Hit Points

[dspeyer]

Every RPG I've played uses numeric hit points. And every one equivocates as to whether they're abstracted physical damage or ablative plot armor. Are you full strength at 1hp? Plot armor! Did a crossbow bolt get venom into your veins? Guess it broke skin after all. I find it frustrating that I don't know what my character is experiencing.

I realize that realistic frailty would make for dubious gameplay, and needing to keep medical textbooks at the table would be worse. Still, I wonder if there's something better than this.

Has anyone used a system they really liked?

[Koo Rehtorb]

In Burning Wheel you have a wound scale based on a combination of your power and forte stats with numbers assigned to "nothing", "superficial" "light" "midi" "severe" "traumatic" and "mortal" wounds. A normal person with 4 forte and power would have a wound scale of:

Superficial B3
Light B5
Midi B7
Severe B8
Traumatic B9
Mortal B10

Where the toughest person in the world with 8 forte and power would have a scale of:

Superficial B5
Light B9
Midi B11
Severe B12
Traumatic B13
Mortal B14

You track each wound individually so a strong person getting a good hit on you with a longsword might give you a B12 wound, enough to instantly kill most people and enough to put a severe wound on a very tough person. Each wound individually subtracts dice from all your skills and stats ranging from 1 to 4. If any of your stats drop to 0 you're incapacitated. Wounds stack for purposes of penalties, but you still track them individually for purposes of treatment and recovery so while four light wounds would give an equal penalty to one traumatic wound, you'll be healed of those light wounds inside of a day where you'll be injured for multiple months with the traumatic wound.

[Kaptin Keen]

Shadowrun has a health track, going from lightly wounded, over moderate, to serious, to dead. With associated penalties to all things. So you really shouldn't allow yourself to get wounded in that game.

I like the Shadowrun thing, but personally I don't really care. I'm fine with D&D full strength a 1 HP too.

[MrSandman]

Fate has stress and consequences. Stress tracks battle strain that doesn't result in real damage (or at least not very long lasting) and consequences track injuries and stuff that you'll need to heal afterwards.

[Thrudd]

You must not have played many games. Some games use a wound track that gives you penalties. Some games have injury charts for specific wounds and statuses. In many, damage minus resistance is calculated to determine if a wound occurs and how severe the wound is.


D&D's treatment of HP and damage types is strictly a game convenience, not meant to be realistic. Originally, more than 1 HP was heroic/super - in battles, every person in a unit was represented by 1HP, each point of damage meant one person dead. So for D&D, a PC was a single character that was as powerful as an entire unit of soldiers, or at least multiple soldiers. Combat wasn't modeled down to individual blows, you rolled a die to see who wins the fight. Following the original model, every single point of damage you take should be enough to kill a normal person. You are getting stabbed, crushed, burned, poisoned, etc. enough to kill a normal person every time you take 1HP of damage. But for some reason, you just don't die - the gods probably like you, or you're a super hero.

I agree, it is silly for poison and similar things to do HP damage, but they've borrowed that from video games. Poison used to be saving throw or die (or get a status effect) - the saving throw decides whether you got scratched enough for the poison to get into you (regardless of how much damage was done).

[Knaight]

There's lots of wound systems which handle particular wounds, or which use small numbers of HP which represent discrete injuries. On the small numbers of HP end GURPS and HEX are both solid, and for wounds I've got a soft spot for Fudge's methodology.

[Glorthindel]

I am a fan of WFRP's model - damage reduced by armour, few hit points, then a variety of minor to grisly critical effects on hits once the small hit point buffer is depleted. Since the critical effects cover everything from small cuts, stuns, all the way to breaks, loss of limbs, and death, its easier to view pure hit point loss as inconsequential, since all "real" injuries are handled on the critical table.

[Pelle]

In Torchbearer you get different conditions like Hungry, Angry, Afraid, Sick, Injured, etc with certain penalties, until you get the Dead condition. It's fun if you enjoy your character suffering...

[CharonsHelper]

There are Vitality/Wound systems (a variation of which I chose for my own system).

In them, the Vitality acts as the abstract, and Wounds are being physically hit. Generally all hits go to Vitality until it's gone (with exceptions for special attacks or critical hits etc. - depending upon the system). A lot of them have some sort of death spiral for the Wounds only.

I do like how it works for things like poison/venom - where they only activate when your Wounds take damage. I did something similar with a lot of psychic attacks. (I have a 3rd pool - Psyche, which is the mental version of Wounds. A lot of psychic attacks have their secondary mind control effect only if they deal Psyche damage.)

[John Campbell]

Hit points represent how awesome you are. The more awesome you are, the more numerous and extreme the traumas you can shrug off with no more ill effects than some contusions that are purely cosmetic and don't actually hamper your actions in any way. Maybe you have to favor the leg that just got an arrow through it for a little bit, but that's only for flavor. As soon as you actually need your leg again, it'll be back at full strength! Because you're that awesome.


I'm fond of the damage system from the older editions of Shadowrun. Characters have two 10-box damage tracks, Physical and Stun, and overflow boxes equal to their Body. One box of damage on either track adds a +1 TN penalty to basically all your tests. Three boxes raises it to +2. Six boxes is +3. Fill either of the tracks, and you fall down unconscious. Fill the Stun track, and further Stun damage overflows into the Physical track. Fill the Physical track, and further Physical damage overflows into Body. Fill your Body overflow, and you die. The penalties from the two tracks stack... if you've taken 1 box of Physical and 3 boxes of Stun, you take a +3 penalty... +1 from the Physical damage and +2 from the Stun.

Though everyone (and everything) has the same number of damage boxes in their damage track (though not necessarily the same number of tracks... for example, vehicles don't have a Stun track and can't take Stun damage, while spirits have a single combined track that all damage goes to), damage is resisted with Body (usually; sometimes other things like Willpower for magical damage), so tougher characters take less damage from the same attacks. Really tough characters may take little to no damage from weapons that would kill an ordinary person outright.

It's a d6 dice pool system, so a +1 TN penalty is significant, and the +6 it's possible to get to and still be up and theoretically functional is "ha ha you're useless". You really want to avoid getting hurt, because once you do, things start going downhill rapidly.

[Anonymouswizard]

I tend to use a system I've seen in several games and works quite well.

You have a certain amount of hp. Above X% (I've seen 50%, 75%, and 66%, and for a grittier game have considered using 80% to 90%) you function as normal. It might just be a 'below here you take penalties', or there might be several levels that give escalating penalties. Then at another level, normally 0, you fall unconscious, then at a lower level you become dead.

It has the advantage of being about as easy to track as D&D style hp, not making every got give penalties, but still making losing hp more meaningful than 'up or out'.

My homebrew system (originally a houseruled D&D 5e, blue very different) uses this. At 1st level you determine your hp, which will normally be in the 20-30 range, and then except for CON increases it's static. You start taking penalties at 75%, 50%, and 25%, drop at 0, and die at -CON. Magical/medical healing can also only restore you to 75%, those last few points have to come back via natural healing.

[Anymage]

More realistic damage systems have to acknowledge that wounds tend to be somewhat debilitating, and model this with a penalty. This has the side-effect of creating a death spiral, since being injured makes you less effective which makes you more likely to take another serious hit than inflict one. Most players want their characters to be more heroic, so penalties tend to be minimal to nonexistent.

Hit points in the sense of D&D or video games are generally easier to grasp than alternatives. One number that increases as you get tougher is less mental overhead than everybody having a flat amount of health levels, but systems to soak damage with natural toughness, mitigate it with armor, and/or negate it with an active defense. Active defenses on every action are just extra dice rolls for the sake of extra dice rolls.

[Morty]

D&D's ever-escalating, "mushy" hit points that are sometimes physical and sometimes not are really an oddity among tabletop games. After finally trying out Exalted 3E, I find myself fond of its initiative system, which has characters build it up with "withering" strikes that represent near-misses, cuts and bruises etc. then use it to strike decisive attacks that actually hurt.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A few things about HP:

1. Penalties on being wounded work best if one or more of the following is true:
** Fighting is rare
** "health" (whatever you call it) is restored easily out of combat
** it's relatively easy to soak/avoid damage. This has the problem that your fights go like block-block-avoid-dead.

Without this, they are worse against PCs than NPCs, because NPCs in a D&D-style game only tend (on average) to get in one real fight. So they always have their full allotment, while PCs can get worn away slowly and so are likely to start in the penalty range.

They also encourage short working days and rocket-tag/nova play-style. 3e D&D devolves to this (supposedly) at high levels due to Save-or-Die effects and huge hits (>> average HP). While this is what some people prefer, it isn't for everybody.

2. I came up with a way to rationalize HP for a single 5e D&D setting. It certainly doesn't work for everybody, but it fits my setting quite well.

Full details here on my setting blog.

Basically, HP represent a pool of energy (the same energy as is used for magic; physical objects are compressed bits of this energy) that the body uses to repair itself. It can be spent very quickly (in seconds), and while it's available the body won't suffer significant impairment. Below half health or so, the body saves resources for potential mortal wounds, so things like cuts and bruises (and potentially broken bones, but that's abstracted away. They're still broken but held in place temporarily.) don't heal. Magical healing is literally replacing the body's reserves. Being reduced to 0 means that hit caused serious injury that the body no longer can heal. Stabilizing naturally might involve a long-term injury or you might get lucky.

Restoring this energy naturally (from ambient energy) requires sleep--the soul can't maintain consciousness while focusing on replenishing stores of energy. While this isn't tracked for PCs (for game purposes), being dropped to 0 might cause lasting injuries. These the body can't heal quite so easily because they're not fresh when it has the reserves to devote to them. Hit dice are the long-term stores--harder to use or replace but a secondary store of energy.

As one gets stronger, their soul is able to maintain larger reserves of energy (more HP/HD). Classes who focus on training the body get bigger reserves (HD) than those that focus on storing spell-available energy in their souls (the two are similar mechanics). A commoner can be knocked out/drained of HP by a good punch, while a dragon takes a pounding before giving up.

In this model, a hit is a hit. This makes the "on hit" effects (like poison) make sense. It does have other worldbuilding consequences though. Diseases become more spiritual (attacking the body at a level other than purely physical); since there are no cells the basic physics and biology must be different (although that's a given, since dragons and all).

[Mastikator]

In the game trudvagn each hit was against a specific body part (arms, legs, head, torso, stomach) and if any one of them reached zero they were disabled, if they hit -1 they're destroyed with all that comes with that. Wearing a helmet was very important. Just like in actual real combat.

[Calthropstu]

Well we could always be realistic.

1 hit from a deadly weapon and you're incapacitated or worse. Seriously, even someone with a bullet in their leg isn't going to be much use in a fight.
Pain from a fresh stab or gunshot is overwhelming. Most people can only hold their leg and moan. They might be able to fire blindly, but aiming with that kind of pain would be difficult at best but probably impossible for most.
Then, of course, there's shock and blood loss.

Yeah, one hit out of fight is pretty realistic. But people don't want realistic, they want epic... the toe to toe slugfest between hero and dragon, the exlosive power of withstanding wave after wave of enemies as you mow them down with.swords and spells.

[Cluedrew]

Hit Points work great in systems... just a notch or two more abstract than I like me role-playing games to be. So yeah I have been trying to find a way to add just a bit more detail to the system. The trick is that most of my solutions end up being too punishing or slow things down too much. It is a delicate line to walk. My search for my perfect solution continues.

[RedMage125]

Every RPG I've played uses numeric hit points. And every one equivocates as to whether they're abstracted physical damage or ablative plot armor. Are you full strength at 1hp? Plot armor! Did a crossbow bolt get venom into your veins? Guess it broke skin after all. I find it frustrating that I don't know what my character is experiencing.

I realize that realistic frailty would make for dubious gameplay, and needing to keep medical textbooks at the table would be worse. Still, I wonder if there's something better than this.

Has anyone used a system they really liked?

As other posters (notably Thrudd's excellent post) have said, D&D HP are an abstraction. I've got a system I use that helps with the narrative aspect of using HP, without having to change the mechanics at all.

Hit Points are (and always have been in D&D), simply put, a measure of your ability to stay in the fight. Just as Armor Class is an abstraction of your ability to protect yourself. So loss of hit points does not necessarily mean you were struck directly, but it might. Saying that until you've dropped to 0 HP that you've "taken no hits" makes things like poison work awkwardly, as you pointed out.

I have continued to use 4e's status effect of "Bloodied". Which means under 50% HP. Above 50%, a character is (usually) relatively unharmed. Once a character or creature is "bloodied", it has taken some damage, perhaps is bleeding from a shallow flesh wound, or took a shot in the mouth and had to spit out some blood, but is otherwise able to continue. A note here: I will always tell my players when an NPC or monster is "bloodied", and I ask that they try not to give out HP totals for themselves in combat (just a table preference to keep metagaming down, I don't punish them if they forget or anything). So if the healer asks "do you need healing?", the fighter might say "I was bloodied 2 hits ago, I'm pretty bad" instead of "I'm down to like 8 HP out of 65".

ANYWAY, what helps keep the narrative of this system going is this: a "hit" can be anything from a close call that made you spend a little more energy to dodge it (thus making it harder for you to dodge more strikes like that), or a solid blow against your shield that makes your arm tingle a bit, or even a minor cut or laceration (after all, in order to get "bloodied", SOMETHING must have made contact). I find that when something does poison damage in addition to regular damage (such as a venomous bite or sting), it is best to narratively call that physical contact.

I also insist that critical hits are always physical strikes, even if they are narratively a flesh wound (ex: arrow wound that doesn't even drop the Ogre below 50% HP could have lodged in its shoulder, which it might pull out, or even just ignore and keep fighting. Or it may have deply grazed its leg, which now bleeds freely, etc).

Using this works with energy damage as well. Take a party getting hit by an NPC sorceror's fireball:

Rogue (made her save, has Evasion): The blast of fire expanding out is not a perfect sphere, there are gaps between the flames. She jumps and spins mid-air like an acrobat through the gap. Completely unharmed, and ready to put a dagger through that sorcerer's eye.

Fighter (made his save, still above 50% HP): The fighter, wearing full plate, crouched and raised his shield, ducking his face behind it to minimize exposed skin. He felt the blast of heat wash over him, and he's sweating a little bit more inside his armor, which is now hotter, but he's okay. He stands back up, coughs once, and resumes the fight.

Cleric (made his save, was "bloodied" by the attack): The cleric also crouched and tried to shield his face, also instinctively calling forth to his goddess to protect him. He feels her power flow through him, shielding him from the worst of the blast, but nonetheless, that HURT. When he again stands, he winces. His skin is flushed and sensitive, even the sweat now covering his body stings on his skin. He spares a quick look around to his comrades, to see if anyone else got that hurt.

Wizard (made his save, dropped below 0 anyway): The wizard, intimately familiar with how a fireball works, thought "oh, crap", and also tried to protect his face and hands, summoning up a minor field of arcane power to try and protect him from the worst of it. His last-minute energy shield DID absorb a lot of it, and he did not catch fire. But the intense heat was to much. As he drops his hands and looks up, his companions note some burn marks on his hands and face, already starting to blister. The wizard's skin is extremely red. He wobbles, falls all the way to his knees, then his eyes roll up into his head and he passes out, face-first. The cleric knows he needs to get to him soon. He may have less than 20 seconds to stop the wizard's organs from complete failure.


And all of that narrative does not require using a different system or really altering the default of HP at all.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well we could always be realistic.

1 hit from a deadly weapon and you're incapacitated or worse. Seriously, even someone with a bullet in their leg isn't going to be much use in a fight.
Pain from a fresh stab or gunshot is overwhelming. Most people can only hold their leg and moan. They might be able to fire blindly, but aiming with that kind of pain would be difficult at best but probably impossible for most.
Then, of course, there's shock and blood loss.

Yeah, one hit out of fight is pretty realistic. But people don't want realistic, they want epic... the toe to toe slugfest between hero and dragon, the exlosive power of withstanding wave after wave of enemies as you mow them down with.swords and spells.

This is why I like the idea of a certain amount of hp to represent 'nicks and bruises' where you've suffered a near miss our really minor wounds, and then a lower 'actually meat' part that comes with severe or escalating penalties.

Another thing is differentiating between a minor hit and a good hit. I like Unknown Armies, where most hits are probably scrapes or not as hard as they could have been, and so deal the sum of your attack roll digits (so in practice up to 19, as a 00 is a critical failure). Plus your weapon modifiers, which can be up to +9 if it's big, sharp, and heavy. A good hit (any doubles) will deal the attack roll in damage, but only if you're using a weapon. Guns always deal the attack roll in damage, but have a cap (of which the lowest is still enough to send you from 'fine' to 'screaming on the floor'), so while a 13 might mean the flask in your shirt pocket somehow managed to stop the bullet from actually connecting a 31 will send anybody without a high 'tough guy' style Identity to the ground (or potentially still acting, but suffering penalties from the pain despite all this adrenaline).

Not to mention that with weapons one in a hundred strikes kill, no ifs, ands, or buts. While with fists a critical success can be a knockout that's just not an option with weapons. Probably one of the reasons it's combat chapter literally begins with 'six ways to stop a fight'.

[Quertus]

I generally prefer HP.

However, one version of Star Wars, IIRC, had D&D-style HP, which represented cinematic dodging with only minor scratches to show for it, and Vitality Points (equal to con, IIRC) that represented actual meat. Most "hits" damaged HP; critical hits (or damage beyond HP) damaged Vitality.

Sounded playable.

[Calthropstu]

Ya know, I like the idea of one hit and down. Instead of HP, you get a number of resources to avoid that potential killing blow. Your first line of defense is your weapon or shield used to block the attack. Your next line of defense is to dodge the attack. Finally, you can hope your armor absorbs the blow. You get a number of abilities to enhance those three defenses, and hope for the best. Add some random elements for dice to determine and I see potential for a solid combat system.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ya know, I like the idea of one hit and down. Instead of HP, you get a number of resources to avoid that potential killing blow. Your first line of defense is your weapon or shield used to block the attack. Your next line of defense is to dodge the attack. Finally, you can hope your armor absorbs the blow. You get a number of abilities to enhance those three defenses, and hope for the best. Add some random elements for dice to determine and I see potential for a solid combat system.

Two issues:

* This forces all characters to be SnB, heavily armored and nimble to have any chance of survival.
* Unless those defense numbers are crazy high, the PCs will die quickly.

At 80% success for each layer, the PCs die 50% of the time after 90 attacks over a lifetime. At 70% per layer, the PCs die 93% of the time after 90 attacks over a lifetime. 5% of the time, they'll die on the second attack.

And this means that enemies must have a much lower success probability or combats are mostly misses, which is padded sumo without the illusion of progress. That, to me, is boring.

If combat is going to be a major part of your game, you have to decide.

Either the PCs can survive a lot of hits that would kill ordinary people OR the PCs have to be easily replaceable (meat-grinder style). The first is the route D&D took, the second is more realistic but a bit harder on the whole role-playing thing (more wargame, where the characters are just tokens to be pushed around the board). You can have "gritty" combat if combat isn't a major focus, or if combat means you failed earlier. But you can't have a high combat focus, high-lethality combat, and a focus on individual characters. At least, if you can't, I can't see how.

[Mendicant]

As other posters (notably Thrudd's excellent post) have said, D&D HP are an abstraction. I've got a system I use that helps with the narrative aspect of using HP, without having to change the mechanics at all.

Hit Points are (and always have been in D&D), simply put, a measure of your ability to stay in the fight. Just as Armor Class is an abstraction of your ability to protect yourself. So loss of hit points does not necessarily mean you were struck directly, but it might. Saying that until you've dropped to 0 HP that you've "taken no hits" makes things like poison work awkwardly, as you pointed out.

I have continued to use 4e's status effect of "Bloodied". Which means under 50% HP. Above 50%, a character is (usually) relatively unharmed. Once a character or creature is "bloodied", it has taken some damage, perhaps is bleeding from a shallow flesh wound, or took a shot in the mouth and had to spit out some blood, but is otherwise able to continue. A note here: I will always tell my players when an NPC or monster is "bloodied", and I ask that they try not to give out HP totals for themselves in combat (just a table preference to keep metagaming down, I don't punish them if they forget or anything). So if the healer asks "do you need healing?", the fighter might say "I was bloodied 2 hits ago, I'm pretty bad" instead of "I'm down to like 8 HP out of 65".

ANYWAY, what helps keep the narrative of this system going is this: a "hit" can be anything from a close call that made you spend a little more energy to dodge it (thus making it harder for you to dodge more strikes like that), or a solid blow against your shield that makes your arm tingle a bit, or even a minor cut or laceration (after all, in order to get "bloodied", SOMETHING must have made contact). I find that when something does poison damage in addition to regular damage (such as a venomous bite or sting), it is best to narratively call that physical contact.

I also insist that critical hits are always physical strikes, even if they are narratively a flesh wound (ex: arrow wound that doesn't even drop the Ogre below 50% HP could have lodged in its shoulder, which it might pull out, or even just ignore and keep fighting. Or it may have deply grazed its leg, which now bleeds freely, etc).


...

And all of that narrative does not require using a different system or really altering the default of HP at all.

This is how I do it too. I've flirted with various wound/vitality systems or wound tracking or what have you and I just never felt like it added much. HP as a combination of luck, plot armor, physical hardiness, divine favor, skill and whatever else seems narratively appropriate for that character at that time pretty much covers all my need for immersion without being hard to track or adjudicate.

Sometimes I think I want to add wound tracking back in if you take a crit or drop below 0, but I haven't spent the time to think through how I'd do it.

[Cluedrew]

Two issues:

* This forces all characters to be SnB, heavily armored and nimble to have any chance of survival.
* Unless those defense numbers are crazy high, the PCs will die quickly.

Having played a game that did use a one hit and down system I have to say you might be wrong on both cases. The might because it depends on the particular implementation. In that game I played it didn't hold true.

First off I have a very funny story about how, in my slow but tough army, the enemy forced cornered the head of my ranged line. After three turns they disengaged and left to try and attack targets they could kill. So yeah, just being one can be enough.

Second down doesn't have to mean dead. Actually it doesn't even have to mean out. Notably you could just lose a turn (with which the enemies would likely just attack you again and then kill you because you couldn't defend as well) and even if you were taken out the character rarely died, there would be a roll after the battle to see just how injured they were. You had a good chance of rolling "full recovery", a punch of lasting injuries and then a chance of rolling dead.

I think that cycle could work well in D&D. Certainly I know I have had plenty of first level characters go from full to down in a single hit and then made a full recovery. I would try to cut it down though. The system I played could go up to 6 rolls, and 4 was not uncommon. That could take a while. So I would say an attack roll if it succeeds then a defence roll and if that fails the defender is down.

You would have to play with the numbers other nuisances, for instance does a really good attack role make the defence roll harder?

[Deophaun]

Well we could always be realistic.

If we're being realistic, then we have to take everything you said after and throw it in the waste basket, because adrenaline is amazing. People have been shot in the heart and still needed to be chased down for two blocks before they've dropped dead. There's a reason it's standard practice to keep shooting until the target is on the ground. One and down is more Hollywood mythology than anything else.

[Mendicant]

If we're being realistic, then we have to take everything you said after and throw it in the waste basket, because adrenaline is amazing. People have been shot in the heart and still needed to be chased down for two blocks before they've dropped dead. There's a reason it's standard practice to keep shooting until the target is on the ground. One and down is more Hollywood mythology than anything else.

For every person who ran for two blocks after being shot in the heart there are hundreds of people who just died. "One and down" might not be true, but Calthropstu is right about the debilitating nature of real wounds.

[Deophaun]

For every person who ran for two blocks after being shot in the heart there are hundreds of people who just died.

I see. And which of these groups tend to be emulated in heroic RPGs?

"One and down" might not be true, but Calthropstu is right about the debilitating nature of real wounds.

After the adrenaline wears off, sure; continuing on your adventuring day as if everything is fine isn't likely to happen. Otherwise, he's completely wrong. The heart case was an extreme example, but not noticing that you've been shot is remarkably common.

[Jay R]

Every RPG I've played uses numeric hit points. And every one equivocates as to whether they're abstracted physical damage or ablative plot armor.

It's a simple-to-use game mechanic that is more simplistic than the effects of actual combat, and therefore makes the game work smoothly. But what it actually simulates cannot be described because it doesn't in fact simulate anything. It's just a simplistic game mechanic.

As my Mathematical Simulations professor said, "A simulation is supposed to be simpler than what it simulates. If we wanted to observe reality, we'd observe reality."

Are you full strength at 1hp? Plot armor! Did a crossbow bolt get venom into your veins? Guess it broke skin after all. I find it frustrating that I don't know what my character is experiencing.

I realize that realistic frailty would make for dubious gameplay, and needing to keep medical textbooks at the table would be worse. Still, I wonder if there's something better than this.

Champions, or any other Hero Systems game, has Stun, Endurance, and Body, each tracked separately. Many people don't like this game, because it's too complicated.

Chivalry and Sorcery was the most realistic system I ever saw. It tracked Fatigue Points and Body Points separately. Only critical hits did Body damage, which was actual damage. Most hits just did Fatigue points, which you could recover (while not doing anything strenuous) rather quickly. When you run out of Fatigue Points, then all attacks reduce Hit Points. Casting spells also uses up Fatigue Points.

Also, you begin losing one Fatigue Point per round after a certain number of rounds of combat, determined by Constitution and level.

Fatigue Points regenerate quickly, but Hit Points take time to heal.

It was the most lush, vivid, glorious, realistic, carefully detailed, immersive, unplayable mess I ever saw.

Has anyone used a system they really liked?

Hit points. It's a simple-to-use game mechanic that is more simplistic than the effects of actual combat, and therefore makes the game work smoothly.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's a simple-to-use game mechanic that is more simplistic than the effects of actual combat, and therefore makes the game work smoothly. But what it actually simulates cannot be described because it doesn't in fact simulate anything. It's just a simplistic game mechanic.

It was the most lush, vivid, glorious, realistic, carefully detailed, immersive, unplayable mess I ever saw.

Hit points. It's a simple-to-use game mechanic that is more simplistic than the effects of actual combat, and therefore makes the game work smoothly.

These are all very good points. I find a lot of appeals to realism lacking in that they forget that first and foremost it's a game. And games need to be playable, which means they have to abstract things to one degree or another. Where the dividing lines are will vary from person to person. More realism/simulation isn't always better.

[Anonymouswizard]

These are all very good points. I find a lot of appeals to realism lacking in that they forget that first and foremost it's a game. And games need to be playable, which means they have to abstract things to one degree or another. Where the dividing lines are will vary from person to person. More realism/simulation isn't always better.

Also from genre to genre. I find hit points more acceptable the more superheroic the game, while the grittier the game the more I want a death spiral.