The 10,000 HP Campaign - need advise

[Some Android]

I want to run a campaign where all the PCs have 10,000 HP. Here's the catch: with the possible exception of regaining HP after sleep which isn't that much, THERE IS NO HEALING. No healing spells, potions or other healing methods. All the PCs start with 10,000 HP at the start of the campaign and it's all pretty much down here from here. All instant death spells and other effects would be banned from the game (or at least the NPCs wouldn't have them).

This would be purely experimental to see how long such a campaign could go on. I'm not sure it "experimental" is the best reason to run a game but that's why I'm posting here for feedback. Just any feedback would be help. One or two tips or even some length paragraphs telling me what (not) to do.

I mean is 10,000 HP too much or too little? Even that number is up for debate.

So yeah. What do you think?

[rferries]

I want to run a campaign where all the PCs have 10,000 HP. Here's the catch: with the possible exception of regaining HP after sleep which isn't that much, THERE IS NO HEALING. No healing spells, potions or other healing methods. All the PCs start with 10,000 HP at the start of the campaign and it's all pretty much down here from here. All instant death spells and other effects would be banned from the game (or at least the NPCs wouldn't have them).

This would be purely experimental to see how long such a campaign could go on. I'm not sure it "experimental" is the best reason to run a game but that's why I'm posting here for feedback. Just any feedback would be help. One or two tips or even some length paragraphs telling me what (not) to do.

I mean is 10,000 HP too much or too little? Even that number is up for debate.

So yeah. What do you think?

Level 1: 24 hour adventuring day. Even the wizard's weapon damage will outpace her spell effects - she can take on the boss with unarmed strikes and win by herself.

Level 20+: 8 hour per week adventuring day. Got to heal up to max hp after every encounter, in case the DM gets fed up at last and throws multiple hecatoncheires at us.

[sengmeng]

Rferries has it pretty much right, unless the nature of the campaign pushes them to keep going all the time; if the operational tempo is too high to heal naturally between battles, then they'll have to get creative. But not too creative; I'm not sure what difference you're hoping for.

[Goaty14]

Methinks the total # of HP needed should be somewhere around ((MAX HIT DIE)*(Factorial, starting at max level))*4+CON MOD at every level. That way, we can account for all levels of HP, for each of the four encounters a day. Max HP because this assumes you *don't* dodge hp by dying, and this doesn't use resurrections (note that a dead wizard is no longer taking blows, and is thus avoiding taking more damage).

Which is likely higher than 10,000, but somebody should check my math.


THERE IS NO HEALING.


Got to heal up to max hp after every encounter,

Ok then?

[jqavins]

Assuming this affects the whole setting, not just the PCs, then the world has virtually no professional adventurers. The MO for adventurers is to do risky things knowing you will get hurt, but you can be healed and go on; you have to be half insane to do it, but only half. With healing out of the picture, you'd have to be completely insane.

[Knaight]

I could see it working, though every PC having the same amount of HP seems off for most systems. Still, if the system works for it or the PCs are something like possessor spirits which can embody different characters temporarily (where the embodied character can heal but the possessor spirit can't) that hiccup could be solved, while also giving an in game reason for both the massive pile of HP and the total inability to heal.

[rferries]

Ok then?

OP said there might be an exception for natural healing.


I could see it working, though every PC having the same amount of HP seems off for most systems.

Bolded for emphasis. No reason to play a fighter or barbarian under this system since everybody effectively has the same HD size. Definitely pushes players towards casters, as they can evade damage outright (invisibility, stoneskin, etc.).

[JeenLeen]

Bookkeeping may also be an issue. I would reckon most players would have a few subtraction errors, so trusting the HP to be tracked accurately is tricky. I'm not talking about cheating, but about innocent things like arithmetic errors, writing down the wrong number, or misreading a number.

This can happen in any game, but usually an extra -1 to -5 HP doesn't matter that much and the effect goes away once the party rests and heals. But the effect never goes away in this system.

[jqavins]

(This ninjad me, and I didn't see it at first.)
Methinks the total # of HP needed should be somewhere around ((MAX HIT DIE)*(Factorial, starting at max level))*4+CON MOD at every level. That way, we can account for all levels of HP, for each of the four encounters a day. Max HP because this assumes you *don't* dodge hp by dying, and this doesn't use resurrections (note that a dead wizard is no longer taking blows, and is thus avoiding taking more damage).

Which is likely higher than 10,000, but somebody should check my math.That's putting it mildly. By "Factorial, starting at max level", and for a 20 level 3.P game, I assume you mean factorial 20 (20!) which is about 2.4×1018. And you're suggesting 4×(hit die size)×20! (the CON mod is insignificant) so about 3.9×1019 HP for a wizard. In other words, everybody has infinite hit points for all practical purposes. If you'll describe the logic that led to this I can try to find where you went wrong with the algebra.

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Another major issue (with 10,000) is how to fluff it. Consider the damage from a composite long bow for an 18 strength, with no magic. Damage is 5 to 10, average 7.5 (still assuming 3.P). A first level fighter with a 15 CON (12 HP) is guaranteed to survive one max damage hit (barring a critical), has a about a 58% chance of surviving two hits with (with rolled damage) and can't ever take three shots even at minimum damage. If the same fighter gets up to 16 CON when he's 20th level (the rest of his attribute boosts have been to STR and DEX) then he'd have, on average, 170 HP and a ballpark 50:50ish chance of surviving 22 or 23 arrows.

Now, it's hard enough, in my opinion, to fluff surviving 22 arrows on average, but there are the usual "increased life force", "divine or magical favor" and so on.

With 10,000 HP, it would take, on average, 1333-1/3 arrows to bring someone down, regardless of class and level! If you care about fluff that even pretends to make sense then it will be awfully hard to make that work.

[Knaight]

On how much HP there should be.

We also technically don't know what system this is for anyways. All signs point to D&D, but I'm not seeing a clean indicator for edition anywhere, other than it not being 5e due to having only mild HP on sleep recovery. 10,000 HP in 1e goes way further than 10,000 HP in 3e. This also makes figuring out how much there should be iffy.

The factorial approach can be ruled out, though a similar summation approach (big sigma instead of big pi) should work okay. Using 3e assumptions, say that there are 13 1/3 encounters per level, and that you heal fully between every encounter, which all reduce everyone to 0 HP, including 13 1/3 encounters at level 20. This is very much an upper bound assumption.

Properly showing the equation for that involves notation that we don't have, so I'll skip showing most work. The key part is that the 13 1/3 can jump out of the summation, leaving you with (13.333...)*((20+19+18+....1)*Avg(HP/Lvl)+ExtraHPFromLevel1). This is 2800*(Avg(HP/Lvl))+40/3*ExtraHPFromLevel1.

A bit of partitioning makes this pretty clean. 2800*Con Mod + 2800*(HDsize/2+0.5)+40/3*(HDsize/2-0.5). That last term is a tiny rounding error compared to the others, so if you just drop it you get a very convenient equation. Better yet, you can tweak that entirely by altering the 2800. For instance, if you assume 1/4 HP is lost per fight instead of all of it (which holds with some CR assumptions) it becomes 700. Then you can just translate hit die to HP, like so:



HD
HP


d4
1750


d6
2450


d8
3150


d10
3850


d12
4550



Add in 700*Con Mod to this, and you've got starting HP.


With 10,000 HP, it would take, on average, 1333-1/3 arrows to bring someone down, regardless of class and level! If you care about fluff that even pretends to make sense then it will be awfully hard to make that work.

I'd interpreted this as only applying to the PCs, which makes this a much smaller problem - just restrict the characters to something that fits. Think the terminator from Terminator II (I don't know the model number), which was a shapeshifting blob of metal that could somehow take human form. That thing taking over a thousand arrows to bring down seems plausible, given that the only real damage being done is the arrows pushing some tiny amount of metal out of the way. The possessor spirits from my previous post would also work, as would weakened gods.

[jqavins]

I'd interpreted this as only applying to the PCs, which makes this a much smaller problemI didn't, though I certainly can't say that's not the case. I didn't see any indication that the PCs are unique in this way, though it did say "the PCs start with 10,000 HP", not that all people do. So maybe it can be something like you suggest, I just didn't get the idea that that's what the OP is looking for.


The possessor spirits from my previous post would also work, as would weakened gods.Assuming that the possessor spirits or gods can always jump to a new host when their present hosts' bodies are ripped to shreds, or that the hosts' bodies are reinforced by the possessors.

How about the hosts get instant regen, but every point regenerated is a point taken from the possessor's non-replenishable pool? Still, if this is a starting-at-first-level campaign, what kind of possessing being starts at first level?

[AtlasSniperman]

One that has to slowly encourage the host body to be capable of supporting the full power of the possessor?

[rferries]

I didn't, though I certainly can't say that's not the case. I didn't see any indication that the PCs are unique in this way, though it did say "the PCs start with 10,000 HP", not that all people do. So maybe it can be something like you suggest, I just didn't get the idea that that's what the OP is looking for.

Indeed... if everyone has 10,000 hp I forsee the first encounter with a rat taking multiple sessions to resolve. :D

[jqavins]

Indeed... if everyone has 10,000 hp I forsee the first encounter with a rat taking multiple sessions to resolve. :D
Well, not everyone and everything, but it could be the PCs plus all the NPCs with PC classes, the BBEG, etc. If it is only the PCs - if just these four to six people throughout the world have a particular characteristic, such as 10,000 HP, but really anything - then some sort of explanation such as Knaight's* is needed.

* Incidentally, is that just pronounced like Nate, i.e. short for Knathahn?

[Goaty14]

If you'll describe the logic that led to this I can try to find where you went wrong with the algebra.

I want to calculate the amount of HP a theoretical PC will need throughout their entire career, and then some. I probably should've replaced the factorial with some sort of additive factorial, but yeh.

So maybe something more like (HD+CON)*20, provided that 1) The character in question would normally never die* and 2) The character would never get in-combat healing for any of the 3-4 encounters expected/day.

*Because when you're dead, a couple of things happen:
-You stop being a target of damage
-You stop taking damage (don't beat dead horses!)
...and thus it's nigh impossible to calculate the damage you would've taken, had you not been dead. Oh, and by "normally never die", I don't mean immortality, I mean the normal character is just lucky enough to never drop to -10 HP.

---

I think natural healing unbalances this, given you could have a party of elans who sit around doing nothing whilst waiting for their massive HP batteries to fill :smallannoyed:

[Knaight]

I want to calculate the amount of HP a theoretical PC will need throughout their entire career, and then some. I probably should've replaced the factorial with some sort of additive factorial, but yeh.

If you look upthread I have that calculation done using somewhat safer metrics (though I wasn't careful with rounding and retention of significant figures, and there was a bit of deliberate gloss in pursuit of friendly formulas ), and the use of an arithmetic sum instead of a factorial is the major difference, and exactly where you went wrong. The arithmetic sum of 1+2+3...+20 is only 210. That's a hair over 16 orders of magnitude fewer than 20!.

[jqavins]

If you look upthread I have that calculation...
Which is why I never followed through on my offer; Knaight did it first.

[Knaight]

Incidentally, is that just pronounced like Nate, i.e. short for Knathahn?

Pretty much - I never actually developed a long form for Nathan or Nathaniel, but Knaight is pronounced exactly like Nate.

[Thrawn4]

I like the Concept, but there should be some changes.
Number is way too high, probably something around three hundred should work. Still a lot but Limited enough that players Care.
As others have Pointed out Martial classes Need more, so you Need a Guideline like Level 1 hp times ten.
Refluff it accordingly, e. g. give it a Frankenstein vibe.
Interesting Thematic choices: how much of your Limited immortality are you willing to Risk? Would you commit attrocities to regain some hp?