I'm working on a full system rewrite, and all the recent talk of hit points and vitality points and whatnot got me to thinking about how I wanted to handle hit points myself. One of my main goals is to keep the system elegant and approachable without sacrificing the complexity we all love; so I'm hoping for something a little more intuitive than some of the other systems I've seen. Here's what I've got:
Hit Points and Wound Points: Your hit points represent your ability to turn a potentially deadly blow into a minor wound, and are determined by rolling your Hit Dice (note, no Con bonus). Your wound points represent your physical capacity for damage, and are equal to your Constitution score. Hit points are lost before wound points, with the following exceptions:
Any time you suffer a critical hit, you take wound points equal to the weapon's critical modifier.
???
Once your hit points reach 0, all further damage (including remaining damage from the current hit) is dealt to your wound points. If you have lost any wound points, you suffer from the fatigued condition.
Once your wound points reach 0, the existing rules for death/dying apply as if you had reached 0 hit points, including death at -CON.
My primary concern is that it low-HD creatures (including 1st-level characters) far, far tougher. Though I suppose one could just rule that most creatures give up/fall unconscious/run away upon taking Wound damage. Alternatively, Wound Points could be limited to be no higher than Hit Points--though that feels a little artificial to me, especially since it only applies for probably the first two levels. Thoughts?
Another alternative I've come up with is making wound points equal to HD, which scales much more cleanly. Perhaps add Con modifier as well.
Interesting, but it won't scale with level at all. Too few hitpoints and woundpoints at high levels to protect characters from dying.
I'm working on a full system rewrite, and all the recent talk of hit points and vitality points and whatnot got me to thinking about how I wanted to handle hit points myself. One of my main goals is to keep the system elegant and approachable without sacrificing the complexity we all love; so I'm hoping for something a little more intuitive than some of the other systems I've seen. Here's what I've got:
** spoiler omitted **
My primary concern is that it low-HD creatures (including 1st-level characters) far, far tougher. Though I suppose one could just rule that most creatures give up/fall unconscious/run away upon taking Wound damage. Alternatively, Wound Points could be limited to be no higher than Hit Points--though that feels a little artificial to me, especially since it only applies for probably the first two levels. Thoughts?
What you have proposed is exactly what I've been toying with for months now. I like it. I have also been toying with a "full system rewrite" for the last couple years. Never get very far because I can never decide how much rewriting is too much. I would be grateful to see your work for possible inspiration.
I wouldn't worry too much about effectively adding Con to hit points, many people have been arbitrarily adding hit points at 1st level to enhance survivability. It might be cool to give a chance for a "bleeder" on a crit, that would drain a few more points.
As far as Wound points = HD, whenever I consider using a Wound point variation, I consider adding +1 Wound point per HD. So, I sort of agree, but I think it should still be based on Con.
-Cheers
Interesting, but it won't scale with level at all. Too few hitpoints and woundpoints at high levels to protect characters from dying.
Who said anything about protecting anyone from dying. I want them to die. At least sometimes, so they start behaving like people.
Ok, so I have some more thoughts on this.
1. This doesn't actually add anything. Having some wound points on the bottom end of these altered hit points isn't adding anything to gameplay, other than making everyone more delicate.
2. This makes everyone more delicate at all levels, but especially high levels.
3. It rewards a high Con at first level only. After that, Con can be almost ignored, because at most it adds only 6-8 wound points (if your character focuses on increasing Con).
I don't mean to be harsh, but I think this needs a lot of work before it will be something many people will adopt.
Part of my rewrite involves cutting down on the scaling of hit points (and to a lesser degree damage) all around, so I'm not too concerned by that. But this system could be used with or without the existing hit point system.
I'm leaning towards either HD+Con modifier or HD+Con, but no max HP at 1st level, for total Wound Points. This removes the skewing problem at low levels.
@ Can'tFindthePath: It's still very incomplete, but it is going to be more or less total. Once it starts to shape up a little more, I'll definitely be bringing it to the boards for feedback, though I have to be careful with OGL vs. copyrighted material--I've drawn inspiration from a lot of places. A quick summary of major changes:
Combat actions revamped; receive two equivalent actions per turn. Iterative attacks gone; you can attack twice at any level by using both actions (with a penalty that drops as you climb in level).
BAB to AC
Streamlined maneuver system based on Kirthfinder
Total rewrites of all classes, drawing heavily on Kirthfinder
Ability score redistribution: no Str or Dex to attack; Will split into two saves, one based on Wis and the other on Cha.
And otherwise heavily editing for clarity and simplicity, particularly with skills.
Part of my rewrite involves cutting down on the scaling of hit points (and to a lesser degree damage) all around, so I'm not too concerned by that. But this system could be used with or without the existing hit point system.
I'm leaning towards either HD+Con modifier or HD+Con, but no max HP at 1st level, for total Wound Points. This removes the skewing problem at low levels.
@ Can'tFindthePath: It's still very incomplete, but it is going to be more or less total. Once it starts to shape up a little more, I'll definitely be bringing it to the boards for feedback, though I have to be careful with OGL vs. copyrighted material--I've drawn inspiration from a lot of places. A quick summary of major changes:
Combat actions revamped; receive two equivalent actions per turn. Iterative attacks gone; you can attack twice at any level by using both actions (with a penalty that drops as you climb in level).
BAB to AC
Streamlined maneuver system based on Kirthfinder
Total rewrites of all classes, drawing heavily on Kirthfinder
Ability score redistribution: no Str or Dex to attack; Will split into two saves, one based on Wis and the other on Cha.
And otherwise heavily editing for clarity and simplicity, particularly with skills.
That all sounds good. I too, am looking enviously at Kirth's game. Must plug some of that in and play!
Interesting, but it won't scale with level at all. Too few hitpoints and woundpoints at high levels to protect characters from dying.Who said anything about protecting anyone from dying. I want them to die. At least sometimes, so they start behaving like people.You can model all real people with character levels 1-5 so long as you use restraint when writing them up.
Level 1 - Professional
Level 2 - Expert
Level 3 - Gifted Expert
Level 4 - Master - Probably the best anyone has ever seen.
Level 5 - Peak Human
Level 6 - Super HeroicIf you keep people at those levels, then they will act like people. There are certainly real people that can jump out of the way of arrows, run up, and stab someone to death. There are real people that can effectively "take 10 and get a 25 on a Profession skill roll." There are even real people that can beat 6 - 10 men in a fight all at once so long as those men aren't anything special. All of that is more than possible at level five.
If you are trying to get characters to act like people at 10 or 20, you are wasting your time. You might as well be trying to hurt the sun by throwing fire at it.
Yeah, see I don't agree with this consuming wildfire of E6. I like the idea, but I would double all those levels you listed out. Super Heroic is 12th in my book.
And I don't subscribe to the notion that high level characters can't be tamed. I play with a group of reasonable, rational, mature (ahem) people and we all want a little more reality in our fantasy. No that isn't a contradiction. We've played D&D to the epic level breaking point, and I know that some tweaks can do a lot to make it playable (at least to 20th) with a measure of reality.
So far, I've just been lazy about implementing them.
That all sounds good. I too, am looking enviously at Kirth's game. Must plug some of that in and play!
My only issue with Kirth's rules are that a beginner looking at that would be completely and utterly overwhelmed; I'm trying to achieve a similar end result, but with a friendlier front side (including a literal rewrite of the book--my word file's at 70 pages and growing!). Keep an eye out in this forum--I've got a fair bit of free time at the moment, so if all goes well I'll be starting to post a lot more about it in a few weeks' time.
EDIT: Speaking of out-of-control high level characters...I'm also redoing magic. That's been a bit of a roadblock though--not sure how far I want to go. I've considered even changing the number of spell levels, though that would massively complicate conversion efforts...
It's interesting. Much more like Vitality points than my variant.
A lot of the "cruft" around my variant HP is dedicated to keeping things mechanically identical to the RAW, except for targeted changes. I expect that taking your approach, you'll probably end up with something much simpler, albeit the rules of combat will have changed fundamentally from the RAW.
In the injury variant, crits don't really become more important to deal out in combat, they're just a little harder to heal. In your variant presented here, crits very quickly become the preferred tactic, since they can "shortcut" the enemy's HP altogether.
If you're looking for potentially more lethal combat, you've hit upon a very clean rule for doing that. I'm considering also how this might interact with negative HP and dying.
Interesting thoughts.
Well, in the context of my rewrite, the rules of combat have changed fundamentally. Damage/round has been curtailed severely, as have hit point totals; the aim is to have the two reductions more or less balanced, just bringing the numbers down into a more reasonable range--100s of hit points is just too much, in my opinion.
As for criticals in this system--at first glance, they do look more deadly. On the other hand...a crit would drop most 1st-level characters into unconsciousness anyways.
Here's a newer version, taking into account the feedback here and presenting my full injury rules:
Hit Points and Wound Points: Your hit points represent your ability to turn a potentially deadly blow into a minor wound, and are determined by rolling your Hit Dice. Your wound points represent your physical capacity for damage, and are equal to your Constitution modifier plus the number of Hit Dice you have. Hit points are lost before wound points, with the following exceptions:
Any time you suffer a critical hit, you take wound points equal to the weapon's critical modifier.
Certain spells and abilities deal damage to wound points.
Once your hit points reach 0, all further damage (including any remaining damage from the current hit) is dealt to your wound points. If you have lost any wound points, you are severely wounded and suffer from the fatigued condition.
Once your wound points drop to 0 or lower, you are disabled and dying.
Disabled: You can only take a single action each turn (my system gives two equivalent actions per turn), and any strenuous action (such as making at attack or casting a spell) results in you taking 1 point of damage. While disabled, you must make a Endurance (Con-based skill) check (DC 10 + number of wound points below 0) at the end of each turn or fall unconscious.
Dying: A dying character must make a Constitution check (DC 10 + number of wound points below 0) at the start of every turn. Success means you have stabilized and are no longer dying; failure means you lose 1 hit point. Characters taking continuous damage, such as from a bleed effect, automatically fail this check.
Another character can stabilize a dying character by making a DC 15 Heal check. If the dying character is conscious, he can attempt this check himself at a -10 penalty.
Dead: If a character's negative wound points exceed his Constitution score, he's dead. A character also dies if his Constitution score is reduced to 0 through attribute damage.
I don't have specific rules for healing yet, but it would be much like your variant, Evil Lincoln--hit points recover rapidly, while wound points recover something like 1 or 2 per day.
Well, in the context of my rewrite, the rules of combat have changed fundamentally. Damage/round has been curtailed severely, as have hit point totals; the aim is to have the two reductions more or less balanced, just bringing the numbers down into a more reasonable range--100s of hit points is just too much, in my opinion.
As for criticals in this system--at first glance, they do look more deadly. On the other hand...a crit would drop most 1st-level characters into unconsciousness anyways.
Here's a newer version, taking into account the feedback here and presenting my full injury rules:
** spoiler omitted **...
I just posted my attempt at this sort of thing but looking at this there may be some take-aways... not sure. I get into re-writing these and then get into a loop.
Yeah, I'm familiar with the revision loop...some portions of my house rules have gone through 10+ iterations by now...