D&D 5E The "everyone at full fighting ability at 1 hp" conundrum

[3catcircus]

I'm not following the point you are trying to make with this additional information?

I believe you intended to show that wounded people can continue fighting effectively. The CMoH citation doesn't mention the reality, just the heroics involved.

The additional info I cited clearly shows that his combat ability was definitely less effective after being wounded, and that his recovery wasnt the equivalent of a long rest in D&D - it took almost a year, with the modern equivalent of magical healing (intensive care, surgery, antibiotics, etc.)

 

[FrogReaver]

I believe you intended to show that wounded people can continue fighting effectively. The CMoH citation doesn't mention the reality, just the heroics involved.

The additional info I cited clearly shows that his combat ability was definitely less effective after being wounded, and that his recovery wasnt the equivalent of a long rest in D&D - it took almost a year, with the modern equivalent of magical healing (intensive care, surgery, antibiotics, etc.)

My point was nothing of the sort. It was that people find a way to succeed against all odds - that if a man can do all he Sgt. Benavidez did - then reality is more fantastic than the fiction you are proposing as best modeling reality - namely that all heroes will be immediately slain by a dragon - which before reading about Benavidez you would have surely said that his heroics must have been fictional and couldn't possibly be real - and yet he was real. In D&D terms, Benavidez is the kind of hero that would be standing up against that dragon fighting it and living to tell about it!

 

[Ratskinner]

My biggest gripe about HP is related to Healing. Heroes getting battered about for little impact is fine...just watch a marvel movie. My problem is when somebody casts a "healing" spell on a guy who...well, isn't wounded.

I've been mulling over a solution/response/houserule for this for some time. I think the next time I run 5e I will do something like this:

• HP are the mystical ability to keep functioning at near-full ability. Characters without positive HP totals cannot take Cast spells or make Attack or Dash actions.
• Whenever you get hit and still have positive HP. You are fine. You might be knocked back, whatever.
• If you run out of HP (or any other time, optionally), you will need to take Conditions or Wounds. Each Condition or Wound will "absorb" a certain amount of damage dealt (probably a small chart on the character sheet. (These values may be based off Con or total HP, haven't decided.) You have to narrate how the wound was inflicted by the attack, or it doesn't work. You may only take one per loss of HP.
• Magical healing doesn't recover normal HP, but it does remove Wounds and appropriate conditions...but only if it heals the same number of HP as the wound absorbed in the first place. I think it makes sense to add a few more spells keyed off of "inspiration" or whatever, to replace the in-combat "healing.
• If you take damage and cannot narrate taking a Condition or Wound or subtract it from a positive HP total, you die.
• Most monsters just die at 0hp. A few lietenants and big baddies might have some lesser-than-PC arrays of wounds and Conditions.

 

[LordEntrails]

President Reagan said of Sgt. Benavidez:
...

Their's a guy with a 1000 HP!

 

[3catcircus]

My point was nothing of the sort. It was that people find a way to succeed against all odds - that if a man can do all he Sgt. Benavidez did - then reality is more fantastic than the fiction you are proposing as best modeling reality - namely that all heroes will be immediately slain by a dragon - which before reading about Benavidez you would have surely said that his heroics must have been fictional and couldn't possibly be real - and yet he was real. In D&D terms, Benavidez is the kind of hero that would be standing up against that dragon fighting it and living to tell about it!

You clearly didn't understand my point. If hp represent anything other than actual physical health, it makes no difference if you have 10 hp or 100 hp - a giant dragon, a lava flow, falling 100 feet are going to kill most people most of the time, heroic or not.

We don't know just how each of the wounds in the MSgt Benavidez case actually did their damage. 28 shrapnel wounds, 7 gunshot wounds, and 2 bayonet wounds. How deep? What viral organs were hit? Any major veins or arteries hit? Any bones broken?
This represents typical physical wound damage from typical similar opponents. If the enemy had dropped an incendiary bomb directly on him (equivalent to Dragonfire), it is highly likely he'd be dead. Compare him to the pilot that was shot and killed in the CMoH citation. How do you reconcile the fact that he took a lot more damage, but it was all not instantly lethal and reduced his combat effectiveness while a similarly trained and experienced person (i.e. assume same number of hp) dies from a single wound.

Using hp as a binary "you're fine, now you're not) mechanic just doesn't do it for me.

I want mechanics that allow modeling of reduced combat effectiveness while still fighting, the possibility of going into shock or bleeding out, and the possibility of an instant kill, for every PC and NPC.

 

[FrogReaver]

You clearly didn't understand my point. If hp represent anything other than actual physical health, it makes no difference if you have 10 hp or 100 hp - a giant dragon, a lava flow, falling 100 feet are going to kill most people most of the time, heroic or not.

But we aren't talking about most people, most of the time. We are talking about the heroes. And the heroes find a way to live!

We don't know just how each of the wounds in the MSgt Benavidez case actually did their damage. 28 shrapnel wounds, 7 gunshot wounds, and 2 bayonet wounds. How deep? What viral organs were hit? Any major veins or arteries hit? Any bones broken?
This represents typical physical wound damage from typical similar opponents. If the enemy had dropped an incendiary bomb directly on him (equivalent to Dragonfire), it is highly likely he'd be dead. Compare him to the pilot that was shot and killed in the CMoH citation. How do you reconcile the fact that he took a lot more damage, but it was all not instantly lethal and reduced his combat effectiveness while a similarly trained and experienced person (i.e. assume same number of hp) dies from a single wound.

Wait - is your argument now that his injuries shouldn't have killed him? That those kinds of injures don't represent enough meat damage to actually down a person? Because if those kinds of injuries don't represent enough meat damage to down a person then we all have 1000 hp!

 

[5ekyu]

I read back in the early 90s some us government reports about how soldiers injured seem to be either near 95 to 100 percent function from a wound or completely out (I do not remember it mentioning much details about the type of wounds but it seemed like some were minor and some were major and it may not have made much difference but mainly people had all or nothing. (I suppose a randomly induced super fast death spiral might describe that realistically.

My personal favorite combat mechanism is the damage save, where a save is mad against a DC with a wide variety of results from ko to bruise and the PCs various defenses nd recovery options served to provide a fluid "endurance" in combat.

You could dial the severity and effects easily enough to suit your lethality and severity needs. Frequently, the most common effecrsxwould be short term conditions producing a found or two of vulnerability, tactical exposure, etc. Most often combat ended not by gradual wear down but by recognizing and exploiting those moments.

But then, it's a very different paradigm than the simpler "new player friendly" HP buffer.

 

[Garthanos]

My personal favorite combat mechanism is the damage save, where a save is mad against a DC with a wide variety of results from ko to bruise and the PCs various defenses nd recovery options served to provide a fluid "endurance" in combat.

The d20 game Mutants and mastermind comes to mind. Agreed damage saves are generally speaking not super newbie friendly ... one way to make them more heroic is as you say controlling the DCs of the saves but another would be allowing a tally of luck or hero points to auto save and the like.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

I find with the group I run, as the characters run out of hit points it changes what the players do. So even though the 'fighting ability' has not lessened in games terms, the players react differently - more conservatively - and this to me is a reduction in 'fighting ability'. It might help that resurrection/raising is difficult in the campaign and a failed death save can result in a role on the serious injury table in the DMG. Hit points don't all come back with a long rest - hit dice must be used for this. So I am comfortable will how it works.

 

[3catcircus]

But we aren't talking about most people, most of the time. We are talking about the heroes. And the heroes find a way to live!

I don't care how heroic a PC is, if they bite off more than they can chew, they are going to die.

Wait - is your argument now that his injuries shouldn't have killed him? That those kinds of injures don't represent enough meat damage to actually down a person? Because if those kinds of injuries don't represent enough meat damage to down a person then we all have 1000 hp!

No - my argument is that it isn't necessarily just the quantity of wounds (i.e. how many hp you've subtracted from your total) that may or may not kill someone; it is the severity of each wound and where it is located in combination with quantity of wounds that will do in a PC (e.g. taking 1 hp of damage is a scratch for one PC but a serious wound for another PC)

In the real-world example, each of the wounds suffered by MSgt Benavidez acted to reduce his combat effectiveness, but each was in and of itself not enough to kill him outright. The severity of each of his wounds wasn't enough to cause him to go into shock and fall over, but they did cause him to lose consciousness on several occasions. Had he not then gotten medical attention, he would have died.

Just hp alone doesn't fully represent the ability to take a massive amount of non-incapacitating wounds, a single wound that is instantly lethal, or a combination of wounds that will eventually prove lethal without medical intervention. An ancient red dragon does 26d6 fire damage. A failed saving throw is meant to indicate you didn't get out of the way, so you are taking the full blast. Best case, your DM rolls all ones. Worst-case all 6s. Average damage is 91 hp. That's enough to outright kill (again using averages for hp) a fighter up to 7th-8th level just as easily as a fighter of 1st level or a 0-level commoner. Why is that attack treated exactly the same as a series of physical attacks with a sword? They both subtract from hp and if you cross that 0 hp threshold, you suddenly go from 100% to 0% and go unconscious? Sure - a single attack that drops you to 0 hp (or even more all the way to negative max hp to kill you outright) is modeled just fine. A series of attacks that slowly subtracts your hp with no effect until you hit 0 hp and suddenly go unconscious makes no sense whatsoever.

People in fights (boxing, a street brawl, a firefight) become fatigued from normal exertion during the fight and the reduction in combat effectiveness is determined by how well conditioned you are (which determines how quickly you fatigue and to what level). Wounds increase that fatigue. More serious wounds can do things like sever ligaments and tendons, making it so you can't run or hold a weapon (reducing combat effectiveness). A head blow can cause a concussion. A kick to the groin is gonna stun any human male. All reducing your effectiveness in combat without ever going unconscious or being killed outright. Get slashed or shot multiple times in limbs or your abdomen (and not nicking a major artery or vein) and it might not cause you to be 0% effective right away, but as the fight continues, loss of blood will cause you to slow down, lose combat effectiveness, and eventually pass out and die of blood loss.

Basically - a series of wounds that doesn't cause significant blood loss or damage to your central nervous system will slowly lead to fatigue, shock, possible unconsciousness, partly offset by adrenaline levels, general physical fitness, and mental stamina. Cause significant blood loss or CNS damage and its a quick ticket to the dirt nap.

D&D doesn't model this well at all using just hp.

One can argue that cinematic combat is better. One can argue that "realistic" combat is better. There is no reason why you can't have both in the same rpg.

Another rpg system I'm familiar with uses hit points that are solely based upon their equivalent of STR and CON. You don't gain hp as you gain experience. They use multiples of this as a set of trip points. Do 1 hp of damage and you have a slight wounds. > x hp damage = moderate wound, etc. Each attack is compared to your hp, but hp do not get subtracted from your total. You have 10 hp (for arguments sake, the multiples are 1, 10, 20, 30 hp) and the orc's sword does 12 hp of damage? You have a moderate wound. Shot with a magic missile for 1 hp? Slight wound. Take another hit for 15 hp? You have a 2nd moderate wound which bumps you up to a serious wound.

Each wound level results in certain penalties to your actions, and the chance of going into shock or bleeding out. Of course, that other rpg uses hit locations as well, so a wound to your arm that would cause you to drop a weapon, could cause you to go into shock if hit in the chest, or go unconscious if hit in the head.

Still quite cinematic in play, but much more closely models the effects of wounds on your physical and mental state.