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Blackbrrd
2007-07-26, 05:39 PM
I have been pondering changing the HP system a bit, the goals are:

I want it to be reasonably simple.
I want it to be less likely to die from a critical hit.
I don't want all the damage to be easily healed by cure/heal spells.


I am therefore introducing critical damage and a modification of the death and dying rules.

You can inflict critical damage in two ways:

If you make a critical the extra damage that results from the critical is counted as critical damage. Let us say you score a critical. Ordinarily you do 1d8+2 damage and 3d8+6 on a critical. 1d8+2 of the damage is ordinary damage, 2d8+4 is critical damage.
If you score a hit that puts an opponent at less than 0 hit points, the portion of the damage that takes the opponent to less that 0 hit points is treated as critical damage. Let us say you do 15 damage to a character who has 7 hit points left. The character would then take 7 hit point in damage and 8 critical damage.


Dying
You are dying if your hit point total is less than (normal damage + critical damage)

Death
You die if your (hit point total+10+con modifier+level) is less than (normal damage + critical damage)

Healing critical damage
Critical damage can't be healed by magic means, only by resting. Critical damage is healed after non lethal damage and normal damage.

What effect do I think these alterations will have?

The chance of going down from one critical hit is less than it ordinarily is because you have a larger buffer from when you go unconscious to when you actually die.
Players will still be afraid of criticals since these will make it harder to heal you, not because they randomly kill your character.
Players will be more inclined to heal a party member that has few hit points since going below 0 hit points gives you critical damage. At the same time, in a crucial fight you know that you can continue fighting even if you are low on hit points, it is unlikely that a single hit will kill you.
The role playing aspect of it is that your character might have some damage left over from any encounter (lucky criticals) so characters are less inclined to use force in every encounter.
A series of "lucky" criticals against a single character can get really annoying, since the damage is hard to heal.


Is there something I haven't thought of? Is there a way to change the rules above to make it simpler, but still retain the same feel? Please come with suggestions or comments! :)

CasESenSITItiVE
2007-07-26, 06:06 PM
i really like this system. my only thought is that dying is a bit odd. a player who's at 10th level, 14 con now has to go to -22 hit points. i like the idea of being harder to kill at higher levels, but that is a bit radical i think

JackMage666
2007-07-26, 06:23 PM
So, um, you kinda have Double your regular HP? That's how I'm reading it, anyway...

jindra34
2007-07-26, 06:24 PM
So, um, you kinda have Double your regular HP? That's how I'm reading it, anyway...

How do you get that?

Blackbrrd
2007-07-26, 06:26 PM
So, um, you kinda have Double your regular HP? That's how I'm reading it, anyway...

No, I am not doubling your regular HP, I am introducing a hp type, which stacks for with normal damage to see if you die.

Example:

Your hit point total is 100.

You have taken 85 damage and 20 critical damage. Together that is 105, which is more than your hit point total, so you are dying. Normally you would just have taken 105 damage.

(I have always noted damage as damage and not subtracted from my hit point total like some people do. It is easier to add than to subtract and it makes it easier when you get a con buff in the middle of a fight, like from the barbarians rage.)

Blackbrrd
2007-07-26, 06:36 PM
i really like this system. my only thought is that dying is a bit odd. a player who's at 10th level, 14 con now has to go to -22 hit points. i like the idea of being harder to kill at higher levels, but that is a bit radical i think

I know it is quite a lot, but I also know that monsters hit at least three times as hard at level 10 than at level 1... Without the house rule you are more likely to go straight from conscious to dead the higher you get in level. It does make it easier to survive.

On the other hand, the critical damage that can't be healed will probably make a character less likely to be at max hit points all the time. It makes it harder to survive.

I think the two modifications probably balances out each other, at least if you are throwing more than one encounter a day on the characters. Two to three fighting encounters is probably quite normal. If the players are smart and keep their characters from unnecessary fights, they get an edge, but that was part of the point.. ;)

The "problem" now is that at level 10 most monsters will probably only kill on a critical, while without the house rule, most monsters will be able to kill with normal hit. On the other hand it gives the DM the opportunity to smack characters down (to unconsciousness), without worrying too much about killing the characters by accident.

Demented
2007-07-26, 06:43 PM
So, where we have normal hitpoint Damage, critical damage is equivalent to hitpoint Burn (of Psionic's Ability Burn)? Where did we skip hitpoint Drain? :smallfrown: :smalltongue:

Also, you changed the health mechanic, so that instead of counting away a character's health as he takes damage, you fixed the health and compare it to the character's damage suffered. It's a very nice idea; you don't have to use it with critical damage, and it might confuse some people when you combine them as one suggestion.

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Increasing the range of negative health you can have before dying is a pretty typical sugggestion. But I have to wonder... With the normal die at -10 RAW, if you get reduced to -1 hp, you have 8 10% chances to stabilize normally. With the variable range, you could have many more 10% chances to stabilize.

JackMage666
2007-07-26, 06:54 PM
No, I am not doubling your regular HP, I am introducing a hp type, which stacks for with normal damage to see if you die.

Example:

Your hit point total is 100.

You have taken 85 damage and 20 critical damage. Together that is 105, which is more than your hit point total, so you are dying. Normally you would just have taken 105 damage.

(I have always noted damage as damage and not subtracted from my hit point total like some people do. It is easier to add than to subtract and it makes it easier when you get a con buff in the middle of a fight, like from the barbarians rage.)

So, what's the difference then? If you're going to take 105 points of damage, or 80 points of damage + 25 points of critical damage, and you're dying either way, what's the difference?
If anything, it makes if harder to survive, because critical damage doesn't disappear with healing. So, you can get to a point that healing won't help anymore, with enough criticals.

Also, how does this effect fast healing?

Blackbrrd
2007-07-26, 06:59 PM
Critical damage reduces your hit point total in a way, thinking of it like that makes probably makes it easier.

Hmm... I thought everybody just added the damage they got together and compared it to the Hit Point total to see if they are unconscious, dying or dead. It wasn't really a change of mechanic, it is just another way of doing the book keeping.

You could probably change the chance to stabilize from 10% to 5% to take into account the larger "unconscious hp pool".

I have been using the increased range of negative health before dying as a house rule by itself, but it felt silly when a character that had just gone down to -18 got up again at full health for minute afterwards. I want it to be more noticeable that you have been dying...

Blackbrrd
2007-07-26, 07:06 PM
So, what's the difference then? If you're going to take 105 points of damage, or 80 points of damage + 25 points of critical damage, and you're dying either way, what's the difference?
If anything, it makes if harder to survive, because critical damage doesn't disappear with healing. So, you can get to a point that healing won't help anymore, with enough criticals.

Also, how does this effect fast healing?

As I mentioned in the posts above (written while you posted yours) the two modifications to the HP system are to be used together. One of them gives a bit to the player (the larger negative hp pool), and the other takes from the player (the hard-to-heal critical damage).

I thought about what to do about fast healing, but couldn't really decide how to manage it. Fast healing from spells obviously wouldn't work, but you might get fast healing from polymorph or similar magic? I don't know. I would be inclined to accept it although its quite open for abuse. I wouldn't allow player character races with fast healing without changing the EL or something, because it would disrupt the balancing act of critical damage.