What's a better method against HP bloat: Increase the damage or reduce the HP?
>>48126369
Whatever 5e did that fixed it.
There we go.
While it all boils down to balance increasing damage will generally make lower tier enemies inconsequentially easy, while reducing HP will tend to make that a little bit more manageable.
So in that manner it all comes down to what kind of experience you want to provide: do you want strong characters to mow down weak enemies more constantly or do you want them to have to get a feel and prepare for every and any encounter?
Remove HP altogether, use wounds or other shit like that. Emphasise ability to avoid getting hit over ability to take hits
>>48126369
Have diminishing returns or a hard HP cap.
Either divide HP into Grit and Flesh (Near misses and scratches, actual damage) or make all HP near misses and take physical damage upon hitting 0.
Have progression outside of levelling for HP.
>>48126379
Soft cap of 20 con, freeing up the use of full attack, and giving damage scaling at will attack spells would be what they did
>>48126369
Low HP/wounds system (wounds where players don't get huge debuffs/knocked out immediately when wounded), active defense, and a good meta currency.
HP bloat is only even an issue when the players can reasonably face death without throwing waves of creatures at them for hours and hours and hours. 3.pf, 4e pre MM3, and Fantasy Age being great examples of super long nerf sword feeling fights. 5e needs to distinguish better between 1 of these versus a party and use these in groups, but it's easy to avoid bloat issues with a good DM.
>>48126369
What the hell is the chick with the flaming sword even doing?
Did she trip? Is she spinning or midspin?
If she thrusts the sword, she'll take out half her shoulder. If she sweeps the sword, she hits nothing because her back is facing the enemy. If she's midspin, she might be able to rake the sword across the Ogre's (Troll) chest, but then opens her chest for a counter-attack, given where her shield is located. Plus, being midflight, her attack and defense carry no weight (power and sturdiness come from core body and foot work).
Seriously, what the hell is this chick doing?
>>48126369
Easy; at some point in every fight against an HP bloated enemy, it becomes statistically impossible for the enemy to ever win if the players are decently healthy and doing sufficient damage.
When this happens end the fight dramatically rather then go through the formality of pretending like it could end any other way; D&D is not a bureaucratic institution where your objective to to fill out every form and ensure all rules are to be obeyed.
It's a made up fantasy bullshit game where we play as imaginary people for fun and roll dice and pretend like it matters.
>>48126642
>realism
>>48126456
That's what HP is.
>>48128126
No, it isn't. HP isn't a measure of wounds as it not only has no impact on character performance but also scale with level, while ability to take wounds generally should not. And don't even get me started with this "HP is combination of endurance and ability to close-evade attacks" BS. Maybe it is abstraction, as authors of system that use this shit to justify it, and maybe it is intended to be taken so BUT it is riddiculously bad abstraction. It is strict rule in itself on the crunch side, but requires extremely circumstantial and sometimes tricky and against the grain of logic explanation for many different cases of use. It fails to simulate anything, and I'm not even talking in "realism" spectrum, but basic consistency and believability.
Srsly, this thing was invented in seventies or even earlier as FIRST method of evaluating damage, it isn't effect of evolution and optimization, just simplest shit people could come up at starting attempt, primitive as fuck. Especially when alternatives aren't much more complicated, if at all.
Use something like Shadowrun's damage spiral or GURPS's wound system instead
>>48126642
L E F T
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F
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H A N D
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D
also shes clearly magical so maybe she can launch herself like a bullet from the ground, meaning she has enough force from her propulsion to land a solid blow without needing to use her core or foot work.
I imagine she is spinning counterclockwise, and is about to slash that thing in the face, not the chest, as her momentum is still carrying her up.
>>48126642
shut up faggot
>>48126369
How is Fantasy Age?
>>48126369
>>48129195
What this guy said - Shadowrun really fucking punishes you for taking damage - unless you're maxing wounds out getting shot is usually very serious every time.
>>48126642
Rule of Cool
>>48126456
>Emphasise ability to avoid getting hit over ability to take hits
So, lower HP then.
How are wounds different than HP anyway?
