If a mouse has 100 health, how much health does a human have?

[Asmayus]

I'm toying around with a health system that works in health pools of 25 points. The idea is that if you loose all the health in a pool, (i.e. take 25+ damage) you need a healing item to get it back, but the active pool regenerates after combat.

So if I took 30 damage I'd loose one 25 point pool, but the 5 health lost from the second pool would regenerate after combat was done.

The new tomb raider has this mechanic and served as the inspiration

I assigned humans 100 health split into 4 pools of 25 points each. I got to thinking about other creatures then. If you give a dog 50 health (2 pools) then what about something smaller, like a cat? 25? But then what about mice and other small animals?

I decided to try a little rebalance by giving humans more health, and while playing around with the numbers I arrived at the question above:

If a mouse has 100 health, how much health should a human have?

I think it could make for some interesting discussion, so I'm going to humbly ask the playground for input. I'd also be interested to see how you rate other creatures like wolves, buffalo, gazelle, giraffe, elephants, hippos, turtles, etc.

Asmayus

[TuggyNE]

What defines health, in this case? Is it purely physical ability to tolerate damage? Is it metaphysical ability to reduce or negate the effects of damage? Some combination? Or something else?

[Asmayus]

It's physical damage. How much harder is it to punch an elephant to death compared to, say, a Gorilla? or a Lion? Assuming you can punch with immunity, of course.

I'm ignoring magic and technology here, since physical damage is a moot point when firearms and bows and swords etc get involved.

[warty goblin]

The new Tomb Raider just has straight up regenerating health so far as I can determine.

And wouldn't it just be easier to give smaller creatures smaller wound pools? So instead of a mouse getting 25 hitpoints to a pool, maybe it only gets 7. It's total health can then be quite small, but it can still suffer wounds from things that would wound a mouse, while being absolutely obliterated by things that would only slightly damage your average human. And it prevents your average human from having annoyingly large and difficult to work with mountains of hitpoints.

[Kane0]

Interesting concept, sounds fun.

I'd split it down a little, based on size and relative toughness.
Tiny things like insects, mice, bats, etc have one segment of HP.
Small things like cats and dogs have two segments
Average sized things like humans have three segments
Larger things like big cats and bears and have four
Truly big things like mammoths and the like have five or more.

Then you increase or decrease the amount of HP in each segment based on the creatures CON (assuming D&D) or general toughness, so dogs have slightly more HP than cats despite them both having 2 segments of HP.
Although you would have to be careful not to make it too complex.

Edit: Alternatively, everything has three or so segments of HP and the amount of HP to be split between the segments differs.

[Grinner]

If I may be so bold, I would suggest that a human would also have one hundred. The difference is that a human can endure injury better than a mouse can.

[Re'ozul]

Being a mathematically inclined university student, I tend to come up with the most ludicrous complex systems.

When I saw the thread title just now, my first thought therefore was.

The human also has 100 health. Damage taken will be calculated differently based on size and Constitution score (or analogue).

(S)ize factors in cubed (as three-dimensional beings)
(C)onstitution factors in as squared quotient (score/10, squared).

D=Damage taken; d= base damage of attacker; s=size of attacker
therefore
D=d*(s/S)³*(10/C)²

Stupidly complex, but thats what came to my mind.

[LordErebus12]

perhaps 25 plus 25 per size above fine?

[Grinner]

perhaps 25 plus 25 per size above fine?

If two bullets can put down a human, then what would four do to a dragon?

[Tragak]

Would working with pools of 10 instead of 25 possibly work better? More flexibility for which animals are harder to kill than each other?

Fine: 10
Diminutive: 20
Tiny: 40
Small: 80
Medium: 160
Large: 320
Huge: 640
Gargantuan: 1280
Colossal: 2560

[LordErebus12]

If two bullets can put down a human, then what would four do to a dragon?

generally one bullet is enough, but if you need double tap, then yeah.

the thing is, this is just the base health, doesn't mean it cant be increased, right?

[Asmayus]

I've arrived at the same general consensus as ye: Max Health is determined by size, while number of segments is determined by Con (or analogue)

A creature with more con gets fewer segments, as this translates into more health regained for less healing. If you have 100 health and 3 segments but loose 2 and a half, you need to spend 2 healing items to regain full health; but if you have 4 segments and take the same damage you'll need to spend 3 health items.

So segments represent the creatures resistance to damage, in effect.

@warty goblin: you are correct, I'm thinking of Mass effect 3. Not sure how I got them confused :P

@Re'ozul:is the big S in that equation Segments? or something else? You'll have to forgive me, I'm not very mathematically inclined.

[Spiryt]

Slightly above 9000.

[Deepbluediver]

And interesting concept; I think that it might work to base HP pool size on creature size.

So a mouse and a human could have the same Constitution equating to the same number of segments or pools, but a human could endure much more damage from the same weapon or attack.

Health Pool Size

or something like that.

[Yakk]

Instead of "pools of 25", I'd go with "wound points" and "toughness".

Your "toughness" recovers (at least between combats, maybe even between rounds). If your "toughness" is overwealmed, you take a "wound point".

"toughness" goes up linearly with size -- consider it "thickness of skin".

"wound points" goes up with the square of size. It is the amount of "skin area" you can have wounds on, in a very rough sense.

A 4" linear size rodent is 1 toughness and 1 wound point.

A 32" linear size cat is 8x larger, so 8 toughness and 64 wound points.

A 64" human (5'4") is 2x larger, so 16 toughness and 256 wound points.

A 10' 8" hill giant is 2x larger, so 32 toughness and 1024 wound points.

A 16' stone giant is 1.5x larger, so 48 toughness and 2304 wound points.

A 32' long dragon is 2x larger, so 96 toughness and 9216 wound points.

A 64' tall tarrasque is 2x larger, so 192 toughness and 36864 wound points.

Meh, doesn't work well. But it does point out how huge dragons are. :)

[LordErebus12]

Meh, doesn't work well. But it does point out how huge dragons are. :)

this is partially why I thought of giving a size bonus to HP in 3.5. the hp never quite reflects how tough something is when they go up in size. in fact most larger creatures are basically crippled by their size.

toughness might be the way to go.

[Deepbluediver]

this is partially why I thought of giving a size bonus to HP in 3.5. the hp never quite reflects how tough something is when they go up in size. in fact most larger creatures are basically crippled by their size.

Damage, health, and HP in D&D has always been somewhat abstract and non-realistic. I could kill a person fairly easily with a pocket knife if I hit an artery or something, so players killing a dragon or something with normal-sized weapons doesn't seem like it's outside the realm of possibility.

Also, if we assume that humans are tough enough to shrug off an axe-to-the-face, and a colossal sized monster is several hundred times their size (by mass) then attempting to kill it via HP damage is just not a real possibility (it's like attacking a moose with a BB gun). Maybe it doesn't seem very realistic, but it makes for a more playable game, I think. You could make that argument that nigh-unkillable creatures would present an opportunity for players to think outside the box and set up a trap or raise an army or even avoid the fight entirely, but D&D isn't really set up that way.

If you to show that unusually-sized creatures are tougher (or weaker, I guess) than normal, maybe use a modified version of the bonus HP chart for Constructs.

Table: Bonus HP per HD
{table=head]Creature Size|Bonus HP
Fine|

-3

Diminutive|

-2

Tiny|

-1

Small|

0

Medium|

0

Large|

0

Huge|

2

Gargantuan|

5

Colossal|

10

[/table]

Rather than having a flat value, I made it per HD, so the HD large creatures have doesn't get lost in the crush of bonuses. So with 2 gargantuan creatures, one of 10 HD and the other of 15, you will still have one being significantly harder to kill than the other.

I left small, medium, and large creatures all at 0, because those are the sizes PCs are most likely to be, and I don't want to unbalance things to much. If you have other ways of controlling PC size, feel free to alter things further.

Ideally, this would also help sort out the problem of needing monsters with 3-4 times as many HD as PC's to survive more than one round in combat.

[Yakk]

d20 type game with wounds and toughness. And while we are at it, hit dice you roll to soak damage, and dodge/parry dice too.

Defence Dice: Defence dice represent your ability to avoid being hurt, via skill, luck or other means. When used, they go away until recovered. There are two basic ways to recover defence dice -- taking a full round action second wind once per encounter recovers 1/2 (round down) of your max defence dice in each category. Defence dice also recover after 1 minute out of combat (which also recovers your second wind).

Wounds: At any point you can double your rolled defence dice and take a wound. You can repeat this, doubling the result again and again, each time at the cost of 1 Wound. This means that part of the blow got through. Wounds take a long time to recover.

Defence Pools: There are two basic kinds of defence pools: Toughness and Avoidance (Dodge, Parry, Block). Various specialized creatures have other pools, such as Rogue's Luck, Wizard's Counterspell, and Paladin's Divine Favour.

Stats: Your physical stats are Strength, Health, Size, and Dexterity. Your mental stats are Will (strength of thought), Keen (speed of thought), Aware (ability to avoid distraction) and Understanding (ability to model other people's thought processes). These can act as bonuses to various defence dice.

Armor: Armor and Size both act as a bonus to your Toughness defence dice when rolling to soak weapon and other similar damage.

Size could act as a penalty on Avoidance dice.

A human might vary in size from -2 to +2. Dragons might have a +30 or more size modifier.