Schrodinger's HP and Combat

[AbdulAlhazred]

First, let me preface this by saying I'm not going to argue either side for hit points, because that's pointless and I've made the huge majority of my Wisdom checks on EN World over the past 6+ months. But I had a question for you on how you'd handle something. This isn't a gotcha, but I'm curious what you'd do with it.

Maybe it's just my players, but I've had many healers (magical or otherwise) that inspect wounds (or ask for judgments of them) before healing. Say two PCs are down; which one looked like the worse wound? Was one stabbed multiple times, and the other knocked down with a club? Before I know if I need to use a spell slot on this guy, how bad is his wound? Like, is he bleeding to death, or does he just need to rest and walk it off?

Interesting... I will say this. I generally play with a very stable group of players, ones who have played RPGs forever, generally know D&D inside out, and whom I know are all mostly on the same page. I haven't fielded a question like that in a long time, at least not in a literal sense. Generally everyone knows the rules, their hit points, etc, so it would be much more informal, the healer player would simply inquire about the state of whichever character(s) was/were of concern and get a mechanical answer "Oh, I've got -3 hit points, if I can spend a surge I'll be fine, but I've failed a death save." etc. The healer might then say "well, he's lying on the ground bleeding, I'll hit him with a CLW!" etc.

These are questions I've gotten from players since they started playing and learning the rules. They eventually slowed with these questions as they learned the rules (and that "down" meant "bleeding to death" with nearly no exceptions), narrowing the possible narrative options. However, once I created my own RPG, I added mechanics that might down people for a variety of reasons (I added a "hit chart", people can go unconscious from taking too much damage while in armor, etc.), and the questions returned (since my mechanics allowed a broader selection of narratives to play out mechanically).

With that in mind, how would you reply to a player's questioning in D&D (not my RPG)? Like, if they said they wanted to inspect the wound, were trained in Heal, and got a high roll. Depending on the severity and specifications, they'll decide whether or not to use the spell (slot / power). This player is a new player (so asking questions like this is natural for him), but he's smart (and gets saving resources if possible) and a good RPer (his god would only approve of him healing this downed person in a fringe sense; say it's an enemy that he might need to heal).

Just curious how you'd handle that kind of thing (since the large majority of players have engaged in it). Thanks in advance

Well, I'd first of all make sure to convey the mechanics of the situation if there's any uncertainty about that in anyone's mind. The player is then free to narrate things as he sees fit pretty much. He could say "Oh, the fighter is down and bleeding, but when I wake him up and whisper some words of encouragement in his ear he gathers his internal reserves and staggers to his feet, determined not to be defeated" in which case the character is still bearing the signs of his ordeal, but clearly -regardless of any previous narration- he's not spurting blood out of arteries, etc. However, he IS now down an HS (or in my homebrew sysem a vitality point), so his physical condition IS lessened, he's just no longer about to collapse and stop fighting.

If the player was a cleric and wanted to use a Healing Word, well, then no doubt he would -presumably- narrate that as knitting back together some flesh and bone, and then the character again gets up and continues. As I said before, its the heat of battle, so its extremely unlikely that anyone has the time to do a real diagnosis or even observe every single shot that people take. A round in 4e is only 6 seconds long after all, its not like you can do any meaningful triage in 6 seconds. Maybe in AD&D's 1 minute round you could perhaps accomplish SOME useful first aid, but not much.

Truthfully I've never (at least in my memory, things from the 70's get a bit hazy) run into a situation where a player was disturbed by the interaction of mechanics and narrative, at least not in that way. I've had players remark that 4e powers often both gave them a lot of narrative power, AND could require some cleverness to make sense of, or back in the day a few complaints about the realism level of various AD&D class features and such. I do recall the ancient debates about what hit points 'meant', but we all simply agreed they were a game construct and not very closely tied to reality, even back then. I really am playing with a lot of the same people nowadays too, so I don't claim to have much of a representative sample of D&Ders, though I've played with a fair number of different groups over the years.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Or (4), the event of hit point loss corresponds to serious injury, but the lost hit points themselves don't correspond to that injury, but rather to the ability to fight on.

On approach (4), which is closer to my preferred approach, the restoration of hit points by way of inspiration doesn't represent the injury being healed, but rather represents the injury ceasing to be a burden on fighting on - because the character has been inspired to fight on in spite of it.

How serious an injury can be, under approach (4), depends on how much fighting on despite the pain and debilitation you are prepared to allow in your fantasy RPG. In my own mind, broken limbs and punctured lungs are probably out, but broken fingers probably are OK, and cuts and bruises certainly are OK.

On this point I think I'm closer to AbdulAlhazred: I think of myself as valuing verisimilitude, but the drivers of that for me are about character motivation, a sense of mythic depth to the fantasy world, etc. (That's one reason I've never got into Forgotten Realms - for me, at least to the extent I've encountered it, it fails on both these points and hence fails my verisimilitude test.)

For me, the relationship between hit point loss/restoration and verisimilitude is also probably enhanced by my adoption of option 4 described above: I focus on hit point loss and gain as representing events (of being set back, and of overcoming that setback) rather than states (of being injured or uninjured).

Yeah, that about covers it. There's no reason to assume that an inspired fighter cannot just stand up and go on as if his injuries are trivial. If the GM is determined to narrate every hit as guts falling out on the floor then perhaps there's a stumbling block there, but personally I'm too interested in the overall action to labor each such point with an elaborate description unless its say a massive damage overkill that felled the character to -bloodied in one shot (in which case the rules already do what I want, no healing is going to help this guy).

This sort of heresy, on the other hand, needs to be stamped out right quick!

Although, truth be told, I would never run Rolemaster again - the mental overhead is too much, and it breaks down too badly around 15th to 20th level (depending on exactly what spell effects are in play). If I felt like running RM, I'd run HARP instead. But then if I was going to run HARP I'd run Burning Wheel instead, which is similarly complex but has nicer, and more tightly designed, bells and whistles to push play in the sort of direction I'm interested these days.

One attraction of RM, which BW replicates, is the intricate richness of character build (they have comparable, very lengthy, skill lists). For me this helps verisimilitude in non-gonzo fantasy. In gonzo fantasy (which is the category I put 4e into) nuances of character aren't that important, because characters are defined more by their mythic resonance and the mythic conflicts they find themselves in. But in non-gonzo fantasy, where the focus is more on personal or human-level situations, individuals nuances of character become more important to bring a character to life. And a detailed skill list really helps with that, for me: I can look at this PC and see the high ranks in (say) Falsehood and Insight, and note the absence of ranks in Etiquette and Pleasantries, and realise that the character is manipulative, scheming, but socially unpleasant; and then look at another character and see the high ranks in (say) Falsehood, Pleasantries and Seduction, and realise that the character is a manipulative charmer. Another character might have low ranks in Falsehood but high ranks in Negotiation and Leadership and that suggests a different personality again, perhaps a stalwart paladin or clerical type.

In 4e, with only Diplomacy and Bluff to cover all that field, these sorts of nuances disappear. Which is fine in a gonzo context - "gonzo" being pretty much the antithesis of "nuance" - but can lead to shallowness, and very same-y characters, in a less gonzo context. (And I would include classic low-to-mid level D&D - eg B/X and AD&D - as less gonzo, and hence suffering for this lack of nuance.)

Of course nuance can be introduced purely by roleplaying, but putting it into mechanics helps make it matter in play when play is adjudicated by reference to mechanics - which is another thing that BW has in common with RM, although BW's mechanics are much tighter, benefitting from 20 years of RPG design development between the two games!

Call me old-school, I don't find that the 19 skills of 4e are overly generalized. I mean you mention Diplomacy and Bluff, but there's also Insight, Intimidation, and Streetwise just to name some that fall within the limits of your example. A high Bluff, high Intimidation character without Diplomacy training is likely the pattern for your callous personality, etc.

Nor is every elaboration left only onto RP, there can be other subsystems besides skills. 4e has, and I have expounded on in my own play, the utility of the background system, which can both supply mechanical support for "My character knows how to play the fiddle" as well as add nuance to the character's personality.

I don't think detailed skill lists work well. They're not particularly realistic and they lead to other sins of design that more than compensate for any advantage IMHO. When you have 60 or more skills as RM does (and with expansions and etc its probably MUCH more) things just get ambiguous and confusing. Should I use gemology or assay to determine the price of the Great Carbuncle? Or should it be some other skill entirely? I tried running a BRP-based game a year or so ago and I just couldn't deal with it. Inevitably the PCs always lacked the one critical skill that would save the day at any given moment, or had 30% in it because they had 200 choices to spread points around. Other times we spent 20 minutes wrangling about which skill was appropriate. Maybe HARP/RM has a much more carefully designed skill list, but I don't remember it being so. 3e/d20 has the same flaw.

I much prefer a system where the mechanics give you basic 'bents' or 'knacks' like 'Athletic' or 'Diplomatic' which you can apply to problems and then the players can, if they like, carry the elaboration further and specify that they are for instance particularly good at swimming or etc. In my current system this sort of thing would be taken care of by a minor boon, you spent a week learning to swim, now you get +2. Granted, in a very sandboxy campaign you might get a group of players "camping" on their base and just spending years learning every obscure boon they can get for a GP price, but GMs have plenty of ways to combat THAT. It certainly suites my style of play anyhow.

So, no, I wouldn't recommend RM, personally. I don't think its a bad game, its mechanics work quite well for what they were designed to do, but IMHO it doesn't lead to greater verisimilitude, and whatever it does get you is at the cost of learning and wading through a system that earned the name 'Chartmaster' and 'Rollmaster' many times over!

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Really? I could have sworn that there was an option to fight defensively in AD&D, taking a fairly large penalty to hit and a level-based bonus to AC. Or maybe you had to spend your action to defend that way in AD&D... it's been a while.

It has indeed! But your memory hasn't failed; 2e AD&D does have an optional parry rule which requires a character to forfeit not only all attacks, but all movement as well, to get a half-level AC bonus!

In 3.x, parry skill (beyond just natural ability) was gated behind a feat that allowed you to trade BAB for AC (or various feats, class abilities, etc).

In any case, dodge/parry ability was also covered by Dex bonus to AC in every edition. Not to say that the 4E level-bonus to AC wasn't appreciated, but it was hardly the first mechanic to try and represent dodge/parry skill.

With 3.5, in particular, it was pretty easy to determine what every little mechanic was supposed to represent.

...However I've always felt that these various opt-in defense options and even Dex are woefully unsatisfying representations of basic dodge/parry skill. The Dex modifier to AC doesn't normally improve with level, so clearly it represents talent rather than skill. Which makes D&D combat look like a bunch of characters just standing in one place wailing on each other, aside from a bit of instinctive ducking and backpedaling.

Similarly, optional parry rules and buy-in feats that cap at +5 AC aren't at all satisfying representations of the basic defensive skills that any character ought to start learning in his first tavern brawl, and continue improving with every survived fight. I mean the feat in question is called Combat Expertise, and the parry rule is explicitly described as defense above and beyond the dodging and parrying that a character is supposedly doing normally. Which makes these options more like specialized skills that a character would have to learn from the Senpais of the Butterfly Wrist who practice their secret fighting techniques at the monastery at the top of Mount Bui Hoshan, or something.

Anyhow, you're right that the 4e level-based AC bonus wasn't the first attempted representation of dodge/parry skill...but it is the first and only one to pass my verisimilitude standards.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It has indeed! But your memory hasn't failed; 2e AD&D does have an optional parry rule which requires a character to forfeit not only all attacks, but all movement as well, to get a half-level AC bonus!

...

Anyhow, you're right that the 4e level-based AC bonus wasn't the first attempted representation of dodge/parry skill...but it is the first and only one to pass my verisimilitude standards.

I don't recall that anything existed previous to the rule cited in the 2e PHB, which is as you say optional. Not only is it optional, it doesn't really work very well! The problem being that fighters pretty much exist to be a wall. It barely matters if they can do damage or not past low levels, certainly not in most challenging fights. So having the optional parry rule really sucks for them, because they're stripped of most any INTERESTING function they have in many combats since almost universally the best strategy is to parry and let the wizards and clerics do the actual killing.

There were other issues. The Complete Fighter's Book had a whole OTHER way of handling parrying and defense, 2 of them in fact IIRC, which with the Combat Expertise NWP makes FOUR, and then there are other supplements like Weapons and Tactics which introduce even more ways. Honestly the interactions and issues with all these optional rules were great, and I've rarely seen a GM who even allowed any of them because they either add huge amounts to AC and slow the game down a lot or as I said above just denigrate the fighter's position in the world even more than it is already.

4e really has the first WORKABLE concept, and beyond that you can always select powers which further allow you to amplify your defense if you need.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Interesting... I will say this. I generally play with a very stable group of players, ones who have played RPGs forever, generally know D&D inside out, and whom I know are all mostly on the same page. I haven't fielded a question like that in a long time, at least not in a literal sense. Generally everyone knows the rules, their hit points, etc, so it would be much more informal, the healer player would simply inquire about the state of whichever character(s) was/were of concern and get a mechanical answer "Oh, I've got -3 hit points, if I can spend a surge I'll be fine, but I've failed a death save." etc. The healer might then say "well, he's lying on the ground bleeding, I'll hit him with a CLW!" etc.

This is more or less how my players handle the game when we run 4e. I usually don't address what state they're in when they go down, it's just assumed it's bad. And my players are familiar enough with the rules that they generally just address HPs amongst one another when making decisions. The Warpriest in my game might inquire about the state of NPCs before making decisions, but that's about it. So I get where you're at here.

Well, I'd first of all make sure to convey the mechanics of the situation if there's any uncertainty about that in anyone's mind. The player is then free to narrate things as he sees fit pretty much. He could say "Oh, the fighter is down and bleeding, but when I wake him up and whisper some words of encouragement in his ear he gathers his internal reserves and staggers to his feet, determined not to be defeated"

Interesting. What if the downed PC's player preferred a different narrative for his Fighter? Just curious; there's nothing wrong with your answer. I just engage in that level of narrative control for players in rule-intensive games like D&D.

I really am playing with a lot of the same people nowadays too, so I don't claim to have much of a representative sample of D&Ders, though I've played with a fair number of different groups over the years.

I'm playing with mostly the same players in my main group (my RPG, not 4e), and then my old group (10+ years playing together) mixed with two newer players (to playing with me, at least) in my 4e game (the Warpriest and Knight, from my other thread). So I understand.

Thanks for answering. It's pretty interesting.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think detailed skill lists work well. They're not particularly realistic and they lead to other sins of design that more than compensate for any advantage IMHO. When you have 60 or more skills as RM does (and with expansions and etc its probably MUCH more) things just get ambiguous and confusing. Should I use gemology or assay to determine the price of the Great Carbuncle? Or should it be some other skill entirely?

I agree this is an issue in RM, and its similar skill rules don't really help.

Burning Wheel, on the other hand, solves this quite well. It has very generous rules for combining skills that potentially overlap, together with advancement rules that mean players don't always want to roll the maximum possible number of dice. So the limits on the stacking that can result from generous similar skill rules are provided by an external system of incentives, rather than having to be inherent to the skill system itself.

This is just one reason why I think BW is a tighter design than HARP and RM.

I wouldn't recommend RM, personally. I don't think its a bad game, its mechanics work quite well for what they were designed to do, but IMHO it doesn't lead to greater verisimilitude

I think there are a number of posters on these boards who seem to be using D&D for goals that I think RM, HARP or RQ would serve better.

On the verisimilitude issue, I can only speak to my own experiences - I find that the classic skill-list based games produce more subtle character distinctions. Whether or not this matters to verisimilitude depends (in my experience, at least) on the broader context of the game. Certainly in 4e, having a skill system that distinguishes between Falsehood, Seduction and Soothing Platitudes (all different skills in BW) would detract rather than add. 4e is about characters who are broadly competent and who generally succeed. Stereotypes and broad brushstrokes are part of the game's strength.

BW is quite different: gritty, and about failure as much as success. This difference in tone and focus is supported (I think) by a different approach to character building.

RM wants, I think, to be more like BW, but suffers a lack of RPG design technology (eg there is no hint of fail forward, and if you try to introduce fail forward GMing techniques the system will push against you at nearly every point). So its grittiness can become more like the grittines of low-level Basic D&D - ludicrous body counts and paper cut-out characters. (But with a much more burdensome process for building a replacement character.) That has the potential to be fun in the right circumstances, but doesn't add to verisimilitude!

 

[Manbearcat]

Fate manages to combine an absence of hit points and narrative malleability and potentially a death spiral too.

You're one of the posters I mentioned upthread that unfortunately don't post enough anymore!

I'm a big fan of the stress track system of games like Fate and MHRP (et al). Not hit points aesthetically or functionally, but as [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] mentioned above, kinda sorta possesses some overlap with HP or surges as an abstract narrative vessel for "what's left in the tank." "What's left in the tank" then informing a fair stretch of the trajectory of subsequent play, only with different play procedures and guiding principles.

I feel like this is very close to my position on the subject. Narrative malleability is something that I want to minimize as much as possible in a system, at least to the extent that it doesn't significantly increase the workload required to model anything. To me, the whole point of having a system is that it converts the objective reality of any action into a mathematical language that we can process and then spits back the objective reality of the outcome of that action.

Although, in my case, my agenda is that "I attack with my sword, hit, and cause damage" should always mean "dude 1 successfully strikes 1 time with weapon and causes a lot of battering and bruising to dude 2 because thankfully dude 2 was wearing armor." As long as it always means something consistent and objective, then that's the important part.

And fortunately for me, 5E lets me do that fairly easily (thanks to default fast healing, lingering wounds triggered by critical hits, and the optional rule that any hit against an unarmored target is automatically a critical).

Like Balesir's waxing nostalgic above, your line of thinking used to inform my play agenda for about a decade-long-span. For several reasons (of which I'm sure you're probably aware of at least some if you've read any of my posts...so I won't waste time here elaborating) I've become dynamically opposed to a process-simulation mental framework and the systems, principles, and play procedures that propel a session or a campaign toward that very specific aesthetic.

This is one of the many reasons that I knew that I wasn't going to fly the 5e flag. Pseudo process-simulation informing a fair dose of action resolution and the requirement of heavy-handed GMing to play at all is literally the opposite of what I'm looking for. That being said, if it is going to be there, I want the system to be tightly focused on that style of play. If they would have done that absolutely awesome, I would have been an advocate. However, drifting the game with all kinds of (not particularly synthesized into a tight feedback system) narrative bits and bobs along with D&D legacy stuff (purple prose and intentionally vague rules text) really pushes me right out of the consumer base.

Do you use that to represent injuries other than disease in your games?

The track would attack contingent upon the fiction warranting it with the attendant mechanics being either (1) a Healing Surge being lost, (2) Skill Challenge failure, or (3) single-event Blooded + HP damage coupled with a failed Death Save. To that end, I've used it for:

1) Disease (mundane and magic)

2) Curses

3) Environmental exposure/exhaustion (specifically surviving being lost in a whiteout in the frozen tundra of the north or surviving being lost in a brutal, tropical swamp)

4) A very few times for Injury under very specific circumstances where the fiction warranted it (eg; going from above bloodied to negative HP in a fall and having a failed Death Save trigger an attack by the injury)

5) Horror in the face of Far Realm psychic keyword attacks.


Using the Disease Track for such things while simultaneously altering the Extended Rest schedule (eg a week or a fortnight) will dramatically affect 4e play (and do it simply).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Interesting. What if the downed PC's player preferred a different narrative for his Fighter? Just curious; there's nothing wrong with your answer. I just engage in that level of narrative control for players in rule-intensive games like D&D.

Well, I don't have a problem with the players deciding that there's something different going on, in the sense of "we are being more specific than the rules require at this point", but of course they will have to own that narrative. If the fighter wants to have the orc cut off his left hand, well, then its going to be off! Now, if he wants that to mean he cannot be inspired to get back up and fight, well, that's up to him too I guess. I haven't seen this kind of thing happen so its not like I really have a policy. In general I let my players do whatever. They've all DMed, so they know how it goes and we try to not make trouble for each other.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree this is an issue in RM, and its similar skill rules don't really help.

Burning Wheel, on the other hand, solves this quite well. It has very generous rules for combining skills that potentially overlap, together with advancement rules that mean players don't always want to roll the maximum possible number of dice. So the limits on the stacking that can result from generous similar skill rules are provided by an external system of incentives, rather than having to be inherent to the skill system itself.

This is just one reason why I think BW is a tighter design than HARP and RM.

I think there are a number of posters on these boards who seem to be using D&D for goals that I think RM, HARP or RQ would serve better.

Yeah, I'm definitely not qualified to comment on BW. I haven't PERSONALLY run into a 'long skill list' system that didn't have basically all the same ills, but I suppose one is possible? I just don't know.

I liked Traveler and in theory it has a long list kind of system, but in practice the designers stuck to a pretty limited ACTUAL list of skills, and then you could simply make up any others you needed (and sometimes various materials DID make one up, but they never seemed to keep some sort of canonical list). The result was generally in a given group there wasn't a plethora of obscure and ultra-niche skills.

On the verisimilitude issue, I can only speak to my own experiences - I find that the classic skill-list based games produce more subtle character distinctions. Whether or not this matters to verisimilitude depends (in my experience, at least) on the broader context of the game. Certainly in 4e, having a skill system that distinguishes between Falsehood, Seduction and Soothing Platitudes (all different skills in BW) would detract rather than add. 4e is about characters who are broadly competent and who generally succeed. Stereotypes and broad brushstrokes are part of the game's strength.

I think of it a bit differently. IME systems where you have a dozen skills each at some modest level of capability 2 more that you're really good at, and 7 that you have 8% on, doesn't make 'subtle character distinctions', it just makes your character's gist harder to understand and frankly you'd be better served by having just the 2 good skills, at least there's stark relief and focus. Now, maybe they could be 2 out of a long list, but that tends not to be workable because the party can then cover such a small footprint out of all the possible skills that might come into play.

I prefer to think that 4e is giving you the sweet spot between scattered and nothing at all. Beyond that I think that, while the developers may not have really outright intended this, its very easy to use background or just DM judgment to interpolate in other things. So if you want your farmer PC to know a bunch about cows then bam, he gets a +5 to know specifically about cow stuff, and you can just throw that in when it actually comes up, not bothering to have a Boviculture skill written on someone's sheet. I think the generalized short skill list really facilitates that.

BW is quite different: gritty, and about failure as much as success. This difference in tone and focus is supported (I think) by a different approach to character building.

RM wants, I think, to be more like BW, but suffers a lack of RPG design technology (eg there is no hint of fail forward, and if you try to introduce fail forward GMing techniques the system will push against you at nearly every point). So its grittiness can become more like the grittines of low-level Basic D&D - ludicrous body counts and paper cut-out characters. (But with a much more burdensome process for building a replacement character.) That has the potential to be fun in the right circumstances, but doesn't add to verisimilitude!

Yeah, that's generally my analysis of RM, it wants to be a system with a sophisticated resolution system. Its just that its a VERY old system, essentially most of it was designed around 1978, and they simply hadn't figured out things like 'fail forward' or even gradations of success at that point. TSR's Marvel Super Heroes game was one of the first to experiment with non-binary success mechanics, and that was around 1983 IIRC. Even then it totally lacked anything on the order of failing forward, increasing stakes, or anything like that. Now and then back in those days you'd see some commentary on GMing that would have an inkling of those sorts of techniques, but they just weren't fully formed ideas. Games like Gangster! were the first ones to START to work on it that I recall.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The track would attack contingent upon the fiction warranting it with the attendant mechanics being either (1) a Healing Surge being lost, (2) Skill Challenge failure, or (3) single-event Blooded + HP damage coupled with a failed Death Save. To that end, I've used it for:

1) Disease (mundane and magic)

2) Curses

3) Environmental exposure/exhaustion (specifically surviving being lost in a whiteout in the frozen tundra of the north or surviving being lost in a brutal, tropical swamp)

4) A very few times for Injury under very specific circumstances where the fiction warranted it (eg; going from above bloodied to negative HP in a fall and having a failed Death Save trigger an attack by the injury)

5) Horror in the face of Far Realm psychic keyword attacks.


Using the Disease Track for such things while simultaneously altering the Extended Rest schedule (eg a week or a fortnight) will dramatically affect 4e play (and do it simply).

The disease track is something I really want to experiment with in greater depth in my own hack. For various reasons I'm in a bit of a bind as to how to proceed with it due to certain design decisions which militate against numeric penalties as a standard part of the thing. I'll figure out something interesting though. I'd really like to see it become a whole other aspect of the game that the characters have to think about and deal with.

 

[Manbearcat]

The disease track is something I really want to experiment with in greater depth in my own hack. For various reasons I'm in a bit of a bind as to how to proceed with it due to certain design decisions which militate against numeric penalties as a standard part of the thing. I'll figure out something interesting though. I'd really like to see it become a whole other aspect of the game that the characters have to think about and deal with.

Another poster that I like to read that doesn't post enough anymore!

The great thing about 4e is that there are so many levers to pull and buttons to push. And its quite intuitive what the impact will be because the system is so mathematically transparent. If you just use healing surges and - 2 to various defenses or skills as punishment for the Disease Track, you're going to have exciting, scary results that don't bog the game down.

The greatest opportunities that 4e had (mechanically) to be even more awesomerererer was the default game being more Healing Surge intensive, a robust Healing Surge economy (perhaps whereby players can cash in a surge for a bonus but risk a system specified complication), and the xp system really pushing play toward risky, swashbuckley heroics (eg rewarding failure and stunting) and tightly coupled to players' themes, paragon paths, and epic destinies. The Quest system did a great job with the latter part, but it could have gone further.

There was also a large opportunity area to synch the mechanics (PC-build side and general resolution mechanics) of noncombat conflict resolution and combat resolution.

If I could have a D&D 4.5, those would be at the top of my wishlist.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Another poster that I like to read that doesn't post enough anymore!

The great thing about 4e is that there are so many levers to pull and buttons to push. And its quite intuitive what the impact will be because the system is so mathematically transparent. If you just use healing surges and - 2 to various defenses or skills as punishment for the Disease Track, you're going to have exciting, scary results that don't bog the game down.

The greatest opportunities that 4e had (mechanically) to be even more awesomerererer was the default game being more Healing Surge intensive, a robust Healing Surge economy (perhaps whereby players can cash in a surge for a bonus but risk a system specified complication), and the xp system really pushing play toward risky, swashbuckley heroics (eg rewarding failure and stunting) and tightly coupled to players' themes, paragon paths, and epic destinies. The Quest system did a great job with the latter part, but it could have gone further.

There was also a large opportunity area to synch the mechanics (PC-build side and general resolution mechanics) of noncombat conflict resolution and combat resolution.

If I could have a D&D 4.5, those would be at the top of my wishlist.

Yeah, I think we are very much on the same page my half-Urso-Feline friend (Is there a new race in this, lol). I've been recasting HS as 'Vitality Points' (well, maybe there's a better name, I'm not genius at naming things). The concept being they would be usable in much the same way APs are now, as well as filling the role of HS and perhaps as a recharge or 'dramatic power' charging mechanism. I haven't really tried to play test any of this concept yet, but I THINK it will probably work.

Naturally the disease track stuff would tie into that, so loss of points and loss of maximum points would be one of the consequences. I'm also kind of recasting disease/poison/curse all into a more magical kind of thing. After all, the distinctions between these things are really quite modern, and in fact somewhat arbitrary.

Oh, another one that never really got much use in 4e, but that had potential, was the artifact concordance system. Except it really should have been built as the general loyalty/relationship system. 4e entirely lacked such a system, formally. I never quite figured out why this wasn't at least mooted as one approach to certain specific PC/NPC relationships.

Another interesting thought is, if you have all these 'track-like' concepts in 4e (Skill Challenges, 'Afflictions', and Concordance/Bond) then why not cast them all in terms of a more general SC-like track mechanism? That would allow for a more generalized SC system and the other things would be basically instances of it. So curing a disease would be essentially a 'skill challenge' (I don't want to imply that the mechanics have to be exactly like 4e, though RC's version of SCs is probably not a bad jumping-off point). Building and maintaining a relationship with your henchman would likewise in effect be an SC (or maybe instances of it coming into play would be SC-like mechanics).

Hmmm, now I have to go put some of these thoughts into my notes... lol.

 

[chaochou]

The greatest opportunities that 4e had (mechanically) to be even more awesomerererer was the default game being more Healing Surge intensive, a robust Healing Surge economy (perhaps whereby players can cash in a surge for a bonus but risk a system specified complication), and the xp system really pushing play toward risky, swashbuckley heroics (eg rewarding failure and stunting) and tightly coupled to players' themes, paragon paths, and epic destinies.

Yeah, I think 'Hit Points' would have been better rebranded as 'Hero Points' and openly represented mojo and determination as much as anything physical. Not that it's a bad description in any edition, it's just that it would have sat within the relatively tight design of 4e pretty well and maybe opened up new avenues of use.

I've thought for a long time that if HP are to be defined using all kinds of mental abstracts (luck, determination, willpower etc) then things which affect those (failing a diplomacy roll, knocking a bucket into a well in an goblin infested ex-dwarven fortress) ought to reduce HP.

Just calling them Hero Points breaks that mental link between the need for physical impact (a 'hit') and, in my view, creates a tighter game.

Ahh well. It ain't happening, and I have plenty of games to play that work for me...

 

[Manbearcat]

Yeah, I think we are very much on the same page my half-Urso-Feline friend (Is there a new race in this, lol).

Another interesting thought is, if you have all these 'track-like' concepts in 4e (Skill Challenges, 'Afflictions', and Concordance/Bond) then why not cast them all in terms of a more general SC-like track mechanism? That would allow for a more generalized SC system and the other things would be basically instances of it. So curing a disease would be essentially a 'skill challenge' (I don't want to imply that the mechanics have to be exactly like 4e, though RC's version of SCs is probably not a bad jumping-off point). Building and maintaining a relationship with your henchman would likewise in effect be an SC (or maybe instances of it coming into play would be SC-like mechanics).

Hmmm, now I have to go put some of these thoughts into my notes... lol.

I think what you're describing in a lot of ways here is pretty close to Dungeon World...right down to the relationship with your henchmen/hirelings. If you haven't checked it out, I highly suggest it. I'd recommend anyone who loves 4e to play it. Given the genre interests you've expressed for your D&D, I think it would absolutely scratch a good part of your 4e itch. There is a lot of overlap in theme, play agenda, GMing principles and the techniques that guide play. Its just a more rules-lite, more tightly narrative designed system without the intense crunch of (super super super awesome) 4e tactical combat.

Yeah, I think 'Hit Points' would have been better rebranded as 'Hero Points' and openly represented mojo and determination as much as anything physical. Not that it's a bad description in any edition, it's just that it would have sat within the relatively tight design of 4e pretty well and maybe opened up new avenues of use.

I've thought for a long time that if HP are to be defined using all kinds of mental abstracts (luck, determination, willpower etc) then things which affect those (failing a diplomacy roll, knocking a bucket into a well in an goblin infested ex-dwarven fortress) ought to reduce HP.

Agreed. This is one of the reasons I love 4e's conflict resolution and healing surge system. Charging the PCs heroic mojo (heaing surges) when they fail a diplomacy check or knock a bucket down a well in goblin-infested ruins is a great feedback for the interests of the fiction itself and for the emotional provocation of your players.

Can you imagine how much grief and system incoherency we could have avoided if Hit Points would have just been outright called Hero Points (and surges Heroic Surges) and if Cure spells would have just been Restore Vitality (or something). Oh and if the "to hit" horse that somehow morphed into being literally "to hit this guy in the fiction" from "to hit target number" would have never gotten out of the barn.

Damn you "Hit" and "Cure" and "Wounds". Damn you straight to the 9 Hells.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think what you're describing in a lot of ways here is pretty close to Dungeon World...right down to the relationship with your henchmen/hirelings. If you haven't checked it out, I highly suggest it. I'd recommend anyone who loves 4e to play it. Given the genre interests you've expressed for your D&D, I think it would absolutely scratch a good part of your 4e itch. There is a lot of overlap in theme, play agenda, GMing principles and the techniques that guide play. Its just a more rules-lite, more tightly narrative designed system without the intense crunch of (super super super awesome) 4e tactical combat.

Oh, yeah, I've played some DW. I haven't had a chance to run it, we just never quite got a critical mass going for a longer running campaign. I like many things about DW, but it is a pretty niche game in some respects. Its very good at doing what it says, dungeon crawls. I don't think you cannot do other things, but it tends to be a game where PCs stick very much to their archetype. The other thing that held back playing it more was the sheer difficulty of breaking existing D&D players of their process-simulation mindset. I can teach someone new to RPGs to play DW, but it can be neigh impossible to teach someone that's played D&D for years. They understand the genre conventions, but that just gets in the way of grokking how utterly different the system really is from D&D and what their responsibilities are as a player in a DW game. In the couple groups we tried it with there were always 1 or 2 players that just couldn't make the leap.

Agreed. This is one of the reasons I love 4e's conflict resolution and healing surge system. Charging the PCs heroic mojo (heaing surges) when they fail a diplomacy check or knock a bucket down a well in goblin-infested ruins is a great feedback for the interests of the fiction itself and for the emotional provocation of your players.

Can you imagine how much grief and system incoherency we could have avoided if Hit Points would have just been outright called Hero Points (and surges Heroic Surges) and if Cure spells would have just been Restore Vitality (or something). Oh and if the "to hit" horse that somehow morphed into being literally "to hit this guy in the fiction" from "to hit target number" would have never gotten out of the barn.

Damn you "Hit" and "Cure" and "Wounds". Damn you straight to the 9 Hells.

Yeah, Gygax just didn't have the same agenda we do. For him it was enough to have a way of tracking wounds that was simple. I'm pretty sure it wasn't until much later that various issues and rationalizations happened.

In any case, I agree, maybe I should rename hit points, lol. I sort of informally renamed HS to 'Vitality', more because it can be used to enable some power uses and such things. It also ate action points, which seem redundant to me. In any case I like to simplify.

 

[D'karr]

Damn you "Hit" and "Cure" and "Wounds". Damn you straight to the 9 Hells.

Hit Points! To the last, I will grapple with thee... from Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

LOL! OK, so I guess I now MUST rename them hero points in my own hack... sigh, do you guys know how much work it is to find all those places and fix 'em? GRRRRRR. Oh, well, at least the acronym is the same!

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

LOL! OK, so I guess I now MUST rename them hero points in my own hack... sigh, do you guys know how much work it is to find all those places and fix 'em? GRRRRRR. Oh, well, at least the acronym is the same!

I think all the big word processor programs have find/replace functions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think all the big word processor programs have find/replace functions.

You can use a computer for writing? lol.

 

[HeinorNY]

DM: Well, either he hit you and wounded you or you dodged out of the way and became fatigued. We won't know which until we determine how you recover the HP...

Why can't inspiring words heal HPs lost by being wounded? Nowhere in the book it says that when a character recovers HPs it means his wounds just vanished.