Came across this in the Players' Handbook:
"Your character's class will determine which sort of die you will roll to determine hit
points. In some campaigns the referee will keep this total secret, informing players
only that they feel "strong", "fatigued" or "very weak", thus indicating waning hit
points. In other campaigns the Dungeon Master will have players record their
character's hit points and keep track of all changes. Both methods are acceptable,
and it is up to your DM as to which will be used in the campaign you participate in."
Has anyone ever played this way? It sounds like a great idea, except for piling more book-keeping on the DM.
Another downside is there would need to be some pretty strong table discipline around not interrogating the DM. "OK, very weak, what does that mean? You said Bill's guy was weak but that troll hit him twice and only hit me once, what gives?" etc.
Ugh, no thanks.
It requires more than just book keeping for the DM; they're going to have to be able to interpolate how 'injured' a PC is (I would use percentages). And because D&D is one of those games which lacks wound penalties, hit points are less 'injury' and more a generic 'this is how much mild abuse you can take before you take a disabling injury'.
Plus, seriously? You can't tell how injured you are? If your PC is under an effect which would inure him to pain and injury, then sure, he shouldn't be allowed to know his own HP. But as a campaign rule? Hard pass.
The way I see it, it would be an important step taking the game away from being a tactical wargame or boardgame - and that is a good thing.
Quote from: Ghostmaker;1122596It requires more than just book keeping for the DM; they're going to have to be able to interpolate how 'injured' a PC is (I would use percentages).
The DM only has to do the interpolation if he feels obliged to give the players an accurate read on their health. You might as well just go back to hit points then.
Quote from: Ghostmaker;1122596And because D&D is one of those games which lacks wound penalties, hit points are less 'injury' and more a generic 'this is how much mild abuse you can take before you take a disabling injury'.
Plus, seriously? You can't tell how injured you are? If your PC is under an effect which would inure him to pain and injury, then sure, he shouldn't be allowed to know his own HP. But as a campaign rule? Hard pass.
You do realise you just contradicted yourself?
Anyway, your first point is, I think, hit points are not meat points - they are an abstract measure of health, will, grit and maybe even some plot immunity. I like this interpretation. If players don't know their hit points, the DM gets to translate the numbers into something that a
character could perceive, and relay that to the player.
Are you telling me you think people do have an accurate percentage feel for how much physical stamina, will and grit they are bringing to the situation every minute of the time? I just don't think that's true.
This is not going to be a 3E or 5E play experience. Players will not be able to do the stats and work out they have a 38.7% chance of beating the next encounter. Sure, it wouldn't be to everyone's taste. But I would really like to give it a go and see how it plays.
Then again, despite the fact it is right there on p.34 of the PHB, I have never heard of anyone playing this way... hence my curiosity if anyone has tried it.
Played once in a game that used that rule. Didn't like it. Haven't done it again.
This would work best, and perhaps only work at all, in a high-trust group. The more you take information away from the players the more they have to trust the DM. If the DM violates that trust, or is otherwise untrustworthy, the game is dead.
This is true in general. More recent versions of the game assume a lower-trust group, a pick-up game at a FLGS or convention. This is what drives the whole "player agency" discussion, within which the swine try to subvert the gaming hobby entire.
Quote from: Marchand;1122598The way I see it, it would be an important step taking the game away from being a tactical wargame or boardgame - and that is a good thing.
The DM only has to do the interpolation if he feels obliged to give the players an accurate read on their health. You might as well just go back to hit points then.
If he wants to keep being a DM, as opposed to getting an atomic wedgie and stuffed into a trashcan, he will :)
QuoteYou do realise you just contradicted yourself?
Yes and no. I'll explain after the next bit.
QuoteAnyway, your first point is, I think, hit points are not meat points - they are an abstract measure of health, will, grit and maybe even some plot immunity. I like this interpretation. If players don't know their hit points, the DM gets to translate the numbers into something that a character could perceive, and relay that to the player.
Are you telling me you think people do have an accurate percentage feel for how much physical stamina, will and grit they are bringing to the situation every minute of the time? I just don't think that's true.
This is not going to be a 3E or 5E play experience. Players will not be able to do the stats and work out they have a 38.7% chance of beating the next encounter. Sure, it wouldn't be to everyone's taste. But I would really like to give it a go and see how it plays.
Regardless of whether you use hit points, wound levels, injuries, or what have you, not letting a player do 'self diagnostics' on themselves strikes me as absurd. Unless there is some built in mechanic requiring such -- let's say you're playing a robot lacking a good structural diagnostic system, or the aforementioned PC who can't feel pain -- you're taking information and agency away from the player.
And yes, I do think -adventurers- would have a pretty good awareness of their own health and stamina levels, considering -not- paying attention to such will fill a shallow grave or a critter's belly faster than a miscast spell.
QuoteThen again, despite the fact it is right there on p.34 of the PHB, I have never heard of anyone playing this way... hence my curiosity if anyone has tried it.
Maybe there's a reason nobody plays that way.
Quote from: Marchand;1122598Then again, despite the fact it is right there on p.34 of the PHB, I have never heard of anyone playing this way... hence my curiosity if anyone has tried it.
I played in a AD&D game where the DM did this and it was fun...definitely made for more interesting combats. You're MUCH more likely to run away when you're "hurt" vs. "I have 7 hit points left, I doubt this monster will be able to do that much damage next round." I know of a couple other DMs who did something similar, but not anything recent. I toyed with the idea for the next game I'm going to run, but I decided against it because I like to drink a lot and having one more thing to keep track off just isn't that appealing.
Quote from: Ghostmaker;1122602not letting a player do 'self diagnostics' on themselves strikes me as absurd.
Why? Some people get their arm chopped off and have no idea because their brain just shuts off the pain. I stubbed my toe getting out of bed yesterday and it literally felt 10x worse than when I almost totally scalped myself and nearly bled out when I was a kid. Most people are NOT good at equating pain to injury in the real world. Now, adventurers, yeah, they might be much better than normal people at determining what constitutes a grievous wound, much like soldiers are pretty good at figuring out if a bullet wound is going to keep them out of action or just be annoying. So if you use the "I just tell you how you feel" rule, the higher level you get, the better you are at self-assessment.
QuoteMaybe there's a reason nobody plays that way.
If the argument is "more annoying DM bookkeeping", then yes that's a good reason, if it's "sounds lame/stupid/boring", then that's a bad reason.
I have no problem with the idea behind this approach, and I even kind of like it. However, in practice I never use it. As DM, I have enough to track and it's easier to let the players track their own hit points.
I've done it a few times, with a small enough group in a short enough campaign. I find it works better as an exercise than as a long-term thing. Some players with experience playing this way carry over some of the good effects even when you revert to everyone knowing their hit points. Whether the exercise is worth the effort or not to me will depend on how many players I have that will:
A. Enjoy it as an alternative.
B. Get some modest but long-lasting improvement in play from having done it.
I'm all for role playing, but I like to keep things brisk at the table. Unless there's a reason, I like to have the numbers all available.
I don't even keep target numbers (Armor Class, etc) secret after the first swing.
I generally do have a problem with this approach (https://www.godsmonsters.com/Features/hiding-rolls-statistics/). People may not have an exact percentage feel for their immediate physical well-being, but they do have some. There is so much about a character that a person would know if they were the character, that the player can never know. Why reduce player knowledge even further? Knowing hit point numbers seems like a reasonable trade-off.
Knowing even less about the state of their character will make it harder to role-play them, and, worse, even harder to have fun role-playing them. Players know so little about their characters and the world that taking away their only quantifiable link and replacing it with a subjective one that is not even of their choosing will, I think, hinder role-playing. Removing even hit point knowledge seems like a huge distancing of the character from the player, and counterproductive. It puts even more of player character actions and reactions under control of the GM.
My experience in games where the numbers are removed (Everway, alternate rules in AD&D, the occasional Forge game) is that players look a lot more to the GM for approbation when describing what their characters are doing. I don't see this as a good thing.
It's an interesting idea. By withholding information about how precisely injured a PC is, and by extension how potentially deadly an encounter may be, you solve the problem of mid and high level D&D combat turning from a risky and excitingly uncertain enterprise into a tedious and predictable exchange of "points". On the other hand, you do this with a cost: more processing load on the DM and a lack of consistent information. Plus the withholding of total HP from the PC seems arbitrary.
One optional tweak that might make this more workable is to allow players to know their total HP and their current HP, AFTER combat, or by taking an action to perform a successful "first aid" or "triage" check, which could be a skill check or just a simple savings throw or whatever.
During the heat of combat, with all the chaos and adrenaline exact injury is uncertain. The PC can ask the DM how he or she feels and the DM will give a general gauge of their current state, but that's it without taking an action or waiting until you have the time to really check yourself over. During combat the DM is usually tracking everyone's HP anyway, but allows the long term tracking to still be offloaded to the PCs. It reintroduces an element of risk, but also allows the PCs to make calculations about relative risk before combat, and gives them something to do after. Honestly... I kinda dig this idea.
I'm not into it myself, but the idea doesn't bother me.
Quote from: Ghostmaker;1122596If your PC is under an effect which would inure him to pain and injury, then sure, he shouldn't be allowed to know his own HP.
Cool idea, and I think best applied to temporary/specific situations such as Ghostmaker suggests. In general, I love the idea of providing information from the character's perspective rather than the player's ... but it's not enough for me to want to add extra bookkeeping for the DM.
I'm going to say, not only should PCs generally be able to self-diagnose their own health/stamina level, but, if you're attempting an action you're actually trained in (be it proficiency, skill points or what have you), you should generally be able to judge the difficulty of a task before you attempt it.
If you're skilled in athletics you should know before you even try whether jumping a gap is something you can do easily or not or whether a crumbling wall will be safe enough to climb or whether you'll really have to push yourself to get the to the top (i.e. risk vs. reward). After the first hit, a warrior should be able to judge their opponent's AC. If you're skilled in arcana you should be able to tell how hard it would be to perform a ritual you find inscribed on the wall (ex. its got lots of easy to mispronounce phrases that could cause disaster).
Narratively, these would be along the lines of "easy, medium, hard" but mechanically a warrior could grade the quality of their own attack vs. the ease of striking and get something a bit more precise to the point there's no reason to not tell the fighter after his first hit that his opponent has an AC 6. Knowing about fighting is basically a fighter's whole reason for existence. He should be able to size up opponents in terms of relative skill (in this case, the numbers needed to roll to hit and the numbers his opponent is needing to hit him) almost immediately the same way that a professional mountain climber can judge the difficulty of a climb.
I could see it for a very immersive game where only the DM sees the rules bits at all. There's a strong leaning that way when you look at AD&D, lots going on behind the screen.
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1122612I'm all for role playing, but I like to keep things brisk at the table. Unless there's a reason, I like to have the numbers all available.
I don't even keep target numbers (Armor Class, etc) secret after the first swing.
Incident from long ago: "Fifteen"
"You miss"
"But fourteen hit him last round"
"I've had a couple more drinks"
Anyway, I like this idea but I don't like it enough to bother with it.
Quote from: David Johansen;1122626I could see it for a very immersive game where only the DM sees the rules bits at all. There's a strong leaning that way when you look at AD&D, lots going on behind the screen.
Right. And at that point, this rule shouldn't be used in isolation, but as part of many more such things. I did once run a game where the players' version of the character sheet had no stats on it at all. It had equipment, name, spells known, etc. The players didn't know any of the mechanics. Again, that's useful with a certain type of player to force them to get into character. But its exhausting to run it.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1122628Incident from long ago: "Fifteen"
"You miss"
"But fourteen hit him last round"
"I've had a couple more drinks"
Anyway, I like this idea but I don't like it enough to bother with it.
A couple more drinks in only one round? Must be 3e based.
Quote from: Marchand;1122592Has anyone ever played this way? It sounds like a great idea, except for piling more book-keeping on the DM.
Another downside is there would need to be some pretty strong table discipline around not interrogating the DM. "OK, very weak, what does that mean? You said Bill's guy was weak but that troll hit him twice and only hit me once, what gives?" etc.
I remember that we did try this but the extra load on the DM just was not worth any "fun" that it may have provided.
I'm ok with the idea. Have used it running games a few times, and it worked well. I'm ok with the players knowing their Hp as well, but prefer to track it concurrently with them, for obvious reasons. Most players won't cheat, however some do, especially at gaming or convention games.
D20 blackjack.
hit me.
hit me.
shit, bust.
I've done it before and it was great, though it was more in games like Amber where a lot of stuff is hidden from the players.
I've considered bringing it into D&D 5e as a sort of status effect. "Numb." You lose sensation in your body and can't tell how bad you're hurt...
Quote from: Shasarak;1122634I remember that we did try this but the extra load on the DM just was not worth any "fun" that it may have provided.
It certainly favours a minimalist system like OD&D.
I've always found it an interesting idea. In one campaign using a percentile system, I even kept their exact skill levels secret - they knew if they were good, poor, etc, but not the precise number.
In practice it makes a lot more work for the GM than is gained by fun in the game session, and in any ongoing campaign players quickly figure out their hit points, skill levels, etc. "I took 7 damage and was "injured", then healed, then took 9 damage and was unconcious... I guess I have 8 hit points."
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1122653I've always found it an interesting idea. In one campaign using a percentile system, I even kept their exact skill levels secret - they knew if they were good, poor, etc, but not the precise number.
In practice it makes a lot more work for the GM than is gained by fun in the game session, and in any ongoing campaign players quickly figure out their hit points, skill levels, etc. "I took 7 damage and was "injured", then healed, then took 9 damage and was unconcious... I guess I have 8 hit points."
You could hide the maximum too...
I've used it in games like Unknown Armies, where it works quite well. But the reason it works quite well is because UA is fundamentally a game of personal horror, set in a lurid version of the modern world where guns are supposed to be crazy dangerous even in unskilled hands, and any fight could be your last. It ratchets up the stakes, and means any fight is fucking dangerous.
I'm not a fan of it in D&D, because while D&D does have some elements of survival horror, it's also a tactical game. Players are supposed to be able to make reasoned judgments, and hit points are one of the most important tools they use to make those decisions. If you take that away, the game becomes a lot more random and unpredictable, and players feel like they have no control.
We used this rule for a while back in the day. Maybe a year or two. It was fine. We found 'you're pretty beat up' or 'barely alive' sufficient for the players to get a sense of how close their PCs were to dying.
For context, we were very into immersion, and very much against mechanics-driven play. We roleplayed stuff like learning the effects of magic items. A player cracking open the Monster Manual was regarded as blatant cheating. Monsters were only described, never named, until the PCs had encountered them more than once. We'd routinely change the stats and abilities of monsters to confound anyone at the table who was familiar with monsters. Any decision or action based on player knowledge rather than PC knowledge was discouraged with extreme prejudice.
IIRC we dropped it because it was a pain for the DM to track.
Quote from: Marchand;1122592Came across this in the Players' Handbook:
"Your character's class will determine which sort of die you will roll to determine hit
points. In some campaigns the referee will keep this total secret, informing players
only that they feel "strong", "fatigued" or "very weak", thus indicating waning hit
points. In other campaigns the Dungeon Master will have players record their
character's hit points and keep track of all changes. Both methods are acceptable,
and it is up to your DM as to which will be used in the campaign you participate in."
Has anyone ever played this way? It sounds like a great idea, except for piling more book-keeping on the DM.
Another downside is there would need to be some pretty strong table discipline around not interrogating the DM. "OK, very weak, what does that mean? You said Bill's guy was weak but that troll hit him twice and only hit me once, what gives?" etc.
I used to do this all the time when I ran Ravenloft 2E (can't remember if I got the idea from advice in a Ravenloft Module or from the PHB). But it worked well for building the tension in a horror adventure. It also stripped out some of the technical language people throw around during combat, making things a touch more flavorful. It isn't going to work with certain kinds of players. In the right group it is great. As a GM I wouldn't want to do it in every game I run because of the book keeping issue you mention.
I'm another one who's run a game using these rules - and it added a lot to the game. The same group of players had gotten a bit mechanical in their combats, but this uncertainty shook things up. And, like Steven Mitchell mentioned - there were some long lasting benefits from us doing that. When we went back to using hit points (mostly to off load that bit of work from me), they mostly continued their current playstyle rather than going back to the way it was before.
Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;1122701I'm another one who's run a game using these rules - and it added a lot to the game. The same group of players had gotten a bit mechanical in their combats, but this uncertainty shook things up. And, like Steven Mitchell mentioned - there were some long lasting benefits from us doing that. When we went back to using hit points (mostly to off load that bit of work from me), they mostly continued their current playstyle rather than going back to the way it was before.
It wasn't too hard to track?
Yep I played in a campaign like that for a while, I quite enjoyed the atmosphere it promoted but the combats took a little longer as the GM had a little more bookeeping to take care of.
I've considered doing this with GURPS. Far fewer hit points to keep track of than D&D, and easier to let players know their status (instead of "you're hurt bad" or whatever, it's "your left arm is gashed, bleeding heavily and you can't lift it anymore").
Nope, never tried this. I mean, I could see it work for a certain type of group. But I think a lot of typical D&D players would go totally apeshit about it.
I haven't tried this, but I like the idea a lot. I prefer interacting in the game via the game-fiction rather than rules. In my ideal game, only the GM would know the rules or roll dice, with the players just saying what they would do. Unfortunately, this is really hard. Even if everyone is on board, everyone needs to have a deep, shared understanding of the game-fiction so that task resolution lines up with expectations. Unless you're running a game based on an extensive work of fiction, like Star Wars, gaining this understanding requires a lot of work on the part of both the players and the GM.
I mean, in my Lords of Olympus game (as in Amber) the PCs don't have a numerical metric of injury, but its a totally different type of game from D&D. Hell, in my campaigns most players never look at their character sheet after the first couple of sessions (instead, they spend a lot of time looking at their notes of stuff going on in the campaign, which is always really complex).
Quote from: RPGPundit;1123171I mean, in my Lords of Olympus game (as in Amber) the PCs don't have a numerical metric of injury, but its a totally different type of game from D&D. Hell, in my campaigns most players never look at their character sheet after the first couple of sessions (instead, they spend a lot of time looking at their notes of stuff going on in the campaign, which is always really complex).
Yeah, that's what they should be doing. That is the whole reason wargames had a referee, to make rulings...you told the dude what you wanted to do and he arbitrated the outcome. Funny how RPGs are turning into ASL in the minds of most players, which consequently limits what they can actually do in a game.
While the idea might work to build some suspense, it adds to book-keeping and and makes it important to describe damage/injuries with rather more detail than I love. If I am going to go to those lengths then I kind of want a more descriptive injury system, anyway. So it seems to reduce the abstraction that I saw the central advantage of the D&D HP system.
Quote from: Votan;1123582While the idea might work to build some suspense, it adds to book-keeping and and makes it important to describe damage/injuries with rather more detail than I love. If I am going to go to those lengths then I kind of want a more descriptive injury system, anyway. So it seems to reduce the abstraction that I saw the central advantage of the D&D HP system.
I find more descriptions can confuse things, because hit points are an abstract concept and pacing mechanic, not an accurate reflection of injuries.
Quote from: Pat;1123590I find more descriptions can confuse things, because hit points are an abstract concept and pacing mechanic, not an accurate reflection of injuries.
Agreed.
But if you don't do careful description then players won't know they are in a run of bad luck.
Imagine a character with 15 hit points. If they are hit by attacks that do 1d6 damage than 3 hits have a 9% chance of being fatal. If the first two hits were 6's, the 3rd hit has a 67% chance of being fatal. This is a very difficult calculated risk.
Or if the attacks are 1d6+1 (hard to tell as a player) then 3 hits has a 37% chance of being fatal and not 9%.
Now other rules can compensate (like Death's Door) but the extra book-keeping will also pay off in higher mortality without careful descriptions. Low level AD&D is pretty lethal, already, and not at all like the tougher characters of 5E and (especially) 4E.
Quote from: Pat;1123590I find more descriptions can confuse things, because hit points are an abstract concept and pacing mechanic, not an accurate reflection of injuries.
Good point.
Quote from: Marchand;1122592Came across this in the Players' Handbook:
"Your character's class will determine which sort of die you will roll to determine hit
points. In some campaigns the referee will keep this total secret, informing players
only that they feel "strong", "fatigued" or "very weak", thus indicating waning hit
points. In other campaigns the Dungeon Master will have players record their
character's hit points and keep track of all changes. Both methods are acceptable,
and it is up to your DM as to which will be used in the campaign you participate in."
Has anyone ever played this way? It sounds like a great idea, except for piling more book-keeping on the DM.
Another downside is there would need to be some pretty strong table discipline around not interrogating the DM. "OK, very weak, what does that mean? You said Bill's guy was weak but that troll hit him twice and only hit me once, what gives?" etc.
I remember we tried doing that eons ago.
If I remember right we settled on something like:
100% was Healthy
75-99% was Minor wounded
50-74% was Wounded
25-49% was Seriously Wounded
1-24 % was Mortally Wounded
More work for the DM? I guess it really depends on the DM. I just divided up their HP's and added the damage up so if the High level fighter had say 100 hps, if he took 20 pts of damage he was only Minor wounded, then took another 15 for a total of 35 pts then he would be Wounded etc etc etc. I've always added up the damage to reach the HP total instead of subtracting it all the time. Adding was always faster for me than Subtracting :)
Would I do that now? I think some of my group would do it while others wouldn't care for it but if most of the group decided to do it, they would do it without too much complaining ;)
The more I think about it, the more I like it and want to try it.
Obviously you need table buy-in.
If you take the view (as I do) that hit points are an abstraction of willpower, stamina, luck, plot immunity and so on as well as meat points, then it is totally reasonable in my opinion to tell players that they don't get to know the running total. (They might not even get to know the starting total; they'll have an idea based on level, but the DM could roll it up randomly fresh at the start of each adventure.)
You do not want micro textual analysis breaking out at the table about what the GM said about your PC's condition, or the thing will bog down. So the players do not get a clue until some threshold, say when a PC gets down to say HP = Constitution. Then hits start doing damage to meat and can be described as such. Because a PC would know they'd been stabbed, obviously. Injuries would have to be described as something non-debilitating so you don't get into messy rules effects. "You took a slash on the arm, you bled a fair bit but it's been staunched." "You took a knock on the head and saw stars for a moment but you think you're OK now." A player at this point knows his PC has between 1 and CON HP left. Probably in the middle of a fight. Tense, yes? Or at the end of a fight and the player now has to decide is it worth carrying on with the adventure or do we try and bail? At lowest levels, any hit will hurt.
The merit of this is that it gets away from gamist PC-RPG bullshit like the example in the 5e DMG of the fighter charging the troll because he knows the cleric has faster initiative and can heal him before he closes.
Quote from: Marchand;1124529If you take the view (as I do) that hit points are an abstraction of willpower, stamina, luck, plot immunity and so on as well as meat points, then it is totally reasonable in my opinion to tell players that they don't get to know the running total. (They might not even get to know the starting total; they'll have an idea based on level, but the DM could roll it up randomly fresh at the start of each adventure.)
You do not want micro textual analysis breaking out at the table about what the GM said about your PC's condition, or the thing will bog down. So the players do not get a clue until some threshold, say when a PC gets down to say HP = Constitution. Then hits start doing damage to meat and can be described as such.
They would also know when they are tired, both physically and emotionally so I think some way of conveying how tired they are before they take physical damage is needed.
Quote from: Marchand;1124529The merit of this is that it gets away from gamist PC-RPG bullshit like the example in the 5e DMG of the fighter charging the troll because he knows the cleric has faster initiative and can heal him before he closes.
One can remove this by rolling initiative every round and declaring actions first. We do this in Rolemaster. Makes super-coordinated actions much harder without people putting in specific decisions to wait.
QuoteHas anyone ever played this way? It sounds like a great idea, except for piling more book-keeping on the DM.
When I first picked up D&D at age 12, we had to teach ourselves and, by accident, initially played sort of similarly. The referee had ALL game mechanism-related info behind the screen and rolled ALL of the dice behind the screen. I think the players only kept a list of their possessions (sword, rope, etc). Quickly ditched it. Felt too much like story time for us. We needed the outcomes grounded in numerical transparency to feel any sense of agency.
Site ate my reply... what was I saying?
Quote from: Chainsaw;1124687When I first picked up D&D at age 12, we had to teach ourselves and, by accident, initially played sort of similarly. The referee had ALL game mechanism-related info behind the screen and rolled ALL of the dice behind the screen. I think the players only kept a list of their possessions (sword, rope, etc). Quickly ditched it. Felt too much like story time for us. We needed the outcomes grounded in numerical transparency to feel any sense of agency.
Well that goes a lot further than players not knowing HP. You still know you're an Xth-level fighter with a to-hit bonus and a certain weapon and AC. The player may well even know roughly the stats of an orc. The player still has to make a calculation before sending their PC charging in. They just have to do so under greater uncertainty, which I'm hoping - for some players, not all judging by this thread - would increase the excitement and engagement.
Quote from: Bren;1124534They would also know when they are tired, both physically and emotionally so I think some way of conveying how tired they are before they take physical damage is needed.
You'd want to try different things, but the problem I can see with this is that you will either get dragged back down into textual analysis of the DM's exact words, or the table will evolve a system where certain phrases tally with certain %s of HP remaining, and then you're halfway back to players knowing HP. Sure a PC might know roughly how tired or stressed they felt, but there is luck, plot immunity etc. moving around as well so that the PC wouldn't know how many hit points they had left.
Anyway here is a Gygax quotation taken from the Tales to Astound blog (https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/), for what it's worth (the quotation, not the blog; the blog is great)
"Dave and I disagree on how to handle any number of things, and both of our campaigns differ from the "rules" found in DandD. If the time ever comes when all aspects of fantasy are covered and the vast majority of its players agree on how the game should be played, DandD will have become staid and boring indeed. Sorry, but I don't believe that there is anything desirable in having various campaigns playing similarly to one another. DandD is supposed to offer a challenge to the imagination and to do so in many ways. Perhaps the most important is in regard to what the probabilities of a given situation are.
If players know what all of the monster parameters are, what can be expected in a given situation, exactly what will happen to them if they perform thus and so, most of the charm of the game is gone. Frankly, the reason I enjoy playing in Dave Arneson's campaign is that I do not know his treatments of monsters and suchlike, so I must keep thinking and reasoning in order to "survive". Now, for example, if I made a proclamation from on high which suited Mr. Johnstone, it would certainly be quite unacceptable to hundreds or even thousands of other players. My answer is, and has always been, if you don't like the way I do it, change the bloody rules to suit yourself and your players. DandD enthusiasts are far too individualistic and imaginative a bunch to be in agreement, and I certainly refuse to play god for them - except as a referee in my own campaign where they jolly well better toe the mark."
Gary Gygax, published in Alarums and Excursions 2, July 1975
Quote from: Marchand;1124694Well that goes a lot further than players not knowing HP.
Right, that's why I tried to differentiate it by saying "sort of similarly." I totally failed! LoL!
Quote from: Marchand;1124694You still know you're an Xth-level fighter with a to-hit bonus and a certain weapon and AC. The player may well even know roughly the stats of an orc. The player still has to make a calculation before sending their PC charging in. They just have to do so under greater uncertainty, which I'm hoping - for some players, not all judging by this thread - would increase the excitement and engagement.
Yeah, give it a shot. I don't think it would add more than it takes away for my games, but maybe would do so for yours.
Quote from: Marchand;1124694You'd want to try different things, but the problem I can see with this is that you will either get dragged back down into textual analysis of the DM's exact words, or the table will evolve a system where certain phrases tally with certain %s of HP remaining, and then you're halfway back to players knowing HP. Sure a PC might know roughly how tired or stressed they felt, but there is luck, plot immunity etc. moving around as well so that the PC wouldn't know how many hit points they had left.
They don't have to know a number. But knowing nothing about your level of exhaustion until the moment the axe actually hits you in the leg doesn't make sense to me.
You could do what others have mentioned and divide things into different states, say four states like
Strong – at least 75% of HP.
Tiring – at least 50% of HP.
Fatigued – at least 25% of HP.
Exhausted – less than 25% of HP.
Assuming HP are at least in the 2-digit range, four broad categories allows for a lot of uncertainty about exactly how tired the character is. If you are also secretly rerolling hit points each (adventure, session, game-day, etc.) there seems to be plenty of uncertainty without the oddity of the character having no idea whether he is a little tired or completely exhausted.
Presumably the player is tracking how many times the character was hit, without knowing the damage rolled or inflicted those three d10 damage hits might have done 1+ 2+1= 4 points of damage or 9+10+ 9=28 points of damage. That seems like the sort of distinction that a person out to be able to determine. To me it would be very immersion breaking for the character to say "Wow, after all that fighting, I'm probably exhausted right now. Though maybe I'm really not very tired at all. I just can't tell which."
As a separate point, you mentioned using HP=Consitution as "meat."I like that sort of separation in inflating hit point systems like D&D Among other reasons, because separating allows certain attacks to directly damage the meat part of the hit points. If we call those two things BODY and STAMINA then we'd apply the 4 categories above to the Stamina total not to the total of BODY+STAMINA.[/QUOTE]