would heal 1d8 times the recipient's level, +1 hp per cleric level. So an injured Fighter of 12th level would heal for 12d8 + something.

Hey, that's a pretty cool idea! Somebody tell the 4th Edition crew! STAT!