Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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The Ugly One said:
I've been spergtastically mad about this in video games lately. It's turned every single FPS into Headshot Mania 2000. People say it's "more realistic," but no, it's not. Real life people are not killed by whittling down their hit points, requiring you to target the area with the highest DPS multiplier to kill them quicker.
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You're not alone in this, as it goes to headshot mania 2000, or ends up being bullet sponge 2099 where you end up dumping 15 magazines of 5.56 into a guy wearing an EOD bomb suit if headshots aren't possible. I think the main problem is that when a system does try to end up being more "realistic" by having a flat number of wounds and not HP, with varying levels of hit/crit leading to multiple wounds taken or even incapacitation, you end up with a system more lethal than what the average gamer actually wants.

The other problem is that even in books and movies, the heroes that are taking on an army of 50 skeletons solo, while shooting up 20 terrorists and saving the day, aren't actually taking tons of hits, at most it's a couple of glancing blows/knicks/grazes/etc. In Die Hard 1, the hero isn't constantly getting shot up, he gets grazed, takes some scrapes, and his biggest wound is the glass shit due to not having shoes. Every Star Wars battle, no one is taking a bunch of hits except in the videogames. It's always parries, blocks, and just dodging hits entirely until someone eventually does get hit and then instantly loses a limb because it's a fucking lightsaber(assuming they didn't simply take a thrust right through the chest or even just get decapitated).

And that's all before factoring in even more gamey shit like weaknesses/vulnerabilities, damage type reduction, and so on. A vampire is "weak" to a stake through the heart? Well what isn't? Trolls and fire... ok most things die if I light them on fire.

There's definitely a better balancing point between game shit and "realism" but it seems like we're nowhere near that point.
 
Notepad Anon said:
Also Rogue Trader is my favorite FFG TRPG by a country mile, I will make my own Space Capitalism Game one day because everyone I know is terrified of the FFG D100 System.
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Use Traveller then, it has a robust trading and job system for making money, and the default main quest foisted on them is paying off their ship's mortgage.
 
Uzumaki said:
In Traveller you’re a bum with a steam tramper. In Rogue Trader you’re a whole ass East India Company. Not the same experience.
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It's a game that scales up easily. Just give the players a bigger ship and an unexplored sector. There you go, Rogue trader but less absurdly swingy.
 
LovisXVI said:
There you go, Rogue trader but less absurdly swingy.
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I ran a Dark Heresy (2E) game with friends a little while ago and the first fight I've ever had with a psyker ended up having the psyker have his head explode and his headless burning body run off of the elevator that they were on, while also setting the Sororitas on fire just because he ran past her... on the very first turn, as soon as he had cast ONE psychic power. Mind you, this was 2E with some of the old edition's swinginess (supposedly) cut out.

The potential for something disastrous to happen with any encounter really is part of the magic of those games.
 
AnOminous said:
HP is such a shit system. You can just walk into a fight, know you can suck up so much damage, basically tank it, and move on to the next fight.

I like systems where even an idiot can take you out. Then you actually have to think before getting into a fight and possibly find a way of NOT getting into a fight.

This is not to say you should never never get into a fight, but it should always be a scary prospect.
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I advise you to stop racking your brain because real life cannot be simulated. I thought about this a lot when writing CoC scenarios. Especially when I run a one-shot or a campaign starter set during some conflict. Max damage from a single .45 handgun or a bolt-action rifle shot is enough to put a slightly tougher character in the ground but how do you explain IRL instances of men surviving combat with dozens of gunshot, shrapnel and bayonet wounds wearing nothing but a uniform? Or Junko Furuta's horrifying case? What that poor girl endured defeats every health system I know of.
 
Yet another online game didn't happen because the US players failed to understand the basic concept of time zones. Which I find odd, because doesn't America have three of them?

Even when I do all the work for them and straight up tell them. "We start at 3pm EST. That is 3pm your time. Are you sure you can make it?" they say yes and then turn up 5 hours late wondering where everybody else is.

I've also been getting people posting on Discord or social media about the DnD characters they made and how they'd love to play them, but when I often to DM for them they make excuses. It reminds me of trying to get a game together back in the early 2010s where people would bang on and on about how they'd do anything to play, only to make excuses when I actually set up a game.
 
p1138 said:
And that's all before factoring in even more gamey shit like weaknesses/vulnerabilities, damage type reduction, and so on. A vampire is "weak" to a stake through the heart? Well what isn't? Trolls and fire... ok most things die if I light them on fire.

There's definitely a better balancing point between game shit and "realism" but it seems like we're nowhere near that point.
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Manly_Brony said:
I advise you to stop racking your brain because real life cannot be simulated. I thought about this a lot when writing CoC scenarios. Especially when I run a one-shot or a campaign starter set during some conflict. Max damage from a single .45 handgun or a bolt-action rifle shot is enough to put a slightly tougher character in the ground but how do you explain IRL instances of men surviving combat with dozens of gunshot, shrapnel and bayonet wounds wearing nothing but a uniform? Or Junko Furuta's horrifying case? What that poor girl endured defeats every health system I know of.
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My take HP is always that it its an amalgamation of skill, toughness, and luck - It is a representation of a character's ability to have blow not hit a critical area. In the case of especially bullets, that means that a "hit" may not actually hit - it might be a graze, it might still be deflected by armor, - but the loss of "HP" is a way to keep things from ending up where its just unsatisfying "You miss. They miss. You miss. They miss. You miss. They miss. You miss." over and over.

The fact character reflexes are involved is why even wizards get more HP as they level, but its not dex based because Dex has already failed to let them dodge, so now its down to how resistant their flesh is.

The other thing to consider, always, is that as much as we love to murder them, unless you playing a mudfarmer simulator even when you are playing low-fantasy B/X the player characters are suppose to be special, they are MEANT to be heroes chosen by the gods (the players) to do great and incredible feats and its only right that they are able to survive more than anyone else, and not just be randomly murked by some goblin with a rock.
(This is one the real pet-peeves I have with PF though it is overshadowed by how shitty the fanboys I've encountered have been)
But also there is a wide gulf between "you have 1 hit point and may be murdered by a cat" and 5e's fantasy superheroes.

I have had thoughts before a "Hit dice" based HP Lifeforce system, where players would essentially roll Hit dice only when taking damage; that is, I am a fighter with a d10 hit die I'm level 3 so have 3 of them. If I'm hit for 7 points of damage, I would roll d10s and add the results until I have rolled over 7 or run out of hitdice. I've also had thoughts of each exhausted dice doing some "wounds" sort of stuff.

But every time I look at the system, I realize its just overly complex and breaks the flow of play, and HP while far from perfect is honestly close enough.

I also liked 4e's healing surges but feel like there would be a way to better integrate them into the system.
 
Ghostse said:
My take HP is always that it its an amalgamation of skill, toughness, and luck - It is a representation of a character's ability to have blow not hit a critical area. In the case of especially bullets, that means that a "hit" may not actually hit - it might be a graze, it might still be deflected by armor, - but the loss of "HP" is a way to keep things from ending up where its just unsatisfying "You miss. They miss. You miss. They miss. You miss. They miss. You miss." over and over.

The fact character reflexes are involved is why even wizards get more HP as they level, but its not dex based because Dex has already failed to let them dodge, so now its down to how resistant their flesh is.

The other thing to consider, always, is that as much as we love to murder them, unless you playing a mudfarmer simulator even when you are playing low-fantasy B/X the player characters are suppose to be special, they are MEANT to be heroes chosen by the gods (the players) to do great and incredible feats and its only right that they are able to survive more than anyone else, and not just be randomly murked by some goblin with a rock.
(This is one the real pet-peeves I have with PF though it is overshadowed by how shitty the fanboys I've encountered have been)
But also there is a wide gulf between "you have 1 hit point and may be murdered by a cat" and 5e's fantasy superheroes.
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Sure and for something where it is the fantasy hero adventuring party it's not a big deal. But when it comes to other settings where the player characters are generally far more mundane it ends up being a bit silly at times.

Ghostse said:
But every time I look at the system, I realize its just overly complex and breaks the flow of play, and HP while far from perfect is honestly close enough.
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Sure, but it can't hurt to discuss the existing issues, and even ponder if there's anything better without having to treat every character like a battletech sheet.
 
Manly_Brony said:
I advise you to stop racking your brain because real life cannot be simulated. I thought about this a lot when writing CoC scenarios. Especially when I run a one-shot or a campaign starter set during some conflict. Max damage from a single .45 handgun or a bolt-action rifle shot is enough to put a slightly tougher character in the ground but how do you explain IRL instances of men surviving combat with dozens of gunshot, shrapnel and bayonet wounds wearing nothing but a uniform?
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My point is that even the dumbest fight should have potential consequences, meaning that players should get risk averse and find more complex, non-violent solutions, or at least make their violence high impact and low risk.

I ran a very deadly CoC campaign, and this is even though it was super gun heavy and the party almost always massively outgunned the (human) enemies. Guns don't do too much to eldritch, though. That said, even with much more firepower than human enemies to the point fights with cultists were nearly always one-sided massacres, someone would occasionally take a stray.

So it was almost always worth at least trying to resolve the situation without (too much) violence. For instance, one cult broke up because they realized the party and they had a mutual hatred of Communism (and the other cult they had been collaborating with were commies).
Manly_Brony said:
Or Junko Furuta's horrifying case? What that poor girl endured defeats every health system I know of.
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I wouldn't put that shit in even my darkest CoC campaign. Even more repulsive is that the perps more or less got away with it.
 
Uzumaki said:
Why don’t you just cut my nuts off while you’re at it.
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米津玄師 said:
I ran a Dark Heresy (2E) game with friends a little while ago and the first fight I've ever had with a psyker ended up having the psyker have his head explode and his headless burning body run off of the elevator that they were on, while also setting the Sororitas on fire just because he ran past her... on the very first turn, as soon as he had cast ONE psychic power. Mind you, this was 2E with some of the old edition's swinginess (supposedly) cut out.

The potential for something disastrous to happen with any encounter really is part of the magic of those games.
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Sure, Traveller isn't good for space craziness, but that isn't what he asked for, he asked for space capitalism, and the first real space rpg is the best one for that as well. If you want space craziness, then I would say that Black Crusade is better for that, since the floor and ceiling both are much higher and more deleterious.
Manly_Brony said:
I advise you to stop racking your brain because real life cannot be simulated. I thought about this a lot when writing CoC scenarios. Especially when I run a one-shot or a campaign starter set during some conflict. Max damage from a single .45 handgun or a bolt-action rifle shot is enough to put a slightly tougher character in the ground but how do you explain IRL instances of men surviving combat with dozens of gunshot, shrapnel and bayonet wounds wearing nothing but a uniform? Or Junko Furuta's horrifying case? What that poor girl endured defeats every health system I know of.
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That's why I have always liked HarnMaster's way of doing it, where every wound is a discrete thing, where you can die to an innocuous wound, but also survive lots of them, even if they end up debilitating by accumulation.
 
Ghostse said:
But also there is a wide gulf between "you have 1 hit point and may be murdered by a cat" and 5e's fantasy superheroes.
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I ran a couple joke games where we'd just send out pathetic characters that I'd let people reroll in the real game and then just have them fight housecats and normal sized rats and mosquitoes and the dumbest shit I could imagine.
 
I think some of you are groping towards an understanding, even if you haven't voiced it:

Reality isn't fun.

We all deal with reality every fucking day we drag our dumb asses out of bed and go to work. I don't know about you all, but I relish being in a game where my solution to an arrogant noble slapping a friend is to telekinetically pick him up, slam him against a wall, and tell him to apologize or I'm going to fucking geld him with a scorching ray.

At some point, the MST3k mantra has to kick in: repeat to yourself it's just a game, and you really should relax.
 
AnOminous said:
I wouldn't put that shit in even my darkest CoC campaign. Even more repulsive is that the perps more or less got away with it.
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Well, one of them suffered something close to what he deserved at the end...
  • Jō Ogura was sentenced to five to ten years in prison. He was released in 1999, changed his last name to "Kamisaku", and began working in an IT position. In 2000, Kamisaku married a Chinese woman and moved to Chiba Prefecture, but divorced after a few years and returned to his mother's home in Saitama. He lost his job after his past became known to his colleagues, and again became involved in the yakuza. In 2004, Kamisaku was arrested for assaulting Takatoshi Isono, a 27-year-old acquaintance whom he thought was involved with a girlfriend. He shoved Isono into the trunk of a car and drove him to his mother's bar in Misato, where he assaulted him for four hours. Kamisaku was sentenced to four years in prison for the crime. After his release in 2009, he relied on welfare and lived alone in an apartment in Saitama, where he died in an accident on 16 July 2022, at age 51 —‌while on psychiatric medication, Kamisaku collapsed, got his head stuck between the toilet bowl and tank, and choked on his vomit.
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AnOminous said:
Yeah but just mindlessly killing things knowing there is no risk at all eventually loses its glamor.
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Everyone has a certain amount of this in them that stays pent up until they play a few decent power fantasy campaigns.

Edit:
AnOminous said:
I wouldn't put that shit in even my darkest CoC campaign. Even more repulsive is that the perps more or less got away with it.
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Ever heard of Myths Over Miami?
 
AnOminous said:
Yeah but just mindlessly killing things knowing there is no risk at all eventually loses its glamor.

At some point, more complexity is fun.
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Oh, I agree, there needs to be risk. And a little granularity never hurts.

But complexity in itself is not fun. If it was, Phoenix Command would've been a best seller.
 
I simply prefer games with health tracks that don't automatically increase: Shadowrun, FFG's Star Wars, Alternity, Savage Worlds. Most of those also differentiate between exhaustion and wounds, so being roughed up applies penalties to a character without having to be stabbed or shot. It's a considerably more realistic setup than the ever-growing HP batteries of D&D, but isn't obnoxiously fiddly.
 
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