Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 NoNeedForNames Sep 11, 2014 1:29:01	In my group, we have two different ways of dealing with hit points. Both have pro's and con's, and I would like to lay them out here, so you can see the differences. I haven't yet decided how to deal with hit points in the 5th ed campaign, but I'm going to chose one of these ways of dealing with them.   1. The player handle their hit points   This is straight out of the box. The way it was meant to be done. The players know exactly how many hit points they have, how many they have left, and how much damage they have taken, because they are the ones keeping track of it.   Pro: Players don't throw their characters into situations where they will die, unless it's for the greater good, and something the character would do. Healers don't spend their huge heals for small wounds. Players don't use the small rest that often, because they see that ther characters have a lot of health left, and can push on. Hit points might be reduced to numbers on a sheet of paper. It might lead to great roleplaying when the fighter is close to death (1 hp left of 150),   Con: Players might play aggressive when they have a lot of health, and very passive when they have next to nothing. This might crash with the characters personality, especially if the character and the player have very different personalities. (e.g. The player has never been in a fight in his life, and is afraid of dying (a good thing!), while the character grew up fighting to survive, and would give his life to save his friends in a heartbeat.) Hit points might be reduced to numbers on a sheet of paper. The players might not roleplay that their character is close to death (1 hp left of 150).   2. The DM handle the character's hit points   This is how we've done it in Call of Cthulhu, with both health and sanity. The players know their characters max score, and they know that they've lost some. Wounds are described "The cultist fire a shotgun, and you feel a sharp pain in your left foot. There's blood everywhere, and the pain makes it impossible to put weight on your foot." . The players know that their characters are hurt, but not how severe.   Pro: This often lead to great roleplay, as the players act on their characters wounds. Players often withdraw from the fight to regroup, heal, or flee. Players who have characters who love the fight (like a Barbarian) might have their character shrug it off, and keep fighting, no matter how injured they are. Healers will have to pay attention to how the characters react to their injuries when deciding who to heal, and characters who are cowardly will withdraw from the fight much earlier than their injuries would dictate. The players tend to be more on their toes, or the edge of their seat, during a fight, as they know their character is hurt, but not quite how much.   Con: Players might give up a fight they can win, because they think their characters are more hurt than they really are. Players will insist on short rests quite often, to regain imagined or real health loss. Characters will die due to staying to long in a fight. The group might lose a bit of the hero feeling. We all know that fantasy heros can take quite a beating, and still come out on top, and this might be lost due to the players not knowing how many hit points their character have left. The DM might feel overwhelmed by the huge amount of numbers.     Please feel free to add your thoughts, both pro and con, to both these ways of dealing with health, as I'd love to see what you guys come up with. I tend to lean towards the DM handles the hit points, but can be talked out of it.
#2 Shiroiken Sep 11, 2014 3:29:08	When I first started, I used a combination of the two. I kept track of all HP, but the player's knew their current total and what damage they had taken. This eventually moved towards method 1 due to ease of play.   I kew of a group that used method 2, and I assumed they would hate it (they are very much power gamers and rules lawyers). Instead, they found it really fun because of the improved danger.
#3 DerelictDroid Sep 11, 2014 10:23:52	Whatever system is used, I've found that refraining from stating numbers goes a long way in helping immersion. Granted, there are times when it is a must. The healer has to tell the patient how many hp has been healed. But the injured person needn't say "I'm down to 2 h.p.!" Instead: "I'm bleeding to death over here!!" to me is preferrable.
#4 iserith Sep 11, 2014 10:59:21	I really wouldn't want to base my in-game decisions on hints the DM was providing regarding my character's hit points. The firm numbers allow me to make meaningful decisions that my character might also make, though the player and character might "process" the decision differently. Low hit points to me means my game construct could be a hit away from pushing up daisies; to my character, he's just running low on stamina and might not be able to mitigate the next swing of that orc's ax. Hit points are not necessarily wounds unless it is established that they are. You can be perfectly functional at 1 hit point and dying at zero so it's good to stay loose with descriptions on hits so oddities don't crop up. Likely it's only the shot that takes you down that is the one that actually "hit" in the fiction. The rest of one's hit points are some combination of luck, stamina, skills, and minor injuries, and it's up to the DM or player to describe what that looks like in the fiction.   I would see the "Cons" you posted for #1 as normal expectations of the game we're playing. I leave people to their own roleplaying. It's not the DM's role to judge it except when it comes to giving out Inspiration.
#5 Ansbach Sep 11, 2014 11:20:30	I've never tried Option 2 and it sounds interesting as an experiment, but at the same time I'm not sure I like the idea of the GM's descriptions being my sole indicator of how healthy my character is.  If I'm sick or wounded, I probably have a pretty accurate idea as to what degree - so some of the uncertainty seems falsely introduced, if you understand what I mean?  Not that you have to agree with me.     If I were to try #2 I would probably reintroduce something like the bloodied concept - let them know for certain when they were below half hit points.
#6 BW0222 Sep 11, 2014 11:19:06	I don't see the con's of the first method.   Why wouldn't some characters actually play more cautiously when in low-health situtations? A trained fighter would know from sparing that when he gets down to that last 5hp, that the next blow is likely to drop him. Of course he is more likely to fight more cautiously, try to avoid being hit, go for an all out attack hoping to drop them, yell for healing, drink a potion, etc. Characters aren't superheros or in the Matrix. Likewise, I would expect enemies to do the same... when low on health they know that they are almost unconcious or in immediate peril of death. Fleeing, surrendering, healing, potion drinking, etc. are all valid responses. I think with is a pro that players would play that way. It promotes realism.   There are some things I won't allow at the table with respect to hit points...   a) I don't allow players to discuss hit points in terms of numbers to other players. If a cleric asks "How badly are you injured?" I don't allow, "I'm down 16, with 4 left.". They can answer "Badly", "Barely standing", etc.   b) Similiarly I don't allow them to know how many hit points monsters have, to track damage (in absolute terms), or even the maximum hit points -- i.e. no monster manuals or looking up monsters at the table. I'll describe damage in general terms "It looks badly injured", or "It's holding its neck, blood is coming out, and it is try to back away.", etc. I'll leave it to the players to guess whether it is one hit away, etc. Some intelligent foes has also use pretending to be injured to make PCs waste attacks against them.   c) I will make it clear that certain attacks may not be damaging as expected. If a creature has damage reduction, I may describe a 15hp hit from a two-handed sword as... "Your hit him solidly in the chest and he staggers abit. However, your sword isn't cutting through as you expect." If the DR isn't that noticable (say hit does 6hp) I might not mention it or allow a perception, medicine, or knowledge type check for the player(s) to realize that their attack isn't as effective as expected.
#7 Redbeard2 Sep 11, 2014 15:59:52	NoNeedForNames wrote:
#8 Kishri Sep 11, 2014 18:03:34	"Hidden Hit Points" sucks.  This is a very old idea.  By and large, very few players like this for the reasons Iserith mentions above.   As a player, when a DM insisted on hiding my character's HP from me, it screamed, "Control freak DM" to me.  I have played under this system several times over the last 35 years and everytime it added nothing to the game but the realization that the DM insisting on this method was indeed a control freak.   There is another issue with tracking all the PCs' hp:  Doesn't the DM have enough to track already?  I know I have better things to worry about.  I have enough trust in my players for them to handle their own stats and such.
#9 Iorwerth Sep 12, 2014 1:57:24	I have used a system for describing how badly injured enemies are to the players:   % of total hit points left: 01-25%: Severely Wounded 26-50%: Heavily wounded 51-75%: Moderately Wounded 76-99%: Lightly Wounded   You could just use the same to tell the players how injured they think they are. A sort of half-way house between the two options.   Another option would be to have a description of the size of the wound done, based off the % size of the total hits it does. Players would then be marking down the severity of the hits they have taken, and so would have a rough idea of how many hit points they have left   e.g. 01-05%: Graze 06-15%: Slight wound 16-25%Light wound 26- 40%Moderate wound 41-60%Heavy Wound 60%+Severe Wound   Obviously at lower levels the catagories will blur to a degree, but I would suppose you would just use the higher catagory to describe the wound   Could have less graduation, which gives players less idea of how damaged they are: 01-25%: Light 25-50%: Moderate 51-75%: Heavy 76%+ : Severe
#10 _Luca_ Sep 12, 2014 4:28:11	I personally like more "The DM handle the character's hit points" but I was forced to step away: too much effort for the DM and the game results being slowed down (and I was also computer aided by a serious engineering-kung-fu). At the time, we were playing 4E: no need for things to be slowed down more... Now, playing 5E, we'll still use "The players handle their hit points".
#11 Xaielao2 Sep 12, 2014 14:24:17	Personally I've never been a big fan of the hit point system. Well I can't say never, D&D was my first PnP game, but I fairly rapidly discovered other systems with different 'health' systems like World of Darkness and Savage Worlds. I found those systems were more pulse-punding in the combat dept because any hit could drop you. Gunfights are scary as **** in the WoD (especially nWoD 2.0) because of just how deadly they are. Both systems treat health as less a measure of physical condition and more a measure of stamina and morality. Makes keeping track of a number feel.. arbitrary.    But it's D&D and they'll never switch to a different system.
#12 Corwyn77 Sep 13, 2014 0:03:40	Xaielao2 wrote: