It was a situation very much like this that made me change our D&D HP model to a Wounds/HP one (late 80s)

In our case a PC fighter was suprised by 2 guards with loaded heavy crossbows. they tried to take him prisoner but the player response was "look they might hit me, if they get say a +4 for loaded weapon at point blank range they might hit my -2 AC but even if they do I have 56 HP and they are dealing 1d6+1 damage (We boosted Heavy crosbow damage a bit) so realistically they have about a 50% chance of dealing 2-7 points of damage or a 25% chance of 4-14 damage chances are I will get hit once and take 5hp, meh."

So we decided that we would put wounds under HP. once we did that we tweaked a few things and one of the things we tweaked was the surprise attack.
I always thought 1e assassination tables were daft, not becuase in and of themselves they made sense, actually they made perfect sense in this context, but because the option was only open to one class and becuase the mechanic used was entirely alien to any other mechanic apart from perhaps dispelling magic.

Basically if you can attack someone who is entirely suprised, or unable to defend themselves like a cross bow at PBR, they only get their wounds. So now rogues suprising folks is awesome because that guy with 60 HP is killable with one blow. However, rogues no longer get multiple damage instead they get bonusus to suprise. +1 per 4 levels (working the 2e d10 suprise method). So rogues now get somethign akin to assassin's ability but so does everyone else. If a fighter suprises someone thier damage goes through to wounds.

The next thing we tweaks was magical damage or rather not tweak it. Basically magical damage always comes of HP first. It can't suprise it can never bypass HP. This meant that magic was just as tough as it always was but steel could be much tougher in the right place at the right time.

The HP model we settled for was simple after much trial and error). You get 0 level HP as your wounds, so 1d6, actually we adjusted it to reflect that more physically imposing fit folk should have more meat and so it became 4 + your To hit Bonus from Strength and your Con bonus. So in theory a 18(00)/18 fighter might have 11 Wounds, a lot of fighters would come in round 6-8 wounds and most everybody else would have 4-5. Then after that all your HP are HP. You took damge from your HP (which heal 10% per hour + con bonus) and then your wounds. Stuff that did over 50 damage in one hit (the 2e critical damage threshhold) means you made a system shock and took excess off wounds if you failed.
If I did it again I would add 1 wound for any critical hit you recieved.

A nice side effect was that 1st level PCs were actually a little tougher. So a 1st level wizard has typically 5-8 damage before they go down and is largely immune to cats (unless they get suprise of course but even them likely to escape with little more than a bad scratch)

When we had a group who had problems with D&D style HP, we would switch to Stormbringer for a short campaign. It's BRP, but faster than RQ, so combat was nasty. In the end, when players complain about HPs, its never to lower their own.

Quote from: Spinachcat;782768When we had a group who had problems with D&D style HP, we would switch to Stormbringer for a short campaign. It's BRP, but faster than RQ, so combat was nasty. In the end, when players complain about HPs, its never to lower their own.

exept in our case see above where the feeling that PCs were not limited by stuff like armed guards unless they chose to be. This came from the PCs (I was actually a PC in that very game)

(shrugs)  If you want a more realistic combat system where it's conceivable to replicate the real-life menace of someone holding a cocked crossbow on you, there are a bunch of systems that do just that.  I GM one (that being GURPS), and no one sane ignores a crossbow, never mind be in a position to snicker "What, you only have one of those?  Go get a half-dozen more."

D&D isn't one of those systems.  Never has been.  Never will be.  Forty years down the road, it's a bit late to call it a bug rather than a feature.

My own epiphany came with increasing dissatisfaction of the relative invulnerability of higher-level D&D characters.  Just as a test, I pitted my brother's barbarian, the highest-level straight combat PC that's been in my campaign before or since, against a horde of orcs.  Coming at him from all sides, in the open, in infinite numbers.  Korak killed over a hundred and seventy of them before he took them down, and I just gaped.

Right then and there, I ditched OD&D and worked up a heavily variant homebrew with relatively fixed hitpoints, which served me decently until I flipped to TFT a couple years later.

Come to think of it, an assassination plot could be interesting if the character absolutely needed to be sure that one crossbow bolt would kill its target on the first attempt.

This could be done by making a pact with a Troll Witch or Hag or just some occult figure who could enchant a crossbow, the bolt or whatever. Perhaps the item needs to bathe in royal blood or be tied up in a strand of their hair or something. There could be a big lead up to it (the assassin must go to court and charm the queen into giving him/her a lock of her hair).

But yeah, a spur of the moment decision to suddenly kill royalty doesn't mean certainty. Depends on the dice! And NOT killing her in one shot would reveal her potency (either as a very competent, high level being or something supernatural).

Quote from: Ravenswing;782783(shrugs)  If you want a more realistic combat system where it's conceivable to replicate the real-life menace of someone holding a cocked crossbow on you, there are a bunch of systems that do just that.  I GM one (that being GURPS), and no one sane ignores a crossbow, never mind be in a position to snicker "What, you only have one of those?  Go get a half-dozen more."

D&D isn't one of those systems.  Never has been.  Never will be.  Forty years down the road, it's a bit late to call it a bug rather than a feature.

True but its not very hard to tweak D&D into a game that can handle this easily.

Quote from: Ravenswing;782783(shrugs)  If you want a more realistic combat system where it's conceivable to replicate the real-life menace of someone holding a cocked crossbow on you, there are a bunch of systems that do just that.  I GM one (that being GURPS), and no one sane ignores a crossbow, never mind be in a position to snicker "What, you only have one of those?  Go get a half-dozen more."

Except for the smug confident asshole sitting behind his force dome.

Quote from: Ladybird;782700A bit too far into storygameyness for my liking ("Here's a mechanism to prevent scrubs like you guys from killing anyone important:"), but I get your logic.

Quote from: Simlasa;782727I must have placed you in the wrong card catalogue... for some reason I thought you were all about the storygames.

Yeah, I don't like - 'Her blue blood and dramatic significance causes the gods to pluck the arrow from the air and send it at the serving boy in the red shirt instead.' explanation either.

It's certainly not for everyone.

Allow me to specify, though, that my approach does not exactly go into heavy storytelling or high heroic gameplay.

I guess I have a somewhat odd way of looking at D&D style fantasy, as I am particularly drawn to the odness/weirdness of it.

Simply put, I imagine that D&D games take place in worlds that superficially resmble ours, but run on fundamentally different laws of nature.

In the specific case of a fighter having, for whatever reson, a 60+ hp royal, in her court, at the mercy of his point blank crossbow and fires, the crossbow wouldn't be plucked from it's path by a gods hand, but the moment it's fired there would be a split second movement from said royal (depending on the exact nature of the target uncanny or intentional) and the bolt hits some piece of jewelry instead of going straight to the heart. The queen would get a nasty bruise and a grazing fleshwound, as well as, even worse, propably loosing her composure.

To my players such an event would show that, when you're at my table, you never where in Kansas to begin with.

Admittedly, one of my reasons for this approach is that I consider the more jarring issues with hp to be rare enough to not bother houseruling it.

Also, my games are already deadly enough without lowering the protection hitpoints provide.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;782750For a D&D variant, LotFP is actually pretty deadly and hardcore (Sneak attacks from a mid-level Specialist can do up to x6 damage, IIRC). A house rule to the effect of "Any attack with a deadly weapon made from surprise requires a death save or you get snuffed right then and there" would not be too out of place.

It sounds like it would be on theme, but it seems it would undermine the Specialist's investment - it takes ten? twelve? skill points to get to x6, but then fighters can just "save vs. die" people?

Quote from: Simlasa;782727I must have placed you in the wrong card catalogue... for some reason I thought you were all about the storygames.

Yeah, I don't like - 'Her blue blood and dramatic significance causes the gods to pluck the arrow from the air and send it at the serving boy in the red shirt instead.' explanation either.

Maybe by this site's definition, but I've been quite open in my discontent with that. Most of the actual storygames annoy me, because I'd have more fun just doing freeform storytelling or playing yahtzee than combining the two. Not enough story in them, too much game.

If you get the drop on someone and both want them dead and have a way of making them dead, then they should die unless there's a good reason otherwise, and I don't consider "they're really important" to be a good reason.

Quote from: Ravenswing;782783Korak killed over a hundred and seventy of them before he took them down, and I just gaped.

Corwin and Bley's assault up the Grand Stair of Kolvir was a stated influence on D&D.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;782800Except for the smug confident asshole sitting behind his force dome.

Sure, until the breathable air is exhausted, at which point the assailants, taking shifts, are ready and waiting ...

Quote from: daniel_ream;782885Corwin and Bley's assault up the Grand Stair of Kolvir was a stated influence on D&D.

Doesn't mean that it was a good one.  A whole lot of gamers, demonstrably, aren't enthusiastic about game systems being written to presume superhuman characters.

Quote from: daniel_ream;782885Corwin and Bley's assault up the Grand Stair of Kolvir was a stated influence on D&D.

That's very cool.

Makes me wonder why we didn't wind up with Fighters being able to improve their AC when they're en garde, rather than accumulating tons of hit points.

Quote from: Ravenswing;782930Doesn't mean that it was a good one.  A whole lot of gamers, demonstrably, aren't enthusiastic about game systems being written to presume superhuman characters.

And yet Pathfinder.

Quote from: fuseboy;782933Makes me wonder why we didn't wind up with Fighters being able to improve their AC when they're en garde, rather than accumulating tons of hit points.

I've always assumed the "Fighter gets attacks/round equal to level against < 1 HD opponents" to be the Amber DNA in AD&D.  That and the Sword +1, +3 against Shapeshifters.

Quote from: daniel_ream;782953I've always assumed the "Fighter gets attacks/round equal to level against < 1 HD opponents" to be the Amber DNA in AD&D.  That and the Sword +1, +3 against Shapeshifters.

Yes, good point.