Frostmarrow
First Post
I'm thinking two pools of hit points: life and mana. That would take care of verisimilitude and highlight the differences between the sly wizard and the burly fighter.
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Why Defenses (saves)?
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Frostmarrow
First Post
To sum up. There are a couple of cons with this method:
* Limits the design space visavi classes and their hit points.
* Some effects are supposed to be more of a hindrance than outright defeating.
* Sometimes you want to short-circuit the hit point supremacy.
Let's take Medusa again. Perseus shows up with his men-at-arms. The men succumb to the Medusa's gaze and are petrified. The men don't have a lot of hit points on account of being low level and generic. Perseus finds a way to avoid Medusa's gaze becuse he is made of stronger stuff, being a hero and having levels, and thus have more hit points.
Even though I realize there is massive work needed to make this work I'm still fond of the idea. For example:
Let's say you run into two goblins, a witch and a ghost. The goblins will stick spears in your back. The witch will shake a rattle at you and the ghost will simply present you it's true visage. They all deal damage to you. However, if you get it from the goblins you will be bleeding out on the floor. If you get it from the witch you will be turned into a toad. The ghost will make you age. After the fight your recovery will be subject to how you were defeated. Your friends have band-aids but what can they do to remedy you being a toad or 100 years old?
I'll address the three cons mentioned above:
* Yes, most classes would all have the same amount of hp. If you base hp after your best stat (instead of Con) the problem is hidden. Something that is done with 4E to hit rolls, and makes some people cringe.
* You could make debilitating effects present a choice. Take a given amount of damage or agree to move slower. This represents exertion on behalf of the targeted character.
* Taking a shortcut to victory is a foolish notion. It shouldn't be possible. In fact, traditional saving thows is the work around to fix the shortcut problem. Something I don't have to worry about in this variant.
* Limits the design space visavi classes and their hit points.
* Some effects are supposed to be more of a hindrance than outright defeating.
* Sometimes you want to short-circuit the hit point supremacy.
Let's take Medusa again. Perseus shows up with his men-at-arms. The men succumb to the Medusa's gaze and are petrified. The men don't have a lot of hit points on account of being low level and generic. Perseus finds a way to avoid Medusa's gaze becuse he is made of stronger stuff, being a hero and having levels, and thus have more hit points.
Even though I realize there is massive work needed to make this work I'm still fond of the idea. For example:
Let's say you run into two goblins, a witch and a ghost. The goblins will stick spears in your back. The witch will shake a rattle at you and the ghost will simply present you it's true visage. They all deal damage to you. However, if you get it from the goblins you will be bleeding out on the floor. If you get it from the witch you will be turned into a toad. The ghost will make you age. After the fight your recovery will be subject to how you were defeated. Your friends have band-aids but what can they do to remedy you being a toad or 100 years old?
I'll address the three cons mentioned above:
* Yes, most classes would all have the same amount of hp. If you base hp after your best stat (instead of Con) the problem is hidden. Something that is done with 4E to hit rolls, and makes some people cringe.
* You could make debilitating effects present a choice. Take a given amount of damage or agree to move slower. This represents exertion on behalf of the targeted character.
* Taking a shortcut to victory is a foolish notion. It shouldn't be possible. In fact, traditional saving thows is the work around to fix the shortcut problem. Something I don't have to worry about in this variant.
I'm creating a system like the one discussed here. But there is a significant difference: attacks do not "deal HP damage". Each attack has a "danger rating" (usually rolled) and an effect that it applies to the target if it hits. One may pay attack's DR in "determination points" to shrug it off or take a hit and get appropriate condition.
So, instead of cutting through HPs to do anything only after they are depleted, you may get some significant results with earlier attacks if the defender prefers taking a hit to paying DPs. Would you rather be tripped and fall prone, or pay to defend now and risk being helpless against an injuring (or killing) attack later? When you're out of DPs, you're at attacker's mercy.
So, there is no passive "taking hits" - which would be especially frustrating in a system without any kind of defenses. Deciding which hits to take and which to stop is as tactical as deciding how and whom to attack. Also, DRs and DPs are consistently abstract, while hit effects tie mechanics tightly with fiction - something you don't get in any HP system I encountered.
So, instead of cutting through HPs to do anything only after they are depleted, you may get some significant results with earlier attacks if the defender prefers taking a hit to paying DPs. Would you rather be tripped and fall prone, or pay to defend now and risk being helpless against an injuring (or killing) attack later? When you're out of DPs, you're at attacker's mercy.
So, there is no passive "taking hits" - which would be especially frustrating in a system without any kind of defenses. Deciding which hits to take and which to stop is as tactical as deciding how and whom to attack. Also, DRs and DPs are consistently abstract, while hit effects tie mechanics tightly with fiction - something you don't get in any HP system I encountered.
It's not a shortcut but an alternative route. Sometimes that route could be longer, sometimes shorter, and often it won't be clear. Furthermore, it is not necessarily a totally distinct alternative; a debuff effect can make it easier to bring down the enemy's hit points through normal means, allowing a "combined arms" approach.
Like I said, 4E tried the "everything goes to hit points" approach early on. It didn't work and they abandoned the attempt. A lot of players like playing the tricky, debuff-and-control classes that don't plunge straight into beating the enemy down. Others want variety in their combat options. When everything just knocks off hit points, those players get bored in a hurry.
The goal is not to make the game as mechanically elegant as possible, but to make it fun.
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That's the way 4E does it, and it turns out to be really terrible for the flavor and feel of the game.
Because there's already one tag that comes into play when you reach zero hit points: death!
There's a whole host of effects you may want to happen while the target's still alive, and even in full physical health. Looking at your list - I couldn't disarm, or intimidate a person unless they're out of hit points, and thus also dead? What if I want to disarm him so he'll stop fighting for a moment so I can *talk* to him!?! I can't talk to him if he's dead! I mean, sure, if I manage to kill a guy, then it makes sense he'd be kind of intimidated, but what is the point of having an inanimate corpse scared of you?
howandwhy99
Adventurer
[MENTION=20187]GSHamster[/MENTION] has a good point. Multiple avenues to achieve an objective increases players' freedom in the game. If a magic-user can cast a Finger of Death spell on a creature and it fails its save, then it dies. Alternately one can chop it down due to structural damage via hit points. Or, one could even convince one's foe to flee, or agree to a truce, or even join on and become an ally (though this last actually increases the party's resources, so it should that much harder to accomplish).
Saving throws can be read about on p.80 in the DMG. Also its glossary has a decent definition, "A die roll which is used in adverse circumstances to determine the efficacy of a spell, whether a character fell into a pit or not, whether a character escaped a dragon's breath, etc."
I saving throws as character and object ability to accept or reject a kind of binary transformation. Stone to Flesh, Petrify, Save vs. Death, Poison (save 2x or die), and other effects which are understood as binary in nature. Hit points do not need to be the only point-based resource that can be spent (remember gold?), but the game defines certain effects as attrition and others as conditional.
I think it's a matter of taste for any one of them. But I wouldn't want to remove either or any option from the table.
Saving throws can be read about on p.80 in the DMG. Also its glossary has a decent definition, "A die roll which is used in adverse circumstances to determine the efficacy of a spell, whether a character fell into a pit or not, whether a character escaped a dragon's breath, etc."
I saving throws as character and object ability to accept or reject a kind of binary transformation. Stone to Flesh, Petrify, Save vs. Death, Poison (save 2x or die), and other effects which are understood as binary in nature. Hit points do not need to be the only point-based resource that can be spent (remember gold?), but the game defines certain effects as attrition and others as conditional.
I think it's a matter of taste for any one of them. But I wouldn't want to remove either or any option from the table.
plenty of good caveats for the OP to consider.
Here's an alternative.
What if saving throws weren't throws but HP pools.
You have 20 Fortitude, 10 WillPower and 10 Reflex
A sword might attack your Fortitude points for 1d6 damage
A siren's wail might attack your Willpower for 1d6 damage
Basically take the OP's idea and flip it on its head again.
Here's an alternative.
What if saving throws weren't throws but HP pools.
You have 20 Fortitude, 10 WillPower and 10 Reflex
A sword might attack your Fortitude points for 1d6 damage
A siren's wail might attack your Willpower for 1d6 damage
Basically take the OP's idea and flip it on its head again.
It is odd, isn't it, that physical wounds are treated like whittling, but other dangers are save-or-die? Getting hit -- in the D&D sense of not just getting touched with the weapon, but having your armor bypassed or overcome -- really does sound like a save-or-die situation -- or even a you-already-failed-your-save-and-die situation.
Good, dramatic fights need momentum, and player characters who are supposed to survive risky adventures need plot protection, so a buffer of points makes some sense -- but bypassing that pool completely for some dangers defeats the purpose, and providing that pool for everyone kind of misses the point too.
the Jester
Legend
I don't see how.
Let's look at another example: the humble charm person. Are you suggesting it would be easier to charm someone if a medusa tried to petrify them a bunch first? Why? How does this add to verisimilitude?
Is it easier, under this system, to petrify a fighter than a wizard? Again, why? (Or why is it easier to petrify a wizard than a fighter, if the obverse holds?)
Using ability damage to model these things makes sense, but when you're lumping together petrification and a charm person spell into attacking one pool of damage, you haven't gained anything, you've just made a confusing mess in my opinion.
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