Quote from: estar;898555It boils down the fact that if somebody gets a successful hit on you and you die is not very fun.

Maybe not fun for some, but it is fun for others. (One of my players said enthusiastically about random travel encounters, "getting there is half the death!") For me, I'd even say the possibility of being hit and dying is a requirement for me to even relate to combat as being combat. In real combat, it's possible you'll be hit and killed, unless you do something about it, and managing that is what combat is about (minimizing risk of death, maximizing chance of enemy defeat). Never in real combat is there a case where you know you can't be taken out for a while because you know you have 30+ HP and your opponent's weapon only does 1d6. So a combat system like that fails to be combat-like to me, and I don't find it fun or interesting or immersive.

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I used to be a big fan of the GURPS approach. Still am in many way. I love Harnmaster's way of handling injury which is like a conditional damage system on steriods. However outside of personal taste in the end I find what really matters is how long it takes to resolve combat, and how well can I translate what the players say they are doing as their character in combat.

I find that the design approach doesn't really matter when I look at it like this. For example GURPS and D&D 4e combat take roughly the same amount of time to complete. D&D 4e approach involves a big bag of hit points that goes up and down like a yo-yo. GURPS approach involves denying hits while maximizing the odds of you scoring a hit. Two completely different systems with two very different design but both result in combat taking the same amount of time with both possessing the same amount of tactical options to use during combat.

Again, that may be what matters to some, but certainly not to me. The quality and interestingness of combat is far more important to me than the time it takes to resolve it. And the "amount" of tactical options isn't the point, to me - as long as there are enough options, it's the nature of the options - to me what matters is if they make sense to me and allow players to use most of the tactics they can think of, and get results that seem to make sense in a realistic "yeah that's about how that would work" kind of way. Of course, having played TFT & GURPS for decades, I'm pretty entrenched in my conviction that those types of systems make sense, and that systems without the things they provide are lacking. I want a map with figures, facings, dropped weapon locations, armor that can stop or reduce injury, effects of injury, etc.

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Now there are a dozen other ways of handling what hit points mean and how it flavors the campaign. The way I outlined is what I adopted to keep the gritty feel I had in GURPS going when I ran the campaign in 5e/OD&D. I partially restored the one shot kill in my OD&D games by instituting a open ended critical rule. If you roll a natural 20, roll again. If you miss on the second roll you get to do max damage plus your normal damage roll. If you hit but didn't roll another natural 20, you get to score double max damage. However if you roll another nat 20 you repeat the above possibly getting 3X, 4X, and even one time 6x your max damage.

Good idea! Though it seems to me the odds are very low, and I'd like ability level to factor into the chances of higher multiples more than it does. Two 20's in a row only happens 1/400 of the time, three 1/8000, four 1/160,000, five 1/3,200,000 , so I wouldn't expect you to see many or any of those higher damage multipliers. I also don't like the multiples of max damage (why should great blows always do damage in increments of the damage die?), so if it were me, I'd increase the chances of the open-ended expansion based on the skill level, but still roll the dice for the actual damage.

QuoteI don't like AD&D 1st, 2e or 3e much because you get into situation where you can't hit your target unless it is a natural 20. While possible to get in that situation with OD&D and 5e it is much less frequent. In OD&D the entire power curve is flat because everything is lower numbers. In 5e bounded accuracy achieved a similar flat power curve but with higher number which allowed for more tactical options.

Yep.

QuoteRemember in GURPS high skill combat is mostly miss, miss, (continue for ten minutes), hit, and kill. So while the GURPS mechanics feel more realistic what they amounted is longer combat with more tactical detail that ate up more of your session. There nothing wrong with liking that but that is the consequence of GURPS' design.

That sounds like lazy/uninformed players with high-skill characters. Such as when players only know to do single basic attacks over and over, and have high defenses. There are other ways to get past a high defense, such as maneuvering to concentrate attacks & overwhelm defenses, or attack from behind, feinting, striking at weapons, close combat, using certain maneuvers, etc.

If bothering to feint etc. is too much work, or just to avoid skill inflation, one can also calibrate the skills to more realistic levels. Even the very best fighters in my campaigns tend to only have combat skills in the 18-22 range, anyway, and they do feint etc. when it's called for. Most combats involve characters with combat skills in the 8-15 range, so even lazy players aren't just waiting for critical hit.

A few notes:

We used the Natural 20 = Critical Hit house rule a lot. Double damage, determined by rolling the damage twice and applying both scores. It seemed to allow for a little more variability in critical hit damage.

I actually prefer the Chaosium method of a percentage of your combat skill determining your critical hit probability. It seems more realistic to say that 5% of your succesful blows will be critical hits, rather than 5% of all your attacks will be critical hits.

Tunnels & Trolls combat uses D&D style Hit Points, sort of. Combat is by opposed pools of d6s and "adds", armour absorbs damage. Every 6 rolled in a combat pool scores 1 point of "spite" damage. This is damage that automatically gets through to hit points, regardless of armour or the outcome of the combat round, normally the loser of the round takes damage and the winner does not. Also you are allowed to make Saving Rolls to attempt any sort of clever stunt you can think of. This may include disarming (or dis-handing) and opponent, tripping them, stabbing them through the heart, etc. The GM determines the difficulty of the action and sets the difficulty of the Saving Roll accordingly. This adds some options beyond the usual Attack/Defend Hit/Miss dynamic of RPG combat.

I agree that knowing how many hit points you have and how many hit points your opponent can inflict, especially if coupled with knowledge of the attack probabilities can break immersion.  "I have 30 HP and the dragon does 4d6 with a bite, so I know I can survive at least one bite. I'll let it bite me this turn so I can whack it with my Sword of Awesomeness."

Dark Albion's Appendix P rules has a critical hit system that I think does a pretty good job of emulating Game-of-Thrones style brutalities.

Are there any systems that use Hit Points as general fatigue... such as spending them during extended periods of exertion (running a long distance) or for making attacks (as some some systems do with magic points)?

Quote from: Simlasa;901175Are there any systems that use Hit Points as general fatigue... such as spending them during extended periods of exertion (running a long distance) or for making attacks (as some some systems do with magic points)?

Blades in the Dark does this, they're just called 'Stress'.

Quote from: Simlasa;901175Are there any systems that use Hit Points as general fatigue... such as spending them during extended periods of exertion (running a long distance) or for making attacks (as some some systems do with magic points)?

Runequest 3 had Fatigue = STR+CON and separate from hit points. Fatigue was expended by fighting, running, and carrying stuff and negative fatigue levels acted as penalties to skill rolls. You actually could collapse from too much fighting.

Beast, Men, and Gods (a somewhat obscure D&D style game) split hit points into Body and Fatigue. Fatigue was expended for some prolonged activities, including, IIR, some spells.

Quote from: Simlasa;901175Are there any systems that use Hit Points as general fatigue... such as spending them during extended periods of exertion (running a long distance) or for making attacks (as some some systems do with magic points)?

Tunnels and Trolls. Loss equates to reduced combat effectiveness. Sometimes exerting yourself cause loss too.

Albedo: Fatigue was the equivalent to damage and HP in combat and you accumulated it through things other than combat as well. Such as running or extended periods of exertion. So you could say run X distance and gain some points of fatigue. Once it reached a certain threshold though you suffered penalties. Eventually you risked passing out, or even death. Also, you gain fatigue from moving around while wounded. This on top of shock results from being hit. And bleeding out was more fatigue.

Some of this you can rest off relatively quickly. Some you cant until its treated at a medical fascility.

Quick example: My old ambassador character had 8 stamina, thats a +1 difficulty penalty every 4 fatigue. So say I have to sprint  40 meters lightly burdened. Thats 4 points of fatigue and Im now +1 on the DR of just about all checks. Lets say I did that with a lightly wounded leg. Thats another 4 fatigue and Im now at +2 DR. At +4 fatigue DR (16 fatigue) I am exhausted or in shock and have to make a DR 10 drive check to stand up or move. At +5 Im unconcious and +6 is death.

So you have to weigh if exertion is worth it.

Quote from: Simlasa;901175Are there any systems that use Hit Points as general fatigue... such as spending them during extended periods of exertion (running a long distance) or for making attacks (as some some systems do with magic points)?

GURPS has fatigue points as well as hit points. The two are not combined or used interchangeably, but you can often choose to power abilities with one or the other. Hero system has hit points (Body), non-lethal hit points (Stun), and fatigue (Endurance) pools. The takeaway from that last one is that the system can very quickly become a resource management game.

Quote from: trechriron;898591I would like some opinions on the Injury system I cooked up. Are they playable? Fair? Does anyone have any alternate systems for 5e I haven't considered? I'm thinking of describing HP as your "avoidance", endurance and luck, and then describe injury more in terms of "after the combat, you notice you're thumb is missing..." or "the past few days our knee has been very tender...". .

I like it, quite cool. Maybe a bit too complex. But yeah, Exhaustion or something similar, combined with saves, is the answer.

Some points:

2. A critical hit is scored during combat.

- Makes weak enemies too powerful.

3. A death save is failed by 5 or more.

- Why not fail to death saves? "by 5 or more" sounds un-5e-ish.,

About NON-COMBAT issues (such as falling), I have a few thoughts here (and elsewhere in the blog):

http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com.br/2015/12/hit-points-what-are-they-good-for.html

Quote from: Skarg;900544Maybe not fun for some, but it is fun for others. (One of my players said enthusiastically about random travel encounters, "getting there is half the death!") For me, I'd even say the possibility of being hit and dying is a requirement for me to even relate to combat as being combat. In real combat, it's possible you'll be hit and killed, unless you do something about it, and managing that is what combat is about (minimizing risk of death, maximizing chance of enemy defeat). Never in real combat is there a case where you know you can't be taken out for a while because you know you have 30+ HP and your opponent's weapon only does 1d6. So a combat system like that fails to be combat-like to me, and I don't find it fun or interesting or immersive.

That's exactly why I prefer playing D&D-style systems at lower levels;).

Quote from: Simlasa;901175Are there any systems that use Hit Points as general fatigue... such as spending them during extended periods of exertion (running a long distance) or for making attacks (as some some systems do with magic points)?

TFT & GURPS have fatigue, and depending on which rules & optional (or house) rules you use, this can extend to spending strength and health to perform "feats" beyond what characters can usually do. Some players really like that and others don't, so it tends to be in optional rules and house rules.

Quote from: AsenRG;901553That's exactly why I prefer playing D&D-style systems at lower levels;).

Yeah. The times I have considered playing/using D&D, I start to think about either very low level caps, extremely low hit points beyond 1st level, and/or extremely steep experience curves. However then I notice how all the content expects the usual D&D power levels and there are all these monsters and spells balanced to usual hitpoint amounts, and I can never figure out how all those monsters and powerful people & magics could really co-exist or what the power balance and cause & effect would be like even as they were designed, so I almost alway give up very quickly.

Quote from: Simlasa;901175Are there any systems that use Hit Points as general fatigue... such as spending them during extended periods of exertion (running a long distance) or for making attacks (as some some systems do with magic points)?

the log horizon trpg has a fatigue stat that reduces your max hp it can even reduce it to zero if you dont have any food to reduce fatigue