I hate combat

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I don't. They are all a game concept to determine how long it takes to render a combatant incapable of continuing. The difference is only window dressing when you get down to it.
Sorry man, robertsconley robertsconley and Skarg Skarg already answered that. From my side I'll only add that yes, you can make D&D account for the difference between meat and HP, but 1) the results are usually unsatisfactory and 2) at this point you basically have switched to a system that uses meatpoints as its core...basically confirming that yes, there is a large difference:thumbsup:!
 
Yup, you can try to mod the various editions of DnD to do things that GURPS or BRP systems do and many of us have made that attempt over the decades, in the end it feels clunky and unsatisfactory. You'll end up thinking why did you bother and why didn't you simply run a game based on those systems instead.

Skarg Skarg mentioned Douglas Cole's excellent Dragon Heresy for DnD 5e, even that kept the game play mechanics to low level if I recall due to system mechanics issues in Douglas's mind if I am remembering correctly. Fifth level was the cut off point.
 
Yup, you can try to mod the various editions of DnD to do things that GURPS or BRP systems do and many of us have made that attempt over the decades, in the end it feels clunky and unsatisfactory. You'll end up thinking why did you bother and why didn't you simply run a game based on those systems instead.

Skarg Skarg mentioned Douglas Cole's excellent Dragon Heresy for DnD 5e, even that kept the game play mechanics to low level if I recall due to system mechanics issues in Douglas's mind if I am remembering correctly. Fifth level was the cut off point.
5th level was because it was designed as a Introductory set.

And Douglas Cole Douglas Cole has a comment on DriveThruRPG about that as well.


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5th level was because it was designed as a Introductory set.

And Douglas Cole Douglas Cole has a comment on DriveThruRPG about that as well.


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Nice, I'm a fan of Douglas. Backed all his Kickstarter 's from Dungeon Fantasy and TFT stuff. Now that he's doing this full time I'm sure we'll see more Dragon Heresy for 5e. I can't appear to help myself when it comes to collecting none WotC 5e stuff. Even if I'll never run it. Lol
 
*The whole reason people bother with injury to get something that either echoes what happens in life, or echoes what they read or saw. Both in life and fiction it is rare for a character to depicted as either ready to fight or completely unable to fight. Most of the character get injured, are not fighting as well, and that reflected in how the action goes.
Oh, I think I get it. You want a Hit to represent a Hit. You were stating that with the term "Meat Points" but somehow that was lost on me. So I'm now interpreting the objecting that with escalating HP, a guy gets hit by a howitzer. The guy with low HP is turned to disassociated parts while the guy with high HP is not even lightly wounded. Since a Hit is a HIt and not supposed to represent wearing down or luck or other some stuff, this is verisimilitude breaking when paired with the idea that HP represent physical wounds. If that's it, then I think I get it, because that's the same thing that bugs me.

You could still use the wounding levels based on differing levels of HP, but with escalating HP it does become more of a measure of fatigue with the combat and being worn down by constant attacks than distinct wounds. It becomes more of a "when you cross this threshold of damage, is when you take this type of wound" than "when you take this much damage in a single strike is when you take this type of wound."
 
Oh, I think I get it. You want a Hit to represent a Hit. You were stating that with the term "Meat Points" but somehow that was lost on me. So I'm now interpreting the objecting that with escalating HP, a guy gets hit by a howitzer. The guy with low HP is turned to disassociated parts while the guy with high HP is not even lightly wounded. Since a Hit is a HIt and not supposed to represent wearing down or luck or other some stuff, this is verisimilitude breaking when paired with the idea that HP represent physical wounds. If that's it, then I think I get it, because that's the same thing that bugs me.

You could still use the wounding levels based on differing levels of HP, but with escalating HP it does become more of a measure of fatigue with the combat and being worn down by constant attacks than distinct wounds. It becomes more of a "when you cross this threshold of damage, is when you take this type of wound" than "when you take this much damage in a single strike is when you take this type of wound."
Basically, yes.
Also, when the Thief backstabs with his X2 damage multiplier and delivers his maximum 12 HP damage to a guy who got lucky enough to have 13 HP, that guy is unimpeded and can fight normally...until he takes another Hit, that is. Because that one's gonna be fatal, assuming we have 0HP meaning death. And he can shout the alarm, too.

Conversely, when the guy with the same Shortsword backstabs you in a Mythras game, you're down and no alarm has been shouted...

But other than that, "the difference is only window dressing when you get down to it", according to Stevethulhu Stevethulhu ... and he wonders why I disagreed:thumbsup:. (Sorry, Steve, you're not going to persuade me on this one:shade:).
 
Sorry man, robertsconley robertsconley and Skarg Skarg already answered that. From my side I'll only add that yes, you can make D&D account for the difference between meat and HP, but 1) the results are usually unsatisfactory and 2) at this point you basically have switched to a system that uses meatpoints as its core...basically confirming that yes, there is a large difference:thumbsup:!
Only I'm not talking about what hit points of any kind represent. Other than as a purely mechanical construct used in play. I don't care that AD&D hit points don't work to represent physical trauma. I don't care that BRP hit points don't work to represent how good you might be at avoiding physical trauma.

What matters is they are a construct of the game system. They are an arbitrary way of tracking how long your character can stay in combat before you need to make a new one.

So no, that hasn't been answered. And no, there really isn't a difference because I'm not looking for justifications of why a particular scale is being used to measure how many hit points a character has. GURPS HT, Cyberpunk wound tracks. All fundamentally the same. True20 goes for something different, with damage saves. SAme with the Star Wars D6 line.

But hit points are just a number that gets reduced until your character is out of the fight.
 
Stevethulhu Stevethulhu makes me want to hide in a dark closet with door pulled shut holding clutching a copy of GURPS in one hand and in the other a copy of BRP while muttering make the bad, bad man go away.

Or in other words, heresy!
 
Stevethulhu Stevethulhu makes me want to hide in a dark closet with door pulled shut holding clutching a copy of GURPS in one hand and in the other a copy of BRP while muttering make the bad, bad man go away.

Or in other words, heresy!
"Oh great Stafford and Jackson let not the heretic poison my soul with his words. Yours is the way of the crunch and I commend my wallet to your supplement threadmill now and forever"
 
Only I'm not talking about what hit points of any kind represent.
Yeah, that's the problem. You're not - but I very much am!

And yes, you got an answer that was satisfactory in my book, so I don't see the need to write another:thumbsup:. According to your logic, since all wounding systems are "an arbitrary way of tracking how long your character can stay in combat before you need to make a new one", there's no difference between any of them.
If that was true, there would have been no need for different wounding systems. If those exist, obviously some people - like me and others in this thread - agree that you can't get the same results that a proper meatpoints system provides, with inferior tools like HP:shade:.

I mean, maybe you and M Moonglum agree that "the actual experience of playing combat systems in roleplaying games is surprisingly similar in virtually all systems"...but all it means is that it feels similar to you.
To us, the differences matter very much.
Honestly, this is starting to remind me the conversation we have every time the issue of dissociated mechanics comes up. Camp A: "It's the same to me, so obviously those mechanics are the same". Camp B: "Not again! It makes a large difference to us, sorry".
 
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What matters is they are a construct of the game system. They are an arbitrary way of tracking how long your character can stay in combat before you need to make a new one.
GURPS and D100 style hit points don't just how long your character can stay in combat. That the difference. GURPS, BRP and other similar systems handle the in between cases as well. Where the character can still fight but not as well. The primary reason for this is that the author wanted physical injury explicitly represented by the system. And in both system and others they opted to use the same basic mechanic of a number you subtract from but used in a different way with a different scale.
 
GURPS and D100 style hit points don't just how long your character can stay in combat. That the difference. GURPS, BRP and other similar systems handle the in between cases as well. Where the character can still fight but not as well. The primary reason for this is that the author wanted physical injury explicitly represented by the system. And in both system and others they opted to use the same basic mechanic of a number you subtract from but used in a different way with a different scale.
That's because Greg Stafford was involved with the SCA on some level and Steve Jackson wanted to model injury in a more 'realistic' way. Of course, so did Mike Pondsmith with Cyberpunk. And that's had several variations on its combat system.

But to answer AsenRG AsenRG, most combat systems are more alike than they are different. Roll to hit, roll damage, apply effects of damage. What system is that? What about roll to hit, roll defence, roll location, roll damage, apply effects of damage. What system is that?

Those two descriptions cover about 85% of RPGs.
 
That's because Greg Stafford was involved with the SCA on some level and Steve Jackson wanted to model injury in a more 'realistic' way. Of course, so did Mike Pondsmith with Cyberpunk. And that's had several variations on its combat system.

But to answer AsenRG AsenRG, most combat systems are more alike than they are different. Roll to hit, roll damage, apply effects of damage. What system is that? What about roll to hit, roll defence, roll location, roll damage, apply effects of damage. What system is that?

Those two descriptions cover about 85% of RPGs.
Well, the former system isn't BRP, and the latter isn't AD&D.
You know, the two systems you agreed with Moonglum produce remarkably similar results in combat...and which don't work the same way according yo your description:devil:.
 
That's because Greg Stafford was involved with the SCA on some level and Steve Jackson wanted to model injury in a more 'realistic' way. Of course, so did Mike Pondsmith with Cyberpunk. And that's had several variations on its combat system.

But to answer AsenRG AsenRG, most combat systems are more alike than they are different. Roll to hit, roll damage, apply effects of damage. What system is that? What about roll to hit, roll defence, roll location, roll damage, apply effects of damage. What system is that?

Those two descriptions cover about 85% of RPGs.
Most cars, you get in, use the gas and brake to control speed, and use the steering wheel to turn. Therefore, Ferraris and Jeeps are pretty much the same.
 
You could still use the wounding levels based on differing levels of HP, but with escalating HP it does become more of a measure of fatigue with the combat and being worn down by constant attacks than distinct wounds. It becomes more of a "when you cross this threshold of damage, is when you take this type of wound" than "when you take this much damage in a single strike is when you take this type of wound."

The issue is that your interpretation is as good as any other including how I handle it. Unless you redesign the system there is no getting around it only addressed combat endurance in the first place. And combat endurance at best has a vague definition.

For example in GURPS I can build a fighter around High Pain Threshold, High Health, and High Strength and another fighter around high weapon skills, specific techniques, and a high Dexterity and each can wind up with the same average amount of "combat endurance" when pitted against the same set of foes. But how each achieves that combat endurance is very different.

So with a more abstract system like D&D, there are many equally plausible ways of describing how a character survived a howitzer hit when they have a high number of hit points.
So I'm now interpreting the objecting that with escalating HP, a guy gets hit by a howitzer. The guy with low HP is turned to disassociated parts while the guy with high HP is not even lightly wounded.

I started playing OD&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry as my primary system a decade ago because I was interested in sharing my adventures and setting. The best way to do that is present in a way that is most useful to the customer which in most case means a form of D&D. I got started when 4e was released and Pathfinder was just rumbles on the Paizo forums. So I opted for Swords & Wizardry. Since most of my stuff was stat light using 3.X would mean just dropping in the appropriate stat block from the Monster Manual.

But I wasn't going to just jettison decades worth of GURPS notes. Nor I was going to tell people playing older editions that they were doing it "wrong". So I thought long and hard about what I needed to make my stuff work smoothly with older edition editions. First off it was treating some of my most important GURPS character templates as classes, and adding an ability system to handle things outside of combat and spellcasting. And to allow certain to be better at some things outside of combat and spellcasting.

And to make sure my stuff was up to par, I playtest a lot at conventions and ran a few campaigns using Swords & Wizardry and the rules I created.

After I did this came a wave of books, posts, and anecdotes about the early days of the hobby. A side effect of this that in many cases you can trace how various D&D mechanics developed from their use in various wargames. For example numerical armor class probably originated in part from a civil war ironclad game.

Now five years later, I could see different ways of handling situation that proven to be problematic in D&D.

Sorry for being long winded but this brings it around to why I quoted your howitzers comment. In my experience D&D hit points work fairly well when it comes to melee combat where folks are shooting or whacking away at each other. But as your howitzer example illustrates it starts to break down at some point.

The way I would deal with this while still keeping the result D&Dish (I know a nebulous concept). Is instead of straight damage, I would use saving throws. Saving Throw were introduce to allow character a chance to avoid "something bad" happening to them. We all heard of classic D&D insta-death traps, spells, and effect. Well Gygax and Arneson quickly realized right off the bat that stuff wasn't fun without some chance to avoid the danger. Nor insta-death was always plausible. Sometimes it was a 50-50 situation. So the save was tried and it stuff around as part of the game.

So something like a howitzer hit is better represented by using a save to resolve it's effect. So rather than extending hit points and damage dice to cover massive damage weapons. Instead if impacted these weapons require a save. And it may be that is so massive that even a successful save results in a detrimental effect.

For a howitzer hit, I think the reduction of combat endurance would be a side effect of even a successful save. And death would result because of a failed save. Plus a howitzer hit has an area effect so the to-hit roll on the part of the gunner isn't to hit a target but an area. And who ever inside the blast radius will have to save.

So you make your save against the howitzer. Why? Well you will have to look at the character and come up with a plausible reason. Also, you make your save but suffer say 6d6 damage as a result. A 7th level fighter survives and a 1st level fighter goes down. To me that OK because there more than a few tales in fiction and life where the young warrior dies but the grizzled veteran survives because of the difference in experience.

So 6d6 in classic D&D terms is saying that the referee believes that on average a 6th level character will survive being caught in a howitzer blast range and was lucky enough to find cover or ducked. If you don't think that sounds right and think that a 3rd level character ought to have that chance then drop the damage on a successful save to 3d6.

It a bit of an art to come up with a good ruling that "feel" right when all you have is hit points, AC, a to-hit, 3 to 18 attributes, levels, etc. But I found it can be done and it helps to understand how those mechanics came about.

But wrapping it up, for me it a hell of lot easier for me to use GURPS to come up with a consistent set of rolls that make sense to the players to handle a situation.
 
Most cars, you get in, use the gas and brake to control speed, and use the steering wheel to turn. Therefore, Ferraris and Jeeps are pretty much the same.
I buy a 1957 Les Paul for £20k or an Epihone Les Paul Standard for £500. Am I buying 40 times the guitar?

That's as relevant as your point.

A more pertinent point would be, are games written 40 years ago objectively different. Or are new games vastly different and better, giving and all new experience?
 
I tried it as well. The results were unsatisfactory. It didn't work because across various editions D&D Hit Points quickly inflate compared to the damage dealt. And there are also other GIURPS damage rules that I didn't post that have similar issues. Namely the one ones that deal with happen as a result of the damage from a single hit.

In short doing the math and applying the rules works but produces nonsensical* results compared to GURPS once you get beyond 2nd or 3rd level. And starting with 3e edition it starts to get weird after 1st level.

*The whole reason people bother with injury to get something that either echoes what happens in life, or echoes what they read or saw. Both in life and fiction it is rare for a character to depicted as either ready to fight or completely unable to fight. Most of the character get injured, are not fighting as well, and that reflected in how the action goes.

Application of GURPS injury rules work from a technical standpoint, but the result in my experience feels neither like life or what I read or see. It winds up being it own thing with it own feel. Which may fun to play and use, but for me is not what I was going for when I decided to use GURPS. Or how I modded OD&D to produce my Majestic Fantasy rules.
I'm not familiar enough which all of the intricacies of GURPS combat, but some of the ideas CAN travel over to a D&D-like system given some considerations.

In Cold Iron, when you go below 1/2 your hit points, your combat effectiveness goes down. This mixes just fine with the increasing hit points as increased endurance in combat. The part that may or may not mix fine is you can also be stunned if you take more than 1/2 your hit points in a single blow. Of course that amount increases as you advance in level and gain more hit points to the point where it doesn't happen often. However, due to open ended attack rolls that produce open ended damage, you are never immune from stunning. So how well it mixes depends on how you view the increased combat endurance and resilience as you gain levels. One interesting idea that could be explored - keep stunning at taking more than 1/2 CON in a single blow, and if you worry that makes stunning TOO easy because magic weapons and such are increasing damage, make it more damage than 1/2 CON + Level or something. There are other factors in play that tend to increase the damage dealt in a single blow faster than probably happens in D&D so these ideas don't break as badly in Cold Iron as they would in D&D.

What Cold Iron does NOT do is try and make any translation of damage points to physical injury such as broken bones. You also aren't at risk of bleeding to death until your hit points are exhausted (a more "realistic" combat system would allow for wounds that wouldn't necessarily incapacitate you will eventually succumb to blood loss if not treated).

But yea, in general, if you want to have more detailed injury, the D&D model of escalating hit points isn't going to work well.

The thing that eventually drove me away from TFT though was that character advancement really didn't contribute meaningfully to combat endurance/resilience. In RQ, you get hit less often, you hit easier, you do more damage (more likely to use damage enhancing spells), healing is much more available, etc. So more experienced characters can fight more encounters in a dungeon before retreating compared to beginning characters. In TFT, I felt my experienced PC was just as much at risk from goblins as when he started.
 
I'm not familiar enough which all of the intricacies of GURPS combat, but some of the ideas CAN travel over to a D&D-like system given some considerations.

Sure, we can see that here and you have a couple of choices to boot for example Injury versus Vitality.


The problem isn't that you can't get to B from the A of D&D the problem is that B winds up being it own thing. And some choices forces other consequences. For example vitality only works if the editions has attributes stats for monsters as well as characters.

Most monsters, on the other hand, have both wound points and vitality points. For Small, Medium and Large creatures, a monster’s wound point total is equal to its current Constitution score. Creatures smaller or larger than that have their wound point total multiplied by a factor based on their size, as indicated on the table.
So if I tried to use vitality with Swords & Wizardry I would have to come up with a Con score for all the monsters.

What this process will result in is Runequest. Not literally Runequest but the system started out as Steve Perrin's modifications to D&D. Then at some point, within a short amount of time (a year) he rewrote it into the draft of what became Runequest.

There are other factors in play that tend to increase the damage dealt in a single blow faster than probably happens in D&D so these ideas don't break as badly in Cold Iron as they would in D&D.

I found the links you posted about Cold Iron and while I didn't read it in depth it looks that system shows a similar process. A few changes on top of D&D then becoming it own thing.

What Cold Iron does NOT do is try and make any translation of damage points to physical injury such as broken bones. You also aren't at risk of bleeding to death until your hit points are exhausted (a more "realistic" combat system would allow for wounds that wouldn't necessarily incapacitate you will eventually succumb to blood loss if not treated).
Keep in mind, my point was that GURPS and Runequest allow for characters to get into a state where they can't fight as well. Which is not the same thing as knowing the precise injury the character suffered. GURPS Injury Rules work with or without hit locations. So does Runequest Injury depending on the edition. When used without hit location then the information is not there to narrate the injury and so like D&D you will have to make something up. However what there is the fact that is no longer all or nothing. There is now a number of intermediate states.

If you want that for D&D then you will have to do something like D20 Injury variant. Vitality just opens up the possibility of a one or two hit incapacitation of an opponent.

The thing that eventually drove me away from TFT though was that character advancement really didn't contribute meaningfully to combat endurance/resilience. In RQ, you get hit less often, you hit easier, you do more damage (more likely to use damage enhancing spells), healing is much more available, etc. So more experienced characters can fight more encounters in a dungeon before retreating compared to beginning characters. In TFT, I felt my experienced PC was just as much at risk from goblins as when he started.
The latest version of TFT from SJG Games seems to handle character progression way better. While you could add attribute point through XP it becomes impractical after a total of 40 points (divided among ST, DX, and IQ) But Talents are there and several have defensive options. I have copies of the originals and the new version seems to be an overall improvement in this regard.

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Most cars, you get in, use the gas and brake to control speed, and use the steering wheel to turn. Therefore, Ferraris and Jeeps are pretty much the same.
Exactly:thumbsup:!
 
I buy a 1957 Les Paul for £20k or an Epihone Les Paul Standard for £500. Am I buying 40 times the guitar?

That's as relevant as your point.

A more pertinent point would be, are games written 40 years ago objectively different. Or are new games vastly different and better, giving and all new experience?
No. Only 25 times:thumbsup:!
And the rest of your "rebuttal" is, I am sorry to say, exactly as persuasive:gunslinger:!
 
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A more pertinent point would be, are games written 40 years ago objectively different. Or are new games vastly different and better, giving and all new experience?
Well as it so happens a major "new" RPG uses hit points in the exact same way as D&D. And not only that it managed to handle high hit points totals worse than various editions of D&D. But in a later version targeting a different genre they gave options for fixing the issue.

The RPG in question.

So the question has little to do what happen 40 years ago. It one of those things that quickly became self-evident right off the bat and the various alternatives were developed within the first decade of the hobby.

For example
Hit Points (D&D)
Low Hit Points totals used as "meat" points (GURPS, Runequest)
Damage Tracks (Fate, Fudge, Vampire) *Yes I know later examples but they built on earlier efforts in the 80s, I just don't remember the specific systems.
Injury degrading skills and actions (Harnmaster)
and so on.
 
Only I'm not talking about what hit points of any kind represent. Other than as a purely mechanical construct used in play. I don't care that AD&D hit points don't work to represent physical trauma. I don't care that BRP hit points don't work to represent how good you might be at avoiding physical trauma.

What matters is they are a construct of the game system. They are an arbitrary way of tracking how long your character can stay in combat before you need to make a new one.

So no, that hasn't been answered. And no, there really isn't a difference because I'm not looking for justifications of why a particular scale is being used to measure how many hit points a character has. GURPS HT, Cyberpunk wound tracks. All fundamentally the same. True20 goes for something different, with damage saves. SAme with the Star Wars D6 line.

But hit points are just a number that gets reduced until your character is out of the fight.
Abstract hit point are not just "an arbitrary way of tracking how long your character can stay in combat before you need to make a new one."

They are also part of a game system that assumes that the ways an experienced character can avoid being injured and taken down and/or killed, are a large number that can be trusted to completely prevent them from any chance of being actually injured, until they wear out, at which point, the character is going to get actually injured and taken down and/or killed.

And that is not how real dangerous situations work, at all.

It may be how some (mostly bad) action movies work (ablative plot armor?), and players of hitpoint-heavy games and many computer games may be very used to it, but it's not at all how actual situations work. Luck doesn't "wear out". The ability to dodge, parry, block, and otherwise take effective defensive actions in combat do not provide complete protection and then wear out and provide no protection. None of those things are healed by healing potion or first aid, either.

Hit point attrition games (at least, at high levels where the major figures have more HP than an attack can possibly do) tend to be fundamentally about trading gradual hit point loss with foes, and getting foes to zero first. And that IS the kind of combat system I do tend to hate and find tedious.
 
I buy a 1957 Les Paul for £20k or an Epihone Les Paul Standard for £500. Am I buying 40 times the guitar?

That's as relevant as your point.
Then apparently you missed my point?

In GURPS, I move very short distances, can feint. Getting hit causes me penalties (unless I have certain advantages). Getting hit hard can disable limbs. There's any number of positional dependencies.

D&D... well, depends on the version, but almost none of that applies.

Rolemaster? Or any of a dozen other games? Yeah, they have those few things in common, but so many other things are different. What effects can be placed on other characters, what modifiers come into play, what maneuvers are available.

At the end of the day "roll to see what happens, maybe roll defense, and apply an effect" is so intrinsic to the hobby that you're going to see that at the core of just about everything. That doesn't mean they're all teh same.
A more pertinent point would be, are games written 40 years ago objectively different. Or are new games vastly different and better, giving and all new experience?
I think there are some interesting new trends. I don't know if they're better. But I also think that the term "better" is not helpful without qualification (better at what is the question - to go back to my example, Jeeps and Ferraris are better at different things.) An "all-new experience"? Dunno about that, mostly, but new in some ways, sure.

I mean, while you can criticize how D&D handles hit points as being inconsistent and unrealistic, it's actually a pretty workable and fun system as long as you don't really insist on some hardcore 1:1 modeling. So are other things "better"? Dunno about that.
 
Sure, we can see that here and you have a couple of choices to boot for example Injury versus Vitality.


The problem isn't that you can't get to B from the A of D&D the problem is that B winds up being it own thing. And some choices forces other consequences. For example vitality only works if the editions has attributes stats for monsters as well as characters.

If you want that for D&D then you will have to do something like D20 Injury variant. Vitality just opens up the possibility of a one or two hit incapacitation of an opponent.

So if I tried to use vitality with Swords & Wizardry I would have to come up with a Con score for all the monsters.
Hmm, I'll have to take a look at those...

What this process will result in is Runequest. Not literally Runequest but the system started out as Steve Perrin's modifications to D&D. Then at some point, within a short amount of time (a year) he rewrote it into the draft of what became Runequest.

I found the links you posted about Cold Iron and while I didn't read it in depth it looks that system shows a similar process. A few changes on top of D&D then becoming it own thing.
Yea, it's pretty clear there was a process for Cold Iron that resulted in a game that's it's own thing.

The latest version of TFT from SJG Games seems to handle character progression way better. While you could add attribute point through XP it becomes impractical after a total of 40 points (divided among ST, DX, and IQ) But Talents are there and several have defensive options. I have copies of the originals and the new version seems to be an overall improvement in this regard.
We were playing the new TFT. Actually one of my observations is that it seemed that with the severe slowing down of attribute improvement that the huge monsters become super duper scary and you never actually want to fight one. And at least with the XP we were getting 3 point talents were going to be a LONG way off... And -2 to the opponents attack is limited. I dunno, it just didn't feel like it worked out well for me. It might have gone better with a different GM, different scenarios, more XP, and more skill in the game among the players. It just turned into a slog and any fight at all was so fraught that it just wasn't fun.

Compare to our recent RQ combat where one PC took down 4 trollkin in 4 rounds before stalling out on the 5th. Meanwhile the other PCs were mostly dealing with the 25 hp giant spider trying to get through it's 6 armor. Took them a long time even with MOST of the hits being on the head (and the rest on the body).
 
I mean, while you can criticize how D&D handles hit points as being inconsistent and unrealistic, it's actually a pretty workable and fun system as long as you don't really insist on some hardcore 1:1 modeling. So are other things "better"? Dunno about that.
I'm not criticising anything. Just saying that things are more similar than they are different.
 
I've pretty much reached the end of my patience with hit points over the last year. It means as GM everything about maintaining the fictional side of the combat and what is actually happening is entirely on me, and it's exhausting (and also meaningless).

Plus it's just so boring. Basically you hit someone with a sword and nothing happens, the game situation does not change. At least in 4e D&D when you hit someone you were generally achieving something beyond merely making numbers go down.
 
Abstract hit point are not just "an arbitrary way of tracking how long your character can stay in combat before you need to make a new one."

They are also part of a game system that assumes that the ways an experienced character can avoid being injured and taken down and/or killed, are a large number that can be trusted to completely prevent them from any chance of being actually injured, until they wear out, at which point, the character is going to get actually injured and taken down and/or killed.

And that is not how real dangerous situations work, at all.
I disagree, to the extent HP loss represents fatigue and exhaustion that does reflect (in an abstract way) how real dangerous situations work. Those things make you lose focus and before you know it "oops" as just recently read in the Appalacia. Same with fighting that revolves around striking, half of it is waiting until fatigue causes someone to be just that bit slower. That being said, loss of HP does represent an impact but not applied at a granular enough level to make it alter dice rolls.

Then again HP (as in D&D style) fail to account for that one shot that gets through and does harm that would have an impact...and if they are applied to being able to jump off a cliff, that is just not realizing the limitations in the abstraction. It is just the nature of abstraction and modeling, a trade off between speed, ease of play and "reality."

Then again I couldn't give too many hoots about real life and none about simulation, more concerned about genre emulation and verisimilitude.
My rules don't need to replicate the details of real life, especially in the particulars, as long as the behavior they engender, the tactics, and outcomes are in alignment with genre, i.e. verisimilitude. For example to represent flanking, sure can use a battle map, but I am equally fine with it being abstracted and just giving your group a "+1 to hit" if you outnumber the other side to reflect it being hard to guard ones flank. Also why I find the idea of T&T combat with pooled dice acceptable as it can provide genre emulation.

I tend on the side of abstraction as I find that importing more "reality" often just adds in far more complication and making things near unplayable, let alone killing the feel where it takes 1 hour real time to resolve 1 minute game time,...without much added "realism," i.e. there are just different areas of "reality" it fails to map adequately.
 
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