Unlucky 13 Hit Points

This was originally going to be a blow-by blow report of a combat playtest that James and I ran through for my Unlucky 13 (U13) rules. As I was writing it up, though, I realized that my explanation of the “health meter” was making a long blog post far too long. So this week is just about the health meter. The playtest report will come after the next Astral Web post.

This is a modified and expanded version of the damage rules in “The Clout Primer” that appeared in my other blog.

The Health Meter

Instead of using traditional hit points, U13 uses up to 12 individual hit points. A typical human’s meter looks like this:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
											☠

The “death” symbol (“☠”) beneath the 12 means that the character is out of action when that hit point is marked off. “Out of action” doesn’t usually mean “dead”—it might mean defeated, unconscious, or captured.

Damage

Damage is usually determined by one of two kinds of dice rolls. The type of roll to make depends on the cause of the damage and whatever protection the character has.

Title	Roll	Criteria
Major damage	1d12	Damage from firearms, explosions, etc.
Greater damage	2d12kl1	Weapon value > Armor Value
Standard damage	3d12kl1	Weapon value ≤ Armor Value

The die rolls use the “selective results” dice notation. The short version is that “kl1” means “keep the lowest 1 die.”

Use the information above to extrapolate damage rolls outside of combat such as falls, poisons, etc.

Example 1: Jalice is wearing light armor (armor value AV 2) and she’s being attacked by a very large rat with dagger-like fangs (weapon value WV 1). Based on the rat’s weapon value and Jalice’s armor value, she’ll take standard damage if the rat bites her.

Example 2: The very large rat does not have armor (nor a particularly tough hide), so its AV is 0. Jalice’s dagger¹ is WV 1. This means Jalice will inflict a greater damage roll to the rat if she hits.

Armor

Armor has two mechanical effects. The first one has already been discussed: it is used to determine the type of damage roll to make. The second effect is that armor prevents damage in the lowest boxes on the health meter. We use the letter “A” to show this on the health meter.

The number of boxes protected is equal to the armor value.

Example: Jalice is wearing light armor (AV2) and carrying a shield (AV+1) for a total AV of three. This means her first three boxes are protected by the armor and can not take damage. Jalice’s health meter looks like this:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
A	A	A									☠

Example 2: Jalice finds herself fighting a very large rat. She gets hit, and it roll 3 for damage. Because the 3 box is protected by armor, the hit is ignored and nothing is recorded.

Hit Points are Individuals

The Health Meter is a group of 12 individual boxes.

Example: The next round, the very large rat hits Jalice again. This time it does 7 damage. Jalice’s health meter now looks like this:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
A	A	A				✗					☠

The next time the rat hits, it rolls a 5 for damage:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
A	A	A		✗		✗					☠

Only One to a Box

If the indicated hit point is already marked off, go to the next higher one that’s available.

The “real” number can make a difference for healing, so even though you’re marking it in a higher box, record the actual number.

Example: Continuing the example from above, Jalice gets hit yet again. The damage is a 5, but that spot is already taken so we record it in the №6 box as follows:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
A	A	A		✗	(5)	✗					☠

If any future hit is a 5, 6, or 7 we would mark the 8 spot.

The upshot is that most battles end from a lower blow that gets elevated to the №12 box. It also means that the players usually² have plenty of notice that they should run away.

Shock Recovery

Damage is a mix of shock and physical trauma. Shock can be treated after the combat by using the medic/first aid skill. Each wound (i.e. each filled box) gets a skill check.

If you succeed, subtract the lower of the skill check’s dice from that wound. If you’re rolling 3 dice due to high or low skill, take the lower of the two dice that count.

If the roll is a failure, reduce the wound by one level instead.

Each wound can only be treated once.

If time is important, assume that each wound takes about 10 minutes to treat.

While it is logical to treat the most serious wounds first and work your way down, it is easier to start at the bottom and work your way up. This is because healing the lower wounds “opens up” those boxes for the higher wounds as they get healed. This avoids a lot of erasing and re-writing. However, if the GM plans on interrupting the characters with a surprise encounter during their healing phase, it’s kind of a jerk move to make them leave their most serious wounds untreated. Don’t be a jerk.

Example: Jalice finally defeats the very large rat. This is her current condition:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
A	A	A		✗	(5)	✗					☠

She has three wounds to heal. She has the First Aid skill. That means she’ll roll 3d12 and drop the lowest die for her skill checks.

For the wound in the №5 box, she fails her first aid roll. The 5 now becomes a 4:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
A	A	A	✗		(5)	✗					☠

For the №6 box, her First Aid skill roll is (4, 5, 11). Dropping the 4 leaves her with a total of 16—a success. The lower die was a 5 so the wound is reduced by 5 levels. Even though this is the №6 box, the wound was only a 5. So this wound is healed completely:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
A	A	A	✗			✗					☠

Finally, she bandages the №7 wound. Her roll (2, 4, 11) is a success, to reduce the wound 4 levels. 7 - 4 = 3:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
A	A	A✗	✗								☠

The fact that there is a wound in the №3 box in no way affects that the box is protected by armor. If she were to take a 3 damage in another encounter, it would still be ignored because of the armor.

Natural Recovery

Every morning following a day of full rest, make a Health roll for each wound. On a success, that wound reduces one level.

Weaker Encounters

The 12-box health meter is meant for leading characters: player characters and major villains. Often you will want to have weaker adversaries: the major villains army of storm troopers, minor monsters on lower dungeon levels, etc.

For your typical “first level monster”—something that should drop in one or two hits, use a wound track with only 4 “safe” boxes. Any hit of 5 or above will drop the monster out of action:

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
				☠	☠	☠	☠	☠	☠	☠	☠

Very weak encounters—say a single, normal rat—shouldn’t need a wound track. If the characters hit it, it’s down.

Stronger Encounters

Sometimes the enemy should be harder to kill: the mighty dragon, the vicious troll, or maybe the Space Alien That Won’t Die.

Only in the vary rarest circumstances would you want to extend the boxes beyond 12. One of the features of U13’s combat id that no matter how unlikely, even a single shot has the chance to kill. By making the №12 box non-fatal, you remove that possibility.

The easiest way to make an adversary more dangerous is to add more armor. Raising the AV to 6 means that only 25% of successful hits will actually cause a wound. Very high armor is especially appropriate for that great old dragon with impervious armor and one missing scale…

Classic fantasy’s troll would probably have a full 12-box health meter, but at the end of every round allow the troll to regenerate by simply reducing every wound by one box.

The Space Alien That Won’t Die can be made tougher by adding more boxes. I said it’s a bad idea to have boxes beyond, the №12 box, so we add duplicate boxes of the lower numbers. That means lower hits will take longer to become serious. Something like this:

01	01	02	02	03	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
														☠

Roll20 Concerns

I plan on running my U13 games online, probably through Roll20. Roll20 has a hit point tracker built in, but it only supports the traditional “hit point pool.” I’m not sure how to run this on Roll20.

Inspiration

This was heavily inspired by the “Recording Wounds” section of Fudge.

Epilogue

This is a long post. I’m certainly glad that I broke it out. It wasn’t this long in the original post, but it didn’t explain it as well and it didn’t have any examples. I think this is a much better explanation.

What do you think? Will it work? It worked well in the test that James & I ran, but that’s a sample size of 1. Do you have any solution for the Roll 20 issue?

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1. If the rat’s fangs are “dagger-like,” does that mean Jalice can have a “fang-like dagger?” ↩

2. For those that like numbers, when the weapon value is greater than the armor value there’s only a 0.7% chance that a single hit will result in a take down. When the armor improves this drops to a 0.06% chance.↩