Refining Thoughts on Ablation, Damage, and Death

This post by subjunctive moods earlier in the year got me thinking about ablative mechanics in combat, and Phlox’s All Damage As 1d6 reignited some of those thoughts.. We all know the pitfalls of Hit Points. But we also don't want our 97th-level Kobold Paramour to be as vulnerable as a newborn babe in battle.

A few constraints on a system occur to me:

• Any attack should have the possibility of incurring a mortal wound. A stiletto to the heart is as fatal as a beheading with a two-handed sword.
• If an attack is not fatal, it ought to increase the likelihood that the next is. Someone wrote an interesting piece a little while ago envisaging Hit Points as a character’s fate, which is interesting in this context.
• A combatant with greater skill at arms should have a greater chance of inflicting a mortal wound 
• A better-armoured combatant ought to have a better chance at avoiding a mortal wound 
• The number of die rolls must be kept to a minimum while still preserving randomness. I know some folks like fixed values, but I don’t.

This actually ties in with some of my earlier thoughts on Hit Points as an ability score, and refinement seems possible.

Hit Points as an ability score?

I like thinking about alternative ability scores for D&D-like systems. Taking a bit of inspiration from Call of Cthulhu's Sanity score, here's an alternative take on character survivability.

Characters have Hit Points. For the sakes of a D&D-like system, this can range from 1 to 20, but is initially determined by rolling 3d6 modified by Constitution. A character with 21 Hit Points (theoretically possible only by rolling 18 HP and 18 Con) is a Conan-type superhero, as close to invincible as it comes. A character with 1 Hit Point is as close to death as can be imagined. A character with 0 Hit Points is dead.

There is no such thing as a Hit Die. Maybe Fighter-types roll highest 3 of 4d6, and Magician-types roll the lowest 3 of 4d6.

When a character takes damage, they must roll a Hit Point check, 1d20 under their current Hit Points. On a failure, they take a high amount of damage. On a success, they take a low amount or none. This may be expressed as '0/1' - for some minor nuisance - or something like '1d6/3d6' for a deadly threat.

If a character takes more than one-third¹ of their current Hit Points in damage, they must make a Constitution check or suffer a lingering wound.

If a character gets a full day's rest, and does not have any lingering wounds, they may make a Hit Point check. On a failure, they gain one Hit Point. They may not do this, and make a Constitution check to recover from disease, on the same day, meaning that disease prolongs healing, and wounds prolong illness. Or maybe Hit Points are entirely non-renewable, in which case characters will not live long...

Hit Points do not scale with level in this system. I'd suggest using this alongside an armour system where better armour reduces the damage taken, rather than one which reduces the rate of hits. This allows for diegetic advancement.

This isn't entirely compatible with my earlier thoughts on wounds. It's not fully thought through either. But there's probably some merit in it somewhere.

^1: This means that an average character (with 10.5 HP and 10.5 Constitution) has about a 1-in-4 chance of suffering a serious injury from an average sword blow (doing 3.5 damage). Don't get in fights.

Thoughts on a Skill System

 As is tradition, I've been redesigning the Thief¹. Probably nothing novel, I may or may not post it the end.

But I'm drawn to a 2d6 skill system. Why? Partly because of the pleasing bell curve effect - a novice might succeed, a master will almost always succeed. And that eases itself into allowing some advanced thief abilities, i.e. the notorious 'climbing upside down and horizontally, voice skills such as mimicry and ventriloquism, and other skills of deception'. Yes, I have thoughts in that direction.

But there's another reason. Building on Dyson's d6 and 2d6 Thiefin' for Basic Dungeons & Dragons, the 2d6 range lends itself to adding ability modifiers to the roll. Specifically, for a roll-high 2d6 system:

• A 1-in-6 chance requires a roll of 10 or higher
• 2-in-6 requires 9 or higher
• 3-in-6 requires a 7 or 8 - there's no clean way to get a 50/50 outcome on 2d6
• 4-in-6 requires a 6 or higher
• 5-in-6 requires 5 or higher

It Takes A Village To Stock A Hex

It's fairly likely that your favourite fantasy roleplaying game has, buried in the rules somewhere, an assumption that you're using six-mile hexes at the basis for overland travel. This assumption is almost as old as the genre, and is present even if you're using a ruleset that doesn't explicitly use hex maps. Ever wonder why D&D 5th Edition has paces of 18, 24 or 30 miles a day? That's 3, 4 or 5 hexes!

The idea that they're the 'ideal' scale goes back to at least 2009, and Steamtunnel's oft-cited In Praise of the 6 Mile Hex. And that idea has merit, it's certainly mathematically convenient. But we don't make maps for the convenience of mapmakers: we make them to describe territory. The 6-mile hex does a poor job of that, because it is too big.

Thievery, or Close-Up Magic? Picking Locks in Fifth Edition.

Plenty of people who play D&D 5e like to use that game's Sleight of Hand skill to determine whether a character can pick a lock. It's a popular house rule, advocated by at least one popular website and implemented in Baldur's Gate 3.

It's also wrong.

The Robgoblin appears. It appears friendly.

Back in January, Prismatic Wasteland posted the New Year's Resolution Mechanic challenge. I thought of a potentially interesting resolution mechanic, so I posted it in a comment. Another user suggested I start a blog... and I wasn't sure.

Then, in their acceptance speech for the Bloggies, sachagoat gave some advice about starting a blog. It's not that hard. The RPG blogosphere is full of cool people who probably won't bite (unless you ask, or have a really bad reaction roll).

So, eventually, here I am. I'll write about RPGs, based largely on what I think is cool and interesting. Which will mostly be mediaeval fantasy, and adjacent genres, with a slight old-school perspective on things. Also some board games. And maybe some other things. But probably gaming-related.

Because I have been schooled in the ancient lore, here is that interesting resolution mechanic:

You have an ability. The ability gives you some marbles. I don't know how many. Maybe you get the same number every time. Maybe you lose some each time you use them. It's probably best if each player had their own colour marbles.

You try to do a Thing. Someone - presumably the GM, if you have one - decides how hard the Thing is, and draws a shape on a level-ish, smooth-ish surface. If it's Very Hard, the shape is just big enough for a marble. If it's Very Easy, it's an enormous shape. Rough circles are probably easiest to draw.

You try and roll a marble into the shape. If you succeed, you do the Thing. If you have more marbles, you can try again. If other characters are trying to do the Thing, take turns. Or go at the same time if you prefer, it's your game. If you roll a marble and it hits another marble, that's a Consequence for the character whose marble you hit. Somebody think of a cool one. If your marble hits a other marble into the circle, then that's a success!

When you're out of marbles, you're out of chances.