Replace Damage Dice with WHAT?! (

[@SgtMaj22]

I am a way back (read as older than dirt) DM and recently a group of new players asked me to run a game for them because they could not decide who among them should be doing that job. They did not know until the 4th session that I did not even own any 5E books and had not even read any rules newer than 3.5 when I used to game master for the old RPGA on occasion. Using the rule of cool and making them roll dice when it seemed appropriate made for a killer game and they all had a blast!

[@stuartclements6243]

The Deathbringer commentary at the end of the video is pure gold.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

He says thank you.

[@taylorcourtney6709]

I could deeply relate to "When they cancel at the last second..."

[@AngryPict]

I really like the Cairn/Into The Odd damage system. Always hit, low HP, once HP gone it comes of STR.

[@Biltzeebub]

I'm actually thinking of how to copy that mechanic and adjust it into OSE. I was thinking of just using the ascending armor class modifiers as the basis for armor points before the enemy can get to your hit points. Since running my first session of Cairn, I feel like I don't wanna do AC rolls anymore as the fluidity of combat you get in Cairn is so satisfying for me as a DM and enjoyable for the players getting to be "actions heroes" without doing too much arithmetic.

[@AngryPict]

@@Biltzeebub I think using armour points as damage reduction works well if PCs have low HP, otherwise it just makes combat last for ever. The other option is to use the armour points as pre-hitpoint hitpoints, the armour being destroyed as the PC takes hits and once gone it coming off the actual HPs.

[@jle2500]

"Your characters will be fine. They have healing word." I had such a hard time killing my 5e paladin. Took me 5 sessions to get all the saves to line up. I was the Player not the DM in this scenario.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Lol.

[@shishoka]

If your players are trying to kill off their characters and that becomes the game unintentionally then you screwed something up.

[@joshuatefft9372]

I did this in a campaign once. We all learned pretty quickly the dm wasn’t going to let us die cause of his “beautifully crafted” story wouldn’t work if we died. 😩 I was running a bard and it just didn’t matter what I did I couldn’t get myself killed 😂 I gave that dude hell. I know that’s horrible but as a player the fun for me lies in the possibility of losing everything I worked for.

[@jimboxx7]

@@shishoka Maybe they want to create a very dramatic moment (and they don't want to wait for the next campaign to try something new)?

[@PossumMedic]

@@shishoka or you're just playing the wrong game 🤣

[@thebitterfig9903]

One thing which I like about this system is that a Dagger can do more damage than a Greatsword. A high-level Fighter who was an expert in dagger combat would probably have their d20 roll of 11 interpreted higher than a raw recruit with a Greatsword with the same roll.

[@JSanime]

I really like the hearts in Index Card RPG concept. You can still let your players roll all the dice they want... cause as a player that's a very satisfying part of the game... If the roll is over a certain amount, the enemy loses a heart.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

That is a VERY cool rule.

[@rynowatcher]

Similar to Savage Worlds: roll damage to beat toughness and got three wounds (hearts) before you are dying.

[@adamjchafe]

Well this is how I am running ICRPG from now on. Give a monster a few hearts + a Threshold to beat. Minions have a zero threshold and bosses might have 8, 9, or 10 per heart!

[@Brian-rt5bb]

feels like a streak of bad luck scoring hits and not draining hearts would be a real drag

[@jamesrizza2640]

I just bought the Index Card RPG, it has a lot of good ideas, some of which I will use in my next campaign, and some I have already used in past campaigns without realizing it. I think the best use is for new players since it's not overly complicated like pathfinder. Furthermore it allows these new players to really get into the true spirit of the game which is supposed to be fun, engaging and most of all entertaining. Great comment.

[@Goshin65]

When I was running Traveller (sci-fi) I had a table for wounds. Roll weapon dmg (mostly 3d6 or 4d6) subtract armor rating, and you got either a Light wound (-1 all rolls), Serious Wound (-2, needs medical treatment), Critical wound (roll to stay conscious, may die soon without meds) or at the far end, DRT (dead right there). It was quick and exciting and lent itself well to the high tech genre. I *thought* about doing something similar for D&D but never did as it seemed like a poor fit.

[@robofeeney]

I adapted the combat resolution system from advanced fighting fantasy and warlock for something similar to this, except I made it so that armour is a damage reducer instead of a to-hit target. I also, in fighting fantasy and ODD fashion, made it so all damage and defense rolls use a d6; I have a series of matrices similar to aff and troika that are referenced for this. Different weapons and armour have different values assigned to each 16% chance in the d6, with a "7+" value that may come up due to crits and fumbles. Combat works something like this: Both sides roll a d20 and d6 simultaneously, adding their melee bonus to the d20. The higher result is the attacker and the lower result is the defender. We then consult the d6s and their corresponding matrices to decide damage and defense, with defense being subtracted from damage, and then remaining damage being subtracted from hp. Once hp hits 0, we start rolling for actual injuries, a la WFRP. How this speeds up combat is that, regardless of who wins the attack, we have all the information needed for resolving a combat from just rolling those 4 dice: who won, who lost, the damage dealt, and the armour's damage buffer. It's honestly easier and faster than rolling dice multiple times, confirming hits and misses with the ref or player, and adding modifiers multiple times. Natural 20s raise your "roll value" on the matrix and lower your opponents, and natural 1s lower your roll value on the matrix and raise your opponents (its possible to win the attack when rolling a 1, and to lose the attack and become the defender while rolling a 20).

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Thanks for sharing!

[@NefariousKoel]

I like Adv Fighting Fantasy's opposed rolls in combat. Everyone declares who/how they're attacking and make an opposed roll with their relevant skill. Higher total causes damage minus armor of target. Even in 3-on-1 situations, they all only roll once at the same time. Use the normal 2d6 skill roll plus an extra different-colored d6 for effect (damage or armor depending on win/lose result) in one go and the number of rolls is reduced along with initiative round-robin'ing. Talisman Adventures rpg does something similar.

[@FabioBittar]

I love rolling for damage. What makes combat slow(er) is HP inflation. B/X is just about perfect at the lower level range.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Also a solution. So is lowering AC--an upcoming video.

[@soultron4238]

Your snark is on point. Speaking truth in pure sass. I’m here for every second of it. The more I run for middle schoolers the more I have moved this direction on my own anyway. Thanks for helping me through the imposter syndrome. It’s sooo much more fun to skip the last couple of rounds of rolling and just say “tell me how you finish this last thing off”.

[@michaelb2westgaedu]

Love this. It's so much like a system we're using now, Simple20 (3.5e OGL). It resolves all combat by a d20 vs modified 10 for difficulty (up or down for armor, situation, etc). Damage is the difference between the difficulty and the die roll after modifiers are applied. For me - and my players really don't know this - I've simplified it in my head by saying "how many hits should this enemy take before dropping?" I then keep track of small/medium/large hits and adjust the situation accordingly (death, knocked out, morale fail check). Weapons are viewed as props in the system anyhow and don't add anything to rolls (unless I give them a magic or special item, which at this point in my campaign we have a few).

[@Gelugladius]

At the beginning of my current 5e campaign a little over a year ago, I would spend hours balancing encounters and carefully choosing the monsters that I would throw at my players. A year later, I basically just write down some suggestions for attack modifiers, damage, and hit points that feel appropriate to the encounter, and judge whether they pass or succeed a saving throw on whether I like the dice roll. Less work for me (My prep time has been reduced to painting minis), more swing room to fudge rolls to fit the narrative ("It's down to 15hp, but the paladin crit and the fight's going on long, so I'm just going to say that she killed it."), and my players will never know (They actually have more fun when I wing it.). My players think that they're playing D&D, but the truth is that I'm playing them.

[@kylegreene1356]

Tuesday used to mean nothing but now it's my favourite day. Rockin' video as per usual. Hickman is an absolute treasure.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Thanks for saying so.

[@thomasparker6124]

My favourite way of treating monsters is inspired by Savage Worlds Extras and 4th edition's minions. They're either unhurt, injured or incapacitated (and probably dead). More detail than that isn't needed for most disposable goblins or ninjas or ninja goblins. If they're hit then they're injured and I like to pair this with them being thrown into the scenery, knocked prone or otherwise dazed and stunned. They then have a penalty (like disadvantage) or entirely miss their next turn. This provides tactical incentives for the players to split their attacks between weaker foes rather always systematically focus firing on individuals until they're dead - which D&D's hitpoints mostly encourage. But they can be one shot by a critical hit/sufficiently high attack roll or damage roll if that's a separate thing in that game. With some mechanism so this is easier to pull off with big/heavy or otherwise more powerful weapons. Personally I generally prefer damage to relate to how successful the initial attack roll was rather than a separate damage roll like D&D. Then have more states of injury for tougher and more important enemies.

[@ogrestamp]

In the past I might have been one of those who would push back on this. But a few years ago I ran a Dungeon World one shot for my friends and they ran into some crypt ghouls. I made that name up on the fly and didn't have time to thumb through the DW manual for the ghoul stats so I gave them stats I thought they might have. Turns out I was 1-2 points off from thr stats on the book. I kinda knew intuitively what ghoul stats should be and that was most enlightening. Now when I run one shots for friends, I tend to keep the flow going by keeping relative score in damage. Basically a goblin will take one hit, and orc 1-2 hits and a bugbear 2 hits. The players rolls their damage and if it's a decent roll against a goblin, they kill it. If it isn't then the goblin lives. But I don't keep exact track, it's all very relative. And it seems to work. Nobody complains and we get in a lot of combat in my one shots.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Rock on! Thanks for sharing!

[@theinevitable77]

My table liked your printing a mini of yourself concept so much we all printed one of ourselves and are running a "Play yourself as a random class campaign" and are having a blast. Thanks for the idea!

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Awesome!

[@ghettogepetto2389]

Play yourself? If I were to play myself, I might not make it past level 0....

[@sinemi3]

I've just started GMing SWd6 (tried, at least) and it's is surprising that lots of these concepts were already there. Injury categories, damage steps, etc. Excellent video, as usual! I love how you compare D&D systems, first with the to-hit number and now with HP and damage.

[@jozcofoz8560]

Every session I have, my players leave that king me for the Incredible story and what not. It's seriously tnx to channels like this. Man you give me so much innovation and even if the rules don't stick with the group. 1 fight with different rules just to spice things up is so refreshing and gives the Monster a special feeling. Tnx for the inspiration ❤

[@lukec6721]

I always enjoyed the toughness saves in mutants and masterminds. Instead of HP, you roll a special constitution save. When you fail, you stack injury conditions which make your future toughness saves worse, or if you fail one badly enough you get stunned or die.

[@erickrochaamorim5173]

"They never bring you beer" 🤣🤣🤣

[@brenorocha6687]

A Brazilian RPG system called Tagmar (first published in 1991 and now in it's 3rd edition) uses a single d20 roll to determine if an attack hits and how much damage it causes. Damage can be dealt in increments of 25% of your total damage, already written down on the character sheet, so you don't have to do the calculations every turn. This brings a lot of weight to each roll. The system still demands HP and damage management, but's it's already half way towards the suggestions of this video and I think they'll work great together.

[@tdworwood]

This is your best video yet. An easy to try idea that speeds up play, your commentary gives a great summary of your philosophy, and the math checks out

[@darcyw156]

I love this! I have already been doing this to an extent for months now. I love that this semi codifies what I have been doing. This is a great thing to try out. Thanks Professor! Great vid. I love all the new ideas you bring to the table.

[@onthebounce6909]

This idea is basically what TSR was doing with their Marvel Super Heroes RPG back in the early '80s. The system was also adopted for a revision of Star Frontiers known as "Zebulon's Guide to the Frontier". In the latter case it was never completely implemented because TSR pulled the plug on a game that simply wasn't selling very well. The basic concept was that rather than resolving actions with numerous dice rolls and charts it simplified everything so that it could be resolved with a single percentile dice roll. So, looks like we've got a case of "everything old is new again" on our hands. :P

[@catfishcooler1566]

Star Frontiers wasn't pulled for lack of sales. TSR got bought out by an heiress who happened to own the rights to Buck Rogers. She killed Star Frontiers to make room for a licensed Buck Rogers game so she could milk more money out of a struggling TSR.

[@NefariousKoel]

Although I wasn't sold on the extra math and tables in Zebulon's as a replacement, Star Frontiers was quite an enjoyable sci-fi game in it's day. Still some of my favorite playable PC alien races. I'd at least convert the setting to FrontierSpace nowadays since that newer RPG took direct inspiration from it and filled in a lot of the shortcomings and missing bits (detailed star system & planet creation, streamlined modern ship combat, many random tables, etc). It's too bad so much user-created SF content was nuked by WotC awhile back.

[@jcraigwilliams70]

I like the strikes of EZD6. You also had another video prior to this one, mentioning the idea of 10 HP= 1 Hit, which is also good. As an older player who only ever played BECMI and a tiny bit of 2E, seeing 168 HP and 45 avg dmg is just insane. I'm used to huge red dragons having about 90-100... I know some people like to play the rules more than the rolls. They like to manipulate the game. That's part of the fun for them. But I find it amusing that those who don't trust the DM to interpret rolls are perfectly fine trusting them to roll behind a screen, potentially making it all up anyway.

[@RobertWF42]

Would like to see a video comparing playtests of different combat rules with your group! For example, do three combats: 20 goblins, 3 trolls, 1 dragon. Players rate the systems on a "fun meter".

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

I can tell you my teenage group who were raised on 5E like rolling Fate Dice for Dmg. Blank= average damage. + means extra damage. - means glancing blow. Much faster, allowing us to get in 10 encounters in 2 hours.

[@FishofMuu]

I met the Hickmans last year. Lovely people. Lovely book

[@bugslayerprime7674]

Third complaint: I'm a brain tired DM and rely on damage dice and HP to calculate how wounded stuff is for me so I don't have to interpret this stuff. I really like this idea, but it just feels like more mental work to eliminate dice rolls and simple subtraction. Prof DM gives a lot of good advice for eliminating HP and stuff, which has its uses and probably works for most groups. But one of my players who heard his advice in another video about fudging the HP and letting players roll dice the DM just ignores, she didn't like the idea. For our group, tracking precise HP is vital to how we play. Rounding the damage dealt to players would frustrate them once they found out, and ignoring their dice rolls in favor of an interpretive system might make their actions feel less consequential. I like it, I just don't think I'll ever be able to use it.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

You are the Dungeon MASTER. Accept your destiny.

[@slickrickard]

​@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 haha

[@keithkannenberg7414]

For some folks, interpreting the results is part of the fun of DMing, as opposed to being a glorified account behind the screen. That said, I don't see why a little addition and subtraction is such a hardship. But then I don't play with little kids or people who are bad at math.

[@bugslayerprime7674]

@@keithkannenberg7414 it certainly has a place! I've played with both erudite calculators masquerading as humans, and people for whom math is physically painful. I've also seen enough comments sections where people complain that math is an actual barrier to entering the hobby. This game hack is totally for them! Anything that gets more people playing is good for the hobby. Just not my style.

[@TheControlBlue]

You can track the HP precisely but the max HP of the enemy is still pure closed information (or at least it should be, else you want to eliminate all tensions in your game), so essentially at the mercy of being fudged by the GM: "Let's say 21HP instead of 20..." That means the essence of the thing is not in the amount of HP damage dealt.

[@brymanxl]

I love playing with other rules, it changes things up. I tell people were playing D&D still, just in a little bit different or easier way. Especially when Im running ICRPG, which is about all I do now.

[@tagg1080]

honestly, ezd6 has changed my entire game. I have bowls of d6s at the table and just ask people to throw handfuls of them around and it is the best gaming I have ever had. We barely write anything down, there is no looking up of stats and fiddly bits, we just add or take dice from the pool at whim. It is so much better than I expected it to be.

[@PossumMedic]

4:23 - That's kind of the point of 5e for me. Introducing newer rpg players to "flavour" while keeping everything balanced. For me 5e is best for new players or groups that don't fully trust eachother (like drop in groups) and benefit from all the extra structure

[@whitepanth3r]

Yes! More Dungeon Craft 😁

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Thank you!

[@brycenelson1987]

I agree with a lot of this, but I personally avoid tying damage dice to weapon size, at it makes characters converge into sameness. The dagger is just as lethal as the greatsword when applied properly. To me, damage dice by weapons turns HP into meatpoints.

[@RockinBobXYZ]

I’ve been DMing for 40 years, and spent too many of those thousands of hours writing out “Hobgoblins: 14, 14, 12, 11, 11, 10” in a row, scratching out a 14 and writing 9 below it to apply 5 damage, etc. etc. etc. I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours of my life on that mundane process. It’s probably the biggest reason I’ve turned away from D&D in recent years. So I’m all for any house rules that make for a less incremental, tedious, book-keeping approach to tracking combat outcomes.

[@mke3053]

Just use hits, instead. Hobgoblin Live = 2 hits, when 2 attack hits, its dead

[@AnnoyingNewsletters]

@@mke3053 sounds like Heroquest's approach.

[@Biltzeebub]

When I ran pathfinder 2e, I actually did it in this format >> creature_name (total hitpoints): "tally of damage" so that looks like >> Goblin1 (8): 3 + 4 + 5 Goblin2 (8): 2 + 2 + 4 Mage (5): 1 + 1 + 2.... and so on. The human brain finds it easier to add than subtract. However, I'm currently running Cairn which is giving me a huge breath of fresh air!

[@AnnoyingNewsletters]

@@Biltzeebub I haven't heard of Cairn. What do you like about it?

[@Sir-Cyr_Rill-Nil-Mill]

[@FigureFan_Pierce]

Love this! I backed the Kickstarter for 2nd Edition because of how highly you spoke of the 1st Edition in previous videos. It's packed with loads of unique ideas. Would be great to see more XDM videos or even a 2nd Ed review.

[@anothermicrobe755]

Taking average damage and rolling to see if it's higher or lower than that is brilliant, I'll probably implement it right away at my next game. The excitement of variable damage, the simplicity of average damage.

[@petersanzone7183]

Just got my copy of XDM 2e in the mail today. Reading up on this stuff because I'm finally working on my own Homebrew world instead of running a module "out of the box." That said, running modules have helped prepare me for this, so I'm not knocking that at all. Been watching the campaign videos you have from the Caves of Carnage and taking notes, like a Student Dungeon Master. Thank you for all of your insight.

[@CausticCatastrophe]

Ive considered using a "to wound" sort of roll similar to warhammer, but once again tracy's chart makes it much easier to interpret!

[@ordwinrahl6655]

This is what I use in my current system. Huge 40k fan, grew up on it and while I don't play - they really did master the mass scale, tons of dice done "fast" which when you break it down to smaller scale, it goes significantly faster. I removed all other dice from my games and only use the d6 with Wounds and W&G styled Attributes and EXP costs. Removed all Classes and Subclasses in favour of a make your own Talent system. The use of Wounds really makes every combat feel deadly and rely more on mitigation. Mortals are what people fear and I've added a few extra damage types and item properties which inflict auto Mortals. So far in testing, in a party of 4-5 players combat lasts ~1 minute per player per round of combat and with flat value reductions and revealed DCs, there's no guessing. Since it's an automatic success on a 4+ and you know what the DC is, it's super easy to read the results and know if you hit or not with a more palatable sense of difficulty. Now if you fail, it no longer feels that the dice are against you because larger dice pools somehow remove the antagonistic feelings of failures. Much like W&G I balance encounters off a deployment point cost for the engagement rather than CR. Allows you to customize encounters but keep it reasonable with each PC giving the DM a fixed amount. If you stay under it's a balanced encounter but things can always go up. It's felt more lenient and fair for stacking. Resources for opponents and players are unlimited, tied to scoring successes, suffering Wounds, or otherwise performing valiant actions which leads to more dynamic fights (I feel).

[@nidhoggstrike]

That gives me an idea! I would never replace damage dice with rolling a single d20 and interpreting as is suggested in this video, but I could totally use this as a replacement for the traditional "critical hit means double amount of damage dice"

[@CausticCatastrophe]

@@nidhoggstrike hack the game how you want, is basically the video.

[@MichaelNgTzeWei]

Really useful advice to make combat simpler

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Thanks.

[@marcosmiotti7399]

Insightful video, Prof. DM. I've ran the Cloque House scenario twice since last week, and I'm running it again tonight! I might use that d20-table-for-determining-damage approach in this third run, to see how it goes. Thank you very much! Regards from Brazil.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Brazil! Glad you enjoyed Cloque House!

[@Lightmane]

3:26 The average damage from a 5th level Magic-User in 5e does 28 hit points of damage? That's crazy. In 1st & 2nd edition the average damage is about 17 (5d6) and Fireball was the most powerful 3rd level spell; so much so that I changed it to a 4th level spell, while also giving a weaker 3rd level version that only does 5d6 and never changes. So glad I never played anything after 2nd edition. D&D used to be a great game, that was very challenging and hard to go up levels. Now it's an overpowered game where everyone flies up levels easily, but seeing that a Giant Corporation turned D&D into what it is now, I'm not surprised in any way. TSR's D&D is way better.

[@Xplora213]

Gygax/Arneson D&D was active and alive in 1989. Not so much now.

[@Lightmane]

@@Xplora213 Lots of people still play Old School D&D. Not nearly as many as play 5e obviously.

[@Xplora213]

@@Lightmane hence Not So Much Now 😂 But yeah I’m totally agreeing with your distaste in the new. The modern game is influenced by marketing more than truth in accomplishment. Get your players hooked on the endorphin rush of level creep early and then reach 10th level in 6 months of game time.

[@Lightmane]

@@Xplora213 It's sad what WotC did to Gary's game, but they never should've been allowed to buy it in the first place, just as no one should've been allowed to fire Gary from his own company. It's a stupid world that we live in. Corruption is the norm, and is celebrated. Welcome to The Twilight Zone.

[@Xplora213]

@@Lightmane Gary was a richer man selling it, i suspect. And he knew the truth… the game is at the table, not in the book.

[@HappyFunNorm]

I've been fiddling with the idea of rolling your to-hit d20 AND damage die at the same time and adding them together. Anything over the AC is applied as damage.

[@Recontramojado]

This is pretty cool... in a sense it's AC as DR but with only one roll.

[@gregh5665]

Great advice: average damage is a useful approach to simplify and speed up routine combat. But for those moments that really matter - when the stakes are high! when epic enemy is fighting with their last ounce of strength! or when the exhausted party is on its heels and fighting for its life! Make your choice and roll the dice. Average damage is predictable, routine. If you want tension, it's time to let the dice tell the tale!

[@lordofdorknessdm3085]

I recently implemented this D20 roll for determining damage for a new 5e game that's heavily house ruled (some 4e tactical conditions, critical hit cards, story cards for players each session, alternate crafting rules adapted from 3.5 Craft Points, and many ICRPG concepts to see how the players like it such as fixed Room DC (with +/- for Hard/Easy), clockwise turn rotation, 'hearts' for enemy HP, and others), and holy cow does it speed up my DM turn. I like rolling dice as much as other folks, but I have no problem using options to speed up my turn to get it back to the players (who still roll all of their dice for funsies). I heavily endorse this!

[@spaceflows]

I think this is great for certain tables. I run one group that would benefit from this streamlining, they’re more role-play heavy. My other group? Not so much. They are all about the crunch, and this would not go over at that table. A good tool to add to the kit nonetheless. Thanks Prof. DM!

[@AndyReichert0]

i love this, but my players also build to be able to optimize damage. so i like the idea of having checkpoints in along the slog to give it some value and narrate some process in taking them down instead of jumping from full power to dead. chopping off abilities, movement, etc. is a great suggestion. thank you.

[@greenman8]

@ 3:07 "On failure, a creature takes 45 (10d8) psychic damage and is stunned for 1 minute" Algebra taught me to simplify 10d8 -> 8d10 -> 4d20. Roll a 20-sided four times instead of an 8-sided ten times. (that sounds like a Chicago song from 1974)

[@stuartwebb2287]

As always, fantastic advice. Thanks Professor.

[@williamderkatzen8987]

The best description of hit point was in 1st edition! It’s a nebulous construct of skill, knowledge, luck, and other things that tells how long you can fight until a telling blow is struck. A dagger in the hands of a 1st level mage is just as deadly as a great sword in the hands of a 20th level knight. The circumstances listed above tell how long you can fight off those two opponents before you drop your defenses just long enough for that dagger or great sword find a weak spot and drive home your death.

[@russellharrell2747]

I think the light/serious/critical wounds from the old cure wounds progression is a good start to a damage rating for a ‘no HP’ system. The d20 rolled for ‘damage’ can indicate the type of wound taken. Light wounds are just scratches with no real consequence to the game (alternately the character might lose initiative next round or other minor effect). Serious wounds mean the character has disadvantage on all rolls. If a character with a serious wound is seriously wounded again then he becomes critically wounded and can’t do most actions (they are basically dying or permanently crippled at this point). If a critically wounded character is wounded again (even a light wound) they are dead. Maybe the d20 damage roll is opposed by a ‘toughness roll’ or some other mechanic. Like I said, it’s a start.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

I talk about this in my next video "Captain Crunch." Look for it in 2 weeks.

[@crowgoblin]

This just results in a death spiral.

[@wagz781]

An interesting suggestion. I personally prefer the bean counting when it comes to damage specifically. I like the more realistic nature of armor reducing damage rather than dnd's AC since it's tied into dodge more than anything. My own personal change would be remove the d20 from attack rolls entirely. Just roll your weapon's damage dice, plus statmod, plus PfB, and subtract target's armor value. Armor dex penalty then becomes applied to dex saving throws and dex based checks rather than AC. If you want to keep crits and advantage, that's easy to do. Just roll an extra die of damage whenever you have advantage. Multiple attacks? Multiple dice. If you roll max damage, roll an additional damage die and add that to the original roll. That's your crit. Though I personally remove crit fumbles. They're much more fun narratively for things like skill checks than attack rolls. Especially since most systems assume your characters are at least semi-competent at level 1. Spell attack rolls work similarly, but only magic armor applies it's armor value against magic damage. Which makes even a -1 piece of armor valuable since the curse still makes it magic. I would reccomend making HP numbers smaller if you use this method, such as lowering the Hit die by one size, or having a cut off point where you get 1+conmod instead of the full hitdie at a certain level. The latter method can lead to characters with negative con slowly withering as they get higher in level, but hey, there's always retirement or questing to unfuck their constitution.

[@adamjchafe]

Here's a thought; use the DCC dice chain and this chart for character builds. Fighters roll a d24 for Weapons but Wizards only roll a d16. Vice versa for magic!

[@plaidpvcpipe3792]

I just had an idea, maybe the d20 you roll to hit is also the damage die. This would mean that the only hits you take when wearing heavy armor are pretty deadly hits. It probably wouldn't work too well, at least for most games, but it's a thought.

[@Xplora213]

No, it’s a great idea! It does require you to start abstracting quite quickly because D&D assumes a damage dice for different weapon types and I’m not sure I’m keen on exposing myself to so much risk…

[@plaidpvcpipe3792]

@@Xplora213 i just had a thought on this. Weapons could have a flat damage. You get an extra point of damage for each number above 15 and negative for each below 15, going down to 1. If a shortsword does 5 damage but you rolled a 19, you would do 9 damage. But if you rolled a 12, you’d only do 2. Alternatively the midpoint could just be the AC, or something lower like 12.

[@Xplora213]

@@plaidpvcpipe3792 you have moved to Wounds aka single hits and then dead, which is more wargame than rpg. It’s completely viable but you can’t use the D&D stat blocks because you will quickly move beyond the results. It’s a brand new game and that’s not a bad thing either.

[@macoppy6571]

Deathbringer is so powerful that Old Spice premieres their D&D crossover advertisement on his show.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Nice!

[@TheGenericavatar]

I heard Hit Points described as 'Likelyhood of Death'.

[@filipr8386]

Even though i'm a master ofd Advanced by heart (i love knowing and using the rules as they are, rare exceptions), this channel is agreat font of inspiration

[@adamjchafe]

One other cool thing about HP; PCs and monsters can both use different systems. If your players like having high HP numbers they are doing that tracking anyway. But for all those monsters you have to run? Just make it narrative like in this chart! Excellent advice and discussion as always.

[@igrgic1]

I love how Open Legend RPG does it. You attack with a d20 + extra die/s based on how much points you invest into your damage stat. If the attack roll beats enemy AC, the damage done is (attack roll-AC), minimum damage you do is 3

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

That's a cool idea. Requires too much math for me though.

[@liamcage7208]

Over the years I've tried various methods to speed up combat. The one thing that I do that works the best over all is fewer hit points. I have the players roll for new hit point every second level up to a max of level 11. With the monster its just half hit points. But still I have one player who is a borderline rules lawyer and complains that we need to play the game "...as it was intended to be played". Another player goes straight to his iPhone when its not his turn. Then when it is his turn again he wants a recap of what just happened. He doesn't get one but he still wants one. (I allow phones because some of the players have to be on-call for work). The one thing everyone universally enjoys though is rolling for damage.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Those two players would drive me crazy. I hope they bring you pizza.

[@GodzillasaurusJr]

3:53 haha! My current group members do usually bring beer, wine, baked goods, potato chips etc., but that made me laugh out loud.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

You have a good group.

[@samchafin4623]

Yep; HP is useful because when the numbers are low, it's intuitive. Once you have more than about 30, our poor little monkey brains start rounding it into "a lot". "Oh, the dragon bit me, and I lost a lot of hit points, but I still have a lot, so I'm OK." I like anything that cuts through that noise, escalates the tension, and keeps the action moving.

[@dirigoallagash3464]

These vids always remind me how much I love Free League's Year Zero Engine. I like rolling dice, just not tons of them leading to math! ;-)

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

I must read that.

[@LordOz3]

I've considered a static damage value (based on weapon) plus the margin of success - so hit by 5 with a 4 damage weapon would by 9 damage. This doesn't solve the granular hit point problem, but combines attack and damage in one roll.

[@WikiSnapper]

This reminds me of a system where as, instead of keeping track of hit points, you decide. This monster should last about 3 turns. If the two or 3 of the players miss, you add a turn onto it. If a player crits, you cut two turns from it. Then monsters are tracked easy like.

[@hueysimon2726]

Check out Dungeonslayers combat system. One d20 roll for attack and damage. The difference between your attack score and the enemy's defense score is the amount of damage you do.

[@VICT0RLAZL0]

Savage Worlds Wounds Low henchmen/minions have one Monsters and main villans have 3 wounds. Each wound is a -1 to everything. Fast, furious and fun 😉

[@emarsk77]

Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland's approach is another interesting one: - no roll-to-hit: everyone rolls directly the weapon damage die (typically d6 or d8) - low HP (which don't represent health, but "hit protection"): d6 for characters, maybe a bit higher for monsters - once HP is 0, damage lowers Strength _and_ triggers a Strength save roll do avoid a serious injury that leaves the character downed and in need of assistance In practice, this produces a very fast combat where almost every blow has some risk of being decisive, and that within a couple of turns forces the players to make some important choice: either press on, or run away, or gain the upper hand with something clever that is not just hitting. On top of that, Electric Bastionland has also the unusual rule that multiple attackers on the same target don't just add their damage rolls, but instead only keep the highest die. This has the effect that ganging up gives some advantage but never makes combat trivially easy, and gives players more freedom because doing something else than "I attack too" can be tactically more useful.

[@amyloriley]

Big fan of the Stress system from Blades in the Dark. A player has a Stress meter that goes from 0 to 9, increasing each time they take damage. Once it's full, imagine them being knocked out. They gain a permanent Trauma, but let's ignore that for now. The additive idea for hit points (0 to 9, rather than 9 to 0) is not the revolutionary thing here. It's this: - The DM can never *ever* by rule of the game never deal Stress damage to you. Instead, the DM narrates conditions like "the bandit whacks your leg with a hammer. Your leg is now broken." - Then the player is given the opportunity to accept this, or to undo this. -- If they accept, they now have a character with a broken leg. -- If they don't want it, they can roll 1d6, reduce the result by 1 to 3 (minimum to 0) depending on the chosen saving throw ability; take that much Stress damage; and then.... undo the narration of the DM. "The bandit tried to whack your leg, but you jumped away just in time." This way, the DM can make it nasty for the players and deal massive damage (falling rocks, dragon breath, etc.) without too much worry, since the players can always choose to take Stress damage instead. It's up to the players to choose when to take the damage and when to undo it using Stress. Narratively, Stress is meant to make the player characters stand out as main characters. Without Stress, a player character has roughly the same strength as any other character; given that city guards are stronger than artisans and there is some flexibility in what "the same strength" means. But with Stress, this is the system that can bring the characters from rags to riches; or allow them to reach any other campaign goal.

[@Xplora213]

I have read dozens of comments and responded to many but it is now clear to me. The dice Are chance and fate, but some players want their tactics and choices (including weapon type and armour during character creation and trips to the local blacksmith) to matter. Dozens of feats and subclass variants, along with a dozen pole arms (glaive guisarme FTW) do not create a better quality outcome, unless the outcome is the empowerment of player choice. The d20 damage table destroys the accountant min max autism spectrum style of play. If you played second edition ad&d you knew that long sword, then short sword, was the only options unless you also had the katana available. A dozen pole arms meant nothing. Because the rules created obvious choices. I wanted to strip away the Insta kills for orcs in my game so no sharp edges or points. Flails and Warhammer. Four levels later, average 15 hit points per round per player if they roll 15 or above. The illusion of DM control is real as well. We hated min max back in the day because it just meant someone was way better at controlling their outcomes in a game that was supposed to be about chance. That’s ultimately it. How much do you want to roll dice, How much do you want to let players hide an ace up their sleeve, How much do you want to look up tables upon tables? A last point… this is very much a war game inspired issue. There is no benefit to having the high ground in my mind but if i had to attack 200 times at once i would want every advantage. A WAR GAME specifically wants to reflect tactical wisdom because it’s always just averages from a high command perspective. 💡 so many people can’t detach themselves from that control. They want to granular benefits from their choice of weapon and feats even when it’s just an average of outcomes… maybe some of us treat our character as an army of one? I wouldn’t like to sacrifice my character to one roll… when i can grab the PHB and squeeze another few hit points out of the Build. I do not want to expose my character to these lazy DM systems, but I will certainly expose my players to them. I am happy to fudge the dice for them if needed. But i want that control (so to speak) for myself. Cheers 🍻

[@mr7oclock346]

Scarlett Heroes has a good damage system too. You are basically using the enemies HD instead of HP, and then using a chart to calculate the damage.

[@chrisandlizsizemore8172]

For live play I'm absolutely for this. Moves things along, keeps the story enticing and immersive, etc. For online play and VTT's all the calculations are done for you and you can even automate as much as you want to your preference. To that end I prefer the more war game aspect of dnd and as a DM I only do open rolls, even to the point where monsters are auto-marked in their health condition for more transparency. For bosses I use a health boss bar they can watch go down when they hit! Like you said - rolling lots of dice is exciting, even if virtual! I'll of course add story and descriptions between turns, but my preference for now on VTT play is open rolls + normal 5e rules. In the end, the most important thing is fun for the table.

[@MarkFinn]

Nice to see you coming off the chain for this one. Great video, good advice.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Thanks!

[@chalkboy8]

Replace Damage Dice? I'm not a hippie.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Lol. Neither am I

[@victorriva91]

I've been waiting for this video. It's more or less what I imagined it would be.

[@elminweatherbee7672]

I have always seen HP as endurance for damage. It doesn't make sense to heal HP on a short rest if it is a realized wound. A magic heal makes sense with wounds, but not hit dice.

[@Stonegolem6]

There's always that pull between abstraction and simulation, like 5ft squares. No we aren't standing five ft apart and taking turns swinging swords at eachother.

[@Nate-lq8jc]

You could strip out the entire melee and ranged combat system with The One Ring 2e's system. 1d12+multiple d6 (say 1d6 per attribute bonus you use to attack.) Ac stays the same. Movement is the same. Any dice that comes up a 6 can be burned for special abilities or weapon abilities. Suddenly the game is way more dynamic. And piercing blows can remove death saves. Remove all 3 and you die. Hp be damned.

[@GreasusGoldtooth]

Here's a secret my players will never learn: I ignore damage dice and don't use hit points at all. Weak enemies die in one or two hits. Strong enemies take five or six. Epic enemies die whenever I think they should.

[@doughollingsworth6548]

As a GM/DM, I feel your pain of players showing up late,not prepared and never bringing a good ale to the table,at 3:55 in your video.🙄 But this presentation did open the eyes as it were,to making high level combat less of a slog. And no one wants that!😆

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Watch Monday. I will discuss players who fail to show up. You'll love it. Thanks for watching!

[@ToddPutnam]

Another wonderful video. As always, you bring great resources to the table for DMs. Switching to Shadowdark RPG in part due to your last video, which means high hit points (power creep, Death Saves, Darkvision, etc) are no longer an issue. I hope to see more Shadowdark coverage in the future too. It feels like the best of OSR & modern TTRPGs combined so you don't have to use a bunch of homebrew rules and workarounds at the table. You can just play with a simple system that works.

[@jaytomioka3137]

One of my hacks is to make combats an opposed roll and damage equals the difference. Armor reduces damage. By making the to hit roll and the damage roll the same, you save time at the table and can make the abstraction more about the comparable skill of the combatants.

[@patrickmooney4135]

"The game isn't real? We can make up??" How dare you! LOL.

[@rynowatcher]

I had heard of an Alt hp system similar to this: ac - attack roll with the however they go over being the hp damage. You have your hit dice max as hp (ie, barbarian 12 hp max with ac 17 takes 2 damage if the attack roll is 19). Saves work the same way; ie barbarian with 12 hp max makes a DEX save versus the goblin shaman's fireball save of DC 12 of 5, so he takes 7 hp damage. Never tried it out, but I thought it had legs. I do not really think bigger weapons make sense doing more damage in regards to a person in medeval combat; that has been a fairly arbitrary thing for the game from the beginning and one rooted in "Conan used a sword, so they are awesome and should do more damage than a spear because Conan never uses one in the books," logic. A pick ax will get through stone faster that a great sword, and a lot of mideval weapons were made smaller, thinner, and shaped certain ways to get between armor plates. An arrow to the eye, a dagger to the neck, and an ax to the head are all equally deadly. Generally, the only reason a 3.5 foot sword is better than a 6 inch knife is you can stab someone from 3 feet further away with the sword, and it becomes a liability if your opponent is too close.

[@RockinBobXYZ]

Exactly. Longer weapons aren’t more deadly - their benefit is providing protection to the wielder by giving them better reach. They should really grant a benefit to AC, not damage.

[@rynowatcher]

@@RockinBobXYZ yeah, I have seen some hacks where it gives a higher attack bonus at certain ranges; ie daggers do +4 if bases are touching and +0 if the enemy is adjacent but bases are not touching/ same but opposite for swords.

[@Piqipeg]

I'd love to se what you'd think of the EON system version of this, instead of HP it has Pain, Bleeding and Trauma. How much you can withstand is based on your stats, but if either of those runs out you die. Too bad they never did a english version of it though.

[@garwynrosser8907]

The "drop to 0 hp" has a unintentional side effect of railroading combat. It becomes a trigger that is more difficult to set off as you go higher in levels. It has more and more exceptions to consider as time goes on. These charts add a behavioral AI to encounters. Beasts may go berserk below %50, intelligent creatures may beg or run away, demons and devil's may bargain for power and dragons may offer information about powerful artifacts or patronage. Death isn't always the most interesting thing to happen. But that hp timer is ticking and the DM only has a limited time to do something interesting.

[@RIVERSRPGChannel]

Interesting idea. I learned a little here today too. Good stuff

[@Wraithing]

Well said! Makes sense to me that a PC's initial d20 attack roll should define their % damage dealt - rather than generating a new and disconnected variable. Roll high on your d20… woohoo, it's a nat 19! That's fantastic, right? Nah. Damage roll was all 1s. WTF!? It just disconnects the roll we said was important from the result. And, hey, if your players like rolling lots of d6s, there's a WEG RPG for that.

[@matthewmcguigan4293]

Just DMed my second game of deathbringer tonight. Had my players roll their attacks and roll the monster's attacks. We group rolled for massive damage from monsters and I rolled Damage for small monsters. Every player used our house rule to avoid death from the Red Dragon's breath weapon sacrificing one of their currently weilded weapons. Combat is fun again!

[@combatsurvivalofalabama1835]

I have worked in healthcare for 25 years and try to bring details into our combat that make it feel real. I love this idea and feel like it would make players more engaged in the game

[@bradleypatterson5384]

True 20 system by Green Ronin did something similar in the 2000s. The concept of the game was you played with just a d20. It had a lot of good ides, my favorite was the classes where you had a flat bonus to combat and saves but you custome built the class features using feats that were added each level. Very flexible, lot of Savage Worlds parallels.

[@patkelley8293]

I'm reading XDM right now. I have quite a few manuals and none of them get into what matters like this book. It's sits right next to my manuals where it belongs.

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

It is one of the most valuable books I have.

[@JMcMillen]

The 'wound' system was actually used in the 2nd ed AD&D BattleSystem Skirmishes rules that were designed for large, but not army level battles.

[@JaredManninen]

Love it! A very cool approach to dealing with damage 👏

[@paulwilson269]

I have toyed around with just using the attack roll as the damage die. Each number on a d20 can be thought of as 5% (5 x 20 = 100). I have used spreadsheets (or a calculator on your phone) to use this to work out damage. Each number you hit or exceed the AC of a target, you gain 5% of the damage die (round down). Bonus damage, from strength, magic, etc aren't effected by this and added after. It is just the damage dice that is effected. For example if you had a character roll a D10 as the base dice damage, and had +3 for strength against a target with AC 14. If the character rolled a 14 exactly, they would do 1 (from the damage dice) +3 (from their strength). For a total of 4 damage. If the character rolled an 18 for their attack, they would do 3 (exceed the AC by 4 which give +2 with a D10) + 3 for their strength, giving a total of 6 damage. The down side is that it takes a bit more calculation, but makes the roll of the attack more dramatic, and spells like true strike useful. And as there are only a few dice you need to work thisbou5 for, you can just use a tavle to look up the results (and print out with you home printer) So, even though it does require a bit more prep and a few seconds to loon at the chart, it isn't any more than a critical hit chart, or such and many people accept those. And, rolling and adding dice take time too.

[@DGB_Smyth]

Yes to EZD6!!!!! Everyone needs to play this game.

[@brucemcbride3308]

This is kind of funny- the MASSIVE amount of character fine- tuning and "customization" that all leads to ... characters that do the same average amount of damage and are all equally unlikely to ever suffer any lasting harm... makes you think why NOT take the silly math away, trust the DM to run a game that is about high and low moments on the swinging drama & tension scale, and let all the character customization lead to better story? Great video Prof DM!

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Thank you!

[@ZamboniZone]

This reminds me of Mutants and Masterminds. True 20 system. Instead of hit points you had a toughness score. You would roll you damage (always d20s) and subtract the targets Toughness score from it. Difference of 5 was stunned (-2 to abilities which could stack) difference if 10 was staggered etc. It took some getting use to but it made combat a lot faster

[@Belly6815]

This is awesome news about XDM 2nd edition. First one is a great read

[@tripp4130]

Great content as usual 👏 thanks 👍

[@DUNGEONCRAFT1]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@gregh5665]

Classic fantasy hero backstories: "He was an enslaved orphan from Cimmeria" "He was a simple farmer from Hobbiton." "He wasn't a mideival pikeman, he was an insuance salesman from Wisconsin. (6:12)"

[@LotharTChips]

If you are worried about the vague nature of the rule then just use armor class. Combine it with the to hit roll. After all this situation is supposed to represent how well you land a strike through their defense. Basically have matching ac be minor damage and go up a level of magnitude each 1 or 2 points. Same idea, but it does mean you base it off an in game Stat. Convert it to hp if that makes the idea easy to manage for you.