Fatigue In The Magic Realm

August 23, 2009 is a date significant to me only because it was the day this blog was established. 

At that time, the stated purpose of this blog was to discuss several game systems:  Thomas Denmark's Dungeoneer; Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip; Dragon Warriors RPG; Dungeons and Dragons; and Avalon Hill's Magic Realm.

While I have ranged somewhat further afield, I don't think I have wholly neglected Magic Realm, particularly over the last several months.

Magic Realm has an innovative combat system that includes a system of recording combat fatigue. 

In Magic Realm, each character has 12 cardboard counters (called chits) that operate in many ways like DnD`s hit points.  For example, the above 12 chits are for the Black Knight (one of 16 available Magic Realm characters). 

Imagine that each of those carboard chits represent 1 hit point (more properly, a wound point, since each successful attack inflicted on a character results in a single wound).  So each character has 12 hit points. In addition to representing a hit point, each chit also has an ability attached to it, either a move, fight, spell or special ability.

The top row of Black Knight chits represent various moves that the Black Knight can make.  I have republished that first row of chits, below.

In the first row of Black Knight chits there is a medium move, with a speed of 4, which is somewhat fatiguing (a single effort-star).  The next chit is a medium move, with a speed of 5, which is easy, as it includes no effort-stars.  The third chit is a heavy move, with a speed of 4, which is very fatiguing (two effort-stars).

To use a DnD 4E analogy, think of those character chits as follows:  two effort-star chits represent daily powers; one effort-star chits represent encounter powers; and no effort-star chits represent at-will or utility powers.

Further consider that each round of Magic Realm combat is equivalent to a DnD 4E encounter. That means you can play a maximum of one effort-star per combat round (one encounter power) without penalty. 

However, if you want to play two effort-stars (a daily power, to continue the 4E analogy) you must set aside one of your single effort-star chits in payment for the fatigue you suffer in performing that fatiguing maneuver.

For example, the Black Knight may play the following combination of chits during the first Magic Realm combat round:

In this instance, the Black Knight has played a move chit with two effort-stars, thus suffering some fatigue.  However, the Black Knight still wants his Move H4** chit to be available for future combat rounds, so he sets aside another one of his single effort-star chits, in this case the one below:

As a result of the sacrifice of the Move M4* chit, the Black Knight now has 11, rather than 12 hit points remaining.  However, he still has access to the Move H4** chit (the Magic Realm equivalent of a DnD 4E daily power) for later re-use, as the Black Knight sacrificed an analogous encounter power chit to play the daily power chit.

During the second combat round, the Black Knight again decides to play two effort stars, this time in the form of two, single effort-star chits (the equivalent of two DnD 4E encounter powers):

Again, because the Black Knight plays two effort-stars, he must set aside another single effort-star chit to pay for the fatigue he has suffered.  Since he has two Fight M4* chits, he chooses to set one of those two aside to pay for the fatigue.  He does not need to use that particular chit, any chit with a single effort-star will do, to pay for the fatigue:

The Black Knight is now reduced to 10 hit points.  During the third combat round, the Black Knight decides to play only a single effort-star, as follows:

Since the Black Knight is allowed to play a single effort-star (single encounter power) each combat round without penalty, he suffers no fatigue this round.  Thus, the remaining 10 hit points continue to be available in the fourth combat round, during which he can again choose whether to suffer fatigue in exchange for playing a powerful Fight or Move chit.

Some Final Thoughts On Fatigue In DnD

I'm sensing more than a little exasperation from certain quarters regarding my plea for fatigue to be a recognized component of DnD combat.

For those "in the know", it will be plain that I'm no game designer.  I don't have the critical mind for it.  Nor the patience for endless stress-testing, to ensure a game component or system is sound.

I leave it the rest of you in the OSR community (the ones who possess real creativity and intelligence) to come up with novel solutions.

As mentioned earlier, hit points were re-purposed by Gygax to encapsulate many disparate elements of combat effectiveness, not to simply represent the capacity to absorb wounds.  Luck, fate, skill, endurance, willpower, concentration, and stamina are just a few elements encapsulated by the hit point pool, in addition to physical damage.  Despite that, very few, if any DnD, players utilize the hit point pool to its full potential.

In traditional DnD combat, the only way that your hit point pool can be diminished is if you absorb an attack from an opponent.  But it is acknowledged that this pool represents skill, endurance, concentration and strength of will, in addition to fate, luck (the avoidance of otherwise damaging blows) and capacity to absorb damage. 

If the hit point point pool represents skill and endurance, why can a player not exhaust some of that hit point pool to inflict additional damage on an opponent?  Effectively, the player would be expending some of their skill, and/or accepting some combat fatigue, in exchange for inflicting additional damage.

This sort of approach would not require any additional book-keeping, other than the book-keeping that every player already accepts, ie. tracking their remaining hit points.  It would also not contribute to that nay-sayer phantom, called "the death spiral," since the expenditure of the hit points would not affect the character's combat effectiveness, merely reduce her endurance (hit point) pool.

I leave it to brighter minds than mine to come up with a way to implement this, although off the top of my head, here is one approach.

During every round of combat, each player can declare, after a successful roll to hit, whether they wish to expend points from their hit point pool (become fatigued) in order to inflict additional damage.  The amount the player can expend from the character's hit point pool, in any round, is tied to the character's level and class. 

For example, Magic-users can expend a maximum of 1d4 hit points, per level, from their hit point pool.  So a 5th level Magic-user could expend a maximum of 5d4 hit points from her hit point pool.  In exchange for the assumption of that fatigue, she can inflict double the number of dice of extra damage. 

So if a 5th level Magic-User accepted 5d4 of hit points of fatigue from her hit point pool, she would inflict 10d4 of additional damage on her opponent.

Similarly, Thieves would use a d6, Clerics, a d8, and Fighters a d10.  In every instance, whatever number of dice was chosen (to a maximum of that character's level) for the assumption of fatigue to their hit point pool, twice that could be inflicted on one's opponent.

It should be obvious the potential effects of such a rule.  First, character heroics: that a character can "go down fighting" by selecting an assumption of fatigue damage that would take them to 0 hit points or below.  For example, a 5th level fighter, with only 8 hit points remaining, might select 5d10 of additional fatigue, in order to do 10d10 damage to her opponent, knowing that, while she might take out the monster, she will likely die in the attempt.

Second, there is a possibility that the number of hit points lost to fatigue will be greater than the damage inflicted.  That's the risk the player takes, in choosing to make this fatiguing attack.

Third, in order to make this sort of rule palatable to the players, the recovery of hit points needs to be increased.  I like the idea mentioned elsewhere of 1 hit point per round or per hour, rather than day, with, say higher recovery rates for sleeping, eating and drinking strong drinks.

That is a amateur's stab at the idea of combat fatigue.  I'm sure others have better approaches to this problem.  The point is, there is a way to recognize and account for combat fatigue, without adding significant complexity to DnD battles.

Combat Fatigue and the Failure of Gygax

Travolta:  That's how Ali took the title from Foreman.  He beat him with a rope-a-dope.  Don't you remember?
Slater:  I don't remember what day of the week it is.
Travolta:  Everybody thought Ali's arms had run out.  That he's running on empty.  But he's just setting Foreman up.  He's letting Foreman burn himself out.  And then, in the eighth round, here comes Ali; and poor George has nothing left.

-- Broken Arrow, 1996

Dungeons and Dragons does a lousy job of emulating combat fatigue.  And i'm not just talking about fourth edition.  We're talking every single edition. 

It would be tempting to blame Dave Arneson for the failure of DnD to emulate the effects of combat fatigue.  After all, he is the author of the hit point concept.

Arneson's hit point concept eventually became DnD's aggregated measure of luck, skill, stamina, concentration, life-blood and endurance.  In fact, after all these years, it is still argued that only the last few character or monster hit points actually represent the life-blood of the combatant.  For the most part, inflicting hit point damage represents the whittling away of your opponent's stamina, the sapping of his will and skill, and the gradual theft of his luck.  In a word: fatigue.

But nowhere in DnD's combat system do the effects of fatigue reveal themselves.  A character's combat abilities do not wane as his hit points decrease.  A figher's speed and combat prowess are undiminished, despite having suffered a 50%, 75%, or even 90% hit point reduction.  And in a perverse twist, 4E actually provides combat bonuses when some players and monsters become "bloodied".  If you can imagine, as one becomes "bloodied" (fatigued), combat ability actually improves.

While it is true that Arneson first implemented the concept of hit points in his pre-DnD games, it took Gary Gygax to unthinkingly promulgate their hybrid use, as a combined luck, skill, stamina and endurance measure, when publishing the earliest versions of DnD.  And to this day, hit points in all versons of DnD, including 4E, continue to function just as they did in 1974, as a rather ghoulish goulash of combat capability measures.

Gygax should have known better.  As an avid reader of pulp fantasy literature, he had myriad sources available to confirm that pulp fantasy role-playing games absolutely require some sort of combat fatigue emulator. 

Even something as simple as the loss of a single hit point during each combat round due to exertion would have provided some reminder to the players that fatigue is a serious matter in battle.

My clucking and finger-wagging at Gygax applies equally to those DnD game designers who came after.

You need look no further to see that continued failure, than to study one of the so-called "marvellous innovations" of 4E, the AEDU system.  The 4E AEDU system gives each character at-will, encounter, daily, and utility powers, and is a rather uninspired effort at combat fatigue emulation. 

It posits that there are certain daily and encounter powers that are so exceptional, and fatiguing, that they can only be attempted once per day or encounter.  That AEDU system has been roundly and justifiably derided, as riven by disassociated mechanics.  Most importantly, it eliminates an important component of player choice, since it prevents players from re-attempting a daily power, accompanied by some equally significant sacrifice elsewhere.

There's really no justification for the absence of combat fatigue emulation as a feature of DnD combat.  That few, if any, have recognized and rued its absence is the real tragedy.