Whether you have the hp to roll with the punches is a separate issue to regenerating potentially tens of hp after just a tiny rest.
No regen for all thanks, I am not buying. It reminds me of 4th eds healing surges for everyone, and pf does not need more 4th ed creeping in (or computer game hand-outs of you took a short rest, now all that damage is gone).
@3.5 Loyalist: You probably wouldn't like A Song of Ice & Fire RPG then...
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Strain is not "a strain". That's one very specific use of a versatile word chosen for its vagueness.
The trouble with saying "but that's not how I do damage at my table" is you're missing the point. This is an alternate way of doing damage. Nobody's telling you to use it, but it's a suggestion for a change in how we do things.
Part of the reason behind it is the traditional method means characters can survive being chopped with an axe a truly ludicrous number of times. An axe blow really isn't as serious as it probably should be. Calling crits the only real hits makes getting cut with an axe doubly serious, which makes way more sense.
All 4th edition ever did in that vain was give you an action usable once per encounter that restored about a quarter of your hit points. Even if all damage results in bleeding wounds, that's perfectly reasonable. You're taking a moment to keep yourself standing and cope with it a little better. It's not a good use of your turn either, so it doesn't get used a lot. In a game in which HP goes up and down much faster, it's a minor effect.
Healing surges in general are a limit on healing, not a way to heal yourself. Even if they did let you heal for free, they are limited. You just have more total hp than you seem to, but if you lose too much at a time you die even if there's some left in reserve. That's the rational behind abilities like inspiring word.
The problem with the 4E approach is the terms they use lead people to misunderstand what they were trying to represent.
The easy access to healing of all kinds makes detailed overnight healing rules pointlessly pedantic in 4E.
As for video games, this has nothing to do with them and even if it did, that wouldn't be a bad thing. Video games are totally irrelevant. This is quick healing for a different reason and with a different justification.
Strain is just a way to rationalize the damage dealt. (I personally have strain removed at a much slower rate)
I think it's far more videogame like to have a character stabbed in the chest with a spear and just shrug it off like it's nothing. Even a rogue or wizard could do that if they had enough hitpoints. But if you're in the "damage is superficial" camp then why does it take so long to recover from it?
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Exactly. The immersion would take a blow if you imagine ALL damage as severe, bloody potentially crippling hits. Most people think "what happens if a person gets hit IRL by <weapon>?" and the notion to rest off such damage by catching your breath IS ridiculous. But by that logic, a mid-level PC stands after taking up to a dozen "mortal injuries".
I see it differently. With this system, only the crits and failed saves are actual injuries. Which makes a TON of sense to me, as crits and failed saves tend to stack up serious chunks of your HP, as opposed to minor hits for single digit damage. Now, you are messed up when an enemy actually injures you, and fights become easier to imagine as well as more memorable. There is more flavor in the post combat healing, as the cleric is healing that specific injury, rather than refilling your HP tank like some gas-station attendant.
3.5 Loyalist, I welcome negative feedback. I have done so many times for this rule.
You're expressing your dislike for a variant rule, which has a built-in response: don't use it.
If you'd like to make this a constructive design discussion, please consider your tone more carefully, it seems adversarial to me (*perhaps it isn't intended, text can be tricky). Please read the rule description carefully before responding, many of your grievances have been addressed and carefully documented. It took some doing.
For the record, the intent of the rule was to correct the healing rates to account for the abstract component of Hit Points as described in the rules-as-written, and to make damage feel less "video-gamey" (though I debate the usefulness of that term). From your comments, it seems that you don't really understand the the execution of that intent. That may be my fault, if it wasn't explained properly.
Yeah I should say I don't think you're wrong for disliking it or that you should use it, I just don't think the particular reasons you've given add up so I thought I'd say so.
Strain is not "a strain". That's one very specific use of a versatile word chosen for its vagueness.
The trouble with saying "but that's not how I do damage at my table" is you're missing the point. This is an alternate way of doing damage. Nobody's telling you to use it, but it's a suggestion for a change in how we do things.
Part of the reason behind it is the traditional method means characters can survive being chopped with an axe a truly ludicrous number of times. An axe blow really isn't as serious as it probably should be. Calling crits the only real hits makes getting cut with an axe doubly serious, which makes way more sense.
All 4th edition ever did in that vain was give you an action usable once per encounter that restored about a quarter of your hit points. Even if all damage results in bleeding wounds, that's perfectly reasonable. You're taking a moment to keep yourself standing and cope with it a little better. It's not a good use of your turn either, so it doesn't get used a lot. In a game in which HP goes up and down much faster, it's a minor effect.
Healing surges in general are a limit on healing, not a way to heal yourself. Even if they did let you heal for free, they are limited. You just have more total hp than you seem to, but if you lose too much at a time you die even if there's some left in reserve. That's the rational behind abilities like inspiring word.
The problem with the 4E approach is the terms they use lead people to misunderstand what they were trying to represent.
The easy access to healing of all kinds makes detailed overnight healing rules pointlessly pedantic in 4E.As for video games, this has nothing to do with them and even if it did, that wouldn't be a bad thing. Video games are totally irrelevant. This is quick healing for a different reason and with a different justification.
Before I get into the rest, just want to respond to the first thing about my table. I've tried variant hp rules before, and been a part of groups that have. Vitality, damage actually takes off you luck pool and doesn't represent a real hit. They were truly terrible. Misses all over the place, mooks having a lot more "hp" than standard because they were running off a + CON rule. The worst gaming experiences.
Now this talk of glancing, being winded and not being hurt reminds me of that. Hp is not real, it is all half hits and mostly quickly recovered damage thereafter.
It isn't the grittiness I want, which I get in the standard hp system (strangely enough) where a wound, even a minor one is serious. A problem you have to deal with, a hit to the body, an indication something tried to kill you. Not hand waived at the end of a combat as unimportant and easily shrugged off. I find the idea of tens of hp disappearing alarming. What did they do to your character? Did they not actually hit you at all (despite tens of hp being lost)? This is the opposite of exciting and risky. The explanations for shrugging off all the damage of a trapped corridor is perfectly an example of this--it is as if there was no risk to begin with. If not insta-killed or hit with multiple crits, you can just walk it off.
I find the strain rules lazy, like it can't be bothered actually calculating how hurt a character is, so it gets waved after the battle. The comparison to computer game wait and heal mechanics is apt, because there is a lot of similarity. Don't worry about your past injuries, you have a pause, there you are back again at full health.
:/
3.5 Loyalist, I welcome negative feedback. I have done so many times for this rule.
You're expressing your dislike for a variant rule, which has a built-in response: don't use it.
If you'd like to make this a constructive design discussion, please consider your tone more carefully, it seems adversarial to me (*perhaps it isn't intended, text can be tricky). Please read the rule description carefully before responding, many of your grievances have been addressed and carefully documented. It took some doing.
For the record, the intent of the rule was to correct the healing rates to account for the abstract component of Hit Points as described in the rules-as-written, and to make damage feel less "video-gamey" (though I debate the usefulness of that term). From your comments, it seems that you don't really understand the the execution of that intent. That may be my fault, if it wasn't explained properly.
I get that. I am more a fan of soak systems (a fansoaker?). The adversarial tone comes from arguing for your defenders. I don't think they see the problems.
The good thing about the hp rules as is, is that if you are hit, you are actually "hit" and injured. This is represented, and you have to heal to be at full capacity again, since you actually got hit. It is not all fine and hand-waved. If it is is a minor wound it is a minor thing, but that stays with you until it is gone. I get some want to get way from this, but you have been hit, so you have been hurt makes a lot more sense than you were hit potentially quite a lot, but now after a brief rest, you are totally fine.
So yeah, I hate "hits" being misses, glances, not real.
And my issue with standard HP is no amount of cuts, burns, arrows to the chest, or whatever mean anything until you run out of HP. With no system of wound penalties in place I can take possibly (at high enough levels) hundreds of daggers to my body and function as if I hadn't been touched. So you hate hits being misses some of us hate cuts, burns ,etc. being meaningless unless they hit a magic number.
Strain is just a way to rationalize the damage dealt. (I personally have strain removed at a much slower rate)
I think it's far more videogame like to have a character stabbed in the chest with a spear and just shrug it off like it's nothing. Even a rogue or wizard could do that if they had enough hitpoints. But if you're in the "damage is superficial" camp then why does it take so long to recover from it?
Yeah but people if they are tough and determined can take serious injuries. People have survived being shot, stabbed, falling great heights. I got hit by a car, massive amounts of damage, took two weeks to heal, but I still got up. I wasn't just going to lie there on the hot road.
In the standard case of being knifed to death, the victims will have 5-7 defensive wounds--which they survived, until they couldn't go on. Stories of war, people walk away from all manner of things. There was a Pakistani guy that was shot multiple times by enemies in a defensive position, he still climbed a cliff and killed people.
There is Blackbeard, there is all manner of tough folks that have taken the pain, been shot or cut and kept going. One old guy in my hometown got hacked up by a Japanese officer and his katana in ww2. He still shot him. He didn't quit saying "oh no I've copped a serious wound from a sword, real people don't take such injuries, ahh I am slain." Nope!
Last Saturday, I was at the market and I saw this tough old bastard. He had clearly taken a massive head wound years ago, it looked like a pick had hit and gone through his forehead. He kept on going, I saw him walk past me.
Boxers, a great example of hp in the real world. They take rounds of extreme potentially bone-breaking damage (and it would break people if it was directed against anyone not as tough as they), and keep going until they win or their injuries take them out. That is boxing rounds of being hit (which are a lot longer than 6 second rounds).
I want my heroes to be tough like the people, those that have taken serious injuries and kept going. Or they can play wizards...
3.5, I get where you're coming from, but I feel like you're missing the "keystone" that holds it all together for the rest of us.
It's not about making things easier, it's about defining a space in the system for parrying, endurance, and the other abstract parts of HP which are mentioned in the RAW but not treated as such in the healing rules.
I started this variant rule during runelords, where I got tired (as GM) explaining how the players were surviving the massive amount of damage that stone giants put out. When I looked at the RAW, I found my answer; HP aren't just wounds, they're anything that makes you easier to kill, including divided attention, lost endurance, dodging, and especially parrying (which is suspiciously absent in the system).
The problem is, after a session of "you hurl yourself out of the path of stone giant's club" instead of "the massive club smashes into you but you are somehow not crushed alive" ... the healing rates were too severe. This is where the idea of two healing rates came from.
The "hand waivey" aspect you seem to have an issue with *is* a reduction in paperwork, but it comes from session after session of players tallying up spent wand charges until they hit full HP. In the rule I've done the math, if you want the PCs to pay a GP penalty for damage, it's 3gp per hit point. You could just do that and get the exact same result for 90% of parties.
I hope that adds some perspective. Still, your comments make me think this rule just isn't for you, and that's okay. It's a very specific problem we're addressing here, and if you're not experiencing that problem, then I'm not surprised you don't see the need for it.
If the hit misses, you have parried, blocked or deflected it with your armour.
...
If you want a parry system, there is Lace and Steel. It also has some soak.
Hey 3.5, can you do me a huge favor?
We don't often have people so willing to write about this rule who aren't so into it. Could you please (*I'm begging*) write up the rule in your own words?
It would be hugely helpful to us, even if you don't care for the rule.
If your issue is over-usage of wands, you can shut that down you know. Surviving becomes more a focus of the game, and they have to think more without the security of wand patch up after every batttle.
More tension, more focus on survival, more smarts and teamwork used to prevent hard to heal damage.
Hey 3.5, can you do me a huge favor?
We don't often have people so willing to write about this rule who aren't so into it. Could you please (*I'm begging*) write up the rule in your own words?
It would be hugely helpful to us, even if you don't care for the rule.
I'd love to, but I've got to do some job related stuff now. I'll check back on later.
Right on, hope to hear from you later.
Boxers, a great example of hp in the real world. They take rounds of extreme potentially bone-breaking damage (and it would break people if it was directed against anyone not as tough as they), and keep going until they win or their injuries take them out. That is boxing rounds of being hit (which are a lot longer than 6 second rounds).
Boxing is mirrored very well by the strain system. The boxers trade strikes that do little more than wear each other down and cause bruising, swelling, and minor cuts (strain), occasionally landing a significant shot (Crit) that has lasting effects, once their opponent is significantly weakened they use the opening to land a shot that puts the opponent into negative HP and renders them unconscious.
Between rounds they go into their corner and get ice and basic treatment of minor cuts as well as a chance to catch their breath. Obviously this is some sort of variant of the Strain rule where a reduced 1 minute rest/refit allows 1/5th of the strain HP recovery.
Also if you're trying to mirror boxing, there's a reason that unarmed strikes default to non-lethal damage in the rules. Also, boxers wear padded gloves on their hands that reduce the damage dealt both to the opponent and their own hands.
As a boxer I am going to tell you the damage does not magically disappear with a tiny rest! It can allow you to get good advice from your coach, treat and slow down the bleeding from cuts, but if you get hammered and are losing, that tiny break does not put you back to full. Lol. If it did, skirmishing and wearing someone down would not work, they'd heal it all in the breaks!
Boxing already works with the current hp system. Although AD&D with hp and a small percentage of K.O from each hit did it best. Good good, back and forth, take it, ohhh, K.O!
Last point on boxing, even a skilled but lowly amateur can do real damage with those punches. For example, breaking bones requiring weeks of healing (this is in gloves yeah, ribs are notoriously easy to break). It isn't subdual, unless you "pull your punches".
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_die_in_boxing
So again, I am against these rules because they make no sense. If someone beats you with sticks or cuts you up, a minute rest is not going to sort you out, nor should it. This is the stance the standard rules follow for good reason. In game, break out the magic or hold up and rest.
As a boxer I am going to tell you the damage does not magically disappear with a tiny rest! It can allow you to get good advice from your coach, treat and slow down the bleeding from cuts, but if you get hammered and are losing, that tiny break does not put you back to full. Lol. If it did, skirmishing and wearing someone down would not work, they'd heal it all in the breaks!
A boxer who is "being hammered" in this system is one who has taken several critical hits, which is indeed damage that is not going to heal up with a simple rest. Strain damage represents a boxer who has been successfully blocking and dodging incoming strikes from a skilled opponent but is growing tired in the process and is starting to have problems keeping his guard up (thus possibly opening him up to a knock out blow). It should also be pointed out that, within this system, the minute between boxing rounds is not even enough time to heal strain damage either.
The only way that boxing works at within the HP system is if you assume that all boxers are doing non-lethal damage. Otherwise every single Boxer who was knocked out would be in danger of dying and every single fighter who manages to get up from a knockout would pass back out and resume dying as soon as they threw a punch.
Last point on boxing, even a skilled but lowly amateur can do real damage with those punches. For example, breaking bones requiring weeks of healing (this is in gloves yeah, ribs are notoriously easy to break). It isn't subdual, unless you "pull your punches".
If we're using a system where a dagger does 1d4 damage and an unamred strike does 1d3 damage then, yes, the damage being done by an unarmed strike is clearly better represented as non-lethal damage.
Sometimes people die boxing, yeah, it happens. But just imagine how many people would die if we held the same number of Knife Fights each year as we hold boxing matches.
This is why unarmed strikes default to nonlethal damage, you're considerably less likely to die from being punched in the face one time by a boxer than you are from being stabbed once by a guy with a knife.
So again, I am against these rules because they make no sense. If someone beats you with sticks or cuts you up, a minute rest is not going to sort you out, nor should it. This is the stance the standard rules follow for good reason. In game, break out the magic or hold up and rest.
Again, a person who has been beat up with sticks or cut in this system is a person who has taken critical hits and/or took an attack that knocked them below 0 HP. A person who has taken only strain damage was attacked by someone with sticks or a knife and managed to avoid taking any significant damage by expending a great deal of physical effort to avoid the attacks, tiring themselves out in the process.
Yes, but crits aren't the only things that can take you down. Jabs and straights hurt, they wear you down and are not easy to come back from if you have been hit a lot and taken real damage--multiple normal strike that hits, bypasses AC, and inflict punishment.
If goblins almost slice you to death over rounds upon rounds of cutting, that should not be just a scratch that has no further effects and goes away after a brief pause. Your char got hurt, cut up and bleeding, deal with it! Roleplay through, you just won, it was really close, now use your healing items to recover.
You are not seeing non-crits as injuries or real damage (because you can't see non-crits as real injuries, the language of these new rules has confined your mind), so we are talking past eachother. Blocking and parrying is already covered by missing the hit; not being hit and then suddenly you are not really hit (jeez this idea annoys me, it is star wars and the vitality system all over again).
I think a variant to the rules where 30 hp in crits is a serious lasting injury but 40 hp in non-crits just washes off, is not a good idea. It seems nonsensical. Hp in the current system already represents health, toughness and your ability to roll with hits and keep going. We don't need luck hp and half-hits all round.
And now we are back to being sliced up and down by goblins having no effect on your ability to function.
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3.5 Loyalist, in this variant, HP is equivalent to a person's stamina, not vitality. The variant literally changed how HP works. There's no point arguing about how HP works in the core rules when it's been changed with this variant. Misses are actions that didn't require the defender to expend any energy to prevent being hurt. Strain hits are misses that did require the defender to expend energy to prevent being hurt badly.
If you stop thinking of HP as the number of times you can get stabbed in the chest before you fall unconscious, and instead as the number of times you can stave off being stabbed in the chest before being too worn out to stop the next one, this variant HP system should make more sense for you.
Yes, but crits aren't the only things that can take you down. Jabs and straights hurt, they wear you down and are not easy to come back from if you have been hit a lot and taken real damage--multiple normal strike that hits, bypasses AC, and inflict punishment.
If goblins almost slice you to death over rounds upon rounds of cutting, that should not be just a scratch that has no further effects and goes away after a brief pause. Your char got hurt, cut up and bleeding, deal with it! Roleplay through, you just won, it was really close, now use your healing items to recover.
No, you see my character didn't take any hits, some vicious goblins attacked him, but he managed to parry the attacks while fighting them off, he's really darn tired afterward and covered in scrapes, he needs to spend time getting his breath back and bandaging up but somehow managed to avoid a dagger getting jammed in his throat or stuck in his gut.
Your character got stabbed X times but managed to fight the goblins off even while covered in wounds that would have killed a lesser adventurer, now he needs to stand there for Y minutes while the cleric burns off charges from his wand/spells, marks off the charges, and tells you how many HP you get back each time until your HP gets back to a decent level.
They're simply different interpretations of something that is called out as an abstract system in the rules themselves, both are valid, one requires significantly less book keeping and out of game time being spent dealing with damage, but that's the primary effect it has on play.
You are not seeing non-crits as injuries or real damage (because you can't see non-crits as real injuries, the language of these new rules has confined your mind), so we are talking past eachother. Blocking and parrying is already covered by missing the hit; not being hit and then suddenly you are not really hit (jeez this idea annoys me, it is star wars and the vitality system all over again)
Or, conversely your mind is confined by thinking that the game term "hit" means that the character must have literally been struck with the weapon rather than being willing to interpret it as a narrow miss that required a greater than normal expenditure of energy from the character to defend or turn aside. The character was never struck by the weapon, there is no "suddenly you are not really hit".
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Loyalist, I see exactly what you mean, but the degree to which some characters survive such injuries on a regular basis strains my disbelief.
By RAW, not all damage is real wounds, but it all heals as though it is. Really we're all house ruling here to make that consistent, it's just you've gone the other way and made the descriptions match the healing rates. That's still better than inconsistency to my mind.
If you ask me "it hit the armour so it's a miss" is an oversimplification. How is that non-critical hit going through that full plate? Why doesn't it hurt my if I'm struck over the helmeted head with an axe? What about the parries that twist your arm, force you into an unfavourable position or just take up enough of your energy that you can't keep them up for long? That's what strain is good for.
I think it's very unfortunate that you think I can't see the problems. I think understand where you're coming from perfectly well.
If a hit isn't a hit, how can a sneak attack hit do sneak attack damage?
*Sent from a Wudang mountaintop*
If a hit isn't a hit, how can a sneak attack hit do sneak attack damage?
*Sent from a Wudang mountaintop*
It's sneak attack damage, not sneak attack injury.
If you follow the link to the rule description and do a search on "sneak attack", you will find the following explanation:
In the Strain-Injury variant, bonus sneak attack damage reflects the unexpected nature of the attack taking an extra toll on the defender’s responsiveness in combat. Sneak attacks are difficult to defend against and therefore leave the target vulnerable to subsequent attacks. Of course, in the even that a sneak attack deals Injury damage, the resulting wound is that much more grievous for the expert placement.
And before you ask poison's been worked out as well.
Yeah, the other thing to consider is if sneak attacks actually work most of the time, why don't they usually take out the target?
Timing good man, it is all about the timing. Delay, go at the end of the round, and you should polish off the foe. High initiative rogues and their ilk usually go first, and while sneak, win initiative, sneak is fantastic, it may not take all the hp and allow the rogue to get a solo kill. If you let others go first and then pile on the sneak, then you have a better chance at finishing the combat. As an example, one fighter or ranger archer backing up two rogues moving in on the flanks to finish off injured foes. Or the fighter dishing out the pain and the rogue which hides behind the fighter being screened and protected. The rogue tumbles out and around finishing off difficult foes already touched up by the fighter. With patience a rogue can get a lot of kills.
What I am saying is I've never had rogue performance anxiety; I feel for your loss.
Thanks for the info Lincoln. It is a little unclear to me though, what does "and therefore leave the target vulnerable to subsequent attacks" mean. Is it real damage, or is it not real? I know some versions of the vitality system allowed sneak attacks/backstabs/a blaster to the back of the head to ignore all the lucky baloney, but others did not.
Thanks for the info Lincoln. It is a little unclear to me though, what does "and therefore leave the target vulnerable to subsequent attacks" mean. Is it real damage, or is it not real? I know some versions of the vitality system allowed sneak attacks/backstabs/a blaster to the back of the head to ignore all the lucky baloney, but others did not.
For this variant, Damage (strain and injury combined) is best defined as: "Anything that makes you easier to stab."
Strain is "anything that makes you easier to stab, but doesn't require more than a few minutes to recover from." Getting winded in a fight makes it easier for the opponent to shank you in the guts, but recovering from windedness shouldn't take 24 hours or a magic spell.
Injury is "Anything that makes you easier to stab, and requires treatment." Being stabbed once sure makes you easier to stab again. All that lost HP from a crit makes it really easy for your enemy or his friend to follow up with a killing blow (0hp).
Because strain brings you closer to 0 HP, and the final blow is always injury, strain makes it easier to deal injury. You tire the opponent out. You mess up his armor. You work with your allies to put out an overwhelming number of attacks, so that last attack finds its mark.
A strain sneak attack is a blind-siding attack that is so difficult to defend from that it leaves you wide open to the next attack, either from the rogue or an ally. When he jumped out of the shadows, you had to turn and focus all your attention in order to not get stabbed. Now you've lost a bunch of HP (to strain), so the next attack may well bring you below zero. That attack will be injury; for healing purposes, it was like a crit. You're stabbed, bleeding, and it isn't going away with a nap.
I hope this helps. I appreciate your interest in talking this out, even if the rule's not your style.
One might think that describing the majority of attack damage as parries and fatigue would make the game seem less lethal, but in practice it is the opposite. Actual injuries feel much more severe with the variant — they're occasional, but terrible and need tending to.
Much as ubiquitous magic items can make magic feel less "magic", ubiquitous wounds make each hit mean less narratively.
My PCs parry a lot. They get tired. They get distracted. Their armor gets bent out of shape. All of this is tracked with HP. Only a few times each session does one actually get injured, and because of its infrequency I can describe it much more gruesomely.
Good explanation. I do have a question though, if you totally attacked from stealth and they were completely flat-footed, but you did not crit, would that take off strain? They did not see you or detect you, they did not parry (how could they).
Because I've played with a rule like this before, and there is little that is more frustrating at the gaming table than a shot from cover on an oblivious target, that hits but misses. Even describing it is problematic (how did the target not get skewered, the aim was true, the arrow sharp, the bow strong). Thus a player can feel cheated (where is the blood for the blood god?).
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Sure, and thanks for teasing this out.
I've got a two part answer for you.
1) Strain isn't necessarily attention based. I use a list of non-injury descriptions that isn't systematized; I tailor my interpretation to whatever's going on.
Examples: tiring parry or dodge, armor or shield wear and tear, superficial cuts, bruises and pricks, divided attention, dwindling morale and dumb luck.
As you can see, even if someone is totally flat-footed, some of those descriptions still work. Armor does its job making the rogue's job harder even if the defender is asleep.
Now, you're right, a skilled rogue with a perfect opportunity should just be able to shank someone, without having to roll and confirm a crit. This is achieved by doing enough damage to take the enemy below zero. Which leads me to...
2) The more lethal an attack seems like it should be, the more you need a description of why it doesn't incapacitate a character who has HP remaining. This is a recurring discussion in this thread, which you'll be forgiven for not wading through all 1,000,000 pages of it. It's the necessary conclusion if you want to avoid the "video gamey" result of getting hit 12 times with a sword and still walking around. You only get hit once in a while (comparatively), the rest is parrying and maneuvering and rolling and blocking — all of which wears down your ability to fend off the next attack. An enemy "miss" means you simply didn't even need to parry, or at least it expended no effort.
You could make the rule that sneak attacks always deal injuries, but this creates an exception in the rules where there really doesn't need to be one. If a rogue gets the drop on you, you suffer greatly whether he cuts you or not. Whatever he did makes you easier to stab (unless he took you down to zero, in which case he stabbed you himself). Whether or not you need to sew it up after the fight actually has no bearing on the outcome of that fight, mechanically. Hit points still work exactly the same during the fight.
It takes some getting used to, it's true. Traps, especially, seem anti-climactic at first if they are encountered outside of an action scene (and don't crit)... but the descriptions of trap results actually become a lot more cinematic. In movies, traps often do "damage" that startles a hero for only a second, but they narrowly evade injury. The role of traps in the S-I Variant is to distract and add peril so that enemies can capitalize on that.
It's also worth noting that I don't really track strain for un-named NPCs, so my players are rarely frustrated by hits that seem like misses. S-I is a rule that affects long-term healing rates (combat healing is unchanged), so any NPC that will never live to be healed needs no strain tracking.
If I want to imply skill, sure, I'll describe parries. I think that adds something to the game. But if you were playing at my table you'd find that I would treat some strain damage vs. NPCs as wounds if that's what I felt like describing at the time.
For important NPCs, yes I track strain. And yes, it can be a touch frustrating that a mere hit can be written off as a parry... but. The players benefit from strain descriptions constantly, and they've learned to discern a miss from a mere hit descriptively. It frequently makes sense in the context of overwhelming a skilled fighter with many allied attacks.
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My old DM used the Vitality/Wounds system, the Damage Conversion system, and the Reserve Points system, all from Unearthed Arcana. Hits were described as glancing blows, getting the wind knocked out of you, a scratch on the cheek, while critical hits left you gasping or left you with a dagger in your chest. While we really liked the cinematic quality of his system, it still didn't deal well with massive damage that wasn't critical hits, like Sneak Attacks. I haven't found anything yet that describes that satisfactorily, especially at high levels.
Back to the rule being discussed. For myself, I like the idea of some kind of temporary HP rather than an actual healing rate. My favorite example of this kind of system is John McClane (or just about any other action hero). John gets battered, bruised, shot, stabbed, has things exploding around him, but he still slugs it out with wave after wave of bad guys. A typical day for adventurers. But the reason he's able to do so isn't because he just plain heals. He's not Wolverine. At the end of that day, he needs a hospital. But during the day, he keep pushing forward. To me, that absolutely says temporary hit points.
I'm sure someone brought this up somewhere else in the thread, I just thought I'd throw it out there.
WK, when you say temporary hit points, do you mean that as defined in the rules (additional hit points as from false life) or do you mean "temporary damage", like strain?
This is another place where I've found that S-I actually does the opposite of what you'd think. By RAW healing rates, most characters can take multiple sword wounds and keep on fighting. In S-I, a character who sustains multiple crits is actually pretty bad-ass. It takes a ton of HP to withstand multiple crits and failed saves in a single combat.
John McClane of the above example is a guy with a ton of HP. He takes a bunch of strain (because those movies never really give him much time for rest and refit) but also quite a few crits and he keeps on pushing.
But I'd argue that the ability to sustain wounds and keep pushing means more in S-I than it does in the RAW, because not just anyone can do it. You need more HP.
I meant temporary hit points, but on second thought I don't think I'd use them. Still, I wouldn't give back all hp lost to strain either.
The main issue I have with Strain as written is that, while I agree that you can catch your breath and recover from some of the strain of combat, you can't recover from all of it. I used to participate in martial arts tournaments, and even with ten, fifteen, forty-five minutes between bouts, you get tired.
It doesn't matter if you took a critical hit to the ribs or dodged every single hit, the strain of combat just takes it out of you. Regaining part of that Strain damage would make a lot more sense than regaining all of it.
I meant temporary hit points, but on second thought I don't think I'd use them. Still, I wouldn't give back all hp lost to strain either.
The main issue I have with Strain as written is that, while I agree that you can catch your breath and recover from some of the strain of combat, you can't recover from all of it. I used to participate in martial arts tournaments, and even with ten, fifteen, forty-five minutes between bouts, you get tired.
It doesn't matter if you took a critical hit to the ribs or dodged every single hit, the strain of combat just takes it out of you. Regaining part of that Strain damage would make a lot more sense than regaining all of it.
Your reasoning sounds like kind of an endorsement to me!
Strain damage only accounts for the fatigue of fighting (and other factors) that heavily determines the outcome. For instance, parrying a broadsword. As you note from your own experience, having to parry repeatedly leaves you tired and vulnerable to subsequent attacks.
In S-I, all that tiredness seems to evaporate after the fight is over and you can catch your breath... but it doesn't really. You could still be tired — it's just the fatigue that heavily affects your performance that goes away, the immediate strain that affects the outcome of the fight.
To go back to a boxing match, you take strain damage from footwork, blocking and dodging. You take injury from taking hits. With a few minutes, whatever effect the former had will diminish. You'll still be tired, but when you get up to fight the next round it has "reset" at least in part. The actual punches will hurt well into the next few days.
In theory I support a fixed rate of strain recovery... the trouble is, which one?
There's a case to be made for "catching your breath" as a full round action, actually restoring a small amount strain damage mid-fight. In that case, strain recovery would be a function of however many rounds people had.
I figure you could ask 10 GMs what the rate should be, and get 10 different answers. That's why I've left it undefined. I'd be interested to see if I'm wrong, and there's some kind of consensus I'm not aware of.
In practice, it seems like it's just not worth the paperwork. There's one thing that P&P RPGs, Pathfinder specifically do quite poorly, and that's measure the passage of time. PF just isn't set up for it, and time ends up being something the GM can easily "abuse" to minimize PCs efforts... which means a lot of GMs can be intimidated into doing the opposite because they're not jerks.
So I figure, if any system boils down to the GM advancing time how she likes, and restoring however many HP she likes, why not just make that the rule? And if you see it differently, please explain how you'd do it.
Yes! I support what you're trying to do. I just feel that, realistically, you don't get back all of your energy when you rest after a fight. You get back some of it. That's really the only point I'm nit-picking. As written, a boxer could fight all day, taking five minutes between matches, and if he never took a solid hit he would mechanically be fresh as a daisy. The body just doesn't work that way. This is why I suggest regaining only some or most of the strain damage. A high-level character should be able to go almost all day, because he's trained for endurance (as represented by higher hit points). But even a Fighter 20 would get tired eventually.
This is just my gut feeling, based on how I've felt after training and fights. I'm interested enough that I'll likely go ahead and test it, though I'm planning on testing a different variant HP system in my next game.
On a completely different note, the failed save vs critical hit argument that was brought up at the beginning of the post can be mitigated by having injury damage only occur if the save roll is a natural 1. This more closely mimics critical hits, and it's how we've always determined critical hits for effects without attack rolls. Just a thought.
I like the "take x minutes and recover a set amount", and I like taking a breather as an action in combat. I actually wouldn't touch static recovery rates like x hp/minute, because that feels like an even worse simulation. I think 5 minutes is just fine as the point of recuperation, because that's about when your heart rate has come down and your breathing is about back to normal. Recovering beyond that requires sleep. I just think I'd rather recover 3/4 of the strain damage in that time. Means a tiny bit extra math, but it's outside of combat, so whatever.
*EDIT*
In my opinion, anything that brings you back to full HP without sleep is magic.
In a game with no actual rules for sleep deprivation, your bar for simulationist fidelity is higher than mine.
It's given me definite food for thought though. More later.
In a game with no actual rules for sleep deprivation, your bar for simulationist fidelity is higher than mine.
Yeah, I've been told I take my game too seriously sometimes. I also think that armor should partially provide damage reduction versus specific weapon types and partially convert lethal damage to non-lethal, massive damage should deal attribute damage and leave scars, all attacks should be based off of dexterity, and you shouldn't be able to make 5 shots with a longbow in less than 6 seconds, never mind crossbows. But it doesn't seem like anyone else wants to get quite that realistic.
Well, part of what I wanted for this rule was a jumping-off point.
I want to reconcile the most glaring problem with hit points (IMO) and encourage people to use that as a basis for their own experiments. Or, even just let it inform your own rules creation.
So far I've been thrilled with the results. There are lots of people who now use adjusted healing rates — even if they're different from mine — to address a problem that used to require a more heavy-handed method like separate HP pools.
(btw, I'm pretty sure your thoughts on sleep are going to pop up in my next post in the Damage Penalty S-I thread.)
On soak systems, I find they get a lot of support, but they can penalise lightly armoured players and privilege knights/tanks/turtles. In a mod of a game I am playing at the moment I really like how they do it. Light armour takes a bit off slashing, and a touch of bashing and piercing. Medium works well against all, but you can still get stunned from being shot by arrows, and a great hit with a bashing or piercing weapon may almost entirely go through with no issue. Heavy is much the same but works a bit better. All armours slow you down, but for light it is mostly unnoticeable.
Against knights or heavy inf, swords are near useless, you want maces, polearms, pikes, a lot of shooting. However swords are fast, so against commoners swords rock (they are the rock to the commoner's scissors).
Being hit by a couched lance is almost certain death, and momentum and the movement of the attacker and defender come into play (move back and you get hurt less, run on a weapon and you give yourself a crit, lol). So there are some really good systems out there, it is unfortunate strain is not for me.
I want sneak attacks to hurt and injure every single time, I want traps to bleed the players, and I want the heroes to rip up their foes with less parries and half-hits taking away the hits away from them. From what I know, it is not hard to hit someone and cause an injury (boxing, fencing, knife or staff fighting what have you), but to put them down takes multiple hits, and some people are great at taking damage and continuing. So I stick with standard hp (but yearn for soak rules because armour can be fantastic. My fencing helmet has saved me from a lot of serious injury).
The little crappy martial arts armour as seen in Tae Kwon Do, that s!%$ is rubbish though.
Well, part of what I wanted for this rule was a jumping-off point.
I want to reconcile the most glaring problem with hit points (IMO) and encourage people to use that as a basis for their own experiments. Or, even just let it inform your own rules creation.
So far I've been thrilled with the results. There are lots of people who now use adjusted healing rates — even if they're different from mine — to address a problem that used to require a more heavy-handed method like separate HP pools.
(btw, I'm pretty sure your thoughts on sleep are going to pop up in my next post in the Damage Penalty S-I thread.)
Yeah, but some of us have sparred against people with a lot of hp. You hit them really hard (it is not a glance, it is not a slight ruffling of their feathers) and it only has minor effect. People can become really tough, hp tries to represent that. People can even take being cut up, ribs and other bones broken to an extent. I think adventurers can as well, so I go with that.
As a tiny aside, when it comes to a soft spellcaster engaged with a nasty melee, (we once had a party wizard cut up by a bastard sword wielder) it makes no sense for every hit by the fighter to not be a hit. The soft and squishy have no skill here, they are getting cut to pieces and they will die fast. I like how this was represented in 3.0 and 3.5 for d4 hit die characters. Anything up close could kill you fast, so the low hit die char pulling evasions and deflections out of their arse makes no sense to me, especially if their AC, their ability to prevent getting hit is around 10, and when hits are colliding by an easy +10 over this. That is not a parry by the wizard, they are being bled out by large blades.
On exhaustion it doesn't come up much, but in one game we had a dervish that got taken apart by an old experienced ranger. Mano to mano, one on one. The 3.5 dervish is all about the dance, doing a lot of damage and tricks in a short time. Sort of like rage. The ranger backed off, and let the target go to fatigued (which happens when you run out of dance). Now we checked our fatigue and exhaustion rules as the ranger engaged and disengaged with the dervish. Low magic setting, intermediate level so not much healing. One on one duel so not much opportunity for powerade of the gods. We found the exhaustion rules (which escape me now) and went from there. After time and some checks, the dervish got to exhausted and still the fight was going. We made the checks again, the ranger got to fatigued but the dervish went PAST exhausted so we said that was a K.O. The enemy won that fight over a few hours. The dervish had a bow, but had to drop it as the fast ranger engaged him when he tried to use it. A long, interesting battle.
So if a pc or enemy goes past exhaustion, I say they pass out until the subdual recovers from rest. I don't mind the subdual damage rules actually. Some won't come back easily, but with time you get a lot back without heavy rest. I don't like strain and its almost all is less than subdual though. There is no respect for lethal damage here, it can be recovered even faster than subdual! Which makes little sense (except by saying the hits are not hits).
As a tiny aside, when it comes to a soft spellcaster engaged with a nasty melee, (we once had a party wizard cut up by a bastard sword wielder) it makes no sense for every hit by the fighter to not be a hit. The soft and squishy have no skill here, they are getting cut to pieces and they will die fast. I like how this was represented in 3.0 and 3.5 for d4 hit die characters. Anything up close could kill you fast, so the low hit die char pulling evasions and deflections out of their arse makes no sense to me, especially if their AC, their ability to prevent getting hit is around 10, and when hits are colliding by an easy +10 over this. That is not a parry by the wizard, they are being bled out by large blades.This is one of the inherit problems with the way the 3.5/pf combat is. The evasion, armor, and parries aren't discriminated and just becomes AC or hitpoints. In real life, a person with a sword (or other long piece of metal) is better defended against an attacker than someone that's unarmed. Criticals have less to do with the target's defense than the attacker's luck, but they still require the attacker to confirm hits on the AC. This means fighters and other martials with higher ACs are less likely to get hit with these deadly wounds than a caster who'll likely have a lower AC than the meat shield in full plate.
Also, the last hit, the one that brings the character to 0, also counts as an injury. Higher level casters with low hit dice may dodge a few swings, but that last hit will cut them down much faster than the fighter will even have a critical confirmed on him. 1st level casters aren't even likely to last more than 2 attacks by a warrior that knows what he's doing.
I've experimented with a Stamina healing rate.
I settled on a recovery rate of 10% of your total HP per minute of rest/refit.
So a character with 100 total HP would get back 10 strain per minute of rest/refit regardless of whether they took 80 Strain during the fight or 12. This way a character who barely took any strain damage is fine and ready to go after only a minute of catching his breath, while one who was pushed to the limit needs to rest for close to 10 minutes before they're ready to go again.
Also, I think that if someone wanted to add on a variant of strain attrition to represent not being able to completely shake off fatigue you could add in an option for, say, 5-10% of your strain converting into Injury damage. This way a character who is lucky enough to never take a crit/fail a save can't just keep going non-stop all day without getting the aid of magical healing/treat deadly wounds.
Also, I think that if someone wanted to add on a variant of strain attrition to represent not being able to completely shake off fatigue you could add in an option for, say, 5-10% of your strain converting into Injury damage. This way a character who is lucky enough to never take a crit/fail a save can't just keep going non-stop all day without getting the aid of magical healing/treat deadly wounds.
Actually, speaking specifically to Witch's Knight's idea:
I'd just reserve the last 10% HP for "fresh" combatants. This means that the first 10 HP lost by the 100HP character can only be regained from a full rest.
But that's only if you want to nitpick about endurance, which WK does. I don't think time-scale systems really add all that much to the game, since they invariably come to GM fiat anyway. Time spent deciding whether they have enough minutes to reach Full HP (or Full HP -8 or whatever) could just as easily be the GM saying "You don't get attacked" or "you get attacked as you try to recuperate."
Clearly, many of you feel differently. I'm happy to hear about your recuperation rates and how you decided on them, but I feel the need to state my case. I think the game is better when the GM accepts that full heal or not full heal is basically his decision. And it always was, unless you seriously restricted GP/healing access.
As a GM, I never end up with a specific amount of time, e.g. "three minutes" that can be used to calculate recovered strain. Either the PCs get a chance to catch their breath or they don't. This helps me move quickly from one encounter to the next with a minimum of fuss and paperwork.
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I think I mentioned before that I actually really dislike time-scale systems. My old DM used them, and I completely agree with you: however much time we spent resting was totally up to him anyway, so why track the minutes? Why not just say, "You rest for a few minutes and get your breath back"? I don't let my players have 15-minute work days either, so I like the idea of healing most of the damage after a fight, but holding back the last 10-25% after the battle gives it the extra touch of realism that makes it click for me. The more I look at this, the more I want to try it out.