Why Defenses (saves)?

[Frostmarrow]

I don't see how these aren't really compatible with defenses at least as they are in 4e -- as a sort of AC the creature needs to hit. But I certainly see the merit in saying "Anything bad that happens deals HP damage."

Good point! People, consider this part of the original idea.

 

[Fanaelialae]

You don't really need rules for this as i understand it, just let the players narrate how they finish off a creature. In 4e, you don't need to declare whether you're killing or subduing a creature until you deal the final blow. So it's not a stretch to say that instead of knocking the creature unconscious you might disarm him and hold your blade at his throat. That certainly saves a bit of time if your next step would be interrogating him.

The only situation your idea doesn't work is if you're applying a minor condition. It wouldn't make much sense if a creature were reduced to zero, dazed, and could continue fighting (albeit dazed). It also wouldn't make much sense to daze a creature that's dead or unconscious. So you still need a means to affect a creature while it is at positive hp. Otherwise, combat literally becomes a hit point slog-fest. IMO, combat becomes significantly less dynamic if conditions are merely finishers.


An approach that I was tinkering with a while back was a damage threshold system. Any damage below your threshold does not connect, and any conditions that attack would apply are lost. If an attack pierces the threshold, it inflicts some degree of physical harm (perhaps a small cut, or even a heavy blow taken on a shield that knocks the wind from you).

To use your example, if I have a threshold of 15, then a medusa's poison attack only inflicts hp damage if she deals 14 or less damage (it's merely fatigue from avoiding her snakes). If she deals 15 or more damage, I've been bitten and am actually poisoned.

 

[GSHamster]

I was wondering, if hit points are abstract why is there a need for defenses (saves)? Why not just add a tag to any damage and that tag only comes into play if the target is reduced to zero hit points?

Because the very point of the special attack is to avoid hit points.

It sets up an Alternate Win Condition for the fight.

Take the medusa, for example. The medusa has two paths to winning the fight. She can reduce your hp to zero. Or she can petrify you. If hp was the only thing that mattered, there would only be one path to winning the fight.

Ideally, the presence of multiple win conditions cause the fight to change. If the medusa can win by petrifying you, you have to avoid her gaze.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't see how these aren't really compatible with defenses at least as they are in 4e -- as a sort of AC the creature needs to hit. But I certainly see the merit in saying "Anything bad that happens deals HP damage."

Early 4E did exactly this. You had things like bard songs and fear spells dealing hit point damage.

They backed away from that in later 4E, for (I think) two reasons. The first is that it trashes immersion. Like it or not, most players have a firm idea what hit points represent--an idea that is reinforced by terminology throughout D&D, as well as decades of computer and console games. Instinctively, most folks assume hit point loss equals "something physically hurting me." The name itself implies as much. You don't lose hit points when the bad guys scare you or make you sad. You lose them when the bad guys hit you.

If you changed the name and associated concept, you could fix the immersion issue. But then you run into the other problem: It's boring. It makes combat feel like you're just grinding away the other guy's hit-point-equivalent until one of you reaches zero... because that's exactly what you're doing. Status effects and non-hit-point-based attacks create variety and challenges that are important to keeping combat exciting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's boring. It makes combat feel like you're just grinding away the other guy's hit-point-equivalent until one of you reaches zero... because that's exactly what you're doing. Status effects and non-hit-point-based attacks create variety and challenges that are important to keeping combat exciting.

That's a really good point. Without the variety of "other stuff happening," the naked exterior of the "who can rack up the most damage the fastest" game at the heart of D&D doesn't have much variety.

 

[Dausuul]

That's a really good point. Without the variety of "other stuff happening," the naked exterior of the "who can rack up the most damage the fastest" game at the heart of D&D doesn't have much variety.

That does bring up an interesting question, though. Why do we have an ablative mechanic for hit points but not for anything else? One of the worst bugaboos of older editions of D&D was the arbitrary nature of "save or die" and "save or lose" mechanics. Why not have a similar ablative defense for, say, willpower?

Not an identical defense, of course. To maintain the sense of variety, it would have to work differently in some qualitative way; perhaps you recover it from round to round, or use it to power offensive abilities, or suffer growing penalties as it goes down. But in many ways it would be superior to "Make a Will save. If you succeed, the vampire's gaze rolls off you like water off a duckbunny's back. If you fail, you are his slave and will probably be seen tomorrow standing in the sunlight trying to sparkle."

 

[the Jester]

That does bring up an interesting question, though. Why do we have an ablative mechanic for hit points but not for anything else? One of the worst bugaboos of older editions of D&D was the arbitrary nature of "save or die" and "save or lose" mechanics. Why not have a similar ablative defense for, say, willpower?

Ability damage, yo.

The problem is the cascade of math and refiguring everything when you take 1d6 points of Dex damage (or whatever).

 

[IronWolf]

Because the very point of the special attack is to avoid hit points.

It sets up an Alternate Win Condition for the fight.

Take the medusa, for example. The medusa has two paths to winning the fight. She can reduce your hp to zero. Or she can petrify you. If hp was the only thing that mattered, there would only be one path to winning the fight.

Ideally, the presence of multiple win conditions cause the fight to change. If the medusa can win by petrifying you, you have to avoid her gaze.

This. Because the medusa can petrify you even if you haven't suffered a scratch in battle yet. There needs to be a way to represent these special attacks and handle defending them that aren't just about wounds in battle or being weakened.

 

[Kaodi]

I think that the key mechanic for a system that used only HP would be resistance. The answer to " How do we account for petrification working on both the mighty and the weak? " is " Petrification attacks do a TON of damage and few creatures have any resistance to it. " The answer to " How do we account for the holy warrior who would die before falling under the sway of some street charlatan? " is " Charm effects do little damage and most creatures have resistance to it. "

Theoretically, I think, you could even take out AC and just have damage resistance. The answer to the question, " How do a lot of weak attacks bring down a highly resistant creature? " would be " If a creature is the target of more than one attack in a round, those additional attacks build up bonus damage. Other circumstances and conditions may also add bonus damage, to account for luck. "

One obvious downfall of such a system would be a proliferation of (possibly complicated) resistance values.

 

[Kaodi]

A resistance system could perhaps even handle non-lethal conditions fairly easily. For instance, if you want to blind someone with a flash of light, you use an attack that does very high light "damage", and if attack does more damage than you have resistance, you are blinded.

Some attack types may even have special limits beyond which additional "damage" is converted to another kind of damage. For instance, an attack which causes an insane amount of light "damage" may have everything above a certain amount count instead as fire damage. And for some creatures, light "damage" is converted entirely to light damage. For shadows and the like.