What are some interesting methods of tracking character health that you've seen over your years of gaming? Is there one that stood out to you as being especially clever or easy to use? Is there one that you just can't fucking stand and think is dumb as hell?
For me, while I'm most used to old-fashioned HP, I'm interested in methods that are more granular and keep track of individual wounds. While death spirals (get worse at shit the more wounded you are) can be fun, I'm actually partial to reverse death spirals, where things escalate and get more serious as wounds accumulate.
Gabriel Cruz
what if you had a little body silloutte chart, and if you take a hit to an arm or chest etc, you write a line on it, but if you get hit again in teh same spot, you make the line into an X, then each body part has a simple stat debuff based on if it's lined or X'ed and if you get too manyXs you get taken out
Matthew Sanchez
I'm a big fan of Into the Odd's combat engine. It's based on old school D&D
>three ability scores >no attack rolls, just roll for damage >once your small pool of hit points is gone, physical damage is applied to STR, with increasing chances for accumulating wounds >in theory, mental attacks (ie sanity-blasting encounters, or even social humiliation) could damage your other abilities. >armor soaks a small amount of damage
It does have a bit of a "death spiral" effect, but it's striking how much variety and emergent behavior it creates with only five essential numbers (three abilities, HP, and a damage die).
Luis Martinez
Not sure about you but as things get worse, then things escalate and get more serious.
It's all fun and games until you have -3 to all actions.
Levi Kelly
Please don't do this.
Aiden Gray
Yeah, but then you struggle to action succeed at anything, and you're better off hoping your allies can carry your weight while you just try to stay alive, and can't actually contribute.
William Cooper
>reverse death spirals Tell me more. Im working on a reverse death spiral system at the moment.
Ryder Gonzalez
You would need to be very unfortunate to be at -3 while your enemies are perfectly healthy.
Parker Kelly
The system I use that has wound penalties also has luck points. Very useful to get the edge in a fight if you are looking worse for wear.
Brody Collins
I can't remember exactly how it works, but Tenra Bansho Zero has something like that, where the more wounded you get, the harder you can push, but the closer you get to death.
