Why rename HP & Saves?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Maybe the problem would go away if we removed the difference between attack and damage rolls?

Wasn't there a system that actually used the idea of "pool all your dice together and whose side gets the higher result wins"?

Just make a single roll, adding "physical damage" and "skill damage" together, and subtract that number from hit points, which are based on stamina and skill.

Example:
A Fighter might deal 1d20 + (5 + STR) Weapon Damage + (2 + Dex) Precision Damage. He has ((Con + 4) Stamina + (Str + 4) Weapon Parry + (Dex +3) Dodge) x level hit points.

A Rogue might deal 1d20 + (2 + STR) Weapon Damage + (5 + Dex) Precision Damage. He has ((Con +2) Stamina + (Str + 3) Weapon Parry + (Dex +6) Dodge) x level hit points.

The system is a step more abstract then the current system, since it doesn't care whether you actually "hit" or just threaten your enemy. As long as the fight continues, people will whittle each other down.

(I am not saying this would be a good system. )

 

[ForbidenMaster]

Given that the game uses the term "damage" whenever an attack lands, I think the rename should be "Damage Threshold".

Instead of having a HP total that's reduced by damage, the paradigm is that you start with 0 damage and accumulate damage as you're hit. Surges and other healing reduce your damage. Temporary hit points are renamed to temporary threshold increases.

So if you're hit in combat and the DM says "take 5 damage", you don't reduce your total HP by 5. Instead, you literally take 5 damage--you add 5 to your total amount of accumulated damage.

This is more intuitive, and negates the whole "what are hit points?" question. "What is damage threshold?" is self-evident; damage threshold is your threshold for soldiering on despite accumulated damage. Exceed it, and you drop.

The question "what is damage" is answered by the game itself. The game already uses the terms "weapon damage", "radiant damage", "poison damage", and so on. Take fire damage and you're burned. Take psychic damage and your brain is fried. If you take too much damage, you collapse.

When you're sorely wounded, you don't call out "Guys! I'm low on hit points!" Instead, you yell "Guys! I can't take much more damage!"

Makes sense to me!

I dont see how this is any different from the current system. I dont know about you , but I have always added and never have subtracted damage. I always just kept adding damage until I hit my max HP and then dropped/died. As you stated addition is more intuitive then subtraction which is why I have always done it like this.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Given that the game uses the term "damage" whenever an attack lands, I think the rename should be "Damage Threshold".

Instead of having a HP total that's reduced by damage, the paradigm is that you start with 0 damage and accumulate damage as you're hit. Surges and other healing reduce your damage. Temporary hit points are renamed to temporary threshold increases.

So if you're hit in combat and the DM says "take 5 damage", you don't reduce your total HP by 5. Instead, you literally take 5 damage--you add 5 to your total amount of accumulated damage.

This is more intuitive, and negates the whole "what are hit points?" question. "What is damage threshold?" is self-evident; damage threshold is your threshold for soldiering on despite accumulated damage. Exceed it, and you drop.

The question "what is damage" is answered by the game itself. The game already uses the terms "weapon damage", "radiant damage", "poison damage", and so on. Take fire damage and you're burned. Take psychic damage and your brain is fried. If you take too much damage, you collapse.

When you're sorely wounded, you don't call out "Guys! I'm low on hit points!" Instead, you yell "Guys! I can't take much more damage!"

Makes sense to me!

Very nice idea, very nice indeed.

You could still have hp counting down as normal too - reflecting that as you get more wounded your 'damage threshold' against future attacks is reduced until eventually you bite the big one.

 

[mmadsen]

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.

In Chainmail, the concept was pretty simple: This one figure of Boromir is worth four ordinary "armored foot" figures. Or, this one figure of Conan is worth eight ordinary "light foot" figures.

A "hero" had four hit dice and got four attacks, because he was equivalent to four ordinary fighters, and a "superhero" had eight hit dice and got eight attacks, because he was equivalent to eight ordinary fighters. Pretty simple, really.

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).

I think the "level progression" of proto-D&D wasn't thought out much at all. Making a hero worth four soldiers was simple; that's all.

Also, looking at older editions, it's obvious that some simple mechanics were not obvious to Gygax et al. at the time. Defining a 4th-level Fighter to be worth four common soldiers was obvious. Defining a 4th-level Fighter to have, say, +4 to-hit and +4 AC (or -4, if lower is better) was not obvious at all. You can tell by looking at all the unnecessarily complex matrices ("dagger vs. leather + shield"). Today we'd give each weapon a modifier and each armor type a modifier and immediately know what the to-hit (or to-kill) roll would be. At the time, you "clearly" needed a table of all the possibilities.

 

[mmadsen]

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.

I agree with foster1941:

Non-physical hit points, like abstracted "to hit" rolls, are a post-hoc rationalization trying to make "sense" out of a game-construct in a way that looks good on the page but falls apart under too-close scrutiny (healing and large creatures in the former case, touch and missile attacks in the latter) so I choose not to think about it too much. "Morale healing" fits within the rationalized explanation of what "hit points" represent, but doesn't fit with their actual in-game function which, like it or not, is actual physical damage -- D&D has a separate mechanic for morale, and while combining the two into something more wholly abstract (as seen in a game like HeroQuest, where an effecive maneuver or taunt might inflict just as much "damage" as a sword-blow and "running out of hit points" might well mean that the character's morale has failed, and not that he has been physically killed) is intriguing and might make for an interesting game, that's not how the D&D system is set up. It's not realistic, it's not logical, but it's how the game is set up (and it does make for a fun game...): as characters gain levels they become physically tougher and harder to kill -- a mid-level character can take as much damage as a warhorse, and a high level character as much damage as a T. Rex.​

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm with the OP on this. It is just vocabulary, and I don't see any reason for a vocabulary change here. Unless someone were trying to inflate a list of "stuff we changed," that is...

 

[mmadsen]

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?

I don't think you read what I wrote:

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.​

 

[mmadsen]

I mention fatigue because in real combat, fatigue is VERY important.

I don't dispute that, but if hit points were about fatigue, then dragging an ogre's corpse would cost more hit points than dodging an ogre's club. Running across the battlefield, climbing a wall, or knocking over an idol would cost more hit points than taking a spear on your shield.

And, as we've already mentioned, fatigue points would return in minutes, not days or weeks.

Hit points are just points your lose when you're hit. People clearly like them, but they don't make much sense.

Which is why, ideally, we'd find a new system that worked just as well for gaming but also kinda, sorta modeled "reality".

Ablative hit points work better than any other system that's been devised.

I don't necessarily agree, but I'm willing to stipulate that for the sake of argument. So ablative hit points are more fun than the alternatives, but they don't make much sense. It's takes a lot of hand-waving to explain a lot of things so that the fun can continue without losing everyone's suspension of disbelief.

So why don't we divorce hit points from toughness entirely and recognize them as a measure of plot-protection, or coolness, or awesomeness, or dudeness, or whatever -- and let them work against things like save-or-die spells, grapples, bull-rushes, etc.?

 

[Storm-Bringer]

What's being ret-conned? Hit points were always about luck and skill turning wounds into nicks and scratches.

Here, let me highlight the parts you glossed over:

Originally Posted by The Lost Blogs of Gary Gygax, Page 82
It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physcial ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses - and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection.
...
Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. [...] Each hit done upon him does only a small amount of actual phyisical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's excepptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment.

There has been a physical component to hit points since day one.

 

[Lacyon]

Which is why, ideally, we'd find a new system that worked just as well for gaming but also kinda, sorta modeled "reality".

That's HP with a different explanation tacked on, and you've already rejected alternate explanations.

So why don't we divorce hit points from toughness entirely and recognize them as a measure of plot-protection, or coolness, or awesomeness, or dudeness, or whatever -- and let them work against things like save-or-die spells, grapples, bull-rushes, etc.?

Having them work against grapples, bull-rushes, and other maneuvers essentially removes those maneuvers from the game - any time you would want to utilize them, the opponent would just pay some extra HP to avoid the effect, so you'd have essentially the same system as if you just made "bull-rush" a damaging attack in the first place.

They do work against "save-or-dies" when you remove save-or-dies and replace them with save-or-take-hp-loss. Since the 4E guys have been trumpeting the removal of save-or-die for some time, that's no longer a problem.