Some HP fun, based on discussion of the same at our game on Sunday.
Vryce has HP 30. That's 3x as much as a normal human. This is totally unrealistic, especially as it only comes with positive mass effects. DF falling damage is standardized, for example, and we don't double it when your HP are 20 or triple it at 30. That may or may not be the intention, but either way, I like HP as pure upside. So HP 30 is pure upside. What's it do for Vryce?
- He heals 3x as much. A $120 Minor Healing potion heals 3-18 HP. A $350 Gem of Healing heals a straight 8 HP, which means 24 HP of healing. The weakest Minor Healing spell heals him 3 points. The best Major Healing spell available (A PI 6 Major Healing) would heal him 36 HP.
- His HP are so high, he's at half Move and Dodge at HP 9 or less (Less than HP/3). A slightly weak human has HP 9. However, Vryce at HP 9 still has 158 HP to go without hitting automatic death, that 9 HP human has 53.
- In a single blow, it takes 16+ HP to cripple Vryce's arms or legs. It takes 11+ HP to cripple a hand or foot, and 4+ to cripple an eye.
- It takes 180 HP to kill him automatically. This would take, say, a 47 HP of damage strike to his unarmored skull. 47 HP of damage to the torso would force a 10 HP fighter to make 3 death checks.
- He makes his first death check after 60 HP of injury. 60 HP of injury is automatic death for a 10 HP character.
This wasn't cheap - Vryce has 100 points in ST and a further 20 points in HP. So, 120 points, which is more costly than Unkillable 2 and only 30 points less than Supernatural Durability. But it's made him almost a comic book hero version of a delver.
Yet for all of that, he's only alive because of a plethora of defensive abilities, armor, and careful deployment, augmented by lots and lots of healing and magical defenses and offensive buffs to keep him on par with his foes. The threat of instant incapacitation or quickly accumulating fatal damage is quite real. Good stuff.
Do you ever feel like it's tough to make encounters that can threaten him but not leave the rest of the party as grease stains? I've been running GURPS for a long time ('92) and that's still the most difficult bit. A baddie who can just barely hurt Mr. DR 17 Knight can outright kill a HP 9 Mage if he connects.
ReplyDeleteI struggle with this exact same thing from time to time. Thoughts?
Delete"Do you ever feel like it's tough to make encounters that can threaten him but not leave the rest of the party as grease stains? "
DeleteI basically don't care if something that can threaten the knight can kill the party mage outright. That's not really my problem. Especially because magic provides so many ways to totally avoid injury, death, or harm. I also don't really mind the opposite - things that can threaten everyone but not even worry the knight a little bit. Then the problem is reversed - how does the high-DR, high-HP knight prevent the others from getting waxed even though he's totally safe.
Short version? I put out threats and see what happens to whom.
That's the way I'm leaning nowadays, to be honest. It's become more fun for me to throw crap at the players and see how they can survive it than it is to spend time worrying about balance.
DeleteIt can be a little hard to let go, but once you do, it is a lot of fun.
DeleteThe extra healing isn't a plus, but q necessity. Without it, it would take three times as long for him to heal up. In GURPS, sometimes conditions will linger until you get back to full HP, which adds to the usual problems of being down HP.
ReplyDeleteThis is an even bigger corundum in D&D.
Thats a good point, a Vryce running around with 0 HP because his healing is so slow is not quite the same thing.
DeleteIt's true - if healing didn't triple, it would cost so much to heal him his HP would be a severe drag on the party resources.
DeleteI like high Hit Points. I think they sort of abstractly represent the heroic powers of the PC. A true hero is very hard to kill thus high Hit Points make sense to me.
ReplyDeleteI agree. For DF, it totally fits the genre - guys who shrug off dragon breath from sheer heroicness are what fantasy is at least partly about.
DeleteBruno's iconic minotaur barbarian berserker had 30 hit points for much of his career, and usually ran around with Luck on and a Blessing spell to avoid the worst stuff. He was the terror of the battlefield, and was often set on fire, hamstrung, or blinded in one eye in mostly vain attempts to disable him. It really does take an enormous amount of damage to cripple someone with 30 HP and an insane amount of armor.
ReplyDeleteI think the only time he was defeated in a straight up fight when he was blinded in both eyes, such that he couldn't see his opponent, dropped out of berserk, failed his next HT check, and fell unconscious. Bruno was pretty pleased about the outcome, being at something like -143 HP and "one decent hit away from the HT check where you're not allowed to roll the dice."
HP 30 is scary stuff. But it does make an interesting contrast between the squishy wizard and the nigh-unstoppable barbarian or knight.
What's really scary is that while ST 20, HP 30 tops out a human knight, a human Barbarian can go as high as ST 25, HP 50, with the Mountain of Meat perk. Non-humans can exceed even that. HP 50 is well into "medium sized dragon" territory in my games.
Delete