Hey all,
So for my new campiagn I want to lower the HP for a more realistic and tactical feel. Ive come across the problem of spells doing massive damage though. Anyone have any ideas for lowered HP games?
Make it a low fantasy setting when it comes to magic if your going for a more realistic feel. The higher the fantasy setting you go for, the less realistic it becomes.
What is your vision of 'realism'?
@Blind Kobold: What exactly do you mean? I know what you mean by lowering magic items and such. But how would you do it with spellcasters themselves?
@Umbral Reaver: I want it to be realistic HP wise as, I want to focus more on AC, Skill and playing smart. I know even with full HP you can still get demolished but im setting back a few things like enchantments and such. So things will deal a bit less damage overall. I understand that the HP doesnt mean that you can take a sword through the chest 10 times in a row. But it always seemed odd that people can just swing and do nothing to others all because of low damage out put. Think of dark souls where though you can get high level, lower level things could still kill you if you didnt play smart.
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Don't reduce HP.
Just play E6
Grittier Rules is amazing for this. It suggests that spells deal minimum(or average? I forget) damage instead of rolling dice.
As a GM, you can control the flow of the game. You can dictate what classes are available and which are not. Same with magic items and magical beasts. You could as a GM decide to treat Arcane classes as exceptionally rare and if one of your players wanted to play as one they better have a good reason and backstory to back it up.
There are two extremes when it comes to fantasy in Pathfinder/D&D. "Magic is scarce".. OR .."Magic is plentiful". The pathfinder setting, Golarion, is an example of "magic is plentiful".
One of my favorite exampels for a more realistic "fantasy" world is how healing and casting worked. This comes from the RPG "Thieves World".
Healing spells only stopped wounds from bleeding out more. Your body, internally, needed to heal naturally and magic really couldn't accelerate the recovery time needed for your body to heal naturally. You had to pick your battles and avoid getting hurt. Wounds were a real thing as a sword to the chest could spell "DOOM" for the unlucky sod who received such a fate... when compared to Pathfinder where you could get stabbed in the chest by a greatsword many times over as long as you had the hit points to spare and weren't in risk of immediately getting dropped.
Casting spells from Thieves World took preparation and rituals. The quickest of rituals took a full minute for casting. The bigger and more impressive spells took a longer casting ritual time. Some took half a day or more like a lightning bolt striking a particular house.
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Don't reduce HP.Just play E6
This. Or use another system, which operates differently.
Pathfinder is designed to have escalating HP with level in a profound systemic way. E6 (or E7-8), which involves stopping leveling at level 6 (or 7-8) manages to work around this fact (by not having you level per se past a certain point), but actually trying to change it either involves rebuilding the game from the ground up or the game becoming vastly more lethal at higher levels (as attacks become far more likely to kill outright, since damage increases already outstrip HP at higher levels a lot of the time).
So...yeah, I wouldn't do this precise thing, I'd try something else to get the effect you're looking for. To reiterate, probably either E6 or a different system entirely.
Pathfinder does a number of things, but it does not do realism. At all.
Play another game if you want realism.
Pathfinder does a number of things, but it does not do realism. At all.
Play another game if you want realism.
To a certain point, Pathfinder does a degree of realism pretty well. Encumbrance, hit points, falling damage, most skills, and so forth. That point being level ~6 or so, after-which you have characters that can easily survive various hazards that in the real world become pretty much instantly fatal (falling damage, lava, ect).
As for reducing hit points, I'm not in favor. The game is remarkably lethal as it is to players, and it is quite easy at any level to die to a level appropriate foe in a single full attack if unprepared. I'm not sure where OP is getting the idea of hacking at each other with swords and doing no damage, unless the objection is that weapon damage isn't high enough relative to scaling hit points (e.g., a level one guy with a sword cannot easily kill a level 10 fighter).
Anyway, though I love pathfinder, it isn't really designed to accommodate the kind of changes you are talking about, and as others say, another system might be best.
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too many stuffs to take into consideration, when you lower hp(you are definitely going to want to lower the damage of some monsters, spells like disintegrate or Power Word:Kill are guaranteed to kill someone etc...). Not every campaign has to go to level 20 and actually most don't. If you like the lower levels, just end your game around level 9 or 10 (Last boss fight with a Lich? good enough) and there is nothing wrong with that.
Remove Magic for more realism
Hey all,
So for my new campiagn I want to lower the HP for a more realistic and tactical feel. Ive come across the problem of spells doing massive damage though. Anyone have any ideas for lowered HP games?
Greater Invisibility + Spells will ruin any tactical feel and playing smart.
E6 sounds like a fun system.
If you want realism and are willing to put the time in for a complete rebuild of a system (it doesn't have magic), look at Interlock...
You don't level at all, you just get better skills and gear. A shot to the head can kill the most powerful character.
It was sold primarily as Cyberpunk 2020, but also as Mekton, and in a limited fashion (altered to a new system called Fuzion) as Champions.
All are worth checking out.
Champions has super power design rules, which could approximate magic pretty easily.
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You know hit points don't represent being able to be stabbed a bunch of times, right? They're a measure of near misses, parries, body checks, etc etc. Once you start looking at them that way, it's not so hard to imagine your fights more realistically.
But honestly, (and I kinda hate to say this) if you want realism Pathfinder isn't really the system for that. At level 1 we have men and women with green skin who can run 40 feet in full plate armor with 100 lbs of gear on their back and hit someone with a sword they found earlier, all in the span of 6 seconds.
And don't get me started on the wizards and dragons and zombies..
Remove Magic for more realism
And enjoy the frequent trips back to town for supplies and bedrest, camping out for days waiting for ability drains to wear off, and characters dropping dead from filth fever every other month. With proper care and management, a good GM can make a campaign duller than an office job and more painful than a trip to the dentist! Follow the mundane crafting rules to the letter for even more game-slowing fun.
OP, from what I can tell, your 2 best options are to play e6 or use a different system. People seem to like Iron Heroes and Savage Worlds quite a bit for lower magic settings.
Edit: I'm reviewing Grittier Rules now and it does have some cool stuff in it. What I'm really liking is the section on use of skill challenges to overcome problems most rely on magic for. Overall, I'd say its well worth the 2 bucks.
There are two simple ways to play a more lethal, more relatable fantasy game.
The first is to cap experience gains to 2nd or 3rd level. Past this, and you have to seriously rework the system to work for your vision. The other is use another game system - preferably one that isn't level based.
Someone once ran a GURPs Fantasy campaign, and used a D&D adventure module for the plot ideas. We found that low level play translated well, though at higher levels we ran into trouble since most mid and high level D&D/Pathfinder adventures assume double or triple digit hit points. GURPs characters usually have 10-15 hit points, so it required a lot of work to become playable.
My main point is that level based game systems are entertaining, yet can quickly destroy your suspension of disbelief once PCs go past a certain level (around 3rd level in Pathfinder).
My favorite example of hitpoints comes from Return of the Jedi. During the battle to take the shield generator or Endor, anytime anyone gets hit with a blaster, they are down (and presumably dead.) Except Princess Leia. When she gets hit, she just gets tagged in the arm and is mostly ok.
She had more hitpoints than the NPC grunts.
That anecdote aside, I endorse the notion of E6 for what the OP seems to want to achieve.
You want realism?
You want gritty?
You want gory?
Go play chart.... er.....um....Role master
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So no one bothers with blasters, which are already the weak casters anyway. What do you do with the battlefield control and SoL spells?More realism? Make everyone become fighters. No spellcasting classes at all.
No seriously, cut all dice in spells in half. So 1d6 per level becomes 1st per two levels. 1d6 per 2 levelsHTC mm lb bnkhj becomes 1d6 per 4 levels.
Same thing, cut effects in half. Reduce the range, increase casting times.
As Lincoln Hills said, it's not the HP values that are "unrealistic", but the lack of consequences.
Pathfinder is an action movie style game. Think about any martial arts movie where 2 guys square off for 4-10 minutes of brutal fisticuffs. They're bashing each other in the face, body, spraining joints, etc. They keep going full speed until someone stops though. Someone might limp a little, but overall his effectiveness isn't reduced.
In Pathfinder, you're battered, bruised and covered in blood (some of it isn't yours), but until you're out, you're fine.
There are a LOT of games out there with injuries and wound penalties. If you'd like a list we can certain recommend them. Typically this puts the emphasis on going first and hitting hard.
For example, if you've ever played Shadowrun RPG, it's typically a good idea to win initiative, shoot the other guy (twice if you can) and then let him miss because of his wound penalties. Then your next turn you finish him off. The other strategy is to make yourself so resistant to damage that everything just flows off of you like water on a duck.
The game is already tactical. How you build your character and what actions to take matter. You just want to change the tactics to emphasis other qualities more.
Also, once people know how to build damage focused characters, combat rarely lasts more than 2 rounds as it is.
Lastly, google "hiroshima survivor no face". People can survive more than you think.
I've been playing d20 games for long enough to know that messing with HP to attain realism doesn't work. The whole system is pretty delicately balanced such that you can't mess to much with the basic core mechanics and still have a functional game without massive overhauls on everything else too. That said I have a very different approach to achieving realism.
To start with I don't mess with HP. Instead I work with a variant of the Strain-Injury System.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2njly?StrainInjury-Variant-A-Minor-Change-to-Hi t
Basically, the majority of the damage a character takes in combat takes the form of combat fatigue, minor cut, bumps and bruises, loss of tactical advantage, general stress, etc. It's kinda abstract, but as anyone that has ever seriously been in a fight can tell you a very real thing all of this heal quickly after a fight. That is the Strain part.
The Injury part is the rare few serious injuries suffered, Critical Hits, failed saving throws, the final hit that drops you below zero HP. These are the enemy actually hitting you and doing real long damage. Under the base Strain-Injury system this is treated like regular HP loss, and healed at a comparable rate.
As a system by itself Strain-Injury actually makes for safer and more cinematic combat, but I change things up some.
To start with I only allow most healing spells to recover Strain and not Injury damage. It can be calibrated to taste, but I personally require seriously heavy duty magic to heal Injury Damage, like Regeneration. This makes Injuries last longer and provide a long term limitation to fighting capabilities.
I also use a variant Critical Hit System, I experiment with different systems trying to find what fits my tastes best, but Laying Waste is a good example of what I try to do.
http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/t/totalPartyKillGamesTPKGames/pathfinderRP G/layingWaste
Basically, a system the provides specific injuries and actual mechanical impact to those injuries. This way players actually need to be wary about getting hurt, and need to be smart about dealing with wounds.
I also experiment with various rules for bleeding damage. In real combat blood loss is what usually kills, and I try to find different ways to make this work. I haven't really found any options that I would describe as both realistic and fun though.
Characters are still pretty darned tough at higher levels, but it all adds some real danger to combat without breaking the rules apart.
Yea I have to agree that just dropping HP numbers isnt going to work. The game simply doesn't function in a 'realistic' way when it comes to damage. Its an action movie, or a comic book. The binary hit or miss nature of the game itself is problematic when considering 'realism'. You are really going to have to fight the system head on if you want to instill that kind of realism into the game past an E6 model.
Sorry for the late reply all! You all gave me great answers and ideas, I just want you to know how much I appreciate all the feedback! After a few of you suggested it, I looked into the Grittier Variant Rules.
After a quick scan I immediately fell in llove with the books and bought them the same day. I read three of the main ones, Grittier, Grittier Rules & Grittier Magic. All of the rulings pretty much fit perfectly in what I wanted!
So again, thank you all for the advice. This is one of the best communities ive been a part of.
You know hit points don't represent being able to be stabbed a bunch of times, right? They're a measure of near misses, parries, body checks, etc etc. Once you start looking at them that way, it's not so hard to imagine your fights more realistically.
In all fairness, this explanation struggles to find traction in practice. When I describe to my players "near misses" or "parries", they think it missed or failed due to DR. It causes confusion. Shallow cuts tend to be a better bet.
With proper care and management, a good GM can make a campaign duller than an office job and more painful than a trip to the dentist!Too much realisms drowns the baby in the bathwater.
Anybody recall the ICE roleplaying game rules, ancestor to MERP? It had dozens of pages of critical hit tables and wallowed in detail and realism. Not only did it take ages to consult, but generally left anyone engaging in combat in a pathetic oozing heap of mangled tissue.This said, you *could* use an alternate hit point system like the following:
- Initial hit points at 1st level = constitution score (not bonus, the raw score) + the maximum die roll for the class hit die.
- Each level gained = 1 point + one half CON bonus, rounded down.This would only work at low to mid levels, since past 10th level PCs would be seriously starved for hit points, compared to the enemies they face and spells the might get hit with.
Guess I'll have to check out these gritty rules, too.
My expert advice: Play Swords and Wizardry.
;D
Hey all,
So for my new campiagn I want to lower the HP for a more realistic and tactical feel. Ive come across the problem of spells doing massive damage though. Anyone have any ideas for lowered HP games?
Us a different system. This one models high fantasy epic adventures. As do all level based systems.