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Quick question- and one I've been thinking of doing as a PFS GM, and wanted others' opinions on...
Back when I used to run 2.0 / 3.0 / 3.5, I used to take the various AC modifiers ('Normal' AC, Flat-Footed, Touch) and hit points down on my notes, then roll to hit and applied damage appropriately. The players never really knew how many hit points they were from maximum "exactly", but I'd give descriptive comments such as "You've got a rather serious leg cramp, and your head feels like you've been on a 3-day bender. You're not entirely sure you can take another hit like that."
From a storytelling aspect, it really minimizes the "Oh, I've taken 41 of my maximum 59 hit points through two hits" metagaming I have been seeing (or, perhaps just more observant to) after running 99 sessions/4 specials.
I'm also a player that, when I take a hit that puts me into negs, I lay my figure down on the play mat, turn my character sheet over, and when someone asks me how badly I'm hurt I say "I'm unconscious, so I really can't answer you."
Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?
-- Steve
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I love this idea!!! I would definitely do this for a home game! The amount of suspense and tension that could cause...Ah man!!!
Not sure how I feel about doing this in society. You might tick a few people off.
"I wish I knew my character was dying, but the GM was being an argle-blargle so-and-so". Individual results may vary, of course. I might actually try this next time I GM society.
EDIT: Come to think of it, ask the players if they'd be willing to try it before starting. If the vote is not unanimous, then don't do it.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16
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We actually do use a similar method in the Iron Gods home game i play in. Individually we know our numbers, but we use yellow, orange, and red disks under our minis to indicate how wounded our characters are. We had to add black, when my fighter got die hard and was able to stay concious at negative hp.
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It's a fun way to go about it, but I think I'd leave it out of PFS simply because you're removing information that the game appears to be built off of. If a GM doesn't properly convey the state of a player, they might inadvertently cause a player to take an action they would not have otherwise made because they thought they were much better off. If a death were to occur, I don't know if it would stand up to an audit.
I'm also not sure I'd call information like, "I've been nearly taken down by 2 hits, and would likely die from a third" metagaming knowledge. HP is a representation of how much of a beating you can survive before you can't take anymore and your body goes into shock/dies (or, it represents an improvement in taking hits so they don't hurt you as much, i.e. you can take more hits like that... whichever you'd prefer). I would expect any PC to have a pretty good measure of this, much like a PC would know about how far they could jump on average (calling back to that big discussion about what it means to take a 10 on a roll).
Descriptive condition is a neat way to go about things, but I would want to set up some baselines with my GM so it doesn't get misrepresented. Your example of a serious leg crap and a 3-day bender could be that you're suffering from a combat related confusion effect, or you're nauseated and stepped on some caltrops but at (mostly) full health.
-edit-
Representing your damage (as a player) to other players in a descriptive manner seems like a lot of fun though, and sharing that information is more in the realm of metagaming than between the player and their own character.
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Selectively it could be interesting, with the right people already on-board to play this way. Adding it to PFS, though, may not be the way to go unless you always play with the same people who are okay with it.
It would certainly end up causing friction.
You need to trust your players, just as the players need to trust you.
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Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?-- Steve
DANGER WILL ROBINSON
The point of the hit point system is to have a clear, objective, easy to relay mechanism of exactly how hurt you are.
Players already measure hit points. They know what damage they do, how much a wand a clw heals, how much x level spell heals, they know what their abilities add to the healing etc.
The last thing I want to rely on in a fight is a DM busy running the scenario, tracking whatever weird subsystem this scenario uses, keeping 47 names strait, playing opperation and trying to figure out if a sprained funny bone and a bent scapula means I can take another hit or if i need to retreat now.
Telling a player their own hit points is not metagaming. Adventurers learn the hard way the sight of their own spleen and how far it can be from where it belongs before they keel over.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Seems like a real non-starter to me. Players are assumed to know their current hitpoint, and since this can interact with some very real resources (healing resources per day, certain buffs) a player might want to use his CLW when he is 5 points below max hp, but not if only 2 points below his max.
This is pretty much a houserule.
Oh and this assumes that the GM actuall knows and remembers everything about the characters, how many temporary hitpoints are left from that last vampiric touch[/i, how much the [i]ablative barrier can still transform into nonlethal damage, does the character have some obscure alterate racial... does the character have any boons that can become relevant like resistance to negative energy damage ....
The ammount of time I would personally require (before the game starts and after that point) seems staggering.
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I will add that I rarely hide anything from my players. I might make a Stealth or Bluff roll secretly for an NPC, but that's about it. I don't use a screen. I roll all my rolls in the open. I write down how much damage the monsters have taken on a sheet in front of me, and the players can easily see that if they want. Sometimes I even write the damage dealt to the monsters directly on the map.
There are other ways to generate suspense in the game. I rely on those instead.
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HP are a property of the character, not the GM. While I understand the desire to remove numbers from the table discussion, this is not a legal way to do it in PFS.
What you *can* do, is encourage *players* to not use numbers at the table. Our Lodge has an unwritten rule that players don't say how many hp they have left; they talk in terms of "wounded", "badly wounded", etc. When someone is down, they roll their stabilization roll secretly, and they kept rolling each round whether they're stable or not. If another player wants to know how many hp the down character has, they can roll a heal check or use deathwatch.
We do the same thing with skills... people are "good", "awesome", "pathetic", etc. I don't care if another player has +2 better arcane knowledge than my PC, if my know-it-all wizard says he's the best at that skill, he's not going to back down and "just" aid while someone else rolls!
I think the goal is to have character motivation and personality drive the story, instead of just the math. You can do that without taking the game away from the players.
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The problem with many of these discussions and concepts is that they all at the end of the day come at the expense of a key part of PFS play: teamwork. As a GM, I frequently have a hard enough time getting some players to work together as a team without CHANGING core mechanics to discourage teamwork.
Additionally, because you consider it metagame and bad doesn't mean that applies to all players. No everyone plays Pathfinder for the same style of game. Some people may play for the tactical elements instead of purely theatrical role-playing. Others prefer a blend of styles. Please don't close off Society to one play style.
I personally find this concept as the toxic as the if you aren't a rocket tag DPR Olympics no concept fiberboard character then you shouldn't bother playing.
Let people play their character as they want as long as it's legal.
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In a home game this can kinda work because they'll eventually come up with a common language where "that hurt" means ~10% injured. I still strongly dislike it but it kinda works.
But in PFS where you don't play with the same group and where new players show up it would be an unmitigated disaster as different GMs use contradictory descriptions of damage.
Fortunately, I'm pretty sure its illegal in PFS.
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I can't imagine trying to track all this as a GM, especially when a character has Life Link (that absorbs 5 points of damage per round from other characters), Shield Other (character takes half of another character's damage), any kind of fast healing (Infernal Healing or Greater Infernal Healing), DR, energy resistance...
Oh, and Blood Rage gives increasing bonuses each time the character takes 5 points of damage, so you'll have to track those, too...
And make sure you keep track of all the non-lethal separately.
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Seriously, if you pulled this in PFS, I'd leave the table mid-session. I don't play games in order to be treated like a child by the person behind the screen.
There is no reason to think the suggestion was asked with malice towards the players. Simply a way to increase tension and role-play and reduce the inherent meta-gaming that happens during gameplay. Because the game depends so heavily on numbers to resolve actions it is extremely difficult to eliminate all meta-knowledge from the game. Since everyone plays the game and derives pleasure differently PFS, its not a good format for the OP's proposal. For a home game, it can be a lot of fun and creates a different experience. That is a far cry from treating anyone like a child.
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Simply a way to increase tension and role-play and reduce the inherent meta-gaming that happens during gameplay.
Actually, in my experience it reduces character immersion. I've managed to sufficiently internalize hit points that the fundamental inconsistencies and nonsense that they represent no longer bother me.
But when the GM insists on describing every blow it gets silly. Either everything just narrowly misses, or just scratches me, or does so much damage that an elephant would be long dead.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I would hate this as a player.
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With regards to telling other players how wounded you are, I've seen a lot of people use "he just passed Bloodied" or variations thereof. No particular game effect, but this is something 4E appears to have got right: it's obvious when something is past 50% of its health.
"We did ALL THAT, and we just barely got it Bloodied? Maybe we should run..."
"Do you need healing?"
"I do look rather Bloodied..."
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As a DM I do not allow players to discuss their current HP if they drop. If your character can not communicate I do not want you providing other PCs information that they could not get themselves. To me it is metagaming, and removes the abilities of people that spent resources to know these things.
A heal check I allow you to make will determine how bad they are. But this is not a video game where the stats are available to everyone. If they stabilize you will not know this either.
If you are awake or can communicate I do not care, go ahead say you have 5 hp, you are bloodied, whatever.
There are no rules in the game that allow you to know how negative a person is, if they stabilized, or even if they are finally dead.
As a player I have stabilized 3 people that were already stabilized. I have healed dead people because I was too dumb to make the check to determine his life.
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As a DM I do not allow players to discuss their current HP if they drop. If your character can not communicate I do not want you providing other PCs information that they could not get themselves. To me it is metagaming, and removes the abilities of people that spent resources to know these things.
A heal check I allow you to make will determine how bad they are. But this is not a video game where the stats are available to everyone. If they stabilize you will not know this either.
If you are awake or can communicate I do not care, go ahead say you have 5 hp, you are bloodied, whatever.
There are no rules in the game that allow you to know how negative a person is, if they stabilized, or even if they are finally dead.
As a player I have stabilized 3 people that were already stabilized. I have healed dead people because I was too dumb to make the check to determine his life.
Do you do that when running the game too?
Take actions as a Mooks to pour a potion into a dead ally?Attack someone already dead?
Etc?
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Steve,
I applaud your attempt to add verisimilitude to the game.
I think that the reason this would work better in a home game, is that over the course of your campaign, you can give players a feel for how you describe moderate hit points, and so on. When a PFS player sits at your table with her 5th-level barbarian, she doesn't necessarily know what you mean by "that blow really knocked the wind out of you." You don't end up conveying as much information as you think.
Having said that, I'm on-board with finlanderboy. There are feats and skills and spells that characters can use, to tell how badly injured a comrade is. If a player ever calls out "Don't worry healing me; I'm only down to -2." I warn them to quit the metagaming. If they would repeat the error, then I would keep their current hit points myself.
nosig, the earliest editions of D&D instructed the DM to run sort of what your DM did, except hit points were re-rolled at the beginning of each level. One of the more recent retro-clones, "Adventurer, Conquerer, King," did pretty much the same thing.
This would make Deathwatch much more useful!
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Do you do that when running the game too?
Take actions as a Mooks to pour a potion into a dead ally?Attack someone already dead?
Etc?
I generally do not attack downed people, nor have I had the opportunity for bad guys to heal downed people often.
It is rare you fight bad guys that are loyal working team. It happens, but it is not to common. With how fast damage happens they almost never get the chance to do it. A move action to get to their ally, a move action to pull out a potion, a full round action to dump it down someones throat(those actions all provoke).
But to answer your question. I definitely would have the bad guys ignorant of each ones HPs when they are down. Usually their tactics are to the death so I have them fight that way. So I have not had the opportunity.
*edit, I did have a druid attempt to CLW scurvy an animal companion that was dead.
You can see the inevitable conclusion. Players start calculated probable monster damage amounts based off your facial expressions after they're damage rolls, combined with descriptions of hits, and bestiary knowledge in order to track their own HPs.
I would object to this as a player, because I don't like dying. Depending on the character, at 1/3 to 1/2 HP, I start backing off. Maybe going to my emergency back up ranged weapon or something. I have been led astray before by GMs who think they're better at describing things than they are. I would not like to gamble my HP total on it.
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I will add that I rarely hide anything from my players. I might make a Stealth or Bluff roll secretly for an NPC, but that's about it. I don't use a screen. I roll all my rolls in the open. I write down how much damage the monsters have taken on a sheet in front of me, and the players can easily see that if they want. Sometimes I even write the damage dealt to the monsters directly on the map.
There are other ways to generate suspense in the game. I rely on those instead.
I will not hide this from the players either. The PCs can just as easily calculate the damage totals as I can, so why hide it. I also roll all my dice in the open and alert the modifiers as well.
But I hide tons from the PCs. It is their characters jobs to figure out things. I love showing a picture of a monster and describing the awesomeness of what it does while the PCs do not have the skills to figure it out. I also love PCs that have the skills and I can tell them things because they spent the effort to learn.
When players ask me things their PCs would not know I often answer with a questioning look and a shrug of the shoulders. The next question from new players to me is you are the DM you should know, and usually an older player says he knows, but he also knows your character would not know.
Surprises are tons of fun, but so are PCs masterfully(or sometimes lucky) built that have the keys to defuse and learn everything. I want to reward people for taking the effort or chance to do that.
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There was a particular GM that hid our HP to others and would only allow folks to see it if they made a DC15 Heal check as either a standard or move action.Don't need to explain what that does to a party in the middle of a pitched battle when someone drops...
Well, if its a standard action to make a heal check or just cast stabalize...
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Well, if its a standard action to make a heal check or just cast stabalize...
There was a particular GM that hid our HP to others and would only allow folks to see it if they made a DC15 Heal check as either a standard or move action.Don't need to explain what that does to a party in the middle of a pitched battle when someone drops...
That was just it. The GM wouldn't let us use healing on other characters if we didn't make the Heal check *first* because 'we wouldn't know the other character was injured' -- even if they'd taken massive damage and were teetering at the edge of staggered.
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I will add that I rarely hide anything from my players. I might make a Stealth or Bluff roll secretly for an NPC, but that's about it. I don't use a screen. I roll all my rolls in the open. I write down how much damage the monsters have taken on a sheet in front of me, and the players can easily see that if they want. Sometimes I even write the damage dealt to the monsters directly on the map.
There are other ways to generate suspense in the game. I rely on those instead.
I will not hide this from the players either. The PCs can just as easily calculate the damage totals as I can, so why hide it. I also roll all my dice in the open and alert the modifiers as well.
But I hide tons from the PCs. It is their characters jobs to figure out things. I love showing a picture of a monster and describing the awesomeness of what it does while the PCs do not have the skills to figure it out. I also love PCs that have the skills and I can tell them things because they spent the effort to learn.
When players ask me things their PCs would not know I often answer with a questioning look and a shrug of the shoulders. The next question from new players to me is you are the DM you should know, and usually an older player says he knows, but he also knows your character would not know.
Surprises are tons of fun, but so are PCs masterfully(or sometimes lucky) built that have the keys to defuse and learn everything. I want to reward people for taking the effort or chance to do that.
Yeah, you are describing exactly the sorts of things I was referring to that are useful for creating suspense in the game.
When I said I don't hide things from my players, I meant mechanical things.
For example, the mini-games that are featured in many games have mechanics that players probably haven't seen before. I explain how the game works, and what options the players have. I see no reason to "surprise" them with "Ha ha, you didn't know you needed to roll a Craft (basket surgery) check to defuse the situation!" That's not suspense.
Suspense is exactly the sort of things you mentioned. What is that monster? Who is that deity that was just referenced? Why would the NPCs do that? etc.
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Well, if its a standard action to make a heal check or just cast stabalize...
There was a particular GM that hid our HP to others and would only allow folks to see it if they made a DC15 Heal check as either a standard or move action.Don't need to explain what that does to a party in the middle of a pitched battle when someone drops...
That was just it. The GM wouldn't let us use healing on other characters if we didn't make the Heal check *first* because 'we wouldn't know the other character was injured' -- even if they'd taken massive damage and were teetering at the edge of staggered.
That is is dumb. I would not play with even in a home game. I often do things on a gamble hoping I am right. There would be no reason to stop me from gambling.
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Wow really? You had to make a skill check to know the fighter that just got clobbered with a great axe and has blood pouring out his arm is hurt and needs healed?
No BS.
Wish I was making it up.
This was also a GM that kept sending waves of attackers at us in Wisp in one encounter...
If there was one 'plus' side, it made 'normal' play a lot easier afterwards.
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As a DM I do not allow players to discuss their current HP if they drop. If your character can not communicate I do not want you providing other PCs information that they could not get themselves. To me it is metagaming, and removes the abilities of people that spent resources to know these things.
A heal check I allow you to make will determine how bad they are. But this is not a video game where the stats are available to everyone. If they stabilize you will not know this either.
If you are awake or can communicate I do not care, go ahead say you have 5 hp, you are bloodied, whatever.
There are no rules in the game that allow you to know how negative a person is, if they stabilized, or even if they are finally dead.
As a player I have stabilized 3 people that were already stabilized. I have healed dead people because I was too dumb to make the check to determine his life.
That works with players who know that you play it this way and that they are allowed the Heal check.
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That works with players who know that you play it this way and that they are allowed the Heal check.As a DM I do not allow players to discuss their current HP if they drop. If your character can not communicate I do not want you providing other PCs information that they could not get themselves. To me it is metagaming, and removes the abilities of people that spent resources to know these things.
A heal check I allow you to make will determine how bad they are. But this is not a video game where the stats are available to everyone. If they stabilize you will not know this either.
If you are awake or can communicate I do not care, go ahead say you have 5 hp, you are bloodied, whatever.
There are no rules in the game that allow you to know how negative a person is, if they stabilized, or even if they are finally dead.
As a player I have stabilized 3 people that were already stabilized. I have healed dead people because I was too dumb to make the check to determine his life.
I let them know right away. I do not say they have to figure out a way to find this information. Heck I would allow a perception check to figure out things as well.
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HP are a property of the character, not the GM. While I understand the desire to remove numbers from the table discussion, this is not a legal way to do it in PFS.
What you *can* do, is encourage *players* to not use numbers at the table. Our Lodge has an unwritten rule that players don't say how many hp they have left; they talk in terms of "wounded", "badly wounded", etc. When someone is down, they roll their stabilization roll secretly, and they kept rolling each round whether they're stable or not. If another player wants to know how many hp the down character has, they can roll a heal check or use deathwatch.
We do the same thing with skills... people are "good", "awesome", "pathetic", etc. I don't care if another player has +2 better arcane knowledge than my PC, if my know-it-all wizard says he's the best at that skill, he's not going to back down and "just" aid while someone else rolls!
I think the goal is to have character motivation and personality drive the story, instead of just the math. You can do that without taking the game away from the players.
Please note the hitpoints are an "ingame" concept that characters know about
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Please note the hitpoints are an "ingame" concept that characters know about
No, they're not - no one has a status bar on them. IRL, people don't know how many "hit points" they have, nor what their "Con" is.
Players should know their *own* character's hit points, since it is a measure of how they are feeling, but it is not a given that anyone else at the table should know that information. In fact, there's a spell that gives you that information, which suggests that such information is NOT shared knowledge in normal circumstances.
In our group, many of us feel that when their character is unconscious, they shouldn't be able to tell other characters exactly what state they are in. Mostly because this leads to, "oh, he's got three rounds until negative Con, so I'll ignore him for two rounds and then run over in the nick of time." YMMV.
EDIT: fixed even more typos and spelling than usual!
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I've always wondered when judges require these kind of skill checks...what is the DC for these heal checks? Is if modified for lots of extra damage? If the target is at CON -200HP is it easier to tell he is dead than if he is just CON -50HP?
Are they "Heal" checks, or "Perception", or "Knowledge (Nature)"... or what? "Know (Planes)" if the guy down is an Aasimar/Tiefling?
Can't speak for others but I'll say what I do:
If the character is more than 5 or so points past death then he is very obviously and visibly dead. Head cut off, Heart on a sword, etc.
At less than that I allow a heal check as a free action to see if he is alive or dead. I don't actually have a DC explicitly codified, probably on the lines of DC 10 ish or so. Usually, player just rolls and if they roll highish OR they have heal trained and didn't roll a 1 or 2 they succeed.
Not perfect but I'm a great believer in "Roll the dice first, worry about it only if the dice doesn't make the result obvious" school of GMing.
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Please note the hitpoints are an "ingame" concept that characters know aboutNo, they're not - no one has a status bar on them. IRL, people don't know how many "hit points" they have, nor what their "Con" is.
Players should know their *own* character's hit points, since it is a measure of how they are feeling, but it is not a given that anyone else at the table should know that information. In fact, there's a spell that gives you that information, which suggests that such information is NOT shared knowledge in normal circumstances.
What spell tells you how many hit points people are down? Status and deathwatch are almost completely useless for this.
The problem is that hit points, in theory, represent many different things to many different people. So descriptions don't work.
In world, presumably the experienced healer who has been healing people for several levels would know if the barbarian before him needs a CLW or a CSW spell, he'd know if enough allies are damaged to make a channel worth while, etc.
So, I am firmly of the opinion that the only means of communicating that information within the rules structure that is pathfinder is to use hit points.
That said, I am one of the GMs who doesn't like people to call out exactly how negative they are, whether they have stabilized or not, etc. In world, I just cannot see even the best of healers being able to say "Oh, he'll likely die in 12 seconds if nothing is done to heal him but he absolutely will not die in 6"