A quick question for the peeps out there who have or
are currently playing an RPG's (Role Playing Games ╹‿╹)

To give a quick overview of this question origins;
I'm Replaying Dragon Quest 8 in my Break time and started to thinking...

"So Jessica has by far the lowest HP of the Four party members and
Angelo has the lowest defense of the four doods. Jessica's able to
take a hit but not many. While Angelo, on the other hand, is able to
tank but if he gets rushed by a party of say 4+ monsters in a single
turn; He's gonna die."

Who's better in your opinion and who would
you choose over the other?

Someone who can take a couple of Heavy hits

but doesn't have much HP to save them in the long run.

Or~★

Someone who's able to take a good amount of damage

but what would be a scratch for one character is a Slash for them.

What are your guys' thoughts? ╹‿╹)

Depends on so many different factors, that it reduces your question down to a pointless argument starter with no real resolution.

See: damage calculation, armor as it affects defenses, availability of boosts to HP or armor rating, incoming sources of damage, etc.

Lafcadio said:
Depends on so many different factors, that it reduces your question down to a pointless argument starter with no real resolution.

See: damage calculation, armor as it affects defenses, availability of boosts to HP or armor rating, incoming sources of damage, etc.

That's just the thing though, It is more than just what
I say it is and that's where the discussion starts.◠‿◠)
And the good points you brought up is how it'll start!

Like would you rather:

-put the time into finding a way to boost the HP of a character
that already has the foundation set but needs the stamina

Or Rather~

-Go item hunting for the fragile warrior? ╹‿╹)

I think the door is open to a lot of interesting answers
on just how other peeps who play RPG's go about building
their parties, ya know?

Honestly, I'd love to hear how other peeps would tackle
a question like this ◠‿◠)

-Note I have not actually played a Dragon Quest game, so this could end up ranty-

Well I guess we will be ignoring attack power then(Even though the name Glass Cannon kinda implies why the character has low HP to begin with. Think Sans from undertale for example.)

So basically the question is Health vs Defense, I guess lets start by being generous and say that defense is a "perfect" system and blocks exactly as much it takes. For example a defense of 10 will zero out an attack of 10. (10 -10 =0) In cases like this you can easily not put points in health in favor of other stats, so in this case I might choose the glass cannon. However there is a risk, as once you lose your armor you're screw unless you can regain it quickly or run the fuck away, though that should be a situation easy to negate if you go this route.

No even in cases where defense is not as described above and you still at least 1 damage from any attack for example DEF10 vs ATT(1-10) equals HP-1, and again in cases like this I might still choose the Glass Cannon.

Now in the case of percentage based defense vs attack, or worse armor piercing attacks(Too tired to run calculation as examples. Well maybe we shall see as I type this out.) This where is gets tricky cause you have to think about number values ALOT here, but 7 out of 10 times I would give this to the paper knight, in my opinion a higher health pool with low defense means longer survival then higher defense with low health pool.
Look at it as (A)HP100 DEF 10 vs (B)HP20 DEF 90
A appears hardy but somewhat squishy but he is more likely to survive to be healed, whereas B looks frail but well armored, but one good hit and he pops like a water-balloon.
So again I give this mostly tot he paper knight.

I could go on and on about various systems, stats, scenarios, ect, but the then I would be here all day. Point being it all circumstantial and its mostly down to how you want to build your character/team. But I will say if I want to buff attack power I would probably sacrifice more defense then I would health.

It's the same kinda flavor as the "would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses, or 1 horse-sized duck?" question :)

I think I'd rather take the character with high-defense but fewer HP.

It all depends on the individual game and system, as well as the enemies you're fighting and whatnot... but yeah.

I, too, have no subjective preference: I would rather bring the appropriate countermeasure to the threat at hand. Or, as the taco kid once said: Por que no los dos?

I mean, I would rather pal around with Jessica than with Angelo, but that has nothing to do with their capabilities as fighters or their preferred combat roles.

In a case where enemies have defense piercing attacks, the more HP is better. However, when there are enemies who have a long combo of low damage hits, the more defense is better.

Xenoblade did kind of the opposite: You had the Armor Tank (Reyn), the Dodge Tank (Dunban), and the Health Tank (Riki). Riki was great against enemies who would tend to inflict DoTs, Dunban against enemies who just attacked at crazy speeds, and Reyn was good for casual enemies. The other three characters weren't made to take much damage, and instead have ways to reduce how much attention they get from the enemies. If you were to use all three as your team, the order of death is usually the mage (low hp and low defense), then the soldier (low hp, decent defense), and then the medic (decent hp, low defense), but that may be the medic having a ranged attack.

Depends on [character damage output per turn] / [enemy damage output per turn], at least. Plus some kind of accounting for dodge rate. Assuming a turn based system which IIRC is what DQ has.

Historically I've played roguelikes. eg Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. In that context, you have to expect occasional high incoming damage, so low HP is in the short term worse than low defense. But normally you don't get as powerful as you'd like, so if you could get a high offence at the tradeoff of low HP, it might be temporarily worth it. It's all about stacking up layers of defense and damage reduction, IMO, so I guess that turns the question into 'what kind of mitigating factors are available'
(armor, elemental resistance attributes, HP boosting equipment, availability of HP restoration, etc)

savageorange said:
I've played roguelikes.

I've been meaning to try DCSS sometime. Got a reasonable amount of ADOM experience though I spent a long time failing to git gud.

It really does vary a lot depending on the general capabilities of both the player characters and enemies. I mean depending on what kind of RPG you're playing there are games where combat is essentially everyone being locked in an abstracted locale taking turns slugging one another, versus games where everything has a quantifiable location within the world and you can avoid taking damage by just not going where things can hit you.

MagnusEffect said:
I've been meaning to try DCSS sometime. Got a reasonable amount of ADOM experience though I spent a long time failing to git gud.

DCSS is IMO easier to get into than ADOM - you can easily play online, no install required; This has the advantage that you can then ask in IRC/discord for people to spectate your game and give you guidance. The sidebar in r/dcss gives all the essential ingredients.

(there are some advantages to a local install, but for just getting into it, online is clearly better)

I mean depending on what kind of RPG you're playing there are games where combat is essentially everyone being locked in an abstracted locale taking turns slugging one another, versus games where everything has a quantifiable location within the world and you can avoid taking damage by just not going where things can hit you.

Although even in the pocket-universe-like model there are usually position-based effects. I'm not sure how useful they are though.

Super Robot Wars X runs with stuff like this like a train

Literally every Mashin Hero Wataru unit is very low in HP and still quite low in defence while evasion isn't quite up to par with real robots either. Yet they hit in between a real and a super. Probably fitting more on the paper warrior side though.

Billbine and Dunbine both have low HP, like other reals, however a slightly lower or on par evasion and defence rivaling even supers. Definitely glass cannon.

Gundam (and Cross Ange) units have low to middling HP, but high evasion, low damage and non-existent armor, except for the G-Arcane. That just sucks all round.

Then there's the traditional supers and battleships, large to extra large in size, built like a brick house, with the HP to match and hits just as hard. They struggle to land hits on smaller units though.

Mightgane units, despite being an old school super, are in some sort of wierd middle between traditional reals and traditional supers.

And then there's Gurren Lagann

Both chars work equally well if you are proficcient in dodging attacks, the def or health are there for the possible attacks that focus on spread or splash damage (ie. you can't evade them easily or at all).

Imo, if you are really good at dodging, go with def, and if not go with attack, though it mostly boils down to the same.