One Hit Die per Character. Ever.

[GMMichael]

I'm reading Clash of Kings, and poor Jon Snow is about to surprise some wildlings on a mountain. At night, in the cold. WITHOUT ARMOR.

Now this is no big deal for a D&D character. "Hmmph. I have 37 hit points, I can take a hit or two." But Jon Snow (and his buddy Stonesnake) has one hit die. If he gets stabbed, it could be curtains.

So how do you run an encounter, much less a campaign, when the characters have only one hit die? Is it plausible? What does character progression look like, if you take extra hit dice out of the question?

 

[fjw70]

If you want to only give one hit die to everyone then the combat system needs to focus on avoiding damage (I.e. Dodges and parties).

 

[Frostmarrow]

I'm reading Clash of Kings, and poor Jon Snow is about to surprise some wildlings on a mountain. At night, in the cold. WITHOUT ARMOR.

Now this is no big deal for a D&D character. "Hmmph. I have 37 hit points, I can take a hit or two." But Jon Snow (and his buddy Stonesnake) has one hit die. If he gets stabbed, it could be curtains.

So how do you run an encounter, much less a campaign, when the characters have only one hit die? Is it plausible? What does character progression look like, if you take extra hit dice out of the question?

My solution is to look at hit points as "hero points" that ablatively protect the character until the one last hit that sends the character to zero hit points. This first and last actual hit connects and causes a wound. Hits that merely reduce hit points aren't actual hits. Such hits are well aimed attacks that might have hit home yet only causing swooshing sounds and footwork. (Interestingly you can describe the characteristics of the wound if you remember what got you there.)

37 swoosh 24 swoosh 20 swoosh 9! swoosh 5 SMACK 0 (blunt force trauma to the head).

Running combat where characters only have 6 hit points works better if you are a fantasy writer with no qualms about killing characters. No qualms whatsoever.

 

[Nagol]

PCs have less ablative defence which means adventure design cannot be "run through this gauntlet and then get to the real fight!"


The table has a few options:

• Adventures become more like guerilla warfare: "How can we affect the situation in a way disproportionate from our investment?" or heist: "How can we accomplish this without detection/combat?"
• The table realises survival is unlikely and unpredictable and accepts high turnover.
• The table goes with a more authorship style where losing means something other than death: more capture, loss of valuable equipment, intelligence, whatever.

 

[Celebrim]

Answer: Jon Snow and the rest of the Game of Thrones is resolved using a heroic FRPG system, but it isn't D&D.

For all the gore, sex, and grit of Game of Thrones, it's clearly not brutally realistic. Their are mooks and their are high level characters capable of dispatching a half dozen or a dozen foes single handedly without breaking too much of a sweat. In D&D terms, the power level is around the E6 level (ei. Gandalf is a 6th level Wizard), but its clearly not a world of single hit die if by single hit die we mean 'everyone is first level'. But cinematically, the characters don't have a lot of hit points - they just don't get hit.

GURPS is an example of a single hit die based system. Starting characters almost never increase their hit points, and no character is really ever more than one critical hit away from being incapacitated. However, a character with a high level of active defense can be virtually unassailable by less heroic characters. One of the outcomes of this is that GURPS is very unpredictable. You don't know who is going to die next, because its really just a matter of a bad die roll or two and any hero can go down to anything. From the stand point of game ability, I ultimately couldn't handle that as a GM, but in terms of adherence to the conventions of the setting, I think the rules set you'd game Game of Thrones in would be more like GURPS than D&D. However, E6 D&D would do a pretty good job of handling the setting, particularly if assume most characters in the story were no more than 2nd level of so.

 

[RangerWickett]

Wait, so only one hit die per character means that when we level up, we add a new character to the party. I'm a 5th level fighter, so I get to play five guys who each have 1 hit die? That'd kind of be an interesting mechanic for a large mercenary company or something.

 

[TwoSix]

Wait, so only one hit die per character means that when we level up, we add a new character to the party. I'm a 5th level fighter, so I get to play five guys who each have 1 hit die? That'd kind of be an interesting mechanic for a large mercenary company or something.

That's some serious iterative attack progression.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I'm reading Clash of Kings, and poor Jon Snow is about to surprise some wildlings on a mountain. At night, in the cold. WITHOUT ARMOR.

Now this is no big deal for a D&D character. "Hmmph. I have 37 hit points, I can take a hit or two." But Jon Snow (and his buddy Stonesnake) has one hit die. If he gets stabbed, it could be curtains.

So how do you run an encounter, much less a campaign, when the characters have only one hit die? Is it plausible? What does character progression look like, if you take extra hit dice out of the question?

Game of Thrones is (despite the name) not a game. It's more realistic than D&D, though obviously less realistic than real life. Playing exactly like the books would be boring. Anytime a PC got into a fight, there would be weeks of "hospitalization", only without modern medicine you need to roll versus gangrene.

 

[TerraDave]

Lots of games besides D&D allow experienced characters to be dropped with a hit or two. Including, presumably, the actual GoT/SoF&I RPG.

But, back to the OP. You would need to have AC/Def get better through time, maybe some damage reduction defense (through armor for example), which can make characters more resilient and can "feel" more realistic, and various recovery mechanics both between and in combat to allow wounds to be shrugged off or ignored, which is probably genre consistent. A nasty critical system, on top of that, would also seem to fit and allow for longer lasting injuries.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I've played the ASoI&F RPG, two sessions, and PCs don't have low hit points. PCs are actually incredibly tough. (I've read but not played the d20 version of the game. It gives lots of hit points too.)

My own PC was ambushed by a knife-wielder, and took 2 damage (1 subtracted from armor). The DM said all assassins should use two-handed weapons instead as they might actually kill someone. (My PC was pretty much a wimp.)

Our best warrior scrambled uphill in a mountainous setting against a swarm of bandits attacking us with crossbows. (We were a house sworn to the Lannisters, and they were trying to rob our tax shipment to the Lannisters, which meant there was no real option but to fight it out.) He tanked virtually all of the bandits himself, and ended up very nearly dead, with pretty much the maximum number of wounds and penalties a PC can take. Afterward we couldn't even move him for fear of death, at which point the realistic healing rules rendered one PC unplayable for a month in-game. (We ended up moving him anyway.)