[Any] Hit Points

[Person_Man]

While doing some homebrew work I realized how truly difficult and pointless it is to statistically balance hit points (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HitPoints) and the damage dealt by various attacks and powers when they scale.

If the hit points gained do not keep up with the damage you could receive (3.X D&D), then combat becomes deadly, and one or two hits could kill a PC or an enemy. So if you don't win Initiative or get lucky, you essentially don't act in combat, and die. (You get similar results if hit points and damage scale precisely but you throw a low level player against a higher level monster).

If the hit points gained outstrip the damage you receive (most video games, excluding some boss fights), then combat becomes a grind. It doesn't matter if an enemy hits you 8 times, because you have plenty of hit points to soak it up. Thus there is no real challenge in combat. (Again, you get similar results if hit points and damage scale precisely and you throw a high level character against low level monsters. They're a joke).

If the hit points and damage are balanced and scale precisely (Oblivion, Fallout 3), then there is no point to it. If you have Level*5 hit points and an attack deals Level*2 damage, then it takes the same number of hits every time to kill you.


So I've come to the odd conclusion that hit points should be set at level 1 (perhaps 30 + Constitution bonus or some similar number) and that damage for all attacks should never scale.


Thoughts? Does anyone have a favorite hit point or wound system that keeps combat challenging but not boring throughout every level?

[Earthwalker]

Now and then I play Runequest.

Generally speaking you get about 10 to 18 HPs at the start of the game, after a year of real time adventuring the players are on the same number of hit points.

What increases are the skills used to avoid damage.

Of course this is true for alot of none level / class games I can think of.

[Morty]

I think hit points should be lower than the damage you recieve and instead there ought to be more efficient ways to avoid getting damage in the first place by blocking, parrying, dodging and armor. This way, combat isn't a pointless grind, characters don't survive being shot with a dozen crossbow bolts to the face, but the combat isn't over in one round. Mind you, combat being over in one round isn't a bad thing, but it doesn't fit every game.

[Mushroom Ninja]

If HP and damage never scale, what combat abilities do increase with level?

Have you considered some sort of modified VP/WP system?

[big teej]

I'm in favor of as is. and just focus on not getting hit

for instance, I have a character that has a defense (AC) score of 31 when not denied his dodge bonus

what?! 31 AC? at character creation!?!?!:smalleek:
not DnD, the system is Phoenix, a d20 superhero expansion IT'S ALOT OF FUN!!!

[Thinker]

I agree with our idea that hit points should be more or less set at level one. As characters increase in powers, some classes (typically tank-types) should gain more HP and damage types should gain more damage, but these gains should not be enough to make level disparity pointless.

For example, using your idea of Con + 30 HP:
Tank gains +3 HP/level, +1 expected damage/level
Damage dealer gains +1 HP/level, +3 expected damage/level

I gained this perspective from SweetRein. These gains should be modified by feats.

That said, I am partial to some sort of energy/vitality/stamina rather than HP. This energy fuels special abilities, spells, and the like or can be spent to avoid taking damage (maybe at a 2:1 damage:energy rate or something) and is regained by resting for a short time. In this scenario, the tank class would have Con + 30 HP and might gain an ability to use energy at a 1:1 rate with damage. Also, no one would gain HP, only energy.

I like this method more because it provides a greater spectrum for special abilities. One attack may not be avoided using energy. This ability allows energy to be spent when the character fails a fortitude save. This attack deals double damage, but only attacks energy. Another ability converts HP to spare energy.

I like adding simple economies to games as a way to increase options without drastically increasing complexity.

Edit: This is similar to the Vitality/Wound Points scenario. You can even allow crits to deal extra damage and automatically target HP or something.

[lesser_minion]

Another option is to have damage and hitpoints increase by only a small amount, or to have fixed hitpoints and scaling damage reduction. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay does this (although you do get extra attacks per round, this is a lot easier to avoid than in D&D).

The biggest mistake with hitpoints is often to tie their recovery to a character's recovery from wounds -- in many games, all your hitpoints represent is that it'd be unfair just to grab some dice and roll every time you get hit to see if it kills you.

In such a case, tying hit point recovery to the recovery of a wound that has already been written off as superficial (by virtue of dealing hp damage and not something else) is a pointless and confusing exercise.

There are games where a lost hitpoint does mean something more than just a superficial injury, and where it makes sense for healing to restore hitpoints, but those are all much grittier games, like Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness.

[Vitruviansquid]

If the hit points and damage are balanced and scale precisely (Oblivion, Fallout 3), then there is no point to it. If you have Level*5 hit points and an attack deals Level*2 damage, then it takes the same number of hits every time to kill you.


Not quite correct.

Let's say that everyone starts with 10hp and an average ability to deal 2 damage every round.

As they gain levels, each level they're expected to go up by 10hp and deal 2 more damage every round. HOWEVER, each time they gain levels, it's also up to them to decide if they want to gain slightly more hp at the cost of dealing slightly less damage, the reverse, or give up both in favor of a different advantage, like faster movement, longer range, etc. This levelling system allows players to play more extreme roles as time goes on and they make more lopsided decisions, like giving up some attack ability for some defensive ability, or allow players to access new roles as time goes on, if, for example, they couldn't choose to have longer range when they level up until level 5.

[Coplantor]

Yesterday I was trying to come up with a hit point/wound system for an RPG i'm trying to develop and realized that hp and damage should not increase too much, that it doesnt matter who you are or how powerful you are, a good hit with a sword will probably kill you.

What should increase are the ways players/npcs get to avoid/absorb damage.

I like the way alternity handled this.

[Orzel]

One of my own Homebrews (Roguish Notes) uses multiple HP systems instead of stacking defensive values.

Each character usually has enough HP in his best pool to block 2-4 attacks from an equal challenge opponent. You can also split damage into multiple HP pools (at a penalty). When a pool hits 50% you take penalties. If any pool hits 0, you have failed to defend yourself and are on the floor dying.

Dodging a 50 damage fireball might deal 40 stamina, 10 armor, and 5 body. If the character was human, his max Body would be low and he'd probably be burned. Heavy armor could had cause more stamina damage because he dodged and possibly winded him.

It become less about how much damage you have and more about how you choose to defend yourself. If you fast, dodging is the strongest defense but it tires you quick. Parrying use little stamina but it's hard to parry some things. Defending with armor or magic is often a save or die deal.

[Pronounceable]

I have decided that trying to balance scaling HP and damage is pointless. Whatever method you devise, there's gonna be something troubling in calculations. So I went and removed advancement. That solved this particular problem handily. Balance it once, and you're good forever.

Also, gaming is for relaxation. If you want to have that awesome X ability, you oughtn't be forced to work to gain it. If you really must see pointlessly increasing numbers you can play a CRPG.

Why everyone doesn't accept this one true idea of truth I have no idea...

[Person_Man]

If HP and damage never scale, what combat abilities do increase with level?

Defensive values, like AC and Saves. Thus 1st level mooks are still less likely to hit 10th level players. But if twenty 1st level mooks surround the 10th level players, the players might have a hard time (and even consider roleplaying their way out of it, gods forbid), because if all of the mooks fire at once they might still kill the players.



Have you considered some sort of modified VP/WP system?

I would most definitely consider a wound system of some kind. But I haven't seen one that I like.

I also think that players just enjoy rolling damage, and you don't necessarily want to take that away from them entirely unless the wound system has some degree of fun and randomness to it.

[QuantumSteve]

I really like the Condition Monitor used in Shadowrun. I've often thought of converting it to D20, maybe something similar to the SW Saga system.

[Jarawara]

So I've come to the odd conclusion that hit points should be set at level 1 (perhaps 30 + Constitution bonus or some similar number) and that damage for all attacks should never scale.

This is not an odd conclusion to come to. In fact, I've been railing against the whole point of the 'leveling up' system for years. If the PC's level up and so do the monsters, then what's the point? They've got the same exact fight on their hands, simply with a new 'skin' to the monster icon. If they level up often but the monsters do not, out goes all challenge.

I run a game where the PC's level up very slowly (eight year campaign, they've just now reached level six). Some friends of mine were horrified upon hearing of this, thinking how could any player put up with leveling up so slowly. But I ask them what they think would be appropriate - they think the PC's should be epic level by now, or at least in the high teens. This of course would require epic level enemies, a radical rethinking of the battlefield (due to high level spells), lots more paperwork, and of course the grand finale with the tribe of orcs is just not going to work!

They responded: "Well, orcs are a joke anyway." Well, yeah, duh, to high level characters. But to a group of 6th level people, they still have to *fight* to earn their victory. Which was the whole point of having slow level advancement, so that the undefeatable enemy at the beginning of the game is now defeatable at the end, without having to turn them into epic upsized vampiric half demons with class levels.

Orcs should never be a joke.

Which brings me to my next rant...


If the hit points gained outstrip the damage you receive (most video games, excluding some boss fights), then combat becomes a grind.

False.


It doesn't matter if an enemy hits you 8 times, because you have plenty of hit points to soak it up.

False.


Thus there is no real challenge in combat.

False.


(Again, you get similar results if hit points and damage scale precisely and you throw a high level character against low level monsters. They're a joke).

True, but only because 3rd edition made it work that way.

3rd edition changed the scale of how powerful characters become, and while they did a halfway decent job of scaling up the high end monsters, they did nothing for the low level ones. Meaning, the low level monsters have become a joke when faced off against high level characters.

This was a mistake.

Back in the good ol days of AD&D, Orcs were a threat to low level characters, to mid level characters (in reasonable numbers), and without proper caution, even a threat to high level characters. You could run mid-level adventures using humanoids as the basic monster type (A1-4, Against the Slave Lords), and when they make an appearance in high level adventures (G1-3, Against the Giants), they can have a significant effect in combat (either as an enemy or as an ally).

Now in 3rd edition, the mid level character wouldn't find the Orcs challenging, while high level character would blow through those Orcs without using any resources, and wouldn't waste time on allying with them, since the giants would blow through them just as fast.

But that is not a direct result of hit points scaling (equally or unequally), it's a result of too damn much scaling of all combat stats. If you slow down the leveling process, or stop it altogether (E6, perhaps), then the low level monsters can remain a threat throughout the character's career.

Yes, that would mean that they have to hit you eight times to hurt you - but if you're facing alot of enemies, and have a long day's adventure ahead of you, being hit eight times is both a real possibility, and a real threat to you when it happens. There *is* a real challenge to combat, which is to win before taking too many hits.

And that doesn't make combat a "grind", either. Boring combat sucks - everyone knows that. But make the combat interesting, turn it into long chase sequences, valiant defenses, a series of ambushes, a battle aboard a sinking ship... any number of tricks can be used to keep it interesting.

So when you're low on spells and have taken several tough hits, and the enemy is down to the last few leaders of the tribe, but they are completing the final stages of the ceremony to summon their demonic patron, and to stop them you have to fight your way across the bridge (which is burning, of course, fire makes everything better)... you'll be glad that your hit points didn't scale with the Orcs' damage output. It's the only thing that's keeping you alive!

So your quoted conclusions are false, because it's not the comparative scaling of hit points that is the problem -- it's that 3E then lets that scale run wild, until the system breaks. Which for 3E, happens around 8th level. Use the E6 system, or modify D&D back towards what it used to be (like AD&D), and you'll find hit points aren't the problem.

Combat is only a grind if you make it so. Low level monsters are only a joke if you let the PC's become too powerful.

And Orcs should never be a joke.

[huttj509]

It depends on what feel you want for the combat.

Combat is lethal and should be avoided whenever possible? Various Shadowrun editions get this, with a set life bar, and cumulative penalties as you get injured. Either you figure out how to avoid getting hit, or reduce the damage taken, or you figure out how to avoid fighting in the first place.

"Untouchable heroes" - Players aren't in much danger unless it's a 'boss fight'? Well, hp scaling faster than damage monsters deal is a good start for that.

Middle ground? That's a dang fine line to walk there. If you want every fight to be threatening, but not overkill...maybe have enemies follow the exact same rules as players, and almost match their number? This becomes a game of 'focus fire wins' as well as strategic positioning. Still feels like walking a razor edge in terms of game design.

DnD 3.5? Early levels hp damage can and will kill you easily. Later levels it's more untouchable heroes for physical, but magic has a number of ways of bypassing HP and removing you from the fight outright. So physical and hp damage folks get to wade through, and have time to react as they take hits, but SoS/SoL/SoD casters get to play rocket tag as they do so.

[Psyx]

It depends how you like your games. Realistic or D&D like (I can't think of a more polar opposite to realistic...).

My take:

I always favour damage NOT scaling with level for weapons and stuff (although a 50' dragon WILL do more damage than a 20' one...). I prefer the characters toughness to scale with levels, but not as much as D&D does.

Thus, in our fictional homebrew system, and advanced character should often face threats that do more damage (because he's fighting really big stuff), however he should have more skill to avoid such attacks, and should probably be able to take -at most- two to three times as much damage as when he started.

[Orzel]

The real question is: How many successful attacks does it take to defeat the opponent?

A character attacking a significantly stronger opponent?

A character attacking a significantly weaker one?

A character attacking a equal one?


After answering that, you base the system on adhering to these guidelines.

I prefer, 10, 1, and 4.

[Theodoxus]

Must be something in the water, as I too have been thinking hard about HP and where a 'sweet spot' would be in terms of D&D 3.x

To me, basing HPs on real life, most people probably don't change much in how many they have - though circumstances may alter how weapons may affect them. (ie a morbidly obese person, stabbed in the belly with a short knife may only receive superficial wounds where as the same knife in a skinny person could very well strike vital organs. - I wouldn't conclude, however that the fat guy has more hit points, but rather an organic form of damage reduction.)

At any rate, a rookie cop and a 15 year vet probably have close to the same number of hit points, but the vet has experience on his side to help mitigate (mostly through pure avoidance) incoming damage potential. In a W/VP system, the vet would have many more Vitality points, but would also expend them in negotiations that the rookie might pull a gun on and escalate.

Since there's only a few abstract ways to make the Wounds choice viable, Con + some set, much like 4th ed base points makes as good a place to start as any. Thinking logically, and realistically, most people in decent shape could take a few hits to the torso from a long sword, provided they knew the attack was coming and had some means to avoid or mitigate the damage. So something in mid 20's would be about where max Wound points should top out, baring magic, superhuman feat training, etc.

The vitality side can be as simple ala Star Wars Core where they were just hit points that could be used for fuel effects, or a complex - like mentioned above, with dodge, absorption, energy... whatever - as you'd like. Basically, whatever works for your plans.

I'm still grappling with exactly where I want to take this concept - but I am definitely tired of the scaling. Logically, it makes no sense.

In video games, it makes no sense. Why would all the level 1 and 2 critters congregate where the new players start? Why wouldn't the level 80 lion not trot out of whatever cave he's living in, and eat his way through all the lower level mobs until he found that tasty tasty zone of newbie player generation? (for that matter, why wouldn't all the various predator mobs not just tear the crap out of each other, until they came up with a nice equilibrium?)

In Pen & paper, it likewise makes no sense for the big bad evil things in the universe to sit put, waiting for the little guys to level up and kill them. There's no reason outside of 'fairness' for the PCs to never run into a raging werewolf or slaving war band of ogres at 1st level - where they'd have no ability to do anything but die.

[Kylarra]

I'm pretty fond of the health system used in Exalted, and most other ST games. Admittedly, Exalted and Scion versions are a bit fiddly in opposite directions, Scion makes it ridiculously easy to become an untouchable tank against nigh anything, Exalted requires perfect defenses on most significant attacks, but I still like the concept.

[Dizlag]

To the OP: Have you seen the Savage Worlds' wound system? Or the Hackmaster Basic HP/wound system? Both of these use different systems for keeping track of wounds for your character, but both use a similar concept ... "soaking damage". In Savage Worlds', the player can use a benny (think action point) to make a soak roll to soak up the damage. In Hackmaster Basic (and previous Hackmaster systems), a player can burn their character's honor to lower the damage.

In my opinion, using a soaking wounds / damage type of system the HP vs Damage balance wouldn't need to be as tweeked as we might think because the player will balance it out using the available soaking option, though limited as it might be.

Dizlag

[Oracle_Hunter]

Important thing to remember: do not let "real life" dictate how your Health System runs - you are designing a mechanic for a game, not trying to model blood loss via die rolls. If you try to make Health "realistic" then you'll spend too much time creating complicated subsystems that get in the way of the actual game - the part where you're not bleeding and dying. It is far better to ask yourself "how do I want combat to work?" and then move from there.
D&D Health is designed for a game where PCs go through a series of combats per session and the weight of numbers of the enemies is the real threat. Hence you have an increasing number of HP that you can lose without losing combat effectiveness and which doesn't (or didn't) scale with damage.

In TSR D&D, HP was set low so that you were more likely to "skirmish" or avoid combats when possible - but advanced characters could handle a short small-squad combat when things got dire. Big monsters were scary because they could do what normal enemies couldn't - kill you in one blow, even at high levels. WotC D&D is much more of the "digital RPG" variety - there are long dungeons with lots of random encounters to kill.

SR/WoD Health is designed for a game where combat can be suddenly fatal and so should be avoided at all costs. Losing Health not only places you closer to death but makes it harder for you to fight - any combat can go sour real quick. oWoD included D&D-esque mechanics to let supernaturals get around this sudden lethality - and then nerfed those mechanics via other mechanics to make some combat lethal - while SR has always been a game of Rocket Tag.

Many Indie RPGs go another route and make injury truly abstract. Bliss Stage for example, has various forms of injury which interact with each other during a mission - and that the Player has some control over taking. This results in Players making cost-benefit analysis when taking damage during combat - Health is just another variable in the storytelling mechanic.

Mountain Witch simplifies things even further: you can take Scene, Chapter, or Story Wounds which heal at the end of scene, chapter, or story. Each one imposes a -1 penalty on die rolls on their Degree of Success checks and only when the difference between the two d6 rolls is 5 or more does a character die. Here, Health is a difficulty mechanic that tracks the storytelling; while death can happen any time, it usually happens when the character in question is injured and alone - perfect for a Samurai Cinema game.
This unrepresentative sample should, hopefully, illustrate what I mean about tying your Health System to your intended combat mechanics.

The moral of the story is that there is no One True Health System; each flavor of Health System (even variants of the HP system) serves a particular style of play. The trick is to use one that suits your personal style.

EDIT: An addendum about "Scaling Defenses & OHKO" systems.
No matter what sort of modifiers you put on this type of system, there is always the chance of some lucky SOB putting a bullet through the head of the PC. In general, luck-based deaths are "not fun;" unless you are playing a light-hearted or character-death-heavy system, don't use any variant of this style.

As an example, in a custom 3.5 game I'm playing, the DM added an "Insta-Kill Rule" to make things more "realistic." Here, a Natural 20, followed by a Natural 20, follwed by a confirmed Crit results in instant death. Naturally, on the very first attack roll of the campaign, an NPC farmer successfully did this to a PC. Were it not for the "OMG Reset!" mechanic the DM also included in his homebrew, this player would have lost his character to pure chance. It's bad enough when a regular Crit eviscerates a 1st level character, but imagine if this had happened to a Fighter just as he challenges the BBEG to single combat? Or worse, the BBEG Warlord takes a sling-bullet to his face right after giving his rant.

[Vantharion]

The reason Hit points scale as you level is when you come across things that ARENT your level.
It's for the Designer who throws the BIG BAD at you so you can see how pathetic you are and how strong they are.
It's also for the Designer who throws the weaklings at you so you can watch your character grow over time.
The reason is its to give you a perception of how your character is growing more powerful over time. This is however overshadowed by how MANY factors show your power change over time; mob size/awesomeness/damage reduction/hp growth/hitpoints/resistances and more.
I personally thing that it could be simplified a lot to a lower number of HP that steadily grows over time as you level (I'm doing this with a custom non DND game I'm working on)

I do however greatly agree with most of OPs points.
I described my opinions on the REASON hit points work the way they do in most settings, however not all of those settings successfully give the scaling encounters properly.

[valadil]

From all my time spent reading the weapons and armor thread I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like HP as an abstraction. I especially don't like the implication that certain weapons are less damaging than others. You can kill someone with a dagger, even if D&D tells you they're not a good choice.

IMO, what should be contested is whether you hit, not how hard you hit. I'd like to see a game that puts more emphasis on reach and positioning. Once you get inside someone's reach you'll have a better chance of hitting them. Hit locations should impose various penalties. When enough penalties are accumulated that the fight is decided, it ends.

In theory I'm going to use something like that in my diceless system. Gotta finish running 4e before I have time to homebrew though.

[Vitruviansquid]

Hit points is really inadequate to model real life in an RPG, that's true.

But as a game mechanic, it's really a lot better than the alternatives I've seen.

[Gametime]

From all my time spent reading the weapons and armor thread I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like HP as an abstraction. I especially don't like the implication that certain weapons are less damaging than others. You can kill someone with a dagger, even if D&D tells you they're not a good choice.

IMO, what should be contested is whether you hit, not how hard you hit. I'd like to see a game that puts more emphasis on reach and positioning. Once you get inside someone's reach you'll have a better chance of hitting them. Hit locations should impose various penalties. When enough penalties are accumulated that the fight is decided, it ends.

In theory I'm going to use something like that in my diceless system. Gotta finish running 4e before I have time to homebrew though.

You could check out Riddle of Steel. It uses dice pools, but attacks and wounds are made at specific parts of the body and have varying effects based on where and how hard you hit someone. Smaller weapons still do less damage, but even a moderate wound severely impacts your ability to keep fighting, so the first person to get hit is pretty likely to die unless they're well-armored. There are mechanics for bleeding, as well as short-term and long-term penalties for injuries. Also, you take a penalty while fighting someone with a longer weapon than yourself; once you score a successful hit on them, though, they take the penalty until they hit you, representing the reach thing you seem to want.

I'm not sure whether its claim to being the most realistic simulation of combat in RPGs is accurate, but it sure has a lot of detail.

[Critical]

I don't think Oblivion or Fallout 3 are good examples of this - a lot of healing potions/stimpaks fix the problem, though, it's probably better than just plainly the second option you listed.

[Ernir]

I got to agree with huttj509 here - how you handle HP is a result of what kind of game you want to play.

Anyway, I think that the game I would like to play is a game where HP/Damage scale in pretty much precise harmony - against an opponent of similar power, combats last about as long whether it's a level 1 character against a level 1 character or a 10th level character vs. a 10th level character. The difference between that and keeping the HPs/damage static across all levels would only show itself when the 1st level character decides to go up against a significantly higher level character.

Another thought - if you are thinking about having HP/damage not scale, you might be better off designing your system entirely as a point-based one rather than a level-based one.

[Aotrs Commander]

I think it's worth bringing up Rolemaster (cue screams of despair) as it does do thing slightly differently to the priorly mentioned systems. Rolemaster's hit points (or more correctly concussion hits) are a combination of shock pain and bleeding. You slowly increase them by level, by developing what amounts to a hit point skill. You can, in Rolemaster, die from hit point damage, but its very rare (until you hit modern or sci-fi). Even on the top of one of the attack tables, the hit points inflicted aren't usually much more than a 1st-2nd level fighter might have (abut 30-40). What kills you in Rolemaster is the criticals. An attack will inflict a certain amount of hit damage and a critical of some severity. Criticals deal a little extra hit point damage, and also penalties, stun and bleeding (stun not being quite as severe as in D&D, it must be noted). And of course, if you roll well enough, you can "uncermoniously remove foe's face"...

Still, again with RM, combat can be rocket tag, or long and drawn out and you fail to roll high on the crits and pass out through bleeding (though to be fair, getting stunned or stunned no parry is usually a signifier that it's going to be over soon!)

Trouble it, you can only get a level of detial like that with tables, you can't really do it with just dice rolls. But it is another method, worth mentioning for completeness.

[valadil]

You could check out Riddle of Steel.

So I've been told. I know one guy with a copy of it, but keep forgetting to borrow it. I'm not sure that I'd actually want to play with that amount of detail, but I'd like to see how they handle it.

[Fax Celestis]

So I've come to the odd conclusion that hit points should be set at level 1 (perhaps 30 + Constitution bonus or some similar number) and that damage for all attacks should never scale.


Thoughts? Does anyone have a favorite hit point or wound system that keeps combat challenging but not boring throughout every level?

You sound like you'd prefer WP/VP (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm). WP never changes, VP scales with level, certain attacks bypass VP and hit WP directly.

I prefer adding in the caveat that a sneak attack against an unaware foe (not a flat-footed one) inflicts damage directly to WP, and deals an extra 2 WP of damage per SA die.

[Another_Poet]

So I've come to the odd conclusion that hit points should be set at level 1 (perhaps 30 + Constitution bonus or some similar number) and that damage for all attacks should never scale.

In general you are right. The one advantage of scaling hit points however is resiliency vs. luck. By that I mean, if you have 10 hp at level 1 you can take 2 hits from a 1 HD sword & board warrior on average. But if the warrior crits or rolls well, a single hit could knock you out. If the warrior crits and rolls well you might die.

On the other hand a few levels later you have 30 hp and the 4 HD warrior has better Str and weapons, so you can still take 2 - 3 hits on average and stay up, but if the warrior crits... you still stay up.

In other words the approximate rate at which hp and damage scale may be the same, making it a moot arms race; but even then it at least allows a buffer against lucky rolls, which have less impact on a higher hp character than on a low hp character.

This is only amplified when iterative attacks come into play, as you can still last x rounds against a level appropriate enemy but now the value of a crit on just one of those many attacks is even less.

ap

[ericgrau]

If everyone is equal there is no reason to scale HP. The purpose of hit point scaling is for there to be weak and strong monsters. A horde of kobolds and/or a single giant.

[Thieves]

There's a reason the HPs are there and high levels are there. Best seen in japanese RPGs, I guess.

Some people like 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999
64 x 9999 DAMAGE !!
9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 numbers.

Honestly, I like it that way. I don't feel good with those small numbers in D&D. Their advantage is they can be counted easily, but other than this? It's a matter of taste, really, and - or maybe even mainly - of the setting. I like wound / vitality points when running a game in 16th c. Europe, but were I limited to such a means while rescuing the universe from an otherworldly plague of demons? I'd feel crippled, deprived of the fun of doing something over-the-top and out of the ordinary.

[Thinker]

If everyone is equal there is no reason to scale HP. The purpose of hit point scaling is for there to be weak and strong monsters. A horde of kobolds and/or a single giant.

Why does the relative HP of monsters dictate that the heroes must increase in health as well?

[pasko77]

So I've come to the odd conclusion that hit points should be set at level 1 (perhaps 30 + Constitution bonus or some similar number) and that damage for all attacks should never scale.


Thoughts? Does anyone have a favorite hit point or wound system that keeps combat challenging but not boring throughout every level?

A high-level character is thought to be a little more durable than a rookie, not only for dnd, but also in movies. The prblem with 3rd edition is that it scales too fast, so to make low level critters useless quickly.

You may try to reach this balance:
level 1: you die in 3 hits.
level Cap: you die in 6 hits.
level 1 against level cap: hits more rarely.
So a "level Cap", surrounded by mooks, can still die fast (if moderately unlucky), but it's what keeps attention high.

[Theodoxus]

Why does the relative HP of monsters dictate that the heroes must increase in health as well?

It doesn't, per se, but it's the easiest (laziest?) mechanic in showing progression of combat 'fu'.

Think of it this way. At 1st level, you typically have 10 or so HPs. At that point in time, due to the way mechanics work, that's pretty much pure body mass.
At 2nd level, you gain an arbitrary additional amount. You haven't gained more 'health'; you aren't twice as healthy as you were 3 xp ago - you've gained an intuitiveness over the creatures of the world. A rat biting your butt still does the same amount of damage that it did before, but you've learned to minimize the lethality of it. Instead of biting your neck, it's gnawing on your leg.

That's the 'classical' view of hit points as a mixture of both physical punishment limits and existential knowledge of avoidance. The ironic thing, the mechanic is pretty elegant and straightforward. It's the explanation of the mechanic that bogs people down. Metaphysical hit points is pretty out there.

It goes back to my question as to why the world is compartmentalized by level. That proto-typical Giant should be eating that horde of kobolds for lunch, and then feasting on your level 1 carcass for desert. Yet the giant is safely away in Giantland and you're dealing with a patrol of three kobolds who's absence will not be missed, ever, unless you willingly go poke their village with a stick, or the GM decides it'd be fun to kill you off.

[tcrudisi]

I only read the first 15 or so posts, but I wanted to bring up this point since many people are saying that "hp and damage should never increase, instead as you level up your defenses should get better."

But what about your ability to attack? Shouldn't you get better at hitting things, which would negate the bonus to defenses, which just leaves everyone sitting at the same as level 1 as well?

[Raum]

Thoughts? I agree with many of your comments. I even agree with your conclusion...and then take it one step further. It's not hit points which are problematic, it's levels (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClassAndLevelSystem).

Seriously. Most games use some form of 'hit point' system to represent health. Some limit it to a set number (Shadowrun = 10, Savage Worlds = 3), some have very little growth (Unisystem, GURPS), some assign points to individual body parts (Artesia?, Riddle of Steel? I think...don't have the books handy.), and some grow as the character gains power (D&D). Some work better than others but they're all counting health points in the end. It's the concept of escalating damage and defenses with experience (i.e. levels) which causes verisimility issues. Perhaps more specifically, it's linking that increase in damage and defense capability to experience and making it inherent rather than a skill which forces the reality check.


Does anyone have a favorite hit point or wound system that keeps combat challenging but not boring throughout every level?Have you tried systems which eschew levels? Unisystem or GURPS are good ones to try, their core resolution mechanic is similar to d20's. If you're willing to go a bit farther afield, Savage Worlds or Shadowrun are good options. For a complete change, you might try FATE.

[Andion Isurand]

I'm in favor of as is. and just focus on not getting hit

for instance, I have a character that has a defense (AC) score of 31 when not denied his dodge bonus

what?! 31 AC? at character creation!?!?!:smalleek:
not DnD, the system is Phoenix, a d20 superhero expansion IT'S ALOT OF FUN!!!

Using Weapon Group Proficiencies variant... any small +0 LA race with +1 BAB at first level... wearing Thaalud Stone Armor ... using a Tower Shield... fighting defensively... using Combat Expertise... and wielding a Broadblade Shortsword

10 + 1 size + 12 armor + 4 shield + 2 fight defensively + 2 broadblade shortsword defense bonus + 1 combat expertise = non-magical 32 AC when not denied dex

....I'm just being snarky, heh