Translating the concept of HP from D&D (and the like) to GURPS

[Plane]

Originally Posted by maximara

One thing to look at is what D&D HP represents in terms of GURPS and for that the older versions are slightly more help then the newer ones. "Thus, the majority of hit paints are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces" (PHB1 pg 34)

Heck, the PHB1 flat out stated just how absurd viewing HP as actual physical damage was: "Let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total of 85 hit points. This IS the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment. The some holds true to a lesser extent for clerics, thieves, and the other classes."

It wouldn't be ridiculous if you were blaming 'magical forces', giving humans more constitution with experience than they would have IRL.

If you're blaming combat skill and luck, then how exactly does "healing" work? Plus: how would combat skill come in to play with EVERY type of damage?

If the only thing left to blame is luck: why increase HP at all? Why not just have a "luck divisor" applied to damage against higher level characters?

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Plane

It wouldn't be ridiculous if you were blaming 'magical forces', giving humans more constitution with experience than they would have IRL.

If you're blaming combat skill and luck, then how exactly does "healing" work? Plus: how would combat skill come in to play with EVERY type of damage?

If the only thing left to blame is luck: why increase HP at all? Why not just have a "luck divisor" applied to damage against higher level characters?

Yeah, even though they try to handwave it in the rules, for all intents and purposes, D&D HP does directly increase resistance to injury. High level characters can walk off hundred-foot falls and survive immersion in lava. There's no way to explain that away as luck or skill.

[AlexanderHowl]

Actually, falling damage increases with HP, so HP would not allow for greater fall survivability.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Actually, falling damage increases with HP, so HP would not allow for greater fall survivability.

Since when? My most recent knowledge is 3.5e and Pathfinder, and I don't remember that being a thing in either of those two.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Plane

It wouldn't be ridiculous if you were blaming 'magical forces', giving humans more constitution with experience than they would have IRL.

If you're blaming combat skill and luck, then how exactly does "healing" work? Plus: how would combat skill come in to play with EVERY type of damage?

If the only thing left to blame is luck: why increase HP at all? Why not just have a "luck divisor" applied to damage against higher level characters?

Remember how D&D came out - as an adaptation of a miniature wargame. So many of these were pulled from the miniature rules (most of the spells reflect this if you really look at them).

Also the PHB1 is even more direct: "These hit points represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors."

The skill part would cover things like block and parry. Also even now a D&D combat round is six times as long as a GURPS one which so tanks everybody's skill it isn't funny.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

Since when? My most recent knowledge is 3.5e and Pathfinder, and I don't remember that being a thing in either of those two.

Think he was referring to GURPS falling damage.

On the original subject: yes, characters don't automatically become more durable as they gain combat skill (though of course you can buy HP or IT(DR)), instead becoming harder to hit, but they also don't particularly scale their damage up.

I would be careful about simply making characters more durable, though; GURPS has somewhat slow hit resolution and low hit probabilities, so making it require multiple hits to drop someone could turn combat into a slog.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

Since when? My most recent knowledge is 3.5e and Pathfinder, and I don't remember that being a thing in either of those two.

awesome is talking about how GURPS does falling damage.

"An object in a collision inflicts dice of crushing damage equal to (HP x velocity)/100" where (for the quick calculation), velocity = square root of (21.4 x g x distance fallen in yards) with g being Earth Gs. (Basic Set 430-431)

[AlexanderHowl]

Yes, if you had two characters (in GURPS) fall 100 yards, they would have a velocity of 47. If the first character had an HP 12 and the above Ablative DR 24, they would suffer 5d+2 damage (an average of 20 points of damage), reducing their Ablative DR to 4 and dealing them 4 points of blunt trauma damage, reducing then to HP 8. If the second character had HP 36, they would 17 dice of damage (an average of 60 points of damage), reducing them to -24 HP.

Of course, HP is much better for some things than Ablative DR (repeated injury, slams, etc.), so the question concerns what is the purpose of the protection. If you want a walking mountain, take HP. If you want someone who survives regardless, take Ablative DR.

[Jareth Valar]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

HP is easy. You just set your "rules switches" to ignore several effects having to do with Death Checks and Unconsciousness*. And then give out more HP.

The more difficult aspect of D&D, which is directly connected to how much HP a Character has, is Levels. Solve how you want to do Levels†, and HP can easily be made to fall in line.




* Also, which edition of D&D do you wish to emulate? "Old School" dead at 0, Unconsciousness is a GM fiat? 3e's Unconscious at 0, dead at -Arbitrary Number? Something between D&D and GURPS (Unhindered at 1+, Possibly Unconscious at 0, Dead at some number ≤ -10)?

† And levels is one of those insanely difficult, "everyone has their own interpretation of how to do it" problems in 'converting' between GURPS and D&D.

If you want to keep an obvious progression you could always increase the max HP percentage by a certain amount based on CP total.

"Baseline" PC's are generally 150 CP with max HP suggested to be an additional 30%. So, keeping that progression you could allow HP Max to improve by an extra 10% per 50 CP?

Still low numbers compared to D&D but...

[Jareth Valar]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Actually, falling damage increases with HP, so HP would not allow for greater fall survivability.

One of the changes we made. Since we use KYOS base HP off of mass not ST. Our HR for Falling damage is it's only calculated on HP gained by mass (base starting HP), not purchased by CP.

Our 260 muscle man has 13 HP base, our 197 lb martial artist has 14 HP but bought an extra 2 HP (12 HP base). For ours the muscle man will have higher damage potential the the martial artist (13 HP base vs 12 HP base)

Makes WAY more sense for our table, but YMMV.