Health Systems in RPGS

[D20ragon]

This is a topic that's been discussed to death, but since I'm trying my hand at homebrewing an rpg to address some issues I have that the games I play don't address, it recently became more relevant to me.
In any case, my problem is this: how to design a health system that doesn't reduce health entirely to abstraction as HP does, but also doesn't feed into "death spiral" gameplay where the penalties for damage lead to players being less effective and thus taking more damage until death.

My tentative solution is a system where any damage over a certain threshold forces a player to make a roll or take an injury. Injuries negatively impact the characters ability to function, and a certain number of injuries kills a player. Hits under the threshold give the player penalties to making the injury roll, and should a player receive a penalty equal to the threshold, they take an injury automatically. This prevents some abstraction as it distinguishes between "big damage" that can immediately negatively impact a character, and "small damage" which in theory can be shrugged off until it piles up. Although it retains some issues of "death spiral" health systems because injury negatively impacts a characters ability to function, it allows for a bit of breathing space: not every hit will make your character immediately less capable, meaning after taking one injury, a player has time to assess whether victory is still possible, and press on or retreat accordingly.

The immediate problem with this that I see is: what happens to "small damage" (damage under the threshold) once it's piled up enough to give the player an injury? Does it reset? If so, how does that make any sense in the game's narrative? Is it okay that it doesn't? If it doesn't reset, any further damage will result in an injury, and the player will die very quickly. Reset to half maybe?

In any case, this thread is both asking advice/opinions about my presented health system, as well as asking y'all about your favorite health systems, homebrewed or otherwise. What has worked for you? Have you found existing systems to be satisfactory, or are you been driven to make your own?

[Fri]

You basically just described Legend of the Wulin's ripples system. In that game , if your attack connects (your attack roll is bigger than your either your opponent's block or dodge), you create a ripple. Ripple is not necessarily a tangible thing, this is a representation of being pressured by the enemy.

By itself, ripple don't do anything.

But if you connect with certain difference between the attack and the defense roll, your opponent will roll a rippling roll. You roll as many dice as the current ripple your enemy have plus the ripple you just inflicted, basically the more ripples your opponent has collected, the easier they can get bigger injuries. Your opponent can roll opposing defense on the rippling roll, but he has to spend chi, which is his stamina/mp that he also need to use techniques and whatnot. And chi will slowly deplete in battle.

Now you compare the result of your rippling roll to his static threshold. Threshold is part of your stat created in your character creation, basically their constitution or whatever. If there's small difference, you create trivial condition. If there's bigger difference, there'll be minor or major condition. And you can combine multiple smaller condition into bigger one. For example your opponent have trivial condition, which actually don't do anything. Then you hit slightly, which should give him another trivial, or you can combine it with the previous condition into minor wound. and so on.

You can see how the battle is supposed to go. You do minor wounds at first, that will slowly become bigger wounds, since it's harder and harder for your opponent to ignore it (since he got more ripples, less chi to defend, and injuries that give him penalties).

It might seem slow, but remember that in LotW, you're discouraged to fight to drop. People should make concession all the times, when it feels like he's already losing, or the battle is getting too long going nowhere. There's specific mechanics for concession, you're supposed to use it.

[Vitruviansquid]

I made my own health system for my game, because my game is designed to include humans fighting weirdly shaped monsters.

Every character, from humans to octopuses to dragons, has to have a table that represents their body parts and states the consequence of that body part being damaged as well as the toughness of each body part. For example, a human has something that looks like:

1 - Head - Toughness 2 - Take one additional wound
2 - Body - Toughness 2 - No effect
3 - Heart - Toughness 3 - Take one additional wound
4 - Body - Toughness 2 - No effect
5 - Left arm - Toughness 2 - Drop item held in left hand
6 - Right arm - Toughness 2 - Drop item held in right hand
7 - Body - Toughness 2 - No effect
8 - Body - Toughness 2 - No effect
9 - Left leg - Toughness 2 - Subtract one from agility
10 - Right leg - Toughness 2 - Subtract one from agility

Obviously, a dragon's table would look very different from a human's. In the system, when a fight occurs, two players roll their dice representing their characters' fighting skill to see which character gains the upper hand and deals a good hit (matching rolls cause each character to hit each other). The character who deals a hit rolls for damage and a d10 representing the location hit on the opponent. The damage die roll must exceed the opponent's toughness at their location for damage to be dealt, causing a wound and forcing the hit character to take the stated effect of being wounded on that location. Humans tend to have 3 wounds total before they are "vanquished," which translates to either dead or too badly hurt to continue fighting, depending on which is narratively appropriate.

Death spiral is definitely a thing in this system, but it's intended because the system also has rules to allow characters to yield and retreat from combat easily. The system's goal is to generate tension by asking players whether to keep fighting a battle that might be getting dangerous or to give up.

Long turn times is also a thing in this system, but that's okay because fewer turns are taken. The rules tend to limit results that end in nobody dealing damage to each other. The game also mostly abstracts movement, which can be a huge time saver compared to games that demand precise tracking of movement, like D&D 4e.

But to answer what works for me: Before you design your health systems, it might be good to not only consider what you want your health system to do, but what you might have wanted your health system to do but you don't need your health system to do it because it's been shifted onto another system. You'd also consider what you'd want your health system to do, but you can't have your health system do it because that would slow your game down too much.

D&D and its hp system is often held up as the worst and simplest possible health system, but its simplicity also makes it really good for a game with highly complex other parts like D&D, which already bogs down for very many tables.

[Satinavian]

Personally i prefer systems that combine hitpoints(that add up and account for small inconsequential damage) with injuries (which give penalties).
Usually only hits above some threshold or by extraordinary deadly weapons/abilities will result in injuries. Everything else usually does not inhibit fighting ability as long as hitpoints are left.

We also would want some system to transform hp damage to injuries. After testing various systems i like it if that does not happen automatically but is player decided. : The player can choose to fight longer but doing so in his weakened state results in making the damage taken more severe and more difficult to heal.

Finally hp dmage should heal extremely fast compared to injuries. I have no problem if hps replenish after every fight.




What i don't like is rolls to avoid penalties. That makes the whole stuff less predictable and in addition can lead to near invincible characters if the system is not super swingy.

[Knaight]

We also would want some system to transform hp damage to injuries. After testing various systems i like it if that does not happen automatically but is player decided. : The player can choose to fight longer but doing so in his weakened state results in making the damage taken more severe and more difficult to heal.

Finally hp dmage should heal extremely fast compared to injuries. I have no problem if hps replenish after every fight.

This is basically Fate's Stress-Consequence system in a nutshell. You have a certain amount of stress (HP), to which you can take wounds. You can also choose to just directly take injuries instead of HP damage, which can be an interesting decision - taking a light injury to keep enough HP to soak a heavier injury later is a legitimate strategy, and that creates actual decision making.

[Frozen_Feet]

"How do I create a Health system without a Death Spiral?"

There is exactly one, straightforward solution to this: getting injured gives compensating bonuses in direct proportion to the penalty of being injured.

Note: a Death Spirals can happen even in simple HP systems, it's just less obvious because you have to calculate expected damage values over multiple turns and possibly multiple combatants.

[Anonymouswizard]

This is basically Fate's Stress-Consequence system in a nutshell. You have a certain amount of stress (HP), to which you can take wounds. You can also choose to just directly take injuries instead of HP damage, which can be an interesting decision - taking a light injury to keep enough HP to soak a heavier injury later is a legitimate strategy, and that creates actual decision making.

It's a tad more complicated, but yeah. To give the OP a slightly more I-depth explanation:

Each character has one or more Stress tracks (in one build everybody gets one, in another most PCs and important NPCs get two, I've seen builds with three), which is a set of numbered boxes from one to four (five in Venture City, ten in Spirit of the Century) that track a certain type of damage. The fact that they're boxes is significant, if you have a one box, a two box, and a three box you can absorbed three hits without any harm, but your one box can only take a hit with a value of one, while your three box can take a hit with a value of one, two, or three. These boxes clear when you can take a few minutes to rest, it's just minor wounds.

Everybody important also gets a single set of Consequences, which generally consists of one Minor, one Significant, and one Major, with values of two, four, and six respectively. There's also something called an Extreme Consequence, or 'being hit so hard your Aspects felt it', but it's not as easy to translate. Instead of absorbing a hit with Stress you can choose to take a Consequence with a value equal to or greater than the value of the hit, which is a bad thing that has happened to your character (although the only inherent bad stuff it gives is denying actions it would logically stop, otherwise you need to invoke it).

You can use up to one Stress Box and one Consequence per hit, and if you can't reduce the damage to zero that way you get taken out and your opponent decides what happens. You can stop this by conceding before the attack is resolved, where you still can't act but get a say in what happens.

[Satinavian]

"How do I create a Health system without a Death Spiral?"

There is exactly one, straightforward solution to this: getting injured gives compensating bonuses in direct proportion to the penalty of being injured.

Note: a Death Spirals can happen even in simple HP systems, it's just less obvious because you have to calculate expected damage values over multiple turns and possibly multiple combatants.
But the OP never stated a wish to avoid a death spiral.

And personally i like death spirals in my games.

@Knaight

Yes, there are already a couple of systems around using something like that. I never claimed it is a new or original idea. It is just my favorite way to handle it. And seeing how widespread it has become it seems i am not the only one.

[Knaight]

But the OP never stated a wish to avoid a death spiral.

And personally i like death spirals in my games.

@Knaight

Yes, there are already a couple of systems around using something like that. I never claimed it is a new or original idea. It is just my favorite way to handle it. And seeing how widespread it has become it seems i am not the only one.

I'm just pointing out what exists because it's really useful to have examples when trying to design stuff.

[D20ragon]

You basically just described Legend of the Wulin's ripples system. In that game , if your attack connects (your attack roll is bigger than your either your opponent's block or dodge), you create a ripple. Ripple is not necessarily a tangible thing, this is a representation of being pressured by the enemy.

By itself, ripple don't do anything.

But if you connect with certain difference between the attack and the defense roll, your opponent will roll a rippling roll. You roll as many dice as the current ripple your enemy have plus the ripple you just inflicted, basically the more ripples your opponent has collected, the easier they can get bigger injuries. Your opponent can roll opposing defense on the rippling roll, but he has to spend chi, which is his stamina/mp that he also need to use techniques and whatnot. And chi will slowly deplete in battle.

Now you compare the result of your rippling roll to his static threshold. Threshold is part of your stat created in your character creation, basically their constitution or whatever. If there's small difference, you create trivial condition. If there's bigger difference, there'll be minor or major condition. And you can combine multiple smaller condition into bigger one. For example your opponent have trivial condition, which actually don't do anything. Then you hit slightly, which should give him another trivial, or you can combine it with the previous condition into minor wound. and so on.

You can see how the battle is supposed to go. You do minor wounds at first, that will slowly become bigger wounds, since it's harder and harder for your opponent to ignore it (since he got more ripples, less chi to defend, and injuries that give him penalties).

It might seem slow, but remember that in LotW, you're discouraged to fight to drop. People should make concession all the times, when it feels like he's already losing, or the battle is getting too long going nowhere. There's specific mechanics for concession, you're supposed to use it.

If it wouldn’t be too much trouble could I possibly get a summary of those concession mechanics? If not, no worries, I plan to try and track down a copy of LotW.


It's a tad more complicated, but yeah. To give the OP a slightly more I-depth explanation:

Each character has one or more Stress tracks (in one build everybody gets one, in another most PCs and important NPCs get two, I've seen builds with three), which is a set of numbered boxes from one to four (five in Venture City, ten in Spirit of the Century) that track a certain type of damage. The fact that they're boxes is significant, if you have a one box, a two box, and a three box you can absorbed three hits without any harm, but your one box can only take a hit with a value of one, while your three box can take a hit with a value of one, two, or three. These boxes clear when you can take a few minutes to rest, it's just minor wounds.

Everybody important also gets a single set of Consequences, which generally consists of one Minor, one Significant, and one Major, with values of two, four, and six respectively. There's also something called an Extreme Consequence, or 'being hit so hard your Aspects felt it', but it's not as easy to translate. Instead of absorbing a hit with Stress you can choose to take a Consequence with a value equal to or greater than the value of the hit, which is a bad thing that has happened to your character (although the only inherent bad stuff it gives is denying actions it would logically stop, otherwise you need to invoke it).

You can use up to one Stress Box and one Consequence per hit, and if you can't reduce the damage to zero that way you get taken out and your opponent decides what happens. You can stop this by conceding before the attack is resolved, where you still can't act but get a say in what happens.
Hm. I have to admit I’m not particularly fond of Fate, but that stress-consequence system does interest me.


I'm just pointing out what exists because it's really useful to have examples when trying to design stuff.
Absolutely incredibly useful, the more examples the better.

[Frozen_Feet]

But the OP never stated a wish to avoid a death spiral.




In any case, my problem is this: how to design a health system that doesn't reduce health entirely to abstraction as HP does, but also doesn't feed into "death spiral" gameplay where the penalties for damage lead to players being less effective and thus taking more damage until death.

Emphasis mine.

[Satinavian]

Ok, somehow missed that.

[JeenLeen]

Riddle of Steel has probably the quickest death spiral I've ever seen in a system, but I think you could augment it slightly to remove the 'death spiral-ishness of it.

The system is mechanically heavy, but to summarize it: if you get hit (and it does damage, meaning bypasses innate Toughness and Armor), depending on where you are hit and how bad the wound it, you get a Shock, Pain, and Blood Loss rating. Shock is a dice penalty for the next action. Pain is a dice penalty that persists. These mean you can quickly become too hurt to fight effectively. If you dropped Pain and Shock, though, and just kept Blood Loss (which I'll explain in a moment), it might give something like what you want. (Also remove that a bad wound is instant-death or essentially instant-death, if you want to not have one-shot kills against a fully-healed, effective warrior.)

Blood Loss is the cumulative effective of your wounds. At the end of a round, you roll a stat (I think Health, maybe Toughness, not recalling perfectly) at a difficulty based on the amount of Blood Loss. If you fail the roll, you lose a dot of Health (one of your main stats.) If Health reaches 0, you die from bleeding out.

How the stats interplay makes this more interesting than it might sound. You have a limited number of points to allocate towards your stats. In combat, you'd want enough to be competent fighting (so Strength, Agility, and maybe another for melee combat), Toughness to soak damage, and Health to not die too quickly when you get damaged. You have to choose between trying to emphasize killing them first/not getting hit, soaking damage, and surviving if you fail to soak damage.

I do think Riddle of Steel is a bit too mechanically complicated and table-intensive to be, well, really enjoyable. I'm in a PBP game and enjoying it, but I don't think I'd handle it well in a real-life game. But the combat system is something you could look at to get inspiration for what you'd like to do.

[tensai_oni]

If it wouldn’t be too much trouble could I possibly get a summary of those concession mechanics? If not, no worries, I plan to try and track down a copy of LotW.

In Wulin, whenever you cause a condition on someone (because you gave them ripples and they failed a rippling roll), you decide what this condition is. Of course it has to make sense depending on the severity of the condition, how you attacked, etc, and the Wulin Master (GM) can veto it if it's unsuitable. This includes the end of combat rippling rolls as well.

By offering to surrender, you suggest what condition will be put on you and if the opponents agree, you're out of the fight and that's what you get, they don't get to choose. The surrender negotiation can have an IC element - the example given being a character who swears an oath he won't harass the villagers anymore if you let him live, but it's still explicitly OOC too. So even if your character isn't the type to offer or take surrender, OOCly you are encouraged to do it anyway.

Also note that surrenders aren't always literally the characters surrendering. It just means the character is out of the fight somehow, and as a consequence the goal they tried to achieve is failed or harder/nigh impossible to accomplish. For a good example, think something like "the rival character falls into a river and won't be able to get in time to the treasure both of you are after".

Oh yeah, and regarding the death spiral in Wulin: as conditions grow more and more severe they incur bigger penalties on your character, but each condition works only in specific circumstance so it's still possible to avoid, it just requires more creativity to get around the penalty. Unless you have two conditions, one working when you stand still and the other when you move - hard to get around that.

[D20ragon]

Interesting. After you use a ripple roll to inflict a condition, do those ripples reset or continue to build up? For example, if I've inflicted say, 10 ripples on my opponent, inflict another for, giving them 11, and they make a ripple roll and fail, so I get to inflict a condition, do they still have 11 ripples as well as the condition? Apologies if I missed that info in an earlier post.

[Jay R]

Any new system you invent for your name should be evaluated with the following questions.

1. Does it make the game more fun for the players and the GM?

Remember that "fun" is subjective. Increasing the risk of death, for instance, increases fun for some players and decreases it for others.]

2. Does it make it a better simulation for the specific purposes of the simulation?

One of the lessons from my simulations class was, "A simulation should be as complex as necessary, but no more so."

3. Does it fit within the genre, the setting, and the players' expectations?

Depending on what you find fun, questions 2 and 3 might be subsets of question 1 (they are for me), but either way, they should be considered directly.

[And yes, I know that some people have no particular interest in genre and setting conventions. For them, question 3 is just about player expectations.]

[Fri]

The ripples keeps. It is after all basically you "damage" your opponent. Remember that by its own, ripple doesn't do anything, that what happens if your attack hits, but just barely have a difference with the opponent's defense. There's no difference to you whether you have 5 or 10 ripples. But when you actually got a good hit, that's when it matters.

It's kinda reminds me to MnM's toughness check, in the line of how there's no "health point" in MnM. You just have toughness. Whenever you hit, you roll against your your opponent's toughness, your damage is the "plus" you get for the roll. When you roll big enough difference, the opponent gets knocked out. So theoritically, you can knock enemy down with one hit if your damage is big enough and the opponent's toughness is low enough. But of course that's hard to happen, so what happens is if the attack/defense difference is low, you just give penalty to your opponent's toughness. So you chip your opponent's toughness bit by bit, until finally it's low enough to be knocked out by your weapon's damage.

So IIRC the flow of combat in LoTW usually goes like this:

1. You do lots of grazing hits that inflict ripples but not actually any damage, you're just giving pressure to your enemies.
2. You finally do a good hit that gives your opponent small injury.
3. Your opponent got more and more ripple from more grazing hit, and finally you hit him again, giving him bigger injury

and so on.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I kind of like Exalted 3e's method of handling things for an interesting variant on the "abstract hit points /tangible injury" thing.

Basically, your normal attacks ("withering attacks") don't do any actual damage, but steal initiative-- you always get at least one point, plus more for beating your opponent's armor. When you want to make an actual killing blow, the damage roll is based purely on your current initiative (you roll one die per point of ini), and if you beat a (magic-only) armor value you inflict wound penalties. After which you reset to a base initiative value and start all over again.

I really like how it de-abstracts "stress" and folds it into a marginally more tangible combat advantage type thing that makes perfect sense to have reset every fight. It also adds an element of risk-reward to things: do you attempt a quick blow now that might or might not work, but will make the rest of the fight easier, or do you wait and hope to build up a bigger advantage to win in a single hit?

[D20ragon]

The ripples keeps. It is after all basically you "damage" your opponent. Remember that by its own, ripple doesn't do anything, that what happens if your attack hits, but just barely have a difference with the opponent's defense. There's no difference to you whether you have 5 or 10 ripples. But when you actually got a good hit, that's when it matters.

It's kinda reminds me to MnM's toughness check, in the line of how there's no "health point" in MnM. You just have toughness. Whenever you hit, you roll against your your opponent's toughness, your damage is the "plus" you get for the roll. When you roll big enough difference, the opponent gets knocked out. So theoritically, you can knock enemy down with one hit if your damage is big enough and the opponent's toughness is low enough. But of course that's hard to happen, so what happens is if the attack/defense difference is low, you just give penalty to your opponent's toughness. So you chip your opponent's toughness bit by bit, until finally it's low enough to be knocked out by your weapon's damage.

So IIRC the flow of combat in LoTW usually goes like this:

1. You do lots of grazing hits that inflict ripples but not actually any damage, you're just giving pressure to your enemies.
2. You finally do a good hit that gives your opponent small injury.
3. Your opponent got more and more ripple from more grazing hit, and finally you hit him again, giving him bigger injury

and so on.

Gotcha. That seems like it provides a very distinctive combat flow, yeah?


I kind of like Exalted 3e's method of handling things for an interesting variant on the "abstract hit points /tangible injury" thing.

Basically, your normal attacks ("withering attacks") don't do any actual damage, but steal initiative-- you always get at least one point, plus more for beating your opponent's armor. When you want to make an actual killing blow, the damage roll is based purely on your current initiative (you roll one die per point of ini), and if you beat a (magic-only) armor value you inflict wound penalties. After which you reset to a base initiative value and start all over again.

I really like how it de-abstracts "stress" and folds it into a marginally more tangible combat advantage type thing that makes perfect sense to have reset every fight. It also adds an element of risk-reward to things: do you attempt a quick blow now that might or might not work, but will make the rest of the fight easier, or do you wait and hope to build up a bigger advantage to win in a single hit?

Now that's pretty cool. I like the idea of tying speed or initiative to killing power, which is after all accurate, but still allowing for really solid big hits to reverse the combat flow.

[Segev]

Clearly, the DM should take responsibility for his players' characters and institute a universal health system, free of charge.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It's kinda reminds me to MnM's toughness check, in the line of how there's no "health point" in MnM. You just have toughness. Whenever you hit, you roll against your your opponent's toughness, your damage is the "plus" you get for the roll. When you roll big enough difference, the opponent gets knocked out. So theoritically, you can knock enemy down with one hit if your damage is big enough and the opponent's toughness is low enough. But of course that's hard to happen, so what happens is if the attack/defense difference is low, you just give penalty to your opponent's toughness. So you chip your opponent's toughness bit by bit, until finally it's low enough to be knocked out by your weapon's damage.
Minor quibble that took me a moment to realize because that's how I've almost always played it: that's backwards, at least for 3e. You roll your Toughness against your attacker's Damage. Also since you're using a d20, the natural swing can make a big difference. But yeah, it's sort of a half-hearted spiral-of-doom. You become easier to hurt as you get more battered, but your offense continues at full strength so you remain dangerous to the end.

[Arbane]

Also, take a look at Savage Worlds - its system looks a lot like the one in your first post. (Get hit for damage over your Toughness, take a Wound and -1 on ALL rolls. Three Wounds and you're out. Fairly simple.)

[Vitruviansquid]

Also, take a look at Savage Worlds - its system looks a lot like the one in your first post. (Get hit for damage over your Toughness, take a Wound and -1 on ALL rolls. Three Wounds and you're out. Fairly simple.)

I'm pretty sure you get "shaken" after taking damage over your toughness, and if you fail to recover from being shaken, you'd take a wound upon being hit again for damage over your toughness.

[D20ragon]

After noodling around with some of the ideas presented here by you fine people, I tentatively submit two health/combat system concepts. I'm sure they're full of holes, so please, point them out. The second one especially feels like it could be taking a turn towards needlessly complex, where the first one may just be half baked. Anyway, here they are:

Strain System
Players have a Strain threshold.
All damage below the strain threshold inflicts strain.
Damage above the strain threshold inflicts a scar.
Should the player be scarred, the player makes a scar roll to determine if the scar hardens (roll succeeds) or cripples (roll fails) them. Note: being too hardened is a bad thing just as being too crippled would be.
Strain accumulated strain inflicts a penalty to the scar roll
Strain does not reset after the scar roll, but continues to compound.
If strain accumulated becomes equal to the player's Strain threshold, the player must make a scar roll automatically. They must make a scar roll when strain becomes 1.5x their threshold, and when strain becomes 2x their threshold.
Strain resets after a short rest.
If a player suffers x number of scars without a significant rest, where x is a number derived from “health/toughness stat” they die.
After a significant rest, scars suffered no longer count towards x, but still affect the character. In the next combat after the significant rest, the character can once again take x scars before dying.


Advantage system
Roll plus "combat advantage".
Player with highest advantage roll goes first.
Actions cost points, players may take actions worth less than or equal to their advantage roll, until they have no more advantage.
Each time the player make an attack, they decide to press the advantage or scar their foe.
If they press the advantage, should they hit their foe, the damage is subtracted from their foes advantage. At the end of their turn, they total the damage they did to their foe and add it to their own.
If they wish to scar your foe, they roll and add all of their advantage.
If they succeed, their opponent gains a wound.
Wounds reduce whatever defense they overcome by the amount of damage the attack dealt.
X wounds and you’re dead.
Succeed or fail, all the attackers advantage is reduced to zero and they make another roll for combat advantage.
After combat, the player makes a scar roll for each scar received to determine if the scar hardens or cripples them.


If the critique is simply that the systems are derivative, I know they are, I'm simply looking for usability and fun. I'm sure there's lots more with them than the lack of originality, so let's stick with that stuff if we could.

[Arbane]

I'm pretty sure you get "shaken" after taking damage over your toughness, and if you fail to recover from being shaken, you'd take a wound upon being hit again for damage over your toughness.

Ah, that's right.

You can also get Wound for every 4 points of damage over Toughness you take in one hit (One thing about SW - with every strike, there is a non-zero chance that J. Random Mook will one-shot your hero. Stupid exploding dice.)

MASSIVE NITPICKING FOLLOWS:



Strain System
Players have a Strain threshold.
All damage below the strain threshold inflicts strain.
Damage above the strain threshold inflicts a scar.
Should the player be scarred, the player makes a scar roll to determine if the scar hardens (roll succeeds) or cripples (roll fails) them. Note: being too hardened is a bad thing just as being too crippled would be.


What do crippling and hardening do?



If a player suffers x number of scars without a significant rest, where x is a number derived from “health/toughness stat” they die.
After a significant rest, scars suffered no longer count towards x, but still affect the character. In the next combat after the significant rest, the character can once again take x scars before dying.

Scars are forever? PCs are going to have a very short career if that's the case and they're more than trivially disadvantageous.



Advantage system
If they press the advantage, should they hit your foe, the damage is subtracted from their foes advantage. At the end of their turn, they total the damage they did to their foe and add it to their own.

Making a comeback will be difficult.



If the critique is simply that the systems are derivative, I know they are, I'm simply looking for usability and fun. I'm sure there's lots more with them than the lack of originality, so let's stick with that stuff if we could.

No problem there - nothing new under the sun, after all...

[Fri]

After a significant rest, scars suffered no longer count towards x, but still affect the character. In the next combat after the significant rest, the character can once again take x scars before dying.

I assume what he means is, the scars stay with you (like, cool physical scar on your face or uneasiness around spiders or whatever), but as he mentions it no longers count toward the "collect x scar and you die." Basically after significant rest the fluff stays but the crunch are gone. I assume you can get rid the fluff scar if you do RP counselling or magical plastic surgery or something :smallsmile:



Advantage system
If they press the advantage, should they hit your foe, the damage is subtracted from their foes advantage. At the end of their turn, they total the damage they did to their foe and add it to their own.

And on this one, if I read your question about "hard to make a comeback" thing correctly, I assume the "comeback" thing shouldn't have a problem because all advantages are resetted if one decide to press the advantage. I might misunderstood your and the op's intention though.

But what I see from this advantage system is you're meant to collect collect and collect advantage, then decide when to use it to damage their opponent. They can either keep trying to collect small advantage and then do small chance of damage/small damage to their opponent, or collecting lots of advantage to bet it on one big attack, either way, all advantages are lost after they attempt their damaging attack.

[Lucas Yew]

All those alternative abstract health systems are fine mostly, but how do they usually handle absolute/environmental damage, like lava, supernova explosions, and the like? It must be my simulationist instinct, but this minor ire makes me shy away from using systems like Fate's stress tracks despite being enticed by it...

[CharonsHelper]

All those alternative abstract health systems are fine mostly, but how do they usually handle absolute/environmental damage, like lava, supernova explosions, and the like? It must be my simulationist instinct, but this minor ire makes me shy away from using systems like Fate's stress tracks despite being enticed by it...

In the Vitality/Wound system in Space Dogs (the system I'm working on) such environmental damage defaults straight to Wounds. Checks can be done to shift some/all of the damage from Wounds to Vitality but don't reduce the actual damage #.

It works because Space Dogs's setting is much lower powered than D&D or other settings where high HP is common - so no walking through lava or surviving falling out of orbit. I like my system, but I wouldn't want to try transferring the system directly into D&D with no other changes.

It's all about fitting the mechanics to the setting.

[Segev]

Your advantage system sounds like it has the death spiral problem you were trying to avoid.

Exalted 3e has a "withering" and "decisive" attack model they invented which is designed to simulate the kind of blow/block/counter exchange you see in anime and the like, where the fighters don't actually take notable damage in most exchanges but one side or the other is clearly building advantage.

Initiative becomes both your order-of-attack stat and a measure of advantage. Withering attacks use weapon stats to hit and damage, but damage inflicted reduces the target's initiative and increases the attacker's initiative. When a combatant decides to make a decisive attack, he rolls to attack normally. If he hits, he rolls his remaining Initiative as damage that actually inflicts health levels; if he misses, he doesn't do any damage and his initiative is still gone. After that, his initiative resets to something low, 5 or 3, I can't remember which.

Decisive attacks can (and are meant to) be one hit kills, but they aren't necessarily. There are more complex rules involving spending initiative to choose to inflict crippling wounds rather than doing normal decisive attacks and such, but that goes beyond the scope of a quick summary in a forum post. :smallwink:

[Fri]

All those alternative abstract health systems are fine mostly, but how do they usually handle absolute/environmental damage, like lava, supernova explosions, and the like? It must be my simulationist instinct, but this minor ire makes me shy away from using systems like Fate's stress tracks despite being enticed by it...

That's because those systems are not meant to simulate physics I guess. For example, in Fate if there's lava if you jump there you die I guess, except if you have "anti lava suit" aspect. Or at least got "badly burned" critical consequence, the kind of consequence that severely penalty you and you can only get rid of it after a whole season of roleplaying as burn victim.

Because I mean, how did you end up in lava anyway, you can't really be suddenly in lava out of vacuum. But say you're trying to cross a lava chamber. There's whole lots of rules for that, checks or contests you get that give you stresses if you fail (or not), and you'd get that critical consequence if you fail all of them or you used up all of your stress boxes.

But basically what I was trying to say is, in Fate if there's lava, you'll get stressed from trying to cross on it, or swim in it with power suit, or sail on it with your asbestos-botommed boat.

In LotW... it's also not a simulation of swimming in lava, but simulation of martial art fight. So they have lots of details on various martial arts and how to do awesome kungfu, but if for whatever reason you got burned by fire you simply got injury according to what your dm says I guess. Because it's not meant to simulate that.

So anyway, for the OP there's no need to rule everything the same way, as long as it's consistent. If you say, want to make a game about musketeers that focus on sword fencing, you need a lot of rules about fencing focus and damage and sword injuries and whatnot, but you won't need to make complex rule about how much damage you get per minute if you're drowning. Just make rule about "environmental injury" for example.

[Grod_The_Giant]

All those alternative abstract health systems are fine mostly, but how do they usually handle absolute/environmental damage, like lava, supernova explosions, and the like? It must be my simulationist instinct, but this minor ire makes me shy away from using systems like Fate's stress tracks despite being enticed by it...
Usually by bypassing the normal track to a greater or lesser degree-- skipping over the stress track and proceeding straight to injuries, or, like... killing you. Heck, Exalted 3e explicitly has "uncountable damage" for just such occasions. When you take uncountable damage, you don't bother with the health track, you just die. Or use a charm and resist it, because Exalted-- the only game where "rocks fall, everyone dies" is followed by "I parry it."

(Though I guess if you want to get technical, in Fate Core I don't think it's possible to have a Stress track of more than 5-- if you take 6 shifts of damage, you're getting hurt no matter what. If you take 14, you're going to take multiple consequences. If you take... what is it, 27? then you're just boned; it's not possible to have enough stress and consequences to not get taken out.)

[Aliquid]

(Though I guess if you want to get technical, in Fate Core I don't think it's possible to have a Stress track of more than 5-- if you take 6 shifts of damage, you're getting hurt no matter what. If you take 14, you're going to take multiple consequences. If you take... what is it, 27? then you're just boned; it's not possible to have enough stress and consequences to not get taken out.)

That's the main thing

So for example, for a low level character with a max stress track of 3:

1st round - Hit for "2 shifts of damage"
- The character takes 2 points of stress

2nd round - Hit for "5 shifts of damage"
- This exceeds his max stress of 3, so he has to take a 5 point consequence

3rd round - Hit for "1 shift of damage"
- He still has room in his stress track, so this can go there

4th round - Hit for "3 shift of damage"
- He can put this on the stress track too. BUT now his stress track is full. Any further hits will have to be a consequence, no matter how many "shifts of damage" are involved.

All the stresses can be shrugged off by resting for a while. The consequence will take more effort to heal.


So with that in mind, if absolute damage is minor... it could be a stress that eventually builds up to a concequence (e.g. walking around in below freezing weather without warm clothes)
If absolute damage is major, it will immediately become a consequence, because the number of "shifts damage" will exceed the maximum "stress" the character can take in one round.

[D20ragon]

Ah, that's right.

You can also get Wound for every 4 points of damage over Toughness you take in one hit (One thing about SW - with every strike, there is a non-zero chance that J. Random Mook will one-shot your hero. Stupid exploding dice.)

MASSIVE NITPICKING FOLLOWS:



What do crippling and hardening do?



Scars are forever? PCs are going to have a very short career if that's the case and they're more than trivially disadvantageous.



Making a comeback will be difficult.



No problem there - nothing new under the sun, after all...

Crippling and Hardening is a system that's basically lifted from Darkest Dungeon (video game) and Unknown Armies (tabletop rpg) where as you receive injury, physical or mental, you have a chance to either develop trauma around the source/type of the injury (crippled) or become more resistant and, well, hardened towards it (hardened). Someone who becomes crippled by a violent scar could develop an intense aversion to violence, a fear of blades or needles, etc, whereas someone hardened by a violent scar could watch a grisly torture scene without batting an eye, could shrug off injuries that might distract others, and find it easier to deal with people through violent, rather than peaceful, interaction. It's a bit of a hamfisted effort to have characters develop in unforeseen ways (happy-go-lucky thief almost dies to a poison needle trap in a lock, develops an intense fear of needles and an aversion to the smell of the particular poison, etc).


I assume what he means is, the scars stay with you (like, cool physical scar on your face or uneasiness around spiders or whatever), but as he mentions it no longers count toward the "collect x scar and you die." Basically after significant rest the fluff stays but the crunch are gone. I assume you can get rid the fluff scar if you do RP counselling or magical plastic surgery or something :smallsmile:



And on this one, if I read your question about "hard to make a comeback" thing correctly, I assume the "comeback" thing shouldn't have a problem because all advantages are resetted if one decide to press the advantage. I might misunderstood your and the op's intention though.

But what I see from this advantage system is you're meant to collect collect and collect advantage, then decide when to use it to damage their opponent. They can either keep trying to collect small advantage and then do small chance of damage/small damage to their opponent, or collecting lots of advantage to bet it on one big attack, either way, all advantages are lost after they attempt their damaging attack.

Yeah, scars no longer count towards the "x scars and you die" once you've been crippled or hardened by them.
And yeah, I'm hoping to avoid death spiral through the whole reset mechanic, which basically does encourage getting an advantage over your foe before trying to injure them, after which you have to collect advantage again. The idea is also that you could approach that in different ways, for example, you could have a build with a really high "speed stat" that revolves around using their initial high advantage role to immediately try and put their foes out of commission, you could have a tanky build that revolves around low speed, high defense, and heavy attacks to rob quicker builds of all the advantage they built up through their annoying quick, small attacks, or a duelist who makes said repeated small attacks, etc.
Idk if it actually works out like that, but that's the dream :smalltongue:

Your advantage system sounds like it has the death spiral problem you were trying to avoid.

Exalted 3e has a "withering" and "decisive" attack model they invented which is designed to simulate the kind of blow/block/counter exchange you see in anime and the like, where the fighters don't actually take notable damage in most exchanges but one side or the other is clearly building advantage.

Initiative becomes both your order-of-attack stat and a measure of advantage. Withering attacks use weapon stats to hit and damage, but damage inflicted reduces the target's initiative and increases the attacker's initiative. When a combatant decides to make a decisive attack, he rolls to attack normally. If he hits, he rolls his remaining Initiative as damage that actually inflicts health levels; if he misses, he doesn't do any damage and his initiative is still gone. After that, his initiative resets to something low, 5 or 3, I can't remember which.

Decisive attacks can (and are meant to) be one hit kills, but they aren't necessarily. There are more complex rules involving spending initiative to choose to inflict crippling wounds rather than doing normal decisive attacks and such, but that goes beyond the scope of a quick summary in a forum post. :smallwink:

I'm hoping to avoid death spiral in the ways I mentioned above (no guarantees that it'll work out like that of course), and I thank you for your further explanation of Exalted combat, makes me want to rethink a few things about my system.