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

[Garthanos]

Nope, wasn't me.... Which I guess is where the confusion in your response to me lies. No worries.

Ah you were taking off of my comment about hit points not doing that (of someone else's complaint) with a segway about the new rule that can sort of get the effect if not the exactitude, and sort of takes off of Gygaxian things get worse when the various defenses are depleted at zero rules.... sorry for the confusion.

 

[RangerWickett]

In brief, my preference would be for a system where:

I. You have Hit Points, which represents your ability to keep an attack that hits you from causing a major wound. Any 'hit' makes contact and hurts, but you aren't debilitated. When you run out of HP, you are helpless but conscious. The only actions you can take are to croak out a few words or crawl 5 feet.

II. Critical hits do no extra damage, but instead cause some sort of debilitation. My preference is a list of four options.
--A. Bleed. The character loses HP equal to its level at the end of its turn. If it's at 0 HP, each minute it makes a DC 5 flat save or die. If the attack was with a piercing weapon, increase the save DC to 10.
--B. Daze. The character loses their action and must make a DC 5 flat save at the end of the turn to end the condition. If the attack was with a bludgeoning weapon, increase the DC to 10.
--C. Dent. The attacker damages an object the character was wearing or wielding. Broken weapons count as improvised clubs. Broken armor provides 4 less AC.
--D. Wound. Here we get a bit complicated. There are light wounds and serious wounds; if the target has at least 1 HP after the damage from the crit, it's light and lasts until they take a short rest, but if they have 0 HP it's serious and is permanent until magically healed. Roll a d6 to determine a location. If the attack was with a slashing weapon, roll twice and pick your preferred location.
----1. Eye. Blind for one round, thereafter disadvantage on ranged attack rolls and Perception.
----2. Mouth. Cannot bite or talk at all for one round. Thereafter can only speak at a raspy whisper.
----3. Primary arm. Drop anything held. Thereafter cannot attack with limb or use it to manipulate objects.
----4. Secondary arm. Ditto.
----5. Chest. At the end of any turn you take an action, gain a level of exhaustion. If you take no action on your turn, at the end of the turn exhaustion from this wound goes away.
----6. Leg. Fall prone. Thereafter, it moves at half speed, and whenever it takes damage it falls prone.

III. You regain HP through hit dice and long rests. A 1st level cure wounds spell cures a light wound. A 3rd level cure wounds spell cures a serious one.

 

[Bohandas]

It seems to me that the best thing to do would be to play high level characters as (depending on the desired tone) either Rasputin of the Black Knight

 

[Lanefan]

A few areas that I would consider:

1) 1st level hit points are too low and its neither fun nor realistic.

Relevant statistics: the LD50 for falling is 48 feet (even for toddlers). The average number of 9mm gunshots to stop someone is 2.45.

It is often much harder to kill average people than most people think.

So, it's not just first level characters that are too low but commoners and peasants as well. Interesting take.

The tricky bit is that hit points also serve another purpose: as a comparative measure of toughness and resilience between one monster/creature and another. The upshot here is if you give humans some more h.p. to reflect the concerns you note above, you then have to add hit points a corresponding ratio to everything else, to keep the comparison valid.

End result is the little creatures would become weaker but the bigger creatures could see their hit point numbers go through the roof. As hit point bloat is already a problem, does this help anything?

2) There are areas in 5e where the hit point system feels remarkably inconsistent such as:

Falling damage being limited to 20d6. This feels like a hold over from earlier editions when 20d6 (70 points average) was more than most high level characters hit points.

No edition has ever got falling damage anywhere close to right; 5e's just continuing the trend.

The damage bonus for wearing a girdle of storm giant strength is less than the damage bonus for a great weapon master "power attack". That just doesn't feel right.

Doesn't sound right, that's for sure. However, given the way the game design has gone, you'd probably get more bang for your buck with a Girdle of Quicksilver Dexterity that had the same effect on your Dex score.......

 

[Lanefan]

In brief, my preference would be for a system where:

I. You have Hit Points, which represents your ability to keep an attack that hits you from causing a major wound. Any 'hit' makes contact and hurts, but you aren't debilitated. When you run out of HP, you are helpless but conscious. The only actions you can take are to croak out a few words or crawl 5 feet.

II. Critical hits do no extra damage, but instead cause some sort of debilitation. My preference is a list of four options.
--A. Bleed. The character loses HP equal to its level at the end of its turn. If it's at 0 HP, each minute it makes a DC 5 flat save or die. If the attack was with a piercing weapon, increase the save DC to 10.
--B. Daze. The character loses their action and must make a DC 5 flat save at the end of the turn to end the condition. If the attack was with a bludgeoning weapon, increase the DC to 10.
--C. Dent. The attacker damages an object the character was wearing or wielding. Broken weapons count as improvised clubs. Broken armor provides 4 less AC.
--D. Wound. Here we get a bit complicated. There are light wounds and serious wounds; if the target has at least 1 HP after the damage from the crit, it's light and lasts until they take a short rest, but if they have 0 HP it's serious and is permanent until magically healed. Roll a d6 to determine a location. If the attack was with a slashing weapon, roll twice and pick your preferred location.
----1. Eye. Blind for one round, thereafter disadvantage on ranged attack rolls and Perception.
----2. Mouth. Cannot bite or talk at all for one round. Thereafter can only speak at a raspy whisper.
----3. Primary arm. Drop anything held. Thereafter cannot attack with limb or use it to manipulate objects.
----4. Secondary arm. Ditto.
----5. Chest. At the end of any turn you take an action, gain a level of exhaustion. If you take no action on your turn, at the end of the turn exhaustion from this wound goes away.
----6. Leg. Fall prone. Thereafter, it moves at half speed, and whenever it takes damage it falls prone.

III. You regain HP through hit dice and long rests. A 1st level cure wounds spell cures a light wound. A 3rd level cure wounds spell cures a serious one.

On a quick read, this says you flat out can't kill anyone without scoring at least one "bleed" critical. Intentional?

There's also no provision anywhere for going unconscious without dying. Also intentional?

And my inner edit-against-rules-lawyers instinct pulled this: reading it strictly as written, this also means death from hit point damage caused by your environment e.g. lava or freezing or falling becomes impossible: because the environment doesn't roll to hit it therefore can't critical on you, and when you run out of hit points otherwise you're still (according to clause I.) conscious but helpless (and can crawl 5' per round) - the only way you can die here is via a "bleed" critical.

 

[snickersnax]

So, it's not just first level characters that are too low but commoners and peasants as well. Interesting take.

The tricky bit is that hit points also serve another purpose: as a comparative measure of toughness and resilience between one monster/creature and another. The upshot here is if you give humans some more h.p. to reflect the concerns you note above, you then have to add hit points a corresponding ratio to everything else, to keep the comparison valid.

End result is the little creatures would become weaker but the bigger creatures could see their hit point numbers go through the roof. As hit point bloat is already a problem, does this help anything?

Well most, basic humanoid NPC stats are for either 2 or 3 HD already, so all this does is bring NPC and PC stats more closely aligned with no significant increase in complexity.

If starting PCs had 3 HD and level 20 PCs had 22 HD, now instead of a x20 increase in hit points from levels 1 to 20, it would be a bit over x7 increase. This makes hit points feel better IMO.

Other monsters don't really require a rebalancing except maybe beasts. They could probably use an extra 1 or 2 HD.

 

[snickersnax]

In brief, my preference would be for a system where:

I. You have Hit Points, which represents your ability to keep an attack that hits you from causing a major wound. Any 'hit' makes contact and hurts, but you aren't debilitated. When you run out of HP, you are helpless but conscious. The only actions you can take are to croak out a few words or crawl 5 feet.

II. Critical hits do no extra damage, but instead cause some sort of debilitation. My preference is a list of four options.
--A. Bleed. The character loses HP equal to its level at the end of its turn. If it's at 0 HP, each minute it makes a DC 5 flat save or die. If the attack was with a piercing weapon, increase the save DC to 10.
--B. Daze. The character loses their action and must make a DC 5 flat save at the end of the turn to end the condition. If the attack was with a bludgeoning weapon, increase the DC to 10.
--C. Dent. The attacker damages an object the character was wearing or wielding. Broken weapons count as improvised clubs. Broken armor provides 4 less AC.
--D. Wound. Here we get a bit complicated. There are light wounds and serious wounds; if the target has at least 1 HP after the damage from the crit, it's light and lasts until they take a short rest, but if they have 0 HP it's serious and is permanent until magically healed. Roll a d6 to determine a location. If the attack was with a slashing weapon, roll twice and pick your preferred location.
----1. Eye. Blind for one round, thereafter disadvantage on ranged attack rolls and Perception.
----2. Mouth. Cannot bite or talk at all for one round. Thereafter can only speak at a raspy whisper.
----3. Primary arm. Drop anything held. Thereafter cannot attack with limb or use it to manipulate objects.
----4. Secondary arm. Ditto.
----5. Chest. At the end of any turn you take an action, gain a level of exhaustion. If you take no action on your turn, at the end of the turn exhaustion from this wound goes away.
----6. Leg. Fall prone. Thereafter, it moves at half speed, and whenever it takes damage it falls prone.

III. You regain HP through hit dice and long rests. A 1st level cure wounds spell cures a light wound. A 3rd level cure wounds spell cures a serious one.

This thread has changed my thinking on hit points and I'm beginning to think that a system like you're suggesting is an awesome solution.

As an exercise in brainstorming I'd like to throw out these ideas.

1) I like it.

2) Critical hits do 2x dice damage, but one of the dice is maximized, and also impose +1 point of exhaustion.

Critical hits that reduce a creature to 0 hit points or critical hits on creatures that already have zero hit points result in rolling on the lingering injuries table DMG p 272.

Rolling a death save results in +1 point of exhaustion.

3) You gain HP through HD, long rests, healing feats and magic. The lingering injuries table in the DMG specifies the level of healing necessary to recover from each type of injury. Exhaustion is removed through long rests or through magical restoration.

 

[jayoungr]

You can have an "immersive" life system, but that has its own drawbacks, like...
Requiring a healbot! (snip) Complexity! (snip) PC fragility! (snip)

And let's not forget the semi-dreaded Death Spiral. It can work (and does, in plenty of systems)--but a lot of players won't find it fun.

 

[5ekyu]

This thread has changed my thinking on hit points and I'm beginning to think that a system like you're suggesting is an awesome solution.

As an exercise in brainstorming I'd like to throw out these ideas.

1) I like it.

2) Critical hits do 2x dice damage, but one of the dice is maximized, and also impose +1 point of exhaustion.

Critical hits that reduce a creature to 0 hit points or critical hits on creatures that already have zero hit points result in rolling on the lingering injuries table DMG p 272.

Rolling a death save results in +1 point of exhaustion.

3) You gain HP through HD, long rests, healing feats and magic. The lingering injuries table in the DMG specifies the level of healing necessary to recover from each type of injury. Exhaustion is removed through long rests or through magical restoration.

I myself strongly dislike piling mechanical options onto totally random dice bouncey - ie random natural rolls. It divorces those effects from "character skill" and buries it in luck only. Spells like Blight, have saves not attacks, may do massive damage more than a cantrip like firebolt but being saves - dont get crits. Characters built around "one big strike" like sneak attack, get fewer rolls and thus fewer crits. Etc.

Imo, take whatever fun, cool, dramatic, necessary trick or change and instead of wedding it to random bouncey bouncey "natural" on a subset of attacks, tie it to something more under the choice or design space of the charscter or player in some way.

Otherwise, IMO, its a bunch of turns hoping for a yahtzee roll.

 

[3catcircus]

I myself strongly dislike piling mechanical options onto totally random dice bouncey - ie random natural rolls. It divorces those effects from "character skill" and buries it in luck only. Spells like Blight, have saves not attacks, may do massive damage more than a cantrip like firebolt but being saves - dont get crits. Characters built around "one big strike" like sneak attack, get fewer rolls and thus fewer crits. Etc.

Imo, take whatever fun, cool, dramatic, necessary trick or change and instead of wedding it to random bouncey bouncey "natural" on a subset of attacks, tie it to something more under the choice or design space of the charscter or player in some way.

Otherwise, IMO, its a bunch of turns hoping for a yahtzee roll.

That's why I like a system that compares damage to different hit point threshold values to determine injuries. The randomness of the attack roll isn't in the equation.