Making more HP more meaningful

[Calimehter]

For a long time now, I've meddled with various systems to allow HP damage to do more to your opponent than leave him at either "fully functional" or "dead" with virtually nothing in between.

In the past, though, I've focused on penalties being assigned as HP totals got lower. What I'm looking at now is giving bonuses when HP are higher, including giving some bonuses that aren't even related to HP. Here's my thought:

- If any character is over 1/2 their starting HP total (including CON bonuses but not temporary hit points) they are considered "Healthy" (just to give a name to the status they have) and gain the following benefits:

1. They are allowed a DC 15 Fortitude save to have their HP reduced to 0 if any single hit lowered their HP total to 0 or lower. A further DC 15 Fortitude save may be taken to make it 1 HP instead of 0.

2. They get a bonus to saving throws equal to their ECL.

3. Any ability score penalty or damage may not reduce their score below "1" unless that score was already at "1" before the most recent penalty/damage occurred, if a DC 15 Fortitude save is passed.

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What I like and hope to accomplish:

- Makes it harder to one-shot an encounter in a single action. Less rocket tag is good IMO.

- Gives damage dealers a 'debuff' of sorts to deliver with damage, in the form of making the enemy more vulnerable to death/defeat rather than actually reducing their abilities in any way. I like how this works against PCs who take damage - they become more vulnerable, but can still use their abilities to their fullest.

What do you think? Any changes/thoughts/etc. would be appreciated. :smallsmile:

[Maginomicon]

Your hit points measure how hard you are to kill. No matter how many hit points you lose, your character isn’t hindered in any way until your hit points drop to 0 or lower.
I always interpreted HP as the amount of luck you have to make blows glance off without sustaining significant injury. When your HP hits 0, you're "out of luck".

If you use the "Injury" variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/injury.htm), you have no hit points.

If you use the "Death and Dying" variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/deathAndDying.htm), when HP hits 0 then the excrement makes physical contact with the hydro-electric powered oscillating air current distribution device.

[Godskook]

1. They are allowed a DC 15 Fortitude save to have their HP reduced to 0 if any single hit lowered their HP total to 0 or lower. A further DC 15 Fortitude save may be taken to make it 1 HP instead of 0.

Arbitrary and doesn't discriminate based on damage source. Most harshly nerfs sources of damage that were least problematic(or easy to deal with via targeted houserules).


2. They get a bonus to saving throws equal to their ECL.

I actually like this one. I think it scales too harshly into high levels(a +20 at lvl 20 is basically impenetrable by mages), but conceptually, I like it. Perhaps an "opposed check" of ECL to determine the score? A CR 10 Dragon would get a +5 on saves against lvl 5 parties but nothing against lvl 10 parties?


3. Any ability score penalty or damage may not reduce their score below "1" unless that score was already at "1" before the most recent penalty/damage occurred, if a DC 15 Fortitude save is passed.

Eh. Just ban most of the sources of large ability damage, cause they're probably broken.

[CombatOwl]

For a long time now, I've meddled with various systems to allow HP damage to do more to your opponent than leave him at either "fully functional" or "dead" with virtually nothing in between.

I'll be honest, the only system I've seen that does damage right is Fate and its related games. Even when penalties and benefits are assigned to hit points, all that does is turn combat into a downward spiral. Anyone who's played an old edition of Shadowrun can testify to how that can cause problems.


1. They are allowed a DC 15 Fortitude save to have their HP reduced to 0 if any single hit lowered their HP total to 0 or lower. A further DC 15 Fortitude save may be taken to make it 1 HP instead of 0.

Eh? This seems arbitrary.


2. They get a bonus to saving throws equal to their ECL.

... What? +20 to saves at level 20? That's quite insane. Even if I were to agree that being healthy should improve your saves, that bonus should be no more than 1/4 ECL. "Oh, I'm effectively immune to magic spells until someone hits me with a stick a few times..."


3. Any ability score penalty or damage may not reduce their score below "1" unless that score was already at "1" before the most recent penalty/damage occurred, if a DC 15 Fortitude save is passed.

Seems complex, and entirely unnecessary given the save bonus you've already suggested.


- Makes it harder to one-shot an encounter in a single action. Less rocket tag is good IMO.

No it doesn't, it just takes arcane casters out of the running for "best rocket tag class." Wildshape druids, melee smash clerics, fighters focused on stupid feat combos, etc are still just as deadly.

The rules you propose are basically just a way to nerf poorly built primary casters. The properly built ones will just shift to no-save strategies (mailman...), buffing, and battlefield control.


- Gives damage dealers a 'debuff' of sorts to deliver with damage, in the form of making the enemy more vulnerable to death/defeat rather than actually reducing their abilities in any way. I like how this works against PCs who take damage - they become more vulnerable, but can still use their abilities to their fullest.

It's silly. They're basically invincible till someone goes up and hits them with a stick enough to drop their hit points to 1/2.

[Rosstin]

I think the reason that HP works the way it does is a functional game-design-related one. If running low on HP weakened you, then the losing side of a battle would become more and more likely to lose as their HP depleted.

Even in cartoons and movies, HP loss doesn't reduce the capabilities of the heroes and villains. If the bad guy became less of a threat over time, it would be sort of boring.

The current system allows for the possibility that the guy with 1hp can somehow turn the battle around with a masterful set of actions.

[holywhippet]

I seem to recall one DM I played with had it so that when your HP dropped below 0 you start taking CON score damage as your flesh is now being carved up rather than any abstraction of damage/morale etc.

HP will always have trouble making sense though. Consider the case of two people being paralysed and dropped from a height. The first is a level 1 fighter with 13 HP. The second is a level 20 wizard with 90 HP. The height they are dropped from is 140 feet. This means each character will receive 14-84 HP worth of damage depending on how the rolls pan out. Both characters are paralysed so there is nothing they can do to reduce or avoid that damage. The fighter is at least going to drop below 0 HP (most likely they will die on impact). The wizard has enough HP to survive the fall, unless they fail their massive damage save (if one is required).

The high HP of a high level character is meant to indicate both general toughness and an ability to not take as much actual damage from a given hit. In the above scenario there is no valid reason why those levels would help the wizard survive.

[CombatOwl]

I think the reason that HP works the way it does is a functional game-design-related one. If running low on HP weakened you, then the losing side of a battle would become more and more likely to lose as their HP depleted.

Even in cartoons and movies, HP loss doesn't reduce the capabilities of the heroes and villains. If the bad guy became less of a threat over time, it would be sort of boring.

The current system allows for the possibility that the guy with 1hp can somehow turn the battle around with a masterful set of actions.

In this vein, if I were inclined to suggest a way to make HP more precious, it seems to me that it makes more sense to make healing more of an issue. One way to do that is to make healing magic cause con damage ("One point per die" would be a good rule of thumb). Unfortunately, the Restoration spell mechanics would need to get substantially adjusted. I would perhaps favor a change to Restoration and associated spells to either make it unable to restore con damage, or to give it an incredibly expensive material component when used to restore con damage.

[BrokenChord]

In this vein, if I were inclined to suggest a way to make HP more precious, it seems to me that it makes more sense to make healing more of an issue. One way to do that is to make healing magic cause con damage ("One point per die" would be a good rule of thumb). Unfortunately, the Restoration spell mechanics would need to get substantially adjusted. I would perhaps favor a change to Restoration and associated spells to either make it unable to restore con damage, or to give it an incredibly expensive material component when used to restore con damage.

I don't think healing was ever really a concern, and I don't think that suggestion was ever a problem. The big issue that the OP is trying to address is that it is infinitely more efficient to try to use spells and such to debuff the opponent than it is to damage their HP, because again, you leave them so much as a single point of HP and they have exactly the same threat level as they did when they were at full health barring the rare cases of enemies who use their HP as a power source such as Blood Mages. Therefore, there should be something to compel people to deal HP damage instead of the alternative, because even if the best option is still using a spell or two to make the opponent literally helpless and then Coup de Grace them to death, the alternative of regular fighting should still be mechanically viable against things stronger than mooks.

[Calimehter]

I'm on a bit of a RL time crunch, but I'll respond to what I can:

(1) - The DC 15 save was basically selected because it was the save to avoid dying outright in the UA Vitality/Wounds system. That target worked fairly well in low-op E6, but maybe the save target DC would need to be raised somewhat? It does seem a bit silly in retrospect that a high-dice Fireball into a dense pack of commoners (+1 Fort) would still leave over 1/4 of them on their feet.

The only comment I didn't get here was from Godsook was the bit about "most harshly nerfs least problematic sources of damage". My hope was that things like ubercharger or Mailman would lose some slight utility (no auto-kills on previously undamaged targets) and give a bit more reward to less-optimized damage sources (i.e. those that wouldn't have auto-killed CR appropriate opponents on average rolls) by having them have some effect (to allow the *next* source of damage to avoid having the save-vs.-death to deal with).

(2) In some ways, I don't mind uber-high level targets having nigh-unbeatable saves until they've taken some damage. High level wizards can remake reality, adventure at no risk via Genesis/Astral Projection, create infinite wealth, etc. . . . is it so wrong to give a 20th level fighter a souped-up version of Iron Heart Surge? Especially if all you have to do to get rid of it would be to hamstring the guy first (i.e. damage him) to slow up his reflexes/stress his constitution/whatever first?

It would make a spell like Implosion sort of useless, though. I do like the idea suggested of basing the bonus on the ECL of the spellcaster targeting you. I'll have to look at that.

(3) I might have a bit too much focus on Shivering Touch vs. Dragons or Touch of Idiocy vs. Tyrannosaurs going on here. I'd rather make the Dragons/Tyrannosaurss tougher to one-shot and leave the spells in, but I can see the argument for just banning the problem spells, too.

Thanks for the food for thought so far - I hope to have some revisions soon!

[Godskook]

The only comment I didn't get here was from Godsook was the bit about "most harshly nerfs least problematic sources of damage". My hope was that things like ubercharger or Mailman would lose some slight utility (no auto-kills on previously undamaged targets) and give a bit more reward to less-optimized damage sources (i.e. those that wouldn't have auto-killed CR appropriate opponents on average rolls) by having them have some effect (to allow the *next* source of damage to avoid having the save-vs.-death to deal with).

1.The mailman kills targets straight through these rules via Twin Spell(two spells, two sources of damage, one dead opponent) or Quicken Spell. The ubercharger does it via iteratives.

2.The mailman is *EASY* to deal with, by either banning or houseruling metamagic reduction. He's also less broken than his metamagic reduction abusing cousin, the persist-cleric(I forget his name).

3.Ubercharger has numerous in-game counters that can keep him in check(terrain to block charging, which people naturally do irl or using minions to keep chargers off valuable bosses until later into the fight or forcecage, etc)) or, if you're the kind of DM who doesn't like complicating your combat maps with things 3.5 already provides, you can just houserule various feats in the line, such as reducing the ratio on PA from 1:2 to 1:1(with leap attack providing a +50% boost rather than +100%) or something.

Your rules neither stop them nor need to stop them.

[Calimehter]

1.The mailman kills targets straight through these rules via Twin Spell(two spells, two sources of damage, one dead opponent) or Quicken Spell. The ubercharger does it via iteratives.

Aha. Got it now.

So, if I changed (1) to work for full actions instead of just individual attacks, that should get around the one-shot kills, right?

Thank you also for the reminders about limiting mailmen and uberchargers via other methods. Given that I already don't allow negative values to be generated via metamagic reduction, I can see the argument for (1) being unnecessary. Still . . . crits happen, and greataxe orcs vs. Level 1 adventurers is still a thing too. For the most part, I'm not just about shutting down "over"-optimized PCs, I'm also about avoiding undramatic one-shot unlucky PC deaths, too.

[Calimehter]

I don't think healing was ever really a concern, and I don't think that suggestion was ever a problem. The big issue that the OP is trying to address is that it is infinitely more efficient to try to use spells and such to debuff the opponent than it is to damage their HP, because again, you leave them so much as a single point of HP and they have exactly the same threat level as they did when they were at full health barring the rare cases of enemies who use their HP as a power source such as Blood Mages. Therefore, there should be something to compel people to deal HP damage instead of the alternative, because even if the best option is still using a spell or two to make the opponent literally helpless and then Coup de Grace them to death, the alternative of regular fighting should still be mechanically viable against things stronger than mooks.

Very much this as far as Rule (2) is concerned. :smallsmile:

[Godskook]

So, if I changed (1) to work for full actions instead of just individual attacks, that should get around the one-shot kills, right?

It ~should~, but it feels incredibly clunky, inelegant and will probably be something your players object to using.


Thank you also for the reminders about limiting mailmen and uberchargers via other methods. Given that I already don't allow negative values to be generated via metamagic reduction, I can see the argument for (1) being unnecessary. Still . . . crits happen, and greataxe orcs vs. Level 1 adventurers is still a thing too. For the most part, I'm not just about shutting down "over"-optimized PCs, I'm also about avoiding undramatic one-shot unlucky PC deaths, too.

My metamagic rules are:

"In order to reduce metamagic, you must be able to cast the spell without reductions"

For example, you can only cast Quicken Grease once you reach 5th level spells, but I don't care if you do it from a 1st level slot or even a 0th level slot. This allows high level wizards to keep a larger list of relevant spells, but not be able to cheese out +14 metamagic onto a lvl 1 spell.

Also, Heighten Spell is no longer a metamagic. Functions the same, but its not a metamagic.

[Calimehter]

So, after some further thought, here's the new version:

(1) Any full action that reduces a characters HP total and/or any individual ability score from its full starting value to 0 or lower will instead reduce the value to "1" if a DC 20 Fortitude save is passed.

(2) Any character who is at or over 1/2 of their full HP value will get a bonus to their saving throws equal to 1/2 their ECL, rounding up.

Here again, the goal is to give a boost to dealing damage, but at the same time allowing the target of said damage to continue to get their full allotment of actions - i.e. a PC that takes damage is at further risk of damage/death/debuff/etc. but still retains his full "agency" to act against his foes (or even run away) w/o penalty - while a PC that deals damage but doesn't kill the target is still helping his teammates out by making the target more vulnerable to future attacks.

I upped the DC of the "one-shot kill" Fortitude save and made it only work for full-to-zero types of attacks. Rule (2) seemed popular with folks, but the first version gave maybe too much of a boost. 1/2 ECL is still a pretty meaningful boost. It still won't do too much to no-save spells, but a few of the nastier ones (Orbs, Shivering Touch) are also covered by Rule (1).

[Godskook]

(1) Any full action that reduces a characters HP total and/or any individual ability score from its full starting value to 0 or lower will instead reduce the value to "1" if a DC 20 Fortitude save is passed.

So what about the wizard with Fireball who deals 3k damage across the entire encounter while our poor fighter can't even 1-shot the front-line? This rule seems *EXCESSIVELY* tedious for say.....a lvl 5 party against tucker's kobolds.

[Calimehter]

Is the same fighter going to complain of tedium when he 'has to' roll an extra die to save himself from being insta-gibbed? ;)

Still, I see your point. Perhaps restricting it to PCs and "major" NPCs would be a good idea.

[Godskook]

Is the same fighter going to complain of tedium when he 'has to' roll an extra die to save himself from being insta-gibbed? ;)

Still, I see your point. Perhaps restricting it to PCs and "major" NPCs would be a good idea.

Why not:

A)Simply make major NPCs more durable, thus rendering them impossible to 1-shot? High Con, maxed HD, Con items, DR, elemental resists, continent spells, temp HP, etc, etc.

B)Allow PCs to maximize their HD at the cost of XP? Say...lvl of HD times 250?

[Calimehter]

Good thoughts, but just maxing out HP gets away from one of the things I wanted to do in the first place, which is to make HP damage more meaningful.

Actually, the more I think about it, the less I'm inclined to restrict the boost to "major" NPCs. To go back to the Tucker's Kobolds example, the save DC of 20 would make saving-vs.-death pretty difficult for a typical Tucker Kobold. The frontliner is still insta-gibbing *most* of his targets, and against the few that luck out and stay on their feet, he can at least console himself that said kobold is going to be easier to take out by himself or the wizard in the near future (no save vs. HP death anymore, and also the loss of save boosts). Likewise, the wizard is facing the same problem - many of his targets will also pass their save vs fireball and stay on their feet, and if he goes for a debuff in place of the fireball, they will be getting save bonus since they are undamaged.

Still, what is defined as a "mook" changes somewhat as one gets higher in level. It would be really annoying for a Barbarian20 to struggle to insta-kill *anything* half his CR just because their Fort save was half decent. How about modifying the DC of the Fortitude save based on the ECL (or CR) difference between the attacker and the defender?

[Maginomicon]

Just a thought, but what if taking enough damage (other than fall damage) to drop you from full HP to 0 instead flung you 5 ft per point of damage away from the source of the damage and dropped you to 1 HP if you succeeded on that DC 20 Fort Save?

Monster: I am a Tucker Kobold, and I am going to--

* Player PUNTS the monster *
Monster: Team Rocket's blasting off againnnnnnn... *twinkle*