Health

I like the idea from Fuzion where damage is split betwen hits and stuns, and most weapons deal damage in hits, and electricity, blunt weapons, chemicals deal damage in stins, and once you've depleted your stun counter, you fall unconscious, and damage over 40 hits is measured in kills.

Cypher system, health and endurance are intrinsically linked and as you avoid blows, take mental damage, or perform fantastic feats you become more tired and more vulnerable.

There is a connected but separate track for death similar to an exhaustion table.

HP are just fine. Simple and functional. The way they are perceived by PCs is another matter and has to do with the fact they won't read the rules and the DM's description skill.

HP as skill and plot-shield>Wound/Death-Spiral>A Pile of Crap>HP as meat-points

Multiple pools of HP.
Stun damage, which is shaken off after every fight.
Wound damage, for superficial injuries that heal in days.
Mortal damage, for severe injuries that take weeks to heal.

Type of weapon and level of success of the attack roll determine which type of damage is dealt. Glancing blows add up, but are shrugged off after every encounter. A single critical hit can eat into your mortal HP and take you the fuck out, so the system can still be pretty lethal.

I like the abstract system of True20/M&M. "Damage" sets the difficulty of the resistance check of the victim. If you fail the check, you get a bad condition, depending on the difference of results. But smaller hits add up as penalties, so sooner or later you are going to fail badly enough to be taken out.

I also like the narrative consequence system of Fate.

It depends on the game the game tone. Something heroic and action oriented - hit points are fine. If you want something gritty and granular, plenty of other systems exist that do it.

I like hit points and fluffing them as meat points.

Your characters will become supernaturally tough, just as they will become supernaturally strong or magical. That's what leveling up is all about; one step closer to becoming a demigod.

No meat point pool. Enough hits means rolls for wounds, and wounds mean specific penalties. Increasing any single wound penalty far enough will KO someone. Possibly kill them.

Twilight:2000 1e
>no levels
>simplified hit location chart
>stats derive health for each body part (head, leg, chest, abdomen)
>the amt of damage = severity of wound
>very easy to get killed in a gunfight

Y’all know any light way to do health without many numbers, or more specifically a hard numbered limit on hits for players?

My (probably bad) idea is to just have them and the enemy roll against each other, or just have them roll against an enemies set attack depending on the situation or type of incoming damage. I’m not sure if I should reveal that information to the players so they know how high they need to roll to succeed.
Once they lose and take damage it’s just based on how much they lost by, so it could be a graze if they lost by a couple points or a heavy hit if they really got fucked and lost by a bunch. The level of damage they can is kinda nebulous, where I keep track behind the scenes about how debilitating a wound is just depending on how they’ve made their character with design and adjectives, so if their a super big guy with an iron will then it’ll be easier to shrug off damage. It’s all just a way for the players to be aware of the amount of damage they’re taking without having to worry about any numbers other than what they need to roll in order to succeed in not taking damage.

Think it could work at all, or is it shit and I need someone’s way better idea?

this

You don't need multiple pools, World of Darkness does it on a single HP track by marking different kinds of damage in different ways.

You speak the truth

adding to this; a larger or tougher person should have larger thresholds, so a guy with 18 con and fighter levels would be like
1-6 = light wound
7-12 = serious wound
or something like that

I like video game health systems, particularly the ones found in jrpgs. There's a lot of places where the streamlined nature of video games actually translates well into the tabletop, and the very simple, black and white "this attack removes this much hp" style is great because it cuts down on bookkeeping without cutting down on strategy

Pls help

Look at what I posted here The True20 system sounds close to what you ask. PCs don't have predefined HPs, but a toughness bonus they use to save against damage.

Sorry, I know I’m a moron, but what’s the difference between our posts, mechanically speaking? Other than your thing adding penalties for small hits, and my thing organically changing the amount of damage someone can take based on their actual character, not some class.

I was just suggesting that you take a look at a published system that does something like what you want to do, for inspiration.
Also, M&M is not class-based, and True20 is only barely. Really, go read'em. Might find that your issues are already solved.

Different user who likes M&M-style Toughness saves (never played True 20). There are some officially suggested variants that can really enhance it.

Characters can be made more durable by setting a limit for how quickly they can reach the higher thresholds of failure. Usually not being able to suffer a second tier penalty until the second round, at least three rounds before incapacitating penalties are possible.

On the other hand, the accumulating roll penalties for failure can be made worse. Making them guaranteed, even on success, means any attack that hits causes harm. Applying the penalty to other rolls enhances the death spiral.

I will definitely check them out, and I appreciate the suggestions. I guess my worry is just that there’ll be more numbers than I’m looking for. I’m trying to minimize math as much as possible, or at least obscure it from player view without overriding their agency. Characters not having a big sheet of numbers, just some adjectives and tokens to give a bonus or minus to whatever roll they relate to, that kinda shit. The most I really would feel okay about showing them (other than rolling for doing stuff / against stuff) is maybe revealing the kind of damage threshold their characters can take, but even that quickly turns into numbers.

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Though I also find HP just fine and agree, the books are not very clear about this. Because losing HP is treated as a mix of things, sure. But then you have recovery treated more like healing than anything else. "Cure light wounds" imply that I've lost HP due to being cut.

Wish the books gave more ways outside that and long rests, which also imply recovering via healing and a little bit or resting.

there really isn’t a way to fix that without getting into a retarded amount of detail

just pick a system you fuck

I've never had a problem with treating HP as a mix of factors. Often it depends on how the character plays. Big bulking barbarian? Meat points all the way. Sneaky rogue who backflips and throws knives? luck and spirit. Armored up knight in the middle of a brawl? resilience and willpower. Healing spells like cure light wounds or whatever can easily be seen as a god's blessing or ameriolation instead of pure physical healing.
And when they get bloodied, the enemy gets in a slash. Or the Rogue suddenly feels how his luck is running out. Or the knight feels how some of his straps have come undone, or his resolution is wavering.

Generally everyone just gets stabbed in the gut when hitting 0 hp. Or something equally drastic.

>Yo what up? I'm the pass guardian. I was guarding the pass but some dude got past me, I'd go get him myself but I gotta guard the pass 'cause I'm the pass guardian. You wanna go fuck him up for me?

Autistics aren't capable of thinking in abtracts user, they've never even wondered why It's "Hit Points" instead of "Health Points".

>A certain amount of hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment. The majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.

I really liked Friday Night Firefight from Cyberpunk back in the day.

I explored a lot of systems that were different than HP systems and in the end they seemed to often lead to death spiraling, which may be realistic but not very fun.

I think all RPG's benefit from a bit of cinematic-y-ness or whatever, as in all honesty most of us are more familiar with it than real wounds anyway.

I like hit point pools as kind of like a buffer. You can go through this much shit, then something bad happens. That pool should recover rather quickly and players should have good access to means to recover that pool. The more severe wounds you get when you run out should be a bit more of a concern.

Of course, I played a system like this, and while I enjoyed it, one serious flaw became clear:

We were on a kind of tight schedule, "5 days from now and the ritual is complete and zombies invade the town" or some shit. The players had to spend those 5 days either bolstering defenses or sabotaging the ritual. This was fine except that our first fight on day 1 went very bad, so half the group would need a week+ to recover from the brutal wounds and were seriously weakened until then, while the other half needed a day or two at least. This basically meant we had no chance to accomplish much of anything before the ritual completed. Ooops, one town gone, sorry!

So all systems can run into problems I guess.

I use HP like D&D, but i treat it as the creature's ability to withstand combat and not meat-points. I also usually don't tell my players how much HP they have, it adds to the abstraction. I'll give them rough estimates on how their character feels if they ask.

Well your opinion a shit. Arbitrary rules and overly complex systems are no better. You just flock to them so you can snort and grunt about "muh 5e" memes

did you hit your head? because I didn’t say anything even remotely close to that.

Savage Worlds wounds. You get damage above a treshold, you get one wound. You get no more than three, each one penalizes all rolls and the fourth has you bleeding out and dying. You can even turn up the grittiness and make every wound a risk of bleedout. Coupled with exploding dice this means you can get shot but take a grazing wound that only rips your shirt, a solid hit that knocks you down, or just get obliter-fucking-ated by a hit to vitals.

When they tried to do it, grogs went up in arms about shouting wounds closed and fighters being wolverine.

darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/srd/srd_true_romantic/PlayingTheGame.html#Chapter 6: Playing the Game - Damage and Recovery

Both 7th Sea and Numenera have interesting health systems.

Was it EABA which had a storyteller style soak pool, but it got better the more damage you took? So a couple of big wounds could fuck you up and it was possible to one-shot someone, but lots of little ones didn't add up to you getting totally fucked.

FATE. By far. You have stress boxes, which are like meat points (I guess?) of different sizes. Those come back at the end of every scene, like a minimum amount of hit points you can count on having. Beyond that, you have consequences. Each one of those gets named when you take it, and is treated just like a character aspect. If you get shot in the knee, that goes on your character sheet, and good luck trying to chase anyone. Same if you take a knife to the hand, or giant monster claws to the left nut.

The last system sounds interesting despite its flaw.
What was its name?

I've never tried this, but it really appeals to me.
It sounds like it'd make your game gritty and cool, a step away from hurtling numbers at other numbers.
I expect you couldn't just mod it into some existing system though, it'd mess up the balance of the mechanics.

Yeah, no. Exploding dice combined with raises every 4 points means you can just play craps until your tommy gun one-shots a spaceship.

I had also done a different system that was HP based. Wounds depended on fractions of HP lost. Lose more than 1/4 HP it’s a serious wound, lose more than 1/2 HP it’s a critical wound, lose more than 3/4 HP it’s a mortal wound.

Look at Burning Wheel

Risus does its thing pretty well.

It's Cyberpunk 2020

I consider two variants for a system I'm making
1) There are 12 decks. When you're hit (12 being top "damage") you draw a card from corresponding deck, telling what happened to you.
2) There's a single deck. You draw as many cards as much damage is rolled. You then can discard cards equal to your fortitude (plus a roll too?), the rest apply.

Cards in both cases are like this:
>You are winded but otherwise unharmed.
>You are wounded deeply. Blood starts gushing. You will bleed out in 10 minutes.
>A major bone is broken.
>You are knocked down and winded.

I use HP as a base, but also with death-spiral effects. HP can be cured during fights, but getting rid of "wounded" penalties takes a lot of time and a real doctor

No. Cyberpunk is just a disguised HP system which health levels. You can die from an accumulation of small injuries. In the system I described, wounds don’t accumulate. Only a fatal wound will kill you.

It’s exactly because I wasn’t 100% satisfied with CP2020 that I made this system (and later discovered that Zaibatsu has exactly the same system).

I kind of like both GURPS and Genesys for health/damage systems. Both have health "pools," but they don't really bloat as characters become stronger, and both have more going on than "When you lose all your health, you fall down."

In GURPS, hit locations really matter. If you take a strong hit with your hand, you're probably losing the use of that hand, at least until you can get it healed. But no matter how much damage an attack does to your hand, you can only lose so many of your HP to that attack.

In Genesys (and the FFG Star Wars system it's based on), critical hits matter way more than your health. The first critical hit or two you take might just give you a penalty for one round, or give you a lasting minor penalty. But as you have more critical injuries, additional critical hits become worse and worse, with the very top of the scale being dead. Health matters in the system, though, because once you lose all your health, any additional hits become criticals, so you become a lot more likely to suffer serious injury or death once you run out of health.

Have you seen the system from X-wing? You take damage as cards up to your threshold (basically HP) but crits make you flip the cards to the bad effects side.

How do you do a gun game without it being super punishing? Not sci-fi super energy shield shit either.

I was thinking the same thing. Are there any video games with a system other than greater than 1 HP = fine, 0HP = not? And are they any decent?

The only thing I can think of is shooter types where you might get slower/be able to sprint less at low hp.

If it can't work well in the automated system of a video game then it probably won't translate well to pen & paper

Kengo had a system where you had the classic life bar. Small attacks would reduce health until you pass out. Critical attacks would knock you out (wooden swords) or kill you instantly (real swords). With real swords there would also be the risk of bleeding out and dieing.

Arguably the thing a lot of shooters do nowadays, where the screen goes red and shaky, could be that.

I like FFG's star wars rpg's health system.

You have 2 stats, Wounds and Strain. Most species start with about 12 each, but can vary between 10 and 15 at character creation.

When wounds reach 0, you are unconscious, representing that you have gotten cut and bruised and burned so much that your body can't continue, and you are usually bleeding out unless someone helps you.

When Strain reaches 0, you also fall unconscious, representing that you are too tired to continue. Or, in some strange cases, it represents that you are just too distracted to be of any help, whether it be in combat or talking.

I like that it splits your "health" into 2 categories, and that mental strain/tiredness is integral into the health system, since that's important too.

Most weapons do 5 or so damage, some do more. Even a little pocket pistol does 4-5. So if your max hp is around 15 or so, most weapons are deadly. I like that this addresses the DnD "health bloat" that lets you have like 40 hp but an arrow does 1d8+3 or whatever, letting you walk around with 3 arrows in you before you even care.

It also has a "injury chart" that you roll a d100 on, with stuff like hand injury or head injury or bleeding or stunned and results like that, that all have effects on your character's performance, that represent that a weapon does more than just ticking a number down, and that you actually have reduced performance after taking damage, like in real life.

So overall I've really been enjoying FFG star wars. Pretty sure Genesys uses the same system if Star Wars isn't your cup of tea.

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Maybe have lost damage be done through grazes, damage to endurance, or even have weak hits just barely miss but they still damage a mental life bar, like, combat effectiveness or something?

Fuck man, i dunno.

But how do you avoid fire and/or find a way to take hits in such a way so as to not instantly fucking die? Cover isn’t always an option.

You can die from getting hit once from stuff. Starship weapons can do like 30 wounds to a human.

But the game has a few mechanics for players to weasel out. It uses "destiny points", which are kind of weaker and less OP fate points from Dark Heresy. They are shared by the DM, and there is typically a pool of 3-5 or so. They get passed between players and DM to reroll one dice, or to "remember something", or get boosts on a dice roll, stuff like that. Represents that the force is meddling in events, for good or bad, since the GM can use dark side points.

There's two armor systems that go along with it:

Soak which is like the ability to absorb damage. So for example if a bullet only hits you for like 4 total damage (pretty light hit in the system) and you have 4 soak then it does 0 damage. Every character has a base soak level based on their "brawn" but armor adds more.

Defense/Deflect: This makes it more difficult for an enemy to hit you so when they attack they had setback dice (dice that hinder) to their rolls. Usually given by armor.

There's also talents like parry where you take strain damage, which is like mental and physical exhaustion, in exchange for parrying a blow and reducing its damage. Things like that.

Any tabletop health system like pic related?

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I always liked how Tenra Bansho Zero does it, how you have sets of boxes for light, heavy, and critical wounds, and a death box. IIRC, when you run out of one type of boxes, you can either choose to fall unconscious or start checking the next kind of box, which escalates the fight and gives you bonuses, but also means you're in more danger. Checking the DEATH BOX gives you huge bonuses, and is entirely voluntary, but also puts your character at risk of for-real dying.

SilCore was ok

I have TBZ but haven't run it. Seems like a good health system as a mechanic to play with the drama and story of a game without being loosey goosey gay obtusy rule of cool nonsense.

That seems cool but complicated for newbs to get to grips with.

>Cypher system
Its pretty great.

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Spaceships have heavy armor, which means a Tommy Gun will auto-fail at wounding.