Results 121 to 137 of 137
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2012-04-21, 02:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2007
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Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
Hit points measure the body's ability to withstand physical trauma/damage.
If they were intended to reflect ANYTHING else, then the rules were horribly written.
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2012-04-21, 06:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
Last edited by Knaight; 2012-04-21 at 06:11 AM.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2012-04-21, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2009
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- Denver.
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Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
If you read the first edition notes, HP were indeed meant to represent physical trauma, and the reason players got more HP as they leveled up was not to represent them getting somehow magically tougher, but because they were more skilled at avoiding or minimizing damage, turning lethal wounds into mere strain and glancing blows.
Of course, this all falls apart when you have people declaring suicidal actions like swimming in lava and not even trying to minimize the damage.
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2012-04-22, 07:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2012
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- ENGLAND
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Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
I recently came up with a system of increasing armour class to replace increasing hit points, but it leaves even high level characters very vulnerable to special attacks such as dragon breath, fireball spells and to falling damage. I can't go back to the original hit point rules, though, so I've now come up with a magic item which provides a reserve of 'healing points' and tends to get fuller with experience.
Last edited by Electric knight; 2012-04-22 at 07:41 PM.
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2012-04-22, 10:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
It all falls apart as soon as characters fall in lava, or fall off a cliff, or are exposed to dangerous stuff that can't be mitigated. If one must treat a model delicately less it break, it breaking is due to a flaw in the model and not the ones using it. This is particularly true when similar models are made elsewhere that don't have those flaws, such as the coherent HP system in GURPS.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2012-04-23, 12:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2009
- Location
- Denver.
- Gender
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
I already said the system gets a little wonky if players decide to swim in lava etc.
However, if you are adept at tumbling and rolling with damage you can minimize the impact of falls, and I would imagine you could minimize contact with lava as you scramble to get away from it.
If you are in a situation where this is actually no way to avoid or mitigate the damage, well that's why the book has rules for inescapable death.
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2012-04-23, 01:35 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
It applies just as much when it isn't their decision. If you fall in a lake of lava, there are no ways to mitigate that damage. That doesn't particularly matter with the actual HP rules. Plus, if it is physical damage, and more HP means better ability to turn actual wounds into tiny cuts, why don't healing spells scale by HP?
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2012-04-23, 02:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2006
- Location
- Kanagawa, Japan
- Gender
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
Well, first edition AD&D actually describes hit point as having a very variable function, certainly magical aspects are considered part and parcel. OD&D on the other hand does not really bother to describe what hit points are, which is not surprising since it had just jumped from hits to hit points (normal men are slain when "hit", but heroes must be "hit" four times)..
Technically, hit points can be and are bypassed in the face of certain death. Poison, lava, assassination or anything of that ilk is simply death. Hit points only measure damage when damage is meted out in hit points, unfortunately there was a tendency to try and expand this universally to anything that threatened a character [e.g. falling damage].It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one’s own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
– Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350), Tsurezure-Gusa (1340)
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2012-04-23, 11:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2009
- Location
- Denver.
- Gender
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
Healing spells are always a bit weird. My personal explanation was that as a character grew stronger they built up an innate resistance to magic. This explained why their saving throws went up as they leveled, and also why healing spells had proportionally reduced effectiveness.
Inescapable death was a big thing in 1e and 2e, and the DM could apply it whenever they felt like. I believe the examples listed in the book where falling into lava and being crushed under a descending ceiling. Also, coup de grace was simple "target dies", no save or roll or anything.
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2012-04-23, 10:35 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
I'd like that one, but the issue is that healing spells scale the exact same way damage spells do, where the latter should be mitigated both by magic resistance and by better wound mitigation, which could thus reduce damage further. It's all sorts of iffy, which gets back to the whole "incoherent mess" thing.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2017-10-20, 06:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2017
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
It is not hit points that don't make sense as defined. The mechanic that is stapled on and illogical is healing. Hit points representing both an increase in physique and ability comes across fairly well. But then they decided that a low lvl heal should heal a low level character completely but only a powerful heal could heal a high lvl character..even though half(at least) of their injuries were mitigated not by physicality but by ability, meaning a cure light wounds should in fact heal a 10th lvl fighter for more hitpoints..but not necessarily a greater percentage of hit points..The problem being that this would, in general mean a cure light and a cure serious are identical spells or one of them is obsolete depending which way you correct for the problem. Making healing a special ability not tied to spell level with various utilities(burst, vs single target, etc) would probably be the best way to fix it..so longer as the uses per day were either unlimited( meaning much but not all of challenge becomes per encounter) or sufficiently plentiful. Alternately leaving them as spells with a sliding scale..the current sliding scale falls short yet..well current for me being 3.5. I do not play the later ones.
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2017-10-20, 07:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2017
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
Consider the potentiality that they do not count scrapes and bumps except insofar as those scrapes would have actually been substantial wounds to a less capable fighter but for their skill. Further, consider that the stabilization does not specify to manner of injury intentionally but might at times mean a pressure dressing or some other modality. Consider that all adventures have some measure of basic first aid by virtue of lifestyle. Indeed all people might well do to environment. You can as easily see the explanations for these things that concern you as you can see the flaws. they are both there..which in this particular case means the flaws aren't actually there as the answers are too. I, knew all manner of first aid before i was 10 and my parents were not in any way associated with the medical profession. They simply had many active(some call this wild) children.
There are effects in the same to give you debilitations both short term and long. We do not need more of them and systems that use them extinsively are rarely if ever more accurate. What they are is more punitive. If you want that go for it but don't think it is more realistic. People fall hundreds of feet bounce several times and walk away and just as infrequently fall 1 foot and die. What lies between is a complex mix of the individual the surface they land on(how many games change damage based upon any surface other than liquid for a fall?), the angle of the fall...we could get into ligament strengths or cellular compositions...the hp system is reasonable. It is not the entire story..I could add a number of systems to make it both more complex and more realistic without actually replacing hp but your average group already takes most of a game session playing less than a minute collectively of combat(game time).
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2017-10-21, 09:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2012
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- South Jersey
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Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
I’m not sure but I think that resurrecting a 5 year old thread is a no-no at GitP. But the CLW argument is intriguing. I like your thoughts, but I always look at cure spells (and I’m coming from an AD&D 1E background) as abstract as we’re supposed to look at hit points.
The higher you get, the less help the CLW is and the more important Heal becomes.
—Ron—Last edited by rredmond; 2017-10-21 at 09:07 AM.
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2017-10-21, 02:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2016
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- SoCal
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2017-10-21, 04:51 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-10-21 at 04:51 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2017-10-22, 01:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
With the exception of the occasional extremely abstract game the rules are usually at least a very rough simulation of something - including for boardgames and videogames. With D&D, a lot of the rules are clearly supposed to mean something. The rules for jumping give a result which is how far you jump, the rules for AC give a result which is what attacks you dodge/ignore, a lot of the rules for spells map to the physical area taken up by spells and their direct effects, all of which has fairly overt meaning. Highly incoherent rules that don't mean anything are rare, and HP is explicitly among them.
As for baggage, an attitude that D&D must be a perfect system that can never fail and can only be failed would qualify.I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2017-10-22, 09:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2005
- Gender
Re: Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent?
Great Modthulhu: Cure spells might have been Necromancy back in the day, but that doesn't make Thread Necromancy okay.
NOW COMPLETE: Let's Play Starcraft II Trilogy:
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