Basics of the Demon Lord: Health and Damage

Shadow of the Demon Lord handles damage and health a little bit differently from many other adventure RPGs. It's a system that is actually quite elegant and rewarding, but it requires you to shift your thinking just a bit to get in the groove. Here's how it works. If you want to follow along at home, we're talking about rules that appear on pages 34 (Health) and 39-40 (Damage) of the Shadow of the Demon Lord core book.

Damage Goes Up, Health Stays the Same

Your Health score is (generally) static. It represents the total amount of damage you can take before you drop (that is, become Incapacitated; see page 40). Rather than losing Health as you take damage, you have a separate damage score that increases. I'll say it again because it's key to how the whole thing works: as you get hit by monsters, traps, spells, and anything else that causes your character pain, your damage increases. Your Health doesn't change. (This is where the system differs from what we're used to, namely losing Hit Points as we subtract damage.) So if I have 13 Health and I take 5 damage, I still have 13 Health. I just also have 5 damage!

Damage Never Exceeds Health

So far, so good. The next key thing to remember is that when your damage equals your Health, you become Incapacitated. (We'll discuss the death and dying rules in a later entry in Basics of the Demon Lord.) Your damage can never exceed your Health. So to go back to our earlier example, if my character with 13 Health and 5 damage takes 10 more damage (from an ogre's club, say) he now has 13 damage. He can't go above 13 because his damage cannot go above his Health, so those last two points of damage are just lost as overkill. He's gonna drop either way-- the key thing to focus on here is that there's no tracking of "negative Health" or anything like that. You're either awake and alive, or you're Incapacitated and (temporarily, one hopes!) out of the fight. If you reduce your damage by any means (a spell from the Life tradition or a healer's kit, for example) you are no longer Incapacitated! In other words, you only ever need to heal away 1 point of damage to wake up. This is why healer's kits are so useful!

Okay, Health Can Change Sometimes

You may be starting to see why this method is so elegant. Removing things like "negative Hit Points" means the game plays faster at the table. Another rule we don't need is something like "temporary Hit Points." If we want a character to be able to withstand more damage, we just increase her Health score. For example, the spell "Call of the Wild" increases a target's Health by 10 for 1 minute (among other things). That means that for the next minute, that character can take 10 more damage without dropping. Conversely, the Circlet of Eyes relic bestows a 1d6 penalty to Health while worn, making its wearer a bit easier to take out. In other words, temporary changes to your ability to take damage don't require a bunch of extra rules. Instead, they just alter your Health score; you can keep taking damage as usual until you're Incapacitated.

One Interesting Corner Case

If you're like me, you heard that Health can change and immediately started wondering what happens when those effects wear off. Well, you should be careful when your Health is temporarily higher! Let's say you normally have 20 Health, but your friend casts "Call of the Wild" on you. You now have 30 Health for the next minute. You charge into combat and take 25 damage. No problem! But before you can heal any of that damage, "Call of the Wild" wears off. What happens to you? Well, you've suddenly got 25 damage and only 20 Health. Your damage can never exceed your Health (see above), so that extra 5 damage is lost. That's cold comfort for you, though, because now you have 20 damage and 20 Health-- yup, you're Incapacitated! In simpler terms, if your Health decreases to equal to or below your damage for any reason (maybe you had 20 health and 19 damage, then put on a Circlet of Eyes), your damage resets to equal your Health and you're Incapacitated.

Hopefully that elucidates and elaborates the Health and damage rules in the core book. Look out for future installments of Basics of the Demon Lord to get more insight into how your favorite rules work!