Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Group Hit Points

I've been rolling this idea around in the back of my head for a while now, so I thought I should share. I'm thinking that instead of having individual hit points, a party of adventurers would share in a hit point pool, with each individual adding to the pool in varying amounts based upon their perceived combat survivability (ie. fighter types would add more, wizard types less).

When injured by enemies, the damage would come from the pool total. With a the following complications

1. Once 50% of pool total is reached, any additional damage triggers a saving throw situation to avoid having the damage applied to a randomly-determined individual, as opposed to the group. If an individual is hit, that damage is removed from their maximum hit points *but not* removed from the hit point pool. In this manner, once the pool gets low, it becomes more likely that individuals start taking "real" damage.

2. Once the pool total is emptied, all additional damage is applied to a randomly determined individual.

I've been thinking this may be a pretty good way to simulate a less granular version of combat or to simulate a type of combat that I think would go pretty well with a super hero theme.

This is just the germ of an idea and far from fleshed out, but I thought I'd share.

2 comments:

Jack said...

This sounds great for monsters. I wouldn't use it for PC's, but I'm always getting situations where a lot of identical people need to die - NPC's, monsters, etc. Tracking individual HP gets tedious if you have four of the same guy.

Talysman said...

It seems to add extra steps. You're tracking group hit points *and* individual hit points, and adding saving throws as well, plus (presumably) random determination of who is hit.

Maybe a simpler method would be: track group hit points, not individual hit points. When group hit points are down to one half, any hit cripples the individual hit; when group hit points are used up, any hit kills. Add saving throws if that seems too harsh.

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