Grittier (?) HP

[Notafish]

These are some concepts that I'm playing with for a 'heartbreaker' d20 system that I'm fooling around with designing for my own amusement, but I'd like feedback on these mechanics specifically.

Let's say you have a system that enables/encourages high-stakes combat. Often, you will have some sort of hit point system to measure "damage" incurred during combat. Although successful attacks are usually described as connecting in some way(thus implying that "Hit Points are meat", it's rare for damage to immediately lead to consequences for players - sometimes, the only mechanical effects of damage occur once a character has been reduced to 0hp, and that effect is often "the character is dead/unconscious". I generally don't mind this, but I don't love it, particularly when HP advances with level. What is the reason that 10th-level character can shrug off a hit that would have flattened them at first level? If it's because they are physically tougher at 10th level, it feels odd for all but the beefiest characters. If it is because the hit points represent something more abstract than physical toughness, then it poses a problem for description at the table.

Some systems that I have read about but haven't played incorporate "death spiral" mechanics to simulate the real-world problems of taking non-fatal wounds. These generally seem more punishing to deal with that I would want to deal with in a casual game. Other systems have a statistic that is more clearly not bodily toughness like Stress as a way to track non-fatal damage. I actually like this, but this seems to show up more in new-school rules-light/narrative-focused games.

Anyway, here are some ideas that I've had for slightly more dangerous-feeling hit point systems. Which is your favorite? What other ways might I approach the problem of making damage feel less like a video-game health bar?

1) At certain damage thresholds make an "injury roll"

On your character sheet (or enemy stat block), note the point where you are "bloodied" (I think 1/2 hp was used in 4e, but other systems could be used). At each point below this threshold, you must make a roll on an injury table , but as long as your hp are above 0, you aren't dying.

2) Small number of hit points, damage goes to stats after HP=0

This option would involve having some small number of hit points (maybe your equal to your CON score plus bonuses from armor in a DnD-like), that could be hacked at without affecting the character's effectiveness in battle. Once hit points are depleted, damage goes to all physical statistics. If one of your physical stats drops to 0, only then are you fully incapacitated.
In this variant, I think benefits from levels could be added in a recovery phase in which the consequence-free hit points are replenished at the beginning of a character's turn (if you have hit dice remaining, you can spend them as a free action to recover hit points on your turn)


3) Characters have a stress tracker as well as a small pool of hit points.

Here, we give characters two resources to mitigate damage, only one of which (hit points) represents physical damage, while the other (stress) represents the extraordinary measures a creature takes to avoid damage. Generally, creatures will want to mark stress first, but if stress is a resource that can also be spent to improve their own rolls, they might choose to take their chances. This option could be combined with option 2 for a simple way to bring consequences other than unconsciousness into gameplay.

[NichG]

What I did in a set of systems was to make it so that characters had resource pools they could spend to avoid consequences and the cost would depend on how well the attack roll/how powerful the thing they were dodging was. But it was a always framed as an active thing like 'dodging' or 'deflecting' or some other kind of active shaking-it-off. If a consequence hit, it would go directly to stat damage, stats didn't increase much over the course of play, and weapon damage tended to be such that a successful hit from a 'serious' battlefield weapon would kill a character with an average vitality stat like 50% of the time. I used the same system for things like mind control spells and the like. At the same time, there was always a 'cheaper' dodge option available that would block the serious consequences but not block some side-effect or collateral effect.

So for example, someone might use a Dominate spell and roll a 30 against the character's defense of 15. The character could spend 15 Mind points to make up the full difference and just throw off the effect, or half of that (7) to shake off only the full domination but instead be Dazed for a round or something. If someone instead used a Phantasmal Killer spell or a Paralyze spell or a 'Edit the Soul' spell or a 'Turn into a mushroom' spell it'd run the same way, but as long as the target had enough points they can buy it off. Meaning that it encourages people starting a fight with cheaper probing attacks to deplete the resource pools, then finish with more expensive/more potent things that have the consequences they want to apply.

At the same time, if for whatever reason a character is rendered helpless against a form of attack like that, it would go straight to consequences if it beat their passive resistances. So someone holding a sword to your throat could bypass your Physical pool entirely, etc.

That meant that 'getting stabbed in the eye by a dagger' was basically always lethal to a character, and character growth explicitly just meant that they had more ways of avoiding being in that situation in the first place.

You could also have monsters with more 'meat' by just giving them a far from normal range Vitality stat, but a smaller Physical pool. That would imply that the monster has less ability to shake off exotic physical consequences (like being grappled or something) but you could stab all day. Or just give the monster something like DR.

[Deepbluediver]

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for but....

It always kinda bothered me that losing HP might make you closer to death, but it never made you less effectively OFFENSIVELY. A high-level character would deal just as much damage and have the exact same spellpower at 1HP as they did at 100% HP. And that bothered me.

So my homebrewed version gives penalties at 2/3rds HP and 1/3rd HP that apply to attack-rolls, spell-save DC, sometimes skillchecks, etc etc etc.
You're right that 4th addition had something similar, and the main criticism there was that once you START losing you tend to KEEP losing because being damaged makes it harder to claw yourself back from the brink of defeat. But that's not bad, IMO, it just different. And it's not impossible to overcome, it just requires a different focus on balance (and also emphasizes the value of in-combat healing, which tends to be undervalued in D&D-based systems).

Some people don't like it because it's not "optimal", but making every encounter a game of rocket-tag has it's drawbacks, too.

[Ionathus]

It's not about being "non-optimal", it's about the problems of a Death Spiral.

In a fight where your combat effectiveness goes down as you lose HP, the side that's winning is going to keep winning. It's a snowball effect as the weaker side gets less and less ability to fight back. All fights become "swing-y" as a result.

Plus, it's just not as fun. The more damage you take, the worse you are at everything? That promises that the battle will turn into more of a slog as the fight progresses.

Sure, there are ways to mitigate this. But I think HP is just a necessary abstraction to keep the game from getting weird and difficult as a fight progresses.

[Notafish]

It's not about being "non-optimal", it's about the problems of a Death Spiral.

In a fight where your combat effectiveness goes down as you lose HP, the side that's winning is going to keep winning. It's a snowball effect as the weaker side gets less and less ability to fight back. All fights become "swing-y" as a result.

Plus, it's just not as fun. The more damage you take, the worse you are at everything? That promises that the battle will turn into more of a slog as the fight progresses.

Sure, there are ways to mitigate this. But I think HP is just a necessary abstraction to keep the game from getting weird and difficult as a fight progresses.

For me, I'm alright with retreating from a battle that isn't going well, and some level of death spiral might add to the sense of danger. That said, having more failed attack rolls on both sides due to injury seems pretty un-fun - I'd rather have fleeting injuries lower AC than lower a bonus to hit.

[Deepbluediver]

It's not about being "non-optimal", it's about the problems of a Death Spiral.

In a fight where your combat effectiveness goes down as you lose HP, the side that's winning is going to keep winning. It's a snowball effect as the weaker side gets less and less ability to fight back. All fights become "swing-y" as a result.

Plus, it's just not as fun. The more damage you take, the worse you are at everything? That promises that the battle will turn into more of a slog as the fight progresses.

Sure, there are ways to mitigate this. But I think HP is just a necessary abstraction to keep the game from getting weird and difficult as a fight progresses.
I admitted to the criticisms of 4th edition's "death-spiral" but I see two main responses to this: first, it can be mitigated with in-combat healing.

To which I've heard people say "in-combat healing isn't optimal" and "what if no one wants to be a healer". For the former, in-combat healing is sub-optimal because of the mechanics as written. Chance the mechanics and you change the viability. Similar to another "sub-optimal" playstyle, add some kind of TAUNT (https://www.wowhead.com/spell=355/taunt) mechanic and suddenly tanking becomes workable.
And for the latter, you could just as easily say "what if no one wants to play a character with a HD larger than a d6?" or "what if no one wants to play a class with [insert critical skill here]" or "what if no one wants to play any kind of caster/range-DPS". It's up to the party to create a balanced-ish group, to prepare to overcome certain challenges if they don't, and for the GM to present a reasonably encounter to the party.

And my second response, possibly more important, is that this mechanic need not ONLY apply to the PCs. It can and SHOULD (IMO) also apply to enemies, so that as you reduce your target's HP they also become weaker. Reducing your adversary's saves to the point where a single SOD ability could reliably end the encounter would then be a good strategy, and it can ratchet up the tension when you're both on the verge of death.

Yes, without some other tweaks the mechanic is not without flaws, but the game isn't free of those already.
Sometimes I think people get up in the mindset of "well with this one change you don't fix EVERYTHING there for you should forget it forever"; no you don't abandon a good idea because it's not perfect immediately, you just acknowledge what else you need to fix it and then work on that next.



For me, I'm alright with retreating from a battle that isn't going well, and some level of death spiral might add to the sense of danger. That said, having more failed attack rolls on both sides due to injury seems pretty un-fun - I'd rather have fleeting injuries lower AC than lower a bonus to hit.
I also take issue with D&D's problem that its actually kinda hard to tell when a fight is going badly (something that making every combat a game of rocket-tag only exacerbates) but that even if you do realize it in time, many monsters run faster than you and "getting away" can be quite difficult on it's own, sort-of encouraging every encounter to be a fight to the death.
That's probably a discussion for a different thread, though.

[ahyangyi]

I feel the 4e "grittier hp" thing isn't the bloodied condition, but the "healing surge", which is genuinely a second resource pool. If you are out of healing surges, you are out of healing and that's a critical condition in itself.

It might be actually a good point to start: you can make characters lose healing surges for massive damage, or for taking damage while bloodied. It won't put the combat into a death spiral but it still hurt a lot.

Other existing D&D mechanics might be death checks: when something bad happens you gain one death check; you won't actually die because you are still above 0 hp, but failed death checks accumulate, and that puts you in a real danger if you ever hit 0 hp later. And also won't cause death spiral.


I admitted to the criticisms of 4th edition's "death-spiral" but I see two main responses to this: first, it can be mitigated with in-combat healing.

To which I've heard people say "in-combat healing isn't optimal" and "what if no one wants to be a healer".

4E had many problems, but I don't remember these being among them. Minor action healing was efficient and characters can self-heal via Second Wind. The thing against in-combat healing is more 3e? Also, isn't the 4e defender mechanics basically "taunt"?

[Deepbluediver]

I feel the 4e "grittier hp" thing isn't the bloodied condition, but the "healing surge", which is genuinely a second resource pool. If you are out of healing surges, you are out of healing and that's a critical condition in itself.

It might be actually a good point to start: you can make characters lose healing surges for massive damage, or for taking damage while bloodied. It won't put the combat into a death spiral but it still hurt a lot.
Yeah I'm not sure about giving away healing-surges to EVERY class, (played well some classes might barely need them) but as a kind of option I think they are really useful. It's basically what 5E's Fighter has- the "Second Wind" ability.


Other existing D&D mechanics might be death checks: when something bad happens you gain one death check; you won't actually die because you are still above 0 hp, but failed death checks accumulate, and that puts you in a real danger if you ever hit 0 hp later. And also won't cause death spiral.
I've never seen a version of "massive damage" that I really liked, especially since crits already exist, but this has some appeal. Will need to think more about it.


4E had many problems, but I don't remember these being among them. Minor action healing was efficient and characters can self-heal via Second Wind. The thing against in-combat healing is more 3e? Also, isn't the 4e defender mechanics basically "taunt"?
Yeah, 4E had some good ideas IMO, and at least some of the hate it got was because it wasn't 3.5 any more. Unfortunately I never really got to play 4th edition so my knowledge is all surface-level.
And yes, one solution to "casters spending spells and actions to heal in combat is inefficient" could be "give every player free at-will self-healing". I'm not sure it's a GOOD solution but I admit it's a thing you can do that addresses that one particular problem.

[D&D_Fan]

Here's my brutal survival rules that are fun to incorporate:

Make sleep part of HP, can't fight without rest. Each day, subtract max HP for each day not slept, and it multiplies over time, as you become more tired. Combat, carrying heavy objects, and travel in general makes you more tired. The only way to remove the HP loss is sleep.

The system also incorporates food and water into HP. After all, you're going to be slightly weaker when hungry and dehydrated.

Say you start with 90 HP. 1 day without food is -1/30th off total HP, one day without water is -1/3rd off total HP.
One day without food and water, and your hit points are less than 2/3rds as effective as they should be. (90 -> 57)
Day two without food and water, and your hit points are even worse. (57 -> 24)
Day three and you're just dead. (24 -> 0)

This means you can't fight unless you're well fed and hydrated. Would you want to be in a gunfight or a sword duel when you're seeing spots and woozy and your stomach feels like you've been stabbed already. Even worse, recovering HP with food and water harder is even harder. Eating food will heal slowly when at low HP, unless you've fully rehydrated first. So players can't heal too quickly.

Eating bad food and drinking bad water will only worsen hunger and thirst, as well as give disease.

For disease, my system says that while ill, you can't gain HP, healing only helps speed up a recovery counter. And further exposure and exertion will set that counter back. There's even a limit to how much can be healed in a day. Being stabbed on a rusty nail could give someone a 20 point illness counter, and only 3 max recovery points a day, and it locks up their muscles, effectively paralyzing them as an additional effect. They'll need to eat and drink and sleep frequently to stay alive.

Being stabbed in general is bad, since bleeding occurs, and that's gradual blood loss. But... Can't bandages stop that? Wrong! You need to clean and disinfect wounds. Otherwise, disease and illness. And then on top of that, too much activity reopens wounds, more bleeding. And healing a wound is similar to disease. They'll need to eat and drink and sleep frequently to stay alive.

Weapons can also break bones. That's more damage just using your broken limbs. And more healing, recovery, etc... Need to rest, stay off limbs.

And conditions stack. A player can have 3 days no sleep, hunger 7, thirst 1, 2 wounds with 5 stages, 1 wound with 10 stages, and a 20 stage vomiting disease.

In this HP model, players will think twice before every choice, every action must be weighed, because if they don't it's the end of the road.

[Yakk]

D&D combat was designed for cinematic sword duels between champions.

Two high end warriors face off and chip away at each other's position, until one wins.

Since then, they boosted weapon damage; originally, a level 10 fighter got 1 attack that did about the same damage per hit as a level 1 fighter did, except it was more likely to land. And the level 10 fighter would usually have better armor.

This led to extremely slow combats (many rounds), but not much going on in each round.

More attacks where added later to reduce the round count.

But that is where it started; slow attrition based combat.

If you don't want attrition based combat, the D&D combat engine might not be what you want. There are lots of RPGs without attrition based combat; or you could try adding such a system to D&D.

I'm not sure if just gluing an injury system onto D&D is the best plan, but it might work.

[Ionathus]

And my second response, possibly more important, is that this mechanic need not ONLY apply to the PCs. It can and SHOULD (IMO) also apply to enemies, so that as you reduce your target's HP they also become weaker. Reducing your adversary's saves to the point where a single SOD ability could reliably end the encounter would then be a good strategy, and it can ratchet up the tension when you're both on the verge of death.

Yes, without some other tweaks the mechanic is not without flaws, but the game isn't free of those already.
Sometimes I think people get up in the mindset of "well with this one change you don't fix EVERYTHING there for you should forget it forever"; no you don't abandon a good idea because it's not perfect immediately, you just acknowledge what else you need to fix it and then work on that next.

I know it's not your intention but it kinda feels like you're putting words in my mouth here. I'm not in the design philosophy camp of "if you can't fix EVERYTHING then you should never try." I'm happy to tinker with new mechanics and try to work them into the game to make things more engaging or interesting.

My issue with this specific change is that it feels like paddling upstream. Everything in D&D combat is geared around HP working the way it does, and changing it to have damage thresholds where you get progressively weaker would require a lot of tinkering. Even if you made everything kinda work together, it would still inevitably make every combat feel more swingy, which I really don't think D&D 5e needs more of.

D&D's whole shtick is that the PCs are heroes going above and beyond what normal folks could do. I'm okay with whatever abstractions (adrenaline, "running out of luck", or good old fashioned Meat Points) let me play that specific game. If I wanted a game where the combat was less about attrition and more about being one bad roll away from doom, I'd just rather play a different game that was designed around those mechanics rather than run back and forth picking up cabbages for seven hours (https://i.redd.it/ahuhsbch22ba1.jpg). :smalltongue:

[Notafish]

D&D's whole shtick is that the PCs are heroes going above and beyond what normal folks could do. I'm okay with whatever abstractions (adrenaline, "running out of luck", or good old fashioned Meat Points) let me play that specific game. If I wanted a game where the combat was less about attrition and more about being one bad roll away from doom, I'd just rather play a different game that was designed around those mechanics rather than run back and forth picking up cabbages for seven hours (https://i.redd.it/ahuhsbch22ba1.jpg). :smalltongue:

(To emphasize: this is just my opinion) My issue with the 5e HP system as it stands is partly that HP working the way that it does feels like a kludgey solution to the problem of keeping creatures in the fight long enough to do cool things, but it can lead to combats that feel less dynamically heroic and more sloppily tedious. The other, related part is that the natural way for me and most people I play with to describe HP is Meat Points, but there are no apparent effects of depletion even after action (and no guidance to DMs on how to handle this problem in the narration). This doesn't ruin my interest in rolling icosahedrons to pretend-fight dragons in dungeons, but it has piqued my interest in bolting on some other systems (including from games that I might like less than 5e overall like FATE)

[Deepbluediver]

I know it's not your intention but it kinda feels like you're putting words in my mouth here. I'm not in the design philosophy camp of "if you can't fix EVERYTHING then you should never try." I'm happy to tinker with new mechanics and try to work them into the game to make things more engaging or interesting.
Sorry, I apologize for that. Sometimes I get myself whipped up and go overboard- I will reign it in and I appreciate your patience.


My issue with this specific change is that it feels like paddling upstream. Everything in D&D combat is geared around HP working the way it does, and changing it to have damage thresholds where you get progressively weaker would require a lot of tinkering. Even if you made everything kinda work together, it would still inevitably make every combat feel more swingy, which I really don't think D&D 5e needs more of.
I agree with you that combat in 5th addition feels very much like a game of rocket-tag (assuming that's what you meant). In some ways I think that's kinda an out-growth of the other 3.5 issues that got carried along, though.
Once people decided that in-combat healing wasn't efficient and tanking wasn't viable without a Taunt mechanic, WotC just kinda dropped any viable build except for MAXIMUM DAMAGE!!! There's basically only 1 healing spell, which in my experience does not keep up with damage output. And the only 2 taunt mechanics I know of are 1 each in a Fighter and Barbarian archetypes, respectively. So not impossible, but very limited.

Another impression that I'm getting is that WotC feels like this is the only way to put tension in a fight- that makes it feel sort of like an online MMORPG (think WoW, etc). There a "tanky" character might survive for a mere few seconds without healing in a combat designed to go on for several minutes. But that few seconds is enough time for healing to take effect, compared to DPS character who die instantly. So the tension in an MMORPG comes from rapid-but-predictable responses, but D&D shouldn't be like that. At least it doesn't have to be like that all the time- combat can/should be more about solving it like a puzzle with the most efficient use of resources, so you don't run out before you have a chance to rest.

As I said before though, having a declining performance isn't an insurmountable problem, I think- it just requires an appropriate response. If anything, it simply emphasizes the importance of planning & tactics, ambushes, ranged attacks, and of course in-combat healing. Instead of just charging ahead and tanking every encounter with your face. (not trying to put words in your mouth, I am 100% guilty of this playstyle myself sometimes)


D&D's whole shtick is that the PCs are heroes going above and beyond what normal folks could do. I'm okay with whatever abstractions (adrenaline, "running out of luck", or good old fashioned Meat Points) let me play that specific game. If I wanted a game where the combat was less about attrition and more about being one bad roll away from doom, I'd just rather play a different game that was designed around those mechanics rather than run back and forth picking up cabbages for seven hours (https://i.redd.it/ahuhsbch22ba1.jpg). :smalltongue:
Again, I agree with you, and I think there are a few simple tweaks you could make which would help, such as boosting HP a bit. In my (admittedly limited) experience, 5E is sort of at the "1 or 2 bad rounds away from death" anyway, and non-tanky characters could easily be only a single round of attacks away from making death-saves. Even tanky characters can't survive for long if they are getting hit, and boosting your AC to reliably keep up with enemy attacks seems difficult at best. Meanwhile maximized damage is pretty straightforward.
So it seems to me like you're kinda penalized for trying to play smart and extend combat, or at least NOT penalized for simply going all-in on offense. That's the sort of issue, as I see it, that I'm hoping to address. If anything I'd like to see MORE types of options in D&D- depending on your group's class makeup you might go for different archetypes, different magic items, different feats or tacits, etc. I don't see that now, and in a lot of the "best archetype" lists it often seems heavily weighted towards the pure damage variants, which I think is a problem.

[JeenLeen]

The game Riddle of Steel had a very gritty health system, but I think it was very Death Spiral prone. You might enjoy reading part of it. It wouldn't be directly helpful -- there wasn't HP per se, but rather you get wounded and it impacts you depending on the location and severity of the wound -- but it might give some inspiration.

I found it a bit too granular to enjoy playing on a tabletop. If you hit someone, you then roll to see where you hit them (based on where you tried to hit them), and then (based on how well you hit them) what injury you did. And each body part could have different armor with different defensive stats to mitigate damage...
Anyway, lots of granularity. And it's really geared towards 1 vs 1 combat. But super gritty and a pretty cool system (at least if I had a computer to run combat).

I've heard the new Exalted's combat system works less like health tracking (HP) and more like gaining advantage in the combat until you can land a killing blow. But I never got the book so that's all second-hand.

General point being you might be able to draw inspiration from some non-D&D systems.

---

For what you wrote, I like your system #2.
#3 reminds me of Fate.

[Yakk]

My Heartbreaker more complex HP system had various defensive dice pools.

You'd expend them to soak an attack. You could take an injury to boost your soak.

Defending with Dodge against high-precision attacks was harder, and defending with Toughness against high-damage attacks was harder.

The dice pool was a bit like hit dice. But instead of being pre-rolled, you'd roll them at the time you are hit.

I played with a Risk-like system as well. So you'd have your action, and sometimes those action dice could be used to defend.