Heroes and injuries, musing to tweak a variant hit point system.

[Elennsar]

I'm not sure if this is the proper forum for this.

As best as I can tell (as someone who has read Solomon Kane, Kull, LotR and some other fantasy), the current hit point system does not really represent how injuries impact heroic (but human) characters.

In an abstract sort of way, the hit point system might (or might not) cover their ability to survive combat.

But it doesn't really represent how well they sustain grevious injury (because there really is no such thing).

How would one represent that? Should characters feel that any hit can potentially be a problem (and get hit very rarely), or should it be possible to "soak" (in Storyteller terms) to reduce the severity of a blow which then may or may not be a big deal?

Any thoughts and comments on what needs to be represented to do justice to the genre would be appreciated.

[RobbyPants]

I don't know if this is of any help to you, but Unearthed Arcana has a variant Vitatlity and Wound Point system.

Basically, you get your hit points as normal (vitality), as well as a smaller number of hit points to represent their core health (wound).  Your vitality = your normal hit points, and your wound = your con score (not modifier). 

When you are hit, you take vitality damage, which represents avoiding true damage.  Once your vitality runs out, you start taking wound damage, which represents taking serious injury.  You can suffer wound damage before your vitality runs out from critical hits.  When you crit someone, you deal normal damage (no multipliers), but the damage goes to wound points.  Merely taking wound damage fatigues and eventually exhausts you.

So, the end result is that lower level characters get more HP (vitality + wound > HP), which adds to survivability at lower levels.  As you get to higher levels, it becomes easier to get killed by a crit.  In addition, you suffer a penalty (fatigue and exhaustion) from grevious injuries.  I've never used the system, but I figured it'd be worth pointing out.

[Elennsar]

Its interesting, but it still has the problem that a character who is "hit" by a howitzer shell (No, I don't know why I like howitzer shells as an example in this context, but I do) is doing just fine (unless it was a crit).

That doesn't ring right. A "hit" that's really a miss feels wrong.

And the limited amount of WP bothers me.

Its a good variant compared to standard, but its not very appealing.

[RobbyPants]

You could always tweak it.

Perhaps if you get hit for over X damage, you take some of it as wound damage.  I haven't thought up any numbers here, but it's an idea.

[Elennsar]

Yeah. Its certainly an easy to use variant, which is important for any change. For better or worse, hit points as is involve minimal headache to deal with (besides rationalizing).

[veekie]

Its interesting, but it still has the problem that a character who is "hit" by a howitzer shell (No, I don't know why I like howitzer shells as an example in this context, but I do) is doing just fine (unless it was a crit).

That doesn't ring right. A "hit" that's really a miss feels wrong.

And the limited amount of WP bothers me.

Its a good variant compared to standard, but its not very appealing.

VP being a combination of luck and energy, consider it plot armor for PCs, who instead have a close shave, or for less cinematic games, the extra effort it takes to avoid a close shave(wrenching yourself in a stunt manuever to turn it into getting just shellshocked). A Real Hit now, would be represented as a crit, direct hit, how much health you have is how much damage you can take. Magic healing would be 'treating fatigue' when used on VP and actually closing wounds on WP, not that VP needs much healing, it recovers in a jiffy.

The limited amount of WP basically represents human endurance, it works pretty ok in low magic when damage comes mostly from equipment, but when magic is thrown in the mix, you might want to increase it with level to represent superhuman toughness from spellwork, faith, or sheer badassery(also to reduce getting annihilated in a single crit, ideally, the system should be able to soak at least one lucky blow without killing you outright).

[Elennsar]

The problem is that Constitution = WP doesn't represent realistic and relatively normal humans, let alone heroic (again, real, not even fictional) humans.

Constitution 10 and a longsword should not leave you "half dead" from one hit.

Plot armor bothers me on principle. If heroes are supposed to be able to avoid being seriously hurt, they should have Whatever it is that avoids damage (good luck, high dodging ability, cover, good armor, etc.)...not "the plot can't allow them to die".

[veekie]

Con 10 and a longsword Crit though, implies said sword going through a major organ, something you're unlikely to survive without immediate medical attention. VP accomodates the minor nicks and slashes you receive in the course of 'almost avoiding' an attack.

And the plot armor is for more cinematic games, the alternative is 'how much insane dodge skills can you still go for?"

[Elennsar]

The problem is, if the characters are dodging 80% of the time, they should have insane dodge skills.

As for a longsword crit...Yes, but me (Elennsar) whacking you (veekie) with a longsword is neither a nick or likely to cut off your arm.

[veekie]

Insane dodge skills is simple, look at movies, anime, comics, fiction in general, how many characters(not extras, mooks, or decorative npcs) actually take more than 2 direct hits without dying unless the heroism level is high(Classic D&D hp, diehards in general) or they are superhuman in some way(which gives extra WP or dampens the damage they recieve). Heroes dodge, getting minor cuts, clothing damage, Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, etc, until they are pushed to their very limits, or simply overwhelmed, at which point they start taking real damage.

The crit is still 1d8+str damage, unless you are attacking with some special skill, you have excellent odds of dealing major damage or killing me outright. Thats the point of swords really, you stick em into someone, they die unless they managed to get stuck somewhere survivable(rolling low on damage), or unless they are not exactly of normal human endurance.

IIRC, with WP, Toughness adds to WP(a +1 I think), which might help.

[RobbyPants]

Again, the numbers can be tweaked.  I think the basic system might be along the lines of what you want.

[Elennsar]

As stated, vitality is very much not. Its a good variant, yes. The variant I want? No.

I do not want a "hit" to mean "no, it wasn't really a hit".

The point of the "me vs. you" is that me rolling 1d8 vs. your WP (assumed to be 10) and hitting you is, on average, 4 damage. 4 out of 10. I really doubt I'm that good.

Of course, since my "to hit" is +0, that might work out closer to how likely I am to hurt you.

Still.

And as for fiction in general: There's usualyl a fair ability to take 'being hurt by lighter stuff", its that the heavy stuff does that.

[veekie]

I'd be seriously worried if a drunk lunged at me with a knife, much less a sword, a couple of lucky blows would leave me gutted or in need of time in the hospital.

[RobbyPants]

Well, lets look at what you were asking in your OP then.

You want some way to represent grievous injury (I'm assuming above and beyond extra crit damage)?  Do you want this injury only applied on a crit?  Should it be a HP threshold?

One simple thing you could add in is that anyone above 1/2 HP is normal.  Between 1/4 and 1/2 HP they're fatigued, and when below 1/4 HP they're exhausted.  It's a fairly quick and dirty fix, but it makes you get weaker the more you're hurt.

[veekie]

Yeah, but as a game mechanic, beware of entering a death spiral with too much weakening from injuries, since the wounded are decreasingly able to fix their situation.

[Elennsar]

I agree, but I wouldn't expect "a hit" to be quite that serious. I'd be expecting to be hit in the arm/hand (possibly/probably by trying to block the knife with it) rather than the vitals.

Robby:

Grevious injury as in "greviously injuried" and an individual dire injury (possibly via something like a tweaked massive damage threshold), yes. And not only on a crit, though crits may be the best way to actually do something like this to someone.

I'm not really sure on specific mechanics. I do know that I want to represent both "can soak up light wounds (those that aren't quite insignificant enough to be ignored but don't cause major problems) and "a big one is a problem", which is a tough balance.

veekie: Yeah. A death spiral to some extent makes sense, but it should not be "once you're hurt, its alllll downhill from there." and that's it. There ought to be at least some period where you're hurt enough to be impaired without being too hurt to do anything about it.

I'm also wondering what to do regarding blood loss. At the moment, I'm assuming that the severity of blood loss is part of the severity of an individual hit, since people don't bleed to death all that quickly (in terms of combat rounds).

[SiggyDevil]

I'm in favor of a difference between HP and Vitality.

It's more versatile because one could define that once HP is down to 0, X penalty is applied and the character is fatigued.

A third value even smaller than Vitality could be below that too. Once Vitality is 0, yet another penalty such as exhaustion is applied.

[RobbyPants]

Well, if you want to track serious injuries on a hit-by-hit basis, perhaps we need to come up with thresholds for people.  For example, lets set a "serious injury" threshold to be half someone's max HP, and a "solid injury" threshold to be a quarter their max HP.  So Joe the fighter with 20 HP would have a solid injury if he takes 5-9 damage, and a serious injury if he takes 10 or more.

The idea would be that solid and serious injuries each do something to you when you sustain them.  What exactly, I don't know.  Perhaps some cumulative penalty of some sort.  Perhaps a point of damage to Str or Dex.  I'm sure we could think of some things.  It's a bit more bookkeeping, as each PC now needs two additional stats, but at least it's easy to calculate.

I'm also wondering what to do regarding blood loss. At the moment, I'm assuming that the severity of blood loss is part of the severity of an individual hit, since people don't bleed to death all that quickly (in terms of combat rounds).

Set "blood points" to be equal to their Con score.  Track how many serious injuries the character has, and they lose that many blood points per round.  A Healing check DC 15 can stop one injury from bleeding any further.  Any healing spell stops one injury from bleeding as well.  If the character gets healed to full HP, all wound stop bleeding.

[Elennsar]

I presume that BP = 0 = death? Or am I missing something?

And the thresholds seem good enough to explore.

Anyone who hasn't read my thread on the variant as is, I'd like to know how much should be added/simplified in this regard.

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1870.0

I know that its very much imperfect, which is why I started this thread...seeing what I need to consider in refining it and in regards to general ideas on the subject, since the current system imperfectly represents the genre.

[veekie]

Arm injury from an attempted block would be closer to the effects of a low level character who just ran out of VP or a 1-2 damage crit from a bad roll. I'm pretty sure armblocking a sword is going to cripple your ability to fight(4 WP sounds about right, the blood loss will kill you soonish IRL after the fight, and you are in pretty bad shape for further dodging/diminishing of attacks if the attacker is seriously attempting to kill you), if the guy hit straight with it