A while back, I made a post about the flaws of traditional (i.e. D&D style) Hit Point systems called The Tyranny of Hit Points. One of my readers (Wyatt to be specific) asked about alternative solutions to a rather specific case, and I thought it would be worth writing about the subject in general. So here goes.
We'll deal with these by the desired end goal, and examine possible ways of getting there. There is little doubt that I'll be unable to cover all possible options, but I'll hit a few possible methods.
First up in our series is a combat style like that found in WWE wrestling and Hong Kong Action Theater, where people are often hit with massive death-dealing or maiming blows only to completely recover seconds latter to put the smack-down on their foes. Over the top and flashy in the extreme- these types of battles are about as far from realism as one can possibly get.
One way of viewing them is that the combatants can only win after they have worn down their foe, such contests can be viewed as a Battle of Fatigue.
Thus 'damage' to Fatigue must be tracked in some way before any combat ending injury can be achieved.
To be perfectly honest, D&D style systems do this type of combat well, with HP standing in as a type of Fatigue. They do however have problems. They tend to be very static (i.e. characters standing toe-to-toe trading blows) and players also tend to benefit greatly from focusing all attacks on single targets.
For today's post, let's look at how to to correct these two problems while remaining within a D&D style HP system.
D&D 4E (and to some degree Star Wars SAGA) attempted to deal with static combat by adding various abilities to involve or force movement. Added to modifiers for positioning, and the static movement issue is dealt with to some degree.
But not completely, the very nature of HP systems mean the effects of movement and position are passing and not in and of themselves critical. Sure the extra damage you took from getting blindsided in the battle could be a turning point. But it could also just be something that happened without final influence on the outcome. That's what HP systems do, turn combat into a war of attrition- not one of decisive action. Even when decisive, that decision is delayed until all HP are removed from the losers.
Still, this methods at least causes movement even if it's not decisive. And can help maintain the illusion of battle far better than just standing there.
On top of this, D&D 4E added healing surges- which mirrors WWE and other wild styles of fictional combat quite well. Now you can get someone on the ropes, and have them jump right off them the next round.
The remaining problem- that of single target focus (i.e. it's better to drop one target than split your damage up between many for little effect) remains, and it's a big one. Generally in the source material for these types of battles, characters tend to pair off. If that's not happening, it's often a single (or each) hero fending off many foes.
And those two concepts are in direct conflict making a universal rule handing the matter basically impossible.
D&D 4E approached the one hero vs. many foes with the minion rule, an exception to the standard combat rules. This works on that end, but leaves the 'single target' focus between 'heroic' foes intact.
One could attempt an 'unengaged foe' rule, where any character who isn't engaged by a foe is given significant bonuses (to hit, damage, or both) such that it becomes extremely dangerous to leave a foe unengaged.
However this runs into problems when the sides are unequal in number. Thus out-numbering your opponents becomes a huge factor in winning. And not just at the start, even if equal at the beginning- the first side to drop one of their foes gains the upper-hand.
And that may not fit the genre either.
Still, it's an approach. Maybe you can inflict such modifiers for unengaged foes only if there you had someone who could have engaged- but instead ran off to engaged an already engaged foe (i.e. wanted the single target focus). Very artificial, but workable in a way.
Add in strong Zone of Control, toss minions in the same fight together with NPC opponents, and you have the start of something that almost works.
I wouldn't use this sort of system. Too inflexible, it does only one thing well- and it does that in a very artificial way with too narrow of a sweet spot.
Next time we'll look at non-D&D style methods of reaching our goals.
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3 comments:
Perhaps I might offer a suggestion. The easiest way to do things is to examine the way an organism reacts to trauma in real life and then alter from there to suit the game.
I'll try to shed some light on things based on what I've learned from my paltry medical background and reasonably extensive game design work.
Ultimately everyone dies of a lack of perfusion of Oxygen to the cells (also known as shock). The ONLY exception to this is in extreme terminal damage to the vast majority of the body within a time period of less than a minute. (Getting sucked through a jet engine and that sort-of thing.) However, even in situations such as decapitation it is the inability to pump oxygen to the brain (because it's disconnected from the lungs) that will end the person's life.
With that simple fact we can derive so many common sense applications for a wounding and trauma system because we have the ultimate understanding of what the end result can be. A bit of basic medical knowledge will tell you what the symptoms of Shock are and how they effect the body so we can use that as a benchmark as well.
So with that in-mind we can basically assume there are two symptoms of damage that can end a person's life within combat time. The first is the most obvious - hemorrhage which limits the body's oxygen exchange (blood being the transport mechanism). Or damage to the Central Nervous System which inflicted at the neck or higher can shut down the diaphragm. Any poison that acts quickly enough to kill a person during combat-time will probably be a nerve toxin that utilizes the 2nd method.
Other than those two methods, everything else that can kill a character is much slower to act (infection, lack of nutrients etc...) before they can cause hypo perfusion and death.
Other things to do with trauma broken bones, bruising, charlie horses and the like is only relevant in that it impedes a being's ability to fight further (death spiral).
Thats a kind-of long winded way of explaining a very simple thing. Games should model this to a degree. The simplest way is to make cellular perfusion represented by Fatigue (the two concepts run parallel), and then make trauma either something that causes penalities or causes bleeding, perhaps both. Penalties prevent the ability to fight, and if the penalties are great enough that could represent the character's inability to walk, move or perhaps even breathe. While bleeding slows cellular perfusion, and if not stemmed will eventually cause shock and then death.
This can be done in a highly gritty realistic way, or a very high-wire action kung-fu way. The difference is in how much a character bleeds and how many penalties he can sustain before being incapacitated.
All this is probably stuff you're already quite aware of, but it seems like some of your solutions were a bit more arbitrary and based more on game balance than any precedent founded in reality. I find using real life principles in games can be a helpful benchmark because we already know the repercussions of certain actions and effects and altering aspects of the reality simulation produces predictable results.
Interesting -- looking forward to seeing Part 2.
The remaining problem- that of single target focus (i.e. it's better to drop one target than split your damage up between many for little effect) remains, and it's a big one.
At the cost of some book-keeping, you could define HP (or the like) as a property that is instantiated every time you are attacked, rather than as a property of the object as such... so that a new HP pool is created every time a new combat pairing is created.
If 4 PCs gang up on 1 dragon, it maintains a separate HP pool for each. If 2 PCs drop out and 1 joins in, a 5th HP pool is created. When the combat concludes either smallest, largest, or a mean HP total can be used (or different for different creature types, or creature sizes, or by Feat, etc).
This system softens ganging up, which would now only help by dividing attacks, not accelerating damage. It also encourages combatants to move around the play area, as they want to switch foes whenever their HPs start to run out.
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