*cheerful music, slowly diminishing*
Is life quantifiable?
Every breath, every beat of a heart...
Do they count as tallies etched tirelessly into the stone of our existence,
until one day, that stone is returned to dust?
Is there a number, an algorithm, underlying the spark of life?
And if given the chance to know the arcane secrets of that algorithm,
would you use that power for good?
Or would you use it to calculate your pet’s HP?
Because that’s what I would do!
*energetic music*
HIT POINTS!
What are they and how did they become the standard unit of life in nearly every game?
It all started with war games, tabletop games that involve a lot of little miniature military
forces fighting on a battlefield.
Back in the 1920s, the Naval War College created an early form of this in order to help evaluate
battles before actually fighting them.
They had a stat called “Life” which was determined by how many
14-inch shell hits a vessel could take.
So that’s what a hit point is, how many 14-inch shells it would take to kill you.
Every living creature is one hit point.
The end.
But that isn’t our current understanding of HP.
That came when war games shrank in scope and started to become more fantasy oriented.
In older games, you would roll dice, and then your troops would either survive or they would die.
You had large swaths of nameless troops so you could do this without feeling any remorse
over their deaths.
Haha.
War.
But when these games stopped playing with hundreds of troops and instead focused on
a few main characters, players realized they didn’t want their characters to die!
So the hit point was born.
Your character could survive X number of bad rolls before throwing them in the garbage.
So really, the hit point wasn’t made to quantify how easy something is to kill,
it was born from compassion and wanting to see your characters grow and thrive.
And then also to figure out how easy they were to kill.
We’ve had some semblance of HP for nearly a century, but we haven’t updated our real-world
understanding of what one hit point looks like.
So I’ll be doing that, specifically so you can quantify your pet’s HP.
A little disclaimer up front:
I am not giving you this algorithm so you can battle your pets.
Animal abuse is wrong.
And if you needed me to tell you that...
I’m glad I told you that.
I'm also not teaching you how to calculate human HP, because that power is too great to wield,
and it could easily be used for evil by some of the most wicked forces on Earth...
like health insurance companies.
No, I am teaching you how to calculate your pet’s HP as a fun bonding exercise between
you and your animal, or in case you happen to be at a house party where you don’t know
anyone but the hosts have a dog and so instead of just sitting in the corner pretending to
text people, you can spend your time calculating that dog's HP, which is a way more normal
thing to do in a social situation.
Now it is time for the research.
How are we going to effectively calculate ANY pet’s HP?
Luckily, there are plenty of games that cover pretty much every type of pet that you could
possibly have, but I’ll be using Pokemon as the main pet HP analog because it is literally
about having lots and lots of pets that you can love and cherish
and I’m ignoring all the other stuff.
And that brings us to our first criteria: Type.
According to the National Pet Owners Survey, here are the most common types of pets found
in U.S. Households.
I appreciate that they have included a category called “Small Animals,”
as if that means fucking anything.
So we're changing some things.
The standards are still there: Dog, Cat, Fish (and all aquatic creatures), Reptile, Bird,
Equine, Small animal is becoming small mammal for things like ferrets and rabbits.
We're also including bug, because I love bugs!
And if you have bugs in your house and you make the conscious decision to WANT those bugs in your house,
they aren't pests,
they're pets...s.
Amphibian for the frog people.
Farm animals covers any livestock that don’t immediately fit into the other categories.
Originally, I thought about classifying these quadrupedal animals as different sorts of dog.
Chunky dog, milky dog, horny dog.
But farm animal encompasses them a little bit better.
I am still keeping those names, though.
We also have a category I call “exotic,” which encompasses all of the animals you see
in instagram influencer pics that make you say,
This can go from monkeys to bats to hyenas, which, according to this incredibly reliable
website, I could technically own in New York due to a loophole?
*about to make a terrible decision*
Also, Millennials and Gen Z often live in tiny, “no pet” apartments and
don’t get paid enough to support a decent standard of living for themselves, let alone
a pet, so they’ll often turn to plants in order to feel the joy that comes from nurturing
a living thing in our rapidly decaying ecosystem.
*sigh*
So I’m extending pet status to plants so that way you too can do this HP calculation,
because, god, we all need a distraction sometimes.
By building a set of pet types, we are able to assign HP RANGES to each of them by finding
the lowest base HP and highest max HP of each type.
The absolute extremes of this scale are Shedinja, with a base HP of 1, and Wailord, with a max HP of 544.
Now, both of these would be pretty wild to have as pets,
considering one is the shell left behind after a cicada molts,
and the other is a fucking whale.
But that’s why they’re the extremes, and that’s why we are not done with our equation yet.
We might know the full HP range of a dog, but what is the HP range of YOUR dog.
I thought for a moment about having size be the next criteria, because you might think
that the larger the animal, the more HP it would have.
But that’s actually not true!
In fact, the Pokemon with the highest base HP is Blissey, this strange little egg woman.
And Onix, an enormous rock snake, has one of the lowest base HPs of all Pokemon.
This confused me, so I had to go back to the original popularizer of HP: Dungeons & Dragons.
And it was there that I realized what truly affects your HP value:
Your value is not defined by the size or shape of your body,
it’s about what you do with the body you’re given.
*cheesy motivational music*
It’s all about class!
As in, what standard gaming class does your pet fall into?
Every class has different HP ranges based on what they are expected to do.
Barbarians are out in the front lines, so they tend to have a lot more HP than a rogue,
who is slinking around in the back.
I’ve decided that the classes that make the most sense for pets are: Barbarian, Ranger,
Paladin, Cleric, and Rogue.
I haven’t included any classes like sorcerer, because if you have a magical pet,
what are you doing here?
Go cast spells with your turtle.
These class distinctions separate your pet’s HP range into 10 equal portions.
If your pet is a rogue, you get the first six.
If your pet is a barbarian, you're anywhere from five to 10.
Your pet’s personality will determine what class they fall into.
Your pet is a rogue if they are rakish, mischievous, and spry.
Cats tend to come to mind for the rogue category, simply because they’re always up in shit
they should not be up in.
Your pet is a cleric if they are kind, reserved, and healing.
A rabbit that hops onto your lap after a rough day of work and makes you forget all your
worries is 100% cleric.
Your pet is a paladin if it is loyal, resourceful, and, honestly, tries a little bit too hard.
Does your zucchini plant produce too many zucchinis?
A.K.A.
Any amount of zucchinis?
It's a paladin.
Your pet is a ranger if they are self-sufficient, aloof, and kind of do their own thing.
Ask yourself, am I holding my pet rat back from their true ambitions?
The answer is always yes, and your rat is a ranger.
And finally your pet is a barbarian if they are boorish, brazen, and courageous to a fault.
Does your dog dig under the fence so it can jump into your neighbor’s pool?
Your dog is Marmaduke.
It is also a Barbarian.
Your pet can have a combination of many of these traits, but it’s up to you to decide
which traits are most dominant.
Now that we have your pet’s type and class designated, we need to get into the nitty
gritty of their exact HP, which means finding your pet's level.
In order to do this, you must observe your pet in a scientific manner.
So I reached out to field biologist.
Hi, I’m Olivia.
I'm a wildlife biologist.
I contacted Olivia after she responded to my totally normal twitter request with this
dope-ass picture.
I figured that if anyone knew how to calculate the hit points of an animal, it would be someone
holding a huge bird like it was a torch.
Have you ever found the hit points of any of the animals you've been researching?
I've never been involved in any sort of study where that was something that we looked at.
So no.
Okay.
But there are probably plenty of studies about hit points with animals.
Probably.
Though she didn’t have experience with my specific question, I knew she would have some
useful advice for observing animals in their natural habitat.
When you're observing an animal, how much interaction should you have with it?
None.
At all.
None.
You have to sit in like a blind or a tent of some sort where you're hidden or you look
like part of the environment.
You could wear a ghillie suit.
Brian - Oh!
Olivia - People have also done that.
How long of a period are you observing that animal for?
It depends on how much time and resources you have, obviously.
There have been scientists that have been observing the same hawk for, like, 20 years in a row.
So if I'm trying to... perfectly know my pet's HP, I should be observing it for
multiple years.
Yes.
Cool.
How do you take notes when you're observing an animal.
Right, so, I actually—can I send you something?
Yes, please.
This is exactly what I was looking for.
Olivia had sent me an animal behavior data sheet, which I could use as a template for
observing and recording a pet’s behavior.
But some of these behaviors wouldn’t make sense when observing your pet on a random day.
We ended up developing a new sheet that had standard behaviors and class specific behaviors
that had different weights associated with them.
You observe your pet for X number of hours, tally up all the behaviors they did over the
course of those hours, and then divide the weighted total by X to give you your pet’s level.
The logic behind this is that a higher level pet is more likely to do more intense and
class specific behaviors.
Then you plug that level into this algorithm, and you get your pet’s HP.
It may seem challenging, but science shouldn’t be easy, it should be correct.
This is probably the hardest scientific work you've ever had to do.
It really is.
Yeah.
With these tips in mind, I welcome you into my home.
In order to test these calculations, I need a test subject.
So I’m using my roommate’s cat, Zuko!
He lives in my apartment but he doesn’t pay rent and he eats my bagels if I leave
them unattended.
As I mentioned previously, finding your pet's HP can be a fun bonding exercise, and in this
case, I’ve been dealing with this small bastard’s antics for so long, I need to
remind myself why he’s here by quantifying his value.
The first step is easy!
He is a cat.
That puts him in the cat category.
Okay.
Step two, we gotta give Zuko a class.
As I mentioned previously, cats are often rogues, but I don't think that fits Zuko considering
he’s the least stealthy creature I know.
His meow sounds like he’s been smoking two packs a day for the past forty years.
*incredibly raspy meow*
And every time he does manage to sneak into his food cabinet,
he lets me know immediately.
Just wanted to check in on what's going on up here in the cat cabinet where we keep all
of the food for the cat.
*loud crash*
He is loud, stubborn, and not afraid to make terrible decisions in plain
view of me.
And that makes this guy a Barbarian.
Okay!
But now it is time to observe Zuko to find his level.
As per Olivia’s instructions, I must observe him for several years without any interaction.
After explaining why I needed it, my time off request was denied.
So instead, I ate some bodega sushi in order to induce illness, and I took a sick day.
Mmmm.
This is the hard part, because it's going to require me to observe Zuko as he goes about
his daily business without him noticing that I am here at all.
I assumed my position, and I waited for the interesting behaviors to start.
*cheeky music plays*
Not only was this terribly boring, but I was beginning to fear that Zuko
was not as strong as I had hoped.
DO SOMETHING!
PLEASE!
But then I realized there was a exploit in my system.
Though Olivia, a scientist, said that you should keep your interferences to a minimum...
I’m not a scientist, I’m a gamer.
And I began what is known as power leveling.
I had to get Zuko as many experience points as I could before my roommate got home and
asked me what I was doing.
Over the course of the day, Zuko averaged 63 behavioral experience points per hour,
although those behaviors were somewhat coerced by me.
I know that I broke my system by interacting with Zuko, but if it makes my pet happier
and it makes him less of a weak-ass scrub, why wouldn’t I game the system!
I had also noticed that Zuko and I had grown closer, our support level had increased to
at least a B. I no longer saw him as a freeloader who sometimes throws up in my bed,
I saw him as a companion...
who sometimes throws up in my bed.
When I felt lonely in my empty apartment, he was there for me.
When my stomach ached from the bodega sushi, he purred at just the right frequency to ease my pain.
When I was worried he was going to be under leveled, he soothed my anxieties
with his heavenly voice.
*beautiful meow*
And all this time I had spent trying to calculate his HP,
I hadn't realized he was replenishing mine.
So here is Zuko, Barbarian class level 63.
I love him with all my heart, and he loves me just the same.
Ow!
Okay, okay...
*lots of wonderful meows*
Beautiful.
Psst!
Remember when I said I really wanted to play the Cyberpunk RPG?
We finally did it.
Come watch me play as a totally uncool forum moderator called Vang0Bang0.
Guys don't say other things, we should only have one person in the...
You're making it sound like there are more than one person in...
There's only one person in the bathroom!
Vang0Bang0!