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. 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.