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<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7904898" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I'm growing increasingly weary of hit points. I do think they are an easy and functional way to track character damage for game purposes, and they mesh nicely with the other elements of the game as needed (spells, class abilities, and the like)...but I feel like they don't carry any kind of meaning to them other than the binary &quot;you're still on your feet/you're down&quot; state. You can add some other mechanic to them, such as wounds or vitality or what have you, and that may help, but that's not always easy to blend into the related mechanics. I also find that ultimately, what HP do is simply allow combat to continue.....so most fights last longer than what might actually be dramatically and/or mechanically exciting. Hit points add to the slog aspect of combat. The question is, what other systems may work better? I can think of two game systems for tracking PC harm that are superior (in my opinion, of course) to HP, and that's Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse World. Both work well in their systems. The Blades system is particularly good, in my opinion.Are there any other systems for this that folks would recommend?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 7904898, member: 6785785"] I'm growing increasingly weary of hit points. I do think they are an easy and functional way to track character damage for game purposes, and they mesh nicely with the other elements of the game as needed (spells, class abilities, and the like)...but I feel like they don't carry any kind of meaning to them other than the binary "you're still on your feet/you're down" state. You can add some other mechanic to them, such as wounds or vitality or what have you, and that may help, but that's not always easy to blend into the related mechanics. I also find that ultimately, what HP do is simply allow combat to continue.....so most fights last longer than what might actually be dramatically and/or mechanically exciting. Hit points add to the slog aspect of combat. The question is, what other systems may work better? I can think of two game systems for tracking PC harm that are superior (in my opinion, of course) to HP, and that's Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse World. Both work well in their systems. The Blades system is particularly good, in my opinion. Are there any other systems for this that folks would recommend? [/QUOTE]

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