Level Systems and Escalating Hit Points

I got into this discussion the other day with DarkgarX, so here goes.

He absolutely hates level systems and escalating hit points. He doesn't like these systems because he feels it makes things that should be dangerous, meaningless. Your sense of threat and scale get thrown out the window. Who cares about a gun pointed at your character's head when it only does 1d8 damage to your 60 hit points?

I know, there is the coup de grace (coo-day-grahs) rule, and this should handle it as a GM ruling. But still, he has a point when arrows and bullets are flying, and characters are laughing off damage.

Yes, heroes are supposed to be heroic.

I feel part of this comes from the "max hit points per level" house-rule, and I am cooling towards using that in my future Pathfinder games. I am leaning towards the PFS average HD + CON hit point rule:

HP (1st Level) = Maximum HD roll + Con Modifier

HP (2nd and Higher Levels) = Average HD roll (1/2 rounded up) + CON Modifier

If it is good enough for organized play, it is good enough for me. So a fighter with a +2 CON bonus has the following hit points at the following levels:

1. 10 (max hp for the d10 HD) + 2 = 12
2. 12 + 5.5 (rounded to 6) + 2 = 20
3. 20 + 6 + 2 = 28
4. 28 + 6 + 2 = 36
5. ...and so on, +8 per level, and so on (sans in the optional +1 hp/level favored class bonus)

With maximum HD per level, the level 3 fighter has 36 hit points (and level 4 is 48), so the average hp/level system knocks a level of toughness off low level characters, and by 10th level the difference is 84 hit points to 120 hit points, or about 30% less for a fighter. Is it enough of a difference to matter?

I feel it is. At 84 hit points, taking a d8+2 damage hit is going to matter, because I could lose 8-10% of my hit points in that one strike. Enough of those, and my hero is going down. At 120 hit points, I have about 40 hit points to give, which is on average five or six more d8+2 hits my fighter has to give.

• At average hp/level, it's 12 average d8+2 rolls before my fighter falls at level 10
• At maximum hp/level it's 17 average d8+2 rolls before my fighter falls at level 10

Too many hit points too quickly breaks the game, and the rate they are accumulated feels like the problem here. Do those free five hits for a level 10 fighter break the game? I feel they do. If you figure 10 fights in an adventure, that is 5 x 10 = 50 free d8+2 hits in combat for that fighter for the whole adventure. What was once a balanced game of resource management becomes making sure those free hits get recharged and reset every fight. That is a huge amount of power given away for free because we like a "max hp per level" house-rule.

With less hit points, damage means more. Healers have to pay attention and use healing spells more often to maintain that safety margin - so healers mean more and healing is more powerful. Defenses that could stop attacks mean more. The monsters are more challenging. Fights are closer. The numbers aren't so out-of-control feeling anymore, or not as bad as they used to seem.

As a player, is max hp/level a good thing? Sure! Everybody wants to be invincible, and everyone wants the best character the rules allow. But max hp/level is not right. Statistically, average hp/level is closer to the balance the game designers intended; and all of a sudden, all of the game's math starts to make more sense. The danger returns. The calculations for CR start to work out a little better. Those "free hits" every fight dry up, and your margin of victory becomes tighter.

I would even say for the average monster, the same is true. Keeping the hit points of monsters down speeds up fights. It makes damage mean more. It doesn't turn the game into a DPS race where maximizing is the key to victory just because you want to reduce a massive pile of hit points to zero in the quickest amount of time possible. D&D 4 had this problem for us, where even low level fights were this massive hit point grind where the party sat there trying to finish off goblins with 30 or 40 hit points with special powers. Even D&D 5 feels a bit hit point happy for us, and I like the older, d8 scale, 1 HD orc sort of 4 or 5 hit point rabble monster. To compare:

• Pathfinder Orc = 6 hp, 1 HD
• D&D 4 Orc = 1 hp (minion) or 66 hp (4 HD, Orcs start at level 4 in D&D 4)
• D&D 5 Orc = 15 hp (2-ish HD, but HD are not really used for monsters in D&D 5)

You have to factor in the damage scaling Wizards has put into play in D&D editions above 4 in those numbers, since to differentiate the game from D&D 3.5/Pathfinder, characters do more damage in the new versions of the game. Still, I like the Pathfinder Orc the best, a longbow could take one out with a solid hit, and it's another minion down (without needing the D&D 4 minion rules).

Do I like tougher Orcs? Yes, on general I do, but not to the point where the balance and scaling of the game world feels out of whack and like a video-game. To compare, 6 hp in a d4 hit die and 2 hit point commoner world is a tough foe, and a 36 hp level four fighter is as tough as six of those Orcs, or 18 common men. Those numbers feel right to me, not DarkgarX though as he is still saying it's too many hits. That d8 longsword is a powerful weapon, and still dangerous to when used against that level 4 fighter, and deadly to the 6 hp Orc.

In D&D 5, it's gonna take at least two or three hits to dispatch that Orc. In D&D 4, it's going to take a good majority of the game session. The opposite is also true. In Pathfinder, the Orc is the most deadly wielding a d8 longsword. In D&D 4, he is the weakest comparatively to the damage of that weapon listed in the book.

Scaling matters. Keeping your numbers down matters. Less means more. The original AD&D numbers and old-school ratios are good and what original D&D is based on, and I feel changing the number and damage scale hurts the game. Pathfinder is the closest to this original "keep it down" scale (minus the multi-attacks at later levels), and it keeps that low hit point and hit die feeling of danger intact. It is easy to want to succumb to "more is more" and give everyone free hit points - but I feel it breaks the game. Even the post D&D 4 scaling does the same thing in my feeling.

Less hit points mean more danger, and more danger is more excitement and a good thing.

Revenant, RPGs, and Heroism

A beautiful movie. When it comes to RPGs, especially high-magic and high-fantasy, it leaves me wondering. I like realism. I like the grim and gritty. I dislike the entitlement and empowerment of the current crop of pen-and-paper RPGs, where characters feel like they are some superhero in the middle of an overused CG Matrix-style 360 slow-motion shot where everyone is fighting and using cool powers like of out of some 2010's era Avengers movie.

It makes me want to go back to Mongoose's Legend, frankly.

While I like my escapism and fantasy tropes, it all feels so mixed up. World of Warcraft meets MMOs meets D&D meets Pathfinder and it all becomes some high-magic joke where mages walk all over the story with infinite cast fire-blast magic, solve everything divination spells, character builds, max-ing DPS, and nothing feels like it is taken seriously any more. That essential quality of a hero sacrificing is lost to min-maxing and magic so prevalent and powerful you could never do a Revenant style story. Not in a million years with a high-fantasy game.

"Let's level to the point where we get the spells to solve this," is what I hear from players.

Granted, low-magic survival and gritty roleplay isn't high-fantasy fare. It doesn't even fall into the genre. "Play another game," is what I feel, because I don't feel I can recreate that experience for players, not in a high-fantasy game. Not with MMO-inspired classes and rules. Not with the constant focus being on wealth and power accumulation, levels and experience points.

Maybe I will get over this feeling, but then again, something primal calls to me. Something that feels real, in the silly way pen-and-paper games try to model reality. Something where survival is the real measure of heroism and achievement, where facing incredible odds and living to tell the tale is the stuff of legends.

It's just one of those movies that makes you think, and it puts a lot of fantasy gaming assumptions under the harsh spotlight of "why is this fun?" Or more importantly "what do I feel is fun for me?"

Dragon Age: Inquisition Playthrough

We hadn't got around to playing through the latest Dragon Age game, so DarkgarX and I decided to play through Inquisition to get us up to speed on the latest lore, and more importantly, the feel of the game.

I can feel this was worth it, because one comment DarkgarX had about the pen-and-paper game was that, "I want a game I can care about, that feels real to me and is serious."

Bioware does great work, and we have been playing their games a while and can spot some of the campy and somewhat 'Bioware' things they do in the games, such as the multi-cultural approach, some of the twisted fiction plot-lines, and they have their own unique 'take' on fantasy in general that is say different than, Game of Thrones. If you can imagine a Bioware-made Game of Thrones game you know what we mean, things wouldn't be 'Martin' they would take on a distinctively Bioware feeling and approach. It's not a bad thing, it is just different and sometime a mix of campy and serious.

Tyrion Lannister may be talking about his chest hair in the Bioware version, if you know what I mean. I love the tounge-in-cheek aspects of the Bioware games, and I also feel they have a more balanced approach when it comes to presenting a more-inclusive variety of fantasy that doesn't focus as much on angry white men as history and pop-culture has the past 2,000 years. Don't take that the wrong way, but you know what I mean, and I like things a little different in my entertainment and gaming.

I thought it would be fun to highlight the more campy, Bioware-y, and multi-cultural aspects of the videogame, but he felt otherwise, like he wanted a more serious and dramatic approach. Watch the video and you'll get what I mean. This was an interesting shift in what he wants from a game, and as a good game master, I picked up on that and will be running the game a little differently than I had planned.

We will get back to that later, but there is another facet to this discussion I wanted to bring in. Dungeons and Dragons is a lot like comic books and what I would like to call "tribute fiction." Tribute fiction works like this, if Hollywood comes out with a new Alien movie and it does a blockbuster summer, you can bet three months later comic books will have Alien-like creatures rampaging through them, roleplaying games will have xenomorphs in them, and video games that give you the Alien-like experience will start to appear. It isn't bad, it is just the normal echo of pop-culture through itself over and over again, and it is the reason D&D 4 warlocks were teleporting Nightcrawler-like heroes out of the X-Men. It isn't really original, it is just like a best-of remix of various pieces of pop-culture in fantasy and also cool things people like.

But really, all fiction is a form of tribute fiction, since everything borrows off the consciousness of what came before. Some fiction though, is more tribute than others.

It is like Dragon Age versus D&D. Dragon Age does borrow from pop-culture, and so does D&D, as they are both part of the fantasy pop-culture continuum. Dragon Age is a specific implementation of a fantasy idea, where D&D is more generic. Watch the trailer again, but this time think of it two ways:

1. This is something that makes me want to play Dragon Age.
2. This is something that makes me want to play D&D.

It works as a generic D&D trailer as well, in that you have medieval trappings, magic, dragons, castles, and "things you see in fantasy gaming." It works better as a Dragon Age trailer, because the trailer is tightly tied into the specific implementation of the Dragon Age idea. If Dragon Age is the Southwestern restaurant, D&D is the generic buffet where you can also get Mexican food. It is the reason why D&D pulls in a huge list of inspirations in the 5th Edition DMG, such as Game of Thrones and Middle Earth, and really any other fantasy source material. It is by its nature, more tribute fiction than is either of those specific implementations of the fantasy idea.

If I want to play Dragon Age or have a group of people who love Dragon Age, I will either play the pen-and-paper game or the videogames, because I will get the full experience.

If I have a group of people that want a more generic experience, I will play Pathfinder or D&D, because they do a lot more different and varied things. They are not the best at doing a specific thing, they just do a lot of things well enough that people can hook their idea of 'fantasy gaming' on the D&D train and ride along.

Now, D&D has specific settings in the form of Grayhawk, Faerun, Dark Sun, and other places. To those who read the Faerun novels in the 90's, that place is as much of a Dragon Age as Dragon Age is to people that are fans of that setting. It is unfortunate that D&D has gone under such seismic shifts in rules and setting lore, because there was a real feeling that Faerun and other settings could have broken out from D&D's shadow and 3rd through 5th Edition rules-turmoil and been stronger worlds with a more Middle Earth feeling to the lore than just as 'settings to play D&D in.'

Again, it is an interesting comparison with Dragon Age in focus, presentation, and feeling. With Dragon Age, it feels like the world comes first, and the rules are a secondary concern. With D&D, it feels like the rules come first, and the settings are secondary concerns.

It is a good thing to know as a game master, does my group like the lore of a specific world better, or are they fans of a specific set of rules? This is part of the appeal of Pathfinder admittedly as well. In any case, finding out what players want and focusing on that will get you a better sense of enjoyment and fun, and success for your gaming time.