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Disclaimer: I'm fairly certain that I've seen this idea described before - if not here at these forums than somewhere else - which means it's not mine. I've been looking for a half-hour now, though, and I can't find the post that inspired me. If I stole it from you, please post in this thread so you get credit for the creative aspect of it.
I've been thinking about the aspect of "numbers" at my tables and how to get people out of numbers mode. What I mean by this is how, when a diplomacy check comes up, Everyone asks, "Who's got the highest diplomacy modifier?", and the highest number wins.
In looking for a way to encourage people to remain in character, I stumbled across an idea somewhere that sparked this one. Tonight, at my game, I'm going to hang a piece of paper on my GM Screen that says the following:
Below 0: Poor
0-3: Unskilled
4-6: Amateurish
7-9: Trained
10-12: Proficient
13-15: Practiced
16-18: Renowned
19-21: Masterful
22-24: Exceptional
The point of this is to put a standard language to modifiers so that players don't have to resort to numbers to decide who the best diplomat is, but they don't feel cheated, because they can be confident (to within a point or two) that their best diplomat is the one doing the talking.
Similarly, I'm thinking of the following for measuring injuries:
80%-100%: Just a scratch
60%-80%: A flesh wound (I know, I know, cue the John Cleese voice here.)
40%-60%: Bleeding
20%-40%: Really hurting
0%-20%: At death's door
I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts about this practice. Constructive criticism is welcome.
To be absolutely clear, I am not going to ban anyone from using numbers at my table, so I don't want to read comments from people complaining that I'm forcing my playstyle on others. I'm going to encourage them to use it to stay in character, and provide it as an option.
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Love the idea! I do have some constructive criticism on your scale, though:
Below 0: Poor
0-3: Unskilled
4-6: Amateurish
7-9: Trained
10-12: Proficient
13-15: Practiced
16-18: Renowned
19-21: Masterful
22-24: Exceptional
First, I think the progression of Trained-->Proficient-->Practiced seems odd or out of order, but it could just be me. Same with Renowned-->Masterful-->Exceptional (shouldn't Masterful be the top?) but again, might just be me.
Second, the scale needs a bit of revision, at least with some skills.
For example, look at Acrobatics: someone with a +5 ("amateurish") can hop down a 15ft ledge and will never even twist his ankle unless her dad is chasing him (in which case he still makes it half the time). Same with a 15ft running jump. That doesn't quite seem "amateurish" to me.
Let's try Swim: same amateur, has a +5 Swim bonus. He can take a leisurely afternoon swim in "rough" water every day without trouble (until he's under pressure, and again he still succeeds half the time). In calm water, this so-called amateur could be fleeing the very hounds of Hell and still will never slip underwater - at worst, he just fails to make progress.
Now Perception: on an ordinary day, standing in the street, Mr. Amateur will detect the smell of smoke (and hear the details of what people standing next to it are saying) from 150ft away and the stench of garbage (and the sound of goblins fighting over it) from 250ft away. He can hear a creature walking from 50ft away, can hear the details of a whispered conversation from up to 9ft away, and will always find the average concealed door unless he's rushed.
If he decides to search an area for traps (and has some time) he will consistently locate lots of nasty traps, including a CR 8 Camoflaged Spiked Pit Trap, a CR 9 Insanity Mist Trap, and a CR 10 Chamber of Blades Trap.
Unfortunately for your scale, it's going to vary by skill. Mr. Amateur is actually about right for Perform, getting a decent performance that can net him a handful of silver pieces in a prosperous city after a day. That sounds about right.
For Diplomacy, Mr. Amateur won't be consistently improving attitudes unless they start at Friendly. For indifferent, you need somewhere in the "trained" range, and it just gets harder from there.
So I like the idea, but getting the scale just right might be more work than it's worth. :/
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Jiggy,
Thanks for your feedback.
The semantics of the words themselves were the biggest reason why I posted this here. I think it looks pretty natural progressing the way it does, but now that you've pointed it out, I'm inclined to agree with your suggestions on how to re-order.
I also agree that making the adjectives match the ability granted by those ranks in a given skill is pretty well impossible. Let me share how I developed that table:
I went to groups of three points because more than that takes away the sense of control that players get by using the levels, but less than that just gets unwieldy in terms of the number of adjectives. Then I named them in (what I thought might be) an ascending order.
That being said, while I agree that "amateurish" doesn't represent the abilities of, say, someone with +5 Acrobatics accurately, I'm not sure that's actually a problem. The intent of the scale is to let players talk about their relative abilities in a way that avoids numbers. (I think, if nothing else, that it will only be used for social and knowledge skills, but we'll see.) As long as someone who is "Amateurish" is not as good as someone who is "Skilled," I don't think it matters what someone who is Amateurish can actually accomplish.
I'm not sure that last paragraph is very clear. Did it make sense?
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Yeah, I follow. You're right that it's probably not a huge deal.
Of course, there's going to be "that GM" somewhere who will read this and use your application of the word "amateur" as a weapon against mildly-skilled PCs that he doesn't like ("you're an amateur, therefore you shouldn't succeed, therefore I'm applying circumstance penalties") but I think in this case that will be a small enough population not to worry about.
Let us know how it works out tonight! :)
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I share some of Jiggy's hesitation in the ordering of Trained and Proficient, Masterful and Exceptional.
You might consider using FATE's scale as a start, since the ordering on that scale works the best I've seen so far as a solid logical progression.
-2: Terrible
-1: Poor
0: Mediocre
1: Average
2: Fair
3: Good
4: Great
5: Superb
6: Fantastic
7: Epic
8: Legendary
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Of course, there's going to be "that GM" somewhere who will read this and use your application of the word "amateur" as a weapon against mildly-skilled PCs that he doesn't like ("you're an amateur, therefore you shouldn't succeed, therefore I'm applying circumstance penalties") but I think in this case that will be a small enough population not to worry about.
True enough. But if I spent all of my time refraining from posting because I was worried about what "that GM" might do with my ideas, I'd never post anything at all. And then what would I be doing while my students are writing a test? ;)
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Of course, there's going to be "that GM" somewhere who will read this and use your application of the word "amateur" as a weapon against mildly-skilled PCs that he doesn't like ("you're an amateur, therefore you shouldn't succeed, therefore I'm applying circumstance penalties") but I think in this case that will be a small enough population not to worry about.True enough. But if I spent all of my time refraining from posting because I was worried about what "that GM" might do with my ideas, I'd never post anything at all. And then what would I be doing while my students are writing a test? ;)
Surely that depends--are the students Unskilled, Amateurish, Trained, or Proficient at the skills needed for the test?
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Rogue Eidolon,
Thanks for your suggestions. I looked at something similar (Actually, it was the old FASERIP system from the 80s Marvel Superheroes game) for the titles, but I was looking more for words that flow and can be slipped into conversation, and I'm not sure that "Fantastic, Epic, and Legendary," are particularly good for that.
My end goal with this is to have a conversation between my players that plays out something like this:
Me: "You're approaching the tavern where you expect to find the Sczarni contact; you've heard that he's a bit cantankerous at times."
Player 1 (to the others): "So this lad's supposed to be a bit grumpy at times. Either of you any good at sweet-talking?"
Player 2: "I've been trained a bit, and I might have some success."
Player 3: "I'm renowned in these parts for my diplomatic skills; let me have a go."
I'm not sure, but I think the higher-end descriptors in that FATE system would just make the conversation sound like bad comic book dialogue. Or an episode of How I Met Your Mother.
Me: "You're approaching the tavern where you expect to find the Sczarni contact; you've heard that he's a bit cantankerous at times."
Player 1 (to the others): "So this lad's supposed to be a bit grumpy at times. Either of you any good at sweet-talking?"
Player 2: "I might have some luck; I'm great at diplomacy."
Player 3: "No, let me have a go. My diplomatic skills are legen - wait for it - dary."
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Rogue Eidolon,
Thanks for your suggestions. I looked at something similar (Actually, it was the old FASERIP system from the 80s Marvel Superheroes game) for the titles, but I was looking more for words that flow and can be slipped into conversation, and I'm not sure that "Fantastic, Epic, and Legendary," are particularly good for that.
My end goal with this is to have a conversation between my players that plays out something like this:
Me: "You're approaching the tavern where you expect to find the Sczarni contact; you've heard that he's a bit cantankerous at times."
Player 1 (to the others): "So this lad's supposed to be a bit grumpy at times. Either of you any good at sweet-talking?"
Player 2: "I've been trained a bit, and I might have some success."
Player 3: "I'm renowned in these parts for my diplomatic skills; let me have a go."I'm not sure, but I think the higher-end descriptors in that FATE system would just make the conversation sound like bad comic book dialogue. Or an episode of How I Met Your Mother.
Me: "You're approaching the tavern where you expect to find the Sczarni contact; you've heard that he's a bit cantankerous at times."
Player 1 (to the others): "So this lad's supposed to be a bit grumpy at times. Either of you any good at sweet-talking?"
Player 2: "I might have some luck; I'm great at diplomacy."
Player 3: "No, let me have a go. My diplomatic skills are legen - wait for it - dary."
Haha, sure, I do see that. Then again, even for Perform, which as Jiggy pointed out works well for +5 as an amateur, +24 means that the angels themselves weep at your average performances (and have done so since you had +20), so maybe you actually are legendary ^_~
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As a teacher, this is something I've seen before for building grading rubrics for my students. One thing I really like to make use of is the Likert Scale.
Now, it's not perfect, and for the skill level breakdowns in Pathfinder even the seven-point-scale won't fit perfectly, so I used 3-point divisions and the seven-point Likert Scale (found here), plus added two "top" descriptors at the + end.
Skill Descriptors:
-2-0 : Very Poor
1-3 : Poor
4-6 : Fair
7-9 : Good
10-12 : Very Good
13-15 : Excellent
16-18 : Exceptional
19-21 : Masterful
22+ : Legendary
(The University of Miami also has some departments that use similar scales, which I'm posting here for reference, but personally I think Likert's can be adapted better to Pathfinder: Assessment Rubrics)
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For injury/damage, I asked a gamer friend of mine who is a nurse, and she suggested we adapt one of the International Association for the Study of Pain "10 point pain scales" -
Injury Descriptors (Percent indicates how much HP a character has left)
100% : Not Hurt
99-90% : Uncomfortable / "Scratched"
80-90% : Slightly Hurt
70-80% : Mildly Hurt
60-70% : Moderately Hurt
50-60% : Hurt
40-50% : Badly Hurt
30-40% : Very Badly Hurt
20-30% : Severely Hurt
10-20% : Very Severely Hurt
1-10% : Horribly Hurt / "Maimed"
0% : Unable to respond
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I'm open to tweaking the names/levels of these - just throwing them out here to help contribute :)
I love the idea of this whole thing Feegle - thanks for posting it here!
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CanisDirus,
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.
The ten-point scale for injury is not a bad idea, but I think it's a little too detailed for me. Five points is just the right division of categories to enable a conversation without becoming overwhelming. Especially at lower levels (1st, specifically), when many characters don't even have 10 hit points, dividing the categories into 10% blocks is a bit excessive.
I do think that your chart for injuries would work well at higher tiers - when players are fooling around with 50+ hit points, a more granular scale is more useful.
As an unrelated side note, the ten point pain scale always makes me think of this.
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Feegle - tweaking the pain levels down to fewer is actually tons easier than doing it by 10% :)
100% : Not Hurt
80-99% : Slightly Hurt
60-80% : Mildly Hurt
40-60% : Hurt / Moderately Hurt
20-40% : Badly Hurt
10-20% : Severely Hurt
0% : Unable to respond
Honestly?
I'm too lazy for even this. About the only thing I liked about 4E was simplifying the wound descriptions.
51-100%: Not Bloodied
1%-50%: Bloodied
0%: Staggered
<-0%: Bleeding out
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I'm with you to a certain extent, Ryan - but with respect to asking how people are and whether it's worth using a CLW wand on them you need a little more. For most players, being down to 51% of hit points would need a jolt, while 95% of hit points wouldn't. Not during combat, perhaps, but the scale is more intended for players talking to players.
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We have a wizard in our local group who uses the following scale:
100% Not hurt
0%-99% Dying!
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I really like the idea for skills. Its always bugged me when people call out numbers when trying to figure out who should aid another on who.
But I'm a lot more leery about the damage thresholds.
Unfortunately, there really are two kinds of information my healer requires. The first basically boils down to "How desperately do you need healing?". The second boils down to "Should I use a spell, a charge from the cure stick, or channel?". The easiest, fastest and most accurate way for me to get that information is to ask how many hit points people are down and how many they have remaining. I can then do the math and decide what I think that I should do.
And I hate to point out to a math teacher that most people are so innumerate that asking them to tell me how down they are as a percentage really isn't a good idea.
When I'm playing the healer, one thing that I try and do is tell the other players that it is THEIR responsibility to tell me when they really, really want me to heal them. And then to tell me how much healing they need. I'll try and keep an eye on things, of course, but I'm likely to miss things.
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Paul,
That's the feedback I'm getting about damage threshold at my table too. My response is that there's nothing stopping people from asking for healing - what I'm encouraging people to do is to change,
"I need a heal - I'm down twenty hit points!"
to
"I need a heal - I'm bleeding!"
There's nothing stopping people (wizards!) from saying, "Well, it may just be a scratch, but I'd still feel better if you'd poke me with that wand of yours."
Nosig,
It's true, and I'll give you that. But people who speak like that now are using a scale of relative power to compare things to an known quantity - or at least a standard.
If you and someone else you'd never met before ended up in, say, a darts competition as partners, and you needed to choose who would take the lead, I suspect you'd end up discussing how you were "pretty good," or "awful" rather than "On a scale of one to ten? I'm a six at darts."
___
Just food for thought - I do appreciate the comments, feedback, and suggestions.
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"I need a heal - I'm bleeding!"
Unfortunately, if somebody says this then my next question (assuming my cleric is L3 or higher) is going to be "How many hit points are you down?"
I NEED that information in order to know which healing resource to use.
So, the immersion is lost anyway. And it just ends up taking more time :-(.
I think that your idea would work very well in a game where narrative wounds AND healing magics were calibrated. So, PCs have Hurt, Injured, Dying thresholds AND spells move a character to the next threshold. But Pathfinder isn't that game.
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If you want to keep it in character, have them roll a heal check. Success gets them numbers, failure gets them vague descriptive terms like those above.
I consider most of the lists above too grainy. Mine would look more like:
76-100% Fine
51-75% Hurt
26-50% Bloody
1hp-25% Hurt Bad
0hp or less Critical
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If you were using the levels above And had a rough idea how many hp the character had to start, which you should from class & level, it seems to me you'd have a pretty good idea how which healing is needed. You might be a little off occasionally, but that probably better reflects what the character could actually see than the exact hp numbers.
No, I generally have no clue what peoples hit points are. They're not characters that I've adventured with a lot before. All I know is approximately what level they are and approximately what classes.
But that leaves a HUGE amount of variation. I've seen characters of the same level and class vary by a factor of more than 2 (Con 10 vs 16, Toughness feat, whether the class bonus goes to hit points or something else).
4th edition actually sort of did this reasonably well. I'm bloodied, calls out the player. Have a healing surge, calls out the Leader. But it only worked to that extent. Pathfinder has a LOT more healing options available to it.
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This effort is all well and good for home games and players that are familiar with each other and who enjoy adding more roleplay to combat (ie another level of complexity), but part of the PFS design is that it allows strangers to sit down together and play Pathfinder without having to spend a lot of time at the table getting to know a lot about one another or their characters, or (and this one is a biggie) learn additional home rules.
So if everyone at the table is good with it, great! But if any player doesn't want to deal with remembering what words equal what numbers or looking them up on a table, you really shouldn't force this system on them.
However, if you want to restrict hit point levels from being common knowledge, a Heal check is certainly in order.
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So, I was helping a friend work on her oracle character, and came across the spell "Deathwatch", which actually seems to have part of the "health" thing covered for this!
Using the powers of necromancy, you can determine the condition of creatures near death within the spell's range. You instantly know whether each creature within the area is dead, fragile (alive and wounded, with 3 or fewer hit points left), fighting off death (alive with 4 or more hit points), healthy, undead, or neither alive nor dead (such as a construct). Deathwatch sees through any spell or ability that allows creatures to feign death.
Emphasis mine. Wouldn't it be easier to use that and then add in something like:
Wounded - less than 50% of hp
Injured - 50-99% of hp
Healthy - full hp
Just a thought :)
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I've had a "no numbers" policy at my table for a while now. I try not to be a jerk about it, but I really don't like people comparing character sheets for every little bonus to see who has the best chance of accomplishing "X".
That being said, changing the numbers to words that correspond to the same numbers doesn't really accomplish much. It does increase the immersion slightly, but doesn't change the fact that players are still going to shop around for the highest bonus, which always feels very meta-gamey to me. (I always have the player doing most of the talking do the diplomacy check, for instance.)
What I've been encouraging at my tables is for players to just say "I'm good at that", or "Maybe someone else should talk to that mean guard", or "I'm in pretty bad shape, can someone heal me?". In fact, on the rare occasions that I actually play instead of GM, no one knows what any of my skill/attack/HP numbers actually are.
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Raise thread!
I know that Chapter 3 from Pathfinder: Unchained isn't PFS legal, but it presents a system for this in Pathfinder now that I really like!
Healthy: Above 3/4 of your max hp
Grazed: Between 1/2 and 3/4 of your max hp
Wounded: Between 1/4 and 1/2 of your max hp
Critical: Under 1/4 of your max hp
Could be the sort of thing that PCs at the table could potentially get in the habit of discussing with their party at the start of a scenario. "If I say "Wounded" out loud it means I'm at x status, but if you ask how I'm doing and say "just Grazed" it means I'm at y status" and so on.
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Just checking: do most characters have the spell deathwatch up and running for free? Have they taken a Feat that allows them to make a Heal check as a free action to determine a character's current hit points?
If not, I'm with Myron: keep the numbers out of the tabletop discussion.
As a table GM, if someone just announces "I'm down to 2 hit points" to the party at large (or, worse, "I'm down to -9, guys") I keep private track of the character's hit points from that point on, giving the player a general sense of his PC's wounds.
Player: "I drink a potion of cure light wounds."
Me, as GM: "You feel a little better, but it doesn't feel as powerful as other draughts of the potion."
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Just checking: do most characters have the spell deathwatch up and running for free? Have they taken a Feat that allows them to make a Heal check as a free action to determine a character's current hit points?
If not, I'm with Myron: keep the numbers out of the tabletop discussion.
As a table GM, if someone just announces "I'm down to 2 hit points" to the party at large (or, worse, "I'm down to -9, guys") I keep private track of the character's hit points from that point on, giving the player a general sense of his PC's wounds.
Player: "I drink a potion of cure light wounds."
Me, as GM: "You feel a little better, but it doesn't feel as powerful as other draughts of the potion."
Uh... I would expect significant pushback from the players, unless of course GMs taking control of hit points from the players is a thing that usually happens in your area.
Besides, there's a much better way of handling this.
"You can describe the way your character looks to your allies no problem, but if you're going to call out numbers, that's you describing in detail to your allies what's wrong with you, and if enemies share a language with you, they'll know everything you said as well, and will act upon it."
I do try to enforce the "no talking about your hit points once unconscious rule," although noticing whether someone is bleeding out, stable or dead is automatic. I also waive it if I have a brand new player at the table and I need to explain how the rules work. (In general, I need to get better at enforcing this rule.)
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Running all games on Roll20, I initially tried to keep people knowing HPs status to those making Heal checks to find out by keeping PC health bars visible to only individual PCs. I quickly discovered that a distracting amount of the table discussion then went into people being confused about HP and trying to figure out how healthy people were. In a scenario where people can quietly talk to each other while things are proceeding, this might be ok. Using Google Hangouts, it's pretty much impossible for more than 1 person to be heard at a time. Now all PCs have visible HP bars, which is actually a decent compromise, since they can't see actual numbers but do get a percentage idea of how well off someone is.
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Just checking: do most characters have the spell deathwatch up and running for free? Have they taken a Feat that allows them to make a Heal check as a free action to determine a character's current hit points?
If not, I'm with Myron: keep the numbers out of the tabletop discussion.
As a table GM, if someone just announces "I'm down to 2 hit points" to the party at large (or, worse, "I'm down to -9, guys") I keep private track of the character's hit points from that point on, giving the player a general sense of his PC's wounds.
Player: "I drink a potion of cure light wounds."
Me, as GM: "You feel a little better, but it doesn't feel as powerful as other draughts of the potion."
So you think that, in world, people have no idea how badly wounded a comrade is? How damaged they are themselves?
While I also don't like people sharing hit point numbers you are going WAY too far. If I ever had a GM tell me that I didn't even know my own characters hit points, that he was going to track my hit points, I'd refuse to play with them (I presume you tell people something that significant BEFORE the game).
As I'm sure you know, deathwatch is a joke. And there is no PFS legal way to know this information. So some meta knowledge is pretty much necessary. Descriptions do NOT work since people are VERY inconsistent
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I do try to enforce the "no talking about your hit points once unconscious rule," although noticing whether someone is bleeding out, stable or dead is automatic. I also waive it if I have a brand new player at the table and I need to explain how the rules work. (In general, I need to get better at enforcing this rule.)
I wish there was a rule for this. When I'm trying to stabilize someone, I don't have time to spend an extra move action to see if they're dead. And I would hate to have someone die at the table because I can't roll well on my Heal check to see whether they're dying.
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I've never had a problem with players using numbers. It is a game after all, they have to call them out all the time to play. Obfuscating them just slows play down in my experience. I'd rather have them call out a quick number so we can get back to the roleplay.
If you really want to know everyone's HP, there is indeed a pfs legal way of knowing this information.
Blood Reader (Ex) : While able to see a studied target, a slayer with this talent knows exactly how many hit points his opponent has remaining. This only works against living targets.
There's another talent that lets you study your allies (called study ally. Both are from advanced class origins) if you want to know your friend's HP.
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When I'm a player, I avoid telling other players how many hit points I have remaining, or have lost. Instead, I tell them qualitatively how wounded I am.
Lightly wounded = down 1 - 10 hp
Moderately wounded = down 11 - 20 hp
Seriously wounded = down 21 - 30 hp
Critically wounded = down 31 - 40 hp
Mortally wounded = down more than 40 hp
I never tell other players what the conversion is, but they usually work it out that if I say "I'm moderately wounded" then a cure moderate wounds spell is a good choice.
Edit: Also, all of this information is shared in-character. "Red, I've been seriously wounded here, and could use some of your healing magic!" As such, I fully expect enemy combatants might act on that information if they speak the language in which I'm speaking to my companions.
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So you think that, in world, people have no idea how badly wounded a comrade is? How damaged they are themselves?
Nope. There are ways. They're in the rules.
As I'm sure you know, deathwatch is a joke. And there is no PFS legal way to know this information. So some meta knowledge is pretty much necessary.
I wouldn't mind it if there weren't game mechanics specifically designed to inform people of their allies' status. Namely, deathwatch, Study Ally, status, or a Heal check. There are probably a bunch of others hidden in this book or that.
If you just announce to other players at the table that you're at -2 and fine, or you're at -9 and you've only got three rounds till you're dead, you've stopped playing by the rules of the game.
At that point, the "least harm" way to get the game back in line is to keep players from knowing the information they've shown themselves unable to keep to themselves.
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If your healer is paying attention to that, track everyone's incoming damage...
If they don't want to, run status and have every right to ask for precise numbers, range, direction....
It' a great spell, right James? (snicker)
I'm not going to complain about any spell that saves a character's life. especially one of my own...
Which reminds me, I should pick up status for my life oracle...
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I regularly port in the 4th edition "bloodied" terminology. Despite the silliness of saying that a construct (or whatever) is bloodied at times, it usually has enough granularity to describe the situation without forcing a table lookup.
I use it particularly when I'm running a game.
Bloodied = 50% of hp or less
Not bloodied = above 50% hp
As a player, people sometimes cheat on it if they're super low, but that doesn't bother me as they're trying to avoid a character death.
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I've come up with another approach for this: estimate the number of rounds/hits you could take assuming the same average damage. So you can clue your friends in to how hurt you are with statements like, "Another hit like that, and I'll be done" (rather than "that was half my hitpoints").