Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Scarletknight 07-05-06, 03:51 AM	Ello all! I would like to know how you all look health in game. Here is the situation and what were looking at doing. During our last session, my character a fighter/barbarian took a greavious wound. The hit took him to -5 but do to a "unknown" force I kept standing. When the DM asked what my HP was I told him do damage then I would say, he did, and I said -5, I do not have the diehard feat as of yet. Anyways the healers were like he is at -5 we have to heal him! Next part of the issue, will come back to this point, we take on a large group bugbears, hellhounds, and a small green dragon. (were apparently doing the red hand module or something like that, please give no spoilers, I want to play this out and find out as I go) Anyways in over all we were disorganised, poor decistions were made and the wizard died. The cleric made a ranged heal check to see if he was dead or badly injured. He lucked out and got a 30 for his total role. The DM said out loud he is dead, and the guy playing the mage said he was dead too. At that point everyone more or less went with "he is dead, heal the fighter (me)" and we left it at that point. I can see as in my example that going to -5 would be a serious thing and everyone could see the wound. The jugglar is gushing from the neck, or the innereds are hanging out, but exact hp is bit more OOC to me. While in battle giving a exact number of HP to me is like metagaming. Not a lot of RP factor to the game. I am not saying everything in a RP game should be RP, I just like flavor and a good mix of RP and battle. The other things is we know the wizards are frail bodies so when they get hit it normally really hurts them. Unlike a fighter who get slashed with a sword can go "eh, you scratch me", this is just my opinions. With the mage died he shouldn't have said "dead" but "he falls to the ground", how many times in battle do you see someone fall and not be dead. In a good game it can happen more then you want to count, IMHO. So in battle does it really make sense to give HP's when you need healing? 3 of the group members are not knowledgable in D&D and dont RP much. Therefor a lot of OOC knowledge is used, there are other things but I want to focus on health. What we have come up with since I asked the group on this, is out of combat when we have time to go over wounds (healers and wounded person) we give HP's for healing. As in I am at 23 out of 76, but in battle you need to make a heal check set by the DM to actually get a HP number, past that as a free action the person can say "I am dieing here!" or "I am hurt but will be ok for now." So as I asked above how do you all deal with health in a game? Is what were doing worth it as far a RP value or is just going to be pain? Is there a better way to do it? Toss me a bone here and help a poor sap out :). PS - kinda jumpy on the wording I know, it is late and wanted to get this up before I fell asleep and forgot about doing it.
GothicDan 07-05-06, 03:59 AM	I agree with you for the most part. Any intelligent Wizard probably would have said something like, "He's down/unconscious/etc." And no, I'd NEVER use actual hit points/levels/etc. in character. Blech!
Teh_username 07-05-06, 06:54 PM	Actually, I save the "limbs cut off" or "innards exposed" kind of wounds that kill a character; it's too unrealistic to have a few HP be enough to bring someone back to conscious activity from that. Personally, I treat "under 0 but above -10" wounds as "hurt very bad, bleeding, most likely in shock/passed out", and it would seem that the novelists do too. As an example, I'm currently catching-up by reading Richard Baker's Condemnation; in the chapter I just read, Ryld Argith was shivved (for lack of a better term - stabbed through the armpit, creating a wound that is incredibly painful and bleeds severely), fell, but lived through the battle and was healed a few "rounds" later. Honestly, just try to think of damage as "could someone actually live for X more rounds with this kind of wound, and possibly stabilise?".
baitmask 07-05-06, 07:55 PM	not giving out totals is a waste of game time. i much prefer the system of Green, Yellow, Red, or Light, Moderate, Severe, and Critical. for badguys, i say his health is green if 80% or better, and he doesnt fall to red until wounded by 2/3rds. Pcs, are asked if they are lightly wounded, moderately, severely, or critically. if they're flat-out flopping on the ground, they get Cure Minor Wounds or a wand to the back of the head, and we hope for the best till combat's over. but flat-out denying any kind of marker is beyond stupid, and going into great descriptions of how wounded someone is or isnt is just wasted air. i know the color system/cure spell system can take away a bit of the flavor for the game, but it sure as anything speeds up understanding among players and DM alike. i tell players how much they take, and they tell me how much they deal. my folks are grown adults, so they apply their resistances and i apply mine. on good faith, everyone believes no one is skimping on damage taken. for this reason, we can breeze through the damage portion of combat, and focus on the tactics of working together agains common enemies while the evil DM plots the destruction of the PCs. you have to find the balance. that's basically me argument.
GothicDan 07-05-06, 08:22 PM	How can someone automatically recognize just how damaged someone is, even in a green/yellow/red sort of way, especially for creatures which the adventurers aren't familiar with, or who are totally non-humanoid? Or, heck, some people just know how to hide wounds better, or perhaps there are wounds that are worse than they look or better (shallow but bloody, or deep but not bleeding as much), etc. Just curious. Or is it just to facilitate the speed of combat?
ElGrecoETAC 07-05-06, 08:52 PM	My DM solves this problem by taking the time to vividly describe the battle as it unfolds. Example: "Kalthanan, after dodging the [ork] berserker's wicked spear, you dance nimbly within his guard and let loose with several spining slashes using both your swords. You strike him mercilessly with every attempt, and you feel his massive abdominal and chest muscles being sliced, deeper and deeper, with each blow. Blood sprinkles on you with each spin. As you leap back, you see his eyes are agape, and his mouth is hanging open. He is still standing, but he's obviously staggering--he's barely able to hold his guard and his weapon upright." At this point, considering I'm facing a barbarian, I have good reason to assume the foe is about to drop dead. If the DM in the situation the OP described used even a rudimentary level of detail in his combat, you wouldn't need HP announcements, code, or anything of the sort. If, for example, he said... "The dark-eyed assassin measures Glindor (the Wizard) as he stands helpless and stunned from the last flurry of attacks. With cold detachment, he slices his throat completely open--to the point that Glindor's head helplessly flops backward before the wizard collapses in a bath of his own blood" ...then you wouldn't really have a question of what's what. The priest would really be making a ranged heal check just for the principle of the thing. A similarly creative description could leave room for hope (where magic is concerned)--for example, Glindor falling on his back, his eyes bulging and his hands clutching his torn throat as he chokes helplessly. ;) Obviously, there are going to be monsters of a sort where you can't accurately gauge how injured they are (Yochlol, etc.).
Aaron L 07-08-06, 08:55 AM	Making in character references to hit points and the like would be really tacky. In combat as a matter or expediency, however, there isnt much difference between saying "im not badly hurt" and "I lost 10 out of 100 hit points" It IS a game, after all. One form of abstract damage description "hurt but not badly" isnt any better than another "15 hit points" as far as out of character description goes. What really is nice, though, is actually using descriptions. You get hit with a sword, describe it as a slice across the arm, maybe a nick for a small amount of damage, a huge guching wound for a large amount. And when youre realy low on hit points let it be know that youre bleeding out of every orifice and perhaps bits of your liver are poking out of your belly :) No one will question if youre low on hit points when your spleen is visible! So, use both. Use the mechanics, thats what they are there for, but keep in mind what they are there to represent, too, and that its not just a bunch of numbers.
Lord Karsus 07-08-06, 11:13 PM	-Dragon Magazine Issue 300 might be a little helpful, if you already have it, or if you aren't worried about plunking down $5.00 on a back-issue. There is a section that talks about how you can add ratings to your D&D game (Appropriate for All Ages - Adults Only). Anyway, they talk about how you can describe wounds/damage in descriptive terms, depending on your "rating".
createvmind 07-09-06, 02:35 AM	I think it's very non roleplayish to say "I'm -5 hit points", as a DM who's been on both sides of the coin though I think the best way to engross players into their characters is to keep them in character. I never say out loud what amount of damage a player recieves in combat in terms of numbers and demand each player keep track of his or her own hit points. They should know when getting seriously hurt by my description and make adjustments accordingly. The Trolls massive claw gashes your stomach- roll die-regular hit from regular damage, it's following backhand rakes your arm to bloody ribbons. You see spots from the intense pain of that last blow- roll dice- critical hit or attack augmented by power attack, etc..... Or "Verkan you grunt in pain as the an arrow pierces your leg but shrug off the pain"- roll die-neglible damage- I require a save of Verkan so I tell real player and usually nearby player to make a roll just to throw them off, Verkan fails roll- On my little marker board I write "You Ok to ruse player then to Verkan I write You suddenly feel burning pain in your gut that spreads quickly throughout your body-Constitution poison- Verkan can use this to make his allies aware of his predicament, screams, groan, say" I don't feel well". This forces characters to stay within their roles, a healer must pay attention to who's being hurt and heal just for G.P. without check or spend round/s checking to see how badly allies are hurt. Must also decide what and how to deal with hurt allied as in case of poisoned Verkan, he doesn't know Verkan is poisoned but can check or asusme by my description of Verkan's physical apperance. "Jlassk cleric- "Does he look hurt other than the arrow, do i notice a difference in his appearance?" I say, his veins are raw and purplish along his arms and it is spreading to his neck. Jlassk can now act accordingly and the game doesn't really slow down with this, if a player ever does take a long time to act I tell them they are holding their action after minute or two has gone by, combat situations only of course. Trust me this works, I used to write players and enemies hps on a board and my 20+ year players would always target or decide to heal allies even if not in line of sight. Worse they would look at points and choose to use just right amount of wand charges without ever making a heal check. Currently they scramble like mad to be on top of situations and do far less metagaming than in the past.
baitmask 07-13-06, 11:11 AM	at this stage in my DMing career, the story is more valuable to my players and their characters than how it plays out. specifically, the color system and cure-related descriptions are there to expedite combat. the less time i spend describing each of the 15 attacks that take place each round, the faster combat proceedes. my players appreciate anything that speeds up combat. as 5 12th level players in a game where combats are challenging and rewarding not negligable instances of conflict, the folks in my game love streamlining the rounds to less than 30minutes each. spending 10-15 seconds describing every hit in a round wouldnt ammount to much more than 1-2 minutes of flavor text, but in a game of 5-10 rounds, that becomes anywhere from 5-20 minutes of gametime. and all of that is just on my end. then i have to describe and remember all the strikes and spells and nicks and scratches over the PCs, their cohorts, hirelings, opponents, and anyone nearby. sure, i miss the days of exacting detail on just how slightly or significantly someone is damaged, but the loss of time isnt worth the gain of flavor for me and my players. maybe we're the oddities. regardless, the video game feel of the color system and the cure-series descriptions, doesnt rob much from the game overall. it just sacrificis some flavor in favor of speed. PARTICULARLY, since i dont want to get into describing just how many if any of X-persons wounds are healed or closed or removed with each casting of every spell. some things in life arent worth tracking--to me. happy hit-point tracking!
Faraer 07-13-06, 11:32 AM	Players openly discussing hp during play is breaking the fourth wall. As ElGrecoETAC says, each character's condition should be clear from the narration of the battle so far, irrespective of hit point totals. Someone with 0 hp is dead or 'would be dead if it were not for...' and that would be evident. Because hit points represent several things, and there's no set point at which erosion of luck/stamina/divine favour becomes physical wounds, you can't determine a character's physical state from hp alone. A DM could adopt rules of thumb such as last hp equal to the character's Constitution score corresponding to bodily damage.
baitmask 07-14-06, 10:18 AM	A DM could adopt rules of thumb such as last hp equal to the character's Constitution score corresponding to bodily damage. sounds like vitality point system. hehe. when 3e debuted, and Combat and Tactics went the way of the Dodo, we no longer had graphic representation of hits and crits. it was during this streaming of the game that i began to slowly fade out the flavor text for battles. regardless tho, you can use the Minor, Light, Moderate, Serious, and Critical ranges of cures to give you an idea of a fellows wounded status. even without the flavors of the hits, you can withold exact hit-point totals by basing what your condition looks like on the amount of healing you'd receive from a curative spell of a similar name. it's an early game and the players are still low level characters. kobolds are still a threat at this level, but you dont have access to the higher level curative spells. still, you can use the flavors of those cures to describe your condition without resorting to totals. for example, the kobolds have landed several hits on the party's tank, but he's still standing and the player notes that he's only lost half his hitpoints. he can indicate to the fellow players that his character appears moderately wounded, but a lucky strike from a kobold could drastically alter that. yes, this takes the player out of character to describe how he looks to the others, but what fighter short of a mortal wound cries out for healing mid-battle? allowances must be made, i should think. with that description, the other players are alerted to his condition and can respond to what they see in character. all of this does rely on the player receiving damage information from the DM. while this dispells some of the RP, there's nothing quite keeping the game from having flavor. players have expectations regarding monsters. big ones hit hard, little ones add up through numbers, and things of this nature. with this in mind, i get the same reaction from players today that i did in years past. telling a guy his arm was nearly severed by a massive strike sends a shiver up his spine, to be sure. but that same shiver is evident, only everyone experiences it when i as DM say something along the lines of "the mob hits you twice for XX damage" and it's a number that equates to nearly half of that player's total hitpoints. everyone hears a big number and relates it to where that number falls on their character sheet, and then, bam. they are all aware of the danger present. i found a balance in my game, and if you're looking for something like that, i can recommend it, but that's about all i can do. happy gaming
PostMortem 07-18-06, 11:00 PM	The whole hp thing is tough, always has been. A barb at 20th level has enough hp to take many, many hits from a group of archers (low lvl). So, imagine this guy, walking around like a human porcupine and he's still kicking. Sounds alittle too unrealistic for me, even in a fantasy setting. So... I like to look at it alittle different. If you had that sam barb stand there, no armor and just let you take a big swing at him with a great sword, wouldnt it kill him? No matter how much hp he has? Because, after all, even though we are talking about a magical setting, if you get ran through with a sword, you get ran through. So I don't think of Hp as how many actual hits you can take before heading to the fugue plane. Instead, I think of them as how many hits you can shrug off... sort of your... luck, if you will. You know what I mean, like how you swear an action star gets shot ten times yet there are no holes in them. This is the only way I can live with hp and not think it foolish. So, in other words... lets say I have 25 hp... I get hit for 10 damage from a great sword... now, the blade didn't actually pierce my skin, all it did was give me a god knock in my armor and take away abit of that... luck, or vitality that I have left... get what I mean? So when you are down to your final 5 hp, you are feeling alittle staggard though still kicking, but you know, the next one is the one that is actually going to hit where it counts. Thus, when you finaly get to around 0, thats when you really take a hit and fall to the ground. I would leave the arms chopped off, guts falling out for -5 or less... or when you get hit with a Crit at low health... Which brings me to another point... Try playing with a Crit table. I forget where I got mine, try googleing it. A crite table is a fun way to add more detail to the game... ex. not only did you get a crit but, you cut his throat open. This does however, take alittle more effort on the part of your DM to make sure that, said barb doesnt get his neck cut open and still have 100 hp left (meaning that the wound didn't really do too much...)
Faraer 07-19-06, 11:11 PM	So... I like to look at it alittle different. . . . So I don't think of Hp as how many actual hits you can take before heading to the fugue plane. Instead, I think of them as how many hits you can shrug off... sort of your... luck, if you will. You know what I mean, like how you swear an action star gets shot ten times yet there are no holes in them. This is the only way I can live with hp and not think it foolish.That's what hit points are, per the rulebooks, and always have been.
GothicDan 07-19-06, 11:20 PM	And realize that many of those wounds might represent more ephemeral things - perhaps jumping aside so that an arrow only grazes you, and doesn't actually stick into you, or you trip over a rock, etc.
Aaron L 07-22-06, 01:35 AM	And realize that many of those wounds might represent more ephemeral things - perhaps jumping aside so that an arrow only grazes you, and doesn't actually stick into you, or you trip over a rock, etc. Or pull a groin muscle - ouch! But what he said.
Voran 08-07-06, 10:08 PM	Yeah, I suppose I still subscribe to the idea that HP is not a representation of direct dmg you can take but the sum of luck, chance, health, experience, etc. In a way, I like the idea of Star Wars RPG (d20) Wound and Vitality points, which gave you CON based Wound points and more regular HP like Vitality Points. Higher level chars have more VP which let them endure more, sorta like how HP in dnd do, but could still get killed by a lucky hit, as crits bypass VP and go straight to wound points. But I also found SWRPG a bit too dangerous at high ends, as pretty much your level 20 dude can still get killed by a lucky roll from a level 2 stormtrooper :P I'd suggest for the purpose of HP, no actual severe trauma damage occurs until below 0. I also suggest avoiding the whole "You need to roll to figure out how hurt you are" as that adds yet another level of complexity the game doesn't need.