Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
[DESIGN] THE END OF HIT POINTS
Posts
Pages:
1
Toaster_Team
966
Toaster_Team
View playlists
CloseAlright so I want to do away with "hit points". It's a fossil in the rpg genre (my opinion) and too seldom questioned or pioneered upon. The reason is likely because they’re easy to handle in the rpg genre in general. More powerful monsters have higher hit points to compensate for stronger players.
I frankly don’t like it (which is problematic since it’s pretty much the only alternative out there). There’s a good reason for that; they’re difficult to replace. It’s easy to say you don’t like something, anyone can do that, the hard part is finding an alternative.
Now I’m using lower numbers in my game, probably going as high as 10 as a number but hopefully no higher. This includes health of course. If 10 is the highest, the most legendary of scores, weaker characters would need to be able to survive in-game without risking of dying in a single hit. That’s essentially the challenge of the whole thing.
I find a certain charm in lower numbers, it’s simpler and more accessible than having 9999 dropping all over the place. Darkest Dungeon is a good example of lower numbers being attractive. Paper Mario did that as well if I remember correctly.
The challenge is keeping battle realistic without being too lethal. It doesn’t make sense to me how someone could survive more than a couple of sword strikes for one thing.
One option is making it more difficult to hit in the first place and making the consequences of being hit more important. The problem with that missing too often means combat really isn’t progressing and that can drag on and become boring.
Having lower numbers also has the challenge of having a diverse set of weapons with their own pros/cons. You can’t just rely on damage to differentiate a dagger from a sword for one thing. Besides, damage output to differentiate weapons is also sort of a let-down, it’s creatively lazy I think.
Darkest Dungeon death’s door is what inspired me to do away with hit points entirely, that and the injury system of Shadowrun pen and paper. They both have game mechanics which are clever, especially Shadowrun. Shadowrun keeps track of your injuries. It becomes harder to fight the more injured you are. I think that’s not only smart but also realistic and consequentially something I wanted to have in my own game.
So I’m thinking of using injuries as opposed to abstract “points”. I liked the idea of having random injuries selected every time a character is hurt. I couldn’t just have all the various injuries as one big pool, I needed various “levels” of injuries; from light ones to potentially fatal ones. I also needed to tie this in with the health characteristic of player characters and implement a way for opponents where it wouldn’t end up being too complex.
_________________________________________________________________________________
So, basically, that’s where I’m at now and what I’d like to discuss. My objective in creating this thread is to read suggestions from other people and also to point out where the HP alternative I’m putting forward comes short so that I can fix it before it’s hard coded in.
Everything written in this original post is brainstorming, nothing set I stone. I’m trying to organize and tidy up my set of ideas to make them practicable,
unique and fun.
For example:
Suppose a wizard has a health of 2. He therefore needs to be fragile without being a glass canon.
My starting point would be too each unit of health represent being able to sustain a certain amount of injuries. A first reaction might be to say: “Well, what’s the difference with hit points then?”. For one thing, every type on injury would have different impact.
Suppose a health unit means you can sustain a certain amount of injuries before being in a critical state (think Darkest Dungeon Death’s Door here) where every single hit might mean your death, regardless of the gravity of the wound sustained.
So basically, how about something like this:
Graze: has no immediate effect on a character but they’re being kept track of. Once you reach a certain amount of grazes, character are inflicted a single light wound. Grazes are dismissed post-combat. They’re too light to really amount to anything outside of combat that is. It’s sort of a safe “injury”. Three grazes could lead to a single light wound.
Light wound: light wounds have consequences. It can be something like an injured arm which lowers combat effectiveness for example. Light injuries carry over after battles so they’re to be taken more seriously so to speak. You can’t die from light injuries however. Since they do stack, getting healed before the next encounter becomes important (whereas grazes do not carry over). As you stack more light wounds, the next injury leads to a serious wound. I’m thinking of 3 light wounds to keep with the grazes vs light wound concept.
Serious wound: Serious wounds are well… serious. They have much more serious consequences than light wounds. Serious wounds can lead to critical wound which in turn can lead to death. Serious wounds are also harder to heal. Stacking up 3 serious wounds leads to critical wounds.
Critical Wounds: These do not have consequences per se but each critical wound increases the likeliness of dying for each consequences wound.
_________________________________________________________________________________
This doesn’t mean that the only way to die is to gradually stack wounds from level to level. All sorts of injuries can be sustained in battle.
So that’s about it right now and this message is long enough on its own. Let me know what you think!
I frankly don’t like it (which is problematic since it’s pretty much the only alternative out there). There’s a good reason for that; they’re difficult to replace. It’s easy to say you don’t like something, anyone can do that, the hard part is finding an alternative.
Now I’m using lower numbers in my game, probably going as high as 10 as a number but hopefully no higher. This includes health of course. If 10 is the highest, the most legendary of scores, weaker characters would need to be able to survive in-game without risking of dying in a single hit. That’s essentially the challenge of the whole thing.
I find a certain charm in lower numbers, it’s simpler and more accessible than having 9999 dropping all over the place. Darkest Dungeon is a good example of lower numbers being attractive. Paper Mario did that as well if I remember correctly.
The challenge is keeping battle realistic without being too lethal. It doesn’t make sense to me how someone could survive more than a couple of sword strikes for one thing.
One option is making it more difficult to hit in the first place and making the consequences of being hit more important. The problem with that missing too often means combat really isn’t progressing and that can drag on and become boring.
Having lower numbers also has the challenge of having a diverse set of weapons with their own pros/cons. You can’t just rely on damage to differentiate a dagger from a sword for one thing. Besides, damage output to differentiate weapons is also sort of a let-down, it’s creatively lazy I think.
Darkest Dungeon death’s door is what inspired me to do away with hit points entirely, that and the injury system of Shadowrun pen and paper. They both have game mechanics which are clever, especially Shadowrun. Shadowrun keeps track of your injuries. It becomes harder to fight the more injured you are. I think that’s not only smart but also realistic and consequentially something I wanted to have in my own game.
So I’m thinking of using injuries as opposed to abstract “points”. I liked the idea of having random injuries selected every time a character is hurt. I couldn’t just have all the various injuries as one big pool, I needed various “levels” of injuries; from light ones to potentially fatal ones. I also needed to tie this in with the health characteristic of player characters and implement a way for opponents where it wouldn’t end up being too complex.
_________________________________________________________________________________
So, basically, that’s where I’m at now and what I’d like to discuss. My objective in creating this thread is to read suggestions from other people and also to point out where the HP alternative I’m putting forward comes short so that I can fix it before it’s hard coded in.
Everything written in this original post is brainstorming, nothing set I stone. I’m trying to organize and tidy up my set of ideas to make them practicable,
unique and fun.
For example:
Suppose a wizard has a health of 2. He therefore needs to be fragile without being a glass canon.
My starting point would be too each unit of health represent being able to sustain a certain amount of injuries. A first reaction might be to say: “Well, what’s the difference with hit points then?”. For one thing, every type on injury would have different impact.
Suppose a health unit means you can sustain a certain amount of injuries before being in a critical state (think Darkest Dungeon Death’s Door here) where every single hit might mean your death, regardless of the gravity of the wound sustained.
So basically, how about something like this:
Graze: has no immediate effect on a character but they’re being kept track of. Once you reach a certain amount of grazes, character are inflicted a single light wound. Grazes are dismissed post-combat. They’re too light to really amount to anything outside of combat that is. It’s sort of a safe “injury”. Three grazes could lead to a single light wound.
Light wound: light wounds have consequences. It can be something like an injured arm which lowers combat effectiveness for example. Light injuries carry over after battles so they’re to be taken more seriously so to speak. You can’t die from light injuries however. Since they do stack, getting healed before the next encounter becomes important (whereas grazes do not carry over). As you stack more light wounds, the next injury leads to a serious wound. I’m thinking of 3 light wounds to keep with the grazes vs light wound concept.
Serious wound: Serious wounds are well… serious. They have much more serious consequences than light wounds. Serious wounds can lead to critical wound which in turn can lead to death. Serious wounds are also harder to heal. Stacking up 3 serious wounds leads to critical wounds.
Critical Wounds: These do not have consequences per se but each critical wound increases the likeliness of dying for each consequences wound.
_________________________________________________________________________________
This doesn’t mean that the only way to die is to gradually stack wounds from level to level. All sorts of injuries can be sustained in battle.
So that’s about it right now and this message is long enough on its own. Let me know what you think!
Shinan
4314
The problem with many alternate systems it that in the end they practically differ very little from actual hit points. Like I remember a cyberpunk tabletop RPG I played (Not Shadowrun, it was called Neotech (2)). It had one of my favourite... damage systems where damage was basically three different things. Pain, Trauma and Bleeding (and Bloodloss as result of bleeding). High pain made actions more difficult, Trauma actually killed you and Bloodloss also killed you (basically making it Trauma but accumulated differently). You had to roll against Pain and Bloodloss before you became unconscious and then it was like a Trauma + Bloodloss roll to see if you died. Or something close to that.
Though in the end it's just tracking a couple of different kinds of hitpoints. It makes for a fun but also kinda fiddly system.
In the end graze, light wounds and serious wounds are just different names for hitpoints. It's like having different coin types in your game. 100 copper makes 10 silver makes 1 gold. In this case it's 100 grazes make 10 light wounds make 1 serious wound. Tiered but in practice there's not much difference.
I will say though that there's lots of interesting things that can be done within these systems. Various critical wounds that have permanent effects (classics like leg wounds for less movement, eye wounds for less accuracy). And also I (in theory) like the concept of few actual hits. I've always wanted a turn based tactical game where there can actually be the feeling of supressive fire where a couple of guys are shooting at each other for a number of turns without hitting while you can flank with some other dude. But these systems are highly reliant on having fairly numerous cannon fodder because if every character is important then every hit is a quickload moment. (same with permanent injuries for your guys. I can see them be like the front line cannon fodder "oh you only have one eye, to the front line with you")
They can also make for cool stories, when you have that one-legged, blind guy that seems to survive anything and you augment the leg and operate the eyes and they just lived long enough to be good again :)
This was random injury ramblings.
Though in the end it's just tracking a couple of different kinds of hitpoints. It makes for a fun but also kinda fiddly system.
In the end graze, light wounds and serious wounds are just different names for hitpoints. It's like having different coin types in your game. 100 copper makes 10 silver makes 1 gold. In this case it's 100 grazes make 10 light wounds make 1 serious wound. Tiered but in practice there's not much difference.
I will say though that there's lots of interesting things that can be done within these systems. Various critical wounds that have permanent effects (classics like leg wounds for less movement, eye wounds for less accuracy). And also I (in theory) like the concept of few actual hits. I've always wanted a turn based tactical game where there can actually be the feeling of supressive fire where a couple of guys are shooting at each other for a number of turns without hitting while you can flank with some other dude. But these systems are highly reliant on having fairly numerous cannon fodder because if every character is important then every hit is a quickload moment. (same with permanent injuries for your guys. I can see them be like the front line cannon fodder "oh you only have one eye, to the front line with you")
They can also make for cool stories, when you have that one-legged, blind guy that seems to survive anything and you augment the leg and operate the eyes and they just lived long enough to be good again :)
This was random injury ramblings.
I think it's a question of how much you're expecting your players to keep track of in combat. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with simply using HP to represent player health; it's just a simple way to do it and will probably resonate well with most players because it's familiar and easy to remember. You COULD take things to Dwarf Fortress levels of detail but remember that you could end up limiting your audience if you do so.
Remember that these wound-type damage systems work well in certain contexts; usually high-difficulty, RNG-heavy games with multiple party members. And I think in your case, where the combat focuses on learning Japanese, you might not want to go with a system that overwhelms the player since there's already a fair bit to keep track of. Especially since you appear to have a combat system based on one playable character and you don't want to corner players into situations that they can't possibly recover from.
Remember that these wound-type damage systems work well in certain contexts; usually high-difficulty, RNG-heavy games with multiple party members. And I think in your case, where the combat focuses on learning Japanese, you might not want to go with a system that overwhelms the player since there's already a fair bit to keep track of. Especially since you appear to have a combat system based on one playable character and you don't want to corner players into situations that they can't possibly recover from.
Toaster_Team
966
I think it's a question of how much you're expecting your players to keep track of in combat. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with simply using HP to represent player health; it's just a simple way to do it and will probably resonate well with most players because it's familiar and easy to remember.
I certainly can see the appeal of hit points and why they are consistently used in games. I do want to provide an alternative however, the idea of using hit points in my own game feels wrong, stagnant. I think it's stale.
You COULD take things to Dwarf Fortress levels of detail but remember that you could end up limiting your audience if you do so.
It would also clash with the simplicity of the board games I'm trying to recreate.
Though in the end it's just tracking a couple of different kinds of hitpoints. It makes for a fun but also kinda fiddly system.
At least it's an attempt for innovation. Having three different sets of hit points would be too complex for one I'm going for however (which makes me realize what I've previously suggested is also too complex).
One thing I want to convey is a more realistic health system. Wounds should therefore have consequences. You shouldn't function 100% if you're wounded and should be further impaired the more wounded you become.
In the end graze, light wounds and serious wounds are just different names for hitpoints. It's like having different coin types in your game. 100 copper makes 10 silver makes 1 gold. In this case it's 100 grazes make 10 light wounds make 1 serious wound. Tiered but in practice there's not much difference.
The difference is this though:
Grazes have no consequences besides stacking. They also are recovered after battle.
Light Wounds, Serious Wounds have consequences (stat reducing).
Sure enough it's not a complete and absolute change from hit points but it's more realistic I think for lack of a better word.
This was random injury ramblings.
Cool, keep 'em coming! They're helpful for sure, force me to question my ideas. I realized the system I suggested in my first message is too complicated, back to the drawing board.
***July 17th update***
Characters in-game are defined by stats which represents their strengths and weaknesses. I've decided to use a heart to represents health:
Again, I want to keep units low, I'm aiming at something 10 and lower. In D&D (the older versions anyway) they used to range from 3 to 18.
So each heart unit represents stronger health or constitution if you will. One heart would be weak whereas 10 would be legendary.
The challenge is to determine how each heart translate in-game. In Zelda being hit reduces your heart meter until you have nothing left and die (which is pretty much hit points in heart graphical form).
What I could is to have hearts empty by a quarter if it's a graze then fill back up provided it wasn't entirely empty.
Every time a heart is lost, a light wound occurs. This means that a lost heart wouldn't regenerate after battle and therefore be healed in some other way. A random debuff is also triggered (a minor one).
Basically, a light wound is a loss of one heart, which comes with a minor debuff.
I like this idea but I don't know how well it can be implemented as weaker characters, like a wizard, would potentially die after three light wound which seem a bit much.
Another option is to have a scale damage like so:
Graze: 1/4 heart
Light wound: 1/2 heart
Medium wound: 1 heart (+minor debuff)
Serious wound: 2 hearts (+major debuff)
Critical wound: 3 hearts (+life threatening debuff)
Hearts which haven't been emptied automatically regenerate at the end of battle, sort of like in Far Cry.
What do you think?
Crystalgate
694
It's pretty close to a hit points system where the characters get weaker the lower their hitpoints are compared to their maximum hitpoints. There are differences of course, but I don't know what exactly this system is supposed to accomplish. I don't think it's realistic either.
The hitpoints system is there to make a character able to survive hits with certainty, but still go down eventually. Let's say a (superhuman) person is so tough that in order to reliable kill it with one spear stab, you need to generate twice the kinetic energy you are capable of generating. With only half the kinetic energy needed, you will not be able to kill him with two stabs. Unless you hit the exact same spot twice, with two stabs you get two stabs where neither kills him. Eventually, he will bleed out over multiple wounds, but it can take a lot of time and way more than two stabs. With a hitpoints system, you would kill him with just two stabs doing half the required damage.
Typically, hitpoints are replaced with a wound system in pen and paper games when a gritty realism, where a person can easily go down in one hit, is desired. You can do that with hitpoints as well, but then you get into situation like "the sword stopped just one centimeter from your heart, you survive, but if a child kicks you on your knee, you're going down".
You want to make battles realistic, but not too lethal. This is almost a contradiction. Realistic means getting a sword rammed into your body can easily take you down without any further injury needed.
If you go that route, I suggest setting the game so so that the player can vastly improve the chances trough good tactics. If we assume that the heroes are more skilled than mook enemies and have say 60% chance to hit vs their 30%, then she/he could maybe manipulate the odds to be 90% vs 10%, but only trough good planing and execution.
Anyway, as for the hearts system, it seems to me that it would make more sense if tougher creatures got a lower wound category rather than surviving more wounds of the same category. A punch that causes a serious, but not life threatening wound, to a five years old child would be unlikely to cause a serious wound to an well trained adult, rather, it would cause what you call a light or medium wound. Heck, try the same punch on an elephant and I doubt anyone would say the elephant got wounded.
The hitpoints system is there to make a character able to survive hits with certainty, but still go down eventually. Let's say a (superhuman) person is so tough that in order to reliable kill it with one spear stab, you need to generate twice the kinetic energy you are capable of generating. With only half the kinetic energy needed, you will not be able to kill him with two stabs. Unless you hit the exact same spot twice, with two stabs you get two stabs where neither kills him. Eventually, he will bleed out over multiple wounds, but it can take a lot of time and way more than two stabs. With a hitpoints system, you would kill him with just two stabs doing half the required damage.
Typically, hitpoints are replaced with a wound system in pen and paper games when a gritty realism, where a person can easily go down in one hit, is desired. You can do that with hitpoints as well, but then you get into situation like "the sword stopped just one centimeter from your heart, you survive, but if a child kicks you on your knee, you're going down".
You want to make battles realistic, but not too lethal. This is almost a contradiction. Realistic means getting a sword rammed into your body can easily take you down without any further injury needed.
One option is making it more difficult to hit in the first place and making the consequences of being hit more important.
If you go that route, I suggest setting the game so so that the player can vastly improve the chances trough good tactics. If we assume that the heroes are more skilled than mook enemies and have say 60% chance to hit vs their 30%, then she/he could maybe manipulate the odds to be 90% vs 10%, but only trough good planing and execution.
Anyway, as for the hearts system, it seems to me that it would make more sense if tougher creatures got a lower wound category rather than surviving more wounds of the same category. A punch that causes a serious, but not life threatening wound, to a five years old child would be unlikely to cause a serious wound to an well trained adult, rather, it would cause what you call a light or medium wound. Heck, try the same punch on an elephant and I doubt anyone would say the elephant got wounded.
Kaempfer
1932
If you're using dice, I'd say each Graze could be used to inflict a -1 penalty on the next roll. As a rough example, if you're using a D20: 15-20 is a miss. 9-14 is a graze, 3-8 is a light wound, 1-2 is a serious wound. I would avoid instant critical wounds, but of course those can be 1 if you jog the numbers around. That means that if you've been grazed twice, 15-20 is still a miss and 9-14 and 11-14 is a graze, but now 3-10 is a light wound. This means you could get to a point where is it impossible to be further grazed (as now 3-14 is a light wound), but you're still dodging around because you're rolling 16+.
I suggest something like this because it means that there is no automatic stacking to greater wounds, which devolves the system into glorified HP. This just increases the likelihood of a wound occurring with each near-miss, but doesn't guarantee it.
And, like was mentioned above, critical wounds (or "permanent wounds") could accrue if enough serious wounds are taken without treatment. If you're rolling for which limb ends up damaged, permanent wounds could offer some respite. A missing leg can't be wounded twice, but a bullet might whiz past a character under his stump where it should have been. He laughs in defiance as he hops over to the enemy and tackles him, his one good hand balling into a fist to deliver a killing blow...
Obviously this is a really very rough outline, but the core of the idea is to have the Graze system offer up a change in chances, not just tiered HP.
I'm not a big fan of the hearts idea if you're trying to escape HP. You could do the same thing by saying "<7 HP=light wound, <4 HP=serious wound" et cetera. There are games where you start with 4 HP "containers" and each one contains, say, 100 HP. Your HP will slowly regenerate, but if you drop below 0, you lose a container until it is healed by other means. This means you start with 400, but each 100 HP you lose is effectively a wound that requires treatment. That's sort of the same, no?
I suggest something like this because it means that there is no automatic stacking to greater wounds, which devolves the system into glorified HP. This just increases the likelihood of a wound occurring with each near-miss, but doesn't guarantee it.
And, like was mentioned above, critical wounds (or "permanent wounds") could accrue if enough serious wounds are taken without treatment. If you're rolling for which limb ends up damaged, permanent wounds could offer some respite. A missing leg can't be wounded twice, but a bullet might whiz past a character under his stump where it should have been. He laughs in defiance as he hops over to the enemy and tackles him, his one good hand balling into a fist to deliver a killing blow...
Obviously this is a really very rough outline, but the core of the idea is to have the Graze system offer up a change in chances, not just tiered HP.
I'm not a big fan of the hearts idea if you're trying to escape HP. You could do the same thing by saying "<7 HP=light wound, <4 HP=serious wound" et cetera. There are games where you start with 4 HP "containers" and each one contains, say, 100 HP. Your HP will slowly regenerate, but if you drop below 0, you lose a container until it is healed by other means. This means you start with 400, but each 100 HP you lose is effectively a wound that requires treatment. That's sort of the same, no?
I'm not going to be 'that dude' that tells you not to bother innovating; that's silly.
I will say that I don't have an issue with hit points and I totally understand why a ton of genres use it. I also warn you that you may find out (the long way) just why the hard way; replacing it may prove to be such a grind that you may find yourself either saying "Oh, this is why everyone and their mother uses HP", or even worse, your players going "why the fuck didn't the creator just use HP?"
Innovate! But be mindful.
I will say that I don't have an issue with hit points and I totally understand why a ton of genres use it. I also warn you that you may find out (the long way) just why the hard way; replacing it may prove to be such a grind that you may find yourself either saying "Oh, this is why everyone and their mother uses HP", or even worse, your players going "why the fuck didn't the creator just use HP?"
Innovate! But be mindful.
Toaster_Team
966
There are differences of course, but I don't know what exactly this system is supposed to accomplish. I don't think it's realistic either.
I think it's realistic that the more wounded you are the less efficient you end up in battle. That's not really what I'm going for however as an end result. I'd agree that just getting weaker the more injured you become is not a thrilling alternative to a basic hit point system.
Anyway, as for the hearts system, it seems to me that it would make more sense if tougher creatures got a lower wound category rather than surviving more wounds of the same category. A punch that causes a serious, but not life threatening wound, to a five years old child would be unlikely to cause a serious wound to an well trained adult, rather, it would cause what you call a light or medium wound. Heck, try the same punch on an elephant and I doubt anyone would say the elephant got wounded.
Oh, I like that. That's a good idea. There's ground to work from this.
As for innovating, it does require more work and trial for sure. I'm hoping it won't be too time consuming as I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel after all.
If you're using dice, I'd say each Graze could be used to inflict a -1 penalty on the next roll. As a rough example, if you're using a D20: 15-20 is a miss. 9-14 is a graze, 3-8 is a light wound, 1-2 is a serious wound. I would avoid instant critical wounds, but of course those can be 1 if you jog the numbers around. That means that if you've been grazed twice, 15-20 is still a miss and 9-14 and 11-14 is a graze, but now 3-10 is a light wound. This means you could get to a point where is it impossible to be further grazed (as now 3-14 is a light wound), but you're still dodging around because you're rolling 16+.
I'm using D6 for the game, do you think it could still be applied then:
This being said, I like the idea that grazes increase the chances of getting a more serious wound further down the road.
How about this:
Instead of representing health reserves, hearts represents your resistance to injuries. Every time you are wounded, your hearts will determine what type of injury you will end up with (from a pool of possible injuries). Some injuries will reduce your heart meter which in turn will make you more prone to more serious injuries further down the line.
Healing would involve picking which injury you want to heal (and removing the associated debuff).
What do you think?
Why not have 5 pieces? Head, body, left/right arm, left/right leg. What was attacked and damaged denotes what is demoted - if your arm is attacked, your own ability to injure the enemy is lowered. If your main body is attacked, your overall ability is hampered but at a lesser rate than if the enemy targeted something specifically. Legs could reduce speed, head could reduce healing (having to be able to think to do so) or maybe hit rate (blood in the eyes?).
Then instead of a HP pool, three types of wounds - light, medium, heavy, where it just stacks up based on the current wound level. An attack on a non-injured part would make a light wound. Another would make that a medium. Another would make it a heavy and one last one would remove your ability to use that part for the rest of the battle (or until a specific item was used to repair it slightly).
You could then have the same for the enemy where you have to choose whether to limit their ability to attack or dodge. You could tie some enemy skills to body parts - punching for arms, kicking for legs, headbutts for heads, and then you'd have to think about whether you want to disable that powerful kick attack misses more often but can deal damage to two parts or the punch attack that hits more often but only one part or the headbutt which can stun you a turn if it hits a specific part of your body.
There's a lot there that you could play with and it would definitely change things up a little but still be easy enough for players to understand.
Then instead of a HP pool, three types of wounds - light, medium, heavy, where it just stacks up based on the current wound level. An attack on a non-injured part would make a light wound. Another would make that a medium. Another would make it a heavy and one last one would remove your ability to use that part for the rest of the battle (or until a specific item was used to repair it slightly).
You could then have the same for the enemy where you have to choose whether to limit their ability to attack or dodge. You could tie some enemy skills to body parts - punching for arms, kicking for legs, headbutts for heads, and then you'd have to think about whether you want to disable that powerful kick attack misses more often but can deal damage to two parts or the punch attack that hits more often but only one part or the headbutt which can stun you a turn if it hits a specific part of your body.
There's a lot there that you could play with and it would definitely change things up a little but still be easy enough for players to understand.
Toaster_Team
966
I'm not against attacking different body parts as I already have an equipment system which includes head, arms, body and legs:
I could actually draw a die for his location, that'd be cool.
The issue I see with your suggestion is that every weapon would cause the same amount of damage which is problematic (unless I misunderstood what you meant).
I sketched a couple of icons for injuries:
From left to right: broken bone, minor bleeding, major bleeding, stunned, panic, blinded.
I could actually draw a die for his location, that'd be cool.
The issue I see with your suggestion is that every weapon would cause the same amount of damage which is problematic (unless I misunderstood what you meant).
I sketched a couple of icons for injuries:
From left to right: broken bone, minor bleeding, major bleeding, stunned, panic, blinded.
Toaster_Team
966
Ok so how about this:
Every time you attack a die is rolled to determine where you end up hitting 6: head 4-5: body 3: left arm 2: right arm 1: legs. This would be displayed as a special die.
Then you roll a number of dice represented by the combat ability of a character. In other words, a combat 3 means you roll 3 dice, a combat of 2 means you roll 2.
The highest roll is selected. So for example, with a combat 3, you’d roll 3 dice: 2, 4, 5; 5 being is highest roll. If you opponent has a combat of 2: 1,3: 3 would be the highest roll. This is pretty much the same as in the board game Risk for those who are familiar. This means that lower skilled character still stand a chance against tougher fighters.
Then you compare if you succeed or fail in your attack. If we keep the example above:
Player A: 5 vs Player B: 3. This means player A succeeds at +2.
Now let’s take another example:
Player A: 3 vs Player B: 5. The player misses at -2. (the enemy dodges the attack).
+2 or -2 is what I’d call the margin of success. The higher the margin of success, the more potential for injury. On the other hand, a lower margin of success means missing of even worse, a counter attack from your opponent. Not that this takes place in a typical turn-based combat: A takes his turn then B takes his turn etc…
How about this:
Different weapons are affected differently by the margin of success.
Dagger:
+1, +2: Graze
+3, +4: Light injury
+5: Serious injury
VS
2-handed battle axe:
0: Graze
+1, +2: light injury
+3, +4, +5: Serious injury
This would keep different stats for different weapons relevant. Not that weapons would simply cause different damage but that’d be one difference from one weapon to another.
This leaves armor and how it affects gameplay. While I do want armor in the game, I don’t want it to further complicate things. I think the best approach would be to reduce the margin of success.
For example:
Being hit on the head while wearing a helmet thus decrease the +2 MoS (margin of success) to +1 and the type of wound you’re getting. I think that’s simple and straightforward enough.
Now the question is, how can I integrate the heart in all this? In the description I’ve provided so far, I’ve talked about how combat influences the potential for injury but not how health comes into play.
Any ideas?
_________________________________________________________________________________
Another option is to drop regular die and use special die instead:
Big Crown: Critical Success
Two small crowns: success
two small skulls: minor failure
One big skull: major failure
Maybe I could play around with that concept.
Every time you attack a die is rolled to determine where you end up hitting 6: head 4-5: body 3: left arm 2: right arm 1: legs. This would be displayed as a special die.
Then you roll a number of dice represented by the combat ability of a character. In other words, a combat 3 means you roll 3 dice, a combat of 2 means you roll 2.
The highest roll is selected. So for example, with a combat 3, you’d roll 3 dice: 2, 4, 5; 5 being is highest roll. If you opponent has a combat of 2: 1,3: 3 would be the highest roll. This is pretty much the same as in the board game Risk for those who are familiar. This means that lower skilled character still stand a chance against tougher fighters.
Then you compare if you succeed or fail in your attack. If we keep the example above:
Player A: 5 vs Player B: 3. This means player A succeeds at +2.
Now let’s take another example:
Player A: 3 vs Player B: 5. The player misses at -2. (the enemy dodges the attack).
+2 or -2 is what I’d call the margin of success. The higher the margin of success, the more potential for injury. On the other hand, a lower margin of success means missing of even worse, a counter attack from your opponent. Not that this takes place in a typical turn-based combat: A takes his turn then B takes his turn etc…
How about this:
Different weapons are affected differently by the margin of success.
Dagger:
+1, +2: Graze
+3, +4: Light injury
+5: Serious injury
VS
2-handed battle axe:
0: Graze
+1, +2: light injury
+3, +4, +5: Serious injury
This would keep different stats for different weapons relevant. Not that weapons would simply cause different damage but that’d be one difference from one weapon to another.
This leaves armor and how it affects gameplay. While I do want armor in the game, I don’t want it to further complicate things. I think the best approach would be to reduce the margin of success.
For example:
Being hit on the head while wearing a helmet thus decrease the +2 MoS (margin of success) to +1 and the type of wound you’re getting. I think that’s simple and straightforward enough.
Now the question is, how can I integrate the heart in all this? In the description I’ve provided so far, I’ve talked about how combat influences the potential for injury but not how health comes into play.
Any ideas?
_________________________________________________________________________________
Another option is to drop regular die and use special die instead:
Big Crown: Critical Success
Two small crowns: success
two small skulls: minor failure
One big skull: major failure
Maybe I could play around with that concept.
Pages:
1
