[Powers] HP and Abilities

[scc]

OK, is it a good idea to include in Power Abilities that grant extra HP?

Either directly (The ability grants extra HP with PM discount) or indirectly (Ability grants extra ST that includes ST)?

Temporarily or permament Abilities? And what about cases where the Power is subject Countermeasures or other methods of taking it away from you?

[dfinlay]

It it fits the concept, sure. If not, then no. As for how it works in terms of recovery when the ability can be suppressed or is temporary, it is clearly not legit to put a limitation on your HP (such as Not underwater -10%) in order to be able to dunk underwater, come back up and have the HP healed. As, such, temporary HP clearly shouldn't always be at full HP when turned on. This leaves two approaches that seem reasonable to me:

1) The HP only heals when the ability is turned on. After all, you can't heal HP you don't have. When the ability is turned off, your HP is frozen at its current level until it turns on. This method requires Regeneration for short term (less than a day) temporary HP. This also leaves the question of which heals first. If you only have a narrow window to heal with the ability on and then will rest without it for a while, you may want the limited HP to heal first. If you might fight soon with the ability suppressed, you want it to be your non-limited HP that heals. So, does the player get to choose or is it always one or the other?

2) You can heal the limited HP even if the Power isn't working. The same question about which heals first applies, but now it is clear that the Player wants his normal HP to heal first.

In the past, I have used both versions to model abilities: The first on a power with a Magic PM so that the HP didn't heal in No Mana Zones (which were fairly common in setting as there were items that could generate them) and the second on an ability with Costs FP. I'm not sure which is more fair or if there is a RAW ruling, but both seemed to work without problems.

Note: An interesting variant on this problem I've thought some about is Modular Abilities. For the same reason, setting a MA to HP, switching to something else and back again clearly shouldn't refill the HP to full. But then what about variants? What if you switch it from HP to VR to VR (crushing damage only) to HP (costs FP) to Ablative DR? Should using up HP from your MA drain other similar things the MA can be used for? Should it drain any possible consumable resource it can be used for (ie. should you be able to switch to HP, lose it all, then switch to FP and use it all)? Should the MA maybe be locked in place until the resource is full again? Same questions also apply for AA. Here, I'm really not sure.

[Nereidalbel]

Temporary HP is better represented by Ablative DR. However, any time Max HP becomes a variable, the most playable method is to keep yourself at proportional injury.

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Temporary HP is better represented by Ablative DR. However, any time Max HP becomes a variable, the most playable method is to keep yourself at proportional injury.

Actually, Vitality Reserve (http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...29&postcount=8) is probably better than Ablative DR for this, but it really depends on what you're trying to model. Sometimes you really want it to be HP, because HP works differently. Max HP is used to determine your negative thresholds and to determine what counts as a major wound and so on. Sometimes, it's exactly what the Power should grant.

Besides, the issues I talked about above still come into play with Ablative DR and with VR. As for keeping proportional injury, that's not a bad idea for HP, but it actually doesn't work to solve the issue in the case of Ablative DR or VR.

I've actually decided to spin my question about Modular Abilites and Alternate Abilities off into its own thread.

[weby]

If it is ok or not depends on your game and style. Basically how many hitpoints you are allowing to

Basically with hp has many effects beyond the other alternatives. It affects things like healing multiple, collision damage and such. It also affects how far below 0 hitpoints you can go before dying.
Fully ablative armor gives funny effects when you have armor piercing or badly armor piercing weapons.
Vitality reserve(VR) is in many ways the easiest to balance. They do not affect anything else except soak incoming damage and once they are gone they are gone until recovered/healed.

I have allowed both HP and VR as power in my games.

For hit points I have always used "damage is constant", thus if you have 10 hp and the have extra 10 hit points for a minute from some power and then take 12 points damage that takes you to 8 points, you will at end of the minute when the extras go away go to -2 HP. If you had taken say two such hits for 24 points total you would then need to roll a death roll when the extra HP go away.