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View Full Version : Original System Go for high score!/Combat that isn't hitpoints based.



Doorhandle
2014-08-09, 04:05 AM
The advantage of hitpoints is that the’re near universal and easy to understand.
The disadvantage if hitpoints sit that their overused and can easily break verisimilitude.

The tradition often adopted instead of/with hitpoints is subsystem-based damage, where each limb has it's on defences/effect if cut off; however these systems can be more complex/slower in play.

So here’s a new take on how to measure damage:

*All combats have a set length. This would vary by the significance of the encounter: maybe 5 rounds for mook fights, up to 30 for the big bad evil guy.
*Instead of hitpoints/armour, creatures would have a threshod of “how hard I need to be hit to take damage.”
*if this threshold is passed, the opponent who hit gains some points (damage) and can inflict an effect: I imagine the most common one would be knockback, because you could launch them into something spiky for more damage. Bigger hits = more, or worse effects.
*Things that do other things beside hurt people (like entangle the opponent) would also do “damage”: ether straight up, or just as a measure of the power of their effect.
*After all rounds have passed in a combat, tall up the total damage dealt of each side. The side who has the highest damage dealt wins.
*The winners of the combat get to decide what happen; the losers, however get to add a catch or compromise.
For example
“ Arachnid tears Zhao-Kant’s spine out, before garrotting him with it.”
“BUT not before the god-king activates the bases’ self destruct."

This would change several things:
*Would prevent anti-climatic fights where a player is taken out early.
*Would probably be good for superhero or shoen-based systems: as it would easily represent the ability of those protagonists to take insane amounts of punishment and still keep kicking.
*Would get rid of healers or at least conventional ones: which can be a boring role in some games. There would instead be someone who can remove conditions, particularly ones that would last past the combat.
*Leaves TPK in the hands of the GM: Do they all die, or does something else unpleasant happen?

So that’s my idea. Your thoughts?

1pwny
2014-08-09, 06:25 AM
Hmm... I can see this resulting in two scenarios.

Optimizer's: Crap! You just destroyed my hops and dreams, because its not like I'll just completely forget about HP and go max into damage! :smallwink:

Roleplayer: I go up to the big, bad, evil guy and I slice him to ribbons with both my swords.
DM: He goes flying backwards into a pit of spikes. He then gets back up and punches you in the face. You are sent rolling back.
Roleplayer: I go up to the big, bad, evil guy and I slice him to ribbons with my swords.
DM: He gets sent flying back, then gets back up and punches you into another wall.
*Repeat for another 27 rounds*
Roleplayer: *Yawns and stretches* I slice him up with my swords, you know the drill.
DM: He goes back, *yawn*, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah, Battle Over! Yay! Nice!
Roleplayer: So what's the final tally?
DM: I don't even care anymore. You won. Whatever. Yay.

While HP is definitely a problem in D&D, the answer isn't to just get rid of it. Its a working idea that has been conceptualized in many, many games successfully. Such as Pokemon (the videogames), Magic (the TCG), virtually every other RPG known to man and other editions of D&D. :smallbiggrin:

I saw the goals that you had in mind, and some seem fairly cool, but the problem is that this system eliminates a lot of strategy.

You said fights are "boring" when someone gets taken out too quickly?

You do know that the whole "Eliminate the weakest link!" thing has been a valid and much-used tactic since multiplayer RPGs were invented, right?

Jormengand
2014-08-09, 06:33 AM
a valid and much-used tactic since multiplayer RPGs were invented, right?

I think it's been a valid tactic since long before then! :smalltongue:

Carl
2014-08-09, 10:45 AM
I think it's been a valid tactic since long before then!

I'm pretty sure Sun Tzu had a rule about it in fact.

Stellar_Magic
2014-08-09, 11:39 AM
Threshold systems can be troublesome, exactly for the reasons that somebody27else pointed out. If you must exceed the threshold to do damage, well... it really reduces the amount of damage to basically zero when you face opponents with really high thresholds. At least with a saving throw there's a chance of a low roll.

I have done a number of experimental playtests with house rules for Pathfinder that removed Hit Points. Here is what I came up with based on the Mutants and Masterminds damage system...

Pathfinder without Hit Points!

I'll tell you something straight up. I've never liked Hit Points. In most games HPs exist purely to allow a character to survive and continue to dish out damage long after a normal person would be killed. What most people don't realize is that there are ways to make heroic struggles without resorting to HPs.

The simplest solution comes from a stat that's very rarely used in most games. The Fort save. Fortitude Saves represent a characters inherit resilience and strength. How much they can endure damage.

Based off the system used in Mutants and Masterminds... we have damage without HPs.

Taking Damage:
For the most part it's pretty simple on a hit the character rolls a Fortitude save verses the damage. If Damage Reduction or Energy Resistance reduces the damage to zero, then the character is completely unaffected and does not need to make a save. The results of this check determine the effects of the hit. See the table below.



Save Result
Nonlethal Damage
Physical Damage
Energy Damage


Save Exceeds Damage
Bruised
Wounded
Burned


Save Fails
Stunned + Bruised
Stunned + Wounded
Stunned + Burned


Save Fails by 5 or more
Stunned + Staggered + Bruised
Staggered + Stunned + Wounded
Staggered + Stunned + Burned


Save Fails by 10 or more
Stunned + Disabled + Bruised
Stunned + Disabled + Wounded
Stunned + Disabled + Burned


Save Fails by 15 or more
Unconscious + Bruised
Dying + Unconscious + Wounded
Dying + Unconscious + Burned




Bruised/Wounded/Burned conditions persist and stack atop each other... each causes a -1 penalty to all skill checks, ability checks, saves, AC, attacks and damage. As a result a character takes a -1 penalty per individual bruise, wound, or burn. A character automatically dies when their wounds and burns reach their Con Score plus their Level.

While Dying, a character gains one wound per round up until the number of wounds and burns equal their Con Score plus their level at which point they die.

Bleed Damage causing the creature to take 1 wound per turn per point of bleed damage.

Removing the Damage:
Magical Healing removes 1 bruise/wound/burn per die of healing and automatically removes all secondary conditions including Unconscious, Dying, and the like.

Natural Healing removes 1 bruise/wound/burn per day. Most other conditions which persist like Staggered, Disabled, and Stable end after 1 day while other conditions such as Stunned and Dazed end after just a single round.

Regeneration and fast healing removes 1 bruise/wound/burn per 5 hps of fast healing... so fast healing 10 removes 1 bruise/wound/burn each round. Additionally Disabled and Dying conditions are negated each round if the creature has Regeneration. While only Disabled is negated if the creature has Fast Healing.

Critical Hits:
Critical hits no longer do extra damage... Additionally the Fort DC for the check increases by 5 on a critical hit. Instead of extra damage their effects are multiplied by their critical multiplier. A crit with a x3 weapon inflicts 3 wounds instead of 1... or causes a character to be stunned for 3 rounds instead of 1.

Doorhandle
2014-08-09, 06:13 PM
Hmm... I can see this resulting in two scenarios.

Optimizer's: Crap! You just destroyed my hops and dreams, because its not like I'll just completely forget about HP and go max into damage! :smallwink:

Roleplayer: I go up to the big, bad, evil guy and I slice him to ribbons with both my swords.
DM: He goes flying backwards into a pit of spikes. He then gets back up and punches you in the face. You are sent rolling back.
Roleplayer: I go up to the big, bad, evil guy and I slice him to ribbons with my swords.
DM: He gets sent flying back, then gets back up and punches you into another wall.
*Repeat for another 27 rounds*
Roleplayer: *Yawns and stretches* I slice him up with my swords, you know the drill.
DM: He goes back, *yawn*, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah, Battle Over! Yay! Nice!
Roleplayer: So what's the final tally?
DM: I don't even care anymore. You won. Whatever. Yay.

While HP is definitely a problem in D&D, the answer isn't to just get rid of it. Its a working idea that has been conceptualized in many, many games successfully. Such as Pokemon (the videogames), Magic (the TCG), virtually every other RPG known to man and other editions of D&D. :smallbiggrin:

I saw the goals that you had in mind, and some seem fairly cool, but the problem is that this system eliminates a lot of strategy.

You said fights are "boring" when someone gets taken out too quickly?

You do know that the whole "Eliminate the weakest link!" thing has been a valid and much-used tactic since multiplayer RPGs were invented, right?

Not sure what to do about optimizing damage. I'd rather make this part of it's own system, rather than bolting it on to 3.5. Maybe have a bunch of expendable "get out of jail free" cards? Hmm.

As for the second point, maybe leaving in some sort of combat out? If one side is clearly winning, you can spend you damage to "skip to the end" so to speak. Could you give me some advice on how to adjudicate that?

On the tactical note, You could still mess up the mage pretty hard even without being able to kill them outright. Someone who's stunned, entangled, sickend and shaken isn't going to be helping the fight much. You can choose what sort of effect you use, after all. :smallbiggrin:


Threshold systems can be troublesome, exactly for the reasons that somebody27else pointed out. If you must exceed the threshold to do damage, well... it really reduces the amount of damage to basically zero when you face opponents with really high thresholds. At least with a saving throw there's a chance of a low roll.

True. While rolling is probably the best option, I remember Brikwars having a way around the "immobile object" problem. If you puny soldiers could't hurt something directly, they could ether work together to do combined damage, or roll to do grinding damage, which would add 1 to all further damage received by the target if successful.
Speaking of Brikwars, the fact that all dice explode in that imperturbably helps a lot with the entire insurmountable defense thing.

Day_Dreamer
2014-08-10, 08:30 PM
Why not just have it be a "first to X damage dealt" wins system. That seems to resolve a lot of the issues presented here. You could have certain actions diminish damage output to give special bonuses (stunning foes, taunting enemies, altering the battlefield itself). Maybe give each faction a shared score-pool, so that you have an elegant resolution when combat ends, where each side can purchase resolution effects with score.

Example:
The Knights of the Forgotten Vale run into some undead on their latest dungeon delve. The DM declares this to be a Trivial Encounter, making it a race to 5 damage on either side. The party's mage goes first, and is able to nail all the skeletons with a bit AOE, dealing a total of four damage. A skeleton archer goes next, and fires a frost arrow at the party's thief. It hits, dealing a damage and slowing the thief for a round. The party's fighter goes next, electing to issue a Challenge, making all enemies who fail a save target him in the next round. The undead assassin has no choice but to attempt to knife the fighter, missing. The thief goes next, and decides to just finish the fight, backstabbing the enemy assassin for two damage.

In resolution, the DM has dealt 1 damage, and the party 5. The players spend their points to obtain some loot, and find a secret passage (declaring that the fireball burned away the moss concealing it). The DM is able to afford a Minor Wound, which he assigns to the Thief, giving the character a minor penalty for the next few fights.


In combat resolution, you could buy different things if you won or lost. Winning lets you buy items, experience, shortcuts through the dungeon, or healing surges. Getting points but losing lets you buy close escapes, wounds to the PCs, destroyed items, or wasted time.

Doorhandle
2014-08-14, 05:49 PM
I like your idea as well. You could also do variants where "higher damage in 1 round wins" , like showdowns at high noon or single-stroke samurai duels.

One problem I can fosee is that random criticals would have a chance of completely screwing one party over, complete at random. Any system using this would have to avoid that.

1pwny
2014-08-14, 07:06 PM
I like your idea as well. You could also do variants where "higher damage in 1 round wins" , like showdowns at high noon or single-stroke samurai duels.

One problem I can fosee is that random criticals would have a chance of completely screwing one party over, complete at random. Any system using this would have to avoid that.

The major problem with this one-round idea again comes from the DPS (damage per second, or the high-damage dealers in the party).

The reason why HP was implemented was so that, hopefully, anybody that specializes too heavily in damage would get taken out early in the fight.

With a one-round fight sort of deal, as long as your character can survive one round, he can have as crappy defenses as can be. In more typical length fights, running out of HP and dying is a serious concern, because usually Damage vs. Health is a tradeoff.

With this, everyone smart would merely go for max damage with a small amount of survivability, while the Tanky builds that can be fun to play would be almost completely invalidated. Because if no one is going to die, then why be Tanky in the first place?

On a side note, this single-turn format also completely screws over low-initiative buffers.

BTW, sorry if I've been a tad harsh on this thread. I just spew out what's in my brain, and this is what's in my brain. The idea for no-HP combat seems interesting to me, but also tremendously hard to implement fairly, which is why I've been pointing out so many problems.

Eldan
2014-08-15, 02:09 AM
Set length really sounds like a setup for a boring fight, to me. And abuseable. I mean, think of it.

Highest damage in five rounds? All you need to do is an alphastrike for at least one damage, then run and/or hide.

Wizard: *teleports in* Haha! Surprise round! Magic missile! *teleports out*

or more simply:

Rogue: "Sniper arrow, female dogs! Now have fun finding me with my +32 hide in plain sight before the timer runs out and you die!"

Doorhandle
2014-08-15, 05:45 AM
The major problem with this one-round idea again comes from the DPS (damage per second, or the high-damage dealers in the party).

The reason why HP was implemented was so that, hopefully, anybody that specializes too heavily in damage would get taken out early in the fight.

With a one-round fight sort of deal, as long as your character can survive one round, he can have as crappy defenses as can be. In more typical length fights, running out of HP and dying is a serious concern, because usually Damage vs. Health is a tradeoff.

With this, everyone smart would merely go for max damage with a small amount of survivability, while the Tanky builds that can be fun to play would be almost completely invalidated. Because if no one is going to die, then why be Tanky in the first place?

On a side note, this single-turn format also completely screws over low-initiative buffers.

BTW, sorry if I've been a tad harsh on this thread. I just spew out what's in my brain, and this is what's in my brain. The idea for no-HP combat seems interesting to me, but also tremendously hard to implement fairly, which is why I've been pointing out so many problems.

True. The 1-round thing would be rare though.
And the harshness is fine because while it's critique it is constructive and quite helpful.


Set length really sounds like a setup for a boring fight, to me. And abuseable. I mean, think of it.

Highest damage in five rounds? All you need to do is an alphastrike for at least one damage, then run and/or hide.

Wizard: *teleports in* Haha! Surprise round! Magic missile! *teleports out*

or more simply:

Rogue: "Sniper arrow, female dogs! Now have fun finding me with my +32 hide in plain sight before the timer runs out and you die!"

Another good point. To be fair though, I think teleporting too far out of battle would count as an immediate forfeit.

"Aha! now i just need to wait for the timer to count do-oh. right. Dammit." :smallbiggrin:

Jormengand
2014-08-15, 11:49 AM
I should also point out, if you did this, that you would have to re-consider how certain mechanics played out. Healing your ally and reducing your enemy's score are essentially the exact same mechanic, but they have very different implications (one is clearly a way of aiding an ally, and the other of obstructing your enemy), just as an example.

Amechra
2014-08-15, 08:58 PM
This is an entirely pertinent topic. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=10282.0)

For those of you that don't want to follow the link:


I've been having this odd idea lately.

Namely, instead of using "HP" to abstract out injury, use it to abstract the party's morale.

There would also be a rule, called "bowing out", that allowed someone to absorb damage done, in return for temporarily being removed from the game.

So, for example, the party has 10 HP; the party trapfinder runs into a nasty trap that deals 3 damage; now, he could choose to take the damage, negatively impacting the party's morale (he managed to dodge to the side, but lost his pack with some precious pieces of equipment they needed.) or he could bow out (he gets hit in full by the trap; his leg is smashed, but he insists everyone else goes ahead. After all, they'll need the gold to help fix him up, right? Perhaps there could be rule that lets you bow out with a party mate, giving a "class"-specific bonus; a healer could bow out in this example, letting their party mate recover faster.)

Then, there could be certain "class" features that play with the concept of HP as morale; for example, a leader class could have +2 max HP (their great resolve keeps the party going), and a feature that, essentially, gives the party DR 1/- for the rest of a battle where they bow out (they get downed? The party, in a vengeful mood, go at it with a new ferocity.)

There could be more nuances (I can see an "evil lord" class with the ability to make their minions bow out, or maybe a weapon that deals 1 damage even if the target bows out), such as separating "adventure" HP and "combat" HP (adventure HP being how much you want to keep going with this adventure as a whole, combat HP being how much you are willing to keep going in this battle), but really, this is the basic idea.

Thoughts?

Rorrik
2014-08-15, 11:09 PM
Reading the thread title, I thought for sure you were going to suggest having battles resolved in a single roll with dice added to the pool by resources and abilities used on each side. The high score wins the whole fight. I have no idea how to make this work out well, and I like a lot of the ideas that have been presented better.

I think if I were to got this route, I'd have maybe 4 rounds won to win the fight, each with a massive roll, that way the loser of the first round could realize he needs to expend more resources, or if he can't expend more resources across 4 round, use all he's got to run away. It makes battles into a strategic affair in the sense that you can bluff the other player into overusing resources and then eek out a win. I might have to draft this up more...