In defense of hit points, the only thing that is unrealistic about "hit points" as they're commonly used is the lack of ability degradation.
Other than that, it is a quite good abstraction of real life, much in the sense of "When a goblin swings his sword for X damage at you, that X damage is how hard it was for you to avoid getting truly hit".

You may be tempted to say a knife or a dagger is designed to kill a person with one or two strokes, and naively spoken, that is true. However, if you get the opportunity to look at real people injured or killed with knives, you will note that (except for the ones killed in their sleep) all of them have around half a dozen defensive wounds and several deeper torso wounds. In most cases, none of the deeper wounds would have been immediately fatal (if there is such a thing as "immeditately") alone.
As such, the hit point model is not so unrealistic at all, and it's easy enough so even the most unwitted player can understand. Count down, and if you hit zero, game over.

Quote:Original post by Guy Meh
I'm not sure I like the systems with two hit point bars, one meaning defence and the other meaning real health. If we assume damage means "this axe is slicing into your flesh," and consider the amount of "damage" that most weapons of war do in real combat situations, any attack to your "vitality" would drop it to pretty much zero. So you still effectively die after one hit without dodging, so there's no real point to having the vitality bar in addition to the stamina bar. The only place I see a use for the vitality bar is in handling unarmed attacks (punches won't really kill you right away, I guess) or handling large monsters (I'm sure Godzilla can take a few whacks with a halberd). I might just abstract those cases away into Stamina though.

If all you do is abstract defense and health into stamina, then you are still using Hit Points. Some systems call it Health, Elan Vital, or whatever, it doesn't matter what you name it, if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, then it probably is a duck. IF you just rename Hit Points, they are sill hit points.

Also, have you ever cut yourself with a knife? Did you die from a little nick on the finger? No. Some people can survive many stab wounds, and others die from just 1. What matters is where you get hit, how deep the wounds goes and how much shock you go into.

Quote:Original post by Guy Meh
Presentation isn't good enough for me though; I want the mechanics themselves (how Strength or Agility or Constitution are used if I use those stats, how damage is calculated, how armour works, etc.) to indicate that hit points (Stamina) are an abstraction of how long you can duck, parry, and do other evasive maneuvers. Some of the Stamina could represent your character being able to absorb a direct hit, but that would only truly apply to really strong/tough characters or characters with lots of armour. Stamina would be all dodging for weak but nimble characters, since that's technically all they have (where, if they're really nimble, they'd have as much Stamina as the tough characters, but should feel different gameplay-wise).

If a bullet hits you, or you get cut by a sword/knife you don't usually die instantly unless it hits a vital organ. What occurs is that you go into shock. If you don't get hit in a vital organ or go into shock, then you can survive for quite some time until you bleed to death.

So you could take that hit by the halberd, but say in the gut, and you might last a few more seconds, but then Shock and blood loss hit you and you go down, but you still might survive for even a few days (but hours is more likely.

So we have 3 stages here. Insta-kill from a vital organ hit (heart or brain), Blood loss (arterial) and Shock/Slow blood loss (veins).

How can you model this in a game so that it is fun? :o

Well, if certain hits did a lot of damage to your health, then this would simulate the Insta-Kill form a vital organ hit.

Arterial Blood loss could be simulated with small but an ongoing drain to health with each hit.

And Shock could be simulated by comparing the amount of damage you get over a short period of time with some measure of a character's toughness (ability to withstand shock).

This is what I tried to model with my proposed system. Small injuries, like scratches, strains, minor wounds drain Stamina, which regenerates over time. More serious injuries, but not immediately fatal ones a small amount of health (and a bit of stamina too as these injuries would cause shock in their own rights). Finally serious injuries can be handled by doing large amounts of damage to Health and bypassing the stamina altogether (or by doing more health damage than stamina damage.

Instead of bleeding doing continual damage, I chose to use a non regenerating Health (unless specific actions are taken to recover it) to simulate bleeding as I though it wouldn't be much fun to stop after every skirmish and apply bandages, splint bones and other first aid.

As an example, lets take the Halberd as a case and look at 3 different hits that might occur. First, the player character dodges out of the way, but strains something. Second the player can't dodge out of the way, but to avoid taking it in the chest they throw up their arm to protect themselves and thirdly they can't dodge and they get hit in the chest.

Firstly this would be that their stamina take all the damage.

Second, half the damage goes on stamina and the other half goes to health. Normally a blow like that to an arm might put someone out of the fight, but it would not be immediately fatal.

Lastly, all the damage goes to Health and this might be enough to actually kill the character.

Now, this doesn't have to be represented as 2 bars. You could have 1 bar to show this. You would use a 2 part bar to represent it.

EG: As stamina is drained, the bar turns from green to red, as health gets lower it shrinks.

Or, if you want to ditch bars altogether, the more stamina is drained, the harder the character breaths. As Health gets lower the heart beats faster (and louder).

Quote:Original post by Guy Meh
P.S. Edtharan's "drain" as a new name for "damage" is interesting, but I'm not sure how well it sticks with me. This is completely arbitrary, but it just doesn't have the same ring to it. :P

I can't claim originality for the Drain concept, I ahve seen it used in many other places. :D

If you want to separate the difference between a stat getting lower to represent an expenditure of effort to avoid damage, and that of taking damage, then you can use Drain to represent the expenditure of effort, and Damage to represent taking that damage.

I can't even claim originality on the two stat system. the D20 Star Wars system uses 2 stats to represent a kind of stamina (Called Vitality) and physical Damage (called Wounds). In this case, vitality is based off you class level and your Constitution stat and Wounds are based directly of your Constitution stat.

I have also seen systems with more than 2 stats as well (both in computer games and table top games). Two stats are not all that much to keep track of. Many Beat-em-ups have 2 or more stats that you need to track (usually Health, Stamina and Combo).

Quote:Original post by theOcelot
Let me see if I've got this all right. Stamina is a measure of your ability to avoid attacks and such. Stamina is reduced (or put another way, you get tired) when an attack is dodged, instead of reducing hit-points or damage.

Not really. Stamina can include damage, but also includes dodging/blocking. It's mostly evasion, actually. When I see a cinematic fight on TV (I'm going for "movie realism") I mostly see blocks and parries until that final blow that decides the winner.

Really, Stamina is hit points with a name change and different assumptions.

Quote:You could just allow them to be a very big deal ("Oh, crap! A magician!"), but balance their cost accordingly.

I'm starting to lean towards this. From the perspective of your average medieval adventurer, a gang of axe-wielding goblins is one thing. But if an old man causes a wall of fire to close in on you, it'd be a pretty big deal.

Quote:Original post by Edtharan
IF you just rename Hit Points, they are sill hit points.

I've already done the renaming, but I need to make other modifications so that it's not just renaming.

Generally, I'm seeing a lot of support for the two-bar system for health. I suppose this model makes sense. Evasion and minor scratches may be rolled into the Stamina bar (not the same Stamina as my Stamina proposal). Real wounds may be rolled into the Health bar (or, use your favourite body-part/wound simulation). I suppose this grants the flexibility of most attacks affecting Stamina first, but more powerful attacks like magic and explosions affecting Health directly.

Anyway, here's some ideas I've had. To recap, the gist of what I'm going for is that I want to use hit points, but I want to treat hit points as more than just a model of physical injury. So I need to determine what mechanics and what stats I need.

A good way of approaching this is probably being more descriptive about what happens when character A attacks character B.

First, suppose I use two physical stats: Strength and Agility. Strength controls your toughness and the force you may withstand and dish out. Agility is your speed, flexibility, and co-ordination.

When someone attacks another, the defender may deal with the attack in four ways: dodge, block, parry, or simply get hit.

Dodge
The defender avoids the attack (or the attacker misses due to clumsiness).
Compares the attacker's Agility to the defender's Agility.
The weapon's reach may give the attacker a bonus; longer weapons are harder to escape from.

Block
The defender stops the attack (covers with shield, grab's attacker's weapon, etc.).
Compares the attacker's Strength to the defender's Strength.
The weapon's force or weight may give the attacker a bonus; heavier weapons like maces are harder to stop. This force may be tied to the attacker's Strength; weaker attackers may receive less benefit.
Weapons or other equipment, especially shields, may give a bonus to the defender in blocking.

Parry
Instead of stopping the attack, the defender redirects the attack away from himself.
I can see this both comparing the attacker's Strength to the defender's Strength and comparing the attacker's Agility to the defender's Agility. Agility is for placing or avoiding the parry, Strength is for holding or forcing through the parry.
Some weapons may be easier to parry other weapons with, giving a bonus to the defender. Some weapons may also be hard to parry against, giving a bonus to the attacker.

Hit
This is where an attack represents physical contact between the defender and the attacker's weapon.
Compares the attacker's Strength to the defender's Strength, like in blocking.
I may possibly allow the attacker's and defender's Agility to be worked in as well, since Agility may help the attacker make a more precise attack while it may help the defender avoid the precision strike.
Again, like in blocking, the weapon's force/weight may give the attacker a bonus. While this bonus may be affected by Strength, weapons may also have a precision bonus affected by Agility.
This would also be where I'd factor the defender's armour in.

The effectiveness of the different forms of defence depend on the attacker and defender; a fast character may dodge more often when against a slow character. Some defences may also grant certain modifiers; parrying may give a defence penalty to the attacker to represent the defender's coming counter-attack, since the defender would get to attack next turn.

However, I'm unsure how to choose a defence for a given attack. I don't want the player to have to choose a defence every time he's attacked. The defence types also need to be balanced enough so that a character's defences against another character will not just be dodges because that is the Best Option right now. I suppose I could just pick a defence at random, but I would prefer some player control and (possibly semi-)predictability.

The problem seem to lie in that you want to player to be able to respond to the immediate situation, without being able to respond at that time. You want them to be able to choose their own defense type according to an attack, but you want them to make this choice before the enemy attacks them (ie: in their own turn).

You can't fix this problem by manipulating Hit Points.

When you are going for a Move/Counter Move system (like you are proposing), you need to have signalling. Signalling is where the game broadcasts what their move is ahead of time so that the counter moving character can respond, but there are a few complications that can be added into this.

You need a way to be able to fake a signal. This should be at a cost or risk to the faker, but offer a greater reward if pulled off. Faking a signal should be a gamble that a player can take.

There is an article on Gamasutra that covers this: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1733/rock_paper_scissors__a_method_for_.php?page=1

Quote:Original post by Thatotherguy
My preference: avoid turn-based combat altogether. If you must, make attacks take so long that they occur in turns, but don't take control away from the player during combat. Allow the player to block, dodge, or parry at will. You could make a sort of hybrid between turn-based and real-time combat by forcing each player to attack when it is "their turn," but allowing them to move about and block at will.

I don't believe this would work, you're open to situations where it's player A's turn to attack, they don't select an attack, but both players/characters can move freely. meaning they can just make no decision and run off, Player B can only follow helplessly watching the back of his opponent's head wishing he could whack it with his mace.

A better system would be a semi-realtime system, similar to the one you propose where both characters get an attack action every X seconds, allowing both to act. this also allows for "fast" characters to act quicker, whilst slow characters, such as those in heavy plate armour, would take a few more seconds to take their agressive action.

Another option is to keep it turn based, but have simultaneous turns, you can select a move, a defence and/or an attack (depends on how you want to do things, you could have players select one of each, or just a single action), and then their action is held "pending" until the opponent selects one as well. That way both players take their first turn at the same time, eliminating the "first hit/recovery" issues. Though this comes with it's own challenges.

The Stamina concept makes a certain sense, after a long fight, you would be tired, your movements a little more sluggish, you're more likely to take a solid blow than someone who'd fresh to the fight and well rested.