Topic: Help me make sense of inflating Endurance

[frodolives]

I have never been a fan of "hit point" systems where the hit points inflate with level increase. D&D explains inflating HP by saying they are a reflection of increased defensive skill and luck. Because D&D doesn't really have any active defense, I suppose it works (although it raises big questions about fallnig damage and healing, etc). But because HARP and RM both use active defense (defensive bonus), I don't see why endurance should increase to such high levels. Is a guy with 100 hits really able to withstand five times the physical harm as someone with 20 hits? It just doesn't really make much sense to me from a logical standpoint. Why should two characters of equal CON scores and physique be affected so differently from a fall off a cliff if one guy has 20 hits and the other has 100??? If their CONs are the same, what does the difference i hits represent?

Is there a HARP combat system out there that does away with inflating hits?

[vroomfogle]

This has come up in RM as well.   I've never done away with variable hits, I think that the overall range of them is still relatively small.  It's not  like it starts at 10 and goes up over 100.   A more normal range (at least in RMSS) is 35 or 40 to 100 (at least at levels < 10).    I think the biggest problem with variable (or 'inflating' as you use) is blood loss.   Take a bleeding wound that loses 5/rnd.  The maximum blood loss you can sustain should be a function of amount of blood, not the amount  of pain you can withstand.

Overall the current system works pretty well, not *too* broken so while I've thought about changing it I haven't.   It is an easy enough fix though.   Give every race the same amount of hits that is based on the body size, then a variable amount off of that based on Constitution.   Remove Body Development as a developable skill (if it is one in HARP).

[lorenen]

Just few examples.. i'am doing weight lifting for 4 months, right now i can sustain a light punch on my back without feeling it while 4 months ago the same punch was able to make feel a bit of pain (i'am talking of not powerful blows).

Imagine a skinny guy and a strong muscular one, the later can absorb more hits..

You can obviously say that the second one has more Constitution, but this is only an half truth because:
1) more constitution = more resistance to diseases and poison.. something you not gain with weightlifting.
2) more constitution = more endurance while running.. again this is not gained doing weightlifting but doing aerobic activity like running or swimming.

Another thing about rising endurance/hits is the hightened mental resistance to pain. A friend of mine is doing kickboxing since he was a child, he can kick a wall with great strenght and don't feel any pain.. why? because his body its HARDER than mine, the skin, bones, muscles are trained to absord physical shocks and his you must also consider that pain its often a subjective factor.

Everyone can be trained to resist pain otherwise any person that do boxe as sport should fall after just one punch in the face..

[frodolives]

Just few examples.. i'am doing weight lifting for 4 months, right now i can sustain a light punch on my back without feeling it while 4 months ago the same punch was able to make feel a bit of pain (i'am talking of not powerful blows).

Imagine a skinny guy and a strong muscular one, the later can absorb more hits..

You can obviously say that the second one has more Constitution, but this is only an half truth because:
1) more constitution = more resistance to diseases and poison.. something you not gain with weightlifting.
2) more constitution = more endurance while running.. again this is not gained doing weightlifting but doing aerobic activity like running or swimming.

Another thing about rising endurance/hits is the hightened mental resistance to pain. A friend of mine is doing kickboxing since he was a child, he can kick a wall with great strenght and don't feel any pain.. why? because his body its HARDER than mine, the skin, bones, muscles are trained to absord physical shocks and his you must also consider that pain its often a subjective factor.

Everyone can be trained to resist pain otherwise any person that do boxe as sport should fall after just one punch in the face..

But pain resistance still doesn't explain away healing rates, bloodloss, effects of unavoidable damage, etc.

[lorenen]

But pain resistance still doesn't explain away healing rates, bloodloss, effects of unavoidable damage, etc.

and luckly doesn't have to..

a rpg its a game where you have a role and you must follow it while a story evolves.. its not a game where a set of rules must describe world in a perfect an over realistic way.
Rules are there as a tool to resolve situations, giving a feel of realistic life and so helping you "feeling there" forgeting you're playing.

So rules must be easy and helping the master in avoiding unfairness and promoting good roleplaying

hits maybe are not so realistic but are very good in doing their job =)

this is my opinion of course

ps: i just want to prevent this discussion from becoming the new "i want it to be HYPER REAL or i don't like it" kind of topic.. this is the way rolemaster sometimes its criticized 

[frodolives]

a rpg its a game where you have a role and you must follow it while a story evolves.. its not a game where a set of rules must describe world in a perfect an over realistic way.
Rules are there as a tool to resolve situations, giving a feel of realistic life and so helping you "feeling there" forgeting you're playing.

Agreed. But they must also have some internal logic. If one character has 80 hits and another has 40, why does the character with 40 heal faster? Makes no sense. Hits need to mean something consistent, that is my point/problem.

hits maybe are not so realistic but are very good in doing their job =)

Hits are fine. It's the inflation of hit points as you increase in level that make no logical sense to me. Rules need to be there to serve an in-game purpose and reflect some degree of realism IMO. Hit points, in and of themselves, do just fine except when they increase drastically for no apparent reason.

ps: i just want to prevent this discussion from becoming the new "i want it to be HYPER REAL or i don't like it" kind of topic.. this is the way rolemaster sometimes its criticized 

I have no interest in that either. But I do like rules to make some logical sense.

[Fidoric]

Maybe Hit points should be reserved for pain alone (reflecting things like body hardening...). This could impose that falls hurt you by the minuses (various body parts broken) and blood loss (the latter could be reflected by direct constitution loss either applied to the stat or the bonus) they give you rather than by the loss of HP.
BTW, don't underestimate such wounds. A simple 1 hit/rnd bleeder is a potential killer if first aid is not applied. Any character falling some distances, being stunned (unconscious ?) and having no one near to help him may simply never wake up and die from blood loss or internal bleeding within several rounds, ie a handful of minutes. A double amount of HP will simply grants you some more minutes to live.

IIRC, Palladium games used to reflect this using Life Points and Structural Damage. I do not have the books available and i'm not sure of the denomination.
Essentially, LP were fixed by your race and cannot evolve much. Letal weapons do damage directly to your LP and thus are... deadly.
All subdual attacks like punch or some others apply to your SDC (SD capacity). The latter can be build up at each level, simulating combat training and ability to sustain pain.
That's realistic. A trained boxer will be able to sustain many more blows before being knocked out than the average guy.

[Arioch]

Agreed. But they must also have some internal logic. If one character has 80 hits and another has 40, why does the character with 40 heal faster? Makes no sense. Hits need to mean something consistent, that is my point/problem.

IMHO the character with 80 HPs endure pain better than the one with 40 HPs, so he can sustain more "damage" before going KO. Both heal at the same rate, but the 80Hps character need more time to recover because he actually sustained more damage than the other.

[WoeRie]

Agreed. But they must also have some internal logic. If one character has 80 hits and another has 40, why does the character with 40 heal faster? Makes no sense. Hits need to mean something consistent, that is my point/problem.

Maybe as a side note, the level of injury (Light, Minor, Major) is related to the percent of lost hits, and the Healing spells also cure a percentage of your total hits. So in both cases healing should be approximately at the same rate (or even faster for more hits). However the natural healing rate of hits depends on your CO bonus and herbs normally only heal a fixed number of hits. But to be honest I don't see a problem to use a houserule to favor percent values of your Total Hits instead of fixed values or CO bonus related values.

[mocking bird]

I don't see the HP/Endurance as amount of pain/damage you can endure.  Rather they are more like exhaustion/actual endurance points.  I read a similar perspective about AD&D where the only 'real' hit points that your actual body has are from your first level.  The rest measure fatigue and endurance.  So a character with more HP's does endure the same damage from the same hit roll but relatively speaking he is affected less.  From this perspective bleeding isn't so much actual bloodloss but is more like a nagging wound again that is relative.

[Fidoric]

I don't see it that way. That means that when you run for several minutes, you get tired and lose Hit Points from exhaustion.
Harp has no rules about exhaustion, but if we have a look at his big brother RM, Exhaustion point and Hit points are two different things. IMO, Hit points reflects your capacity to withstand pain.

[Ecthelion]

Hits are fine. It's the inflation of hit points as you increase in level that make no logical sense to me.

Then what's your problem with HARP? The dwarven fighter I just created as my next character has 96 hits at level 1 and - if I will develop him as planned - is going to have ~125 to 150 hits at level 10. That's not an "inflation of hit points", it's 30% to 50% more. The same is true for my current half-elven cleric, 70 hits at level 1 and probably 100 at level 10.

Of course we can create extreme examples, like a 10th level dwarven fighter with 30 ranks in Endurance and ~160 hits vs. a elven mage with only one rank in Endurance and ~30 hits i.e. less than a fifth. But I don't even have a problem with that big difference. I guess even in our world a professional boxer can take many more punches than an average untrained guy. And that trained boxer matches the dwarven tanks and the untrained guy the feeble elven mage.

Sorry, but I don't see your problem.

Rules need to be there to serve an in-game purpose and reflect some degree of realism IMO. Hit points, in and of themselves, do just fine except when they increase drastically for no apparent reason.

They simply don't increase dramatically. Did you actually create any HARP characters? Did their hit points differ so much at level 1? Would their hit points differ so dramatically as you wrote in your initial posting if you would develop them until, lets say, level 10 or even 20?

[Thom @ ICE]

Here's a thought....

If you don't like Inflating Endurance increasing your hits -
Give each character 6 ranks in Endurance free - calculate your hits - remove the skill from availability for development.

You will end up with a solid amount of hits and you don't need to worry about it increasing.

[bunny]

I think you see a problem based on a misunderstanding - I dont think RPGs are about modelling reality. You have focussed on endurance, but in a similar way, it doesnt make sense that an untrained person gets a -25, then suddenly jumps to a +5 in every use of a skill once they get one rank. In the real world you get a bit good at the easy things, but a raw beginner at something is no better than a totally unskilled person when trying to do the extreme things.

An example because I'm in the mood - I'm a juggler, I can juggle 9 balls for a couple of seconds and then stop. I guarantee you that if I give you 1 rank in juggling (ie teach you to do 3 balls for a minute, say) you will be no better at replicating my 9 ball effort than someone who has never picked up a juggling ball - modelling this is just too much effort, most of us want our heroes to have some slim chance of pulling off the incredible and gradually getting more and more superhuman. If you remove endurance, do you also reduce the rate at which people get better at skills? That is also unrealistic within almost all RPGs (it's particularly apparent with learning languages imo, but if there's anything that you are really, really good at - consider how any game would replicate that skill and I'm willing to bet you'll find it lacking)

Ultimately, the rules arent a model of reality - they are a mechanic to produce fun. The ultimate result is that experienced heroes pretty rapidly become "better" than beginning heroes. That's the limit of it. Heroes in fiction can fight through hordes of minor enemy cannon fodder, ending up covered in blood, with arrows sticking out of them, fighting on through sheer grit and "heroness". That's not realistic - a few semi-skilled armed people will overpower all but the most skilled fighter, but it's not meant to be - when you played cops and robbers as a kid, how much time did the cops spend filling in forms and obtaining warrants?

All something of an aside. The beauty with HARP is that it is eminently customisable. If this particular unreality bothers you - just forbid endurance from being developed and your problem disappears (though the result will be that a weak beginning character will have no chance of surviving at the higher levels imo)

[mocking bird]

I don't see it that way. That means that when you run for several minutes, you get tired and lose Hit Points from exhaustion.
Harp has no rules about exhaustion, but if we have a look at his big brother RM, Exhaustion point and Hit points are two different things. IMO, Hit points reflects your capacity to withstand pain.

And imo no exhaustion in HARP is a good thing as is completely ignoring it in RM.

Hit points also cannot be about pain tolerance.  You can be in pain but not be in mortal danger.  Simply put pain cannot kill you.  This is more in the realm of stun maneuver or stamina rolls.

[MaxUgg]

bunny

how much time did the cops spend filling in forms and obtaining warrants?

made me laugh so much, and it's 9:30 in the morning - so laugh point and thanks

As for endurance and HP and the representation of injuries in RPG systems. Well I have always liked the RM. MERP, HARP style system. Endurance makes the tank like characters feel tough and able to withstand lots of pain and so on but they know the crits will take them down in the end. The stuns, MM penalties, broken bones, injured organs comas and so on keep the game dangerous and make it flow well for me. I like to cripple my payers [or as a player fight thought the injuries] it makes for a great game - some other systems I like, for example Ars Magica and Shadowrun, have the status bar and that shows a gradual lowering of abilities as you become injured. But the variety of way to get crippled and die is not as great as in RM/MERP/HARP.

To finish, then, 2 things - The first is find a way to shoe horn Arms Law and Spell Law in to your HARP the variety of critical hits and healing spells will ,I think, please you and scare your players.

The second thing is a quote from Arm's Law. I find the RM/MERP/HARP combat system to be fun and balanced between heroic combat and deadly enough so that high level characters can not just walk in to an ambush and go 'oh' and fight their way out. It really works for me and a lot of my RPG friends but as always YMMV. There is not one game to rule them all, it's horses for courses..

Arms Law is about FRPG combat ? the kind that leaves you shaking and bragging to your friends about your character?s exploits.

[Right Wing Wacko]

Yeah... I really don't see a problem either.
Like others have said, it is your game and if you want to change something or don't like something... change it!