As a GM, I don't bother with HP anymore. I just let players kill stuff after a certain number of hits...

>why bother?
Because it combats HP bloat and doesn't really matter in the long run.
>why not tell your players and see how they feel?
The question's never really come up. The players seem like they're having a good time, and I haven't felt the need to tell them because I feel that it doesn't really matter to the game at large.

Be prepared for it to blow up on you if they find out though.

>Nobody in my group has caught on yet.
This is wrong

Then why post about it on Veeky Forums?

Unless your real intention is to start a bait thread.... hmmmmmmmmm

If they're enjoying the illusion, let them waste their time.

You might as well tell players not to write backstories.

that just about what i do...i kinda just assign HP based on how fast i want the player to kill it, littlest of monsters or minions get 10, then 15, then 20, then 30, then 60 and 120 for bosses i dont want to die in 1ish round....it works pretty well. i also tend to up the damage of monsters by about 2x...my players and i like things deadly and combat to be fast.

The autists will screech, but as long as your players are having fun, then you are winning and doing your job as a DM.

The illusion of choice is a powerful tool. You're using it wisely.

I don't think it's wrong in general, especially if they're having fun. But if I'm spending time figuring out how to deal with enemies and spending lots of time, xp, and money on combat it'd be nice if you told me the rogue getting in 4 hits is equivalent to me doing so. You asked for opinions, that's my opinion. It's not really how the system is intended to be used and there are other options that do it differently.

If it works for your group then yeah, you're ok. If you get figured out and your players don't like it then you're pretty fucked. Once you break that trust between player and GM they're going to start feeling a certain way about any encounter you throw at them from that point on.

I'm not a fan of this style and if I found out my GM was doing it I wouldn't be happy at all. Some systems have minion-type enemies for this exact purpose, so if you just statted a few guys with lower health then played it straight I'd say you're fine, but you're doing it with every enemy. I track numbers for every encounter just so things stay fair. It's not exactly fair to my players if they built their character to be able to do a certain amount of damage when all I'm really looking for is hits. If I were you, I'd just run it by your players so at the very least they have an understanding and can adjust their play style/builds accordingly. Hell, I'd redo my whole game and make it the same for PCs too if they're down for it.

Kinda shitty unless you're doing it with more nuance than your posts suggest. If the big, slow heavy attacker is, under your system, vastly less useful than the quick multiattacker then it's honestly pretty shitty, as you're mechanically invalidating a significant number of player options without any ability on their part to tell.

With some actual consideration, guidelines and examples I think it isn't the worst thing, but I do question what benefit it has over just managing HP the normal way.

It's a fairly easy illusion to maintain as long as you limit your usage of it.

I'm not giving him back.

> if I found out my GM was doing it

Yes, exactly

How is it wasting time if they're enjoying it?

Only if you eyeball the health of enemies. If it's straight up hits like in OP's post it is going to be obvious.

And, nothing is worse than a DM who thinks he's clever with his "stealth" railroad. Or at least that's my opinion as a player and as a DM.

This only works if you're more clever than your players. I guess it depends heavily on your gaming meta.

Just change hit dice to hits. Chainmail, baby!

You are a very good GM. Ignore others on this thread. RPG is about immersion and flow, not about following rules.

I've come to dislike D&D and other systems that overcomplicate simple stuff. It's just better to have a 4 hour session of pure flowing narrative and interpretation instead of 4 hours of doing fucking math

If one guy does 5 points and another 20 points of damage on average then it's not hard to eyeball how many hits they'd take to down an enemy. Both kill a small enemy with a single hit, but big enemies take four times more hits from the smaller guy. It's not exactly rocket science.

that's okay, as a player I've stopped bothering keeping score of my hp, arrows, resistances, actual bonuses to hit, spell slots and money too. it just gets in the way of my fun, you know?

Can you prove that your current GM isn't adjusting hit points of enemies on the fly?

Well, yeah. Anybody who would use the latter system is clearly a moron.

Assuming no one ever adds up the actual damage and catches on.

It's not that much more difficult to just right the numbers down on paper.

Having a playstyle preference does not mean things outside your preferences are incorrect. 'My fun is superior' is just another kind of badwrongfun argument, and those are always stupid.

Not the same thing, please try again.

Well, one of them always does. It's obvious and really annoying.

The other? If he is he's doing it well, so who cares?

Only the DM is privy to how much hp a monster has. Adding damage together shows only how much one particular monster had before it was demonstrably slain.

If it is like this you re actually using a hp system

>Fine your me but not for thee
>tfw your DM ignores all the rules for his mary sue DM NPCs, but holds you to the most literal interpretation of the rules

That's open information, not hidden information like monster hp. Totally different thing. The GM and the player are not equals because the flow of information is unidirectional in the GM's favor.

>One orc has 25 HP
>This other identical orc has 33 HP

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

>If he is he's doing it well, so who cares?
Exactly.

It's not open information unless your GM asks for it, and if he does, why give him the right numbers?

You're being dumb. If you thought about the situation more than not at all, you'd see why the players should be held to a higher standard of rules than the NPCs.

My point is that there is a difference between being loose with the exact numbers for the sake of game flow and literally playing freeform RP like OP stated

My players have yet to notice anything amiss. Everybody is having fun, and my workload is reduced. This is the win state.

>He doesn't roll for every enemy's HP individually

Shame.

Of course it is the same. if the enemy's health is irrelevant, so is mine.

>the players are held to a higher standard than the GM

obviously higher than you at least seeing as you're a complete shitter

a) Monster hit points are expressed as a range. 1 HD monster has anywhere between 1 and 8 hit points.
b) If the orcs have different hit point amounts then they obviously weren't identical, as you falsely assumed. Maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions?

Or no? The story isn't about the NPCs, it's about the PCs. You should focus on building a realistic world for your PCs to tell their own story. (unless you have PCs you need to spoonfeed)

Do you take account of significant damage variance between players?

Or does one person expending resources or doing really well just not actually matter, and is explicitly identical to making a simple standard attack?

because of those two are explicitly equal, it's fucking stupid.

I think it can be compared.
The GM ignores stuff he knows is just busyworks and don't directly contribute to fun.
A player can have the same intention, he ignores these stuff not because he wants an advantage but because they mean nothing to him.
It's basically freeform which people can enjoy

>implying anyone would take the effort to do this

Path of least resistance, user

The sentiment in applies just as much to this post as the one it was originally replying to.

Expressing your playstyle preferences with an air of objectivity just makes you sound dumb. Your preferred flavour of fun is no better than anyone else's preferred flavour of fun.

>user DM rolled for bluff
>Nat 1

It takes no time at all though.

Your character's current hp total can be verified at any moment simply by asking, while none of what happens behind the GM screen cannot. There's the difference.

Just make sure it's your players' preferred flavor of fun.

Your character is a persistent part of the story and game at large. Their HP, ammo count, and inventory matter for consistency. The goblin who's never going to be seen again after one encounter? His stuff doesn't matter because he's a one off NPC. He didn't exist before the players stumbled on him, and he won't exist afterwards.

I eyeball things as best I can. I'm not an idiot about it.

Exactly. That the GM and the group are on the same page is all that matters. It's disconnects between players and GMs, differences in expectation or understanding, that cause most actual issues in RPG groups.

In D&D doing really well doesn't matter at all, because to hit and damage rolls are separate. As a martial you just want to use Full Attack again and again every round anyway, so there's no difference. Only the number of attacks matter, not how flashily you describe them.

>what are crits

As a GM, I don't bother with games that has HP anymore. I just let players kill stuff after they rolled over a certain obstacle.

Might have been good to express that in the first place.

Also, as said above, all you're really doing at that point is still using an HP system, just with less consistency and simplified bookkeeping. It's not bad, but I don't think it's innately better either, it depends very much on the expectations of the group.

I have a buddy who DMs kind of like this.
Our group caught on almost immediately since he made it really obvious and it kind of sapped all of the fun out of any of the fights.
He also refuses to actually read the DM guide or even the Player's guide since he 'plays by his own rules'
The group of furries he is playing with now seem to enjoy it though so what do I know.

>this is what ForeverPlayers actually believe

Exceptions to the general rule? Unless you crit it doesn't make a single difference whether you rolled 13 or 17 to hit, as long as you beat the enemy's AC. And the way to get more crits? Make more attack rolls = stand still and Full Attack.

Good idea, keeps it exciting and dramatic.

You can ask for it, but who knows if im telling the truth

>furries
>having non-shit taste

Is this bait?

>Do you take account of significant damage variance between players?

And this right here is why this method is dumb. If you want to make it foolproof then your method would have to account for the different damage outputs of different PCs. It'd also have to account crits and abysmal rolls. So we now have 3 "hits to kill" values per PC. Lets take an average party of 4, now we have 12 different hits to kill amount. And that's without spells and whatnot. If you include all that then congratulations you've spent an hour repainting the HP of the orc that the book already clearly says what it is.

I can see your character sheet Dave.

Or it's a group that isn't that interested in combat and wants to get it over with in three rounds or so, so they just don't care about the specifics that much.

Then pick a narrative focused system. If combat is meaty in the game and you don't like combat in general then why are you playing that system? If it's because you like the setting then may I introduce you to the wonderful world of homebrew settings?

You can't though. And even if you did, you're working on the presumption that you already suspect me of not following the rules, which makes this duscussion moot.

I don't entirely disagree with you but there are plenty of group's that have fun doing math.

All you have to do is assign weighted values to each player's hits. For instance, the axe-wielding Barbarian does around .7 of an orc's hp, while the archer does .55 with his bow. At this point, you might want to scale up the values and round so you don't have to deal with decimals, then maybe involve some dice rolls to give damage a little more variability.

>nobody in my group has caught on yet
Either they are retarded or you lack perception.

This is not a bad thing, just try to keep it consistent (orcs should have about 15 hp, for example). If they deal 18 damage in one hit, they should get the kill.
If they only deal 5 damage, twice, they shouldn't get the kill.

I just wanna say, sometimes it is fun to come together and run some crunchy sessions of something. Might just be because I go to a STEM University, but we enjoy running a campaign where we know we're going to do a lot of math and optimize the hell out of everyone.

Not to say that freeform flowing narrative is badwrongfun, but people do enjoy the alternative every now and then.

I can ask you your current hp, and then doodle your answer on a piece of paper behind my screen. I can track that number going down easily, while you cannot track how much hp my monster has left. There's the difference.

So barbarian hits twice, rolls shit damage both times and kills the orc. The archer crits the orc once and deals more than the barb's 2 hit yet the orc still lives hmmmmm.

This system has too many flaws and has no place in a simulationist game. You should only eyeball stuff when looking it up would break pacing too much. If you eyeball it all the time then you (the GM) are not playing by the rules you are supposed to and are effectively betraying the players.

Because D&D is the most common game in town and people bitch if they're asked to learn new rules? You must've run in to the crowd that goes 'yeah use D&D to run that' no matter what kind of setting you suggest to them (because system mastery).

You don't have to play by the rules if the players enjoy the game. That's all there is to it. If a combat feels like a slog then it should be handwaved away when everyone around the table starts feeling bored, regardless how many rules are broken by doing so.

Ha, my D&D homebrew does this but I never figured out the best way to handle a written guideline. NPCs don't need HP, they really just need rough damage thresholds and something interesting to do.

Imagine if in a stat block it said "when a cultist takes a hit they go down or run away depending on the power of the blow, a critical hit kills them outright" while plot important NPCs might say "when hit with N number of attacks they open a vein praying to an evil God on their turn, becoming "

It works better for an active defense system though, where the abstraction is a little more intuitive.

If you're worried about your players losing interest in your battles then you've either made them too bloated or your players are ADHD retards.

>Because I am using the system.
No. You're being a cunt. You are the reason why rules lawyers exist. If you're going to warp the rules at least be honest beforehand that that is the type of game you are going to run.

God I hope a player in your group finds you out soon and goes on a huge sperg rage about how you are cheating, gets kicked out, but plants the seed of doubt in your players minds until they stop trusting you entirely.

I also hope you die. Fucking faggot.

So you don't want to GM for D&D that's fine don't. People don't want to play a non D&D game? Then tell them to find a GM that will run it for them. It's significantly easier to find a group if you are willing to GM as not a lot of people want to do it.

> If a combat feels like a slog then it should be handwaved away when everyone around the table starts feeling bored

Then maybe, just maybe don't play a game that is all about combat? If you play a combat focused game and then handwave away the combat then I'm sorry but you are retarded.

Settle down.

If only there was some sort of system where different attacks and abilities had different damage values corresponding to how deadly they were and all enemies had some sort of value to keep track of so you know when the attacks and abilities exceed the amount of damage required to kill them.

>people bitch if they're asked to learn new rules
i will never ever understand this. this is a quintessential part of the hobby. it adds both spice and variety.
it's as retarded as saying "yeah, roleplaying is nice but i only ever want to campaign in middle-earth, don't care about the system." there's no accounting for taste but it's so incredibly limiting.

No. Fuck off. I hope OP gets pneumonia and dies from it because he has no health insurance.

>GM
>Cheating
>autistic numbercruncher
>I play to WIN!
Your opinion is not important.

Nowhere did I say anything related to your last two bullet points. You are strawmanning. And no the Gm technically can't cheat, but if he violates the rules to the point of hardly following them at all, he is either playing the wrong system, or is just a power tripping rest.

t. 11 years of GM experience

This. I also pretend to use a system when in reality I'm just running my own homebrew game lmao

Players haven't even caught up yet

you can, but you won't. I can also jot down how much damage every enemy takes and keep tabs on them, but I won't.

Instead of fudging HP, maybe you should adjust combat encounters on the fly so they aren't too long or short?
In the end though I'll second what and say. Nothing wrong with this, but be prepared to face the consequences of your method.
Consider switching systems or explicitly coming up with a homebrew that uses minion-type enemies AND whatever mechanics you like from your current system.

This, NPCs are allowed to do weird/OP shit and ignore the rules for the sake of telling a good, exciting story (unless verisimilitude is broken of course). Most of the OP shit in question happens just once. By contrast, allow the players to do one stupid-powerful thing and they'll do it as much as possible. Players and GMs are not bound to the same rules for a reason, it's not rocket science.

Gonna agree with
I mean, why even begin reintroducing a whole new numerical value system to attacks when you just left the first one behind?

To the OP i think it's a solid approach, contingent on the players never finding out, and on being a good judge og when players ought to kill something.

The thing is though, that no human is a perfect judge of anything. You get tired, you make mistakes, and all of the sudden the players start to notice discrepancies. Or say, you favoring the guy who made that totally flashy awesome swashbuckler character who totally deserves 60% of all killing blows because he's just so much better at narrating his in-combat actions.

Personally i'd hate to have a GM pull this one on me.

The mechanics of a good game is meant to be static with random variables to introduce non predictabillity.

If you remove the tactical aspect of a game, it makes it a random boring toss of the dice on which you as a player have no real impact.

If you remove the random variables you make the game a progressive optimization problem with a set "perfect" solution in a given scenario to every game mechanic.

A good game needs to balance these two factors to a ratio that is dependent on other aspects of the game.

I could perhaps offer suggestions on how to strike a balance between just eyeballing it, and adhering to static guidelines, but i would need more details on how you run your game.

When all is said and done, if you have fun, and your players have fun, then thats all there is to it.

Hey, maybe there could be a small chance to deal double damage, too.

We'll call this... the Strike Tally system.