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Original post by Anonymous Poster
An RPG needs these things. I cannot think of one that doesn''t. Granted, some RPGs might call them something else, or mask them behind another name; they''re still in there, that is what makes it an RPG.

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Bah, people are too stuck up on the traditional hp, xp, and magic points. All you really need for a rpg is one character that player can control directly, one game setting, and have the character goes through some kind of development. This is the basic, everything else is just fancy mojos.

There''s even a easier way to represent hp without requiring a hp bar. Just have the character''s color fade (or change) when the hp drops below a certain level.

Several methods to avoid hp:
* Avoid it entirely (ie: one hit kills)

* Use random factor (every attack has a slight random value attached to it. Ie: a sword has a one in three chance of killig your opponent in the first hit)

* Use an endurance meter. When you''re hit with a weapon the endurance meter is reset. And the lower value of it, the greater the chance of a weapon randomly killing you upon hitting (or inflicting maximum damage if you don''t use One-Hit-Kills). The endurance meter regenerates at quick speed. This means that the first hit is likely to just wound your enemy slightly.

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Original post by Ganryu
Several methods to avoid hp:
* Avoid it entirely (ie: one hit kills)

* Use random factor (every attack has a slight random value attached to it. Ie: a sword has a one in three chance of killig your opponent in the first hit)

* Use an endurance meter. When you''re hit with a weapon the endurance meter is reset. And the lower value of it, the greater the chance of a weapon randomly killing you upon hitting (or inflicting maximum damage if you don''t use One-Hit-Kills). The endurance meter regenerates at quick speed. This means that the first hit is likely to just wound your enemy slightly.

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1. One hit kills? ONE HIT KILLS? Now that, no matter how you phrase it will probably be the worst ideas in an RPG. People were saying my idea could be frustrating, but think about that! You go out into the world map and your killed by the same damn rabbit over and over again.

2. Thats not to hot of an idea either. Yeah, hit the robot with a sword and there is a one in three chance he''ll explode into millions of peices of shrapnel.

3. Not that bad of an idea, but it seems like its the same as the HP idea, but it recharges, and you have a one in 3 chance of dying if your HP is zero.

BAH!

Qualify hits as to the type of damage they do: dehabilitating, severing, internal injuring, crushing. Each type of hit has a chance of occuring based on each player''s agility, armor, weapon type, skill, etc.

You can die of blood loss, trauma to the brain, shock, or massive internal injury. The more you are dehabilitated, the more easily the striking blow can be made to you. There really is no such thing as hit points.

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Original post by Mooglez
Bah, people are too stuck up on the traditional hp, xp, and magic points... There''s even a easier way to represent hp without requiring a hp bar. Just have the character''s color fade (or change) when the hp drops below a certain level.

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Hmmm... That would seem to be HP again, just with a different way of showing it.

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Original post by bishop_pass
Qualify hits as to the type of damage they do: dehabilitating, severing, internal injuring, crushing. Each type of hit has a chance of occuring based on each player''s agility, armor, weapon type, skill, etc.
You can die of blood loss, trauma to the brain, shock, or massive internal injury. The more you are dehabilitated, the more easily the striking blow can be made to you. There really is no such thing as hit points.

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this is the same as giving different body parts hit points, and not showing the player these numbers! a computer does not understand "slight injury" or "massive crushing death"; so, if a player was hit in the head the program itself would think:
HeadHP = HeadHP - RandomNumberBasedOnStatsAndWeapon
you can say you are being innovative and leaving out HP and MP, but in reality you are just renaming them, changing them to colored bars, or hiding them from the player completely.
an RPG without these stats is hardly an RPG (even the oldschool paper and pencil ones like D&D allow players to increase their stats with experience); you would play for 30 hours and still have the same chances of killing the bunny, or being killed by the bunny?
that said, i DO like your idea (although how to display these various HPs for each section of the character''s body without taking up all the screen space still eludes me)...

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

"Is it my imagination, or do all battle systems in rpg''s that arent real time seem to be very simaler?"

And yet you go on to propose your own idea of a battle system, and state what other games it is like.

"(ie FF6 - FF9)"

What was your original point? Are you asking if we think FF6 and FF9 have good battle systems?

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Original post by krez this is the same as giving different body parts hit points, and not showing the player these numbers! a computer does not understand "slight injury" or "massive crushing death"; so, if a player was hit in the head the program itself would think:
HeadHP = HeadHP - RandomNumberBasedOnStatsAndWeapon

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I disagree. Blood loss isn''t really a set of hitpoints. Blood loss is a rate of flow which occurs over time. Yes, it uses a number, though. Actually a few numbers. Everything in the computer is just numbers.

Head trauma isn''t really hit point based either. A warrior''s head is no more immune to a club than an inexperienced farmer''s. Head trauma will cause dizziness, confusion, or worse.

Perhaps the only thing I suggested which is close to hit points is the idea of massive internal injury, but once again, a warrior isn''t really more immune to this than a farmer.

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Original post by bishop_pass
I disagree. Blood loss isn''t really a set of hitpoints. Blood loss is a rate of flow which occurs over time. Yes, it uses a number, though. Actually a few numbers. Everything in the computer is just numbers.
Head trauma isn''t really hit point based either. A warrior''s head is no more immune to a club than an inexperienced farmer''s. Head trauma will cause dizziness, confusion, or worse.
Perhaps the only thing I suggested which is close to hit points is the idea of massive internal injury, but once again, a warrior isn''t really more immune to this than a farmer.

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so you would be using a system where the hit points do not increase with class or level... and perhaps a lower amount of these points left in the head would cause dizziness or whatever, leading to lower dexterity perhaps?
regardless, it is some number that decreases when you are beat on, and will (hopefully) heal over time. you can call it whatever you like; it is hit points.

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

perhaps those should be called being hit points, but that''s a different story.

An issue I have come up against in many departments of Paper and Dice RPGs is how to make damage more representative. My experiences have shown me that I will never get away from using some form of Hit Points. Ever! That said, there are very innovative ways of making damage more real. Add to that the beauty of computers for damage computation, being the dice don''t have to be rolled and complicated calculations can be done very quickly.

The hard part is making it all balanced

George D. Filiotis