Set the Odds

Following up on yesterday's post, I'd like to take the matter of selective (rather than randomized) hit points a step further.

Let's take two scenarios.  In both scenarios, the party is wandering over a wilderness country more than 40 miles from a friendly town, where goblins are known to dwell.

In the first scenario, the party comes across a group of a dozen goblins busily quarrying into a rock surface just above the tree line.  The work on the rock is recent, as the goblins have succeeded only in cutting down about seven to eight feet, all of it in the shape of an open pit that's nothing at all like a shaft.  Perhaps a few weeks work altogether.  The goblins all have picks and there's about 500 g.p. worth of complex construction equipment laying about, just as we would expect with a site.  They're just goblins, so the party decides to fall on this little group and kill them, seize the tools and delicate instruments and head back to town.,

In the second scenario, the party is walking along the edge of the same treeline, where everything seems serene and peaceful.  There are no diggings, no sign of any goblins at all - but all at once, the party is hit by a squad of a dozen well-armed goblins who rise up from the rocks above the tree line.  These all fire arrows into the party, hoping to catch the party by surprise.  If the party turns and flees, the goblins are ready with spears; and if the party turns towards the goblins, to try to make their way up to the rocks, the goblins are scattered and well able to get two or three more arrows each before the party can reach even one of them.  Either the party has to separate and go after the goblins individually, try to hit them with missile weapons though the goblins are well under cover or simply give up the field and hope to take the goblins in the trees.  These goblins are well set up to get the party in trouble.

Now ask this question.  Which of these two groups of goblins are likely to have more hit points?

Is it completely random?  Really?  Are we saying that the second group just grabbed a dozen goblins from the nearby lair without picking the best goblins for the job?  Because that seems pretty dumb.  If your high school has a basketball team, is the team picked by just going randomly around the school and grabbing people without thinking about it?  Or is the selection process a bit more elaborate?

And what about these fellows in the quarry.  Sure, they're tough and strong and they've got picks - but does that really make them ready for a military standoff?  Do you think they been chosen to work this dig because they swing a mean pick?  Or might it be, since the work is just starting and there's a greater need to have engineers and goblin geologists who know what they're doing in preparing the intricate arrangements needed to start a mine.  Might it not be that these goblins were selected for their brains and not their combat prowess, hm?

It is true that D&D is a game and that games are based on random dice.  However, D&D is not just a game.  It's also design, the process of deciding what the numbers stand for, what dice to throw and why this roll counts and that doesn't.  It isn't just playing craps, it's inventing craps - and it's a helluva lot more complicated than craps.

It means that long, long before the players arrive at the table to throw their dice, the table has to be built and it has to make sense.  When the players see the collection of diggers, they're entitled to make an intelligent guess at how capable these goblins will be where it comes to defending themselves.  This enables the players to make the same kind of evaluation of the game that a craps player makes when deciding whether or not to double down on making a point.  A 10 is very different from a 6 in this regard.

It isn't unfair to change the 'rules' about how many hit points the goblins have given each special situation.  Taking the goblins at the quarry includes all the elements of rolling a 6.  Handling the goblins at the ambush, that's rolling a 10.  And if there are goblins in the trees, too, waiting for the party to run into them . . . well, that's craps, baby.

If you want a better world, don't let the structure of the game become such a straight-jacket that it forces elements of space and time into the same mundane lithium-fed snore-fest.  Let the monsters be tougher if the situation calls for it; and balance that by making the monsters weaker when the situation calls for that.  Sure, the dice are the game - but you're the DM and you've got to be the game, too.  You're the one setting the odds.  

The Collectors of Gong

We're all nerds so this won't be a pleasant memory for some.

I don't know how many times as a kid, until I grew into my shoulders and size, that I would find myself one the last or second-last to be picked for football, basketball or whatever game we were going to play.  In those days, even without urging from parents, kids themselves would choose two captains and let them pick from among the contestants - and as this was as true for school, family gatherings or any joint get-together from camp to church events (yes, gawd, those too), the picking was set up and followed through.

Even with complete strangers it was evident who could play and who could not.  Oh, everyone likes to tell stories about the scrawny kid with the amazing jump shot, but those stories never seemed to happen in front of me.  Even as I got older, bigger and tougher, there were still kids I watched get picked last and second-last, every time.

We can tell in advance which they'll be.  As Malcolm Gladwell writes, in a Blink.  It's a good thing, too - for being able to assess situations in a moment of stress has kept human beings alive these millions of years.  The games played by Homo Erectus were for higher stakes . . . and when it came down to choosing who would beat the sticks together to frighten the animal and who would hold the spear for when the animal came through the gap between the cliffs, Erectus picked the winners over the losers.

An immense advantage over the other creatures of the earth that humans possessed, however, was in finding something useful and practical for the weaker members of the tribe to do.  Throwing the spear may be the job of the jock we all hated in high school (though some of us became that for a time), but making the spear was shepherded out to others who didn't need to be tough and strong, just patient and able.  We still divide things this way.  The kid who was picked last is the lawyer now, defending the kid who was a physical phenomenon now suffering from CTE.

The point here comes back to an argument I made more than a year ago about hit points.  My argument at that time was that, given a random hit point roll for a general population, the population that survives into maturity and past previous combats ought to have more hit points than the average die that's rolled.  From among creatures rolling a d8 for hit points, the 1s and 2s would die out in battle, I argued, leaving the 7s and 8s.

This did not go over well.  But, well, that's how it goes.

I don't plan to revisit the argument here.  Rather, I want to provide a counter argument that, in part, refutes it.

I don't think the 1s and 2s would see battle at all.  I think that these would be held back, kept in the caves and the service areas, judged unworthy for battle by the clan - at a blink, as I said.  Every goblin in the cave would know what a clumsy idiot Xyttat is; and Pysggak can't even lift a hammer properly, of course.  That's why these two collect the gong, shovel out the rothe pens, collect all the lickspittle from the Queen after she gives birth and generally present themselves for a good kicking during the high holidays.  Xyttat and Pysggak only have 1 hit point - it doesn't take a spratling to see that!  Xyt and Pys go to war?  Haha hah HAH ha . . . wait . . . whew! . . . just catching my breath.  Don't make me laugh.

The reader should just think for a moment about the way we assess people at a glance every day - and ask seriously if we wouldn't know which dexterous, strong, enduring clubmasters we'd send out into the daylight and who we're going to leave back home to cover the floors in rat-grease for the happy day they return victorious.  Because we do have a measure for who does what job.  Even if we do dream of pitching major league baseball, we know very well why we're not.

And it's cool.  There's always gong to collect.

Injuries

From the Wiki:

Injuries are penalties imposed on the healing of hit points when a great deal of damage has been delivered to a combatant in a single attack.

When a combatant suffers sufficient damage to reduce them from more than half their hit points above zero to less than zero in one strike, then the combatant is considered to be injured - unless the total damage done is less than 12 points total. For example, if Caleb the mage has 6 hit points total, then takes 7 points of damage (sufficient to lower Caleb to -1 hp) then Caleb is not injured because the total damage done was less than 12.

However, if Bala the Druid has 17 hit points total and is presently at 9 due to damage she has already suffered, then takes 12 points of damage (sufficient to lower Bala to -3 hp), then Bala would be injured.

For every 12 points of damage received, the injury tally is counted at 1 point. Thus 24 points of damage would mean a 2-point injury, 36 points of damage would mean a 3-point injury and so on.

Note that 11 or more damage received in a given attack is sufficient to cause a wound. But injuries are not wounds! An injury does not occur merely because 12 damage has been done. For the injury to occur at all, the combatant must be hit hard enough to eliminate half their maximum hit points. For higher level characters, particularly fighters, it may require as much as 40, 50 or 60 damage for an injury to occur. The tally only refers to dividing this ultimate amount of damage by 12.

Healing Injuries

A combatant that has been injured does not sustain any additional damage due to that injury. However, the amount of time necessary to recover from the injury is dependent upon the injury tally. A 1-point injury requires that 10 points of equivalent healing must be gained before the first hit point after damage can be raised by one point.

In the example above, Bala has a 1-point injury that dropped her total hit points to -3. In order for Bala to restore her hit points to -2, Bala must heal 10 hit points of equivalent damage. In effect, the injury that Bala has sustained has stretched the healing distance between -3 and -2 hit points by a multiple of 10.

Let us take another example. Albert is a 7th level cleric with 42 hit points. While climbing up the side of a mountain, Albert slips and falls, taking a total of 46 points of damage. This reduces Albert's hit points to -4, all at once. And because the damage sustained is more than half his total, Albert is injured. Because he is at -4 hit points, he must roll to see if he is conscious (see Negative Hit Points). Albert makes a wisdom check, as described on the negative hit points page, and fails by rolling a 14.

From the fall, Albert is also wounded, which means that he has injured himself in some way that he is suffering -4 hp damage per round from the 46 damage he received. If he were laying on the ground all alone, he would bleed out and be dead in two rounds - and there is nothing Albert can do about this, because he is unconscious. However, lucky for Albert, he fell near to Erick, a 1st level paladin, who quickly runs to Albert's side and lays hands for 2 hp as soon as he can. He can't quite get there before Albert bleeds for one round, now reduced to -8 hit points. However, the bleeding is stopped and Albert's life is saved.

Albert is not, however, restored to -6 hit points by Erick's laying on of hands. Albert was injured. He sustained a 3-point injury . . . so to be restored to -7 hit points (one above the score he has right now), Albert must gain a total of 30 points of healing. Erick has given him 2. Albert needs 28 more. Once Albert has been restored to -7 hit points, he can begin healing damage normally.

If Albert had died, then been restored by death's door, then his body would still have to be healed those same 30 points, as the body would retain the injury, even though Albert would be restored to zero hit points.

Type of Injury

At this time, I have not created any specific tables for what is injured. The rule is still in its infancy - and since in most cases the injured person will be in the negatives and laid up, a flat rule that it is one or the other arm is sufficient. If the rule works and does not overly tax the patience of my players, then I will work up a injury table specifying what type of injury occurs.

Time in Mass Combat

As a second post on mass combat, I'd like to talk about time.

Over the years, I have settled on 12 seconds as the appropriate time for a combat round to last.  In the beginning of my experience, I adopted the one-minute round with everyone else, though in the early 1980s it was a favorite mocking conversation to talk about how much could be done in the time it took to remove 1 hp from a goblin.  Eventually I had trouble with movement vs. one-minute rounds and I tried adjusting my combat so that it ran in segments rather than rounds.

For those not familiar with AD&D, there were ten segments to a round.  The 'weapon speed' for individual weapons had been carefully broken down in the player's handbook: daggers had a 'speed factor' of 2 segments, halberds had an SF of 9, morning stars 7, long swords 5, short swords 3 and so on.  For a year (about '84), I tried a system where the time it took to fight with a weapon was the speed factor plus 10, so that a dagger could be used in attack every 12 segments, a footman's mace every 17 segments and a war-hammer every 14 segments, along with other weapons of varying speeds.  Quickly players moved over to faster weapons and the two-handed sword disappeared (even though I was still using special damage against large creatures in those days).  Being able to attack 8 times in the space of 100 segments with a dagger was vastly superior to attacking 5 times with a two-handed sword.

But, it really didn't work.  The actual time element hadn't actually changed and so trying to explain what was going on with all that time was becoming more and more problematic - particularly when I made the decision to slow spellcasters down (see the last post) in order to reduce their power.

So I adjusted my 'rounds' to 6-seconds, the length of the old segment, so that spells that took '4 segments' to cast in the players' handbook became 4 rounds to cast.  This was eventually adjusted too, so that now I use a system where 1st and 2nd level spells take 1 round to cast and part of 1 round to discharge; 3rd and 4th level spells take 2 rounds to cast, 5th and 6th level spells take 3 rounds to cast and so on.  Everything discharges at the same speed.  There are exceptions, such as the 24 hours for find familiar or the gunshot effect of command, where casting and discharge happen simultaneously in the time it takes to speak one word.  Command is a weak spell, however, so I have no problem with it.  As well, I have certain spells where the discharge is automatic because it affects the spellcaster personally, such as sanctuary, shield, shocking grasp, etcetera - the caster does not need to spend movement discharging the shocking grasp, but time must be spent trying to touch the opponent . . . but this is all unimportant right now.

Six seconds was too short, however, particularly as I adopted action points into my campaign from 3rd Edition (I thought them a good idea).  Twelve seconds offered a more refined speed for events, so that a single 'action point' (AP) was anything that required 2.4 seconds to perform (5 AP per round).

Using this scale, however, when we measure the 29 rounds it took to bring the melee in the previous set of posts to the point where I stopped recording the battle, we find that all of that takes only 5.8 minutes.

Ouch.

I don't think that the solution is to return to one-minute rounds.  Granted, 29 minutes seems more reasonable for a mass battle (still pretty fast, though), but it also means that when the mage blinks out of existence, that mage is gone for a full minute of time.  It means it takes the mastodon three minutes to cover a distance of 70 feet once it chooses to flee, smashing through the 15 ft. high palisade wall that surrounds the fort.  The mastodon weighs six tons.  I made the time it took to smash the wall equal an extra 12 seconds; traditional AD&D would suggest it takes the mastodon a full two minutes to smash that wall.  That is as ridiculous as 5.8 minutes of total time for the combat.

No, no, no, the solution is to force the combatants to do what they actually do in real life:  hesitate.  At several points in the combat I had the enemy hesitate (or even fail to do the logical thing and rush across the courtyard to shore up a battle), but I did not require the party to follow that principle.  That's a way of giving the party an edge.

But rule ideas I proposed earlier this year could massively slow down a combat like this.  Where both sides of the north gate battle or the west breech battle are steadily losing strength and combat effectiveness, it more or less forces Falyn - who fights virtually every round of the entire combat, when not held - to fall back to avoid passing out from heat stroke.  If the reduction in character abilities across the total force is deep and hurtful enough, eventually the entire force will withdraw out of missile range, to cool down and regroup.  Even if they're winning!  That is the thing about biology - it doesn't care how well the battle is going.

That is only the first consideration, however.  At the time of this battle, I was not playing with the recently proposed biological unit rules that I've lately adopted.  Those rules give another 4 hit points to every goblin and every glaiver all over the field, so that instead of these dying upon hitting zero, as I was doing in 2010, more than half of them would actually be alive and well.  This should result in many of the glaivers who are standing at the back and doing nothing except waiting to get into battle to change their minds in order to walk or carry their still-alive companions off the field.  This is going to produce a different sort of attrition on both sides, one that every real-life commander of a military unit accounts for and accepts as proper behavior from the combatants.  The commander who opposed such action would undoubtedly get 'accidentally' shot in short order.

So as that attrition is happening, simultaneous to the loss of statistical power, the players would have to retreat in light of the fact that while they might be inclined to stay, staying may not be an option.  Once again, by forcing the battle lines to pull back, time is spent, thus more closely reflecting the duration of a battle without changing the time it takes to move or swing a weapon.  We often fail to recognize that most battles that are fought throughout a day are not fought continuously as they are in role-playing.  People take breaks.  Both sides, in fact, acknowledge the need for these breaks and are willing to let a side retreat - simply because they are too exhausted to follow.

Finally, in the mass combat above, I was not applying any meaningful morale system to the events.  Occasionally, for something profound, I would require a morale check (for the druid's animals, for instance, after a fireball) - but I did not employ them unilaterally.

In the fall, however, I began trying to employ a morale check for NPCs, in order to affect the way that followers of the party reacted to combat differently from their own henchmen.  Mostly, it has been an attempt to force parties not to rely upon hirelings to show 100% loyalty in combat.  It has worked, more or less.  Parties still have hirelings, but they are much more conscious of trying to boost the hireling's overall morale while at the same time protecting them, since they know that the hirelings will fold in actual combat if left to themselves.

So far, the morale system is still in its learning stages; there are a number of details that haven't been memorized by the players or even by myself, so that looking up the linked page above has been a chore.  Eventually, however, the rules will stick; they've already proven themselves in terms of increasing the tension and tactical considerations in battle.

If this morale system above is applied to a mass combat, this too will cause whole units to collapse and fall back from battle.  If the reader takes the time, the consideration of sympathetic morale could mean that an entire unit could rout on account of one participant in that unit.  A routed unit would then retreat, again to a point outside of missile range, to reform, cool down, then march back into combat.

Overall, between heat exhaustion, injuries and morale, a battle such as the one detailed in the many posts this week could easily take five times as long to play - particularly if the party wanted to have all three or four fronts hammering away at the fort at the same time.  It is easy to see the Queen drow and other smarter defenders being able to move from melee to melee as this one or that collapses, leaving only one group still actually assaulting the fort.

Would this drive the players crazy?  Yes.  Would it make them question the validity of this sort of assault?  Yes.  Would it feel like actual mass combat feels, a frustrating, disappointing, disheartening and maddening procedure encouraging both sides to make some sort of treaty rather than going on with the apparently unending attack?  Abso-fucking-lutely.

I love that people have written to say that this combat from 2010 was fantastic and awesome.  But I still think I can do better.

What Players Will Accept

Some years ago, a discussion about something called 'wilderness damage' made the rounds of several blogs.  I never implemented it into my campaign (for all it's slashing brilliance), largely because it was bound to be unpopular with my players.  Like many new ideas, it would increase the player's record keeping requirements while at the same time actually making the campaign more strenuous and therefore less pleasant.  Therefore, after several private attempts to play with the idea, I shelved it.

Once digging into the matter, I expected that the most difficult thing to manage would be the weather or the choice of route - those things that appear on the original table I proposed back in 2011.  Instead, the real trouble arises as we consider what individual conditions for each player serve to exascerbate those effects.  Listed below are some of those conditions:

• wearing armor; types of armor vs. clothing
• clothing itself; wool vs. cotton vs. linen vs. silk in various climates
• footwear; hard boots vs. soft boots or sandles
• shelter; tents vs. 'sleeping under the stars' or choosing to pay money for an inn.
• constitution; who fares best where it comes to poor weather?
• dexterity; who is most likely to fall in rough places, the thief or the clumsy cleric?
• intelligence & wisdom (see above)
• characters who keep watch vs. those who sleep all night
• cleaniness vs. filth
• food that is eaten
• riding vs. walking
• rangers & druids vs. other characters
• elves, gnomes & halflings vs. other characters

It is these individual differences that make it hard for some characters to comfortably make their way through the outback as opposed to others.  Take any expedition where survival became a critical factor:  the Greeley Expedition, the Shackleton Voyage, the Donner Party, Edmund Kennedy's third expedition in Australia, violence that occurs among Canadian surveyors described in Pierre Berton's National Dream, even the 1996 Everest disaster, and the reader cannot help but understand that there are differences in each person's ability to endure.  What is always weird in these cases is that some live, not because they're special or able or strong, but simply because they have a greater will to survive than others.

No system that sets forth to describe the wilderness in terms of damage can be applied equally to all persons.  Some will live.  Some will die.  It is useless to pretend that a system like this can be universal.

The players understand this.  That is why, if said system were put in place, a DM could absolutely count on players producing arguments like, "If I keep my shoes in repair, will I suffer less damage?  What if I carry a lighter weapon?  What if I take a swim in the pond in the middle of a hot day?  Do I take the same amount of damage if I drink more water?"  And so on.

Here is the problem.  Now the solution.

Embrace the chaos.  Why?  Because it is worth all the chaos, all the individual arguments, all the trouble of having to assign point values to every tiny change or infringement on the character's welfare, however long it takes to finally assign (and possibly to program) each aspect into a calculation system that keeps this character going and makes this one take a day of rest.  It is worth it because finally, finally, it would be nice if a journey taken by players actually felt like a journey.  It is worth it if players would only view a distance of 700 miles with doubt and indecision, knowing that its very possible someone will die along the way.  It is worth it if travel isn't just a math problem of dividing the distance between the number of kilometers travelled in a day, producing the number of wandering monster rolls that must be made before the party gets where they're going.

As yet, I have not introduced the rules I conceived with these two posts on climate, here and here.  However, my players' embrace of the ideas has confirmed for me that the 'feel' of my campaigns are changing.  They are steadily moving towards maturity, towards a desire for the kind of problem solving that challenges the norms, that demands a higher approach to overcoming hazards.  I feel that, more than ever, my players are beginning to program themselves towards agreeing that yes, wilderness travel should not be a walk in the park.  It should feel like travel.  The world should be more than fighting in 19th century mobile theatre devices (presented on computer, in my case).

So I am returning to this idea . . . but I have a new twist on it.  Something that I think will massively change the way that parties - particularly young, low-level parties - approach adventure.

Experience for damage taken.  Somehow, in 2011, I was somewhat leery of this idea.  Just now, I can't think of why.  It seems reasonable to me that players, faced with taking damage along a journey from exhaustion or from minor incidents while hunting up wood for a fire, tripping over stones, losing their balance under a heavy pack and so on, would grow stronger and more durable through the simple process of covering the distance between here and yonder.  How many monsters did Lewis and Clark fight?  If you were going to assign 'bonus xp' to their journeys, how much would you give?  Now give me a total for Nikolai Przhevalsky.  For Alexander Gordon Laing.  For Jacob Le Maire.  For Martin Frobisher.  Distance in miles just isn't going to cut it.  Some of these went through deserts, some of these went by ship, some of these hacked their way through jungles.  What measurement are we going to use?

Because surely all these explorers went up levels.  Surely they grew more handy with their knives and weapons, their hands grew calloused, their wits sharper, their minds more ready for the unknown and unexpected.  Don't tell me that because they never had to fight monsters, they're not worthy of being in the upper levels!

Players will do the record keeping if it gets them closer to another level.  We all know that is true.

The Gap Beneath First Level

Yesterday's post provides the groundwork for solving two questions that have nagged at me since I began with AD&D - how does an non-player character upgrade from ordinary person to 'man-at-arms' and how does a man-at-arms upgrade to a 1st level fighter?

It's no wonder that later editions did their best to gut the structure put blithely in place back in '79. Let me recount for those of you who have long since forgotten how it used to be.  These are all considered zero level:

• Sedentary female, 1-3 hp.  I assume this describes the average princess.
• Sedentary male, 1-4 hp.
• Active female, 1-4 hp.  In other words, a woman who participates will take as much damage as a male that sits on his ass.  Her attack die is at least one better.
• Active male, 2-5 hp.
• Laboring female, 2-5 hp.  Says right on the page that a carpenter does not labour as hard as a farmer.
• Laboring male, 2-7 hp.
• Man-at-arms (regular soldier), 4-7 hp.

The man-at-arms reference is from p. 30; the rest from p. 88.  The numbers given are supposed to fit into a system where monsters with hit die are neither 'zero-level' or 'levelled' . . . because that makes everything as clear as mud.  Let me, however, make these additions:

• One hit die monster, 1-8 hp.
• Human bandit, 1-6 hp. (from the Monster Manual)
• First level mage/illusionist, 1-4 hp.
• First level thief/assassin, 1-6 hp,
• First level cleric/druid, 1-8 hp.
• First level fighter/paladin, 1-10 hp.

Those are the traditional numbers.  If played exactly as written, 30% of first level fighters will have less hit points than a regular soldier.  The average mage has less hp than an active male - mages aren't active?  Do they think those spells are easy to cast?  And what the fuck is that bandit number?  A piece of flotsam that got ignored when the DMG was written (the MM was published two years earlier).

The numbers make no sense . . . yet I admit, I stuck with them for twenty-eight years.  I am nothing if not stubborn.  I stuck with them because most of the details could be glossed over, because I gave leveled characters the benefit of rolling in the upper half of their range, because I ignored the numbers of ordinary citizens and because I turned a blind eye to the mess, futzing with the numbers during the game in order to produce representations I could live with.  I did it without thinking because I had begun doing it back in 1980, the way everyone did it because we had to.  I didn't fix the mess until, with age, I began feeling that futzing around during play was wasting my time and annoying me.

I had to get rid of that zero-level bullshit.  There is no such thing in my present world. Creatures, regardless of race of form, have hit dice, period.  The number of hit points vary, so that a sprite can still have 1d4 hp while an orc has 1d8 hp, due to their mass, but their hit die remains the same. Additional hit points for levelled training is universal.  I do not care if you're a kobald, a hobgoblin or a hill giant - if the creature is a 1st level thief, it adds 1d6 hp.  It does not add more because you're bigger - training is training.

Up until recently, however, I was still stuck with this common citizen versus regular soldier problem.  Increasing the number of hit points for the latter was easy; as I wrote yesterday, combat experience could logically increase an individual's overall hit points.  But since it's never been explained how the training/experience/upgrade from Frick the Farmer to Frick the 1st level Fighter is accomplished, it's remained something glossed over and futzed with during my campaign.

This is something that matters to the players.  They pick up a girl in an adventure, they decide they like her and they want her attributes.  A sweet roll turns up and the party adopts her, deciding she should have a sword and some armor.  She hasn't done any fighting before, but the die roll indicates she's game so she joins the party as a follower.  She holds a torch in the dungeons, binds a few wounds, fetching bottles of holy water and flasks of oil from a backpack.  A couple goblins corner her in a big fight and she manages to kill both of them, even though she's only got 5 hit points and a THACO of 21.  Now the party really likes her.  Her morale improves and she continues to be lucky. When the party speaks of Jonida, it is with great affection - and they want to know how Jonida can become 1st level.

Good question.

I consider it a very good thing that my online players (from the campaign that seems like it must be dead) browbeat me into sage training for fighters, thieves, assassins, monks and bards, because creating a knowledge study called 'Training' is an ingenious way to solve the problem.  It frees the whole process from the eternal straight-jacket of character level (there are far too many aspects of the game that have been restrained by that one mechanic).  An individual accumulates knowledge in teaching others to be soldiers, in turn to be fighters - without needing to a dazzlingly high level.

Moreover, the knowledge eliminates the need for another mechanic intended to keep it rare and difficult to obtain - the mechanic of money.  1,500 g.p. per level per week?  Page 86 is easily the most inept, absurd, mean-spirited, clumsy page that has ever been included in a game manual.  I cannot stress that enough.  Consider Numbskull Gygax's system for punishing players that do not play their characters appropriately, by increasing the number of weeks of training a character must spend money on in order to improve to the next level:

"Clerics who refuse to help or heal or do not remain faithful to their deity, fighters who hang back from combat or attempt to steal, or fail to boldly lead, magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ignore magic items they could employ in crucial situations, thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or refrain from acquisition of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity presents itself, 'cautious' character who do not pull their own weight - these are all clear examples of a POOR rating."

I did not add the caps at the end - those are there to truly emphasize the disgust Gygax the Hardhead feels about mages who show bravery or thieves that fail to act like moneygrubbing worms, clerics who are not slaves to the party or fighters who cautiously consider the odds before acting as everyone's shield.  Punish them!  Punish those fuckers for not obeying the Default Principles of Petty Play!

Sigh.  But I digress.

One last aside, though.  I'd love a psychiatrist with experience at the game to take those megalomaniac I-will-tell-others-how-to-play-this-game paragraphs apart and put together an evaluation of the Great God EGG.  What a miserable, mewling muck-fucker he must have been.  But of course, I'm no Wayne or Garth who got to meet him, crying that I'm not worthy.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, training.

I see training - particular combat training - as dirt cheap.  Most soldiers are going to get it in the field of battle, in actual combat, being worthy of their salt by living.  Many cultures, however, did exercise combatants, teaching them weapons, traditions, ideals, improving their morale for the confrontations they would face.  Mercenaries and new conscripts were never front line soldiers because they would break early in battle.  Better to build a dojo, a daily routine of practice and guidance mixed with meditation and festivity.  The party can raise their charge Jonida from 5 hp to 7 hp, improve her morale further and ready her for becoming 1st level.

Which means that first level fighter cannot have 1-10 hp.  No one would take the time to drill a conscript with 1 BU (see previous post) for weeks in order to improve that individual's hit points not-at-all!  Then to give them more training or time or effort to see that they become a fighter of the first rank?  Ridiculous.

I'm going to leave this post here.  I'll be applying myself to fighter sage abilities as soon as I finish the druid - which looks like it will take another 3 weeks.  I'm making good progress.

I'd like to know - is the problem considered at all in later editions, 3.5, 4e or 5e?  I really don't have any idea.  Do those editions even have zero-level or non-level characters?

BU to HP

Part I

I've been building a theory over the past few weeks about hit points.  It is a sensitive subject, something people seem to get upset about.  However, I find as I develop and expand my game design, as a mechanic hit points tend to be somewhat mercurial, making it difficult to express to my players, in terms they can understand, how hit points work and what is happening when hit points are increased.

This post hopes to build a framework for these things - but I warn the reader, I'm going to discuss an idea that the average DM doesn't care about, has not or cannot conceive of, falling clearly under the heading of 'not fun.'  I'm going to take hit points apart in a manner more detailed than what most of you would ever consider.  This post is also going to be too long . . . so feel free to tune out now.

The term 'hit points' is vague.  I think it's far too familiar to for an initial deconstruction, so at the beginning of this post I'm going to avoid that reference.  Instead, I'd like to discuss the pure biological/physical construction of the body using a different measurement, biological units (BU).  These are meant to describe characteristics of origin, growth, reproduction and structure, relative to maintenance of the body and in no way affected by the skill of the body's user.  How the body is used, therefore, is not inherent in the number of BU the body has - only the body's capacity for sustaining and surviving damage, however that damage may occur.

I propose that an average 150 lb. to 210 lb. human body in top condition - in the best of health, at the point where physical shape and fitness are at their peak - would have a set number of BU.  Keep in mind that we are speaking of a body that has not trained, an activity that would suggest the acquisition of a skill.  I am merely speaking of a full-grown body lacking ailments or physical disabilities, that has been properly nourished and kept in a state of readiness to perform mechanical work (as physics defines the term).

Let's establish that number as a total of 12 BU, understanding that this number would indicate a body at the height of its status, so that the removal of all the body's BU would mean death.

Just to be weird, however, suppose that instead of rating 'death' as occurring at 0 BU, we establish the bottom of the scale at -3 BU.  Believe me, mathematics doesn't care where we start counting.  We can therefore use the balance of BU on either side of the number zero as an easy way to keep account of what is happening to the body as BU is removed by damage.  Thus the figure below indicates the spread of BU between -3 and 8:

Feel free to count the columns.  As we move off the left end of the scale, death occurs (at -4 BU). Alternatively, it is impossible to move above the right end of the scale.  It is not possible to be more alive than alive.  Therefore, 8 BU is the maximum number of BU that a human of such-and-such a mass can possess.  Remember, BU are not hit points!

The benefit of beginning the scale at -3 is how this allows us to divide vitality into three categories:  a) illness, in which the body's BU is less than zero; b) vigorous, in which the body's BU is above zero; and c) sapped, or exhausted, in which the body's BU is equal to zero.  Sapped does not indicate that the body is ailing, only that it has reached the point where the body is strained.  Further effort is possible, but it would probably result in the body becoming ill.

Glancing at the left end of the scale, we can judge the medical state of the body in three levels: critical (-3), serious (-2) and subdued (-1).  A critical condition, where 1 BU separates the body from death, could be described as intense weakness, an inability to rise, tend to one's self, drifting in and out of consciousness (more out than in) and probability of not being fully aware when awake.  A serious condition could be described as moderate weakness, some mobility but requiring assistance and periods of lucidity separated by long periods of sleep (or fitful hours of sleep spread throughout the 24 hour day).  Finally, a subdued condition would require plenty of bedrest and considerably reduced energy, but the ability to attend to one's self.

Looking at the vigorous end of the chart, it is presumed that, in all but the chronically ill, a healthy body will have a positive number of BUs.  This does not mean that every body would be vital enough to possess 8 BUs above zero!  The number of actual BUs possessed must depend upon the condition in which the body is kept, complimented by the condition the body possessed at birth.  We can, if we like, extrapolate the 8 points of BU above zero as a composite of different elements that combine to form vitality.

I propose the following:

• Activity, normal employment of the body's capacity for the expenditure of energy.
• Depreciation, devaluation of the body accumulated due to use
• Happiness, the positivity and mental attitude that encourages vigor 
• Health, the soundness of the body, freeness from chronic disease or ailment
• Heredity, the transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to offspring
• Initiative, a readiness and ability to initiate action
• Maturity, the degree of physical development increasing or decreasing towards/from peak
• Nourishment, food and sustenance consumed throughout the body's lifetime

Others may suggest additional possibilities; some may contend that one or all of them are inherent in the individual's abilities scores.  I don't think that matters.  I do not contend that BUs are measured contrary of constitution, intelligence, strength or dexterity - only that they are measured contrary to training or skill.  The elements above do not depend for their existence upon training.  This does not say that a given uneducated individual has a high level of happiness or initiative (those vital composite parts most suggestive of mind rather than body), only that there is some measurable existence of either prior to training.  The same is true of the remaining six composite parts of vitality.

This is key.  There is some measure of each, which combined produce the number of BUs a body (mind included) possesses above zero.  The combination need not be the same from body to body - this body may be high in heredity, nourishment and maturity, while another may be high in happiness, health and activity.  We might, to determine the balance, roll a d8 for each of the 8 elements, dividing the total by 8 to achieve an average.  Alternately, we might suppose that certain composite parts of vitality were universally poor for an entire region - examples would include the degree of expected nourishment in certain parts of Africa, the depreciation of an entire country due to continuous war or enslavement, comparative initiative between regions of abundance and scarcity, etcetera.  The resulting average number of BUs across a population might reasonably be expected to be less than, say, 4.5 (8 x d8 /8).

Part II

Very well, how might we derive a concept of hit points from the above framework of biological units?

Let us consider basic combat training, concentrating specifically upon improving the physical and mental acuity of the subject.  Obviously, in choosing a candidate for training, we want someone with the greatest number of BUs possible.  However, it is unlikely that any of the candidates we find will have a BU higher than 6.5 (without doing the math, the reader may take my word for it that rolling more than 52 on 8d8 is unlikely - though the reader is invited to try).  Still, we know that through training, a relatively ordinary body between the ages of 16 and 24 can be improved - therefore we know that in those candidates, at least one 8th of the body's vitality can be created where it does not formerly exist.

The same can be said of the body's activity, certainly.  Happiness and initiative can be redirected or enabled.  Depreciation that has occurred in a young body can probably be overcome through expanding lung and heart capacity.  Nourishment can be provided.  Finally, both health and heredity can be chosen for - and if the choice proves inadequate, the candidate can be dumped mid-way through training or retained even if the final results are somewhat less than ideal.

This would mean that, at the end of basic training, we are improving each candidate's BU through rigorous training from an average of 4.5 to an average of somewhere between 6 and 8.

We can view the result to be "combat-trained" recruits - able to recognize what a weapon is and to hold it, but possessing no special ability in the use of a weapon or moving easily in armour.  Take note that these recruits would also lack any sort of combat experience, at all.  Their entire potential is based upon their physical capacity alone.

As active combatants in a D&D world, they would have - yes, you guessed it - 6 to 8 hit points.  To this I am adding the supposition that these same combatants (indeed any person) would not die at zero hit points.  This would be a first-time proposal for me.  Yet the increased number of followers employed by my parties has made me consider the importance of allowing a negative/illness (comparative to severely damaged) buffer between exhaustion and death.  I'll begin testing the proposal in months to come.

Given this system of BUs regulating the maximum number of hit points for combat-trained recruits, however, how does it happen that its possible to have hit point totals that are much higher? I'll just restate my point from earlier: 8 BU is the maximum number of BU that a human of such-and-such a mass can possess.  

Before we get to that, compare the damage done by a weapon, say a dagger, against the number of BU that the body possesses (no, not the number of hit points - keep up).  Let's say that the effectiveness of the dagger is based on chance, so that as I turn to attack you with the dagger, I may nick your arm, cut a deep slash across your belly, skid the dagger along your ribs or plunge the dagger directly into your chest. These different attacks might reduce your BU, comparatively,  1, 2, 3 or 4 points.

Imagine that any strike with the dagger that deprives a defender of half the defender's BU above zero causes a wound.  I wrote some content about wounds in the link that describes what happens when 11 hp damage is done to a creature.  Since we are talking BU and not hp, we can use the same rules to apply to this circumstance.  A tough body with 6 BU above zero is struck with a dagger, causing 3 BU in damage.  This may not be enough to immediately kill the defender, but the defender will lose 1 BU every following round (which in my system is 12 seconds).  Reduced to 3 BU, we know that it will take 7 rounds for the defender to be reduced to -4 BU, or death.  That is a total of 84 seconds, less than a minute and a half.

Observe very closely the last point in the link on wounding, which itself links to this page.  The bleeding defender with 3 BU will be stunned every round until death occurs - unless this death is staved off by an ally or bystander.

This means that a dagger could kill an ordinary defender with as many as 8 BU - who would be stunned by the original hit and then stunned every round thereafter - even though the dagger can only cause 1d4 points of damage.

From this, it sounds like I'm saying that BU are equal to hit points.  I'm not.  I am saying that where no experience has been gained, BU and hit points are coincidentally equal in value.

So let's talk about experience.

Part III

According to wikipedia, Experience "is the knowledge or mastery of an event or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it." [bold face added by me].  It is from this that I argue an individual cannot be talked into an improved combat ability - this ability is gained through immersion and the development of a relationship with an enemy attempting to use a weapon to kill you. Skill is acquired through repetition and experimentation - holding the weapon, wearing the armor, growing comfortable, obtaining the necessary callouses and balance through endless physical practice and training.

Eventually, however, to level means more than growing comfortable with the mechanics of war - it means growing to the point where one is able to function when swimming in a maelstrom of intoxicating adrenaline and hormonal signals coming from a body made terrified and insane by the possibility of immediate death, the smell and taste of blood, pain and a ludicrous dopamine high that will result from success.  In the end, mechanics will fail in the face of chemistry.  The survivor in that chaos is not the one who can rationally piece together how to turn the sword of the enemy or physically endure the dagger's blow.  The survivor is the one who does not get hit in a way that causes a critical wound.

Imagine, then, a character that has no combat training - let's say, a mage.  Because we are speaking of a character who's power derives from mental development rather than the physical, we may assume the mage has an average of 4.5 BU.  In my system, I account for this by calling it mass and assigning 1d8 hit points to the mage if he or she possesses the appropriate weight (I could write a couple of paragraphs about BU and its relationship to a mass greater than the average human described here, but let's leave that on the shelf and move forward).

On top of this, we already know that the mage has an additional 1d4 hit points.  This, of course, is the original total number of hit points a mage is supposed to start with in traditional D&D, but in the end I've had to ditch this as a viable number of hit points.  Granted, in the system I've developed, there is still a 1 in 32 chance that a mage without any constitution bonus will have only 5 hp, but c'est la vie.  I'm digressing here.

Where do these additional hit points come from?  Traditionally, we view them as added onto the existing mass, perhaps with the suggestion that the initial damage done to the character would be these extra 'skill-type' hit points, so that the body is only attacked when the character is reduced to 8 hit points or less . . . but I consider that argument invalid.  I am here to propose another.

Suppose we imagine a mage, Erick, who rolls a 4 for his mass and a 3 for his d4 leveled hit points, making a total of 7.  Since I use the rule where a leveled character doesn't die until -10 hp, this gives Erick a considerably wider range of hit points (17) than Erick's BU - which, because Erick has 4 BU above zero, is a total of 8 points stretching from -3 BU to 4.  I sure hope the reader is keeping up.

Let's put up a new chart, comparing Erick's BU to Erick's hit points:

The theory is simply this: that as a player grows in experience, the damage done by the weapon, applied to the creature's BU, is lessened by the player's experience (and gained hit points).  Where the creature's BU would be expended in an unleveled character after suffering only 4 damage, the same amount of damage caused against Erick only reduces Erick's BU by 2 points.

Were I to use the "half BUs causes a wound" proposal, either 3 or 4 damage would still wound Erick (in my game as it stands, it already stuns him) - but this is better than the 2 required if he had no training at all as a mage.  Given another level, it would be unlikely that a dagger hit would wound him - thus reducing his chances of being killed by a dagger.

How?  Because with experience, Erick has learned to shift and turn his body so that the 'dagger in the chest' result won't happen until Erick's overall BU has been spent (ie., reduced to his last hit points).  It means that the 1d4 damage done by the dagger no longer has the four possible results described above, but something closer to "nicks arm," "grazes face," "produces furrow in shoulder" and "cuts deep into side."  The importance of the d4 damage the dagger does is relative to the opponent the dagger is used against.

The same applies to the severity of injuries/ailments that accumulate on the left end of the scale.  Experienced characters take better care of themselves, monitor themselves to a greater degree, make better use of their existing constitution and strength, endure pain more easily and are less likely to do something that stupid that would cause an injury to become worse.  The untrained, ignorant body may have a constitution of 15, but that constitution in the hands of a character with three levels of experience is much better exploited.

(This does go against certain ideas I had about ability stats that were posted years ago on this blog, but better ideas will gradually replace weaker proposals).

If you have made it this far, you may be wondering why I should go to this length to detail a fairly simple notion.  How has all this made an important difference to the substantial nature of hit points?

I believe that the theory builds an important construct between the nature of hit points and the nature of real injury, while satisfactorily keeping them apart.  For example, it means that when resting to regain health, we should adjust the creature's BU and not the creature's actual hit points.  When poison enters the body, the poison should attack the creature's BU.  The same ideal can be applied to injuries that hit points cannot account for, such as broken arms or ribs, providing a structure for the healing of these things that is set apart from the creature's level or total hit points.

Having created the supposition, there are directions in which the game can be structured more rationally - while remaining simple to understand and immensely playable - where before the limited restrictions of hit points lost/hit points restored allowed for little development where elements of injury and being alive were concerned.

It is a change in thinking, not a change in the original game principles.  Hit points (with the exception of my possibly increasing my wounding rules) remain unaltered by the change, so that no changes need to be made to all other aspects of the game already incorporating hit points.  It is added structure without needing to tear everything down and start again.  For me, this is the best sort of game redesign there is.

Material Injuries

We had a little snow last night.  The pic above was taken at quarter to seven, as I was walking to work.  The temperature was -1 C (30 F).  The inevitable melt hadn't started (note the lack of falling snow on the road).  It was like a fairy land.

Yet, of course I was only able to walk through it comfortably because there are streets, because the pavement on those streets retains more heat than the ground, so that my feet could remain completely dry.  Seeing the world this morning put me in mind of mornings in a wet camp, where we were above six thousand feet and the rain had turned to snow in the night.  With the snow heavy and everything soaking wet, when even the wood under the tarpaulin won't light, it can be a misery.  More than that, careless people die in these conditions. Thinking they need to march out as soon as possible, they're soon soaked to the bone from weather and sweat, only to fall prey to hypothermia.

This I offer as proof that the wilderness ought to have physical effects on characters - and not merely a mild encumbrance like -1 to hit or -2 damage.  I can recall mornings in August so cold it was hard to open my fingers and grip the box of matches to strike a fire; hikes so cold that I was shaking and half-delusional as we descended back to camp, or back to our car because we had been caught mid-afternoon during a day trip.  Minus one is ridiculous.  Minus ten is more like it.  With a maximum weapon weight allowance.

I have been thinking about a shadow hit point/ability stat system that wouldn't fundamentally change any part of the existing game, while addressing things like hypothermia or, say, a broken arm.  Unfortunately, this would bring us back to the subject of hit points - and there is nothing that online gamers like to talk about more than what are hit points and what hit points represent and why hit points are silly and so on.  So before I venture forth, I suppose I shall have to write a very short explanation about hit points.

Hit points are a game mechanic.  They are a game measurement meant to indicate the nearness of a character to death.  Lots of hit points = far from death.  Few hit points = near to death.  Low level and minimum hit dice creatures are near to death.  High level and maximum hit dice creatures are far from death.

I do not care what hit points 'mean' beyond this reckoning.  Please do not bother to write to give me your pet theory.  Please read the English words in the above (look them up in a dictionary if necessary) and recognize that this is not a post about the meaning of hit points.  This is a post about game structure.

Let us take two persons, Rafe and Karl.  Rafe is a 1st level fighter with 14 hit points.  Karl is a 9th level fighter with 82 hit points.  At the start of a combat, Rafe is near to death, as only a couple of attacks may kill him.  It will take a lot of attacks to kill Karl.

Both Rafe and Karl fall off a low castle wall together.  Both break their arms.  In the real world, if Rafe was a 'cherry' and Karl was an experienced soldier, the main difference we would expect is that Karl is calmer, less affected emotionally by the broken arm.  Neither would be able to use that arm, however - and given proper treatment, both broken arms would heal at approximately the same rate (varied, depending on the type of break and precisely which bone in the arm was broken).  We'll presume for the sake of argument that both bones broke in precisely the same place and in precisely the same manner, so that the x-factor is in the basic biology of both.  Karl is probably older than Rafe, though perhaps by no more than a year or two, but if Karl is a lot older, Rafe's arm would probably heal earlier.  My point is that the combat skill of the injured persons would have no special effect on the rate of healing.

This is precisely the sort of thing for which the hit point game mechanic does not work.  We cannot say that a broken arm causes 8-48 damage, because that would probably kill Rafe while at the same time it would probably fail to reduce Karl even half his hit points.  A broken arm cannot be measured in hit points.  The result is that, usually, in game terms we ignore the issue that broken arms occur, conceiving 'damage' as something (in terms of the game mechanic) that happens to the whole body and which has no particular effects upon ability until the last hit point goes.

Making any attempt to adjust this gaming perspective is viewed as an affront to the game. Nevertheless, the game was made for players, not players for the game, so there must be something that can be done to address the issue.  Any adjustment, however, would need to fulfill two requirements:

1) It must be SIMPLE.  Players and DMs alike do not need it to be a complex set of rules or the creation of multiple note fields.  In other words, to keep it simple, stupid, let's not get bogged down in trying to adapt for a broken arm vs. a broken leg vs. hypothermia vs. fifty thousand other possible temporary weaknesses to the humanoid body.  We don't need to go from NO recognition of such things to a multi-varied adjustment scheme.

2) It must not damage, slow, destroy or otherwise weaken the working game mechanic as it presently exists, preserving CONTINUITY.  I've run thousands of hours of combat and I have no problem with the system.  My players like it.  They don't need the system cluttered with junky rules or structure or anything else that will seriously undermine their ability to predict their own survival.

Fundamentally, I have no interest in including 'broken arms' into the combat procedure.  I would like to limit such grittiness to issues where people fall off cliffs or are knocked about in rivers or otherwise damaged in wilderness escapades.  At some point in the future, perhaps, there may be a means to marry the two prospects together, but for the moment I'd like to keep them separate.

My scheme would be to incorporate a material injuries as a percentage of stat or hit point total.  A broken arm, for instance, might reduce the number of existing hit points (and maximum hit points) by 50%.  It could be a range, but let's say 50% for the sake of the post.  The trick that would manage the two points above (simplicity & continuity) would be in healing the damage

As an example, let's start with Rafe.  He has 14 hit points and hasn't been hit yet.  He falls off the wall, breaks his arm and takes 50% of his hit points in damage.  He isn't dead, but he can no longer fight with his broken arm.  If it is his shield arm, he must take a few rounds to unstrap the shield (a painful operation) because he would be in too much pain to let the shield hang there while he moved about.  If it were his weapon arm, then he would have even more trouble freeing the shield from his arm (as he'd be doing it with the hand of the broken arm).

Writing this, I find myself thinking of rules about strapping of shields to arms (what shields need to be strapped, what need to be carried, how easy is it to knock an unstrapped shield from a character's hand, etc.) but that's a completely different subject.

Once Rafe's arm is freed, he can go on attacking with his good hand (the adjustment for attacking with the wrong hand is a dexterity issue) - but we have to acknowledge that every blow he makes and every one he takes will hurt his broken arm.  His strength, constitution and dexterity should all be dropped.  I would suggest 50% (as I'm a mean bastard), eliminating all bonuses.  For a fighter, this isn't that bad (though dropping the strength to less than '9' would mean Rafe was technically not a 'fighter' and should be fighting according to his hit die and not his level), but it's bad for a thief or a mage, since those classes tend to have lower stats in strength.

Karl is in a similar position.  Let's say he's suffered 20 damage already, so that he's at 62 of his 82 hit points.  His present hit points drop to 31, and his maximum to 41.  His stats drop by half, just like Rafe - and his THACO suffers, unless Karl has an 18 strength.

Both, then, are affected significantly.  Neither can shrug it off.  Karl is still a lot farther from death than Rafe, but there remains a meaningful ratio in the impact the broken arm has caused.

Most of all, both can go on taking part, while adjusting to the fact that they can't use their arms.  Such consideration can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis (the broken leg making movement impossible, hypothermia reducing intelligence and wisdom as well as physicality, etc).

How, then, do we heal it?

If we go back to the original D&D game, we find the healing spells helpfully described.  A broken arm is not a "light wound."  It is certainly serious, but it isn't critical, so we can assume that any spell of sufficient description will heal the hit points lost (cure light wounds would have zero effect on a broken arm).  Therefore, cure serious wounds, cure critical wounds and heal would all be effective. As hypothermia is only serious in its later stages (reduce hit points 10% per hour, perhaps), if dealt with before it became serious or critical, cure light wounds would probably work.

For Rafe, there are seven hit points between his present 'maximum' of seven and his usual total of 14. To heal those 7, he would need either a powerful spell or actual resting time.  Seven days would not be enough.  He would need, rather, 7 weeks.

Karl, on the other hand, has 41 hit points to gain back.  He could heal the difference between 31 and 41 normally, but above 41 he needs a serious spell or rest.  We would not, however, suggest that he needs 41 weeks!  Rather, we argue he heals 1 hit point per level per week of material damage, so he would heal in just 5 weeks (rounded up).  The reason?  Well, perhaps he can ignore the pain a bit more, so that while he isn't totally healed after five weeks, it stops hampering him as much as it still hampers Rafe.  Perhaps, as an experienced veteran, he knows better how to rest - fixedly keeping his arm still, eating better, not screwing around with his arm as patients often will, etc.  There may be other reasons.

As yet, this whole idea is untried.  I'm only expressing a possible way it could be managed - no doubt there are tweaks necessary, and perhaps a list of specific effects caused by specific injuries.  I intend to go on giving it consideration.

In the meantime, some more pictures from my walk to work:

Bad Cops in L.A.

There is probably some argument to be made about my stepping on the success of my own posts by putting another post in front of them within a few hours . . . but I can't help it.  I get an idea stuck in my head and I want to write it out.  Still, the blogging gurus say don't do it, wait for the next day to write your next post.  Ah well.  Do read this post, The Wind, if you can - I think it's brilliant.

Charles Angus of Spells & Steel made a good, solid argument last night regarding a much-abused subject from a couple weeks ago.  Here is his comment in part (be sure to read the whole comment):

"Let's look at that 300-strong orc tribe attacking the town. How many of those orcs have been in deadly combat, mano-a-mano with a trained and armed combatant? All of them? Some of them?  An argument could be made that very few of them have. So the 300 orcs raid a village of 150 people. If this is like a medieval English village, perhaps 20 men are of fighting age, and of them, probably 5 are armed. (Very rough numbers, obviously). Let's be generous and say that the knight of the manor is present with his retinue - so add a leveled fighter and a few men-at-arms.  How many orcs would be involved in deadly combat during this raid? Seems like only a few - probably no more than 30 or so. So maybe 10%, if the orcs are too dumb to wait a week for the knight to move on to one of his other manors ..."

An example power-law graph, where a high number
of incidents occur among a small number of
participants

Unfortunately, I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, What the Dog Saw (which can be purchased from Amazon Books along with this nice little ebook) - and so I have something called power law distribution at the forefront of my imagination.  Basically, this is the principle that has begun to be the default for social behaviour, much more than the previously conceived 'bell curve' that was all the rage in the 1960s forward.

For the purpose of this post, my reference to power law is to describe the distribution of costs or behaviours among a certain segment of the population, say the number of complaints received by the city of Los Angeles against its police officers (as described in Gladwell's book) or the number of orcs that have fighting ability - and fighting experience - as compared with orcs that do not.

Power law distribution shows, at least with regards to the police, that the greatest mass of complaints are, in fact, directed at a comparatively few officers (who each receive many, many complaints), rather than the majority, who receive only one complaint or none at all.  What this means is that the vast majority of police officers in L.A. are pretty decent people who are good to the people, while a very small number are consistently abusive, engendering anger.

Within the same sort of distribution, it stands to reason that a group of orcs, 10% of the tribe as Angus describes, do not only the represent those orcs with combat experience, but also those orcs most likely to pursue combat and thus seek more conflict!  Therefore, if the party encounters a group of orcs that are ready and willing to fight the party, it does not matter that the orcs represent only 10% of their tribe - those orcs will be the toughest, meanest and the most able.  If the party were to encounter a party of orcs without 7 or 8 hit points, those orcs should immediately be willing to parley and discuss matters - in fact, they should want NOT to fight at all.

And just as peaceful police officers are not the sort to approve of or support the actions of officers who are abusive to the constituency, orcs with low hit points should be equally non-supportive of their meaner orc kin.  Of course, this means granting orcs the ability to think and have the average intelligence they've been said to have, the equal of humans, and therefore behave in a manner unlike remorseless targets for player aggression.

In fact, we could argue that only 8 point hit point orcs would want to be in combat, comparatively to the entire tribe.  They would probably prefer to hang out together, like jocks among the lesser, weaker members of the tribe.

And, like bad cops in L.A., it would be the jocks' behaviour that outsiders would remember, and use to define orcs as a group.  Nyet?

The 1 Hit Point Jump

I cannot express how good it feels to write new theoretical content.  Advice is fine and all, but I wrote tens of thousands of words of that.  A change = a rest and all that.

So, continuing on with the stun rules described in this post.  The purpose of this post would be to determine what peculiar effects this has on the subject of creatures in the world and their behaviour.

Let's group the number of hit points creatures have according to our ability to stun them.  Thus, creatures with 1-4 hit points would be a group, since they can all be stunned (or killed) by 1 damage.  Creatures with 5 to 8 hit points would be stunned by 2 damage, creatures with 9 to 12 hit points would be stunned by 3 damage and so on.

From the outset, I'd like to point out that by giving player characters more hit points to start, as described here, vastly increases their chances of surviving the first few rounds of combat, as will become evident with the rest of this post.

Let's take a set of creatures that have already been struck with a weapon.  In this case, we will assume that all the creatures described below were hit by the first attack; the chances of that first chance succeeding doesn't matter.  We'll assume these are creatures that have already been hit with a spear (1d6 damage); all we want is to determine the effects of that spear.

Starting with the first group, those having 1-4 hit points.  We already know that all those with 1 hit point are dead, and that the attacks will kill 5/6ths of those with 2hp, 2/3rds of those with 3hp and half those with 4hp. More importantly, for our purposes, no matter how much the spear will do in damage, all of the first group will be stunned.  It only takes 1hp of damage to stun up to 4hp, so those who aren't killed won't be able to attack the next round.

This means that - using the same 35% chance of hitting that I have used all this time - a good chunk of the creatures that survived the first attack are still going to be killed before they get another swing.  Assuming we start with 100 creatures of each hit point, the results will be as follows:

'Success of 2nd Attack' refers to the creatures being 'double-tapped.'  They've been hit, and now they can be attacked again, at once, without a chance to defend themselves.

In an effort to show my work, I'll explain the above table.  The initial hit points on the left most column are those total hit points left of survivors after they've been hit once; of 100 with 1hp, there are none; 16.7 survive of the original 2 hp creatures and these all are left with 1 hp.  33.3 survive of the original 3 hit point creatures and these are evenly divided between 1 and 2 hp after being hit.  50 survive of the original 4 hit point creatures and these are evenly left with 1, 2 and 3 hit points.  The numbers are then compiled, all those with 1 hp, all those with 2 hp and all those with 3 hp.

The number hit and missed reflect the 35% chance of hitting the creature.  Those with 1 hp that are hit all die, leaving only those that weren't hit.  5/6ths of those with 2 hp die, leaving the remainder with 1 hp and those that weren't hit with 2 hp.  Finally, 2/3rds of those with 3 hp die, splitting those who were hit between 1 and 2 hp, and finally those with 3 hp that weren't hit.

The total number left of those who were hit by the second attack is a total of 3.9 out of 35.  That's a devastating kill rate.  That 3.9 that survive are of course stunned again.  But of course this only applies to those creatures that were hit.  Unhit creatures can now attack back and do some damage.

The point here is to indicate the comparative effect of the double tap.  Naturally, we've only covered weak, low hp creatures, so we don't expect them to survive anyway.  Let's move on to something stronger.

Because stunning only occurs if we do one quarter of the hit points needed, we must recognize that while 1 damage will stun anything with less than 4 hp, it won't stun something with 5 hit points.

Let's look at the table above again, only this time let's add 5 hit point creatures and let's make each line of the table specific to creatures with that number of hit points to start..  Remember that the 'Success of 2nd Attack' column can only apply to 83.3 of the 5 hp creatures - since the remainder aren't stunned and therefore can't be double-tapped:

The jump is meaningful, but not excessive.  It does mean that 16.7 1HD/5hp creatures can swing back immediately whereas their 4hp cousins cannot.  This means that, using the stun system, a 5 hp creature is considerably more dangerous simply because there's at least a chance that, if it gets hit, it will still be able to swing back.

That is significant.  It means that a single kobald leader with 5 hp has more of an advantage over his peers than merely 1 hp.  Given the same chance to hit, the same AC and so on, he is still markedly more competitive than his underlings.

None of that is noticed by a party with 12 through 17 hp, but look at the numbers above and make a reasonable guess at the difference between 8 hp and 9 hp.  The 8 hp orc, top of his untrained breed, is definitely improved upon by the 1+1 HD/9 hp elf, nyet?  The 2 hit dice creature with an average of 9 hp has more than hit points where it comes to the 1 HD creature - simply because that creature is going to be harder to stun.

Most readers, I know, don't employ stun rules, but you should really consider how a simple rule addition can alter the dynamic of combat in more ways than might be initially understood.

Back to the Beginning

"Fool, fool, back to the beginning is the rule."

Fezzik, The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

We don't see a characters day-to day health. We don't see how clumsy they are, how often they scrape themselves or stub their toes or fall in the mud. We don't really see height at weight unless we are explicitly told these things. Even if we are, we don't see the breadth of the shoulders, the muscle groups that have developed, whether the person carries the healthy fat of someone who wants not for food, or whether they have simply gorged themselves in a time of feast and will starve again during famine. We don't see which people have trouble seeing, or which ones have trouble hearing. We don't see which people have flat feet, or who have bad luck. We don't see the people who physically and mentally can't take the stress of combat. We don't see the squeamish soldier who vomits every time he smells blood.

We only see hitpoints. This is the only value we have to describe the ability of a person to survive combat. This value represents an assessment of all of the things I mentioned above, and more. It is an assessment that the world reports to us, the players. So, do you play a game where these other factors are worked in to the descriptions of characters are worked in and interact with each other, providing bonuses and penalties in real-time? Or do you play a game with just hitpoints? Because if it is the later, then yes, an orc can see its hitpoints. Rather, it can see all of the things that contribute to hitpoints. They see the runt who can't keep his stomach down in a fight, and we see the orc with 1hp. They see the muscled, well fed, sturdy warrior, and we see the orc with 7 hp. The smart army is going to kick as many of the people that they have assessed as "weak" to the least important positions. They are going to be peeling potatoes, not guarding treasure or ambushing adventurers.

Matt, comment on Save vs. All Wands, July 11

I had intended to move onto other facets of last week's arguments (interrupted by the publishing of my book), but it has been discovered that my math from a week ago Monday did not meet the necessary requirements.  I did not show my work, there were definite failings, and this was pointed out by the fellow I referred to as 'self-deluded.'  That was, in fact, the only personal comment I made about him - all my other insults were directed at the dumbassery of his arguments regarding the 'reality' of hit points.  Let me be clear. He, Oakes Spalding, corrected my math.  The arguments I called a self-deluded dumbassery STILL ARE. As it happens in reality, however, people can be both stupid and correct in unrelated things.  This is a case of that here, with both him and me.

So, I will set about making corrections in that which I got wrong.

Before doing so, however, I am forced by the existence of dumb asses (this being a very personal comment directed at people, and not their ideas) to set out some principles.  I can't believe I have to set out these principles, but the community has gone straight up its own ass and this makes stating the obvious a necessity.

First and foremost:  hit dice are a game mechanic used to give value to a creature's maximum health.  hit points are a finite value used to determine how much damage a creature can withstand in combat.  Hit points are determined traditionally as a set random value assigned as a die or such-and-such number of dice per hit die.  Traditionally, the die used is an 8-sided.  The number assigned by the total rolled dice to determine a creature's hit points is the maximum number of hit points the creature is able to have.

If, due to circumstances of injury, exhaustion, physical difficulty or hampering of combat strength, the number of hit points of a creature are currently less than the total number of its maximum hit points, then it is the DMs responsibility to make clear the total number of hit points of the creature in addition to the creature's present hit points due to circumstances.  The DM would be irresponsible to assume the number of current hit points were merely "something less than the maximum" without also assigning a true number of hit points that the creature would possess if the creature were not suffering from present circumstances.  As the players must keep track of their maximum hit points as well as their current hit points, the DM must keep track of all creatures' maximum and current hit points also.

The DM is also responsible to make evident, in a manner that would be plainly in evidence to a character's eyes, any creature that is currently under plain duress, ie., evidence of exhaustion, injury, pain, suffering, blood on clothes, an inability to walk normally due to a rock in the creature's shoe large enough to lower the creature's hit points and so on, so that parties attacking or being attacked by creatures are able to make a clear and obvious visible assessment of limitations of opponents due to having lost any substantial portion of their hit points prior to being encountered.  A DM failing to do this is guilty of deliberately limiting a player's legitimate knowledge of the circumstances in order to deceive or otherwise fudge the game's present play in the DM's favour.

I consider that an act of railroading and robbing the players of the fair ability to play in an unrigged game.

Very well.  Let's start again.  And this time I'll show all my work, a LOT more clearly that Oakes shows his, and we'll see where we are.

Let us take 800 one-hit-die creatures, because it actually doesn't matter if the attacked creature can use a weapon where this argument is concerned.  Let us assume that by perfect, possible chance we roll their hit points (using 1d8), getting exactly 100 rolls of each possible hit point value:  100 with 1 hit point, 100 with 2 hit points, 100 with 3 hit points and so on.  Really, this is the sort of thing I assumed people could understand when I wrote my original post, but people - it turns out - are really, really fucking stupid.  So it has to be said very slowly and in great detail so they will understand.

(Incidentally, my published book, How to Run, doesn't do this.  It is an Advanced Guide, so for some of you, it is really going to be too difficult.  It has English words and stuff).

Let's start with 100 creatures of 1HD that each have 1 hit point.

Now, in my original post I never said what was attacking the humanoids (or creatures, as we are now calling them).  I said that whatever it was had a 35% chance of hitting, because I was rating the creature as AC 6.  I was, in fact, assuming a 1st level fighter, that hits AC 6 on a 14.  For the very, very slow, that means a 1st level fighter would hit on a 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20.  That's 7 possible facings out of 20, or 35%.  I know this is really hard for some of you, but there you are.  Try to keep up.

Because some of you seem to think everything makes a big difference how many creatures attack the 1HD/1hp creature per round, I won't use rounds. I'll just refer to attacks.  Someone attempts to attack the 1 hit die creature at some point.  It doesn't matter if the creature attacks first, or succeeds, or if it kills 50 creatures before it is actually attacked, because for this argument, that doesn't matter.  We know from experience that it probably won't kill 50 first, but that isn't important right now.  Sooner or later, if it keeps getting into combats, it is going to get attacked.

Since we are starting with 100 creatures (to make our math easier), we assume that they're all going to get attacked a first time.  There's no need to assume that this is all going to happen at the same time, or in the same round, because within the function of this argument, that still doesn't matter.  For those who think it does matter for some reason, you're too young to read this blog.  Go ask your mommy or daddy.

Let us assume that in this universe, the chances of hitting exactly equal the actual hits that are done, so that in the first round, 100 creatures are attacked with a 35% chance of hitting them, and 35 creatures are hit. Miraculous!  And all done through the power of supposition.

Bif, bang, boom, 35 1HD/1hp creatures die.  That leaves 65.  Now we have a second attack.  We assume, again, that if they're still around, eventually they will be attacked a second time.  Being attacked is extraordinarily common in combat, so we can presume they'll probably have to take that risk again.

2nd Round:  35% x 65 creatures = 22.75 creatures are going to be hit.  To keep our numbers nice and round, let's say that fractions in this universe are dispersed by the gods, so that we only hit 22 creatures.  All 22 of those creatures are now dead.

3rd Round:  The 43 creatures that remain are attacked again.  This time, 35% x 43 = 15.05.  We drop the fraction and 15 die.

And here is where Oakes is correct when he tells me there wouldn't be 4 left.  I honestly don't understand right now how I wound up with 4 originally.  Some goofy thinking there.  Wow, I sure fucked up.  I must be really, really stupid.  Oh well.

Still, I count 28 left.  What happens if they're attacked another round.  We must assume, mustn't we, that these creatures, if still alive, are going to be attacked again, right?  Well, to save time, assuming they are attacked for a whole bunch of rounds, nine rounds in all, I find the remaining 1HD/1hp creatures diminish thusly (each number is a round, for those who are having trouble) - please try to remember I'm dropping fractions:  19, 13, 9, 6, 4 and 3.

I sure conflated that with the last post.  My math really sucks.

Okay, let's take one-hit-die creatures with 8 hit points.  We have 100 of those too, remember?  We could work our way up through each number of hit points up to 8, but this post is getting long enough, so let's just jump to the top.  After all, we know that since my original argument that there would be far more 1HD/8hp creatures left was totally bogus since my math sucks so much, we might as well prove that there isn't going to be a difference. There isn't going to be a difference, right?

Well, this is going to be more complicated (and here's why my math was screwed up, because I was trying to manage the 8hp creature and I overcomplicated the 1hp creature; oh well, live and learn).

Again, everyone is attacked and of 100 8hp creatures, 35 are hit.  These all die, and . . .

Wait a minute.  Wait just a minute.  None of them die, do they?  Seems to me that I came to that conclusion before, but my math really sucks, so let me look at it again.

All 35 that get hit take 1-6 damage from the spear I had originally applied in my first post.  That would mean that 5.83 suffer 1 damage, 5.83 suffer 2 damage, 5.83 suffer 3 damage, 5.83 suffer 4 damage, 5.83 suffer 5 damage and 5.83 suffer 6 damage.  I felt I should list them all off, since I don't want any of my readers thinking I've pulled a fast one.

Well, we still want to keep round numbers, but just for shits and giggles, let's say that the gods really hate 1HD/8hp creatures and that they insist on all fractions being kept.  Makes it harder for me, but . . . well, they're gods.

Let me put this into a table, because that will be easier for everyone:

Now, maybe it's just me, but the fact that I have to make a table for these, that I didn't have to make for the 1HD/1hp creatures, ought to say something of itself, but there we are.  Let's look at the second attack.

Of the ones that were hit above, each of those has a 35% chance of being hit.  This works out to 2.0405 of each of those that gets hit a second time, and 3.7895 not being hit by the second attack.  Taking one of those groups as an example, if we just take those with 2 hit points remaining, 84.33333% are killed, while 16.66667% take 1 damage.  See?  This is really simple math, isn't it?

So to see who gets hit and who doesn't, and how many take how much damage, let's have a look at this table:

We can then compare the above numbers with those that are killed:

And from that we can get a lay out of how many are left with each amount of hit points:

Total: 86.61741667

Hm.  Maybe it's just me, but it seems like even if a troop of 1 hit die humanoids had been attacked prior to meeting the party, most of those with 8 hit points to start would still have 8 hit points.  Isn't that strange?  I must be reading the numbers wrong.

Well, I've shown my work, and the means of getting there, so let's just jump to the end.  Let's see how the 1HD/8hp creatures would fare to the end of 9 rounds (*sorry, for easier reading, I'm going to limit it to 3 decimal places - the reader will have to trust I'm not lying about decimal numbers I'm not showing):

There!  Proof positive that the reader is absolutely right.  There is no difference  whatsoever between creatures having 8 hit points and surviving combats and creatures having 1 hit point.

Damn.  Glad that's settled.