Saturday, June 6, 2009

Hit Points

This is probably the primordial subject to houserule/argue over. I doubt I have anything to add. But when did that stop anyone.


I'm firmly in the camp that hit points are an abstraction of luck, fatigue, skill (one reason they increase with experience). For much of combat a hit does not represent an actual cut. Rather it abstracts opponents getting fatigued, discovering weaknesses, etc. Think of a boxing match. Barring an early round K.O.(critical hit) the combatants spend several rounds dancing about, wearing down, and sizing up each other. Eventually one reveals a vulnerability, is too exhausted to keep his guard up or the like and the other takes him out.

I like to break that abstraction in a couple of instances. Criticals should be gory, bloody, and dramatic. Abstraction don't cut it. I want shattered bones, caved skulls, and blood fountains. Monsters and characters that get worn down, exhausted with physical trauma and death looming demand tension and gravitas. The last 10 hp should be different than the first 50. I could just narrate this when I see low hp but 1) I forget. 2) having a mechanical difference drives it home.

I've been using these Wounds and Vitality rules in my current campaign. I like the concept and implementation. The short of it is wounds represent physical damage and start off equal to constitution and never increase. Vitality represents that fatigue, luck, experience abstraction and work exactly like hit points. Once vitality is gone further damage is taken to wound points. Thus there is a nice point at which to start the Conanesque "showers of blood" narration. Which also very nicely keys in the players to each others and opponents' levels of damage. I'm Especially fond of how criticals bypass fatigue and inflict wounds. Verisimilitude all around. The two "levels" of hits and possibility of being stunned from wound damage remind players to take stock and consider fleeing when the blood starts flowing.

Because I find level drains tedious and unfun. I've extended "crit as wounds" concept to "level drains do wound damage". I might bring back "save or die" effects if I made them "save or take wound damage and then maybe die".

Commentary
While writing this entry it dawned on me "Do I really want to force players into tracking two numbers for hits?" It's already been confusing in my existing campaign. What spells heal what type of damage, etc. Continuing my Dark Side training I'm strongly considering to just go with Trollsmyth's Death & Dismemberment or similar. It's far simpler. I lose the nice crits handling and ability transform other annoying (level drain) or deadly (save or die) into wound damage. But, I'm betting most the pain of level drain is due to complex, heavy rule systems in which it's a lot of work to go up/down a level of experience. And, really, save or die would mean save or roll on Death & Dismemberment table which has the same possibilities as having a wound point"buffer" of being ok, in a bad way, mostly dead, and parrot dead.

6 comments:

  1. The games I run use a very similar system with luck and body points (which I can honestly say is a case of parallel development).

    Keeping track has the following method: Poker Chips for Luck points (Vitality in your system) and I pass out red cocktail swords for Body Point (wound) damage, but that can be the old school "marking down on paper" too since there are not as many (A high level character in the campaign has 74 luck points and 16 body points, half of which he is unconcious for).

    But this way I give poker chips and have them cashed in as needed (with healing spells I give them out, from damage they cash in) and only at the begining and end of a session is it tracked.


    This works really well for keeping track, especially on a quick glimpse it lets the party look around the table and see where everyone stands. If you are the type of GM to tone down or fudge encounters it gives you an idea of if the party can handle that next roaming batch of trolls or if you should just let it slide.

    Also, tactile elements are fun

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  2. > Also, tactile elements are fun

    Oh boy, you have no idea. I have more tokens, chips, glass beads, plastic beads, foam squares, counting sticks, fake gems, plastic thingers, and other stuff than I know what to do with. No cocktail swords though. That is pretty awesome. Definitely get some and use them for next swashbuckler / pirate game I run.


    I've used poker chips as XP. Currently using these colored plastic thingers to track wounds and vitality. Not sure if really that effective, esp the look around table and see were everyone stands. I think next time instead of players starting with big pile == to their characters health I'll pass out wounds as damage and they can turn them in when healed.


    One thing I forgot to mention is the vitality comes back really fast in hours not days. Wounds are much more serious. I like that. Knock players out, but they're good to go in a day or two. Unless they get life threatening wound then it's days/weeks.

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  3. Tactile goodies are fun! I don't use them mostly because my gaming is online these days.

    One thing I should note about my Table of Death and Dismemberment: contrary to expectations, it's apparently heightened the tension that comes from losing hit points. Yeah, I know, it ought to be the other way around, but apparently that extra roll, and looking at the nasty things that might happen from it, is worse than just "you're less than zero, you're dead".

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  4. @trollsmyth: "it's apparently heightened the tension that comes from losing hit points."

    I'm not sure that is necessarily a bad thing. One of my goals for the vitality/wounds system is to make the game grittier and ensure players consider death easy to achieve.

    I'm almost completely sold on it now. Either won't have criticals or criticals will do something nasty(such as "that arm you had, yeah not there anymore") instead of just more hit points which has always been blah to me. Give me use for all my Rolemaster charts...

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  5. I use pretty much the same idea, calling it Hit Points and Stamina, including the idea that criticals go directly against Hit Points. I like it a lot, and it doesn't seem too complicated for the players (including kids as young as 9) to understand. One thing it lets me do is make armor more than just a number; the primary effect of heavy armor such as plate is that it prevents criticals, so you have to wear them down first.

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  6. @jamused "primary effect of heavy armor such as plate is that it prevents criticals, so you have to wear them down first."

    I like this. "Armor" is in my list of "house rules" posts that I'm working on...

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