Hearts and Hit Points

#1

So, I’m fairly new to ICRPG, and having difficulty wrapping my head around the hearts concept. To clarify, I like the concept- to simplify monsters, and not worry about a few more hit points here or a couple less there- but when combat is still about tracking individual hit point damage, it seems to deviate from that [heart] flavor. Is there something I’m missing, or does anyone else feel the same?

Also, that thought brought along an idea: what if damage was doled out in half- and whole-heart increments? For example, a damage roll of 1-5 is half-heart (or 2-5, with 1 being a 0 h.p. graze); 6-10 whole-heart; 11-15, one whole- plus one half-heart; etc. Has anyone tried rounding the damage like that? I think I want to test that out, but if people already have feedback that’d be great.

#2

First of all, welcome to the shield wall.

Second, you have hearts basically down. All ICRPG does is chunk them up in increments of 10. Yes, you still keep track like normal. If you have one heart (10 hit points), and you take 3 damage, you have 7 hit points left. If you’re a player, that’s not such a difference, except for the fact that most characters never end up with more than 2 or 3 hearts worth. However, if you’re the DM, then keeping track of monster HPs in terms of hearts makes life way easier for you, especially in terms of challenge tuning (ie, this group can probably handle a five heart boss).

As for damaging hearts, sometimes I just draw them in my journal and color them in roughly as players do damage, which is similar to what you are proposing (if the creature takes roughly 7 to 12 damage, as I color the heart in, it dies).

But the real beauty of ICRPG is that it keeps the numbers small, so you don’t end up with the crazy scaling of 5e. Like, who wants to subtract from
88 hit points and have 390 hit point monsters just to challenge a party?

#3

Just to follow up on @Alex, keep in mind that the strongest monsters in ICRPG rarely have more than 5 or 6 Hearts (50-60 HP). It’s not all about how much HP an enemy has. Too much HP creates a slog.
If you want to make a monster defensive, give them damage thresholds, immunities, and invulnerabilities.
Otherwise, make the monsters more dangerous by doubling or tripling damage, nullifying PC abilities, and room hazards.
For low level threats like the basic goblin or kobold, consider not giving them HP. If the monster takes a hit, it’s down and out automatically. The danger with those monsters is their sheer numbers anyway.

#4

Don’t forget the good video game design advice: if you want a boss to last longer, give it positions or defenses that are unbreachable or keep him out of range to shoot attacks, this’ll force your players to make decisions to survive in the arena until the monster gets back on the board! :v:

#5

@Alex
Thanks.

Alrighty, that all makes sense.

I like that idea–perhaps I’ll try that first, before introducing changes to the rules.

Precisely.

@Ravaan
That’s it, exactly. It’s the slog that I’m trying to avoid. Also, just slowly dinging away hit points doesn’t bring with it much emotional investment over time.
I’ll keep that in mind, makes sense,
I like that idea for low-level threats. I’ll try that, and then if I want things to be just as cinematic at higher level challenges, perhaps I’ll re-visit my heart idea, then.

@BlazingPolyhedron
Appreciate the tip!

Thanks a lot everyone. :slight_smile:

#6

I have thought about this as well, and done it in 5e D&D like this:

  • Players roll to hit
  • Players roll damage. If the damage is less than a certain amount, the target is not hurt. If it is more than a certain amount, the target is hurt. (So, if the threshold is 5 and they roll 4, it does not count, but conversely if they roll 15 damage it counts as 3 hits.)

I did this behind the scenes in 5e and it worked surprisingly well. I based a creatures threshold on its hit die (So, if a goblin has a d6 hit die, you have to do 6 damage to it to hurt it. Then if it has 1 hit die, you only have to hurt it once to kill it. A tougher creature with 4d8 hit die would have to be hit for 8 damage 4 times to kill it).

Now, there are obvious problems with this. One is that the players suddenly have two chances to fail (Miss on attack or hit on attack but not do enough damage). That’s not very fun for the players.

However, I am kinda thinking of combining hearts and this idea for ICRPG by making it so damage beyond 10 does not roll over into the next heart. Like, if the player rolls 11 damage I would just take off one heart from the monster. If they roll 19 or 20 though, I would probably take off 2 hearts. I might try it out by making a monster with a feature like that. Less than 10 damage (say 3) would still ping away at a heart though. This would make it super easy to track monster HP because you only have to count to 10.

That being said, I do like hearts as presented. Breaking it down and keeping it even is a brilliant idea.

#7

Using minions is a great way to make game combats more fun. But hearts are just part of the equation. - the party fights six orcs. 4 orcs are minions, one hit point each, easily dealt with. The Sargeant is a tough old bird, he has one :heart: and he is hard to hit, meaning it’s minus three for the players to attack him. The other orc is a different story. Shes got one :heart:, flies into a rage and each character is easy for her to hit and damage from her is easy too meaning the DM adds three to whatever she rolls. She is easy to hit though and will likely be taken down pretty quick.-
The encounter has a total of 24 hitpoints. It will feel completely different from an encounter of six orcs, each with one :heart:.
And when the fight starts, what is your timer die doing? What is next?

#8

Players roll damage on a table but deal damage in hearts, consider the following table:

  • 1-2 = 0

  • 3-7 = 1

  • 8-12 = 2

  • 13+ = 4

So lets say player hits a monster that has 2 hearts, rolls d8+1 for damage, rolls 7, plus 1 for total of 8, so deals 2 hearts of damage and kills the monster.

#9

I’m loving all of the outside the box thinking, but truly, why add another layer of complexity? Derivative numbers are kind of just another mental step (or worst case, actually consulting a chart). If the numbers are small, why not just subtract?

The other point I’ll make is that if players feel like their damage rolls are arbitrary, then there is a limbic hit there. If I roll 14 damage, I want to know that I did 14 damage and high five my friends. Once that trust in the DM is lost, it can be hard to get back.

I’m not beating up the thinking here; just offering some counterpoints and why I think ICRPG pretty much nails it as is.

#10

@Kirwyn
That’s great advice–for a new(-ish) DM, I can really get a lot of mileage out of that, thanks!

@Alex
I really appreciate the feedback. For me, the concept of not worrying whether a monster has 14 or 15 hit points really nails it on the head–why stick with numbers, when you can remove a heart and keep going.

It does matter, however, that there is enough variation to keep the damage rolls interesting, as someone else said. To that point, and others, I came up with this:

1 (natural): graze, no damage
2-5: ½-heart
6-10: 1 heart
11-15: 1 heart + ½-heart
…and so on.

Your rolls change from worrying about every point, to trying for the highest (still) to get the next increment. Plus, your bonus effectively widens your “crit range” on your damage die roll.

To add to that, the # of hearts for all creatures, including monsters, would be visible on the board/mat, at all times. Therefore, players know some of what they’re getting into from the onset of combat (i.e. HD represents approx. CR), and never have to worry about the DM fudging numbers in the background.