🩺 Health — What This System Does (and Doesn’t Do)¶

This page explains what the Health system is responsible for and what is intentionally left to you.

No code. No implementation details. Just boundaries.

✅ What Health does¶

Health is responsible for:

Tracking current health, maximum health, and dead/alive state
Applying damage through a controlled damage pipeline
Applying healing through a controlled healing pipeline
Handling damage rules such as armor, crits, affinities, team checks, clamps, and multipliers
Handling heal rules such as anti-heal, low-health boosts, and healing modifiers
Supporting shields through shield interfaces and preview-capable shields
Supporting damage previews and heal previews for UI, AI, and decision systems
Managing death, revive, and optional before-death interception
Supporting optional invincibility, regeneration, DOT, HOT, and combat-state helpers
Emitting events for UI, VFX, SFX, analytics, and gameplay systems
Providing health snapshots for save/load systems
Supporting optional authority checks before mutation

👉 In short:

Health owns the lifecycle of health mutation and health state

❌ What Health does not do¶

Health intentionally does not provide:

Persistence¶

No save files
No cloud sync
No automatic save/load

Health can provide snapshots, but you decide:

when to save
where data is stored
when to restore
how snapshots are versioned

Networking¶

No replication
No prediction
No rollback or reconciliation
No server/client state sync

Health supports authority checks, but you must implement:

server authority
ownership rules
state synchronization
multiplayer correction behaviour

Authority Rules¶

No built-in multiplayer authority model
No automatic ownership system
No networking framework dependency

Health can ask:

👉 “Is mutation allowed?”

But your project decides:

👉 “Who is allowed to mutate this health?”

Combat Design¶

Health provides damage, healing, shields, rules, DOT/HOT, regen, and lifecycle hooks.

It does not decide your game’s combat design.

You own:

damage formulas
balancing
team/faction rules
enemy AI decisions
ability logic
weapon logic
status-effect design
encounter tuning

UI / UX¶

Health emits events and exposes readable state.

It does not own your final UI.

You own:

HUD layout
boss bars
floating combat text
damage numbers
hit indicators
death screens
player feedback

The included UI connectors are convenience helpers, not a full UI framework.

Animation, VFX, and Audio Direction¶

Health includes hooks and optional helpers for death, healing, damage, VFX, SFX, and animation triggers.

It does not define:

your animation controller
your death presentation
your sound design
your VFX style
your camera feedback
your hit reaction system

Those are game-specific presentation layers.

🧠 Responsibility Split¶

Responsibility	Owner
Current / max health state	Health
Damage application	Health
Healing application	Health
Damage and heal rules	Health
Shields and shield previews	Health
Death / revive lifecycle	Health
DOT / HOT ticking helpers	Health
Regeneration helper	Health
Invincibility helper	Health
Health snapshots	Health
Save/load system	You
Networking	You
Authority rules	You
Combat balancing	You
Ability / weapon design	You
UI / UX	You
Animation / VFX / SFX direction	You

🧩 The Mental Shortcut¶

If you’re ever unsure:

“What happens when health changes?” → Health
“How is damage or healing evaluated?” → Health
“Can shields, rules, or lifecycle hooks affect it?” → Health
“When and where is health saved?” → You
“Who is allowed to mutate health?” → You
“How does multiplayer sync this?” → You
“How is it shown, animated, or balanced?” → You

🎯 The Point¶

Health is designed to be:

Predictable
Modular
Explicit
Adapter-friendly
Safe to extend through public seams

It gives you:

👉 a reliable health mutation and lifecycle engine

It does not try to be:

👉 your entire combat system

TL;DR¶

Health owns health state, mutation, rules, shields, and lifecycle.
You own persistence, networking, authority policy, combat design, and presentation.