I hate the concept of HP (health points)

Allow me to offer a rebuttal:
>muh death spiral

My favourite is Ripples, in Legends of the Wulin.

The basic idea is that all successful attacks inflict Ripples. Some do more, but it's diminishing returns, capping out at 3 ripples before techniques or other effects from a single attack.

Ripples, on their own, do nothing. You can rack them up, and in a fight everyone will gain some over time. But they are important when someone inflicts a particularly successful attack, triggering a Rippling Roll.

A Rippling Roll rolls a pool of dice, one per ripple, to inflict an Injury on you. Although certain techniques in combat can inflict special injuries, like burns or shocks, while others can inflict social, spiritual or medical conditions instead. Social-fu being directly supported is one of the things I love about the system, talking someone down as a perfectly viable combat strategy.

The way it does injuries is also pretty cool. It uses Chi Conditions, a narrative clause tied to a mechanical bonus or penalty. For negative ones, you obey the clause or take the penalty.

Injuries are an easy example, as they're always negative. Say someone gets a Rippling Roll on you and inflicts an Injury Condition they choose to fluff as a heavy impact to your shoulder. If you plan on using that arm, you'll take a penalty to your future rolls. However, if you're clever and adapt the fluff of your actions to avoid the injury, you avoid the penalty.

When the player is injured, injure them in real life.

>Is it the idea of being able to operate at top performance regardless of damage, right up until you hit zero and then suddenly become powerless?
yes
>muh death spiral
seems ok
it is absolutely normal to back off from the fight when you are hurt

Except that heroes perform their best the more hurt they're.

Apocalypse World is shit. Dungeon World is basically AW but with the normal hit points back, and it's a much better game.

...

not really
I could see it as a cool gimmick for Barbarians tho

yes.

at sword path glory, with the total amount of damage you received at the moment, you find some amount of turns X.
After X turns you roll to see if you will survive.
If you survive you roll again after more X turns.
After the fifth time you dont fail the survive test, you will start to recover your "health".
PS: The chance of survival is based at amount of damage you received.
Everytime you receive damage or try to heal wound, the 5 steps thing start again.

Rhand morninstar mission use similar system
Phoenix command and living steel also use a similar system, but you roll only 3 times instead of 5 (you roll only 1 if not using advanced rules)

...

>Implying death spiral isn't appropriate for certain systems and settings
If you've been stabbed and the other guy hasn't, it makes sense you'll be at a disadvantage.

Depends. Narrative focused games tend to go that route, since it's more concerned with a cool fight scene than paying any attention to realism.

By the way, a stupid question. How do you make a harm/progression clock in a digital environment? Vincent said somewhere in the book he drew that stuff by hand, but how easy it is to use, say, GIMP to precisely mark multiple segments on a circle?

As for a health system idea, what about a dice roll for damage agaist a character´s stat ( from -1 to +3 in the PbTA way)+ armor (1 or2) amd there is a conditions table that gives you results based on the difference between damage and defense:
0-1 is Stunned: -1 to your next action, stacks.
2-3 Injured: -2 to your next action until treated., can be injured twice.
and so on with a diference of 1 between steps , until you need a saving throw to do strenous actions starting at difference 6.

Finally, difference of 10-11 means you´re outright killed or unconscious, based on damage and maybe the attacker has an exploding damage die that lets him potentially roll a difference of 12 or more, which means you´re killed so messily that your allies have to roll to react.

Some classes might also have abilities that let them mitigate damage from a specific source by a step.
I think there was a Star wars-themed PbtA or World of Dungeons game that did this, but I can´t find it.

Call them "Stamina" instead and when they get to 0 start rolling on one of the death and dismemberment tables you can find online. Every hit before those are near misses and toughing it out. Every hit after is real damage.

Weird use of contraction, but I guess it works?

It's always how you interpret HP honestly, don't take it as just a number you have to take down.

A bbeg could take a few hits but not generate any visual wounds. The repetitive hits on their shield/armor has worn their endurance, their reactions slowed - maybe one or two hits actually wound the target visibly, and the final hit is a total kill shot.

Same with players. The old d20 rpg game for Star Wars utilized a two fold system. Vitality and wounds or something, once you were worn down (your vitality reached zero) you took hard wounds. So vitality was this high point value shield, usually around 50-60, and then wounds were around 10ish.

>When damaged, roll a hit die and add your Constitution modifier.
>If the result is greater than the damage you took, step down the hit die (d12->d10->d8->d6->d4) and return it to your hit die pool.
>Otherwise, reduce the amount of damage you take by the result and repeat.
>If you run out of hit dice, you are dying.
Season to taste.

I like body part damage personally.

What about sneak attacks that don't inflict lethal damage, then? Is dodging that single blow that you didn't see coming just really exhausting?

Wounds as in Savage Worlds are pretty good.

What about Injury poisons, which explicitly work by entering the bloodstream and can result from a single point of HP damage? Doesn't that clearly indicate that some form of physical damage is being dealt by attacks, not just exhausting the target?

i hate the concept of mana but i like the system of the aes sedai in wheel of time(one power)
how translate this into a game?

Use seprarate attack rolls for poison and the delivering attack. If physcal attack hits, but poison doesn´t, it is bruising blow that dazed you or something but the poison didn´t get into your bloodstream, If poson hit but attac didn´t you have a just a sratch, but was enough. Those are the two most important possiblities. I think Lenend of the Wulin went through this exact situation somewhere in its combat rules, but I can´t give you a page number, LotW is a clusterfuck when it comes to editing and accessibility.

you shouldn't post your picture in here, somebody might dox you

No. Hit Points are meant to be meat points with a bit of stamina/morale thrown in. Not the other way around. Those passages about how the poison blade poisons you without actually stabbing you are for faggots like OP who don't want to play along with the fucking game.

1e D&D disagrees with you explicitly, and that was the foundation for the concept in RPG's.

>Those passages about how the poison blade poisons you without actually stabbing you are for faggots like OP who don't want to play along with the fucking game.
Everything outside of that one fucking passage indicates otherwise, you fucking faggot.

Then please point to one.

Until then, I think I'll trust the word of the original author, as well as the description of HP in literally every edition of D&D.

Bump.

...

>Spiral power

wut?

The more you think about the luck/resolve part of HP the less it makes sense with how it interacts with how characters see the world. Clerics should never know how much to heal, characters should only sort of know when they need to rest, and you might need to drink a potion without ever actually receiving an injury. Even if the meat points interpretation means you're taking an absurd amount of axe wounds a day it feels more internally consistent to me

He probably means more Gurren Lagann than "DURR DURR DURRR this hole is made for me"

...No? Why would that be the case?

It's a factor, but it's alongside stamina, resolve and the capacity to go on despite minor injuries, Given how many of those provide very direct and obvious feedback, the luck side doesn't seem like it'd really cause any problems. It's just a useful part of the abstraction for explaining how things work. And nothing says that the lucky scrape didn't wind you or leave you feeling a little more emotionally drained after your close brush with death.

Yeah, the Meat Points interpretation is much more internally consistent, despite characters ending up a bit like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I believe Nechronica has damage dealt to body parts individually until they become useless.

It's a factor, but every time you put it into consideration it goes against every other mechanic that interacts with HP.
At some point I would think huge HP from an outside perspective would look a lot of fast healing if they're getting fucked up.

Why? I've never experienced this.

That's because most people don't actually address what HP is supposed to be on specific terms. The closer you look at it the less sense you can ever make of it no matter what you describe it as, but it works perfectly fine if you don't.

I change the proportion of how much of HP is meat vs how much is morale, luck, and stamina based on the PC in question and their level.

If you're level 3 and survive a crossbow bolt its probably because you blocked it, it only nicked you, or it hit you and didn't go in deep. But if you're level 8 you're well within your rights to say it just bounces off her skin comically, leaving at most a small bruise.

The idea that morale and luck plays a large role in HP stops making sense somewhere around level five or six.

I like how Blades in the Dark handles this.

It's mechanically the same as AW's 6-segment Harm clock, but more descriptive, and with specific penalties depending on the severity of harm.

"HP as an abstract measure of luck" is handled separately, by fictional positioning. If you roll badly in combat, but context says it would make no sense to take harm, it just puts you in a Risky or Desperate position or reduces your effect, both of which reduce your odds on your next roll.

It flies in the face of other mechanics' lore
-Armor class, tohit, and damage rolls already represent dodging ability, luckiness, and how much harm an attack did
-Luck mechanics tend to impact tohit rolls and armor class rather than hit points
-The word "hit" and "damage" makes it abundantly clear that the target has been hit for damage, as opposed to dodging and losing luck
-Poisoned, sharpened, and serrated weapons inflict more damage
-Bleeding mechanics
-Constitution improves hit points
-A number of abilities only make sense to work when the target has been physically struck by incoming attack, such as a monk's stunning fist

Honestly, that just sounds like you getting too wrapped up in terminology. Not that the terminology is good, but there's a lot of abstraction inherent in all those mechanics that you're ignoring, which leaves plenty of room for abstracted HP to be perfectly consistent and logical.

There are tons of RPGs without anything even similar.

common fucking sense
use a system like dwarf fortress

If you have to ignore how many other mechanics interact with it abstracted HP is by no means perfectly consistent. It can be passably consistent, but I can't agree that it doesn't contradict a lot of other things

It only really contradicts with terminology. If you look at how things actually work or read more in depth explanations, it makes perfect sense.

Damage applied directly to physical stats (STR, CON, DEX) a la Traveller

Impedes your ability to do stuff the more wounded you get. 2 stats get to 0: unconscious. 3 stats get to 0: dead.

You don't really have anything to back up what you're saying, unlike the previously listed features that interact with HP in a way that only really works with blood points.

If you really hate something, you should at least know what its name is.

No, it means they restore hit points.

user, you are trying too hard to define things as a simulation of real life, when hit points is expressly not such a thing, just like AC is in no way representative of real life defenses, and your attack roll is in no way representative of real life combat.
Stop looking for "real life" in a system that is BY INTENT an abstraction of complicated scenarios.
Or, y'know, stop being trolling trash, but that's too much to ask.

>The word "hit" and "damage" makes it abundantly clear that the target has been hit for damage

Then I'll go through them one by one

Armour class is a summation of different sources of passive defence, setting a minimum threshold of success for attacks against you. Nothing about it conflicts with abstract HP.

'To hit' is more appropriately called an Attack Roll, and represents an exchange of blows going on throughout the round, the result you get showing whether your offence was successful or not. Nothing about it conflicts with abstract HP.

Damage, if your offence was successful, represents how much pressure you were able to put on your opponent by doing so., with more threatening weapons able to wear down your opponents more. Nothing about it conflicts with abstract HP.

'Hit' and 'Damage' are bad terms drawn from old wargames and grandfathered in, but even then more modern iterations have used the term 'Attack roll'. 'Damage' can also be taken to mean general impact on your opponent's ability to keep fighting, rather than raw physical harm

More dangerous implements are more threatening and thus do more damage, perfectly consistent. I've honestly never understood the poison thing, though. Abstract HP covers the idea of minor wounds and such, so getting nicked and thus getting poisoned makes sense.

Can you point out any specific bleeding mechanics? Although an injury doesn't need to be particularly severe for bleeding to be an issue. Losing blood tires you out a lot, which is consistent with abstract HP.

Constitution improves hit points because ability to take damage is a part of HP. It's just that the abstraction covers more than that.

And the last one is covered by the same thing as poison- Getting hit doesn't mean you took the full force or damage of the attack directly, there's no inconsistency there that I can see.

If you can't actually support or add anything to your argument it's better to step away than calling everyone else a troll. I mean can you even name an ability that attacks someone's moral or luck in its flavor, that deals HP related damage? The closest I can think of are some psychic damage stuff, but that is always described in a way that would actually manifest as physical damage

>HP is a measurement of morale/luck instead of being straight up Meat Points
>Every action that reduces your HP is described as some form of damage, whether it's from physical damage, elemental damage, or psychic damage to name a few.
>Also, actions that restore HP directly reference you healing wounds, whether it's using the medicine skill, using cure X, or stabilizing someone from the dying condition.
But y'know, I guess this doesn't count because the authors said IT'S NOT HEALTH POINT GUIZ!

Yep. Their stated definition overrules the later inconsistency. Glad you understand.

Not him but I don't know what's more pathetic, the fact that this is the best comeback you could come up with in ten minutes, or the fact that you thought that it was good enough to post in the first place.

funin.space/compendium/power/Sharp-Retort.html

>Your quick rejoinder speaks of enduring pain and misfortune, hindering your enemy’s attempt to throw off a harmful effect.

This is the description of a damaging power

>Their stated definition overrules the later inconsistency.
You got it backwards mate. In D&D, specific always trumps general, so if anything, it would mean that HP represents luck/morale UNTIL such a time where it represents meat points, which is way more often than when it's used to represent luck/morale.

I'll stick with the definition that makes perfect sense and doesn't require adventurers to be drawn by Rob Liefeld, thanks.

If you need an abstraction to make another abstraction make sense, it was a pretty shitty abstraction in the first place.

If it's supposed to represent luck/morale, add mechanics that reference you losing luck/morale. I mean fuck, you could easily tie this into shit like fear effects or intimidation if you wanted to, and it'd honestly add more depth by actually giving people a reason to invest in the non-physical stats as a martial.

>Muh realism
>Muh consistency
Veeky Forums sure loves taking the fun out of everything.

I'm the guy you linked, but I didn't write out the list you're going through, but here it goes
AC conflicts by defining attacks as either a miss or a hit. The conflict is when you describe an attack as "A miss, but..." it is at odds with this.

"To Hit" is often used in place of attack roll. Your interpretation of one doesn't nullify the other.

They're only "bad terms" based off your subjective preference. I've never heard of someone taking another person's luck to the limit as "damage"

I think the guy's point is these things are incapable of being described as anything other than "meat damage", making the abstraction weaker

A near hit with a weapon you don't know is poisoned doesn't seem like it should hurt your moral more.

I'm not sure what he had in mind in particular, but bleeding in DnD usually means some secondary effect that does damage per turn until a heal check. It's basically the same point as the above one on poisons

The point is that constitution only represents that

The point here is that you can't have a "near hit that hurts the enemy's morale" then justify using stunning fist as the ability is described. It only makes sense when there's physical damage and contact

This is actually something we're doing in a game I'm working on. HP works best as an abstraction involving factors like that, but D&D never fully took advantage of it, despite stating it as an assumption of the system.

Nobody's saying you can't but just don't say that your definition is correct when it's contradicted by everything in the game's rules.

I never said there wasn't physical damage or contact. The ability to endure minor wounds is part of the abstraction.

And if you read actual descriptions of what attack rolls represent, it makes it quite clear. The terminology is confusing, but the intent is simple- A success represents your offence putting pressure on your opponent, a failure represents it failing to do so.

But it's the games own definition. It's implicitly correct. That the game fucks up is of no consequence.

Even though losing enough HP knocks you out and leaves you bleeding on the ground until you're stabilized by someone else.

How exactly is the definition correct when you admit that the game fucks up? Why trust one piece of information in the game just because it matches your own prior assumptions?

That's going below zero HP. That's the point where it stops being an abstraction and starts being real, physical injury. Although injury that you can muscle through and fight on despite, as seen in martial healing.

No, I trust the games definition because it makes more sense than otherwise. Fantasy heroes being able to be pumped full of arrows like Dark Souls characters is stupid. The definition that avoids that is the best one.

Try meat percentage points. Like an experienced boxer, a high HP character knows how to roll with a hit -- even though he takes the same amount of "damage" as everyone else.

>That's the point where it stops being an abstraction and starts being real, physical injury.
You're being stabbed repeatedly by a dude wielding a knife suddenly now it's becoming an injury?

>No, I trust the games definition because it makes more sense than otherwise.
Even though it contradicts everything about the way the game handles HP loss?
>Fantasy heroes being able to be pumped full of arrows like Dark Souls characters is stupid.
Why exactly?

No. You're being attacked by a dude repeatedly with a knife, depleting your ability to keep him at bay until he finally lands a significant hit.

But it doesn't contradict everything. I pointed out above how it all makes perfect sense.

Because it doesn't fit the fiction. In fantasy movies and stories characters are durable and able to get through a lot without being walking meat mountains who shrug off swordblows like its nothing.

It could be a cool aesthetic choice for a particular character, but it doesn't fit as a default given the rest of the tone of the game.

>Even though losing enough HP knocks you out and leaves you bleeding on the ground until you're stabilized by someone else.

No, only getting to zero does that. You can loose a million HP, but as long as you have 1, you will not have anything other than superficial injuries. You aren't dazed, tired, have any broken bones, no lacerations, nothing that actually impacts the structural integrity of your body.

And once you're back up to 1- which a day of bed rest can achieve, you're as fit and spry and able to do as many push ups, jumping jacks, or whatever as you are when you were at 100. Just as long as nobody punches you.

D&D HP is basically plot armor. Sure, the characters in a story get "hit" but plot armor means they just get banged up, nicked, or hit in a non-vital area that only leaves them with superficial bruises and scars that tatters their clothes, scuffs their armor, leaves a little bit of blood coming from their mouths, but never actually keeps them from fighting on until thoroughly defeated and don't really ever drag them down from scene to scene.

And who has more/less plot armor is partially informed by who the bigger.physically tougher person is, but is usually more informed by lots of other stuff.

But he's still hitting you. You're losing HP each time he successfully hits you and if you lose all your HP, you're on the ground bleeding to death. If you chug a potion, you're curing the wounds that you sustained earlier from his attack(s).

Putting it another way, you're basically saying that you're dancing around each other until suddenly one dude keels over from a heart attack.

That's how I fluff it usually. An attack that might kill a low level character is a nasty bruise on a high level one.

I guess in a way that's similar to 'hitpoints as luck', except that hp damage always represents an injury of some kind, regardless of the severity.

>But it doesn't contradict everything. I pointed out above how it all makes perfect sense.
You really didn't, you posted halfassed bullshit that only raises more questions than answers.
>It could be a cool aesthetic choice for a particular character, but it doesn't fit as a default given the rest of the tone of the game.
Even though the tone of D&D has never been all that serious in the first place?

You're fixating too much on bad terminology. explained it well.

I posted the most intuitive and logical interpretation of the system given its own definition. If there are flaws in it, then feel free to point them out.

So basically this.

I already have and your response is "I choose to believe this definition even though it's wrong!"

Different guy, but if that's the case, what exactly does a healing potion or a healing spell do? How does poison do an effect on a hit, when a hit doesn't represent a physical hit?

It honestly holds up less well to scrutiny than meat points do, at least with the way D&D works. If you wrote a new game from the ground up, that might be different, but as it is, there's an assumption that hit point damage involves at least some level of physical harm.

Nothing that claims that bleeding to death tires you out without actually injuring you is either intuitive or logical.

Can you point it out? Because I've not seen anything like that in this thread so far.

The alternative is playing trash games that don't have it.

Schrodinger's wound. Until treated, it is simultaneously depleted luck and actual wounds.

I guess you wouldn't when you've been ignoring people the whole time.