Post by Finarvyn on Feb 8, 2009 16:09:15 GMT -6
I was struck by a post made by Calthena in the middle of another thread entirely. I didn't want to derail that discussion but instead thought I'd start a new one. (I also was afraid that it would get lost in the midst of other chatter.)
How about, have players roll their hit dice at the beginning of each fight.
If you remove a die you can't roll it next encounter. Cure spells heal hit dice.
So like this: Zaftig the Amazon Myrmidon has 6 hit dice. She's fighting 2 bugbears, rolls 653221. These dice go face up on the board. She takes a wound for 2, reduces the 5 to 3. She takes another wound for 6, drops the 6, and then kills the bugbears. Next fight, she will only have five dice to roll for hit points unless she gets a healing spell in the interim.
I gave this method a shake-down and it really works a lot better than I might have expected. I was running an all-d6 game, but I'm sure that similar ideas could be applied to rules with other dice types as well.
I made some on-the-fly rulings along the way, and I'm not sure that they were along the lines of what Calithea was suggesting or not, but they seemed to work!
Some thoughts and comments:
1. Players quickly realized that there was a lot of strategy inherent in the way they assigned hits to their character. In general they thought this was a positive thing.
They realized quickly that it was to their long-term advantage to lose as few actual dice as possible, and instead to take smaller hits off of existing dice without dropping their totals to zero.
2. A question came up about taking hits and losing dice. Suppose Zaftig takes a hit for 6 points. Could she choose to take those hits from the 1 hp die (and have the other 5 points “go away”) or would she need to keep taking away dice until the total pips added up to 6 (in which case removing the single 6 would be to her advantage).
I ruled that the character got to pick which die lost the points and that extra points would “go away”, and we found that this made characters a lot stronger in combat. The characters liked this because (for example) a 3-HD character would always be able to take a minimum of 3 hits before death, whereas the other way a single lucky hit combined with unlucky hp rolls could kill a character in a single blow.
3. A question came up about big nasty damage, and if the total was used or if each die was used. In other words, suppose Zaftig gets hit by (and fails to save against) a 3-HD fireball. The monster-MU rolls damage of 4-3-2. Would this count as a single hit for 10 points or 3 separate hits of 4, 3, and 2 points respectively?
I ruled that the character had to absorb 3 separate hits, but that more than one of those hits could come from a single hit die. So, Zaftig could reduce her 653221 hit point roll and make it a 211221 by taking 4 points from the first die, 3 from the second, and 2 from the first.
Or, combining this with my ruling from #2 above, Zaftig could take 2 from the third die (reducing the hit point dice to 651221) and then another 4 from that same die (making it now 65x221 as that die is taken from play) and then the remaining 3 from somewhere else. This second option actually means that Zaftig could actually reduce the damage taken, since she took 2+4=6 points away from a die starting with only 3.
Anyway, we had a lot of fun with the system and honed our math skills at the same time.
If you remove a die you can't roll it next encounter. Cure spells heal hit dice.
So like this: Zaftig the Amazon Myrmidon has 6 hit dice. She's fighting 2 bugbears, rolls 653221. These dice go face up on the board. She takes a wound for 2, reduces the 5 to 3. She takes another wound for 6, drops the 6, and then kills the bugbears. Next fight, she will only have five dice to roll for hit points unless she gets a healing spell in the interim.
I gave this method a shake-down and it really works a lot better than I might have expected. I was running an all-d6 game, but I'm sure that similar ideas could be applied to rules with other dice types as well.
I made some on-the-fly rulings along the way, and I'm not sure that they were along the lines of what Calithea was suggesting or not, but they seemed to work!
Some thoughts and comments:
1. Players quickly realized that there was a lot of strategy inherent in the way they assigned hits to their character. In general they thought this was a positive thing.
They realized quickly that it was to their long-term advantage to lose as few actual dice as possible, and instead to take smaller hits off of existing dice without dropping their totals to zero.
2. A question came up about taking hits and losing dice. Suppose Zaftig takes a hit for 6 points. Could she choose to take those hits from the 1 hp die (and have the other 5 points “go away”) or would she need to keep taking away dice until the total pips added up to 6 (in which case removing the single 6 would be to her advantage).
I ruled that the character got to pick which die lost the points and that extra points would “go away”, and we found that this made characters a lot stronger in combat. The characters liked this because (for example) a 3-HD character would always be able to take a minimum of 3 hits before death, whereas the other way a single lucky hit combined with unlucky hp rolls could kill a character in a single blow.
3. A question came up about big nasty damage, and if the total was used or if each die was used. In other words, suppose Zaftig gets hit by (and fails to save against) a 3-HD fireball. The monster-MU rolls damage of 4-3-2. Would this count as a single hit for 10 points or 3 separate hits of 4, 3, and 2 points respectively?
I ruled that the character had to absorb 3 separate hits, but that more than one of those hits could come from a single hit die. So, Zaftig could reduce her 653221 hit point roll and make it a 211221 by taking 4 points from the first die, 3 from the second, and 2 from the first.
Or, combining this with my ruling from #2 above, Zaftig could take 2 from the third die (reducing the hit point dice to 651221) and then another 4 from that same die (making it now 65x221 as that die is taken from play) and then the remaining 3 from somewhere else. This second option actually means that Zaftig could actually reduce the damage taken, since she took 2+4=6 points away from a die starting with only 3.
Anyway, we had a lot of fun with the system and honed our math skills at the same time.
