Why rename HP & Saves?

[Philotomy Jurament]

That proves that hit points have been totally abstract since Chainmail.

Technically, Chainmail didn't use hit points. A hit was a kill. D&D introduced the idea that a hit does 1-6 damage, instead, and that a character accumulates hit points/damage up to the maximum he can take. Thus, Chainmail's hit == kill becomes hit == 1d6 'hit points' of damage, and a normal man can take 1-6 hit points of damage before death.

Dice for Accumulative Hits (Hit Dice): This indicates the number of dice which are rolled in order to determine how many hit points a character can take. Plusses are merely the number of pips to add to the total of all dice rolled not to each die. Thus a Super Hero gets 8 dice + 2; they are rolled and score 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6/totals 26 + 2 = 28, 28 being the number of points of damage the character could sustain before death. Whether sustaining accumulative hits will otherwise affect a character is left to the discretion of the referee.

Note that the wording, here, suggests the "counting up" approach (not really a new idea), and "hit points" are synonymous with "damage."

 

[Zaruthustran]

OK, but reversing all the math doesn't change the core mechanic.

Whether you calculate 0 + x < y (0 is no damage, x is damage taken, y is damage threshold) or y - x > 0 (y is HP with no damage, x is damage taken, 0 is damage threshold), the end result is still the same mechanic with the signs reversed.

The mechanics *do* work out exactly the same. But that's a feature, not a bug.

But if we're not doing all that, then what do we gain by reversing the math (other than the fact that most people are better at doing addition in their head than they are at subtraction)?

What we gain is that Hit Points are no longer part of the game. That entire resource is simply gone. It's no longer possible to ask "what are hit points?" because hit points no longer exist as a game element.

Instead, we've got damage. What is damage? The game already defines it as much as you need: weapon damage is damage from weapons. Fire damage is damage from fire. Characters can only take so much damage (the damage threshold; what used to be "max HP") before they drop. Damage is therefore a measure of a creature's ability to incapacitate an enemy as a result of its attack.

So what does it mean when a character takes "six weapon damage"? It depends on the character. For an undamaged character with a damage threshold of 6, "six weapon damage" is a hit that's hard enough to drop him. For an undamaged character with a damage threshold of 100, "six weapon damage" is not that big a deal.

What *exactly* is "six damage"? Is it a deep bleeding stab, a near-miss that makes you doubt yourself, a scratch on armor? The description of the power that causes the damage provides as much detail as needed, which isn't much; the game just doesn't require that granular of a definition. If you wish, you and your DM can fill that detail in however you like, in whatever way you and your friends find most enjoyable.

 

[mmadsen]

It's harder than it seems to make up a system that's a) as simple as AC/HP, b) that's a much better model of reality and c) makes for as much fun around the gaming table, especially over a long campaign with a lot of fighting in it.

Oh, I agree completely -- except that I would contend that no one has really tried. Most games that have tried to be "realistic" have aimed for complexity and detail, not realism, and they have largely ignored playability and fun.

Anyway, it's easy to make a system that's as simple as AC/HP and a better model of reality, if not as much fun. In fact, it can be even simpler than AC/HP. As Philotomy Jurament points out, the original Chainmail effectively subsumed hit points into armor class -- a "hit" was a telling blow, good enough to take an enemy out of combat. AC makes a lot more sense without hit points; it's just the one number that represents how hard you are to hurt. (Chainmail actually presents a table of weapons vs. armor classes, with a target number to roll on 2d6 to kill an enemy.)

I would say that Men & Magic made an effort to increase the "fun" by introducing hit points and damage. I don't think it was a well thought out idea, but as long as weapons did one die of damage and fighters could take one die of damage, it worked out fine. It drew out the tension from a single 2d6 roll to a d20 roll and another d6 roll, and it gave characters some sense of "hanging in there by a thread" if they managed to survive a hit or two. A "hero" had four hit dice, and surviving four otherwise-deadly wounds seemed heroic.

What I find odd is that attack bonuses went up slowly, and AC didn't go up at all with level, but hit dice skyrocketed.

Anyway, I can easily see a system with one d20 roll to hit (vs. Ref), followed by one d20 roll to hurt (vs. Fort + Armor), with fate points usable to modify either roll. A character could be tough without plot protection (Smaug) or weak but with plot protection (Bilbo, Frodo).

 

[Parlan]

OK, maybe not a dichotomy, but at least a strong correlation

It's harder than it seems to make up a system that's a) as simple as AC/HP, b) that's a much better model of reality and c) makes for as much fun around the gaming table, especially over a long campaign with a lot of fighting in it. Such a system may exist - my RPG experience is not encyclopaedic.

Amen.

I suddenly realized that the less I think about the logical basis underlying the concept of hitpoints, the happier I am.

 

[hong]

No system exists that facilitates the routine promulgation of violence as well as hit points. As long as D&D's basic mission is to kill monsters and take their stuff, hit points will remain.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I think the original concept was something like this:

The average man can take 1 die of damage.
Any of the standard weapons are capable of killing the average man with a single "hit;" all standard weapons do 1 die of damage.
A hero is the equal of four men, in battle; he gets 4HD.
A superhero is the equal of eight men in battle; he gets 8HD.

As you point out, it was hit dice, not chance to hit, that was the basic measure of improvement (suggesting that hit dice and maximum number of hit points that can be taken represent more than just physical toughness, IMO).

However, also consider that in OD&D, hit dice also dictate how many times a Fighting Man can attack in non-fantastic combat (i.e. when he is in melee with enemies that are 1HD or less). For example, a Hero (4th level) fighting six goblins will attack four times. A Superhero would get to attack 8 times. (This is OD&D's "mow down the mooks" rule; AD&D has a similar rule, but it only applies when fighting enemies of less than 1HD.)

Personally, I don't think the original combat rules made perfect distinctions between all these concepts (i.e. ability to hit, number of attacks, hit points, damage rolls), as far as how they model the combat and the combatants' capabilities; I think there's some overlap and some duplication. I have a general explanation of how hit points and damage work, but I don't sweat all the little details.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

You guys might also be interested in the "morale healing" thread over at the OD&D forums, since it had its roots in the 4E approach to healing.

 

[JohnSnow]

I was not discussing how well D&D increments hit points and AC over levels; I was discussing the nature of ablative hit points vs. a bonus on a d20 roll to avoid getting hit. The jump from, say, eight hit dice to nine, means you can survive in combat one-eighth longer (12.5%). The jump from getting hit on a 19 or 20 to just on a 20 means you can survive twice as long (100% longer). AC bonuses show increasing returns -- at least until you hit the "always hit on a 20" stage.

Not exactly. Besides, what on earth do you think they meant by saying they were "fixing the math" in Fourth Edition if not to address things like this?

Assuming equal skills and abilities, the chance that one 10th-level fighter can hit another 10th-level fighter should be exactly the same as the chance that one 1st-level fighter can hit another 1st-level fighter. However, ignoring magic for a moment, that 10th-level fighter has a +5 to his AC vs. his 1st-level counterpart, which means he can wear no armor and hold his own against a 1st-level fighter in chain. However, even when that low-level fighter manages to get past the veteran's defenses, his blows just aren't likely to inflict serious injury. Winning the fight might take some of the old guy's energy, but in a heroic system like D&D, he's not in serious danger of dying. The system is designed this way. That's a flavor thing.

That's a semantic quibble. Avoiding injury completely is simply doing all the things that allow you to avoid injury partially, but doing them better. The only major difference is when physical toughness comes into play. Anything that improves AC should improve hit points and vice versa -- except that that is hard to implement, because hit points last, and being flat-footed (or whatever) is temporary.

It's far from a semantic quibble. In D&D, a 'miss' means they never hurt you. Because D&D also lacks fatigue rules of any kind, it also means it wasn't even a hard fight.

I mention fatigue because in real combat, fatigue is VERY important. The best fighter in the world can be killed by a novice when he starts to get tired. When he's fresh, the novice has no chance. When he's not, he starts making mistakes, and even a novice has a chance to "take him out."

Have you ever seen the damage system in Mutants & Masterminds? It's a great system, in a sense. You make a damage roll and see how badly you injure your opponent. The game has no hit points to speak of - just AC and the damage check. It's a great system for the same kind of cinematic action D&D handles, but it doesn't feel a thing like D&D. The real problem is that there's no sense of "accomplishment" as you go through a fight. Actually, it has a "death spiral" mechanic - something most D&D players hate.

Ablative hit points work better than any other system that's been devised. Yes, you could make due with a damage system. But personally, it just doesn't feel like D&D to me.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

It looks like very few people understood the intent of my original post, which was:

While Hit Points and Saving Throws might be somewhat mechanically different in 4E than in the past, they are still very appropriate NAMES for the concepts they track, that is:

Hit Points: Opponent scores a Hit, You lose Points.
Saving Throws: Throw a die, Save your character.

It doesn't matter how abstract they are, or what they represent in story of the game.

Fitz

 

[Jack Colby]

I think the names are fine, and I doubt WotC is going to change them, at least not for the next decade or so. Hit points in 4e do what they have always done, regardless of what some people may have falsely believed HP represented over the years. Saving Throws actually have changed but that's ok.

A lot of things get redefined as new editions come out. We will all get used to it pretty quickly. No need for knee-jerk reaction calls for name changes!

Oh, and notice that neither name is terribly descriptive of what they actually do, because what they do has always been vague. Hit points allude to "hits", which was just the term for successful die rolls. Saving throws refer to a throw of dice to save your character. Those are some pretty general descriptive names, and are as perfectly applicable to 4e as they were to original D&D.