Calculate your pet's HP with my 100% legitimate formula | Unraveled

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] his life quantifiable every breath every beat of a heart so they count as tallies edged 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 pets HP because that's what I would do [Music] hitpoints what are they and how do 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 cult 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 Franken scoped 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 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 upfront 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 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 pets 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 US households I appreciate that they have included a category called small animals as if that means [ __ ] anything so we're changing some things the standards are still there dog catfish 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 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 we also have a category I call exotic which encompasses all of the animals you see in Instagram influencer pics that make you say I don't know if you should own that thing 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 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 so I'm extending pet status to plants so that way you two 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 the highest max HP of each type the absolute extremes of this scale are shedinja with a base HP of one 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 Maltz and the other is a [ __ ] 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 that's actually not true in fact the Pokemon with the highest base HP is Blissey this strange little egg woman and onyx an enormous rock snake has one of the lowest base HP's 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 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 rope 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 rope 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 pets HP range into ten 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 ten your pets 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 are always up and [ __ ] that 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% Clare 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 aka any amount of zucchinis it's a paladin your pet is a ranger if they are self-sufficient aloof and canna 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 range 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 pets type and class designated we need to get into the nitty-gritty of their exact HP which means finding your pets level in order to do this you must observe your pet in a scientific manner so I reached out to a field biologist hi I'm Olivia I'm a wildlife biologist I contacted Olivia after she respond to my totally normal Twitter request with this a 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 within 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 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 can wear a ghillie suit 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 twenty years in a row so if I am trying to perfectly know my pets copy 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 it's 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 pets 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 pets 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 but 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 roommates 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 pets HP can be a fun bonding exercise and in this case I've been dealing with this small bastards 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 is the least stealthy creature I know his meow sounds like he's been smoking two packs a day for the past 40 years and every time he does manage to sneak into his food cabinet he lets me know immediately just want to check in on what's going on up here in the cabinet he is loud stubborn and not afraid to make terrible decisions and 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 mm-hmm 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 [Music] not only was this terribly boring but I was beginning to fear that Zuko was not as strong as I had hoped but then I realized there was an 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 [Music] over the course of the day Zuko average 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 Abbey 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 gonna be underleveled he soothed my anxieties with his heavenly voice 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 [Music] okay [Music] beautiful just remember what 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 Bango Bango guys don't say other things we should only have one person in the you're making it sound like there more than one person that there's only one person in the bathroom Bango Bango

Channel: Polygon

Views: 2,781,935

Rating: 4.9583139 out of 5

Keywords: unraveled, brian david gilbert, bdg, hp, hit points, health, pokemon, videogames, video games, polygon, zuko, cat, dog, how to, calculate, pet, biology, class, dungeons and dragons, D&D, dnd, war games, tabletop, rpg, kitty, gaming, funny, hilarious, ridiculous, formula, equation, algorithm, unravel, animal, board game, xoxo, science, math, scientific, calculation, gamer, ghillie suit, biologist, wildlife, rogue, barbarian, paladin, ranger, cleric

Id: 9Jcxc-ddWKI

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/revantargaryen]

Lmao that cat's meow was great

[u/Jencaasi]

I'm one minute, twenty seconds into this video and I've already laughed out loud twice. I just had to pause and comment to say thanks for the link! Edit: And I like his purple nails!

[u/DrFizzles]

I made a Google spreadsheet to do this automatically because I'm a fucking nerd.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1htbTjHJCLKsi6bZn_bOIrXsilz_4uVMhh0LOIz5Svmo/edit?usp=sharing

[u/thelehmanlip]

Only reason I sub to polygon

[u/rainey832]

I love this guy

[u/artuno]

My cat Zelda's HP is 420. Nice.

JK, I'll probably have to observe her this weekend to do it properly.

[u/ryushiblade]

I’d like a channel or nothing but Brian David Gilbert and Tim Rogers, please

[u/Blackgunter]

More top notch academic questioning by my man BDG. Love this guys work!

[u/audax]

DBG is a national treasure.