   RPG hit points that aren't hits
  Hit points. Everyone likes to complain about them, but they're just too damn useful. People with one hit point acting as healthy as people with a million hit points sounds weird, but degrading your stats and performance as you take damage creates a positive feedback loop where you basically can't make a comeback as soon as you're hit once. Body part systems are compelling, but they don't completely solve the problem of the ridiculous number of hits you can take. Body parts take us from "get stabbed a million times and live" to "get stabbed in the chest/leg/whatever a million times and live." All of these systems ignore the fact that most weapons are designed to kill you will kill you in one or two hits. I think I've heard people suggest we keep hit points low and hope dodging takes care of it. But if we only use the standard percentage-chance-to-hit mechanic for dodging, then we might as well have "flip a coin; heads = you die." If you're still not convinced, read this article.The context: I'm trying to develop a turn-based cRPG with a single protagonist that can expect to fight lots of monsters. The combat style will be heroic fantasy: I do not want to simulate reality, I want to simulate our favourite action movies and cartoons. If stats are in the 5-15 range, my game should look like the Lord of the Rings movies. If stats are in the hundreds to thousands range, my game should look like Dragon Ball Z. I'm also against to-hit chances; all attacks will always hit. I actually thought of having attacks do constant damage and getting rid of other random elements; my system would be "diceless." I hoped this would encourage tactical play and discourage players from reloading their save a million times until they get a good roll. Plus, I figure the lack of dice worked out well for Chess and Go.Hit points are your general ability to survive combat and not your measure of physical injury or lack thereof. When a goblin swings his sword for X damage at you, that X damage is how hard it was for you to avoid getting truly hit. The damage may have been a scratch, or it may have been you dodging, blocking, or parrying. Lots of people have said on these forums that this was what hit points were meant to represent in original Dungeons and Dragons. My aim is to make this representation more obvious.To start, I guess I'll rename hit points to Stamina, though that's been done before. Anyway, Stamina would be a percentage; character statistics and equipment would increase/decrease damage percentages done for an attack. Damage is something I can't come up with a better name for. I also want to get rid of healing items (lost Stamina doesn't really represent injuries to heal). Instead, Stamina would regenerate in such a way that you'd have enough Stamina to handle a handful of monsters and it would be full in time for the next fight. The only things that would be problematic, if I strictly stick with the "most attacks are evaded" metaphor, are magic and area-of-effect attacks. If a character is caught in a fireball, how do I explain the allegedly non-fatal damage he took?Anyway, I've tweaked the Stamina bar itself. Now I want to design the character and equipment stats, as well as the general combat mechanics, to better reflect what Stamina means. I want just enough character stats to describe a variety of characters that are equal but play differently enough to justify multiple playthroughs (this is the extent of my game's "role playing"). I also want to balance this system for characters that don't use weapons or armour for the benefit of players who want to play a martial artist or a barbarian with nothing but an axe and a loincloth (not to mention all the wild beasts you'll meet in the countryside and dungeons).Unfortunately, I'm sort of drawing a blank. I get the feeling that the stats in most RPGs assume each attack is actually connecting, and I want to get away from that. That makes this design daunting though, since I can't just copy and past the stats of my favourite existing RPG.   
  I believe it is a weakness of turn-based combat in general.In a real fight, you either get hit or you don't. Not getting hit by the attack is sometimes due to skill, and other times due to true randomness. Let me give you an example: you are walking through the woods and are suddenly attacked by an archer. The archer shoots at you. Three things can happen:1) By random chance, or by lack of skill on the archer's part,  the archer misses you.2)By skill, you duck out of the way or take the arrow to an upraised shield.3)You fail to dodge the arrow, and it hits you, either killing you or injuring you. Randomness or skill on the archer's part affects how much you are hurt.The problem with turn-based combat, is that it takes the SKILL out of AVOIDING an attack. During the enemy's turn, you are entirely at the mercy of the enemy. Your only hope of survival is randomness, or an arbitrary constant applied by the programmer to your character. You are static. To me, your representation of HP as the likelihood that you survive an attack makes very little sense. Why should your ability to avoid damage decrease  over time? Why should you be lighting quick in the first rounds and then suddenly fall dead to a blow near the end?My preference: avoid turn-based combat altogether. If you must, make attacks take so long that they occur in turns, but don't take control away from the player during combat. Allow the player to block, dodge, or parry at will. You could make a sort of hybrid between turn-based and real-time combat by forcing each player to attack when it is "their turn," but allowing them to move about and block at will.   ;  Lately I've been thinking about a hit point model sort of in analogy to exercise.  If you go and exercise really vigorously, you eventually get to the point where you are tired and have to rest.  Usually, if you rest for a few minutes you will be ready to exercise again, but you won't be able to do it as much.  Similarly, if someone punches you in the arm, it will hurt a lot for a short period of time, but that will fade.  The bruise that is left might not fade for a few days though.So my thought is to have two stats, stamina and max stamina.  Each time you are attacked the stamina goes down a lot -- this represents the exertion from dodging, etc.  Max stamina goes down a little to represent the actual amount of damage taken.  If stamina gets to zero, then max stamina starts going down a lot for each time you're attacked, this represents the point where you are too tired to capably dodge.  After combat, the stamina regenerates fairly quickly, but max stamina slowly or not at all.  Area of effect attacks like magic would more directly affect max stamina making them much more dangerous than regular attacks that can be dodged.   ;  Re: Guy MehHi, I think that you could summarize what you said like this:What you want:D0) The game is Turn-based.D1) You want most injury to be fatal.D2) You want the character to evade attacks most of the time in an automatic, but deterministic mannerA possible design:R1) The character has 1 HP.R2) A character that has 0 HP is dead.R3) The character has a dodge meter. Everytime the character is attacked, the value of the dodge meter is deducted depending the situation.R4) When the dodge meter value is 0, the character cannot dodgeR5) The dodge meter is recharged at the end of a turn depending on stance of the characterR6) The character can cast 1 magic barrier each turn that blocks magical attacks.R7) A magical attacks destroys all non-affiliated barriers until it reaches a barrier that counters its affinity.R8) The character could cast new barrier between any barrier layer.R9) The enemy may see when you cast a barrier, but they might not know what barrier it is or in which layer it is cast.Meaning of R7:Suppose your character has this magic barrier chain, from the innermost to the outermost:Fire - Fire - Water - Lightning - Ice - Dark - Fire - Fire - DarkSuppose the monster attacks with a fireball. If the attack could be dodged the player could choose to just dodge it without. Otherwise, the fireball will destroy the Dark barrier but is blocked by the Fire barrier. So after the attack, the player has these barriers left: Fire - Fire - Water - Lightning - Ice - Dark - FireIf the enemy is a wizard that could cast any type of magic, theoretically, the wizard would cast an Earth spell, because you have no Earth barrier at all. The spell would rip through all barriers. If you were to cast an Earth barrier, you could cast it in any layer you want. The following are additional rules that are not critically interrelated. Module 1: Premediated Melee ReactionsThis is similar to the magic barrier system that allows the character to stock melee moves to neutralize physical attacks without using dodge points: Block(Shield), Parry, Couter-attack, etc. Suppose the character has this chain:Block(Sword) - Parry - Counter-attackAnd the enemy uses an attack that could be parried, then the attack will be neutralized at the second layer. The character would be left with:Block(Sword)If another enemy attacks with a Counter-able, but unblockable strike during the same round, the character would dodge in expense of the dodge meter. If a third enemy attacks with a blockable strike, the character will block it. Module 2: Magical attack dependency on barrierWhen a character casts an attack spell, the outermost magical barrier must be the same affinity of the spell. So if a character is casting a Dark attack spell, it is given that their outermost barrier must be a Dark barrier. Module 3: High level magical AttackA high level magical attack requires expelling the outermost barriers of the require affinity. For example, suppose FireStorm requires Wind-Fire-Fire, then to cast this spell, the caster's outermost barriers must be Fire, Fire, and Wind. When the spell is cast those three layers are consumed to fuel the spell. Magical attack spells that cannot be dodged are high level attacks. Normal magical attacks can be dodged.Module 4: Melee attack with Magical ForceA melee attack can be enhanced with magical force by expelling the outermost barrier during the attack. Magically enhanced attack could have the property to neutralize barriers or to make the attack unblockable, unparriable, or uncounterable. Normal melee attacks can be dealt with in more than one way. Other effects of normal melee attacks include knocking the enemy off balance thus affect the stance and the dodge meter of next turn. Module 5: High Power Magical AttacksHigh power magical attacks requires multiple barriers to block. A Dark II spell will destroy a Dark barrier but reduces to be a Dark spell, which can be blocked by another Dark barrier. So a Dark II spell will neutral two Dark barriers.   ;Quote:Original post by Guy MehBody part systems are compelling, but they don't completely solve the problem of the ridiculous number of hits you can take.It's only ridiculous if the player thinks its ridiculous. My solution is to start the player off as normal as any real human, where 1-3 hits will kill them. Then give them the POTENTIAL to change that. Shields, dermal armor, cyberware, regenerative nano-bots, etc. Make the player believe they are responsible for earning and accepting their abilities, rather than just accepting your hard coded player character design.   ;  Hit points being unrealistic is why I like games that move toward the idea that a few hits = dead.  Then again, I like realism.  This is also why I intend to make my next game like this, even though the protagonist is intended to do pretty much nothing but fight.  I intend to put defense in the player's hands completely, removing the flip a coin effect of death.  If you're good, you'll live.  But, it's not really geared for casual gamers...Anyway, if you just want to make it more obvious what hit points do, you could take the approach that the Star Wars D20 role playing game did for one of its editions.  Characters have wound points and vitality points.  Vitality points increase with levels and represent the ability to roll with hits and turn them into glancing blows.  Wound points represent physical injury, and don't increase with levels.  Damage is taken from vitality points first, then from wound points when vitality is 0.  Some effects bypass one or the other though, critical hits going straight to wound points, poison causing constitution damage (which reduces both effects but wound points more obviously), force powers drain vitality points, and similar effects.It gives the impression of combat still being dangerous, a good hit can get past your vitality and possibly kill even the most experienced fighter, but it's unlikely.  In the Star Wars role playing game, armor only helped for wound point damage, which is probably one of the reasons they scrapped the system in the next edition and went back to straight HP.  It probably wouldn't be devastating to believability or balance if armor affected both statistics (it makes it easier to turn a hit into a glancing one, after all).Just food for thought, changing the name of the HP and adding a little flair like that can actually go a decent way toward restoring a little belief in a character's durability.   ;  Surprisingly watching Star Trek gave me an idea. Ships have shields that deflect incoming fire, yet some damage is done to the hull of the ship regardless. As the shields receive more damage their energy depletes and more more damage is done to the hull with each hit until the shields are depleted and and the hull is comprimised to the point where it can no longer stay together and the ship can now take damage to vital systems that will annhilate it. However if the ship somehow survives the encounter repairs can be made and energy restored to the shields.A similar system could be implemented for your character. As your character receives hits his defensive stats start to degrade, so more hits from the same type of attack would hurt him for more each time. It would simulate things like the armor he's wearing taking damage, then his body taking damage. As more damage is done to these there becomes the more likelyhood that a blow could do serious damage to a critcal internal organ such a lung, artery, heart, brain, these organs would be represented by the character's HP. Cumulative damage to these organs would kill a person even if the organs aren't destroyed. So HP becomes sort of a cumative damage threshold to critical organs, when it depletes to 0 it means there's been too much damage to one or all of them to sustain the body. Things like adrenalin rushes could be implemented so even if the character's defenses are low, there's a chance he'll simply ignore the damage done to HP until after the fight when his body has had time to partially heal.A system like this would give you a bit more of a tactical feel, a character knows when he starts out with full HP, a healthy body and his armor is in tip top shape he's more likely to survive hits. But has his armor is damaged and his body becomes more damaged when he takes a hit it will do more damage to his vital organs/HP. So even if he goes into a fight with full HP, if his body and armor are in bad condition he could still end up getting killed really quick if he doesn't play smart.   ;Quote:degrading your stats and performance as you take damage creates a positive feedback loop where you basically can't make a comeback as soon as you're hit onceWhile your body should be weaker, your mind could potentially be stronger in a way.Being hit increases adrenalin, rage, etc.   ;  You could ahve 2 statsHealthandStaminaHealth determines how much damage your body can take.Stamina determines hard you can push your body.Whenever you would take a "hit" some of the "damage" (actually "Drain" is a better word) is done to your Health and some is done to your Stamina. This represents you either making an extreme effort to avoid a lethal hit (say taking it on the arm instead of the chest, or leaping out of the way and straining something). The amount is determined by your character's defense stat/roll/equipment/stance/or whatever.If an attack misses, then it will only take a little bit of Stamina Drain (or none at all) and no Health Drain.If no Stamina is left, the Drain is applied to Health.Taking actions (making attacks, etc) will also Drain Stamina. And if you have no Stamina left, then it will start to Drain your Health.Stamina will quickly recover (eg: around 10% each round - but playtesting would be a better determiner of the right balance), but Health will only recover slowly. The character can also take actions to recover their Stamina quicker than this base. This makes a fight where you don't take much Health Drain an easy fight, but one where you take Health Drain a dangerous fight.Health would remain fairly low, probably not changing much from a starting character to a high level character, but Stamina would increase significantly.In this system, combat can still be quite lethal for a high level character as attack that deal Health damage will still be a threat no matter how much Stamina they have. However, a character with a high Stamina would likely last longer in combat due to action/equipment that would allow more damage to be done to Stamina than Health and having more Stamina to soak up that damage.As an example:If there were two character both wearing a good armour (like Plate armour), then both would have the same capacity to absorb damage as Drains to Stamina. However, if one was a low level, then they would not have much Stamina and this would quickly get depleted and further damage, despite the Armour's ability to allow Stamina to soak it, would be transferred onto the character's Health instead.However, if even the high Stamina character encountered an enemy or situation that could bypass that armour's ability to allow Stamina to soak the damage (say falling boulders), then both characters would have a similar risk.   ;  I'm not sure I like the systems with two hit point bars, one meaning defence and the other meaning real health. If we assume damage means "this axe is slicing into your flesh," and consider the amount of "damage" that most weapons of war do in real combat situations, any attack to your "vitality" would drop it to pretty much zero. So you still effectively die after one hit without dodging, so there's no real point to having the vitality bar in addition to the stamina bar. The only place I see a use for the vitality bar is in handling unarmed attacks (punches won't really kill you right away, I guess) or handling large monsters (I'm sure Godzilla can take a few whacks with a halberd). I might just abstract those cases away into Stamina though.I do not intend to get rid of hit points. I do not intend on making combat more "lethal" than the combat of your typical commercial RPG. I just want to make the representation a little clearer. I could even do this solely through the animation. When you hit a monster in most RPGs, your attack passes through the monster and takes X damage. I can change it so that when you hit the monster, he blocks your attack or he jumps out of the way...actions represented by X damage. It's the same mechanic, but now it has a better presentation.Presentation isn't good enough for me though; I want the mechanics themselves (how Strength or Agility or Constitution are used if I use those stats, how damage is calculated, how armour works, etc.) to indicate that hit points (Stamina) are an abstraction of how long you can duck, parry, and do other evasive maneuvers. Some of the Stamina could represent your character being able to absorb a direct hit, but that would only truly apply to really strong/tough characters or characters with lots of armour. Stamina would be all dodging for weak but nimble characters, since that's technically all they have (where, if they're really nimble, they'd have as much Stamina as the tough characters, but should feel different gameplay-wise).P.S. Edtharan's "drain" as a new name for "damage" is interesting, but I'm not sure how well it sticks with me. This is completely arbitrary, but it just doesn't have the same ring to it. :P   