Is a Health system a good idea?

Game Development Writing and Content
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So I’m working on my first IF game and because it’s a dark fantasy story with lots of danger and fighting, I want to make it so that the main character can die. After going through various posts about stats and character deaths, I thought it might be a good idea to have a health bar.

The idea is that there would be a handful of stats that players would have to manage. Ideally, every fight would have a choice to utilize one of the stats. If a player picks an option that they have low stats for, they succeed but lose an amount of health. If they pick options that they have better stats for, they would either lose no health or a smaller amount of health. Of course, if health drops to zero, they would die.

Is this a good system? How can I improve it? I want stats to matter without forcing people to always pick their best stat, but I also want death to be a real possibility.

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It can be. Depends on how you apply it. I recommend having a save/checkpoint system if you go with that.

Try Mobile Armored Marine for implementation ideas. It was one of the earliest choicescript games to try a gameplay system like this, and it’s short and free if you don’t have time for lengthy playthroughs. Plot wasn’t the best, but I think it did a fairly good job with the gameplay system.

Instead of just stat tests, try optional encounters which offer a possible reward at the cost of health. Players will need to decide whether they are willing to lose/risk health for a reward which may or may not be useful.

For example, you see a treasure chest protected by a trap. You can choose to ignore and walk past it, or you can choose to spring the trap, take the health damage, and see what reward is in the chest and whether it was worth it. There are plenty of ways to force the player to weigh their options.

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When I play a game with a health bar I will always attack one stat more than others, because if I die I’ll have to start again. Personally, I think a good way to deal with making sure that choices matter in life and death situations without making people rely on a single stat to boost—is to make it so it isn’t health bars they need to keep an eye on, but decisions they make that take their stats into consideration.

For example: there’s a person lying wounded in an alley calling for help, and being beaten bloody by an attacker.

Does the player have enough (Awareness) to see the ambush waiting for them? And if they don’t and they run in to save them, do they notice now the closer they are with a high (Combat) stat that the punches aren’t actually landing and now they’re preparing to dodge a hit? Or does their high (Luck) stat have them slip at an inopportune time for the two attackers that turn on them and the player just happens to miss being skewered?

However, if all three are low—they’re beaten bloody, stabbed and robbed, and only a high (Charisma) stat manages to make one of the attackers call off the others. Except now they’re badly wounded until they can get help.

Obviously, if it’s all terrible misses with the stats check though and you’ve been playing with too many scattered choices? You’re dead. But you’ve been given enough chances to survive, and you can make a build that isn’t solely single stat dependant.

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That’s basically ttrpg. You roll dice and include your stat in the resolution mechanic in one way or another, so even if the stat is weak you still have a chance, and likewise even with a strong stat you’re not guaranteed to win.

In a ChoiceScript game, since stats are usually percentile values, you could use a d100-roll-under system. It would fit perfectly.

Fair warning, choicescript players, at least the people in this forum, are very averse to dice and other random mechanics.

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Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of health bars (even though I’m about to stick on in a WIP), but it is a valid and easily understood concept. I prefer Stress/Ticks like in the Fate TTRPG, or a more simplified version.

You’ll get a lot of people trying to min-max a stat with something like this. If you’re fine with that, go for it! If you want people not to, I recommend a Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock system. A system that has five or more stats that win outright – or get a bonus – against other stats. This makes it hard to focus on steamrolling with a single stat.

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So, the tricky part of any system is figuring out what you’re actually incentivizing.

Right now, you have suggested a system where players are rewarded for choosing options that align with their stats and punished for choosing options that don’t.

This does not seem aligned with your goals of (a) people can choose a less optimal stat, and (b) death is possible.

In this case, I’d recommend going back to your goals. First, ask yourself why these goals matter to you.

For example, is it that you really want death on the table, or rather that you want every choice to feel extra important?

You’re right that high stakes make choices matter more but health and life weirdly aren’t that high of a stake. The real cost to the reader is their time. A character that’s dead has nothing to lose. Their story is over.

Health bars, health points, etc are more often pacing mechanics than they are stakes enhancement. Health decides how long someone can stay in a fight. That’s why the quickest way to balance an encounter in D&D and similar games is to compare how much damage your monster(s) and player(s) can deal and take in a round.

(This is also why a lot of indie games tie mechanical consequences to the loss of health, such as diminished stats or rolling with disadvantage, etc).

Something that works really well to increase tension, instead of death, is conflicting goals. You want X but getting it requires hurting Side Character A (guess how long I lingered on some of those DA:I choice screens….). You succeed, but Antagonist B wants something from you.

Basically, I think that if you want every choice to feel high stakes, you give the character more to lose – with story consequences for every loss.

….but I’ve gone off on a tangent. Apologies.

The point is–think about what exactly you want to incentivize, and build a system that does that.

What you’ve suggested isn’t terrible; I just don’t think it does what you want it to.

(PS: Someone linked an article about social-based games in an insta-death tabletop setting that is utterly fantastic. If I find it, I’ll edit to add it here).

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A dice system sounds really cool. I have no idea how to code that though. Also I’m concerned about a player dying because of an unlucky roll and getting mad because of that.

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That’s definitely par for the course. :sweat_smile: But also, if the player can die from a single bad roll, that’s bad game design. They should die only if they make a series of bad calls or if they are unlucky multiple times in a row.

A dice is just a random number generator in a range. You can use the *rand command. You can look it up in this forum; there have been numerous discussions about it already.

On the other hand, if you mean the mechanics, my suggestion is, like I said, d100 roll under. This means, generate a number from 1 to 100; if it’s less than or equal to the character’s stat, it’s a success, but if it’s over the stat, then it’s a failure. It’s a bit counterintuitive in the sense that lower is better, but it makes sense because the stat represents the likelihood of success.

So, if your strength is 45, you have a 45% chance of success in a standard check. You define what standard means in the context of your game world. If you want the test to be harder or easier, you can add or subtract modifiers to the roll, respectively. If you add 10 points to the roll, it means the roll has become 10% more difficult, and likewise, if you subtract 25 points, then it becomes 25% easier. Alternatively, you can use advantage/disadvantage instead.

1 Like
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That’s a fantastic point about series of bad calls being the key, not a single unlucky roll. That makes a health system feel much fairer and more skill-based, even with the dice rolling!

The d100 roll under mechanic you described is also a super clean way to implement stat checks in a text game. Definitely useful info for anyone tackling this!

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As long as there is a valid reason for burning through your life force, I won’t mind playing a game like this

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Several possibilities:

(1) Death is funny (Grailquest, Godville, Discworld etc.)

(2) Foreshadowing - you can have a character say something is really risky given your current health etc. or flat out just chew you out in a “if you’re going to kill yourself, I don’t want to be part of it” kind of way.

(3) A healer/town teleport device

IF is entertainment, so it kind of has to be fun, otherwise it’s just masochism. Dying, as someone once said, has never been popular and is really bad for the complexion :slightly_smiling_face:

Dying as a plot device, as a way to make a game more fun or entertaining, is a whole other kettle of fish I guess.

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I think a health system can work - especially if you treat HP like a resource to manage rather than just “stat-checks or die.” For example: let low-stat choices cost health but give a chance at success, while higher-stat choices are safer or cost less, so players can gamble if they want more tension. But remember: sometimes death isn’t what makes a story interesting - making choices feel meaningful or giving long-term consequences can be more powerful than just “you died.”

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It’s a good idea, because others if and poma already done it. You can try poma if you haven’t already and see how the game manages the health bar when fighting and outside of fighting.