Building Bhakashal - Unpacking the Abstraction: Hit Points, Saving Throws and Luck Points
Extensive playtesting of Bhakashal has been a gift. It is one thing to have ideas, it's entirely another to see what happens when you instantiate those ideas. Also, when you have been running games for a number of groups, you tend to notice commonalities, things that multiple groups agree upon as important.
One of the issues that came up consistently across different groups was the issue of bad rolls. There were players who, for whatever reason, went through extended periods of terrible rolls. By and large I don’t want to change rolls, and I believe that the good and bad rolls will, in the fullness of time, average out, and generally, as levels increase, saves and “to hits” will improve.
Having said that, the long run isn’t really the issue, what happens at the table is the issue. So I decided I wanted some sort of luck mechanic for the game. I sniffed around at different luck mechanics and I found that there were a few issues.
Re-roll mechanics were very swingy. They were great in the sense that you could roll REALLY well the second time and obtain a very improved result. Of course, you could also get nothing. So it was difficult to decide how many attempts to allow. If you increased with level things started getting out of hand, particularly if you assigned them on a “per day” basis.
Adding “luck points” directly to rolls appealed to me, for a few reasons:
It was more granular, so gave more choice and involved more resource management, I am much better with mechanics when they involve resource management choices and therefore strategy
Players would be tempted to change really bad rolls and eat up a lot of the luck points in doing so, which would balance the easy cases
But the question then became how many of them to give?
This led to some meditation, and I had one of those jump out of the bathwater moments.
Hit points are luck/stamina points. I have been saying that for years, but mainly to make a point about the abstraction of HP. HP are not “meat points” they are largely non-physical past first level. So I regularly argued that HP are essentially just luck/stamina points, after the first level is passed. Your HP represent your ability to dodge, roll with a blow, push yourself despite damage, etc.
Well, if HP were just luck/stamina points, then why not allow the PCs to use them as they like, to alter “to hit” rolls or saving throws, rather than just absorbing damage? This actually works really well, say you fail a saving throw against a fireball, then you spend HP to make that save, in role playing terms, this can be understood as pushing yourself to exhaustion, and therefore lowering your HP.
Groovy.
So I had my basic idea. But there was a hiccup.
AD&D in general, and older editions in particular, give out a lot of HP. Which would mean that PCs would have TOO MUCH ability to change rolls. One of the key requirements of a “luck system” is that it doesn’t give the PCs too much luck.
So something had to give. I had been considering lowering overall HP for a while, but I hadn’t settled on a mechanic for it. My first instinct was to just limit the amount of HP per level. That wasn’t a bad idea, but it wasn’t enough.
Then I decided that I would restrict getting extra HP to 1-5th level. That way the “top” HP for each class would be limited with a hard cap. But there was still the issue of the CON bonus to HP. Given that HP are not strictly physical, the CON bonus shouldn’t apply anyway, but in this situation in particular I wanted to restrict HP, so that was dropped.
I then considered giving a roll for HP at 1st level and a fixed additional amount per level after that until 5th. Deciding on the extra amount became a challenge. And it occurred to me that maybe I should let the players decide! Then I thought about something I had done a few times for my after school game. At leveling I offered players two options:
Roll your HP
Take the average
The point was to give the players a strategic decision to make, taking the average was safe, rolling had the potential for great or small gain.
That’s what brought it all together. PCs could roll or take the average at every level until 5th, then from 6th onwards, they would roll no new HP.
I also decided to change the HD dice for the classes a bit, I never liked that HP were largely non-physical but the difference between fighter and magic-user were so large, d10 versus d4, HP might be both luck and stamina, but fighters weren’t THAT much luckier. So I boosted the HD for the arcane classes.
But I wasn’t quite satisfied, I wanted to give the PCs a chance to DO something with their HP after 5th level, but not for it to go up too much. Then I remembered a re-roll mechanic for HP from Stars Without Number, and it tied together nicely.
Then I had another realization, if HP were not too high, then why not allow PCs to add THEIR HP to a damage roll? This even made sense in the narration of the mechanic, the PC puts in a huge effort to crush their opponent with a strike, it makes them exhausted to do so as they exert themselves, but it adds to the damage on their opponent.
This was also more significant in Bhakashal as it has an optional Exhaustion/Attrition mechanic, once you get below 1/2 of your total HP, you start taking penalties to hits, damage, saving throws and AC. So spending HP to hit or damage an opponent more causes immediate impacts on you if you drop below half your HP total when you do so.
Beautiful.
Then the last piece was saving throws. I have blogged about this elsewhere, but in essence AD&D saves were a problem as they were clustered by level spans, so you would go for long periods without any changes then things would change suddenly and significantly. I wanted to smooth that out with initial bonuses then improvement by 1 point per level thereafter. The net result of this was that saving throws are generally harder in Bhakashal compared to AD&D, sacrificing big jumps in scores for gradual progress at every level.
Again, the idea was to give the players more control over where their luck went, so saves in general were worse, but the player could “buff” those saves with their luck points. This is important, as saves represent a competing demand on a limited supply of luck points for the PCs, not only were you spending precious HP from a smaller pool, but it also ran the risk of creating negative mods on everything. So this made it a strategic choice to use HP to change rolls.
With all this in mind, this is the end result.
Bhakashal - Hit Points
Table 1 - Hit Point Progression by Class
Notes:
Bhakashal - Exhaustion/Attrition
In addition to combat criticals and weapon criticals, combat quickly wears you out and causes penalties. Bhakashal uses the following procedure:
Note every PC/NPC/Monster’s half hit point total.
On the first blow that takes the target below half hit points but not below 0, give the target a Jack and they now take a 1 point penalty on hits, damage, saving throws and AC.
On the second blow give the target a Queen and they now take a 2 point penalty on hits, damage, saving throws and AC.
On the third blow give the target a King and they now take a 3 point penalty on hits, damage, saving throws and AC.
On the fourth blow give the target an Ace and they now take a 3 point penalty on hits, damage, saving throws and AC
Note that you can give a card to the player to help them remember the penalty, for the referee, place a “J” near the target’s stats to indicate a “Jack”, a “Q” for Queen, etc.
Bhakashal - Spending Hit Points
With respect to hits, damage or saving throws, a PC may spend hit points on a 1:1 basis to alter a roll.
Playtesting
When I put this system into place, my main concern was that the PCs would be modifying rolls all the time and would make it “too easy”. I discovered, after applying these rules to three different groups, that the following results were fairly consistent between groups:
Some players were hesitant to spend their HP to alter rolls and wanted to “save them” for big dramatic moments when they were “needed most”
Other players spent them as soon as they could, to try and take control over encounters.
The exhaustion/attrition effects were a significant contributor to hesitancy in spending HP
HP were most often spent on hit rolls, then on saves, then on damage
The arcane classes miss the most in combat and have the fewest HP to change those rolls, so martial classes still reigned supreme in combat, even with this rule
A significant number of players saved ALL their HP for saving throws
A smaller number of players saved ALL their HP for “to hit” rolls
With saving throws generally being a bit worse than AD&D, the discretionary spending of HP did not make saves that much more likely
Some PCs basically NEVER spent HP unless they felt it was life or death at stake
The system did not make the players noticeably more or less risk averse
In other words, it works beautifully. The players love it as they can make sure that, if they REALLY want it, they can change a result. Because it is a one to one change, some rolls are always going to be missed as the cost is simply too many points, so it doesn’t allow them to alter everything. It only impacts THEIR rolls, so it doesn’t impact the rest of the many game mechanics.
And, as a side benefit, not for me for the most part, but for others, it removes the temptation to “fudge” results by placing a game mechanic in the system that allows players to, at least sometimes, change results in their favor.
I call that a win.
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