The Collapsing Column Conundrum

In this post I talked about a friend's game where we found ourselves in a room filled with granite columns falling all about us. I was contrasting one of the differences between D&D and Dungeon World. That difference being that in D&D getting "hit" by a column was a matter of losing hit points, while in the fiction-first world of DW, missing a roll to avoid a granite column would likely prove fatal.

I'm in a DW mood again and I found myself pondering this situation again. Even though I'm in a DW head, I think I've stumbled on a more satisfying way to handle this in D&D.

The real crux of problems like this in D&D is remembering that hit points are abstract constructs that represent many facets of a character's ultimate survivability (see this post). In this sense, hit point loss is a narrativist opportunity. Well, D&D isn't a narrativist game, so hmmm.

Here's my idea (finally): In the column room example my character was a fighter (natch, I usually play fighters), with somewhere around 70 hp. The room was quite large and filled with these falling columns. I think another way to handle this would be to say "In order to cross the room, you have to make 3 successful Dex checks (or saving throws, whatever). For every one you fail you take d10 damage."

I think that makes it more narrativist. It models an escalating situation, where every column that you don't "dodge" whittles away at your chances of getting to the other side of the room alive. You're getting more tired, more tensed up. Maybe you're dodging away from one, only to step in the way of another one. In any event, if you do make it to the other side alive, the damage from the failed checks represents the physical and emotional exhaustion of such a harrowing experience.

And if the DM wanted to be extra nasty, for each failed roll impose a -1 penalty to the next roll. That would really ramp up the tension.

Ruminations on OD&D: Hit Points

There is a thread over on OD&D Discussion concerning how hit points are rolled. Essentially, there are four methods (I think):

• Keep a running, static total, adding the roll of each hit die as it is gained;
• Reroll all hit dice at each level, keeping the new total if it is higher;
• Reroll all hit dice at some predetermined point each day, such as after a night's sleep;
• Reroll all hit dice at the beginning of each combat

I like the "reroll" methods. I've always hated getting hosed on some shit-ass HD rolls. Plus, as a referee, I don't like feeling like it is absolutely vital that I hand out max hp at 1st level. It's a minor annoyance, but sometimes they are the most annoying.

Anyway, this segues into something I have been ruminating on. There are a lot of rationalizations for certain OD&D rules. We all know the ones about hit points representing fatigue, favor of the gods, and luck. While damage represents being taxed to your limits, minor scrapes and bruises, exhaustion, etc.

A big part of OD&D is resource management. Hit points are a key resource to be managed. But, if they represent the things we rationalize them to represent, and damage is per its rationalization, I believe the healing rules are way out of whack. At the healing rates as written a single attack, with a lucky (unlucky?) damage roll could take almost a week to heal. A week to get over being tired and a few minor scrapes and close calls.

I'm sure at this point this may seem like I've kit-bashed two posts. Maybe I have, I don't know. I'm just wondering how to tie in rerolling hit points either each day or each combat would work in conjunction with some "accelerated" healing rules. Like maybe throw the running damage total right out the window, along with the running hit point total, and start fresh each combat/encounter. Would it seriously unbalance things? Would it rob the game of part of its drama, like when your hit points are really low and you're trying to tip-toe out of the dungeon and back to town?

So maybe the "reroll every morning" is the better way. So, how would that work with pre-existing damage? Is it only your max hit points that are affected?

At any rate, I need to rethink healing in light of what damage is supposed to represent. I think getting a certain amount, maybe a percentage of current max, at the end of a combat would work. That could represent the "fatigue loss" being recovered once the character has a chance to collect his breath. One thing's for sure (at least as anything is "for sure" in my head) is that I don't want the book keeping that goes with calling hit point damage fatigue, and keeping track of "wounds" separately. Akrasia's house rules feature that, and while I love the idea on paper, I don't want to deal with it at the table.

I welcome any and all thoughts on this subject. 

The Value of Hit Points

This has been rattling about in my head for a week or more, but I never remember to post it. Until now . . .

While I do understand the math of "more hit points" being an advantage, I never truly appreciated it as something that made Fighting-Men better fighters. I recently saw the light whilst watching a marathon of The Unit.

Two men were engaged in a fist-fight. One was younger and clearly more capable. The other was older, and while a seasoned fighter, wasn't the man he used to be. Both men were basically beating the shit out of each other, but the punishment was more telling with the older man. Eventually the younger man gained the upper hand, even though the older man was landing solid blows.

Watching this, and putting it into an OD&D perspective, I was reminded that OD&D combat is about results. The fundamental truth is this: statistically speaking, the better fighter will still be standing at the end of the fight. Period. It is that simple. So, maybe we have similar, or even identical, chances to-hit, but if I have more HD (and therefore hit points, presumably), I should win.

I feel like I should expound on this further, but I can't really see what that would serve right now. So, let's just leave it at this, shall we?

Ruminations on OD&D: Hit Points

In the pursuit of my job I have a lot of time to think about gaming (and anything else that crosses my mind). However, I have no time whatsoever to write, design, or develop anything I think about. One of the things I've been thinking about lately is OD&D, but I've been thinking about it on a much more philosophical level. I'm a huge fan of Philotomy's OD&D Musings and read and reread them frequently. This will (hopefully) be a series of posts of my personal observations, with the title inspired by those musings.

First up: Hit Points

I've blathered about hit points before. Anyone that makes a conscious choice to have D&D in their life has. I'm not going to rehash those previous thoughts; they are easy enough to find. No, this is about the drama inherent in hit points.

Over the course of my gaming travels and experimentations I have run across the notion that hit points aren't dramatic. According to many systems, designers, and players, it isn't realistic nor dramatic to know with absolute certainty how much abuse you can take before being killed. A lot of games trumpet their "fun" and "realism" by pointing out that death is always possible and any blow may kill any character at any time. Each and every creature in the game, from stableboy to the Queen's Champion, from kobold to ancient red dragon, could be killed with a single stroke of a blade.

I have been lured by this temptation myself. I have bought into the idea that it is a bit meta-gamey and jarring to base one's willingness to risk combat on knowing how much more damage on'e character can sustain. It occurred to me yesterday, though, that while ripe with dramatic potential, systems which support this notion of ever-possible character death are better in theory than in fact.

Think of it from the player's perspective. How much fun is it to have a favorite character killed by random chance? Sure, it makes combat more tense, and perhaps causes the player to actually consider the risk/reward every single combat rather than only when hit points are low. Yet, for that threat of imminent death to be real, and not just some sort of boogeyman, it has to actually happen from time to time. I was playing in a sort of mini-campaign with two friends. My friend Rick was DM and he had developed some critical hit charts that included the possibility of instant death. The other player was my friend Todd. He was playing a dwarf. We were about 4th or 5th level and quite attached to our characters. We had a random encounter with a small number of goblins, definitely not enough to pose a real threat. One of them scored a critical hit on Todd's dwarf. Rick rolled on his new chart and ended up with the goblin getting in a one-in-a-million hit that pierced the dwarf's heart, killing him instantly. Todd was devastated.

Granted, with the charts being experimental, Rick could have invoked fiat and ignored such a horrific result, but that's not the point. The point is: the supposed fun brought on by the "dramatic tension" of the dangerous critical hits did not outweigh the let-down as a result of watching a favorite character killed by pure chance. So, ultimately, from the player perspective, I just don't see this type of thing fun. Whether it is through a bolted-on critical hit table, or baked into the health/damage system, it is not an even trade. Furthermore, since we actually play these games for fun, I wouldn't ever, as a referee, allow a player's character to be killed in such a manner. So, the threat of imminent death becomes hollow and meaningless.

From the referee's perspective, and the player's as well, to a degree, this type of system saps the fun from battles which end prematurely in the characters' favor. Who wants to spend months of real time and many sessions to get to the Ultimate Threat only to have him killed by an exploding damage die on the first hit? Again, the point of the exercise is fun, and it is hard to do that when a planned three-hour session ends in 15 minutes because of a lucky roll.

Upon reflection, I have to say that I see a lot of drama in D&D's hit point system. It's all in how it is role played. Hit points, especially in the relatively low amounts as generated in OD&D, really model the ebb and flow of a battle. I have been in countless games where I was sweating bullets because my hit points were at a point where one more really good hit could kill my character and I knew I had my opponent in bad shape (or at least I thought I knew). I was praying to the dice gods that I hit him before he hit me. For me, that is a much more satisfying sort of drama than that offered by random chance death.

Hit Points and the One Minute Combat Round

I was watching Troy this afternoon. It led me to the following train of thought.

Many aspects of OD&D (and, by extension, the more modern titles based on it) are much maligned. Of course, on of the hot-button issues is hit points. It has been discussed ad infinitum what hit points actually represent, as well as what their loss represents.

Another aspect that isn't particularly maligned, but is probably one of the most house-ruled is the one-minute combat round. It is quite often said to be completely unrealistic that combatants could swing swords at each other for five or six minutes straight, or longer. There is another aspect to the hit point/combat round that had completely eluded me until I was watching the movie.

It was the big showdown between Achilles and Hector. They swung, they dodged, they dipped, dodged, and dove. Hector tripped over a rock. Achilles narrowly avoided a sucking chest wound. Obviously, all of this was wearing down their hit points. I may have even posted about it before. I know I did a movie-hit point post, but I can't remember the movie and I'm too lazy to go back through my posts, so there. Anyway . . .

I'm currently hip deep in Delving Deeper, a most excellent OD&D clone, and freely available here. It finally clicked with me that there is a distinct correlation between the rather modest number of hit points and the one-minute round. An 8th level fighter is a fearsome opponent in OD&D, but still only has, on average, 28 hit points, lacking any adjustments. With a CON bonus, he would have a whopping 36 hit points. He could conceivably be smacked down, by a comparable opponent, in 6-8 rounds.

My point here is that I think the one-minute combat round started getting a little hoary when hit point inflation started taking hold. An 8th level fighter with an 18 CON would have the aforementioned 36 HP in OD&D. The same fighter in B/X would have, on average, 60 HP (8 x 4.5 per d8) + (8 x 3 CON bonus). in AD&D the same fighter would have 76 hit points on average. That's more than double the OD&D fighter.

Now, I know somebody out there is saying "But what about variable weapon damage and monsters' attack schemes?" Sure, an AD&D fighter faces more damage potentially than the OD&D fighter, but I seriously do not believe the damage threat doubled right along with hit points. So, it is my contention that the one-minute combat round is perfectly acceptable in OD&D, where there just aren't enough hit points to drag fights out for too long.

A Real A-Ha! Moment

I'm sitting here this morning sifting through some OD&D forums. I see one about combat and Fighting Capability. At some point hit points were mentioned, and for some reason my mind swung off onto a tangent. I'm glad it did, because it gave me a new perspective.

A long time ago I accepted the notion that hit points are not just blood. They are sweat, fatigue, luck, divine favor, and simply the will to continue the fight. We've all had to accept that, in some degree, in order to make peace with D&D, no matter which flavor we prefer. Well, I have a new visually stunning example of exactly how that works. Without further ado, I give you . . .

Remember the scene in the corridor of the castle, when our heroes were assaulted by Count Rugen's men? They rushed in and Indigo cut them down like the 1 HD pukes they were. One attack per man. Bam! Done.

Now, think back to the duel between Indigo and Westley. They never wounded each other (at least until Westley clocked Indigo with his pommel). Westley just wore him down. It took a while, of course, because they were both masters (with a decent number of hit points).

Remember, too, Indigo's duel with Count Rugen. He was stabbed, twice, but dug deep and kept going, because the fight was important to him. The wounds became inconsequential simply because of his will to fight, and his desire for revenge.

So, yeah, even though I've accepted the rationale behind hit points, these little a-ha moments that give me a fresh perspective on them are always welcomed.