How do you give out hearts?

#1

So, I see some classes get Hearts as milestone reward loot and some do not. Some randomly generated loot drops also give you Hearts. My question is, do any GMs just give out Hearts? How often? Is it better to just play it by the book? Some characters may never go above one Heart. Of course, that makes the game deadlier, which might be more awesome… Thoughts? Experiences?

#2

I do occasionally, maybe a potion that bestows a permanent heart, stuff like that. As far as milestone rewards my players ALWAYS have a choice between a heart or an UNKNOWN milestone of my (the GM) choosing.

#3

I personally don’t hand them out to often. I save them for big story moments and usually to a single person where it makes sense.

I have a necromancer who drank demon blood and for 6 ROUNDS she lost 1d4 BASIC HP. The only way to recover HP was through her drain life spell and the Cleric’s healing magic now harmed her. After she survived the 6 ROUNDS (barely) she gained a heart stone. She forever now is harmed by holy magic.

The commander player died trying to retrieve a legendary sword called “the king maker” after the sword became corrupted thirsting for blood. The sword possessed his corpse and turned him against the rest of the players. The priest used a Miracle to pray to her goddess to revive the fallen player (required a NAT 20 for miracles to happen) and she actually got a NAT20 off. Was amazing. The goddess not only pulled him out of the depths of hell but her touch purified the sword returning it to its former glory. This act turned him into a Paladin and he earned a heart stone.

And that now Paladin player rolled a heart stone on a loot table and is rocking 3 hearts. so only 2/6 players have more than 1 heart in my group and we been playing for over a year now. Keeps things more dangerous and epic in my opinion.

#4

That’s kind of what I was guessing. I’m figuring it’s just more awesome to keep the hearts low and the combat tension high.

#5

I like that idea! Has anyone just tries to rack up hearts or do they usually go for the blind reward?

#6

More often than not, once they have 2 hearts, they go for the other

#7

I hand them out from time to time as on-the-spot awards. In our recent Oathsworn/Roll-For-Effort campaign, the players ended up with roughly three or four over the course of the campaign, in addition to periodic stat bonuses and milestones. In fact, these characters were Tier 4, epic level characters at the end of campaign with three or four hearts. I still didn’t have any trouble challenging them as a DM, though I don’t know that I would want them to have too many more hearts than that.

#8

Make them collect 4 heart pieces before gaining a heartstone.

#9

A heartstone per tier seems like a good rule of thumb.

#10

What I do is give EVERYONE a heartstone once a really really big milestone is achieved and I also give out “temporal” hearts (think in temporal HP from 5e) when they rest/get inspired and such.

I don’t think that having a lot of HP (3-4 hearts) can break your game, but what I’ll probably keep an eye on will be balance between players. If the fighter that tanks has a lot of hearts and is always protecting their buddies with, then it is fine, but if the fireball-happy wizard has more HP than the rest of the party, they can start to feel somewhat intimidated by it.

#11

I’m actually doing your Armor Dice method hack with my players Nimlouth. Armor Points/Dice!
We are just going to switch from DnD 5e for me to DM my ICRPG hack and they are all down with this mechanic. But I have decided currently not to give them any more HP beyond standard 10HP; I’ve also given them plus CON. I don’t really want them to have more HP from heartstones, but more armor dice, heck yeah! To get the PC’s target number to increase I am doing 10+DEX+Loot to make them harder to hit. But, having a potential of ICRPG RAW rule of 10 armor meaning I need my creatures to roll a 20 or more to hit, plus having a couple heartstones seems like I would have to constantly be destroying their armor by some means or suffer a slog fest/slow burn for battles. So my solution is to hack it your way as ICRPG intends, so for me that means no Heartstones.

PS- I think I might make heartstones if they roll them on loot tables as adding plus one to their CON stat plus 3 or 4 HP.

#12

Oh that’s awesome! I’m glad you found that useful :heart: haha

The fighter that I talked about in the original post is now super happy with its 15+ armor points + duranium dignet haha.

That’s actually a fine way to do it, for monsters the heart system is really good but some will feel that players need more granularity sometimes. I do believe damage reduction is cooler than a larger HP pool tho :stuck_out_tongue: