Is it frowned upon to keep track of health?

[killem2]

As healer, you probably know what your parties health is normally. Is it frowned upon to keep track of each person as they take a hit or is it considered major meta gaming?

[legomaster00156]

If it's considered meta-gaming in your group to heal someone when they're at low HP, you're in a bad group.

[Kelb_Panthera]

This varies by group. Ask your DM. It's undeniably meta-gaming if you're keeping an exact hp tally. If it is frowned upon, there are spells that give you the information anyway.

[BRC]

As healer, you probably know what your parties health is normally. Is it frowned upon to keep track of each person as they take a hit or is it considered major meta gaming?
I have yet to encounter a group that does not keep track of their own hitpoints. Some realism-minded DM's may limit you to using adjectives "I'm Fine", "I'm Injured" "I'm badly injured" "I'm VERY badly injured" "DUDE HEAL ME RIGHT NOW OR I WILL DIE", stuff like that.

[Eldariel]

As healer, you probably know what your parties health is normally. Is it frowned upon to keep track of each person as they take a hit or is it considered major meta gaming?

You can at least tell if they're slightly hurt, heavily hurt or almost dead. That's enough. Tho we always play with HPs open to all players since the metagame concepts are there for a reason and the game is abstract enough that it doesn't really meaningfully detract from the suspension of disbelief.

[Savannah]

Depends on your group.

Every group I've been in, the healer's player hasn't kept a hit-by-hit tally (way too much effort), but just asked "who looks the most hurt?" after a battle and everyone will rattle off their current and maximum hit points so the healer can choose how to allocate their spells. In battle, if someone is in serious need of healing, that player will say so after they take damage.

[Larpus]

I can see some tables considering this too much meta, however, if you think of the HP numbers as a way to measure how well the characters are, then it makes quite a lot of sense.

In that regard, the 55 HP Barbarian who is lacking 30 HP most probably has a big wound on the chest or multiple pretty ugly wounds all over the body, so it makes sense to use a potent healing spell on him.

However, I could kinda see the complaint if you just went "Oh wait guys, I'm about to sleep and I see here that McMonkeyton there is missing 2 HP, so I'll heal him before we sleep."; but honestly, even that I don't see much problem with.

Again, HP is a gauge to see how well a person is, the Barbarian had a gaping obvious wound, because he was lacking a large chunk of his HP, the Monk...well, it's pretty minimal, so it's most probably something that only he can perceive, a sprained ankle or maybe just a swollen joint, for example that is not visible, so it'd make perfect sense for his character to complain about it and check with your healer if you still got a healing spell to spare.

And yes, that is even without in-game complaint, after all, never seen a DM cry in the middle of combat "Ah hah! You didn't say you went to the bathroom, so now you got this urge to pee, Fort 15 to hold it in or lose a fullround doing it in the bushes, provoking AoOs!", even though no, I never mentioned that my character went to the bathroom.

It can be considered somewhat meta if you start min-maxing your daily lot of healing in order to find the most efficient method of getting everyone up to shape, but even that can be argued against, after all, you do get a limited amount of spells per day and spending one in the improper time can even end up with a character death, especially considering that the spells have a numeric mechanic, not something like "heals one step of health" (something as in "pretty bad", "normal", "healthy" for a numberless system).

[Razanir]

I would say it depends on the world. Proof of point: This very website! (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html) But even if it is meta, hp tracking should be fine

[Ravens_cry]

HP is a pretty abstract thing, and yeah, I can see it potentially getting a little metagamist. But in my table at least, it would be considered more irresponsible to NOT keep track of your HP.

[AntiTrust]

"How close to death are you?"

*Gurggles and cough's up blood*

"You're gonna need to be more specific, cause I've got cure mod and cure serious prepped, but I don't want to waste all the healing on you"

[Ravens_cry]

"How close to death are you?"

*Gurggles and cough's up blood*

"You're gonna need to be more specific, cause I've got cure mod and cure serious prepped, but I don't want to waste all the healing on you"
"Gurgles and cough's up blood" sounds like a cure serious or a wand of cure lights.
We got a small house rule I like for Cure X line, they are xd4+4+CL, because a xD8+CL sucks when it comes up Yahtzee.

[Razanir]

"How close to death are you?"

*Gurggles and cough's up blood*

"You're gonna need to be more specific, cause I've got cure mod and cure serious prepped, but I don't want to waste all the healing on you"

*Coughs up a bit more blood*

"Cure light it is then"

The reason bards need wisdom as well

[killem2]

I was thinking more on the line of the extreme like:

Ok, I know tordek, aust, and termod have 67 hp, 50 hp, and 62 hp respectively. So then I just watch the combat carefully and mark down the rolls.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I would say it depends on the world. Proof of point: This very website! (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html) But even if it is meta, hp tracking should be fine

Um... OotS isn't a D&D game. Like, at all. It's a world that runs on D&D mechanics most of the time. There might've been one game like that in the history of D&D.

[Prime32]

As long as the characters don't say their HP totals IC, it should be fine.

[Slipperychicken]

If hp damage = physical wounds, a character should be able to gauge his own pretty accurately. If the marks are visible, it should be obvious to a healer that he needs healing. How much healing is needed can be kept in vague terms like "I'm hurt bad", "I'm gonna need a lot more healing", or "Just a scratch and a few bruises left. I can sleep it off".

It would be completely reasonable to allow a Heal check to determine how much healing a character needs. Probably something low like DC 15.

[Medic!]

I've literally played in games at both ends of the spectrum on this one.

In the middle of a combat encounter:
Rogue: DM, may I have a free action?
DM: Sure, knock yourself out.
Rogue: CLERIC HEAL ME I'M AT FOUR HITPOINTS! FOUR. HIT. POINTS.

In one group I played with the DM rolled all of the damage and healing dice, and if you asked you could get a condition report based on your ranks in Heal.

Neither was any less enjoyable than the other. It depends on the setting, the game, and the group. If it's a big concern, they're the ones to discuss it with to establish your group-standard on metagame interaction.

[Razanir]

Um... OotS isn't a D&D game. Like, at all. It's a world that runs on D&D mechanics most of the time. There might've been one game like that in the history of D&D.


In the middle of a combat encounter:
Rogue: DM, may I have a free action?
DM: Sure, knock yourself out.
Rogue: CLERIC HEAL ME I'M AT FOUR HITPOINTS! FOUR. HIT. POINTS.


This is the type of thing I'm talking about. Health and everything is just as measurable as stuff like height and weight

[molten_dragon]

I used to play in a 3.0 game where the cleric could make a DC 15 heal check to see how many gashes an ally had received. A gash was equal to 10 hit points.

We had a frenzied berserker in the party, and when the results started sounding like "he has 77 gashes", we decided as a party that we needed to institute a new unit of measure. And so missing organs (equal to 100 hit points) was born. There were points at which I'm not sure that poor frenzied berserker had any organs left.

[AntiTrust]

Has anyone in game had HP represent something else? The PHB on page 145 suggests some characters may represent HP as divine favor or inner power. The mechanics are the same, but I've just never seen it done that way.

[deuxhero]

I've always disliked that explanation for HP. In a high fantasy system like 3.5, saying the fighter is just that tough that he can survive reentry or get stabbed a dozen times makes more sense then somehow dodging the ground or the dozens of hits actually being misses (despite being able to transmit poison and various other effects that activate off a hit just fine) till your luck runs out

[ACSherman]

My players and I settled on them all being able to tell each other how many hit points they were out OOC, but IC they have to refer to themselves by actual wounds, or just a simple "I'm hurt pretty bad." However, once a character is unconscious, their player isn't allowed to discuss how many hit points he has left. They show me the sheet, I roll for bleeding out, and then they drop it. They consider it OOC information, and something the other players shouldn't know.

It leads to fun moments where people have to guess whether they have time to kill something/finish a task/etc. before healing someone, or whether they should just drop it to heal them.

[Slipperychicken]

I've always disliked that explanation for HP. In a high fantasy system like 3.5, saying the fighter is just that tough that he can survive reentry or get stabbed a dozen times makes more sense then somehow dodging the ground or the dozens of hits actually being misses (despite being able to transmit poison and various other effects that activate off a hit just fine) till your luck runs out

I always wanted to use that explanation myself, but then what you said hit me. I'm sure it would work fine in some other system, but not 3.5.

[TuggyNE]

I've always disliked that explanation for HP. In a high fantasy system like 3.5, saying the fighter is just that tough that he can survive reentry or get stabbed a dozen times makes more sense then somehow dodging the ground or the dozens of hits actually being misses (despite being able to transmit poison and various other effects that activate off a hit just fine) till your luck runs out

Yes, I agree with this so much. "HP as meatshield" just resonates vastly better (despite its occasional oddities) than "HP as plotshield/divine favor/superb luck".

[Kelb_Panthera]

For the luck thing, you could flavor it as hits are only near-misses. The damage done represents you using a bit of your "heroic luck" but they're still leaving scratches and other mostly cosmetic damage until you start getting down to around 10% of your max hp. For falling it could simply represent hitting a patch of soft earth or particularly brittle and porous rock. This also adds the comedic effect of leaving an impression of yourself when you get up. :smalltongue:

[The Bandicoot]

Me and my friends have a pretty good system made up. We each pick a color when we're making our characters. Now let's say I picked red and I have a human character. When I'm at half health I'll say in a booming voice "Red human needs food badly"

When I'm at 0 or lower it's "Red human is about to die"

Other than that we keep tally of our own hp and that's it.

[Togo]

I've seen it go to both extremes. Some tables one Pc openly tracks everyone's hp, so the DM doesn't have to, and it's considered public information.

Other tables, the DM doesn't like players exchaning any form of numeric information with eachother, and all healing is done based on guesstimates.

I ran into a nasty tendancy in a tournament series I was in where the DM tried to enforce a heal check roll on anyone who asked about the monster's hp, and then pointed out that a heal check is generally a standard action, so that was theirs for the next turn. :smallfrown:

[Downysole]

I've seen it go to both extremes. Some tables one Pc openly tracks everyone's hp, so the DM doesn't have to, and it's considered public information.

Other tables, the DM doesn't like players exchaning any form of numeric information with eachother, and all healing is done based on guesstimates.

I ran into a nasty tendancy in a tournament series I was in where the DM tried to enforce a heal check roll on anyone who asked about the monster's hp, and then pointed out that a heal check is generally a standard action, so that was theirs for the next turn. :smallfrown:

In lieu of rolling the dice for this, I have seen players get the benefit of knowing other players' hp to greater and greater accuracy based on ranks alone. That way, the level 12 Cleric with full heal ranks knows his party's current hps from line of sight as a free action.

[Razanir]

I'll admit to making it OotS-style, where hp is just a law of the universe. That is, characters can know each other's hp and Knowledge checks let them remember approximate enemy healths. Same goes for AC

[Keneth]

We don't allow our healers to keep track of everyone's exact HP (and neither do they want to, they're busy enough keeping track of their own), but they can always ask the others if they need healing. Relaying the exact numbers is somewhat frowned upon in this case, but no one's really gonna throw a fit over it.

[Blue Bandit]

....When I'm at half health I'll say in a booming voice "Red human needs food badly"
When I'm at 0 or lower it's "Red human is about to die"....

"Reaches down into ancient knowledge of various video games played throughout life." O.K. is that a quote from Gauntlet Dark Legacy? Haven't played that game in forever.

Anyway, are group always allows our players to communicate how many hp they have with each other since, "they are all on the same team anyway." So, are conversations usually go like this,

(hurt character) Ouch, o crap, I only 3 hp left.

(Cleric) I cast cure serious wounds on that player.

I know it might take a little realism out of the game, but personally, I don't think it's such a big deal as it's still just a role playing game which happens to use mechanics such as dice and hit points to determine someone's fate. So to me, I think it would be rather annoying to try to role play mechanics out of the game as it would lead to the table continuously correcting players saying, "hey, we're not supposed to know that," every time someone mentions there hit points. But then again, our group tries to not take the game too seriously.