So, I recently came across an interesting article by Johnathan Tweet. In it he talked about hit points and spells that do things other than hit point damage. I disagree with some of what he said, but the following sentences intrigued me:
"As for a more direct way to make hit points relevant to an enchanter, maybe each spell should carry a hit point limit as to how tough a creature it can work on. That way the fighter can weaken the enemy and the wizard can finish it off with a spell, and then the two characters are working together instead of in parallel."
While I'm not sure of the hit point limit idea, I do think it would be interesting if the core idea (hit points affecting spell effectiveness) was implemented in some way. I was thinking of a house rule where there are three different tiers of health and one would write their saves for different tiers. A character could have a bonus to their saves if they are at 2/3 or higher health, their average save between 2/3 and 1/3, and a penalty to their saves below 1/3.
Let me know what you think; I'm still not sure of this idea in general or on the specifics, but it seems doable with a minimum amount of effort and might add some nice synergy between straight damage dealers and other characters in combats. Anyone see any potential issues? Any suggestions on refinement?
sounds like you want to turn all enchantment spells into power word spells.
It might work well, but personally i dont mind spell casters "winning" encounters.
Hey BEGS,
That was my concern with Tweet's original proposal. If you'll look at my proposed rule, you'll see that this is not the case. Based on my rule, characters would get a bonus or penalty to saves based on how much health they have. Any thoughts on that?
Very interesting.
This has implications for people who like abstract hit points, including (but not limited to) the Strain-Injury HP variant.
But without changing the very nature of the spells themselves, some spells would continue to be limited by HD regardless of this rule. Sleep, Color Spray, and others that simply stop working on enemies after a certain point.
I'm a fan of EL's Strain/Injury variant for the specific reason that it doesn't add any new bookkeeping to my players. Other house rules I've used in the past have always met with "but that's ANOTHER number I have to keep track of." For instance I tried to implement a Short Rest mechanic as well as a Bloodied mechanic borrowed from 4e but the players disliked both for the reason of having to keep track of varying levels of health.
That all being said I'm just one guy with a dozen players. I'm sure this houserule would work well for a vast majority of gamers. The only other dissent I might imagine is along the lines of what BEGS said: we may not want to put yet another piece of ammo in the hands of the casters. I suppose by making it a sliding scale of saves you are giving an advantage to poisons, hazards and some PC abilities as well though...but its mostly casters.
What about just imposing a condition? At 2/3 - full HP; no condition. At 1/2 - 2/3 HP; Fatigued. At less than 1/2 HP - Sickened. That way they don't start taking a full penalty to all saves until less than 1/2 HP, but there's still a downside to being wounded.
I do despise HD limits in spells, so if I'm allowing a house rule that's this invasive already, it seems like a short step to scrapping HD limits.
I'm not 100% on the method presented in the OP though. Would you mind explaining your rationale in a little more detail?
I prefer something state-based rather than a formula-determined threshold. For example, you might call full HP "unfazed" and grant a +2 to saves, then I would have an "injured" state to work with my house rules that was a -2 from injury damage... Etc. HP thresholds are a bummer.
I toyed with the idea for a while of having compulsion effects do "mental damage" instead of a binary on/off.
Mental damage would be tracked much the same way non-lethal damage is, when your mental damage was higher than your current HP you'd fall under the effects of the spell.
So, in theory a Hold Person might do "mental" damage like a Fireball while a sleep spell might do damage like a flaming hands.
So a 7th level wizard might cast a Hold Person on a fighter and roll 7d6 damage, the Fighter fails his save and takes 25 mental damage, but as that's well below his current HP, he's fine for the time being. But then the wizard's Barbarian ally charges and hits him with a his axe while the Ranger hits him with a full attack from his bow. And if that brought his current HP below 25, then he'd fall under the effects of the Hold Person spell.
@Mark Hoover: That's a good point about extra bookkeeping. To minimize this, I was imagining a slightly modified character sheet (the standard paizo one) where instead of a modifier box to the right of the save [since I never use that, just scratch paper], there is a small table something like this:
I am unable to format it correctly with the limitations of the messageboard, but I think you can kind of see what I am wanting to do based on this table. Just imagine the tiers shifted over and it's clearer.
1st 2nd 3rd
tier tier tier
HP: 67 33 0
Fort: 17 15 13
Refl: 15 13 11
Will: 16 14 12
Where the HP means that if you're higher than this HP, use this column.
As for why not conditions, I kind of like the idea that at higher levels of health, a character gets a bonus to saves like they're "fresh." Then, as they get a little more tired, they fall into their normal range, and *then* they get a penalty. I think this promotes synergy as discussed in the article.
@Kazaan: That's an interesting idea...I'll have to think about that more. It's more complicated, but, if you just had a list of what average health is at different HDs, it could work.
@Evil Lincoln: My rationale for this rule has two aspects to it: a game reason and a simulationist reason. The game reason is that I think it adds some nice synergy between classes. As mentioned in the article, it means that a character focused on dealing damage could "soften up" a target for a character that uses save-based abilities. The simulationist reason is that I think it simulates different levels of energy and vigor decently. Let me know if I need to clarify anything else :)
@Ninja in the Rye: That's an interesting system, but it seems like it would require a lot more bookkeeping and keeping track of which spells were in the queue to affect an opponent or player.
Argh, tables.
There is a really simple way to do this mechanically that you can steal from 4E which used half hit points as a bloodied threshold.
For PF, say... at half hit points or under, you take a -2 (or -x, for whatever x your group thinks reasonable) to saves vs spells.
There. Done.
Lol, what do you have against tables, Coriat? The thing I don't like about that solution is that I want there to be a bonus to saves until a certain threshold. Of course, this is personal thing. Your idea is fine :)