I'm working on a post apoc setting where it's been a year or so since the world has gone belly up. By now everything that was mass produced is becoming harder to come by. The places where one might find some stores of supplies are either environmentally difficult to get into (radiation or biohazard), or are heavily patrolled by other forces. I'm thinking about adding some optional mechanics to motivate the characters to get out and look for food and water for their survival. The mechanic would impose penalties to the characters physical and mental activities after so many days gone without proper sustenance. Aside from record keeping, what other issues would you have with rules like this?
Quote from: Jamfke on June 19, 2021, 12:46:49 PM
I'm working on a post apoc setting where it's been a year or so since the world has gone belly up. By now everything that was mass produced is becoming harder to come by. The places where one might find some stores of supplies are either environmentally difficult to get into (radiation or biohazard), or are heavily patrolled by other forces. I'm thinking about adding some optional mechanics to motivate the characters to get out and look for food and water for their survival. The mechanic would impose penalties to the characters physical and mental activities after so many days gone without proper sustenance. Aside from record keeping, what other issues would you have with rules like this?
None, it's perfectly reasonable given the setting.
Watch out for death spirals. When you apply a penalty to everyone's actions, you make it harder for them to succeed. And when they need to succeed or the penalties get worse, failure gets more and more likely. This is amplified if the difficulty is also increasing, say because they have to take higher risk actions due to time constraints. Due to that mechanical trap, it can become much harder than it looks to turn things around.
It might be better to get rid of the penalties and keep it descriptive, similar to the way hp work in D&D, i.e. no penalties until you drop. That way you can still die of hunger, but there's no spiral. Another option is to take away some of their agency, say having to make a will check to avoid grabbing a burger, even when it's clearly a trap. That adds danger and complications, while punishing the players in a different way, because they can't do what they want all the time. Or change to a mode that's not harder or easier, just different. For instance, give them a desperation bonus for immediate physical actions, but things that require concentration or thought suffer. That will change optimal tactics, and can make it feel like a different game, which can be a fun change up.
Or just make it all about resource tracking. After all, unless they're starting out, characters in a post-apocalyptic game should be collecting resources. A home bases, allies, stashes. Give numbers to everything, and let the players build up a scorecard/treasure trove. A disastrous event like losing their base and having to flee might result in a temporary shortage, but after the first few sessions the game shouldn't be about recurrent privation. Instead, the players should be focused on the best way to use and build the resources that are available. A campaign structure designed around this would have a timeline as store shelves are stripped and goods go bad, but also options to build new resources like setting up farms, or trading for the output.
We touched on this a little in an older thread of mine here some time ago.
Bottom line is it really depends on the players and system. Some just do not like even the bare minimum of just tracking food and water. Others are ok with that but not foraging/starvation. And others are fine with it all and more.
In Dragon Storm for example there was built in a system for tracking food and water, and for foraging, starvation and even ways to use cooking to extend rations. Certain character types, particularly the Werewolves and wolf form, could opt to pick up an ability allowing them to bring home food for the group when camping. This was all integral to gameplay as alot of overland travel was involved and areas could be suffuse with anything from pristine nature magical radiation to the exact opposite making it harder to camp for some or all present. Or some locales being better, or worse for foraging or even causing the party to need to use up more supplies to get any rest in the area.
Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 01:45:31 PM
Another option is to take away some of their agency, say having to make a will check to avoid grabbing a burger, even when it's clearly a trap.
In the opposite note, you could reinforce player agency by presenting options of morality; "If you are starving to death, would you steal the candy from the baby?" type of deal. Obviously only if you and your players want a dark campaign of desperate struggles and moral ambiguity.
I wouldn't have any issues with it as long as it went both ways. NPCs should suffer from these issues as much as PCs, so make sure the penalties are easy to apply when the PCs brush up against some malnourished militiamen. Also, if the penalties work out to be so minor as to be forgettable, then better to just skip them.
The way I'm doing it in the game I'm writing now: physical feats (like climbing) and special combat maneuvers (more than just "I attack") cost stamina; hunger and thirst also reduce stamina; if you run out of stamina you get a penalty on related checks and thing that cost stamina now cause damage. I wanted to be able to run the journey through Mirkwood, and this seemed like a good way to add tension without a lot of extra bookkeeping during combat.
Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 01:45:31 PM
Watch out for death spirals. When you apply a penalty to everyone's actions, you make it harder for them to succeed. And when they need to succeed or the penalties get worse, failure gets more and more likely. This is amplified if the difficulty is also increasing, say because they have to take higher risk actions due to time constraints. Due to that mechanical trap, it can become much harder than it looks to turn things around.
This is a commonly mentioned concern about this and related mechanics, but it's the price you pay if you want bad things happening to characters to have actual consequences. I've never had much of a problem with it. Maybe it's a DMing issue - there are all kinds of ways to adjust an adventure on the fly to keep it fun for the players.
Quote from: Mishihari on June 19, 2021, 06:27:01 PM
The way I'm doing it in the game I'm writing now: physical feats (like climbing) and special combat maneuvers (more than just "I attack") cost stamina; hunger and thirst also reduce stamina; if you run out of stamina you get a penalty on related checks and thing that cost stamina now cause damage. I wanted to be able to run the journey through Mirkwood, and this seemed like a good way to add tension without a lot of extra bookkeeping during combat.
I might go with deprivation reducing maximum Stamina (since it sounds like Stamina points are in use). Eventually, it will bottom out, and you die. In the meantime, your activity tolerance withers away, but it doesn't cause "damage" until the very late stages.
Quote from: Mishihari on June 19, 2021, 06:31:59 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 01:45:31 PM
Watch out for death spirals. When you apply a penalty to everyone's actions, you make it harder for them to succeed. And when they need to succeed or the penalties get worse, failure gets more and more likely. This is amplified if the difficulty is also increasing, say because they have to take higher risk actions due to time constraints. Due to that mechanical trap, it can become much harder than it looks to turn things around.
This is a commonly mentioned concern about this and related mechanics, but it's the price you pay if you want bad things happening to characters to have actual consequences. I've never had much of a problem with it. Maybe it's a DMing issue - there are all kinds of ways to adjust an adventure on the fly to keep it fun for the players.
It's not the price you pay for actual consequences. Low level old school D&D is notorious for being a bloodbath, but lacks a death spiral for hit points. And all the alternatives I suggested involved consequences, and none of them did away with the basic assumption that, if you don't have food for more 3 weeks, you're dead. The death spiral is a real mechanical problem, though it can be influenced (like the results of literally every mechanic in any RPG ever) by the DM's style, because DMs decide how and when mechanics apply, and set the framework in which mechanics operate. Sounds like your "adjustments" are doing just that. But that's a meta solution that bypasses the mechanic. It can also be addressed at the mechanical level.
Quote from: 234ne on June 19, 2021, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 01:45:31 PM
Another option is to take away some of their agency, say having to make a will check to avoid grabbing a burger, even when it's clearly a trap.
In the opposite note, you could reinforce player agency by presenting options of morality; "If you are starving to death, would you steal the candy from the baby?" type of deal. Obviously only if you and your players want a dark campaign of desperate struggles and moral ambiguity.
Thread made me think of Dark Sun. The original game had rules for alignment in extreme conditions of water deprivation. Like, everyone who fails a check becomes Chaotic Evil until they get some water in them. >:)
---
So yeah, if it's a feature of the game, I'll roll with water/food tracking. Even in Dark Sun, I didn't make it the focus of every session, but it's expected as part of the setting to be an issue that can come up.
Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 09:58:07 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on June 19, 2021, 06:31:59 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 01:45:31 PM
Watch out for death spirals. When you apply a penalty to everyone's actions, you make it harder for them to succeed. And when they need to succeed or the penalties get worse, failure gets more and more likely. This is amplified if the difficulty is also increasing, say because they have to take higher risk actions due to time constraints. Due to that mechanical trap, it can become much harder than it looks to turn things around.
This is a commonly mentioned concern about this and related mechanics, but it's the price you pay if you want bad things happening to characters to have actual consequences. I've never had much of a problem with it. Maybe it's a DMing issue - there are all kinds of ways to adjust an adventure on the fly to keep it fun for the players.
It's not the price you pay for actual consequences. Low level old school D&D is notorious for being a bloodbath, but lacks a death spiral for hit points.
That's not how I see it. The old D&D style you mentioned is a good example. You take one point of damage. There are no consequences. You take 10. Still nothing. You take one less than your total. Nothing yet. One more and you're dead. The last hit point has a consequence, but none of the rest do. It has been proven over the years to work really well as a game mechanic, but I still find it very unsatisfying. I would like lesser consequences with real impact along the way. To me it seems a lot more realistic. And it adds tactical depth. At the end of a long boxing match, neither fighter is operating at 100%, and often the one who has done a better job of managing his energy uses that tactic to win in the end. So if a character takes some hits and the rest of the adventure gets harder, I see that as a good thing. It's that much more heroic when he wins in the end. And if he doesn't, that was always a possibility anyway. If the fun wanes, I can deal with that as DM. Maybe it's time for a tactical withdrawal. There are a lot of options.
Quote from: Mishihari on June 19, 2021, 11:44:33 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 09:58:07 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on June 19, 2021, 06:31:59 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 19, 2021, 01:45:31 PM
Watch out for death spirals. When you apply a penalty to everyone's actions, you make it harder for them to succeed. And when they need to succeed or the penalties get worse, failure gets more and more likely. This is amplified if the difficulty is also increasing, say because they have to take higher risk actions due to time constraints. Due to that mechanical trap, it can become much harder than it looks to turn things around.
This is a commonly mentioned concern about this and related mechanics, but it's the price you pay if you want bad things happening to characters to have actual consequences. I've never had much of a problem with it. Maybe it's a DMing issue - there are all kinds of ways to adjust an adventure on the fly to keep it fun for the players.
It's not the price you pay for actual consequences. Low level old school D&D is notorious for being a bloodbath, but lacks a death spiral for hit points.
That's not how I see it. The old D&D style you mentioned is a good example. You take one point of damage. There are no consequences. You take 10. Still nothing. You take one less than your total. Nothing yet. One more and you're dead. The last hit point has a consequence, but none of the rest do. It has been proven over the years to work really well as a game mechanic, but I still find it very unsatisfying. I would like lesser consequences with real impact along the way. To me it seems a lot more realistic. And it adds tactical depth. At the end of a long boxing match, neither fighter is operating at 100%, and often the one who has done a better job of managing his energy uses that tactic to win in the end. So if a character takes some hits and the rest of the adventure gets harder, I see that as a good thing. It's that much more heroic when he wins in the end. And if he doesn't, that was always a possibility anyway. If the fun wanes, I can deal with that as DM. Maybe it's time for a tactical withdrawal. There are a lot of options.
It doesn't add tactical depth. It tends to mean whomever hits first, wins. Not always, but games with death spirals skew in that direction. In fact, there's a good gamist argument to flip it, and give bonuses when someone is particularly injured. Some of the clicky mini games do that, it sounds like 4e had something in the same vein, and a lot of board games have a catch up from behind option. That creates tension, and makes the outcome less predetermined. Though it's not to everyone's taste, and it works better in competitive games than RPGs, where the PCs face hordes of monsters instead of playing against each other. In that case, simply getting rid of penalties works well. That's one of the reasons why hit points are a good mechanic.
Realistic is always a shaky argument when it comes to RPGs. It tends to be based on a far more subjective set of preferences than people tend to believe. And it's especially weak when it comes to hit points. But if you find it unsatisfying, you find it unsatisfying. That's a personal preference, and it's impossible to argue against. And if you're fine with the consequences of a death spiral, or have other meta ways to deal with it, that's fine too. But there are some relatively objective factors here as well. Death spirals have mechanical consequences. They can be ameliorated or evaded, but it's useful to know how they work.
Pat is correct that death spirals, while realistic, are depressing.
In normal conditions, a person can go 1 day without water and 3 days without food before suffering measurably detrimental effects. Most people will perish after 3-5 days without water, and 8-21 days without food. Those who've survived longer had access to token amounts of moisture and were very inactive physically, basically just lying around like on a hunger strike in prison. Gandhi didn't do his 500 mile march to the sea on an empty stomach.
One way a number of computer games handle it is that the deprivations of lack of water and food - or radiation, or fatigue, etc - effectively drop attributes. Hit points would work, too.
You can tease the death spiral without imposing it straight away, eg small penalties at first with worse waiting ahead. The small ones are enough to annoy and want to avoid, but not so bad as to make getting out impossible, and the prospect of the large ones scare the PC into action.
Quote from: Jamfke on June 19, 2021, 12:46:49 PM
I'm working on a post apoc setting where it's been a year or so since the world has gone belly up. By now everything that was mass produced is becoming harder to come by. The places where one might find some stores of supplies are either environmentally difficult to get into (radiation or biohazard), or are heavily patrolled by other forces. I'm thinking about adding some optional mechanics to motivate the characters to get out and look for food and water for their survival. The mechanic would impose penalties to the characters physical and mental activities after so many days gone without proper sustenance. Aside from record keeping, what other issues would you have with rules like this?
Reality, mostly.
Water is essential. You better get some quick. Food, on the other hand, people can go a remarkably long time without food. There was one guy who went a year without eating.
But that's different from keeping up strenuous adventuring type of activity on no food.
So I keep it real simple. When you run out, your time is up. I have no desire to roleplay out emaciated forms surviving on ketchup sandwiches. If you run out of food, you're out of the game. Roll up a new character. Now maybe if some new PCs get to the area where the old PCs ran out of food, we might say, "Hey, yeah, these guys managed to survive a few weeks on rat droppings" and assuming there's enough food to go around at that point, those characters can then be put back in play, perhaps requiring 1 day of recovery per 1 week without food. Same if you run out of water, only you've got a 3 day time limit before death.
I don't think tracking this stuff is a burden. IMO, this is one of the stupidest thing self-appointed gamer gurus ever came up with. No. Don't track torches. Don't track ammo. Don't track food. That stuff is no teh funz! It's just dead weight. Cut it loose then focus on teh funz! But then when asked "How can I make my adventures more fun and exciting" one piece of advice these same gurus will offer up is to emphasize the time element. There should be some sort of time limit or sense of urgency. Which of course can come off as contrived, especially if you have clever enough players who managed to sidestep time constraints until you've exhausted all reasonable options. And it's like, you fools. You gave up perfectly functioning organic time constraints implied in limited torches and food under the rationale that it was too much work, and now you're jumping through hoops just to force half-baked time constraints back into your game. /rant
It depends on the kind of game you're running. This is right along the lines of the discussion we had about tracking ammunition.
A gritty, post-apocalypse game like Twilight 2000? You bet your ass I'll be tracking every bullet and bandage (although I might abstract food and water usage somewhat to 'X supplies expended per day, depending on if you're eating heartily, carefully, or on short rations').
It is said that you die after three days without water, three weeks without food, three hours exposed to terrible weather without adequate clothing, three minutes without air, and you probably faint if you do not sleep for three days.
I don't think most GMs want their PCs to starve to death, so food/water would be more important as an encumberance/commerce minigame. I like it, but it gets tiresome.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 21, 2021, 08:31:48 AM
It depends on the kind of game you're running. This is right along the lines of the discussion we had about tracking ammunition.
A gritty, post-apocalypse game like Twilight 2000? You bet your ass I'll be tracking every bullet and bandage (although I might abstract food and water usage somewhat to 'X supplies expended per day, depending on if you're eating heartily, carefully, or on short rations').
Tracking bullets is nothing special. Real Twilight 2000 players count their empty brass.
Hit Points do a perfectly good job here.
No air after 3 rounds? Take damage.
No water after 3 days? Take damage.
No food after 3 weeks? Take damage.
And that's if you're inactive and in comfortable surroundings.
The damage happens sooner and hits harder if you're active and/or you're in rough conditions.
Walking through Dark Sun's desert with no water? Take 1D6 per day.
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 24, 2021, 12:14:20 AM
Hit Points do a perfectly good job here.
No air after 3 rounds? Take damage.
No water after 3 days? Take damage.
No food after 3 weeks? Take damage.
And that's if you're inactive and in comfortable surroundings.
The damage happens sooner and hits harder if you're active and/or you're in rough conditions.
Walking through Dark Sun's desert with no water? Take 1D6 per day.
Hit points do not do a good job with air deprivation. I've tried to make it work. In normal cases, about a minute without air is enough to knock someone out. (Leaving aside pearl divers etc) But let them wake up and recover for a minute then they're as good as new. Over three minutes and brain damage starts to set in, which doesn't ever heal. Neither of these can be modeled by hot points without modifying them into something entirely different.
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 24, 2021, 12:14:20 AM
Hit Points do a perfectly good job here.
No air after 3 rounds? Take damage.
No water after 3 days? Take damage.
No food after 3 weeks? Take damage.
And that's if you're inactive and in comfortable surroundings.
The damage happens sooner and hits harder if you're active and/or you're in rough conditions.
Walking through Dark Sun's desert with no water? Take 1D6 per day.
Greetings!
Oh, yeah, man. You know that's right. It reminds me of a young fellow Marine back in the day, training on war maneuvers at 29 Palms, CA. There's a giant Marine base out there at 29 Palms, CA. That's where the Corps trains us in desert warfare.
Anyhow, this young Marine somehow got separated from his unit during operations. He's Marine Infantry, so he's a beast in fantastic physical condition. The young Marine's body was found the next day, dead from heat exhaustion, exposure, and dehydration. The investigating authorities figured out that he managed to make his canteens of water last for some time, and that he walked for 18 miles trying to find a road or some kind of help. A single day of marching under the heat of the brutal desert sun with minimal water simply sucked the life from him and killed him. Such a tragedy. He was 18 or 19 years old, and had been in the Corps for just about a year when he died out in the desert.
I always remember how lethal the desert can be. Getting separated and lost, and you are in a world of hurt *fast*.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: SHARK on June 24, 2021, 05:12:33 AM
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 24, 2021, 12:14:20 AM
Hit Points do a perfectly good job here.
No air after 3 rounds? Take damage.
No water after 3 days? Take damage.
No food after 3 weeks? Take damage.
And that's if you're inactive and in comfortable surroundings.
The damage happens sooner and hits harder if you're active and/or you're in rough conditions.
Walking through Dark Sun's desert with no water? Take 1D6 per day.
Greetings!
Oh, yeah, man. You know that's right. It reminds me of a young fellow Marine back in the day, training on war maneuvers at 29 Palms, CA. There's a giant Marine base out there at 29 Palms, CA. That's where the Corps trains us in desert warfare.
Anyhow, this young Marine somehow got separated from his unit during operations. He's Marine Infantry, so he's a beast in fantastic physical condition. The young Marine's body was found the next day, dead from heat exhaustion, exposure, and dehydration. The investigating authorities figured out that he managed to make his canteens of water last for some time, and that he walked for 18 miles trying to find a road or some kind of help. A single day of marching under the heat of the brutal desert sun with minimal water simply sucked the life from him and killed him. Such a tragedy. He was 18 or 19 years old, and had been in the Corps for just about a year when he died out in the desert.
I always remember how lethal the desert can be. Getting separated and lost, and you are in a world of hurt *fast*.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
With no disrespect intended to your brother, Shark, he made the classic mistake people too often make when they get lost: he kept moving around.
Exertion drains energy and yes, water from you, faster. He would've done better to dig in, build a shelter from the sun, then wait it out -- after all, Uncle Sam's got an investment in him, and his brothers WILL come looking. Depending on his gear loadout he might've even been able to build a solar still -- you won't get a LOT of water out of it, but even a little might make the difference.
Quote from: Mishihari on June 24, 2021, 02:14:40 AM
Hit points do not do a good job with air deprivation. I've tried to make it work. In normal cases, about a minute without air is enough to knock someone out. (Leaving aside pearl divers etc) But let them wake up and recover for a minute then they're as good as new. Over three minutes and brain damage starts to set in, which doesn't ever heal. Neither of these can be modeled by hot points without modifying them into something entirely different.
If you're shooting for realism, a.k.a. "normal cases", this all makes some sense; for cinematic games less so. But the issue is no different for any sort of "damage". If HP are abstract, then they include things like battle fatigue which ostensibly recovers with similar speed. Likewise, actual battle damage leaves all sorts of permanent injury that warriors never recover from, and most games ignore that as well.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 24, 2021, 08:04:54 AM
Quote from: SHARK on June 24, 2021, 05:12:33 AM
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 24, 2021, 12:14:20 AM
Hit Points do a perfectly good job here.
No air after 3 rounds? Take damage.
No water after 3 days? Take damage.
No food after 3 weeks? Take damage.
And that's if you're inactive and in comfortable surroundings.
The damage happens sooner and hits harder if you're active and/or you're in rough conditions.
Walking through Dark Sun's desert with no water? Take 1D6 per day.
Greetings!
Oh, yeah, man. You know that's right. It reminds me of a young fellow Marine back in the day, training on war maneuvers at 29 Palms, CA. There's a giant Marine base out there at 29 Palms, CA. That's where the Corps trains us in desert warfare.
Anyhow, this young Marine somehow got separated from his unit during operations. He's Marine Infantry, so he's a beast in fantastic physical condition. The young Marine's body was found the next day, dead from heat exhaustion, exposure, and dehydration. The investigating authorities figured out that he managed to make his canteens of water last for some time, and that he walked for 18 miles trying to find a road or some kind of help. A single day of marching under the heat of the brutal desert sun with minimal water simply sucked the life from him and killed him. Such a tragedy. He was 18 or 19 years old, and had been in the Corps for just about a year when he died out in the desert.
I always remember how lethal the desert can be. Getting separated and lost, and you are in a world of hurt *fast*.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
With no disrespect intended to your brother, Shark, he made the classic mistake people too often make when they get lost: he kept moving around.
Exertion drains energy and yes, water from you, faster. He would've done better to dig in, build a shelter from the sun, then wait it out -- after all, Uncle Sam's got an investment in him, and his brothers WILL come looking. Depending on his gear loadout he might've even been able to build a solar still -- you won't get a LOT of water out of it, but even a little might make the difference.
Greetings!
Yep, my friend! You are exactly right, too. No worries or offense taken, brother. It's funny, because the commanders said the same thing you just said! The weird thing is though, the corpsmen or doctor that was part of the official investigation--cause you know, when a Marine or any member of the military dies, there's *always* an investigation--the doctor aid that the Marine was certainly trained, and had he been able to keep his cool and think clearly--he would have done precisely that. Instead though, he figured the heat exhaustion must have made the Marine delirious, and as the dehydration and heat kicked in, he must have become disoriented, and confused. Recon guys guessed from some of the signs that the Marine was lost because apparently part of his 18-mile march through the desert had been also going some of the way in circles, or going over some areas he had already been to. Geesus. Yeah, he should have crawled under a rock and sat tight. They would have found him within 8 hours, as I recall. But his wandering took him further out and shit. Fucked up. Right on, my friend!
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: Mishihari on June 24, 2021, 02:14:40 AM
Hit points do not do a good job with air deprivation. I've tried to make it work. In normal cases, about a minute without air is enough to knock someone out. (Leaving aside pearl divers etc) But let them wake up and recover for a minute then they're as good as new. Over three minutes and brain damage starts to set in, which doesn't ever heal. Neither of these can be modeled by hot points without modifying them into something entirely different.
I think HP probably model that pretty well. They have been described as abstract things rather than meat points from the beginning. The disconnect has been the healing rate rules which, for all the hate it received, 4e actually treated closer to how they've been written with quick healing. HP hasn't modelled physical damage well in many games.
Quote from: Pat on June 20, 2021, 12:15:38 AM
It doesn't add tactical depth. It tends to mean whomever hits first, wins. Not always, but games with death spirals skew in that direction...
The only death spirals I usually enjoy seeing (as you said - it's subjective) are with Vitality/Life systems. That way the "life" points are basically defined in-setting as the "meat" points - so it makes sense that they cause penalties. While Vitality is the luck/endurance/whatever - so it makes sense losing it doesn't cause penalties.
Plus - it generally avoids the issue of the first solid hit winning - since Vitality will likely take the first hit or two.
Even then I still don't like extreme death spirals - but a moderate one can add a bit of depth there without most of the usual negatives of a death spiral.
Other than that - I do think that death spirals can work well in horror settings - especially if they surround the mental aspects of feat/insanity moreso than physical damage. Though part of that may be due to horror settings generally being for one-shots anyway.
The problem with using hit points is that you end up with immersion breaking situations: characters going weeks without water just because they have tons of hit points. Unless it does ridiculous amounts of damage? But usually this would be like 1d6 a day.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on June 24, 2021, 02:02:56 PM
The problem with using hit points is that you end up with immersion breaking situations: characters going weeks without water just because they have tons of hit points. Unless it does ridiculous amounts of damage? But usually this would be like 1d6 a day.
There's a solution to this. Start with fatigue/exhaustion conditions. No saves. Go more than (Con modifier) days without water and you become fatigued, the next day exhausted, the next day you're incapacitated (effectively 0 HP). Next day, you're dead. Modify for environment.
Yeah. That's what 5e does. You get ranks of exhaustion.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on June 24, 2021, 01:39:10 PM
Plus - it generally avoids the issue of the first solid hit winning - since Vitality will likely take the first hit or two.
Even then I still don't like extreme death spirals - but a moderate one can add a bit of depth there without most of the usual negatives of a death spiral.
I'd say that's more a delayed death spiral than a moderate one. Moderate implies the penalties are small, but what you're describing is a buffer before penalties take effect. And I agree, that works. In that case, once you start taking penalties, it's a sign you've lost. Under all but the most exceptional circumstances, the fight should be over. Depending on how it's implemented, it could even lead to a game where surrender becomes feasible (which is not the case with old school D&D, where all fights are essentially to the death).
It's worth noting that even in games without the explicit penalties of a death spiral, there's still a death spiral at the party level, as party members start dropping. This doesn't impose a penalty on an individual's actions, but it reduces the number of actions (attacks) your side can make (Lanchester's laws), which reduces your damage output, which from the party-level is effectively the same as individual penalties.
One consequence of this, is that smart player should take party members dropping very seriously. If one of your party drops, for whatever reason, the party should immediately start thinking defensively. Retreat or bargain, instead of pressing the attack.
My OSR version does CON damage: 2d6 per day without water, 2d6 per minute without air, etc. You get a saving throw to halve that.
My 5e version is here:
http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/06/d-5e-fixing-food-and-water.html
You can use HP, yes, but you'll run into the same problem that falling damage has: extremely lethal at low levels, negligible at high levels.
Quote from: Pat on June 24, 2021, 02:58:07 PM
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on June 24, 2021, 01:39:10 PM
Plus - it generally avoids the issue of the first solid hit winning - since Vitality will likely take the first hit or two.
Even then I still don't like extreme death spirals - but a moderate one can add a bit of depth there without most of the usual negatives of a death spiral.
I'd say that's more a delayed death spiral than a moderate one. Moderate implies the penalties are small, but what you're describing is a buffer before penalties take effect.
I actually meant both - in that there is a buffer AND the penalties aren't too severe.
The Space Western I'm working on does just this. No penalties for being down on Vitality - put at half Life points you're 'bloodied' which gives -2 to all rolls (which is a bigger deal than in D&D - since attacks are 2d10/2d8/3d6 - but hardly insurmountable).
The high HP at high level make sense why those characters would last much longer. Not in realism, but in cinematic / literary fiction world.
AKA, Conan will be the last one standing if his ship runs out of food and water. The rest of the sailors will starve and dehydrate alongside Conan, but they'll die and he'll keep going.
Of course, the amount of damage depends on your edition/campaign.
In OD&D where 1D6 HP per level vs 1D6 is the average weapon damage, then 1D6 damage on Day 4 of no water results in most low level NPCs and PCs dying before Day 8.
And let's not forget that lowering the HPs from environmental damage makes them easier prey for the various wandering monsters.
While its true various rules like exhaustion tracks or damage to attributes works fine, just doing damage to HP is fast and easy. Not realistic, but we're talking about games with HP.
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 25, 2021, 01:41:50 AM
The high HP at high level make sense why those characters would last much longer. Not in realism, but in cinematic / literary fiction world.
AKA, Conan will be the last one standing if his ship runs out of food and water. The rest of the sailors will starve and dehydrate alongside Conan, but they'll die and he'll keep going.
Conan will survive the longest, but not 50 times as a long. Hit points scale too quickly.
Which suggests a solution: Damage for environmental hazards should escalate. Not X per day, but X for day 1, then 2X for day 2, then 4X for day 3, or something like that. Or use the old cumulative falling damage rules: 1d6, then 3d6, 6d6, 10d6, 15d6, and 21d6 at 60' -- or 20d6, since falling damage caps at 20 dice. That's total damage, which makes sense for the sudden stop at the end of a fall. To do it in stages for more gradual forms of dying, it's 1d6 + 2d6 + 3d6 + 4d6 + 5d6 + 6d6.
Extrapolating that into a general rule: Since 1d6 is enough to kill a normal person, decide when people should start dying, and say that's the point at which they suffer 1d6 damage. Then decide the maximum anyone can realistically survive, and set that as the 21d6 threshold. Then spread the rest of the dice in between. That can apply to hunger, drowning, falling, disease, or whatever.
Of course, that also leads to weird results. Ships where all the sailors die from starvation, leaving the entire office corp. Then the junior officers die, leaving the senior officers, and so on. It feels a little too regimented. A save to avoid damage, or at least reduce it to a lower level, might randomize it a bit. Say if you're at the 1d6 stage, a save reduces that to 0. Or if you're at the +3d6 stage, a save reduces that to +2d6. That means at least a good portion of the crew will save and survive, while the junior officers start dying.
Reading the ideas above about how to do environmental damage with hit point, I can say that I've tried most of those and a lot more. You need some pretty convoluted additions to the game to get hit points to work even sort of reasonably with environmental damage. I take that as an indicator that hit points is the wrong approach for this in the first place.
Quote from: Mishihari on June 25, 2021, 02:46:16 PM
Reading the ideas above about how to do environmental damage with hit point, I can say that I've tried most of those and a lot more. You need some pretty convoluted additions to the game to get hit points to work even sort of reasonably with environmental damage. I take that as an indicator that hit points is the wrong approach for this in the first place.
First edition Dark Sun dehydration causes Con loss. A character loses 1d6 Con if they don't get enough water, or lose 1d4 Con if they get at least half the required amount.
A character reduced to 0 Con is dead.