Huh: State-based Stack HP [PEACH, Thoughts?]

[Amechra]

Alright, show of hands who understands the word salad title! Anyone? Bueller, Bueller?

Anywho, I was working on a cRPG concept in my head earlier (mostly on the combat engine, because jRPGs have gotten stale and boring.) when I had a thought:

You can represent HP as a Stack of States.

To give an example:

You are an adventurer wandering around in the Healthy state. No benefits, no drawbacks, no nuttin'. You then come across a big scary monster, who punches you in the face. Ouch! Now you are in the Wounded state, which has X benefit, Y drawback. If you don't defend yourself, you will drop down to the Dead state, which reads something like this:

"Dead: You've kicked the bucket, guv; immediately add the Corpse state on top of this one."

Then the Corpse state reads:

"Corpse: You're dead. As a doornail. Can't do a bloody thing."

Now, why set it up that way? Because of how Healing is handled.

Basically, a normal Heal spell just pops the top State off the Stack; Wounded gets popped down to Healthy, and so on and so forth. Now, if you try casting Heal on a guy with the Corpse state, they pop back to Dead... then immediately regain the Corpse state. Basically, it's a kludge to stop basic healing from bringing back the dead.

However, the more powerful Megaheal (or whatever) pops two States off, leaving Corpses alive (if barely).

And voila, we have Resurrection as a direct consequence of the HP rules.

And you can do other fun stuff, too!

A Zombie-making spell would just slap the Zombie state on top of the Corpse state, allowing the Corpse to move around under the Necromancer's control; a good Heal spell will remove the Zombie state... thus turning him back into a Corpse. Depending on how Zombie works, you could play this as either an immunity to damage (Head-shots remove Zombie!) or just have Sword-to-Chest remove Zombie in the same way as healing.

Someone whose flesh rots away adds the Skellington state on top of the Corpse state, making it that much harder to resurrect them (which can be extrapolated to the Dust state, which makes it even harder.) Combine with the Zombie-making spell, and you've got a spell that makes SKELETON WARRIORS!

Stack other states on top of Zombie or Skellington to make other forms of Undead, etc.

A super-charged Healing spell could remove the Healthy state, leaving you at SUPER HEALTHY!, which makes you that much harder to kill.

A Necromancer could have a class feature that makes Dead transition into the Ghost state instead of the Corpse state.

So, thoughts?

[Domriso]

The idea seems interesting. One part I think which could be cool is taking the idea of a super-charged healing spell removing the Healthy state. What if you remove the Healthy state and there's nothing on top? With proper wording, damage and the like could be defined as "Move from the Healthy state to the Wounded state," making it so that a creature which does not currently possess any state is effectively immortal.

It could add interesting possibilities for supposedly-immortal creatures, where first you need to find a way to give them the Healthy state, so you can beat the crap out of them.

[Qwertystop]

Interesting. Would this be on top of or in place of an HP system? Seems to me that it might work well with something like a separate set of HP for each state (or at least for Healthy and Wounded and their undead equivalents).

[Seerow]

Interesting. Would this be on top of or in place of an HP system? Seems to me that it might work well with something like a separate set of HP for each state (or at least for Healthy and Wounded and their undead equivalents).

Seems like it's intended to be in place of.


Which makes me nervous, it really sounds like it's very binary, and doesn't have a ton of room for scaling. How do you handle different levels of damage here without just turning it back into a normal HP system?

[TuggyNE]

Intriguing. I'll have to think about this one some more.


Which makes me nervous, it really sounds like it's very binary, and doesn't have a ton of room for scaling. How do you handle different levels of damage here without just turning it back into a normal HP system?

Have a gradual defense in place to protect against getting hit hard enough to take HP damage. Call it stamina or luck or something like that, and make partial hits reduce it. Set it up so it's difficult to react to surprise hits, which means those will probably just punch through to HP.

[Ziegander]

I had this idea years ago, or rather the one Tuggy's talking about. What we couldn't figure out when I proposed it then was how high/low Constitution characters were handled by the system.

I'll see if I can find the original thread. It might have been all the way back on the Wizards forums...

EDIT: I called it the Vitality Track and it worked thus (as of more than 3yrs ago):
When a character's HP is reduced to 0, instead of falling unconscious immediately, going into negative HP, and/or dying, they move one place down the Vitality Track and regain all lost HP. The first step is Winded. If at full HP, but not Winded, a character is considered "Fresh." These "Fresh" characters enjoy a +1 bonus to attacks and defenses.
Healing in excess of a character's maximum HP may remove one of the negative conditions of the Vitality Track and move that character back up into better places. The Winded condition can be removed by any class of healing, however Bloodied, the second step in the Vitality Track, requires Class 2 Healing effects or better to remove.
Staggered, quite a serious condition, and the third step in the Vitality Track, carries a penalty and requires Class 3 Healing or better to remove. Staggered characters may not take Full Turn actions and must choose to take either a Short or a Standard during their turns, but not both. Dying, the fourth step in the Vitality Track, carries the stiffest penalty - such characters are unconscious (unable to take any actions), and must pass three Death Checks to avoid becoming Dead. Dying requires Class 4 Healing, the most powerful healing effects, to remove.

Normal attacks vs Critical hits. Normal attacks deal HP damage, and if their damage exceeds your HP, you move a place down the Vitality Track, and the excess is dealt to your HP again. However, Critical Hits deal maximized damage AND automatically move you a place down the Vitality Track, dealing their full damage to your HP in the weakened condition. For example, Grog the Barbarian has 80 max HP, but only has 18 remaining. He is not Winded. If he were struck by a normal hit that dealt 22 damage he would move to Winded and be at 76/80 HP. If instead he were struck by a critical hit that dealt 36 damage he would move to Winded and be at 44/80 HP. NOTE: Grog would have been Winded and at 44/80 HP even if his HP were maxed out before the attack!

Death Checks are a d20 roll, with no normal modifiers. If the player rolls 13 or higher they succeed. If the player rolls 2 or 1 they fail. If they succeed three times they regain 1 hit point, regain consciousness, and move from Dying to Staggered. If they fail three times they become Dead. Each time a Dying character is dealt damage that character is considered to have failed a Death Check.

Natural Healing can move a character up the Vitality Track even from Dying (but not from Dead), of course such a circumstance is rare at best). 1 hour of rest or 8 hours of activity will remove the Winded condition. 8 hours of rest or 24 hours of activity will remove the Bloodied condition. 24 hours of rest or 1 week of activity will remove the Staggered condition. 1 month of rest (in the unlikely event that during that time the character has not passed or failed three Death Checks) will remove the Dying condition.

Natural Healing also restores HP. To what degree... I don't know. This is an issue best left to playtesting, I think.

The Second Wind action is available to all player characters. By spending a standard action, a character is able to regain all lost HP, but also gains a +2 bonus to defenses for 1 round. Once a character's Second Wind is used it can't be used again until the character takes a short break from activity to rest (5, 10, 15 minutes?).

Small, but potentially important, point: There is no difference between lethal and nonlethal damage. If you wish to "deal nonlethal damage" simply tell your GM. Instead of an opponent then moving to Dying or Dead they only go unconscious.

[Just to Browse]

Have a gradual defense in place to protect against getting hit hard enough to take HP damage. Call it stamina or luck or something like that, and make partial hits reduce it. Set it up so it's difficult to react to surprise hits, which means those will probably just punch through to HP.

Sounds like you shifted the HP problem to a new term.

[TuggyNE]

Sounds like you shifted the HP problem to a new term.

Yes and no; it avoids the problems with being able to fall from orbit and land unscathed (unless the character has some ridiculous ability that explicitly says "you can spend Stamina to avoid HP damage from falling"), it avoids problems with being surprised and yet having no problem surviving, it makes sneak attack a built-in thing that any roguish sorts can then go to some trouble to trigger more often and to greater effect, and so on. If you also split off spell resisting ability into something else, then it also avoids problems with being able to tank five fireballs to the face.

Basically, by explicitly separating "meat" from "luck/divine favor/Just That Good", it makes both easier to accept.

Of course, if you don't like determinators at all ever it's not much good, but oh well.

[Amechra]

The idea in this case wasn't as a replacement for D&D's system (the "damage" is far more granular than D&D's, for one, which would require too much rewriting to be feasible.)

I wanted to share it more as a different way of looking at health (i.e., as a collection of states instead of a gradual defense.)

[Just to Browse]

I feel like this is something you could include in an RPG-like board game, where one or two hits kill you and you have to fulfill some open-ended goal.

[MoleMage]

I have an mechanic with no home right now that achieves a similar goal. Basically, in the system, you have a skill level, and your goal is to roll under the skill (like GURPs, as one example). However, the number of dice you roll against the skill is effectively equal to a challenge rating of the skill. So someone facing a challenge three skill rolls 3d6 and hopes to be under their skill.

Health is a skill. Damage represents cumulative challenge ratings. So: person hits you with sword. You have taken injuries, so you roll a health check. If your health skill is 13, and the damage of a sword is 1, you roll 1d6. You're safe since you always roll under 13. If you take a second hit you roll 2d6 and are still okay. If you roll a third skill your odds of coming out alive are only slightly above 50%. So on and so forth.

[Knaight]

This seems pretty interesting, and could easily work. It also seems like the sort of thing that would go really well in a game with a more psychological focus, as sanity tracks and similar also apply here.

[Dragonus45]

Interesting. Would this be on top of or in place of an HP system? Seems to me that it might work well with something like a separate set of HP for each state (or at least for Healthy and Wounded and their undead equivalents).

That puts me in mind of the L5R health system, where your character has a set of states like healthy, nicked, crippled ans so forth and damage is a point value and the more you take the farther down the state list you go.