Saturday Morning Adventure Dev Diaries #12: Hit Points and Death
Hey all! Today's dev diary is all about the health, damage and death systems I'll be using in SMA.
As you'd probably already guessed based on the whole "game-like" pitch for this whole project, I'm gonna be using a hit point system for tracking damage. Other options like wound categories, shock/pain/blood loss, limb tracking are all interesting and may work better in certain games, but hit points seems closest to the vibe I want for SMA.
Obviously, a direct translation of JRPG systems wouldn't really work for a tabletop RPG. The typical system of an instant KO at 0 hit points works in a video game because there is only a single player. A character getting knocked out is usually costly or risky to remedy, and heightens the tension of combat effectively since you're capabilities as a party are reduced. However, something like this would probably be pretty frustrating when each character has a single player since death would be very sudden. Compare this to the D&D system where any HP-recovering spell can get you back on your feet immediately.
I might implement something like this in SMA, though I also have another proposal to avoid the race to 0 hit points, and that's making the unconsciousness of zero hit points a more "sticky" condition. In D&D, getting a character back up and running is as simple as throwing out a healing spell. Because of this, a party will almost always rely on just staying alive until the enemy is dead rather than any other options like retreating when the situation is against them.
My pitch is this: once you hit 0 zero HP, you fall unconscious and are in a state of dying. You can avoid dying by becoming stable through various means just like D&D: succeeding on enough death saves, recovering health, whatever. The difference is that the KO condition doesn't just go away, even if you recover health. The KO condition naturally ends sometime after combat, but other than that it can only be removed through the use of certain costly items or special abilities. If you recover hit points you remain unconscious, but they do act as a buffer to avoid being in a state of dying.
The motivation behind this change is to make hitting 0 hit points something you really want to avoid, and once party members start dropping it really gives the feeling that the situation has become risky.
This idea definitely needs playtesting. As I mentioned earlier, having KO's being so limiting works in a video game since there's only one player in control. Having a character go down is threatening for sure, but it doesn't sideline a player for the rest of the encounter.
I also think I'll add some sort of "bloodied" condition that kicks in when you're below a quarter of your max hit points in the same vein as the "dispirited" condition that Angry proposes. I'm not currently planning on having two separate damage bars like Angry suggests. I do like the vibe they give, and I'm particularly interested in splitting up effects that restore hit points and "fighting spirit". I like the "friends around a campfire" feel that having hit dice restore fighting spirit rather than hit points. I'm just a unsure if the upsides are worth having a whole extra resource for, when you could get most of the benefits in other ways.
As for the state of dying itself, that will probably just work in a similar way to D&D. Death save every turn, three strikes and you're out, all that jazz.
Well that's all I wanted to say for today, thanks for reading. I'm planning on going back to only posting weekly after today, for various reasons. I think I'm nearing the end of this series of dev diaries, which has been my main driver behind posting so often. Maybe I'll find some replacement series that I can work on quickly or something, but I'm not sure yet. But yeah, as it stands now I'm just going to go back to one post every weekend.
It was also pointed out to me recently that there is already a video game out there called "Saturday Morning RPG", so I'll probably end up changing the name of this RPG project to avoid confusion. Any name suggestions would be appreciated lol. I've got something exciting planned for next week's post, I hope to see you then!
As you'd probably already guessed based on the whole "game-like" pitch for this whole project, I'm gonna be using a hit point system for tracking damage. Other options like wound categories, shock/pain/blood loss, limb tracking are all interesting and may work better in certain games, but hit points seems closest to the vibe I want for SMA.
Obviously, a direct translation of JRPG systems wouldn't really work for a tabletop RPG. The typical system of an instant KO at 0 hit points works in a video game because there is only a single player. A character getting knocked out is usually costly or risky to remedy, and heightens the tension of combat effectively since you're capabilities as a party are reduced. However, something like this would probably be pretty frustrating when each character has a single player since death would be very sudden. Compare this to the D&D system where any HP-recovering spell can get you back on your feet immediately.
The Health System in SMA
Naturally before getting too deep into designing this system I did a little reading. Once again I came upn an Angry GM article entitled "We’ve Got Fighting Spirit, How About You?". The article mostly focuses on the "race to the bottom" issue in the D&D health system. To give summary, the issue is that defensive strategies are almost never used and instead the focus tends to shift towards just killing the enemy as quickly as possible. Angry's proposed solution is a "Dispirited" condition which severely reduces a character's offensive capabilities when they are below a certain hit point threshold.
I might implement something like this in SMA, though I also have another proposal to avoid the race to 0 hit points, and that's making the unconsciousness of zero hit points a more "sticky" condition. In D&D, getting a character back up and running is as simple as throwing out a healing spell. Because of this, a party will almost always rely on just staying alive until the enemy is dead rather than any other options like retreating when the situation is against them.
My pitch is this: once you hit 0 zero HP, you fall unconscious and are in a state of dying. You can avoid dying by becoming stable through various means just like D&D: succeeding on enough death saves, recovering health, whatever. The difference is that the KO condition doesn't just go away, even if you recover health. The KO condition naturally ends sometime after combat, but other than that it can only be removed through the use of certain costly items or special abilities. If you recover hit points you remain unconscious, but they do act as a buffer to avoid being in a state of dying.
The motivation behind this change is to make hitting 0 hit points something you really want to avoid, and once party members start dropping it really gives the feeling that the situation has become risky.
This idea definitely needs playtesting. As I mentioned earlier, having KO's being so limiting works in a video game since there's only one player in control. Having a character go down is threatening for sure, but it doesn't sideline a player for the rest of the encounter.
I also think I'll add some sort of "bloodied" condition that kicks in when you're below a quarter of your max hit points in the same vein as the "dispirited" condition that Angry proposes. I'm not currently planning on having two separate damage bars like Angry suggests. I do like the vibe they give, and I'm particularly interested in splitting up effects that restore hit points and "fighting spirit". I like the "friends around a campfire" feel that having hit dice restore fighting spirit rather than hit points. I'm just a unsure if the upsides are worth having a whole extra resource for, when you could get most of the benefits in other ways.
As for the state of dying itself, that will probably just work in a similar way to D&D. Death save every turn, three strikes and you're out, all that jazz.
Well that's all I wanted to say for today, thanks for reading. I'm planning on going back to only posting weekly after today, for various reasons. I think I'm nearing the end of this series of dev diaries, which has been my main driver behind posting so often. Maybe I'll find some replacement series that I can work on quickly or something, but I'm not sure yet. But yeah, as it stands now I'm just going to go back to one post every weekend.
It was also pointed out to me recently that there is already a video game out there called "Saturday Morning RPG", so I'll probably end up changing the name of this RPG project to avoid confusion. Any name suggestions would be appreciated lol. I've got something exciting planned for next week's post, I hope to see you then!
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