# How many hit points do you have?



## Ahnehnois (Apr 16, 2014)

Poll question cut off. Should read: "In your D&D game, how much does a character know about his own hit points (his total, how much damage he has, and how it compares to other things)?"

I don't know that anyone's ever asked this here directly before, but it seems interesting.

The question is specific to what the character understands, not the player (if you're drawing a distinction).

The first response is not to be taken that you know the exact number, but may be something close to that. For example, it would indicate that if you have 15 hit points, you know that a 20 ft fall won't kill you, but a more serious fall might. If you have lost 20 hit points, you know that a Cure Light Wounds isn't sufficient to heal you up, but Cure Moderate might be and Cure Serious definitely will. These are the kinds of decisions I'm talking about.

The second is to indicate that you know something, but very little. For instance, you might realize if you dropped below half hit points, you had some damage, but you probably wouldn't be able to recognize your remaining health to any more specific level than a quartile. You couldn't necessarily make reliable judgments like the above regarding specific sources of damage and healing and exactly how close you are to death, but you know something.

The third is fairly radical, and would indicate that you can only observe objective consequences, like being dropped or perhaps (in 4e terms), being bloodied. You could be at 1/100 hp and not know that you were close to dying. At most, you'd realize you'd almost been stabbed a few times recently, but you wouldn't have any sense as to when your luck is about to run out.

***

This has significant play implications, so I'm interested to see how people feel about this.


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## oxybe (Apr 16, 2014)

hit points, thematically, is just plot armor. it's how much abuse your character can take before they drop unconscious or die.

for the most part, when it comes to combat, it tends to fall into a weird inbetween realm of "how consistent is the GM going to be" and "how do i want to portray my character"

basically a character that's rather agile is treating HP as close calls whereas your john-mcclain-esque PC treats every HP as meat points: every hit is a wound and blood is drawn. 

outside of combat it's simple threat assessment: "should this go wrong, do i think i can come out of it relatively safely?" as seen through your own personal view. a big old pendulum axe trap, for example could be a close shave as the PC jumps back/forwards at the last second, giving his cloak a nice shave or it could be that the character manages to get through but is left with a wound on his leg as it grazes him before he fully passes the threshold.

basically, my view of HP is "whatever plot armor fits your character better, you know the PC better then I do"


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## Hussar (Apr 16, 2014)

We've always treated hp as a meta game thing. It's never really been strongly linked to anything in game afaik.


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## Lanefan (Apr 16, 2014)

In character we usually have it as fairly vague - "oh, I'm down some but still good to go" or "I'm at about half my usual fighting form" - until you get into body points, at which time the characters know they're getting really banged up and have a pretty good idea what they're at.

The players, of course, know exact numbers as they are who track such things.

Corollary question: when characters level up do they know they now have a higher hit point maximum if not at full?  We have it that they do not, until they wake up (or are cured up) feeling better than ever before.  They also don't get the new h.p. as if healed that amount - instead of being at 13 out of 24 you're now at 13 out of 31. (most video games have it that you'd go frm 13/24 to 20/31; this makes no sense in the rpg world)

Lan-"and if you've any h.p. you don't think you'll need, I'll take 'em"-efan


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## Jan van Leyden (Apr 16, 2014)

The character has a divine insight in what his player knows about the status.  

I once (1e or 2e era) tried to employ a descriptive method, but it broke down pretty quickly after the first level. My descriptions became to samey ("the orc's sword hit you, you barely managed to jump away, suffering only a minor wound"). It became an HP description with other words.

The other point is that tracking PC HP is just another task I'm not keen to handle. And having the players distinguish between their knowledge and that of the character wouldn't work, I guess.


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## Sunseeker (Apr 16, 2014)

My players have their sheets in hand, and they know how much damage they take, so it's really just a meta-game thing.  I certainly do reward RPing it up, especially when communicating it to the other players.  I understand the _need_ for specifics and to be tactical about the use of healing in any game, but I appreciate players saying "Help me I'm bleeding out over here!" when they're low on health, rather than "I'm at 5 HP, heal me!"

Players do not know the specific HP of anything other than their own character though...except for that stupid 4e ability that lets them know the _exact number_​.  >.>


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## Minigiant (Apr 16, 2014)

Somewhere between one and two.

Just like I know a 10ft fall won't kill me if I don't land weird, the PCs can guess whether something can kill them. 

A fighter with 50HP knows he can hold off a single common orc for 20 seconds because it can't kill him for a few rounds.


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## steeldragons (Apr 16, 2014)

Well, considering [or, at least, assuming] the players are not robots or suffer from multiple personality disorder, the character is not ever capable of acting without _some_ player knowledge.

That said, the PCs are not in the heat of battle yelling to each other, "Assistance please, I've only got 3 left!!!" "GAH, that attack just knocked me down to half in one shot!!!" The players, sure. All the time. But I've never sat at a table where that sort of comment was taken as actually "in character."

But something akin to Lanefan's post, I suppose, would be what/how it works for me/my tables: a "vague understanding" of their general health and well being, sure.

The character, assuming they are even mildly self-aware, has knowledge and can discern when they are "barely/somewhat/badly/GODS HELP ME I'M DOOMED!" hurt.

Some characters, with this knowledge, make the "heroic last stand/final charge" trusting their abilities and the gods to see them through and/or intend to go down in a blaze of glory. Others, with the same knowledge, go/limp/crawl "Wee wee wee, all the way home."


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## Celebrim (Apr 16, 2014)

Both hit points and levels are treated as pure metaconstructs.  Neither exists in the game world and its not possible to discover hit points or level, nor have any magical effect be triggered on or by hit points.  For that matter, class per say is also a meta-contruct, but in some cases there is a very tight relationship between the metagame class and the character's in game station in life, relationship to the world, and chosen profession.  A character with the cleric class knows he is a cleric and is in the game world a cleric.  A character with the cleric class doesnt' know in game whether he is a multi-classed cleric/expert though, nor does he really understand what that means (because it doesn't mean anything in game, class being just an abstraction of concrete in game world skills that are usually acquired together), but to the extent that multiclassing reflects specific periods of his life history he might know that.

Characters know how seriously they are wounded, and can convey this to other characters.  In general, I don't squash players telling other players how many hit points they've lost because not everyone is of such a thespian inclination and it tends to slow down gameplay in larger groups if you are that hardnosed about being IC.   But their characters can't refer to hit points in character, and NPCs never do so.

It is possible to use a heal check to tell how seriously someone else is wounded, but the same result is obtained if a person with 10 hit points has 2 hit points left or a person with 100 hit points has 20 hit points left.  Both are assumed to have more or less equivalent injuries - in both cases quite serious and ugly looking but not crippling or life threatening.  Although often we could make distinctions about how the injuries were obtained, even that is not certain.  The characters know that they are feeling tired, achey, or pained by their injuries but they can still grit through them (although presumably a less than heroic character would not want to and would require motivation to do so).  Neither character would exactly know that the next blow they took was likely to be quite serious (and after all, in the case of the character with 20 hit points, it might not be), but they'd certainly both understand that they couldn't take much more of this, their luck was running out, and they'd have a hard time fighting through the pain to avoid any more danger.  

It is also possible to appraise whether or not someone is more skillful than you at a particular task if you observe them performing the task for a reasonable period, and in D&D this implies level but does not prove it nor does it obtain an exacting figure.  For example, if you watch another character fight or spar against them, you can reasonably quickly establish if they know what they are doing or if they know more than you do.  But you can't establish their level (which could be multi-classed)

Although levels don't exist, it is possible for spellcasters in game to effectively know the level of other spellcasters because the level of a spell is something that explicitly exists in the game world.   A wizard that can cast 5th level spells is said to have "penetrated the 5th circle of mysteries".   The title Archmage can be claimed by a wizard that has "penetrated the 9th circle of mysteries".   The particular path of learning to reach the next circle of understanding is formalized among wizards, but no one thinks or talks about it in terms like levels and if you asked wizards about graduations among wizardry they'd say that there were 10 - it doesn't really occur to them that a Wizard that can cast 4th level spells might be 7th or 8th level.   For one thing, a potent hedge mage might be 9th or 10th level, but if he only has a 14 Int, he won't penetrate the 5th circle of mystery (5th level spells) and so as far as the wizards are concerned 7th, 8th, 9th, or 10th level all look the same.  Being able to cast a certain number of spells of a given level doesn't prove anything either, as that's dependent on Intelligence, Feats, and so forth.   Inside the game world, the level of the wizard is still an abstraction for the concrete thing of being of a particular skill in his chosen profession.


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## Halivar (Apr 16, 2014)

My character always knows when the next hit is going to finish him off (3 hp or less). Makes charging in anyway that much cooler.


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## Balesir (Apr 16, 2014)

For me, hit points are a player-knowledge proxy for an understanding of the nuances of their condition that the characters know but may find very hard to express clearly. It's a bit like knowing how able you might be to play football; you have a pretty good idea within yourself, but you might not be able to define it precisely to a coach or physician.


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 16, 2014)

shidaku said:


> Players do not know the specific HP of anything other than their own character though...except for that stupid 4e ability that lets them know the _exact number_​.  >.>



I am not familiar with this one. Can you explain?


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## Halivar (Apr 16, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I am not familiar with this one. Can you explain?



"Bloodied" status is when a creature falls below half hit-points. The players often need to know this because they have abilities that key off of this. Alternatively, most solo creatures have special abilities of traits that activate at bloodied status.


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## Grogg of the North (Apr 16, 2014)

It depends.  In the middle of combat, my group tends to lean towards things like "He's bleeding badly" or "The monster looks hale and hardy".  Out of combat, when healing is being dispensed, things become more number specific.  "How are you doing?"  "I'm fine, I'm at 27 of 30."


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## Sunseeker (Apr 16, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I am not familiar with this one. Can you explain?




It's been some time and I don't have their sheets anymore, all I recall is that it was a utility power that allowed him to find out the specific health of an enemy.  Power even specified that he got to know the exact HP total of the enemy, not just "Bloodied or not" or "kinda hurt".


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## Jacob Marley (Apr 16, 2014)

shidaku said:


> It's been some time and I don't have their sheets anymore, all I recall is that it was a utility power that allowed him to find out the specific health of an enemy.  Power even specified that he got to know the exact HP total of the enemy, not just "Bloodied or not" or "kinda hurt".




3.5 had a similar ability with the Combat Awareness feat. So long as the character was maintaining his combat focus, he could learn the exact current hit point total of each adjacent enemy and ally.


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## Lanefan (Apr 16, 2014)

Jacob Marley said:


> 3.5 had a similar ability with the Combat Awareness feat. So long as the character was maintaining his combat focus, he could learn the exact current hit point total of each adjacent enemy and ally.



Which, all too obviously, just begs to be narrated as:

"You invoke your Combat Awareness, and around you little red-green bars shimmer into view above each of your foes.  With each successful strike, the proportion of red in that opponent's bar increases."

Lanefan


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## Celebrim (Apr 16, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> Which, all too obviously, just begs to be narrated as:
> 
> "You invoke your Combat Awareness, and around you little red-green bars shimmer into view above each of your foes.  With each successful strike, the proportion of red in that opponent's bar increases."
> 
> Lanefan




Pretty much.

Though I'm of the impression that late 3.5e and 4e did not feel anything had to be narrated or explained in game.  The intention is to communicate entirely through the metagame path.

I will say that I am finding narration to be somewhat hard when it comes to creatures that have alien physiologies.  I recently ran a battle with Abballin (water oozes), and had a very very hard time narrating what a damaging blow was like or what was happening as the creature became injured (or died).  In particular, the problem with narrating an unsuccessful edged attack versus a successful bludgeoning attack (they have immunity to edged weapons) became acute.   I'm inclined to reverse that in the future, simply because narrating unsuccessful bludngeoning attacks as opposed to successful cleaving attacks is a lot easier.


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## billd91 (Apr 16, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> I will say that I am finding narration to be somewhat hard when it comes to creatures that have alien physiologies.  I recently ran a battle with Abballin (water oozes), and had a very very hard time narrating what a damaging blow was like or what was happening as the creature became injured (or died).  In particular, the problem with narrating an unsuccessful edged attack versus a successful bludgeoning attack (they have immunity to edged weapons) became acute.   I'm inclined to reverse that in the future, simply because narrating unsuccessful bludngeoning attacks as opposed to successful cleaving attacks is a lot easier.




Sure, the narration can be tricky sometimes, but the edged vs bludgeoning attack vs a water ooze doesn't seem so difficult to me. You could say an edged weapon slices through the watery creature without much disruption while a bludgeoning attack causes water to splash out all over the place and causes the creature to reel in response. That may at least convey the information that bludgeoning weapons are where it's at with respect to affecting the creature.


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## Manbearcat (Apr 16, 2014)

The players in my game and myself (as GM) have (for 28 years) assumed that HPs are in no way knowable by characters.  They are a metagame marker for heroic staying power.  We post-hoc justify ablation and restoration of HP by referencing the current, and recent past, fictional positioning and use the abstract composite of martial skill/luck/morale/fatigue/divine favor/magic with a very tiny smidgeon of superficial meat (a minor tweak of an ankle/knee/wrist, perhaps a  few mm deep laceration, insignificant shrapnel/fragmentation, a bruise, or a topical burn whose only relevance is pain).  The last HPs lost before unconsciousness are rarely, if ever, narrated as potentially terminal as well (only if clearly and presently the case...or if definitively so; as in death).  If I want to put a lasting injury on a player's character in my 4e game, I'll leverage the condition/disease track rather than using HPs.

This usage doesn't affect our sense of versimilitude.  I'm certain the antithesis would.


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## Celebrim (Apr 16, 2014)

billd91 said:


> Sure, the narration can be tricky sometimes, but the edged vs bludgeoning attack vs a water ooze doesn't seem so difficult to me. You could say an edged weapon slices through the watery creature without much disruption while a bludgeoning attack causes water to splash out all over the place and causes the creature to reel in response.




Ultimately, that's pretty much exactly what I adopted, but it felt very contrived.


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 16, 2014)

They're aware enough to make decisions based on it.

I'd hesitate to say it was a precise awareness -- "I am at 24.5% of my maximum health" isn't an in-character statement.

But they know it enough to know if they could take another sword blow or a drop off that cliff or a flurry of crossbow bolts. They know it enough to make decisions on it.

This is in part because in my games HPs are always at least a little injury. So the guy thinking about taking a flying leap off the roof is thinking, in part, "this is gonna hurt...but I think I can take it."


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## Hussar (Apr 17, 2014)

Of course, this all begs the question - How many decisions does a character actually make?  

As [MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION] above said, unless the player is somehow able to induce a multiple personality disorder, the character cannot really know anything.  AFAIC, the character is simply a filter through which the player makes decisions.  Since the player cannot not know his hit points, then decisions will always be made based on remaining hit points.

But, from an "in world" perspective", the character has absolutely no idea if the next sword hit will kill him.  Actually, that's not true.  I take that back.  The character always knows that the next sword hit will kill him, regardless of how healthy he is, because being hit with a sword kills you.  But, until you whittle down something's hit points, that sword hit never occurs.

IOW, no one ever dies from minor cuts and bruises.  And I don't have to beat something up first to kill it.  It always baffles me when people talk like this as if it makes sense from an in game perspective.  A hunter could never, ever kill a deer.  A pony in 3.5 has 11 hit points (which would be about right for most deer) means that an arrow from a hunter won't kill a deer.  Since hit points mean that the deer won't actually bleed out (unless knocked below 0 HP), you'd need to hit the deer multiple times before dropping it.

Which is utterly ridiculous.  Hunting in a D&D world, if HP apply to everything and are objective, would be extremely difficult.

OTOH, if HP are a meta-game construct which only really applies to events that the game concerns itself with - high adventure, buckling your swashes - then this stops being a problem.


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## pemerton (Apr 17, 2014)

I'm in the unusual situation of agreeing with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] at the same time.



Ahnehnois said:


> The third is fairly radical, and would indicate that you can only observe objective consequences, like being dropped or perhaps (in 4e terms), being bloodied. You could be at 1/100 hp and not know that you were close to dying. At most, you'd realize you'd almost been stabbed a few times recently, but you wouldn't have any sense as to when your luck is about to run out.



In 4e you also know how tired you're getting and how sore you're feeling (as surges get used). I also take it that as hit points are lost, a character may be feeling weary; and that when healing is received, a character feels reinvigorated/inspired.

Of course _players_ know their PC's hit points remaining and make decisions on the basis of that information.


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 17, 2014)

Balesir said:


> For me, hit points are a player-knowledge proxy for an understanding of the nuances of their condition that the characters know but may find very hard to express clearly. It's a bit like knowing how able you might be to play football; you have a pretty good idea within yourself, but you might not be able to define it precisely to a coach or physician.



I think this is kind of how I look at it. The specific knowledge the character has is related to, but not the same as the hit point mechanics. Much the way that I have an intuitive idea of how far I can throw a ball even if I cannot necessarily calculate it using physics equations.


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 17, 2014)

Manbearcat said:


> The players in my game and myself (as GM) have (for 28 years) assumed that HPs are in no way knowable by characters.  They are a metagame marker for heroic staying power.
> ...
> This usage doesn't affect our sense of versimilitude.  I'm certain the antithesis would.



Which is fine, but, it seems, pretty atypical (though I'm not surprised by who chose that answer). I think the the idea of considering hit points as a purely metagame element would suggest that the character can't understand them, as it would essentially break the fourth wall if he knew things like that.

To me, where that leads is that there must be a separate set of rules in the reality the characters live in. That is, the characters in the world experience fatigue and wounds in some fashion, and they develop an understanding of how health and harm work. If that understanding does not reflect what is going on in the mechanics, it begs the question of what exactly is going on in their experience.

Do we assume that they live in a realistic world where people sometimes get an eye poked out or gangrene in their wounds, but that this reality simply never interacts with the hp system (i.e. those outcomes only occur through DM 'fiat'). Or do they live in a Hollywood world where no one of consequence ever gets hurt, but they lack the self-awareness to understand that? Or are they cartoonish characters that know they can't get hurt and jump off cliffs for fun?


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 17, 2014)

Jacob Marley said:


> 3.5 had a similar ability with the Combat Awareness feat. So long as the character was maintaining his combat focus, he could learn the exact current hit point total of each adjacent enemy and ally.





shidaku said:


> It's been some time and I don't have their sheets anymore, all I recall is that it was a utility power that allowed him to find out the specific health of an enemy.  Power even specified that he got to know the exact HP total of the enemy, not just "Bloodied or not" or "kinda hurt".



Thanks both of you. It's interesting; I thought that there might be rules wherein you learn the enemy's hp total, but I couldn't remember where they were. I can't say I'm a big fan of them either.

To me, this implies that the writers are assuming that you know your own hp already (otherwise you would know more about the enemy than you could ever know about yourself, which doesn't make sense). However, that isn't explicitly stated.


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## Celebrim (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:


> A hunter could never, ever kill a deer.




While the difficulty of a hunter in killing a deer is a problem I have deliberately introduced into my rules for a variety of reasons, including solving the problematic issue of scale between say farmers and house cats, I think you are exaggerating the problem here far beyond what actually exists in the RAW.



> A pony in 3.5 has 11 hit points (which would be about right for most deer)




And there is your problem.  I'd guess most deer have about 5 hit points, IIRC.  Certainly in 1e they were 1/2 of 1 HD animals.   A pony suitable for riding weighs between 500 and 1000lbs depending on the breed.  Whereas a 200lb deer is a pretty big deer.   If you have 11 h.p. deer, then the problem becomes why doesn't the deer just kill things since it greatly outclasses the hunters?  Why are we assuming the commoner hunter has 2.5 h.p. when the animal of about the same weight has 11.5?



> means that an arrow from a hunter won't kill a deer.  Since hit points mean that the deer won't actually bleed out (unless knocked below 0 HP), you'd need to hit the deer multiple times before dropping it.




I've done enough hunting to have encountered the problem of a deer someone else stuck with an arrow, they didn't kill the deer and now the flesh has closed up around the point.  While hitting a deer with a broad head from a compound bow usually kills it, it rarely drops it.  Generally you have to track it until it bleeds out.  A critical hit from a longbow does 3d8, and though I agree it shouldn't take 20 attempts to get a kill, if we assume deer are 1HD the problem becomes more logical.   Historically speaking, stalking deer with bows was rarely the way they were killed because it is extremely difficult.  Native American hunters preferred snare traps, for example.  Bear were almost always taken with deadfalls, not bows.  Bison were almost always taken by driving them off a cliff, or later by lance once horses came along.  

Is it perfectly realistic?  No.  I've not encountered the system that manages that, despite playing around with GULLIVER for a while.   But you are exaggerating the problem, or else you are dealing with problems introduced by poor monster design.  An example of pervasive poor monster design in 3e is that everything has a constitution bonus (except elves).  Constitution is vastly overestimated for most monsters if you are going for realism.


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, from an "in world" perspective", the character has absolutely no idea if the next sword hit will kill him.  Actually, that's not true.  I take that back.  The character always knows that the next sword hit will kill him, regardless of how healthy he is, because being hit with a sword kills you.



This isn't true. People survive serious wounds sometimes. The human body is surprisingly resilient. People also die of not-that-serious wounds. One of the basic truths of battlefield medicine, until relatively recently, is that infections killed more combatants than the actual wounds did. Also, a nick to an artery can be more deadly than a gaping wound that misses one. The spread of outcomes is quite complex.



> OTOH, if HP are a meta-game construct which only really applies to events that the game concerns itself with - high adventure, buckling your swashes - then this stops being a problem.



Well, yes, but that creates a rather large new problem.

Because now, if your ranger PC goes out and bags a deer without rolling an attack, the next time he sneaks up on an enemy, he says "Oh, I shoot the guy's horse." The DM asks him to roll an attack and damage (which won't kill it), but the player says "No, the horse is just dead now, that's how I do things apparently." What are you supposed to tell him? Quadripedal animals become more durable when they're important to the plot? The deer only died because you weren't swashbuckling at the time?

If the rules aren't applied in a consistent fashion (and moreover are applied selectively in ways that make the players' goals harder to achieve) they seem less to me like rules.


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:
			
		

> But, from an "in world" perspective", the character has absolutely no idea if the next sword hit will kill him. Actually, that's not true. I take that back. The character always knows that the next sword hit will kill him, regardless of how healthy he is, because being hit with a sword kills you.




This is part of why D&D feels like a heroic fantasy game to me -- you are playing people who do not die from being hit by dudes swinging swords at them. Normal people die when they are hit with a sword, sure. You are not playing the role of a normal person, you are playing the role of a _fantasy hero_, and part of what that means is that you can survive getting hit with a sword. 

That is because when a fantasy hero gets hit with a sword, they turn that potentially lethal blow -- a blow that would kill any normal person -- into something lighter. It might not be much -- a cut, a graze, a scrape, a nick, a "flesh wound." Being a fantasy hero means being superhuman, being able to take a slice with a blade without falling to pieces.

I like that, because it makes D&D feel like a game of fantasy heroics. That's part of what HP functions as for me -- a genre mechanic. It's pulpy. It's unrealistic in the best way. In the story, your fantasy hero looks at the legion of town guards with blades flashing in the moonlight and knows that they can get out of this (though maybe not without a few cuts and bruises). As a player, you look at 4 1st-level guards armed with longswords, and your own HP total, and you know that even if they all hit and deal max damage, you aren't going down. You and your character are thinking the same thing. _Roleplaying!_.



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> It always baffles me when people talk like this as if it makes sense from an in game perspective. A hunter could never, ever kill a deer. A pony in 3.5 has 11 hit points (which would be about right for most deer) means that an arrow from a hunter won't kill a deer. Since hit points mean that the deer won't actually bleed out (unless knocked below 0 HP), you'd need to hit the deer multiple times before dropping it.
> 
> Which is utterly ridiculous. Hunting in a D&D world, if HP apply to everything and are objective, would be extremely difficult.




That issue is pretty much pure theorycraft, though. It's not something that ever comes up in actual play because the players are not deer hunters, they're adventurers. If you're not into the rules-as-physics, this is a non-issue.

But okay, sure. Lets say that there's a problem with that verisimilitude. There's a few reactions to this and I think all of them are acceptable:


 *Go With It*: In this world of heroic fantasy, deer are pretty much all heroic, fantastic deer, so common hunters who are not fantasy heroes have to content themselves with smaller prey. Killing a deer in this heroic fantasy world is not something hunters regularly do. Venison is prized. Maybe those who hunt deer do so in groups (more attacks, more damage). Maybe they use traps. This is awesome because it makes everything legendary and amazing, and adds some interesting texture to the world.
 *Deer don't have that HP total*: We can presume the ponies in the MM are more robust than a common deer (deer being gracile, wild animals, ponies being domesticated laborers). Deer might be 1 HD animals (4 hp), possibly even with a CON penalty. Ponies are hardier. Part of why they make better pack animals. This is awesome because it gives some meaningful distinction between creatures you might encounter in the game. 
 *NPC's have special abilities, too*: Even without an ability score bonus (presuming all 10's), there's no reason to presume that an NPC hunter has no special skill. Perhaps NPC hunters have something like a ranger's Favored Enemy, and/or maybe something like the rogue's Sneak Attack. Perhaps they have some other ability that induces a bleed. Or maybe they make special arrows that deal ongoing damage. This is awesome because it means the world doesn't live just for the PC's and their experience, and builds out elements of the world that interface with them -- sure, you could get a +5 damage bonus vs. deer, if you wanted, but it's very specific. Maybe you could get your hands on those arrows -- sure would be useful!
 *Use the Proper Rules*: A hunter can kill a deer with a DC 10ish (maybe 12, 14) Survival check, which gives them enough food for themselves for a day. 12 or 14 because deer are kind of big and might provide enough food for a few folks. They don't need to roll attacks and damage because those rules aren't for hunting, they're for fighting. If a rampaging deer was coming at you with antlers bared and hooves glinting with blood in the moonlight, we're talking about a different kind of event than if a deer is trying to eat some grass or get a mate and some guy sneaks up on him and shoots him in the back. One is handled with combat rules, the other is handled using the rules for "getting along in the wilderness"

None of which is really even needed to enjoy a game of D&D, if you just accept the initial proposition that the numbers aren't the absolute physics of the world and that the rules for what happens offscreen don't matter a great deal. 



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> OTOH, if HP are a meta-game construct which only really applies to events that the game concerns itself with - high adventure, buckling your swashes - then this stops being a problem




Which is fine, too. Personally, I find that diminishes my feeling of high adventure, because then what my character feels and what I feel are in conflict, rather than in harmony as representing heroic fantasy heroes. I feel like a dude with Asperger's at a party: always aware of the rules on display, never able to just _feel_ them. And that's less fun for me.

Others ain't got that hang-up, though.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 17, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> This is part of why D&D feels like a heroic fantasy game to me -- you are playing people who do not die from being hit by dudes swinging swords at them. Normal people die when they are hit with a sword, sure. You are not playing the role of a normal person, you are playing the role of a _fantasy hero_, and part of what that means is that you can survive getting hit with a sword.



I wish I had better statistics on this, but I'm pretty sure that most normal people don't die when they get hit with a sword. In game terms, it's just a low damage roll (1-4 on the d6), but whenever they release data on terror attacks or actual combats, you always get a lot more people who are just _wounded_ rather than killed.


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## Hussar (Apr 17, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> This is part of why D&D feels like a heroic fantasy game to me -- you are playing people who do not die from being hit by dudes swinging swords at them. Normal people die when they are hit with a sword, sure. You are not playing the role of a normal person, you are playing the role of a _fantasy hero_, and part of what that means is that you can survive getting hit with a sword.
> 
> That is because when a fantasy hero gets hit with a sword, they turn that potentially lethal blow -- a blow that would kill any normal person -- into something lighter. It might not be much -- a cut, a graze, a scrape, a nick, a "flesh wound." Being a fantasy hero means being superhuman, being able to take a slice with a blade without falling to pieces.
> 
> I like that, because it makes D&D feel like a game of fantasy heroics. That's part of what HP functions as for me -- a genre mechanic. It's pulpy. It's unrealistic in the best way. In the story, your fantasy hero looks at the legion of town guards with blades flashing in the moonlight and knows that they can get out of this (though maybe not without a few cuts and bruises). As a player, you look at 4 1st-level guards armed with longswords, and your own HP total, and you know that even if they all hit and deal max damage, you aren't going down. You and your character are thinking the same thing. _Roleplaying!_.




But, hang on.  Are you saying that because I have more HP, I actually _change_ the outcome of an attack?  As in I deliberately change reality so that your strong hit is now just a graze?

Or is it the fact that I have X HP left means that no attack which deals less than X is actually a strong hit?  

I dunno about your character, but mine is thinking that a sword through the spleen is a sword through the spleen and it's going to kill me.  Me, the player is thinking, "Hey, I've got lots of HP, I got this."



> /snip
> 
> 
> 
> ...




At what point is your character thinking, "Hey, if one of those town guards stabs me in the kidney, I'll just walk it off"?  

To me, the character is worried about getting stabbed in the kidney and is trying his best to not have that happen.  The player, OTOH, is looking at his HP total and knows that he can get into this fight without dying (most likely).  The things your character and the player are thinking have never been in sync.


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## Hussar (Apr 17, 2014)

Saelorn said:


> I wish I had better statistics on this, but I'm pretty sure that most normal people don't die when they get hit with a sword. In game terms, it's just a low damage roll (1-4 on the d6), but whenever they release data on terror attacks or actual combats, you always get a lot more people who are just _wounded_ rather than killed.




Oh sure.  But, then again, what usually happens when someone is wounded?  They fall down.  Most people who are wounded are only stabbed once or twice.  And very few times by someone who is trained in using a sword.  

Very, very few times is someone stabbed eight or ten times and then keeps walking around afterward as if nothing happened.  Which is what happens in HP.  

Let me put it this way.  Tell me how you can do exactly 1 HP of damage (note it has to be lethal damage, because it can potentially kill something) that can be healed by anyone in one day.  There, no outside interference.  No magic.  What does 1 HP of damage look like?  After all, it's objective, according to you, so, it has to look like something.  What differentiates it from 2 HP of damage, which is twice as deadly.  Or 50 points of damage?


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## Manbearcat (Apr 17, 2014)

Saelorn said:


> I wish I had better statistics on this, but I'm pretty sure that most normal people don't die when they get hit with a sword. In game terms, it's just a low damage roll (1-4 on the d6), but whenever they release data on terror attacks or actual combats, you always get a lot more people who are just _wounded_ rather than killed.




You have to be thinking this due to your exposure to very recent history which is tainted by the march of modern medicine; the advent of penicillin to treat infection (post WWI), the development and advancement of field triage protocols, and the advancement of surgical techniques, tools, and technology.

Real, lethal martial combat without modern medicine, even dark/middle ages embedded with high fantasy conceits, would be a meat (not HP) grinder without plot protection (HP).  People would die primarily due to vasovagal response and/or generic loss of consciousness through sudden loss of blood pressure due to a rapid blood loss.  Then its coup de gracie.  I've suffered dozens of traumatic soft tissue injuries and bone breaks.  The body responds with all manner of impairing terribleness (vasovagal response) even if you aren't anywhere near threatened with death; lightheadedness, nausea/vertigo (possibly inducing vomiting), extreme cold/hot accompanied by massive perspiration, weakness, tunnel vision, and straight-up feinting.  Its awful.


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## Celebrim (Apr 17, 2014)

Manbearcat said:


> You have to be thinking this due to your exposure to very recent history which is tainted by the march of modern medicine; the advent of penicillin to treat infection (post WWI), the development and advancement of field triage protocols, and the advancement of surgical techniques, tools, and technology.




Arguably D&D has more advanced medicine than the modern world by a wide margin.



> Real, lethal martial combat without modern medicine, even dark/middle ages embedded with high fantasy conceits, would be a meat (not HP) grinder without plot protection (HP).  People would die primarily due to vasovagal response and/or generic loss of consciousness through sudden loss of blood pressure due to a rapid blood loss.  Then its coup de gracie.  I've suffered dozens of traumatic soft tissue injuries and bone breaks.  The body responds with all manner of impairing terribleness (vasovagal response) even if you aren't anywhere near threatened with death; lightheadedness, nausea/vertigo (possibly inducing vomiting), extreme cold/hot accompanied by massive perspiration, weakness, tunnel vision, and straight-up feinting.  Its awful.




Maybe so.  But there are also stories of people keeping on despite unimaginably horrific injuries - Hugh Glass comes to mind for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Glass or the infamous 1986 FBI bloodbath http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout.  Maybe some people just have more hits points than we do.


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## billd91 (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, hang on.  Are you saying that because I have more HP, I actually _change_ the outcome of an attack?  As in I deliberately change reality so that your strong hit is now just a graze?




This is pretty much the case with hit points since the beginning. The PC doesn't have more meat - he has more skill. And the attack that would skewer a less experienced and skilled combatant (that 8 hit points of damage from an orc's blow that would kill a greenhorn) is little more than a graze to the well-seasoned warrior. This explanation has been around for over 30 years.


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, hang on.  Are you saying that because I have more HP, I actually _change_ the outcome of an attack?  As in I deliberately change reality so that your strong hit is now just a graze?




"Change reality" is a weird way to put it. If I am the dude with 100 HP and a normal town guardsguy is the dude with the 1d8 longsword, I know that no hit from this amateur is going to drop me, in-character and out. I'll still notice it -- I'll feel that sting for a while (this would be the distinction between a hit and a miss). If am the dude with 4/100 HP and that normal guard still has that 1d8 longsword, I know that I'm tired, I'm injured, I'm beaten down, and maybe I don't have the energy left to dodge that sword. That doesn't change reality, that just IS the reality. Either way, damage is a thing that happens in the fiction that my character notices and that I as a player also notice. It's not just a metagame construct for me. 



> Or is it the fact that I have X HP left means that no attack which deals less than X is actually a strong hit?




That feels about right. I mean, the guard is going to swing as strong as he ever would, but if I'm at 100 HP, there's zero chance of that guard doing what he set out to do (ie, stab and kill me). At 4 HP, there's a much better chance of that happening.



> I dunno about your character, but mine is thinking that a sword through the spleen is a sword through the spleen and it's going to kill me.  Me, the player is thinking, "Hey, I've got lots of HP, I got this."




A sword through the spleen doesn't happen for me when you've still got lots of HP. Well, maybe if I was doing some sort of wahoo hyper-violence style of D&D where guys could keep fighting with their organs pierced and limbs hanging around by threads or somesuch. But a hit for 8 damage doesn't hit the spleen of the 100 HP man. It might hit the spleen of the 4 HP man. 



> At what point is your character thinking, "Hey, if one of those town guards stabs me in the kidney, I'll just walk it off"?




Unless I'm doing wahoo ultraviolence, that's not usually the thought. 

It's usually more like he's thinking: "None of these goobers could stab me in the kidney if they tried."

If one hits for damage, maybe that's a solid slice through your bellyfat, or a cut to your arm as you lower it to swat aside this guy's attack. They TRIED to stab this fantasy hero in the kidney, but they're just not skilled enough to do that, at least without wearing him down first. 



> To me, the character is worried about getting stabbed in the kidney and is trying his best to not have that happen.  The player, OTOH, is looking at his HP total and knows that he can get into this fight without dying (most likely).  The things your character and the player are thinking have never been in sync.




It's maybe because I'm from a theater background, but the things my character and I are thinking are often in sync. In fact, the more this happens, the better, and the less often I have to ponder the mysteries of the metagame, the better. It's part of why I play D&D -- to pretend to be a fantasy character for a few hours. If I look at my HP total and know that these guys can't kill me, my character looks at how skilled he is and how weak they are and knows that they can't stab him in the kidney because he is a big fantasy hero, too.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:


> Oh sure. But, then again, what usually happens when someone is wounded? They fall down. Most people who are wounded are only stabbed once or twice. And very few times by someone who is trained in using a sword.
> 
> Very, very few times is someone stabbed eight or ten times and then keeps walking around afterward as if nothing happened. Which is what happens in HP.



To paraphrase Gygax, even Conan wore a shirt of mail in battle.

What it means is that the rules of the game must be most suited toward explaining the things that happen most often. Certainly, it's not very realistic for someone with, say, 100 hit points to just stand there and get run through with a sword for 5 damage at a go, until eventually keeling over a few minutes later. But that's also a situation which is highly unlikely to occur within the game, so it's no wonder that the rules don't make a ton of sense for it!

The common situation, which the rules are _actually_ designed for, have anyone with a significant number of hit points _also_ likely to be wearing heavy armor! If you hit someone for 10, and that person is only down to 90%, then most of the "stopping power" of your attack was drained into the armor. They covered one hole in the rules by hiding it under a different, tangentially-related rule! (Decades later, World of Warcraft proved that this design philosophy was still around - they didn't want Tauren warriors to be so much tougher than other warriors that it would be unbalanced, but they also didn't want a giant minotaur-person to feel squishy, so they just conveniently prevented Tauren from playing any class that was restricted to light armor.)

So yes, these drastically simplified rules fall apart in situations that are unlikely to occur. Fortunately, it's easy to ignore those situations, because they pretty much never happen. (And if you feel like you _need_ rules for the unlikely even that someone with 100 hit points is attacked while naked, then that's a perfect place for the DM to interject with a house rule; I recommend that any attack with an edged weapon against an unarmored humanoid is automatically a critical hit.)




Manbearcat said:


> You have to be thinking this due to your exposure to very recent history which is tainted by the march of modern medicine; the advent of penicillin to treat infection (post WWI), the development and advancement of field triage protocols, and the advancement of surgical techniques, tools, and technology.



I actually just meant _during_ combat. If someone hacks at you with a cleaver, you might bleed out in a few minutes/hours or die from infection in a few days, but you're still alive for the duration of combat. Especially in a game of fantasy heroes, where the two conditions are "up" or "down", the natural outcome of being hit with a weapon is that you're still "up" for now. (Plus, see above, concerning the likelihood that you are wearing armor. If you're concerned with modeling non-heroic types, then I believe they call for a morale check when you're wounded or at a certain percentage.)

As a bit of an aside, fantasy settings are kind of a strange place. You want it to _look_ like pseudo-medieval Europe, but then you can't make it _too_ gritty, or else it becomes a place you would want to escape _from_ rather than _to_. So you end up with this weird place that has knights and castles and dragons, but also gender equality and (most relevant here) modern hygiene practices.

Wherever you can't explain away something nasty, you just have a convenient herb that happens to disinfect wounds or whatever. (What else could possibly be in a healer's kit?) At least, that's what makes most sense to me. As unrealistic as it may seem, we're mostly dealing with a sort of medieval theme park rather than actual history. Think Velgarth, if you want to see this played straight.


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## Hussar (Apr 17, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> Arguably D&D has more advanced medicine than the modern world by a wide margin.
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe so.  But there are also stories of people keeping on despite unimaginably horrific injuries - Hugh Glass comes to mind for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Glass or the infamous 1986 FBI bloodbath http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout.  Maybe some people just have more hits points than we do.




But, the reason that those stories are famous is because they are the outliers, not the norm.  Yes, there are examples of people suffering horrific injury and keeping on going.

Where I'm drawing a blank is the individual who does it twice.  Unlike a D&D PC, who suffers horrific injury on a virtually daily basis, the examples you want to point to are generally things that happen once in a lifetime.  And, more often than not, it's the last even of most lifetimes.



billd91 said:


> This is pretty much the case with hit points since the beginning. The PC doesn't have more meat - he has more skill. And the attack that would skewer a less experienced and skilled combatant (that 8 hit points of damage from an orc's blow that would kill a greenhorn) is little more than a graze to the well-seasoned warrior. This explanation has been around for over 30 years.




But, this isn't anything the PC is doing.  Unless you believe that my wizard is a better melee fighter than a trained warrior.  The explanation that has been around for so long is that the target with lots of hit points will never suffer a strong blow.  A strong blow doesn't change depending on what I'm stabbing.  A strong blow is a strong blow.  The difference is that I will never actually LAND a strong blow on a high HP target.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> "Change reality" is a weird way to put it. If I am the dude with 100 HP and a normal town guardsguy is the dude with the 1d8 longsword, I know that no hit from this amateur is going to drop me, in-character and out. I'll still notice it -- I'll feel that sting for a while (this would be the distinction between a hit and a miss). If am the dude with 4/100 HP and that normal guard still has that 1d8 longsword, I know that I'm tired, I'm injured, I'm beaten down, and maybe I don't have the energy left to dodge that sword. That doesn't change reality, that just IS the reality. Either way, damage is a thing that happens in the fiction that my character notices and that I as a player also notice. It's not just a metagame construct for me.




You actually think that the character knows these things?  I certainly would never think that someone sticking a sword in my chest wouldn't kill me.  What I do know, as a high level character, is that I can avoid the clumsy blows of the low level opponent.  Fair enough.  But, I know that regardless of how many HP I have.  



> That feels about right. I mean, the guard is going to swing as strong as he ever would, but if I'm at 100 HP, there's zero chance of that guard doing what he set out to do (ie, stab and kill me). At 4 HP, there's a much better chance of that happening.
> 
> 
> 
> A sword through the spleen doesn't happen for me when you've still got lots of HP. Well, maybe if I was doing some sort of wahoo hyper-violence style of D&D where guys could keep fighting with their organs pierced and limbs hanging around by threads or somesuch. But a hit for 8 damage doesn't hit the spleen of the 100 HP man. It might hit the spleen of the 4 HP man.




Exactly.  This is precisely what I'm saying.  But the character is in no way aware of this is he?  



> Unless I'm doing wahoo ultraviolence, that's not usually the thought.
> 
> It's usually more like he's thinking: "None of these goobers could stab me in the kidney if they tried."
> 
> ...




Wow, I never, ever think like that.  My characters are afraid of getting stabbed at all times.  I would never look at it from that perspective.  Heck, "I'm a big fantasy hero" is, to me, so meta that it's completely out of character, AFAIC.  Conan doesn't think to himself, "Well, I'm the protagonist of this story, so nothing can kill me", so, why would my fantasy character.

In fact, I'm trying to think of a fantasy hero who actually would think that way and I'm really drawing a blank.


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## pemerton (Apr 17, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> where that leads is that there must be a separate set of rules in the reality the characters live in. That is, the characters in the world experience fatigue and wounds in some fashion, and they develop an understanding of how health and harm work. If that understanding does not reflect what is going on in the mechanics, it begs the question of what exactly is going on in their experience.
> 
> Do we assume that they live in a realistic world where people sometimes get an eye poked out or gangrene in their wounds, but that this reality simply never interacts with the hp system (i.e. those outcomes only occur through DM 'fiat'). Or do they live in a Hollywood world where no one of consequence ever gets hurt, but they lack the self-awareness to understand that?



Both (a) and (b). They don't get hurt, but they don't notice because they are "genre blind". (They likewise don't notice that they are at the centre of the most dramatic events in the world.)

But NPCs get hurt, just not via action resolution mechanics. When the PCs in my 4e game met some NPCs who had been injured in battle (including having severed or maimed limbs, blinded etc) they cast Remove Affliction to help them. (Hit point recovery can't help with that sort of thing - however reinvigorated you are, your eyes won't grow back!)



Ahnehnois said:


> that creates a rather large new problem.
> 
> Because now, if your ranger PC goes out and bags a deer without rolling an attack, the next time he sneaks up on an enemy, he says "Oh, I shoot the guy's horse." The DM asks him to roll an attack and damage (which won't kill it), but the player says "No, the horse is just dead now, that's how I do things apparently."



This is why we have the phrase "say yes or roll the dice". If the GM doesn't say yes in relation to the horse as s/he did in relation to the deer, the player has to roll the dice.

I believe that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has also been making this same point upthread when he says that the action resolution mechanics, including hit points, are not for modelling the gameworld but for resolving fantasy action adventures.


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:
			
		

> You actually think that the character knows these things? I certainly would never think that someone sticking a sword in my chest wouldn't kill me. What I do know, as a high level character, is that I can avoid the clumsy blows of the low level opponent. Fair enough. But, I know that regardless of how many HP I have.




Well, you're not a fantasy hero. And that 1d8 sword guy isn't sticking a sword through the chest of the 100 HP fantasy hero. At best, he's gonna leave a mark *trying* to stick a sword through the hero's chest.

I don't see it as "avoid the blows," (that's a distinction between a hit and a miss), I see it as the skill to turn a lunge for the heart into a scrape that leaves a mark (a hit, but not for significant damage).



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> Exactly. This is precisely what I'm saying. But the character is in no way aware of this is he?




Yeah, for me, he basically is. My 100 HP fantasy hero knows a typical guard with a longsword isn't going to be able to kill him in a single blow, even if he manages to get a lucky hit in. Heck, the guard might even know that. The skill is apparent. 



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> Wow, I never, ever think like that. My characters are afraid of getting stabbed at all times. I would never look at it from that perspective. Heck, "I'm a big fantasy hero" is, to me, so meta that it's completely out of character, AFAIC. Conan doesn't think to himself, "Well, I'm the protagonist of this story, so nothing can kill me", so, why would my fantasy character.
> 
> In fact, I'm trying to think of a fantasy hero who actually would think that way and I'm really drawing a blank.




Yeah, different things wreck the verisimilitude in different ways for different people. I've got no problem with the high-level 100 HP hero knowing that after he's slain armies of goblins, steadings of giants, caves full of trolls, alien aberrations from beyond the world, and a dragon or twenty that some dude in an alleyway isn't going to be able to kill him with a single lucky sword blow. That feels real to me: this guy knows danger, he knows adventure, what putting his life at risk looks like. This isn't that. "I've taken dumps with more risk to my life than this, friend."

I'd compare it to how you might know you can read the word "verisimilitude." You've seen words, you know language, you know what sounds letters make, and how to string them together. You've also got experience on D&D message boards, so you've likely seen the term before. You're skilled at reading, so you know you can probably read and understand that word. A D&D adventurer is that skilled at risking his life: he knows what he can handle fairly intuitively. 

It's not that they know they're fictional protagonists, it's that they know they live in a world of danger and magic and adventure, and they know what they have faced before and may be able to handle again/in the future. They have an expertise about risk that you or I would lack in the same way that you have an expertise about reading that a typical fantasy hero would probably lack.  

That feels a lot more real to me than pretending that 96 of my 100 HP's don't exist, that my professional adventurer with a long career is frightened by some dude in an alley with a sword, that he thinks that this is exactly as likely to kill him as a red dragon. I can't get into that dude's mind. So playing like that is less fun for me.

Though, you know, if I played that guy in a system where 1 hit was lethal, but a high-level character was given 99 "dodge points" or something, that could make sense to me. It's just not the vibe I get from the HP system.


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## Manbearcat (Apr 17, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> Arguably D&D has more advanced medicine than the modern world by a wide margin.




The relevant contention I was addressing was the two-fold bit on this:



> Originally Posted by Saelorn
> I wish I had better statistics on this, but I'm * *pretty sure that most normal people don't die when they get hit with a sword*. In game terms, it's just a low damage roll (1-4 on the d6), but ** *whenever they release data on terror attacks or actual combats, you always get a lot more people who are just wounded rather than killed*.




This is invoking the real world physiology and psychology of traumatic injuries.  The first contention is incorrect.  People do typically die when they are struck with a sword a single time (especially in the periods relevant to their usage).  Whether it be due to vasovagal response, blood pressure loss triggering unconsciousness, or being rendered lame and the feedback response.  The second contention is considering the current era only instead of comparing it to, say the American Civil War and WWI.  There have been considerable studies about the rise of the ratio of maimed, wounded and incapacitated - due to what I cited upthread - versus casualties in modern warfare.

But to your point (which wasn't addressing the real world contentions I was disputing), including powerful magical rituals and spells, yes, I would say that post-injury treatment in your classic high fantasy setting is certainly advanced and much more available than your classic dark age or middle age.  Whether it is prolific enough to exceed modern medicine (in terms of total number of lives saved), I'm not so sure about that.  Is a few miracles more impressive than 100 lives saved due to penicillin or proper triage?  I guess that depends on who you ask.



Celebrim said:


> Maybe so. But there are also stories of people keeping on despite unimaginably horrific injuries - Hugh Glass comes to mind for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Glass or the infamous 1986 FBI bloodbath http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout. Maybe some people just have more hits points than we do.




Interesting (and I've certainly played through some pretty terrible injuries myself) but aberrant and not illustrative of standard trauma implications while in the middle of a martial contest (warfare or sport).  If a tough guy gets his calf or achilles torn by greater than 50 %, he is effectively lame.  If his bicep tendon/muscle or labram tears, he can't wield a weapon/shield/implement with any level of effectiveness.  If his blood pressure drops dramatically in a few short moments, he will lose consciousness.  Death will follow shortly thereafter where he either bleeds out or is killed (in warfare).

But again, as I'm sure you know by now, I don't use HP to model trauma nor the restoration of trauma.  They are entirely insufficient to the task and we've had (and are having) dozens of threads disputing their base intentions/functionality as a facilitator of TTRPG play.  Further, as I'm sure you know as well, I'm not interested in simulating process in my play.  I'm interested in emulating genre.  My D&D is a lot closer to Indiana Jones than it is Band of Brothers.  So I'm not disputing any of this on the grounds of "what should be for D&D".  I'm just disputing on the basis of their framing by the user (in the invocation of real world physiology and psychology when it comes to in-situ, field trauma) and then the subsequent, erroneous extrapolation about the D&D HP model being coherent with those ideas.


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## Celebrim (Apr 17, 2014)

Manbearcat said:


> Interesting (and I've certainly played through some pretty terrible injuries myself) but aberrant and not illustrative of standard trauma implications while in the middle of a martial contest (warfare or sport).  If a tough guy gets his calf or achilles torn by greater than 50 %, he is effectively lame.  If his bicep tendon/muscle or labram tears, he can't wield a weapon/shield/implement with any level of effectiveness.  If his blood pressure drops dramatically in a few short moments, he will lose consciousness.  Death will follow shortly thereafter where he either bleeds out or is killed (in warfare).




While being stabbed with a sword was generally debilitating and lethal in earlier eras, generally not in the time frame of mere seconds.  People stabbed would take minutes, hours or even months to die depending what actually killed them.  The main things that D&D doesn't model about injuries that are relevant here are blood loss and infection.   If we really want to be realistic, we are going to have to start modelling all those secondary effects of injury that are really what kills you.  Sure, if someone put a warsword in someones belly button point up and lifted, the resulting loss of blood as thier insides gushed all over you would kill them pretty fast.  But that's not how hit points work.  Hit points don't suggest and have never suggested that you are able to endure multiple disembowelments and decapitations.

Sure, cases like that are somewhat rare.  But they aren't as rare as you'd indicate.  If bleeding stablizes, a person can endure pain and traumatic injury far beyond what people would expect.  I watched my brother win the state wrestling championship with his shoulder torn out of its socket.  I have a great-grand uncle that owned a bank in Texas, and got in a feud with his neighbors the dry cleaners and challenged them to go out into the street to settle it.  He did.  They did - but three dry cleaning brothers came out with rifles.  They shot him six times and he still killed the three of them with pistols, and then lived for three months before the infection killed him.  If you look at stories of warfare you'll find innumerable examples of persons with multiple serious wounds performing heroic actions - numerous persons winning purple hearts and medals for bravery with the same action.  In ancient warfare, beserk and fanatical warriors would take what would probably be lethal wounds and keep fighting for minutes.

On a casually realistic level, the relative rarity of such things is easily explained.  Most persons are 1st level commoners or the like with just 2-4 hit points.  They can't evade or endure weapon blows.   Some people have both high constitution to endure multiple blows, and also the experience to evade them.  A character that's say a 3rd level fighter with a 15 Con - far above an average person - has both greater ability to endure injury (my brother could keep wrestling with his shoulder dislocated because his deltoid was so strong, he benched over 450lb at the time, it kept his arm immobilzed) and greater ability to evade injury by slipping otherwise telling blows.  

You put me in the ring with a professional boxer, it will be one punch and I'll be on the floor.  But you put that same boxer up against another professional boxer, and they'll pound each other until they look like hamburger meat.  Then at some point in the fight, too weary to remain wary, half-blinded by swelling, and with reflexes dulled by pain, one of them will do exactly what I did in the hypothetical fight - stay still or move into a punch they didn't see coming - and it will be lights out for them too.   That's the casual realism of the hit point model. 

It's not intended to be perfectly realistic.  But the range of outcomes it produces largely overlaps the expecations of casual narration.   There are plenty of edge cases where it is clear it doesn't work really well - it doesn't really know what to do with arrows, and commoners vs. housecats or housecats vs mice are problems, for example - but largely the narration we can produce from D&D is plausible.



> My D&D is a lot closer to Indiana Jones than it is Band of Brothers....




If there is any character in fiction who could easily be simulated with hit points, it's got to be Indy. I can understand lots of objection to the idea that hit points don't model 16th century reality very well were most death involves slow painful bleeding out from torso injuries, lungs filling with blood, and death by gangreen - but as far as modelling an action movie where the hero can endure traumatic experience after traumatic experience while not slowing down and only ending up with scrapes and bruises, hit points do very very well. 

I think you are exagerrating the problems in casual realism produced by hit points.  So long as character level is low they produce a pretty decent narrative.  If you really wanted to make them more realistic, bleeding rules, shock, and infection could be added to the mixture.   In general I find that going that route generates relatively unfun book keeping, death spirals, and so forth while having relatively minor impacts if you've got a cleric hanging around to close wounds and cure disease when the adrenalyn wears off.  If character level is high, then the character ceases to be related to some ordinary rael person, and becomes a stand in for heroes of fiction.  Rambo can jump from the cliff and fall 100' with a reasonable expectation of only minor injury.  John McClane can be punched, shot, and get glass in his feet and still perform olympic atheletic feats.   And that's before we even hit 'high level' D&D with its Achilles and Heracles level heroes.


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## Aenghus (Apr 17, 2014)

I've seen attempts to hide the hp totals of PCs in games before, and personally I thought the experiments were failures that didn't really work and made lots of work for the players and especially the referee. Either people got super cautious with their PCs, or they abandoned all caution and their PCs died a lot. And in most games the referee will give _some_ indication as to your health level.

Frankly, I find the question "How many hit points does that PC/ NPC/ Monster have?" to be a more interesting question. Can a player or PC find out by any way other than killing them? Risk assessment is very important for decision making, and I've seen a huge variety of opinions on the topic on all points of the spectrum from "you know nothing" to "you know everything".

I have visions of a mad wizard/scientist experimenting on identical siblings of various different levels to discover the mystery of hit points.

(I'm not intending to threadcrap here, let me know if this is too off topic.)


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## billd91 (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, this isn't anything the PC is doing.  Unless you believe that my wizard is a better melee fighter than a trained warrior.  The explanation that has been around for so long is that the target with lots of hit points will never suffer a strong blow.  A strong blow doesn't change depending on what I'm stabbing.  A strong blow is a strong blow.  The difference is that I will never actually LAND a strong blow on a high HP target.




Of course it's something the PC is doing. His experience and skill enable him to redirect hits from life-ending thrusts to the vitals to nicks, grazes, bruises, and other less lethal injuries. The strong *attack* doesn't change, but whether or not it's a strong *blow* (i.e. whether the effect when it lands is strong) depends partly on the defensive skill or toughness of the target. Moreover, when those hit points have been worn down, the target becomes more  unable to protect himself, then those strong attacks become stronger and stronger blows.



			
				From the 1e DMG said:
			
		

> Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only o small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment.




None of this is a new idea. I can't avoid the feeling that you're being deliberately obtuse in this discussion.


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## Celebrim (Apr 17, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, the reason that those stories are famous is because they are the outliers, not the norm.  Yes, there are examples of people suffering horrific injury and keeping on going.
> 
> Where I'm drawing a blank is the individual who does it twice.  Unlike a D&D PC, who suffers horrific injury on a virtually daily basis, the examples you want to point to are generally things that happen once in a lifetime.




The PC's in my game have been in scores of combats in the 100 days 'in a combat zone' that constitute the game thus far.  Rarely do they suffer truly traumatic or horrific injury - being dropped blow 0 hit points.  That situation is called 'bleeding out', and the players joke with each other over who has bleed out the most and who has been the closest to death.  That has generally happened only 1 or 2 times to each character.  

But quite literally, the only reason that they aren't all dead is heroic combat ability isn't the only super power they have.  They also have in the party characters who can close wounds, knit flesh, and restore blood with a touch.  The party would never be able to keep this up otherwise.  Even the ones that come out of the fight without views of their insides or some such, are still a mass of minor injuries, cuts and bruises that would take them at least days or weaks to heal naturally.  

Take away that supernatural healing, and yeah, adding recovery time from this level of injury would mean the campaign would be not 100 game days in to it, but 300 or 500.   And generally speaking, anyone actually mangled would be in big trouble.  Without magic - without changing the rules of the universe - no character would have survived this long.



> The difference is that I will never actually LAND a strong blow on a high HP target.




I don't want this to degenerate into a damage on a miss thread, but there is a range of outcomes between landing a strong blow and a miss.  Boxers don't cause most blows to miss.  They slip most blows.  The blow lands, and it was thrown with force by a skilled combatant, but the target evades the full force of the blow both by pulling back and by slipping to the side so that only a fraction of the force is imparted.  The same thing applies to a knife.  It's better to evade the knife, that's what AC is for, but if you can't avoid being hit, then at least be hit by as little of the blade as possible.  Once you add armor to the equation to help you slip blows, then its perfectly plausible that what might have run you through the chest - what would have gone right through the breastplate of a less wary warrior - becomes only a prick, a bruise or a scratch.



> You actually think that the character knows these things?  I certainly would never think that someone sticking a sword in my chest wouldn't kill me.




The hero doesn't think he can survive a sword through the breast.  He thinks that that even if they opponent gets through his gaurd, even if the swing isn't clumsy, he's going to slip the blow so that it is only glancing and at most he'll get a scratch.



> Exactly.  This is precisely what I'm saying.  But the character is in no way aware of this is he?




The high level character comes up to the low level gaurd.  The high level character is feeling good.  He knows he's got this fight.

The high level character comes up against the low level gaurd.  He's bleeding from a half dozen minor wounds, he's got blood leaking into his eyes, his muscles are burning, he's light headed from blood loss, his knee is feeling about 85%, he knows he's going to lift his leather jerkin off tonight and find his torso a mass of purple wounds, and he thinks... I'm in trouble.  I need to get out of these fights before one of these jokers gets lucky and kills me.



> Conan doesn't think to himself, "Well, I'm the protagonist of this story, so nothing can kill me", so, why would my fantasy character.




Conan is one cocky confident SOB, and with good reason.  I'm sure he doesn't say, "I'm the protagonist of this story", but he is also well aware of his panther like reflexes and speed, and the fact that he's killed lots and lots of people before and the guy standing before him with a shaky sword isn't any more special than the last 20 were.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 17, 2014)

Manbearcat said:


> This is invoking the real world physiology and psychology of traumatic injuries.  The first contention is incorrect.  People do typically die when they are struck with a sword a single time (especially in the periods relevant to their usage).  Whether it be due to vasovagal response, blood pressure loss triggering unconsciousness, or being rendered lame and the feedback response.  The second contention is considering the current era only instead of comparing it to, say the American Civil War and WWI.  There have been considerable studies about the rise of the ratio of maimed, wounded and incapacitated - due to what I cited upthread - versus casualties in modern warfare.



I don't know that much about getting stabbed with a sword in the real world. It doesn't _seem_ right that someone would keel over and stop fighting upon getting stabbed once, unless it was a really solid stab right through the torso or some other vital organ was hit. 

But on some level, it doesn't really _matter_ how it would work in real life. My knowledge of how swords work in limited to books, movies, and video games, as well as some light re-enactment with wooden weapons. If the game has someone keel over at the first stab, then whether or not it is realistic is secondary to whether or not I _feel_ that it's realistic, where my feelings on the matter are set by Hollywood.


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## Hussar (Apr 18, 2014)

> Quote Originally Posted by From the 1e DMG
> Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only o small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability *which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment.*
> 
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ny-hit-points-do-you-have/page5#ixzz2zBiEFhk3




So, HP allow the fighter to avoid the attack.  IOW, an 8 HP blow isn't always the same.  Sure, the high level character is dodging and avoiding.  And that's the point.  The "hits" that he takes are different.  He never gets hit with a strong blow until that last one.  So, yeah, he knows he's better than that guard.  Fair enough.

But, to me, if the character is cognisant of his actual HP, it runs into OOTS world thinking.  "Oh, well, he's got a longbow pointed at me, totally got the drop on me, but, I've got 100 HP, so, I run the 500 feet to close to him and attack him because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he cannot kill me."  

Or, "Hey, they've got a ballista.  Isn't that cute.  I charge."

Or, "I know a 60 foot fall can't even hurt me, so, I jump off a six storey cliff."

So on and so forth.  It's just not what I would think my character is thinking.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 18, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, to me, if the character is cognisant of his actual HP, it runs into OOTS world thinking.  "Oh, well, he's got a longbow pointed at me, totally got the drop on me, but, I've got 100 HP, so, I run the 500 feet to close to him and attack him because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he cannot kill me."



I don't know if this is the best example of what you're getting at. With 500 feet between you, I think you would be able to trust in your reflexes to dodge an incoming arrow when you can see it coming. Wouldn't it make more sense to complain about the crossbow pointed at your back, from a distance of three inches? That's the shot that I'd have difficulty avoiding.


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## Sunseeker (Apr 18, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> Which, all too obviously, just begs to be narrated as:
> 
> "You invoke your Combat Awareness, and around you little red-green bars shimmer into view above each of your foes.  With each successful strike, the proportion of red in that opponent's bar increases."
> 
> Lanefan




I try not to be snarky with my players, which honestly that's how that comes off sounding.  If something states that my character gains specific knowledge, they gain specific knowledge.  If the ability did not say they gained specific knowledge, I wouldn't give them specifics.  I think it's rather rude to give vague information when the game instructs otherwise.  

That said, I don't like the ability, but I went with it as it's not detrimental to the game overall, just to the temporary immersion.

Of course, if "damage" was measured in more RP terms, ie: An attack "injures" the target, a successful follow-up attack moves that up to "seriously injured" and then "wounded" and "crippled" and so on (which frankly might be a cool system), I would have less trouble with an ability to gave a player specific knowledge, because the knowledge itsself is not specific.


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## billd91 (Apr 18, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, to me, if the character is cognisant of his actual HP, it runs into OOTS world thinking.  "Oh, well, he's got a longbow pointed at me, totally got the drop on me, but, I've got 100 HP, so, I run the 500 feet to close to him and attack him because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he cannot kill me."
> 
> Or, "Hey, they've got a ballista.  Isn't that cute.  I charge."
> 
> ...




Well, that just the player metagaming. Either you do a decent job role playing the PC's perspective or you don't and play more like a board game. I prefer the former, in general, but clearly some people around here prefer the latter.


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## Obryn (Apr 18, 2014)

If you stare too long into the hp void, the void stares back at you. 

I really can't express how silly I find the idea that a character would have knowledge of their HP or that such a thing like hp could have a physical, provable existence. 

I can understand the logic behind wanting the game rules to generate some semblance of a fantasy physics and model the processes in the game world, imperfect though it might be. It's not what I want in a game, but I get it. 

This is recursive, though. It's taking the abstractions and fudge factors inherent in the imperfect model, then deciding that those, too, must be physical, observable objects. It's backwards from that drive for simulation.

What's more, once you take that step, I can't see how you can object to much on either a realism or verisimilitude point. If hit points are real, in-game, intangible but observable items, then anything could be. Experience points. Levels. Martial encounter powers. Saving throws. Skill check DCs. Those are just as empirically observable and certainly no more ludicrous.


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## Hussar (Apr 18, 2014)

billd91 said:


> Well, that just the player metagaming. Either you do a decent job role playing the PC's perspective or you don't and play more like a board game. I prefer the former, in general, but clearly some people around here prefer the latter.




But what's the difference? KM has stated that his character is not only aware of his own level of invulnerability but is also aware that he is a big damn hero. 

How is that not the latter?


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## howandwhy99 (Apr 18, 2014)

I voted "2", vague understanding, but it's really more Not Applicable. 

Characters know things the players don't. What Players know in-game is P/C knowledge. IOW, what the player has learned about the game is much of what their character has learned. 

Is a character's bone density a character knowledge? What about their ability to dodge? Or is it the character's idea of their ability to take a hit? Or is it their guess of being able to take a hit based on everything else they've learned so far?

The latter 2 are gamed and learned by the Player if they care to pay attention. The former 2 are character generation when hit points are rolled and told to the player (though deeper understanding can still be delved into). 

Honestly, it feels like a false question. Why does it matter what the character "knows" if none of the participants do? What does my invisible friend know that he's not telling me? It's not relevant to roleplaying.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 18, 2014)

Hussar said:


> So on and so forth.  It's just not what I would think my character is thinking.



I'm actually really curious of how you'd deal with this situation, because it's not something for which I've ever found a satisfactory answer. If anyone else would like to chime in, I'd appreciate any insight.

A rogue/assassin gets the drop on you. She doesn't want to just kill you outright, but wants to interrogate you, basically with a dagger to your throat (or a gun to your head, if you prefer). If you don't do what she says, you're dead. Well, she says that you'll die, but you have 100 hit points. What do you do?

The way I see it, there are three ways to play it:

1) Laugh at the assassin, take the critical hit / sneak attack / assassination damage, and proceed to normal combat.
2) Pretend that the assassin is able to kill you, because the player knows for a fact that you can't die, but the character thinks she might die.
3) Trust the DM to patch this faulty rule, by ruling that it counts as a Coup De Grace (even though that maneuver is only supposed to work on characters who are unconcious/helpless).

What do you do?


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## Hussar (Apr 18, 2014)

I would assume this is a coup de grace situation and act accordingly.


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## pemerton (Apr 18, 2014)

Aenghus said:


> I've seen attempts to hide the hp totals of PCs in games before, and personally I thought the experiments were failures that didn't really work and made lots of work for the players and especially the referee.



Just to be clear: I'm not saying that the _player_ doesn't know the PC's hit points remaining. I'm saying that the PC doesn't know, because s/he can't, because it's not an ingame quantity. (Contrast, say, the number of coins in the character's purse, which is an ingame quantity knowable to the PC.)



Kamikaze Midget said:


> I don't see it as "avoid the blows," (that's a distinction between a hit and a miss), I see it as the skill to turn a lunge for the heart into a scrape that leaves a mark (a hit, but not for significant damage).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> My 100 HP fantasy hero knows a typical guard with a longsword isn't going to be able to kill him in a single blow, even if he manages to get a lucky hit in.



For me, the issue is that as a player I know when my PC's luck is going to run out and his/her skill fail; but as a character, how could I know that?

 [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] gives one possible explanation - "I'm bleeding from a half dozen minor wounds, I've got blood leaking into my eyes, my muscles are burning, I'm light headed from blood loss, my knee is feeling about 85%, I know I'm going to lift my leather jerkin off tonight and find my torso a mass of purple wounds". For me this doesn't fully work, though, to bridge the gap between player and character knowledge, firstly because no other aspect of my character's performance is impeded (despite my knee being 85% I can still run and jump at full power, for instance), and secondly because in other situations I've been feeling pretty bad too yet triumphed.

Inevitably, there is for me a gap between the player knowledge of hp remaining and the PC's knowledge.

(On the metagaming discussion, I expect the players to play the game having regard to their knowledge of their hp remaining, even though the characters don't have the same knowledge. Conan doesn't know he's the protagonist, but I expect Conan's player to take up the game from a position of protagonism.)


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## pemerton (Apr 18, 2014)

Saelorn said:


> I'm actually really curious of how you'd deal with this situation, because it's not something for which I've ever found a satisfactory answer. If anyone else would like to chime in, I'd appreciate any insight.
> 
> A rogue/assassin gets the drop on you. She doesn't want to just kill you outright, but wants to interrogate you, basically with a dagger to your throat (or a gun to your head, if you prefer). If you don't do what she says, you're dead. Well, she says that you'll die, but you have 100 hit points. What do you do?



In my 4e game, if this was a PC against a monster/NPC, then the player could make a skill roll to "minionise" the opponent.

If it was a monster/NPC against a PC, then [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s solution is a reasonable one: the PC is helpless and hence vulnerable to a coup-de-grace. In 4e that is unlikely to be fatal, and I would anticipate the player playing accordingly - ie taking the risk of trying to escape.

The one time something like this has actually come up in my 4e game the character was unconscious and the assassin was bargaining with another PC. I applied the ordinary combat timing and resolution rules, and the result was that the PC was killed.


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## Celebrim (Apr 18, 2014)

pemerton said:


> For me, the issue is that as a player I know when my PC's luck is going to run out and his/her skill fail; but as a character, how could I know that?
> 
> [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] gives one possible explanation - "I'm bleeding from a half dozen minor wounds, I've got blood leaking into my eyes, my muscles are burning, I'm light headed from blood loss, my knee is feeling about 85%, I know I'm going to lift my leather jerkin off tonight and find my torso a mass of purple wounds". For me this doesn't fully work, though, to bridge the gap between player and character knowledge, firstly because no other aspect of my character's performance is impeded (despite my knee being 85% I can still run and jump at full power, for instance), and secondly because in other situations I've been feeling pretty bad too yet triumphed.
> 
> Inevitably, there is for me a gap between the player knowledge of hp remaining and the PC's knowledge.




I suppose that at some level there always is a gap, because the PC can't know what h.p. are much less that they have 16 of their normal 45 hit points.  But the PC can certainly know that they are 'the worse for wear', and in the end game world characters who are observant and knowledgable can note the PC's diminished status.   You complain about the 'knee feeling 85%' should have a grosser impact on overall performance, but that particular term of art was chosen from NFL football where players will often play with various niggling injuries and describe their status as 80% or 85% and yet there isn't necessarily to the observer (that is, the person witnessing the narrative), any gross or obvious sign that they are performing below what they know to be their best.   Indeed, it's not unreasonable to suggest that for someone hyped on adrenalin of competition that one of the biggest differences between being 85% and 100% is that the player is at greater risk of more serious injury.  Probably it is true that some subtle wound track workign alongside hit points would be more realistic, but D&D has enough fiddly modifiers as it is and wound tracks tend to be very disruptive on play.

In point of fact though, I did introduce something like a wound track when I was trying to reform my rules.  Characters reduced to 10% or less of their starting hit points are 'staggered', before they enter 'dying/bleeding'.   I also adopted some GURPS like rules for staying conscious while dying.  So there does tend to be a little less abrupt transition in the narrative from healthy to dying.  But on the whole I consider it a minor point.

What isn't being addressed is the reverse.  If hit points have no real relationship to bodily injury and other observable effects, then isn't perforce the gap between player knowledge and character knowledge to be complete?   It won't merely be true that there is some gap between player knowledge and character knowledge, but there will be an absolute gap between reality as the player knows it and reality as it is possible for the character to know.   So the consequences of me being wrong aren't less of what you complain about, but far greater of what you and Hussar complain about.  After all, it may be true that the 100 h.p. character can't know that a 60' fall can't kill him, or that no single shot from a shotbow is threatening, but that hardly matters when speaking of PC's because it is the player that animates the PC and makes the decisions for them.  If we say that because hit points are abstract and can't be known to the PC, the PC won't make decisions based on that knowledge, it doesn't mean anything because the PC never actually makes decisions 'on their own' but make decisions according to the player's will.   Therefore for precisely the sort of reasons my position is being criticized, we must reduce as much as is reasonablethe gap between what the player knows and what the PC knows.  

If hit point damage always represents some degree of injury and trauma from injury, however minor, then every loss of hit points communicates not just to the player's understanding but the character's understanding.  The character knows and other characters can observe that he's looking and likely feeling less well.  The player likewise will be motivated to behave in exactly the way that the character would be motivated to behave.

Hussar complains that the character shouldn't know that he can jump off of a 60' cliff without fear of death.  But if the character really has 100 hit points, why in the world should this be true?   A character with 100 hit points has no real world analog.  A character with 100 hit points is an analog only of heroes of literature - the ones that jump from high places in necessity all the time and yet survive with only the thinnest of narrative justification.   How many times can you recall in heroic stories where the hero must leap from a precipice to escape the villains, the bomb, the helicopter, the Pinkertons, ect. etc. etc.  And how many times in all of those stories does the hero land with a splat and a crunch?  

Now again, this particular area is one that I've decided could be handled better than it is and there are many different ways people have addressed this over the years.   One way is that you make damage from falling cummulative so that a 60' fall does 21d6 damage and therefore must be taken far more seriously.  The effect of this is to contrain the DM's narration of height so that falls are of less exagerrated distances.  That's not a bad solution.   Another solution, and the one I'm currently using, is the d20/d6 calculation which produces averages near the 3.5 damage per 10' of the standard rules but which occasionally produces massive spurts of damage - maximum damage from a 60' fall is 120 with 50 or more damage (and provoking massive trauma saves) being not unlikely.   This creates a situation where normally PCs don't die to sudden falls (leaving the PCs master of the environment) but where jumping from a high place, even for a high level character, is like playing Russian roulette - sooner or later it will make you pay.



> (On the metagaming discussion, I expect the players to play the game having regard to their knowledge of their hp remaining, even though the characters don't have the same knowledge. Conan doesn't know he's the protagonist, but I expect Conan's player to take up the game from a position of protagonism.)




Hit points don't protagonize characters.  I dare say that mammoths have lots of hit points, but that doesn't make a mammoth a protagonist in my games.   If hit points protagonized characters, then low level characters would be less protagonists than high level characters and protagonist status would be something you'd have to grow into after finishing your non-protagonist levels.  I expect Conan's player to play Conan according to Conan's fierce passion and joy of savage living.  I'm not sure I agree that Conan doesn't know he's the protagonist.  I get the impression that Conan in a sense believes that life is all about himself.   What else could it be about?  You only get to see the story through your own eyes.   Maybe Conan's joy of savagery is in a sense motivated through Conan's knowledge at some level of his own hitpoints.  Certainly its motivated by knowledge of his own skillfulness with the blade and power of his limbs.   The only thing Conan doesn't know is that he's only a character on a page written by an author, but I'm not sure we can say that he doesn't know he is the protagonist of his own story.


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## billd91 (Apr 18, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But what's the difference? KM has stated that his character is not only aware of his own level of invulnerability but is also aware that he is a big damn hero.
> 
> How is that not the latter?




There's never a middle ground with you, is there? It's either one extreme or another. Either the PC has to think anything can kill him in one shot and the player has to play accordingly or the PC knows his exact hit points just the like the player and acts accordingly. The PC *can't* have a vague notion that he may be up to snuff... or not... depending on his own internal assessment.

Besides, if the PC can never have the idea he's a big damn hero then you can't play out situations in which the hero, despite being covered by a weapon, turns the tables on his enemies - something we see a lot in movies and comics. Granted, you see it a lot with superhero comics but mainly with the martial oriented ones who aren't necessarily that much different from advanced level D&D characters. And these sorts of scenes are exciting to play out. Take the situation from X-Men 133 in which Wolverine, while taking apart the guards in the Hellfire Club has a pistol put to his head by an elite mercenary. Rather than play hostage, Wolverine turns the tables on the guard and throws him into the ballroom. He does that because, despite being in a situation that would kill less-skilled combatants, he's got confidence in his abilities. Admittedly, his adamantium-laced skull is bulletproof but his superior skill allows him to pull it off. Why is that not the case with higher-level PCs in D&D?


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 18, 2014)

Hussar said:
			
		

> I run the 500 feet to close to him and attack him because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he cannot kill me."
> 
> Or, "Hey, they've got a ballista. Isn't that cute. I charge."
> 
> Or, "I know a 60 foot fall can't even hurt me, so, I jump off a six storey cliff."




That ALL sounds like fantasy heroics to me! That's awesome. That's the kind of ballsy, fearless hero that it is a lot of fun to play! Head and shoulders above other mortals, he takes flying leaps and ballistae bolts and charges a wall of archers because he is Just. That. Skilled. It makes me laugh and smile at the awesome possibilities that this hero can realize. It makes me feel powerful, heroic, mighty, and incredible. I eat the impossible for breakfast and laugh in the face of death! These are all positive things for a game of fantasy heroics in my mind!

Yeah, verisimilitude breaks in different ways for different folks, and not everyone wants to play the kind of heroic pulpy mythic fantasy where you play Achilles and you wrestle rivers (certainly LotR was not really of this flavor). I'd encourage those groups to look to systems other than _hit point damage_ to make big things threatening. A ballistae or a fall from a 60-ft. cliff or even a bow pointed at your head probably shouldn't just deal HP damage in those games, they should just be outright deadly in some way, a la poison or disintegrate in early e's. Bypass HPs if high-level guys shrugging it off is something you don't want to have happen. 

The fact that falling deals HP damage to me implies a model of heroic fantasy where falling is the kind of thing you WANT high-level folks to be able to walk away from with nothing more than some bruises and scrapes. 

Which is AWESOME.



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> KM has stated that his character is not only aware of his own level of invulnerability but is also aware that he is a big damn hero.




Well, what do you call a guy who can withstand dragon's breath, endure a 60-ft. fall, mostly defelct a ballistae, and has no fear of being shot in the head by a trained archer? What would you say an invulnerable person who saves villages and fights evil _is_, really? 

The person in that world knows how people describe them, the effect they have on the populace, the whispered awe they address him with. They know the stories spread in taverns about their exploits. They certainly know they're not like most other people. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> For me, the issue is that as a player I know when my PC's luck is going to run out and his/her skill fail; but as a character, how could I know that?
> [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] gives one possible explanation - "I'm bleeding from a half dozen minor wounds, I've got blood leaking into my eyes, my muscles are burning, I'm light headed from blood loss, my knee is feeling about 85%, I know I'm going to lift my leather jerkin off tonight and find my torso a mass of purple wounds". For me this doesn't fully work, though, to bridge the gap between player and character knowledge, firstly because no other aspect of my character's performance is impeded (despite my knee being 85% I can still run and jump at full power, for instance), and secondly because in other situations I've been feeling pretty bad too yet triumphed.




Yeah, [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] 's description is pretty much what I would use. And I don't need impediments beyond that low HP, for three main reasons:


 *Big Invincible Fantasy Heroes can ignore injuries that aren't lethal*: The genre demands that someone whose knee is at 85% still has no problem running and jumping and climbing at full capacity. There might be winces and favoring, but they're heroic, they're mighty, they're invincible, they can take ballistae and 60-ft falls, they can sure as heck grit their teeth and perform whatever amazing feats of athletics and agility that their circumstance demands.
 *Low HP means their injuries make them vulnerable*: Since, in part, HP reflects your ability to turn aside a lethal blow, when your knee is at 85%, you can't as well turn aside that blow -- if someone goes for the weak knee, or hits you in a way to exploit that, you're more likely to succumb to their attack. That's the only effect of the injury that you can't really just ignore because you're a fantasy hero. 
 *Injury mechanics don't add anything*: Because my verisimilitude doesn't demand it (aforementioned big dang heroes), there's not much to be gained for me with fiddly floating little modifiers to assorted checks. Bleh. Yeah, my fantasy hero can ignore that weak knee until some goblin exploits it. Sounds like enough of a description of that wound to me. 

Again, people have different things that break their suspension of disbelief, so that probably isn't for everyone. For them, adding more detailed injury mechanics would probably help. Alternately, dividing HP into "wound" and "vitality" (or somesuch) might also help. It works just perfect for me, though. Rules-light, makes sense, reinforces genre, and keeps me thinking like my character. No special rules needed.


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## delericho (Apr 18, 2014)

In principle, characters should know their health in broad terms - I'm fine, I've got a few scratches, I'm bloodied, this is getting serious. But, equally, in principle characters should always operate in the belief that even one good hit with a longsword could prove fatal, even if they have 100 hit points because that's the realistic position.

In practice, characters know _exactly_ how many hit points they have, how much damage they're likely to take from the next few incoming attacks, and can calculate accordingly. Only in the case of a critical hit or a surprise attack should they ever be very surprised at the amount of damage they take. Because, quite simply, the life-or-death of the PC is too important to expect the player to _really_ avoid metagaming. IMX, attempts to fight that reality are an exercise in frustration - better, IMO, just to go with it.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 18, 2014)

Cool thread. I registered just to give my two cents that I think heroes -- if they were real-life personalities -- lack self-awareness when it comes to their superhuman abilities and mortality.

Take a typical movie action hero, and imagine you could make them real and sentient, and if you could ask them a barrage of questions like: Why did you seem afraid and hesitant in the first battle, and why did you seem invulnerable by the final battle? What were you thinking about your odds of success when you drove the car off the highway and jumped out just before it smashed into the helicopter? Why doesn't your superhero suit rip and burn all the time, and where do you find the time to sew a new one? How come we never see you bored in a dark alley, killing time playing Candy Crush on your iphone, waiting for a crime to happen? How come we never see you held up in traffic and show up too late to save the dame? I think they would stare at you blankly, laugh and change the subject, or any avoidance behavior that would betray a complete lack of self-awareness. Or... they break the fourth wall like Deadpool and tell it to you straight. Compare to a character taken out of a realistic World War II movie and I think they'd be much more likely to give you satisfying answers like "Gosh, I was just lucky" or "In the beginning, I was sh*tting my pants but then I was just desensitized."

D&D heroes are even more oblivious, I think. Why did they go to the bar and accept a total stranger into their party? Why do they almost consistently risk their lives adventuring to the death instead of retiring to a different lifestyle once they're rich? Why aren't they curious why so many monsters sit around in dungeons for no apparent reason? They don't know.

The player can certaintly try to roleplay a character as if they knew their hit points, but really, the character couldn't be self aware of anything. They couldn't understand the true motivations that drive their behavior and most of the things that happen in their world happen for reasons that are completely external. Truly, heroes are idiots.


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## Celebrim (Apr 18, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> D&D heroes are even more oblivious, I think. Why did they go to the bar and accept a total stranger into their party? Why do they almost consistently risk their lives adventuring to the death instead of retiring to a different lifestyle once they're rich? Why aren't they curious why so many monsters sit around in dungeons for no apparent reason? They don't know.
> 
> The player can certaintly try to roleplay a character as if they knew their hit points, but really, the character couldn't be self aware of anything. They couldn't understand the true motivations that drive their behavior and most of the things that happen in their world happen for reasons that are completely external. Truly, heroes are idiots.




I think you are speaking about more of a sterotypical 'Beer and Pretzels' (or even Mt. Dew and Pizza) sort of game than D&D generally.  The tropes you are questioning are real and common, or they wouldn't be well known tropes, but they aren't necessarily universal to all tables.

I've had groups refuse to let new PC's into the party unless IC justification was provided.  At times this has led to two parallel parties that play alternated between.  One session I ran for some new players took this to such extreme, that by the end of the session the good aligned PCs and the evil aligned PCs were in rival organizations!  (I wish I could have continued that play, they were making great story.)  One group I knew of had a party that had an IC falling out, and split and the DM ran the characters as separate parties on separate nights because the two groups of PC's were trying to kill each other - and everyone was loving it.  I had another game for new players memorably end with the equivalent of the party attacking the total stranger in the bar (another PC) and a near TPK that everyone was laughing about.   I've had new PC's go several sessions before they gained enough acceptance from the other PCs to get 'into the party'.   I've seen PC's introduced as hirelings, and players go several sessions before being promoted up to getting a full share of party treasure.  Heck, I've actually been that PC, being interviewed by the party in a line of henchmen explaining to the party what useful skills I could bring and hired along with the NPCs.  

There are plenty of ways to do this in a way that makes sense to the narrative, especially if you are willing to let the DM work you into the story.  Think about for example Star Wars the movie (A New Hope) from the perspective of being an actual RPG with C3P0 and R2D2 being the original party and how new PC's were added, and sometimes removed, from the campaign and how they were worked into the original story line of the droid's mission.

Likewise, I've been in the group that 'retired' and 'settled down' upon becoming fabulously rich.  

And if you are still designing dungeons with monsters that just set around 40 years after the publication of the 1st dungeon, you are doing it wrong.  There might have been some justification for static dungeons with no believable economy or ecology and rooms containing red dragons with no exits big enough to let the red dragon out back in 1975 or something, but really, the only justification for that now is that you are 10 or something.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 18, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> I think you are speaking about more of a sterotypical 'Beer and Pretzels' (or even Mt. Dew and Pizza) sort of game than D&D generally.  The tropes you are questioning are real and common, or they wouldn't be well known tropes, but they aren't necessarily universal to all tables.
> 
> I've had groups refuse to let new PC's into the party unless IC justification was provided.  At times this has led to two parallel parties that play alternated between.



I'd very much enjoy a game like that. Unfortunately, I haven't  experienced anything like that in D&D across several DMs, and I'm  not sure that anything in D&D culture specifically encourages that  type of play. Well, that may be beyond the scope of this thread, but my  strong assumption is that the "sterotypical 'Beer and Pretzels'" game is  extremely common.

IOW, it sounds like you're DMing the equivalent of a smart action thriller like The Bourne Identity or Léon: The Professional, whereas many others are rp'ing The Expendables and Die Hard 21. Is that a fair call?

I think Bourne or Léon would be far more self-aware as an action hero than others. There are probably a few things they couldn't answer if self-aware, probably involving continuously fortunate probabilities, but nothing too overt.



Celebrim said:


> And if you are still designing dungeons with monsters that just set around 40 years after the publication of the 1st dungeon, you are doing it wrong.  There might have been some justification for static dungeons with no believable economy or ecology and rooms containing red dragons with no exits big enough to let the red dragon out back in 1975 or something, but really, the only justification for that now is that you are 10 or something.



Isn't that an overstatement? Sure, things have changed, but there are  still plenty of convoluted adventure plots and D&Disms that are  unreasonable under scrutinity and the characters involved don't question  their places in that. I don't have any specifics in mind though. (I'm  waiting for D&D Next to get back into D&D after a long hiatus.)


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## Celebrim (Apr 18, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> IOW, it sounds like you're DMing the equivalent of a smart action thriller like The Bourne Identity or Léon: The Professional, whereas many others are rp'ing The Expendables and Die Hard 21. Is that a fair call?




I think it would be fairer to say that I'm trying to DM something that could be made into a smart novel or a smart movie.  I'm not sure I'm always successful at that.



> Isn't that an overstatement? Sure, things have changed, but there are  still plenty of convoluted adventure plots and D&Disms that are  unreasonable under scrutinity and the characters involved don't question  their places in that. I don't have any specifics in mind though.




I honestly don't know.  I'd like to think that it isn't an overstatement, but I no longer have wide exposure to what a lot of other DMs are doing with their games.  

In my experience as a DM though, players will question whether your story hangs together.  If you've got plot holes or inconsistancies in the slightest, your players are going to start tearing at the fabric on purpose.  Players are going to be gleefully jumping into them or highly disatisfied with the lack of logic the game has.  I don't think I've ever had players that just shrugged and said, "Ok, this doesn't make sense but its what the DM wants us to do so we are going to do it anyway."  At best, I've had players that said, "Since this makes sense, I'm going to go along with it." rather than players who say, "Let's see if I can make the DM squirm by doing something I think he's completely unprepared for."  

I pride myself on being hard to throw off my game.  During my recent campaign, the players saved a rural town from an ancient curse, and when they got back to town one of the players that tended to be the one most likely to try to make me squirm was like, "Why aren't we getting paid.  We are big darn heroes.  We just saved your town; you guys owe us.  Give us a reward."  Now, in truth I hadn't prepared for the town to display gratitude to the PC's - in some sense, this whole scenario was just a side quest to explain where the Paladin's mount came from - since the Wizard Aden had been the character that had served as 'quest giver' (gold '!' over his head, heh) and had promised to pay the characters.   After first I played the town as (paraphrased), "Errr.. we're grateful and all, but we don't have a lot of money to pay you.  No body said we were going to pay you.  We don't have a lot of money to give wealthy mercenaries like you.  We're wood cutters and many of our homes have been destroyed.  You've got or gratitude now.... ummm bye."   But the player insisted.  They'd done the town a great service, and now they were only getting lip service about how grateful the town was, but no real gratitude.  So, I played the NPCs to character.  I had the mayor declare a fair and a feast on the player's behalf.  I had the local bombastic noble bring a wagon of beer and present a keg of his families own label to the party.  I had farmers giving the character's homespun clothes, crates of chickens, bags of newly littered hunting hounds, a barrel of pickled eels, fresh eggs, new wood axes, etc.  

I don't think the PC's have ever been more satisified by the treasure they recieved.

It's a good thing to have players that refuse to look away from a plot hole.  If your plot can't hang together, it's not your players fault.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 18, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> In my experience as a DM though, players will question whether your story hangs together.  If you've got plot holes or inconsistancies in the slightest, your players are going to start tearing at the fabric on purpose.  Players are going to be gleefully jumping into them or highly disatisfied with the lack of logic the game has.  I don't think I've ever had players that just shrugged and said, "Ok, this doesn't make sense but its what the DM wants us to do so we are going to do it anyway."  At best, I've had players that said, "Since this makes sense, I'm going to go along with it." rather than players who say, "Let's see if I can make the DM squirm by doing something I think he's completely unprepared for."



I played the original Temple of Elemental Evil way back. My character captured and charmed a cultist and I wanted to use that to our advantage (instead of an endless mindless dungeon hack n slash) but I was frustrated by what I would've tried to do in that situation vs second-guessing what D&Disms would allow me to do. So in a sly way of breaking the fourth wall, my PC asked the charmed cultist where did they sleep? (IIRC, there weren't any beds or barracks for his company of cultists.) The DM was stumped, didn't expect that, and blurted "Oh, we go back to Hommlet." I asked if truly every night, there's a mass exodus of cultists leaving the temple at night and commuting back in the morning from the village. The NPC confirmed this, as the DM was stuck to this story detail he had inadvertently committed himself to. So my PC wanted to ambush the commuting cultists (fighting on our terms, rather than keep walking into their dungeon traps) but the DM was pissed, and the players knew that this wasn't "supposed" to be part of the adventure, and I knew that, so after making my point (out of temporary frustration) about the ridiculousness of it all, I gave up questioning the adventure setup and reverted back to roleplaying non-self-aware hack-n-slash mode.

I think that if I applied the same character pseudo-self-awareness to hit points, the DM and other players would see me as a party-pooper, and probably rightly so.


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## Lanefan (Apr 18, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Yeah, verisimilitude breaks in different ways for different folks, and not everyone wants to play the kind of heroic pulpy mythic fantasy where you play Achilles and you wrestle rivers (certainly LotR was not really of this flavor). I'd encourage those groups to look to systems other than _hit point damage_ to make big things threatening. A ballistae or a fall from a 60-ft. cliff or even a bow pointed at your head probably shouldn't just deal HP damage in those games, they should just be outright deadly in some way, a la poison or disintegrate in early e's. Bypass HPs if high-level guys shrugging it off is something you don't want to have happen.
> 
> The fact that falling deals HP damage to me implies a model of heroic fantasy where falling is the kind of thing you WANT high-level folks to be able to walk away from with nothing more than some bruises and scrapes.
> 
> Which is AWESOME.



To you.

To me it's a bit over the top; if a character with 70 h.p. is standing at the top of a 60' cliff deciding whether to jump I'm assuming it's either gone suicidal or faces certain death if it stays at the top.

Which rasies another ridiculous point: by the rules, a character with 70 h.p. couldn't commit suicide by jumping off a 60' cliff even if it wanted to!


> Again, people have different things that break their suspension of disbelief, so that probably isn't for everyone. For them, adding more detailed injury mechanics would probably help. Alternately, dividing HP into "wound" and "vitality" (or somesuch) might also help.



Yep - body points and fatigue points for the win.  Been lobbying for this for years now. 

Lanefan


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 18, 2014)

Lanefan said:
			
		

> To you.



'Course. Think I've been pretty clear about that.  



			
				Lanefan said:
			
		

> To me it's a bit over the top; if a character with 70 h.p. is standing at the top of a 60' cliff deciding whether to jump I'm assuming it's either gone suicidal or faces certain death if it stays at the top.




That can work, it just doesn't seem to me to be the kind of game the D&D rules typically suggest. I generally apply this principle: if it will never kill you, or will always kill you, it shouldn't do HP damage. If falling into lava deals HP damage, it's something you want some folks to sometimes walk away from. If that isn't what you want, don't use HP damage -- just make it deadly. If a housecat scratching you deals HP damage, it's something you want to be able to kill someone. If that isn't what you want, don't use HP damage -- maybe have it have some other effect. 



			
				Lanefan said:
			
		

> Yep - body points and fatigue points for the win. Been lobbying for this for years now




Yeah, I think there's a lot of solutions. I think HP works well in the mode I described as a default, but there's no reason there shouldn't be other ways of dealing with that area between totally healthy and dead.


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## Lanefan (Apr 18, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> I think you are speaking about more of a sterotypical 'Beer and Pretzels' (or even Mt. Dew and Pizza) sort of game than D&D generally.



From my view he's talking about D&D, period.


> I've had groups refuse to let new PC's into the party unless IC justification was provided.  At times this has led to two parallel parties that play alternated between.  One session I ran for some new players took this to such extreme, that by the end of the session the good aligned PCs and the evil aligned PCs were in rival organizations!  (I wish I could have continued that play, they were making great story.)  One group I knew of had a party that had an IC falling out, and split and the DM ran the characters as separate parties on separate nights because the two groups of PC's were trying to kill each other - and everyone was loving it.  I had another game for new players memorably end with the equivalent of the party attacking the total stranger in the bar (another PC) and a near TPK that everyone was laughing about.   I've had new PC's go several sessions before they gained enough acceptance from the other PCs to get 'into the party'.   I've seen PC's introduced as hirelings, and players go several sessions before being promoted up to getting a full share of party treasure.  Heck, I've actually been that PC, being interviewed by the party in a line of henchmen explaining to the party what useful skills I could bring and hired along with the NPCs.



Pretty much all of these have happened in our beer-and-chips games (the only way to play, IMO!)  along with murderous infighting while in the field, tricks, in-party plots, etc.  (occasionally, some adventuring gets done as well)  It helps (or doesn't, depending on your view of such things) that in my current campaign non-Clerics tend to see Wisdom as a dump stat... 



> There are plenty of ways to do this in a way that makes sense to the narrative, especially if you are willing to let the DM work you into the story.  Think about for example Star Wars the movie (A New Hope) from the perspective of being an actual RPG with C3P0 and R2D2 being the original party and how new PC's were added, and sometimes removed, from the campaign and how they were worked into the original story line of the droid's mission.



Lord of the Rings is another excellent example of this.  The party starts as Frodo and Sam, they pick up Merry, Pippin and Strider during what in D&D would be their first adventure (journey to Rivendell).  There they pick up a bunch of other people, becoming a party of 9.  This party goes into the field and: loses two characters, gets split into three smaller parties (two of which later end up reuniting and interweaving), one of the parties picks up a few new characters (e.g. Eowyn), a character is resurrected, etrc., etc.  To me that's how it should work; a party isn't (or shouldn't be) completely static in its membership or makeup as time goes on.



> And if you are still designing dungeons with monsters that just set around 40 years after the publication of the 1st dungeon, you are doing it wrong.  There might have been some justification for static dungeons with no believable economy or ecology and rooms containing red dragons with no exits big enough to let the red dragon out back in 1975 or something, but really, the only justification for that now is that you are 10 or something.



I take mild offense to this.

You're seeking "justification" where none is really needed; and if someone insists on it it's easy enough to dream something up.  But part of the fun is wondering *how* that dragon ever got in there (or did it just hatch there and never leave?), and why it hasn't eaten the tasty goblins just down the hall...  And to me economics is the root of all evil in real life; I'll be damned if I'll let it get in the way of a fun D&D game! 

Sure, it can be useful sometimes to know why each monster is where it is, and what it's doing, and to what end; but sometimes it's just as much if not more fun to just go with the gonzo!

Lan-"for a fine example of gonzo dungeon design I give you _Sword of Hope_ by Judges' Guild; believe me, it plays way better than it reads"-efan


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## Celebrim (Apr 18, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> I played the original Temple of Elemental Evil way back. My character captured and charmed a cultist and I wanted to use that to our advantage (instead of an endless mindless dungeon hack n slash) but I was frustrated by what I would've tried to do in that situation vs second-guessing what D&Disms would allow me to do. So in a sly way of breaking the fourth wall, my PC asked the charmed cultist where did they sleep? (IIRC, there weren't any beds or barracks for his company of cultists.) The DM was stumped, didn't expect that, and blurted "Oh, we go back to Hommlet." I asked if truly every night, there's a mass exodus of cultists leaving the temple at night and commuting back in the morning from the village. The NPC confirmed this, as the DM was stuck to this story detail he had inadvertently committed himself to. So my PC wanted to ambush the commuting cultists (fighting on our terms, rather than keep walking into their dungeon traps) but the DM was pissed, and the players knew that this wasn't "supposed" to be part of the adventure, and I knew that, so after making my point (out of temporary frustration) about the ridiculousness of it all, I gave up questioning the adventure setup and reverted back to roleplaying non-self-aware hack-n-slash mode.




Whereas I probably would have either pushed it, or quit after that session and found a different DM.  I've had to say, "Had fun.  Thanks for the game.", but think, "But I won't be back.", several times.  It happens.   If it's a group of friends and you are gaming for that reason, you probably should get the DM 1 on 1 and talk about how you aren't fully satisfied because you as a player are having to be too self-aware about the fact that it is a game and its ruining the RP.

Then again, I'd probably never play ToEE as written, either as a player or a DM.  I agree with you about endless mindless dungeon hack and slash, and as I've noted elsewhere, ToEE is a fairly terrible module.

Your general tactic of ambushing commuting cultists rather than fighting them on their terms is something Gygax himself would have approved of, encouraged, and probably even designed for.  It is IMO the sort of thing you are 'supposed' to do.


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## Lanefan (Apr 18, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> That can work, it just doesn't seem to me to be the kind of game the D&D rules typically suggest.



Which is part of why I for so many years have been largely treating them as guidelines... 


> I generally apply this principle: if it will never kill you, or will always kill you, it shouldn't do HP damage. If falling into lava deals HP damage, it's something you want some folks to sometimes walk away from. If that isn't what you want, don't use HP damage -- just make it deadly. If a housecat scratching you deals HP damage, it's something you want to be able to kill someone.



Another solution is just to have these things do so much (or so little) h.p. damage that death is either automatic or extremely unlikely.  Jump into lava - OK, you're taking 100 h.p. damage per segment; nice knowing ya.  Fight with a housecat - OK, it's doing d4-3 damage per attack and fails a morale check on anything higher than a 5 on d20; a housecat could kill you, but it's extremely unlikely. (that said, I've seen what my cat can do when it's of a mood to; and it ain't pretty!)

Lanefan


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## Argyle King (Apr 18, 2014)

I voted for the first option.  That is by far _not_ my preference, but that is the option which seems to make the most sense in the context of D&D.


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## Celebrim (Apr 18, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> From my view he's talking about D&D, period.




Then I'm not sure that you understand what he's talking about.  Either that, or we've had very different experiences of D&D... which the rest of your post would seem to argue against.



> I take mild offense to this.




I approve.  Mild offense is the best kind.  If its less than mild offense, there is nothing to talk about it.  If it's more than that, the emotion gets in the way of learning anything.



> You're seeking "justification" where none is really needed; and if someone insists on it it's easy enough to dream something up.  But part of the fun is wondering *how* that dragon ever got in there (or did it just hatch there and never leave?), and why it hasn't eaten the tasty goblins just down the hall...




This is only fun if there is actually an interesting answer.



> And to me economics is the root of all evil in real life...




Well, on that you are just wrong.



> ; I'll be damned if I'll let it get in the way of a fun D&D game!




I'm not suggesting that an economics simulation is necessarily a fun game.  But I am suggesting that everything needs a certain economic plausibility, because smart players - like the great generals of history - will seek to attack the weak points of everything they encounter, and that includes the supply lines.   They'll also question the motivations of everything they encounter, and that will include envy, greed, and power.  If there isn't at least the basis of well thought out gloss on the economics of why the goblin tribe is occupying this cave somewhere, you don't have much of a setting to build on.  Economic considerations might not be useful in and of themselves, but they do provoke thought about the setting which will lead to deeper and more interesting stories.



> Sure, it can be useful sometimes to know why each monster is where it is, and what it's doing, and to what end; but sometimes it's just as much if not more fun to just go with the gonzo!




Gonzo is a muppet.  I love him, but he has no real place being in a game that isn't self-consciously roasting D&D tropes and featuring players attacked by demonic clowns wielding +2 red sausages and pink dragons spraying caustic bubbles and farting rainbows.  Even that gets old quickly, but at least it knows what it is.  With the sort of attitude that I just need to 'go with' things, I'll probably have a brittle smile on my face at the end of the session when I say, "Had fun. Thanks for the game."  Fortunately, as a DM I've learned to be a pretty decent actor.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 18, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> From my view he's talking about D&D, period






Celebrim said:


> Then I'm not sure that you understand what he's talking about.




Based on the back-and-forth, I think I'm talking about:

Gonzo campaign, un-self-aware PCs:
Hit points as purely meta or not is irrelavent, since PCs probably aren't rational characters and aren't self-aware of why they do what they do. Such a character would jump off a cliff and keep going, without ever wondering how that was possible.

Gonzo campaign, self-aware PCs:
Hit points are indirectly observable in-character. PCs can be roleplayed *as if* they "know" their hit points. The rationales could be gonzo: "Look, I've fallen 100' several times before and didn't die, so trust me, I'm not being suicidal. I can probably grab one of those jutting rocks on my way down."

Gritty campaign, self-aware PCs:
Hit points are purely meta and are not observed in-character. However, PCs are roleplayed as if self-aware rational beings. If the group is cognizant of an anomaly, like being unable to commit suicide if you have a 100 hit points, then the DM and players might:
a) avoid introducing such anomalies into the storyline (ie., never try to commit suicide)
b) introduce a satisfyingly rational story element ("by the gods, any attempts at suicide will fail until the Raven Queen is done with you")
c) evoke Rule Zero (ie., extra hit points by level are a gift, not a right, which is negated when trying to commit suicide / suicide by cliff jumping causes maximum damage)

Gritty campaign, un-self-aware PCs:
As above, but in-game rationality isn't prioritized as much as the players aren't questioning in-game events through their characters


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## Lanefan (Apr 18, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not suggesting that an economics simulation is necessarily a fun game.  But I am suggesting that everything needs a certain economic plausibility, because smart players - like the great generals of history - will seek to attack the weak points of everything they encounter, and that includes the supply lines.   They'll also question the motivations of everything they encounter, and that will include envy, greed, and power.  If there isn't at least the basis of well thought out gloss on the economics of why the goblin tribe is occupying this cave somewhere, you don't have much of a setting to build on.  Economic considerations might not be useful in and of themselves, but they do provoke thought about the setting which will lead to deeper and more interesting stories.



You must have much different players, in style, than I do.  Put a dragon in front of my lot and the first question isn't "what does it eat" or "why is it here", it's "how are we going to kill it" quickly followed by "where is its lair".

As for setting-building, I build on the game world's history rather than its economics.


> Gonzo is a muppet.  I love him, but he has no real place being in a game that isn't self-consciously roasting D&D tropes and featuring players attacked by demonic clowns wielding +2 red sausages and pink dragons spraying caustic bubbles and farting rainbows.  Even that gets old quickly, but at least it knows what it is.  With the sort of attitude that I just need to 'go with' things, I'll probably have a brittle smile on my face at the end of the session when I say, "Had fun. Thanks for the game."  Fortunately, as a DM I've learned to be a pretty decent actor.



Gonzo (the concept) has every real place being in any game.  Gonzo the muppet is a different story, and not very relevant here.  But gonzo dungeoning doesn't have to involve demonic clowns and pink dragons, just an all-round attitude of let's get out there and giv'er; kill the monsters/bad guys, take their stuff, and if we happen to learn something as a side effect so much the better.  Internal logic is useful, yes, but much more important for play is that whatever internal logic is present be backed up by rock-solid internal consistency.

Lan-"if you want that thrill you gotta pay the bill, and it'll cost your life to visit Danger Hill"-efan


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 19, 2014)

Obryn said:


> I really can't express how silly I find the idea that a character would have knowledge of their HP or that such a thing like hp could have a physical, provable existence.



And yet, over 80% of the poll respondents apparently found the idea intuitive enough to say that this is the case.


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## Celebrim (Apr 19, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> You must have much different players, in style, than I do.  Put a dragon in front of my lot and the first question isn't "what does it eat" or "why is it here", it's "how are we going to kill it" quickly followed by "where is its lair".




I couldn't tell you how different my players are, because I don't have a habit of dropping dragons into areas where it couldn't find something to eat.  However, if the question of, "What does it eat?" or "Why is it here?" came up, I'd probably have an answer.   

For example, the only dragon they've fought so far was a Sea Dragon.  The answers are: "Sea turtles, mantas, dolphin fish and tuna which are abundant in the warm currents flowing north along the storm coast.  The occasional sailor, merfolk, or sea elf when it gets the chance." and "Nuati called it up from its lair near Tip-of-the-Tongue because he hates one of the PCs."



> As for setting-building, I build on the game world's history rather than its economics.




The two aren't completely separable.  Without something like the Silk Road, a lot of European history from the 13th century to the 17th century 
isn't really explainable.  It's worth knowing things like that Sweden was dominating the copper trade, or that Austria's wealth was driven by the fact that water wheels made silver mining profitable, which in turn happened because the collapse of the Roman slave based economy made it essential to utilize mechanical power.  It's worth considering that Spain's rise to world power was done by filling the huge void in European currency relative to its economic power, and that despite being in a rivalry with England it never could stop consuming English craft goods.   And so on and so forth.  But I wasn't even talking about such macro scale economics.  I was talking about, "What does the goblin tribe over the hill do when they aren't sitting around waiting to be slaughtered by adventurers.  They've got metal weapons but no mines or forge, so they are darn well doing something of economic value or they'd not have anything to trade.  And if they only equipped themselves by raiding their neighbors, why haven't they become such an burden years ago that some other far higher level and better equipped party didn't kill them and take their stuff?"

Because really, if you aren't answering those sort of questions, you aren't building a world and you are depriving yourself of an imaginative dungeon.  Instead you'll just have basically empty 20'x30' rooms with 1d6 goblins in each room.



> Gonzo (the concept) has every real place being in any game.  Gonzo the muppet is a different story, and not very relevant here.  But gonzo dungeoning doesn't have to involve demonic clowns and pink dragons, just an all-round attitude of let's get out there and giv'er; kill the monsters/bad guys, take their stuff, and if we happen to learn something as a side effect so much the better.




Perhaps we'd do better if we were sharing a common language.

gon·zo  [gon-zoh]   
adjective  
1. (of journalism, reportage, etc.) filled with bizarre or subjective ideas, commentary, or the like. 
2. crazy; eccentric. 
noun  
3. eccentricity, weirdness, or craziness. 

So that's as far as I'm concerned what Gonzo means.  Gonzo does mean things like being attacked by ice cream sundae monsters, tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, 'hub'goblins biker gangs, and the crew of the Star Ship Enterprise.  It means having the deities be Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Andy Warhol.  It means bizarre, wierd, and eccentric.  Gonzo is Weekly World News.  A lot of the first decade of RPGs had a lot of that - TSR even published several gonzo modules and there were tons of the original Greyhawk in the gonzo style.  I'm familiar with the style.  It's a style of gaming were what's important is the immediate problem, where comedy and bad puns are expected, logic is thrown out the window, and no one really worries about whether there is a story, a backstory, or a forestory.  I have no idea what giving a world a history means to gonzo gaming, other than you are evolving out of it.  Nor have I ever heard it defined as ' let's get out there and give'r', but I guess - to the extent that means 'carpe jugulum', I understand what you mean.  

Nonetheless, I'd like to think it's possible to game with a larger emotional range and more substance.  If it wasn't, I think I would have gotten bored a long time ago.  I enjoy the idea of a straw golem, tin golem, were-lion and a witch with ruby slippers and a terrier familiar as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't play that game for 4 hours a week for 3 years.   By the mid-80's, gonzo was passé.  People wanted more and I think have a right to more.   

What would be worse is creating a gonzo game that wasn't aware that it was a gonzo game but thought it was actually serious.  

The best way to prosper in my game is to realize that you need to learn something, and if you have to kill monsters and take their stuff to do it, so much the better.  My characters haven't completely figured out that asking questions and then killing things is the preferred order, but they are learning.


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 19, 2014)

Aenghus said:


> I've seen attempts to hide the hp totals of PCs in games before, and personally I thought the experiments were failures that didn't really work and made lots of work for the players and especially the referee. Either people got super cautious with their PCs, or they abandoned all caution and their PCs died a lot. And in most games the referee will give _some_ indication as to your health level.



Interesting. It's an odd artifact of the game that players have character sheets with hit points and other information on them. In truth, those are all really the DM's purview, but the game has put some of the mechanics where the players can see them. In my eyes, this is largely to save bookkeeping, but I suspect it contributes to the people who think that players have certain rights pertaining to narrative control.

It's also part of what raises this thread question. In most games, the DM will narrate damage in the context of health, and it could be argued that the players really shouldn't have any information other than that narration, which would reflect the hp mechanics, but not on a one-to-one basis. Instead, the players have the exact numbers, and we're left with the question of what that means.



> Frankly, I find the question "How many hit points does that PC/ NPC/ Monster have?" to be a more interesting question. Can a player or PC find out by any way other than killing them? Risk assessment is very important for decision making, and I've seen a huge variety of opinions on the topic on all points of the spectrum from "you know nothing" to "you know everything".
> ...
> (I'm not intending to threadcrap here, let me know if this is too off topic.)



Yes, this is also an interesting and distinct topic. At some point it would be great if someone started a thread on assessing these types of things in other characters. In this case, by and large, the player and the character are in the same boat, because they will only glean knowledge from the DM and cannot see the underlying mechanics.



> I have visions of a mad wizard/scientist experimenting on identical siblings of various different levels to discover the mystery of hit points.



Reminds me of a post I made a while back about how in a d20 Modern world, I think Joseph Mengele and his ilk could be seen as people who were trying to understand hit points with some of the experiments they did. In a way, the idea of understanding life and death is tied to the idea of people going too far in the pursuit of knowledge and committing horrific acts. In reality, there are laws that govern these things (though they're a good deal more complicated that D&D rules), and they often can't be determined within the bounds of ethical and moral science.

(This is my own off-topic diatribe).


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## pemerton (Apr 19, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> If hit points have no real relationship to bodily injury and other observable effects, then isn't perforce the gap between player knowledge and character knowledge to be complete?   It won't merely be true that there is some gap between player knowledge and character knowledge, but there will be an absolute gap between reality as the player knows it and reality as it is possible for the character to know.   So the consequences of me being wrong aren't less of what you complain about, but far greater of what you and Hussar complain about.



I'm not sure what you think I'm complaining about. (I'll let [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] speak to his own complaints.)

I can't say that I have a strong working model for classic D&D hit points - after all, I was dissatisfied with the play of combat in that system, and hence mostly abaondoned it to play a system (Rolemaster) which uses a wound/debuff approach to character health. And when playing Rolemaster, I certainly take for granted that a character knows his/her injuries, just as the player knows them.

But in 4e, I regard hit points as roughly a victory/momentum marker. The lower the character's hit points, the more the momentum of battle is turning against him/her. Hence a rousing word from a battle captain, or a word of blessing from a cleric, can re-invigorate the character and restore momentum, turning the tide. I assume that the PC's emotional and cognitive state corresponds to that of the player - for instance, if the player knows that his/her PC is low on hit points but is relaxed because s/he can see that his/her PC is in no danger because the other PCs have the situation under control, then I take it for granted that that player's PC is feelingthe same thing: s/he is in no real position to contribute to the fight, but is content to stand by while his/her allies clean things up.

Conversely, when a PC is bloodied and is confronted by multiple enemies any one of whom could render him/her unconscious with a hit and a lucky damage roll, I assume the PC's state of mind corresponds to that of the player: anxiety, a degree of desperation, a readiness to give it all and do whatever it takes to survive (mechanically, that correlates to daily powers, and at the metagame level to scouring the sheet for possible life-saving combos, etc), looking around to see if fellow PCs can provide any aid or reassurance, etc.

Hence my comment, either upthread or on another of these healing threads, that 4e healing works the same way in the metagame as in the fiction: it provides comfort and reassurance both to the PC and to the player.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 19, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Yes, this is also an interesting and distinct topic. At some point it would be great if someone started a thread on assessing these types of things in other characters. In this case, by and large, the player and the character are in the same boat, because they will only glean knowledge from the DM and cannot see the underlying mechanics.



Can PCs know when a monster is bloodied? Consistently or is it a knowledge or perception or nature check? What does it even mean to know a monster is bloodied anyhow? That's got to be meta for sure, because halfway to death doesn't mean anything in-character. Even bloodied in the literal sense doesn't mean much in-character. If a PC is not being roleplayed as if self-aware of their hit point status, they do know that certain conditions will kick in if/when they are bloodied and time their own actions accordingly? If a PC is self aware of its hit points, it seems it would open a Pandora's Box to observing in-character all the other effects of mechanics that are tied to hit points.


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## Aenghus (Apr 19, 2014)

For players to make plausible decisions for their PC, they need to know some idea of their health, either in or out of character, and have permission to chose actions based on that knowledge. 

I sincerely doubt many people advocate that PCs know their actual hit point total in-character, rather that they have some idea of their health and can discover the relative toughness of their foes with experience -  sufficient knowledge that they can make tactical and strategic decisions without a blindfold.

This knowledge and  approval to act on it can be in-character, out-of-character or some combination thereof. 

Hit points are an abstract concept, and people have come up with lots of different competing ways to rationalise them, and describe their loss and recovery. These competing ways are very subjective and the various interpretations can result in different outcomes, and support competing design goals.


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## Manbearcat (Apr 19, 2014)

pemerton said:


> *But in 4e, I regard hit points as roughly a victory/momentum marker.* The lower the character's hit points, the more the momentum of battle is turning against him/her. Hence a rousing word from a battle captain, or a word of blessing from a cleric, can re-invigorate the character and restore momentum, turning the tide. I assume that the PC's emotional and cognitive state corresponds to that of the player - for instance, if the player knows that his/her PC is low on hit points but is relaxed because s/he can see that his/her PC is in no danger because the other PCs have the situation under control, then I take it for granted that that player's PC is feelingthe same thing: s/he is in no real position to contribute to the fight, but is content to stand by while his/her allies clean things up.
> 
> Conversely, when a PC is bloodied and is confronted by multiple enemies any one of whom could render him/her unconscious with a hit and a lucky damage roll, I assume the PC's state of mind corresponds to that of the player: anxiety, a degree of desperation, a readiness to give it all and do whatever it takes to survive (mechanically, that correlates to daily powers, and at the metagame level to scouring the sheet for possible life-saving combos, etc), looking around to see if fellow PCs can provide any aid or reassurance, etc.
> 
> Hence my comment, either upthread or on another of these healing threads, that 4e healing works the same way in the metagame as in the fiction: it provides comfort and reassurance both to the PC and to the player.




Upthread I said that HP serve primarily as metagame markers for my players and myself. I just wanted to quote pemerton's post here (and bold the top sentence) as this comports precisely with the conveyance of the fictional positioning as HPs ablate and restore in my home 4e game. They are metagame markers for resource deployment/system interaction and fictional positioning markers with respect to momentum, escalation, rallying, desperation, and exaltation. In the same way that responsible 4e GMs and players pay heed to this inherent dramatic ebb and flow (rising action, climax, denoument) that the HP system (and knock-on effects/system components) connotes (and narrate complications, escalation, etc accordingly), so too do responsible 4e GMs and players pay heed to the markers of stakes, complexity, advantages, # successes accrued, and # failures accrued (the last two being the interposing adversity's "HP pool" and the player's collective "HP pool" respectively).


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 20, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> Cool thread. I registered just to give my two cents



Well, my count of "people recruited to ENWorld" is now up to 1.



> that I think heroes -- if they were real-life personalities -- lack self-awareness when it comes to their superhuman abilities and mortality.



So essentially, your case is that bravery and stupidity are the same thing. That characters are heroes not because they are better than everyone else and they know it, but because they're oblivious risk-takers.

It's an interesting take, and not one without precedent. Many action heroes do seem to behave that way.



> The player can certaintly try to roleplay a character as if they knew their hit points, but really, the character couldn't be self aware of anything.



I don't really see why they couldn't. Our own self-awareness is predicated in empirical observation. Something hurts us, and we learn about our vulnerabilities. We achieve a success, and we learn about our capabilities. Fantasy characters, despite living in an unrealistic world, could observe the outcomes going on around them and draw conclusions.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 20, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> That characters are heroes not because they are better than everyone else and they know it, but because they're oblivious risk-takers.
> 
> It's an interesting take, and not one without precedent. Many action heroes do seem to behave that way.



Yes, that's a great way to summarize it: I think many action heroes are oblivious risk-takers. In many cases, I think they are both: they know they're better than everyone else AND they're oblivious.

Heroes actually do what they do because it advances the plot in an  exciting way that pleases the audience and makes money for the  producers. Similarly, D&D heroes do what they do to please the  gamers. The in-character motives are then subject to intepretation as Aenghus  says. I think that attempts at plausible explanations for action hero  risk-taking are merely to  help suspend disbelief just enough. But "knowing" your hit points throughout a campaign is  more than the usual suspension of disbelief. It requires behaving with  self-awareness, and I don't think most heroes (paricularily heroes in  dumb action settings) have that.

I'd say that, esp when it comes to hit points, a brave kid in an action movie and Average Joe protaganists are oblivious idiots. The ex-CIA op in a gritty 'realistic' movie who takes on 4 opponents at once, counts his lucky stars,  recovers in the hospital for the next 48 hrs with his family, and leaves the rest to his CIA colleagues knows he's better than everyone else. The ex-CIA hero who takes on dozens of armed opponents and various obstacles over 48 hours and succeeds and kisses the dame -- such a  hero knows he's better than everyone else but he's still rather  oblivious. He can't be self-aware, because if we was, he'd probably act differently or at least  question the rationality of his superhuman endurance and the improbability of these  events.



> I don't really see why they couldn't. Our own self-awareness is predicated in empirical observation. Something hurts us, and we learn about our vulnerabilities. We achieve a success, and we learn about our capabilities. Fantasy characters, despite living in an unrealistic world, could observe the outcomes going on around them and draw conclusions.



But even in an unrealistic fantasy world, the characters need some understanding of cause-and-effect in order to draw those conclusions. Let's say a cleric believes he's surrounded by a protective divine forcefield. He believes this aura is damaged by attacks and regenerates with rest, and once that forcefield is gone, the cleric feels vulnerable. Such a cleric can be roleplayed (more or less) consistently with player's out-of-character knowledge. (Furthermore, theoretically, if the cleric was in anti-magic shield and believed this aura was gone, the players knows he still has 60 hit points, but the cleric in-character would fear that he's vulnerable to a single strike, and wouldn't rush to the front of the battleline as boldly as if he knew he had the full divine protection -- or 60 hit points -- left.)

In most cases, I think, fantasy characters don't have access to in-game cause-and-effect undertstanding that would lead to naturalistic behavior consistent with player knowledge of the character's mortality, just like the typical action hero that engages in oblivious risk taking to please the movie audience. D&Disms and fun requirements and obligations to the gaming group can often require us to roleplay characters in ways that aren't quite rational, which is why I think they're oblivious, and if they're not self-aware, they can't "know" their hit points -- at least not to an extent that is meaningful to me anyway.


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## Celebrim (Apr 20, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> Can PCs know when a monster is bloodied? Consistently or is it a knowledge or perception or nature check? What does it even mean to know a monster is bloodied anyhow? That's got to be meta for sure, because halfway to death doesn't mean anything in-character. Even bloodied in the literal sense doesn't mean much in-character. If a PC is not being roleplayed as if self-aware of their hit point status, they do know that certain conditions will kick in if/when they are bloodied and time their own actions accordingly? If a PC is self aware of its hit points, it seems it would open a Pandora's Box to observing in-character all the other effects of mechanics that are tied to hit points.




With respect to rationalizing the rules of 4e and narrating them coherently, I'm sure that pemerton knows vastly more than idea and can offer a vastly more coherent description of 4e play than I could.  I simply don't know enough about 4e to comment, save that I do know that it produces a theory of the game that is vastly different than the theory of the game from 1e through 3e.  The 1e DMG still offers the definitive description of what hit points represent as far as I'm concerned.

I'm ready to assume - in part because I think pemerton runs 4e better than its designers do - that if there is a coherent description of 4e hit points, that he can offer it.  However, pemerton's descriptions of hit points are just not things I'm ready to accept for a wide variety of reasons.  In the past he's compared them to fatigue.  Here he goes further and suggests that hit points are markers of courage and morale.  Perhaps this works in 4e.  I can't say.  But it doesn't work for me.

As I play the game, which is a heavily modified version of 3.0, characters - both PC's and NPC's - can indirectly observe their own hit points and attempt to assess the hit points of others.  This is necessary in might opinion to be internally consistant, and in general doing so produces consistency in just about everything but the 'cure' spells.  This consistency gap is one I'm aware of, and I can partially close it, but a full closure requires a rules rewrite and so far a set of rules that closes that consistency gap and is also mechanically balanced and interesting hasn't suggested itself to me.


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## SteveC (Apr 21, 2014)

So I watch the show Arrow, which is a totally guilty pleasure thing for me (it's on the CW, so ... yeah it's kind of like that). Many of my friends who like to poke fun at me ask "how the heck can all those characters who are supposed to be smart and with it NOT KNOW who the Arrow is." If you think about it, it makes no sense on that show, or just about any other superhero with secret identity program.

So why don't people know who the Arrow or Batman or Superman or ... you name it are? Genre convention. That's it. Why does the villain monologue about what they're going to do and then leave the hero in a totally escapable death trap? Genre.

So why do heroes not think about their hit points, or other meta gaming concepts? Genre.

It doesn't have to be that way: I have played in games where the GM had no barrier between character and player knowledge, and they completely worked, they were just different.

For me, I very much prefer the mystery, and not immediately knowing who the Arrow is.


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## billd91 (Apr 21, 2014)

SteveC said:


> So why do heroes not think about their hit points, or other meta gaming concepts? Genre.




Moreover, why do heroes not think about hit points yet act like big damn heroes with confidence that a lowly mook is not going to kill them with a single attack? Genre. And if anyone thinks that a superior warrior turning deadly attacks into minor nicks and cuts isn't in-genre, they haven't read enough John Carter stories.


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## Hussar (Apr 21, 2014)

Now this I totally agree with [MENTION=44640]bill[/MENTION]91 and [MENTION=9053]SteveC[/MENTION].


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## Argyle King (Apr 21, 2014)

billd91 said:


> Moreover, why do heroes not think about hit points yet act like big damn heroes with confidence that a lowly mook is not going to kill them with a single attack? Genre. And if anyone thinks that a superior warrior turning deadly attacks into minor nicks and cuts isn't in-genre, they haven't read enough John Carter stories.




Heroes being able to handle multiple mooks is something I'm fine with.

PCs being virtually immune to entire armies isn't something I'm fine with.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 21, 2014)

Why do villians in comics get knocked out (not killed), imprisoned (and released), or die and resurrect?
1) Genre
2) To get readers hooked on a serial format comic
3) Batman has a no-kill code

Genre is an answer, but is it really *the* answer or is just a self-reinforcing label?


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## Balesir (Apr 21, 2014)

pemerton said:


> I regard hit points as roughly a victory/momentum marker. The lower the character's hit points, the more the momentum of battle is turning against him/her. Hence a rousing word from a battle captain, or a word of blessing from a cleric, can re-invigorate the character and restore momentum, turning the tide. I assume that the PC's emotional and cognitive state corresponds to that of the player - for instance, if the player knows that his/her PC is low on hit points but is relaxed because s/he can see that his/her PC is in no danger because the other PCs have the situation under control, then I take it for granted that that player's PC is feelingthe same thing: s/he is in no real position to contribute to the fight, but is content to stand by while his/her allies clean things up.



This is a nice and fairly clear explanation of how you see the meaning of hit points translating into the game world, but is it not essentially saying, as I did, that the character has a nuanced understanding of his or her hit points and can make decisions based on them?

Sure, the character likely isn't thinking of them as "hit points" - and probably isn't imputing a numerical value to them - but they surely instinctively understand where they are as regards "momentum" and morale/spirit/energy? Do we not imagine them having, in fact, sufficiently nuanced an understanding of these things that they are able to take decisions based on that understanding? It would seem to me that this suggests the first option in the poll, not the second or third...


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## Aenghus (Apr 21, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> Why do villians in comics get knocked out (not killed), imprisoned (and released), or die and resurrect?
> 1) Genre
> 2) To get readers hooked on a serial format comic
> 3) Batman has a no-kill code
> ...




Genre can be either cause or effect or even some of both at the same time. A game's style will produce a genre from the ongoing consequences of play, what can happen, what does happen, and what can't happen. Even trying to avert strong genre tropes can result in a genre IMO.

Strong genre conventions like "one successful attack should rarely kill a healthy PC"  or "superhero secret identities are effective" need to be supported by mechanics such as hit points or by agreement with all the players. Weak genre conventions don't necessarily need rules support as much.

"Random deathtrap dungeon" is a genre where skill can help reduce the risks incurred but not avoid them entirely due to the everpresent randomness. Eventually everyone's number comes up unless there's fudging, so don't get attached to your PCs or bother with long-term plots.

Whereas "fantasy soap opera" is going to have lots of relationship-based plots and less violence and PC turnover. 

Neither of these would probably suit players looking for strong tactical or wargaming elements in play.

IMO because some sort of genre is inevitable, its often better to decide what you are aiming for deliberately, rather than have it develop inadvertently. Accidental genre can be great but it's a crapshoot and I've seen a lot of disappointment from refusal to make decisions in this area.

.


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## I'm A Banana (Apr 21, 2014)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Hence my comment, either upthread or on another of these healing threads, that 4e healing works the same way in the metagame as in the fiction: it provides comfort and reassurance both to the PC and to the player.




In this, the 4e HP mechanic is really quite good. This is what I want out of a mechanic! It helps me play my character well. It could be better (4e could have gone whole hog with this idea and just owned it and done a lot of interesting things with it independent of martial healing), but it's good for that.

It just doesn't fit as comfortably into the model of HP that I tend to want to use in D&D, which is that HP is an injury mechanic for heroic fantasy where injuries don't do much until they're deadly.


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## diaglo (Apr 21, 2014)

through years of training in their class they have learned how fragile they are.
they know their hps, their ability scores in relation to others of their race, their abilities to climb, jump, run, etc...

they didn't become heroes in the dark. they learned from others or were touched by the gods. mostly they know what is written on their sheet in the game sense. the player knows it on the metagame lvl.


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## Hussar (Apr 22, 2014)

diaglo said:


> through years of training in their class they have learned how fragile they are.
> they know their hps, their ability scores in relation to others of their race, their abilities to climb, jump, run, etc...
> 
> they didn't become heroes in the dark. they learned from others or were touched by the gods. mostly they know what is written on their sheet in the game sense. the player knows it on the metagame lvl.




While I might not totally agree with this, I suppose, in play, this is exactly how it works out.  Players are incapable of making decisions without knowledge of their character sheets.  I, the player, know exactly what is on my sheet and my decisions will always be coloured by that knowledge.  That's unavoidable.  So, effectively, my character is going to act as if he (or she) knows what's on the character sheet too.

IOW, what my character does is going to be affected by my current HP, no matter how much I the player might want to separate HP from the game world.


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## pemerton (Apr 22, 2014)

Balesir said:


> This is a nice and fairly clear explanation of how you see the meaning of hit points translating into the game world, but is it not essentially saying, as I did, that the character has a nuanced understanding of his or her hit points and can make decisions based on them?
> 
> Sure, the character likely isn't thinking of them as "hit points" - and probably isn't imputing a numerical value to them - but they surely instinctively understand where they are as regards "momentum" and morale/spirit/energy? Do we not imagine them having, in fact, sufficiently nuanced an understanding of these things that they are able to take decisions based on that understanding? It would seem to me that this suggests the first option in the poll, not the second or third...



I can see your argument.

But I can also think of counterexamples - for instance, when PCs enter combat there is not, as yet, any momentum but the players know (and act on) PC hit point totals. There are 100' cliff counterexamples too.

Plus there's the knowledge a player has, when hp are very low, that any lucky shot _will_ knock the PC unconscious, which I don't think the PC has.

For me, these are examples - perhaps marginal ones - where the "momentum" is established purely at the metagame level, but doesn't translate into the fiction.

To allude to [MENTION=6775975]Dungeonman[/MENTION]'s terrific posts above, I think these are the points were genre-blindnes/lack of self-awareness kicks in: the players know that genre tropes will be supported (because they have the hp information to tell them) but the PCs don't. Fpr intsance, they still feel lucky every time they fall straight down 100' and don't die.


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## Balesir (Apr 22, 2014)

pemerton said:


> Fpr intsance, they still feel lucky every time they fall straight down 100' and don't die.



For the 100' drop case, I generally assume that the character feels that they could probably survive such a drop (by grabbing handholds, rolling down the slope or whatever). But they also know it will be unpleasant to experience it, as losing hit points always is. Whether the unpleasantness manifests as pain and bruising or just the angst of being outmanoeuvred and/or demoralised in a fight, it's not a situation that any sane person would voluntarily expose themselves to needlessly - hence the "jumping out of a sixth storey window just because they can" scenario doesn't generally happen. If the building was on fire and their way out was aflame, however, it could certainly be an option they would consider - just as Indy or Conan might do in a similar "tight spot", relying on their athletic or acrobatic prowess (not to mention dumb luck!) to get away with it. If jumping seemed likely to be less unpleasant than running the gauntlet of flame, it might be an option they would even choose.

Edit: On the topic of "genre blindness" and genre tropes in general. I do have sympathy for players who feel that, even with genre assumptions in play, they want to find some rationalisation acceptable to themselves concerning why their character takes the actions they take and believe the things they believe. "It's in the genre" is fine as a justification as to why the rules work a certain way, but the players may still need to find a model of what is actually happening that makes sense of their character for them. One advantage of separating such justifications/rationalisations from the rules mechanics is that individual players do not need to come up with the same justifications/rationalisations - they just need to ensure that their own rationalisation explains whatever the rules say happens.


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## pemerton (Apr 22, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> In this, the 4e HP mechanic is really quite good.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It just doesn't fit as comfortably into the model of HP that I tend to want to use in D&D, which is that HP is an injury mechanic for heroic fantasy where injuries don't do much until they're deadly.



Whereas I have no real desire to use such a mechanic. If I want injuries in my game I want them to be somewhat realistic in their consequences - hence my preference for Rolemaster, RQ etc for that more gritty style of game.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 22, 2014)

pemerton said:


> To allude to Dungeonman's terrific posts above, I think these are the points were genre-blindnes/lack of self-awareness kicks in: the players know that genre tropes will be supported (because they have the hp information to tell them) but the PCs don't.



Thought experiment if genre-blindnes/lack of self-awareness did NOT kick in:

Heroes around the land with a modicum of intelligence and self-awareness realize that they're better than regular folk, and that there are universal laws that apparently apply only to their kind.

They know that when they go into battle in full health, rarely or never is anyone taken down early in the fight; but rather through attrition. This is predictable enough that they can plan their tactics accordingly. Some adventurers can even predict that they'll never, ever be bloodied right away. Other adventurers can accurately predict that the first wound from an axe swing is never dangerous but a dozen axe wounds are.

They can ably predict that their opponents rarely or never outclass them, or they will rarely or never be put in a position to fight opponents that would outclass them. They remember goblins being worthy opponents at the onset, and after a year or so, they're taking on dragons and demons, as if they're getting better and better.

In comparison, they see that regular folk are prone at any time to a knockout or deadly strike regardless of their state of health, and thus cannot predict the ebb and flow of combat, plus these regular folk are scared of having to randomly confront an opponent who can best them and kill them dead.

The adventurers know they didn't do anything in particular to earn this destiny. They didn't bath in a magic pool of immortality or have a special sword that empowers them so. The only thing they do differently is to take on quests that others would consider foolhardy, and if they survive, they get better at it. They even get better at other skills that have nothing to do with the quest, and they can get better at these skills faster than regular folk who practice and train at it for weeks or months or years.

At first, this wonderous phenomenon is kept secret, too embarrasing and too crazy to confess. But after a few weeks, the elephant in the room is so obvious,they hesitantly share their musings. It starts with sitting by the fire at nights and discussions about luck and destiny. Then it morphs into meetings at adventuring halls, drunken boasts in pubs, and ballads sung by minstrels: stories about Karma that adventurers earn and regular folk lack.

Eventually, the Adventuring Industry is born: "Become an Adventurer! Risk your Life for Fame and Glory.. and mostly importantly... Karma! Do you really want to be a Regular guy in the King's army, or do you want to be a Warrior with more Karma after a few days in an Official Credited Adventuring Dungeon? Do you really want to spend a decade in a tower learning that Fireball spell, or do you want to unlock your very own Fireball after just a few weeks shooting Magic Missiles with your fellow Adventurers? Stop being a regular person, stop waiting for other Adventurers to save your town. Yes, you can be an Adventurer today, and get yourself some Karma! Find any Official Adventure Recruitment Centre, and find out if you qualify! (If you don't qualify, please see our Henchman Wanted section.)"


EDIT: Not to mock anyone's rp style, of course. This was a thought experiment of what it could mean for a PC to "know" their hit points. As much as I'd love to see a D&D system that encourages that...


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## lehcym (Apr 22, 2014)

The usefulness of knowledge is to help you to do the right choice. If the character does the right choice every time (thanks to the player), is he still ignorant ?

The character is either perfectly aware of his character sheet or he is some kind of psychic.


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## pemerton (Apr 22, 2014)

[MENTION=6775975]Dungeonman[/MENTION], it seems like you're describing the Forgotten Realms!


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 22, 2014)

[MENTION=6775975]Dungeonman[/MENTION]
I think that scenario also ties into assumptions about non-adventuring life. Personally, I go a lot by Experts d20, which talks a lot about XP and character advancement for everyday professional life. A lot of D&D texts either ignore the issue of how NPCs compare to the PCs, or establish ludicrously low baselines (the 3.5 DMG indicates that the world is essentially full of level 1 commoners, despite there being several NPC classes and 20 levels of advancement available).

Assuming that NPC life really sucks, your example follows. Assuming that it doesn't; if we make higher baseline assumptions about the level, financial resources, and overall power of people in the world at large, it becomes more of a choice whether one wants to go into the adventuring business or not.

That being said, if we assume that the general population has 3d6 bell curve ability scores, most of them would fail and/or just die if they tried adventuring, so that enters into the equation as well.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 22, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Assuming that NPC life really sucks, your example follows. Assuming that it doesn't; if we make higher baseline assumptions about the level, financial resources, and overall power of people in the world at large, it becomes more of a choice whether one wants to go into the adventuring business or not.



I'm wrapping my head around this kind of setting and it reminds me of that movie Tai Chi Zero, about a village of seemingly normal hardworking folk who also happen to be kung fu masters. If most NPCs had levels, that sure would explain how humans survive against the hordes of monsters, and it would unflinchingly embrace the D&D ruleset with the fiction.


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 22, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> If most NPCs had levels, that sure would explain how humans survive against the hordes of monsters, and it would unflinchingly embrace the D&D ruleset with the fiction.



To an extent. Even a level 5 commoner isn't much of a combatant. He certainly can't beat what a PC would consider a "level appropriate" challenge. But he is a much better laborer, and he is in general more resilient.

What it does when you start using the d20 system as a worldbuilding tool is it takes away some of the sense that adventurers and/or player characters are "special" or operate on a different plane of existence than everyone else. Instead, they are simply incrementally better at various relevant tasks. That increment may be a lot, but there isn't the same sense of "if you want to get better/smarter/tougher, go slaughter some goblins". Instead it's "if you want to get better, the amount you get better will depend on the risk you take; if you tend bar, you'll slowly advance, whereas if you try to save the world, you'll probably die young but you'll live hard up until then".

Another idea that's tied up here is the method of advancement. The D&D rules themselves are largely oriented around XP for adventuring tasks like acquiring treasure or killing monsters, but most people (at least most people who respond to ENW surveys on this topic) either substantially modify or ignore the XP rules, making more diverse outcomes possible and lessening the whole "killing goblins makes you a better person" vibe.


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## pemerton (Apr 23, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> The D&D rules themselves are largely oriented around XP for adventuring tasks like acquiring treasure or killing monsters



This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about. For instance, in 4e acquiring treasure isn't a source of XP; it's a _consequence_ of XP (because XP drives levels, and levels drive treasure parcels).

XP are earned by completing quests, engaging with and resolving challenges, and free roleplaying that drives the ingame situation forward: in other words, for playing the game (as the designers conceive of it). The basic idea is that 12 or so hours of playing the game in this sense, with a 5-player group, will earn a level's worth of XP.



Ahnehnois said:


> the "killing goblins makes you a better person" vibe



This seems to be an artefact of 2nd ed AD&D and 3E. In AD&D, for instance, there is no particular incentive to kill goblins - the incentive is to loot them. And in 4e there is no particular incentive to kill goblins, unless that is the particular way you want to engage the ingame situation and thereby drive the game onwards.


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## Lanefan (Apr 23, 2014)

pemerton said:


> This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about. For instance, in 4e acquiring treasure isn't a source of XP; it's a _consequence_ of XP (because XP drives levels, and levels drive treasure parcels).



While I realize how it's supposed to work, every time I see the term "treasure parcels" my gut reaction is *'bleah!'*; it sounds so pre-packaged, the antithesis of the freeform and random type of game I far prefer.

Then again, in the 4e adventure modules I've run some of the most valuable treasure found by the party isn't considered treasure at all by the system.  Example from Keep on the Shadowfell 

***SPOILER ALERT*** - if you don't want to know stuff about Keep on the Shadowfell, please jump to the next post now

In KotS there's an enemy - I think it's a Hobgoblin just near the stairs between the first and second decks - who carries around a staff that when touched to an opponent does something like 4d6 electrical damage.  The module doesn't consider this to be treasure at all, but when my crew killed that Hob. and figured out how to get that shock-staff working they thought it was the best thing they'd ever seen!  So into party treasury it went, meaning that later I had to assign a value to it for treasury division...it ended up being the most expensive thing in the adventure!

I don't think 4e wants things to work that way, but if an opponent can use something then in theory the PCs (usually) can too.

Lan-"that shock-staff hung around in the party for about 2 years until it got stolen from its owner by another PC who then lost it when he died"-efan


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 23, 2014)

pemerton said:


> This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about.



To an extent. I don't think any of them are really giving you experience for gaining life experience though. It's always been some variation of rewarding people for adventuring rather than modeling learning through experience.

Which of course is why many people ignore that part of the rules.


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## Obryn (Apr 23, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> In KotS there's an enemy - I think it's a Hobgoblin just near the stairs between the first and second decks - who carries around a staff that when touched to an opponent does something like 4d6 electrical damage.  The module doesn't consider this to be treasure at all, but when my crew killed that Hob. and figured out how to get that shock-staff working they thought it was the best thing they'd ever seen!  So into party treasury it went, meaning that later I had to assign a value to it for treasury division...it ended up being the most expensive thing in the adventure!
> 
> I don't think 4e wants things to work that way, but if an opponent can use something then in theory the PCs (usually) can too.
> 
> Lan-"that shock-staff hung around in the party for about 2 years until it got stolen from its owner by another PC who then lost it when he died"-efan



In this case, it's a matter of the hobgoblin casting a spell through the staff, not the staff itself being magical. The fighter can't cast all the wizard's spells by borrowing his wand, either. 

This was an attempt to avoid the wretched state of affairs in 3e of NPCs needing an overabundance of gear. 1e faced similar problems, so you had stuff like drow weapons that evaporated in sunlight.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 23, 2014)

Obryn said:


> In this case, it's a matter of the hobgoblin casting a spell through the staff, not the staff itself being magical. The fighter can't cast all the wizard's spells by borrowing his wand, either.
> 
> This was an attempt to avoid the wretched state of affairs in 3e of NPCs needing an overabundance of gear. 1e faced similar problems, so you had stuff like drow weapons that evaporated in sunlight.



In 4E, are drow weapons mundane or are they magical and salvageable? If you disarm the hobgoblin's staff, does he lose his implement for shocking? How do the PCs "know" to spend 10 minutes or not differentiating the useful magical loot from the useless loot that were merely implemental to their owners? What do treasure parcels imply is happening in the fiction, or is it merely uninteresting to the story? I'm curious, because it seems to mirror the hit point self-awareness angle as well.


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## Manbearcat (Apr 23, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> In 4E, are drow weapons mundane or are they magical and salvageable? If you disarm the hobgoblin's staff, does he lose his implement for shocking? How do the PCs "know" to spend 10 minutes or not differentiating the useful magical loot from the useless loot that were merely implemental to their owners? What do treasure parcels imply is happening in the fiction, or is it merely uninteresting to the story? I'm curious, because it seems to mirror the hit point self-awareness angle as well.




I think the totality of your answer lies in a simple acknowledgement.  4e, unlike AD&D 2e and 3.x, doesn't willfully attempt to convince its operators to divorce themselves from the metagame, or at least to mask its existence through various means.  It embraces it.  This is a guiding principle of the scope of its design.  With 4e being Heinsoo's D&D, unsurprisingly, 13th Age stridently advocates the same approach.  All the various parts, from setting/backdrop to PC build components, can move from mere background color ("say yes") to actual mechanical resolution ("or roll the dice") as is required to properly pace the game and keep everyone engaged in the conflict they are interested in.

To answer your questions:

1)  Drow weapons, the ends of general labor and material by drow, are mundane.  There is some specific mundane equipment that, while not magical, may have specific (yet mundane) properties that make them superior.  The Drow Long Knife is an example; Superior one-handed melee weapon (+ 3, 1d6, 5/10 range, Heavy Blade Group, Heavy Thrown and Offhand Properties.  Then there are magical items that are expected to have specific relevance to drow culture (such as a Piwafwi).

2)  No, he doesn't lose his ability to shock people if he is disarmed from his staff.  The implement keyword means that magic can be channeled through it (requiring proficiency with the implement) and empowered if the implement is magic (such as a + 1).  An unmagical implement, unless it is superior (and then it has properties), is merely color mechanically (but perhaps a sign of power or ritual for the owner).  However, there are high level magical implements in the game that specifically have At-Will spells stored in them that let the user cast them if he has proficiency (typically as an encounter power).

3)  Discerning magic is a straight-forward affair for anyone trained in Arcana (any group will typically have one or more).  The character spends a Minor or Standard Action (depending upon what they are trying to identify) and resolves the check mechanically (Moderate or Hard DC depending on what they are doing). 

Regarding magic items, it is assumed that a wielder immediately knows the magic properties of a magic item (there is no more procedural ritualizing the "identify item" D&D trope; flapping your arms as a bird or spending hours and pearls).  An item with a cursed property, however, will stay hidden until the trigger condition is met.  The curse stays until a DIsenchant Magic Item or Remove Affliction ritual is used or something else campaign-specific occurs.   

4)  Treasure Parcels are a GM-side metagame tool to properly dispense loot to the group such that the expectant wealth/treasure by level balance is maintained.  Treasure is a PC build resource in 4e so it is inherent to the expectant balance and is another tool to diversify/bulwark archetype and enrich PCs thematically for in-fiction outcomes (such as a Divine Boon by a pleased deity or an earned martial Alt Advancement exploit after training with someone).


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## Lanefan (Apr 24, 2014)

Obryn said:


> In this case, it's a matter of the hobgoblin casting a spell through the staff, not the staff itself being magical. The fighter can't cast all the wizard's spells by borrowing his wand, either.



I'll have to read it again, but I don't recall the Hob. specifically being a spellcaster.  In any case, I was converting the adventure for 1e which doesn't use implements for casting, so I had to rationalize it somehow.  


> This was an attempt to avoid the wretched state of affairs in 3e of NPCs needing an overabundance of gear. 1e faced similar problems, so you had stuff like drow weapons that evaporated in sunlight.



I think they did this specifically to drow weapons to allow themselves design space to load drow up with magic so they'd present a credible threat to mid-high level parties; which is fine by me.

The trick is to make the magic risky - the more you have, the bigger the bang if and when it goes off. 

Lanefan


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## Obryn (Apr 24, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> In 4E, are drow weapons mundane or are they magical and salvageable? If you disarm the hobgoblin's staff, does he lose his implement for shocking? How do the PCs "know" to spend 10 minutes or not differentiating the useful magical loot from the useless loot that were merely implemental to their owners? What do treasure parcels imply is happening in the fiction, or is it merely uninteresting to the story? I'm curious, because it seems to mirror the hit point self-awareness angle as well.



The 4e default is that NPCs don't need magic items, but may possess and use them when they're intended as treasure. NPC gear is assumed to be mundane, so you can loot a guy's sword if your sword breaks or something - not too uncommon in Dark Sun.

As for what to identify, magic items are automatically identified during a short rest, except in very rare situations (e.g. when the item is an artifact). There's no dull "pile the loot and cast detect magic" routine; such identification is an assumed part of downtime after an encounter.

I personally don't like or use treasure parcels; I like the game to be about the characters more than their equipment, so I use inherent bonuses + rare and powerful items on occasion that scale with the party + fun/interesting stuff. This lowers the optimization ceiling in my game, but means neither my players nor I need to screw around with gear.

As to what treasure parcels are in the fiction? They're a game mechanic. Just a formalized way to get a certain wealth-by-level. I don't like fiddling with them, but they're as sensible as rolled treasure types.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 24, 2014)

Then this is going to sound very obvious, but in those cases where players don't know or don't think about what the metagame construct means in the fiction (either in general, or at any one point in the story) then obviously the character couldn't know either in-game.

I think the implication of the OP is whether the player has "permission" of sorts to roleplay the PC to do X when the player knows Y.

For example, if the PC has 50 hit points facing against a 5 hp goblin, then:
- if the PC "knows" this, the player has "permission" to roleplay the PC in a brave confident manner
- if the PC does not "know" this, the PC could be brave ("die puny goblin") or cowardly ("run away") or cautious ("maybe we should negotiate with the goblin") and all options are equally valid

If 4E embraces the metagame, then the player doesn't need any "permission" to roleplay the PC within the rules. One way or another, the story will follow. In that case, I think this poll is rather irrelevant.

In previous editions, this is an issue, that I don't think has been addressed satisfyingly in D&D culture as a whole, because:
1) Let's be honest here -- most people probably didn't and don't care
2) From a game play perspective, the PCs should "know" their hit points anyway. Who wants to be in the position of the epic fighter begging the cleric for serious healing when he lost only 5 hp?

I guess I don't appreciate blindspots in the fiction so much. I don't like 4E if it gives me blindspots with treasure parcels and bloodied conditions and martial healing and such. Then again, I didn't like previous edition blindspots with monsters standing around in rooms for no reason, fighters increasing their swimming skill during a forest/dungeon quest, and many many others. Because that created a schism between what I thought I was "supposed" to do (which usually equals hack and slash, search every room, etc.) vs rp'ing the PC in a rationally interesting way.

Necessary evil, I say. Unless I try Ahnehnois' idea of a setting that makes every D&D rule to be "real" in the story too. Hey maybe, D&DN will make that even more satisfying. That would be cool.


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## Campbell (Apr 24, 2014)

I very much see it as similar to the genre blindness you might see in superhero comics. I enjoy the tropes of the genre, but conflicts seem trivial if characters are aware of the fact that they are in a comic book. I mean I love Deadpool, but he's entertaining as a joke because he subverts that genre blindness.

4e allows me to play through heroic fantasy stories with the tropes I enjoy while maintaining aesthetic flourishes that the much more self aware 3e does not. I can have fighters who very much fear that dagger at their throat when I realize their throat will not get slit in their sleep because that's bad fiction in a heroic fantasy game. I can have that same fighter collapse in a desperate battle due to exhaustion and rally under the wise words of a priest or inspiring words of a battle captain instead of having his guts get put back together on a daily basis.

In short: I have far more tolerence for metagame mechanics that lead to satisfying fiction than more immersive mechanics that lead to what I consider inferior fiction because I cannot meaningfully relate to the characters as the human beings the game tells me they are. Aesthetics are deeply important to me - far more than mechanical vagaries.


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## Manbearcat (Apr 24, 2014)

Campbell said:


> In short: I have far more tolerence for metagame mechanics that lead to satisfying fiction than *more immersive mechanics that lead to what I consider inferior fiction because I cannot meaningfully relate to the characters as the human beings the game tells me they are.* Aesthetics are deeply important to me - far more than mechanical vagaries.




This is a very good post and I agree with it all.  However, I would supplement this bit here with "and that inevitably contract the narrative space available to us at the table due to the binary, stridently causal, nature of outcomes in process simulation task resolution (eg always success or failure at task - failed climb rendered only as you fail to move up the tree or fall - rather than success or failure at intent as in conflict resolution - failed climb rendered potentially as you successfully climb the tree but your prey slips out of your line of sight into a crevice in the gully.)


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## Dungeonman (Apr 24, 2014)

Campbell said:


> 4e allows me to play through heroic fantasy stories with the tropes I enjoy while maintaining aesthetic flourishes that the much more self aware 3e does not. I can have fighters who very much fear that dagger at their throat when I realize their throat will not get slit in their sleep because that's bad fiction in a heroic fantasy game.



How does that work in 4E? Can the DM "minionize" the PC in their sleep? How does the metagame reflect the fear and the trope of a fighter scared by a dagger at his throat if it's not actually possible?



> In short: I have far more tolerence for metagame mechanics that lead to *[cough, cough, what I consider]* satisfying fiction than more immersive mechanics that lead to what *I conside*r inferior fiction because I cannot meaningfully relate to the characters as the human beings the game tells me they are.



Not to discourage your enjoyment of 4E, it's just that I see a conflict between prioritizing satisfying heroic fiction vs relating meaningfully to the characters, so I don't understand the above statement. A protaganist vulnerable to being killed in his sleep is a real and thus meaningful character to me. A character that cannot be killed in his sleep makes a satisfying hero but I can't relate to him. What does it mean that a guy in an uber-dangerous world goes to bed never afraid of someone slitting his throat? Now a fighter who is afraid, and goes to sleep with his sword under his pillow, and maybe one day, an assassin sneaks in, and I know that the PC *could* be killed, that's a meaningful character. A fighter with exceptional senses and sleeps lightly, or a wizard who knows an alarm spell and thus goes to sleep soundly are both characters I can relate to as well. But that relatability starts with fiction that suspends my disbelief, not with metagame constructs that forces some sort of story trope.

Also, it's a very valid and satisfying fantasy trope to have your throat slit in your sleep in the modern world that enjoys fiction like Games of Thrones, etc. Whether that level of grittiness is appropriate to a D&D game is a different issue. There's also a difference to me between a system that doesn't allow for assassination of PCs in their sleep vs a social contract that discourages that (I appreciate the latter, but not the former.) And all of the above is meant to be edition-neutral, as I'm not sure that any edition of D&D encourages PC throat slitting. The point was really to ask you about "meaningfully relat[ing] to the characters as the human beings" when many fantasy tropes are not particularly about relatable human beings at all.



> Aesthetics are deeply important to me - far more than mechanical vagaries.



Perhaps it's more fair to say that _particular_ aesthetics induced by 4E are important to you. Obviously, previous editions offer certain aeshetics that are very satisfying to those who play them. I can imagine gamists who don't care about aeshetics are comparably prevalent in all editions of D&D, including 4E.


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## Obryn (Apr 24, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> Then this is going to sound very obvious, but in those cases where players don't know or don't think about what the metagame construct means in the fiction (either in general, or at any one point in the story) then obviously the character couldn't know either in-game.
> 
> I think the implication of the OP is whether the player has "permission" of sorts to roleplay the PC to do X when the player knows Y.
> 
> ...



I'll just note that I don't look at hit points any differently in 4e than I ever have in any other RPG - whether an edition of D&D or not.

I don't need "permission" because I am a person sitting at a table rolling dice and playing a game, making decisions for my dude. Even if "immersion" is a goal, there are limits, and there's a necessary and fundamental distance here given that hit points are a nonsensical game construct which cannot correspond 1:1 to any sensible in-fiction construct because people just don't work that way. (And if they do, how are you relating to them for this "immersion" goal anyway?)



Dungeonman said:


> How does that work in 4E? Can the DM "minionize" the PC in their sleep? How does the metagame reflect the fear and the trope of a fighter scared by a dagger at his throat if it's not actually possible?
> 
> Not to discourage your enjoyment of 4E, it's just that I see a conflict between prioritizing satisfying heroic fiction vs relating meaningfully to the characters, so I don't understand the above statement. A protaganist vulnerable to being killed in his sleep is a real and thus meaningful character to me. A character that cannot be killed in his sleep makes a satisfying hero but I can't relate to him. What does it mean that a guy in an uber-dangerous world goes to bed never afraid of someone slitting his throat? Now a fighter who is afraid, and goes to sleep with his sword under his pillow, and maybe one day, an assassin sneaks in, and I know that the PC *could* be killed, that's a meaningful character. A fighter with exceptional senses and sleeps lightly, or a wizard who knows an alarm spell and thus goes to sleep soundly are both characters I can relate to as well. But that relatability starts with fiction that suspends my disbelief, not with metagame constructs that forces some sort of story trope.
> 
> Also, it's a very valid and satisfying fantasy trope to have your throat slit in your sleep in the modern world that enjoys fiction like Games of Thrones, etc. Whether that level of grittiness is appropriate to a D&D game is a different issue. There's also a difference to me between a system that doesn't allow for assassination of PCs in their sleep vs a social contract that discourages that (I appreciate the latter, but not the former.) And all of the above is meant to be edition-neutral, as I'm not sure that any edition of D&D encourages PC throat slitting. The point was really to ask you about "meaningfully relat[ing] to the characters as the human beings" when many fantasy tropes are not particularly about relatable human beings at all.



OK, kinda weird we're off on this tangent, but...

A 4e PC can be coup-de-grace'd in their sleep just fine. The attack is automatically a critical hit, and if it deals damage equal to or greater than your bloodied value, that's that. A 15th-level character might have 104 hp; 52 in a coup-de-grace and they're a goner.  For a "lurker" style monster - the sorts who'd do the knifing - this is extremely plausible. Likewise, a brute or a skirmisher with on-advantage damage. Or a higher-level monster. Or a normal enemy NPC with an actual magic weapon.

I don't think it's kosher to throw that sort of thing into a game, by and large. And I think the fact that 4e actually _can_ model it is more an accident of design than an intentional goal. But it's there...


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## JamesonCourage (Apr 24, 2014)

Obryn said:


> OK, kinda weird we're off on this tangent, but...
> 
> A 4e PC can be coup-de-grace'd in their sleep just fine.



I'm having fun running a 4e campaign right now (I have an ongoing thread on it), but this doesn't look like it's the case for Fighters (as in Campbell's example).


Obryn said:


> The attack is automatically a critical hit, and if it deals damage equal to or greater than your bloodied value, that's that. A 15th-level character might have 104 hp; 52 in a coup-de-grace and they're a goner.



Actually, 104 HP looks pretty impossible for a Fighter (definitely possible for other characters, as you no doubt meant). I'm just going to use the Fighter as an example, as that was what Campbell used in his example.

A Fighter gets 25 starting HP (15 + Con score of 11 [10 + 1 for reaching level 11]) + 6 HP/level for 14 levels = 110 HP minimum. If the Fighter invests any of his starting ability score points into Con, any of his three stat hops into Con, or gets any feat (Toughness) or Paragon Path (Dreadnought), then it's significantly higher. A level 15 goliath Fighter with a starting Con of 14, one Con stat hop, the Toughness feat, and the Dreadnought Paragon Path has 135 HP. This gives us a range of 110-135, with something like 115 probably closer to the average. This means that it'd take 57 damage to kill the Fighter (his bloodied value).


Obryn said:


> For a "lurker" style monster - the sorts who'd do the knifing - this is extremely plausible. Likewise, a brute or a skirmisher with on-advantage damage. Or a higher-level monster.



It looks like only two level 15 creatures can finish off the Fighter in one hit (from an admittedly cursory glance of about 20 minutes), the Drow Infiltrator and the Drow Darklasher (the Megapede comes close at 54 damage). There might be others (or even some at level 14 or less, such as The Black Blade of Raam if the target has no allies adjacent to it, or the Shadar-Kai Dawnkiller). While it's possible, there aren't a lot of equal level enemies that can do it.

Then again, I use higher level enemies against my PCs all the time, and they're only (just now) level 8. I imagine this will only grow as the game goes on, so facing off against a wider range of enemies means more enemies that will qualify to do enough damage in one shot. Still not a lot, but definitely possible.


Obryn said:


> Or a normal enemy NPC with an actual magic weapon.



Also a possibility.


Obryn said:


> I don't think it's kosher to throw that sort of thing into a game, by and large. And I think the fact that 4e actually _can_ model it is more an accident of design than an intentional goal. But it's there...



Yeah, this is my feeling on it, too. These things mostly slipped through the cracks, though there are some exceptions (like The Black Blade of Raam, which has an ability called "Execution" that does 105 on a crit). All told, I'm not disagreeing with your point of it being possible, but I'd stress the rarity. It is there if a DM wants it, though.


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## JamesonCourage (Apr 24, 2014)

Campbell said:


> 4e allows me to play through heroic fantasy stories with the tropes I enjoy while maintaining aesthetic flourishes that the much more self aware 3e does not. I can have fighters who very much fear that dagger at their throat when I realize their throat will not get slit in their sleep because that's bad fiction in a heroic fantasy game. I can have that same fighter collapse in a desperate battle due to exhaustion and rally under the wise words of a priest or inspiring words of a battle captain instead of having his guts get put back together on a daily basis.



It depends on how you like your fiction (I love Game of Thrones, for example, and I love gritty games), but I get where you're coming from. If you think having your Fighter's throat slit in the night is bad fiction, then 4e is actually pretty good at avoiding this. I personally don't think inspiring words being done _every battle_ is good fiction, but I try not to focus on the specifics of healing when I play 4e (the party has a cleric, so we handwave it as magic).


Campbell said:


> In short: I have far more tolerence for metagame mechanics that lead to satisfying fiction than more immersive mechanics that lead to what I consider inferior fiction because I cannot meaningfully relate to the characters as the human beings the game tells me they are. Aesthetics are deeply important to me - far more than mechanical vagaries.



I totally get this, too. My house rules for 3.X (which eventually evolved far and away into its own thing) made things "make more sense" to me, but it got grittier. A Hit Chart was added, as were long-term wounds, the separation of fatigue and body wounds, etc. I quite like it (or I wouldn't have made it), but I get it fits a more niche play style than what many others like.

In 4e, they went basically the other direction, but they're still aiming to make a game that produces a fiction that doesn't jar you out of the game (just like what I aimed for, even if the end results are drastically different). You can still have an in-depth game with lots of details in 4e (I feel like my sessions have them, and I put them up for everyone here to read), it's just a different experience than what you'd get from a game that aims for a different aesthetic.

Regardless of our preferences, I totally get where you're coming from. I can have the most realistic game rules in the world, but if it takes twenty minutes to resolve each and every attack roll, I'm probably getting pulled out of any sense of "immersion" I had going for me, which kind of defeats the purpose of the rule most of the time.


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## pemerton (Apr 24, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> If you disarm the hobgoblin's staff, does he lose his implement for shocking?



My reading of this is that it is up to the GM.  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] gives one answer (treating the *implement* power the same as for a PC). If a GM chose to take the view that it is an implied prerequisite of the hobgoblin's power that a staff be wielded, I think that would be fine too. The players can learn via successful knowledge checks (perhaps History or Arcana in this particular case). The general tenor of 4e is to leave this sort of stuff in the hands of the GM - who is expected to adjudicate by reference to (i) challenge, (ii) fun pacing and (iii) fairness (eg allowing knowledge checks to work).



Dungeonman said:


> How do the PCs "know" to spend 10 minutes or not differentiating the useful magical loot from the useless loot that were merely implemental to their owners?



The PCs will, except in unusual circumstances, be taking a short rest (5 minutes or so). The game rules indicate that in that time it is possible to determine whether or not a given item is magical (the precise means of identification is not specified, as best I recall; in my game we assume that it is the wizard and sorcerer analysing for magical properties, and/or the power evident in the items themselves, such as was the case for the knives the hobbits took from the barrow wight).



Dungeonman said:


> What do treasure parcels imply is happening in the fiction, or is it merely uninteresting to the story? I'm curious, because it seems to mirror the hit point self-awareness angle as well.





Obryn said:


> I personally don't like or use treasure parcels; I like the game to be about the characters more than their equipment, so I use inherent bonuses + rare and powerful items on occasion that scale with the party + fun/interesting stuff. This lowers the optimization ceiling in my game, but means neither my players nor I need to screw around with gear.



A treasure parcel doesn't look like anything in the fiction - the question is a bit like asking "what does a random dungeon stocking table look like in the fiction?" Treasure parcels are an accounting device to guide the GM in the placement of treasure: rather than random treasure generation as per D&D tradition, there is a per-level target for treasure placement, and you (as GM) inject it into the game as seems appropriate to the fiction and as is necessary to meet the guidelines.

In my game, I don't use inherent bonuses (though in any future 4e games I think that I would). But nor do I place a great deal of loot. Most of the magic item awards in my game take the form of upgrades to existing items (as per the option canvassed in Adventurer's Vault), which in the fiction are characterised as divine blessings, infusions of other-planar energy, etc. Some items are rewards from NPCs. Some are looted in the classic D&D sense, either from abandoned tombs or strongholds, or from former owners.

At least in my case, the fact that the treasure parcel system is about "treasure acquired per unit of character progression" rather than "treasure acquired on the basis of particular in-game interactions" means that treasure awards are often worked out on a somewhat ad hoc basis as the game progresses. Forinstance, I may have had a conception that such-and-such an item would turn up in location X, but then it ends up that the PCs are not in X but in Y at that particular level, and so the item turns up in Y instead. In Gygaxian play that would be a type of cheating by the GM - players are expected to use their cleverness and resources (eg wands of metal and mineral detection, potions of treasure finding) to locate the pre-placed loot. But 4e dispenses with that sort of exploration-oriented divination magic, and is more oriented towards improvisational GMing world-creation along those sorts of lines.



Dungeonman said:


> If 4E embraces the metagame, then the player doesn't need any "permission" to roleplay the PC within the rules. One way or another, the story will follow. In that case, I think this poll is rather irrelevant.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I guess I don't appreciate blindspots in the fiction so much. I don't like 4E if it gives me blindspots with treasure parcels and bloodied conditions and martial healing and such.



I think "blindspots" are inevitable in adventure fiction where it is expected that the same character will undergo an essentially endless series of trying adventures.

Gygaxian D&D, which correlates PC level to player skill, can perhaps avoid some of these genre blindspots because it is _not_ taken for granted that any given character will undergo an essentially endless series of adventures. Starting again at 1st level is expected to be fairly common (although the DMG canvasses starting experienced players as high as 3rd level). But I think very few D&D players play in that style any more. The popularity of adventure paths is testament to that.

If the alternative to genre blindspots is (near-)fatalities at something like a real-world rate, followed by magical patching of the injuries, then I am with [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] in preferring the genre blindspots, super-hero style.

(On bloodied: I don't think that's much of a blindspot. I take it for granted, and generally narrate, "bloodied" as a drawing of blood. With psychic damage that is sometimes tricky, though there is always the old "bleeding from the ears" trope.)


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## Dungeonman (Apr 24, 2014)

pemerton said:


> I think "blindspots" are inevitable in adventure fiction where it is expected that the same character will undergo an essentially endless series of trying adventures.



Oh for sure. I accept some/certain blindspots in fiction as inevitable. I just don't appreciate them.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2014)

pemerton said:


> Gygaxian D&D, which correlates PC level to player skill, can perhaps avoid some of these genre blindspots because it is _not_ taken for granted that any given character will undergo an essentially endless series of adventures. Starting again at 1st level is expected to be fairly common (although the DMG canvasses starting experienced players as high as 3rd level). But I think very few D&D players play in that style any more. The popularity of adventure paths is testament to that.




Even though I'm running something of an adventure path right now, I've not succeeded in keeping PC's alive.  With 6 current PC's and players, I also have 9 former PC's in the dead folder and only 1 PC that has managed to stay alive since 1st level.

I think that PC death is still alive and well in D&D as it is commonly played.  I think what has gone out of fashion is restarting from 1st level.   I haven't restarted characters from 1st level in like 25 years, mostly because players who are forced to restart from 1st (hardcore) can easily become really discouraged - which isn't fun for anyone.  I usually restart characters about a level behind the rest of the party, enough that its a bit painful (equivalent to a raise dead), but not so much that the player becomes really discouraged.


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> I think that PC death is still alive and well in D&D as it is commonly played.  I think what has gone out of fashion is restarting from 1st level.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I usually restart characters about a level behind the rest of the party, enough that its a bit painful (equivalent to a raise dead), but not so much that the player becomes really discouraged.



This approach - which I used for a long time GMing Rolemaster, and whch I suspect is pretty widespread - gives rise to another point of genre-blindnes: that a friendly, level-and-motivation-apporiate person turns up just and only when such a character is greatly needed (because a previous ally was killed).


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2014)

Balesir said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I was thinking more about your post this morning.

Momentum towards victory is, perhaps, a quantity. But it is not a pool into which quantities of momentum are added or subtracted. I think the principal reason I still incline towards the third poll answer is because layers' knowledge of hit points is knowledge about a pool, and whether it is full or empty. The character's have no conception of any such pool, _even if_ they do have a conception of which way the tide of victory is running.


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## Henry (Apr 26, 2014)

I've always played as #2 - general idea of injury, but it wouldnt make sense to willingly let someone stab you with a knife. I DID have a level 15 PC who once chose to jump off a 100 foot cliff, but to be fair the group was cornered by an entire regiment of troops, but it was either certain death, or ALMOST certain death, so we chose the latter.


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2014)

pemerton said:


> This approach - which I used for a long time GMing Rolemaster, and whch I suspect is pretty widespread - gives rise to another point of genre-blindnes: that a friendly, level-and-motivation-apporiate person turns up just and only when such a character is greatly needed (because a previous ally was killed).




Given that level appropriate characters and even allies flow around the PC's at most times, I think the biggest genre-blindness is less that the character turns up when needed, but rather that he sticks and within a session or three after meeting the other PC's manages to become a fully trusted partner of the other PCs - who otherwise are so untrusting.  Although technically, it's taken about 20 sessions for the party to finally officially welcome the newest PC into their company, literally let her sign up, and promise her a full share of the treasure.  For this whole time it's been something of a running gag how the PC has had barely a copper piece to her name, because she was just a stranger seeking the parties help and not actually a member of the party.  In fact, she'd been repeatedly reduced to begging from the other PC's or panhandling to have enough money to feed her pet bear. 

Although I can foresee the simply showing up being a problem as well, I haven't yet had to replace a PC in a circumstance where it was unusual that someone else was around.   Now, later, when the PC's are lost in a steaming jungle miles from civilization, if I have a death its going to represent a problem replacing that character and I'm already fretting about how I'm going to play that eventuality.  It was much less of a problem waiting to a dramatically appropriate moment to replace a character in an urban adventure, for example.  With a session or two there was always a nice insertion point.

To a certain extent this is lampshaded in game without breaking the 4th wall, because it is an open trope of the campaign that the parties many coincidental experiences aren't coincidences at all but things that have been arranged by the gods and that they are pawns in a divine game.  In fact, it's something that the villains have repeatedly taunted them with during monologues.  Further, the PC's all have destiny points and particularly for the PC's with a relationship to the divine, using these destiny points is always given the in game color of direct subtle intervention by the deity - the deity yanking them physically out of harms way, or sheltering them in some fashion, or causing a 'coincidence' to occur.   

In prior games where I was a player myself, the replacement of PC's was usually done by promotion of NPC associates - henchmen, retainers, and allies - to PC status.  These characters had adventured with us before, it was just a matter of them being around even more often.   The reverse has happened in this game, a PC was demoted to NPC status after the player moved away.  This actually created I think more difficulty for an observer of the narrative to observe the mechanics underlying the narrative.  Unless you could actually see outside the text, you wouldn't necessarily be able to guess or always guess correctly who was a PC and an NPC by who was in the party.  

All this raises a question for me what exactly is meant by 'genera blindness'.  At what point of awareness is it no longer 'blind'?


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## Dungeonman (Apr 26, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> All this raises a question for me what exactly is meant by 'genera blindness'.  At what point of awareness is it no longer 'blind'?



I was watching Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and a character said "I thought there was a 97% chance we were going to die". If she wasn't genre blind she'd assume closer to a zero percent chance (they're both main characters whose death at that point would be meaningless and random to at least two developing subplots.) Even if she didn't break the fourth wall entirely, if she was rational and self aware, she'd at least recognize that the team's survival rate has been extraordinary.

I think that characters aren't "blind" if their range of possible motivations/actions is not collapsed to suit conventions for the readership or audience.

For example, comic Batman's range of motivations/actions (including his no-kill code) is constrained to conform to the serial comic format requirements of recurring villians. If Batman questioned whether his no killing and his no gun philosophy was warranted balanced against the untold suffering and death in Gotham caused by villians that have escaped over and over and over and over and over, then perhaps his range of motivations would expand. He might follow a police code of sorts when it comes to shooting. He might kill The Joker dead and incinerate his body and dissolve the ashes in acid and then toss the DNA fragments into a volcano. He might pour his wealth into funding better security for Arkham Asylum and lobbying for the death penalty. Seriously, though, instead of pouring a gazillion dollars into Bat toys, just use that money to turn Arkham Aslyum into the best prison in the world with execution facilities, and no one will have to be physically and mentally tortured by the likes of The Joker again.

But I do love what you wrote about divine providence and destiny tokens. You're allowing the characters to be rational and consider the implications of events around them. If there was a series of "coincidences", the players are free to have their characters be aware of that possibility. Even if their range of actions is collapsed to suit D&D conventions, at least the characters have a fuller rational range of motivations, and so they're more relatable to me than a character whose motivations are utterly slave to the genre or other tropes.


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> I was watching Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and a character said "I thought there was a 97% chance we were going to die". If she wasn't genre blind she'd assume closer to a zero percent chance (they're both main characters whose death at that point would be meaningless and random to at least two developing subplots.) Even if she didn't break the fourth wall entirely, if she was rational and self aware, she'd at least recognize that the team's survival rate has been extraordinary.




Though I do get your point, I'm not sure that given the writer/producer of the series that random unexpected death of characters is out of the question.

I haven't seen the show and I don't know the context of the quote, but I do know that in generic superhero movies its usually established that in general, the superheroes act as if they had a 0% chance of dying early on in the movie.   These scenes establish the heroic competence of the characters, that they know they outclass the opposition and really have nothing to fear from normal threats and dangers.  Captain America jumps casually out of an airplane without a parachute while continuing friendly banter about the fact he isn't dating anyone, for example.

Later in the story line we generally establish that these same characters have become fearful, and this establishes the competence of the villains and that the stakes have become higher.  I'm not entirely convinced that a character saying, "I thought there was a 97% we were going to die", isn't in fact the character's awareness that their survival rate has been extraordinary.  Whether or not the characters have reason to be fearful is a different question, but to the extent we are talking about D&D I think there are strong parallels.    There have been several times in the campaign where the players expected to die with what was a higher level of probability than the actual odds of death, and they have certainly said things like, "I thought there was a 97% chance we were going to die".  The odds of death weren't 0%, but they weren't 97% either, however the players assessed the chance of death as high because I the story teller was pushing them to do so in order to make the players fearful of the death of their characters through that make the characters act as if they were fearful of their own deaths.  The real odds were probably closer to a 25% chance a character would die. 

At the same time there have been times that the players underestimated the threat, like the time the player decided to try to pick the lock on a door with a death trap on it despite me hanging some big drapes on the scene that should have indicated to them that this was a puzzle trap (that they had two different ways of solving, neither or which was explored).  The result was a dead PC that hit them completely out of the blue.  Fortunately, the cleric had just taken a Heal skill related feat that gave her a small chance of resuscitating a character that had just died and she rolled well on her Heal check, leaving the character stable -9 life.  After receiving the benefit of the cleric's cure serious wounds, the same player had his character solo charge the enemy necromancer in the room despite knowing that the necromancer had been alerted to the parties presence and would have had time to prepare and the fact that as an injured Sidhe rogue he's got almost no hit points.  The result, one vampiric touch later, was the character dead again.  Again, the cleric rolled to resuscitate, this time initially failing - but spending a destiny point to get a reroll - and another lucky set of rolls later having her Goddess bring the character back to life.  This set of events allowed the player of the Sidhe rogue to retake what is a coveted title at my table - "Character who has come closest to death and improbably lived."

I'd assess the long term probability that a character dies in my game at close to 100%, which incidentally is the same chance I'd assess to some character dying a meaningless random death in a Josh Wheldon story.   I'm not sure that the players or their characters are in any sense blind to whatever the conventions of my story are.  



> For example, comic Batman's range of motivations/actions (including his no-kill code) is constrained to conform to the serial comic format requirements of recurring villians. If Batman questioned whether his no killing and his no gun philosophy was warranted balanced against the untold suffering and death in Gotham caused by villians that have escaped over and over and over and over and over, then perhaps his range of motivations would expand.




No, I think you are entirely wrong in all of that.  Batman certainly killed in his earliest incarnations, and yet had reoccurring villains anyway.  And many characters in DC comics have no qualms or at least no explicit qualms about killing foes and yet face reoccurring villains.   Batman's no-kill moral code has been justified in story in two or three ways, and has been explicitly something that Batman is forced to wrestle with and is something that his reoccurring villains causing the death and suffering explicitly taunt him with.   Batman's no-kill moral code is justified by (what I find to be) a superficial understanding of what makes violence depraved that reoccurring is presented in fiction of all sorts as being commitment to purity and higher good.  This is mostly based without much reflection on memes that ultimately have evolved out of Christian ethics regarding priests - what you might call the Christian Pacifist line of thought.  Secondly, Batman's no-kill moral code in later years (say since the 1980's) has been justified by the fact that Batman himself knows that the line between himself as a costumed vigilante and the villains he fights is thin, and that his own dedication borders on mental illness and indeed may even be a sort of mental illness.  Thus, Batman maintains a sharp bright line because he knows that if he crosses it, he personally won't be able to distinguish between himself and the people he fights.  This all occurs out in the open in the comics, movies, and so forth and is continually challenged by the writers.   Batman is continually questioned about the fact that he doesn't kill, and must repeatedly justify it to himself and others and with them the reader.


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## Lanefan (Apr 26, 2014)

pemerton said:


> This approach - which I used for a long time GMing Rolemaster, and whch I suspect is pretty widespread - gives rise to another point of genre-blindnes: that a friendly, level-and-motivation-apporiate person turns up just and only when such a character is greatly needed (because a previous ally was killed).



A few things to note here:

1. In no way are the PCs the only levelled entities in the world, nor are they the only adventurers, so finding a replacement character isn't that much of a stretch - in town.  In the field, yes, sometimes things are entirely too coincidental; but I can live with it.  What I just can't imagine is a game world where the PCs are the only adventurers, though I know some people play it that way.

2. In most cases the PCs are among the more successful of adventurers, thus it only makes sense that others would want to join their group assuming the party has been in the area long enough to build any reputation.  If they lose their Thief, say, and recruit in town for another (or approach a guild, whatever) they'll often end up turning down a few people but - for the game's sake - will take in the new PC Thief.  Usually.

3. I chuck adventuring NPCs into the party now and then, so characters coming and going is a normal thing anyway.  Other times theparty go out and actively recruit such - everyone's happy with the characters they're playing but the party still doesn't have a Thief, so they go and recruit an NPC.

Lanefan


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 26, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> I was watching Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D



Well, there's your first mistake.


> and a character said "I thought there was a 97% chance we were going to die". If she wasn't genre blind she'd assume closer to a zero percent chance (they're both main characters whose death at that point would be meaningless and random to at least two developing subplots.) Even if she didn't break the fourth wall entirely, if she was rational and self aware, she'd at least recognize that the team's survival rate has been extraordinary.



I don't think that's true. People say stuff like that all the time. I don't think that line of dialogue was intended to convey a literal truth. Particularly in dangerous situations, it's quite normal for gallows humor to kick in and for people to talk about death.

It's also normal for people not in those situations to overestimate how dangerous they are. I don't take it as given that the heroic characters in this show (or in a lot of action shows) really have exaggerated rates of survival.

Also, if Joss Whedon is involved in this show in any way, the chance of main characters dying at some point is actually pretty high.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 26, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I don't think that's true. People say stuff like that all the time. I  don't think that line of dialogue was intended to convey a literal  truth.



Watch it, then come back to me.



> It's also normal for people not in those situations to overestimate how  dangerous they are. I don't take it as given that the heroic characters  in this show (or in a lot of action shows) really have exaggerated rates  of survival.



Your first "mistake" was not actually watching the show. Your second mistake is that the character in question is a civilian turned agent with only basic training over a few days, similar to the lucky sidekick, and her heroic team member is the one who expressed his fear that they could die because he was taking on multiple opponents IIRC. And others with far superior training and experiencing were being killed or captured around them beforehand. Three of the protagonists are practically mooks in battle compared to many of the villians they had faced. If you think they didn't have exaggerated rates of survival for reasons of plot protection -- oh great, I just burned my toast. Moving on...



Celebrim said:


> There have been several times in the campaign where the players expected to die with what was a higher level of probability than the actual odds of death, and they have certainly said things like, "I thought there was a 97% chance we were going to die".



The character thought there was a high chance she was going to die. Even if using black humour, she was still scared of the strong probability of death. In reality, those characters would not be killed, not in that episode anyway. That's the only point of that one anectode, or at least why I brought it up. Genre blindness to plot protection. If we want to extrapolate beyond that, it's probably more helpful to watch the episode first, as not to get detoured.



> No, I think you are entirely wrong in all of that. <snip>  Thus, Batman maintains a sharp bright line because he knows that if he crosses it, he personally won't be able to distinguish between himself and the people he fights.  This all occurs out in the open in the comics, movies, and so forth and is continually challenged by the writers.   Batman is continually questioned about the fact that he doesn't kill, and must repeatedly justify it to himself and others and with them the reader.



Batman has no justification whatsoever in my eyes. If his ultimate purpose is to protect the citizens of Gotham, he is a failure. I won't repeat the previous ideas of better ways that he could allocate his wealth to protect Gotham. I'm aware of the justifications you write of, and there are just as genre blind.

EDIT: See below


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 26, 2014)

Dungeonman said:


> Watch it, then come back to me.



I watched earlier this week; it's been a pretty lame show but maybe it's starting to come around. It didn't strike me as an example of "genre blindness"; it seemed pretty genuine to their situation.


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## Dungeonman (Apr 26, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I watched earlier this week; it's been a pretty lame show but maybe it's starting to come around. It didn't strike me as an example of "genre blindness"; it seemed pretty genuine to their situation.



Ya, IMO, it never comes around quite enough, but I watch it anyway. Anyway, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. If [insert a superhero] faces a villian like Deathlok or Blackout and is challenged by that battle, and then a relatively puny SHIELD agent (some with field experience, others are mere scientists) face the same kind of villians and survive (not once but over and over), and they don't realize that they're exceptionally fortunate, I simply cannot imagine how that is rational relatable behaviour that suspends my disbelief if I chose to be critical in that way.

EDIT: See below


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## Dungeonman (Apr 27, 2014)

Actually, repeating pemerton's usage of the term "genre blindness" may have confused the issue for me the last several posts. It may have a more specific nuance that's maybe parallel to but different from my original angle about self-awareness and rational relatable motivations
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenreBlindness
"Furthermore,  some stories in some genres really couldn't function at all if the  characters displayed an innate and complete understanding of what genre  they were in and exactly how they should act at all times within a story  in said genre if they want to avoid trouble — which in most cases would  also rob the story of tension and drama, since if the character knows  exactly what to do to avoid trouble and conflict in their particular  story, they'll do it, and consequently have an easy, trouble-free life,  and... why are we watching again?"


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## Ahnehnois (Apr 27, 2014)

If anything, though, I think the _absence_ of genre blindness is characteristic to the way I've seen rpgs played. When I run a horror game, the players know it's a horror game. They don't split up or take unnecessary risks or trust people. They're not surprised when bad things happen. In fact, it's exceptionally difficult to run a genuine horror game under those conditions.

Likewise, I see players who are, to a significant extent, metagaming their characters with knowledge about how powerful they are. That includes things like using their knowledge of hit points (which, depending on how you look at it, is somewhere in between metagaming and normal in-world behavior).

One of the tremendous challenges of DMing is subverting players' genre-based expectations.


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## pemerton (Apr 28, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> In no way are the PCs the only levelled entities in the world, nor are they the only adventurers
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I just can't imagine is a game world where the PCs are the only adventurers, though I know some people play it that way.



The PCs are the only significant "adventurers" in my game, in the sense that they are the principal near-god-like-yet-still-mortal actors who are not themselves god/demon princes etc but nevertheless are taking steps in relation to the oncoming Dusk War.


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## Lanefan (Apr 29, 2014)

pemerton said:


> The PCs are the only significant "adventurers" in my game, in the sense that they are the principal near-god-like-yet-still-mortal actors who are not themselves god/demon princes etc but nevertheless are taking steps in relation to the oncoming Dusk War.



I assume, then, that you have very little to no character turnover during the campaign?  Permanent deaths?  Retirements?  Players dropping out and-or joining up?  Because if you do have such turnover,  the very existence of the heretofore non-party-member replacement characters makes it pretty obvious there *are* other adventurers out there; as the replacements are getting their levels and loot from somewhere. 

Lan-"internal consistency rears its ugly head at the worst of times"-efan


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> I assume, then, that you have very little to no character turnover during the campaign?  Permanent deaths?  Retirements?  Players dropping out and-or joining up?



At 1st or 2nd level (I can't remember exactly now) one of the PCs died - the wizard initiate of the Raven Queen. I asked the player if he wanted to bring in a new character or keep going with that one. He wanted to keep going, and suggested that he might be sent back to the world on an important mission. So I narrated his spirit's encounter with the Raven Queen in Letherna, and the intervention of Erathis, who asked that he be sent back to the mortal world to recover a sceptre hidden in the Nerathi ruins where he had fallen in combat. Which duly happened. (Mechanically, it was adjudicated as Raise Dead, including an appropriate deduction from the treasure parcels for that level.) That sceptre turned out to be the first recovered piece of the Rod of 7 Parts.

The same character died again at 15th level. When the PCs had him resurrected, he was sent back to the world in his fully reborn form, as a deva invoker. (The player wanted to rebuild his PC, based on changes and developments that had occurred during play.) Full story here.

At 3rd level there was a "TPK" - one of the PCs, the paladin of the Raven Queen, actually died (to friendly fire), while the others were knocked below 0 hp by undead under the command of a goblin shaman. I asked the players who wanted to keep going with an existing PC, and who wanted to change. Only one wanted to change. So 3 of the PCs recover consciousness in the goblin cells, with a new cellmate (the new PC). They can smell the roasting flesh of the half-elf (the PC abandoned by its player, now being cooked by the goblins). The body of the dead paladin, meanwhile, was laid out on an altar by the goblin shaman, who was using the paladin as a channel to summon the spirit of the paladin's dead nemesis, in the form of a wraith. The summoning was successful (by way of GM fiat), but the paladin was also sent back by the Raven Queen to stop the summoned spirit going wild in the world. Which he and his friends, in due course, did. (Mechanically this was also handled as Raise Dead, as above.)

The only other deaths were fairly recently, around 24th level or so. Two PCs - the fighter and the paladin - died in a difficult fight against starspawn carrying the true name of the Raven Queen, and the angels of Vecna who were trying to learn said name. The other PCs, after defeating the final enemies, took their bodies back to a friendly homestead in the area that they had last visited around 20 levels ago, and stayed there for a day or two while the invoker/wizard Raised the dead PCs.

(I'm not counting the half-dozen or so "deaths" that have been immediately countered by "once per day when you die" effects that are pretty typical for epic characters. The paladin has two of them, the fighter, ranger-cleric and invoker/wizard one each, and I think the drow sorcerer might have one too.)



Lanefan said:


> Because if you do have such turnover,  the very existence of the heretofore non-party-member replacement characters makes it pretty obvious there *are* other adventurers out there; as the replacements are getting their levels and loot from somewhere.



If a new PC were to be introduced at this point in the game, s/he wouldn't be an "adventurer" who had acquired loot from random tombs. (That's not where most of the PCs' equipment came from either; it is mostly bestowed upon them as blessings from the various gods they serve.)

Depending on details, of course, s/he would most likely be the exarch of some god or other power sent to work with the party in this hour of cosmological crisis!


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## Halivar (Apr 29, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> I assume, then, that you have very little to no character turnover during the campaign?  Permanent deaths?  Retirements?  Players dropping out and-or joining up?  Because if you do have such turnover,  the very existence of the heretofore non-party-member replacement characters makes it pretty obvious there *are* other adventurers out there; as the replacements are getting their levels and loot from somewhere.
> 
> Lan-"internal consistency rears its ugly head at the worst of times"-efan



In my 1E game, all new players/characters started at level 1. If you had a henchman, could use that henchman as your new character if your old one died (a frequent occurrence). For this reason, most of my players had a "favored" henchman that was always in the dungeon with them, collecting XP and gold. The system actually worked really well. 1E 1st level characters weren't as behind the curve as their 3E and 4E counterparts.

I may adopt a strategy _something_ like this for 5E. I like the idea of adventurers being incredibly rare; the only way to get to high levels is by being associated with the PC's. If bounded accuracy works the way WotC claims, then starting new characters at level 1 won't be quite as punishing.


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## Lanefan (Apr 30, 2014)

Halivar said:


> 1E 1st level characters weren't as behind the curve as their 3E and 4E counterparts.



I really hope this is the case in 5e as well, that the difference between 1st and 5th and 10th level is much less than 3e-4e.  In which case...


> I may adopt a strategy _something_ like this for 5E. I like the idea of adventurers being incredibly rare; the only way to get to high levels is by being associated with the PC's. If bounded accuracy works the way WotC claims, then starting new characters at level 1 won't be quite as punishing.



...this would work; though I still like the idea of there being quite a few adventuring groups out there of which the PCs are but one - or two, or several, depending on the campaign.

Never mind that some of the most bizarre combats can come from putting two adventuring parties up against each other. 

Lanefan


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2014)

Halivar said:


> In my 1E game, all new players/characters started at level 1. If you had a henchman, could use that henchman as your new character if your old one died (a frequent occurrence). For this reason, most of my players had a "favored" henchman that was always in the dungeon with them, collecting XP and gold. The system actually worked really well. 1E 1st level characters weren't as behind the curve as their 3E and 4E counterparts.




I'm not sure that is true, but 1e characters had two real advantages over their 3e counterpart.

First, since XP was exponential rather than linear, if your lower level character teamed up with higher level characters, the sort of XP they'd earn per session would very quickly power level you (if you ignored training time, which most people did).  Characters could very quickly catch up.   By the time the highest level character in the party leveled, you'd just be a level or so behind.

Second, in 1e AC was king.  Since almost nothing had an attack bonus, an AC of 0 (AC 20 in 3e terms) or better rendered you largely immune to monsters until very high level.  In 3e terms, the most dangerous monsters in the game only had a +13 attack bonus.   

It's wasn't so much that 1st level fighters were relatively more potent compared to 10th level fighters, it was that the monsters were far weaker.   In 3e, a 15th level character is still basically dog chow relative to what's in the monster manuals.    The same character in 1e is a low level demigod.


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## Lanefan (Apr 30, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure that is true, but 1e characters had two real advantages over their 3e counterpart.
> 
> First, since XP was exponential rather than linear, if your lower level character teamed up with higher level characters, the sort of XP they'd earn per session would very quickly power level you (if you ignored training time, which most people did).



IME training was almost universally used.  Different communities, I guess.  







> Characters could very quickly catch up.   By the time the highest level character in the party leveled, you'd just be a level or so behind.



True in terms of strict level numbers, but the veteran characters would still have more - or much more - wealth, unless they were unusually generous.



> Second, in 1e AC was king.  Since almost nothing had an attack bonus, an AC of 0 (AC 20 in 3e terms) or better rendered you largely immune to monsters until very high level.  In 3e terms, the most dangerous monsters in the game only had a +13 attack bonus.



True, though traps (much more prevalent in 1e) and magic could still ruin your day pretty quick.  



> It's wasn't so much that 1st level fighters were relatively more potent compared to 10th level fighters, it was that the monsters were far weaker.   In 3e, a 15th level character is still basically dog chow relative to what's in the monster manuals.    The same character in 1e is a low level demigod.



That's almost an apples-and-oranges comparison, as not that many 1e games ever got to 15th level (the system kind of petered out around 10th-12th).  3e was designed to go to 20, and a 15th-level 3e type is, relative to the system, about the same as about an 8th or 9th level in 1e.  But you're right about the monsters, for the most part, at least by RAW.

That said, you're speaking to a tangential point to what's in play here: the difference between 1st and 10th levels in 1e vs. the same difference in 3e-4e.  1st-level in both 1e and 3e is reasonably close to the same thing, but the scaling curve in 1e is simply not as steep, and if anything you have it backward: in 1e a 10th-level fighter was relatively weaker in comparison to a 1st-level than she would be in 3e; and as that's about as high as the game usually went the overall top-to-bottom power window (for lack of a better term) was much narrower.  I don't mind this.

Lanefan


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> IME training was almost universally used.  Different communities, I guess.




I guess so, though honestly, I'm surprised to hear this.  The fact that different classes leveled at different rates pretty much assured that at the point one character needed training, the others would not.  This would have necessitated retiring a character for several weeks from the campaign.   Weeks of game time is an eternity of real time.  In my experience, each session averages about a day of game time.   Putting a character in down time any time most other characters are not in down time is for many campaigns the same as retiring the character.  Everyone has to be willing to retire their characters to down time at the same time.  And as a practical matter, this means that the variable length training doesn't really mean anything for small groups.

The training imposed also huge burdens on the style of game you could play.  Training makes sense as a rule only if you have a large cast of rotating adventurers, and possibly a large cast of rotating players, and large dungeon containing mostly passive and reactive foes nearby to a large metropolitan area.   In other words, much of the 1e AD&D DMG and the rules and advice therein can only be understood in the light of Gygax's original Greyhawk campaign, and as house rules evolved to handle the particulars of that situation.  If that is your situation, Gygax will seem sageous and prescient - because this is the distilled wisdom of actual play experience.  Removed from that situation, Gygax's advice is a lot less applicable.  

If you are playing a wilderness game, you pretty much have to assume no leveling the whole time the party is in the wilderness because there is no one around to provide training.

If you are playing a story based game, the plot must routinely stall to give players time to train.

If you have active or proactive foes, they must routinely cease their machinations in order to give the PCs time to become stronger in peace.  

Even Gygax's own modules show that outside of the Greyhawk campaign structure, training was generally waived and not expected.  The GDQ series gives no real expectation of time off for training, and is designed such that the characters need to level up as they progress and will receive the XP to do so.  If XP is being lost through lack of training, the early 'adventure path' just doesn't work.



> That's almost an apples-and-oranges comparison, as not that many 1e games ever got to 15th level (the system kind of petered out around 10th-12th).  3e was designed to go to 20...




Whether it was intended or not, I never perceived 3e as demanding 20th level be reached.  Rather, I believe that 3e provides structure for the game to continue up to 20th level should it go there based on the experience many 1e DM's had that after 10th-12th level, they were pretty much on their own regarding providing reasonable challenges to players.   But I never perceived the fact that 3e could go to 20th level as being a requirement that it could go to 20th level, any more than I perceived the fact that the XP tables for classes in 1e reaching 18th-24th level meant that it was an expectation that games would obtain those levels.



> , and a 15th-level 3e type is, relative to the system, about the same as about an 8th or 9th level in 1e.  But you're right about the monsters, for the most part, at least by RAW.








> That said, you're speaking to a tangential point to what's in play here: the difference between 1st and 10th levels in 1e vs. the same difference in 3e-4e.  1st-level in both 1e and 3e is reasonably close to the same thing, but the scaling curve in 1e is simply not as steep




I disagree.  First, 1st level in 1e vs. 1st level in 3e is not nearly the same thing.  In 1e, the first two levels where generally deemed to lie outside the games 'sweet spot' (usually sited as levels 3-8).  This was because 1e 1st level characters were generally pretty pathetic, and baring cheating or lucky rolls, where typically inferior to say hobgoblins.  This is especially true prior to the weapon specialization rules and cavaliers appearing to turn low level fighter types in to weapons of mass destruction.  In 3e 1st level characters were consciously front loaded with more spells, more abilities, good ability scores by default, and maximum hit points in order to ensure that they could do more than 'kill rats in the basement'.  The 3e 1st level characters are further up on the curve.   However, the scaling curve in 1e is even steeper than 3e.   While the 1e 1st level fighter is challenged by a single hobgoblin, his 10th level counterpart can probably take on 200 solo, and is facing things like old dragons, frost giants, and balrogs - things that for the most part have been moved further up the slope in 3e.  In 1e, leveling up starts out fast and then slows.  The exponential table means you'll catch up - your whole career from 1st-9th is the same as your companions grind from 11th-12th.   In 3e, the linear advancement table and the constant rate of advancement across all levels means you're always stuck well behind.



> and if anything you have it backward: in 1e a 10th-level fighter was relatively weaker in comparison to a 1st-level than she would be in 3e;




I don't see that at all except perhaps in the case of a fighter with greater than 18/50 strength (because of the huge outscaling that starts happening at that point 18/00ish strength is game breaking).  By your own assessment, 1e 10th = 3e 15th.  The low level 3e fighter has far more positive modifiers, with ability bonuses starting at 12 and the ability to acquire feats - its relatively easy for a 3e fighter to have a +6 to hit bonus and be doing 2d6+6 damage - which is far beyond the average 1e fighter absolutely and relatively.  And the fighter will likely still have 'room' for bonuses to AC and hit points.  The 1e 1st level character has nothing go for it and will behind the 3e power curve until crossing it (in a relative sense only) sometime in the mid-levels and then taking off.  The UA somewhat evens it up in the case of some classes - 3e tends to balance with the UA classes more than the original ones - but low level rogues, clerics, and wizards are still much weaker than their 3e counter parts both relatively and absolutely.


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## Lanefan (May 1, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> I guess so, though honestly, I'm surprised to hear this.  The fact that different classes leveled at different rates pretty much assured that at the point one character needed training, the others would not.  This would have necessitated retiring a character for several weeks from the campaign.



Easy thing to fix in one regard: allow characters to continue gaining (some) xp after they have actually bumped but before they train.  Gygax's RAW are needlessly harsh on this one.


> Weeks of game time is an eternity of real time.  In my experience, each session averages about a day of game time.



IME it varies wildly.  One session might get through an hour or less of heavy combat while the next might go through weeks of travel and info gathering.


> Putting a character in down time any time most other characters are not in down time is for many campaigns the same as retiring the character.



Which also happens all the time... 

Keep in mind that we use a very slow advancement (which also seems to have been common back in the day), most times a character is only going to bump about every other adventure; and between adventures they almost always take a few weeks in town anyway to divide their treasury and take a breather.


> The training imposed also huge burdens on the style of game you could play.  Training makes sense as a rule only if you have a large cast of rotating adventurers, and possibly a large cast of rotating players, and large dungeon containing mostly passive and reactive foes nearby to a large metropolitan area.   In other words, much of the 1e AD&D DMG and the rules and advice therein can only be understood in the light of Gygax's original Greyhawk campaign, and as house rules evolved to handle the particulars of that situation.  If that is your situation, Gygax will seem sageous and prescient - because this is the distilled wisdom of actual play experience.  Removed from that situation, Gygax's advice is a lot less applicable.
> 
> If you are playing a wilderness game, you pretty much have to assume no leveling the whole time the party is in the wilderness because there is no one around to provide training.



Or, every now and then the party needs to come in out of the wilderness and do some training (not to mention resupply, divide loot, etc.).



> If you are playing a story based game, the plot must routinely stall to give players time to train.



Much easier is to simply pace the plot with training (and travel, and recruitment or revival) breaks in mind - the party isn't usually adventuring every day of the month.



> If you have active or proactive foes, they must routinely cease their machinations in order to give the PCs time to become stronger in peace.



Not so much cease their machinations as run them at a slower pace - BBEG's need time to get things odne too.  



> Even Gygax's own modules show that outside of the Greyhawk campaign structure, training was generally waived and not expected.  The GDQ series gives no real expectation of time off for training, and is designed such that the characters need to level up as they progress and will receive the XP to do so.  If XP is being lost through lack of training, the early 'adventure path' just doesn't work.



Another thing to keep in mind is that by the time characters got to the sort of level that GDQ expects they could largely self-train, I think; though not in the field.  The only place this becomes a real headache (and I've run the whole series, in the past) is in Q1 when the party is off-plane for so long with no way back...I admit I did have to tweak training for that one.



> I disagree.  First, 1st level in 1e vs. 1st level in 3e is not nearly the same thing.  In 1e, the first two levels where generally deemed to lie outside the games 'sweet spot' (usually sited as levels 3-8).  This was because 1e 1st level characters were generally pretty pathetic, and baring cheating or lucky rolls, where typically inferior to say hobgoblins.  This is especially true prior to the weapon specialization rules and cavaliers appearing to turn low level fighter types in to weapons of mass destruction.  In 3e 1st level characters were consciously front loaded with more spells, more abilities, good ability scores by default, and maximum hit points in order to ensure that they could do more than 'kill rats in the basement'.  The 3e 1st level characters are further up on the curve.   However, the scaling curve in 1e is even steeper than 3e.   While the 1e 1st level fighter is challenged by a single hobgoblin, his 10th level counterpart can probably take on 200 solo, and is facing things like old dragons, frost giants, and balrogs - things that for the most part have been moved further up the slope in 3e.  In 1e, leveling up starts out fast and then slows.  The exponential table means you'll catch up - your whole career from 1st-9th is the same as your companions grind from 11th-12th.   In 3e, the linear advancement table and the constant rate of advancement across all levels means you're always stuck well behind.



Though in 3e RAW lower-level characters got more xp than higher-level types for the same encounter, so they did catch up to a point.

But 1st level in 3e isn't the sweet spot either - that seems to be about 4th-12th; where it's about 3rd-9th in 1e.  Also, 1e is designed differently - by high level you're a badass that's supposed to be able to smoke most of what you meet in the game world, where in 3e (and, I gather, 4e) it's possible to feel a bit like a hamster on a wheel - sure your level number gets higher, but you never seem to get much better relative to the parts of the game world that you encounter.

Lan-"which in truth is one reason why 1e breaks down around 10th level, but 3e overcooked the fix"-efan


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