For those of you who just stumbled upon this video over a year later, thanks for watching! I'd also like to share that I play many other ttrpg's besides D&D 5e; The list is quite extensive at this point. I find a particular enjoyment in creating homebrew rules mechanics, especially when they add to the game in a fun and fresh way. Hence the curiosity in what D&D 5e would look like with such changes inspired by Viking Death Squad or Into the Odd. Cheers!
A lot of your content has been randomly recommend in the last 24 hours for me. I've been on a bit of a House DM binge now. I'd love to see some more uploads especially of the longer form content! Keep up the good work stranger!!
@@ezequielfountain662 thanks for sharing that! I’m working on the next one right now! I only have capacity for one video per month because I got a day job but if more people like you keep discovering my content, who knows, you might see me making weekly videos at some point 😉
I run Pathfinder 1e, and I have used a few of these in the past for specific games. They work okay, but they do tend to break down when they interact with certain builds - ie, 'death by many cuts' builds die in games where armor equals DR and evasion builds get ruined in always-hit systems. One variation I encountered in another system, Anima RPG, functioned off of Percentiles. The to hit was a percentile roll and the to dodge was a percentile role. One gets subtracted from the other and any positive that remains is the percent (of a flat damage number) done to the target, meaning that you are usually dealing fractional damage. This represents weapons grazing or doing minor wounds. However, when the attacker rolls high and the defender rolls low, resulting in a high percent, you do a huge amount of damage since the 'base damage' is basically near fatal - because being stabbed with a sword or whatever generally kills people. Anima is a very math heavy game (And a dead system since the creators went out of business), but it created some of the most realistic combat I've ever seen - tons of misses and grazes and then BAM dead when the lucky hit occurs.
When I describe hit points, I am often reminded of a description from a Conan novel that I read many years ago. In the story, Conan is fighting against a supremely skilled swordsman who is armed with a rapier. At one point, the swordsman strikes what would be a mortal wound to any lesser warrior but, due to his incredible reflexes, Conan manages to twist at the last second and the strike grazes across his ribs instead of piercing his heart. It's a painful wound, to be sure, but Conan is tough (and probably pumped on adrenalin, but that detail's not in the original story) so he shrugs it off and keeps fighting. Eventually the swordsman's repeated attacks start to fatigue even Conan and it's clear that soon one of those deadly strikes will land properly... That's hit points to me.
I haven't read that story, but that is exactly correct. It is the only way that hit points rising so rapidly with increasing levels could possibly make any sense.
I like to remedy Hitpoints by making the 'bloodied' effect relevant to roleplay. Characters do not take any physical damage until they are at half HP, the first half of their HP is their armor or weapons absorbing an otherwise successful blow, draining their stamina. Once past half HP, attacks get through the armor but remain small like a cut until the final blow. As a DM I can narratively explain like, "Your sword makes contact with their shoulder and finds purchase, you see a little blood this time as you cut him." and suddenly that player can gauge how well their foe is doing.
Yea i do that, personally I find hp to be a system people enjoy. I don’t think dnd has to be so realistic we strip things like hp down so far, and a lot of realism stuff can be fixed by just the DM describing things differently.
I think that makes the best point about hp and combat and well dnd in general everythings made up and the points don't matter, its all make-believe so any form of engagement is only limited by your creativity.
So what would you do for characters that are wearing minimal armor, like barbarian type clothing? Do you mask the hit as them dodging and then getting progressively more tired?
Both hit points and armor class are abstract concepts. I view hit points in 5E as a form of combat stamina and luck. The characters are dodging and parrying attacks into minor wounds until they run out of hit points when a mortal injury occurs. This helps explain why short and long rests work the way they do. Resting restores stamina. Armor class represents how difficult a character is to injure, not how hard they are to hit. It is a combination of avoiding an attack as well as getting through the armor to cause injury
Good point about stamina. If you are in a sword fight in real life, you wont be able to hit with the same force on your 5th swing that you did on your first. Yet in D&D you can swing swords all day without having to respite.
Exactly. I think this is often a narrative problem, not a system problem. I think the narration problem starts when most people start equating an "attack" with a single swing. A "hit" with a single swing and it all goes downhill from there. One of my many pet peeves with CR and people who are first exposed to the game by that example.
This is exactly the conclusion i came to recently. Big creatures can literally take sword stabs & keep on trucking, but humans can’t, so hit points have to represent running out of fighting spirit, stamina, and luck. However, D&D 5e & PF 2e have waaay too many hit points. Stuff that doesn’t scale, like falling damage, is a joke.
My DM (for AD&D) had the brilliant idea that weapons determine your AC (parrying, keeping distance, etc.), while armor does damage reduction. Prevents people absurdly sleeping in their armor, but allows them to defend themselves while buck naked so long as they can grab a weapon. I love modifications like that.
That's a really interest change for D&D! I like that adds a lot realism to melee fights that feel sort of intuitive? Like, I should be able to fence competently nude, in a rapier duel, right? It would result in a lot of pain, but I should be able to thwart _some_ of the attacks, right? In a system I'm making, my game _also_ has a simple damage-reduction armor system, but for hitting instead of an AC it is just a damage contest (no roll to hit): 1. A melee attacker's success in the contest results in full damage to target. 2. An aware target can make a _Defensive Response_, using a reaction and whatever they're holding in their hands to defend (by rolling a melee weapon's die). On the defender's success, they thwart the incoming attack entirely. 3. On a tie, the attacker inflicts a _Glancing Strike_, dealing half damage. 4. Different weapons use different sized die. ---NOTHING BUT (hopefully enjoyable) RAMBLES. Shields can serve as "whatever they're holding in their hands" and has a die of its own that can be used for a _Defensive Response_, enabling the defender to thwart any attacks after the first, but having to roll the shield's die twice and taking the lowest result until the start of their next turn. (They can eventually spend skill points in improving this as a much later skill.) Some shields have special features, such as: *Defender*. If your _Defensive Response_ results in a value that is 1 less than the attack, it becomes a _Glancing Strike_ as though it tied with the attack. As context, the game I am making is sci-fi and its combat mechanics largely revolve around using ranged weapons, piggybacking off my attempt at a lightweight exposure system, and a Halo-like disposable weapon gameplay loop (using informational, fun weapon cards and dice to track their uses). I love the fantasy of melee weapons in a context they're totally unsuited to, like melee characters in FPSs. I've made it so that melee weapons are more likely to make contact with the enemy and deal fairly strong damage, where ranged weapons are less likely to hit (in typical play, unless targets are totally exposed and not playing to cover). While not meant to perfectly adjacent to be reality, I feel like this makes sense intuitively). To account for this, ranged weapons are extremely deadly and the shields that exist to be used against infantry are best served in melee; at range, most shields offer minimal protection against ballistics and plasma. Thanks for reading, sorry for the tangents. 😅
It's not as corrective as you think. Take a dagger for example, if you strike it wildly at someone in full plate it will never do anything. Yet applied more precisely it can achieve damage, sometimes death. How is a DR system able to deal with this kind of variance? Quite simply it can't. You can try fixing this with crits but this starts to make things messy. See a dagger strike on this "crit" shouldn't always kill, yet for that to occur the DR will have to be low enough the roll variances will allow some strikes to be lethal and some to be non lethal. However, at that point, the DR will be so low that many weapons with more damage than a dagger, who have no right doing damage normally against plate will be doing so without crits.
@@TheAnimeAtheist In your example, I do think plate armor should resist a dagger most of the time. For a precision strike, I would think some kind of special player ability would be needed to pull off a move like that, that can get through the armor.
@@redav99 I think just using an AC to Hit system solves this problem. A high hit value can represent a more precise strike, already. Adding in an ability on top of DR to do something AC to hit already does strikes me as overcomplicating things.
@@TheAnimeAtheist True it might be a bit more complicated, but it also gives a different feel. The main difference being that a special ability could be used intentionally, whereas the AC to Hit system will randomly determine when your hit will land.
When I see videos like this, I always have in mind something an old friend told me once: "D&D is the best roleplay game ever, you just need to change the rules..."
And he doesn't gel with why he thinks the mechanics are weird. Just comes off as catering to his ignorance. It's like because he can't wrap his head around actual combat realities, it must be wrong.
There’s still one issue with HP that hasn’t been addressed which you actually mentioned at the start of the video. Characters on low hp still being able to do what they did at full hp. In my homebrew rules I have AC and HP for each body part. The head has the highest ac but lowest hp. Reducing the head to 0 means death, reducing the torso to 0 means death saves, reducing an arm to 0 means you can’t use that arm (drop shield, no 2nd attack etc) reducing a leg to 0 means your speed is halved. It’s been great for roleplay
This is interesting, but I fear it would create a certain design problem. Characters becoming less powerful over the span of combat creates a design problem called a death spiral. Death spiral means, that once you start losing, the rate at which you are losing accelerates. Additionally, it is a bit undramatic if it works on enemies since it makes them less powerful, which means that the battle becomes less dramatic the further we go in combat. Hit points are not really a design problem, the only problem is how they are contextualized within the game's rules, which I believe is the topic of the video. Having said that, your rules seem more balanced than the usual "I target this body part" systems, but I am still a bit worried.
I think to save the head ache you just explained you should look into Cairns scar system. Basically if you grit is 0 with no flesh would you can hand out a condition. Conditions effect encumbrance usually and in cairn encumbrance is a measure of health and how much item slots you can keep
there's a video game called fear and hunger that uses this exact system actually, it's pretty insane how similar both of your systems are. unless you already know about fear and hunger, in which case fair enough. if not, you should check it out, it's extremely hard to learn everything but satisfying once you make progress
@@mac_sour GURPS has a rule system for that. Individual limbs can be crippled, affecting specific actions. You can even target individual limbs in combat, so you can try to disarm someone, or keep them from running, without necessarily killing them
Interesting concepts, I really like the "armor score" idea. However, finding a way to implement both of these is basically just writing your own d20 rules light system and you can divorce it from D&D almost entirely if you so wish.
I actually had a similar thought. I like the rules but I personally think they would fit better in a different table top. Perhaps even an earlier edition of dnd
Yes, definitely! This feels like the situation I see so often where someone doesn't like the rules of D&D but doesn't want to leave it for some reason. My theory is that D&D is the only ttrpg that any average person would have heard of if at all, so the idea of playing something else might feel like self-alienation or something.
@@taintedmyth0s636, the notion of this video is actually living rent-free in my head and I may write up a d6-based system that plays around with some of the ideas as well as some of my own.
Although interesting, i would just prefer to try other systems. Removing hit points just makes them a smaller pool, with the only added benefit of time saving, which could be achieved by using only the average damage. Your example of the giant sword would still be, as you described, something that your character just survives if he has enough health left. My biggest improvement in my current almost 3-year-old game was to give a Ring of Regeneration to the players. Now we all know that a good hit can and WILL cut your arm off. The second one is VERY problematic, it would mean that a high damage character would quite literally never miss. Sneak attacks can go very high tier2 or 3, as so spells. Or you will make characters with a more supportive role never hit, or the nova paladin, gloomstalker, any rogue or any wizard would be the strongest beings in the universe, removing any challenge for later levels
That second bit has made me realize that I don't think a good amount of class features would work, or would only work somewhat. Sneak Attack, for example, requires you have advantage on a roll unless an ally is within 5 feet of them and you don't have disadvatange... but with no attack rolls, there is no advantage/disadvantage system (which 5e relies a lot on). A barbarian's Reckless Attack would be completely useless and their Rage feature would be much more powerful because of the damage resistances, now that hits are guaranteed. The Shield spell would turn from something that can turn a hit into a miss into making the user do extra math as their Armor Score would momentarily increase. Not to mention the scaling of spells, even cantrips. Any cantrip that scales in damage and is an attack roll (e.g. Fire Bolt) just increases the chance of there being critical hits and exploding dice, even more so if the damage dice is lower (like Acid Splash), making something that's supposed to be a spellcaster's weakest spells into something easily outdamaging martials at higher levels. This is on top of the already powerful spells casters have access to so it would probably widen the spellcaster/martial divide even more.
Having armor as purely damage-reduction would also penalize characters that make more small hits instead of fewer big hits. e.g. monk or lvl20 dex fighter making a lot of attacks which add up, vs. a Zealot barbarian making two big attacks or a rogue making one very big attack. And for spellcasters, it would be a huge buff to attack-roll spells vs. saving-throw spells. Inflict Wounds does very good damage, but nothing if you miss. But now it can't miss. Attack roll cantrips (like chill touch) in standard 5e usually land bit more often than saving throw cantrips (like sacred flame or toll the dead), for typical level-appropriate enemies. But now attack-roll cantrips always hit. Would you remove saves from damage spells? What about things like Psychic Lance where the save for half is also a save against incapacitate. And if you remove saves vs. damage spells, then save-for-half vs. save-for-none is gone, which was part of the balance of spells like Disintegrate which might do nothing, but does a huge amount if it works. I guess for spells like Magic Missile (that automatically do damage, no save possible), armor score wouldn't apply. Also, suddenly Eldritch Blast goes from the best cantrip to worse than Firebolt, even for Warlocks with Agonizing Blast. And Scorching Ray, the default nuke for wildfire druids, becomes terrible. You would need a whole new system with classes and spells balanced around damage reduction instead of AC for this to remotely work. As you say, turning AC into a damage reduction while keeping the rest of 5e the same would just break so much class / spell balance.
@Peter_Cordes in the case of making many small attacks, there's a potential fix. The first damage die you roll for an attack has a chance to crit if it rolls max, in which case you add another of that die. This process can go on indefinitely, but only for that first die. If you roll 3d4, only one of those d4s can crit. Then to improve this further, those light-hitting characters could get bonuses to their critical rolls to allow them to add additional dice if the d4 rolls a 3 or a 4 rather than just a 4. As for spells, that would definitely require a complete overhaul
the removal of damage can get really tricky with factors such as resistances, spells of high level, character level, class abilities, spell diversity, number of attacks and absolute dependency on Constitution score.
Resistances simply add a specific form of "armor" against a specific attack type. Treat it exactly like an extra layer of armor for combat purposes. Immunity, obviously negates that form of damage altogether... to the character. Their armor and weapons would need to be tested against the attack form to see if they could survive the attack type. A character with Immunity to fire damage would be fine in a red dragon's breathe weapon, but armor, weapons and all other equipment might not be so lucky and suddenly that character might find themselves completely naked and penniless against a foe that has other attacks that can still do damage, lol. Resistance would work similarly, though the character would still take some damage from the attack, due to resistance not providing 100% protection. It could make for some very comedic encounters and a change of tactics...
As a spell, let's imagine it's a bubble, so technically it should apply to equipment as well. That's a DM's call, though, so for argument's sake, let say the answer is up to individual DMs, who can make decisions for interpretation of rules and mechanics. Generally, unless the spell says specifically otherwise, it affects the PC(s) and whatever they have on them. If a bubble protects from a certain effect, then it should protect everything/everyone inside of that bubble. I hope this is a satisfactory answer
Removing damage or attack rolls just seems dumb. Damage being removed completely changes all Damaging spells, weapons, abilities, modifiers ect and removing rolls to hit completely fucks with stats, spells, weapons ect just as a basic example it completely ruins the choice between spells like magic missile/witch bolt or fireball/cromatic orb and all together makes spells seem samey
After playing many other RPGs, I like this discussion a lot. There are more realistic combat systems out there (including wound locations, ect). It's always interesting to home brew what makes sense. You should also remember, after receiving a serious wound, you can easily die the next day or 2. Internal hemorrhaging, tissue trauma, and infection are big killers (in the real world).
These both seem like a wonderful ideas to build a new system around (definitely checking out Viking death squad)! Not too jazzed on trying to insert it into 5Es existing system due to the amount of DM work that entails.
I’ve recently tried a variation on this idea that essentially combines both of these. Using current D&D methods you roll your d20 & your damage die, add them together and then if you exceed the target’s AC you do damage equal to however much you exceed their AC. That way you don’t need to change any published numbers in any existing books, but it does seem to feel more organic. It also has the side effect of speeding up combat rounds, and makes combat a bit more lethal as a better hits equate to more damage always.
@@Aleara27 Thats because its a core mechanic. you remove a core and the thing topples like a house of cards. honestly people talk about how much work it is to learn a new system, but at that point you're designing a new system... people are foolhardy
@@Carlphish That also mean that high dommage weapon become incredibly op and unavoidable . Also investing in your hiting stat become way more advantageous since you are buffing the dommage twice
This is an interesting idea for sure, but I feel like you should probably just try out different rpg systems if you're wanting to do this, rather than do the MASSIVE overhaul your proposing for 5e. The Quest RPG system has a pretty similar rule for just 10 hit points. The biggest problem I came up with was that it was super easy for people to go down. It also feels a lot less narratively crunchy to say "you take 2 points of damage" compared to you take "20". The balance would also be pretty hard to fix, and it would make spellcasting pretty much always better --- as they do half damage on a success. So it would mean that all save spells would do minimum one damage (unless they did nothing on a success). The armor score system is... interesting. I don't know if I completely agree with it though, it heavily favors people with larger armor scores and heavy weapons, while making light armor and smaller weapons pretty much pointless. an enemy with plate and a shield already has a DR of 10, which means that they are literally immune to any damage a dagger could deal. Even with a d6 weapon and +5 damage modifier, you'd only deal 1 point of damage if you rolled Maximum. This is pretty poorly thought out idea I think that heavily hinders small / light weapon / dual wielding, and skews everything towards heavy armor and two handed weapons.
In addition it turns combat into a slug fest with each combatant just standing there trading blows one after the other. Not the way I've pictured combat or explained it to my players. Combat is a dance with each combatant looking for the right time to strike, testing defenses and fainting all just to take that perfect blow. HP is the ability to reduce the effect of that "perfect" blow into something less fatal, through luck, toughness and sheer force of will, stuff seasoned adventures should have in plenty.
HP Should be 3 + Con bonus + Proficiency. Whenever a character suffers an attack that doesn't deal damage, reduce their Armor Score by 1. Armor Score from Shield cannot be reduced by this. You can restore your Armor Score during a short or long rest. This may add an extra layer of tactical decision and reduces the chance of a slog because of too much Damage Reduction.
The second option (just rolling damage/armor as damage reduction) is how the very excellent Into The Odd works. I love it. Makes combat hella-scarey and fast
@@Squeekysquid The irony here is that Into the Odd is an OSR game. All OSR games are just someone's homebrew version of an old D&D edition. If it weren't for people modifying existing D&D rules instead of moving to other games, it wouldn't exist.
Corvus Belli's Infinity (a tabletop wargame) uses opposed D20 rolls to resolve combat. It's very simple and cinematic and gives you the impression of cyber ninjas actually clashing swords instead of the D&D system of "waiting to get hit". It also allows different ways of countering an attack: dodge, shoot back (if they're closing in), melee attack back, berserk attack (automatically take the hit to ensure your melee attack is unopposed), or hacking (in fantasy this would be spellcasting or something). You also have to roll *under* a target or you whiff - two units can slash at each other and miss. It lends itself to a very cinematic and deadly combat, but players are always taking about That Moment when something cool or critical happened in the game. Infinity's designers based it on their own homebrew RPG system, drawing on their experiences with HEMA and paintballing. It doesn't try to be a simulation, as things aren't arbitrarily crammed into 6 seconds. Rather, it focuses on the results.
Or you could roll to Hit vs 10 +Dex Bonus, then take your Armor's DR which would be AC -10. This does not require any additional rules to make it fit into 5e. This way you're Leather Rogue will be harder to hit than your Full Plate Fighter, while your Fighter will be harder to kill when you do hit.
Not bad ideas even though i doubt I would use either one and here is why: #1. More work for the GM I am here (along with the players) to weave a grand story of heroism of both epic Success and failures. I am not going to spend A LOT of time trying to re figure how much damage a FB or any other attack is going to do, because in the end it is going to sound arbitrary & may cause hard feelings with our Intrepid heroes. #2 armor now becomes King. Every hero might as well walk around like a mideival tank or die. #3 Healing is out: if hits are reduced by armor, than you dont need a cleric in the group, you would need a stand by armor smith, otherwise it makes no sense ( how do you heal armor?) #4 your still calling them hit points. #5 A succesful roll to hit means you found a weakness in the armor ( Legolas was directing where to aim on the orcs, where their armor was weakest) since its not always about brute strength to cut into flesh. I could probably go on but the point I am making, I think D & D works as intended. One final thing, our hero with the 5 hps: How many times in movies have we seen the protaganist, beaten & bloodied, about to be undone, yet saves the day & maybe himself at the last possible moment. I betcha they had 5 hps left as well :)
Yeah, I feel like adding more realism to the system makes the game less about the story and plot of a great adventure and more of a documentary or something.
The better solution is to add realism through the narrative portion. Like maybe hit points are a combination of chance, constitution, and stamina. And not every hit has to be an injury inducing hit even if it takes a lot of their hp. Maybe it was a flurry of blows that tired them out a lot and ended up bruising up their arm.
@@fabienherry6690 it sets up another character pretty well to avenge them and carry on their friend’s/family’s/guild’s quest. Dying is as much a narrative point for this character as every character that is, or will be, at the table.
In the Star Wars D20 (the first one), your characters has both Wounds and Vitality. Your Wounds (the actual amount of damage you can take before you drop) is directly linked to your Constitution Score and is only further modified by Feats or other outside forces. You gain Vitality the same way Hit Points work in D&D. Vitality is a reserve of energy you have to dodge attacks and use force abilities and skills. Damage dealt to you comes off of Vitality first and then Wounds. On a critical hit, you roll the d20 again to 'confirm' the crit. If the second hit result would also successfully hit, then you confirmed the crit and all damage goes straight to Wounds, otherwise, it was just an automatic hit. I like the rework design of using armor as pure damage reduction and just rolling damage instead of 'to hit' and then damage.
First, I want to say, I love this conversation, keep up the great videos! I'm not particularly fond of getting rid of HP, AC & particularly attack rolls, and not because I think it's a great mechanic, one of the reasons I didn't play D&D for years was because it wasn't a good tactical simulation and I just couldn't reconcile the game mechanic and how this stuff works in real life. All the other games I played, armor was damage reduction, Savage Worlds you have 3 wounds, your solutions are good! (Though when I play, I want to roll to hit. Don't take that fun from me.) The reason why I'd never house rules these is, there are certain things that make this game Dungeons & Dragons. At its core are AC & Hit Points. That's the game my players are showing up to play and changing the fundamentals of the system seems like I'm just trying to create a new system. I think if those mechanics don't appeal to you, try a different game, cuz that ain't D&D.
Yes but also tweaking these things in a small way with a group that is familiar with DnD makes the transition much easier. It’s much more difficult to get my group to play a whole new system with different vocabularies and rules than to steal a mechanic and make it work well inside DnD until I can convince them to try something else.
@@donkeykong315 I don't think that's true in my personal experience. I have a much easier time going, "Here's the rules for Dungeon World. Let's try out this system for our next campaign!" rather than going, "Here's my homebrew system that I've bolted onto 5e. I'm not sure if it's balanced or not, so we might have to retcon/redo stuff constantly as I hammer out the issues." Homebrewing minor tweaks is much more acceptable that homebrewing major/core systems in a ttrpg.
@@donkeykong315 changing the core mechanic of the game isn't a "small tweak", you'll have your friends used to a game that just ins't d&d, there's house rules, and there's throwing the mechanics of the fucking window
Really love the idea of the first option for a duel idea. As opposed to running a whole combat encounter you just streamline it, makes it more narratively interesting.
We've tried the second option and I'm a huge fan. We called the target to hit your "threshold" and that number would increase based on armor, agility, and equipment! It kept the game moving a lot faster. (at one point we had 12 players around the table and a round could still be under 5 min. This same threshold concept could fit nicely into ICRPG's answer to making social encounters initiative based!
Hey glad to hear it! 12 players is a HUGE table. I just read another article in the new Glatistant that talks about adding new types of armor to your game that does this instead of changing the entire system. Seems like a brilliant, and sneaky, way to introduce a home brew mechanic mid campaign.
do you add proficiency to the damage now to offset it? I ran some tests and it seems weird to use this system and disregard the skill of getting better over time?
@@darcyrobbs6866 We tried a couple things. At first we went with Proficiency Dice, (+2 =d4, +3=d6, +4=d8) to keep the game more of a swing, and later we just dropped proficiency entirely. Instead, we added more points to the base 6 stats during level ups. I liked the first option, but for the sake of less math my group decided on the second option.
@Darcy Robbs Yes! And we would skip saving throws since the Threshold/AC already included the dexterity bonus most of the time. (This only applied to dexterity save spells) Again, made the turns faster and the players felt better when opponents weren't saving against a high damage roll.
I love the way how EZD6 by DM Scotty handles this. Most actors can endure 3 hits before perishing. Armor gives you a chance to avoid a strike by meeting or beating the target number of the armor you're wearing.
I love that alternative to AC / damage, including the exploding dice is a nice touch. The alt HP is intriguing and I'll have to pitch these ideas to my group
As much as I love the first option (been using it for monsters for a LOOOOOOONG time and love it to bits!), it doesn't remove hitpoints, it simply (greatly) simplifies the formula xD And now all of a sudden everyone is either a minion from 4e or very close to being one.
I get why you'd want to remove HP or attack rolls, but at that point you might as well just find a different TTRPG to play instead of having to rework the entirety of D&D.
There are issues with both approaches, the first one (the amount of hits till they die) really favours those who attack more in a round widely throwing off the balancing, the second approach greatly lowers the effect of characters who deal small amounts of damage but to more targets or in a trade of for utility sorta like a monk
In my experience, the entire reason you create house rules like this with experienced players is to throw off balance so that they can't research builds online, and then you sit and watch who can break the game the most. It's a lot of fun. Those aren't "issues", it's a feature of the change.
@@0744401 it also limits creativity when half or more of the time your not doing anything as a spell caster and in a roleplay sense a fireball is the equivalent to some throwing knives. Sure it can be fun but I don't see the sheer benefit
This is really such a fundamental change to the rules that it's no longer playing D&D. 5e is effectively designed to be a fantasy superhero simulator, after all, so if the rules that support this are so completely at odds with what you feel your game needs, then what you need is a different game. That being said, I would: 1. Keep the To-Hit roll. Everyone likes this. 2. Drastically modify how Damage and HP are handled. 2a. Remove Damage rolls, and drastically decrease the amount of damage dealt. A d4 deals 1 damage, d6 is 2, d8 is 3, d10 is 4, d12 is 5. 2b. HP is currently a mix of very different things. I would split it into HP and FP. - Set HP to CON + Level x CON Modifier. HP can be healed by Long Rests and by Healing. - Set FP to CON + Willpower. FP is recovered by Hit Dice. 2c. FP should be spent to avoid being hit. Just reduce the To-Hit roll by the amount spent. FP can also be spent to improve Saving Throws against Damage effects not using a To-Hit roll, such as Fireball. 2d. Critical Hits do not do extra damage, but FP cannot be spent to resist/evade them.
I don't particularly like the hit points system, but rather than get rid of it, in my games, I created an exhaustion track. Basically, once a character loses about half their HP, they start to gain levels of exhaustion as they take increasing amounts of damage. This shows they're actually being hurt (rather than being as good as new all the way down to 1 HP), and it means if they take a lot of damage it takes some time (or higher level magic) to make a recovery.
I like the concept, but something that immediately came to mind is how swingy this makes things. Granted, I haven't tried this yet, but it seems like it would mean: when one side starts losing, they've effectively ALREADY LOST. That's OK if the losing side is the bad guys, but it must really suck for the players if THEY'RE the losing side. Also, combats in which people are missing more attacks (due to disadvantage) and moving very slowly seems like it'd be quite a slog - particularly if BOTH sides are exhausted. (Plus, I would hate to be a rogue if my Sneak Attack was suddenly nerfed at a critical moment in a deadly fight by exhaustion-based disadvantage.) The whole reason we're doing this is for fun, so if your players find this mechanic fun, PLEASE ignore me! I'm just musing over potential foreseeable problems; maybe you've already figured out solutions for these things. (One solution that occurred to me as I was writing this comment is: not every combat has to be "kill all the monsters" - maybe the objective of the fight is "survive until support arrives" or "stop the bad guys from delivering the thing to the place" or "make the bad guys surrender or run away instead of killing them". Matt Coleville just released a good vid on that topic.)
@@MeZimm Yeah, I hear you. I don't think it's for every table, but I like the mechanic myself and it works for my group. And in many cases at my table, the enemies don't fight to the death; they'd rather retreat if they can. I don't recall it ever slowing down combat too much at my table, but I haven't heard of any other groups playtesting my system, so I can't say it never would.
I've been meddling with this in my own TTRPG that I've been brewing up for a year or so. I found hit points to be too complex, so I decided to switch ro a Stamina or Endurance based system. It works similarly to Hit Points, except its determined by an Amount times your Level, based on your Origin (no real classes in this system). Its also a d6 system with 3 being the basis. The basics is that a Mage has 3 times level number of Stamina, when you are reduced to 0, you die. It ranges from 3-6. A standard hit does 1 Stamina Damage, certain spells do 1 to more enemies, or 1-3 if its a single hit. Still working on the math but glad to see this isn't an outlandish idea. Love the video!
Hey House DM, I'm Anthony_C! I'm glad you enjoyed the commentary on that forum post. I've played with these variants a few times since that post, and am pleased to say they both work very well. They lend themselves to different kinds of games. Currently, I'm iterating on mixing a static number of "Hit Points" (say, six or ten) and using them as a player-burnt buffer for consequences as in Blades in the Dark. In this manner, at least theoretically, fantasy characters can still get rough and tumble with their foes without being too fragile, but I get to use more varied consequences of failing rolls or being the target of monster's actions. For example, I think it makes sense that having an ogre hit you with a felled tree should (1) physically harm you, and (2) knock you away or prone. If a player fails a roll by a large amount ("critical failure"), they will likely suffer both consequences. The player can opt to take those, or burn some "Hit Points" (see: luck, heroism, resolve, etc.) to mitigate one or both of those consequences. I will be updating that linked post soon to share my thoughts on this method. Thanks for the shoutout. Game on!
Hey Anthony! Great connecting with you! I’m happy to hear that you’ve tried these methods out to great effect. I really want to design an OSR combat system that doesn’t use a roll to hit system but with some form of increased hit points since PC’s in OSE are already so squishy. I haven’t played Blades in the Dark but I know the system has a fascinating perspective on ttrpg’s in general. Looking forward to your updated post on the Runehammer forums and thanks for stopping by!
You didn't remove either. You just changed how they work. There are still hit points, just less. There are still attack roles, they just automatically do damage
The homebrew system I'm testing right now combines bits and pieces of Macchiato Monsters, Knave, and Mausritter. Combat works like your second example with no attack rolls, just damage rolls. Armor provides an HP buffer for each encounter -- the first time you get hit, you roll to see how much temporary HP the armor provides for this fight. You have to patch the armor up between battles to refill its HP buffer. Shields let you completely block one attack per turn, but if the attack does a lot of damage you'll be stunned and miss your next action. Both shields and armor can degrade with use, using the "risk die" system from Macchiato. Also, combat actions are simultaneous (except that ranged attacks go first), so it's very possible for two combatants to kill each other at the same time. After your HP runs out, further damage goes straight to your stats (STR for physical damage, DEX or WIL for other types of damage and exertion). Each time you take stat damage you also get an associated condition ("Wounded", "Slowed", "Shaken") that fills up space in your inventory. If a stat hits zero, or if your inventory gets completely full of conditions, you die.
This is the second video I've watched, and I love your content. I've been working on an alternative system for Fantasy TTRPG for over 30 years. I'm happy to include any interested, committed parties in the effort. I'm developing a system with several components. The first is that Armor / Speed reduces damage from a 'hit'. (Thank you Stephan Michael Sechi and Vernie Taylor, The Arcanum 2nd Ed.) The second is that as you build up injury, your abilities and attacks are less effective. Right now this is a very 'math-ey' system that I want to resolve.
Excellent video! This is why there is a longstanding tradition of homebrew rules in RPGs. Our table adopted rules based on your second option long ago. Why? Armor doesn't make you harder to hit; in fact, armor can make you easier to hit (since it is harder to dodge in heavy armor) - but it does absorb damage. So we use hit effectiveness (hit v. avoidance). How well the stroke is landed places the hit into a category and then damage = roll for that category less armor. It makes for quick, adjustable, and exciting play!
Damage absorption has its own issues, though: both in terms of things that fall under the threshold (but which should realistically hurt) and things whose damage isn't partitionable (i.e. a solid slug doesn't do much less damage to human flesh because it went through a few mm of steel plate first - the plate either stops it or does not). For the former issue you can use scratch damage for successful hits, and then just try to keep the PC/NPC HP bloat from rendering it pointless. For the latter, I've seen an approach where you have certain weapons that ignore a certain amount of armour or deal a certain amount of damage directly through it (i.e. special "can opener" weapons). But now you have three rules to keep track of instead of one. I'm personally a fan of having hit rolls and amour penetration being separate mechanics, with armour being treated as all-or-nothing except for the addition of scratch damage (i.e. a weapon with a damage rating of 10 and an AP rating of 2 will do 1 scratch damage to armour with a rating of 3, and 10 damage to armour with a rating of 1). I fully accept that this is not a perfect solution either, though, as it's even more complex and the main advantages are the dubious ones of "realism" and being able to have weapons with different damage potential vs. armour-piercing characteristics.
currently working on the following: HP bubbles: for example you have 24 HP and , this means you have 3 bubbles each 8 hitpoints. (u have 60 HP = 3 bubbles with 20 HP) If an enemy deals 10 damage on bubble gets destroyed, if he deals less then 8 none get destroyed, but also extra damage disappears, this system is very close to the normal System, but i implemented special rules to pop more bubbles at once, for example ambushing +1 bubble of damage. In later levels each bubble gets more powerful, that means low level monsters like goblins could only maybe damage you with a crit. With ambushing and flanking for example being more effectiv, the party needs to think of stuff on how they cant be tricked or attacked, otherwise they easily die. I am still not sure, if 3 bubbles is always perfect or not, I will see when I test it. this was just a short explanation and i will try to implement this in my next campaign on a more detailed level, hope you liked it. if this idea already exists please dont talk shit, send me the link and then i can improve mine :)
There was a homebrew variant of the old Legend of the Five Rings samurai RPG which did things in an interesting way. Armor reduced the number of damage dice the attacker would roll, but the attacker could use the “raise” system to voluntarily increase the difficulty of the to-hit roll (before you roll!) in order to ignore the armor by striking at weak points. It was a neat way to thread the needle between armor making you harder to hit (classic D&D), or armor making you harder to hurt (many other games). You could overpower armor with a high strength or big maces and hammers, or you could focus on Agility and being accurate with a sword to get around it.
D20 modern rule setting used both of AC of characters and DR for armors. If I remember well, the characters' AC come from their Dexterity modifier and they got some based on their class and level. But that never was too much, so they needed to get cover for more AC. Because the characters' HP was equal to their Consitution and chritical hits always dealt actual HP damage (DR of armor could absorb ssome of it) it was really easy to die without cover or a good armor. There also were some kind of life points similar to the classic D&D HPs, maybe the system called them Vitality, the characters got them based on class by leveling up, and every hit which wasn't chritical, dealt damage on this Vitalyity thing, the book described this as a combination of Luck and agility maybe. We played Star Wars d20 a couple of times what used this rule set, and since a medium blaster dealt 3d6+ damage on hit, running from cover to cover under blaster fire was our base tactic for every combat situation, what absolutely granted us the Star Wars fight feeling.
Until an Echo Knigh/Gloom Stalker/Frenzy Barbarian/Paladin shows up and does 11 attacks in 1 turn, doing 400+ damage. No mater how much damage it reduces, almost any creature would be flatened.
@@trndrd but then DM can make more than one creature like that, and with similar damage output to those PC, then you have more Tactical combat with less probability, that party will just bludgeon it's way through the encounter, but will try other ways to solve a conflict
You basically described how Savage Worlds works with these two solutions. Your attack roll is either against an opponents parry score (melee) or the default dc (ranged). Miss and your character dodges/parries/blocks. Hit and damage is rolled. Damage is compared to toughness. If it doesn't beat toughness, your armor stopped the blow. If it beats the toughness, you are shaken (minor nick or scratch). If it beats it by 4 or more, it causes a wound. Each multiple of four beyond the target number is another wound. Each hero can take four wounds. Each wound gives them a cumulative -1 to all their rolls (the more wounded you are, the harder it is to do stuff). The fourth wound knocks you out. Attack and damage dice can explode. When you roll max, you roll again and add it to the total. If the explode roll is max again, you roll and add that as well. If your attack beats the target number by 4 you add an extra d6 to the damage roll (crit). My main takeaway from this video is: Savage Worlds > DnD.
I have thought about removing armor class because it’s never fun to miss. The crit damage idea is really interesting to me because I view it as an extra attack. It’s a lot easier to attack twice with your small dagger than your huge great axe, and it could come with additional weapon perks. For a piercing weapon like the rapier attacking twice would be easier it could crit on an 8 or a 7
Yeah I read a lot of ttrpg blogs and this was an idea discussed on the Runehammer forums from the game Into the Odd. It's really interesting game theory to explore.
@@bryanwoods3373 I disagree. Missing gives this sense of waisting a turn but getting hit increases drama and furthers tactical playing. Tactical playing is ultimate why I still keep rolling to hit in my games
@@Death_Wish Sometimes, you miss. And not every miss is a miss. It got blocked by a shield, parried, or glanced off their armor. It happens in real life as well. That's why you miss less on lower CR monsters as you get stronger. By 20, you should have a +11 to attack, so you will always hit most monsters of CR 5 or less.
@@bryanwoods3373 yes, I understand this, but missing still waists an action. I choose to keep attack rolls because of the tactics it provides an the joy of a monster missing you
I think the number 1 problem with 1 damage per hit is that everything will deal the same damage on a hit. That means a rat bite, when it hits, will deal the same damage as a fire giant's greatsword. It isn't as clear if they are separate, but If you are fighting both the rat and the giant, and on a turn both hit, it will be clear how weird it is that the rat bite was just as devastating as the giant's blow. And if you change it so that stronger foes deal higher, but fixed, damage values, then you're just playing with the average damage, which is already an option D&D offers. It is definitely an interesting idea that can be worked on, but I'm afraid it tends to turn into the same as playing with average damage, but with normalized values.
Very interesting stuff. Magic, in both systems, would be a tough fix, but very cool nonetheless. Back when 2e was exciting and new, we used the idea of exploding die on nat 20s. The attack dealt full damage and then you role again to see if there was additional damage. If you roled a second nat 20 you repeated the process... 3rd, yep... and so on.
@@HouseDM that's true, but it can happen. One of our player characters hit a fellow PC to subdue them and roled three nat 20s back to back, unfortunately killing the other character in the process. Awe the Joy's of squishy 2nd ed characters.
@@Squeekysquid We did something similar in 3.5 If you roll initial roll was a 20(not just the threat range of the weapon, a real nat 20), and your confirmation roll was also a 20 it was an instant kill. 1 in 400 chance. We had a group of 6 pc's that played for a year and it only happened once. It was epic, and we still talk about in now almost 10 years later :) I highly recommend.
Both ideas are cool! At least on paper, as I haven´t tried any of them yet. However, playing OSR I tend to narrate the outcome of each combat round after everyone has acted, so any misses, near misses, low damage, high damage.... get bundled up into a single narrative. You might actually defend against that mace with your shield but the attack was too strong and you still took HP damage.
So you’re saying you share the narration after the groups initiative resolves? Waiting until “everyone has acted” seems like a group initiative type of thing and makes sense if so.
I've been brewing similar ideas for a while, coming from a simplification perspective, and there's one big and fully overlooked benefit to the D&D5e method: roll to hit is a greater than function, and damage is minor addition. *These are always going to be the quickest mathematical equations we can perform.* In fact, 5e takes this two steps farther, doing away with most subtraction (fie PF2) and introducing Advantage. Armor-as-subtractor significantly increases the amount of math done during every attack, because subtraction has to "drop the ten". As an extreme example, the tarrasque hits you for 112 damage, subtract your 14 armor, then subtract that from your 103 HP. You have to "drop the ten" four times in that equation. I would *always* rather roll two d20 and compare them to your AC. I think pure AC d6 "wound" systems could be a potential solution, but such systems also introduce a bell curve to every roll. Success has a high floor and skyrockets after only a few dice, rendering the roll a formality. The difference between a fireball and a broken nose also becomes buckets of dakka. Worst of all, the DM has no practical sense of success rate. A 25% success rate in a d20 system is DC15. But in a d6 system? Calculate a hypergeometric distribution on the fly~ While 5e has its pitfalls, the combat math is shockingly elegant. The erroneous pair of HP and AC *do* tangibly speed up gameplay, which is maddeningly counter-intuitive. It's witchcraft.
I've played games with both of these concepts and a third where someone rolls to hit and the other rolls to defend. The difference between rolls is the damage dealt. It allowed a more conscious effort to deal more or take less damage based on where you wanted to put stats. Regardless, I've been meaning to test out some rules to try and make combat faster if possible. Great video!
I'd be interested in the second option of Armor as DR, but I think I might tweak it in a few ways. Like that attacks do a minimum of 1 damage even if the DR would cancel it entirely. This way you don't have high AC creatures don't feel entirely invincible to mobs (albeit it would take a mob a while to take them down).
I would like to add a point towards rolls to hit, then rolling damage You roll to hit to see if you hit or not, but since all hits don’t do the same amount of effect We roll damage to see how well the hit landed… Pro tip, if you take the top number of a damage die mean critical hit, then you double the max value of the die, allowing for different range of options to apply to diversify weapons more
Yeah another differentiation that a lot of roleplay do are you roll to hit depending on dexterity and then you roll to dommage depending of armour and then hit point. You actually have three system here : hiting the target , going through the armor, doing enough dommage to knock the guy down. DnD fuse the first two but fusing them all would be SO boring
These are valid questions to ask. The problem is (as others have probably mentioned) these are not minor tweaks or just ignoring features (like encumbrance or spell components) and so by the time you make all these changes to 5e to accommodate it, you aren't just playing homebrew 5e anymore. You're essentially inventing (or re-inventing) a new core combat system, and you'd probably be better off just changing the lore for another, higher risk combat system. For such sweeping changes, it's easier to change or ignore the lore of a combat system than to change every stat line in every book for every campaign session. If you want to tell high-risk combat stories with real danger and long-term consequences, choose another system. If you want to play 5e....then play 5e - with all its warts. It's a great experiment to play with, to be sure - the sort of experiment game designers at studios like WOTC undertake all the time. I'm just not sure it's a practical experiment for regular table play by the average DM and player group.
The damage reduction idea is one I have thought about before, and it's definitely intriguing. I think you would need to pair it with the exploding dice in order to not make d4 weapons obsolete.
You could use the "exploding dice" method, but you could also say that a max damage roll ignores armor reduction. So d4 weapons are more likely to roll under someones armor, but they also have a 25% chance to ignore armor.
@@ComradeFurious That's interesting. That would certainly speed up combat! Also, rolling max damage on weapons with higher dice would be rarer, but devastating.
I once removed 'hit Points', replacing them with CON points. Here's how it worked: Your CON represents you overall health and vitality. Instead of hit points, you have a number of hits you can take equal to your CON X Your Prof Bonus. So, at first level (or Tier One) you have your CON as hits. Example: Trebor the Elven Ranger, with a CON of 14, gets into it with a pair of hungry gnolls (CON-10 ea). He draws his paired Scimitars and charges in, swinging. He rolls and hits the first gnoll for 8 damage, which is less than its CON, but still more than 50%, so the gnoll loses a point of CON (Down to 9) Trebor's second swing strikes the other Gnoll, but this time he crits the hit, yielding 16 damage. This damage exceeds the Gnolls CON of 10, so he lowers his CON by 2, and the fight goes on. Gnoll#1, stabs Trebor with its Spear, hitting for 7 damage. Because this is half of Trebor's CON, he loses a point. The battle continues until each of the Gnolls is dropped to Half their CON, at which point they turn and flee. Trebor then uses his Healer's Kit to bind his wounds and continues his journey. When your CON is reduced to half, you must make a Wisdom Save. Failure means you flee; a save means you can fight on. (Raging Barbarians ignore this roll) When your CON hits Zero, you drop. If a nearby party member makes a successful Medicine check, they can stabilize you. If you were along, sorry. You'll bleed out in CON rounds and pass on to that next place... ((No, I don't use Death Saves.))
I love these ideas. I favor the 1st method for simplicity and the fact that you still need to roll a Hit. Not only is rolling a Hit a fun central part of D&D but it is also realistic. Yes I'm serious. I have been a Martial Arts instructor and Kickboxing Coach for over 30 years (and former competitor). In the ring, cage or octagon combatants actually miss far more often than they hit. Pay close attention while watching the UFC. Anyway, method #1 has real potential.
I ran a hack of D&D 4E that did something similar to getting rid of hit points. Basically you had three innate hits before you were taken out, and then armor added hits (one for light, two for medium, three for heavy, one for shield). So fully armored you'd have seven hits. Then spells that granted armor just added a 'magic' hit to the lineup. Really horrible attacks might do two or even three hits at once. Some things, like poison, passed through your armor hits and went straight to magic and your innate three. Then as you leveled up, some classes (fighter) got more hits steadily, while others (wizard) got more hits occasionally (every 3 or 4 levels). Anyway, with some hacking it worked great, and made a lot of sense to people who were new to RPGs.
I like the "only roll damage" idea. I think there should be a different way to lower different types of damage. Without over complicating it, maybe different armors or modifiers for different damage types.
That mostly mean the dextrous fighter and the brute barbarian have zero difference systeme wise. And let me tell you it's get REALLY boring to be constantly reminded : yeah you are just rolling a dice a see if it's good compare to a number.
@@fabienherry6690 Do you know what really reminds me of the fact that I'm just rolling dice and comparing the results. Having to roll more dice. Simpler systems tend to be more immersive, because you spend less time on rules, and more time on play.
@@tortture3519 I remember playing open legend in a discord campaign. I you have a barbarian with super high strength roll a d20 compare to your score of strength that the dommage you have an assasin , roll a d20 compare to your score of sneaky and the result is the dommage. play a summoner roll a d20 compare to your summoner score and that your dommage. Like EVERY FREAKING combat action was that. The reason why you have multiple system is to make them chaotic enough for you to not have a instant knowledge of what the result will be to lean on what you don't know. Like let's says you hit on 10 and do 1d6 dommage is it better to hit on 12 and do 1d10 ? Now you hit on 10 is it better than hit on 11 ?
I don’t even play DND and I love this concept. It always struck me off how you had to roll twice in games like Warhammer as well. Seems like an antiquated system that is only here because it’s always been here. Time to open up the ol’ creativity box. Good work.
Interesting ideas. The main problem with HP that I always had as a long term DM was the notion that it is a combination of health, luck and expertise. So when the healer is healing your missing HP, what is he healing actually? Your luck and expertise? While removing the Attack Roll completely does sound interesting on paper, it does not account for 1 specific thing: the possibility for an attacker to miss his opponent or to better put it - the possibility for the defender to dodge the attack completely. This is why a small game of which I am the author has created an entirely new system, where every creature has a very limited amount of HP determined by their endurance (constitution). They also have a Miss Rating that is determined by their agility and awareness. Characters may opt to wear armour which may reduce their Miss Rating (making them easier to be hit in combat) but will improve their Protection and Toughness Ratings, making them harder to Wound (reduce their very very limited HPs) if they do get hit. The game that this is from has been in development for 5 years and I am really proud of this system :D
The system your describing sounds a lot like both Cyberpunk 2020 and World of Darkness. I assume there are many other games from that era using similar systems but those are the only ones I've looked into. In both systems you have very small hit point pools that basically remained static as you levelled up. In both systems, armour acts as damage resistance with Cyberpunk taking it a step further and having cover act as armour (with a suitably clunky table for figuring out how it all stacked). In Cyberpunk, you also rolled hit zone before resolving damage, so you could easily 'hit' a guy in a trench, but chances are you 'hit' his body, so the shot is actually going straight into the ground. In World of Darkness, armour didn't do much to save you if you were a basic human. You relied on shooting first and losing your action to dodge if you were getting shot at (the initiative system was really cool conceptually, but a slog to run, people declared their actions in reverse-initiative order then ran them in forward-initiative order with the ability to back out and dodge at any point). Vampires could take a lot more hits but still relied on regenerating to survive.
Due to the reasons you bring up in this video is the reason I started using Iron Crown Enterprises Rolemaster and Spacemaster combat system ages ago. With that system a VERY lucky first level fighter would be able to take down a 10th level fighter due to the way armor, damage and crits works. The type of armor worn and the weapon that is used on that armor determines the damage done in points and maybe if you have scored a crit. The type of crit and severity is determined by weapon type and a second roll is made. A high roll with a high severity can kill a creature in one hit. Offensive bonus is added to your attack roll but some of it, all of it or none of it can be added to your defensive bonus which is subtracted from the attacker's attack roll. This is known as parrying the attack, which is limited to certain conditions. Cover is also taken into account. On top of that the more damage you take the more your attack is degraded as well as some of the crits may limit you.
The only problem with a standard 1 Hit (a.k.a. "wounds") is that a dagger does the same damage as a zweihander. This proved to be a fatal flaw in my group, because we have talking animals wielding needle swords and a giant wielding an anchor as a club. So in my home-brew (called Danger Dice) weapons are rated Tiny, Small, Medium, Large or Giant and do 1,2,3 4, or 5 points per Hit. Your attack roll determines how many Hits you did. Thus there is no damage roll. Armor deducts damage per attack, not per Hit. Hit points measure physical stamina plus grit. As you lose hit points your attacks get weaker. Our combats are fast and very, very scary.
Another issue I see is it removes the impact of luck when rolling (and lets be honest, most players love rolling dice). I love how you can hit and still kinda miss cause you do so little damage... I can describe it as "altough you scored a direct hit, the bandit's quick footwork made him avoid most of the blow's impact. He jolted backwards has your axe pierced his flesh, leaving more of a graze than a wound..."
I also homebrewed something like this, but with gravity of wounds. You have for example 4 Light Wounds 3 Medium Wounds 2 Serious Wounds 1 Mortal Wound Max. All start at 0 when the character is in top condition. A dagger will do light wounds. If all light wounds are filled, all attacks that would do light wounds now do medium wounds, and so on. This way, hitting X times with a dagger can become very dangerous, but hitting one time with a zweihander is no joke as well. It also helps, as a DM, to give meaning to the HP loss. If you suffer Lights Wounds, it's just scratch, but Medium Wounds start to hurt when you move or act, and Serious Wounds could even come with malus if you want. Also, having a Mortal Wound doesn't mean your character is dead, it means it will die. You can play a turn or 2 or finish a narrative piece and have the character die between scenario rather than in a scenario, so the player isn't taken out of the game.
This was a neat video. Reminds me of a two-shot Deadlands adventure a friend of mine ran. The exploding dice concept is very neat and I'd be excited to see someone stream it.
A few things: 1. Hit points doesn't just represent life force, much as it gets used that way. To an extent, it represents life, but it's also a matter of stamina, and ALL wounds, not just bleeding ones. So essentially, HP also represents hits that don't actually make it through your armor, because while the armor may still be intact, it doesn't mean you necessarily take no damage. When a canine bites you, its jaw strength can cause your armor itself to bite into your skin, and there's the natural tendency of animals to violently yank once they have their jaw locked, meaning muscle damage. It can also represent your ability to push through the pain to keep fighting. In the case of the greatsword, either the armor manages to hold up to the hit, or they could be hit not by the blade of the axe, but to either side of it (It's still a giant piece of metal, it's gonna hurt when you get hit with the blunt side), so a hit still occurs, but it doesn't necessarily mean instant death. In fact, shy of direct head or heart shots, the reality is, almost nothing instantly kills a human. 2. The problem of the 'exploding die': Rogues. in 5e, Rogues can easily start swinging for more than 3d6 in a single swing, meaning that their statistical chance of exploding multiple dice keep going up, and since there's no technical limit to the number of times they can sneak attack in a combat, that means that it's going to see the party making more and more certain to set the Rogue up, which also means more work for the DM. As well, you would have to fully redo all CRs in the game, because hobgoblins suddenly become WAY more deadly with their Martial Advantage ability, given that it literally adds dice to their every attack. And that's just the hobgoblins, setting aside things like breath attacks, and other things that are dice adders. This also means that, the lower the die being rolled, the higher the probability OF critical hits. Even a greataxe lowers the difficulty of critical from 1:20 to 1:12, and d4 is literally 1:4 (Magic Missile gets way more brutal). 3. AC isn't, despite terminology, about armor. The 10 represents the average person's ability to get out of the way of, or take, a hit without taking significant damage. It can represent blocking, parrying, dodging, deflecting the hit, or even the armor or whatnot being able to stand up to the hit without causing significant damage. With changing this much of 5e, honestly? You're far better off going to a different system, such as Warhammer Fantasy, or World of Darkness, where they have systems built in to represent these facets of combat. WoD even takes things like weapon speed into account, allowing character who use faster weapons to attack more often, versus those who swing more powerful weapons, making for a better balance of combat. There's a certain point where you're doing more work than needed, and I would love to see other publishers start to get some love.
One of the systems I’ve appreciated from the past, rather than simplifying and removing either to-hit or hit points, so to split hit points into vitality and wounds… Vitality is typically the straightforward replacement to hit points, only typically slightly less (maybe every class drops a die code for their hit points when determining vitality). Vitality represents your character’s ability to weather those non-lethal hits. Losing vitality is still getting hit, but remain standing through sheer tenacity. When you vitality drops to zero, you can no longer run, you take penalties to strength and dexterity, and you have to roll to stay conscious. Wounds, on the other hand, is your actual meat value. It’s your flesh, and is typically equal to your constitution. Once you’re out of vitality, all hits go directly to wounds. Similarly, critical hits do not hit vitality, but go directly to wounds (but do not double damage as per usual). When you run out of wounds, you are immediately unconscious and dying. I realize it’s adding complexity rather than simplifying, but I always liked the clearer representation of hit points, and the breakdown of durability be mortality.
One system that did pretty great on it's damage/hp system is Shadows of Esteren. Step 1 : Roll attack vs defense, if it hits go to step 2 Step 2 : your attack roll minus the evasion is the base damage of the attack, then you add your weapon modifier and substract armor value. Apply damage to character. if I remember correctly, aside from some perks/class, you have 19 health points with negative modifiers as such : good : 5 points Ligh wounds -1 : 5 points Heavy wounds -2 : 4 points Critical -3 : 4 points Agony : 1 point (No malus because you are considered dying and have to roll to stay alive and not die from your wounds or get healed)
My friend and I have had many discussions on this subject. I basically look at hit points like "plot armor" because that's really what it is. Its a measure of how difficult you are to kill. If you're up against an enemy with a 1d6 damage attack, that's an average of 3.5 "damage" per successful hit. If you have 14 HP, then taking an average 4 of those hits drops you to zero. Losing HP represents your enemy otherwise fighting well, but you get a lucky dodge in, or you deflect the blow with your buckler at just the right time. Its your "Time To Kill" metric. I have my own system that I like to use, somewhat adapted from a FUDGE wound system. All characters have 3 "HP" which are their actual health. Losing 1 results in minor stat reduction, losing 2 results in major stat reduction, and losing 3 means you are dead. Any HP beyond this 3 is "plot armor" and more or less represents minor scratches, near misses, lucky dodges, etc. Your "plot immunity." The more skilled you are at fighting, the more "plot armor" you have. The tougher you are, the more "plot armor" you have. I usually start characters at 5 total (3 HP + 2 Plot Armor). This system is nice because it also gives you a degree of damage scaling. Against a healthy person with 3 HP, 1 damage is enough to wound, but not kill. 2 is enough to seriously wound, but not kill. 3 is enough to kill. Against someone with 3 HP + 2 Plot Armor, 1 or 2 damage is negligible because you dodged it or blocked it or whatever, but 3 damage would wound you because you managed to dodge but it still got you right in the shoulder, now its harder for you to swing your sword and if you take another hit like that you're certainly dead. The only rolls you really need are checking for success and failure. At that point you can play the entire d20 system with exactly one d20.
This sounds much like the system in Savage Worlds where you have no HP and taking hits makes you both easier to kill (shaken) and worse at doing anything until you go down at 3 wounds, which can actually happen in a single hard hit. That system does have rolling to hit and rolling for damage with exploding dice, but hitting things is pretty similar in almost all circumstances. E.g.: shooting a person-sized target with a gun in normal conditions within range is always a TN 4 (target number 4, like DC) to hit them, no matter what. The player's shooting skill determines the die type they roll (d4 - d12), along with other factors, so someone very good at shooting will almost never miss that shot.
So here's and idea I've used as a DM: When a larger massive creature such as a giant strikes a medium sized character with a massive sword you'd think the sword would simply carve them In half and also send them flying several feet away. So when a massive creature hits a players AC and exceeds the AC by a factor of 5, 10, 15, 20 etc (depending on the size difference) the creature deals damage as usual and then the player must makes a CON save vs. that damage (base damage of a Hill Giant is 18) depending on the success or fail of the save, the character can be slammed away (possibly taking extra damage if they hit something else) the character can gain the prone, stun or incapacitated condition or if they completely fail the role ( failed by 10 or more ) then they are brought to zero hp and begin dying I apply this rule to falling great distances as well, a character that falls 40-50 or more feet doesn't simply take some damage, get up and keep on going.
Macchiato Monsters has a related mechanic I really like. 1. If you hit a monter, it loses its attack. 2. If you don't hit a monster, it hits you automatically. Zero Whiff Factor. It also explicitly states that HP aren't flesh points, but represent your ability to stay in the fight through stamina, positioning, and luck. My current house rule is to say that first 50% of HP are just that, never wounds. Below that you accumulate minor wounds while losing ground and getting exhausted, while your last HD represents major wounds.
One of my favorite systems uses armor more like health, where taking damage from an opponent adds up against armor value until either the attacks cease from the opponent or the armor is overcome, after which the damage resets. If the damage exceeds what the armor can take, the character receives a wound. Wounds count against a very small pool, in the 5 to 6 range for average characters, and don't regenerate until the character gets medical attention or sufficient time passes. Crits bypass armor to deal a wound and have additional effects. Very cool system, there were so many nice quality of life features
Food for thought. I'm thinking these concepts might be fun to tinker with, and who would not be interested in seeing you put together something on this. Or to play test it.
In the current system I’m working on, there’s six levels of woundedness. The first is unwounded, where you perform ideally. The second is hurt, where you’re in some pain and have some small cuts or bruises, but no effects yet. The third is wounded, where you begin to feel some weakness or inability from your injuries. The fourth is maimed, where you are seriously wounded and are becoming very ineffective, the fifth is dying, where you can likely do little more than cower, block attacks or attempt to flee. And the sixth and last is death. This makes wounds more serious, deadly and actually having effect on the gameplay. Different damage types also inflict wounds differently. Piercing damage from, say, arrows or stabs damage according to the effectiveness of the hit on the attack roll. Cutting damage is all chance but you’re rolling multiple die so there’s a good chance that you may inflict massive damage or you may inflict only light damage and perhaps even none. Blunt damage deals a base damage no matter what plus additional rolled damage. And hewing damage (chiefly from axes) does base, has additional cutting damage and a chance to sever limbs from the body. There’s more I’m working on and I’ve yet to playtest, but these are ideas I’m playing with to allow for a more “realistic”, brutal and dynamic game.
I've thought about this a lot, and have designed and tested out a number of different systems (including fully narrative systems, hitpoint-less systems, and various hybrids). I'm just going to address hitpoints here, as armour is a different topic that needs its own discussion. The fundamental issue with HP is that what they are trying to model is human injury. And the fundamental issue with human injury is that the real mechanics of getting hurt are very contingent and non-linear. People can sometimes survive being riddled with bullets or stab wounds, and yet frequently die from slipping in the shower. People also tend not to die all at once outside of certain, specific scenarios. Instead we get injured, lose some capability and then become incapacitated later on due to trauma/blood loss. This makes sense when you think about it - we're machines with a bunch of important parts (our organs), each of which has its own failure points and knock-on effects to the whole. HP, on the other hand, model the body as a sort of potato-like structure - your character is perfectly functional until a magic threshold is reached, after which they die. One approach that I've used is to have gated states that the character moves through as they lose hitpoints - after half your HP are gone, your character is wounded and loses stats. At one quarter they're grievously injured, lose even more capability, and will then continue to lose HP until stabilized. The results are more realistic, but this is obviously a bit fiddly to implement and can be frustrating when you spend half a scenario watching your character bleed out as they crawl towards help. I'd recommend it more for a grim-n-gritty setup where frustrations like these are part of the intended experience. Another approach is just to re-define terms - you have a more or less sharply limited HP pool, and characters who run out are "knocked out of the fight" by default rather than being killed. Being KO'd means that you're either down for the count, are too busy tending to your own wounds to deal with anything else, or are scared enough to run away or surrender (options to be provided as appropriate). So a fireball doesn't just blow up goblins, it also terrifies them - with the results being handled using either a narrative or mechanical system as to whether they fall down dead, lie very still on the floor and hope that nobody notices them, stop-drop-and-roll, or run for the hills. This adds a small extra system (a way to manage outcomes when HP hits zero), but opens up a bunch of narrative potential and resolves some common-sense questions about why two identical-looking characters might have order-of-magnitude differences in HP. Finally, I've had some success with having a damage model where weapons deal both direct and indirect damage. The direct damage just lowers HP as per normal, while the indirect damage goes into a "catastrophe" pool. When the catastrophe pool equals or exceeds a threshold (e.g. the remaining HP pool), then the character suffers from a catastrophe of some sort that puts them out of the fight without killing them. This can again be anything from passing out due to blood loss, to crapping their pants and running away. Every character with catastrophe points on them then has to make a check at the end of the turn (for instance, a simple 1D6 with multiple options depending on outcome). This is loaded so that catastrophes can self-resolve, but are more likely to snowball as the game goes on (eg: a roll of 1 adds two points, 2-3 adds one point, 4-5 do nothing and 6 removes 1 point). The nice thing about this approach is that although it adds two new systems (tracking and managing catastrophe points, and resolving outcomes from them), it also opens up a bunch of new scenarios that make the overall experience more realistic without futzing with the core systems as well. For DnD, which is already loaded to the gunwales with systems, it's probably not a good fit. But for a ground-up system that already uses a lean-n-mean HP-lite approach, I think it adds a bit of flexibility in terms of outcome.
Thanks for the Glatisant shout-out! A great RPG that removes the attack rolls is Into the Odd and its sequel, Electric Bastionland. Definitely check them out if you're interested in seeing how these ideas could be expanded
Aye the Beast himself. Yes indeed they are both incredible! I learned about both Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland after recording this video. In fact, the Glatisant was what led me to find the discussion on the Runehammer forums in the first place so cheers for that and thanks for all you do for the ttrpg community Ben.
A Warhammer 40k RPG I play pretty much does both of these things to some extent. It's called Dark Heresy, and while you still roll to hit, you have to roll *under* your score for that skill and count any modifiers. Basically means that no matter how heavily armoured your target is, your skill with the weapon is consistent. You have very low HP (or wounds as they're called) throughout most of the campaign since it doesn't really increase as a given like in DnD. Armour and toughness just reduce the amount of damage you take to potentially 0. This also lets damage numbers stay pretty low and make armour piercing an actual mechanic. God, I could go on about that game. The magic system is amazing too.
Great vid. I am always interested in ways to streamline the rules. Check out Savage Worlds, if you haven't before. It essentially has no hit points, though in reality you have 3, and each time you lose one, your stats go down, too. It's a great system.
Shadowrun 2ndEd had a hit pointless system. You had two 10 box tracks, one for damage and one for consciousness. Weapons and spells did damage levels of L (1 box), M (3 boxes), S (6 boxes), or D (10 boxes). For each two successes the attacker rolled, they advanced the damage level up one, up to D. Each weapon/spell had a Power Level like 12S or 6L. That number was the target number each of the target's Body dice (roll a number of d6 equal to you Body, explode dice on 6). For every 2 successes the defender scored they lowered the damage level (not boxes). So if weapon did 6L and the attacker got 4 successes the base damage level would be 6S. If the target rolled 6 successes the damage would be gone (S to M, M to L, L to none). It was a fantastic system.
I've thought similar thoughts. The way I house ruled it is if the the roll to hit is below your dex, the attack is a miss. If the roll to hit is above your dex but below your AC, the damage is halved and goes to your armor. Your Armor's durability is determined by the AC (example AC 15 means your Armor can take 15 damage before being damaged itself). If the roll to hit is above Dex and AC, you take full damage to your armor and if damage taken is greater than your AC durability, you lose 1 HP and your Armor is permanently damaged bringing your AC and Armor durability down by 1. I had a much more low magic, grounded type of game. Health was low and scarce. Level ups for HP were straight rolls, no averages. And armor did more than protect you, it could mean the difference between being alive and dead. I felt that 5e gave a lot more to the magic classes and this was kind of my response to it. I wanted to give melee strength based characters a chance to feel badass as well.
As a DM, I've done these things. No "to hit", just damage + Armor mitigates the damage. And I've also had armor count as a hit point buff, or temp HP. The player decides if the armor takes the hit or the character. If the armor gets to 0 HP, not only does it no longer function, but it makes all physical actions take a penalty. In prior editions, I just had it apply a roll penalty equal to its armor category (light = -1, medium = -2, heavy = -3). In 5e, I think I'd make it apply Disadvantage to any physical action. The main advantage to eliminating to-hit rolls is it speeds up combat. It also makes tank + sneak-attacker a far more important tactic. The tank (fighter, paladin, bear-druid, etc.) isn't expected to do much damage to a heavy-armor foe, but if they can hold attention while a sneaker gets in a multi-die backstab, then that makes both players feel like they seriously contributed to the battle.
@@HouseDM so I've been getting into rougelike games lately, so Im trying to somehow implement some mechanics into dnd. I'm kind of struggling, because this is my first major attempt at homebrew and I want it to play well. I'm trying to simplify character Creation, due to constantly dying in roguelikes. I'm also trying to make combat faster paced, which is where this comes in. Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated, because I really want to make this first version as good as possible. I'm assuming there will be many versions, due to there always being room for improvement.
@@ITrySometimes I feel for you. I’m in the same boat. Some of the design principles you mentioned are done VERY well in the Arcane Library’s Shadowdark RPG. I 100% think you should check it out and hopefully you find some inspiration there. Also check out Into the Odd if you haven’t already. Homebrewing can be hard if you don’t know your base game well enough. Each thing you tweak can cause another thing to break. So you really need to know the game and be patient with yourself 👍🏼
@@HouseDM The main features I want to implement are: slightly higher difficulty, fast paced combat, the importance of resource management, and also the importance of planning your actions. This video helps with the combat, your video about spell slots could be used to nerf spellcasters a bit, making it slightly harder, as well as encourage planning and resource management, but the main issue is character creation, because I want to make it really quick, so if you want to try a different strategy, you could just create a new character quick, and get right back into action. There could also be checkpoints, that if at least one person makes it to the next floor, everyone who died gets revived, to prevent someone from not being involved. If you have any ideas on simplifying character creation, just reply to this comment, and I'll probably see it. I'm also genuinely surprised you saw the original comment, so thanks.
The best ruleset for a ttrpg, or for any game for that matter, is one that has mechanics that fit the flavor of the game. D&D is designed for classic dungeon crawls and will perform well for games that fit that theme. However, the mistake people make is that they assume it is a one size fits all and only use that system. When d&d is forcefully applied on a game that has a completely different objectives, it can handle it sure, but you’re missing out on a system that can handle it better. If you want to learn more about this, look up game design :)
a fun system a lot of rp heavy games have are tags. instead of hp, you have tags that define what damage your body's taken. some spells or moves add the "nausea" tag or "asleep" tag to your character, whereas regular weapons might add the "wounded" or "bleeding" tag. tags can be super temporary like "proned" or nigh permanent like "dismembered", then, either to the dm/player's discretion, accruing enough tags would effectively take you out of the encounter, even if you're not dead, OR with something like a "mortal tags" system, you could track a number of tags that threaten your life separate from other tags "bleeding", "punctured lung", "left leg inoperable", and if you accrued enough of those you could pronounce your character dead.
Here's an idea from Monster of the Week/ MASKS - both are game systems that run on Powered by the Apocolypse Conditions, which are as follows - Afraid - lessens your ability to damage your enemy - Angry - lessens your ability to hit your enemy (basically, you're being reckless) - Guilty - lessens your ability to defend against your enemy - Hopeless - all rolls get a penalty until you regain hope - Insecure - lessens your ability to save against certain types of spells (for example charm person) (special) - Damaged - your character is seriously wounded and needs to either rest or have powerful magic cast to allow them to fight at full strength when all 5 or 6 are marked, your character is out of the scene
I have actually used the armor as DR system before. When i gm'd for it, my players didnt like the idea of (what you awesomely termed as) exploding dice. What we did was use the inspiration system. You could use inspiration to do an extra hit on top of your normal attacks, if you had an expanded crit range added attacks to the point. Example, Belgram the fighter was a champion subclass with a crit range of 18-20. So when he used his longsword 2H, he got his normal 1d10+3, and the inspiration point gave him a total of 3d10+9 extra, (1d10+3 Per number on the die he could crit on), the barbarians extra damage dice ability just got maxxed on each die that would have rolled. To balance it, for the creatures, i added 1 damage to each creature, since they didnt do inspiration, and a creature that had legendary actions, had one inspiration that could be used, but a player could sacrifice their inspiration to negate it. It was great fun
Open Legend does something similar to what you mentioned with removing attack rolls, but it's like attack and damage rolls are wrapped into one thing. You roll a d20 plus whatever dice corresponds to the attribute you're attacking with, for for example 1d20+1d6. If whatever you roll is higher than the opponent's relevant defensive stat (there are 3 in OL) then your opponent takes damage equal to the difference. So if you rolled a 23 and the opponent has a guard stat of 15, the attack does 8 damage. All this discussion, at least to me, begs the question of why to stick to D&D instead of using a different system. If players need to learn a totally different set of rules for combat anyway, why not just find a different system? That being said, this was a great video and shows how different rules can dramatically alter the decisions someone makes in combat :)
Oh my goodness, I remember the same discussions and the same answers from 30-40 years ago. Many good games have been created with them in mind. You seriously should try some ;).
These are cool mechanical ideas, that I can totally see working well in their own RPG system. Trying to cram them into DnD seems like it would get messy really quick, though. First of all, making most attacks deal the same 1 HP of damage would kind of exacerbate the already all-powerful Action Economy. Fighting eight CR 1/4 skeletons in 5e is typically going to be way more dangerous than fighting a single CR 2 Ogre (despite the two fights ostensibly having the same challenge rating), because you're getting attacked eight times per turn with the skeletons, and only once per turn with the Ogre. If everything is now dealing 1 damage and everyone has around 5 HP, 8 skeletons is now a horrifying mob of destruction, and an ogre is a complete joke that might go down in the first turn. Even if you say that big scary creatures like Ogres or Giants deal extra damage to compensate, it's still not even close. Class features would similarly be really hard to balance. Martial classes tend to get Extra Attack at level 5, whereas cantrips increase in damage. At first you could say that martials get a second attack as normal and cantrips go from 1 to 2 damage, but what happens when cantrips level up again at level 11? Do they go to 3 damage, and then you have to figure out a way to give martials more damage to compensate? Barbarians get a slight damage bonus when they rage. Do you translate this to a +1 bonus, giving them a whopping potential damage output of 2x2 per turn, massively buffing them? Or do you cut the damage bonus entirely because it's not big enough to translate to a +1, nerfing the class by quite a bit? What about Sneak Attack? Starting off with a +1 damage on sneak attacks sounds fair, but it's supposed to increase by 1d6 every other level. Do you increase it by +1 every two levels, resulting in an absolutely busted amount of damage? Or do you cut back on how often sneak attack increases, nerfing the class significantly? Spells would be an absolute nightmare. Fireball is already renowned for being intentionally overpowered, and with this new system...It still would be, if all damaging spells deal the same damage and just differ in AoE. Inflict Wounds is a single-target attack spell that deals 3d10 damage, obviously quite a bit more than a base-level cantrip. So I guess we can say it deals 2 damage, since you're using a spell slot to cast it. But then you hit level 5, and suddenly Fire Bolt and Chill Touch and Ray of Frost are also all doing 2 damage (unless they aren't, at which point cantrips immediately fall off at level 5). So I can cast Fire Bolt to deal 2 damage at range, cast Chill Touch to deal 2 damage at range with an additional effect, cast Ray of Frost to deal 2 damage at range with an additional effect, or I can use a spell slot to cast Inflict Wound to deal...2 damage. In melee. With no additional effects. In practice, truncating everything to bits of 1 would, counterintuitively, make everything way more complicated. It would be really neat to see a unique game system that uses these ideas. But to use them in DnD you have to look at every individual class feature/spell and individually balance them to make the new system work, or make blanket changes that would immediately throw the balance out the window. At that point, it's worth considering why you're playing DnD, and not a different system.
Adapting a bit from Pathfinder 2e, we can use the four degrees of success & failure for combat hits. Meeting or beating a AC causes regular damage. Beating it by 10 or more is a crit, double damage. Rolling a bit below the AC still causes half damage (like some spell damage does) because you still made contact or required extreme evasive action. Missing by 10 or more is a clean miss with no damage, except to the attacker’s confidence. Natural 20 moves you success up on step, and natural 1 moves it down one step. This means that most attacks aimed at a target will wear them down. Many things, including dodging, armor deflection, and luck can be used to describe this slow erosion. When you drop to zero, you’re not necessarily unconscious, but you’re incapacitated and have taken a significant wound. You get one level of exhaustion from dropping to zero, and another for each failed death save. You recover exhaustion levels at a rate of one per long rest (per day), and while you have any exhaustion, the effect of any HP healing is halved. You don’t get free HP for a long rest, but you can spend as many hit dice as you like. In a 30-minute short rest, you could only spend one hit die. I would really like spell slots to require hit die expenditure, but I’m still working on that.
As someone already familiar with both of these ideas, I was disappointed the "AND" part of the title wasn't quite accurate to your point. "OR" is more what you meant, I think. I like both ideas. I think some complexity or concerns with their execution (such as a dagger exploding or critting on a 4 being statistically better vs a shortsword exploding on a 6) stem a bit from trying to force these concepts into DnD 5e without abandoning some of what 5e already has in place. I'd highly recommend to anyone who hasn't already checking out Into the Odd (or Bastionland by the same author), which is what I immediately think of when I think of removing attack rolls. Mausritter is also great and borrows a lot from Into the Odd. Your explanation of these concepts was very good and enjoyable!
The very first RPG i was a GM at was a derivation of the original "The Black Eye", in which you roll for attack, if you manage the defender rolls to defend (parry or dodge is a tactical choice), and then you roll for damage and see if you beat the armor score of the enemy. It sounds like a lot but I found it to play very nicely and it was way easier to describe the hits. It is done that way because the system wants each swing to have a roll, rather than doing exchanges, and takes a lot into account. I have also experimented with roleplaying without a rulebook, and thus without hit points. Since there is no armor class or score, in that case I do opposing rolls (with ""modifiers"" depending on how skilled the characters are supposed to be) if the attacker gets higher, the higher the difference, the more important the wound
The old d20 Star Wars rules had a neat hitpoint system. Basically you had a pool of Hit points equal to your Con score that represented your actual health, then you had a vitality pool that was the "hp" from your class. Your vitality refreshed very easily and was depleted before your health. Health healed very slowly and if it was ever fully depleted your character could die (I can't remember if it had a death save type mechanic or was just 0 hp=dead). Critical hits and massive damage simply skipped vitality and directly damaged health. So if a character lost vitality, it represented near misses, soaking damage etc and could be narrated as such, but if a character lost health, they were actually injured.
That’s incredible! When you break down the core mechanics, the game is really quite simple and could have all sorts of positive applications. Not the first time I heard it could do wonders for therapy 👍🏼
Ability to hit and damage dealt by the hit are both important. The old WHQ did it great. You rolled for an attack comparing both fighters weapon skill, superior fighters being harder to hit and landing blows easier. Then you would roll damage with your attacks strength added to it, and then the targets armour and toughness reducing the damage. All D6 A barbarian swings his axe at a dwarf warrior wearing chain armour (roll a 4+), he hits. He now does D6+4 damage to the dwarf who will be reducing 5 from the damage dealt. He'd need to roll a 2 or higher to even wound the dwarf. WS3 S4 vs WS4 T4(5) The dwarf then retaliates with his WS4 vs WS3 and needs a 3+ to land the blow. When he succeeds he will roll d6+3 damage, but with his two handed axe he'll roll an aditional d6 if he hit with a 6. The barbarian is equiped with a shield giving him a toughness 4 so the dwarf needs a 2+ to do any real damage. Unless he rolled a 6 to hit, then he will do 2d6+S damage to the the barbarian who will still negate 4 damage. So, for D&D, just have a weapon skill that works like AC and then have the AC just reduce damage with your endurance modifier.
I’m actually in a campaign where we have a lot of optional/homebrew rules. One of them actually being damage reduction from armor, but we still have normal ac. So you still have to roll high enough to hit, and roll high enough to get good enough damage to kill. This sounds like it makes the campaign more difficult, but we have combat rules that make attacks more devastating, and the reduction to damage sometimes is a life saver.
I've always liked the wound system that Warhammer fantasy uses. It might be even more interesting to have temporary bolstered healing and permeant damage. It makes combat more deadly, but also raises tension - all the while reducing the amount of numbers to keep track of. Your body has a certain number of "wounds" it can take before you're out of commission, whether it be mental or physical - and you really cannot heal mental damage without a way to numb the pain - it would keep coming back unless there was a legitimately real way to cope. This also works in lieu of negotiations and charisma checks who roll social skills like with Intimidate, Charm, Bluff, Diplomacy. You can use said words to cut deep into the other person to get your point across, and still apply said "wounds" to the situation. It's exceptionally fluid depending on the situation. For instance - AC vs damage as opposed to the "to hit." This specifically helps deal with enemy mobs as opposed to one v one - allowing more epic mind theater. If combined with the "critical hit" system at the end of the video, it makes a lot of sense or how healing magic doesn't actually remove fatigue or restore blood, it just stops the bleeding and a poor roll on a willing target would cause further shock, but still stop bleeding. I think it makes things more fluid and interesting, allowing for greater storytelling.
So, as someone who runs Call of Cthulhu campaigns and been apart of DnD campaigns, I suggest a "major wound" system. It is similar to the Call of Cthulhu's, where a Major wound is whenever a character takes half of their max hp they have to make a con save to remain conscious (at least, in CoC that is the consequence). It could stumble, daze, stun or concuss them, whichever flavors better or whatever you decide, if a weapons size and strength of an enemy is really high, and a pc receives a major wound, they get literally bounced and be moved and forced prone (I.E. Zealot barbarian human gets hit by a giant twice his size and the weapon/form of attack is considerably bigger then him, he gets hit and his momentum slams him on the ground and he bounces up a little, or gets knocked back a few feet and skids on the ground and has to stand back up) CoC's large punishment for having a major wound is no healing when time passes, and a requirement to rest to heal and be attended by someone with First Aid or Medicine skills to accelerate the process and recover from the wounds. I imagine you could think of a lot of different things around the system as inspiration for a more realistic feeling of being smoted by a weapon your size.
I have also struggled with the concept of “hit points” or “damage” - I tend to lean toward a narrative system of injury “severity” based on other factors. Like proficiencies. Its kinda like the the complexities between dodge, block, stealth, parry… it all ends up being small difference outside of narrative value. Or the functional difference between having high hit points vs. high skill in dodging. Whether you get hit or not, you survive long enough to defeat the baddie and life goes on. You win. Storytelling is what its all about. I also enjoy the Cypher system approach. Just having options and control over the story to make player rolls more meaningful helps a lot. When you think about the roll of “dice” or essentially chance, what does it really represent? Why would an expert warrior need to worry about chance when theyre a legendary talent at a skill or weapon? They wouldnt. Even a 1 on a d20 doesnt represent how rare it would be for them to mess anything up. I like using dice for true chance or luck only. But this can just as easily be achieved with a deck of cards, as Gloomhaven has shown us people are clearly excited about. Anyway, lots to say on that too. For sure.
4:00 I’m sorry to be blunt but there’s no innovation in this method. All that’s occurred is the squashing of hit point and damage totals and damage type being made arbitrary. You still subtract points from a total based on the effectiveness of the damage dealt. Tracking specific damage from a health pool vs subtracting hits from a health pool is nearly the same thing.
The damage reduction method is how cyberpunk red does armor. I’m setting up my first campaign soon so I have the details fresh in my mind. Each armor type has Stopping Power that reduces the damage taken by a certain amount. Melee weapons ignore half that amount, barehanded attacks do not. Effects like fire or poison ignore it completely. If an attack gets through your armor, it also abates it, reducing its effectiveness by 1 as the armor takes its own damage. I’m very excited to see how CPRed runs compared to DnD.
For those of you who just stumbled upon this video over a year later, thanks for watching! I'd also like to share that I play many other ttrpg's besides D&D 5e; The list is quite extensive at this point. I find a particular enjoyment in creating homebrew rules mechanics, especially when they add to the game in a fun and fresh way. Hence the curiosity in what D&D 5e would look like with such changes inspired by Viking Death Squad or Into the Odd. Cheers!
How would you rule feats that makes an attack at -5 to roll for +10 damage if removing AC?
@@andrejkatic633 honestly, I would just remove the feats. Sharpshooter and GWM are both broken in my opinion anyways 🤘🏼
A lot of your content has been randomly recommend in the last 24 hours for me. I've been on a bit of a House DM binge now. I'd love to see some more uploads especially of the longer form content! Keep up the good work stranger!!
@@ezequielfountain662 thanks for sharing that! I’m working on the next one right now! I only have capacity for one video per month because I got a day job but if more people like you keep discovering my content, who knows, you might see me making weekly videos at some point 😉
I run Pathfinder 1e, and I have used a few of these in the past for specific games. They work okay, but they do tend to break down when they interact with certain builds - ie, 'death by many cuts' builds die in games where armor equals DR and evasion builds get ruined in always-hit systems.
One variation I encountered in another system, Anima RPG, functioned off of Percentiles. The to hit was a percentile roll and the to dodge was a percentile role. One gets subtracted from the other and any positive that remains is the percent (of a flat damage number) done to the target, meaning that you are usually dealing fractional damage. This represents weapons grazing or doing minor wounds. However, when the attacker rolls high and the defender rolls low, resulting in a high percent, you do a huge amount of damage since the 'base damage' is basically near fatal - because being stabbed with a sword or whatever generally kills people.
Anima is a very math heavy game (And a dead system since the creators went out of business), but it created some of the most realistic combat I've ever seen - tons of misses and grazes and then BAM dead when the lucky hit occurs.
When I describe hit points, I am often reminded of a description from a Conan novel that I read many years ago. In the story, Conan is fighting against a supremely skilled swordsman who is armed with a rapier. At one point, the swordsman strikes what would be a mortal wound to any lesser warrior but, due to his incredible reflexes, Conan manages to twist at the last second and the strike grazes across his ribs instead of piercing his heart. It's a painful wound, to be sure, but Conan is tough (and probably pumped on adrenalin, but that detail's not in the original story) so he shrugs it off and keeps fighting. Eventually the swordsman's repeated attacks start to fatigue even Conan and it's clear that soon one of those deadly strikes will land properly... That's hit points to me.
I'm reading through my dads old conan books and I just read that story today, it happened in "the bloodstained god"
I haven't read that story, but that is exactly correct. It is the only way that hit points rising so rapidly with increasing levels could possibly make any sense.
and that's hitpoints to Gary Gygax as well. that is exactly how the original dungeon master's guide explained hitpoints.
Does that story involve time travel or is it just complete fantasy (which is fine - just wondering)?
Perhaps the final duel in Rob Roy was inspired by this Conan story. Quite reminiscent of what you're talking about.
I like to remedy Hitpoints by making the 'bloodied' effect relevant to roleplay. Characters do not take any physical damage until they are at half HP, the first half of their HP is their armor or weapons absorbing an otherwise successful blow, draining their stamina. Once past half HP, attacks get through the armor but remain small like a cut until the final blow. As a DM I can narratively explain like, "Your sword makes contact with their shoulder and finds purchase, you see a little blood this time as you cut him." and suddenly that player can gauge how well their foe is doing.
Yea i do that, personally I find hp to be a system people enjoy. I don’t think dnd has to be so realistic we strip things like hp down so far, and a lot of realism stuff can be fixed by just the DM describing things differently.
I think that makes the best point about hp and combat and well dnd in general everythings made up and the points don't matter, its all make-believe so any form of engagement is only limited by your creativity.
that the easiest way to do it RAW for the when the narrative needs to change! thanks for sharing that nugget of wisdom
Amazing and I’ll be using that. Thank you so much.
So what would you do for characters that are wearing minimal armor, like barbarian type clothing? Do you mask the hit as them dodging and then getting progressively more tired?
Both hit points and armor class are abstract concepts. I view hit points in 5E as a form of combat stamina and luck. The characters are dodging and parrying attacks into minor wounds until they run out of hit points when a mortal injury occurs. This helps explain why short and long rests work the way they do. Resting restores stamina. Armor class represents how difficult a character is to injure, not how hard they are to hit. It is a combination of avoiding an attack as well as getting through the armor to cause injury
Good point about stamina. If you are in a sword fight in real life, you wont be able to hit with the same force on your 5th swing that you did on your first. Yet in D&D you can swing swords all day without having to respite.
Exactly. I think this is often a narrative problem, not a system problem. I think the narration problem starts when most people start equating an "attack" with a single swing. A "hit" with a single swing and it all goes downhill from there. One of my many pet peeves with CR and people who are first exposed to the game by that example.
Agreed, well said.
@@kenrowe7594 that's not actually true about swords, they're quite easy to swing in real life.
This is exactly the conclusion i came to recently. Big creatures can literally take sword stabs & keep on trucking, but humans can’t, so hit points have to represent running out of fighting spirit, stamina, and luck.
However, D&D 5e & PF 2e have waaay too many hit points. Stuff that doesn’t scale, like falling damage, is a joke.
My DM (for AD&D) had the brilliant idea that weapons determine your AC (parrying, keeping distance, etc.), while armor does damage reduction. Prevents people absurdly sleeping in their armor, but allows them to defend themselves while buck naked so long as they can grab a weapon. I love modifications like that.
That's a really interest change for D&D! I like that adds a lot realism to melee fights that feel sort of intuitive? Like, I should be able to fence competently nude, in a rapier duel, right? It would result in a lot of pain, but I should be able to thwart _some_ of the attacks, right?
In a system I'm making, my game _also_ has a simple damage-reduction armor system, but for hitting instead of an AC it is just a damage contest (no roll to hit):
1. A melee attacker's success in the contest results in full damage to target.
2. An aware target can make a _Defensive Response_, using a reaction and whatever they're holding in their hands to defend (by rolling a melee weapon's die). On the defender's success, they thwart the incoming attack entirely.
3. On a tie, the attacker inflicts a _Glancing Strike_, dealing half damage.
4. Different weapons use different sized die.
---NOTHING BUT (hopefully enjoyable) RAMBLES.
Shields can serve as "whatever they're holding in their hands" and has a die of its own that can be used for a _Defensive Response_, enabling the defender to thwart any attacks after the first, but having to roll the shield's die twice and taking the lowest result until the start of their next turn. (They can eventually spend skill points in improving this as a much later skill.)
Some shields have special features, such as:
*Defender*. If your _Defensive Response_ results in a value that is 1 less than the attack, it becomes a _Glancing Strike_ as though it tied with the attack.
As context, the game I am making is sci-fi and its combat mechanics largely revolve around using ranged weapons, piggybacking off my attempt at a lightweight exposure system, and a Halo-like disposable weapon gameplay loop (using informational, fun weapon cards and dice to track their uses).
I love the fantasy of melee weapons in a context they're totally unsuited to, like melee characters in FPSs. I've made it so that melee weapons are more likely to make contact with the enemy and deal fairly strong damage, where ranged weapons are less likely to hit (in typical play, unless targets are totally exposed and not playing to cover). While not meant to perfectly adjacent to be reality, I feel like this makes sense intuitively). To account for this, ranged weapons are extremely deadly and the shields that exist to be used against infantry are best served in melee; at range, most shields offer minimal protection against ballistics and plasma.
Thanks for reading, sorry for the tangents. 😅
It's not as corrective as you think. Take a dagger for example, if you strike it wildly at someone in full plate it will never do anything. Yet applied more precisely it can achieve damage, sometimes death. How is a DR system able to deal with this kind of variance? Quite simply it can't. You can try fixing this with crits but this starts to make things messy. See a dagger strike on this "crit" shouldn't always kill, yet for that to occur the DR will have to be low enough the roll variances will allow some strikes to be lethal and some to be non lethal. However, at that point, the DR will be so low that many weapons with more damage than a dagger, who have no right doing damage normally against plate will be doing so without crits.
@@TheAnimeAtheist In your example, I do think plate armor should resist a dagger most of the time. For a precision strike, I would think some kind of special player ability would be needed to pull off a move like that, that can get through the armor.
@@redav99 I think just using an AC to Hit system solves this problem. A high hit value can represent a more precise strike, already. Adding in an ability on top of DR to do something AC to hit already does strikes me as overcomplicating things.
@@TheAnimeAtheist True it might be a bit more complicated, but it also gives a different feel. The main difference being that a special ability could be used intentionally, whereas the AC to Hit system will randomly determine when your hit will land.
When I see videos like this, I always have in mind something an old friend told me once: "D&D is the best roleplay game ever, you just need to change the rules..."
for real, for the love of God there are already tabletops that work like this, you're allowed to play other games
@@kirat2009 Omg thanks! DND has such an oppressive grasp on the RPG genre that people often never even know how many fun games there are around
And he doesn't gel with why he thinks the mechanics are weird. Just comes off as catering to his ignorance. It's like because he can't wrap his head around actual combat realities, it must be wrong.
That's why Savage World's is better.
"This is the best game anon, you just need to notnplay it :D"
There’s still one issue with HP that hasn’t been addressed which you actually mentioned at the start of the video. Characters on low hp still being able to do what they did at full hp. In my homebrew rules I have AC and HP for each body part. The head has the highest ac but lowest hp. Reducing the head to 0 means death, reducing the torso to 0 means death saves, reducing an arm to 0 means you can’t use that arm (drop shield, no 2nd attack etc) reducing a leg to 0 means your speed is halved. It’s been great for roleplay
This is interesting, but I fear it would create a certain design problem. Characters becoming less powerful over the span of combat creates a design problem called a death spiral.
Death spiral means, that once you start losing, the rate at which you are losing accelerates. Additionally, it is a bit undramatic if it works on enemies since it makes them less powerful, which means that the battle becomes less dramatic the further we go in combat.
Hit points are not really a design problem, the only problem is how they are contextualized within the game's rules, which I believe is the topic of the video.
Having said that, your rules seem more balanced than the usual "I target this body part" systems, but I am still a bit worried.
I think to save the head ache you just explained you should look into Cairns scar system. Basically if you grit is 0 with no flesh would you can hand out a condition. Conditions effect encumbrance usually and in cairn encumbrance is a measure of health and how much item slots you can keep
there's a video game called fear and hunger that uses this exact system actually, it's pretty insane how similar both of your systems are. unless you already know about fear and hunger, in which case fair enough. if not, you should check it out, it's extremely hard to learn everything but satisfying once you make progress
@@mac_sour GURPS has a rule system for that. Individual limbs can be crippled, affecting specific actions. You can even target individual limbs in combat, so you can try to disarm someone, or keep them from running, without necessarily killing them
Seems a little too...much
Interesting concepts, I really like the "armor score" idea. However, finding a way to implement both of these is basically just writing your own d20 rules light system and you can divorce it from D&D almost entirely if you so wish.
I actually had a similar thought. I like the rules but I personally think they would fit better in a different table top. Perhaps even an earlier edition of dnd
Oh, the best way to implement this is 100% just writing your own stripped-down system. Whatever you keep from dnd is just incidental.
seeing rhe title of this video reminded me, why people should try different rpgs.....
Yes, definitely! This feels like the situation I see so often where someone doesn't like the rules of D&D but doesn't want to leave it for some reason. My theory is that D&D is the only ttrpg that any average person would have heard of if at all, so the idea of playing something else might feel like self-alienation or something.
@@taintedmyth0s636, the notion of this video is actually living rent-free in my head and I may write up a d6-based system that plays around with some of the ideas as well as some of my own.
Although interesting, i would just prefer to try other systems. Removing hit points just makes them a smaller pool, with the only added benefit of time saving, which could be achieved by using only the average damage. Your example of the giant sword would still be, as you described, something that your character just survives if he has enough health left.
My biggest improvement in my current almost 3-year-old game was to give a Ring of Regeneration to the players. Now we all know that a good hit can and WILL cut your arm off.
The second one is VERY problematic, it would mean that a high damage character would quite literally never miss. Sneak attacks can go very high tier2 or 3, as so spells. Or you will make characters with a more supportive role never hit, or the nova paladin, gloomstalker, any rogue or any wizard would be the strongest beings in the universe, removing any challenge for later levels
That second bit has made me realize that I don't think a good amount of class features would work, or would only work somewhat. Sneak Attack, for example, requires you have advantage on a roll unless an ally is within 5 feet of them and you don't have disadvatange... but with no attack rolls, there is no advantage/disadvantage system (which 5e relies a lot on). A barbarian's Reckless Attack would be completely useless and their Rage feature would be much more powerful because of the damage resistances, now that hits are guaranteed. The Shield spell would turn from something that can turn a hit into a miss into making the user do extra math as their Armor Score would momentarily increase.
Not to mention the scaling of spells, even cantrips. Any cantrip that scales in damage and is an attack roll (e.g. Fire Bolt) just increases the chance of there being critical hits and exploding dice, even more so if the damage dice is lower (like Acid Splash), making something that's supposed to be a spellcaster's weakest spells into something easily outdamaging martials at higher levels. This is on top of the already powerful spells casters have access to so it would probably widen the spellcaster/martial divide even more.
Having armor as purely damage-reduction would also penalize characters that make more small hits instead of fewer big hits. e.g. monk or lvl20 dex fighter making a lot of attacks which add up, vs. a Zealot barbarian making two big attacks or a rogue making one very big attack.
And for spellcasters, it would be a huge buff to attack-roll spells vs. saving-throw spells. Inflict Wounds does very good damage, but nothing if you miss. But now it can't miss. Attack roll cantrips (like chill touch) in standard 5e usually land bit more often than saving throw cantrips (like sacred flame or toll the dead), for typical level-appropriate enemies. But now attack-roll cantrips always hit. Would you remove saves from damage spells? What about things like Psychic Lance where the save for half is also a save against incapacitate. And if you remove saves vs. damage spells, then save-for-half vs. save-for-none is gone, which was part of the balance of spells like Disintegrate which might do nothing, but does a huge amount if it works.
I guess for spells like Magic Missile (that automatically do damage, no save possible), armor score wouldn't apply.
Also, suddenly Eldritch Blast goes from the best cantrip to worse than Firebolt, even for Warlocks with Agonizing Blast. And Scorching Ray, the default nuke for wildfire druids, becomes terrible.
You would need a whole new system with classes and spells balanced around damage reduction instead of AC for this to remotely work. As you say, turning AC into a damage reduction while keeping the rest of 5e the same would just break so much class / spell balance.
@Peter_Cordes in the case of making many small attacks, there's a potential fix. The first damage die you roll for an attack has a chance to crit if it rolls max, in which case you add another of that die. This process can go on indefinitely, but only for that first die. If you roll 3d4, only one of those d4s can crit.
Then to improve this further, those light-hitting characters could get bonuses to their critical rolls to allow them to add additional dice if the d4 rolls a 3 or a 4 rather than just a 4.
As for spells, that would definitely require a complete overhaul
the removal of damage can get really tricky with factors such as resistances, spells of high level, character level, class abilities, spell diversity, number of attacks and absolute dependency on Constitution score.
Exactly. This feels like "DnD is too unrealistic, let's remove a core mechanic without adjusting anything else. Ooops, dnd is unplayable now"
Resistances simply add a specific form of "armor" against a specific attack type. Treat it exactly like an extra layer of armor for combat purposes. Immunity, obviously negates that form of damage altogether... to the character. Their armor and weapons would need to be tested against the attack form to see if they could survive the attack type. A character with Immunity to fire damage would be fine in a red dragon's breathe weapon, but armor, weapons and all other equipment might not be so lucky and suddenly that character might find themselves completely naked and penniless against a foe that has other attacks that can still do damage, lol. Resistance would work similarly, though the character would still take some damage from the attack, due to resistance not providing 100% protection. It could make for some very comedic encounters and a change of tactics...
@@prometheuskayne9320 so does the "elemental resistance" spell protect just the person, or their items too?
As a spell, let's imagine it's a bubble, so technically it should apply to equipment as well. That's a DM's call, though, so for argument's sake, let say the answer is up to individual DMs, who can make decisions for interpretation of rules and mechanics. Generally, unless the spell says specifically otherwise, it affects the PC(s) and whatever they have on them. If a bubble protects from a certain effect, then it should protect everything/everyone inside of that bubble. I hope this is a satisfactory answer
Removing damage or attack rolls just seems dumb. Damage being removed completely changes all Damaging spells, weapons, abilities, modifiers ect and removing rolls to hit completely fucks with stats, spells, weapons ect just as a basic example it completely ruins the choice between spells like magic missile/witch bolt or fireball/cromatic orb and all together makes spells seem samey
After playing many other RPGs, I like this discussion a lot. There are more realistic combat systems out there (including wound locations, ect).
It's always interesting to home brew what makes sense. You should also remember, after receiving a serious wound, you can easily die the next day or 2. Internal hemorrhaging, tissue trauma, and infection are big killers (in the real world).
These both seem like a wonderful ideas to build a new system around (definitely checking out Viking death squad)! Not too jazzed on trying to insert it into 5Es existing system due to the amount of DM work that entails.
I’ve recently tried a variation on this idea that essentially combines both of these. Using current D&D methods you roll your d20 & your damage die, add them together and then if you exceed the target’s AC you do damage equal to however much you exceed their AC. That way you don’t need to change any published numbers in any existing books, but it does seem to feel more organic. It also has the side effect of speeding up combat rounds, and makes combat a bit more lethal as a better hits equate to more damage always.
@@Carlphish That's a really interesting idea!
@@BasementMinions IF you try it out, let me know how it works at your table.
@@Aleara27 Thats because its a core mechanic.
you remove a core and the thing topples like a house of cards.
honestly people talk about how much work it is to learn a new system, but at that point you're designing a new system... people are foolhardy
@@Carlphish That also mean that high dommage weapon become incredibly op and unavoidable . Also investing in your hiting stat become way more advantageous since you are buffing the dommage twice
This is an interesting idea for sure, but I feel like you should probably just try out different rpg systems if you're wanting to do this, rather than do the MASSIVE overhaul your proposing for 5e.
The Quest RPG system has a pretty similar rule for just 10 hit points. The biggest problem I came up with was that it was super easy for people to go down. It also feels a lot less narratively crunchy to say "you take 2 points of damage" compared to you take "20". The balance would also be pretty hard to fix, and it would make spellcasting pretty much always better --- as they do half damage on a success. So it would mean that all save spells would do minimum one damage (unless they did nothing on a success).
The armor score system is... interesting. I don't know if I completely agree with it though, it heavily favors people with larger armor scores and heavy weapons, while making light armor and smaller weapons pretty much pointless.
an enemy with plate and a shield already has a DR of 10, which means that they are literally immune to any damage a dagger could deal. Even with a d6 weapon and +5 damage modifier, you'd only deal 1 point of damage if you rolled Maximum. This is pretty poorly thought out idea I think that heavily hinders small / light weapon / dual wielding, and skews everything towards heavy armor and two handed weapons.
Absolutely agree
In addition it turns combat into a slug fest with each combatant just standing there trading blows one after the other. Not the way I've pictured combat or explained it to my players. Combat is a dance with each combatant looking for the right time to strike, testing defenses and fainting all just to take that perfect blow. HP is the ability to reduce the effect of that "perfect" blow into something less fatal, through luck, toughness and sheer force of will, stuff seasoned adventures should have in plenty.
HP Should be 3 + Con bonus + Proficiency.
Whenever a character suffers an attack that doesn't deal damage, reduce their Armor Score by 1. Armor Score from Shield cannot be reduced by this. You can restore your Armor Score during a short or long rest.
This may add an extra layer of tactical decision and reduces the chance of a slog because of too much Damage Reduction.
@@Itomon so you are suggesting a mage could be as durable as a barbarian if both have the same con? Heh
The second option (just rolling damage/armor as damage reduction) is how the very excellent Into The Odd works. I love it. Makes combat hella-scarey and fast
Yeah I thoroughly enjoyed reading Into The Odd! It’s definitely referenced a ton in the OSR blog world.
The first one is scary too.
@@HouseDM Also Cyberpunk Red uses armour as damage reduction.
@@Squeekysquid The irony here is that Into the Odd is an OSR game. All OSR games are just someone's homebrew version of an old D&D edition. If it weren't for people modifying existing D&D rules instead of moving to other games, it wouldn't exist.
Corvus Belli's Infinity (a tabletop wargame) uses opposed D20 rolls to resolve combat. It's very simple and cinematic and gives you the impression of cyber ninjas actually clashing swords instead of the D&D system of "waiting to get hit". It also allows different ways of countering an attack: dodge, shoot back (if they're closing in), melee attack back, berserk attack (automatically take the hit to ensure your melee attack is unopposed), or hacking (in fantasy this would be spellcasting or something).
You also have to roll *under* a target or you whiff - two units can slash at each other and miss.
It lends itself to a very cinematic and deadly combat, but players are always taking about That Moment when something cool or critical happened in the game.
Infinity's designers based it on their own homebrew RPG system, drawing on their experiences with HEMA and paintballing. It doesn't try to be a simulation, as things aren't arbitrarily crammed into 6 seconds. Rather, it focuses on the results.
Or you could roll to Hit vs 10 +Dex Bonus, then take your Armor's DR which would be AC -10. This does not require any additional rules to make it fit into 5e. This way you're Leather Rogue will be harder to hit than your Full Plate Fighter, while your Fighter will be harder to kill when you do hit.
Not bad ideas even though i doubt I would use either one and here is why: #1. More work for the GM I am here (along with the players) to weave a grand story of heroism of both epic Success and failures. I am not going to spend A LOT of time trying to re figure how much damage a FB or any other attack is going to do, because in the end it is going to sound arbitrary & may cause hard feelings with our Intrepid heroes. #2 armor now becomes King. Every hero might as well walk around like a mideival tank or die. #3 Healing is out: if hits are reduced by armor, than you dont need a cleric in the group, you would need a stand by armor smith, otherwise it makes no sense ( how do you heal armor?) #4 your still calling them hit points. #5 A succesful roll to hit means you found a weakness in the armor ( Legolas was directing where to aim on the orcs, where their armor was weakest) since its not always about brute strength to cut into flesh. I could probably go on but the point I am making, I think D & D works as intended. One final thing, our hero with the 5 hps: How many times in movies have we seen the protaganist, beaten & bloodied, about to be undone, yet saves the day & maybe himself at the last possible moment. I betcha they had 5 hps left as well :)
Yeah, I feel like adding more realism to the system makes the game less about the story and plot of a great adventure and more of a documentary or something.
The better solution is to add realism through the narrative portion. Like maybe hit points are a combination of chance, constitution, and stamina. And not every hit has to be an injury inducing hit even if it takes a lot of their hp. Maybe it was a flurry of blows that tired them out a lot and ended up bruising up their arm.
The system is seperate from the narrative description of what is happening.
@@zacharycompton5624 Yeah real story "you get ambushed by gnoll ... you get hit and die the end" Really breath taking adventure
@@fabienherry6690 it sets up another character pretty well to avenge them and carry on their friend’s/family’s/guild’s quest. Dying is as much a narrative point for this character as every character that is, or will be, at the table.
In the Star Wars D20 (the first one), your characters has both Wounds and Vitality. Your Wounds (the actual amount of damage you can take before you drop) is directly linked to your Constitution Score and is only further modified by Feats or other outside forces. You gain Vitality the same way Hit Points work in D&D. Vitality is a reserve of energy you have to dodge attacks and use force abilities and skills. Damage dealt to you comes off of Vitality first and then Wounds. On a critical hit, you roll the d20 again to 'confirm' the crit. If the second hit result would also successfully hit, then you confirmed the crit and all damage goes straight to Wounds, otherwise, it was just an automatic hit.
I like the rework design of using armor as pure damage reduction and just rolling damage instead of 'to hit' and then damage.
First, I want to say, I love this conversation, keep up the great videos!
I'm not particularly fond of getting rid of HP, AC & particularly attack rolls, and not because I think it's a great mechanic, one of the reasons I didn't play D&D for years was because it wasn't a good tactical simulation and I just couldn't reconcile the game mechanic and how this stuff works in real life.
All the other games I played, armor was damage reduction, Savage Worlds you have 3 wounds, your solutions are good! (Though when I play, I want to roll to hit. Don't take that fun from me.)
The reason why I'd never house rules these is, there are certain things that make this game Dungeons & Dragons.
At its core are AC & Hit Points. That's the game my players are showing up to play and changing the fundamentals of the system seems like I'm just trying to create a new system.
I think if those mechanics don't appeal to you, try a different game, cuz that ain't D&D.
Yes but also tweaking these things in a small way with a group that is familiar with DnD makes the transition much easier. It’s much more difficult to get my group to play a whole new system with different vocabularies and rules than to steal a mechanic and make it work well inside DnD until I can convince them to try something else.
@@donkeykong315 I don't think that's true in my personal experience. I have a much easier time going, "Here's the rules for Dungeon World. Let's try out this system for our next campaign!" rather than going, "Here's my homebrew system that I've bolted onto 5e. I'm not sure if it's balanced or not, so we might have to retcon/redo stuff constantly as I hammer out the issues."
Homebrewing minor tweaks is much more acceptable that homebrewing major/core systems in a ttrpg.
I hate games that try to model real life. I'm playing fantasy for a reason.
@@donkeykong315 changing the core mechanic of the game isn't a "small tweak", you'll have your friends used to a game that just ins't d&d, there's house rules, and there's throwing the mechanics of the fucking window
Really love the idea of the first option for a duel idea. As opposed to running a whole combat encounter you just streamline it, makes it more narratively interesting.
We've tried the second option and I'm a huge fan. We called the target to hit your "threshold" and that number would increase based on armor, agility, and equipment! It kept the game moving a lot faster. (at one point we had 12 players around the table and a round could still be under 5 min.
This same threshold concept could fit nicely into ICRPG's answer to making social encounters initiative based!
Hey glad to hear it! 12 players is a HUGE table.
I just read another article in the new Glatistant that talks about adding new types of armor to your game that does this instead of changing the entire system. Seems like a brilliant, and sneaky, way to introduce a home brew mechanic mid campaign.
do you add proficiency to the damage now to offset it? I ran some tests and it seems weird to use this system and disregard the skill of getting better over time?
@@darcyrobbs6866 We tried a couple things. At first we went with Proficiency Dice, (+2 =d4, +3=d6, +4=d8) to keep the game more of a swing, and later we just dropped proficiency entirely. Instead, we added more points to the base 6 stats during level ups. I liked the first option, but for the sake of less math my group decided on the second option.
@@dmlark6059 what about spells. Like hellish rebuke? did the damage still get reduced by ac?
Thanks for responding btw
@Darcy Robbs Yes! And we would skip saving throws since the Threshold/AC already included the dexterity bonus most of the time. (This only applied to dexterity save spells) Again, made the turns faster and the players felt better when opponents weren't saving against a high damage roll.
I feel like these both are great ideas for low level characters but becomes difficult when dealing with higher leveled characters
I've been working on building a ttrpg. The part about just rolling damage was super inspirational. It helped me get over a mental block. Thank you.
I love the way how EZD6 by DM Scotty handles this. Most actors can endure 3 hits before perishing. Armor gives you a chance to avoid a strike by meeting or beating the target number of the armor you're wearing.
I love that alternative to AC / damage, including the exploding dice is a nice touch. The alt HP is intriguing and I'll have to pitch these ideas to my group
As much as I love the first option (been using it for monsters for a LOOOOOOONG time and love it to bits!), it doesn't remove hitpoints, it simply (greatly) simplifies the formula xD
And now all of a sudden everyone is either a minion from 4e or very close to being one.
I get why you'd want to remove HP or attack rolls, but at that point you might as well just find a different TTRPG to play instead of having to rework the entirety of D&D.
There are issues with both approaches, the first one (the amount of hits till they die) really favours those who attack more in a round widely throwing off the balancing, the second approach greatly lowers the effect of characters who deal small amounts of damage but to more targets or in a trade of for utility sorta like a monk
In my experience, the entire reason you create house rules like this with experienced players is to throw off balance so that they can't research builds online, and then you sit and watch who can break the game the most.
It's a lot of fun. Those aren't "issues", it's a feature of the change.
@Annaelle Jacques-Morel its absolutely an issue when my mage bolt does more damage than my fireball
@@0744401 no, theyre game breaking issues that invalidate like half or more of the character options' effectiveness in combat
@@fdmugen4724 Then don't cast fireball. There are other spells on your list.
@@0744401 it also limits creativity when half or more of the time your not doing anything as a spell caster and in a roleplay sense a fireball is the equivalent to some throwing knives. Sure it can be fun but I don't see the sheer benefit
This is really such a fundamental change to the rules that it's no longer playing D&D. 5e is effectively designed to be a fantasy superhero simulator, after all, so if the rules that support this are so completely at odds with what you feel your game needs, then what you need is a different game.
That being said, I would:
1. Keep the To-Hit roll. Everyone likes this.
2. Drastically modify how Damage and HP are handled.
2a. Remove Damage rolls, and drastically decrease the amount of damage dealt. A d4 deals 1 damage, d6 is 2, d8 is 3, d10 is 4, d12 is 5.
2b. HP is currently a mix of very different things. I would split it into HP and FP.
- Set HP to CON + Level x CON Modifier. HP can be healed by Long Rests and by Healing.
- Set FP to CON + Willpower. FP is recovered by Hit Dice.
2c. FP should be spent to avoid being hit. Just reduce the To-Hit roll by the amount spent. FP can also be spent to improve Saving Throws against Damage effects not using a To-Hit roll, such as Fireball.
2d. Critical Hits do not do extra damage, but FP cannot be spent to resist/evade them.
I don't particularly like the hit points system, but rather than get rid of it, in my games, I created an exhaustion track. Basically, once a character loses about half their HP, they start to gain levels of exhaustion as they take increasing amounts of damage. This shows they're actually being hurt (rather than being as good as new all the way down to 1 HP), and it means if they take a lot of damage it takes some time (or higher level magic) to make a recovery.
I like the concept, but something that immediately came to mind is how swingy this makes things. Granted, I haven't tried this yet, but it seems like it would mean: when one side starts losing, they've effectively ALREADY LOST. That's OK if the losing side is the bad guys, but it must really suck for the players if THEY'RE the losing side. Also, combats in which people are missing more attacks (due to disadvantage) and moving very slowly seems like it'd be quite a slog - particularly if BOTH sides are exhausted. (Plus, I would hate to be a rogue if my Sneak Attack was suddenly nerfed at a critical moment in a deadly fight by exhaustion-based disadvantage.)
The whole reason we're doing this is for fun, so if your players find this mechanic fun, PLEASE ignore me! I'm just musing over potential foreseeable problems; maybe you've already figured out solutions for these things. (One solution that occurred to me as I was writing this comment is: not every combat has to be "kill all the monsters" - maybe the objective of the fight is "survive until support arrives" or "stop the bad guys from delivering the thing to the place" or "make the bad guys surrender or run away instead of killing them". Matt Coleville just released a good vid on that topic.)
@@MeZimm Yeah, I hear you. I don't think it's for every table, but I like the mechanic myself and it works for my group. And in many cases at my table, the enemies don't fight to the death; they'd rather retreat if they can. I don't recall it ever slowing down combat too much at my table, but I haven't heard of any other groups playtesting my system, so I can't say it never would.
I've been meddling with this in my own TTRPG that I've been brewing up for a year or so. I found hit points to be too complex, so I decided to switch ro a Stamina or Endurance based system. It works similarly to Hit Points, except its determined by an Amount times your Level, based on your Origin (no real classes in this system). Its also a d6 system with 3 being the basis. The basics is that a Mage has 3 times level number of Stamina, when you are reduced to 0, you die. It ranges from 3-6. A standard hit does 1 Stamina Damage, certain spells do 1 to more enemies, or 1-3 if its a single hit. Still working on the math but glad to see this isn't an outlandish idea. Love the video!
Hey House DM,
I'm Anthony_C! I'm glad you enjoyed the commentary on that forum post. I've played with these variants a few times since that post, and am pleased to say they both work very well. They lend themselves to different kinds of games. Currently, I'm iterating on mixing a static number of "Hit Points" (say, six or ten) and using them as a player-burnt buffer for consequences as in Blades in the Dark. In this manner, at least theoretically, fantasy characters can still get rough and tumble with their foes without being too fragile, but I get to use more varied consequences of failing rolls or being the target of monster's actions. For example, I think it makes sense that having an ogre hit you with a felled tree should (1) physically harm you, and (2) knock you away or prone. If a player fails a roll by a large amount ("critical failure"), they will likely suffer both consequences. The player can opt to take those, or burn some "Hit Points" (see: luck, heroism, resolve, etc.) to mitigate one or both of those consequences. I will be updating that linked post soon to share my thoughts on this method.
Thanks for the shoutout. Game on!
Hey Anthony! Great connecting with you! I’m happy to hear that you’ve tried these methods out to great effect. I really want to design an OSR combat system that doesn’t use a roll to hit system but with some form of increased hit points since PC’s in OSE are already so squishy.
I haven’t played Blades in the Dark but I know the system has a fascinating perspective on ttrpg’s in general. Looking forward to your updated post on the Runehammer forums and thanks for stopping by!
You didn't remove either. You just changed how they work. There are still hit points, just less. There are still attack roles, they just automatically do damage
The homebrew system I'm testing right now combines bits and pieces of Macchiato Monsters, Knave, and Mausritter. Combat works like your second example with no attack rolls, just damage rolls. Armor provides an HP buffer for each encounter -- the first time you get hit, you roll to see how much temporary HP the armor provides for this fight. You have to patch the armor up between battles to refill its HP buffer. Shields let you completely block one attack per turn, but if the attack does a lot of damage you'll be stunned and miss your next action. Both shields and armor can degrade with use, using the "risk die" system from Macchiato. Also, combat actions are simultaneous (except that ranged attacks go first), so it's very possible for two combatants to kill each other at the same time.
After your HP runs out, further damage goes straight to your stats (STR for physical damage, DEX or WIL for other types of damage and exertion). Each time you take stat damage you also get an associated condition ("Wounded", "Slowed", "Shaken") that fills up space in your inventory. If a stat hits zero, or if your inventory gets completely full of conditions, you die.
This is the second video I've watched, and I love your content.
I've been working on an alternative system for Fantasy TTRPG for over 30 years. I'm happy to include any interested, committed parties in the effort. I'm developing a system with several components. The first is that Armor / Speed reduces damage from a 'hit'. (Thank you Stephan Michael Sechi and Vernie Taylor, The Arcanum 2nd Ed.)
The second is that as you build up injury, your abilities and attacks are less effective. Right now this is a very 'math-ey' system that I want to resolve.
Excellent video! This is why there is a longstanding tradition of homebrew rules in RPGs. Our table adopted rules based on your second option long ago. Why? Armor doesn't make you harder to hit; in fact, armor can make you easier to hit (since it is harder to dodge in heavy armor) - but it does absorb damage. So we use hit effectiveness (hit v. avoidance). How well the stroke is landed places the hit into a category and then damage = roll for that category less armor. It makes for quick, adjustable, and exciting play!
Damage absorption has its own issues, though: both in terms of things that fall under the threshold (but which should realistically hurt) and things whose damage isn't partitionable (i.e. a solid slug doesn't do much less damage to human flesh because it went through a few mm of steel plate first - the plate either stops it or does not). For the former issue you can use scratch damage for successful hits, and then just try to keep the PC/NPC HP bloat from rendering it pointless. For the latter, I've seen an approach where you have certain weapons that ignore a certain amount of armour or deal a certain amount of damage directly through it (i.e. special "can opener" weapons). But now you have three rules to keep track of instead of one.
I'm personally a fan of having hit rolls and amour penetration being separate mechanics, with armour being treated as all-or-nothing except for the addition of scratch damage (i.e. a weapon with a damage rating of 10 and an AP rating of 2 will do 1 scratch damage to armour with a rating of 3, and 10 damage to armour with a rating of 1). I fully accept that this is not a perfect solution either, though, as it's even more complex and the main advantages are the dubious ones of "realism" and being able to have weapons with different damage potential vs. armour-piercing characteristics.
currently working on the following:
HP bubbles:
for example you have 24 HP and , this means you have 3 bubbles each 8 hitpoints. (u have 60 HP = 3 bubbles with 20 HP)
If an enemy deals 10 damage on bubble gets destroyed, if he deals less then 8 none get destroyed, but also extra damage disappears, this system is very close to the normal System, but i implemented special rules to pop more bubbles at once, for example ambushing +1 bubble of damage.
In later levels each bubble gets more powerful, that means low level monsters like goblins could only maybe damage you with a crit.
With ambushing and flanking for example being more effectiv, the party needs to think of stuff on how they cant be tricked or attacked, otherwise they easily die.
I am still not sure, if 3 bubbles is always perfect or not, I will see when I test it.
this was just a short explanation and i will try to implement this in my next campaign on a more detailed level, hope you liked it.
if this idea already exists please dont talk shit, send me the link and then i can improve mine :)
Changing armor class into damage reduction sounds like a very neat thing
Which is why so many RPGs work that way.
There was a homebrew variant of the old Legend of the Five Rings samurai RPG which did things in an interesting way. Armor reduced the number of damage dice the attacker would roll, but the attacker could use the “raise” system to voluntarily increase the difficulty of the to-hit roll (before you roll!) in order to ignore the armor by striking at weak points.
It was a neat way to thread the needle between armor making you harder to hit (classic D&D), or armor making you harder to hurt (many other games). You could overpower armor with a high strength or big maces and hammers, or you could focus on Agility and being accurate with a sword to get around it.
D20 modern rule setting used both of AC of characters and DR for armors. If I remember well, the characters' AC come from their Dexterity modifier and they got some based on their class and level. But that never was too much, so they needed to get cover for more AC. Because the characters' HP was equal to their Consitution and chritical hits always dealt actual HP damage (DR of armor could absorb ssome of it) it was really easy to die without cover or a good armor. There also were some kind of life points similar to the classic D&D HPs, maybe the system called them Vitality, the characters got them based on class by leveling up, and every hit which wasn't chritical, dealt damage on this Vitalyity thing, the book described this as a combination of Luck and agility maybe. We played Star Wars d20 a couple of times what used this rule set, and since a medium blaster dealt 3d6+ damage on hit, running from cover to cover under blaster fire was our base tactic for every combat situation, what absolutely granted us the Star Wars fight feeling.
Until an Echo Knigh/Gloom Stalker/Frenzy Barbarian/Paladin shows up and does 11 attacks in 1 turn, doing 400+ damage. No mater how much damage it reduces, almost any creature would be flatened.
@@trndrd but then DM can make more than one creature like that, and with similar damage output to those PC, then you have more Tactical combat with less probability, that party will just bludgeon it's way through the encounter, but will try other ways to solve a conflict
You basically described how Savage Worlds works with these two solutions.
Your attack roll is either against an opponents parry score (melee) or the default dc (ranged). Miss and your character dodges/parries/blocks. Hit and damage is rolled.
Damage is compared to toughness. If it doesn't beat toughness, your armor stopped the blow. If it beats the toughness, you are shaken (minor nick or scratch). If it beats it by 4 or more, it causes a wound. Each multiple of four beyond the target number is another wound.
Each hero can take four wounds. Each wound gives them a cumulative -1 to all their rolls (the more wounded you are, the harder it is to do stuff). The fourth wound knocks you out.
Attack and damage dice can explode. When you roll max, you roll again and add it to the total. If the explode roll is max again, you roll and add that as well. If your attack beats the target number by 4 you add an extra d6 to the damage roll (crit).
My main takeaway from this video is: Savage Worlds > DnD.
I have thought about removing armor class because it’s never fun to miss. The crit damage idea is really interesting to me because I view it as an extra attack. It’s a lot easier to attack twice with your small dagger than your huge great axe, and it could come with additional weapon perks. For a piercing weapon like the rapier attacking twice would be easier it could crit on an 8 or a 7
Yeah I read a lot of ttrpg blogs and this was an idea discussed on the Runehammer forums from the game Into the Odd. It's really interesting game theory to explore.
It's not fun to get hit either. Anything you do to benefit the players has to apply to the monsters. Otherwise, you're cheapened the drama.
@@bryanwoods3373 I disagree. Missing gives this sense of waisting a turn but getting hit increases drama and furthers tactical playing. Tactical playing is ultimate why I still keep rolling to hit in my games
@@Death_Wish Sometimes, you miss. And not every miss is a miss. It got blocked by a shield, parried, or glanced off their armor. It happens in real life as well. That's why you miss less on lower CR monsters as you get stronger. By 20, you should have a +11 to attack, so you will always hit most monsters of CR 5 or less.
@@bryanwoods3373 yes, I understand this, but missing still waists an action. I choose to keep attack rolls because of the tactics it provides an the joy of a monster missing you
I think the number 1 problem with 1 damage per hit is that everything will deal the same damage on a hit. That means a rat bite, when it hits, will deal the same damage as a fire giant's greatsword. It isn't as clear if they are separate, but If you are fighting both the rat and the giant, and on a turn both hit, it will be clear how weird it is that the rat bite was just as devastating as the giant's blow.
And if you change it so that stronger foes deal higher, but fixed, damage values, then you're just playing with the average damage, which is already an option D&D offers.
It is definitely an interesting idea that can be worked on, but I'm afraid it tends to turn into the same as playing with average damage, but with normalized values.
Very interesting stuff. Magic, in both systems, would be a tough fix, but very cool nonetheless.
Back when 2e was exciting and new, we used the idea of exploding die on nat 20s. The attack dealt full damage and then you role again to see if there was additional damage. If you roled a second nat 20 you repeated the process... 3rd, yep... and so on.
With a d20 though, how often did that pop up? Rolling 2 nat 20’s in a row is pretty rare.
@@HouseDM that's true, but it can happen. One of our player characters hit a fellow PC to subdue them and roled three nat 20s back to back, unfortunately killing the other character in the process. Awe the Joy's of squishy 2nd ed characters.
@@Squeekysquid We did something similar in 3.5 If you roll initial roll was a 20(not just the threat range of the weapon, a real nat 20), and your confirmation roll was also a 20 it was an instant kill. 1 in 400 chance. We had a group of 6 pc's that played for a year and it only happened once. It was epic, and we still talk about in now almost 10 years later :) I highly recommend.
Been watching RuneHammer for a long time. He is a big brain when it comes to anything D&D and under rated IMO.
Both ideas are cool! At least on paper, as I haven´t tried any of them yet. However, playing OSR I tend to narrate the outcome of each combat round after everyone has acted, so any misses, near misses, low damage, high damage.... get bundled up into a single narrative. You might actually defend against that mace with your shield but the attack was too strong and you still took HP damage.
So you’re saying you share the narration after the groups initiative resolves? Waiting until “everyone has acted” seems like a group initiative type of thing and makes sense if so.
@@HouseDM Yes. group initiative indeed. B/X D&D (OSE) in my case
@@pedrobernardo5887 love it. I’m feeling the OSE life too. Cheers!
I've been brewing similar ideas for a while, coming from a simplification perspective, and there's one big and fully overlooked benefit to the D&D5e method: roll to hit is a greater than function, and damage is minor addition. *These are always going to be the quickest mathematical equations we can perform.* In fact, 5e takes this two steps farther, doing away with most subtraction (fie PF2) and introducing Advantage.
Armor-as-subtractor significantly increases the amount of math done during every attack, because subtraction has to "drop the ten". As an extreme example, the tarrasque hits you for 112 damage, subtract your 14 armor, then subtract that from your 103 HP. You have to "drop the ten" four times in that equation. I would *always* rather roll two d20 and compare them to your AC.
I think pure AC d6 "wound" systems could be a potential solution, but such systems also introduce a bell curve to every roll. Success has a high floor and skyrockets after only a few dice, rendering the roll a formality. The difference between a fireball and a broken nose also becomes buckets of dakka. Worst of all, the DM has no practical sense of success rate. A 25% success rate in a d20 system is DC15. But in a d6 system? Calculate a hypergeometric distribution on the fly~
While 5e has its pitfalls, the combat math is shockingly elegant. The erroneous pair of HP and AC *do* tangibly speed up gameplay, which is maddeningly counter-intuitive. It's witchcraft.
I've played games with both of these concepts and a third where someone rolls to hit and the other rolls to defend. The difference between rolls is the damage dealt. It allowed a more conscious effort to deal more or take less damage based on where you wanted to put stats. Regardless, I've been meaning to test out some rules to try and make combat faster if possible. Great video!
I'd be interested in the second option of Armor as DR, but I think I might tweak it in a few ways. Like that attacks do a minimum of 1 damage even if the DR would cancel it entirely. This way you don't have high AC creatures don't feel entirely invincible to mobs (albeit it would take a mob a while to take them down).
I would like to add a point towards rolls to hit, then rolling damage
You roll to hit to see if you hit or not, but since all hits don’t do the same amount of effect
We roll damage to see how well the hit landed…
Pro tip, if you take the top number of a damage die mean critical hit, then you double the max value of the die, allowing for different range of options to apply to diversify weapons more
Yeah another differentiation that a lot of roleplay do are you roll to hit depending on dexterity and then you roll to dommage depending of armour and then hit point.
You actually have three system here : hiting the target , going through the armor, doing enough dommage to knock the guy down.
DnD fuse the first two but fusing them all would be SO boring
These are valid questions to ask. The problem is (as others have probably mentioned) these are not minor tweaks or just ignoring features (like encumbrance or spell components) and so by the time you make all these changes to 5e to accommodate it, you aren't just playing homebrew 5e anymore. You're essentially inventing (or re-inventing) a new core combat system, and you'd probably be better off just changing the lore for another, higher risk combat system. For such sweeping changes, it's easier to change or ignore the lore of a combat system than to change every stat line in every book for every campaign session. If you want to tell high-risk combat stories with real danger and long-term consequences, choose another system. If you want to play 5e....then play 5e - with all its warts. It's a great experiment to play with, to be sure - the sort of experiment game designers at studios like WOTC undertake all the time. I'm just not sure it's a practical experiment for regular table play by the average DM and player group.
The damage reduction idea is one I have thought about before, and it's definitely intriguing. I think you would need to pair it with the exploding dice in order to not make d4 weapons obsolete.
You could use the "exploding dice" method, but you could also say that a max damage roll ignores armor reduction. So d4 weapons are more likely to roll under someones armor, but they also have a 25% chance to ignore armor.
@@ComradeFurious That's interesting. That would certainly speed up combat! Also, rolling max damage on weapons with higher dice would be rarer, but devastating.
I once removed 'hit Points', replacing them with CON points. Here's how it worked: Your CON represents you overall health and vitality. Instead of hit points, you have a number of hits you can take equal to your CON X Your Prof Bonus. So, at first level (or Tier One) you have your CON as hits.
Example: Trebor the Elven Ranger, with a CON of 14, gets into it with a pair of hungry gnolls (CON-10 ea). He draws his paired Scimitars and charges in, swinging. He rolls and hits the first gnoll for 8 damage, which is less than its CON, but still more than 50%, so the gnoll loses a point of CON (Down to 9)
Trebor's second swing strikes the other Gnoll, but this time he crits the hit, yielding 16 damage. This damage exceeds the Gnolls CON of 10, so he lowers his CON by 2, and the fight goes on.
Gnoll#1, stabs Trebor with its Spear, hitting for 7 damage. Because this is half of Trebor's CON, he loses a point. The battle continues until each of the Gnolls is dropped to Half their CON, at which point they turn and flee. Trebor then uses his Healer's Kit to bind his wounds and continues his journey.
When your CON is reduced to half, you must make a Wisdom Save. Failure means you flee; a save means you can fight on. (Raging Barbarians ignore this roll)
When your CON hits Zero, you drop. If a nearby party member makes a successful Medicine check, they can stabilize you. If you were along, sorry. You'll bleed out in CON rounds and pass on to that next place... ((No, I don't use Death Saves.))
I love these ideas. I favor the 1st method for simplicity and the fact that you still need to roll a Hit. Not only is rolling a Hit a fun central part of D&D but it is also realistic. Yes I'm serious. I have been a Martial Arts instructor and Kickboxing Coach for over 30 years (and former competitor). In the ring, cage or octagon combatants actually miss far more often than they hit. Pay close attention while watching the UFC.
Anyway, method #1 has real potential.
Hell yeah! I’m okay describing the narrative if participants in the fight keep missing or narrowly missing. It certainly adds to the tension!
I ran a hack of D&D 4E that did something similar to getting rid of hit points. Basically you had three innate hits before you were taken out, and then armor added hits (one for light, two for medium, three for heavy, one for shield). So fully armored you'd have seven hits. Then spells that granted armor just added a 'magic' hit to the lineup. Really horrible attacks might do two or even three hits at once. Some things, like poison, passed through your armor hits and went straight to magic and your innate three. Then as you leveled up, some classes (fighter) got more hits steadily, while others (wizard) got more hits occasionally (every 3 or 4 levels). Anyway, with some hacking it worked great, and made a lot of sense to people who were new to RPGs.
I like the "only roll damage" idea. I think there should be a different way to lower different types of damage. Without over complicating it, maybe different armors or modifiers for different damage types.
Check out electric bastionland or mausritter. I would personally suggest mausritter.
Edit: I'm saying this because both systems just roll for damage.
That mostly mean the dextrous fighter and the brute barbarian have zero difference systeme wise. And let me tell you it's get REALLY boring to be constantly reminded : yeah you are just rolling a dice a see if it's good compare to a number.
@@fabienherry6690 Do you know what really reminds me of the fact that I'm just rolling dice and comparing the results. Having to roll more dice. Simpler systems tend to be more immersive, because you spend less time on rules, and more time on play.
@@tortture3519 I remember playing open legend in a discord campaign. I you have a barbarian with super high strength roll a d20 compare to your score of strength that the dommage you have an assasin , roll a d20 compare to your score of sneaky and the result is the dommage. play a summoner roll a d20 compare to your summoner score and that your dommage.
Like EVERY FREAKING combat action was that. The reason why you have multiple system is to make them chaotic enough for you to not have a instant knowledge of what the result will be to lean on what you don't know. Like let's says you hit on 10 and do 1d6 dommage is it better to hit on 12 and do 1d10 ? Now you hit on 10 is it better than hit on 11 ?
I don’t even play DND and I love this concept. It always struck me off how you had to roll twice in games like Warhammer as well. Seems like an antiquated system that is only here because it’s always been here. Time to open up the ol’ creativity box. Good work.
Interesting ideas. The main problem with HP that I always had as a long term DM was the notion that it is a combination of health, luck and expertise. So when the healer is healing your missing HP, what is he healing actually? Your luck and expertise? While removing the Attack Roll completely does sound interesting on paper, it does not account for 1 specific thing: the possibility for an attacker to miss his opponent or to better put it - the possibility for the defender to dodge the attack completely. This is why a small game of which I am the author has created an entirely new system, where every creature has a very limited amount of HP determined by their endurance (constitution). They also have a Miss Rating that is determined by their agility and awareness. Characters may opt to wear armour which may reduce their Miss Rating (making them easier to be hit in combat) but will improve their Protection and Toughness Ratings, making them harder to Wound (reduce their very very limited HPs) if they do get hit. The game that this is from has been in development for 5 years and I am really proud of this system :D
The system your describing sounds a lot like both Cyberpunk 2020 and World of Darkness. I assume there are many other games from that era using similar systems but those are the only ones I've looked into.
In both systems you have very small hit point pools that basically remained static as you levelled up. In both systems, armour acts as damage resistance with Cyberpunk taking it a step further and having cover act as armour (with a suitably clunky table for figuring out how it all stacked).
In Cyberpunk, you also rolled hit zone before resolving damage, so you could easily 'hit' a guy in a trench, but chances are you 'hit' his body, so the shot is actually going straight into the ground.
In World of Darkness, armour didn't do much to save you if you were a basic human. You relied on shooting first and losing your action to dodge if you were getting shot at (the initiative system was really cool conceptually, but a slog to run, people declared their actions in reverse-initiative order then ran them in forward-initiative order with the ability to back out and dodge at any point). Vampires could take a lot more hits but still relied on regenerating to survive.
Yes, the healer is restoring your luck and expertise.
Due to the reasons you bring up in this video is the reason I started using Iron Crown Enterprises Rolemaster and Spacemaster combat system ages ago. With that system a VERY lucky first level fighter would be able to take down a 10th level fighter due to the way armor, damage and crits works. The type of armor worn and the weapon that is used on that armor determines the damage done in points and maybe if you have scored a crit. The type of crit and severity is determined by weapon type and a second roll is made. A high roll with a high severity can kill a creature in one hit. Offensive bonus is added to your attack roll but some of it, all of it or none of it can be added to your defensive bonus which is subtracted from the attacker's attack roll. This is known as parrying the attack, which is limited to certain conditions. Cover is also taken into account. On top of that the more damage you take the more your attack is degraded as well as some of the crits may limit you.
The only problem with a standard 1 Hit (a.k.a. "wounds") is that a dagger does the same damage as a zweihander. This proved to be a fatal flaw in my group, because we have talking animals wielding needle swords and a giant wielding an anchor as a club. So in my home-brew (called Danger Dice) weapons are rated Tiny, Small, Medium, Large or Giant and do 1,2,3 4, or 5 points per Hit. Your attack roll determines how many Hits you did. Thus there is no damage roll. Armor deducts damage per attack, not per Hit. Hit points measure physical stamina plus grit. As you lose hit points your attacks get weaker. Our combats are fast and very, very scary.
This is so cool. I'm working on making a game and I want to try this so badly to put the fear of God in my players. Thank you for this.
Another issue I see is it removes the impact of luck when rolling (and lets be honest, most players love rolling dice). I love how you can hit and still kinda miss cause you do so little damage... I can describe it as "altough you scored a direct hit, the bandit's quick footwork made him avoid most of the blow's impact. He jolted backwards has your axe pierced his flesh, leaving more of a graze than a wound..."
I also homebrewed something like this, but with gravity of wounds.
You have for example
4 Light Wounds
3 Medium Wounds
2 Serious Wounds
1 Mortal Wound
Max.
All start at 0 when the character is in top condition.
A dagger will do light wounds. If all light wounds are filled, all attacks that would do light wounds now do medium wounds, and so on.
This way, hitting X times with a dagger can become very dangerous, but hitting one time with a zweihander is no joke as well.
It also helps, as a DM, to give meaning to the HP loss. If you suffer Lights Wounds, it's just scratch, but Medium Wounds start to hurt when you move or act, and Serious Wounds could even come with malus if you want.
Also, having a Mortal Wound doesn't mean your character is dead, it means it will die. You can play a turn or 2 or finish a narrative piece and have the character die between scenario rather than in a scenario, so the player isn't taken out of the game.
This was a neat video. Reminds me of a two-shot Deadlands adventure a friend of mine ran. The exploding dice concept is very neat and I'd be excited to see someone stream it.
A few things:
1. Hit points doesn't just represent life force, much as it gets used that way. To an extent, it represents life, but it's also a matter of stamina, and ALL wounds, not just bleeding ones. So essentially, HP also represents hits that don't actually make it through your armor, because while the armor may still be intact, it doesn't mean you necessarily take no damage. When a canine bites you, its jaw strength can cause your armor itself to bite into your skin, and there's the natural tendency of animals to violently yank once they have their jaw locked, meaning muscle damage. It can also represent your ability to push through the pain to keep fighting. In the case of the greatsword, either the armor manages to hold up to the hit, or they could be hit not by the blade of the axe, but to either side of it (It's still a giant piece of metal, it's gonna hurt when you get hit with the blunt side), so a hit still occurs, but it doesn't necessarily mean instant death. In fact, shy of direct head or heart shots, the reality is, almost nothing instantly kills a human.
2. The problem of the 'exploding die': Rogues. in 5e, Rogues can easily start swinging for more than 3d6 in a single swing, meaning that their statistical chance of exploding multiple dice keep going up, and since there's no technical limit to the number of times they can sneak attack in a combat, that means that it's going to see the party making more and more certain to set the Rogue up, which also means more work for the DM. As well, you would have to fully redo all CRs in the game, because hobgoblins suddenly become WAY more deadly with their Martial Advantage ability, given that it literally adds dice to their every attack. And that's just the hobgoblins, setting aside things like breath attacks, and other things that are dice adders. This also means that, the lower the die being rolled, the higher the probability OF critical hits. Even a greataxe lowers the difficulty of critical from 1:20 to 1:12, and d4 is literally 1:4 (Magic Missile gets way more brutal).
3. AC isn't, despite terminology, about armor. The 10 represents the average person's ability to get out of the way of, or take, a hit without taking significant damage. It can represent blocking, parrying, dodging, deflecting the hit, or even the armor or whatnot being able to stand up to the hit without causing significant damage.
With changing this much of 5e, honestly? You're far better off going to a different system, such as Warhammer Fantasy, or World of Darkness, where they have systems built in to represent these facets of combat. WoD even takes things like weapon speed into account, allowing character who use faster weapons to attack more often, versus those who swing more powerful weapons, making for a better balance of combat. There's a certain point where you're doing more work than needed, and I would love to see other publishers start to get some love.
One of the systems I’ve appreciated from the past, rather than simplifying and removing either to-hit or hit points, so to split hit points into vitality and wounds…
Vitality is typically the straightforward replacement to hit points, only typically slightly less (maybe every class drops a die code for their hit points when determining vitality). Vitality represents your character’s ability to weather those non-lethal hits. Losing vitality is still getting hit, but remain standing through sheer tenacity. When you vitality drops to zero, you can no longer run, you take penalties to strength and dexterity, and you have to roll to stay conscious.
Wounds, on the other hand, is your actual meat value. It’s your flesh, and is typically equal to your constitution. Once you’re out of vitality, all hits go directly to wounds. Similarly, critical hits do not hit vitality, but go directly to wounds (but do not double damage as per usual). When you run out of wounds, you are immediately unconscious and dying.
I realize it’s adding complexity rather than simplifying, but I always liked the clearer representation of hit points, and the breakdown of durability be mortality.
One system that did pretty great on it's damage/hp system is Shadows of Esteren.
Step 1 : Roll attack vs defense, if it hits go to step 2
Step 2 : your attack roll minus the evasion is the base damage of the attack, then you add your weapon modifier and substract armor value.
Apply damage to character. if I remember correctly, aside from some perks/class, you have 19 health points with negative modifiers as such :
good : 5 points
Ligh wounds -1 : 5 points
Heavy wounds -2 : 4 points
Critical -3 : 4 points
Agony : 1 point (No malus because you are considered dying and have to roll to stay alive and not die from your wounds or get healed)
My friend and I have had many discussions on this subject. I basically look at hit points like "plot armor" because that's really what it is. Its a measure of how difficult you are to kill. If you're up against an enemy with a 1d6 damage attack, that's an average of 3.5 "damage" per successful hit. If you have 14 HP, then taking an average 4 of those hits drops you to zero. Losing HP represents your enemy otherwise fighting well, but you get a lucky dodge in, or you deflect the blow with your buckler at just the right time. Its your "Time To Kill" metric.
I have my own system that I like to use, somewhat adapted from a FUDGE wound system. All characters have 3 "HP" which are their actual health. Losing 1 results in minor stat reduction, losing 2 results in major stat reduction, and losing 3 means you are dead. Any HP beyond this 3 is "plot armor" and more or less represents minor scratches, near misses, lucky dodges, etc. Your "plot immunity." The more skilled you are at fighting, the more "plot armor" you have. The tougher you are, the more "plot armor" you have. I usually start characters at 5 total (3 HP + 2 Plot Armor). This system is nice because it also gives you a degree of damage scaling. Against a healthy person with 3 HP, 1 damage is enough to wound, but not kill. 2 is enough to seriously wound, but not kill. 3 is enough to kill. Against someone with 3 HP + 2 Plot Armor, 1 or 2 damage is negligible because you dodged it or blocked it or whatever, but 3 damage would wound you because you managed to dodge but it still got you right in the shoulder, now its harder for you to swing your sword and if you take another hit like that you're certainly dead.
The only rolls you really need are checking for success and failure. At that point you can play the entire d20 system with exactly one d20.
This sounds much like the system in Savage Worlds where you have no HP and taking hits makes you both easier to kill (shaken) and worse at doing anything until you go down at 3 wounds, which can actually happen in a single hard hit.
That system does have rolling to hit and rolling for damage with exploding dice, but hitting things is pretty similar in almost all circumstances. E.g.: shooting a person-sized target with a gun in normal conditions within range is always a TN 4 (target number 4, like DC) to hit them, no matter what. The player's shooting skill determines the die type they roll (d4 - d12), along with other factors, so someone very good at shooting will almost never miss that shot.
So here's and idea I've used as a DM: When a larger massive creature such as a giant strikes a medium sized character with a massive sword you'd think the sword would simply carve them In half and also send them flying several feet away. So when a massive creature hits a players AC and exceeds the AC by a factor of 5, 10, 15, 20 etc (depending on the size difference) the creature deals damage as usual and then the player must makes a CON save vs. that damage (base damage of a Hill Giant is 18) depending on the success or fail of the save, the character can be slammed away (possibly taking extra damage if they hit something else) the character can gain the prone, stun or incapacitated condition or if they completely fail the role ( failed by 10 or more ) then they are brought to zero hp and begin dying
I apply this rule to falling great distances as well, a character that falls 40-50 or more feet doesn't simply take some damage, get up and keep on going.
Macchiato Monsters has a related mechanic I really like.
1. If you hit a monter, it loses its attack.
2. If you don't hit a monster, it hits you automatically.
Zero Whiff Factor. It also explicitly states that HP aren't flesh points, but represent your ability to stay in the fight through stamina, positioning, and luck.
My current house rule is to say that first 50% of HP are just that, never wounds. Below that you accumulate minor wounds while losing ground and getting exhausted, while your last HD represents major wounds.
One of my favorite systems uses armor more like health, where taking damage from an opponent adds up against armor value until either the attacks cease from the opponent or the armor is overcome, after which the damage resets. If the damage exceeds what the armor can take, the character receives a wound. Wounds count against a very small pool, in the 5 to 6 range for average characters, and don't regenerate until the character gets medical attention or sufficient time passes. Crits bypass armor to deal a wound and have additional effects. Very cool system, there were so many nice quality of life features
Food for thought. I'm thinking these concepts might be fun to tinker with, and who would not be interested in seeing you put together something on this. Or to play test it.
In the current system I’m working on, there’s six levels of woundedness. The first is unwounded, where you perform ideally. The second is hurt, where you’re in some pain and have some small cuts or bruises, but no effects yet. The third is wounded, where you begin to feel some weakness or inability from your injuries. The fourth is maimed, where you are seriously wounded and are becoming very ineffective, the fifth is dying, where you can likely do little more than cower, block attacks or attempt to flee. And the sixth and last is death.
This makes wounds more serious, deadly and actually having effect on the gameplay. Different damage types also inflict wounds differently. Piercing damage from, say, arrows or stabs damage according to the effectiveness of the hit on the attack roll. Cutting damage is all chance but you’re rolling multiple die so there’s a good chance that you may inflict massive damage or you may inflict only light damage and perhaps even none. Blunt damage deals a base damage no matter what plus additional rolled damage. And hewing damage (chiefly from axes) does base, has additional cutting damage and a chance to sever limbs from the body. There’s more I’m working on and I’ve yet to playtest, but these are ideas I’m playing with to allow for a more “realistic”, brutal and dynamic game.
I've thought about this a lot, and have designed and tested out a number of different systems (including fully narrative systems, hitpoint-less systems, and various hybrids). I'm just going to address hitpoints here, as armour is a different topic that needs its own discussion.
The fundamental issue with HP is that what they are trying to model is human injury. And the fundamental issue with human injury is that the real mechanics of getting hurt are very contingent and non-linear. People can sometimes survive being riddled with bullets or stab wounds, and yet frequently die from slipping in the shower. People also tend not to die all at once outside of certain, specific scenarios. Instead we get injured, lose some capability and then become incapacitated later on due to trauma/blood loss.
This makes sense when you think about it - we're machines with a bunch of important parts (our organs), each of which has its own failure points and knock-on effects to the whole. HP, on the other hand, model the body as a sort of potato-like structure - your character is perfectly functional until a magic threshold is reached, after which they die.
One approach that I've used is to have gated states that the character moves through as they lose hitpoints - after half your HP are gone, your character is wounded and loses stats. At one quarter they're grievously injured, lose even more capability, and will then continue to lose HP until stabilized. The results are more realistic, but this is obviously a bit fiddly to implement and can be frustrating when you spend half a scenario watching your character bleed out as they crawl towards help. I'd recommend it more for a grim-n-gritty setup where frustrations like these are part of the intended experience.
Another approach is just to re-define terms - you have a more or less sharply limited HP pool, and characters who run out are "knocked out of the fight" by default rather than being killed. Being KO'd means that you're either down for the count, are too busy tending to your own wounds to deal with anything else, or are scared enough to run away or surrender (options to be provided as appropriate). So a fireball doesn't just blow up goblins, it also terrifies them - with the results being handled using either a narrative or mechanical system as to whether they fall down dead, lie very still on the floor and hope that nobody notices them, stop-drop-and-roll, or run for the hills. This adds a small extra system (a way to manage outcomes when HP hits zero), but opens up a bunch of narrative potential and resolves some common-sense questions about why two identical-looking characters might have order-of-magnitude differences in HP.
Finally, I've had some success with having a damage model where weapons deal both direct and indirect damage. The direct damage just lowers HP as per normal, while the indirect damage goes into a "catastrophe" pool. When the catastrophe pool equals or exceeds a threshold (e.g. the remaining HP pool), then the character suffers from a catastrophe of some sort that puts them out of the fight without killing them. This can again be anything from passing out due to blood loss, to crapping their pants and running away. Every character with catastrophe points on them then has to make a check at the end of the turn (for instance, a simple 1D6 with multiple options depending on outcome). This is loaded so that catastrophes can self-resolve, but are more likely to snowball as the game goes on (eg: a roll of 1 adds two points, 2-3 adds one point, 4-5 do nothing and 6 removes 1 point).
The nice thing about this approach is that although it adds two new systems (tracking and managing catastrophe points, and resolving outcomes from them), it also opens up a bunch of new scenarios that make the overall experience more realistic without futzing with the core systems as well. For DnD, which is already loaded to the gunwales with systems, it's probably not a good fit. But for a ground-up system that already uses a lean-n-mean HP-lite approach, I think it adds a bit of flexibility in terms of outcome.
Thanks for the Glatisant shout-out! A great RPG that removes the attack rolls is Into the Odd and its sequel, Electric Bastionland. Definitely check them out if you're interested in seeing how these ideas could be expanded
Aye the Beast himself. Yes indeed they are both incredible! I learned about both Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland after recording this video. In fact, the Glatisant was what led me to find the discussion on the Runehammer forums in the first place so cheers for that and thanks for all you do for the ttrpg community Ben.
A Warhammer 40k RPG I play pretty much does both of these things to some extent. It's called Dark Heresy, and while you still roll to hit, you have to roll *under* your score for that skill and count any modifiers. Basically means that no matter how heavily armoured your target is, your skill with the weapon is consistent. You have very low HP (or wounds as they're called) throughout most of the campaign since it doesn't really increase as a given like in DnD. Armour and toughness just reduce the amount of damage you take to potentially 0. This also lets damage numbers stay pretty low and make armour piercing an actual mechanic.
God, I could go on about that game. The magic system is amazing too.
Interesting! Been thinking about removing hit points in a video game idea that I am working on, this is hella helpful thanks!
Great vid. I am always interested in ways to streamline the rules. Check out Savage Worlds, if you haven't before. It essentially has no hit points, though in reality you have 3, and each time you lose one, your stats go down, too. It's a great system.
Savage definitely uses a lot of the ideas referenced here. Wounds instead of hit points, armor reduction, etc. And I love exploding dice.
I love this. But also, this takes us to the roots of D&D, war gaming! What a great video to express how to add more verisimilitude!
Shadowrun 2ndEd had a hit pointless system. You had two 10 box tracks, one for damage and one for consciousness. Weapons and spells did damage levels of L (1 box), M (3 boxes), S (6 boxes), or D (10 boxes). For each two successes the attacker rolled, they advanced the damage level up one, up to D. Each weapon/spell had a Power Level like 12S or 6L. That number was the target number each of the target's Body dice (roll a number of d6 equal to you Body, explode dice on 6). For every 2 successes the defender scored they lowered the damage level (not boxes). So if weapon did 6L and the attacker got 4 successes the base damage level would be 6S. If the target rolled 6 successes the damage would be gone (S to M, M to L, L to none). It was a fantastic system.
Some cool concepts to be sure, some of which I've been using already for over 30 years. Good stuff!
I've thought similar thoughts.
The way I house ruled it is if the the roll to hit is below your dex, the attack is a miss. If the roll to hit is above your dex but below your AC, the damage is halved and goes to your armor. Your Armor's durability is determined by the AC (example AC 15 means your Armor can take 15 damage before being damaged itself). If the roll to hit is above Dex and AC, you take full damage to your armor and if damage taken is greater than your AC durability, you lose 1 HP and your Armor is permanently damaged bringing your AC and Armor durability down by 1.
I had a much more low magic, grounded type of game. Health was low and scarce. Level ups for HP were straight rolls, no averages. And armor did more than protect you, it could mean the difference between being alive and dead.
I felt that 5e gave a lot more to the magic classes and this was kind of my response to it. I wanted
to give melee strength based characters a chance to feel badass as well.
As a DM, I've done these things. No "to hit", just damage + Armor mitigates the damage. And I've also had armor count as a hit point buff, or temp HP. The player decides if the armor takes the hit or the character. If the armor gets to 0 HP, not only does it no longer function, but it makes all physical actions take a penalty. In prior editions, I just had it apply a roll penalty equal to its armor category (light = -1, medium = -2, heavy = -3). In 5e, I think I'd make it apply Disadvantage to any physical action. The main advantage to eliminating to-hit rolls is it speeds up combat. It also makes tank + sneak-attacker a far more important tactic. The tank (fighter, paladin, bear-druid, etc.) isn't expected to do much damage to a heavy-armor foe, but if they can hold attention while a sneaker gets in a multi-die backstab, then that makes both players feel like they seriously contributed to the battle.
I'll admit, I was skeptical at first, but I tried to hear you out, and I'm glad I did, because this rule is perfectly made for my new project/idea.
Ooooh do tell more 🙃
@@HouseDM so I've been getting into rougelike games lately, so Im trying to somehow implement some mechanics into dnd. I'm kind of struggling, because this is my first major attempt at homebrew and I want it to play well. I'm trying to simplify character Creation, due to constantly dying in roguelikes. I'm also trying to make combat faster paced, which is where this comes in. Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated, because I really want to make this first version as good as possible. I'm assuming there will be many versions, due to there always being room for improvement.
@@ITrySometimes I feel for you. I’m in the same boat. Some of the design principles you mentioned are done VERY well in the Arcane Library’s Shadowdark RPG. I 100% think you should check it out and hopefully you find some inspiration there. Also check out Into the Odd if you haven’t already. Homebrewing can be hard if you don’t know your base game well enough. Each thing you tweak can cause another thing to break. So you really need to know the game and be patient with yourself 👍🏼
@@HouseDM The main features I want to implement are: slightly higher difficulty, fast paced combat, the importance of resource management, and also the importance of planning your actions. This video helps with the combat, your video about spell slots could be used to nerf spellcasters a bit, making it slightly harder, as well as encourage planning and resource management, but the main issue is character creation, because I want to make it really quick, so if you want to try a different strategy, you could just create a new character quick, and get right back into action. There could also be checkpoints, that if at least one person makes it to the next floor, everyone who died gets revived, to prevent someone from not being involved. If you have any ideas on simplifying character creation, just reply to this comment, and I'll probably see it. I'm also genuinely surprised you saw the original comment, so thanks.
The best ruleset for a ttrpg, or for any game for that matter, is one that has mechanics that fit the flavor of the game. D&D is designed for classic dungeon crawls and will perform well for games that fit that theme. However, the mistake people make is that they assume it is a one size fits all and only use that system. When d&d is forcefully applied on a game that has a completely different objectives, it can handle it sure, but you’re missing out on a system that can handle it better. If you want to learn more about this, look up game design :)
a fun system a lot of rp heavy games have are tags. instead of hp, you have tags that define what damage your body's taken. some spells or moves add the "nausea" tag or "asleep" tag to your character, whereas regular weapons might add the "wounded" or "bleeding" tag. tags can be super temporary like "proned" or nigh permanent like "dismembered", then, either to the dm/player's discretion, accruing enough tags would effectively take you out of the encounter, even if you're not dead, OR with something like a "mortal tags" system, you could track a number of tags that threaten your life separate from other tags "bleeding", "punctured lung", "left leg inoperable", and if you accrued enough of those you could pronounce your character dead.
Here's an idea from Monster of the Week/ MASKS - both are game systems that run on Powered by the Apocolypse
Conditions, which are as follows
- Afraid - lessens your ability to damage your enemy
- Angry - lessens your ability to hit your enemy (basically, you're being reckless)
- Guilty - lessens your ability to defend against your enemy
- Hopeless - all rolls get a penalty until you regain hope
- Insecure - lessens your ability to save against certain types of spells (for example charm person)
(special) - Damaged - your character is seriously wounded and needs to either rest or have powerful magic cast to allow them to fight at full strength
when all 5 or 6 are marked, your character is out of the scene
I have actually used the armor as DR system before. When i gm'd for it, my players didnt like the idea of (what you awesomely termed as) exploding dice. What we did was use the inspiration system. You could use inspiration to do an extra hit on top of your normal attacks, if you had an expanded crit range added attacks to the point. Example, Belgram the fighter was a champion subclass with a crit range of 18-20. So when he used his longsword 2H, he got his normal 1d10+3, and the inspiration point gave him a total of 3d10+9 extra, (1d10+3 Per number on the die he could crit on), the barbarians extra damage dice ability just got maxxed on each die that would have rolled. To balance it, for the creatures, i added 1 damage to each creature, since they didnt do inspiration, and a creature that had legendary actions, had one inspiration that could be used, but a player could sacrifice their inspiration to negate it. It was great fun
Open Legend does something similar to what you mentioned with removing attack rolls, but it's like attack and damage rolls are wrapped into one thing. You roll a d20 plus whatever dice corresponds to the attribute you're attacking with, for for example 1d20+1d6. If whatever you roll is higher than the opponent's relevant defensive stat (there are 3 in OL) then your opponent takes damage equal to the difference. So if you rolled a 23 and the opponent has a guard stat of 15, the attack does 8 damage.
All this discussion, at least to me, begs the question of why to stick to D&D instead of using a different system. If players need to learn a totally different set of rules for combat anyway, why not just find a different system?
That being said, this was a great video and shows how different rules can dramatically alter the decisions someone makes in combat :)
Oh my goodness, I remember the same discussions and the same answers from 30-40 years ago. Many good games have been created with them in mind. You seriously should try some ;).
These are cool mechanical ideas, that I can totally see working well in their own RPG system. Trying to cram them into DnD seems like it would get messy really quick, though. First of all, making most attacks deal the same 1 HP of damage would kind of exacerbate the already all-powerful Action Economy. Fighting eight CR 1/4 skeletons in 5e is typically going to be way more dangerous than fighting a single CR 2 Ogre (despite the two fights ostensibly having the same challenge rating), because you're getting attacked eight times per turn with the skeletons, and only once per turn with the Ogre. If everything is now dealing 1 damage and everyone has around 5 HP, 8 skeletons is now a horrifying mob of destruction, and an ogre is a complete joke that might go down in the first turn. Even if you say that big scary creatures like Ogres or Giants deal extra damage to compensate, it's still not even close.
Class features would similarly be really hard to balance. Martial classes tend to get Extra Attack at level 5, whereas cantrips increase in damage. At first you could say that martials get a second attack as normal and cantrips go from 1 to 2 damage, but what happens when cantrips level up again at level 11? Do they go to 3 damage, and then you have to figure out a way to give martials more damage to compensate? Barbarians get a slight damage bonus when they rage. Do you translate this to a +1 bonus, giving them a whopping potential damage output of 2x2 per turn, massively buffing them? Or do you cut the damage bonus entirely because it's not big enough to translate to a +1, nerfing the class by quite a bit? What about Sneak Attack? Starting off with a +1 damage on sneak attacks sounds fair, but it's supposed to increase by 1d6 every other level. Do you increase it by +1 every two levels, resulting in an absolutely busted amount of damage? Or do you cut back on how often sneak attack increases, nerfing the class significantly?
Spells would be an absolute nightmare. Fireball is already renowned for being intentionally overpowered, and with this new system...It still would be, if all damaging spells deal the same damage and just differ in AoE. Inflict Wounds is a single-target attack spell that deals 3d10 damage, obviously quite a bit more than a base-level cantrip. So I guess we can say it deals 2 damage, since you're using a spell slot to cast it. But then you hit level 5, and suddenly Fire Bolt and Chill Touch and Ray of Frost are also all doing 2 damage (unless they aren't, at which point cantrips immediately fall off at level 5). So I can cast Fire Bolt to deal 2 damage at range, cast Chill Touch to deal 2 damage at range with an additional effect, cast Ray of Frost to deal 2 damage at range with an additional effect, or I can use a spell slot to cast Inflict Wound to deal...2 damage. In melee. With no additional effects.
In practice, truncating everything to bits of 1 would, counterintuitively, make everything way more complicated. It would be really neat to see a unique game system that uses these ideas. But to use them in DnD you have to look at every individual class feature/spell and individually balance them to make the new system work, or make blanket changes that would immediately throw the balance out the window. At that point, it's worth considering why you're playing DnD, and not a different system.
Adapting a bit from Pathfinder 2e, we can use the four degrees of success & failure for combat hits.
Meeting or beating a AC causes regular damage.
Beating it by 10 or more is a crit, double damage.
Rolling a bit below the AC still causes half damage (like some spell damage does) because you still made contact or required extreme evasive action.
Missing by 10 or more is a clean miss with no damage, except to the attacker’s confidence.
Natural 20 moves you success up on step, and natural 1 moves it down one step.
This means that most attacks aimed at a target will wear them down. Many things, including dodging, armor deflection, and luck can be used to describe this slow erosion.
When you drop to zero, you’re not necessarily unconscious, but you’re incapacitated and have taken a significant wound. You get one level of exhaustion from dropping to zero, and another for each failed death save.
You recover exhaustion levels at a rate of one per long rest (per day), and while you have any exhaustion, the effect of any HP healing is halved. You don’t get free HP for a long rest, but you can spend as many hit dice as you like. In a 30-minute short rest, you could only spend one hit die.
I would really like spell slots to require hit die expenditure, but I’m still working on that.
As someone already familiar with both of these ideas, I was disappointed the "AND" part of the title wasn't quite accurate to your point. "OR" is more what you meant, I think.
I like both ideas. I think some complexity or concerns with their execution (such as a dagger exploding or critting on a 4 being statistically better vs a shortsword exploding on a 6) stem a bit from trying to force these concepts into DnD 5e without abandoning some of what 5e already has in place.
I'd highly recommend to anyone who hasn't already checking out Into the Odd (or Bastionland by the same author), which is what I immediately think of when I think of removing attack rolls. Mausritter is also great and borrows a lot from Into the Odd.
Your explanation of these concepts was very good and enjoyable!
The very first RPG i was a GM at was a derivation of the original "The Black Eye", in which you roll for attack, if you manage the defender rolls to defend (parry or dodge is a tactical choice), and then you roll for damage and see if you beat the armor score of the enemy.
It sounds like a lot but I found it to play very nicely and it was way easier to describe the hits. It is done that way because the system wants each swing to have a roll, rather than doing exchanges, and takes a lot into account.
I have also experimented with roleplaying without a rulebook, and thus without hit points. Since there is no armor class or score, in that case I do opposing rolls (with ""modifiers"" depending on how skilled the characters are supposed to be) if the attacker gets higher, the higher the difference, the more important the wound
The old d20 Star Wars rules had a neat hitpoint system. Basically you had a pool of Hit points equal to your Con score that represented your actual health, then you had a vitality pool that was the "hp" from your class. Your vitality refreshed very easily and was depleted before your health. Health healed very slowly and if it was ever fully depleted your character could die (I can't remember if it had a death save type mechanic or was just 0 hp=dead). Critical hits and massive damage simply skipped vitality and directly damaged health. So if a character lost vitality, it represented near misses, soaking damage etc and could be narrated as such, but if a character lost health, they were actually injured.
New to this channel. Love watching Jason Mamoa explain viable home brew rules. 👏
I stumbled onto this change today, and I have a smirk as I just backed MCDMs RPG. Nice video.
I dig these great examples of the artifacts of TTRPGs. It's something I've been working on recently to make TTRPG more accessible to therapy.
That’s incredible! When you break down the core mechanics, the game is really quite simple and could have all sorts of positive applications. Not the first time I heard it could do wonders for therapy 👍🏼
Ability to hit and damage dealt by the hit are both important. The old WHQ did it great. You rolled for an attack comparing both fighters weapon skill, superior fighters being harder to hit and landing blows easier. Then you would roll damage with your attacks strength added to it, and then the targets armour and toughness reducing the damage.
All D6
A barbarian swings his axe at a dwarf warrior wearing chain armour (roll a 4+), he hits. He now does D6+4 damage to the dwarf who will be reducing 5 from the damage dealt. He'd need to roll a 2 or higher to even wound the dwarf.
WS3 S4 vs WS4 T4(5)
The dwarf then retaliates with his WS4 vs WS3 and needs a 3+ to land the blow. When he succeeds he will roll d6+3 damage, but with his two handed axe he'll roll an aditional d6 if he hit with a 6. The barbarian is equiped with a shield giving him a toughness 4 so the dwarf needs a 2+ to do any real damage. Unless he rolled a 6 to hit, then he will do 2d6+S damage to the the barbarian who will still negate 4 damage.
So, for D&D, just have a weapon skill that works like AC and then have the AC just reduce damage with your endurance modifier.
I’m actually in a campaign where we have a lot of optional/homebrew rules. One of them actually being damage reduction from armor, but we still have normal ac. So you still have to roll high enough to hit, and roll high enough to get good enough damage to kill. This sounds like it makes the campaign more difficult, but we have combat rules that make attacks more devastating, and the reduction to damage sometimes is a life saver.
I've always liked the wound system that Warhammer fantasy uses. It might be even more interesting to have temporary bolstered healing and permeant damage.
It makes combat more deadly, but also raises tension - all the while reducing the amount of numbers to keep track of. Your body has a certain number of "wounds" it can take before you're out of commission, whether it be mental or physical - and you really cannot heal mental damage without a way to numb the pain - it would keep coming back unless there was a legitimately real way to cope. This also works in lieu of negotiations and charisma checks who roll social skills like with Intimidate, Charm, Bluff, Diplomacy. You can use said words to cut deep into the other person to get your point across, and still apply said "wounds" to the situation. It's exceptionally fluid depending on the situation.
For instance - AC vs damage as opposed to the "to hit." This specifically helps deal with enemy mobs as opposed to one v one - allowing more epic mind theater. If combined with the "critical hit" system at the end of the video, it makes a lot of sense or how healing magic doesn't actually remove fatigue or restore blood, it just stops the bleeding and a poor roll on a willing target would cause further shock, but still stop bleeding.
I think it makes things more fluid and interesting, allowing for greater storytelling.
So, as someone who runs Call of Cthulhu campaigns and been apart of DnD campaigns, I suggest a "major wound" system. It is similar to the Call of Cthulhu's, where a Major wound is whenever a character takes half of their max hp they have to make a con save to remain conscious (at least, in CoC that is the consequence). It could stumble, daze, stun or concuss them, whichever flavors better or whatever you decide, if a weapons size and strength of an enemy is really high, and a pc receives a major wound, they get literally bounced and be moved and forced prone (I.E. Zealot barbarian human gets hit by a giant twice his size and the weapon/form of attack is considerably bigger then him, he gets hit and his momentum slams him on the ground and he bounces up a little, or gets knocked back a few feet and skids on the ground and has to stand back up) CoC's large punishment for having a major wound is no healing when time passes, and a requirement to rest to heal and be attended by someone with First Aid or Medicine skills to accelerate the process and recover from the wounds. I imagine you could think of a lot of different things around the system as inspiration for a more realistic feeling of being smoted by a weapon your size.
I have also struggled with the concept of “hit points” or “damage” - I tend to lean toward a narrative system of injury “severity” based on other factors. Like proficiencies. Its kinda like the the complexities between dodge, block, stealth, parry… it all ends up being small difference outside of narrative value. Or the functional difference between having high hit points vs. high skill in dodging. Whether you get hit or not, you survive long enough to defeat the baddie and life goes on. You win. Storytelling is what its all about. I also enjoy the Cypher system approach. Just having options and control over the story to make player rolls more meaningful helps a lot.
When you think about the roll of “dice” or essentially chance, what does it really represent? Why would an expert warrior need to worry about chance when theyre a legendary talent at a skill or weapon? They wouldnt. Even a 1 on a d20 doesnt represent how rare it would be for them to mess anything up. I like using dice for true chance or luck only. But this can just as easily be achieved with a deck of cards, as Gloomhaven has shown us people are clearly excited about. Anyway, lots to say on that too. For sure.
4:00 I’m sorry to be blunt but there’s no innovation in this method. All that’s occurred is the squashing of hit point and damage totals and damage type being made arbitrary. You still subtract points from a total based on the effectiveness of the damage dealt. Tracking specific damage from a health pool vs subtracting hits from a health pool is nearly the same thing.
The damage reduction method is how cyberpunk red does armor. I’m setting up my first campaign soon so I have the details fresh in my mind.
Each armor type has Stopping Power that reduces the damage taken by a certain amount. Melee weapons ignore half that amount, barehanded attacks do not. Effects like fire or poison ignore it completely. If an attack gets through your armor, it also abates it, reducing its effectiveness by 1 as the armor takes its own damage.
I’m very excited to see how CPRed runs compared to DnD.