Determining Exact Hit Points


Advice


Other than the slayer talent "Blood Reader" is there any way to know the exact hit point total an enemy has?

Are there any items or classes or feats or traits or anything?

Scarab Sages

No, hit points are an abstraction, the characters in-world don't know what they are.


Duiker wrote:
No, hit points are an abstraction, the characters in-world don't know what they are.

Except blood reader specifically says that's not the case.

I'm looking for more things like blood reader.

Spoiler:
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. Source PRG:ACO

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.
DiscOH wrote:
Duiker wrote:
No, hit points are an abstraction, the characters in-world don't know what they are.

Except blood reader specifically says that's not the case.

I'm looking for more things like blood reader.
** spoiler omitted **

Hmm, sorry, misread your post. Now I don't think blood reader should exist :-)


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Deathwatch Goggles might be as close as you can get.


Duiker wrote:
DiscOH wrote:
Duiker wrote:
No, hit points are an abstraction, the characters in-world don't know what they are.

Except blood reader specifically says that's not the case.

I'm looking for more things like blood reader.
** spoiler omitted **

Hmm, sorry, misread your post. Now I don't think blood reader should exist :-)

While I tend to agree that HP are abstract and characters in-game would have no idea what HP are, it's not entirely out of the realm of plausibility that the blood reader doesn't know a number ("that troll has 30 bit of life left" or "that dragon is down to its last 97 soul fragments" or some other junk like that).

Maybe, it's abstract for him too. Like "Hey, that ogre will die if I hit it exactly twice with my sword, assuming my average hits - once if it hit if really well."

The GM tells the player that the ogre has 11 HP, but the blood reader simply knows that abstracted number-of-typical-whacks-to-kill-it kind of thing.

To the OP, this ability is pretty far removed from the normal rules of the game for just the reasons stated here. The numbers we use in the game are how we, the players, think of our characters. The characters themselves don't think about themselves that way. For example, I never walk around thinking "I have a strength of 10, my AC is 12 unless I'm flat-footed, I have 5 hit points, and my Knowledge(software development) is a 12."

I don't think that way, you don't think that way (if you do, seek help - fast), and your character doesn't think that way. Abilities that break this metagame barrier are almost non-existent. The blood reader is a very rare exception (and as you can see, a provocative one that might require delicate handling between GM and players to maintain a semblance of verisimilitude).


Queen Moragan wrote:
Deathwatch Goggles might be as close as you can get.

Deathwatch only lets me know if the target is < 4 health, or > 3 health. I'm trying to get a build to reliably chain Goblin Skull Bombs, and for this purpose deathwatch is almost entirely useless.

DM_Blake wrote:
To the OP, this ability is pretty far removed from the normal rules of the game for just the reasons stated here.

Yeah, I got my hopes up because of the Slayer talent, but my search terms weren't finding anything similar. I was hoping I might have missed some rare non parallel wording somewhere in a splash book. That seems like it's not the case :(


Ahh...Goblin Skull Bombs actually need to kill the creature. Not drop below 0. Kill. What's the average Con of an NPC creature? 12-14 or so? Far higher for monsters? The goblin bomb deals about 18 damage. Against a 14 Con creature, that means that the creature has to be at 4 or less HP to get a kill, on average. That's about a 50/50 chance, so in reality the creature should be a bit lower HP than that. The Catching Fire bit makes it a little more likely, but the DC is so low that most creatures are going to pass. If Deathwatch doesn't return "Fragile", you probably shouldn't be using the bomb anyway if you want to get a new one.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Yeah Blood Reader is banned in our games, Horrible piece of meta-gaming cheese that breaks the wall between character knowledge and player knowledge.
We were all pretty put off by it.


Snowblind wrote:
Ahh...Goblin Skull Bombs actually need to kill the creature. Not drop below 0. Kill. What's the average Con of an NPC creature? 12-14 or so? Far higher for monsters? The goblin bomb deals about 18 damage. Against a 14 Con creature, that means that the creature has to be at 4 or less HP to get a kill, on average. That's about a 50/50 chance, so in reality the creature should be a bit lower HP than that. The Catching Fire bit makes it a little more likely, but the DC is so low that most creatures are going to pass. If Deathwatch doesn't return "Fragile", you probably shouldn't be using the bomb anyway if you want to get a new one.

Oh wow, I totally missed this. I play a lot of 4th edition where enemies die at 0 unless you call out that you're trying not to kill them. I guess I could... vital strike with the thrown goblin bomb?

Either way, back to the drawing board. Thanks guys!


DiscOH wrote:
Snowblind wrote:
Ahh...Goblin Skull Bombs actually need to kill the creature. Not drop below 0. Kill. What's the average Con of an NPC creature? 12-14 or so? Far higher for monsters? The goblin bomb deals about 18 damage. Against a 14 Con creature, that means that the creature has to be at 4 or less HP to get a kill, on average. That's about a 50/50 chance, so in reality the creature should be a bit lower HP than that. The Catching Fire bit makes it a little more likely, but the DC is so low that most creatures are going to pass. If Deathwatch doesn't return "Fragile", you probably shouldn't be using the bomb anyway if you want to get a new one.

Oh wow, I totally missed this. I play a lot of 4th edition where enemies die at 0 unless you call out that you're trying not to kill them. I guess I could... vital strike with the thrown goblin bomb?

Either way, back to the drawing board. Thanks guys!

If you can convince your DM it's a splash weapon, there's always Int to damage from alchemist or underground chemist rogues. Just a thought.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Determining Exact Hit Points All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice