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Tequila Sunrise
2009-06-14, 05:36 PM
(Suspension of Disbelief)

This story is about 4e, but it applies to just about any game that uses HP. I was playing a warlord in an Eberron dungeon. During a fight, the avenger gets hit with an ice lance thing, making him bloodied. The DM describes the hit as the ice lance impaling his chest. On my next action I use Inspiring Word to heal him, with role play something like "Tough it out buddy, you've seen worse! Put some ice on it, you'll be fine!"

Can DMs describe non-fatal hits as purely near-hits and flesh wounds? Sure. Can falls into lava rivers be described as last second handholds? Usually. Can we think of creative reasons why undead take extra damage from positive/radiant attacks that hit according to the rules, but don't hit in-game? Yeah.

But ya know what? Every DM I've ever played with [including myself], in the heat of a tense battle, has a tendency at least once in a while to describe hits as hits. This often leads to patently absurd situations where my brain trips head-over-heels, gets up and then says "Oh yeah, this just some doofy game."

Jack Zander
2009-06-14, 05:40 PM
Hmm... is this a question? A rant? Or what?

If it's a question, you've answered it in your post. If it's a rant, then I'd like to point out that descriptions of attacks are a problem of the speaker, not the system.

I myself prefer a wounds system with action points used to negate hits. Then you know what's a miss, what almost hits but wears out the character, and what actually rips flesh.

AstralFire
2009-06-14, 05:40 PM
It's more accurately a problem with Hit Points as an abstract concept that amalgamates morale and actual physical toughness. When it just represents physical damage, that helps.

Jack Zander
2009-06-14, 05:45 PM
It's more accurately a problem with Hit Points as an abstract concept that amalgamates morale and actual physical toughness. When it just represents physical damage, that helps.

That's true. In 3.5 hit points represented (mostly) your actually toughness. If an attack did 5% of your total HP, it was assumed that the attack just grazed you, even if the actual damage was 30+. Hit Points represented your ability to dodge just enough or to roll with the blows rather than your ability to absorb damage. In 4.0 they gave HP all sorts of different definitions, and so you have things like morale boosts getting you unbloodied, or cure spells healing you even when you aren't hurt.

Morty
2009-06-14, 05:45 PM
It's more accurately a problem with Hit Points as an abstract concept that amalgamates morale and actual physical toughness. When it just represents physical damage, that helps.

In that case, you're faced with people who can take several hammer blows to the face and keep going. Which isn't necessarily bad, but doesn't help suspension of disbelief either. I prefer it to the "HP are morale" nonsense, though.
In fairness though, it's not really a problem with HP but with the way they work in D&D, of whichever edition - there's too many of them. There are hit points in WFRPG as well, but nobody complains about lack of realism or suspension of disbelief there.

Maerok
2009-06-14, 05:45 PM
Well how could you structure a game to quantize limb damage, etc.? It can be done, but it may make combat quicker, more unforgiving, and 'frustrating' (but I would probably like that better). I'm not even talking about headshots: losing any limb of mine would probably make me want to call it a day on that particular battle. I've always viewed this as something LARPs have done to varying degrees.

But if you wanted to do something like this, I'd advise not making it a race for the critical hit but a duel where defense is emphasized over offense. Because as much as you'd like to take down that goblin, you'd probably want to do it in one piece.

Jack Zander
2009-06-14, 05:53 PM
In that case, you're faced with people who can take several hammer blows to the face and keep going. Which isn't necessarily bad, but doesn't help suspension of disbelief either. I prefer it to the "HP are morale" nonsense, though.
In fairness though, it's not really a problem with HP but with the way they work in D&D, of whichever edition - there's too many of them. There are hit points in WFRPG as well, but nobody complains about lack of realism or suspension of disbelief there.

It's not that there are too many HPs, its that people think 50 damage should always be described as a cleave through the chest. To an adventurer with 400 HP, 50 damage is only 1/8 of his total HP. If your 2nd level fighter with 16 HP took 2 damage, how would you describe it as? Now take that description, and apply it to the attack that hits for 50 when that is only really a small portion of the total.

Zeta Kai
2009-06-14, 05:55 PM
Yeah, I'd love to add to the I-H8-4E pile, but this is an issue that could've occurred with any edition of D&D, or indeed, any tabletop RPG. You're DM has a hard time taking the information that the game is giving him & translating it into a cohesive & sensible narrative. It's not the rule-set's fault; it's in your DM's hands to describe the action in a way that makes sense.

Now, if he's trying to describe what's going on in a skill challenge... well, good luck. Those things are uber-borked. :smallamused:

Winthur
2009-06-14, 05:58 PM
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/866/tapthepaper.jpg (http://img197.imageshack.us/i/tapthepaper.jpg/)
It is written, "Only Link can defeat Ganon".

Reportedly, there was also written in the 1st edition rulebooks that Hit Points aren't just the number of whacks to the head a character can sustain, but are a mix of luck, skills, toughness and what not. And it makes sense...

Cedrass
2009-06-14, 05:58 PM
I don't really understand the problem here.

Maybe it's just me, but I always imagined my characters as some kind of James Bond or Superman guy that can take one hell of a beating and still walk just fine and even fight as if nothing was actually ripping him appart.

I'd probably have done the same thing as your DM did, and my players would have accepted it saying their characters are freakin' heros and that kind of hit is "normal".

It's a high fantasy game. You have Wizard literally shooting lightning out of their finger tips. What's wrong with a figther taking a dagger trough his chest and walking away with it?

AstralFire
2009-06-14, 05:58 PM
In that case, you're faced with people who can take several hammer blows to the face and keep going. Which isn't necessarily bad, but doesn't help suspension of disbelief either. I prefer it to the "HP are morale" nonsense, though.
In fairness though, it's not really a problem with HP but with the way they work in D&D, of whichever edition - there's too many of them. There are hit points in WFRPG as well, but nobody complains about lack of realism or suspension of disbelief there.

If it's not morale and is purely a physical representation, then the system is presupposing that they are demigodly like DBZ, or highly restricts the improvement of HP (like my system.)

I'm not saying this is an issue of 4E, because 3E also uses the morale basis, and they both have the problem stemming from their exponential HP growth rate.

potatocubed
2009-06-14, 05:59 PM
Well how could you structure a game to quantize limb damage, etc.? It can be done, but it may make combat quicker, more unforgiving, and 'frustrating' (but I would probably like that better). I'm not even talking about headshots: losing any limb of mine would probably make me want to call it a day on that particular battle. I've always viewed this as something LARPs have done to varying degrees.

But if you wanted to do something like this, I'd advise not making it a race for the critical hit but a duel where defense is emphasized over offense. Because as much as you'd like to take down that goblin, you'd probably want to do it in one piece.

The game you're describing is Runequest.

The body is divided into six hit locations - arm, arm, leg, leg, body, head - and each location has... about 6 hp - more for the chest, less for the head.

A typical sword blow does 1d8 + 1d2 damage, and limbs are rendered useless when their individual hp reach 0. This makes combat brutal, armour essential, and ranged weapons recommended. Ambushes are particularly savage as well.

Spiryt
2009-06-14, 06:02 PM
Yeah, I'd love to add to the I-H8-4E pile, but this is an issue that could've occurred with any edition of D&D, or indeed, any tabletop RPG. You're DM has a hard time taking the information that the game is giving him & translating it into a cohesive & sensible narrative. It's not the rule-set's fault; it's in your DM's hands to describe the action in a way that makes sense.
:

Indeed it's mainly problem of DM, who have to put all data in to the description that makes sense.

So it's all problem of DM computing power.

So gamers, format and defragment your DM regulary! It speeds the system up.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-14, 06:02 PM
The game you're describing is Runequest.

The body is divided into six hit locations - arm, arm, leg, leg, body, head - and each location has... about 6 hp - more for the chest, less for the head.

A typical sword blow does 1d8 + 1d2 damage, and limbs are rendered useless when their individual hp reach 0. This makes combat brutal, armour essential, and ranged weapons recommended. Ambushes are particularly savage as well.

Several other games use locational wound systems. GURPS, The Riddle of Steel, etc.

And that's, for humans, 40% chest, 25% arms, 33% head, abdomen, and legs - percentages of total hit points, which are (CON+SIZ)/2... and the lowest damage modifier is +1d4, so swords would do 1d8+1+1d4 (broadsword) if you're burly enough for the modifier...

Oops, sorry. 15 years of RuneQuest.

Maerok
2009-06-14, 06:04 PM
How is HP growth exponential? (Is that in 4E?)

Berserk Monk
2009-06-14, 06:04 PM
{Scrubbed}

Lamech
2009-06-14, 06:04 PM
You kind of need to have hitpoints to have things like fireballs in the large numbers of DnD. Otherwise it goes like this: Okay you get hit by three fireballs. You suffer massive burns. You die. On the topic of fireballs: WTF reflex saves and especially evasion? Your dodging heat? Thats litterally the air. That makes no sense. And while we are on the topic of air, have you seen the rules for flying. Why the hell does your ground speed have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with flying? WTF And while we are high in the sky read the rules for falling. Over 6 second you go in real life over 500ft (32*6/2*6) feet down. DnD: (150ft (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm) scroll down to "minimum forward speed" under "three dimensions").

Ever noticed any of those things? They exist to make the game easier to play, just like HP. If you really hate HP play something like Rolemaster. I personally find HP far less objectionable than the three things I listed. One can just refluff wounds and what not. Bob the level one fighter takes 10 damage and he lost his spleen, at level 20 its a shallow slice on his arm. The rules for massive damage mess with that so I'd drop them.

Maerok
2009-06-14, 06:07 PM
{Scrubbed}.

Woah. Not called for. He's just voicing an observation.

And IIRC acronyms make words. Abbreviations are just letters.

FoE
2009-06-14, 06:23 PM
Hey, I hear you guy. While I recognize that HP are a mixture of physical endurance, luck and the ability to take heaps of punishment, I've had a hard time in the past reconciling the concept, especially when PCs can be gravely injured or even die and never suffer any debilitating effects, like scars, limps or missing organs. It's a flawed concept.

It's a little easier from a DM's perspective since monsters aren't meant to be permanent characters, but you have to watch out for getting too gory with your descriptions since it might lead to players saying "And my guy is still standing after that?"

I can offer you no better advice than just "get over it."

It's the trade-off to playing heroic fantasy. I want to play this superhuman warrior/spellcaster of legend. There are other systems out there for tracking injuries and they're great for simulating more realistic games, but I'd rather not keep trading in PCs every time a mook got lucky and my hero never walked again due to that mace he took to the kneecap or the battleaxe to the head. It's not that enjoyable.

Just as with 4E you have to accept that PCs are "special" and capable of greatness beyond that of mere mortals, maybe that applies to their ability to take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

EDIT: I too thought I was clicking on a thread about Start of Darkness. The title's a bit misleading, given the forum yer posting on.

Artanis
2009-06-14, 06:29 PM
It's not that there are too many HPs, its that people think 50 damage should always be described as a cleave through the chest. To an adventurer with 400 HP, 50 damage is only 1/8 of his total HP. If your 2nd level fighter with 16 HP took 2 damage, how would you describe it as? Now take that description, and apply it to the attack that hits for 50 when that is only really a small portion of the total.
One problem though: other things use HP that give a much more concrete scale. For example, in 3.5, 50 damage is enough to smash an inch and a half of steel into utter uselessness. So if it takes 400hp damage to down an adventurer, that means he's as hard to kill as a battle tank.

LurkerInPlayground
2009-06-14, 06:31 PM
How is HP growth exponential? (Is that in 4E?)
I'm sure 4E has strictly linear HP growth. Even Con is only a one-time bonus. Of course, this doesn't factor in healing surges.

Kilremgor
2009-06-14, 06:31 PM
There are alternatives to HP, but most of them are quite complex and not 'fun' to use.
The main shortcomings of HP are, usually:
1) Critical Existence Failure - being hit by enchanted life-stealing sword, burned by Empowered Fireball, mighty fighter dies from a punch into leg done by unarmed attack of some lowly summoned creature... just because it dropped the hp past the threshold.
2) No Damage Feedback: If one is hit by huge mace into head that smashes part of helmet and damages the skull, and then got hit again into the same place, one would expect it would shatter the skull and kill the target outright. But HP has no history whatsoever of what damage character has sustained and whether this damage will somehow augment (or prevent; if, say, your arm is cut away and hangs on a chunk of flesh, you can no longer realistically suffer much from consecutive hits into nearly-severed arm) future damage.
3) No damage penalty: as long as hp are above threshold, you're just fine throwing knives and dodging fireballs. Once below... oops.
and others.

If you would like the more 'realistic' approach in d&d setting, IMO, start from basics: define death, at least for PC living humanoids.

Define it as soul leaving the body, due to (the following are in-combat causes, add general ones if necessary):
1) Effects that directly cause this behavior (such as certain spells or abilities)
2) Brain damage occuring either from direct damage to brain (being hit onto it, neural toxins, etc.); or continuous loss of brain supply (head being severed, cardiac arrest, whatever, etc.) for some period (say, 2 minutes, or 20 rounds).
3) Effects that can indirectly cause this (such as extreme pain).

So, whenever someone is suffering damage, check if their present condition falls under those categories. If it does, they are dead no matter the hp.

Then, define hp for each body part separately: legs, arms, torso, head, possibly eyes and neck. And define Blood and Pain as two 'general' hp types.

Define effects that are affecting the target with damage done to body parts:

Arms: stacking penalties on attack rolls, damage rolls; chance of spellcasting failure for spells with somatic components; penalties on Sleight of Hand, Climb, Grapple, etc. skills and so on. Attacks that cause open wounds will also decrease person's Blood hp (and attacks causing pain decrease Pain hp). Dropping Arm's hp to zero means it is no longer functional at all, or severed if done by powerful attack.

Legs: reduced movement speed, reduced Reflex saves, potentially inability to run/charge, skill penalties. Again, Blood/Pain effects; reducing hp to 0 is non-functional leg or severed leg.

Torso: Reduced Fortitude saves, trouble breathing (limits running and penalties on physical activities, chances of spell failure for spells with verbal components). Pain/Blood effects. If target's heart is destroyed, drop Blood hp to zero.

Head: reduced Willpower saves, reduced Spot/Listen checks, chance of spell failure to any spells, lowered reaction times (lower Reflex saves, attack rolls), etc. Destroying target's brain instantly kills it, obviously.

Other two stats:
Blood - when this stat lowers, effects are applied that are like those of Head damage (due to blood loss) and generally all physical activities get worse and worse. Reducing it to 0 means clinical death that will later cause complete death unless character gets help.

Pain - the lower the stat, the more penalty on Concentration (and similar) checks. When stat gets lower, character must roll Willpower with Con modifier to do any action that causes pain (such as moving the wounded hand), if save is failed, action is canceled; when stat is really low, Will save is needed to prevent collapsing from pain and becoming helpless. When it hits zero, character is down, helpless and overcome with acute pain.

This sounds really complex, yes, and that's without the 'actual' (numerical) thresholds and values. But that's the general idea; some parts of it may be incorporated to add spice to certain fights.

It can be used if all participants agree. Similar systems may 'enhance' melee fights, producing some results like
'Joe, rapidly losing blood from nearly-severed leg, shouting 'I will not die while your evil lives!' (rolling a Willpower save), picks up a knocked-away sword with his bloody hand and avoids the Harry's attack aimed at his heart (that had low attack roll due to Harry's damaged head). Counterattacking, Joe rolls high to overcome negative modifiers and shatters Harry's skull, killing him. Trying to find help, Joe tries to move away, but having no more anger that kept him active (failing willpower save), falls on the ground, overcome with pain and losing blood until he suffers clinical death... To the great sorrow of his party catching up to him. But party's cleric Lisa makes succesful Heal roll to find out that Joe is not truly dead yet, and saves him by Regenerating lost blood and wounds on his body.'
but the line between extra realism/flavor/fun and needless complexity is thin. So first discussing it with players (how detailed they would like to go with homebrew hp alternatives) is good idea.

AstralFire
2009-06-14, 06:34 PM
How is HP growth exponential? (Is that in 4E?)

I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but the rapid growth of HP is more a problem of 3E, with regards to maintaining realism. (A level 20 has more than 20x the HP of a level 1 if they're well-geared.)

4E's problems lie more in the greater abstraction of HP there. Either way, it's a problem in D&D.

LurkerInPlayground
2009-06-14, 06:36 PM
One problem though: other things use HP that give a much more concrete scale. For example, in 3.5, 50 damage is enough to smash an inch and a half of steel into utter uselessness. So if it takes 400hp damage to down an adventurer, that means he's as hard to kill as a battle tank.
It's weirder than that actually. The 400 hp adventurer is very hard to hit with any aimed blow from anybody alive. He always manages to be a step ahead of well-aimed violence for one reason or another (i.e. luck, skill, anticipating danger, etcetera)

Which is to say that nobody can get good enough with a vehicle, no matter how maneuverable it is, to make it REALLY dangerous. Its hitpoints always remain static. No matter what tricks he's picked up with it, he can never make the armor better armor. The human body is a machine that has a really high skill curve. Vehicles? Not so much.

As pointed out for 4E, this gets weirder with the inclusion of doors, since combat experience makes you better at breaking down static but really tough objects. But no matter how you look at it, a steel door is a steel door. There's only so much that fencing skills can do for you when confronted by a porticullis.

As an interesting tangent, very experienced FPS players actually do fall under the hit points abstraction to some degree. They can squeeze more use out of the same point of health than a less experienced player can. Tournament players can even achieve some rather jaw-droppingly flashy results. This can get rather frustrating to a newbie that gets repeatedly steamrolled by skills like this.

Artanis
2009-06-14, 06:40 PM
It's weirder than that actually. The 400 hp adventurer is very hard to hit with any aimed blow from anybody alive. He always manages to be a step ahead of well-aimed violence for one reason or another (i.e. luck, skill, anticipating danger, etcetera)

Which is to say that nobody can get good enough with a vehicle, no matter how maneuverable it is, to make it REALLY dangerous. Its hitpoints always remain static. No matter what tricks he's picked up with it, he can never make the armor better armor. The human body is a machine that has a really high skill curve. Vehicles? Not so much.

As pointed out for 4E, this gets weirder with the inclusion of doors, since combat experience makes you better at breaking down static but really tough objects. But no matter how you look at it, a steel door is a steel door. There's only so much that fencing skills can do for you when confronted by a porticullis.

Most people I see complaining about 4e's hp complain that 4e is the way you describe, while in 3.5, every point of hp is supposedly actual injury.



Edit: Addendum to reply to the ninja

You seem to be misinterpreting something here. Yes, hitpoints reflect actual damage, but that doesn't mean every hit is to the face, or a vital part of the body. Those several hammer blows could be glancing off the leg, or the torso, with only a blow that does severe amounts of damage (such as a critical) actually being directly to the face or vital organ. This common misconception is what makes hitpoints so unbelieveable for many people.
The Alexandrian explains it really well in this essay (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/explaining-hit-points.html)
So a crit is a blow to the face? Well, I guess adventurers can take several blows to the face and keep going because they can survive multiple crits.

Brogen
2009-06-14, 06:40 PM
In that case, you're faced with people who can take several hammer blows to the face and keep going.

You seem to be misinterpreting something here. Yes, hitpoints reflect actual damage, but that doesn't mean every hit is to the face, or a vital part of the body. Those several hammer blows could be glancing off the leg, or the torso, with only a blow that does severe amounts of damage (such as a critical) actually being directly to the face or vital organ. This common misconception is what makes hitpoints so unbelieveable for many people.
The Alexandrian explains it really well in this essay (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/explaining-hit-points.html)

Drakevarg
2009-06-14, 06:46 PM
Honestly, if suspension of disbelief is a problem with you, then you're kinda being masochistic playing a stat-based RPG. When you can statistically determine anything through a randomized dice roll, you've gotta suspend disbelief. For example, an experienced mage could fumble a Knowledge (arcana) roll and suddenly has no idea what casting a fireball looks like.

If you want to have logical wounds come out of combat, play an honor-based RPG. Or read a book.

LurkerInPlayground
2009-06-14, 06:46 PM
Most people I see complaining about 4e's hp complain that 4e is the way you describe, while in 3.5, every point of hp is supposedly actual injury.
Well, just with doors and from my understanding, it's because they have static defenses (armor class) rather than hardness rating. But this is a fairly minor glitch in 4e rules.

The difference here is that 4e characters start out being really badass. They're tougher from the get-go, but this is easily handwaved by saying that your characters have already have a reputation or are already prodigies before the game starts.

But 3e follows the same basic abstraction. A 400 hp character in 3e is still very hard to kill because of a highly polished ability to anticipate/mitigate danger and/or nearly supernatural toughness.

d20 modern gets weird because things like mech suits have a static amount of hitpoints. This ignores the fact that the vehicle in question is highly maneuverable and therefore probably also should be subject to the same scalable hitpoints. An experienced pilot/driver should therefore also be a terror with his weapon just as a master gunman or swordsman is. As a matter of fact, to an ace fighter pilot, evasion is probably more important than actual offense.

averagejoe
2009-06-14, 06:53 PM
While I'm mostly okay with HP, stuff like fire has pretty horrible rules for it; I don't mean magical fire, which is magic, I mean a fighter lying down on mundane fire and only taking 1d6 damage per round. Being lit on fire should always be deadly in my opinion. They need fire rules that are more similar to the drowning rules (except without the healing thing, obviously.)


they both have the problem stemming from their exponential HP growth rate.


I'm being a bit hyperbolic

:smallamused:

AstralFire
2009-06-14, 07:02 PM
I was hoping someone would catch that. :D

penbed400
2009-06-14, 07:08 PM
The game you're describing is Runequest.

The body is divided into six hit locations - arm, arm, leg, leg, body, head - and each location has... about 6 hp - more for the chest, less for the head.

A typical sword blow does 1d8 + 1d2 damage, and limbs are rendered useless when their individual hp reach 0. This makes combat brutal, armour essential, and ranged weapons recommended. Ambushes are particularly savage as well.

Don't forget the maim system where if you are hit hard enough in a location that damage reflects upon all of your abilities for the rest of your life until you find a good enough shaman or sorceror or priest with like...a Heal 12 or however high the maim damage is which is hard to get. It sucks when you get maimed in the leg and it shows because you have 10% less to athletics rolls and whatnot. You have to remember the difference between the D&D system and the Runequest system though.

D&D makes superheroes, really super duper awesome killing machines who can do whatever whenever. Runequest recognizes the fact that when you start out you're a farm boy with a long sword...and until 20 years from now you are going to still be a farm boy with a long sword. Eventually you become a warrior but you still have nowhere near the same kind of magic or fighting abilities a D&D character has until maybe Rune Level. In which case you're about as cool as... a Level 10? That sounds about right. The world is much more realistically done with how combat and everything goes though and I personally enjoy Runequest more than D&D...frickin' superheroes.

Maerok
2009-06-14, 07:15 PM
On the up side, you can quantify when you've beat someone half to death.

(Can't find the proper Ben Bailey stand-up clip...)

chiasaur11
2009-06-14, 07:24 PM
While I'm mostly okay with HP, stuff like fire has pretty horrible rules for it; I don't mean magical fire, which is magic, I mean a fighter lying down on mundane fire and only taking 1d6 damage per round. Being lit on fire should always be deadly in my opinion. They need fire rules that are more similar to the drowning rules (except without the healing thing, obviously.)


I disagree, at least at higher levels. You're legendary heroes. Being on fire should be how you impress your mates at the pub.

shadzar
2009-06-14, 07:27 PM
I never really had problems with hit points because I never treated them as anything other than physical damage.

System shock occurred from a big blow that knocked the wind out of you on top of its damage amount.

All little bits of damage add up over time until you cannot function at al and your body is ripped to shreds.

That is where the -10 rule made sense that you were pretty much dying, and bleeding to death.

This of course was all prior to 4th.

Loss of limb was very likely as a result of a hit, but not some specific amount of damage.

The rules really don't take into account someone losing a limb, but this is where common sense should scome into play. Lose an arm and you aren't using that shield and sword at the same time anymore.

Lose a leg and you aren't running anymore, probably moving as if you were heavily encumbered.

Lose a wing, and you aren't flying.

Lose your head and...well DUH!

You7 really didn't used to need rules for these things because common sense was expected form players and DMs.

4th edition however like many video games do "hit points" in such a way that is silly and non-believable.

You get some special ability when you hit a special number. You take way to long to bleed to death and can naturally stop bleeding when in an unconscious state.

:smallconfused: WTH?

:smallyuk:

penbed400
2009-06-14, 07:31 PM
where are the rules concerning losing a limb? I've never come across any, and even then it still needs to be applied to multiple things. So who determines it?

Jack Zander
2009-06-14, 08:37 PM
One problem though: other things use HP that give a much more concrete scale. For example, in 3.5, 50 damage is enough to smash an inch and a half of steel into utter uselessness. So if it takes 400hp damage to down an adventurer, that means he's as hard to kill as a battle tank.

Well, an inch and a half of steel doesn't move when you swing a sword at it. Hit Points are more of a character's ability to roll with the blows, rather than to just stand there and take it. Different amount of HP mean different things for different characters/objects, because HP is so abstract.

Now, a coup de grace doesn't fit into this very well, but those are generally pretty hard to survive regardless.

ashmanonar
2009-06-14, 08:40 PM
where are the rules concerning losing a limb? I've never come across any, and even then it still needs to be applied to multiple things. So who determines it?

Those are what most of us refer to as "house rules." 3.5 does not have a designated "aimed shot" mechanic; HP are:

"What Hit Points Represent: Hit points mean two things in the
game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going,
and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For
some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner
power. When a paladin survives a fireball, you will be hard pressed to
convince bystanders that she doesn’t have the favor of some higher
power."

So while a hit may be "a solid strike by a mace that bruises your chest", it can also be "a narrow deflection of an arcing axe hit".

edit: Shouldn't say unkind things.

Nu
2009-06-14, 08:43 PM
D&D has always had an abstract, video-game like concept for hit points (not just 3.5 and 4E as some might have you believe). I think it just comes with the system that this can result in some problems with suspension of disbelief, if you care about that kind of thing (in the case of hit points, I really don't).

HamsterOfTheGod
2009-06-14, 08:51 PM
The game you're describing is Runequest.

The body is divided into six hit locations - arm, arm, leg, leg, body, head - and each location has... about 6 hp - more for the chest, less for the head.

A typical sword blow does 1d8 + 1d2 damage, and limbs are rendered useless when their individual hp reach 0. This makes combat brutal, armour essential, and ranged weapons recommended. Ambushes are particularly savage as well.

Runequest was a great game but yeah combat took a long time to resolve and it was brutal. I remember a one-armed fighter I played. He had a taboo against wearing armor or shield on one arm so it was only a matter of time before he lost it.

Starbuck_II
2009-06-14, 09:13 PM
That's true. In 3.5 hit points represented (mostly) your actually toughness. If an attack did 5% of your total HP, it was assumed that the attack just grazed you, even if the actual damage was 30+. Hit Points represented your ability to dodge just enough or to roll with the blows rather than your ability to absorb damage. In 4.0 they gave HP all sorts of different definitions, and so you have things like morale boosts getting you unbloodied, or cure spells healing you even when you aren't hurt.

Nope. Not even in 3.5. It has been combination of toughhness, luck, divine protection, morale, etc since 3.0 (never read 3.0 DMG to be sure).

So in older editions it might be toughness, but not in current ones. You are stuck in nostalgia or bad memory or a houserule some DM used (common issue when DM doesn't mention it was a houserule).

Foryn Gilnith
2009-06-14, 09:14 PM
Hit Points represent superhuman ability. After 5th level you're more powerful than anyone ever existing IRL. This is why drowning is inconsistent and "unrealistic" as far as things go; but fire is excessively weak. For a wizard, HP is the concentration of his arcane shielding. For a cleric or paladin, it's divine favor almost like insta-healing (such as some Damage Reduction is). For a tough-guy fighter, it's having muscles like steel. For the rogue, the only recourse I see is to just not get hit.

Worira
2009-06-14, 09:35 PM
4th edition however like many video games do "hit points" in such a way that is silly and non-believable.

You get some special ability when you hit a special number. You take way to long to bleed to death and can naturally stop bleeding when in an unconscious state.

:smallconfused: WTH?

:smallyuk:

Yeah, how dare 4E give players platelets! :smallfurious:

shadzar
2009-06-14, 09:35 PM
where are the rules concerning losing a limb? I've never come across any, and even then it still needs to be applied to multiple things. So who determines it?


Specific Injuries

Severed: Obviously, a creature that has a limb severed can no longer engage in activities that require the use of that member. A human with a severed leg can’t walk or run and is reduced to crawling until he gets a crutch. A character with a severed shield-arm can’t use a shield anymore, and so on. The only way to undo this kind of damage is by means of a regeneration spell.

The shock of losing a limb will prevent a character from moving independently or attacking for 2d10 weeks. At the DM’s discretion, a character who “only” loses a hand or a foot may actually be able to perform limited activities after being stunned 1d6 rounds, but only by passing a System Shock roll. However, characters who sustain such massive injuries are best off abandoning the field to their enemies.
The loss of a limb will reduce a character’s maximum normal hit points by 25% for a partial loss, or 50% for a more catastrophic loss. If the character can compensate with a wooden leg or hook, the hit point loss may be reduced by one step.

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.


The magical properties of sharpness override the normal critical hit procedure. It is still possible to achieve a normal critical hit by rolling an 18 or 19, even if it doesn’t quite activate the sharpness properties. If a limb is severed, consider the injury to be a critical one of the appropriate sort—Chapter Six details the unpleasant effects of losing limbs.

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

Sword of Sharpness: This weapon is treated as +3 or better for purposes of who or what can be hit by it, even though it gets only a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. Its power is great, however, for on a very high attack roll, it will sever an extremity--arm, leg, neck, tail, tentacle, whatever (but not head) determined by random dice roll:

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

Combat and Tactics seems to have come about for those unable to figure it out for themselves, and need the rules spelled out for them. :smallconfused:

Otherwise losing a limb was right there and present in the DMG. So there were rules for it, but not written down what happens when X is done. Because D&D cannot EVER have it so that it is written down what happens when every possible action occurs, or else you move away from what D&D is, which is a game of imagination.

When you have all possible outcomes spelled out then D&D becomes a game of finding the critical path and using it each time to overcome anything.

Writing it down would turn the game into rock-paper-scissors.

When fighting a ROCK monsters you would always win with a PAPER weapon. always tie with a ROCK weapon, and always lose with a SCISSORS weapon. So you would always know what to do when, and this would remove choice from the game.

Therefore it is left up to the random decision of the DM as to what effects take place from losing a limb, based on what the game world allows, and the player wishes to work with.

Most players would whine or complain so things were made to have downtime where the PC healed up.

Other players would redesign their character around the loss of limb for a time and play it with the lost limb.

How it would work form game to game would be between the player of the PC that lost the limb, and the DM. Just a if a monster was kept alive with a lost limb, the DM would decide, and have to play it out.

The job of the DM comes into play to keep things consistent. Which is no different than any other time the DM does his job to keep balance between things that go on wherein the game does not try to define for all players what should be balanced and how.

So the results from losing a limb without using Combat and Tactics, were decided upon by the player of the missing limb PC, and the DM.

:smallsmile:

Jack Zander
2009-06-14, 09:40 PM
Nope. Not even in 3.5. It has been combination of toughhness, luck, divine protection, morale, etc since 3.0 (never read 3.0 DMG to be sure).

So in older editions it might be toughness, but not in current ones. You are stuck in nostalgia or bad memory or a houserule some DM used (common issue when DM doesn't mention it was a houserule).

Erm... no.


What Hit Points Represent: Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner power. When a paladin survives a fireball, you will be hard pressed to convince bystanders that she doesn’t have the favor of some higher power.

Emphasis mine. Nowhere is luck or morale mentioned, and the paladin's divine protection was given as an example of what they could represent, but should not be taken as the norm.

Foryn Gilnith
2009-06-14, 09:44 PM
Nowhere is luck or morale mentioned, and the paladin's divine protection was given as an example of what they could represent, but should not be taken as the norm.

First off, what is written in the rules is not the end-be-all of what good playing is; and the existing rules are a jumping board for possible interpretations of hp. Like shadzar (I think) said, they aren't going to write out every possibility; because that would be seen even more as excluding alternate interpretations.
Secondly, there is no indication that divine protection should not be taken as the norm. If it could happen, and it's the best option for preserving suspension of disbelief, it will happen. Frequently. For some characters (i.e. high level ones), hit points may (i.e. when they take more damage than a dagger grazing them) represent alternate things.

Jack Zander
2009-06-14, 10:05 PM
First off, what is written in the rules is not the end-be-all of what good playing is; and the existing rules are a jumping board for possible interpretations of hp. Like shadzar (I think) said, they aren't going to write out every possibility; because that would be seen even more as excluding alternate interpretations.
Secondly, there is no indication that divine protection should not be taken as the norm. If it could happen, and it's the best option for preserving suspension of disbelief, it will happen. Frequently. For some characters (i.e. high level ones), hit points may (i.e. when they take more damage than a dagger grazing them) represent alternate things.

I never said it was the end-all-be-all. What I said was that the norm for most characters is:
Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one Anything else you describe HP as is your own personal flair added. The core mechanics still assume that for your average character you are taking physical beatings. Like you said, if there is a better way to have SoD, then you should use it instead. Which goes back to my original statement that if your descriptions are not getting SoD because every source of damage is inconsistent with each other, it's a problem of the describer, not the system. (Though 4th edition lends itself more to this side of the extreme than 3.5 does. Most people who have a problem with 3.5 HP have the problem where they aren't adding in their own flairs and treat everything as a cleave to the chest).

Jayabalard
2009-06-14, 10:10 PM
I'm not saying this is an issue of 4E, because 3E also uses the morale basis, and they both have the problem stemming from their exponential HP growth rate.D&D, regardless of the edition, has a fairly linear growth rate for HP.

Jack Zander
2009-06-14, 10:31 PM
D&D, regardless of the edition, has a fairly linear growth rate for HP.

You could even say it's exponentially decreasing. At level 2 you've got 1.5 times the amount of HP you had at level 1 (on average). At level 3, you get 1.33 times the amount of HP, and it only decreases from there.

Of course, I'm also twisting math to do my bidding, just like people can twist statistics to say whatever the want them to say.

Mr.Moron
2009-06-14, 10:31 PM
The DM describes the hit as the ice lance impaling his chest. On my next action I use Inspiring Word to heal him, with role play something like "Tough it out buddy, you've seen worse! Put some ice on it, you'll be fine!"


I don't really see this is a huge problem really. I mean we are dealing with an environment where people can indeed, shoot ice lances and magic balls of acid, and also fly. Personally, If I'm already buying into that it isn't a big leap for me to buy into someone getting a surge of heroic inspiration pulling out that same Ice Lance and fighting on despite the gaping wound, by pure bad-assery. Hell maybe you take that thing and beat someone over the head with it, just to prove a point (not that is a terribly good choice mechanically, but still)

Hell, someone plants a dagger in your side? Freaking flex a muscle and pop that baby out. "Realistic?" No. However, I think it's fairly on par with flying half-lion eagle things, tangible deities & actual beings composed of things like Fire and Earth.

Come on man. Come onnnnnn.

AstralFire
2009-06-14, 10:33 PM
D&D, regardless of the edition, has a fairly linear growth rate for HP.

See my other posts.

Jack Zander
2009-06-14, 10:38 PM
See my other posts.

So what you mean is that the higher your level, the more abstract HP becomes? That's true for any system really. If you don't like HP being abstract, I would suggest using a wounds system with action points, or have several different HPs that you have to keep track of (I've never seen that done, but I bet it could be interesting if done well).

Saph
2009-06-14, 10:39 PM
I don't really see this is a huge problem really. I mean we are dealing with an environment where people can indeed, shoot ice lances and magic balls of acid, and also fly. Personally, If I'm already buying into that it isn't a big leap for me to buy into someone getting a surge of heroic inspiration pulling out that same Ice Lance and fighting on despite the gaping wound, by pure bad-assery.

I find these two things completely different, personally. Characters using magic doesn't bother me because it's explicitly stated to be one of the ways in which the D&D universe differs from our own; magic works.

However, nothing in D&D has ever said that humans aren't humans. So when a character acts in a way that makes no sense for a human (such as healing wounds by getting shouted at loudly) it breaks my suspension of disbelief big-time.

- Saph

Mr.Moron
2009-06-14, 10:50 PM
I find these two things completely different, personally. Characters using magic doesn't bother me because it's explicitly stated to be one of the ways in which the D&D universe differs from our own; magic works.

However, nothing in D&D has ever said that humans aren't humans. So when a character acts in a way that makes no sense for a human (such as healing wounds by getting shouted at loudly) it breaks my suspension of disbelief big-time.

- Saph

I didn't say the wound healed, the individual in question is just so badass it doesn't matter. I don't think it's unreasonable that larger-than-life heroes could fight on (at top performance even) with wounds that would normally be fatal to boring old "real" humans.

Still, I suppose it all comes down to taste. I'm sure there are plenty of folks would want to treat getting an arm ripped off as a knock-out blow. Me. Well, you probably won't be claiming any bonuses from holding a weapon in two hands any time soon, but other than that it only serves to make someone angry. (Unless they're a nameless NPC in which case they're a goner.)

AstralFire
2009-06-14, 10:53 PM
So what you mean is that the higher your level, the more abstract HP becomes? That's true for any system really. If you don't like HP being abstract, I would suggest using a wounds system with action points, or have several different HPs that you have to keep track of (I've never seen that done, but I bet it could be interesting if done well).

Not all systems use a level-based HP setup. When I say it's a problem with D&D, I'm not saying it's a personal problem of mine so much as I am saying that it's going to be an inherent part of this style of health monitoring. Sometimes I want that, sometimes I don't.

Tequila Sunrise
2009-06-14, 10:55 PM
I don't really see this is a huge problem really. I mean we are dealing with an environment where people can indeed, shoot ice lances and magic balls of acid, and also fly. Personally, If I'm already buying into that it isn't a big leap for me to buy into someone getting a surge of heroic inspiration pulling out that same Ice Lance and fighting on despite the gaping wound, by pure bad-assery. Hell maybe you take that thing and beat someone over the head with it, just to prove a point (not that is a terribly good choice mechanically, but still)

Hell, someone plants a dagger in your side? Freaking flex a muscle and pop that baby out. "Realistic?" No. However, I think it's fairly on par with flying half-lion eagle things, tangible deities & actual beings composed of things like Fire and Earth.
Ice lances and huge flying lizards are fantasy tropes expressed with mechanics. Hit points is a mechanic that expresses nothing. Of course, there's nothing stopping a GM from saying "In fantasy land, everyone is magical and so they can recover from wounds that real world people cannot." But guess what? I've never read that in any rpg book, and I've never heard of a GM actually do that.

So, to quote your own wise words: Come on man. Come onnnnnn.

Mr.Moron
2009-06-14, 10:59 PM
Ice lances and huge flying lizards are fantasy tropes expressed with mechanics. Hit points is a mechanic that expresses nothing. Of course, there's nothing stopping a GM from saying "In fantasy land, everyone is magical and so they can recover from wounds that real world people cannot." But guess what? I've never read that in any rpg book, and I've never heard of a GM actually do that.

So, to quote your own wise words: Come on man. Come onnnnnn.

Eh, Different Strokes for Different folks I guess. A few games back one of my characters got a pretty heavy hit. The DM described it as a claw ripping into my characters belly and ripping out a big fistful of flesh. He grabbed the wound in pain, gritted his teeth and then got even.

Saph
2009-06-14, 11:03 PM
I didn't say the wound healed, the individual in question is just so badass it doesn't matter.

What if you're playing an individual who's not badass?

Case in point; I'm currently in a 4e game where my character's a young and fairly inexperienced wizard, who's more used to living as a street performer than as an adventurer. She's not supposed to be particularly tough. Problem is, the only healer in the party is a Warlord.

I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to do if she gets seriously injured and Inspiring Worded up again. Having her get inspired enough to ignore her injuries by being yelled at drill-sergeant style is completely out of character for her.

- Saph

chiasaur11
2009-06-14, 11:14 PM
What if you're playing an individual who's not badass?

Case in point; I'm currently in a 4e game where my character's a young and fairly inexperienced wizard, who's more used to living as a street performer than as an adventurer. She's not supposed to be particularly tough. Problem is, the only healer in the party is a Warlord.

I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to do if she gets seriously injured and Inspiring Worded up again. Having her get inspired enough to ignore her injuries by being yelled at drill-sergeant style is completely out of character for her.

- Saph

She's not badass, it's just that the warlord is that nasty.

We're talking speeches that, if broadcast, would make Balors cry. He yells at you, you can wait for medical care and keep fighting, because death itself is preferable to what he implies he will do to you if you do not get up this instant.

In other words, you're barely running on fear.

Or at least, it's an idea.

FoE
2009-06-14, 11:15 PM
What if you're playing an individual who's not badass?

Case in point; I'm currently in a 4e game where my character's a young and fairly inexperienced wizard, who's more used to living as a street performer than as an adventurer. She's not supposed to be particularly tough. Problem is, the only healer in the party is a Warlord.

I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to do if she gets seriously injured and Inspiring Worded up again. Having her get inspired enough to ignore her injuries by being yelled at drill-sergeant style is completely out of character for her.

But she is one of the heroes, right?

Therefore=special. Able to find some inner resolve that lets her ignore her wounds.

Lamech
2009-06-14, 11:37 PM
I find these two things completely different, personally. Characters using magic doesn't bother me because it's explicitly stated to be one of the ways in which the D&D universe differs from our own; magic works.

However, nothing in D&D has ever said that humans aren't humans. So when a character acts in a way that makes no sense for a human (such as healing wounds by getting shouted at loudly) it breaks my suspension of disbelief big-time. This is a world with non-sense gravity(3rd), non-sense flight rules(3rd AND 4th). Normalish people who can ignore being engulfed in flame or deflect bullets(3rd AND 4th). And my favorite in 4th edition a grid dictates how fast you move. I don't really find the warlord worse than healing surges. BUT, I personally would just say the warlord is a "crusader" or "warmage" and blame it on magic. I'm not a fan of that class's healing either.

Jayabalard
2009-06-14, 11:42 PM
See my other posts.Yes, but it's still linear growth... its not even geometric growth (and certainly not exponential).

edit: The total amount of purely abstract hp is a geometric at best; growth is the rate of change (the derivative of that curve), and would be linear.


So what you mean is that the higher your level, the more abstract HP becomes? That's true for any system really. Only for systems with levels, and HP that increase by level.

GURPS characters, for example, do not gain levels, nor do they generally gain HP (though depending on what advantages are available you might) at all. They can increase in power doubly or trebly without their HP becoming more abstract.


But she is one of the heroes, right?That pigeonholes the game into an extremely narrow subset of the games that are possible in other systems.

FoE
2009-06-14, 11:51 PM
That pigeonholes the game into an extremely narrow subset of the games that are possible in other games.

I don't follow. I heard "games" a lot, but the rest didn't make sense.

Carnivorous_Bea
2009-06-15, 12:02 AM
For a good example of two high-hit point fighters slugging it out, and one of them ending up losing most of his hit points without taking an injury until the fight is almost over, see the duel between Hector and Achilles in the movie "Troy."

There's a perfect example of how hit points can represent skill and readiness. By the end of the fight, Hector's hit points were so low that he was finally killed by a hit. But that same hit would have killed a mook on the first blow, because he only has 1d8 hit points to begin with. Yet, Hector did nothing in that fight which was physically impossible for an actual human, even though he probably has about 80 to 90 hit points in that fight.

Yes, you can design a system where there are realistic injuries; armor blocks most hits (since there are many historical references to armored opponents fighting each other to exhaustion without wounding or killing each other, resting, and starting again); individual skills such as parries, dodges, and ripostes are rolled for, and cost fatigue points to use, gradually making subsequent parries, dodges, and ripostes less effective; feints; rolls for muscle strains, minor shifts of advantage and position, footing, etc. etc.

And you'll end up with the most tedious, boring, long-winded, complicated, confusing set of rules for resolving 10 seconds of combat ever.

And that's without including separate resolution systems for fire effects; ice effects; electricity; poison; falling objects; falls; lava; gas; smoke; food poisoning; etc. etc. Then, you've got to figure out how all these things affect creatures that AREN"T humans, and are tougher, more fragile, bigger, heavier, lighter, faster, whatever. And make up a system for how each of them is affected by damage.

Personally, I think it's a far more elegant solution to put in "hit points" and call it day. Run out and you die. Let the DM and the players narrate what is going on and what the hit points represent, rather than turn the whole thing into a multi-hour accounting exercise using 50 different rulesets for different effects.

Maybe I'm just weird.

AstralFire
2009-06-15, 12:03 AM
Yes, but it's still linear growth... its not even geometric growth (and certainly not exponential).

edit: The total amount of purely abstract hp is a geometric at best; growth is the rate of change (the derivative of that curve), and would be linear.

As I joked in another post, I was being hyperbolic. :P

Mr.Moron
2009-06-15, 12:06 AM
That pigeonholes the game into an extremely narrow subset of the games that are possible in other games.

I think that's true, D&D as does play to a very narrow subset of possible game types/themes. I think that's also kind of product-as-advertised. You can count the number of pictures that feature someone not brandishing a weapon/energy blast or being in an action pose in the PHB on one hand.The rules are overwhelmingly dedicated to combat. To me, this sends a clear message that the system is very much meant provide a place for action heros to exist. That things other than big fantasy action heros might clash with the system, is to be expected.

kjones
2009-06-15, 12:16 AM
Saph brings up an important point that I was going to discuss regarding the difference in hit points between 3rd and 4th edition - namely, the manner in which they are recovered.

In 3rd edition, lost hit points are regained either slowly through natural rest (even slower in 3.0 than in 3.5, IIRC), or through magic.

In 4th edition, lost hit points are regained through expenditure of healing surges - out of combat, you can use as many as you have.

I'll readily admit that the latter is more challenging to my willing suspension of disbelief than the former. In 4e, you can go from the brink of death, where a stiff breeze will K. O. and possibly kill you (0 HP), to the pinnacle of health (full HP) - without magic, equipment, or anything more than your swingin' cod.

The 4e mechanism only really makes sense if you use HP to represent fatigue, etc. rather than actual physical damage - how would you recover from a wound in 5 minutes?

(Saph, it's funny that you should bring this up - I'm currently rolling up a wizard for a 4e game, and I'm having the same conceptual problem as you are. He's not a big burly warrior - an "Inspiring Word" would probably only inspire him to wet himself...)

Jayabalard
2009-06-15, 12:23 AM
I don't follow. I heard "games" a lot, but the rest didn't make sense.The first games are the actual game sessions that people play; the latter is meaning game systems. The heroes=special idea pigeonholes the games that you can play into a very narrow subset of what's possible for people to play.


I think that's true, D&D as does play to a very narrow subset of possible game types/themes. I think that's also kind of product-as-advertised. You can count the number of pictures that feature someone not brandishing a weapon/energy blast or being in an action pose in the PHB on one hand.Which PHB? I can think of quite a few more than that in some of them (there were quite a few silly sketches and non-action poses in some of the early books)


The rules are overwhelmingly dedicated to combat. To me, this sends a clear message that the system is very much meant provide a place for action heros to exist. That things other than big fantasy action heros might clash with the system, is to be expected.I don't really see your conclusion following from your premise; the rules might be overwhelmingly dedicated to combat but that doesn't necessarily mean that the system is only suitable for big action heroes.

Saph
2009-06-15, 12:28 AM
The 4e mechanism only really makes sense if you use HP to represent fatigue, etc. rather than actual physical damage - how would you recover from a wound in 5 minutes?

The trouble with that interpretation is when someone's HP drops to zero. Now they're going to bleed to death in somewhere around 30 seconds - yet the warlord yelling at them is still enough to make them jump to their feet and keep going as though nothing's happened.


(Saph, it's funny that you should bring this up - I'm currently rolling up a wizard for a 4e game, and I'm having the same conceptual problem as you are. He's not a big burly warrior - an "Inspiring Word" would probably only inspire him to wet himself...)

Heh, I'm not the only one, I guess. :)

I think this is one area where the "everything works the same way" approach of 4e fails a bit. Having magical healing (the Cleric's Healing Word) and shouty encouragement (the Warlord's Inspiring Word) be functionally identical to each other is a bit too much simplification.

- Saph

FoE
2009-06-15, 12:30 AM
I don't really see your conclusion following from your premise; the rules might be overwhelmingly dedicated to combat but that doesn't necessarily mean that the system is only suitable for big action heroes.

It's not "only suitable" for big action heroes, but that's what it's geared for.

It's hardly pigeonholing when that's one of the core concepts of the game. I suppose it's possible to play Monopoly to see how many times you go to jail, but that's not really the point of the game.

Mr.Moron
2009-06-15, 12:31 AM
Which PHB? I can think of quite a few more than that in some of them (there were quite a few silly sketches and non-action poses in some of the early books)


The 4th edition one, since the issue is mostly arising from 4e mechanics.



I don't really see your conclusion following from your premise; the rules might be overwhelmingly dedicated to combat but that doesn't necessarily mean that the system is only suitable for big action heroes.


Not just the combat rules, but the art is also a big sign. Like I said, not in an action pose or brandishing some kind of kill-a-majig? There are like 4 or 5, and in at least a couple of those they have the weapons at their side.

Jayabalard
2009-06-15, 12:33 AM
It's hardly pigeonholing when that's one of the core concepts of the game. I suppose it's possible to play Monopoly to see how many times you go to jail, but that's not really the point of the game.If that's one of the core concepts of the game, then that system is pigeonholed in a particular style of game.

Likewise, monopoly is pigeonholed into a game where people try to buy property; it's very hard to effectively run a roleplay heavy, gritty sci-fi game in the transhuman space universe using monopoly.

Mr.Moron
2009-06-15, 12:35 AM
If that's one of the core concepts of the game, then that system is pigeonholed in a particular style of game.

Likewise, monopoly is pigeonholed into a game where people try to buy property; it's very hard to effectively run a roleplay heavy, gritty sci-fi game in the transhuman space universe using monopoly.

In that case, monopoly isn't at fault when that player is disappointed. The player trying to get monopoly to do something it wasn't designed to do is. There should be less talk of pigeonholing and more talk of what they should be looking at to accomplish their goals (HINT: It isn't monopoly).

EDIT: (That is a far more extreme situation however, than what I think is being discussed here.)

Jayabalard
2009-06-15, 12:42 AM
In that case, monopoly isn't at fault when that player is disappointed. The player trying to get monopoly to do something it wasn't designed to do is. It's monopoly's fault if it's something the player could reasonably assume the game was supposed to be designed to support.


EDIT: (That is a far more extreme situation however, than what I think is being discussed here.)Not really; larger than life action heroes generally take a lot of SoD; they do lots of impossible things. So it's not surprising that the OP is having problems with SoD when playing a system that is geared toward playing big action heroes.

Jothki
2009-06-15, 01:06 AM
Yeah, D&D, especially in 4th Edition with skills automatically scaling, seems to assume that every character is essentially a <normal class>/"adventurer" dualclass. Get better at your class, and you also become more badass in general. If you try to interpret leveling as anything other than your character becoming increasingly awesome, the system conceptually breaks down.

Yora
2009-06-15, 02:37 AM
You kind of need to have hitpoints to have things like fireballs in the large numbers of DnD. Otherwise it goes like this: Okay you get hit by three fireballs. You suffer massive burns. You die.
On the other you culd say: "You get hit by three rocket launchers. You shrug it off. You're fine."
That's also silly. In a modern game, you'd say that the players have to take extra care to net get into such a situation. And you could also say it to a fantasy game. Which is a style of fantasy I think is really awsome.

potatocubed
2009-06-15, 05:14 AM
Runequest recognizes the fact that when you start out you're a farm boy with a long sword...and until 20 years from now you are going to still be a farm boy with a long sword.

Or as I like to put it, "A starting-level Runequest character is almost never going to sever his own leg while trying to pick a lock, but you can't guarantee it." :smalltongue:

Leeham
2009-06-15, 05:42 AM
Not just the combat rules, but the art is also a big sign. Like I said, not in an action pose or brandishing some kind of kill-a-majig? There are like 4 or 5, and in at least a couple of those they have the weapons at their side.

I'm sorry, you're right the picture in the book mean you MUST play the game a certain way, of course.

i would like to retract my earlier statement, on grounds of sheer muppetry. I've read the rest of Mr.Moron's post and now i agree with him completely. 4e IS the home of fantasy action heroes, and the hit points in DnD go to show this.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-15, 06:13 AM
Don't forget the maim system where if you are hit hard enough in a location that damage reflects upon all of your abilities for the rest of your life until you find a good enough shaman or sorceror or priest with like...a Heal 12 or however high the maim damage is which is hard to get. It sucks when you get maimed in the leg and it shows because you have 10% less to athletics rolls and whatnot. You have to remember the difference between the D&D system and the Runequest system though.

D&D makes superheroes, really super duper awesome killing machines who can do whatever whenever. Runequest recognizes the fact that when you start out you're a farm boy with a long sword...and until 20 years from now you are going to still be a farm boy with a long sword. Eventually you become a warrior but you still have nowhere near the same kind of magic or fighting abilities a D&D character has until maybe Rune Level. In which case you're about as cool as... a Level 10? That sounds about right. The world is much more realistically done with how combat and everything goes though and I personally enjoy Runequest more than D&D...frickin' superheroes.

Are you kidding me? Fluff-wise, RuneQuest (Glorantha) has the superheroes of Fantasy (in fact, they're called Super-Heroes) - Harrek, Jar-Eel, and the like. The old system buckels a bit when you get to that point, but it can be tinkered to accommodate it just fine - characters dealing 300 points of damage, one-shotting Cacodemon and taking on the Crimson Bat, and so on.

One of our campaigns got to the point where the Humakti would split his attacks and have 16 attacks with a 100% chance to hit each 10-second round, and each attack dealt something like 50 damage (plate armor reduces damage by 8, and humans have 10-18 hit points). The troll had fewer attacks, but he'd always deal a critical and with maximum Crush his damage was about 200.

These guys were considered "minor" Heroes, because frankly they couldn't have taken on any God Plane opponents yet.

RQ works great for both low- and super-high-level play.


Also, regrowing limbs is easy enough. You only need a Heal 8 Rune Spell to re-attach them IIRC, and Regrow Limb (a 1- or 2-point Divine Spell) just takes a few months. But that's for ninnies - one of my players' characters cut off his leg just so he could go to an Elven Forest and get a magical living branch as a replacement...

Jack Zander
2009-06-15, 06:46 AM
I'm sorry, you're right the picture in the book mean you MUST play the game a certain way, of course.

No one said that you have to play the game a certain way from the pictures. They said that the pictures suggest a certain style of play which is flashy action-packed fun. For some people, this kind of fun is the bad-wrong-kind.

The evidence that says you have to play to that style is in Saph's and kjones' examples of how their wizards aren't badass enough to fit into the rules.

Can you play a non-badass character? Sure, but you'll soon find inconsistencies within the system, because it's simply not designed to help you there.

Fixer
2009-06-15, 08:04 AM
AHEM

If the concept of Hit Points being misnamed is enough to destroy your suspension of disbelief in your game I have a simple and 100% effective manner of fixing it.

*grabs your character sheet*
*erases Hit Points and HP from everywhere on your sheet*
*Writes in Luck to replace it in every instance*
*grabs your handbooks and does the same with all of them*

Now the problem is completely removed. When your character is 'hit' they simply lose some Luck and keep going. They were supposed to be hit, but lucked out of it. When they reach 0 Luck, they are now Out Of Luck and are disabled. When they are at negative Luck, they are dying (Running on Borrowed Time) and quite possibly soon deceased.

Jack Zander
2009-06-15, 08:09 AM
Now the problem is completely removed. When your character is 'hit' they simply lose some Luck and keep going. They were supposed to be hit, but lucked out of it. When they reach 0 Luck, they are now Out Of Luck and are disabled. When they are at negative Luck, they are dying (Running on Borrowed Time) and quite possibly soon deceased.

But how do they get bloodied from loosing luck? And why are they dying when they run out? When a character is unconscious, how do inspiring words increase his luck and make him get back up? How does an unconscious character hear inspiring words while unconscious in the first place?

SoD
2009-06-15, 08:10 AM
*doesn't read thread*

Oh, so now I'm a ruined person, merely because I have HP?!

Fixer
2009-06-15, 08:13 AM
But how do they get bloodied from loosing luck? And why are they dying when they run out? When a character is unconscious, how do inspiring words increase his luck and make him get back up? How does an unconscious character hear inspiring words while unconscious in the first place?
1) I was speaking in 3.5 terms, not your 4th edition voodoo that you do.
2) They aren't dying when they run out, they are simply out of luck (0). When they get hurt beyond that they are actually hit and dying/dead.
3 & 4) Inspiration can make a person feel lucky again. How you can inspire an unconscious person I am not too clear on. Got me there. Given the way the abilities work, I'd have to say, it's magic!

Jack Zander
2009-06-15, 08:28 AM
So once again we have a case where SoD is strained with 4E, but not at all with 3E.

Gamist vs Simulationist.

MickJay
2009-06-15, 08:38 AM
Then all those healing potions, healing spells are merely restoring luck, resolve and courage! Those healing belts simply accumulate stray luck and release it on demand! It all makes sense now! :smalltongue: :smallwink:

J.Gellert
2009-06-15, 08:40 AM
*doesn't read thread*

Oh, so now I'm a ruined person, merely because I have HP?!

Yes!

On-topic, I like how HPs work and my group has never had trouble with descriptions. Basically, all we do is avoid giving any fancy "I hack him to PIECES!" speeches until the killing blow.

It isn't unrealistic if you think of every hit as a glancing strike until finally, be it through loss of morale, bad timing, battle fatigue, or a stroke of bad luck that you finally take a hit that kills you.

On the other hand, healing spells? These are a little harder to describe. But that, I think, is an inherent problem with healing and how Cure Light Wounds feels like "Raise Dead" to a 1st level commoner and how Cure Critical Wounds feels like "Cure Annoying Itch" to a 20-th level dwarf barbarian with improved toughness and normal toughness x6.

AstralFire
2009-06-15, 08:48 AM
So once again we have a case where SoD is strained with 4E, but not at all with 3E.

Gamist vs Simulationist.

So uh... being able to stay on fire basically as long as you want with no real trouble is not at all strained?

Bloodied: "Ack! They managed to hit me this time! I'm winded!"

And it's a well-known convention in fiction for someone unconscious to be roused to action by the requirements of the outside.

Morty
2009-06-15, 08:48 AM
But she is one of the heroes, right?

Therefore=special. Able to find some inner resolve that lets her ignore her wounds.

And, y'know, that's the whole problem. It pretty much forces you to play a B-class action movie hero who's Speshul, and some people don't want that. A fighter regaining HP by being shouted at makes sense. A wizard? Not a smidgen.
Not that a wizard who somehow survives a blow that'd kill a fighter of lower level is any more logical, but what's the problem with HP inflation by level. I'm not satisfied with the way HP work in both editions of D&D I know.

MickJay
2009-06-15, 08:52 AM
You can always roleplay that warlord ability as kind encouragement when it's directed at a wizard, not as yelling at him. It's ultimately up to you how you roleplay these things, in this respect, 4e is even better than some of the previous editions, since the players can decide to even greater degree what the abilities actually represent. Less rules about roleplaying = more freedom to GM and players how to roleplay.

Jack Zander
2009-06-15, 08:58 AM
So uh... being able to stay on fire basically as long as you want with no real trouble is not at all strained?

Bloodied: "Ack! They managed to hit me this time! I'm winded!"

And it's a well-known convention in fiction for someone unconscious to be roused to action by the requirements of the outside.

Fire damage can be your clothing being on fire, but the flames haven't burned you yet. You know, cuz you're lucky.

Once you are bloodied, how can you become "unbloodied" with anything other than natural or magical healing?

"well-known convention in fiction"

Gamist vs Simulationist.

AstralFire
2009-06-15, 09:26 AM
Once you are bloodied, how can you become "unbloodied" with anything other than natural or magical healing?

It was enough of a hit to wind you and will probably need some sort of attention afterwards, but for now you've pushed through it.

And responding out of unconsciousness may be a fictional trope, but it's one based on reality; that sort of thing doesn't happen often, but it does happen. This makes about as much sense as your clothes being on fire for more than 10 seconds without you being seriously injured because you're lucky.

kjones
2009-06-15, 10:22 AM
Inspiration can make a person feel lucky again. How you can inspire an unconscious person I am not too clear on. Got me there. Given the way the abilities work, I'd have to say, it's magic!

But it's not magic - it still functions in an anti-magic field.

Lamech
2009-06-15, 10:23 AM
Anti-magic field exist in 4th ed?

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-15, 10:28 AM
Anti-magic field exist in 4th ed?

As far as I know, AMF mechanics were too difficult for dumb-a**es like us.

ericgrau
2009-06-15, 11:29 AM
I prefer the circular definition. Hit point damage is anything that's enough to hurt you without impairing your ability to act - bleeding, surface wounds, etc. - until you finally collapse (unconscious or just too debilitated to move) from the overwhelming stress of it all. Excessive blood loss. You, have, no, skin. Etc.

I'll use the lava example. Only 1 round of lava plus the following 1d3 rounds outside of lava does an insane amount of damage, 140 on average. But a very high level character, especially a martial character, "legendary" in game terms can survive it. So you describe it as "You pull yourself out of the lava, large burnt patches covering sections of your body and lava dripping off of other patches. You roar in pain and lurch towards the fire giant. His blank stare of shock and amazement fades as you plunge your sword through his chest and he falls to the ground."

Fixer
2009-06-15, 11:31 AM
But it's not magic - it still functions in an anti-magic field.You missed my point; out-of-the-ballpark missed.

You are attempting to argue Phantasy Physics to counter a purely role-playing problem. The problem was that the loss of 'hit points' and the phrases 'hit your opponent' were detracting from the distraction from reality that is role-playing games. My suggestion was to change the vocabulary to help prevent this by saying "he lucks out of your hit" or "you have run out of luck and are easy pickings to die" in order to prevent words from stopping the suspension of disbelief.

My counter to you is that if you take the time to sit there and think about all the 'what ifs' there may be, you have already taken yourself out of the distraction by your own actions, not those inherent within the game or its vernacular. Thus, it is not the game that is the problem, it is your own analytical and suspicious nature preventing you from attaining immersion, not flaws within the game itself.

Thus, if this solution doesn't fix your problem, no amount of game design can do so any better.

kjones
2009-06-15, 12:47 PM
You missed my point; out-of-the-ballpark missed.

You are attempting to argue Phantasy Physics to counter a purely role-playing problem. The problem was that the loss of 'hit points' and the phrases 'hit your opponent' were detracting from the distraction from reality that is role-playing games. My suggestion was to change the vocabulary to help prevent this by saying "he lucks out of your hit" or "you have run out of luck and are easy pickings to die" in order to prevent words from stopping the suspension of disbelief.

My counter to you is that if you take the time to sit there and think about all the 'what ifs' there may be, you have already taken yourself out of the distraction by your own actions, not those inherent within the game or its vernacular. Thus, it is not the game that is the problem, it is your own analytical and suspicious nature preventing you from attaining immersion, not flaws within the game itself.

Thus, if this solution doesn't fix your problem, no amount of game design can do so any better.

I guess I did kind of miss your point... I guess my point is that I usually think of battles in terms of opponents hitting each other with swords, and not in terms of hitting each others' "luck" with swords. I realize, of course, that my interpretation makes no sense in the real world - in a "realistic" system, anyone who actually gets hit by a sword is wounded, if not killed.

My problem with your "luck" interpretation is that it turns every battle into a prolonged example of A Team Firing (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ATeamFiring) - every hit is actually a near miss that took off some of their luck.

Due to the difference in recovery mechanisms between 3rd and 4th edition, I feel like it's easier to represent damage in 3rd edition as actual injury, since it's harder to heal wounds with non-magical means.

Also, for those of you who are saying that the 4e HP system is "video-game like"... you do realize that earlier editions of D&D invented the concept of hit points, right?

Fixer
2009-06-15, 12:56 PM
My problem with your "luck" interpretation is that it turns every battle into a prolonged example of A Team Firing (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ATeamFiring) - every hit is actually a near miss that took off some of their luck.Ah, but if you have ever witnessed a swordfighting movie, you know that is not uncommon. Until the battle is truly over, neither side ends up with nary more than a scratch or perhaps a lovely scar to remember the fight by. It is a matter of role-playing immersion, playing up the drama as opposed to the mechanics.

And, truthfully, it isn't far from reality either. In reality people try to avoid getting hit. They often play far more defensively than offensive because they don't wish to be injured. As a result most real fights are matters of a series of parries in which you attempt to exhaust your opponent so badly they cannot react to your final, lethal, attack. Up until they you are trying to exhaust them faster than they can exhaust you. Perhaps calling it "Endurance" would help you more?


Also, for those of you who are saying that the 4e HP system is "video-game like"... you do realize that earlier editions of D&D invented the concept of hit points, right?All games are abstract representations of situations. The difference is the immersion factor: how much effort it takes to ignore the fact you are playing a game. In 4e I cannot testify to how easy it is to forget you are playing a game. In 3.5 the fact you are playing a game is brought up every time you roll a die, or have to refer to a rulebook to examine how some abstraction is supposed to work. In video games it is often VERY easy to forget you are playing a game because, once you get the handle on the controls, you usually just stare at the screen and lose focus on everything else. Thus, video games are the best to avoid losing your SoD, if you have sufficient resolution.

quick_comment
2009-06-15, 01:03 PM
This is a world where people can shatter steal weapons by having people hit them in the genitals with them, as long as the person being hit is a pacifist (vow of peace).

People can shoot lightning out of their eyes (ocular lightning bolt) and make giant snakes come out of their belly buttons (gut snake). They can punch their way through stone walls, without even being stronger than the average commoner (stone dragon).

And the description of hit points is what ruins your suspension of disbelief?

Jack Zander
2009-06-15, 01:17 PM
This is a world where people can shatter steal weapons by having people hit them in the genitals with them, as long as the person being hit is a pacifist (vow of peace).

Iron Crotch (http://http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=315)

AstralFire
2009-06-15, 01:23 PM
Hardness breaks things, resilience does not. That's an example of a resilient, spongy material like cloth.

Indon
2009-06-15, 01:50 PM
From reading the thread, it overwhelmingly seems the immersion problem is not in HPs in and of themselves, but in applying inconsistent standards for what HPs mean.

Think of the laundry list of what HPs could mean as a list of suggestions - every game should pick one. For 4th edition, either nothing ever hits directly, but fighting exausts you and being yelled at can keep you going indefinitely (you may want to houserule the death rules then), or things hit you, deal damage, and every hero is blessed with immense regenerative powers - obviously an option for a more Rule of Cool-oriented game.

FatR
2009-06-16, 09:07 AM
In my games, HPs are physical toughness, period. If you have 60 HP, when an average human has 6, you are literally 10 times tougher and more resistant to all forms of trauma than mundane people. Unrealistic? Your abilites are not supposed to be.

Jack Zander
2009-06-16, 09:39 AM
In my games, HPs are physical toughness, period. If you have 60 HP, when an average human has 6, you are literally 10 times tougher and more resistant to all forms of trauma than mundane people. Unrealistic? Your abilites are not supposed to be.

Hey, if it works for you, great! Not everyone is willing to suspend their disbelief that far though.

Doug Lampert
2009-06-16, 10:00 AM
That pigeonholes the game into an extremely narrow subset of the games that are possible in other systems.
If she wants to play a non-hero who CAN'T recover the way a real hero does I'll be happy to use the rules for an NPC for her and she gets 1 healing surge per day till paragon level.

Done.

Heck, if she wants to she can pretend to be a minion and fall down at any hit. No problem.

If you want to PLAY a Hero capable of awesum feats of endurance, then, yes, you are pigeonholed into being a Hero capable of awesum feats of endurance. I don't see this as a system problem.

Satyr
2009-06-16, 10:16 AM
If she wants to play a non-hero who CAN'T recover the way a real hero does I'll be happy to use the rules for an NPC for her and she gets 1 healing surge per day till paragon level.

So... until a character doesn't trat injuries as a minor inconvenience at best, he is no real hero? I really don't think so. Actually, it's the other way 'round. A character who suffers from no real disadvantage when injured is much less heroic than a character who is obviously in pain and has problems and yet keeps on going.

Heroism has nothing to do with being superior to anybody else. heroism is about facing a challenge or obstacle and pushing on, at points where aybody sane unheroic would give up.

The problem I have with the way D&D (pretty much any edition I have played) deals with damage is not the degree of abstraction. Yes, the whole idea is so detached from any thing resembling true injuries that it breaks apart as soon as you start to look at it with more than the utmost superficiality. But the actual problem is that it is anti-heroic (no, not in the dark and edgy sense. That would be a valid solution after all) as there is no real obstacle for getting hurt. When even death is only a minor set-back, tere is something awfully amiss.

AstralFire
2009-06-16, 10:19 AM
Except that there is only mechanically little setback in part because these characters are so heroic they say 'screw you.'

In OotS-verse, Roy knows he is way tougher than a 3rd level fighter and can handle a fireball better; in most campaign settings, it's more like Roy would go "I don't have time to burn" and then slice off someone's head.

Indon
2009-06-16, 10:31 AM
Hey, if it works for you, great! Not everyone is willing to suspend their disbelief that far though.

When I read Berserk, I think of Guts as the shining example of what a hit point system could represent. The universe could rather easily be depicted as a D&D-style world, filled with demons and magic and one straight Fighter with Monkey Grip (for his magic weapon), power attack, and a bucket of HP.

Edit: It occurs to me I need to get to the point. Does Guts' clearly, ridiculously superhuman durability break suspention of disbelief, or does it fit right in with just how badass he is?

Oslecamo
2009-06-16, 10:37 AM
The problem I have with the way D&D (pretty much any edition I have played) deals with damage is not the degree of abstraction. Yes, the whole idea is so detached from any thing resembling true injuries that it breaks apart as soon as you start to look at it with more than the utmost superficiality. But the actual problem is that it is anti-heroic (no, not in the dark and edgy sense. That would be a valid solution after all) as there is no real obstacle for getting hurt. When even death is only a minor set-back, tere is something awfully amiss.

That's for what you have lower levels.

Between 1-6 death is death. You have no tools to get back.

At levels 7 and beyond you're suposed to start to transend mortality.

The wizard is turning into small dragons and the cleric is calling fire from the sky. The barbarian is jumping off pits. Lv1 things are an annoyance at best. You're well past your usual hero.

And by all means, if you know any system wich has a realistic wound system and allows you to fight fire breathing dragons with iron-hard scales, by all means share it with us.

The Rose Dragon
2009-06-16, 10:45 AM
And by all means, if you know any system wich has a realistic wound system and allows you to fight fire breathing dragons with iron-hard scales, by all means share it with us.

Exalted? Unisystem? Qin: The Warring States?

Satyr
2009-06-16, 11:05 AM
And by all means, if you know any system wich has a realistic wound system and allows you to fight fire breathing dragons with iron-hard scales, by all means share it with us.

Did I mention realism anywhere? I don't think so. Heroism and Realism are completely unrelated categories.

BTW, the answer for your question is Gurps. Pretty much the standard every game is measured by. If any game cannot do what it is supposed to do equally well as a Gurps conversion of the same setting, it is pretty much a failure. Not because Gurps is that good, but because it is that flexible, it is a good bottom line for evaluating what is the minimum a set of rules should be able to do.

And games were you have more realistic damage rules than in D&D are common. I actually can't think of any system which has any worse rules for injuries...

MickJay
2009-06-16, 11:10 AM
When I read Berserk, I think of Guts as the shining example of what a hit point system could represent. The universe could rather easily be depicted as a D&D-style world, filled with demons and magic and one straight Fighter with Monkey Grip (for his magic weapon), power attack, and a bucket of HP.

Edit: It occurs to me I need to get to the point. Does Guts' clearly, ridiculously superhuman durability break suspention of disbelief, or does it fit right in with just how badass he is?

It does go a little overboard at times, like when that cursed armor tears through his flesh to set the broken bones back in place so he can continue fighting; he's losing litres of blood, has deep wounds all over the body, has a number of bones broken and still survives. Or even earlier on where he slashes through a hundred man squad of armored soldiers on his own (though by D&D standards it would be possible, assuming they were all lev. 1 or 2 fighters; even more so if you consider that fatigue doesn't really come to play in prolonged fights in D&D).

edit: is Guts' sword actually magic? First one definitely wasn't, it was just a huge slab of steel shaped into a sword. The one he gets during the Kushan arc could be magical, but I don't remember anything obviously magical about it.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-16, 11:10 AM
And by all means, if you know any system wich has a realistic wound system and allows you to fight fire breathing dragons with iron-hard scales, by all means share it with us.


Exalted? Unisystem? Qin: The Warring States?

The Riddle of Steel, RuneQuest, Rolemaster... even Pendragon and Elric! are miles ahead of D&D in realism...

Dear me, there's no end to them!

GoC
2009-06-16, 11:23 AM
But she is one of the heroes, right?

Therefore=special. Able to find some inner resolve that lets her ignore her wounds.

So the heros are special just because they're PCs and not due to any IC explanation? Talk about breaking suspension of disbelief...

MickJay
2009-06-16, 11:31 AM
So the heros are special just because they're PCs and not due to any IC explanation? Talk about breaking suspension of disbelief...

You know, some people are just born more equal, they tend to become heroes later on. :smallbiggrin: See how many people play commoners; the PCs are special not because they're PCs, but because the players have already picked the "hero material" from the setting to roleplay them.

Indon
2009-06-16, 11:35 AM
edit: is Guts' sword actually magic? First one definitely wasn't, it was just a huge slab of steel shaped into a sword. The one he gets during the Kushan arc could be magical, but I don't remember anything obviously magical about it.

It occurs to me that there's a bit of a spoiler element here. Ah, well.

At one point, the dragon slayer is said to have become a magical weapon simply by having killed so many demons - mind that the Berserk universe is one in which the boundary between magic and reality is at times awfully thin, and particularly so around Guts.

The Rose Dragon
2009-06-16, 11:37 AM
The Riddle of Steel, RuneQuest, Rolemaster... even Pendragon and Elric! are miles ahead of D&D in realism...

Dear me, there's no end to them!

I have heard good things about RuneQuest's health system, but I didn't know it had fire breathing dragons with iron hard scales; if I did, I'd probably note that as well.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-16, 11:39 AM
So the heros are special just because they're PCs and not due to any IC explanation? Talk about breaking suspension of disbelief...

That's pretty much an accepted conceit in about half of RPGs, as well as fiction. It's a basic cinematic game trope.

But it certainly doesn't work for all types of games. (I can't imagine running a cyberpunk or low-fantasy game where the PCs are just harder to injure than NPCs "because!" ...)

Edit:

I have heard good things about RuneQuest's health system, but I didn't know it had fire breathing dragons with iron hard scales; if I did, I'd probably note that as well.

Yep - it absolutely does! They're in the basic monster listings in pretty much all editions. The new Mongoose edition includes dragons in the monster book (SRD of it, among other core books, available for download free of charge on the Mongoose site). The dragons have scales considerably harder than plate armor, and breathe fire. They're perfectly slaughterable if you're tough, clever, and swift enough.

Also included are 30-foot giants and the like. And if you get into Gloranthan monsters, you have dragons the size of mountains and mountain ranges, giants the size of hills and mountains, and other insane monsters (some of which are even statted out)... these latter types of creatures are mostly beyond the means of heroes who aren't Heroes with a capital H (which has a fairly specific meaning in Glorantha).

The system stretches nicely from quick-and-dirty combat where being hit one may well kill or disable you to combat where heroes and monsters land blows that send their opponents hurtling dozens of feet and smashing through walls, only to stand up and return the favor... and that's not including the flashier magic.

Satyr
2009-06-16, 11:59 AM
That's pretty much an accepted conceit in about half of RPGs, as well as fiction. It's a basic cinematic game trope.

Wait, there is a difference between determing that the player characters are extraordinary individuals because of their abilties and that they are extraordinary individuals because they are player characters. The first approach is basically treating the characters as a part of the setting they exist in, the second one treats the characters detached from the setting. It might be a common assumption, but it is still much less organic - or plausible - than the first approach.
From the point of view of the verisimilitude of a campaign - I understand the Suspension of Disbleif mostly as an extension of the overall plausibility of the game - it is much more worthwhile to see the characters as a product of their environment and not the environment only as a coulisse for the player characters.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-16, 12:09 PM
I don't think the difference is as stark as all that. The cinematic invulnerability can be something as simple as Warhammer FRP characters having Fate points - they're mechanically identical to NPCs, but they can cheat death with Fate points. Similar systems abound.

Oslecamo
2009-06-16, 12:11 PM
Exalted? Unisystem? Qin: The Warring States?

You mean the system where you can parry nuclear bombs with your bare hands whitout being even singed? I'm afraid I can't acept that.


Satyr:Yet, the HP system is the most used in "hero" games, at least as far as computer games care. Go figure why, since the other systems could be perfectly implemented with our current technology.

The Rose Dragon
2009-06-16, 12:26 PM
You mean the system where you can parry nuclear bombs with your bare hands whitout being even singed? I'm afraid I can't acept that.

You said health system, not the rest of it. The health system is greatly more realistic than D&D. And you didn't object to Qin: The Warring States or Unisystem.

Satyr
2009-06-16, 12:35 PM
Satyr:Yet, the HP system is the most used in "hero" games, at least as far as computer games care. Go figure why, since the other systems could be perfectly implemented with our current technology.

Because it's simple and it is always easy to assume that most people are stupid and can't cope with anything more complex. But the most important reason is tradition. AS RPG rules go, HP have become a fixed topoi, and like most traditions, rational reasons for them are scarce. And never mix up popular with good. Popularity and quality are mostly unrelated cateogories, and most often the most mediocre solution is also the most popular one.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-16, 12:38 PM
You mean the system where you can parry nuclear bombs with your bare hands whitout being even singed? I'm afraid I can't acept that.

Well, that's one down, and Qin, Unisystem, RuneQuest(s), Pendragon, Elric!, GURPS, Rolemaster, and The Riddle of Steel (hands down the most realistic combat and injury system ever) left... out of the scant handful we even threw out there to begin with.

Satyr
2009-06-16, 12:44 PM
Despite the abilities of the most protagonists, the injury system in Exalted is still more realistic than that in D&D. Yes, the average Solar can pull off ridiculously powerful stunts, but the system doesn't stop to work if you try to play a group of completely mundane, mortal warriors...

sonofzeal
2009-06-16, 12:45 PM
Satyr:Yet, the HP system is the most used in "hero" games, at least as far as computer games care. Go figure why, since the other systems could be perfectly implemented with our current technology.
It's intuitive to understand, and leads to good gameplay. Non-hp based systems tend to have a much smaller gap between "dandy" and "dead", or at least have the chance to cross that gap very very quickly under even mundane combat circumstances. Paranoia uses the "OSWMDKV" scale, where instead of hp you have an array of statuses, but one high roll can dump you straight from "Okay" to "Killed" (or even "Vaporized"), and combat's going to more or less remain lethal no matter how you play. Wound location charts are rather realistic, but then you get an unlucky headshot and there goes your character.

Now, some people like playing in gritty, realistic systems. However, most people (in my experience) think of it at least partially as a game. In a good game, if you play well then you should generally do well, not have your epic Barbarian Warlord go down because a goblin rolled well with a sharp stick, no matter how realistic that possibility is. HP based systems provide exactly that sort of buffer, making your character incrementally harder and harder to kill. D&D may have issues with offence rapidly outpacing defense, but at least the core hp system helps fight that, if only a little bit.

Knaight
2009-06-16, 01:14 PM
Well, that's one down, and Qin, Unisystem, RuneQuest(s), Pendragon, Elric!, GURPS, Rolemaster, and The Riddle of Steel (hands down the most realistic combat and injury system ever) left... out of the scant handful we even threw out there to begin with.

I'll add Fudge. Every single wound system I have ever seen with it(and that's probably eight or nine at this point.) And the default way of handling determining damage dealt (its directly linked to how well you hit, with an option of a bit of randomness on top of this).

This (http://www.fudgefactor.org/2004/05/non-linear-wounding-system.html) in particular is way beyond the D&D hit point method, and Fudge works well with dragons and such. And even with this, its still lighter.

Naszir
2009-06-16, 09:44 PM
AHEM

If the concept of Hit Points being misnamed is enough to destroy your suspension of disbelief in your game I have a simple and 100% effective manner of fixing it.

*grabs your character sheet*
*erases Hit Points and HP from everywhere on your sheet*
*Writes in Luck to replace it in every instance*
*grabs your handbooks and does the same with all of them*

Now the problem is completely removed. When your character is 'hit' they simply lose some Luck and keep going. They were supposed to be hit, but lucked out of it. When they reach 0 Luck, they are now Out Of Luck and are disabled. When they are at negative Luck, they are dying (Running on Borrowed Time) and quite possibly soon deceased.

How then do you account for those types of monster (or character) abilities that actually need to be a physical hit? A spider attacks a character and hits. It does 5 ongoing poison damage. If the spider only "hit" the characters "luck" how the heck does the character take 5 ongoing poison damage.

Hit points, IMHO, should not just reprensent one thing. For me it makes more sense for the SoD if HPs are a combination of physical punishment a character can take, luck, the ability to make more serious "hits" not so serious and exhaustion from physical exertion.

Fixer
2009-06-17, 06:53 AM
How then do you account for those types of monster (or character) abilities that actually need to be a physical hit? A spider attacks a character and hits. It does 5 ongoing poison damage. If the spider only "hit" the characters "luck" how the heck does the character take 5 ongoing poison damage.Scratches, nicks, and minor cuts.

MickJay
2009-06-17, 07:27 AM
Maybe the poison is simply draining characters' luck even further and over time, without injuring them physically... :smalltongue:

Naszir
2009-06-17, 07:51 AM
Scratches, nicks, and minor cuts.

Well then, that's an actual physical hit, not just luck. The character might have been lucky that the hit wasn't more damaging or fatal but is still a hit that causes some physical damage.

Personally, I like the idea that hit points do represent some luck but to erase HP on a character sheet and just replace it with Luck is too simplistic in my mind and is worse for the SoD.

kjones
2009-06-17, 09:07 AM
Maybe the poison is simply draining characters' luck even further and over time, without injuring them physically... :smalltongue:

Brilliant! :smallbiggrin:

ericgrau
2009-06-17, 09:21 AM
^ In the form of strength damage? And how does cure moderate wounds heal luck anyway?

In spite of my defense I'm not the biggest fan of HP systems either. I just try to imagine it the best I can.

I think a more realistic system could be implemented without screwing over the player. The problem is that every time someone tries to do something "realistic" he holds on so tightly to his dream that he completely disregards oter things like fun... and whether or not it's actually realistic for that matter. With proper gaming expertise and some extra complication it could likely be done.

The reason no one's tried it in video games, btw, is because programmers are lazy. No joke, at least from the code I've seen before. When they have a physics engine that isn't just for minor eye candy only after a creature dies then maybe things will change. But the common method is if you can make a game without including something, why bother?

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-17, 09:44 AM
Just to..

Add myself to the Guts (in the italian version of the manga, Gatsu) thing.

And the armor thing- it's a magic armor. He's high level, maybe epic, so that's coherent with my view of HPs.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-17, 10:19 AM
Add myself to the Guts (in the italian version of the manga, Gatsu) thing

It's actually supposed to be Götz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tz_von_Berlichingen), which becomes "Gattsu" in the Japanese (ガッツ).

Yes, I'm that kind of person! "Belldandy" ticks me off too (mistranslation of the Japanese transliteration of Verdandi, one of the three Norns - the other two being Urd and Skuld).

frogspawner
2009-06-18, 02:52 AM
D&D's odd Hit Points mechanism has been recognized as a problem since Olden Times. There was an article proposing a fix in White Dwarf #15 - August 1979!

That was called "How to lose hit points and survive" by Roger Musson. IIRC it treated HPs as luck/fatigue, and said critical (or otherwise unavoidable) hits directly affected the body and did damage to CON instead. Or something like that - it's been a long time! So you could patch your D&D game with a similar mechanism.

But for those of you who, like me, care enough to be bothered by D&Ds various silly rules, I recommend switching to the more realistic Basic RolePlaying (BRP) (http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?cPath=37&products_id=3700) system from Chaosium (that link takes you to their site where you can download the Quick Start rules, including adventures, for free!). It's a system with a fine pedigree, being basically the one used for Call of Cthulhu and many more RPGs, including good-old RuneQuest*. It's a fundamentally simple system, but has various options and can be customised to be as detailed as you like.

(* Not the same as Mongoose's newer game, for which they just bought the RuneQuest name and is only vaguely related - and not nearly as good, IMHO. Don't get me started!).

Sir Homeslice
2009-06-18, 05:31 AM
As far as I know, AMF mechanics were too difficult for dumb-a**es like us.

Pointlessly (and needlessly) bitter, much?

Jayabalard
2009-06-18, 06:43 AM
If you want to PLAY a Hero capable of awesum feats of endurance, then, yes, you are pigeonholed into being a Hero capable of awesum feats of endurance. I don't see this as a system problem.And if you don't want to play a hero capable of awesome feats of endurance? Like Saph's weedy wizard? Personally I see that as a failure with the system unless the system is VERY clearly labeled as such (ie, specifically a superhero focused RPG system). Fantasy is not sufficient to quality as very clearly labeled as such... "total bad-ass" characters make up a fairly small portion of the fantasy genre.


Well, that's one down, and Qin, Unisystem, RuneQuest(s), Pendragon, Elric!, GURPS, Rolemaster, and The Riddle of Steel (hands down the most realistic combat and injury system ever) left... out of the scant handful we even threw out there to begin with.Wait, I thought FATAL was the most realistic and historically/mythically accurate... shouldn't it be on that list? :smallbiggrin:

The Rose Dragon
2009-06-18, 06:54 AM
Fantasy is not sufficient to quality as very clearly labeled as such... "total bad-ass" characters make up a fairly small portion of the fantasy genre.

Yes, but D&D clearly is far from "fantasy". It's "D&D", a genre of its own. It has examples of characters explicitly said to be physically very weak get impaled by a dragon's claw and live (e.g. Raistlin Majere).

If you're playing D&D, you're going to play according to the rules of D&D genre, not fantasy.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-18, 07:36 AM
(* Not the same as Mongoose's newer game, for which they just bought the RuneQuest name and is only vaguely related - and not nearly as good, IMHO. Don't get me started!).

The rules are about 95% the same; the biggest changes are how hit points work (i.e. removing General Hit Points; you now can't die from having small, non-crippling injuries inflicted on all of your locations - I'm still not sure if it works out better or not, but re-instituting them would be trivial) and how experience works. Most of the changes to magic etc. reflect the best houserules from the sites of RQ "stars" like Effingham, Brooke, etc., and from YBoT and TotRM issues. Mongoose got a license to use RuneQuest and to create Second Age Glorantha material (only; Greg isn't giving up the Third Age/Hero Wars era to anyone), and created a system almost identical to BRP because you can't copyright rules, only their representation.

PenDragon Pass and HeroQuest are still better for Glorantha, but there's a definite charm to playing RQ - the new one beats the old one in many respects, and the new material is often excellent. The designers clearly know what they're doing, considering they had even Shannon Appel (the "in-house elf expert" for Tradetalk) write the elf sourcebook, etc. The dragonewt book was better than any treatment of dragonewts so far.

The problem with BRP hit points is that there's too few, which reduces granularity. Being punched in the stomach or chest about 4-5 times will reduce your GHP enough to kill you, and that's pretty silly. Similarly, it should be at least theoretically possible to survive even a dozen stab-wounds to the torso - but that's a minimum of 24 damage (without damage modifiers; daggers deal 1d4+1, knives deal 1d3+1), and the maximum human GHP is 18.

It'd probably work much better if hit points were a sort of "treshold" like in GURPS; at 0 and each multiple of your HP into the negatives, you have to roll to stay conscious and alive, half your HP damage to a limb cripples it, and so on.

It's much more realistic than D&D, though - nobody's battle tactics are going to be "well I'm going to beat on him until one of us runs out of hit points!"

frogspawner
2009-06-18, 09:41 AM
(* Not the same as Mongoose's newer game, for which they just bought the RuneQuest name and is only vaguely related - and not nearly as good, IMHO. Don't get me started!).
The rules are about 95% the same; the biggest changes are how hit points work...
PenDragon Pass and HeroQuest are still better for Glorantha...
The problem with BRP hit points is that there's too few...
It'd probably work much better if hit points were a sort of "treshold" like in GURPS...
It's much more realistic than D&D, though - nobody's battle tactics are going to be "well I'm going to beat on him until one of us runs out of hit points!"
Thanks - you knew I really meant "get me started", didn't you? :smallwink:

BRP (Chaosium's new Basic RolePlaying, the RPG descendant of old-time RuneQuest) may look 95% the same as Mongoose's RQ from a D&D persepective, but that "5%" makes a heck of a difference in quality from my point of view. IMHO, the design decisions in MRQ are (mostly) wrong, but BRPs (mostly) right. (e.g. whereas MRQ scrapped general HP, BRP's default is only general HP - individual HP totals per arm/leg/etc are optional) And gone are the days when BRP/RQ was just for Glorantha!

BRP has plenty of options to customize the rules according to taste. For example, there's an option to have twice the usual Hit Points, and another for Major Wound effects to kick-in at a threshold (half HP). (Which I guess would be more to your taste!)

Agreed on BRP's realism winning over D&D (though I still like and use many things from D&D, such the spells). And it does that without becoming too complex - since most mechanics are optional, you can balance the realism/complexity just how you like.

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-18, 10:27 AM
Pointlessly (and needlessly) bitter, much?

Touchè, my friend.

But consider that if designer start to craft games about this assumption, starts the tragedy (*back of the hand on the forehead, closes eyes, simulates faint*).

Se what satyr some post ago said about HP (I agree with him).

Mr.Moron
2009-06-18, 11:13 AM
And if you don't want to play a hero capable of awesome feats of endurance? Like Saph's weedy wizard? Personally I see that as a failure with the system unless the system is VERY clearly labeled as such (ie, specifically a superhero focused RPG system). Fantasy is not sufficient to quality as very clearly labeled as such... "total bad-ass" characters make up a fairly small portion of the fantasy genre.


It is pretty clearly labeled, from the PHB intro

"Imagine a world of bold warriors, mighty wizards and terrible monsters"
..
"You take on the role of a legendary hero... a skilled fighter, or a courages cleric... [class list continues"
..
"you strike out on daring missions and epic quests, testing yourself against an array of daunting challenges and blood thirsty monsters. Get Ready - the Player's Handbook contains everything you need to create a heroic character of your own!"

on PCs...

"As you create a Player Character - a Heroic Adventurer"

Certainly the word badass never gets throw in there, and they use the term "Fantasy-Adventure" rather than say "Heroic Fantasy" when describing the genre of the stories. Still though, the system is at least to me sending a very clear message about themes and characters it's meant to accommodate.

I'm certainly not bashing people who like other themes and concepts. I'm just saying that the system is being fairly straight forward about what's intended to help portray. It's system for RPing powerful fantasy heros... and not much else. Maybe powerful fantasy villains, I suppose.

Leeham
2009-06-21, 03:49 PM
You can always roleplay that warlord ability as kind encouragement when it's directed at a wizard, not as yelling at him. It's ultimately up to you how you roleplay these things, in this respect, 4e is even better than some of the previous editions, since the players can decide to even greater degree what the abilities actually represent. Less rules about roleplaying = more freedom to GM and players how to roleplay.

You have hit the nail on the head my my friend, and it is driven firmly into the wood :smallbiggrin: That's exactly it, it's all about roleplay!