Hit Points should be dropped as a measure of health.

[Cloaked Figure]

[edit]

 

[Malakal]

HPs may be needed for gameplay reasons, getting killed by one arrow isnt fun, and Your idea of 'penalties' seems exactly as abstract.

Personally I like VtM system of wounds. But it can be mixed with hps too.

 

[Erebus]

I don't like HP much, but too much realism can be really annoying as far as wounds are concerned. If my PC were to lose an eye or a hand, I'm pretty sure I would simply reload to avoid being plagued by such a handicap for the rest of the game (unless, of course, such damages could be repaired within a reasonable period of time).

Mind you, the idea's interesting, but it would require a very special combat system.

 

[soggie]

I don't like HP much, but too much realism can be really annoying as far as wounds are concerned. If my PC were to lose an eye or a hand, I'm pretty sure I would simply reload to avoid being plagued by such a handicap for the rest of the game (unless, of course, such damages could be repaired within a reasonable period of time).

Mind you, the idea's interesting, but it would require a very special combat system.

This.

What games should do is to penalize HP loss more. In my design, when the player loses HP, all his skills suffer a universal decrease.

50-100% HP = no stat loss
25-50% HP = 1 point decrease
10-25% HP = 2 point decrease
1-10% HP = 3 point decrease

Given that all stats only range from 1 to 10, losing 3 points is a huge thing.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

I've been looking at something like this myself and I'd like to see a system where this sort of damage system has been implemented well.

Thinking about the drawbacks (there being a possibiliy of your PC being crippled and easier to incapacite in a fight), I don't see anything that increasing the maximum party size and/or giving the player some faceless henchmen to take the blows wouldn't solve.

 

[J1M]

You can't get rid of hit points because computers store information as numbers.

 

[BearBomber]

I don't like HP much, but too much realism can be really annoying as far as wounds are concerned. If my PC were to lose an eye or a hand, I'm pretty sure I would simply reload to avoid being plagued by such a handicap for the rest of the game (unless, of course, such damages could be repaired within a reasonable period of time).

Mind you, the idea's interesting, but it would require a very special combat system.

This.

What games should do is to penalize HP loss more. In my design, when the player loses HP, all his skills suffer a universal decrease.

50-100% HP = no stat loss
25-50% HP = 1 point decrease
10-25% HP = 2 point decrease
1-10% HP = 3 point decrease

Given that all stats only range from 1 to 10, losing 3 points is a huge thing.

This is very similar to the Savage Worlds RPG, but in that you just have penalty to every roll,not to the stats, as stats are used for something different.

 

[oldmanpaco]

I like to think of HP as an abstract measure of toughness. 50/100 means you getting worn out and 0/100 means you got a sword through your heart.

 

[soggie]

I don't like HP much, but too much realism can be really annoying as far as wounds are concerned. If my PC were to lose an eye or a hand, I'm pretty sure I would simply reload to avoid being plagued by such a handicap for the rest of the game (unless, of course, such damages could be repaired within a reasonable period of time).

Mind you, the idea's interesting, but it would require a very special combat system.

This.

What games should do is to penalize HP loss more. In my design, when the player loses HP, all his skills suffer a universal decrease.

50-100% HP = no stat loss
25-50% HP = 1 point decrease
10-25% HP = 2 point decrease
1-10% HP = 3 point decrease

Given that all stats only range from 1 to 10, losing 3 points is a huge thing.

This is very similar to the Savage Worlds RPG, but in that you just have penalty to every roll,not to the stats, as stats are used for something different.

Given that stats determine the dice pool (e.g. storyteller system, shadowrun, etc), 1-3 point of decrease will directly affect all rolls, you an say that a loss of HP affects the rolls too.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

HPs may be needed for gameplay reasons, getting killed by one arrow isnt fun,

The real problem here isn't the low amount of HP. The real problem is getting hit by that arrow. A game with a lethal combat system would need to provide players with a way of avoiding getting hit with arrow. Historically, there were lots of fighters that somehow avoided getting killed with one arrow. I don't see any reason why PC shouldn't be like them.
A system based on avoiding getting wounded would also solve the problem of potion spamming.

 

[soggie]

HPs may be needed for gameplay reasons, getting killed by one arrow isnt fun,

The real problem here isn't the low amount of HP. The real problem is getting hit by that arrow. A game with a lethal combat system would need to provide players with a way of avoiding getting hit with arrow. Historically, there were lots of fighters that somehow avoided getting killed with one arrow. I don't see any reason why PC shouldn't be like them.
A system based on avoiding getting wounded would also solve the problem of potion spamming.

I agree with Malakal that getting killed by a lucky arrow shot (while realistic) is not what I call fun. What's the point of grinding all the way to level 15 only to still have the same resilience (or lack thereof) as you did in level 1? HP goes up in levels because it represents your character being capable of taking more punishment, which is logical.

 

[laclongquan]

Oh it's pretty easy to avoid arrow-kill. Wear a full plate armor with visored helmets.

Of course, it's heavy as hell and limit movement but what can you do? Trade off is the name of the game.

 

[Der_Unbekannte]

Until the enemy starts shooting with longbows.

@Topic:

I would keep the Hitpoints as some overall measurment, just like oldmanpaco suggested, but add some cripple effects.

But didn't Fallout already do something like that?

 

[Boddler]

One disconnect between gaming and most other areas of real life that I noted long ago is this: points are usually given or awarded in life, starting from a base of zero (sports match points, traffic points, brownie points, etc.) whereas hit points in games are taken away or subtracted, working downward from a non-zero number. The effect of this disconnect must certainly contribute to many players' unease with the hit point system, to the degree that any violation of the natural world's natural law may also create psychic unrest. In the long term, I believe this disconnect will be corrected by the competitive disadvantage of the unnatural subtractive hit point system vis-a-vis a holistically benign additive hit point system. In the short term, gamers can exert influence to effect positive change by using our voices to shine light onto this current wrinkle in time.

 

[spectre]

Fallout's problem was hitpoint inflation, starting average HP was around 30, endgame was in the 300s. Couple that with some weapons dealing ridiculously low damage. OK, the original was less guilty of this, but 2 and Tactics just sucked in this regard.

I encourage anyone interested to check out Mount & Blade's way of balancing hp and damage. Even though it went to shit a little bit lately.

 

[chzr]

I don't think you can completely remove the 'hit points', it's basically a base value of 'damage'. If you imagine any 'hit point' game without hit points (= 1 hit 1 death), you'll still have '1 hp', in that case, 1 hit point - alive, 0 hp = death.

Only thing you can do is to 'cover' hit point system with something else.
Like 'hitboxes'. IF you are hit in an arm, some stats/rolls would determine amount of damage (like scratch, mild wound, critical roll = you're without arm...). And each of these wounds would have appropriate penalties. Then there could be 'lethal' hits (head, hearth in body zone) etc. that would obviously mean death.
And another important thing would be bleeding.

Of course, just this basic idea is already much more complex than 'hp' system, not mentioning that it's for 'physical' combat, without magic and stuff.

Also i think it would be hard to balance so that fights aren't either extremely long because you'll have to be lucky to actually 'kill' opponent, or extremely deadly for player (because lethal wounds would be easy to score both form him and for enemies.)

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I agree with Malakal that getting killed by a lucky arrow shot (while realistic) is not what I call fun.

Yeah, but games with rising hit points are a bad idea because encountering 150 opponents, each of which has 589689689895489048905906590679065904904390489058975 hit points and regeneration of 59689685830390689658409 hitpoints per turn while you do only 856868548 points of damage simply isn't fun.

What's the point of grinding?

Fixed it for you.

HP goes up in levels because it represents your character being capable of taking more punishment, which is logical.

Being capable to take more punishment dealt out with tools designed to kill and horribly maim people is anything but logical.
Better armour protecting from damage is logical.

 

[Castanova]

Conceptually, hitpoints are closer to a measure of tactical advantage in a single fight. I.e., after each combatant makes one move, hitpoints are decreased depending on who achieved more with that one move toward the goal of eventually winning altogether. It has nothing to do with health or wounds whatsoever except in an extremely abstract sense (in that, stabbing someone non-fatally does, in fact, give you an advantage going forward).

Hence, some kind of "wound system" where your dice rolls are penalized at 75%, 50%, and 25% hitpoints (as an example) is inappropriate as it double counts the "injured" combatant's disadvantage. In other words, his wounds are taken into account by his decrease in hitpoints already.

If there is anything to complain about with hitpoints, it is that increasing hitpoints with level-ups implies a uniform improvement in the character's ability to win fights regardless of the form of the threat to that character. Whether the character is met with sword, bow, or magic, that increase in HP improves his chances all the same. It is up to the system designer to come up with a way to fix this, if they are interested in fixing it at all.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Conceptually, hitpoints are closer to a measure of tactical advantage in a single fight. I.e., after each combatant makes one move, hitpoints are decreased depending on who achieved more with that one move toward the goal of eventually winning altogether. It has nothing to do with health or wounds whatsoever except in an extremely abstract sense (in that, stabbing someone non-fatally does, in fact, give you an advantage going forward).

Hence, some kind of "wound system" where your dice rolls are penalized at 75%, 50%, and 25% hitpoints (as an example) is inappropriate as it double counts the "injured" combatant's disadvantage. In other words, his wounds are taken into account by his decrease in hitpoints already.

If there is anything to complain about with hitpoints, it is that increasing hitpoints with level-ups implies a uniform improvement in the character's ability to win fights regardless of the form of the threat to that character. Whether the character is met with sword, bow, or magic, that increase in HP improves his chances all the same. It is up to the system designer to come up with a way to fix this, if they are interested in fixing it at all.

 

[soggie]

I agree with Malakal that getting killed by a lucky arrow shot (while realistic) is not what I call fun.

Yeah, but games with rising hit points are a bad idea because encountering 150 opponents, each of which has 589689689895489048905906590679065904904390489058975 hit points and regeneration of 59689685830390689658409 hitpoints per turn while you do only 856868548 points of damage simply isn't fun.

What's the point of grinding?

Fixed it for you.

HP goes up in levels because it represents your character being capable of taking more punishment, which is logical.

Being capable to take more punishment dealt out with tools designed to kill and horribly maim people is anything but logical.
Better armour protecting from damage is logical.

It's called Hit Points and not Health Points for a reason - it is supposed to abstract the nature of combat where you only go down after an amount of hits. It's not supposed to represent a character's overall health, but rather a person's combat efficiency in that situation.

Now you might ask, a fight can end with a lucky shot, right? That's where criticals come in. And crippling criticals too. But in the end, HP is still an abstraction - one that is necessary to break down combat to a level where you can represent it with numbers and dice rolls.

I don't see why this concept is wrong. What's wrong instead is the implementation of it, or rather, the exponential inflation of HP as the character gets more experience. While raising HP makes sense as a character gets more experience (and thus is more resilient), having 10 times the HP as a level 1 character is not right when you have other methods of abstracting experience levels like BABs, feats, perks and so on. Also, the fact that a 1 HP character retains the same combat efficiency as a 100 HP character.

What I'm trying to say is I don't see a point of adding an extra layer of complication at all. Wound levels ala Storytelling system is good though.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

It's called Hit Points and not Health Points for a reason - it is supposed to abstract the nature of combat where you only go down after an amount of hits. It's not supposed to represent a character's overall health, but rather a person's combat efficiency in that situation.

Except that usually you already have AC, DR, DT, variable weapon damage, skill/attributes bonuses to damage, etc. etc. etc. to represent these things. Redundant concept is redundant.
Also, if they would represent efficiency, they would be modified by stuff like dexterity, agility, etc. not condition.

Even if character has 15hp and most of weapons have damage potential>15, his efficiency of defence is represented by AC/DR/DT from dodging, armour, and stuff like that. Then the efficiency of attack is represented by variable damage of weapons and bonuses from character's skills/attributes.

Criticals are also a redundant concept - weapons already have variable damage. If a sword does 1d10 of damage, then a low roll is a light wound and a high roll is a "critical" hit.

 

[Castanova]

Why can't you understand that RPG combat is entirely abstracted? Just because you can kill someone with a single lucky hit in real life doesn't mean that is appropriate for a game. HP allows a battle to play out over a longer period of "time" than a real fight would last in order to reduce excessive variance and the resulting player frustration - because it's frustrating to lose a battle in one turn and it's also frustrating for battles to become so inconsequential that you can win them in one turn.

 

[spectre]

Most of the stuff you guys are arguing here is balancing, no such thing as "one hit kills are inherently bad" imo.
If they happen too randomly, then they're bad. Nothing wrong with them going off consistently with proper tactics.

Of course, this needs a re-think if the game is not party based, but if its not, it's hard to pull off deep tactical combat anyway.

And I think "kill" needs a redefinition here. Defeat or struck down or otherwise incapacitate would all work better here. I think there's lots of avenue for post combat reconvalescence. A barrage of Cure Light every fight is a good start, but it is possible to do much more with it when critical effects are addet to the bag.

 

[DraQ]

HPs may be needed for gameplay reasons, getting killed by one arrow isnt fun

Is it more or less fun than knowing that you can take additional several arrows through your ribcage before the situation even starts being tight?
Also, is it more or less fun than having to whittle down baddie's health till it bloody dies?

HP systems become unrealistic, boring shit as soon as the HPs of the strongest character exceed upper end of damage range of the weakest weapon. Period.

Otherwise they are more or less workable, but horribly simplified and boring.

Also:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=22602
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic ... 33#1152833
and
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic ... 82#1151482

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Why can't you understand that RPG combat is entirely abstracted? Just because you can kill someone with a single lucky hit in real life doesn't mean that is appropriate for a game. HP allows a battle to play out over a longer period of "time" than a real fight would last in order to reduce excessive variance and the resulting player frustration - because it's frustrating to lose a battle in one turn and it's also frustrating for battles to become so inconsequential that you can win them in one turn.

Nevermind, different people, different tastes.
Maybe for some weird reason you like long combats. I don't.
I want my combat to be Brutal. Even if it's an abstraction, I want it to be brutal. Because abstraction can be brutal too. For example Chess. Chess is extremely brutal, characters die just by being at wrong place at wrong time without any chance for saving throw or stuff like that. And it's considered one of the best games ever made.

I follow the following philosophy when it comes to fighting:
I want to avoid getting killed by using the following steps:
1. Avoid being in a fight by using safe routes/diplomacy/underlings.
2. Avoid getting seen by using stealth, ambushes, etc.
3. Avoid getting hit by using cover, ambush, dodging, etc.
4. Neutralising the hit by using parrying.
5. Neutralising the hit by using shield.
6. Neutralising the hit by using armour.

If I fail all the six steps, then something went wrong. Most of games assume that I'll fail all the six steps, more they are constructed in a way that all the six steps have to fail, which leads to the hitpoint attrition.

As for the lucky hit thing, it's easy to avoid that problem against players by simply creating a rule that doesn't allow the attacks with marginal chance to hit to hit the PC for specified time (for example when there's automatic hit on 20, the enemy isn't allowed to roll 20 on his first 10 rolls).
After all, protagonists of novels usually don't get killed with a lucky arrow halfway through the novel, even if combat is realistic.