People shouldn't have a d4 hit points.

[Username17]

I don't actually have strong opinions about whether the d4 hit die should exist, but characters shouldn't ever be able to have a total number of hit points which is about 2.

Why? Because it doesn't leave any room at the bottom. Characters live in a world where there are dogs and chickens, and dragonflies and squirrels and there isn't any room for these creatures if characters already have a minimum hit points of 1.

There should probably be a hit point sze modifier. Where you just get hit points for being a certain size. Then you can get level hit points on top of that. Your death margin could be your size hit points plus your level.

So medium creatures should probably walk in with 20 hit points or so. Small creatures can walk in with 10, tiny creatures 5, dimminutive creatures 1, and fine creatures zero (that is, any damage at all slays a fine creature).

This would require an upcalculation of damage, but I'm actually OK with that.

And yes, I know this is a major change, but if you want cats to no longer be able to go a whuppin and a whompin all over villagers this has to happen.

Setting the standard hit points of a villager at 3 was convenient back in the days when this was a war game (heck, Warhammer still has the hit points of a villager at one) - but now that it is primarily a Role Playing Game, that doesn't fly.

Hit point inflation has been basically good, and we need more of it in order to represent the world in a way which feels in the slightest bit not stupid.

-Username17

[Lago_AM3P]

As long as it doesn't screw over small PCs, I'm all for it.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Well, I dunno about size-based hit-point bonuses, but I do think that the d4 hit die needs to go. And to be fair, let's nix the d12 hit die too. We can give that one point average back to the Barbarian by just giving him an ability that nets him one or possibly even two extra hit points every level.

-Desdan

[User3]

People only have a 1d4 HPs if you constantly make sure that all commoners only get 1 level.

The system as written totally lets 20th level commoners exist in a world with 1st level heroes.

And I don't have any problems with that. Higher average NPC levels(lets say an average level of 5) creates people that tend to have skill levels that make them competant in their chosen profession(s). They'll have more HP, and more Saves.

Sure, low level heroes won't instantly be able to push around every person they meet. Sounds good to me.

The odd high level warrior or Aristocrat might even make adventurers respect normal people. Being unable to Bluff every single person you meet is a good thing.

[The_Hanged_Man]

1082406813[/unixtime]]dimminutive creatures 1, and fine creatures zero (that is, any damage at all slays a fine creature).

I agree, but got a question here. Why 0 hp? You'd have to have an exception to the normal disabled rules just for fine creatures. And for effects that do things like 20 points of damage total, spread over everything w/in 20' radius.

[User3]

If I were to do this, I would probably make it Medium=20, Small=15, Tiny=10, etc. It dosen't mess up small characters as much and provides a more smooth transition. Larger creatures tend to have higher Con scores, which even things out.

However, I'm not certain that this is really needed. I agree with K on the NPCs with levels issue, and honestly, who cares how many HP a cat or fly have as long as they aren't a familiar? An average player Wizard has 4 HP. If you decide you want to play Elric with a 3 Con, you suffer the consequences.

-Catharz Godsfoot

[Username17]

honestly, who cares how many HP a cat or fly have as long as they aren't a familiar?

Or a summoned animal, or a rabid creature, or have the key to the cellar door around their collar....

The only reason why the fact that a housecat can whup holy hell on many starting characters doesn't come up all the time is because DMs purposefully leave out opponents of the standard animal variety.

I mean, let's face it - the average shepherd is going to have his ass handed to him by like two of his sheep. That's absurd.

Throwing out the occassional 13th level commoner doesn;t help - because the characters still start their life as 1st level characters. If anything, it underscores the simple absurdity of low level adventures if the PCs can be slain by pidgeons and there are bankers walking around who are mysteriously immune.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Agreed. Some time I need to post my views on level theory in relation to RL (Or at least normal fiction) power levels.

-Desdan

[The_Hanged_Man]

Do you guys read KODT? Remember the episode where Bob and Dave got mauled by a squirrel? That's why Frank makes so much sense here.

Desdan, that sounds interesting, but I don't think HP translate at all to real life. IRL, wounds either are flesh wounds that need bactine and a bandaid, somewhat serious, possibly deadly, or instant death. Which one is as much luck as anything else.

A squirrel, for instance, has a 99.999999% chance of causing me only a minor flesh wound, and a near-infinitesmal chance of killing me outright through some freak thing like hitting my chest at just the right point w/ just the right force to cause cardiac arrest.

A gun could cause anything from a slight cut to me forearm to spalttering my brains on the back wall.

I just don't see any HP system, that involves gradual deterioration of condition, being a fair simulation of this. It's great for roleplaying, but even w/ crits, massive damage, and called shots to the head HP-based systems just don't translate well. A hundred squirrel bits aren't as deadly (generally) as one bullet to the brain. Well, as far as I know - I haven't experimented. Maybe Frank has . . .

[Crissa]

Well, actually... Squirrels account for one of the highest human/wild animal injuries in the US. They're daytime animals with hard-biting rodent teeth.

...But really, we don't want to bring in rolling for infections and whatnot. We still want a cat or a squirrel to do some serious damage to a PC given that animal has any sort of story significance... Like familiar, pet, etc.

Frank's idea has some merit, changing the death-margin by size would allow higher level characters to care about it.

If HP is when you die, they don't need to be when you drop - We could say, if a character doesn't have a fighting class they drop when hit by X points of damage anyhow.

...That's how a wound puts someone on the ground. They don't usually die until later, anyhow.

-Crissa

[User3]

Rather than rewriting the whole system, wouldn't it be easier to just downgrade the stats of animals? The fact that a housecat is capable of doing 3 points of damage on a full atack, but a knife wound does 1d4 is pretty crazy.

People want their familiars to have some minimal combat ability. Well, they shouldn't. A cat should have a distraction attack at best.

Fine creatures like fairies shouldn't have glass jaws. They're magically delicious, and that should be reflected in at least human-level HP.

[Username17]

Rather than rewriting the whole system, wouldn't it be easier to just downgrade the stats of animals?

There's nowhere to downgrade them to! The minimum number of hit points for a starting character is 1. The minimum number of hit points an animal can have is 1. There is no way to make it so that a chipmunk is easier to kill than the weakest playable adventuring human.

We can't solve the problem by moving animals down, because a lot of them are already at the bottom. We need to make more room at the bottom by raising the stats of normal humans.

Humans are pretty bad ass, they can take on mountain lions and leopards and such without a whole lot of training. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But the point is, there are a lot of animals which are weaker than humans - so if we want them in our games (and we do), then we can't jolly well have the human baseline be "zero" can we?

Basic humans need starting positive numbers so that the game can accomodate all of the myriad creatures which are individually less physically impressive than we are.

-Username17

[User3]

Give chipmunks a distraction attack, and no damaging attack. Seems like that would do it pretty easily. In fact, small and smaller animals should not have any damaging attacks at all.

Snakes and other venomous things could just have a poison attack that required an attack roll.

Rewriting the whole conception of hit points for every creature is pretty masochistic when the problem is so small and easily corrected.

[Username17]

That doesn't solve anything.

We've still got the fact that an attack small enough to only stagger a hamster is still large enough to stagger some grown men. That's absurd.

We've also now introduced a new problem, which is that suddenly chipmunks can't hurt each other. What you are suggesting isn't a solution, it's just moving problems around - they are still totally there.

Now, if you wanted to make that work, you could set everything over to a unified injury roll, where people rolled their toughness against an amount of damage based on the attack as a DC, and depending upon how they rolled they'd end up with a Light, Moderate, Serious, or Crippling wound - or even die outright if the damage exceeded their toughness sufficiently.

That way, the squirrel would be unable to hack you down with its mighty claws, but would still be able to hurt other rodents. Meanwhile, you could be weak on the human end and still be able to turn a vole into red paste with a baseball bat.

So long as the cutoffs between damage values really did scale up and down by way more than the spread on the d20 you could cover attacks all the way down to ticks and all the way up to battleships and still keep things in perspective at each level.

But that's some kind of bastard Shadowrun/D20 hybrid. And while it may well work better than either - this is a thread about fixing the hit point system. And the hit point system doesn't have any room at the bottom. And the only way to give it that room is to give more hit points to basic humans.

-Username17

[User3]

Why should chipmunks being able to hurt each other?

At one HP, a chipmonk will still take one attack, and then bleed to death in a few rounds since it'll have a really low Con.

Are we going to be playing games where everyone gets shrunk to fine size and tries to fight chipmonks? In that unlikely event, just say that a chipmonk has the stats of a bear when fighting tiny creatures.

The game is Medium-centric, and all things revolve around them. If you want to play a small-centric game, then humans are giants, and need to be statted accordingly.

Rebuilding the whole system to allow a case that comes up 1% of the time(to be generous) and increases the overall complexity of the game seems like a fool's proposition. Plus, there is no way that you can prevent the halfling's from getting screwed.

Better to just modify the 1%, and not worry about housecats fighting housecats. Really, I wouldn't play in an adventure where I spend the first four levels fighting moles and dogs.

[Sanishiver]

Hello,

Perhaps you could use the Phil Athans Rule instead of re-working the hit point structure?

[Username17]

Gophers still drop you - they just take longer to devour your corpse.

That's not a solution, it just lets players wake up the next day every time they get severely mauled by a pidgeon.

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

1082579776[/unixtime]]Gophers still drop you - they just take longer to devour your corpse.

That's not a solution, it just lets players wake up the next day every time they get severely mauled by a pidgeon.

-Username17

lol - you meant pigeon, right? On the boards, ya never know . . .

[fbmf]

1082577879[/unixtime]]Hello,

Perhaps you could use the Phil Athans Rule instead of re-working the hit point structure?

Welcome to TGD, Sanishiver. Glad to have you. You may want to check in over at the Welcome thread in MPSIMS.

Game On,
fbmf