How well could a completely abstract and narrative health system work?
I've always thought damage and pain tolerance aren't exactly quantifiable.
A small dirk could give you nothing more than an injury no worse than a papercut or stab your eye and kill you instantly.
Fate does it well enough for me. Stress is only a measure of how lucky/skilled you are at avoiding the real damage before you get shanked in the ribs with a stiletto, which is modelled through consequences.
Only problem I have with it is that it doesn't do instant healing well.
>>43595875
I was going to post Fate but I see Anon covered it here >>43596571
>>43596571
Not too hard to add in. Someone on rpg.net suggests:
>From Legends of Anglerre, the Minor Healing spell will heal blocks of stress 1 for 1 depending on how many shifts are generated. For Major Healing, the difficulty of the Consequence to be healed is equal to the amount of stress it deflects (2 for minor, 4 for moderate, 6 for severe, 8 for extreme). Success means that it downgrades the consequence by 1 time factor (Extreme heal like moderate, etc.). I would still make the requirement to change a character aspect for an extreme consequence necessary.
Can we have at least one thread where someone asks for a specific game element and doesn't get thrown the Fate or GURPS blanket?
>>43596571
What if you have players who aren't creative? Fate doesn't seem to work if they will just do simple attacks. Fate seems to more of a narrative fighting scene instead of rolling dice.
>>43595875
>How well could a completely abstract and narrative health system work?
Well what you'd need is some sort of "hit points" system that represents varying degrees of "hit"...
>>43599900
They explicitly asked for abstract and narrative, Fate's mechanics are abstract and very narrative focused which makes it an appropriate suggestion in this situation.
>>43599900
>"I attack."
Okay cool. What are you doing to hurt him?
>"I punch him."
Okay so you're fighting up close then, are you hitting him in the face or somewhere else?
>"I don't know, I guess I'm gunning to break his nose?"
You coax it out of them until they start getting used to thinking about how they're doing things in the fiction instead of feeling like they're just mashing the attack button.
>>43595875
My (very basic) understanding of Legends of the Wulin is that it handles combat without hit points. When you fight an opponent, you choose to do things that reduce their options (usually by hurting them, but sometimes by changing things about yourself or them, or by interacting with the environment), until their options basically amount to "do what you wanted them to do"--which is often "die" or "surrender", but you know.
I might be completely misrepresenting it, but whenever it comes up on /tg/ people rave about it, so it might be worth checking out if you're interested in seeing how a system handles it.
>>43599857
Fate and GURPS are useful systems. Just because people who frequent /tg/ see them a lot doesn't mean everyone has. It's okay, Anon.
>>43601974
>You coax it out of them until they start getting used to thinking about how they're doing things in the fiction instead of feeling like they're just mashing the attack button.
Not him, but that sounds like a hassle, and for a lot of players would be a complete turn off from a game.Your ability to just handwave the shit you don't like and just get past it in the same, impartial manner as everyone else is important.
Legends of the Wulin has a great narrative health system.
Attacks inflict Ripples, an abstract measure of the toll of combat. Particularly severe attacks can convert Ripples into a Rippling Roll, which actually does damage.
Damage comes in the form of Chi Conditions, which are a mechanical penalty (and, for non-injuries, a bonus) tied to a narrative restriction. If you don't abide by the restriction, you eat the penalty. Chi Conditions can be used to represent almost anything, but injuries are one of the simplest expressions of this.
Slash someones arm? They'll take a penalty to actions involving that arm, and have to try and limit their actions or be clever and fluff around it. Stab someone in the lung? That'll be a penalty to their ability to Breathe Chi unless they're very clever in how they work around it.
>>43602303
Yes, having players who aren't creative while playing Fate is a hassle.
>>43602303
I wouldn't suggest just doing it without talking to them about it first, of course. If you want to work out a more narrative system for dealing with combat consequences, talking about how you handle combat in the first place is important and the advice assumes the players are willing but just having trouble coming up with "creative" descriptions.
If someone tried to start doing this to, say, an established pathfinder group or something out of nowhere one session they would all be justifiably annoyed.
>>43602439
The fact the game necessitates hassling to function correctly when someone isn't into a part of it isn't great design.
>>43602496
The counter-argument would probably go something like "if being creative is a hassle, maybe that game isn't for you."
Not even in a bad way. Some people like a little more tactical wargame in their RPG combat, some people like a little more free-forminess. Both are fine.
>>43599857
But in this case Fate has exactly what the OP asked, moron.
>>43595875
I think Legends of the Wulin might be what you want. It doesn't actually have a "damage" system. You straight-up deal specific injuries when you hurt people, and then they either compensate for those injuries in what they have their characters do (thereby limiting their narrative options), or they take a mechanical penalty.
>>43595875
>abstract
You mean hit points?
>narrative
You mean driven by the fiction, like, say, hit points?
Now that I've mocked your wording, I shall answer your question : perfectly well. Ever tried playing without dice or numbers? Like, your character sheet is whatever your character is/thinks/has/can do/cannot do/matters in the game. And you all say stuff, as in like, any RPG. And if the table doesn't agree, then it doesn't happen and you backtrack and change stuff. You can have someone with a final authority if you want, or if you're more comfortable with it.
In any way, both D&D-style hitpoints and no hitpoints at all work perfectly well.
Now, I like graphic wounds. As in, I like games where when you're hurt, it says "oh god it hurts" instead of "you took X damage".
>>43596571
>how lucky/skilled you are at avoiding the real damage
Actually, it's your plot armor. Literally.
It's your character's right to not suffer complications in a conflict.
>>43602496
Actually, good game design doesn't mean "suits everyone", it means "works well to do what it's designed to do", so yeah, FATE requires proactive and imaginative players who are awake, ready to do stuff and who don't get triggered when the GM pulls story-gamey hippy stuff on them.
>>43606043
Hit points are fully retarded if you do not take the narrative into account. By the book they are only a measure of your skill and will to live, not damage at all, apparently because Gigax thought it was retarded that a high-level fighter (or anyone with high HP) could withstand a lot of injuries.
Which apparently means that you can stand unprotected in the middle of a fireball and only want to fight less, die of being overmotivated in the Positive Energy Plane, or have a blade strike a glancing hit but its secondary effects are fully working.
