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Kyutaru
2020-08-17, 11:00 AM
With D&D 5E abstracting HPs once again and other RPGs having similar concepts of Vitality or of wounds separate from the standard pool I'm curious about replacing HP with a flat Luck system.

Instead of being hit by attacks you are heroically avoiding them entirely. You are spending some of your luck to not die. When your points hit zero your luck has run out and the reaper comes to collect. In the negative range your certainty of death hangs in the balance and whether you pull through comes down to a different form of luck -- the gamble known as the death save.

Naturally this implies that healing magic doesn't actually restore your health total but rather grants you a divine boon up to your maximum luck total. It's a representation of how favored you are by the gods. It goes up as you perform heroic deeds and slay monsters because now you're attracting their attention. They are literally granting you more luck.

Wounds can still be a thing too. Say on critical hits instead of doing massive damage you BYPASS hitpoints and deal me a direct blow. This was the way Star Wars RPG worked and it made blaster fire quite serious as a stray gunshot could kill a character potentially. In that game you had wounds up to your Constitution score I believe. But for this purpose you could suffer wounds from other things as well like falling from heights or fumbling. Taking wounds could even decrease your performance, reflecting the impact of injury on your character along with specific placement of the wound to affect usage of limbs.

Attack rolls here become less about luck and more about skill. The luck part is accounted for, you lose points. Missing an attack is because the opponent's defensive skill beat out your offensive one.

What's handy is you can spend luck points for more things now. Skill checks could cost you luck points to get a favorable roll. Failing them could lose you luck. Social encounters could become quite serious (and deadly) with your character rolling just to stay out of prison. Woops, you ran out of luck and the king has run out of patience. He's summoned the guards and you'll be spending the rest of your life in a tiny cell. Which won't be very long since your execution has been scheduled for dawn. There was a vacancy due to an untimely accident; how unlucky for you!

More still I can see spells carrying Luck costs or having variable expenditures depending on how much you wish to tempt fate. It may cost you some Luck to contact a god for help but it will cost you the whole shebang to try to bargain with a demon. Things become less about random accidents due to dice rolls and more about the consequential failure of your own attempts. That skill check you failed wasn't because of some random slippery piece of ice on the ground; you just blew it, hero. Good job. Don't try to blame the universe.

I'm contemplating other implications of such a system and extend the floor to input.

Democratus
2020-08-17, 11:05 AM
This could be the basis for a lot of fun stuff.

It seems to also imply that Hit Dice are your "luck battery" where you store backup luck that you can draw on if given a little while to catch your breath.

Mastikator
2020-08-17, 11:52 AM
I'm in favor of it if only because it fixes the issue of ambiguity. I'd probably call it plot armor since "luck points" sounds like something you could expend outside of combat as a part of any roll.

Kyutaru
2020-08-17, 12:19 PM
I'm in favor of it if only because it fixes the issue of ambiguity. I'd probably call it plot armor since "luck points" sounds like something you could expend outside of combat as a part of any roll.
Who's to say you can't? :smallwink:

Spend some luck to make things happen. You only get so much of it per day though. Gotta take a break for a few hours to get that luck back. Karma demands it. I totally didn't intend for this to be strictly combat only but rather usable even in social encounters or other areas too. It's a resource like any other only much less confined by terminology such as Hitpoints.

JNAProductions
2020-08-17, 12:34 PM
I did something like that for 5E. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?558375-Fighting-Spirit-II-Electric-HP-A-Loo)

MrStabby
2020-08-17, 02:02 PM
I wouldnt call it luck... or fortune or anything like that. Nothing probabilistic as it really starts to imy things it shouldn't at that point.

Plot armour works. Some kind of expendable blessing sure.

Mastikator
2020-08-17, 05:01 PM
Who's to say you can't? :smallwink:

Spend some luck to make things happen. You only get so much of it per day though. Gotta take a break for a few hours to get that luck back. Karma demands it. I totally didn't intend for this to be strictly combat only but rather usable even in social encounters or other areas too. It's a resource like any other only much less confined by terminology such as Hitpoints.

In the game Drakar Och Demoner Trudvang the PCs have access to a special kind of stat "Raud" which is basically destiny points. They can be expended to automatically succeed any roll if the roll fails. Raud is not restored over time but rather from performing great heroic deeds.

However there is one big issue, there's still the problem that half of the game of D&D still pretends that HP is bodily tissue damage, spells that restore damage are called "cure light wounds" not "restore luck". And you get luck points from Constitution. But if luck has anything to do with Karma or divine favor then Wisdom or Charisma are much candidates.

Raud was a really cool idea, but Drakar Och Demoner still has "kropp poäng" (body points) to represent physical damage. So if you're going for luck, I'd suggest not having luck instead of hitpoints but on top of it. Double down on hitpoints = body damage and then add luck additionally.
Luck could act as plot armor, or an expendable resource for getting the results you want when the dice are not cooperating. And luck could be refreshed not by time or magic but by glorious deeds and experience points (basically, RP and level).

This would mean that as long as the players are acting like Heroes Who Commit Deeds Worthy Of Song then their luck wont run out easily, but if they stray from the path then destiny is no longer on their side.

gijoemike
2020-08-17, 05:32 PM
One of the big issues is poison. Poison works when you succeed with a hit. If the heroes aren't getting cut or its near misses poison blades shouldn't work at all until near the killing blow anyway.

Grod_The_Giant
2020-08-17, 06:50 PM
I did something like that for 5E. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?558375-Fighting-Spirit-II-Electric-HP-A-Loo)
Same. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?614151-Grittier-Hit-Points-Endurance-and-Life)

As Mastikator said, the difficulty with converting D&D to a health-as-plot-armor paradigm is that (apart from maybe 4e) the games are incredibly ambivalent about when hit points are "luck" and when they're "meat." That was the main part of my project-- coming up with rules to separate the two more explicitly.

Kyutaru
2020-08-17, 07:00 PM
One of the big issues is poison. Poison works when you succeed with a hit. If the heroes aren't getting cut or its near misses poison blades shouldn't work at all until near the killing blow anyway.

Ah, poison can happen even from minor nicks and cuts, which the system doesn't necessarily prevent. It stops grievous wounds of serious injury that can drop you to the ground but poison working its way through your system could be as much luck as anything else that you withstand it for so long.


Same. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?614151-Grittier-Hit-Points-Endurance-and-Life)

As Mastikator said, the difficulty with converting D&D to a health-as-plot-armor paradigm is that (apart from maybe 4e) the games are incredibly ambivalent about when hit points are "luck" and when they're "meat." That was the main part of my project-- coming up with rules to separate the two more explicitly.The meat/luck separation is where the Wounds come in. This isn't strictly for D&D though and 5E makes it clear that HP abstraction is a thing. Rogues with Evasion are just really good at conserving their luck while hits that ordinarily land blows are mere flesh wounds or not that serious. I mean you don't see battles in cinema where Conan just lost an arm and keeps fighting anyway like nothing happened wielding his sword in his mighty ghost arm. Typically when meat damage happens it's a mortal wound or something quite severe. The battle is either over or walking the razor's edge.

In general unlike the ideas you guys present I'm also using the resource as a non-combat one. It works similar to Destiny or that resource Mastikator mentioned in that it's multi-purpose. When social encounters turn to combat encounters you might regret pushing your luck on the diplomacy.

Quertus
2020-08-17, 07:40 PM
So, Star Wars d20 "wounds and vitality"? Except it's… plot armor?

Well, first off, monsters with "meat" and PCs with plot armor now behave differently. Rider effects shouldn't trigger on loss of plot armor. For example,



One of the big issues is poison. Poison works when you succeed with a hit. If the heroes aren't getting cut or its near misses poison blades shouldn't work at all until near the killing blow anyway.

Poison - at least, injury poison - becomes ineffective against PCs (except on a lucky crit). Which… is great! 2e had far too much poison, IME - making it a "monster killer" that PCs are immune to is great.

(EDIT: I see the ninjas are out. Yes, "you take a 0-damage 'nick' every time you lose plot armor" is doable, except… shouldn't you just die on a poisoned crit, then? That is, if barely touching the poison / lava / voidstone is "save or die", shouldn't being run through by / faceplanting on the same be, you know, infinitely more deadly?)

Things that boost crit range become very strong… also a good thing :smallwink:

"Healing" should remain the province of Clerics & Druids… and only heal meat, not plot armor. If plot armor can be healed, it should be by Bards, Crusaders, and maybe Clerics of the Fourth Wall (or other narrative-based clergy). It'll be nice for Clerics to move beyond "box of bandaids" status.

Speaking of the narrative: everyone now has Evasion. That Fireball? It didn't actually *hurt* any of the PCs. Plot armor is a visible, all but tangible thing.

What else?

Losing "HP" in social combat, because "plot armor" represents luck, period? That's always been frowned on, but should be revalidated in this context. At a guess, I would say… attempting to model social interactions etc on the combat framework is gonna be really dumb, and produce events and incentives that look nothing like reality.

Of course, if that's the goal - to remove the game from any semblance of this world - then cool. Maybe we can finally kill "guy at the gym".

Kyutaru
2020-08-17, 08:23 PM
So, Star Wars d20 "wounds and vitality"? Except it's… plot armor?More luck/destiny points that can be spent on social encounters but yes.


Well, first off, monsters with "meat" and PCs with plot armor now behave differently.Yep, I think that adds a level of heroism in that monsters are constantly getting stabbed while the heroes are narrowly avoiding their tendrils. Exactly how it plays out in movies.


I see the ninjas are out.What? I posted 40 minutes before you with no edits. Confused now.


Yes, "you take a 0-damage 'nick' every time you lose plot armor" is doable, except… shouldn't you just die on a poisoned crit, then? That is, if barely touching the poison / lava / voidstone is "save or die", shouldn't being run through by / faceplanting on the same be, you know, infinitely more deadly?)
This is the kind of stuff I want to examine by having the topic. In the case of poison damage it's not a 0-damage nick. Absolutely nothing about the game mechanics has changed. You were nicked by poison and now it's running through your veins losing you 1d8 luck because fortune is looking grim that you will survive this battle. A critical poisoned hit is an interesting take and one that may be quite deadly or it may simply mean you take the critical hit + poison is now sapping your luck and bringing you closer to death. You're lucky to even be alive. :smallsmile:


Things that boost crit range become very strong… also a good thing :smallwink:Yes, I quite liked that about the Star Wars system. It gives players an incentive to NOT take damage instead of the Barbarian thinking "I have 140 hp and the dragon can only do 38 per round. We need to end this in three turns but I'll be fine."


"Healing" should remain the province of Clerics & Druids… and only heal meat, not plot armor. If plot armor can be healed, it should be by Bards, Crusaders, and maybe Clerics of the Fourth Wall (or other narrative-based clergy). It'll be nice for Clerics to move beyond "box of bandaids" status.A valid suggestion and definitely capable of adding granularity to the mix of class abilities. I saw it as clerics able to provide divine blessings that protect from further harm and level ups providing additional amounts due to divine favor. Blessed by the gods means lucky as heck. But I wouldn't be averse to letting other classes fill the shoes too and it makes the system that much more partitioned which is good.


Speaking of the narrative: everyone now has Evasion. That Fireball? It didn't actually *hurt* any of the PCs. Plot armor is a visible, all but tangible thing.
It may have singed some of them but nothing that is causing to cause a violent death over. This is another characteristic of movies, that the heroes can somehow avoid almost all the effects of a devastating explosion and walk away mostly unharmed. As for Rogues themselves, they now are luckier than halflings and capable of conserving luck with skillful grace and instincts.


Losing "HP" in social combat, because "plot armor" represents luck, period? That's always been frowned on, but should be revalidated in this context. At a guess, I would say… attempting to model social interactions etc on the combat framework is gonna be really dumb, and produce events and incentives that look nothing like reality.
Oh I wouldn't dream of modelling social combat. I said this today in another thread but let the talking parts remain about talking, you don't need more than the one roll to know if it worked. But what it does provide is a resource to gain or lose during social encounters. What's the limit on the number of times you can fail to persuade the king? How many times can a rogue reasonably try to pickpocket people in a crowd? Is he going to sit there all day doing it? Not if he's taking "luck damage" on a failure, or even spending some luck to even attempt it at all. If at all possible, players will carefully consider the impact of their more risky ventures out of combat as they already do in combat.


Of course, if that's the goal - to remove the game from any semblance of this world - then cool. Maybe we can finally kill "guy at the gym".Pssssh like D&D ever was. I much prefer the theatrics and drama. :smallcool:

Composer99
2020-08-17, 08:24 PM
I think this is an interesting concept - a sort of universal "luck" or "fate" currency that you use to overcome challenges.

You'd have to ensure the game is less weighted around combat than typical D&D, but as long as that's the case, it's got potential.

Kyutaru
2020-08-17, 08:36 PM
I think this is an interesting concept - a sort of universal "luck" or "fate" currency that you use to overcome challenges.

You'd have to ensure the game is less weighted around combat than typical D&D, but as long as that's the case, it's got potential.
Thank you. Yes I agree that the trick is striking up a balance between the combat and the social encounters because now your Hitpoints are being lost in both. It also means particularly deadly creatures that can slash through your meat in a single lucky crit need to be observed for CR changes.

I was thinking Wounds could be tied to Constitution score and grant those with a higher physicality more meat to plow through. When you run out of Constitution, you died. Things like poison, fire, psychic damage etc would still affect your luck because "it's not that serious, walk it off", not trying to upset the balance so much as providing an alternate avenue for other skills. What I particularly liked is the concept of Mortal Wounds from Warhammer 40k tabletop. They're wounds that bypass all armor, saves, and defenses and go straight to "you suffered a devastating blow". With characters having single digit health bars, and the average mook having 1, mortal wounds are extremely deadly. That said very little can inflict them.

Mechalich
2020-08-17, 08:49 PM
The ultimate issue with this is that however you choose to implement it - and there any several viable options - you're ultimately taking one thing and splitting it into two things, which means you're increasing the complexity of the game. And you're doing so with regard to one of the most significant aspects of gameplay - which inevitably creates many more things you need to manage.

For instance, when you create a split system like this you immediately impart an extremely high value on anything that can bypass the ablative 'luck' layer and go straight to the 'meat' which means you have to be incredibly careful with regard to management of such effects. For example, in the oWoD aggravated damage largely bypassed the 'soak' layer that allowed characters some chance of shrugging off hits. However, it was not especially difficult to find a reliable means of dealing aggravated damage which essentially rendered soak irrelevant and quickly turned games in which the players took this approach (and the GM was therefore forced to have NPCs do so in compensation or render all antagonists ineffectual) absurdly lethal.

Likewise Star Wars SAGA, which had a 'condition track' in addition to HPs became very vulnerable, especially at higher levels, to builds that focused on dropping characters all the way down the condition track, and thereby tacking them out of combat, with a single attack even if it only dealt some small fraction of their HP in actual damage, or even no damage at all - I recall an incident of dropping a Rancor with a single use of Force Stun.

HP does a lot of things, and many of them are kind of ridiculous, but one thing is does do is lower lethality (in 3.X D&D HP bloat was arguably too good at this, which is one reason SoD abilities became so valuable). If you create a split system you need to manage the lethality impacts very carefully.

Kyutaru
2020-08-17, 09:05 PM
For instance, when you create a split system like this you immediately impart an extremely high value on anything that can bypass the ablative 'luck' layer and go straight to the 'meat' which means you have to be incredibly careful with regard to management of such effects.

HP does a lot of things, and many of them are kind of ridiculous, but one thing is does do is lower lethality (in 3.X D&D HP bloat was arguably too good at this, which is one reason SoD abilities became so valuable). If you create a split system you need to manage the lethality impacts very carefully.
Would you suggest then to remove the dual track entirely? Eliminate meat and go pure luck? Then it can still be used as a social currency or cost to particularly useful spells while sharing a common resource with your continued happiness (and well-being). I'd much rather retain the concept of Fate protecting you than lose the whole system to a split health bar. Ultimately the goal is not to copy paste what so many other games have done already with Vitality/Wounds but to redefine the terminology in a way that makes sense for non-combat purposes as well.

You failed your Bluff check. You lose 1d10 luck. It adds a real consequence that has significance later while allowing social/combat encounters to flow into each other better.

In short, I'm not looking to increase lethality so much as incorporate it into the rest of the game's decision making. It was noted on another topic that social encounters don't really have resources that people spend. The DM kind of makes up the consequences, if any, on the spot.

Hytheter
2020-08-18, 12:35 AM
Personally the idea of someone routinely surviving deadly situations just because they are lucky strains my suspension of disbelief far more than the idea that they are simply inhumanly durable. And that's before accounting for the ridiculous situations that arise as a result. Oh, Barbarians aren't tougher than Wizards they are just more lucky! Oh, that vampire isn't sucking my blood to restore its own vitality it's just... uh.... making me less lucky, while also reducing the amount of luck that I can have, and improving its own luck in the process. Oh, I didn't actually fall into the lava, I just, uh, hovered above it for a turn I guess? But oh boy do I feel less lucky now!


What? I posted 40 minutes before you with no edits. Confused now.

He probably opened the thread shortly before you had posted, spent some time reading the thread and on formulating his own comment, and possibly underestimated the time spent doing those things.

Quertus
2020-08-18, 08:27 AM
Yep, I think that adds a level of heroism in that monsters are constantly getting stabbed while the heroes are narrowly avoiding their tendrils. Exactly how it plays out in movies.

Fair.


What? I posted 40 minutes before you with no edits. Confused now.


He probably opened the thread shortly before you had posted, spent some time reading the thread and on formulating his own comment, and possibly underestimated the time spent doing those things.

Something not entirely unlike this, yes. Ninjas need not be high level to sneak past me - as a side effect of the casing time of "Wall of Text", I'm a CR 1 or lower challenge for ninjas!


This is the kind of stuff I want to examine by having the topic. In the case of poison damage it's not a 0-damage nick. Absolutely nothing about the game mechanics has changed. You were nicked by poison and now it's running through your veins losing you 1d8 luck because fortune is looking grim that you will survive this battle. A critical poisoned hit is an interesting take and one that may be quite deadly or it may simply mean you take the critical hit + poison is now sapping your luck and bringing you closer to death. You're lucky to even be alive. :smallsmile:

… wait, nothing's changed? Um… "refluffing HP as 'luck', allowing them to be spent out of combat alla d20 Star Wars Force powers"?

Well, I can see a lot of incentive to a) get lucky; b) kill anyone who attempts to engage in "social combat", just like in Exalted. Actually, now the optimal course of action for the Determinator is to kill children playing hide and seek, people speaking in words with more than one syllable - basically anyone who offers them a check that they cannot pass on a "1". And they can legitimately call it self defense.

Wow. Any girl who turns down an adventurer gets killed in self defense. That's… quite the dysfunctional society. :smalleek:


Yes, I quite liked that about the Star Wars system. It gives players an incentive to NOT take damage instead of the Barbarian thinking "I have 140 hp and the dragon can only do 38 per round. We need to end this in three turns but I'll be fine."

So, you want to incentivize clever cowards over bold heroes?

I mean, I tend to play a predominance of cowards anyway, so I'd either be in saner company, or Resurrection would be a lot more common.


A valid suggestion and definitely capable of adding granularity to the mix of class abilities. I saw it as clerics able to provide divine blessings that protect from further harm and level ups providing additional amounts due to divine favor. Blessed by the gods means lucky as heck. But I wouldn't be averse to letting other classes fill the shoes too and it makes the system that much more partitioned which is good.

Not all gods are gods of luck.


Oh I wouldn't dream of modelling social combat. I said this today in another thread but let the talking parts remain about talking, you don't need more than the one roll to know if it worked. But what it does provide is a resource to gain or lose during social encounters. What's the limit on the number of times you can fail to persuade the king? How many times can a rogue reasonably try to pickpocket people in a crowd? Is he going to sit there all day doing it? Not if he's taking "luck damage" on a failure, or even spending some luck to even attempt it at all. If at all possible, players will carefully consider the impact of their more risky ventures out of combat as they already do in combat.

"Consequences? We don't need no stinking consequences!" That's the tagline of the skill system.

Which… certainly makes the heroes more heroic, knowing that they'll get away with it.

Wait. Now heroes are cowards in combat, and heroic out of combat. Is this… intentional? To deincentivize combat solutions, and Incentivize noncombat actions?

If so… is keeping the skill system boring (and making combat more fatal) really the answer? It's like, "this party of the game isn't fun. I know - let's make the rest of the game unfun, too!" It's the same logic as "the Fighter can't play the game. I know - let's make everyone else unable to play the game, too!".


Personally the idea of someone routinely surviving deadly situations just because they are lucky strains my suspension of disbelief far more than the idea that they are simply inhumanly durable. And that's before accounting for the ridiculous situations that arise as a result. Oh, Barbarians aren't tougher than Wizards they are just more lucky! Oh, that vampire isn't sucking my blood to restore its own vitality it's just... uh.... making me less lucky, while also reducing the amount of luck that I can have, and improving its own luck in the process. Oh, I didn't actually fall into the lava, I just, uh, hovered above it for a turn I guess? But oh boy do I feel less lucky now!

Movie logic? Nah, even then, Barbarians and Vampires and whatnot will need careful inspection.

Fighters should get more HP than Barbarians; "blessed by the gods" Clerics and Paladins even more. Wizards specialized in Luck magic will become a big thing (with lots of HP).

Vampiric effects would be luck-stealing? Or… convert meat to luck or vice versa as needed?

Would "Flurry of Misses" suck away HP, adding injury to insult?

Targeting the weak save, already the optimal choice, becomes even more important. As does having a bag of puppies to AoE, or a captive Troll for your Crusader to performance pummel.

Trollblooded gets weird. Persistent Mass Lesser Vigor is king.

Heal chambers should be a social/societal norm. Work breaks to the Heal chamber become mandatory.

Monsters with no luck, only meat likely die out unless the rules are revisited very carefully. All those failure checks they make could prove fatal. Similar for low-level humanoids. The 15-minute workday becomes the non-adventurer standard, too, until Tippyverse Heal chambers become standard in every household.

"Just say yes" becomes a social norm, because societies of "no" died out already.

"If at first you don't succeed, quit" is the survivors' slogan.

That's all the dysfunctions I see of the top of my head.

Kyutaru
2020-08-18, 08:37 AM
Well that's quite a post, Quertus. I feel rightly critted and slain. Luck was not on my side.

I'll have take some time to decompress the implications posed here and figure out how to alleviate them in the system I have planned.

kyoryu
2020-08-18, 09:44 AM
So in Fate, this is basically how it works. Stress (the HP equivalent) is pretty explicitly not "meat" - it recovers at the end of every Conflict.

There's a couple things worth noting I think

1. Running out of Stress (and Consequences, which is where "damage" comes into play) doesn't mean you're dead.... it means you're Taken Out, which just means you can't continue any more in the fight for some reason, up to the person that took you out.
2. It recovers at the end of every Conflict, so getting into an argument doesn't make it harder to fight (except see below)
3. The "luck" bits are pulled out into Fate Points. Fate Points can be used for a number of things, including getting bonuses and rerolls. Fate Points regenerate more slowly, and their use is always optional. It's generally recommended that abilities not be powered by Fate Points.
4. Actual "damage" is in the form of Consequences, which can be real injury, but can also be social consequences, mental trauma, etc. There are a limited number of these available
5. Stress only really "exists" in Conflicts - the equivalent of fight scenes, but they can be social as well.

Quertus
2020-08-18, 10:01 AM
Well that's quite a post, Quertus. I feel rightly critted and slain. Luck was not on my side.

I'll have take some time to decompress the implications posed here and figure out how to alleviate them in the system I have planned.

Lol. I'm still chuckling as I write this.

I'm… a tough critic. I wouldn't bother roasting the system in a wall of text unless it met one (or more) of several criteria, such as: interesting, good idea, toxic (social combat using combat rules is borderline toxic). I find the idea you have suggested interesting, and am curious whether there could be an implementation that produces the game you want (whether I want that game myself or not).

Honestly, I can think of several ways such a system could be fun, but… I'm a natural at "gaming the system" - it's not unfair to say that doing so is part of the fun for me.

Still… despite the seeming oddities, there are ways that this system feels more aligned with "reality" than most I've seen. It deserves further though.

Jay R
2020-08-18, 07:42 PM
Luck doesn't work that way any more than physical wounds do.

I understand the temptation. Hit points don't simulate how wounds actually work, so let's call them something else that does work that way.

Unfortunately, nothing works the way hit points do.

Hit points are simple, clear, easy to use, and inaccurate as a simulation. Any explanation that attempts to portray them as an accurate simulation must therefore be incorrect.

And if you try to redefine them as "luck", you will have to redefine everything connected to them. Constitution isn't health-based; it's the gods' favor that allows you more luck. They aren't potions of healing; they are bottled serendipity. A Manual of Bodily Health has to be renamed a Manual of Karma.

And once you have finished, you will have more unanswered questions than you started with. Why do dwarves have more luck than other races? Why do elves have less?

In my graduate Mathematical Simulation class, the professor said, "You can only get out of a simulation what the designers put into it." His example was that you can't separate simulated shoppers into different categories if the simulation model treats them all identically.

HP is a simplistic simulation of the ability to continue to act, deliberately over-simplified for game purposes because the workings of a human body are far too complex to simulate quickly and easily.

The HP simulation is not complex enough to represent either luck or meat, or anything other than how long the character can continue to act.

If you think about the details of a non-detailed simulation too much you start asking questions like, "Why is a Danish Prince speaking English in iambic pentameter?, or "How can we see into this person's private bedroom?"

Or even, "Why don't they all run away when the monster's theme music starts playing?"

These questions pull you away from the entertainment.

Stop thinking about the HP model. Use it to think about the ogres who are attacking your wizard.

Tanarii
2020-08-18, 07:52 PM
Works for me. That's pretty close to how I view hit points anyway.

What doesn't work for me is then adding stuff that bypasses hit points. Just run the game as is with any non-reducing-to-0 'hit' as "it would have been a killing/crippling blow, but ..."

Samwich
2020-08-18, 08:48 PM
Blades in the Dark has a similar concept. Each member of the party has 10 stress points, and stress gets used for everything. Want to improve a roll? Spend stress. Want to rewrite yourself into a more favorable position? Spend stress. Want to avoid the penalties from an attack? Spend stress. But once you're out of stress, you're in trouble. What's more, the only way to get stress back is to spend valuable time between scores indulging your character's vice. It could be useful to take a look at the system if you want inspiration for this idea.