>"hit points are an abstraction!!!1!"
>"losing hit points means not actually getting hit!!!"
>armor is what prevents you from losing hit points
>armor is helping you dodge attacks somehow
>but when your armor fails to protect you it means you actually dodged out of the way or some shit
This cope makes no sense. Just because Gygax said it doesn't make it true.
are you unfamiliar with the term abstraction?
Are you unfamiliar with abstractions actually making sense and being good mechanics?
Star Wars d20 did armor better in every possible way, and that was 3.5 based trash.
>Just because you take hp damage doesn't mean it can hit you
Then why does armor make you less likely to lose hit points?
>Then why does armor make you less likely to lose hit points?
You get "hit" but not in a way that causes damage (glancing and deflection even of enormous forces in some cases)
You don't have to expend as much effort to absorb the concussion of blows when your armour is thick
You can make more extreme dodges as you are protected from the ground/environment
Solid protection improves your morale
How was armor in star wars d20? What made it better?
Losing hitpoints doesn't mean you got hit, and armor makes you less likely to lose hitpoints. There's no contradiction because it's not a literal representation of physics. It's a game mechanic, a convenience. Like every other rule in the game.
>just dont think about it bro lmao
Yes, you autistic retard. This is why I get invited to games and you haven't spoken to a real person in 7 years.
you have just admitted to being a brainlet
guess that's what it takes to be part of the D&D community
You don't understand what intelligence is. Which, again, is why no one enjoys your company.
the D&D "community" in action everyone
Yes, in action, being superior to you.
S E E T H E
Yeah, you are seething 🙂
>You don't get it, man
>Every single action and reaction must be simulated
>If I'm not recording my heart rate every minute and mapping my brain activity at each turn then it's not realistic
>And that means that I can't understand what is going on at all
>I NEED, I MUST, know exactly what muscles are contracting and expanding before I roll to strike the goblin
do you really need to resort to erecting strawmen to defend D&D's flaws
>HP is literally just an abstraction of how many times a hero can fail in conflicts and challenges before facing permanent consequences (death)
and
>Listen, we need a seperate system for every single type and form of harm and inconvenience a hero can ever face, and combining ANY of them means the whole mess is retarded.
Which of these seems smarter to you?
you are still reduced to erecting strawmen
health, luck, armor, evasiveness are all separate characteristics that define characters in different manners
Not in D&D they aren't.
we are aware of it
>Listen, we need a seperate system for every single type and form of harm
No, you don't need it when you have MAGIC that can heal any damage. You see, the differences between different types of wounds only show up after a long period of time, and in battle only matters if the wound disables players/part of the player's body or not. Add a death timer for some wound types and that's all you need for a simple but satisfying wound system. Of course you can say that a party that doesn't have magic healing is unplayable then, to which I reply that only a dumb dndrone would use dnd for something that the system wasn't designed for.
Not being able to abstract something is not a sign of intelligence anon. They’re a necessary tool for forming good second order thoughts. Idk where you got this idea, but I’ll admit it does seem to be very prevalent. You’re like one those people who argue the analogy and think you’re really doing something.
the argument was that it's demonstrably an inaccurate abstraction which as the other anon admitted have to be glossed over to be able to enjoy
maybe you deendeefags should try to keep up with the debate and coordinate to get your stories straight
>it’s le not a perfect analogy
>le reading comprehension
Exactly what I’m talking about buddy. You’re being exceptionally Reddit by rejecting an abstraction without understanding why it exists. No metaphor is perfect, because a perfect metaphor would just be the thing itself, and therefore useless for the purpose of explanation. A map is useful as long as it helps you accomplish a goal, a map of terrain isn’t useless because it doesn’t include roads, a map of roads isn’t useless if it doesn’t include elevation. HPs purpose is not to recreate irl scenarios to appease autists. It’s to represent someone’s current heath state in a way that makes gameplay accessible and convenient.
sorry not reading this drivel. the anons in this thread have demonstrated what a bad abstraction it is.
Its not about perfection. As
stated, what is HP? If its abstraction for x, y, z, why does the game has one more abstraction for y and z, separately? Do you need two abstractions for dodge? Why not three, tho?
>Losing hitpoints doesn't mean you got hit
This is some of the most retarded gnomish shit ever conceived.
>Star Wars d20 did armor better in every possible way, and that was 3.5 based trash.
I can't find my Anakin came here to laugh at you image but you deserve it.
Agreed, hit points are meat points. Simple as.
>you nimbly dodge the lava as you wade through it to the other side, taking only minor injuries
that's not a critique of HP tho, that's a critique of the lava not doing as much damage as it should.
Yes. You dodge the lava.
/thread ended here but she still suckin'
what if the abstraction doesnt resemble the original very much
Abstractions still need to be consistent.
If HP is an abstraction covering movement, magic, armor, etc. then what the fuck does AC represent? ALSO armor absorbing blows before the abstraction of their armor absorbing blows? And dex is factored into AC as well so “dodging” is also bullshit. There are spells that specifically exist to raise AC AND abilities that grant temporary HP so what exactly is the point of HP as an abstraction beyond being a single mote that instantly kills or KOs when touched? If you’re going to make it an abstraction it either needs to stand alone as an abstraction where armor and dex are factored into HP as well as caster ability, or reduced to a single point that says “now you have been fatally struck”.
I’ve wasted years trying to make a half dozen systems myself and the one thing I quickly realized is that HP/AC doesn’t work. It’s just the established norm, and it stems from a time when the average HP was low enough to die from a single unprotected hit, but it doesn’t function above single digit values.
Wound tables
Meat points and damage reduction
Differential damage
It all works better than saying “you didn’t roll high enough to hit, but if you did, you’d still miss in an abstract fashion, or otherwise hurt them in a way that doesn’t inhibit performance whatsoever. No, it’s their turn to see if they hit your “still not hit points” yet.
>If you’re going to make it an abstraction it ... needs to stand alone
Why?
People like the round to round tension of whether or not they'll be hit, but also (because of other pacing concerns) want attrition to be an orderly affair without a death spiral.
Its like the fifth bait thread in less than an hour, just dont reply
all valid points though
They literally aren’t though.
the thread keeps exposing the shitty arguments of deendeefags
This is the first seethe post itt, one reply = 1 mocking
Are you just retarded or just bad at making bait posts?
Anyway I'm going to bite anyway cause lmao. HP is basically a abstract way of doing stamina during a fight. You can make it so that your HP is actually just how much your armor is soaking up, or if you're a barbarian your skin is just that tanky you just stop arrows from hitting past your muscles. Maybe you use your shield to deflect a blow towards your face.
Just because you take hp damage doesn't mean it can hit you (well besides spells) which in the case of lightning bolt you can just say you dodge lightning cause D&D characters are super heroes retard. Maybe as a wizard you got small shield wards that deflect attacks and your HP is basically you being tired of constantly putting them up or they was just fast enough to go through or strong enough to bash through it to club your skull in.
Its all dependant on your character. This isn't even just in D&D this is also in Mutants and Masterminds even though it got a more active defense which you gotta roll you at least choose it mechanically.
Play more games and actually try to Roleplay in your RPG not just play your role in a fight.
He's lonely. Apart from when his mom yells at him for shitting his pants, this is the only social interaction he ever gets.
The actual mechanics of the system (D&D in this case) disagree with you. You can say hit points are some abstraction of fatigue, luck, or whatever all you want, but when fatigue is it's own entirely unrelated system, dodging is it's own unrelated system, and every spell that restores hit points is fluffed as being restoring wounds and has been for years, to argue that "Hit points aren't meat points" is just willful ignorance. And yes, even if the people making the system say otherwise, it doesn't change a damn thing about HP being meat points since, again, the system argues against them.
>Hit points are dodge juice
>leads to absurdity
>Hit points are meat
>leads to absurdity
There's no right answer, and it entirely depends on whether you're more comfortable with a fudgy mechanic or a nonsense game world.
It's almost like hit points are a poorly thought out concept from an archaic era of game design that make no sense when put to scrutiny.
yeah
"almost"
>HP is basically a abstract way of doing stamina during a fight.
then where is the abstraction for health which is way more important than capturing stamina
im sorry but you can't BS your way out of this
>im sorry but you can't BS your way out of this
Bullshitting your way to make sense of random rolls in any situation is the core of rpgs. HP is an abstract value representing how many hits you can take, it includes fatigue, wounds, the condition of your armor, etc... the details of how you take these hits is up to your character and your imagination.
I don't know, if it's such a staple of rpgs maybe, just maybe, it has some qualities? Not saying it's the best but it's a perfectly valid system.
Should have roleplayed as your barbarian hanging on the rock at the last moment and trying to resist the burning heat and unbreathable air. Skill issue from imaginationlets player and GM combined with a stupid lava mechanic. This is no HP problem.
>Skill issue
Dancing around retarded rules is a skill no doubt, conversely other people may prefer a rulesystem that naturally emerge scenarios that makes some sense either referencing fiction or reality. If the rules don't reference that situation or specifically states that, yes, freefalling in lava is fatal period, that would push the gm for naturally making a cliffhanger scenario rather than jumping through hoops for justifying an occurrence in post because otherwise doesn't make fucking sense.
>Dancing around retarded rules is a skill no doubt,
i have no problem with having to interpret the dice rolls. the problem for me is that the dice/rules don't tell me what happened. if i lose 10 of my 50 hitpoints did i tank the hit due to my toughness? or was I evading getting hit but my "luck" went down? or did I evade it but expended my stamina and i am not fatigued?
rolling these things into one number weakens characterization
*now fatigued
>Condition of your armor
Okay
>Takes off my dented breastplate
>Suddenly regains HP because I'm not wearing (damaged) armor anymore
Sounds legit, back when I used to do manual labor taking dirty clothes off at the end of the shift did make me feel better.
Actually, if your armor is dented ENOUGH, doffing it would help your condition and in a few cases might even save your life.
>submerged
>should be roleplayed as hanging onto a rock
Incorrect. It says "submerged".
You're just that tough.
well, yeah, that's what the rules say.
simply swim through the lava, if you have enough health.
Similarly, I've made characters through a number of editions who's gimmick was getting a lot of health or damage resistance, and a lot of grapple, and just pulling people into lethal hazards.
The Molten Core Swim Team needs YOU (hated when they rebalanced Lava to deal %HP bonus damage in WoW. It was fun to swim in it.)
>you dont actually take damage from the poison
Also
>you dodge the spell
Thats literally what the dex save is there for, if you fail that dex save, you dont.
These are trolls just playing devil's advocate for lulz or to be a contrarian, right? No one seriously defends this inanity, surely?
Armor doesn’t give you more HP so I don’t see how it could represent the damage your armor takes instead
Exactly, and consider that it can’t be “mental endurance” either, contrary to what the 5e book says. Your will save (well, 5e equivalents with WIS and CHA saves) don’t affect your HP despite being related to mental endurance. And barbarians- the class whose whole gimmicks is throwing shitfits so bad that they can’t cast spells, even with a “magic” subclass- gets the highest hit dice
Yeah, hit points are a shit system unless they're explicitly Meat Points and losing them means you lost a chunk of your body. Trying to do anything else is simply fucking inexcusably stupid.
See all that you typed? That is fucking idiotic because it makes it unclear what actually happens in the game world on a very basic level, and that's something that should always be kept clear to all so that the shared illusion is preserved.
>and that's something that should always be kept clear to all so that the shared illusion is preserved.
Or you could just use your own imagination to explain how your character takes a non-fatal blow in a way that that is consistent with established fluff. There has never been a real reason to explain exactly what losing HP does because losing HP doesn't have any inherent consequences until you drop into negatives,
you mean shoehorn a thinly-veiled rationale in
how do u avoid the
>just dont think about it bro lmao
effect
Just do so:
>Remaining HP after an hit are above 0
Just a flash wound (cuts in non vital parts, instantaneous dislocations, first and second degree burns, etc...)
>Damage makes you go 0 or less
Serious wound (hemorrhages, fractures, third degree burns, etc...)
>Damage is enough to kill the character
Reign free description.
Use "Die Hard" movie logic for anything else the character survives (eg: fall damage is mitigated because the character happens to grasp a protrusion for a split second, etc...).
Still shit but workable at least this way. Either this or fucking play GURPS.
Forgot to add: this method works best with 3.x and backward, 4e and 5e have "2nd wind" abilities or weird instantaneous recovery mechanics that make meaningless any "serious wound" description, just always go with "just a flash wound" regardless of the condition.
2nd wind can be fluffed as just adrenaline kicking in well enough to let you ignore the pain for a few more scant seconds to finish a fight
Why did you say flash wound more than once? It's "flesh wound", just so you know.
I know, i am ESL and my fucking phone T9 for some reason keeps changing "flesh" with "flash". Sorry, i didn't double check before posting but i assumed the typo was kind of implicitly understandable.
My hit points are endurance, and armor is durability, because I run heroic fantasy. Dodging is applied to either the defense check or is activated through reaction skills.
But my games are "too complex", "bean counting", and "book keeping", so I'll continue enjoying what I do on my own.
>hit points
>a measure of anything but how hard you can be hit
unironically more retarded than just having characters be built different and able to survive having a greatsword swung into them
>OP yet again arguing with voices in his head
This is the primary reason why I dislike D&D. I know it's petty, and I don't like some other stuff, but how they handle armour is the first thing that comes up whenever I think of the game and I just can't stand it.
Fall damage directly lowers HP and does not scale with HP.
Hit Points are really just Meat Points.
So what you're saying is that hit points are related to how many times you can get hit?
This entire thread is why I hate the TTRPG scene. It's a god damn game. Hitpoints work well. If they didn't work well they wouldn't be so ubiquitous in videogames.
You all are so autistic. It literally is the most minor things out there AND it works well AND players universally understand what it means. For those reasons it's fine. I've played 'alternative' health schemes in different games and literally none of them feel as good as HP.
>Hitpoints work well. If they didn't work well they wouldn't be so ubiquitous
oh boy what a cogent and well-reasoned argument that doesn't in any way ignore how stupid human beings are
What argument is there to make? They feel good in the game, they're easy to comprehend, easy to track, and players universally understand what stats feed them and how damage is applied to them.
There's nothing more to it. Again it's a GAME. Videogames, which have 100x more complexity in their combat interactions due automation still use HP because it just works.
This on the other hand, I can agree with. D&D's problem is mainly lack of consequences in low HP and going down.
Yeah and I don't either. It is how squishy your character is. Narrativist cucks had to go about explaining what it meant because they hate that they're playing a game, but universally a player understands that it is meat points tied to level and strength or stamina or constitution because everyone has played a videogame before.
>they feel good
They feel horrible.
>They're easy to comprehend
This thread proves otherwise.
>Easy to track
As is nearly everything, it's like saying they're decimal as a plus. It's below a baseline requirement.
>players universally understand what stats feed them and how damage is applied to them
Nope. D&D's hitpoint system in particular sucks ass and makes no sense.
...No? It's pretty easy. Hitdice Plus Con plus whatever else your class/race gets to add. Temp HP's a bit goofy though.
A lot of players like having an increased cushion as they progress.
How's d6 work?
...Yes? It's pretty bad and unintuitive. Hit dice make no sense.
Nobody enjoys the spongeyness of HP.
Imagine being this wrong
NARPer detected, your non-experience is noted and your opinions have been discarded.
D6 has opposed rolls, damage Vs soak (stamina plus armour bonus). If damage wins, you move up your wound track which goes from Stunned to Dead. Most modern interpretations make Soak a static score for ease of use.
What is horrible about them? You get hit you take damage your health goes down.
Everyone can comprehend this, no one thinks it's bad. Everyone has mountains of experience with the system via videogames and intrinsically understands what it means.
This I can believe. God damn do people hate tracking weight despite being such a universal system. I think it's the lack of automation, but like we all have VTTs... it's not that hard... if you're playing IRL there are systems that go by 'boxes' ala diablo.
Hunger and light are more difficult to track, mostly because of the poor abstraction of in game time vs out of game time and almost every system being hot wet dogshit at explaining time outside of combat. Lots of systems are God damn shite at tracking time. Literally all you have to do is break days into 3 chunks of turns and hours into 6 chunks of turns and then everything else becomes piss easy to track.
>What is horrible about them
It's spongey, unintuitive, makes zero sense from a simulationist or a game design perspective, and overlaps poorly with many other systems.
>Everyone can comprehend this
Nope, read the thread. Everyone is pretty much in agreement that HP sucks and is bad.
Spongy gives you room to recover. Also allows for regeneration mechanics that don't heal too quickly but are still meaningful.
Spongy gives you four hours of boring combat instead of one. It doesn't affect the outcome whatsoever, just the length of time it takes to reach it.
>Regeneration mechanics
Completely irrelevant to HP inflation.
>Nope, read the thread.
I did. I think it's just you anon.
20 Posters say otherwise. Sorry that you can't handle disagreement without having a meltdown, but HP sucks and nobody likes it except NARPers.
20 posters don't say otherwise though. Have you tried reading the thread?
20 Posters do say otherwise. Have you tried reading the thread?
Yet it works and is widely used in videogames to great effect. Show me a player who doesn't understand HP. Seriously. I can't think of anyone I've ever played with having trouble understanding it since literally everyone has played a videogame before.
In fact, what I've always found surprising about TTRPG is in general the lack of things being trapped. Most RPGs that are made as videogames first and foremost track both mana and stamina points (again something games intrinsically understand).
>trapped
did you mean tracked?
Yeah I did. Again I've found it interesting that mana points and stamina points aren't also used in most games. It seems fairly straightforward and would be simple for GMs to use if players came up with spells or combat maneuvers on the fly (i.e., jumping off the balancing board and slamming down onto the enemy mook is going to cost you 4 stamina points). It basically lets you balance cool shit with a resource of cool shit points.
The issue with Mana Points is that you tend to just use the same exact thing over and over again based on cost-efficiency, which ends up making it pretty braindead.
Vancian Casting has a similar issue, but it only pertains to specific spell levels, so it's less obscene. And for classes that have to prepare their spells usually don't run into the issue at all, unless there's a spell that's just leagues beyond all of its competition.
Yeah I can understand that, but I think that's generally the problem with anything if players are optimizing too much. I still think it's better than vancian casting.
Also, in my experience, most of the time only very poorly designed spells get spammed a lot. Shit like D&D's fireball (which has ALWAYS been broken). You can also very easily encourage diversity with the system much more easily, spamming a spell just ups the mana cost each time (something you can't do with Vancian magic).
Fireball broken? I thought the meta was all in save-or-suck?
The current meta is to stop playing D&D.
>The current meme
The save-or-suck is balanced since it's something only mage (cleric, druid, etc.) can do.
Fireball is broken because it deals damage and dealing damage should be fighter's thing.
I mean that's a bit much, but yeah that's partly because they nerfed haste real bad in 3rd apparently so a hasted fighter is no longer doing almost a spell's entire damage every turn, if not more, continuously for the full duration.
>The save-or-suck is balanced since it's something only mage (cleric, druid, etc.) can do.
Fighters can toss nets and tanglefoot bags just fine and should use poisoned arrows better than most.
>I think that's generally the problem with anything if players are optimizing too much
It's simply not a problem in Vancian casting, so no.
>In my experience
You don't play games so this doesn't matter at all. In real games, people will just use whatever they think is best. The more obvious it is, the more quickly they'll catch on to the meta. There is zero reason to use a spell if it has 20 DPR over one that does 21+ DPR if they have the same costs.
>spamming a spell just ups the mana cost each time (something you can't do with Vancian magic).
You can easily do this in Vancian magic just by making duplicate spells cost more. Both of these methods suck because people want to be able to use their abilities freely, and it doesn't fix the root issue of one spell being objectively better than alternatives, it just wastes their time.
Also, you can add in cooldowns to spells again, something videogames have realized is a good way of diversifying and balancing shit (either it's cooldown or cast time). Again, it's something I've seen a lot of RPGs are allergic to for some reason. I don't know why this hobby tries so hard to distance itself from videogames when there are a lot of lessons to be learned from their implementations.
Shit, I've been thinking of taking a moba-like design philosophy to an RPG system if I ever get around to creating my own. Basically a hyper small list of abilities/spells tailored to each player that they invest in as they progress. Something similarish to discipline in VtM.
Hmm I can see it slowing things down, I'd probably honestly only track it for players (and only have them track it). I think a VTT could also automate and speed it up fairly significantly.
The real value to it, I think, isn't the tiring out, it's encouraging players to pick maneuvers more carefully and also think creatively. I've typically found tying a resource to something and encouraging creativity with that resource always helps the game a lot (I personally lower difficulties in combat if players are being creative in how they're going about doing things and what they're using in their environment).
It DOES happen in Vancian systems though I've seen it.
Right they'll use what's best which is why 95% of games in D&D clones end up in fireball wars or shitty save or suck kill spells (depending on editions).
The root issue with one spell being objectively better is also largely to do with there being way too many spells. Again, this is something videogames have largely solved. Most games have small magic lists which allow each spell to shine since you autistically focus into them and make sure there are real mechanical differences to them that make them viable. There are a lot of games with pseudo spell abilities that have solved this issue.
>It DOES happen in Vancian systems
Nope. It literally can't.
>The root issue with one spell being objectively better is also largely to do
Nah, it happens when spells use the same resources, and/or the combat system sucks. Which with D&D, it does.
Can you explain why it can't? My experience is, you prepare shit so why wouldn't you always prepare what is 100% objectively the best in combat? Doesn't it then boil down to shitty combats in general?
Also it happens when there are definitely too many spells. If a combat focused spell is objectively better than another similarly leveled combat spell it will always be chosen no? Small spell lists and small lists of special abilities is definitely the way to go and I think videogames in general have realized this. TTRPGs mechanically are still largely stuck in the 90s though with the only innovations occuring in narrativist systems.
I guess... i don't know, I think that comes down to players more so than anything else. I can see it working effectively as long as it's implemented well. D&D just is fairly garbage to build off for any of these things.
Tbh I do. I don't know why you think otherwise tbh.
To actually add to this. Vancian casting reminds me MOST of Pokemons problem. There are so many spells and so many Pokemon moves that are available to the player that everyone kind of metalike moves to optimal combinations of what they can prepare on their team.
This whole idea that you can create an "optimal spell list" is yeah, the consequence of a theoretic that depends on being DMed by a literal AI. The simple fact that there are elements attached to damage and enemies might have resistances to those elements makes it unlikely that a single spell will ever be the perfectly optimal choice to always have, and this compounds considerably when you pause to consider that the role of casters in D&D has almost always been more a matter of control and AoE than it has demanding large amounts of single-target damage. Yet, the circumstances under which AoE and Control are useful is highly context sensitive- Dominate Person doesn't mean very much if you're fighting a bunch of undead, but it could mean a lot if you're fighting a gang of criminals. To be optimal, a wizard NEEDS to change his spells. If he isn't, then the DM isn't providing a significant variety in his encounters.
All spells in 5e are combat spells anyway so it's all just different flavors of combat utility.
What's the point of saying something so reductive that you already know it's wrong? You could always make a value judgement about 5e without opening yourself up to being lamely "um,aktually'd"
That said, nah. I think 5e has an alright number of spells that aren't intended strictly for combat applications, although I'd not say "no" to more of them.
What's a non-combat spell you'd like to see included in 5e that it doesn't presently have a spell for?
Yeah, because I cast Comprehend Languages or Detect Magic in combat all the time.
There's really not, honestly. It just encourages people to minmax more than they otherwise would, and narrows down their options, which in D&D is already as narrow as it gets thanks to the action economy.
Tbh you don't play games, so why does anything you say matter?
Stamina isn't really fun in most applications.
I've seen the way its used in GURPS, where it works like what you described, but is generally just an annoyance to work with or work around.
I also tried incorporating Stamina Points into my own homebrew system (Which eschews point-based health for individual wounds that either incapacitate you, kill you, or slightly weaken you), and the result was that it made combat take longer but still didn't have a serious impact on most fights.
All it opened up from a gameplay perspective was the ability to try and tire your opponent out, but turning a ten minute fight into an hour long slog isn't fun.
>Yet it works
It doesn't, as this thread has demonstrated.
>But muh vidya games
Wrong board
Stop feeding the troll, fucking seriously.
Stop samefagging. We can tell it's you when the poster count doesn't change, you know.
You're autistic and a fucking retard, an awful combo
>You get hit you take damage your health goes down.
it's hard to comprehend whether it's health, stamina or luck that is being affected by the latest hit
>universally a player understands that it is meat points tied to level and strength or stamina or constitution
>Universally everyone understands its a bunch of different and conflicting things
>um humans are yucky I know because garden gnomes who are definitely human spent billions of dollars per year to tell me humans are very bad and stupid
You can do HP well and poorly. D&D does it poorly.
Video games don't pretend HP is something else.
You're missing bigger picture, the recent outcry against hitpoint mechanic is part of gradual simplification of hobby. There's already light sources that last arbitrarily long, gold abstracted to be weightless, if weight gets tracked at all, thirst and hunger handwaved away with Goodberry. Won't be long before tracking hitpoints starts getting shunned as "unnecessary beancounting that gets in the way of fun".
>the recent outcry against hitpoint mechanic is part of gradual simplification of hobby
It's not "recent", this argument was well represented in 4e criticism
I can't wait for people to think keeping track of spell slots is bean counting.
It’s not bean counting, but vancian magic is rather arbitrary and does a poor job of conveying a wizard who can control magical forces and bend them to his will. What is the actual law of nature in the setting that prevents him from casting 6 level 3 spells a day? No such thing exists and it’s purely a game balance reason.
>It’s not bean counting
You still need to keep track of how many slots for how many levels of spells you have. And if you can only get them back during a long rest, you then have to use them wisely.
Yeah the number of slots is arbitrary and done for balance, but it's still bean counting.
Yeah, and the whole long rest/short rest system also doesn’t make much sense. I always thought that using magic for a wizard should be directly analogous to doing physical activity for a fighter or a rogue, in that it should be a mana/stamina thing. If a wizard runs out of mana, then it should regenerate at a constant rate while not being used. Like if you were on a run, got tired and rested for 10 minutes, you could go a little longer, but if you rested 20 minutes you could run for a farther distance past that. Treat it like the caster is literally just using his ‘mind muscles’ to manipulate reality.
>I've played 'alternative' health schemes in different games and literally none of them feel as good as HP.
you don't play (traditional) games. you also don't shower. fuck off secondary tourist.
>Hitpoints work well. If they didn't work well they wouldn't be so ubiquitous in videogames.
>literally just dont think about it bro lmao
for casuals and gamists maybe
>hit points work well
Name 2 other games you have played that don’t use HP.
If you could you wouldn’t be saying this.
World of darkness and FFG Warhammer 40 ttrpgs.
wounds are the same as hit points, you get some sort of critical injury while in the negatives, and at -10 or so you're dead, D&D. Health levels don't seem very different than hit points, but ehh ymmv
Ok no game.
Tbf I heard from here of all places once HP used to represent the abstraction of your army in the skirmish battles of miniature war prior to D&D. I never liked HP myself and when I tried proposing we just drop it for save or dies with layers to prevent random character death, tg hated it, even my own players hate it.
Why I dont know. Unless you're like level 10, I as the dm gotta do extra work to make everything headed your way be about as deadly as a stinky baby diaper. Even a goblin knicking at your shins with a rusted knife could kill a first level wizard.
Rusted knife d4 damage vs
>Has to make the AC
>Then target has to make con save 13, if fails that, flip 3 coins. If all are tails, dies of infection. Otherwise fine.
Your proposal is so horrible it shouldn't even require explaining as to why it's awful and doesn't work. Just play a different system.
How though? Like i said in my post, unless I start you off at level 10 or whatever, even as a fighter a few unlucky hits with rusty knife and you're down.
You're probably the type who says my system would be "random death" but there's nothing random about it
>Your AC has to be shit
>Your con save has to be shit
>You have to be severely unlucky and flip 3 tails
That's not gonna happen
And if it did happen, you were meant to die
Now I'll admit, some monsters might be more dangerous than this. For example I might make a basilisk
>Gotta make the con save and if you fail, have to make three more and are consecutively getting penalties to them each time. Let's say the first was 16. And while the next three are as well, first round it's at -1, -2, then -4 to become petrified. Now it will require luck to survive, but you have three rounds to do it and get a buff in between to make it.
Essentially that's all it is is it replaces what would be cure wounds with buff spells and potions with armory that actually provides tangible bonuses.
Also a basilisk should be more threatening than a goblin with a rusty knife.
All systems are random death, technically.
The reason it's shit is that it's overly complex and not easily expandable across a system with hundreds of monsters and character builds.
Sounds like you're shittily reinventing the damage systems of Shadowrun or WEG Star Wars.
Play more games.
Not even shadowrun because you have a shit ton of dice to roll to soak things, if you have a bad soak roll you can use edge to reroll and you can burn edge to automatically survive
Problem is that damage becomes all or nothing. Wound systems are superior. I tried to post this same exact picture, check here
So now that we've agreed that hit points suck, what's the next best alternative?
health points
some sort of injury system?
Hold on a second, I recognize those icons
You got me there, and I even left one out to confuse the audience...
This is a pretty great system in fact. So is WoD's wounds soaked by stamina, or those that use an HP pool interpreted as fractions of a toughness stat.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAH
A system that makes you roll something to resist the injury and move on. Penalties and the like depend on how well you resisted. Being stabbed more times doesn't make you weaker to more stabs if the first 40 stabs didn't injury you yet the 41st one can kill you if it hits a vital spot.
I don't know a single system that does that.
Literally True20, Mutants & Masterminds and Savage Worlds (well on the reverse, you roll damage vs the resistance threshold) work like that.
>alternatives
Realistic systems are not fun. That's why hit points work. I've played games with specific body part damage. Had to have two surgeries for collapsed lungs. Have died of exposure a couple times. Have played games where there's no way of telling how healthy someone is without medical equipment. Have bled out over the course of a real life hour while only being able to crawl whenever i was lucky enough to regain consciousness. Been knocked unconscious in a single hit I couldn't see coming and subsequently robbed. Have been shot, lucky enough to get to the hospital, died of medical malpractice. Been crippled by electrical burns, having to move slowly for the rest of the game. Got shot in the face, couldn't see the right side of the screen when aiming down sights for the rest of the game...
At some point put it the fuck together that HP works because the alternative is being crippled or instantly dead. I like games where that happens because they tend to be very cautious, people play and think like they've got one life to live and their decisions matter, especially ones with no quick save or multiplayer ones with no respawn. They're interesting, not necessarily fun, but we live in a society where everyone expects everything to be as fun as mssturbation.
I think the solution is, if HP is a must for a fun game, to turn HP from an abstraction into the actual literal in universe way things work, and everyone knows about it. They don’t need to use the phrase HP, or assign specific numbers to it in universe, but have even the peasants understand that everyone has some amount of life force that helps them withstand attacks. Turn the mechanics of the game into the actual literal laws of physics in the universe in which the game takes place.
>in universe explaination of HP for tabletop games
Is saying Cure Wounds heals your vitals and vigor, flesh wounds heal, but not poison or disease or broken bones enough to say it? How about if Cure Poison, Cure Disease etc did both HP at different amounts and that associated fix? Then you'd kinda need to heal fighters harder than wizards unless it was percentage based healing... though you have to do that now and i never thought of it that way.
You’re talking about things that interact with HP. I’m talking about a straightforward, literal, direct, in universe reason for HP as a concept to exist due to the base functioning of the world. Like gurren Lagan spiral power type shit that the characters themselves are aware of
We get it, you don't play rpgs.
Y, WNBAW!
I like Fragged Empire's base system: Stamina / Stat damage. Most of what was attached to it is shit tho.
> Critical Hits cause actual wounds that amper your ability to move, see, etc.
> Non-critical hits are usually painful suckers, but less important to your health. Bruises and small cuts.
> When battered in battle (no more stamina), every hit you receive is a critical hit, and they get worse.
DP9's system is also neat.
> Have a flesh wound threshold (X/2), Deep Wound Treshold (X) and instant death Threshold (2X).
> Armor adds a significant flat number to all 3 values.
> When hit, the margin of success is multiplied by the weapon's damage, and compared to all 3 thresholds.
> Thus, armor protects far better against small arms. Good thing rockets are imprecise on character scale.
> Wounds have effects by themselves (deep wound x2 basically means you can just crawl)
> When )Flesh Wounds + 2x Deep wounds)>= System Shock, you go into shock and die. You can be resucitated for a short while, but odds decline quickly.
I prefer the first because it has as good a feel while being a bit more forgiving. A shame the base system was butchered by the shit layered on top of it.
Yeah the clue's in the fucking name really. HIT points. As in how much you can get HIT before dying/being knocked unconscious. Dodging is handled by a completely separate mechanic in D&D at least but in most things really, the spell is called Cure Light Wounds not Restore Luck Points, etc.
I know some article or paragraph in one of the books might've said they're supposed to represent you parrying or something, but from the way the mechanic works you can tell this definitely is not how it was originally meant to be interpreted and is just an excuse they hastily came up with once characters began to amass unreasonable amounts of HP. That doesn't mean you should necessarily assume that losing any amount of HP is equivalent to being skewered straight through the chest, but it does make sense to assume it represents some form of hit and subsequent injury, even if minor.
if this theory hold i will go to the bathroom and piss without removing my pants and will remain dry
Yes, HP are an abstraction. Its why creatures with tons of HD have tons of HP, its a "you must be this tall fight this monster" stick
what systems do damage/hp pools right then?
In my godawful homebrew attempt to recreate OSR despite only having played 3.5-5e, you only get your starting hit die worth of hit points, 0 means dead, and when you are at a quarter health you hit level three exhaustion.
My players hate it but they haven't taken the hint that I want them to run games instead of having me do it yet.
Why defend hit points? It's fine in certain contexts but definitely too gamey and overly simplistic for anything even mildly simulationist in nature. A wound system could easily be simpler (but less simplistic) and more realistic.
You don't need anyone's permission to build the game you want.
Hit points have ALWAYS been meat points and anyone who has ever claimed otherwise is hard coping about the fact they're playing a superhero system.
>fall damage directly affects hit points
>different damage types and resistances REQUIRE they be meat points, the reason getting dunked in a vat of acid hurts celestials less than human is because they have acid energy resistance, same with fire for dragonborn and tieflings
>LITERALLY EVERY EFFECT WITH A FORTITUDE SAVE necessitates that HP=Meat Points, like taking a Fortitude/Constitution save after being struck with a poisoned arrow. THERE IS NO ABSTRACTION TO INJURY POISON ENTERING YOUR BLOODSTREAM.
>damaging grapples and rake attacks literally mandate physical contact between player and enemies, being shredded by a damaging grapple effect or swallow whole or a Choker throttling you is not "an abstract measure of near-misses"
HP=Meat. Higher level characters have more meat. The end. Play a Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green if you think that's retarded
>THERE IS NO ABSTRACTION TO INJURY POISON ENTERING YOUR BLOODSTREAM.
This. I'll probably be making a video blowing the fuck out of hit points tomorrow.
Gurps
By level 20 if you're not playing a hambeast overladen with meat points, whose only reason to not struggle with their bulk is superhuman ability, you're doing it wrong.
I really don't see what's wrong with this. HP is a measure of luck, physical fortitude, and all that sort of thing, determining how you stand up to receiving a blow.
Armor in some systems directly blocks damage. In others, it measures how hard you are to damage.
There is literally no issue here.
>I will say as an aside, having low HP values is superior as it makes weapons feel more powerful, and decisions in combat more high stakes
Low HP is most fun in low/no-magic games because magic users can apply damage too reliably and generally do so in AoEs. I don't mind a Perils of the Warp-style balancing system for magic to account for this, tho.
This. Systems where mages are OP, but have a propensity to explode when the dice don't like them are awsome
>HP is a measure of luck, physical fortitude, and all that sort of thing, determining how you stand up to receiving a blow.
Because most of those things have already separated attributes, feats etc
It's never been pure abstraction or pure "meat points". Every conventional definition of hitpoints refers to it as a combination of factors. Only simulationist giga-autists care about the minutia of when and where it's supposed to represent what specifically.
>to deendeefags everyone who isnt like
>just dont think about it bro lmao
>is a simulationist giga-autist
the absolute state of the D&D community
What should really happen is armor should apply differently to different types of weapons, and differently based on specific armor. A chainmail hauberk should apply flat damage reduction to slashing attacks, a minor AC like penalty to piercing attacks, and basically nothing to blunt attacks. A suit of plate should basically nullify slashing attacks entirely, provide a good AC like bonus to piercing (to represent chinks in the armor needing to be found), but have a relatively poor bonus against blunt/spike weapons. It should all be weapon-armor interaction specific.
The real reason spongy health points are bad is it changes the way people play the game. Most groups play dnd/pathfinder as a battle simulator where you go from one hostile encounter to the next, with your ‘lawful good’ character slaughtering scores of combatants without batting an eye and sleeping like a baby later that night. Combat should be quick, lethal, dangerous, and most importantly, the absolute last resort in any situation. Like in real life. Some sort of wound system with actual long lasting and potentially lethal consequences for getting stabbed, with turn these games back into actual role playing games and not battlehobo simulators.
>Combat should be quick, lethal, dangerous, and most importantly, the absolute last resort in any situation. Like in real life.
This is heroic fantasy you GNBAF (gay moron bitch ass gay). Imagine if Achilles cried about having to "resort" to slaughtering Trojans by the droves for his path to glory lol.
>heroic fantasy
There is nothing heroic about being a psycho murderhobo.
Americans don't define what a hero is stupid gay.
>In DnD terms, Achilles would be like a lvl 15 fighter at least, bestowed with a GM created protection spell from an actual god. T
Guess how he reached level 15? Not being a sniveling pussy.
>Americans don't define what a hero is
Sounds like we put a lot of yours in shallow graves.
You have absolutely nothing of value to say so you're trying to shift the argument to bragging about America's desert wars, which isn't even the point I'm making.
Sounds like I hit a sore spot, because you're yelping just like your heroes did before they died and got used as a fucking urinal by an American man.
You're the one calling Achilles a "psychopathic murderer" instead of a hero you insipid zoomer shithead. When I call you American, it's people like YOU who, when not sucking his boyfriend's cock, is busy telling people you should give your guns up to the government. The American ideal of a hero is literally the neoliberal ideal of being a sycophantic cuck for the state ala Superman and Batman, not someone who admires individuality and strength as virtues in of itself.
You should have most of your "training" done by level 1. Past that, you only grow through direct experience.
Wrong guy, you dumb noguns gay. Foreigners shouldn't be allowed to speak to American men without permission.
>American "men"
You all look fat enough to have tits.
>Achilles was a warrior who obeyed the warrior's code of honor.
Achilles would agree with me.
>You're just a murderhobo who doesn't even know what socialization is
Killing bands of marauders that attack your carriage is perfectly reasonable. Destroying malevolent vagabonds that undermines the very soil your country stands on is objectively a good thing. There are numerous scenarios where violence is far preferable - and yes, even more heroic than mere diplomacy.
>and you play dnd only for the sake of increasing numbers, the idea of roleplay doesn't even enter your stupid head.
Your type of roleplay is being a neurotic conflict averse gay.
>Typical hobby cancer - neckbeard incel.
My face has a more noble countenance than you, I am capable of greater contemplative depth than you, and my artistic tastes are superior to yours. Eat shit.
>Makes no sense.
You grow in a spiritual sense. Constantly throwing yourself into danger hones instincts, strengthens resolve etc. Growing in muscular strength coincides with this kind of fantasy because back then people believed that a strong body meant a strong spirit (though nowadays it's obvious that's not the case when you look at bodybuilders).
>Constant training in between actual hostilities is essential to any warrior/soldier.
Boxers don't get "stronger" when they train in-between matches, this is just the basic tenants of conditioning. In fact they tend to peak physically early on in their careers even. This isn't Dragon Ball Z or One Piece where the characters can theoretically one-shot whatever villain is a threat if they just lifted weights off-screen for a while. Fighters simply get better at fighting, which is done through direct experience (via fighting).
Americans don't have heroes they just sit trapped inside of their homes afraid of taking a walk in their deteriorating neighborhoods.
Autism
Kys mudcore gay.
I don't mind HP at all and I despise mudcore, but damn dude you're autistic as fuck.
You're German, aren't you? Only krauts are this butthurt about Americans slaughtering their heroes and breeding their widows.
Achilles was a warrior who obeyed the warrior's code of honor. You're just a murderhobo who doesn't even know what socialization is and you play dnd only for the sake of increasing numbers, the idea of roleplay doesn't even enter your stupid head. Typical hobby cancer - neckbeard incel.
There is no need to be so hostile. Also,
> You should have most of your "training" done by level 1. Past that, you only grow through direct experience.
Makes no sense. Constant training in between actual hostilities is essential to any warrior/soldier. The skills you gain through direct experience must be reinforced through training otherwise they will be lost. We’re starting to touch on why even the concept of levels themselves doesn’t make much sense when you start to scrutinize it. A level-less system the tracks a character’s competency across various skills directly would make more sense.
>concept of levels themselves doesn’t make much sense
This makes sense if the level system reflected the character's growth beyond the capabilities of an ordinary individual (for example, to continue fighting while on the verge of death or to have a state of superconcentration). The problem is that dnd hates fighters, and therefore, instead of real heroic traits, the authors simply stuffed what an ordinary person can achieve through training. Moreover, in real life, real people can do more than fighters in dnd.
Even then you could represent the ability to achieve those things through methods other than levels. For you first example, achieving a certain threshold of an endurance/willpower stat, plus prerequisite feats, could unlock that ability, and for your second example achieving a certain level of competency in a specific fighting style could give you that power. None of these things need be inherently tied to an overall ‘level’
I don't think there are any methods that could prepare you for a fight when you are holding your own guts in your hands.
Okay so then how is a level going to do it?
The level system should show of the character growth as a hero. Although this means that there should be two different systems, one system for skills and one for the heroic aspect. I doubt the dndrons brain can handle it.
The system for skills, attributes, etc can be just those things themselves. This also prevents things from being backwards. The way it is now, you do a bunch of stuff to get enough experience to level up, and then your skills, attributes, feats etc increase when you do. It should be entirely the other way around. Your skills should ‘level up’ as you use them, and only when you use them, similar to an elder scrolls game like morrowind.
Your brain's been rotted by Hollywood such that your notion of an American hero is narrowed to capeshit. Expand your horizons a little.
>Meaning of hero in English: a person who is admired for having done something very brave or having achieved something great.
>https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/hero
Ok retard.
There’s two of us talking to you. Well, Achilles probably got that way through a lot of physical exercise and combat training in between fighting wars. This is another topic not represented well by DnD and other systems; typically you will want to get as good at fighting as is reasonable through training before going into an actual combat situation. In other words, you level up and then go fight, as compared to fighting to level up.
Depends on how we're defining hero here. More importantly, the tone of the campaign and the conduct of the party is up to the group. I was in a campaign once where the party was part of the setting equivalent of the FBI. I had to cajole the rest of the players a bit after our first crackdown ended up with more casualties than arrests, but from then on we ended up conducting ourselves like respectable lawmen. I think the DM was proud of us for cleaning up our act.
Do you have a comprehension issue? It was clearly stated that there should be a heroic fantasy, it is not my problem that zoomers with ADHD are not able to follow even the simplest goal.
That's the point. Heroism and heroic fantasy don't really preclude defeating swathes of enemies. It might even necessitate it, depending on the context.
So lord of the rings is a murder hobo movie. Do you even think before you say the most banal inept shit possible?
Each character has a house, retard.
I never saw fucking Gandalf with one, he just sleeps in Bilbo's
In DnD terms, Achilles would be like a lvl 15 fighter at least, bestowed with a GM created protection spell from an actual god. That’s nowhere close to what player characters are like starting at level 1
and this is how I know you're trolling because he did try to duck out of fighting the Trojans
His counterpart Hector (just as heroic) was dragging his feet quite a bit too.
>Hector agrees to meet Achilles to fight him
>loses his nerve and wimps out
>Achilles chases him around the town until Athenia tricks him and makes him turn around
>Achilles stabs him through the neck, ties his body to his chariot and rides donuts around the city walls for literal days
great "heroes", guys
the pettiness of ancient greeks shouldn't be underestimated.
Homer after all was both writing a story exalting the glory of war and decrying it's insanity and brutality at the same time
hubris was a very popular trope for a reason
>realize that your only class feature is physical damage
>realize this bro is immune to physical damage
>realize you are NOT immune to physical damage
>realize this bro can deal a lot of physical damage
What would you do?
Sacrifice to the gods and hope somebody up there hates the bastard bad enough to help me bring him down.
Failing that, dig a deep hole, trick him to fall down, put a heavy lid on top, cover with dirt, and never mention it to anyone. I don't need to kill him, I just need to keep him out of the way long enough to win the war.
Bury him alive. That would kill Achilles.
Nets, nets, nets, more nets, drown him in nets, put him inside a hole, throw more nets on him, drop a pallete of bricks on top of him so he can't get up, fill the hole with cement (das conk creet baby), let it dry, put dirt above it, maybe build a road or something atop it.
Sounds like a prologue. The opening credits will show how a city gets built over the (still living) hero's grave.
The title would be Achilles Takes Manhattan
>not Achilles Takes Paris
you had one job
I wouldn't watch a movie about achilles if half of it was in arabic
More like Muhammad takes Paris
>gets within net throwing distance
>achilles reaches you with a single leap
>decapitates three of you in one stroke
>the rest flee in terror
>proceeds to run rampant hunting all of you down till he quenches his bloodlust
>eventually the gods have to intervene to save some of you
I've read the Lore™ so I aim for his ankle
That's metagaming!
Because he'd been dishonored.
That's well within the DM's discretion for how he wants to run combat. It's not exactly hard for him to increase enemy damage and decrease enemy health to make combat feel more fast and deadly. Plus there's optional rules in the DMG for stuff like injuries.
Another way to help these systems make sense is by, from the outset, designing the actual universe in which the game takes place to be different from ours. I’m talking stuff like literal anime logic of ‘my willpower is too strong for this wound to kill me’ being the actual intellectually understood way things work in the universe, and everyone living in it knows it. I’m talking about the Samurai Jack ‘jump good’ episode, where everyone in the village knows full well that if you practice long and hard enough, you absolutely can learn to jump 30 feet high from a standing position, and Billy’s great uncle Ted did just that 15 years ago. Make ‘game logic’ the actual hard physics of the universe and go from there
I replaced hits points with the posture system from Sekiro. Much better and more people are becoming interested in the game because it is easier for them to understand.
Armor and weapons and 'to hit but armor' is the most retarded shit, and I have no idea how or why D&D sycophants still defend this bullshit.
>Be 5th level barbarian
>Have an average of 43 hp
>Have to explore the evil wizard !mount doom cave
>Passage is a narrow path coasting a lake of lava
>We secure ourselves with a safety rope and try venture
>Fail my balance ceck, fall in lava
>Fighter pass both the balance check and the strength check so miraculously extract me in 1 round
>I have to take 10d6 damage for two rounds. I get a total of 37 points of damage, lucky me.
>No crippling effects because damage is AbsTraCt, i just clean myself from the residual molten rock over my skin a chug a couple of healing potions (that don't regenerate anything because that's another spell altogether but just recharge my abstract pool of damage resisting points)
>Good as new.
>You soaked up this damage and just heal from it from outside sources
>Under my system, damage comes from many different sources. Falling into fucking lava would probably be something like 10d6 vs your combined strength and constitution score. Which is what? 36 itself? If it hits that threshold you're dead. Which is just a little above average for a 10d6 roll and at the same time seems plausible.
>However, the cleric prayed for you to somehow survive giving you bulls strength to put your strength score just above the dice. You know consciously you should be dead and quite honestly it's still painful, but it's a literalmmiracle why you're alive
>Tg calls this shit game design
>Tg is wrong again
>Barbarian is crossing the narrow path over the lava lake
>DM asks for a dex check because it's difficult
>If failed barbarian has to roll a save vs death
>If save successful the barbarian just slipped sliding on a nearby rock protrusion getting hit by 10d6 points of damage for the unimaginable heat exposure (also charisma and constitution are reduced by 1 point each for the permanent disfiguring scars)
>If save is failed the barbarian fucking dies sinking in lava
Old school is the way.
>skills don't affect the save and could as well just don't exist
As usual
What, do you think a 3 in 6 chance (2 in 6 base +1 because is basically half climbing) to pass through is better instead? Thief can use the climbing skill if better and failure triggers the saving throw.
If we apply this to 5e
>Ability to resist banishment and possession worsens
>Ability to play instruments worsens
>Ability to cast spells powered by faith, pact, or bloodline worsens
>Lose “force of personality”
>Because I have a fucking scar
losing cha for a physical injury is completely retarded. just give a disposition penalty due to the hideous scar or smth
sometimes these oldschool players go too far
>Hideous monster appears on the outskirts of the town
>Horribly disfigures you, but you survive and flee, still leaking blood
>Try to warn town guard
>They don’t believe you because you’re ugly
>losing cha for a physical injury is completely retarded
stories of war veterans from "recent" history largely suport the direct association
>drafted for tour in 'man / volunteering for iraq
>sent home after getting shot
>trouble interacting with people back home, often including own family
>trouble finding stable employment
>increased likelihood of falling into homelessnes, destitution or developing addiction
many such cases
The real issue is
>drafted for tour in 'man / volunteering for iraq
not
>sent home after getting shot
You don't have to get shot for PTSD/other mental trauma (but it helps)
So characters should lose charisma just by dungeon delving even if they don't get hurt in the process?
>Characters could lose charisma just by dungeon delving even if they don't get hurt in the process, if it makes sense.
Maybe, if that's how the system is set up? Usually when you care for that sort of thing, you have separate (in)sanity system, possibly with social penalties built in.
Thank you for actually contributing something useful to the thread
You don’t get it, the lava ate your “luck points”, meaning you can’t win a lottery until you drink potions.
But your "luck points" don't take a hit when you win or lose a lottery or any game of chance. How weird, people say hit points are luck but they never work when your luck is tested without immediate danger to your body.
The issue in this scenario is that the lava doesn't do as much damage as it should, not the underlying HP mechanic.
It's from 3.x. being submerged in lava does 10d6 damage per round. If the character gets suberged and extracted damage persist for 1d3 subsequent rounds. In that example the character got damage for 1 round (when he fell in the lava lake) and another round (implies the dm rolled a 1 on a d3). 37 points of damage is very low but within the realms of possibilities, the point of the example is that despite the damage taken it doesn't make any sense being dipped into lava e not even being Anakin Skywalker'd, let alone surviving it.
>It's from 3.x. being submerged in lava
Already retarded
Them low balling the damage is a problem because they low balled the damage. If they made it just flat 1,000 hp damage than there would be no issue.
It's not an issue of damage magnitude but the binary nature of the HP mechanism: if damage leaves the hp pool above 0 the effects of injury are meaningless so have to be described without crippling/incapacitating connotations which forces the gm/player to jump through hoops in order to justify the outcomes always having this fixed premise in mind.
Point is that, even in fiction, heroes and villains alike get scarred and maimed. In the case of the aforementioned example even if narratively the barbarian survives a dip/proximity to lava it would be expedient to have lasting consequences from that (eg: Anakin Skywalker).
Nah, my barbarian takes damage like that and walks it off constantly.
It takes something more than lava or 40 arrows to make a lasting injury.
what a godawful setting
>able to get close enough to lava to touch it without being cooked alive by the roughly 600 degree Celsius air (around 1112 degrees Fahrenheit for my fellow americhads)
>only take damage from touching the lava
>recharge from this death defying feat by drinking potions in the comfortable heat of a volcano.
>Muh abstraction, this is unrealistic.
jokes aside lingering injuries and hitpoints should go either one of two ways.
A. when you run out of luck points, you suffer some mutilation that affects gameplay, (stat debuffs, loss of limbs removing sword and board tactics, loss of weiner, ect.) then restocking your Luck points after that injury. or
2. meat points in the sense of how much trauma kills you outright, while still leaving room for lingering injuries (I.E. your arm was broken by that golem smashing your arm, but it didn't do enough damage to make you die outright but getting shot by 7 arrows in one turn did do enough to make the elf die of shock.)
the problem is games like to do a bit of one and a bit of the other to the point where it tries being both with none of the advantages and all of the weirdness of not picking a side.
>able to get close enough to lava to touch it without being cooked alive by the roughly 600 degree Celsius air (around 1112 degrees Fahrenheit for my fellow americhads)
>only take damage from touching the lava
>recharge from this death defying feat by drinking potions in the comfortable heat of a volcano.
Yes? That's why the old school ruling here
makes more sense: it implies the narrow path is way higher apart from the lava lake and the barbarians gets scorched only when falling down on the rock protrusion by the sheer proximity with the lava.
>sinking in lava?
>the barbarian is denser than stone? thus sinking below the fluid rock.
>as opposed to the realistic scenario where everyone would have a very traumatizing few minutes of the barbarian being pan scorched from the surface of the magma, screaming for their companions to help them from the unimaginable pain until exhaustion or pain causes them to pass out, then expiring from the heat in their comatose state.
>assuming the barbarian was unlucky enough to not fall on his head, cracking open like a cantaloupe on the surface of the magma and granting a comparatively painless death.
>few minutes
incorrect, assuming a human.
Assuming some kind of meat point superman, yeah sure.
>Yes DM I would like to die now because that is more realistic.
>My hit points? No that's absurd, just kill me
>A save? No I wish to just die right now instantaneously as that is fun for me. Make sure all my items are gone as well
>And while I'm making my new character can you please kill the others as well? Realistically speaking, they shouldn't be able to survive the torrid air
>t. pussy
>i dun goofed up and ended up in lava AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH HITPOINTS SAVE ME!!!
fuck u u strawmanning gay
Armor making attacks hit-or-miss is realism. This isn't football armor vs baseball bats. If you are attacking a knight in full plate, you are either finding a weak spot (stabbing a joint/armpit/etc) or not doing much at all.
>Armor making attacks hit-or-miss is realism
>what is a blunt trauma
>what is kinetic energy
Ok retard.
Ya but that can’t account for an enemy with monstrous strength that can just swing a sword like a slab of metal into you so hard it dents the armor half a foot
You are not describing a miss, anon. You are describing a glancing blow.
How to fix HP (if you must use it at all):
>lower it drastically
>armour provides DR instead of making you harder to hit
>fluff HP as meat points
Easy.
I'm tired of the "abstraction" copium. Just take the meatpoint pill already or don't use HP at all.
>waaah my paladin can tank hits that would kill a draft horse
Yeah, so could Achilles, the Batman, or any 80's action hero. D&D is cheesy action adventure. Where anyone is a training montage away from becoming bulletproof. Brother if you don't like that there are hundreds of games that cater to you, stop fucking coping and trying to make the stupid elfgame something its not. That goes double to wishy-washy game designers like Gary himself in this case.
They're meatpoints in every edition and setting where "being immersed in acid" and "being immersed in lava" are not instant death.
The problem is that in this case you have to change a lot of mechanics. Cuts made by sharp weapons tend to bleed, you know.
Or we could simply not care about that kind of granular bullshit
There are bleed effects.
Also, there could still be a dodge or absorption component, is just that the physical/meat point one is never zero.
I ain't got time to bleed.
D&D is its own setting. Its not a licensed game. It has influence from stories but is not those stories. It is explicitly about superhumans, and Gandalf is not a D&D character.
well if that's what gamers want
and that is the problem of it. the uniformity. lumping disparate things together in one stat.
The problem is that you have to group things up at some point, or else we'll have to start tracking heart rate, blood volume, and so on.
yeah maybe we shouldnt roll toughness and luck into one number though. "survivability" seems a bit too coarse/abstract
i remember having these discussions years ago when 5e was fresh and D&D shills were just everywhere
Nobody ever talks about how just as much goes against HP being meat points. Do you literally sleep off severe wounds? It’s an abstraction.
fine we can talk about it but in the end all roads lead to the same rome:
D&D's hit points are a fucking inconsistent mess. they are described as combo of health, stamina, luck, whatever, just so that the GM can asspull the most fitting narration for whatever the rules dictate.
>it's an abstraction
No, you're just literally superhuman, as evidenced by being able to be submerged in lava,
Or your ability to be coup-de-graced multiple times with enough health.
>you're just literally superhuman, as evidenced by being able to be submerged in lava,
ergo it's not suitable to playing a typical fantasy campaign, something akin to lotr or asoiaf
neither bilbo nor boromir nor jon snow nor brienne are superhuman
well in D&D any non-lethal damage is superficial, since the only time the number in your sheet's Current Hit Points field becomes mechanically relevant is when it falls below 1.
To this same point, weapon damage is also a highly abstracted thing. A dagger, short sword, and long sword are all able of delivering essentially the same wound if you get a full penetration stab in, the difference is in reach, weight, etc. I never liked the dice rolling for weapon damage, I feel like those kind of things should be determined mainly by other things like the circumstances of the actual hit with the weapon, the character’s strength and skill, and techniques that are applicable to one weapon while not to another. For example, you can half sword with the long sword but not the dagger, so that extra penetration should account for the damage, not because the sword magically has a 2d6 damage compared to the 1d4 of the dagger or whatever.
There are no vital areas, only meat and meat nexuses.
So, your weapons total meat destroying value is all that matters.
Just dont play dnd and do hit points like Runequest, with armor providing DR and a fixed amount of meat points based on your stats.
Actually play dnd if you like and use this system instead if you want to add simulationism to your games
Have you tried playing any system other than DnD?
If you want to have sludgy, hyper detailed combat and damage systems, you should try a simulationist rpg instead of something gamey like DnD.
You're the retard here if you expected any version of DnD to deliver on these issues. DnD is at it's best when it's quick and snappy, hence AC, HP, and Spell Slots.
>DnD is at it's best when it's quick and snappy
So only B/X, good to know.
My WoD ST homebrewed a nice wound system for playing with The Hunters Hunted book. He added some Conditions for critical hits, changed the armour values to account with stabbing/slashing, made it so having 5 in a combat stat actually meant something more than extra dice and adapted the critical tables from WH40KRP and WHFRP to work with locational damage. It was incredibly nice that investing in helmets actually paid off, using fire was realistic, light weaponry (like daggers) could be incredibly deadly to other mortals without spending all my XP on martial Merits and being a giant with 5 strength swinging a baseball bat was mechanically meaningful.
>Guys, you'd have to be retarded not to understand what HP is, it's:
>[something that conflicts with a half dozen other similar replies in this thread and itself]
>Anyone who doesn't get this is a turboautist simulationist
It's not meant to be a simulation, ot's meant to be a game.
You're not meant to be a gay, but here you are posting retarded shit
Losing hit points means getting worn down. AC from armor means your armor deflected the blow. If you weren't retarded you'd realize that AC is easily understood as tiers. So a Knight in full plate with a shield at AC 20 (18+2) has a hit of 1-17 be blocked by the armor (misses ac 18) and then 18-19 be a shield block (misses ac 20 but hits ac 18).
A number of character sheets used to have an AC section so you could keep track of what part of your AC equation negated the blow.
>A number of character sheets used to have an AC section so you could keep track of what part of your AC equation negated the blow.
Good thing we now have four boxes for a character's personality, bond, ideal and flaw. Those are much more useful.
>5e
That's your problem.
Yes. It can be abstract or literal depending on whatever is narratively appropriate in any situation. Why is this confusing you?
How about hit points = plot armor?
It's called Cure Light Wounds, not Restore Plot Armor.
Yeah so you'll have light wounds. Isn't that like 2d6? It's on average a pretty minor cut. Are you saying that you wouldn't get a minor cut
Nta but 2d6 is the damage output of a fucking greatsword.
My mistake it's 1d8. So on average it couldn't out heal the damage of a greatsword. You have to understand that is the magical ability to instantly heal wounds, the source of said magic being a God and it can't even out heal a greatswords swing
So what does this have to do with plot armor?
hit points don't represent dodge, luck, stamina, plot armor or anything like that. they do in fact represent literal bodily integrity. yes, if you have high hit points you can take a sword to the face (or a dagger to the neck while you sleep) and only get a literal scratch. you can survive lava, dragon fire and spells that invoke death itself because you are just that tough.
hp ARE meat points.
Here's a compromise.
Hitpoints are fairly low, but you can restore them after taking damage in exchange for suffering a penalty, just as a maimed arm, a sprained leg, or even being knocked out for a few turns.
ok but only if we never invite the guy that takes forever to make a choice
"You make the choice in ten seconds or I pick two at random"
legs, I will take the damage to the legs
I don't see why people are so annoyed that HP means both meat point and plot armor. A Dinosaur has plenty of meat points. Indiana Jones survived falling from a plane because he has plenty of plot armor. If I am to believe that Lava is insta-death, why can I survive the Breath Weapon of a Dragon or the fiery embrace of a Balor without as much as a scar?
That said, 2e had a rule for ridiculous amount of damage requiring a Save versus Death on top of the damages - while it didn't fix entirely the issue, it prevented players from abusing the system by jumping from a flying city or swimming through Lava. Not so funny when you have 30% of chances to become the next Anakin.
>If I am to believe that Lava is insta-death, why can I survive the Breath Weapon of a Dragon or the fiery embrace of a Balor without as much as a scar?
you shouldnt
Do we really need these threads? it's been years and they're still getting posted. How many fucking threads do we need?
I wish your mom got an abstraction when she was pregnant with you