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Love 'em or hate 'em Hitpoints are a common mechanic, especially in RPGs but also in skirmish games to a limited extent. RPGs have a lot of alternatives since they can handle more book keeping (Wounds/Vitality combo system, dice pools, etc.).

But for skirmish games it's a bit harder to come up with valid alternatives. Mordheim used Knocked Down / Stunned / Out of Action and Necromunda uses their Flesh Wound system. What other options have you guys seen?

This came up when working on my own skirmish game Dinosaur Cowboys. Currently it uses low levels of Hitpoints, since the default is 8 HP but can go to 6 or 10 HP easily during character creation, and even higher as the characters advance. The highest starting would be around 37 HP for a Brontosaurus dinosaur. Normally it takes 2-4 shots to kill someone of comparable level. Each side has 2-6 miniatures, so I can afford a bit more detail.

Anyways what I was thinking of doing in this case was replacing Hitpoints with a new statistic called "Grit" (more flavorful name as a bonus too) which is actually a die type (D4 {worst}, D6, D8, D10, D12 {best}). When a character is hit and damage is done they would roll a "Grit Save" using their die type. If the result is greater than or equal to the incoming damage they ignore it. For example if they took 5 damage from a Six-Shooter and had D6 Grit they would need to roll a 5 or 6 to avoid the damage. If the Grit Save fails or is impossible (for example if I had D4 Grit in that last example) then they suffer an Injury.
Injuries are recording by checking a checkbox under one of the primary statistics (Movement, Armor, Ranged / Melee Miss Chance). Checking this represents getting hit in the legs, torso, or arms. The player who took the damage can decide how they want to allocate it, but once all 4 checkboxes are filled the character is dead. Each checkbox negatively affects the associated statistic, so checking Movement would mean -1 Movement.
I think this is a nice variant to standard Hitpoints as it has a bit of degrading capability as they take damage without entering a "death spiral" where they have so many penalties they are useless.

So let's talk about general alternatives or the idea I outlined above. I'd love to hear any feedback and to get a solid discussion going!

Seems like a nice take on the way Warmachine jacks allocate damage. I think that the check box should be determined randomly, but I've never played Dinosaur Cowboy so I don't know what the game play is like and if this can be exploited, ect.

From a practicality point of view, it's kind of annoying to have to buy a bunch of different kinds of dice for one game.

From a gameplay and balance standpoint, I see one major issue being that a team that gets injured first starts to lose hard and fast, which make comebacks harder, especially in smaller scale skirmish games, where the destructive capacity of a single unit is usually much more restricted (and for good reason). It wouldn't be a huge issue in a game of decisive actions where whole models are generally removed in a single turn, but it would be all too easy to put the system to the point where the first action can cripple an entire team in short order.

@Saruus: Interesting, I've only seen Warmachine once but if you could shed some more light on how their damage allocation works I'd appreciate that. Kind of funny if I end up ripping off a mechanic I haven't heard of yet, haha.
In general having to randomize which checkbox would be annoying because it's an additional dice roll, which I'm trying to cut down on. Plus once say two checkboxes have been checked would you switch to a D3 or something, or just re-roll if a checked value comes up?

@Fafnir: Hmm as I lie in my giant pit of wildly shaped dice I hadn't considered that.
Terrific point about the "hard to comeback" and early cripple, I hadn't considered that (duh! on my behalf), but you have a good point. The game uses model-by-model activation instead of team-by-team UGO-IGO, so there might be enough punishment both sides to stop that early "knockout punch".

Maybe I just like the mechanic so much that I'm trying to shoe horn it into a game that really does better with static HPs. Sounds like more playtesting is needed.

Great feedback so far, much appreciated so keep it coming!

So essentially a model needs to be damaged four times before its killed? and thats after failing a Grit roll? I don't know what the average damage of a weapon is but won't high Grit models be almost invulnerale?

Grit saves is a cool idea (though I lack some of those dice types), I would like to see how it holds up to play testing. How would this work with a dinosaur? Have you considered dice combinations (eg 2d6, 3d4, d4+d8)?

The recording system reminds me of Fudge.

@KoganStyle: Yes that would be correct. I think I'd have to play with the Grit roll odds. Low level weapons do 2-8 damage and the highest weapon can do 15 or so. It definitely might make characters too tough.

@J8: Dinosaurs would be handled the same way, except they would have a higher Grit and slightly different "checkboxes" to damage. I hadn't really considered combining dice types since Grit saves beyond D12 would probably never be needed.

I think in the end I'll just stick with plain Hitpoints because it's so simple. Maybe I'll just name them "Grit" instead so they're a bit less tied directly to the state of a person's health. I haven't had a ton of time to playtest but I'm going to try out this idea asap. Thanks for all the feedback so far I'm interested to hear more views!

As far as exotic dice are concerned, I had assumed everyone would have a set from when they were 14 and playing DnD. They're pretty cheap though so I wouldn't change your game mechanic for this reason alone, if you decide to go that route.

Someone else could probably explain this better, but here's the Warmachine stat cards. The model on the left is a person so the damage just gets marked in boxes for every point of damage that goes over the armor of the model. The model on the right is a warjack and a d6 is rolled to determine what column the damage goes into. When all of the boxes of a particular type, (for example, m is movement) are checked off, that system is disabled and a penalty is applied when doing something with it.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i241/deacis/Warmachine/newsletter/pps_newsletter_1.png

Hope that helps if you were curious. Looks like you'll be sticking to hit points. Maybe just grit for dinosaurs?

I like the idea of a characters determination to continue fighting as a measurement of 'HP'



Do you have injury tables? Because you could have injuries linked to hit locations, and then have weapons with different abilities have an impact in the game e.g rifles with scopes could choose a hit location, shotguns spread and hit two locations that are next to each other. Seems complicated trying to write it down here but I think it could be quickly streamlined.

What about treating Grit as an armour save on 1 dice? say a D10/20 just off the top of my head

KoganStyle wrote:I like the idea of a characters determination to continue fighting as a measurement of 'HP'



Do you have injury tables? Because you could have injuries linked to hit locations, and then have weapons with different abilities have an impact in the game e.g rifles with scopes could choose a hit location, shotguns spread and hit two locations that are next to each other. Seems complicated trying to write it down here but I think it could be quickly streamlined.

What about treating Grit as an armour save on 1 dice? say a D10/20 just off the top of my head

I like this idea a lot. Maybe blunt weapons could do double the damage to the head and stabbing can get a bonus to the torso.

Sounds like a diced based approximation of the GW Hard to Kill tables.

There is nothing wrong with borrowing or reuseing game mechanics. Game mechanics can't be copyrighted.