If HP aren't meat, how do you narrate combat?

[Psyren]

Fine.

Just a few of the posts in which D&D HP has been referenced as things other than taking an injury.


Some emphasis added.

"Hit points represent the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one."

(Some emphasis added.)

[Max_Killjoy]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Florian]

I do indeed understand the terms I am using, sirrah.

I am entirely fine with broad abstractions. In fact I basically exclusively play games with broader abstractions than D&D deals in. I don't object to abstractions. I object to badly designed and incoherent abstractions. Because D&D is a badly designed game. :smallsmile:

I´m a bit dubious that you do in this particular case.

You've named approaches that try to describe how the game should be played and why that is so for a certain player base, what their main source of fun is for playing the game. If you had written "HP makes the game feel game-y, because it very much reminds me of a health bar in a video game", then I´d have instantly agreed. It´s like Psyren and me saying that the big advantage of this model is that we can narrate the outcome and tailor it to what is going on in the game, to what the exact source of HP damage is. That's because we don't model the action, but the outcome, ex why the kid with the baseball club going up against a 10hp char will generate a different description and outcome then when going up against a 100hp char. That has absolutely nothing to do with a game being "Gamist" or "Narrativist", which describe sources of fun and how the game adapts to encompass these sources.

[Max_Killjoy]

What I'm trying to clear up is your definition of inconsistent. Is it your assertion that ANY abstract number which CAN but is NOT REQUIRED to represent any number of fictionally specified dressings or concerns an inconsistent number?

If the answer to the above is YES, then are you also stating that STR, AC and DCs in D&D as they are used in all the editions are also inconsistent?

If the answer to either of the above is NO, then please further elucidate your definition of inconsistency and the specific reason why of all the abstract stat numbers used in D&D, only HP is "inconsistent"


The fact that you refer to the fiction-layer as "dressing" makes me wonder if you're ever going to be satisfied with any answer I give you, or get what I've been trying to get at.

The fiction layer is never "dressing", it's the whole damn point. The mechanics follow the fiction -- the setting, the characters, etc. The fiction layer is the actual territory, the setting layer is just the damn map of that territory. The rules, the mechanics, etc, either successfully map/model/represent the "fiction", or they don't.

If HP is X, Y, and Z, then things that affect X, Y, and/or Z need to affect HP, or the "mapping" is faulty. That's what makes it inconsistent, that it claims to by X, Y, and Z, but then isn't affected by elements and events impacting X, Y, and Z on the fiction layer. That they're already happening at that moment in the events of the session has established them within that "fictional reality", the system can at that point only succeed or fail to reflect their occurrence or presence "reality".

The rest of the basic system isn't perfect, but this thing we're actually talking about right here, this is one that takes the cake, that's completely over the top. STR is one of the least-bad examples, CHA is probably the worst of the Abilities given that it's evidently some sloppy combination of inner power, charm, force of personality, destiny, or whatever's needed each time they've added or tweaked a new casting class to the game in the last decade or however long it's been.




Again, HP actually represents your ability to take potentially lethal damage and continue to fight. Nothing more and nothing less. All of the "specific factors" are fictional concerns, used to further flavor the play, and to enable players and GMs alike to apply narrative tropes to what would otherwise be a boring mechanical spreadsheet. They [the specific factors] are relevant and have measurable impacts beyond (and to) the HP only to the degree and extent that your table and group choose them to.


"Your ability to take potentially lethal damage and continue to fight" is a meaningless canard. It doesn't tell us anything about the character, it's just an abstraction itself.

All of the "specific factors" are either represented by HP, or they're not. If they're part of HP, then the HP mechanics are missing a way for them to affect HP. If they're not part of HP, then they can be utterly ignored for HP and HP is an absolute abstraction itself, with no meaning, a purely gamist mechanic that doesn't represent anything.

[Florian]

The fiction layer is never "dressing", it's the whole damn point. The mechanics follow the fiction -- the setting, the characters, etc. The fiction layer is the actual territory, the setting layer is just the damn map of that territory. The rules, the mechanics, etc, either successfully map/model/represent the "fiction", or they don't.

You more or less have it completely backwards.

So for you, the sword strike has to be modeled as an (object), the target as to be modeled as an (object), the sword striking the target is a fixed thing, so you model the (effect) on the target.

We work the whole process in reverse. The action is announced, the mechanical aspects of it are handled, the status quo is updated and depending on how the status quo changed, we create the narrative of what happened and what (effect) it had.

[deuterio12]

Note that coup de grace actions are really, really hard even for level 20 characters to survive.


Only if it's somebody else pretty powerful delivering the coup de grace.

An average commoner (+0 str) with a dagger (1d4 damage, x2 crit) delivering a coup de grace is at most dealing 8 damage and forcing a DC 18 fort save, which would be pretty lethal for another commoner, but against the 20th level barbarian with 3 digits HP and +22 fort save (+12 base, +10 Con) only needs to fear a natural 1 and it would take quite a lot of time for the commoner to finish him off dealing only single digit damage sinking the dagger in the barbarian's throat if said natural 1 doesn't come up.

Even if the commoner brings out a greataxe (1d12 damage, x3 crit), a classic execution tool, then he could potentially deal 36 damage which is bad news even for the high level barbarian, but statistically the commoner only deals some 18 damage meaning a DC 28 Fort save which the +22 fort save barbarian still has pretty good odds of doing.


And now let's try to look at this from another angle:
-It's ok for the high level barbarian to have superhuman reflexes, shrugging off traps that would've killed lesser beings.
-It's ok for the high level barbarian to have superhuman speed, running faster than any lesser human.
-It's ok for the high level barbarian to have superhuman strength, shattering walls with his blows and reliably felling adult dragons in 6 seconds.
-So why isn't it ok for the barbarian to have superhuman toughness too?

[Psyren]

For what it’s worth I certainly don’t always agree with Max but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him engage in a bad faith argument.

First time for everything it seems. ("plonk")


You more or less have it completely backwards.

So for you, the sword strike has to be modeled as an (object), the target as to be modeled as an (object), the sword striking the target is a fixed thing, so you model the (effect) on the target.

We work the whole process in reverse. The action is announced, the mechanical aspects of it are handled, the status quo is updated and depending on how the status quo changed, we create the narrative of what happened and what (effect) it had.

This. It's not a difficult concept.

[Max_Killjoy]

And now let's try to look at this from another angle:
-It's ok for the high level barbarian to have superhuman reflexes, shrugging off traps that would've killed lesser beings.
-It's ok for the high level barbarian to have superhuman speed, running faster than any lesser human.
-It's ok for the high level barbarian to have superhuman strength, shattering walls with his blows and reliably felling adult dragons in 6 seconds.
-So why isn't it ok for the barbarian to have superhuman toughness too?


That would be fine, if you want to say "yeah, it's just plain toughness on a supernatural scale". That explanation should avoid all the contradictions with other parts of the system and all the missing synchronicity with the fictional elements that the "pileup of maybes" explanation inevitably causes.

But that's "HP are meat, just supernaturally resilient meat", so it's a bit of a sideline to the thread's question.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Locked for review.