Alex
Arcane
I have, more than once, seem people argue here agains hit points in RPGs. Specially as they are implemented in AD&D, where a high level PC can withstad several bits from a dragon, or falling into a pit of spikes more than once. Usually, these arguments ask for a less abstract system instead, where wounds are actual individual concepts, wich create specific hindrances and cause specific problems. For example, if you have had your arm bitten off, you should be bleeding, in a lot of pain and (of course) unable to use that arm for anything.
Now, I think the defense that these approaches each work for (very) different kinds of games is pretty obvious. I would say D&D's hit points worked pretty well in games like the gold boxes or Dark Sun, and while it is possible that the more realist approach could work there as well, that would certainly change the focus of the game, I think. Even if you added some kind of mechanic to still allow the PCs to face so many powerful opponents, the gae would still create a grittier feel, I believe, as the PCs tried to patch their wounds in camp. In fact, I think something like this could work very well with a game more like Realms of Arcania.
But I think neither of these approaches actually captures what is interesting about how hit points worked in the early days of the hobby. The pencil and paper game, while allowing for very powerful characters, still had a certain gritty feel to it. Let me try to explain:
In old D&D, character survival, specially in the early levels, was far from assured (although some soft hearted GMs sometimes fudged dice in favor of the PCs). It was common that the very first adventure of a PC was also his last. The philosophy here is that a 1st level character is not a hero. In fact, he may be weaker than some peasants he might meet. In the case of a magic user, he might be weaker than some house cats he might come to meet. The idea here is that, once you generated a character that worked well with you, and had a bit of luck, you would manage to gain a couple of levels and get him to a safer spot, like level 5.
Thus, as characters evolved, they became understandably harder to kill. (A)D&D may be a bit nasty sometimes, but it would be a rather frustrating game if the efforts of sometimes years poured on a character could be wiped away just as easily as those of minutes. Thus, not only do high level characters have high hit points, bu they also have a lot of safety nets, like saving throws (that are actually good for something), ressurrection spells, wishes, and other (sometimes hated) tricks up their sleeves.
However, though high level characters in D&D have all these things, it is important to note that they are far from the invincible superheroes computer games may make them look. First of all, in a tabletop game, players can't save and load. This means more than simply not being able to save scum. It means that a bad decision can end a character, and you have no take backs. If you do bad in a fight, if you fail your save or die roll, if you open the door to the dragon's lair without realizing where you are getting, you will die, and that is that. Well, you could be ressurrected, but even then your character will take on a permanent penalty (1 less constitution point), and this assumes your companions decide your life is more important than all the expenses. And that they survive as well.
Second, you don't have an infinite amount of time. You can't rest and heal after every fight, as the GM will always put pressing factors to keep you going. Monsters may organize counter-attacks, the time for your quests may run out and all other kind of interesting and dangerous consequences may be introduced. Even a very simple dungeon crawl is likely to have its creatures replaced if you just dilly dally.
Third, the pen and paper game frequently used traps that were much more interesting than "2d6 of acid damage, reflex save for half". Whether is is a salvo of arrows coming out of walls, a rolling boulder, a crushing ruff, pits and spikes, an anihilation sphere in a statue's mouth or just one of the many available poisons, traps in the older games frequently bypassed a character's hp. This is because hp was really supposed to be a combat mechanic. Althotugh you certainly could lose hp outside combat, the point of the mechanic wasn't to simulate any kind of damage, but rather to organize combat.
Finally, it is important to note that while hit points can be a pacing mechanic in combat sometimes, they aren't meant to always be so! The point of combat isn't to just hit each other with your strongest attacks, waiting for one side to run out of HP. Not unless we are talking about trivial encounters, and even those were supposed to have some kind of danger to them, like rust monsters that could eat your weapons or the tarantella, a spider whose poison would give its victims an irresistible urge to dance.
Tunnels and Trolls, one of the earlies RPGs, actually had a combat where the main mechanic was that one side caused damage to the other, and you would through the combat turns, erode the other's side hp. But even there it was done for a reason, because while this basic mechanic may be really dull, it showed well the situation of the PCs, who were most often in disadvantage. In fact, just playing one of the many solo books you will see your character frequently stuck into fights that, if just played straight, will crush your character most of the time!
The point here, and in D&D, is that you need to me up with something smart to win fights. An old red dragon can still mow down a high level fighter in a couple of rounds. In games like Baldur's Gate 2, dragon fights may have been considered easy, after the players had time to come up with an optimal strategy, but in P&P, a static strategy wouldn't work! The dragon would at the very least take flight if it was overpowered, and come back later, when the PCs didn't have the natural advantage. It would use the terrain to its advantage, and try to get the PCs with its breath weapon from somewhere it couldn't be hit! It would use its many spells in ways to make the PCs spend their resources, or steam them, or even make them unusable. I mean, can you really rely on your healing potions once they are frozen over?
Thus, hit points weren't so much a a pace setter of combat as insurance for PCs. They were an insurance that their characters wouldn't get destroyed right away for mistakes in combat or in some off combat situations. But you can't rely on it, and old D&D was all about getting the jump on your enemies. In fact, I would argue a much more important insurance than HPs was that high level PCs would always walk with a whole lot ofNPCs, as hired hands, henchman and even apprentices. In fact, high level PCs sometimes even used their hechman to begin (re)building in the dungeon. Fix up wall cracks, put down a floor, set up guards, and you can avoid having the monsters reclaim all the hard earned ground you conquered.
While some rogue-likes managed to get some of these features right, I've never seen one that came even close of how it is in P&P. So, I wonder, could we transfer these qualities to a computer game? Could we make a game where sending down a chicken with a helmet on its head to test for traps is more important than having 10 or 50 hit points?
Now, I think the defense that these approaches each work for (very) different kinds of games is pretty obvious. I would say D&D's hit points worked pretty well in games like the gold boxes or Dark Sun, and while it is possible that the more realist approach could work there as well, that would certainly change the focus of the game, I think. Even if you added some kind of mechanic to still allow the PCs to face so many powerful opponents, the gae would still create a grittier feel, I believe, as the PCs tried to patch their wounds in camp. In fact, I think something like this could work very well with a game more like Realms of Arcania.
But I think neither of these approaches actually captures what is interesting about how hit points worked in the early days of the hobby. The pencil and paper game, while allowing for very powerful characters, still had a certain gritty feel to it. Let me try to explain:
In old D&D, character survival, specially in the early levels, was far from assured (although some soft hearted GMs sometimes fudged dice in favor of the PCs). It was common that the very first adventure of a PC was also his last. The philosophy here is that a 1st level character is not a hero. In fact, he may be weaker than some peasants he might meet. In the case of a magic user, he might be weaker than some house cats he might come to meet. The idea here is that, once you generated a character that worked well with you, and had a bit of luck, you would manage to gain a couple of levels and get him to a safer spot, like level 5.
Thus, as characters evolved, they became understandably harder to kill. (A)D&D may be a bit nasty sometimes, but it would be a rather frustrating game if the efforts of sometimes years poured on a character could be wiped away just as easily as those of minutes. Thus, not only do high level characters have high hit points, bu they also have a lot of safety nets, like saving throws (that are actually good for something), ressurrection spells, wishes, and other (sometimes hated) tricks up their sleeves.
However, though high level characters in D&D have all these things, it is important to note that they are far from the invincible superheroes computer games may make them look. First of all, in a tabletop game, players can't save and load. This means more than simply not being able to save scum. It means that a bad decision can end a character, and you have no take backs. If you do bad in a fight, if you fail your save or die roll, if you open the door to the dragon's lair without realizing where you are getting, you will die, and that is that. Well, you could be ressurrected, but even then your character will take on a permanent penalty (1 less constitution point), and this assumes your companions decide your life is more important than all the expenses. And that they survive as well.
Second, you don't have an infinite amount of time. You can't rest and heal after every fight, as the GM will always put pressing factors to keep you going. Monsters may organize counter-attacks, the time for your quests may run out and all other kind of interesting and dangerous consequences may be introduced. Even a very simple dungeon crawl is likely to have its creatures replaced if you just dilly dally.
Third, the pen and paper game frequently used traps that were much more interesting than "2d6 of acid damage, reflex save for half". Whether is is a salvo of arrows coming out of walls, a rolling boulder, a crushing ruff, pits and spikes, an anihilation sphere in a statue's mouth or just one of the many available poisons, traps in the older games frequently bypassed a character's hp. This is because hp was really supposed to be a combat mechanic. Althotugh you certainly could lose hp outside combat, the point of the mechanic wasn't to simulate any kind of damage, but rather to organize combat.
Finally, it is important to note that while hit points can be a pacing mechanic in combat sometimes, they aren't meant to always be so! The point of combat isn't to just hit each other with your strongest attacks, waiting for one side to run out of HP. Not unless we are talking about trivial encounters, and even those were supposed to have some kind of danger to them, like rust monsters that could eat your weapons or the tarantella, a spider whose poison would give its victims an irresistible urge to dance.
Tunnels and Trolls, one of the earlies RPGs, actually had a combat where the main mechanic was that one side caused damage to the other, and you would through the combat turns, erode the other's side hp. But even there it was done for a reason, because while this basic mechanic may be really dull, it showed well the situation of the PCs, who were most often in disadvantage. In fact, just playing one of the many solo books you will see your character frequently stuck into fights that, if just played straight, will crush your character most of the time!
The point here, and in D&D, is that you need to me up with something smart to win fights. An old red dragon can still mow down a high level fighter in a couple of rounds. In games like Baldur's Gate 2, dragon fights may have been considered easy, after the players had time to come up with an optimal strategy, but in P&P, a static strategy wouldn't work! The dragon would at the very least take flight if it was overpowered, and come back later, when the PCs didn't have the natural advantage. It would use the terrain to its advantage, and try to get the PCs with its breath weapon from somewhere it couldn't be hit! It would use its many spells in ways to make the PCs spend their resources, or steam them, or even make them unusable. I mean, can you really rely on your healing potions once they are frozen over?
Thus, hit points weren't so much a a pace setter of combat as insurance for PCs. They were an insurance that their characters wouldn't get destroyed right away for mistakes in combat or in some off combat situations. But you can't rely on it, and old D&D was all about getting the jump on your enemies. In fact, I would argue a much more important insurance than HPs was that high level PCs would always walk with a whole lot ofNPCs, as hired hands, henchman and even apprentices. In fact, high level PCs sometimes even used their hechman to begin (re)building in the dungeon. Fix up wall cracks, put down a floor, set up guards, and you can avoid having the monsters reclaim all the hard earned ground you conquered.
While some rogue-likes managed to get some of these features right, I've never seen one that came even close of how it is in P&P. So, I wonder, could we transfer these qualities to a computer game? Could we make a game where sending down a chicken with a helmet on its head to test for traps is more important than having 10 or 50 hit points?
(actually the entire party died that day, was our GM's way of quitting)
