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

[DND_Reborn]

But would it be more fun? It could mimic the whole "the hero is dying but crawling to trying to X" where X is something heroic. I do know it would be more finicky. I'd have to do some real world play testing, and my current group isn't that much into combat.

Yeah, we also tried various house-rules that were more realistic, but ultimately they slowed things down too much or mucked them up so we dropped them. More realistic? Certainly! More fun? meh

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, we also tried various house-rules that were more realistic, but ultimately they slowed things down too much or mucked them up so we dropped them. More realistic? Certainly! More fun? meh

Which is why I came up with what my house rule could be; it's easy to say "this sucks" it's tough to come up with something better that would actually be more fun at the table.

I could maybe see a simplified version. When dying you can take a heroic chance. You can still take a single action on your turn with disadvantage or one quarter movement but you need to immediately make a death save. Interacting with items (i.e. pulling a potion) counts as an action. You must still make a death save at the end of your turn.

 

[Ratskinner]

One way of seeing it is that a healer can see you are spent and that includes those nebulous resources that are hit points even if others cannot. It's part of both the magical healing gift and the knack for leadership. So that Poets Priests and Politicians all do their thing (Bards, Clerics and Warlords)

As I understand it, it actually looks like a colored bar above my head. It looks long and green when I am fit and fresh, but shortens and changes to red as I get hit more.

I don't mind nebulous resources on the table/gamist level (I think Fate points work great). What I mind is when they inject a relatively unnecessary level of quantum superposition between the |fine>,|wounded>, |fatigued>, and |dispirited> character states in the fiction. Which is only resolved when somebody later tries to do something about the target character being "not 100%".

If a monster has just chewed up somebody's arm to the point of uselessness, you can't "encourage" them to keep swinging a sword. Nor, if someone is dispirited, can you spray it away with some bactine and a bandaid. (Exception for small children and band-aids with cartoon characters on.)

And honestly, I think the HP system makes our fights and narratives' more boring, Its just an accounting match to see who can get the other side's balance down to 0. (4e tried to fix this a bit, but accidentally changed the Dueling Accountancy into Dueling Accountancy - Now with added CHESS!) At how many HP can you narrate someone's arm getting lopped off? An eye taken out?

 

[Garthanos]

At how many HP can you narrate someone's arm getting lopped off? An eye taken out?

So D&D hit points do not do either of those effects for PCs I am picturing a lot of push back if you start deciding they do.

 

[Oofta]

As I understand it, it actually looks like a colored bar above my head. It looks long and green when I am fit and fresh, but shortens and changes to red as I get hit more.

I don't mind nebulous resources on the table/gamist level (I think Fate points work great). What I mind is when they inject a relatively unnecessary level of quantum superposition between the |fine>,|wounded>, |fatigued>, and |dispirited> character states in the fiction. Which is only resolved when somebody later tries to do something about the target character being "not 100%".

If a monster has just chewed up somebody's arm to the point of uselessness, you can't "encourage" them to keep swinging a sword. Nor, if someone is dispirited, can you spray it away with some bactine and a bandaid. (Exception for small children and band-aids with cartoon characters on.)

And honestly, I think the HP system makes our fights and narratives' more boring, Its just an accounting match to see who can get the other side's balance down to 0. (4e tried to fix this a bit, but accidentally changed the Dueling Accountancy into Dueling Accountancy - Now with added CHESS!) At how many HP can you narrate someone's arm getting lopped off? An eye taken out?

Having the possibility of "getting your arm chewed off" is fine if you almost never get into a fight. But in most D&D campaigns, you get into a lot of fights. Dozens if not hundreds over the course of a campaign. Sooner or later something really bad will happen to your PC unless you are never attacked.

If the game has options like "lose your arm" it grinds to a halt unless you have a source of constant regeneration. I had a DM for a short period of time that would do this. If your PC was critically hit he rolled a dice to determine what was incapacitated or lopped off. If it was your head you died.

It wasn't fun if you had a melee character and we quit playing with him shortly after.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So D&D hit points do not do either of those effects for PCs I am picturing a lot of push back if you start deciding they do.

Well, they can. In fact it is under the Combat Options section, "Injuries" on p. 272. We use them and our dragonborn as a beautiful scar over his left eye thanks to a critical hit. It is very dashing!

 

[Garthanos]

Well, they can. In fact it is under the Combat Options section, "Injuries" on p. 272. We use them and our dragonborn as a beautiful scar over his left eye thanks to a critical hit. It is very dashing!

Nifty so the fighters can be horribly mangled all the time now.. instead of just by a sword of sharpness.

But ofcourse that isnt hit points its a critical hit.

 

[Lanefan]

Actually, in 1E and 2E, 0 hp = death. It was optional, but normally highly recommended, to allow PCs to go to -10 before they died, losing 1 hp / round IIRC.

I could be wrong, but didn't 2e bake in the death-at-minus-10 rule?

In Basic and 0e death was at flat 0. 1e defaulted to death at 0 but Gygax offered a few alternatives, of which by far the most-used was death at -10.

The section on hp recovery (same page):

View attachment 114823

Yeah, 1e hit point recovery as written is too slow even for me; particularly when most of one's hit points are supposed to be luck, nicks, fatigue, etc. that should in theory come back fairly quickly (though not all in one night!)

It just makes a case for a body point/fatigue point split, is all.

I really disliked older editions that had death at -10 and house-ruled it when I ran my own games. Dying at a flat -10 was so arbitrary. What was so magical about that number? If I had two PCs, one with 5 HP and one with 100, the former pc for all intents and purposes had double their HP as a "buffer" before dying. A low level PC will be fighting monsters that will rarely kill them outright in one blow, even if they were already wounded. High level PCs? Get low on HP and any single attack could take you from perfectly fine to flat out dead.

The reason for the flat death-at-minus-10 was, as far as I can tell, to try to reflect that when it comes right down to it, each of our physical bodies can take about the same amount of actual wear and tear before falling apart; and once you were into negatives that bit of physical resilience was all you had left going for you.

It's yet another argument for a body-fatigue system. Negative points, and the first few positive points, are body points: harder to recover or cure and (once in negatives) giving significant penalties to what one can do and how effectively one can do it.

For what it's worth, I extend the same courtesy to most living monsters, villains and opponents: they too die at a minus number vaguely determined by their size and type: a simple Kobold might die at -6 while you might have to take a Cloud Giant or massive Dragon down to -20 or -25 before finally finishing it off. The default is -10. Undead and some jellies and oozes are destroyed at 0.

That said, all creatures suffer penalties to just about everything if below 0, and also have to make checks to remain conscious.

 

[Garthanos]

Arguably a critical hit system inducing explicit injury independent of the damage roll is more evidence hit points are not meant in most contexts to be equated with wounds of any measure which is consistent with the rest of the system.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But simple HP persists from game to game, even lots and lots of electronic games use simple HP.

I don't know if anyone's played Overwatch, but that's my immediate example of a video game that uses simple HP to great success. It's a game where you can get shot, and still move around at full capability, and nobody can try to claim that you didn't actually get hit, but it still feels like you're actually getting hurt. That level of abstraction isn't uncommon in video games.

I don't see why people can't apply that exact same level of disbelief to an RPG. It may not be perfectly realistic, but it's certainly close enough for our purposes.