RPGs that try to explain "HP"

[rusty_shackleford]

In Lord of the Rings Online, you don't have health, you have morale. I'm sure it has become a lot more blurred over time since release, but at release it was mostly restored by things that would raise morale. The main healer was even a bard archetype:



I thought it was a pretty neat way to get around LotR's relatively low magic setting(for the age)

[Oyster Sauce]

Not an RPG, but I like Uncharted using luck. Nathan doesn't get hit until his luck runs out and then he's toast.

[Tangerine]

Not an RPG, but I like Uncharted using luck. Nathan doesn't get hit until his luck runs out and then he's toast.

If it's red, it's health. If they wanted it to be luck, it should have been gold or Irish green.

[ArcaneLurker]

You could combine Morale & Luck with an Achilles like character that was blessed by the Gods, cloaked in protections of good fortune, but only as long as he believes in himself and remains brave in the face of dangers.

It mirrors Europe, whose Achilles heel was evidently in the psychological & emotional realm of perception & will.

[J1M]

"Just a normal Drake man who can survive falling several stories over and over without injury. Like the average player."

[rusty_shackleford]

"Just a normal Drake man who can survive falling several stories over and over without injury. Like the average player."

He's just like me!

[J1M]

D&D just says it's a combination of things and does not represent "meat" in order to explain how one can recover via sleeping.

[rusty_shackleford]

D&D just says it's a combination of things and does not represent "meat" in order to explain how one can recover via sleeping.

Vampires draining you of your luck

[TKVNC]

D&D just says it's a combination of things and does not represent "meat" in order to explain how one can recover via sleeping.

Vampires draining you of your luck

Don't tell Vergil.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

In Sakura Wars, you are piloting magitek mechs called spirit armors, which are powered/animated by the spirit power of the characters (it appears that young ladies seem to manifest the power more often than men). Healing a Koubu is not physically repairing the Koubu, but rather rejuvenating its spirit energy. When a Koubu reaches 0 HP, the mech itself might not be destroyed, but the pilot can no longer conjure up enough spirit energy to continue moving it for that battle.

In Aselia the Spirit of Eternity Sword, all units are bonded to magic, sentient artifacts called Eternity Swords, which suck up mana. You do not gain "exp" upon defeating enemies. Instead, the entire game (both the gameplay and the plot) revolves around waging war over extractors in the ground that suck up mana, which can then be distributed and infused into the Eternity Swords of a country's spirits. The more mana your Eternity Sword has, the more powerful you are. You can release all of the mana you invested into a character's Eternity Sword, resetting that character back to level 1 and reinvest that mana into another character or into building stuff like teleporters. When Eternity Sword users are slain, they disintegrate into golden particles. The only other enemy type you fight against besides Eternity Sword users, the optional dragon bosses, are also made up of mana too, and they have a lot of it, which is why you are going after them in the first place and is why they have so much health.

In The Banner Saga trilogy, your strength is both your HP and your attack stat. The more strength you have, the harder your character can hit. Naturally, getting hit and bleeding and becoming bruised and tired will sap your strength, so you will not hit as hard. Until eventually you strength depletes to zero and you collapse to the floor. I quite like this, as it avoids the usual nonsense of a character at 1 HP still fighting at maximum output, but then he loses 1 more HP and is now inexplicably unable to battle. To prevent the game from just becoming a straight forward matter of whoever hits first winning the DPS race, the game has a second stat called armor which mitigates strength damage. The armor stat has to be attacked first before you can then deal a lot of damage to the target's strength stat.

[Demonic Fate]

Any CRPG that does not implement Rolemaster's wound roll table is basically a visual novel.

► Show Spoiler

[Norfleet]

If it's red, it's health. If they wanted it to be luck, it should have been gold or Irish green.

See, in my funny concept, your "hitpoints" are represented in two layers. The first layer consists of red shirts. When you take a hit, you lose one of them, reflected in game by one of your redshirted security guards getting killed. The second layer consists of gold shirts. When you take hits to that, your character's shirt gets ripped.

[WaterMage]

You could do what Warthunder do with vehicles but with humans, modeling each organ and having damage thresholds, for eg, light, moderate, severe and destroyed for each organ.

[Norfleet]

You could do what Warthunder do with vehicles but with humans, modeling each organ and having damage thresholds, for eg, light, moderate, severe and destroyed for each organ.

That's basically the approach taken by Rimworld. Major parts and organs have individual damage pools rather than an obvious singular hitpoint pool (it sort of exists, but isn't a clearly presented feature and doesn't generally come up), as well as expiration through blood loss.

[gerey]

You could do what Warthunder do with vehicles but with humans, modeling each organ and having damage thresholds, for eg, light, moderate, severe and destroyed for each organ.

Complexity should never be added for the sake of complexity. Some games do benefit from a more detailed damage model, but unless you've built an engaging gameplay loop around dealing with the damage and repairing/healing it, all you're doing is creating more busywork for the player.

[Tadeusz]

You could do what Warthunder do with vehicles but with humans, modeling each organ and having damage thresholds, for eg, light, moderate, severe and destroyed for each organ.

That's basically the approach taken by Rimworld. Major parts and organs have individual damage pools rather than an obvious singular hitpoint pool (it sort of exists, but isn't a clearly presented feature and doesn't generally come up), as well as expiration through blood loss.

Fallout games have similar system with body parts damage.

Not an RPG but I like the health system from Touhou: Great Fairy Wars. Since the main character is an immortal fairy she has a motivation bar instead of health. This bar fills up to 300% and every hit reduces it by 100%. The game ends when the motivation drops to zero.

[Norfleet]

Complexity should never be added for the sake of complexity. Some games do benefit from a more detailed damage model, but unless you've built an engaging gameplay loop around dealing with the damage and repairing/healing it, all you're doing is creating more busywork for the player.

Honestly, the main purpose of a more detailed damage model would seem to be to cause actors to become combat-ineffective BEFORE they actually die. The main reason you'd want this would be to reduce the outright fatality rate. If you're not actually going to allow for the ability to survive combats this way and a desirable gameplay loop to continue after an actor is taken out of action, you're not adding much: Once someone becomes a mission kill, the game is otherwise over anyway.

But as far as I know, practically no games actually make use of this property. It basically amounts to little more than a lucky KO, which is largely unsatisfying when it happens to the player.

[gerey]

Honestly, the main purpose of a more detailed damage model would seem to be to cause actors to become combat-ineffective BEFORE they actually die. The main reason you'd want this would be to reduce the outright fatality rate.

Fair enough, but couldn't the same goal be achieved with a wounding system - i.e. if a character has lost a certain percent of their HP and the enemy lands a critical strike on them, there is a chance they will gain a wounded status?

Or, do it like Gothic or Mars: War Logs. Once you reduce a human enemy's HP enough they fall on the ground and the player gets to decide whether to kill them or not. I don't think you really need as intricate system as you're describing to make combat less lethal, or at least give the player the option.

An alternative that others have proposed was the Fallout system, which I do find cool - targeting an enemy's legs to reduce their mobility, or their hands to make them drop a weapon, is a good idea, though FO games never really utilized the mechanic to its full extent.

The problem I have with these intricate systems is that the healing process is a usually a letdown. You must use a rarer or more expensive item to treat and remove the injury, but since the injured state is usually so debilitating, the devs don't dare make such resources too scarce for fear of softlocking the player. You could make the injuries permanent, I guess, but that's just going to encourage people to savescum.

[Norfleet]

Fair enough, but couldn't the same goal be achieved with a wounding system - i.e. if a character has lost a certain percent of their HP and the enemy lands a critical strike on them, there is a chance they will gain a wounded status?

If the status doesn't inflict a mission kill, it's not going ultimately change anything. And if it's not actually possible to exit the fight and still continue the game effectively, the system doesn't add anything.

Or, do it like Gothic or Mars: War Logs. Once you reduce a human enemy's HP enough they fall on the ground and the player gets to decide whether to kill them or not. I don't think you really need as intricate system as you're describing to make combat less lethal, or at least give the player the option.

Mobility kills are ultimately game-enders as far as the player is concerned: The game is likely over and the situation cannot be salvaged.

An alternative that others have proposed was the Fallout system, which I do find cool - targeting an enemy's legs to reduce their mobility, or their hands to make them drop a weapon, is a good idea, though FO games never really utilized the mechanic to its full extent.

Because enemies in such a state don't really treat it as a mission-kill, they just keep trying to bite you to death rather than trying to withdraw from the fight. In Fallout, fights are basically cage matches to the death. There's no exit from them except to die.

The problem I have with these intricate systems is that the healing process is a usually a letdown. You must use a rarer or more expensive item to treat and remove the injury, but since the injured state is usually so debilitating, the devs don't dare make such resources too scarce for fear of softlocking the player. You could make the injuries permanent, I guess, but that's just going to encourage people to savescum.

See, this thinking here indicates exactly the kind of thinking which results in excess lethality in combats. Players and enemies are both expected and trying to fight to the death. An injury or damage system is being seen as a means of escalating the stakes. Everyone's looking at it the wrong way.

The reality is that often, very MINOR damage is required to take something out of action. If your rangefinder scopes get hit, you're a mission kill. You can still drive away from the fight, but your ability to actually shoot anything has effectively vanished. If you get hit in the hand, you're unable to fire your weapon anymore, but you're still capable of leaving the fight. However, game design and players do not take advantage of these opportunities for things to exit fights. Instead, all fights must be to the death, rendering the value of having a more complex damage system largely irrelevant.

[WaterMage]

Complexity should never be added for the sake of complexity. Some games do benefit from a more detailed damage model, but unless you've built an engaging gameplay loop around dealing with the damage and repairing/healing it, all you're doing is creating more busywork for the player.

I said you COULD, not you SHOULD.

Being very honest, such mechanics could work in a hardcore survival game, in the typical high fantasy game, no way.

[gerey]

The reality is that often, very MINOR damage is required to take something out of action. If your rangefinder scopes get hit, you're a mission kill. You can still drive away from the fight, but your ability to actually shoot anything has effectively vanished. If you get hit in the hand, you're unable to fire your weapon anymore, but you're still capable of leaving the fight. However, game design and players do not take advantage of these opportunities for things to exit fights. Instead, all fights must be to the death, rendering the value of having a more complex damage system largely irrelevant.

That level of realistic fragility is untenable in games outside of hardcore milsims, and even they skew the damage calculation in favor of the player, so they can take two or three bullets before dying.

And no, fights don't need to be to the death, there's plenty of ways you can decrease lethality - add a stamina bar that you can deplete to knock the enemy out using nonlethal weapons, go with the aforementioned Gothic/Mars: War Logs system of requiring the player to outright kill decide to kill them after the fight, introduce a morale mechanic so enemies either run away or surrender when significantly damaged or crippled.

[Norfleet]

That level of realistic fragility is untenable in games outside of hardcore milsims, and even they skew the damage calculation in favor of the player, so they can take two or three bullets before dying.

Well, yes, this is true when the actor in question is a human, as opposed to his tank or ship, yes.

And no, fights don't need to be to the death, there's plenty of ways you can decrease lethality - add a stamina bar that you can deplete to knock the enemy out using nonlethal weapons, go with the aforementioned Gothic/Mars: War Logs system of requiring the player to outright kill decide to kill them after the fight, introduce a morale mechanic so enemies either run away or surrender when significantly damaged or crippled.

Yes, but you'll notice such encouragements never exist for the player, who is always encouraged to fight to the bitter end rather than bug out. THIS, more than anything else, is what produces the huge body counts. If fights were more slanted towards realistic risk acceptance levels, such that you'd trade shots, maybe somebody gets hit in the side, and then gets dragged off the field and everyone withdraws.

[gerey]

who is always encouraged to fight to the bitter end rather than bug out

Are you saying I should behave like a coward?

[Norfleet]

Are you saying I should behave like a coward?

I wouldn't say deciding to call it a day after having all your scopes shot out instead of trying to ram your enemy to death like a crazed berserker is "being a coward". Games simply currently offer an unrealistically high incentive towards being a completely unhinged maniac.

[gerey]

Games simply currently offer an unrealistically high incentive towards being a completely unhinged maniac.

I mean, yes, I agree, it would help with immersion and add something unique to the game, but from a logistical point of view, concerning the development of the game, that would add quite a bit more work for them, since they'd need to take into account enemies surrendering or fleeing when designing quests, player choice and subsequent consequences.

That's a hard sell to make for the developers, especially when they could put the work hours towards flashier features that would help sell more copies.

[Norfleet]

I mean, yes, I agree, it would help with immersion and add something unique to the game, but from a logistical point of view, concerning the development of the game, that would add quite a bit more work for them, since they'd need to take into account enemies surrendering or fleeing when designing quests, player choice and subsequent consequences.

That's a hard sell to make for the developers, especially when they could put the work hours towards flashier features that would help sell more copies.

Well, in which case, it would be simpler to just stick to a basic dumb damage model. But you see cases where they put forth extra effort creating complex damage models, yet the payoff isn't there, so it becomes wasted effort.

[gerey]

But you see cases where they put forth extra effort creating complex damage models, yet the payoff isn't there, so it becomes wasted effort.

That's the problem with most cRPG mechanics. Take New Vegas, what's the point of the expansive crafting system when you're going to be swimming in resources in a few hours of playing?

What's the point of having an alignment system when the quest rewards and how the evil path is written heavily incentivize being a good goy?

What's the point of debuffs, traps, stealth etc. when pure DPS renders all of them irrelevant?

I hate when games implement some system and then do everything in their power to disincentivize the player from engaging with it.

[Norfleet]

Take New Vegas, what's the point of the expansive crafting system when you're going to be swimming in resources in a few hours of playing?

Crapting systems aren't undermined by the availability of resources. Crapting systems are undermined by the lack of anything worth crafting. There's a REASON I tend to refer to it as the "crapting system. It's because all the stuff you can craft is CRAP. That's part of why we end up swimming in resources, because there is NO ACTUAL USE FOR ANY OF IT.

What's the point of having an alignment system when the quest rewards and how the evil path is written heavily incentivize being a good goy?

Mostly to remind you that you are bad. After all, you don't need an "alignment system" for there to still be clearly evil things to do. What the alignment system does is remind you that you are bad, and you should feel bad!

What's the point of debuffs, traps, stealth etc. when pure DPS renders all of them irrelevant?

Well, stealth, at least, still serves a purpose even when DPS outclasses sneak attacks: Stealth can let you just straight up avoid infinite trash fights entirely. But yes.

I hate when games implement some system and then do everything in their power to disincentivize the player from engaging with it.

I agree. I dunno why devs do that, honestly. Why even bother making it? They could have saved a lot of time and budget by just not bothering.

[Red7]

In Lord of the Rings Online, you don't have health, you have morale. I'm sure it has become a lot more blurred over time since release, but at release it was mostly restored by things that would raise morale. The main healer was even a bard archetype:



I thought it was a pretty neat way to get around LotR's relatively low magic setting(for the age)

my morale improves from swollen, lactating, juicy titties

[Val the Moofia Boss]

That level of realistic fragility is untenable in games outside of hardcore milsims, and even they skew the damage calculation in favor of the player, so they can take two or three bullets before dying.

Well, yes, this is true when the actor in question is a human, as opposed to his tank or ship, yes.

And no, fights don't need to be to the death, there's plenty of ways you can decrease lethality - add a stamina bar that you can deplete to knock the enemy out using nonlethal weapons, go with the aforementioned Gothic/Mars: War Logs system of requiring the player to outright kill decide to kill them after the fight, introduce a morale mechanic so enemies either run away or surrender when significantly damaged or crippled.

Yes, but you'll notice such encouragements never exist for the player, who is always encouraged to fight to the bitter end rather than bug out. THIS, more than anything else, is what produces the huge body counts. If fights were more slanted towards realistic risk acceptance levels, such that you'd trade shots, maybe somebody gets hit in the side, and then gets dragged off the field and everyone withdraws.

It depends upon the circumstances. In Mount & Blade campaigns, when I am a lord in a NPC kingdom and there is a war going on, I might arrive at a big battle, fight until I take too many casualties, and then withdraw and either go to town to recruit more people, or hang around a short ways away from the battle if it is about to end so I can then get participation credit and/or follow my marshal around.