WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Oofta]

Depends on how you run hit points. A friend of mine designed his own system back in the late 70's and still tweaks it, but this is how he runs hit points, armor and armor class.

Armor class is a function of your size, agility, dexterity and experience. So a big guy is going to be easier to hit than a halfling, and your dex and agility(he split dex) will add to that, as will a small increase in percentage when you level. So if you start with 32%, your AC is 7(still uses 1e low is better). If you gain a few levels and hit 40%, AC drops to 6.

Now let's assume you are hit. First you have stamina, which function like non-meat hit points. You can lose stamina from staying up 3 days since tired = low stamina, or from being hit, or from a bumpy fall down a hill. He also has PBP(Personal Body Points) which are based on constitution and size. Big guys are easier to hit, but have more physicality so more personal body points.

If a hit reduces your stamina to 0 or lower, it has now impacted your body and is doing physical damage. He rolls on a chart and lets say it hits you in the arm. He did 10 damage and you had 7 stamina left, so 3 went into the arm. If you had 8 PBP in the arm, you are now at 5 and your arm is bleeding and will take time to heal. Stamina comes back fairly quickly with rest. Critical hits not only do increased damage, but they bypass stamina, so you don't want to get hit by one.

Another function of PBP is that they are painful and hamper you, reducing stamina. So a first level fighter with 13 hit points that took those 3 PBP in the arm would be down 6 stamina until healing starts and they get some points back. Each PBP point of damage reduces stamina by 2 until healed. If your body area, let's say arm is reduced to 0, it's useless. If it is reduced to minus it's full value, it has been cut off, crushed to the point where amputation is necessary, dead if it's your head, etc.

Armor is DR in his game. Starting with clothing with provides 1. It doesn't do much, but it does more than bare skin. Full plate is 16, but very, very, very rare and expensive. Armor also doesn't always cover all of your arms and legs, as a lot of leather and chain armors stop about halfway down both, so his charts differentiate between upper and lower extremities. Get hit in the lower armor or leg and your armor isn't going to help you.

Seems interesting, if more complex for HP than I would want. Not sure how you'd handle monsters HP. To me I guess it all comes back to being more complex while still being basically arbitrary numbers to support the system.

But if someone does get that full plate, are they not immune to hydras while still being as (or more) vulnerable to the frost giant? This is an aspect of armor as DR that people never seem to answer. I see it as a flaw, do others see it as a feature?

I'm glad it works for your friend, I just wouldn't see enough bang for the buck for me.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not sure why you think they'd leave a hydra impotent under that system. Damage for something like a hydra should be higher than it is, but is artificially low in order to keep it's CR down. Just increase the damage.

You'd have to rewrite quite a few monsters, as well as PC classes. Fighters (especially 2WF) and monks would be pretty SOL for example.

Obviously you could just rewrite several things around a different design. But it still wouldn't model that precise hit that found the chink in the armor or stabbing someone in the face with a dagger after you manage to lift their faceplate somehow which would be more realistic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You'd have to rewrite quite a few monsters, as well as PC classes. Fighters (especially 2WF) and monks would be pretty SOL for example.

Obviously you could just rewrite several things around a different design. But it still wouldn't model that precise hit that found the chink in the armor or stabbing someone in the face with a dagger after you manage to lift their faceplate somehow which would be more realistic.

It doesn't have to be precise. Just better than it is now, imo.

 

[Oofta]

You couldn't, which is why it is not something that you can really introduce in a minor revision or mid-edition variant (which is why the Armour as DR variant in UA was pretty terrible). But you could do it in a full new edition. I remember arguing in the run-up to 4e, before we knew what it would actually look like, that it would be a good idea for it to use an armour-as-soak model. I have mostly changed my mind, but I can hardly begrudge other making the same arguments.

I do rather like the idea someone (possibly @dave2008) posted here that does not reduce generic damage but does reduce the extra damage from crits - in their case I think it was specirfically mitigating the crits go to wounds thing discussed upthread, but I think it generalises beyond that.

Which kind of sounds like "My car would be better at pulling a plow if it were only a tractor." Back in the day of the Model T had a conversion kit so that the car could be a tractor. Back in the OD&D the game could have gone a different direction. I just don't see shoehorning it in now without a significant rewrite would work.

 

[glass]

I just don't see shoehorning it in now without a significant rewrite would work.

The post you quoted was my saying "it could work but only with a major rewrite". So telling me that it needs a major rewrite does not seem to be adding any new information.

 

[Oofta]

It doesn't have to be precise. Just better than it is now, imo.

No system will ever work for everyone. HP has worked for half a century and been propagated across most combat based video games from the original Castle Wolfenstein and Doom and continuing with today's games. It works for me and it seems like much of D&D works for you.

 

[Oofta]

The post you quoted was my saying "it could work but only with a major rewrite". So telling me that it needs a major rewrite does not seem to be adding any new information.

I stated my issues, I didn't think my reasoning bore repeating other than to simply comment that it seems like we'd have to significantly change core aspects of the game.

D&D could have gone a different direction, it didn't. I don't remember the last time someone complained about these aspects of the game in person. I'm sure at some point we had a 2 minute conversation, shrugged and moved on.

Things could be different, but different doesn't mean inherently better. If we're going to change the status quo and basic principles of the game, IMHO there has to be significant justification and analysis of side effects.

 

[Maxperson]

I think even "nothing is meat until zero" is trying to assign some specific physical interpretation to Hit Points that gets you into trouble.

In 5e, if you are Poisoned, you have disadvantage on ability checks. The status has nothing to do with hit points! If the attack that poisons you also does hit point damage, you lose Hit Points. This is, again, game abstraction. The narration of what that physically means for the character is a matter of color and immersion, not mechanics.

I just don't see a giant scorpion stinger piercing someone to the point of injecting poison and not doing some sort of physical injury that will take time or magic to heal. It's going to take more than a scratch to inject a significant enough amount of poison to immediately begin killing the PC.

For example - some poisons cause sensations - nausea, chills, dizziness, pain, or the like. These are things that come from interaction of substances with the meat, but we can reasonably say that, once the poison is gone and you have a night's rest, they are no longer effectively a problem for the PC.

So, for example, the character is poisoned - they have Disandvantage, and the attack says they take 1d6 damage every round until they make a Con save. Our narrative description may be that they are racked with cramps and vertigo - the distraction of these sensations and the inhibition of muscular control accounts for the Disadvantage. If the save is made before the character drops to zero hit points, then that's all it was - cramps and dizziness, and with a good night's rest, they feel better, and regain hit points.

It takes days in the real world to see improvement from a black widow bite which causes those same symptoms. A giant scorpion should be worse than a tiny spider. I don't see having the effects poisons going away in a matter of hours as being an improvement.

If the attack damage drops them to Zero, we watch those Death Saves - If they pass, again, the cramps and dizziness got so bad they were overwhelmed for a bit, but they will clear. If they fail, that means the poison finally got to the point where those cramps inhibited cardiac action, and the character died.

This is also something I dislike. I hate Schrodinger's damage which is both deadly and not more than a minor inconvenience until we observe it.

I'm okay with hit points being abstract to the point that how you describe the damage varies. A fighter with 100 hit points isn't going to be all meat. I'm not into the DBZ style of damage. A large chunk of those hit points will be lose of stamina, skill, etc. Then some will be meat as scratches and bruises happen when the fighter gets lower on hit points. And then finally serious injury and possibly even death happen at very low and 0 hit points(negative in prior editions).

I'm also okay with those serious injuries not providing penalties in combat and such so that the game can function properly. That's a smaller price to pay than you're 100% unharmed from 100 down to 1 hit point, and then you're either dead at 0 or maybe not dead until we observe how it turns out.

 

[Maxperson]

You'd have to rewrite quite a few monsters, as well as PC classes. Fighters (especially 2WF) and monks would be pretty SOL for example.

Obviously you could just rewrite several things around a different design. But it still wouldn't model that precise hit that found the chink in the armor or stabbing someone in the face with a dagger after you manage to lift their faceplate somehow which would be more realistic.

Most creatures don't have skin as tough as full plate armor, and ki-empowered strikes can be changed a bit to enable it to go through say half of the DR of armor or even all of it if half isn't good enough. That's what ki-empowerd strikes is for.

 

[Oofta]

Most creatures don't have skin as tough as full plate armor, and ki-empowered strikes can be changed a bit to enable it to go through say half of the DR of armor or even all of it if half isn't good enough. That's what ki-empowerd strikes is for.

But my monk, or my two-weapon fighter will never be able to keep up with that rogue if DR is used. They can now. Any character or creature that relies on more attacks will be nerfed while those that rely on 1 or 2 big attacks won't.

You'd have to change the way the system works and look at cumulative damage from all attacks in a turn but that doesn't seem to fit the fiction you're going for. I just don't think it's worth it.