I recently read a design article covering the issues inherent in current Drow design and how their abilities tended to be very frustrating rather than beneficial to usage in game. Specifically, they've many abilities that classify as 'gotcha' type abilities: those rated as 'useful' whose primary purpose is to deny what you usually expect to be the standard. Drow spell resistance occasionally, and unpredictably, prevents your spells from working, as does their random dodge chance for critical hits; things of that nature. It seemed fairly sensible, all told, and when I sat down to clean up my articles that were sitting here almost done, I couldn't help but realize another game system that depended a great deal on similar mechanics. Specifically, RPGs which utilize very high hit points in their design.
The most obvious example is the majority of Final Fantasy games, where later on half your party can hit for 9999 with standard attacks. This also includes Star Ocean games, with some creatures at over a million hit points, regardless of hard set limits on damage per action. It seemed to me that these sorts of designs press a need for 'gotcha' type mechanics to get around the inherent safety that such a high damage buffer provides. Often, these gotchas are implemented by way of always-hit death/fatal status attacks, which succeed regardless of HP. Tabletop RPGs feature something similar, but unlike tabletop games, video games lack any mythos to go with the character to warn you of these things; monsters with fatal attacks are not known as such until it is too late. Suddenly, you have a need for instant death protection, after a thousand fights of it being unnecessary.
I recall, for instance, that one of the primary deterrents from soloing Kefka in FF6 wasn't the abilities, so much as a 'gotcha' instant zombie infliction during the third tier of the final battle. This attack, which occurred with the death of the monster, was both unavoidable and inevitable, and the only defense was to equip the appropriate protection against it prior to the fight. Otherwise, the character was 'dead' before the transition and thus could not cure themselves. This setup was simply a system response to the high HP and the push for finding ways to retaliate in such a system.
Final Fantasy 8, a game I often reference for its horrible design examples, actually took this far enough to hit the other step: some enemies could retaliate for over the max HP limit in damage. This meant that rather than HP being a statistic that indicated survivability, there was a whole set of enemies that treated it like a binary value. In fact, many of these did that while hitting everyone, which amplified the effect along the 'gotcha' range: your well-equipped party could be wiped out entirely and instantaneously. Additionally, the designers gave you your own 'gotcha': enemy attacks worked, except when you used invulnerability items and suddenly they were all meaningless.
These mechanics are, to a degree, pushed into the system with the intent of countering the high HP numbers. The higher the max HP, the more likely a designer will utilize such an element, as frustrating or outright silly as it may be. Conversely, avoiding high HP systems will reduce the 'need' for such tricks. A smaller HP scale with a wider or deeper health system provides more opportune vectors for providing sensible danger without pushing towards gotchas to get around a large number.
So, Earthbound is superior?
Rolling hp ftw?
I wouldn't say that. I don't think it compares directly to what I was talking about.
That said, I would say that rolling hp is a BRILLIANT concept that should be executed more often. It's a great way of actually making high hp count for something by not allowing it to just be blasted out of existance in the wink of an eye. Very player friendly as a concept and it's a shame more games don't use it.
Dracos