Wyverns & Warrens Preview: When Are Hit Points Not Hit Points? (Patreon)

(This article is not covered under the OGL 1.0a.)

Wyverns & Warrens (or "WyvWar") is my current ongoing attempt to design a short, easy, fantasy ttRPG that still had a depth of options. I'm doing previews of concepts for my Patrons, and open to your feedback.

Hit Points. Sort Of.

WyvWar has a mechanism currently called "Hit Points," but I am very likely to change that name, because they don't act like Hit Points in any other system I'm aware of that uses that term. In other words, they are not primarily a measure of how much damage you can take -- if someone deals 7 points of damage, those don't come off a character's "Hit Points." Instead, Hit Points are primarily points a character expends to hit, and avoid being hit. So, as much as I love having my game mechanic about being hit or hitting others (separate from damage) being called 'Hit Points,' it's bad game design to take a term you KNOW most players of your game are familiar with and have it work totally differently than they're used to.

But in a draft, I can call them what I like to entertain myself, and it's an easy fix when I move to a playtest manuscript.

(Art by Nyothep)

So, in WyvWar, Hit Points are used once per round to ignore damage when you get hit by an attack, and to deal damage with an attack that otherwise would miss. The baseline is that if you get hit by an attack and wish to ignore it, you expend 2 Hit Points. Similarly, if you miss with an attack and want to connect anyway, you expend 2 Hit Points.

There will be a (hopefully short and intuitive) list of factors that will modify that -- the core Edge of the Warrior path (we'll get to edges and paths later, but hopefully the usage is clear enough here for an example) allows you to ignore weapon damage for just 1 Hit Point, carrying a shield allows you to spend Hit Points to ignore damage twice per round, a cloak of fire resistance lets you ignore fire damage for just 1 Hit Point, and so on.

Similarly, if you take the Lancer path, you get a core Edge that lets you have a polearm attack deal damage even if you missed for just 1 Hit Point, and an Archer path can do the same with a bow.

Some special abilities require the expenditure of Hit Points. A character on the Mage path who selects Fire magic can shoot a typical firebolt at will, can cast a more powerful firelance by expending a Power Point (which all characters get to fuel some of their abilities), but must expend both a Power Point and a Hit Point to cast a fireball.

Characters don't get many Hit Points -- as few as 2, and no more than 12 even for the highest-level heroes -- but they do gain them as they gain experience. And there are ways to regain 

This is separate from Health, which kicks in when you actually take damage. For most characters, Health does not automatically increase when you gain experience (though there are options to gain more health if you choose to expend character customization options on it, which you gain as you gain levels).

Characters don't have a great deal of health, and while damage tends to be kept in vary low values (just so the game isn't slowed down by adding up 10d6, or 2d8+1d5+14, or whatever), actually taking damage even once is something most characters want to avoid.

And that's all the "points" I plan for players to ever have to track in WyvWar -- Hit Points (to be renamed), Power Points, and Health.