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Petition to remove the hitpoint health system from all future RPGs

Daemongar

Arcane
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Nov 21, 2010
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Codex Year of the Donut
Some of the best games out there have systems that, after 3 seconds without being hit, you just regenerate all your health. Little bit of a learning curve there, but once you get used to it, the cleric doesn't have to go 100% healing, he can take a damage spell or two.
 

undecaf

Arcane
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Cyberpunk 2020 also had a wound system where (iirc) each subsequent point past armor and body ratings translated into a more severe wound (4 was already quite severe).

Can’t remember the exact details, but it was quite lethal system.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
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Can I ask what you have against a hit-point system?

Nothing I'm just interested in alternatives.

One idea I had was just three simple health states: Healthy, Injured, and Critically injured.
If you lose a round of combat and fail to dodge or block the enemies attacks, there is a chance that you become injuerd or critically injured. Being in these states gives a negative % modifier to all future combat rolls. This is something I made up few seconds ago but is just an example of a non-HP health system.
 

Ismaul

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The problem with being injuried giving a negative modifier to combat effectiveness has been know for a while in PnP. We call it the Death Spiral.

Once you start going down, there's very little chances of coming back, because if you went down then it means the fight was already hard, and so with diminished effectiveness it most likely becomes harder if not impossible. The moment-to-moment experience of it is also pretty frustrating, as the actions you take that will most likely fail given the penalties (if the fight was hard, they were already failing some so this is just running you into the ground). Usually injury systems are combined with lasting injuries that can't be healed instantly in combat, since both mechanics exist to simulate reality, so you're pretty much boned until it ends. Gameplay after getting injured becomes about waiting for the foregone conclusion, twidling your thumbs while other characters in your party (if any) save the day, or reloading. I wouldn't recommend it in that form.
 

Nutria

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Strap Yourselves In
You can have wounds to certain body parts like in Rimworld or Unreal World. That doesn't get rid of hp entirely (each body part has its own hp) but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than games where you can still fight at 100% effectiveness when you're 99% dead.
 

Sjukob

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Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Deus ex has good health system that combines standart HP and injuries. It also doesn't suffer from the issue Ismaul described. I haven't played that many games, but it is the best implementation of health that I know, although it doesn't get much of the interesting play because enemies are not affected by it and Denton is immensely powerful for player to really care.
 

Iznaliu

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Cyberpunk 2020 also had a wound system where (iirc) each subsequent point past armor and body ratings translated into a more severe wound (4 was already quite severe).

Will CP2077 incorporate this in some way, or is this too hard for CDPR's target audience?
 

Ismaul

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Yes!

Lets replace health bars with number of hits you can take before you die.
What a wonderful idea!

Then, since we are sophisticated gamers, let us introduce the next step in the revolution!

It's not realistic that any attack hurts the same, that a troll's attack hurts the same as a goblin's. So how do we fix it? Make some attacks deal a number of hits. Say a troll's attack deals 10 hits, and my warrior can take 40 hits. Call them hits points, HP for short.

We did it guys!

:happytrollboy:
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
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20,294
It is simple. The human body is a fragile thing, and even the wrong word is enough to cause massive disruptions to the body and lead to health problems. Therefore, the most realisitic and progressive system to replace the unrealistic and archaic HP system is that if you get hurt, like even a stubbed toe, you roll up a new character.


;)
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
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Granbretan
Hit Points are as good as owt, but they're bloated in many games. In me old homebrew system o AD&D I only allowed a CON bonus at generation, an had injuries that'd permanently reduce HP on failure of a CON check (or multiple checks if it were really bad.) Also made sneak attacks an crits do max damage so a blade to throat or a brace o crossbow bolts were someat to worry about for even doughtiest dwarf. Also had instant death for massive attacks if a CON check failed.

Me players soon learned that name o game were to strike from a significant advantage or avoid scrapping totally.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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Jun 2, 2017
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Bulgaria
We can go for the realistic hp. You have one and a bunch of armoure! On loss of HP you eater die or loose a limb.
 

Naveen

Arcane
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Aug 23, 2015
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1,115
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
HPs are fine, it's just that their characterization/understanding is usually wrong. They don't (or didn't) represent "health" or the amount of trauma your body can sustain or whatever.

There are alternatives, but I think they make the game frustrating, especially video games where your character is going to have to kill hundreds of mooks and might lose x10 to x20 of his total HPs. You can have a static value of "life points" while your combat skill or fighting capability increases (which decreases the odds of being hit.) This is fine but, if the life-points pool is small, it may make the game frustrating or prone to one-hit-kill random events, which are not fun. The pool can be bigger, but then all fights become too long or your character's power becomes a function of equipment.

One idea I had was just three simple health states: Healthy, Injured, and Critically injured.

You could implement this with HPs by adding negative hitpoints. Your usual HPs represent "healthy" (minor scraps, abrasions, lacerations and so on, but generally healthy,) the bottom 20-30% "injured" (a broken bone here and there, but nothing life-threatening) and -1 to -10 "critically injured" (your guts are spilling out)
 

Cael

Arcane
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Nov 1, 2017
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20,294
I once had a DM who decided that healing in DnD 3.5 is unrealistic (note that this is a game where throwing around a fireball and firing disintegrate rays is perfectly OK) and so basically removed it from the game. This is the edition where the HP bloat went through the roof (Red Dragons used to have about 100hp max, now have over 650, for example). Yeah. It didn't work very well.

Many RPGs have a lot of status effects and treat HP like a resource. JRPGs, for example, usually have HPs going into the thousands, and status effects and removal are more or less an every combat round affair. Making things permanent or difficult to heal from/remove breaks a lot of systems.

Therefore, the OP might want to specify a game system that he would like to remove HP from.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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What are some good alternatives to hit points in combat?
None.

If the combat mechanics are 'number-based' (you roll to hit, roll to determine damage, your character abilities (stats and skills) are defined numerically, etc), then there is absolutely no reason not to go with hitpoints.
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
7,952
There's the Robinson's Requiem system of injury and such. It does have a blood bar, but that is depleted from blood loss, something not all wounds produce.

I'm not sure what the system in it is like under the hood. A lot of the games stats are kept vague or hidden to the player, so they just might be a HP system mechanically.

The problem with being injuried giving a negative modifier to combat effectiveness has been know for a while in PnP. We call it the Death Spiral.

Once you start going down, there's very little chances of coming back, because if you went down then it means the fight was already hard, and so with diminished effectiveness it most likely becomes harder if not impossible. The moment-to-moment experience of it is also pretty frustrating, as the actions you take that will most likely fail given the penalties (if the fight was hard, they were already failing some so this is just running you into the ground). Usually injury systems are combined with lasting injuries that can't be healed instantly in combat, since both mechanics exist to simulate reality, so you're pretty much boned until it ends. Gameplay after getting injured becomes about waiting for the foregone conclusion, twidling your thumbs while other characters in your party (if any) save the day, or reloading. I wouldn't recommend it in that form.

Which is effectively what all reality revolves around for most living brings - success breeds success, failure breeds failure.

In RPGs it would just breed even more rampant save scumming.

It is simple. The human body is a fragile thing

The issue isn't that it's fragile, it's that it's very stripped down and contained only that which is needed for a human to live. About the closest thing that qualifies as useless padding or armor, is ones ass.

The closest thing I can think of it is something like a satellite or other vehicle that is sent into space where space and weight are at such a premium that no area is wasted, everything fits together as tightly as possible.

I have TMD/Neck problems and I've gotten a huge realization of all of this in the past year. We mostly think of complexity in the head as being all in the brain, but you take a look at diagram of the jaw/ear/upper neck area and there is a ton of shit going on there with nerves, arteries, muscles, all to service the neck, the jaw, the ear and to all work together to keep the massive heavy human head kept erect.

It's for that reason that a treatment I'm working on getting can only be done to my jaw in front of my ear despite it also effecting tendons lower down along my jawline - there the problem is down there is what the pain doc called one of the "seven no go areas" of the body, places doctors will not inject because it's so crammed with shit they risk hitting missing the target tendon and damaging something else.
 
Last edited:

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
2,258
The adventures of Robin Hood made by Millenium had a fatigue system with a strenght system. An arrow guarantee a kill even on a uninjured soldier with 0% fatigue, only the dragon is immune. Strenght is a fixed value: women have lowest, then farmers, then monks, then Robin Hood, then Merchants (despite strenght they always flee) and Sheriff, then norman soldiers, then Little John, then the dragon. Fatigue is the same for all characters. The melee result is based on fatigue and strenght, after a fight or running around the map you lose some fatigue that you can restore by resting. If they are hanging you and Little John will run all the map to rescue you he will die because he will be too tired but after he dies if you attack the guard that killed him the soldier will die while a fresh soldier will kill a fresh Robin Hood. Sometimes Little John and norman soldier collapse even before the combat because fatigue.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
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Location
Australia
Here's my experimental RNG-based combat system.

You have a combat skill of 70, your opponent has a combat skill of 20. Your chance of landing a strike on him is 70x20 /90 - 100 = 84.45%, otherwise he blocks. If you fail to block an attack from an enemy, there is a chance that you become injured or critically injured. Being in these states gives a negative % modifier to all future combat rolls, for example instead of a combat skill of 70 you'll temporarily have a combat skill of 56 (-20%), thus lowering your ability to fight.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Here's my experimental RNG-based combat system.

You have a combat skill of 70, your opponent has a combat skill of 20. Your chance of landing a strike on him is 70x20 /90 - 100 = 84.45%, otherwise he blocks. If you fail to block an attack from an enemy, there is a chance that you become injured or critically injured. Being in these states gives a negative % modifier to all future combat rolls, for example instead of a combat skill of 70 you'll temporarily have a combat skill of 56 (-20%), thus lowering your ability to fight.

A bonus of these mechanics, is that the player can always win a fight. If he has a combat skill of 1 and is verusing a dragon with a combat skill of 9000, there is still a chance he can win the fight.
 

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