2008-01-12 Per Encounter Hitpoints

I’ve been thinking about some of the things I might houserule in future games.

One of the things that come to mind: Hit points are per encounter resources: *At the end of the encounter you take a minute or two to catch your breath and you’re back at full hit-points.*

My players rarely walk into a fight without healing back to full hit points. I personally find a wand of cure light wounds to be super boring, and yet that’s the most reasonable option.

If characters nearly died during a fight (below zero hitpoints), then I’d love it if they roleplayed being stunned, exhausted, fatigued, or whatever for the day. They just had a near death experience! Enforcing this via rules might make it less fun, though.

I’m no longer that interested in fixing skills.

All the buffing is getting on my nerves as a DM. I hate it when a player rolls some dice and then starts mumbling “so that’s plus eight, and protection from evil +1, and bull’s strength +2, and how could I forget bless +1 – yes, I hit!!” As a player I find keeping track of the numbers doesn’t have to be a problem. I start the session with a big empty sheet of paper with my current damage total my current attack bonus. As soon as the situation changes, I recompute the numbers and replace the old ones. When it is my turn I roll my dice and I know that the current bonus is +5/+5 (+8 ranged -2 for distance, -2 for rapid shot, and +1 for bless). I don’t have to repeat this calculation every single time I roll a die.

I think as a DM I should just punish players for wasting our time, harr harr. 😈

“So that’s plus eight, and protection from evil +1, and bull’s strength +2, and how could I forget bless +1 – yes, I hit!!” “No you didn’t!! That took way too long! NEXT!”

Late night posting. Not good. 😄

​#RPG ​#thoughts

Comments

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Re: skills, I am still really interested in consolidating the skill list, but I think if you make all skills class skills, give every class more skill points, and make changes in your Int modifier retroactively change your skill point total (like Con affects hp), that it is not too bad a system to work with.

– Adrian 2008-01-13 14:02 UTC

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Cool, that sounds a lot like what I had in mind. At higher level this is going to be intractable, however. Keeping track of the number of minutes passed will end up being fudged by the DM, I’m sure.

– Alex Schroeder 2008-01-13 19:09 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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I’d probably just simplify the recovery mechanics to “once you have a few (1-5) minutes to catch your breath, you can refill your hit point pool on a 1-to-1 basis from your reserve pool.”

Now that I think about it, this is basically like doubling a PC’s hit points, except that you only have access to the first half of the pool in combat; as a result, it doesn’t significantly alter your staying power in combat, but it does increase your ability to survive successive encounters.

Then you can add a feat that lets you use your reserve pool in combat, kind of like getting a second wind (which I think is something that Star Wars Saga already has).

– Adrian 2008-01-14 10:58 UTC

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Hm. I think I’d try the simplest form first: “Once you have a few minutes to catch your breath, you’re back at full hit points.”

Now I need to find a campaign where the players are willing to experiment with my houserules. The next campaign, I keep telling myself. 😄

– Alex Schroeder 2008-01-14 14:52 UTC

Alex Schroeder