In tabletop roleplaying games, there are many different ways to track when a character fails, each giving their own mechanical feelings to our games. Today I want to look at two more combat-focused game design tools: Health and Wounds. Then after reading this article, you can better decide which of these concepts are right for your ttrpg.
Health Definition
For the sake of today’s post, Health is a numerical representation of a character’s wellbeing. Here are our assumptions:
The lower the number, the closer they are to failure in the encounter/game.
The character’s performance is nearly the same at full Health and low Health.
Health is lost or gained in small, medium, and large events (single attacks, sliding on pavement, etc.)
Wound Definition
For this argument, Wounds are a milestone representation of a character’s well-being.
Here are our assumptions:
The more Wounds a character has, the closer they are to failure in the encounter/game.
Wounds are incurred only by significant events (big damage, large stresses).
When a Wound is incurred, a penalty is incurred and the character’s strength decreases.
What Health Feels Like
From a player perspective, Health is a clear indicator of how your character is doing and feeling. When your character has 5/20 Health remaining, you can quickly tell that you are in a dangerous spot. You know to trigger a change in tactics.
How the game approaches healing (the restoration of Health) changes the tactics you might adopt. For example, a game with easy access to healing in an encounter might only encourage you to take a quick break from the action, to increase your health. In a game where healing can only happen rarely outside of an encounter, you will might up more defensive actions for the rest of the encounter.
In either case, the measure of Health acts as a warning to players of the state of their character, assuming that when your Health reaches zero, your character can no longer function, and therefore the player can no longer play. From that perspective, Health is a measure of how far away the player is from not being able to play the game.
What Wounds Feel Like
A Wound is a condition placed on the character that makes playing them more difficult. From a player perspective, they can stand their character taking damage to a certain point, but even a single Wound is something to be avoided. Each instance of a Wound carries a weight; the implication of making your character play worse, and more susceptible to gaining another Wound in the future. When a system has Wounds it leads to more cautious play, especially when getting a Wound makes it easier to get more, creating a “death spiral type effect as each Wound makes getting the next Wound easier. So, if you failed the check without a Wound, you will certainly fail the check with one. Players understand the implications of how a Wound will affect play, and it influences how they approach situations in-game.
On the opposite side, players will take more risks if they don’t think their actions could result in a Wound , creating a more superhero-feeling for the player. Those five bullets did no Wounds to me? “I just got shot five times and not even a scratch on me,” the player might say, and that becomes the narrative. This leads to a heroic, flashy, rule-of-cool style gameplay when you know there is little to no chance to acquire a Wound in an encounter, since the lack of mechanical consequences leads players to believe that there are no consequences at all.
Design Space
Health is easy to quickly look at and understand. Number goes up, good. Number goes down, bad. Wounds have different requirements to determine when they are applied and what the consequence of getting a Wound is.
Player perception of Health changes drastically between 1 Health to 0 Health. This shift is unrealistic, and lends itself more to heroic games or systems about solving the system like a puzzle. Higher damage and lower Health values can shift the style away from a heroic feeling.
Wounds can have the design potential for both heroic and gritty games. The nature of Wounds not always being applied means that players feel heroic fighting peons but can feel more gritty when fighting bosses. So, the number of threatening enemies is how you can control the level of grittiness and heroicness.
Within a design space, Health is generally more granular, meaning designers can give more incremental rewards, relating to reducing Health more or having more Health, without those rewards being as game changing as systems with Wounds. But that does not mean Wounds are devoid of design space, as you can still tweak the threshold at which a Wound is applied and how to choose consequences, or even what those consequences are.
In summary, here are some considerations for when you are deciding between Health and Wounds, and which one (or both) will be right when designing your system.
Health
Simpler and more intuitive
Lends itself to heroic games
Easier to create items and abilities
Can lead to Health sponge situations when Health values get too large
Wounds
Can be more realistic
Can do gritty
More design work needed
More space to explore with consequences of wounds received
Be careful of death spirals
Extensions
I wonder what other design spaces we can explore with the relationship between Health and Wounds. Can we expand Wound systems to break a death spiral, maybe making players not necessarily weaker, just different, with each Wound? Can we make Health feel less of a drastic change between 0 and 1 Health, or would that just be too heavy-handed in forcing players to change their tactics? How much of a grittier feeling would incremental Wounds along a Health track cause? Ultimately, you need to choose what’s right for your game and the kind of play-action you want to encourage in your players.
This article is part of the Indie Game Developer Network’s blog series. The content of this article reflects the views of but one member of the IGDN. This IGDN blog article is brought to you by Brandon Gutowski of the C22 System. If you want to get in touch with the contributor he can be reached on Twitter at @c22system, on Facebook @PagodaGamesLLC, or visit their website at www.c22system.com.