Balancing Magic, Bears & Hit Points

Happy Canada Day!

While swatting mosquitoes and sipping cool bevvies, let’s look at a dilemma that community member Sir Tainley poses about explaining the strength of commoners in certain game systems:

I’m designing a world for a D&D 5e clone. I want magic to be reasonably common, and taught in the universities.

But, powerful enough spells imply a level for spellcasters, and consequently an amount of hit points available to them.

This means that University professors, accomplished lawyers, talented engineers, skilled surgeons… are all living with more hit points than a bear.

This feels unbalancing. Has anyone else thought around it? Is there a guide for how many NPCs should have levels in a setting?

Great question. I’ve grappled with similar breaks in believability in level-based systems.

A few ideas:

Checks & Balances

From Game Master Johnn

As part of the nature of the unique universe you’re crafting, experienced farmers can indeed wrestle bears – they’ve had to on occasion.

Alternatively, commoners stay weak. You’ve got an instant, baked-in class divide and Plot Factory.

The Runelords fantasy series offers another approach. Something extrinsic to life experience grants spell levels and powers. Tattoos, rituals, runes.

Also, world building requires relationships and checks and balances. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and everything competes for survival, status, or power. 

Thus, weak rebels seek to destroy the superbeings who control them and waste their lives. And while each wizard could kill a commoner with a geezer flick, what will they do when assassins creep into their quarters, monstrous allies assault their laboratories, and an army of 100,000 with nothing to lose storms their gates?

Further, wizard politics get complex, especially when sources of power, access to knowledge, and status are the stakes. The most adroit will control, manipulate, and cull their enemies and rivals. Intra-faction warfare gives you another check to balance your campaign.

Restructure Health Progression

From Game Master Auke

Hit point is a such a weird abstraction, I agree!

My houserule is that your “real” hit points depends on your class (and Constitution).

At level 1, a mage gets 4 (not 1d4), a cleric 8, a fighter 10, etc. Anything beyond that (due to level advancement) is only available during combat or other physical exertion, and comes from constant training. Skip gym, you lose those hit points.

I also have “non-adventurer” classes, like Astronomer, Judge, Alchemist, and so on. Irrespective of level, they have a small number of hit points as adults (4 or 6).

Mana or Health?

From Game Master Loz

You can give everyone hit points, and allow casters to take spell points instead of hit points. This increases player agency, and neatly encompasses the range of Tank-to-Squishy found in RPGs.

There are also “Life-powered magic” type systems. i.e., Burn hit points to power spells. Which could (GM’s decisions) lead to nasty “sacrifice sentient beings” and “devour the land’s vitality” variants. This could be ethically and narratively…

Health or Slots?

From Game Master Lessa

There is the option that you don’t have spell slots but Mana Points (or something the like) and Hit Points, and that spellcasters have to decide where to allocate their level gain. So, if a spellcaster has high Mana, they have low HP.

BUT, having played Dark Eye a lot at the start of my RPG career, I can tell you that’s a horrible decision in a D&D style game, because the encounters calculate with the high hit points, and if PCs don’t have them, they constantly die.

What you might be able to do is allow spellcasters to convert HP into low-level spell slots. Like, “You can buy an additional spell slot of a rank two lower than your highest rank for 1/10th of your HP”.

That makes it fairly unattractive to adventurer spellcasters, but makes low-level magic more widely available.

I hope there’s an idea or two here that might help, Sir Tainely.

A couple final thoughts.

In movies, a hero taps a guard on the back of the neck and they instantly fall unconscious. But in reality, humans are very resilient.

Sure, a lucky shot can end a fight instantly, but that’s true for monsters and animals, too.

So double-check the premise of what the stats indicate in your setting.

As for resources, these do not answer your question directly, but they might be of value:

  • I believe the D&D Companion Set talks about demographics, class distributions, and such.
  • Medieval Demographics Made Easy by John Ross is a great resource. It might not only be about hit points. Nutrition and other factors could come into play.
  • Read the definition of hit points in the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide by Gary Gygax. He explains that hit points are a combo of stamina, luck, and other factors.
  • The book Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes by Carla Hoch offers realistic advice, such as how adrenaline works, that might inspire your game design.

Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
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