Be 1d4 hp commoner

So, who is closer to death? A commoner with 1 hitpoint or a character with 2 hitpoints left out of 10?

A commoner with 1 hit point is full of life.

A character with 2 out of 10 hit points is 4/5ths of the way to death.

The commoner because he obviously lacks other class skills (and likely any equipment) that would help him survive in any given combat situation.

Only PC classes have the first hit die maximum thing. It's one of the things that makes them special compared to plebs.

>shit man
>you're so retarded we don't even have a number for you
>Uhm... I guess you get a C.
>C-
>Now please stop eating the test packet.

Wouldn't a hard stubbing of one's toe be more of a temporary penalty to stuff like reflex saves instead of outright damage?

>Be 1d4 commoner
>Fall 10 feet
>Have a 66% chance of death

But the character at death's door can take hit that would kill the commoner full of life?

In today's breaking news, the world's entire roleplaying game community was shocked into insensibility when an anonymous 4channer made the remarkable observation that hit points don't make any fucking sense. Generations will hail his genius, and his name would go down in legend as the most insightful RPG analyst to have ever lived, if only we knew what it was.

...

If HP represents all those things how come it's not taken into account at all with things like being petrified and other HP ignoring effects yet it still works against poison?

Actually, during the vast majority of human history quite a lot of people probably did die from something as simple as stubbing a toe.

Remember, they didn't have things like neosporin back then, and a life threatening infection doesn't give a shit how it enters the body.

Thankfully, 99% of potentially fatal encounters today are prevented by just washing our hands after we take a shit.

...

Neither luck or meat points are all that logically consistent in practice. With the luck perspective it is technically impossibly to have any idea what your attacks are doing, know when an ally needs to be healed, and natural healing is fucking baffling. With the meat point perspective you were just stabbed 20 times, but weren't even slowed down until the final one.
As dumb as they are I kind of prefer meat points

Falling to 0 hp starts Death Saving Throws.

I personally know two people who got SEVERELY FUCKED UP by falling about 10 feet, one busted his ankle to the point where the doc said his boot literally kept his foot from getting twisted off and another broke his back and was in a hospital bed for 4 or so months (though that one was 15 feet onto concrete)
A friend of mine's dad died after falling off an 8 ft ladder and cracking his skull.
Falling sucks bruh.

That's Pathfinder

In 3.whatever, you get max HP by virtue of being a PC. Thus, if a PC starts as a commoner they get max HP, and if an NPC is a level 1 barbarian they might have 1 HP

>be elf 1d4 hp commoner
>start with average hp of 2
>8 con due to -2 racial
>1 hp

>get hit with dnd.arkalseif.info/spells/book-of-vile-darkness--37/slash-tongue--255/index.html and get a thin cut on tongue
>fucking die

Yeah. My uncle broke his neck when he stumbled while going to his bed.

You know people have died from falling off ladders?

I'm sorry to hear that.

happened to my granddad, though he was 70+ at the time. gravity's no joke.

My personal pet system (Into The Odd) has a neat way of handling it that I let creep into all my other games.

Hit Points represent your ability to turn a potentially lethal injury into a painful disruption. Once you're out of hit points (which recover with a few minutes of rest) damage goes straight to your stats and only recovers with medical attention and/or bed rest. The way I DM (non d&d at least) any time a character isn't actively trying to avoid injury the HP value is ignored.

Into The Odd also has PCs make a save or fall unconscious every time they take stat damage to represent the physical shock of an injury. A fighter with 20 Str can drop from a 1 damage dagger cut if they have no HP... but only at a 5% chance. An 8 damage crossbow bolt has a 40% chance of dropping someone in peak physical condition.

It's neat, it allows fights to end fast, and it means that without medical attention and rest the stat damage will cripple your characters.

>ITT: Things that never happened

Then why can a level 15 survive a lava dip while a level 1 can't.

DnD is trash, this is not news.

Yes, of course. D&D does not actually have rules for stubbing one's toe, and even if it did it would probably be a minor penalty (-1 to all checks from the pain and -5 speed for 1d3 rounds, Fortitude save negates). But a good number of Veeky Forums-goers do not play any games, so they kinda homebrew their own D&D so they can hate it, since they do not know enough about the real D&D to properly despise it.

Why do they hate a game they do not play? Its a meme. Roll with it.

Nonlethal damage kills you, user
>If a creature’s nonlethal damage is equal to his total maximum hit points (not his current hit points), all further nonlethal damage is treated as lethal damage.

Why,Why, Why

WHY

are you running npc's as being one hit dice?

The system works far better if most common npc's have 2 to 4 hit dice.

That's... not in the book. I checked. Which game are you playing, user?

Bare with me a minute
Imagine you're a monk and that between your speed and high acrobatics (tumble in 3.5) you can jump more than 40ft (thing you can accomplish easily at 5th level).

Sounds cool, right? you're like a superhero or a wuxia dude.

Now, did you know the height you reach is 1/4th the distance you jump? so if you jump more than 40ft that means you reach more than 10ft high, cool right?

But, did you know that if you fall from 10ft you take damage and fall prone? so if you jump like a monk you fall like a retard.

>but user, you can ignore the first 10ft with an acrobatics/jump/tumble roll
Indeed you can, and that's why I said if you jump more than 40ft, because that becomes more than 10ft high, which means you reduce the first 10ft, and the rest is damage, and you fall prone.

Welcome to 3.PF, the game that has a "hate monk" policy installed in their mechanics.

You're, right, my mistake, that's from Pathfinder, aka 3.75

Taking damage, even non-lethal, for a stubbed toe, is taking the piss. RP a sore toe and walk it off.

Huh. I'm surprised Paizo added that. It seems like too much of a corner-case to bother, but what do I know?

Of course, Monks get slow fall 20 ft. at 4th level in 3.5.

>It seems like too much of a corner-case to bother, but what do I know?
Literally happened the other day to my 5th level monk, I "gently" tapped a guard and obliterated him

First time playing monk, turns out the "you can deal non lethal for free!" means nothing when you deal 50 damage on avrage

Which makes me think that my old GM either didn't know aoout this rule or ignored it because my Magus dealt like bazillions nonlethal damage on average (Enforcer build) and even though I knocked out dudes in a single hit never killed anyone

How'd you do 50 damage on average as a level 5 monk in Pathfinder? I'm interested in hearing your build.

>Slow fall
That ONLY works if you have a wall next to you to lean against it as you fall. Read the rules.

Fall from a zeppeling? no slow fall.

Not on a single hit
But I have dragon ferocity, monk's robes, 22 Str, AoMF +1

I deal 2d6+17 on my first hit per turn, 2d6+13 on the rest, I make 3 full BaB attacks per turn

>he doesn't know
Kek, slow fall needs a nearby wall that goes all the way down. FAQ says a tree or similar also works, but you need something.

So if you jump like in pic related more than 40ft, when you reach the end you take damage and fall prone, because no wall. Thanks for playing. Next?

If it takes three hits, couldn't you just stop hitting him after the first hit knocks him out? Not all your attacks in a full attack action have to be on the same target, ya know.

1/4 is larger than 1/5

Ok, I explained myself incorrectly, the guard didn't die because I attacked with 3 attacks and dealt 50 damage to him, that was more or less irrelevant only there to proof I deal enough damage, he was a mere 3rd or so level warrior NPC. I was sneaking and attacked him from behind dealing 2d6+17, that killed him.

Thank god that rule wasn't in 3.5, my monk there dealt 80 damage PER hit at 13th level. Imagine dealing nonlethal damage to NPCs then.

>be 1d4 hp commoner
>roll a 1
>have 8 CON
>die during character generation

Hit Points simply aren't a problem in GURPS, where they are explicitly meat-points and normal people start at 10. Even the most heroic of heroes in a normal fantasy game only go as high as the 20-30 range, which isn't much if what you're fighting against has 1) good amount of strength, 2) good amount of skill, and 3) good weapons. A stab (specifically, since GURPS features multiple attack types) to your vital organs triples damage, which turns a knife into a true-to-life instrument of death against unarmored foes.

Since a sword does only an average of 4.5 damage, and people usually die from a single sword hit in real life, it follows that 1 hit point loss should already represent a serious injury.

1 hit point of damage is like being stabbed with a 4-inch pocket knife. It's unlikely to kill people in good shape, but it can kill.

A punch or a king dealt by a non trained person deals 1d3, that's 2 damage on average.

Yes, loads of peasants die in childhood. What else is new.

and a solid punch can and has killed people who aren't trained fighters.

System seems solid.

Where could one find a off of this system?

anyone had experience with the injury system in Burning Wheel? it seems pretty fair, if not a tad brutal

I think a 4 inch pocket knife has more chances of kiling than a punch by an untrained person

Isn't that why there's non-lethal damage?

>be 1d4 hp commoner.
>have a feat
>don't take toughness.

You're still wrong. Unless your GM ruled you took enough damage to drop you to a negative HP total equal to your Constitution score (Which at the minimum would be 7). Even if you took 1d8 points of non lethal damage that's only going to leave you at 0 HP and 4 points on non-lethal damage.

Why would he stop if the player doesn't know, and someone with more system mastery doesn't stop the player?

... Granted the character should probably know, but the DM can totally allow players to act against information that characters might have.

Falling from 10 feet distance can easily kill you. That's about 1.5 height of an average adult male.

If you lower yourself off an edge of a height and just let go, that'd be a climb or acrobatics check.

... Generally, ... I don't like the insane attempts to model reality using a system that is about wizards and warriors wacking each other with sticks.

... And like .... Assumes critical existence failure or like ... has -10 be the damage cap before you dead.

A DM revealing that a minion is only mostly dead and gets away shouldn't piss players off.

That would be a long jump tho.

And yet so many players of RPGs forego that simple custom.

>MFW High Cs

I think he's saying that OP's IQ is between 70 and 79.

>High Cs

>Hi Cs

They're getting in-character

>ITT people who have never been punched

Ok to be fair a punch is very unlikely to kill but it definitely can happen. Even a body blow if it hits the right spot. I live in the drunk sucker-punch capital of the world and the number of healthy teenagers who die from getting hit on the back of the head once is pretty high.

I'd say that the chance of a random critical making an unarmed attack dealing 2 damage (and thus being lethal) is about on-par with reality.

Yeah imo that's kind of shitty. If the player specifies non-lethal and is clearly skilled enough in combat to deal 50 damage in a round they should know enough to pull their punches.

If the player didn't specify non-lethal, I'd get it. If the player rolled a random critical then I'd get it (nobody's perfect).

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