What if? (HP thread)

[Tovec]

I've never encountered the issue with the whole "you are fine and suddenly you are dead/dying" that keeps being raised. I know that IS what the HP do but honestly in any fight I've ever been in it has never really come up. I've never (as a player or DM) been like "but I was fine last round and now I'm dying, what is that" .. I've been more like "I was able to fight next round and we had a chance, now I'm dying and we are probably going to lose" but that is an entirely different can of worms.

Can someone explain to me why is it a GOOD thing that you (after say 1/2 HP) have status effects that limit your abilities? Why do we want this? I would much rather be able to keep fighting as long as possible. Numerous characters have picked up the diehard feat for this reason.

As far as representing the inability to fight. We HAVE had fights where we go from still standing to dead/dying but that is a feature not a problem with the system. I had a character who was shot full of magic missiles and for the rest of the fight I hid behind a corner because I had approx 2 HP left and didn't want to die. Did that hamper my ability to fight? Yes. Did I need a mechanic to do it? No. Knowing my HP are low is enough to keep me from being in the front line, unless I have to. In a fight vs. a beholder our best chance of killing it went out the window as it turned that character to stone. Did we need advanced hit locations? No, he was stone.

I'm just trying to see the appeal and reason for this. As I said before, it is certainly an issue when someone feels they can jump off a cliff and survive with little injuries, and (as BryonD said) 4e made people realize the problems with HP when they introduced healing surges. Personally my problem is suddenly you have a LOT more and more ways to replenish them.

But please explain to me why this feature has suddenly turned into a bug in the past few years?

 

[TimA]

Personally i would solve the HP "bug" but giving away many fewer HP as players leveled up. Start out with Con=HP add a static 1-4 HP per level and your done with those numbers.

If you want you can have 0 HP mean your out of stamina, luck, whatever by having a small critical hit chart that only comes into play once a character is at 0 HP. Because thats when you start really getting tagged.

You could have every hit after that inflict a more serious category of wound until death is reached. You could for instance have 4 levels of wounds. 1st level leg hit -5ft speed -2 init,
1st level arm hit -2 to STR for attacks.
1st level head hit -2 AC, -2 Init, (your dazed and easier to hit)

Increase it every level until you die at your 4th hit, or 5th hit or whatever level you think is appropriate for something like a beheading, stab through the heart or limb chopping off-ness (couldnt think of the word)

Its easy enough, gives you the death spiral effect people want from real wounds but it doesnt take effect until you would normally be out cold and totally helpless anyway. So if anyone whines about it just tell them

"okay your right, the death spiral sucks. We'll take that rule out for you. Since your at 0HP you fall down and begin bleeding to death, happy? Next players turn"

And the problem is solved for everyone. We get a gritty game with specific semi-realistic wounding and players who want HP to be heroic plot armor can fall down and die at 0HP like they want to. Everyones happy and the game works for everyone at the same table.

 

[Andor]

But please explain to me why this feature has suddenly turned into a bug in the past few years?

It hasn't. I've been having these conversation since before the web existed. Seriously.

The problem is this: People want to be able to imagine the events we portray in the game are "real" on some level. We want verisimilitude, a sense that the reality as our character experience it is in someways related to our own.

So. The trouble with this is that our character frequently get stuck with sharp pointy objects, and we somehow get the nagging sense that an arrow to the knee should slow you down.
So then there is a desire to portray that "Ouch" effect within the rules framework of the game.

Now, the problem with that is that D&D damage is non-specific and therefore tricky to model. And in reality people have taken mortal wounds and fought on with minimal impairment, adrenaline is an amazing thing. OTOH we can watch any sports game an watch an exceptional athlete, hopped up on adrenaline and exquisitely trained and conditioned, pull something and collapse screaming to the ground even though his injury is unlikely to actually cause death before scenesence.

So the tension between these two conflicting (but both true) bits of knowledge boils over into the interminable HP meaning wars. And nothing is so sure to trigger a renewal of tensions as the release of a new system, with the faint hope that somehow this time we'll get it right, even though we have no idea what "right" actually means in this case.

 

[am181d]

I think the way that to hit, damage, and hit points are handled in D&D is stupid in general, but that the stupidness is pretty integral to the brand at this point.

Nobody would build a system like that today, but because it's super old it's OK.

And I mean all of that in the nicest possible way.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I think the way that to hit, damage, and hit points are handled in D&D is stupid in general, but that the stupidness is pretty integral to the brand at this point.

Nobody would build a system like that today, but because it's super old it's OK.

And I mean all of that in the nicest possible way.

How would you build a system from scratch, ooi?
Human health is a rather complex model..

 

[Guest 85555]

Given their design goals i dont think further innovation here is going to help (nothing wrong with the mechanic you propose in itself but i sense more changes to HP could serve to fragment the base yet again). My guess isthey either have to reconcile 4E and pre 4Ehealing (in a way that both sides can accept) or they need to seperate them out through optional modules.

 

[Dausuul]

So with a new edition around the bend the HP wars have boiled up again, like an army of the undead bursting forth to ravage the lands ... again...

So. It seem to me that most of the issues with HP as damage revolve around the fact that D&D does not feature impairment, instead you fight in at full strength and then you die. Depending in the edition you might have some rounds of unconciousness before death or a narrow window at 0 hp where you are down but not out.

Depending on your point of view, that may be an issue with hit points, but it's not the cause of the hit point wars. The central issue of the hit point wars is how you get them back.

On the 3E/Pathfinder side, the hit point wars were sparked by the lack of long-term hit point loss in 4E, and the continuation of old terminology ("healing," "damage," et cetera) into a system where the inappropriateness of that terminology is thrown into sharp relief. Hit points have always required a fair bit of not-thinking-about-it-too-hard, but the amount required went up substantially in 4E.

On the 4E side, the hit point wars began with the desire to get away from cleric-dependence and to have the party recover some (most) of its resources after combat.

I suspect D&DN is going to punt this into an optional module; you can either have 3E-style hit point recovery, or 4E-style. This is all very well if you're firmly on one side or the other. Me, I'm in both camps--I approve of the goals of the 4E system but don't like how 4E implemented them. Sadly, I don't think D&DN is going to have a "both at once" solution, but here's hoping.