03-02-2021, 06:23 AM | #81 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
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On the other hand, if the PCs do decide to get into a fight, there is always risk. A PC may be killed outright; or they may endure permanent crippling; or they may fail a Fright Check and be left psychologically impaired. The willingness to take a chance of these things happening is, among other things, a source of drama; it asks the players, "Does your character care enough about X to risk permanent impairment?" It's the "skin in the game" that puts tension in an RPG. And on the other other hand, you don't need "genocide level" for this. Quite a small chance of permanent consequences can still provide that underlying tension.
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03-02-2021, 07:19 AM | #82 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
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Sure, in each of those cases, the GM is making a decision to have the NPC behave in this manner, but it's not as part of some railroad plot - it's simply a case of "What would this character do in this situation?" And, of course, the opposite situations could occur - a PC (even a heroic one) might take an enemy hostage to escape a bad situation, force enemies out of hiding, etc. If the game system lacks any means by which the PC could make good on his threat, the player may opt not to even try, reducing his options ("Hmmm... Realistically, I could grab the Black Prince and put a dagger to his throat, and his father should call off his guards and let me go free. But seeing as the Prince is at least a 10th level fighter and I only have a 1d4/x2 dagger, it would take me something like a dozen critical hits to even get him to 0 HP, so that's not going to work. Guess I'll just run for it?"), and I prefer characters to have a lot of options on how to deal with something whenever possible. Quote:
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03-02-2021, 08:25 AM | #83 | ||
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Rome, Italy
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
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In many D&D (and many Videogames) instead "fight" is the only possible activity and murder = XP. It's unnerving (and quite troubling) how one of the most heinous act possible is converted in just a token for power grow. I personally find this not only plain WRONG but also extremely boring. And Hit Points are just the embodiment of this process, in some Pathfinder games I joined they were, at best, a time optimization resource: "we cannot withstand another round so we need to thin the baddies ranks" more often than that they were just a way to sort the marching order and/or the engagement distance. I understand who wants to play a tactical skirmish game but, frankly, it's not my cup of tea: I prefer to play a game where every choice (even combat ones) have interesting effects more than a random "roll dices and subtract numbers until you run out" game.
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03-02-2021, 08:30 AM | #84 | |
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Cambridge, MA
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
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Or do you think this rule exists to handle a different scenario than the one described? |
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03-02-2021, 12:34 PM | #85 | ||||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
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03-02-2021, 03:24 PM | #86 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
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And milestone progression completely detaches character progression from kills while also making play simpler. Even if you use the regular progression, the rules suggest giving XP for non-combat encounters at the same rate as combat encounters, assuming they have some risk of consequences for failure. |
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03-03-2021, 09:36 AM | #87 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
In 3.x, I believe that using a lethal weapon for subdual damage was a -4 to hit. You could get around this a couple ways - fighting unarmed (which was always subdual, but had low damage and provoked Attacks of Opportunity), or specifically using non-lethal weapons like saps or magical weapons with the Merciful modifier. Monks and Rogues were in the best shape here - the former because they had markedly improved unarmed damage (that didn't provoke AoO's), the latter because a Sneak Attack (doable simply by flanking most foes) with a non-lethal weapon also did subdual damage. Using non-lethal weapons was often a bad idea, however - many enemies were immune to subdual damage (so you'd need two weapons), at later levels you're fairly dependent on having magical weapons, and having two magical weapons (one lethal, one non-lethal) generally meant neither was as good as having just one (as you had to split your funds between them). Of course, there was one funny quirk to the way subdual damage worked - you could simply strike the foe (at -4) with subdual damage until you'd dealt enough to equal or exceed the maximum your weapon could deal (typically doable in 2 hits, and almost certainly within 3, if you're willing to risk an unlucky high-damage crit at exactly the wrong moment killing the target), then switch to fully-lethal damage, as there was no risk of dropping the target below 0 HP before they fell unconscious from having subdual damage equal to their HP. This could make capture missions look really weird, as the heroes pull their punches in the beginning but then go all-out once they've landed a few stunning hits.
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03-03-2021, 03:34 PM | #88 | ||||
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
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The ideal would be to have a stat-based way (derived from how much damage you can do and how much damage it takes to kill a foe) that allows us to measure when to apply lethality handwaving. 4e abandoning 3e damage amounts required for decapitation because that's too lethal makes me think they don't want this idea used too broadly, as in to be considered obviously lethal in 4e an attack ought to at minimum do more damage than the generic 3e decapitation thresholds, or else why abandon them? Quote:
It sounds like your advice is to ignore this rule, not to "follow the rules," which is fine of course, no one has to use every rule in the books. Quote:
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/faq/FAQ4-3.html#SS3.4.5.4 Quote:
If the neck takes full hit point damage from an edged weapon, a successful HT roll is necessary to avoid decapitation!Not sure about the "automatic" part, maybe that got introduced elsewhere? If we don't even have "full HP to neck chance of auto death" rules anymore in 4e, then the "obviously lethal" rules in 4e must be intended to be even more extreme. I'd estimate perhaps 2xHP in a single hit, given the Extra Head formula. Even then, I think it's feasible to treat decapitation via means other than insta-death. You'd immediately suffocate (FP loss 1/second) and be Mute, and suffer Quadriplegic and make a HT check to avoid Stun (it's a Major Wound) and whatever HP is left, you're beeding out (HP loss 1/30 seconds?) maybe if you're a mage you can still get off a no-ritual spell in 1 or 2 seconds before losing consciousness? In the case of decapitation, if we were going to actually crunch the numbers, I think since this fulfills two "1 per 30" situations on MA138 (both "dismemberment" and "neck") we ought to at least make that as frequent as 1 hit point per 15 seconds. Basic Set decapitation handwaives seem possibly outdated as of Martial Arts introducing the spine location though. I can buy DR 100 (Spine -80%) [100] because I want it to be really hard to attach my spinal cord, and severing the spinal cord is an inherent aspect of decapitation. Spine takes >HP to cripple (11 injury for 10 HP, which requires 8 penetrating damage using cutting 1.5 multiplier boosting it to 12... which requires 11 basic damage due to spine having DR 3) and you need twice the pre-limit injury to destroy body parts (22 injury for 10 HP... requiring 15 penetrating damage) which takes 18 basic damage to do. 11 to cripple spine (22 to destroy w/ 15 basic cutting) is not only beyond 3e's full HP req to potentially decapitate, but even beyond the Extra Head formula of 2xhp/#ofheads 12 injury isn't quite |
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03-04-2021, 02:44 AM | #89 | |
Join Date: Apr 2013
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
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03-04-2021, 07:50 AM | #90 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Kentucky, USA
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Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?
Indeed. Fiction tends to treat the neck likes its made out of Styrofoam when decapitation happens. In reality it's more like trying to cut through a 4x4, there's a reason the head and neck are braced when going for that execution style. Even then, executioners sometimes had to hit the neck 3 or 4 times to sever the head, and that's a helpless, unmoving target!
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