Splitting hit points into health and dodge
Aaron M.
bar and a Dodge bar. Dodge would represent you evading and reflecting
attacks without getting a wound, while Health would represent your
physical condition. When you run out of Dodge, damage is applied to
Health.
Damage against Health could be calculated differently from damage
against Dodge. Dodge damage could be something like Aim vs. Speed while
Health damage could be Strength vs. Toughness. This would allow attacks
that are good against one type of defence but not against the other.
There could be classes of weapons that are lethal (high Health damage)
but are easy to avoid (low Dodge damage), as well as attacks that are
easy to hit with but don't do much harm. There could also be attacks
that bypass Dodge completely. These would be magic attacks, explosions,
and area-of-effect attacks that few would rationalize as being
"dodgeable."
Health and Dodge could replenish in different ways. Health could only
replenish with the use of healing items while Dodge could only replenish
with time. I myself would make Dodge heal faster than hit points do in
current games. I suppose sleeping could also replenish some Health, but
not completely.
For character growth, we could have Dodge follow the standard hit-point
style inflation model that seems to annoy some people, while Health
would be tied to a specific stat like Toughness. I believe the Star
Wars tabletop RPG did this. This would be "realistic" since character
growth would be representing your ability to avoid deadly attacks rather
than representing your flesh becoming as hard as titanium. It would
also better depict combat from popular fiction where heroes are mainly
shown skillfully evading attacks rather than letting themselves get
stabbed a hundred times.
Damage against Health could be made to reduce your other stats.
Reducing stats on damage would be a problem in other games since it
leads to a death spiral. However, if you're already protected by Dodge,
reduced states from Health damage could hopefully be only as dangerous
as stat reductions in Angband. If we go this route, we could drop
Health altogether and have damage applied directly to your stats when
you're out of Dodge; you'd die if one of your stats reaches zero while
healing items would restore your stats.
I'm unsure what to do with armour though. It could boost defences for
both Dodge and Health, or for only one of them. Armour could also maybe
boost Health but penalize Dodge because of weight.
Now, if only I had time to actually create a demo to test this. :/
Risto Saarelma
> I've been thinking about the idea of splitting hit points into a Health
> bar and a Dodge bar. Dodge would represent you evading and reflecting
> attacks without getting a wound, while Health would represent your
> physical condition. When you run out of Dodge, damage is applied to
> Health.
> I'm unsure what to do with armour though. It could boost defences for
> both Dodge and Health, or for only one of them. Armour could also maybe
> boost Health but penalize Dodge because of weight.
Some FPS did a similar system, but starting from the armor instead of
having a dodge bar. As long as you were wearing an armor, damage would
degrade the armor. You could patch it up by finding a fresh armor.
Damage taken without any armor or damage that bypassed the armor for
some reason would damage health, which couldn't be restored until the
current mission was over.
So you end up with one hit point gauge which works with the "pick up
stuff, get better" way, and another one which is more vital and
difficult to replenish. You could even get a wait-to-heal on the armor
gauge if the armor was some kind of recharging force field.
Adam Blinkinsop
Spycraft (a d20 p&p) does this in a way; I'd have to be at home to
check my book, but the basic idea is the same. You might pick it up
for ideas. Critical hits are applied directly to health (wounds in
their system), and there are some other differences.
Darren Grey
> I've been thinking about the idea of splitting hit points into a Health
> bar and a Dodge bar. Dodge would represent you evading and reflecting
> attacks without getting a wound, while Health would represent your
> physical condition. When you run out of Dodge, damage is applied to
> Health.
>
> Damage against Health could be calculated differently from damage
> against Dodge. Dodge damage could be something like Aim vs. Speed while
> Health damage could be Strength vs. Toughness. This would allow attacks
> that are good against one type of defence but not against the other.
> There could be classes of weapons that are lethal (high Health damage)
> but are easy to avoid (low Dodge damage), as well as attacks that are
> easy to hit with but don't do much harm. There could also be attacks
> that bypass Dodge completely. These would be magic attacks, explosions,
> and area-of-effect attacks that few would rationalize as being
> "dodgeable."
I like the idea. One could also have one's Dodge reduced by certain
player actions (a particularly difficult spell to cast, or a lunging
melee attack) so it would act as an endurance of sorts too.
One problem gameplay-wise is that it suddenly makes dodge-ignoring
attacks vastly more powerful. Area of effect and magic attacks would
have to be very carefully balanced.
--
Darren Grey
Gelatinous Mutant Coconut
> One problem gameplay-wise is that it suddenly makes dodge-ignoring
> attacks vastly more powerful. Area of effect and magic attacks would
> have to be very carefully balanced.
Some versions of D&D handle this by allowing "reflex saves" against
area-of-effect spells, so for example an adventurer hit by a fireball
takes half-damage if they make their reflex save.
What I would suggest in this case is to mostly avoid adding attacks
that completely bypass a character's Dodge meter without some other
kind of defense to take its place. (You could easily have a Spell
Resistance meter that acts like Dodge against spells.)
On another point: How should attacks that deal high Dodge damage but
low Health damage be treated? (I'm assuming that no extra Health
damage occurs due to Dodge damage when the Dodge meter is empty.) If
the player must automatically dodge every attack that they can, the
optimal strategy against any dodging-focused character would be to
just throw lots of small harmless pebbles at them until they are
exhausted (or some similarly weak but hard to dodge attacks). Maybe
this can be avoided if there aren't any inexpensive attacks that do
enough Dodge damage to ensure that a Dodge-focused character can't
close in on their target before their Dodge meter runs out?
Pender
like the idea of partitioning health into a buffer that replenishes
automatically and a reserve that does not. Halo 1 used a system like
that (energy shields and health being separate stats) and I think it
struck a good balance: windshield kills did not need to be
painstakingly finessed, but tougher battles rewarded careful play
beyond the simple dichotomy of did/did not survive. I think dodge/HP
is as good of a metaphor for the partition as any -- though I might
use "fatigue" instead of dodge to explain why it should take more than
a few seconds to recover fully.
It's also an interesting idea to have certain character builds
(determined by innate classes or by equipment) that specialize in one
half of the partition or the other, and certain obstacles (monsters,
traps, etc.) that lean more heavily on one type than the other. The
playing experiences will differ qualitatively and the game will stay
fresh longer. Along those lines, you could have heavy armors magnify
damage to fatigue but reduce health damage while light armors do the
reverse.
I also see no problem with having spells that directly damage health
and bypass fatigue. Each character type should have strengths and
weaknesses. In my game Brogue, high-armor characters can often hold
their own against multiple attackers at once simply because they are
so hard to hit -- but throw some direct-damage spells into the mix and
the tables tip in favor of the high-offense low-defense character
build. Melee attacks never miss characters who are entangled in
spiderwebs, which makes spiders much more dangerous to the former
build than to the latter.
I'm not sure about many of the further embellishments you've proposed;
like a lot of character statistic models, its complexity seems to
exist for its own sake without a compelling gameplay justification --
sort of an attempt to do something with the STR/DEX/CON/INT/WIS/CHA
numbers in deference to RPG canon without first asking if that canon
serves a purpose in the context of your game. As they say, perfection
is attained not when there is nothing more to add but when there is
nothing left to take away.
Aaron M.
<9e86d52c-bad5-4ec5...@n35g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Darren Grey <darrenj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I like the idea. One could also have one's Dodge reduced by certain
> player actions (a particularly difficult spell to cast, or a lunging
> melee attack) so it would act as an endurance of sorts too.
I'm thinking of having hit points (or Health and Dodge) be a fixed
percentage, with all damage being reduced by a defence stat. In many
games you have both growing hit points and growing stat points, so why
not combine them?
Making actions that leaves one vulnerable Dodge-wise would then be as
simple as temporarily reducing the corresponding Evasion stat, during
which you'd take more Dodge damage than usual.
In article
<85c09d8e-5ae4-42aa...@n35g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Gelatinous Mutant Coconut <gelatinousm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 27, 8:43�pm, Darren Grey <darrenjohng...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > One problem gameplay-wise is that it suddenly makes dodge-ignoring
> > attacks vastly more powerful. �Area of effect and magic attacks would
> > have to be very carefully balanced.
>
> Some versions of D&D handle this by allowing "reflex saves" against
> area-of-effect spells, so for example an adventurer hit by a fireball
> takes half-damage if they make their reflex save.
>
> What I would suggest in this case is to mostly avoid adding attacks
> that completely bypass a character's Dodge meter without some other
> kind of defense to take its place. (You could easily have a Spell
> Resistance meter that acts like Dodge against spells.)
Well, depending on our assumptions on how "dodgeable" common magical and
area of effect attacks are, I agree that those kinds of attacks could
get overpowered if we're not careful.
If we want those attacks to act like their equivalents in standard
one-HP-bar games we could just lower their (Health) damage. Or we could
say that they really are that powerful and balance them by making them
harder or more costly to perform or access. Surely we're not averse to
really powerful high-end attacks. ;)
> On another point: How should attacks that deal high Dodge damage but
> low Health damage be treated? (I'm assuming that no extra Health
> damage occurs due to Dodge damage when the Dodge meter is empty.) If
> the player must automatically dodge every attack that they can, the
> optimal strategy against any dodging-focused character would be to
> just throw lots of small harmless pebbles at them until they are
> exhausted (or some similarly weak but hard to dodge attacks). Maybe
> this can be avoided if there aren't any inexpensive attacks that do
> enough Dodge damage to ensure that a Dodge-focused character can't
> close in on their target before their Dodge meter runs out?
Hm, this question may depend on where we're getting our Dodge and Health
damages from. I was thinking attacks would have vs. Health and vs.
Dodge damage ratings. If there's Dodge left use the vs. Dodge rating,
otherwise use the vs. Health rating. How about we enforce that an
attack's vs. Dodge rating is never greater than its vs. Health rating?
And if we do enforce that an attack's vs. Dodge is less than or equal to
its vs. Health rating, do we do this to all attacks or just to weapons
and spells. In other words, would it be all right for *characters* to
do better Dodge damage than Health damage independent of their weapons?
I suppose it would be easier to have a single attack rating that's
applied to Dodge and then to Health when Dodge runs out, along with a
flag for whether the attack bypasses Dodge or not. Then we'd work on
differentiating Dodge from Health (e.g. Dodge regenerates naturally,
Health needs red potions).
Jotaf
<gelatinousmutantcoco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Some versions of D&D handle this by allowing "reflex saves" against
> area-of-effect spells, so for example an adventurer hit by a fireball
> takes half-damage if they make their reflex save.
>
> What I would suggest in this case is to mostly avoid adding attacks
> that completely bypass a character's Dodge meter without some other
> kind of defense to take its place. (You could easily have a Spell
> Resistance meter that acts like Dodge against spells.)
An interesting mechanic for spells could be to make a sort of reflex
save depending on the dodge/fatigue meter. If it's below some
percentage, the spell hits; otherwise, it's completely evaded. Compare
to regular attacks that must first deplete dodge and only then hit
health. This way, spells bypass the "dodge shield" and deal direct
damage, but still it's not completely arbitrary or dependent on
additional meters. To cast an effective spell you'd first need to wear
down the enemy (with melee or using different kinds of spells
specifically to tire opponents, say Tornado), and the spell would be
the finishing blow. To defend against magic attacks a melee character
must keep himself nimble and not let fatigue drop down below a certain
point, which makes sense in a realistic sort of way.
Jotaf
Matt_S
of dodge, and it was just an abstract measure of your ability to avoid
bodily harm. Also, it didn't have to be drained completely before you
could get injuries, but instead as you lose stamina you would be able
to take damage to more body parts, though it also acted to determine
the chance of getting injuries to certain body parts. This is sort of
a mixture of body part injuries with the idea that "HP" isn't
necessarily a direct measure of injuries, and I hope that it mitigates
some of the most undesirable features of the other systems.
Billy Bissette
news:85c09d8e-5ae4-42aa...@n35g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:
> On another point: How should attacks that deal high Dodge damage but
> low Health damage be treated? (I'm assuming that no extra Health
> damage occurs due to Dodge damage when the Dodge meter is empty.) If
> the player must automatically dodge every attack that they can, the
> optimal strategy against any dodging-focused character would be to
> just throw lots of small harmless pebbles at them until they are
> exhausted (or some similarly weak but hard to dodge attacks). Maybe
> this can be avoided if there aren't any inexpensive attacks that do
> enough Dodge damage to ensure that a Dodge-focused character can't
> close in on their target before their Dodge meter runs out?
This might be solved by how you think of damage.
Do you accept a fundamental difference between attacks that do no
damage and attacks that do any amount of damage? If so, then it is
easier to accept the idea that you automatically try to dodge every
attack that is capable of dealing damage and simply ignore attacks that
are incapable of affecting you. This is admittedly easier to accept
with a low hit-point character. If you only have 20 health points,
then even having them whittled away one at a time isn't acceptable.
If you have 300 health points, then you honestly might not care if
pebbles chip it away a point at a time.
Second is to consider any degree of damage worth recording is enough
to affect the character. You might ignore pebbles thrown at you
which can do no damage, but you don't just shrug off a rock that hits
hard enough to draw blood. You feel pain, maybe you flinch, or the
impact itself might throw off your movement. In such a system, again
automatic dodging of any effective threat is justifiable.
Attacks which entirely do "dodge" damage, with no health damage
impact, are still supportable as long as a successful dodge is "cheaper"
than taking the attack. Sand in the eyes isn't going to do real
damage, but a successful hit should have a high enough effect on your
dodging as to force you dodge.
The issue comes with high HP characters. These are the characters
that would justifiably shrug off even damaging attacks as long as the
damages are low enough. One option is that instead of making the
dividing line the difference between no damage and any damage, make it
a percentage system. A 250 HP character might "ignore" any attack of
5 HP or less, while a 100 HP character can only ignore 2 HP or less.
Alternatively, you could make the threshold player-definable. A high
HP character could then still be paranoid and dodge everything, while
a low HP character could try to shrug off anything that did less than
a quarter of his life (though a successful hit might be more than he
could handle.)
Hrm, that does bring up the issue of the chance of hitting, as well.
Even if a successful incoming attack will do serious damage, if the
chance of it hitting is significantly low, then you might want to
take the risk by not dodging.
Slash
> I've been thinking about the idea of splitting hit points into a Health
> bar and a Dodge bar. Dodge would represent you evading and reflecting
> attacks without getting a wound, while Health would represent your
> physical condition. When you run out of Dodge, damage is applied to
> Health.
>
>
> I'm unsure what to do with armour though. It could boost defences for
> both Dodge and Health, or for only one of them. Armour could also maybe
> boost Health but penalize Dodge because of weight.
>
> Now, if only I had time to actually create a demo to test this. :/
This is already done in DrashRL, you can have a look at http://slashie.net
--
Slash
Aaron M.
In article
<5f2ad910-0eba-42e6...@r12g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
Pender <pende...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was skeptical at first but the more I think about it, the more I
> like the idea of partitioning health into a buffer that replenishes
> automatically and a reserve that does not. Halo 1 used a system like
> that (energy shields and health being separate stats) and I think it
> struck a good balance: windshield kills did not need to be
> painstakingly finessed, but tougher battles rewarded careful play
> beyond the simple dichotomy of did/did not survive. I think dodge/HP
> is as good of a metaphor for the partition as any -- though I might
> use "fatigue" instead of dodge to explain why it should take more than
> a few seconds to recover fully.
I guess it depends on interpretation. I took Dodge to mean a character
is evading or parrying the attack, while Health meant he took a physical
blow. I think I'd rather call it "Evade" instead of Dodge now.
> It's also an interesting idea to have certain character builds
> (determined by innate classes or by equipment) that specialize in one
> half of the partition or the other, and certain obstacles (monsters,
> traps, etc.) that lean more heavily on one type than the other. The
> playing experiences will differ qualitatively and the game will stay
> fresh longer. Along those lines, you could have heavy armors magnify
> damage to fatigue but reduce health damage while light armors do the
> reverse.
Yes. I'm hoping for different play styles for characters with high
Health, characters with high Evade, and characters whose Health and
Evade are about even. I also want different items (especially
equipment) to have different effects on a character's Health and Dodge
to increase both item diversity and diversity in player choices over
equipment.
To make this meaningful, I first have to differentiate Health and Evade.
When the player sees the level up screen, and sees that he can choose
between increasing Health and increasing Evade, this choice needs to be
interesting. So far the breakdown I've come up with is:
Health
- Vital
- Does not regenerate naturally
- Requires magic, items, or a visit to the town doctor
Evade
- Spills over to Health after it runs out
- Regenerates automatically and rapidly
?- I could even make Evade regenerate by, say, 2% each turn (while
enforcing that all attacks do at least more than 2% damage)
- Does not regenerate by any method other than time
- Especially if Evade regenerates really fast anyway
?- Though would "stimulant" items that replenish Evade also be
interesting?
Now, ignoring the points designated with a question mark since they'd
need further discussion, would these properties encourage an equal
number of players to focus on Health as the number who focus on Evade?
Would wearing a piece of heavy armour that increases Health at the cost
of decreasing Evade be an interesting choice? Have I ensured that
neither Health nor Evade are better than the other?
> I'm not sure about many of the further embellishments you've proposed;
> like a lot of character statistic models, its complexity seems to
> exist for its own sake without a compelling gameplay justification --
> sort of an attempt to do something with the STR/DEX/CON/INT/WIS/CHA
> numbers in deference to RPG canon without first asking if that canon
> serves a purpose in the context of your game. As they say, perfection
> is attained not when there is nothing more to add but when there is
> nothing left to take away.
Well, in my defence, as far as stats were concerned I originally only
introduced at most four attributes (attack and defence values for Health
and Evade) which had clearly defined roles. But I can see where you're
coming from, and I suppose I was starting to go a bit overboard.
In article
<1f21b02c-0e57-4503...@s31g2000yqs.googlegroups.com>,
Slash <java....@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is already done in DrashRL, you can have a look at http://slashie.net
Just tried it. I saw you had Evade points deplete whenever the player
successfully dodged (attack missed).
I've been wondering if this could work if there was no miss chance but
instead all attacks hit. I've been wanting to leave out misses in any
game I'd get around to creating since they make it hard to tell how long
a fight could last.
I wonder if the Evade bar could actually "replace" the miss chance.
Instead of having damage decrease Evade and then Health in a linear
fashion, Evade could reset to full after it is depleted and damage is
done to Health. Evade could reset to full the turn after the last hit
or only after several turns.
Billy Bissette
news:aaron.on.usenet-253312.18480204012010@[74.223.185.199.nw.nuvox.net]:
>
> Health
> - Vital
> - Does not regenerate naturally
> - Requires magic, items, or a visit to the town doctor
>
> Evade
> - Spills over to Health after it runs out
> - Regenerates automatically and rapidly
> Now, ignoring the points designated with a question mark since they'd
> need further discussion, would these properties encourage an equal
> number of players to focus on Health as the number who focus on Evade?
> Would wearing a piece of heavy armour that increases Health at the
> cost of decreasing Evade be an interesting choice? Have I ensured
> that neither Health nor Evade are better than the other?
With no natural health regen, it may be fairly difficult to balance.
The problem is that with Health loss relatively permanent, it may be
considered too valuable to lose. Having your Health chipped away will
stop you eventually, while focusing on Evade may let you get through
any number of foes unscathed. You might just want enough Health to
survive things that bypass Evade.
You could make Evade more expensive. If you have the choice between
evading an extra point of damage or getting 20 extra health, you might
go for health. But the recovery of health will still be a restriction.
Having health recovery be a percentage of your maximum health might
be a balancing factor. If a healing potion heals most of even a high
Health character's life, then he might be more willing to absorb damage.
(Making it a percentage means that low Health characters wouldn't get
a full heal from every potion/spell/whatever. Which is arguably fair,
as the few Health such a character has will individually be more
precious than the those of a high Health character.)
Öö Tiib
> > I was skeptical at first but the more I think about it, the more I
> > like the idea of partitioning health into a buffer that replenishes
> > automatically and a reserve that does not. Halo 1 used a system like
> > that (energy shields and health being separate stats) and I think it
> > struck a good balance: windshield kills did not need to be
> > painstakingly finessed, but tougher battles rewarded careful play
> > beyond the simple dichotomy of did/did not survive. I think dodge/HP
> > is as good of a metaphor for the partition as any -- though I might
> > use "fatigue" instead of dodge to explain why it should take more than
> > a few seconds to recover fully.
>
> I guess it depends on interpretation. I took Dodge to mean a character
> is evading or parrying the attack, while Health meant he took a physical
> blow. I think I'd rather call it "Evade" instead of Dodge now.
Concept is good. If you are unsure about the name then maybe
"endurance" sounds most fitting. The higher it is the better you
dodge. Also it is natural that your endurance has degraded during
stressful battle, even if you did dodge all blows.