How to maintain tension as HP balloon?

[Schwann145]

After a certain threshold, some things just aren't dangerous and/or threatening anymore, despite the fact that they absolutely should be.

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

How do you convincingly maintain a sense of danger when things that should be dangerous just... aren't?

[animorte]

The title of your thread is a part of the problem. If the encounter(s) at hand are consistently a race to run out of HP, then something’s wrong.

There are many ways to create tension in a combat scenario other than running out of health. Time sensitive objectives, actively trying to guide the opposition away from or to something else, and environmental awareness are some vague examples.

A.K.A: The DM could try to get more creative.

[Spo]

Our party was level 8 when we attacked a temple the other week. The guards were only carrying swords and blow darts. We initially thought these clowns would be a pushover and we would sweep through them without problem. What we didn't know was they had multi-attack with a grapple rider vs STR save and their blow darts could paralyze us for a full minute if we failed a CON save plus enough hit points to not go easy into that goodnight. The whole raid became "tense" after that first encounter.

This didn't feel artificially bumped up but felt like a natural danger given what our characters were doing. If our party decided to stick to killing giant rats in the sewer or raid a preschool, I could see that we would not fear a toddler with a crossbow. That same crossbow in the hands of a battlemaster would be a different story.

[Kane0]

Ways to kill off PCs

1: HP Damage. Duh.
2: Max HP reduction (great for poisons/diseases/curses whittling you down over time)
3: Exhaustion levels (6 stage death spiral)
4: Target Death Saves directly (Three strikes and you're out!)
5: Attribute reduction (straight up from previous editions)
6: Prof bonus reduction (Emulates previous edition's energy drain nicely, also a handy death spiral)
7: Save or Suck/Lose/Die
8: Overhealing (explode when THP exceeds your max HP)
9: Reducing XP
10: Aging (in both directions)
11: Sap spell slots
12: Damage vulnerability (as in giving it to you temporarily)
13: Drowning/Choking

Oh, and never forget that threatening people/things other than the PCs themselves is also a totally viable option.

[Jerrykhor]

After a certain threshold, some things just aren't dangerous and/or threatening anymore, despite the fact that they absolutely should be.

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

How do you convincingly maintain a sense of danger when things that should be dangerous just... aren't?

And why should we assume that pulling a dagger on the PCs would be as threatening as to a common peasant? Maybe if the PCs were bound, gagged and completely at the mercy of the dagger wielder, but... just imagine pulling a dagger on John Wick. Its nothing.

If your situation is such that you deem a dagger to be potentially fatal ignoring HP, its a situation that the players don't want to be in, and would do everything in their power to avoid being in such situations. Otherwise, all the standard combat rules still apply.

[Schwann145]

I guess my concern is that everything that can threaten you, as a PC, requires a time investment. Which means it's only a threat if you consider the entire scenario from beginning to end. No individual thing (save a save-or-die spell effect like a Disintegrate) will be a concern, rather than just a single step along the overall battle of attrition that may end up being a threat.

Even the prone paralyzed player has nothing real to fear about the next attack. They very well should fear the next sequence of attacks, but the requirement of hacking the downed foe over and over to put them into threat of death is... kinda my point? It's cartoonishly silly, isn't it?

[Kane0]

The most direct answer is to increase the damage so it can once again down with a single hit, but you may want to look into a wound system instead of HP if you're going down that route rather than relying on an infinite series of poisoned weapons, magical enchantments and other circumstantial increases.

[Sparky McDibben]

A.K.A: The DM could try to get more creative.

A-friggin'-men, brother.

[Jerrykhor]

I guess my concern is that everything that can threaten you, as a PC, requires a time investment. Which means it's only a threat if you consider the entire scenario from beginning to end. No individual thing (save a save-or-die spell effect like a Disintegrate) will be a concern, rather than just a single step along the overall battle of attrition that may end up being a threat.

Even the prone paralyzed player has nothing real to fear about the next attack. They very well should fear the next sequence of attacks, but the requirement of hacking the downed foe over and over to put them into threat of death is... kinda my point? It's cartoonishly silly, isn't it?

Yes a dagger is a threat, a d4 threat. I feel like this thread is not created in good faith. Its trying to beat a dead horse about HP being meat, about realism, and it assumes we have the same (wrong) assumption. Being cartoonishly silly is part of D&D, like surviving 200ft falls and whatnot.

A schmuck with a dagger is threatening to me, because I'm a untrained guy softened by the modern world. I dont know why it should be the same threat to a high level adventurer in a fantastical setting. You are meant to deal with higher level threats.

[rel]

Ultimately, the D&D rules don't replicate gritty fiction very well. The average PC party has more power than a lot of real world mythological pantheons well before level 20.

You can use e6 or a similar level capping system and implement wounding and coup de grace rules, but a street thug with a dagger will still struggle to maintain relevance as the players gain levels.

And every change you make in that direction will damage the tactical combat minigame unless the implementation is considered very carefully. If a reliable instant kill tactic exists it rapidly comes to dominate the combat space.

[FrancisBean]

The most direct answer is to increase the damage so it can once again down with a single hit, but you may want to look into a wound system instead of HP if you're going down that route rather than relying on an infinite series of poisoned weapons, magical enchantments and other circumstantial increases.

I see you get the point behind the question, while I think a lot of other people may be missing it. I'm picturing the whole hero with dagger at throat and tense hostage negotiation scene, but D&D just doesn't do that sort of dramatic cliché well in any edition. D&D is all the last row of this comic (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0929.html).

The best we've got is a DM's fiat sort of thing which players will never like. (Imagine being told your 17th lvl fighter died in one shot because the orcish chieftain with a dagger at his throat pulled the trigger? Who needs a jugular when you're almost Epic?) The OP may wish to look into a different system than D&D, if that sort of plotline drama is his thing.

[Zhorn]

I'm tending to find as long as the encounter's goal is something other than "get the other team to zero hp", then the amount of damage the creatures can do to the party is a very minor concern.

Burning buildings
Killing hostages
Escaping with a McGuffin
Completing a ritual
Sounding an alarm

Had an encounter a few weeks back, the party was guiding their river barge throw some swamp land and were discovered by hostile giants (whole plot thing after tracking artefacts, we don't need to delve into).
Rock throwing ensued
Cleric figures "This will be easy, I'll just park the boat and engage them in melee"
... and then the giants continued to throw rocks at the boat.
The party COULD beat the giants in a race to zero hp, easy.
But the boat wouldn't survive that long.
Encounter quickly switches to a chase sequence and the party using their turns to protect the boat from incoming rocks while they got out of range.

Sure, some fights being simple slug fests are fun, and the occasional instance where one side (be it the party or their opponents) dramatically outclasses their competition will be enjoyable.
but mix up the encounters and have goals beyond "I'm here to kill you in a fight to the death".
You get to keep lower CR monsters still having relevance in the game in higher levels and don't need any special new houserules to do so.

[Magikeeper]

Have settings that don't try to treat HP as an approximation - something the rules have never truly supported despite their insistence otherwise - and issues like this largely disappear.

Why? Because then the enemies (and everyone else) won't do things that obviously don't make sense if high level characters are simply inhumanly durable. If they want to hold a PC at arrow-point it's either a single highly optimized archer or an entire team of them. The reason why no one tries to murder the PCs in their sleep is because it's unlikely to work - unless, again, it's done by a specialist or a team of assassins that deal the final blow at the same time. IC scheming syncs up with the rules and it all generally works out pretty nicely. This was more true for 3.5e than 5e, but it still applies to an extent. This works for the players as well - there cease to be weird disconnects between what the best move is table-wise and what the best move *should* be IC. At least not HP-wise.

As for "silly", that's up to the setting and tone. You can portray it as a cartoon, you can portray the PCs as robust action heroes, you could portray high level PCs as downright terrifying inhuman beings, you can even be a bit gritty (if the world's average is unusually high level). Are you giving a reason for the D&D standard no-called-shots rule (e.g. an in-character reason why you can't just stab enemy XZY through the eye for an insta-kill)? Whatever the reason is for no-called-shots in your games can likely be expanded to explain HP-as-Meat.

It often comes across as silly because the most standard settings are pretending HP doesn't work the way it does, creating the disconnect. If it's an established fact that high level characters are inhumanly durable, and the setting properly accounts for that, its just a different style of fantasy.

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If the players desire ways to be one-armed swordsmen or whatever, you can work out the circumstances under which that is possible. Which, hey, fits the fact that you'd need to come up with an exception to the rules as well since limb loss in combat is nearly impossible in D&D. HP=Meat is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to keeping things consistent.

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Now, 5e does have a bit of HP bloat going on, so if you feel that's an issue you might want to just have HP stop increasing after level XYZ (and maybe start cutting published enemy HP in ?half?...)

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Finally, if you don't like the idea of high-level PCs being superhuman, then tweaking the rules like the others suggested would be the way to go. It's better to have a consistent world than try to hand-wave exceptions whenever someone feels it's narratively appropriate, imo.

[Schwann145]

It's less of an "HP-as-meat" issue as it is a "HP is a buffer so large that nothing is scary anymore" issue.

Let me explain why this is even on my mind:
I started reading Elminster's Daughter the other day, and in the first chapter is a scene where a corrupt money-lender is collecting on outstanding debt from several business owners. With said money-lender is two body guards, armed with hand crossbows, acting as intimidating enforcement.
As the scene plays out, one of the merchants can't (or won't) pay the debt, so the money-lender has him shot; dead. As witnesses would be problematic for him, he then has the bodyguards shoot all the others as well, pulling out pre-loaded but-as-yet-hidden extra hand crossbows. He then collects what wealth they had, as well as their business deeds, and takes his leave.

Now, yes, these are merchant NPCs; they'll die to a hand crossbow bolt, no argument there. But I couldn't help but think, "jeez, if this situation were D&D PCs instead of merchant NPCs, you couldn't even have this scene, because a shot from a puny little hand crossbow isn't going to do nearly anything, and the players definitely know it.
Trying to do a scene like that (a sudden betrayal, double-crossing, whatever, with should-be-lethal weapons), is basically impossible unless you do it entirely by DM fiat, and as pointed out already, players aren't generally a big fan of that sort of DM fiat - because there's no chance of meaningful harm. It doesn't matter how you narrate the HP (meat, lucky dodge, near-miss, whatever), the fact that you have so much of it after a certain point (generally level 3 or 4 IME) makes the stakes basically disappear and the tension non-existent.

So how do you get that tension back? Or is that just asking too much from D&D?

[JackPhoenix]

Now, yes, these are merchant NPCs; they'll die to a hand crossbow bolt, no argument there. But I couldn't help but think, "jeez, if this situation were D&D PCs instead of merchant NPCs, you couldn't even have this scene, because a shot from a puny little hand crossbow isn't going to do nearly anything, and the players definitely know it.

Do they? Well, that's your problem for telling them the bodyguards definitely aren't capable of adding LotdX damage on top of the hand crossbow's d6.

[Dark.Revenant]

As soon as you open the Pandora's Box of "surprise attacks bypass Hit Points" (or variations thereof), players will realize that surprise attacks are the "meta" of the game.

Really, it just comes down to the combat attrition system of D&D; it's the strongest-scaling part of the game. Your damage and # of spell slots scale up by roughly 4x from Tier 1 to Tier 4, your to-hit and skills scale up by about 2x, but Hit Points scale by more like 6x. It's even more extreme if you consider Level 1 to be the baseline. If mundane weapons in mundane hands are to remain dangerous at all levels, damage and especially HP would need to scale far more slowly, and for "special success" (e.g. critical hits) to have fatal consequences.

My advice is: deal with it, or switch systems. The mechanics of the game make too many assumptions about how many hits it takes to bring someone down; dramatically reducing Hit Point scaling will basically just turn the game into rocket tag if you're using any higher-CR monsters built for the existing system.

[Jerrykhor]

It's less of an "HP-as-meat" issue as it is a "HP is a buffer so large that nothing is scary anymore" issue.

Let me explain why this is even on my mind:
I started reading Elminster's Daughter the other day, and in the first chapter is a scene where a corrupt money-lender is collecting on outstanding debt from several business owners. With said money-lender is two body guards, armed with hand crossbows, acting as intimidating enforcement.
As the scene plays out, one of the merchants can't (or won't) pay the debt, so the money-lender has him shot; dead. As witnesses would be problematic for him, he then has the bodyguards shoot all the others as well, pulling out pre-loaded but-as-yet-hidden extra hand crossbows. He then collects what wealth they had, as well as their business deeds, and takes his leave.

Now, yes, these are merchant NPCs; they'll die to a hand crossbow bolt, no argument there. But I couldn't help but think, "jeez, if this situation were D&D PCs instead of merchant NPCs, you couldn't even have this scene, because a shot from a puny little hand crossbow isn't going to do nearly anything, and the players definitely know it.
Trying to do a scene like that (a sudden betrayal, double-crossing, whatever, with should-be-lethal weapons), is basically impossible unless you do it entirely by DM fiat, and as pointed out already, players aren't generally a big fan of that sort of DM fiat - because there's no chance of meaningful harm. It doesn't matter how you narrate the HP (meat, lucky dodge, near-miss, whatever), the fact that you have so much of it after a certain point (generally level 3 or 4 IME) makes the stakes basically disappear and the tension non-existent.

So how do you get that tension back? Or is that just asking too much from D&D?

Ah, i see where you're coming from. But I disagree on the notion that "HP is a buffer so large that nothing is scary." If you think that, then you've failed as a DM. To players, HP not just a buffer, but a resource, and a finite one. Sure, most things are less scary to a high level PC. But just because they can kill a peasant or a town guard like swatting a fly, doesn't mean they would do it. I'll give you an example. In the Boys tv show, Homelander is basically a Superman living among mortals. He can kill most normal people easily, but a lot of times he restrain from doing so, for many reasons. Usually its because the consequences would be too negative.

Now to threaten a defenseless merchant vs a bunch of powerful adventurers is very different, you know that already. You probably need to bring an army of elite soldiers on top of Archmages and other big guns, which i doubt those corrupt money lenders would have. You can't just replace the merchants with adventurers in that scenario and say how stupid is HP as a concept, context matters. Like, the money lenders wouldn't lend to said adventurers in the first place if they knew how difficult it is to recoup the money.

If you still want to a crossbow to threaten the party, then have it do so. You're the DM. Once it hits, it downs the PC no matter what. If the player complains, just say, 'Ah but its not a regular bolt you see. Its a Bolt of Annoying Adventurer Slaying.'

[ShadeRaven]

After a certain threshold, some things just aren't dangerous and/or threatening anymore, despite the fact that they absolutely should be.

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

How do you convincingly maintain a sense of danger when things that should be dangerous just... aren't?

If the PCs feel threatened by a single crossbow pointed at them past level 1 - they should become innkeepers and bread merchants. If a crossbow is threatening, then a forgotten temple guarded by a dozen of traps, 30 kobolds with crossbows and a ****ing spell slinging dragon should be something that the PCs won't even consider. It takes a special sort of person to become an adventurers and we hear the bards sing only about those of them that are missed by the said crossbow they didn't feel threated from.

[Anymage]

On the one hand, it's easy to replace low damage attacks with higher damage ones if you really want to threaten PCs. Status inflicting poisons, save-or-dies, or sneak attacks from high level rogues can all fit the bill.

These do in general require the threat to come from another high level character. That's a feature rather than a bug. Superheroes, even street level ones, tend to see common thugs as an inconvenience at worst. By the time your PCs have a few levels under their belts, they're some level of superhero or another and some nobody with a knife shouldn't really register on their radar.

[Gignere]

You’re playing the wrong game system if you want that kind of grim dark fantasy. You’d need to look into a system like runequest or call of Cthulhu where the heroes basically never progress beyond level 1 hps.

They gain in skills and potentially spells and such. But everyone can die at any level to stray bullets/errant attacks making it extremely deadly to actually fight no matter the level/experience of your PC.

Especially Call of Cthulhu since the enemies can sometimes be creatures that is the equivalent of CR10+ and you’re just fighting it as a level 1 commoner.

[Burley]

After a certain threshold, some things just aren't dangerous and/or threatening anymore, despite the fact that they absolutely should be.

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

How do you convincingly maintain a sense of danger when things that should be dangerous just... aren't?

I mostly disagree with this solely on your examples. A player character should feel tense when a bow is pulled on them, or a dagger, because they know what multiple-attacks-per-round and sneak attack look like.
Especially in 5e which, in my experience, doesn't have large HP pools but does have +10 to damage.

So, I guess, if you and your characters are unafraid of damage because you're a 16Con Paladin, that explains why damage isn't intense to you. I like to include "Protect the X" objectives into combats, which lets you (as DM) play around with the battlefield a bit more than "bad guys run at good guys." Other ways to inject tension: crumbling platforms, escaping villains, lava, innocents that may heal/become baddies, an HP pool so large that the PCs are trying to survive/escape instead of kill/murder.

[Catullus64]

Controversially, I've had certain things kill or drop to 0 HP before with no real reference to the rules. A character got hanged once; I think they were expecting the drop-and-stop to inflict massive damage, or maybe start inflicting death saving throws, and were surprised and a bit miffed when I said "Your neck snaps and you die." That player later said they were ok with it (they had blown a lot of opportunities to get out of that fate), but it was shocking in a way I don't think it should have been. Nowadays I probably would have given them more direct warning of "this will immediately kill you", but I otherwise don't think I would handle it differently.

I've done the same for non-PC death before. Sleeping characters that aren't huge monsters can be slain instantly and without a roll if you can strike them while they're still asleep. Falls from a certain height result in getting knocked to 0 HP regardless of HP total, and a certain height above that results in death.

At the end of the day, HP are good for modeling survival and endurance in conditions of heroic combat, and not good for much else. If you want to model dangers outside of those conditions, go outside the HP system. Just have a little talk with your players first so they're aware that HP is not the sole measure of how much danger they're in.

[Witty Username]

So is the complaint about the threat of the base damage of weapons, or threatening the PCs with harm generally?

If it is the second one then put the encounter over a pit of molten lava. It works in movies, it works in D&D.

If you're complaining about the base damage of weapons not being threatening at high level. Then up the damage of weapons, that 8th level fighter won't mess around when the hand crossbow does 8d6 damage, for example. This would of course require thinking about weapon damage differently if we don't want to murder every low level Party , some ideas:
1. Scale weapon damage with level, when the party is 5th level hand crossbows deal 5d6 damage to PCs, video games do world scaling and it does work for its purpose.
2. Reducing the scaling of HP, (maybe something like each level +1 for Wizards, +2 for the d8 people, +3 for the d10 people, +4 for barbarians. This makes it so damage doesn't fall off as hard and will generally make for more fragile PCs.
3. Scale encounters out, 1 hand crossbow is not as scary as 50 hand crossbows, see encounter building in the DMG for the appropriate number of goblins to use against the party and don't be afraid to use more.

[MrStabby]

Yeah, this is a thing in D&D. It isn't that the game need be easier at higher levels or that the threats are not there. Nor is it even that there are not single die rolls that will clearly seperate success from TPK.

The difference is in what those rolls are. At low levels an attack roll that could be a critical hit is one die roll away from death of a character. In the intermediate levels it might be a recharge roll for a dragon's breath attack. At higher levels it might be a teleport error, or a save vs a spell or trying to counter a high level spell. It isn't even that physical damage becomes less threatening (though I argue it does, but seperate issue), it is that the variance on damage, as a fraction of total HP is lower. A round might have 12 incoming attacks rather than two, and whilst the average damage might keep up, the probability of dealing 3 times the average damage is masively lower.

I am not sure here is really an elegant solution - just embrace that the nature of risk changes at higher levels.

[KorvinStarmast]

After a certain threshold, some things just aren't dangerous and/or threatening anymore, despite the fact that they absolutely should be. You've got your "should" asserted with its foundation in sand, not in concrete.

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.
It usually takes multiple stab wounds to kill someone.
As to that hand crossbow, unless someone hits you in the heart or brain, that first crossbow bolt will wound, not kill, you. (See also Boromir approximating a pin cushion (in the book) and to a lesser extend in the movie, with lots of arrows in him before he dies-yeah, I know, it's Hollywood).

How do you convincingly maintain a sense of danger when things that should be dangerous just... aren't? Have more than one encounter in a day. HP leach during the day. By the time they get to this encounter, (someone pointing a cross bow at them) their HP has been reduced by (things that happened beforehand).

But TBH, I think that the suggestions to switch systems, or to confine your games to levels 4 and below, might be the best advice.

[Composer99]

I guess my concern is that everything that can threaten you, as a PC, requires a time investment. Which means it's only a threat if you consider the entire scenario from beginning to end. No individual thing (save a save-or-die spell effect like a Disintegrate) will be a concern, rather than just a single step along the overall battle of attrition that may end up being a threat.

Even the prone paralyzed player has nothing real to fear about the next attack. They very well should fear the next sequence of attacks, but the requirement of hacking the downed foe over and over to put them into threat of death is... kinda my point? It's cartoonishly silly, isn't it?

At some point it's time to stop flogging the dead horse and admit that modern D&D, with its focus on heroic fantasy and rapid power scaling, is not, or is no longer, the game for you, and either move on to an OSR game or one of the even deadlier systems suggested by others, or find a third-party mod of the game (or even homebrew your own) that allows you to play it the way you want to. Or cap out gameplay somewhere at levels 4, 5, or 6.

Another easy answer to your troubles is to scale threats to match PC power growth. Which is what modern D&D intends - you go from exploring the Lost Mines of Phandelver and fighting orcs and zombies at low levels, to exploring flying cloud giant castles and fighting adult dragons and vampires at mid levels, to plane-hopping and fighting armies of fiends and avatars of gods at high levels.

Looking at the scenario you described in a book, I can't see why you would want to present that situation as a genuine threat for mid-level or high-level characters. That's what's cartoonishly silly! (Although, if you wanted to, you could replicate the scenario in a planar setting, and have the corrupt merchant be a rakshasa and the guards a pack of dao or yugoloth mercenaries. Now your D&D PCs are in trouble, because the threat has scaled to match or maybe even exceed their capabilities!)

[MoiMagnus]

After a certain threshold, some things just aren't dangerous and/or threatening anymore, despite the fact that they absolutely should be.

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

How do you convincingly maintain a sense of danger when things that should be dangerous just... aren't?

Poisons, especially magical ones and/or those that make you fall unconscious/paralysed. You could even homebrew a few poisons that are particularly powerful but require to be injected in specific parts of the body to work, so that they remain unpractical during fights. Homebrewed curses could serve the same purpose.

But in the same way that waving a medieval crossbow in front of a modern tank shouldn't feel particularly threatening to the driver of the tank, a high level character which is literally a supernatural being shouldn't feel threatened by that same mundane crossbow.

Or, to take a more magical comparison: Werewolves are only CR 3. Creatures being almost unkillable unless you prepare against them is normal in the D&D universe. Methods to neutralise creatures that you can't harm (either because they are immune to damages, or because they have too much HP) should be widely spreads among NPCs.

Similarly, if you want to arrest a very high level PC, prepare your Dimensional Shackles, that why those exists.

[Tanarii]

D&D assumes characters at high level have ablative "plot armor" in the form of hit points and Death Saves.

If your table doesn't like that, either reduce the values (they are very bloated compared to AD&D), slow down the rate of XP gain, implement/adapt some kind of HP bypass system (any number available online or in other games), or use a different game system.

[Sorinth]

By treating it as more of an action movie. How many action movies does the bad guy have a knife/gun held to someones throat/head but ends up perfectly fine. They drop to the floor or use a self-defence move they learnt earlier in the movie and the bad guy can't react quickly enough.

If an NPC has a dagger to the players throat and only does 1d4+3 damage and the player has 100HP then the PC twists away from the dagger and gets at best a minor cut rather then a deep cut that will cause someone to bleed out.

[Schwann145]

I know the answer for me really is, "should probably just find a game better suited," but (as we all know in our hearts) other games are a fiction we tell ourselves when we can't find a D&D group. They don't exist. D&D name recognition is just too powerful and people are too unwilling to try different games. :smalltongue::smallsigh:

[Kane0]

I know the answer for me really is, "should probably just find a game better suited," but (as we all know in our hearts) other games are a fiction we tell ourselves when we can't find a D&D group. They don't exist. D&D name recognition is just too powerful and people are too unwilling to try different games. :smalltongue::smallsigh:

It is entirely possible to insert a wound-like system or other gritty elements into 5e, or approximate with things like exhaustion, conditions, lingering injuries and reduced resting benefits.

[Leon]

Its a inherent problem with the game along with the free and safe magic system ~ basically gets to the point where the PCs are free to anything because of bloat and any opposition ceases to be a threat or a challenge, the game is at its best in first twelve levels and then after that is a crap shoot. As to the above post, you can retrofit those type things back in, past editions had similar things but were stripped out for the easy and safe 5e "experience" where the PC is bubble wrapped.

[Unoriginal]

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening.

Why should it be threatening?

Hand crossbows are a threat to average humanoids. Not to someone who started a fistfight with a Demon Prince and won.

[Gignere]

Why should it be threatening?

Hand crossbows are a threat to average humanoids. Not to someone who started a fistfight with a Demon Prince and won.

He wants a different kind of game/setting. Which beyond t1 D&D stops being that kind of game.

[Sneak Dog]

Those things shouldn't be dangerous. They're high level heros. Characters blatantly outscale lethal threats into being annoyances as you level. It gives a sense of progression in this competent human to basically demigod system.

A commoner stabbing with a sword was dangerous at level 1. Later it's a dragon's huge claw. Bounded accuracy means enough commoners with enough swords are a threat against parties without fireballs, but just one? No.

[Willie the Duck]

Okay, I think people have beaten up on the OP enough for me to not feel the need to join in.

OP, generally peoples points are valid -- there are other games out there; weapons in the hands of powerful characters can do much more than their damage die (and/or powerful people can multiattack as well); and while individual actions (a single crossbow bolt) may not be as threatening as they would be in real life, 1) characters who take on dragons probably oughtn't be constrained by real life, and 2) there are plenty of other individual actions (push the lever and someone drops into lava) that still exist in the game that are threats.

That said, there certainly is quite a bit of the game where you are not wrong in your point. The game is not set up to serve the purpose you describe, instead trying to serve a different one which is likely to consume a larger portion of gameplay (especially amongst the parts where rules come into play at all).

The game tries hard, quite deliberately, and trending moreso in each subsequent edition, to not make the the primary method of character death (especially in combat or combat-like situations) be a sudden, high-finality (little or no recourse) act the player and character may or may not have seen coming. This is because (IMO) the most interesting part of having a character is making consequential decisions in clutch situations -- the most straightforward of these is looking at your current fragility and deciding whether to press the offensive or to retreat/play defensively. That requires a series of back-and-forth exchanges and both depletion and decision points in between. For the most part, I think this is a positive.

The game used to be more varied in this regard. Save-or-die spells and poison obviously, but also coup de grace rules (or just play assumption*), and of course just lower hp totals -- a dagger was more of a threat when it did 1d6 and even the mightiest of 'superheroes' (8th level fighting man with 15+ con) had just 8d6+16hp. Heck, if we include Chainmail, the same superhero would be 'perfect health... perfect health... perfect health... oops (surrounded and all opponents hit), now dropped.' That has advantages and disadvantages.
*paraphrased from oD&D playtester Mike Mornard: we didn't need coup de grace rules, as we all agreed that if you were asleep or paralyzed, someone could just slit your throat

I know some of my fellow OSR aficionados think the game was more tactical back then ('if every room might be a save-or-die or worse situation, you'll be more circumspect about every door opened'), but honestly that only worked right when everything worked right. Pretty much from day one there would be DMs who thought they provided hints to the deathtrap and their players thought it was a insta-kill out of nowhere. And DMs who saw a monster with a clever gimmick and included them in a situation where they were hard to predict (ghasts in a sewer where a great stench isn't a giveaway), in numbers instead of singular (when that has an overpowered multiplicity--intellect devourers are this in 5e), or otherwise just didn't play out as expected. There were any number of character deaths that felt unfair in some way, probably in excess of times when the modern incarnation makes holding someone at bay with a crossbow doesn't feel threatening. Certainly enough to make it understandable why they've moved away from that setup.

Likewise, other systems are much more lethal. Other than 5e and the OSR game Worlds Without Number, my main game right now is Mythras, which is a fantasy game using Runequest/Call of Cthulhu's game engine. Life is cheap and a critical (bypassing armor) to the head with almost any weapon could conceivably kill just about any non-gigantic-monster. Unsurprisingly, combat is avoided quite a lot (even by martial type characters). That's a big distinction about modern D&D -- it is designed around the idea that players want to get into fights.

The tl/dr version is that you aren't exactly wrong, but that it was done deliberately (with the specific scenario you mention being an unfortunate casualty of a greater concern) to make sure players feel that they have agency and decision opportunities in the bid for combat success for their characters.


Yes a dagger is a threat, a d4 threat. I feel like this thread is not created in good faith. Its trying to beat a dead horse about HP being meat, about realism, and it assumes we have the same (wrong) assumption. Being cartoonishly silly is part of D&D, like surviving 200ft falls and whatnot.
I mean, that is the flipside to what I said about how things were BITD -- they were only selectively more immediately lethal and 'realistic,' and always had a healthy dose of absurdity in support of gamist concerns.
*although the game works fine if you make falling 1d6 per 10'-squared or the like. The prevalence of 60'+ pit traps seems to only exist because the damage/increment is so low.


I know the answer for me really is, "should probably just find a game better suited," but (as we all know in our hearts) other games are a fiction we tell ourselves when we can't find a D&D group. They don't exist. D&D name recognition is just too powerful and people are too unwilling to try different games. :smalltongue::smallsigh:

Not true. 5e's massively expanding of the RPG gaming has benefited other games significantly. Yes, the proportion of TTRPG gamers who are playing D&D as opposed to other games has grown (since, for example, the mid 90s when White Wolf was giving D&D a run for its' money and other games like GURPS, Shadowrun, RIFTS, West End Star Wars, and others were in ascendency), however the total number of people gaming (of which, X% will be amenable to trying another system) has grown enough that there are likely more people playing non-D&D TTRPGs than ever before. If you're having trouble finding a D&D group, though, you are right that you likely also won't find a non-D&D group (in whatever area in which you are looking). You likely have to get a consistent group of gaming friends, with whom you have played for years, who decide they are bored with D&D and want to try something else for a while. That was true back in the day and true today. Certainly if you want to play a specific non-D&D game, then you likely will have to be the one to suggest it, and to run it.

[Yakk]

After a certain threshold, some things just aren't dangerous and/or threatening anymore, despite the fact that they absolutely should be.

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

How do you convincingly maintain a sense of danger when things that should be dangerous just... aren't?
Frame challenge.

A level 5 PC is already an insanely good warrior in D&D. A typical guard (which I also use for a decently trained soldier) is CR 1/8, and a level 5 PC can often take on a dozen of them at once all alone.

That level of combat capability is very, very good.

If some random street thug pulls a dagger on James Bond, is it a threatening situation? Not really. For James Bond to be threatened, you'd need a gang or someone whose skill was telegraphed as being much better than a random mugger.

By level 11, you are a hero who can plausibly kill a fire breathing magical beast the size of a bus. You can take blows from it and recover, survive being blasted with magical napalm, and in some cases punch through its iron scales with your bare hands.

Again, some random person with a crossbow or knife isn't a plausible threat.

At level 20, you face down demon lords and threaten them.

...

Playing D&D past low levels is a choice. But the mechanics do impact the fiction. If you want a game where the PCs are not extremely competent heros of legend, restrict PCs to level 1-3, and offer feats and rare spell scrolls and the like as rewards.

[Schwann145]

D&D is advertised as a role-playing game, not a combat game. Yet, a combat game is exactly what it has become. Forgive my lamenting over the loss of story-driven mechanics. ;(

Although, I would like to know where the change from "regular humanoid" into "unstoppable demigod" occurs during the leveling process. What level Fighter is it, when you go from human/elf/whatever with all the normal assumed vulnerabilities into the unstoppable killing machine? What class ability is that? Is it your 3rd attack? Seems too lackluster to be that...
It seems to me that the only thing one could possibly ascribe is the bloated HP system, and the assumption that because it takes so long to bring you (or anyone, for that matter, monsters included) down, you must be able to take ridiculous amounts of physical punishment... ie: HP-as-meat. Except that's expressly not the case, as HP has always been an abstract of many things.
Why is lava a threat? If you can take dozens of stab wounds and shrug them off, why can't you take a quick dip in a lava pool and climb out mostly unscathed (truth is you can, but the assertion so far is you can't)? Where is the logic there?
You can fist-fight demon princes and expect to win? Lol, no, you can't. Your group, with lots of resources, most of which will need to be magical, can threaten a demon prince. Maybe. And if the demon prince's claws are expected to hurt, a lot, when why isn't a sword expected to hurt?
Again, where is the logic?

[JNAProductions]

Long time ago (wow, four years!) I made Fighting Spirit (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?558375-Fighting-Spirit-II-Electric-HP-A-Loo). (Actually five years for the original thread.)

I think this could help achieve what you're looking for. It's not a perfect solution, but for Tier II PCs, they'd range in HP from 14 (Wizard with 14 Con) to 29 (Barbarian with 20 Con). So, while a dagger to the throat by an ordinary Commoner is unlikely to KILL even a Wizard with moderate Con (2d4+0 averages to 5) it's enough to start them taking penalties. And using a slightly better weapon-like, say, a Quarterstaff-it's got around a 10% chance of dropping them to death saves, and will leave them significantly wounded even on an average roll.

If you're dealing with someone that has both a good weapon and decent stats (Greatsword and +2 modifier) you've got a 3/4 chance of murdering that 14 HP Wizard. The Barbarian is still really tough, but that's more their schtick.

[Unoriginal]

D&D is advertised as a role-playing game, not a combat game. Yet, a combat game is exactly what it has become. Forgive my lamenting over the loss of story-driven mechanics. ;(

So, just to make sure what you are saying is understood clearly by me and everyone else:


https://youtu.be/cRbwQ7NbTF0?t=126

If I follow what you are saying, the scene starting at 2:03 in the video above would be a no-role-playing combat situation if it happened around a 5e table with 5e PCs, and since there is no tension due to the seasoned adventurer character not being worried by someone attempting to threaten him with a dagger.

Meanwhile the situation you mentioned earlier in the thread about a money-lender having his goons massacre not only the helpless customer who didn't pay him back but also those who did pay would be a story-driven role-playing scene if it happened around a RPG table and the goons were able to threaten the PCs with their weapons before starting to shoot everyone.

Is this your thesis?

[Schwann145]

If I follow what you are saying, the scene starting at 2:03 in the video above would be a no-role-playing combat situation if it happened around a 5e table with 5e PCs, and since there is no tension due to the seasoned adventurer character not being worried by someone attempting to threaten him with a dagger.
The only example I gave involved competent enemies who knew how to use their weapons. The clip above is the opposite. As such, it's hard to take it seriously as a comparison.


Is this your thesis?
My thesis is pretty easily summed up as: The storytelling aspect of the game is heavily harmed/hampered by the ability of characters being largely able to ignore (or, at the very least, be unfazed by) threats, because of being mostly unaffected by the follow through of said threats.

[Edits for clarity]

[Unoriginal]

The only example I gave involved competent enemies who knew how to use their weapons. The clip above is the opposite. As such, it's hard to take it seriously as a comparison.

So you are saying that a weapon is threatening if in the hand of a competent enemy, and not threatening in the hand of an incompetent enemy?

[animorte]

So you are saying that a weapon is threatening if in the hand of a competent enemy, and not threatening in the hand of an incompetent enemy?

I feel you. Ever heard of those situations where untrained individuals do a lot of damage with some weapon strictly because they weren't trained with said weapon?

[Segev]

The OP brings up a very specific scenario, and I think it fair to examine it as he wants to look at it. On first blush, hp being high absolutely crushes the scenario. And by at least one argument, it probably should.

I will address that argument, first. I am, to lay out my premises, of the opinion that hp are meat, but not just meat. If you're taking hp damage, you HAVE had at least a scratch or a bruise. Blood has been drawn, abrasions have happened to the flesh, internal injury has happened. It will almost always be very minor injury, because only when you hit 0 hp is the wound serious/lethal. You can have some negotiation in your fluff for precisely how much a given wound is flesh-rending, but it always at least a little. (This is why poisons always trigger on even 1 hp of damage.) However, hp also represent luck (or plot armor), skills that take a certain amount of stamina to use, and a few other traits that can slowly be exhausted.

So, under this paradigm, you can play the "I have a knife to your throat; why aren't you more intimidated, Peesea of the Professional Tagonists?" game straight not because Peesea will wind up laughing off the hardest, most accurate stab to the throat that our villainess Anne Tagonist (estranged cousin to the Professional Tagonists) can manage, but because as long as he's got a fair number of hp left, he knows full well that that knife will do little more than knick him. Peesea will, you see, dodge to the side and/or block with a slap to her wrist as she lunges, or will enact any number of other possible plans of action that his supreme skill will allow him to pull off. Maybe, if Peesea is a wizard, he actually has a mystical force field Anne doesn't know about. If he's a druid, he might have regenerative powers that are finite but as-yet unused (so the knife plunges in, and he heals the wound right back up). Maybe the barbarian version really does just clench his neck muscles and deflect it with his iron thews.


Now, that's all well and good for taking the gameplay mechanics of basic combat and saying, "Yeah, you're right, that scene with the merchant and the bodyguards would not go at all like it does in the book if the merchant had PCs involved." But you find that unsatisfactory.

Let me posit one more thing before I move on to addressing how you can restore what you're looking for: If the merchant has PCs there instead of the NPC bodyguards, and the debt collector has his goons threatening the merchant, the fragility of the merchant is absolutely the PCs' problem. They want to keep him alive, and the goons are threatening their VIP. Legitimately threatening him. One hit, and he could die. So the tension is still there, because it's not about the PCs needing to live. It's about the NPC that is far more fragile than they are needing to survive for them to succeed their quest/mission/whatever.


Finally, how to reintroduce this: Have a condition - let's call it "Threatened" - which means that the source of the threat can kill - or inflict any particular threatened condition - on you. It'd be phrased something like, "The target is Threatened, and the [threatening creature] can [do X to] the target at any time as a bonus action on his turn or as a reaction."

Holding a knife to somebody's throat would put them in to the Threatened condition, allowing the knife-holder to slit their throat and reduce them to 0 hp (or outright kill them) as a bonus action or reaction.

You'll need to decide how hard it is to get somebody into a Threatened condition. Maybe they must be rendered Helpless, first, as an example.

[Willie the Duck]

D&D is advertised as a role-playing game, not a combat game. Yet, a combat game is exactly what it has become. Forgive my lamenting over the loss of story-driven mechanics. ;(
When were those halcyon days? I'm having a hard time placing them.


Although, I would like to know where the change from "regular humanoid" into "unstoppable demigod" occurs during the leveling process. What level Fighter is it, when you go from human/elf/whatever with all the normal assumed vulnerabilities into the unstoppable killing machine? What class ability is that? Is it your 3rd attack? Seems too lackluster to be that...
It seems to me that the only thing one could possibly ascribe is the bloated HP system, and the assumption that because it takes so long to bring you (or anyone, for that matter, monsters included) down, you must be able to take ridiculous amounts of physical punishment... ie: HP-as-meat. Except that's expressly not the case, as HP has always been an abstract of many things.
It really does not follow that HP must be meat for this to be the case. The badasses of Girl Genius (https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/) seem to follow D&D HP logic -- they are (almost) all theoretically killable by a single knife stab or bullet or arrow, but they end up acting as vaguely "unstoppable demigods" because they won't be dropped by a simple knife stab from a pleb. Regardless, that there isn't a clear and unambiguous defining point when you go from zero to hero doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, nor that it must be any one other thing (such as massive HP, be they meat or not). Mechanically it is a combination of all traits and features, and thematically it is when you can contribute (approximately, and we don't need to turn this into another martial/caster thread) equally to wizards and monsters who act in a vaguely "unstoppable demigod"-like way.


Why is lava a threat? If you can take dozens of stab wounds and shrug them off, why can't you take a quick dip in a lava pool and climb out mostly unscathed (truth is you can, but the assertion so far is you can't)? Where is the logic there?
In some cases you can. I think in 3e a splash of lava was only 1d6 and submersion 20D6, when you could easily have 30+ points of fire resistance and 200-300 hp at high levels.


You can fist-fight demon princes and expect to win? Lol, no, you can't. Your group, with lots of resources, most of which will need to be magical, can threaten a demon prince. Maybe. And if the demon prince's claws are expected to hurt, a lot, when why isn't a sword expected to hurt?
The game is built around ~4 person groups taking down challenges, so naturally there needs to be encounters which would challenge them up to all the levels in the book. If 5e ever comes out with rigorous epic rules (unlikely, as people supposedly barely play the top two tiers as it is), it would be reasonable for a 37th level fighter to solo a demon prince, or something. As it stands, you can find situations where a single 20th level character can solo a monster meant for a Xth (some number below 20th) level group.

The sword is expected to hurt a lot when wielded by someone just as dangerous as you are (and it does, with specifics based on the level or monster manual entry by which that someone is represented). Or, thanks to bounded accuracy, by lots of someone all wielding that type of swords all fighting you at once. Or someone attacking you with that sword repeatedly while you won't or can't stop them.


Again, where is the logic?
I think you might be a little too worked up here. People have made clear the logic, limitations, game expectations, and criteria under which they believe the game is working. If you find their points lacking or unsatisfying, please point to specific ones and say why and we'll try to expand on them. This isn't a competition or a fight. Everyone benefits if everyone walks away with more satisfactory answers (up to and including 'DYD just doesn't do what you would like it to do').

[animorte]

I want to bring forth a concept that I think has only been briefly touched upon (sort of in favor of the OP).

Say you are that high level individual inflicting an aura of confidence that everyone nearby can feel, just because you have a lot of HP and experience. Even if you're not projecting that sort of attitude, you still know what you're capable of.

Then you see some smaller fella with a crossbow pointed at you. Without additional information, you might look to be at an advantage. It could be some low level, lightly armored bandit or a high level Assassin Rogue (perhaps with some Gloomstalker levels or Fighter levels for Action Surge or the Crossbow Expert feat - insert whatever first-turn extreme damage optimized build you want). If you know the information that both sides are capable of, maybe you can judge how the fight will go. If one or both of them involved doesn't, you really no idea.

Moral of the story is: don't underestimate your opponent.

I also really love any AtLA reference, so thanks for that.

[Segev]

I want to bring forth a concept that I think has only been briefly touched upon (sort of in favor of the OP).

Say you are that high level individual inflicting an aura of confidence that everyone nearby can feel, just because you have a lot of HP and experience. Even if you're not projecting that sort of attitude, you still know what you're capable of.

Then you see some smaller fella with a crossbow pointed at you. Without additional information, you might look to be at an advantage. It could be some low level, lightly armored bandit or a high level Assassin Rogue (perhaps with some Gloomstalker levels or Fighter levels for Action Surge or the Crossbow Expert feat - insert whatever first-turn extreme damage optimized build you want). If you know the information that both sides are capable of, maybe you can judge how the fight will go. If one or both of them involved doesn't, you really no idea.

Moral of the story is: don't underestimate your opponent.

I also really love any AtLA reference, so thanks for that.

To be fair, at high enough level, hp does outstrip single-round damage sufficiently that a fighter-type CAN be confident he won't go down even against a highly-optimized same-level single-attack-damage monster of a rogue.

That isn't necessarily true for squishy casters, who had better be ready to throw up their defensive buffs that aren't on all day, though.

[NaughtyTiger]

I think you might be a little too worked up here.

OP is rationally stating his position.
No all-caps tirades.
No attacking other people or assigning them emotional states.
He has said nothing to indicate that he is worked up.


When were those halcyon days? I'm having a hard time placing them.


1988? we often avoided combats because we were so squishy even as high levels.

[Unoriginal]

You can fist-fight demon princes and expect to win? Lol, no, you can't. Your group, with lots of resources, most of which will need to be magical, can threaten a demon prince. Maybe.



The game is built around ~4 person groups taking down challenges, so naturally there needs to be encounters which would challenge them up to all the levels in the book. If 5e ever comes out with rigorous epic rules (unlikely, as people supposedly barely play the top two tiers as it is), it would be reasonable for a 37th level fighter to solo a demon prince, or something. As it stands, you can find situations where a single 20th level character can solo a monster meant for a Xth (some number below 20th) level group.


It's entirely possible for a PC of lvl 20 (or less, even) to beat up a Demon Prince in a fistfight, solo.

CR 23 to 26 isn't so overwhelmingly powerful that they're unbeatable for a specialized PC.

It would be a hard fight, sure. It would be, I dare say, a tense situation, as should fighting any being with that kind of gravity should.

[NaughtyTiger]

I assumed most folks here also viewed 5e as having too much HP.

Do yall actually like having such high safety nets?

Past T1, risk of death is low.
There isn't even tension about a hostage dying, cuz a 3rd level spell will fix her right up.

[Segev]

I assumed most folks here also viewed 5e as having too much HP.

Do yall actually like having such high safety nets?

Past T1, risk of death is low.
There isn't even tension about a hostage dying, cuz a 3rd level spell will fix her right up.

What is it you are reacting to? This seems like outrage and exasperation in response to nothing I am seeing here. What am I missing?

[Kane0]

I assumed most folks here also viewed 5e as having too much HP.

Do yall actually like having such high safety nets?

Past T1, risk of death is low.
There isn't even tension about a hostage dying, cuz a 3rd level spell will fix her right up.

I have taken steps to reduce HP bloat in the past. Met with moderate success.

[Witty Username]

I assumed most folks here also viewed 5e as having too much HP.

Do yall actually like having such high safety nets?

Past T1, risk of death is low.
There isn't even tension about a hostage dying, cuz a 3rd level spell will fix her right up.
HP isn't much different than it was in AD&D or 3.5 from my vantage point. I don't think HP is a gameplay problem.

The primary differences are short rest and long rest recovery, and the general lack of non damage mechanics. And a secondary issue of death mechanics.

AD&D and 3/.5 have all sorts of dangerous things from harmful conditions, frequent ability damage as well as HP damage, and even permanently reducing ability scores and levels. Not even your XP was safe from a vampire.
Also, recovery in 5e is very fast in comparison, one long rest is enough to restore all hp, and short rests is on average about half that. This combined with death saves meaning it can be difficult to kill a character even when they are at 0 hp, and this means even a bad fight has almost no real consequences.

Long rests not giving a full heal does alot to bring the grit back in. Those crossbow bolts add up, and if it takes a few days to recover you won't be headlong charging into them as much. Dying at 0 hp can also help, but that is alot scarier for people, and can come out of nowhere sometimes.

[rel]

Ultimately, the D&D rules don't replicate gritty fiction very well. The average PC party has more power than a lot of real world mythological pantheons well before level 20.

You can use e6 or a similar level capping system and implement wounding and coup de grace rules, but a street thug with a dagger will still struggle to maintain relevance as the players gain levels.

And every change you make in that direction will damage the tactical combat minigame unless the implementation is considered very carefully. If a reliable instant kill tactic exists it rapidly comes to dominate the combat space.

To expand on this, if preserving the tactical combat minigame isn't a concern then the fix is straightforward:

Level cap the game at 6 or even 4 for an extra low fantasy feel.

Instigate a coup de grace rule, which can be a simple as if the enemy incapacitated or you have them dead to rights you can kill them with an action.

Add a crippling injuries or persistent wounds rule, which again can be as simple as whenever you reach 0HP roll a D20, on a 1 you suffer a crippling injury determined by the GM that can only be removed through questing or extended convalescence.

throw in any other variant or house rules that help support the games theme and tone mechanically, for example a variant rest mechanic or extra brutal crits.

And there you go. D&D where the PC's are always vulnerable to some punk with a dagger.

[Tanarii]

HP isn't much different than it was in AD&D or 3.5 from my vantage point. I don't think HP is a gameplay problem.
HPs were lower in TSR D&D. All classes were one HD size smaller except Fighters, you didn't start with a max HD at level 1, +2/HD from Con wasn't standard for the majority of PCs, and HD stopped at name level.

E.g. starting magic user might have 3 hps, and a starting Thief 4. If they didn't roll poorly on their Hd and just end up with 1 or 2. Whereas most in 5e have 8 for a Wizard and 10 for a Rogue. At level 5 it'd be 13 vs 32 for a magic user / Wizard and 18 vs 42 for a thief / rogue.

But you're right, a major difference is Short Rest and Long Rest healing. Attrition is a whole is far less in 5e.

Otoh the scale of what you generally face has gone up too. It's just the scale of "level 1" threats that hasn't, which means leveled PCs far more rapidly outpace any danger from that same level of threat.

Edit: And that's fine, as long as you don't treat HPs as meat. Even by mid-level (level 5-10), PCs have ablative narrative armor in the form of HPs, where they're just that good. And can avoid even surely fatal point blank and surprising blows into avoidance/misses/scratches. Until they can't.

[Witty Username]

HP as grit, vitality or what have you doesn't work as well when falling into a pit of lava or getting blasted by a fireball or dragon breath, at least for me. That being said, I don't mind HP as meat, at least for high fantasy adventure.
-
Fair enough on AD&D, the bits I played I used a maximum HP mod, and I sometimes forget that was not the norm. Even with that and a 16 constitution AD&D felt like it was much harder to survive than 5e though.

[Tanarii]

falling into a pit of lava or getting blasted by a fireball or dragon breath
I can't remember the last time I had PCs fall in to a pit of lava, tropey as it may be in these discussions :smallamused:

Fireballs and dragon breath evadimg, shielding with clothes & armor, and escaping with minor singeing doesn't bother me as much as superhero skin or regeneration explanations would. (That said, for Arcane casters, "I use magic to defend myself" doesn't bother me. Because genre.)

Otoh IMX players rarely care one way or the other. They note down the damage and we play on. Overall we understand it's a game, not a reality or story simulator.

[Kane0]

I can't remember the last time I had PCs fall in to a pit of lava, tropey as it may be in these discussions :smallamused:


Closest i've come across recently is river of acid in a city on an Acheron cube, during the big setpiece battle we even pushed a few monsters into it to die in appropriate battlefield hazard fashion.

[Sneak Dog]

To get into the world-building part. Have the vast majority of NPCs be basic commoners, including those that matter. Merchants, innkeepers, fellow travelers. All 4 hp. The king is a noble with 9 hp! Now reevaluate how deadly a dagger is when most people have 4 hp. One to the throat would probably count their target as restrained, so that's advantage.
Level 1 PCs are heroic. They're threatened by a commoner with a dagger, but not severely so because they're larger-than-life heroes.

Oh, and the king's assassin? 78 hp trained combat master that can easily deal over fifty damage in a surprise round with a light crossbow. Could also show that off once...

[NaughtyTiger]

To get into the world-building part. Have the vast majority of NPCs be basic commoners, including those that matter. Merchants, innkeepers, fellow travelers. All 4 hp. The king is a noble with 9 hp! Now reevaluate how deadly a dagger is when most people have 4 hp. One to the throat would probably count their target as restrained, so that's advantage...

Oops, king died again... revivify then grab lunch?



What is it you are reacting to? This seems like outrage and exasperation in response to nothing I am seeing here. What am I missing?
it was a question?
Dont know what you are missing, but you certainly added an emotional backstory out of whole cloth.

[olskool]

After a certain threshold, some things just aren't dangerous and/or threatening anymore, despite the fact that they absolutely should be.

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

How do you convincingly maintain a sense of danger when things that should be dangerous just... aren't?

You have hit on the one big issue with D&D 5e... a lack of lethality... which reduces the tension during play. The game is DESIGNED this way intentionally but you don't have to play it that way. If you want to play a REALLY GRITTY version of 5e where even a 20th Level Fighter fears a sword, just give your PCs a number of Hit Dice equal to their 5e Proficiency BONUS. That 20th Level Fighter will change his tactics when he maxes out at 60HP + CON bonuses.

[Yakk]

To get into the world-building part. Have the vast majority of NPCs be basic commoners, including those that matter. Merchants, innkeepers, fellow travelers. All 4 hp. The king is a noble with 9 hp! Now reevaluate how deadly a dagger is when most people have 4 hp. One to the throat would probably count their target as restrained, so that's advantage.
Level 1 PCs are heroic. They're threatened by a commoner with a dagger, but not severely so because they're larger-than-life heroes.

Oh, and the king's assassin? 78 hp trained combat master that can easily deal over fifty damage in a surprise round with a light crossbow. Could also show that off once...

If you make a CR 20+ offence CR 4 defence assassin, they'll come out to CR 12 and they can really threaten a mid-level PC in a single round.

Like, can make 2 attacks, one a 1d4+10d6+4(41) knife stab , and one 1d6+4(7)+10d6(35 poison) poisoned hand crossbow (poisoned condition, DC 18 con save or take 10d6(35) poison damage, 3 passes and it wears off, 3 fails and you are unconscious), with a riposte disruptive strike.

...

And I use the Guard as a competent soldier.

AC 16 11 HP, +3 to hit for 5 damage on average.

That is what an armored, trained soldier from the city-state people looks like.

Orcs, at 13 AC 15 HP +5 to hit and average 9 damage, are scary to this soldier. It takes an average of 3 hits for a guard to drop an orc, and 1.25 hits for the Orc to drop a soldier.

A level 1 Fighter PC (chain+shield+longsword) has 16 AC, 12 HP, +5 to hit and does 9 damage, plus a 6 point self-heal. They hit like an orc, have orc-level HP (after second wind), and have the armor levels of a guard. They are the elite soldier who can take on 3 typical grunts at once.

By level 4 PCs are insane. 28+8 HP (including second wind), +6 to hit for 10 damage, action surge for double attacks one round, AC probably up to 17 or 18. If they are a battlemaster, they can throw on an extra 4d8 (18) damage (or be uncannily accurate, or get extra attacks). They can probably take on 6+ soldiers all at once reliably.

Level 5 and the new tier ups the number of soldiers you can take down to probably 10 or more due to extra attack. Everyone else looks slow compared to this character. If they are wearing plate + shield they have 20 AC, and have 45 HP of total durability. They have +7 to hit for 10 damage per swing, twice per round, and 4 times once per combat. It takes 34 attacks on average for Soldiers to drop this T2 fighter. The fighter in turn takes 1.7 swings to drop a guard. In 3 rounds -- under 20 seconds -- the Fighter can drop 7+ guards, and get nicked once or twice even if surrounded.

Think about it. A level 5 fighter, surrounded by guards with weapons drawn (say, disadvantage on initiative), can draw their sword and kill them all with a minor flesh wound. This is Captain America in the elevator level fiction.

...

If you want your PCs to be competent mortals, you are really talking about T1 D&D. By T2 your characters are heros out of legend, combat-wise.

Sadly, the mechanics for non-combat for non-casters are fuzzy enough that many DMs turn these insanely competent combatants into out of combat incompetents.

[Asmotherion]

my take on it is the Weekly Long rest Variant rule.

Long rests take a Week of not adventuring. Everything else is handled by Dayly short rests.

That way, loosing HP actually means something. Yes, even if you have a Cleric, because it costs a resource to have it cast on you.

An other take is the PF2e take where Long Rests only restore Con modifier HP (or something along those lines, can't remember the specifics but I'm pretty sure there is at least one more modifier you regain). It's wonderfully simple.

[Zhorn]

my take on it is the Weekly Long rest Variant rule.

Long rests take a Week of not adventuring. Everything else is handled by Dayly short rests.

That way, loosing HP actually means something. Yes, even if you have a Cleric, because it costs a resource to have it cast on you.
Should give Slow Natural Healing from the DMG a try, achieves the same end goal of resource healing but without the stretched out timescale of the Gritty Realism rules.

In my current campaign, I pair Slow Natural Healing with houserule of you cannot Short Rest unless you spend hit dice on it. Just helps close out the chain Short Resting for free healing loophole some classes get (eg: fighters with second wind, warlocks with cure wounds, etc)

[Amnestic]

You have hit on the one big issue with D&D 5e... a lack of lethality... which reduces the tension during play. The game is DESIGNED this way intentionally but you don't have to play it that way. If you want to play a REALLY GRITTY version of 5e where even a 20th Level Fighter fears a sword, just give your PCs a number of Hit Dice equal to their 5e Proficiency BONUS. That 20th Level Fighter will change his tactics when he maxes out at 60HP + CON bonuses.

Yeah, messing with HP scaling is definitely a solution - and HD=PB would make them ever so slightly tougher at 1st level too.

You can also turn off/tone down their max HP gain after a certain level. Get to [x] and switch your HP gain from dx+ConMod to 1+ConMod, or half ConMod, or whatever.

[Easy e]

I know the answer for me really is, "should probably just find a game better suited," but (as we all know in our hearts) other games are a fiction we tell ourselves when we can't find a D&D group. They don't exist. D&D name recognition is just too powerful and people are too unwilling to try different games. :smalltongue::smallsigh:


I recall I had a group that wanted to play D&D and asked me to run it. They had not really played any D&D or TTRPGs before. I promptly helped them build characters and learned the system. We had an ongoing campaign for about two years.

We never actually played D&D*, we just played a TTRPG with a Fantasy skin. They had a good time, until I moved away.

Many folks do not want to play D&D, they just do not know any other word for TTRPG.




*= For the record, I never said we were playing D&D and explained that we were not playing D&D. However, the players kept calling it D&D. I gave up after a few months.

[Willie the Duck]

The OP brings up a very specific scenario, and I think it fair to examine it as he wants to look at it. On first blush, hp being high absolutely crushes the scenario. And by at least one argument, it probably should.
I think it reaches the criteria of 'probably should' specifically in that a ruleset which offers a perfectly verisimilitude-maintaining solution to this specific scenario (an extant but uncommon one in most games) likely will interact poorly with the standard mode of combat for D&D, at least if we want to preserve it as a game where people want to get into fights.


Finally, how to reintroduce this: Have a condition - let's call it "Threatened" - which means that the source of the threat can kill - or inflict any particular threatened condition - on you. It'd be phrased something like, "The target is Threatened, and the [threatening creature] can [do X to] the target at any time as a bonus action on his turn or as a reaction."

Holding a knife to somebody's throat would put them in to the Threatened condition, allowing the knife-holder to slit their throat and reduce them to 0 hp (or outright kill them) as a bonus action or reaction.

You'll need to decide how hard it is to get somebody into a Threatened condition. Maybe they must be rendered Helpless, first, as an example.
This is definitely a solution (provided the 'get somebody into threatened condition' is sufficiently hard to do in a standard combat situation that the trying to invoke this clause and bypassing hp doesn't become the default or go-to strategy).

Another idea would be to have the rule: Hit points, initiative, and all those things only exist in situations of two able-bodied entities squaring off in combat. In other instances, defer to Other Mechanisms [and then include one that was applicable to this situation]. That would make it such that the rule couldn't be a go-to application in combat, and allow for the Other Mechanism (probably something similar to Fate or PbtA mechanisms, or an elaborate skill challenge) to be a broader solution to more than just this specific scenario. I think early D&D could have gone that route, but hp damage for traps and falls just worked so well (and better than the other mechanisms that tended to happen at the time, which mostly were Save-or-Die).


OP is rationally stating his position.
No all-caps tirades.
No attacking other people or assigning them emotional states.
He has said nothing to indicate that he is worked up.
I interpreted the repeating of 'where's the logic?' (as well as repeating the basic premise instead of addressing people) as heading into rant territory. If I misinterpreted the OP, then I apologize to them.


1988? we often avoided combats because we were so squishy even as high levels.
What I mean is that I don't see any of the previous era, including the editions prevalent in '88, as having "story-driven mechanics*." It had less heroic Player Characters, who were significantly more cautious in when they entered combat and/or ventured down the next hallway, but I don't think that is really all that much of a regular indicator of story-driven mechanics specifically. I'm an OSR fan and a semi-grognard**, and I tend to bristle at the notion that TSR era D&D was 'just a wargame***,' or 'a combat engine glued to a list of spell effects,' or the like. That said, it was definitely significantly a dungeon-exploration game with lots of rules for resolving potential combat scenarios, traps and perils, and exploring the unknown on a time budget; all the while leaving scenarios like standoffs with helpless individuals, complicated physical endeavors (footraces more complex than comparing movement rates, obstacle courses, etc.), and social interactions other than retainer loyalty or running into potential hostiles in the wild to DM adjudication. The driving of the story that came out of the 80s seemed mostly to spring from the modules published at the time, and many of them did so by superseding the basic rule system.
*2nd edition AD&D a year later being a great example, where the rulebooks suggested that the game was going to be going in a much more story-driven direction, but not changing the underlying ruleset in that direction.
**started in '83 in a BX/BE(eventually CMI, plus some AD&D add-ons)
***if for no other reason than if it was a wargame, it would have had no reason to ever been made, since they already had Chainmail
****Expert Page 51 from BX did much the same in '81, but in the broadest of strokes.

I'm also not sure older D&D even does this specific scenario any better. Shooting an (ex.) 15-con 5th level AD&D fighter with 5d10+5=33 hp with a 1d4 damage crossbow isn't that much different from shooting a 5e 14 con 5th level fighter with 10+4d10+10=42 hp with a 1d6+in terms of threatening to drop them before they can act or the like. They both fail realistic fear of a deadly weapon for the given scenario.


I assumed most folks here also viewed 5e as having too much HP.
Do yall actually like having such high safety nets?
Past T1, risk of death is low.
There isn't even tension about a hostage dying, cuz a 3rd level spell will fix her right up.
I don't for me, but I like that they are there in the first place. Because eight-to-ten-year-olds (and all the kids I gamed with bitd who didn't stick with the game to age eleven plus). And Tina's husband Joe who will play, but not if he dies ten times before getting 'a guy' to 3rd level. 5e D&D's default setting is relative easy mode, and that's a good thing for starter play. The B/X and BECMI boxed sets that were designed to introduce a younger audience to the game ought to have been like this. Instead they were the same basic ruleset as oD&D (with some needed editing and clarification), simply minus the nipples of oD&D/AD&D and written at a 4th grade reading level (with some added vocabulary). When you graduate from easy mode, it is trivially easy to take on challenge ratings in excess of your level, or use one of the optional alternate modes laid out in the core ruleset.

As to no tension because resurrection magic exists, that has always been true (most editions it started at level 9 instead of 5, but there always were NPC priests who would do it for a fee).


Edit: And that's fine, as long as you don't treat HPs as meat. Even by mid-level (level 5-10), PCs have ablative narrative armor in the form of HPs, where they're just that good. And can avoid even surely fatal point blank and surprising blows into avoidance/misses/scratches. Until they can't.
Fundamentally, I think this is the issue -- this trait is deliberately included so that combat can be a fun collection of decisions important to survival and success, and it works very well at that; and it just works poorly for narrative situations where people do not want that narrative armor.

[Segev]

Another idea would be to have the rule: Hit points, initiative, and all those things only exist in situations of two able-bodied entities squaring off in combat. In other instances, defer to Other Mechanisms [and then include one that was applicable to this situation]. That would make it such that the rule couldn't be a go-to application in combat, and allow for the Other Mechanism (probably something similar to Fate or PbtA mechanisms, or an elaborate skill challenge) to be a broader solution to more than just this specific scenario. I think early D&D could have gone that route, but hp damage for traps and falls just worked so well (and better than the other mechanisms that tended to happen at the time, which mostly were Save-or-Die).

Possible, but you have to rewrite everything outside of combat that uses hp, then, and you also can't use hp as a non-combat resource for attrition.

[NaughtyTiger]

And Tina's husband Joe who will play, but not if he dies ten times before getting 'a guy' to 3rd level.

The irony here is that levels 1-4 are really the only times a PC is a risk of death from HP loss.
As most folks in this thread admit, in T2+, the HP scales much faster than the damage.


I interpreted the repeating of 'where's the logic?' (as well as repeating the basic premise instead of addressing people) as heading into rant territory.

once you start telling people what THEY are feeling and thinking, you are attacking the person, not the argument. that was my point.


As to no tension because resurrection magic exists, that has always been true (most editions it started at level 9 instead of 5, but there always were NPC priests who would do it for a fee).

I disagree that "a DM is able to create an arbitrary rule (resurrection before level 9)" is the same as "a default on game mechanic that provides it at level 5."


I am seeing a disconnect between folks who say they prefer fewer guardrails in their games, but defending 5e's plethora of gaurdrails. I haven't seen data showing that a lot of 4th graders are playing DnD, let alone DMing the games, so I do not think the game should be tailored to them.

[Segev]

I am seeing a disconnect between folks who say they prefer fewer guardrails in their games, but defending 5e's plethora of gaurdrails. I haven't seen data showing that a lot of 4th graders are playing DnD, let alone DMing the games, so I do not think the game should be tailored to them.

Please tell me you didn't just equate those of us who are fine with the guardrails in 5e with being 4th graders. :smallconfused:

Nor imply that all 4th graders are unable to deal with games where characters are at risk.



In practice, I think younger kids are more likely to play games with high death rates; they're more likely than most modern adult gamers to have the limited investment in a particular character to mind the "show up with a pile of sheets" style of play. (Which is a perfectly fine mode of play, but I know very few people who enjoy it these days.)

[NaughtyTiger]

Please tell me you didn't just equate those of us who are fine with the guardrails in 5e with being 4th graders. :smallconfused:

Nor imply that all 4th graders are unable to deal with games where characters are at risk.

Quite the opposite.



Because eight-to-ten-year-olds (and all the kids I gamed with bitd who didn't stick with the game to age eleven plus). ... 5e D&D's default setting is relative easy mode, and that's a good thing for starter play. The B/X and BECMI boxed sets that were designed to introduce a younger audience to the game ought to have been like this. Instead they were the same basic ruleset as oD&D (...), simply minus the nipples of oD&D/AD&D and written at a 4th grade reading level (...)


In practice, I think younger kids are more likely to play games with high death rates; they're more likely than most modern adult gamers to have the limited investment in a particular character to mind the "show up with a pile of sheets" style of play. (Which is a perfectly fine mode of play, but I know very few people who enjoy it these days.)

However, I think I disagree with one of your points, in my experience the younger the player, the greater the investment in the character and their backstory.

[Tanarii]

In practice, I think younger kids are more likely to play games with high death rates; they're more likely than most modern adult gamers to have the limited investment in a particular character to mind the "show up with a pile of sheets" style of play. (Which is a perfectly fine mode of play, but I know very few people who enjoy it these days.)
IMX for all ages it depends entirely on how much time they've spent developing the character. Which is why the golden rule is not to spend a bunch of time on a character that hasn't even hit the table yet. :smallamused:

Otoh that doesn't mean anyone particularly enjoys a BECMI meatgrinder without knowing exactly what they're walking into. That was a huge failure of the original game, it didn't advertise its extreme difficulty at all. "This is a game for experienced war-gamers who appreciate very hard mode" probably wasn't something that would have even occurred to Gygax or Arneson needed to be put on the game cover. Because that's who originally they were selling it to.

[Segev]

Quite the opposite. Ah, good.
However, I think I disagree with one of your points, in my experience the younger the player, the greater the investment in the character and their backstory.[/QUOTE]It's probably, as Tanarii notes, a function of how much investment the player put into the character, yeah.


IMX for all ages it depends entirely on how much time they've spent developing the character. Which is why the golden rule is not to spend a bunch of time on a character that hasn't even hit the table yet. :smallamused:

Otoh that doesn't mean anyone particularly enjoys a BECMI meatgrinder without knowing exactly what they're walking into. That was a huge failure of the original game, it didn't advertise its extreme difficulty at all. "This is a game for experienced war-gamers who appreciate very hard mode" probably wasn't something that would have even occurred to Gygax or Arneson needed to be put on the game cover. Because that's who originally they were selling it to.

In my personal experience, littler kids put less investment into characters because they're more looking at it as a chance to just try wild and crazy things. I see a LOT more murderhobos in little kids than even in teens (though would-be edgelord teens also get very murderhobo-y, and I know several players in college who were inveterate murder-hobos to the point they got de-invited from games because they were forcing the DM to choose between allowing the one player to wreck the fun of everyone else, or retconning and ignoring the player's stated actions and choices).

But yeah, it is probably fair to say that all ages can have all kinds of players, and the cross-section I see in my own life is anecdotal.

[Tanarii]

I see a LOT more murderhobos in little kids than even in teens (though would-be edgelord teens also get very murderhobo-y, and I know several players in college who were inveterate murder-hobos to the point they got de-invited from games because they were forcing the DM to choose between allowing the one player to wreck the fun of everyone else, or retconning and ignoring the player's stated actions and choices).Kids and even young teens definitely don't have a problem understanding Orcs and Goblins and Thieves Guild are bad = stabby time, and merchants and town guards and knights are good = don't stab. So I'd say I've seen plenty of murderheroes, but very few murderhobos ... until late teens or college age. Then they start see stabbing more and more as a solution to every problem, regardless of if it's wildly inappropriate.

The real test is what they do with the surviving Bandits they accidentally took prisoner after failing to kill them outright when they stabbed them. Insist on marching them back to justice, not fit for adventuring life, but sure let's call them heroes. Summary execution for their crimes, good group here, solid murderheroes. Leave them alive and let them go, meaning they're wounded and will die in the wilderness, some table issues may crop up, because you got murderhobos.


But yeah, it is probably fair to say that all ages can have all kinds of players, and the cross-section I see in my own life is anecdotal.IMO for pre-teens the real fun is social encounters, provided they have a clear understanding of what they're supposed to be trying to do.


I'm also not sure older D&D even does this specific scenario any better. Shooting an (ex.) 15-con 5th level AD&D fighter with 5d10+5=33 hp with a 1d4 damage crossbow isn't that much different from shooting a 5e 14 con 5th level fighter with 10+4d10+10=42 hp with a 1d6+in terms of threatening to drop them before they can act or the like. They both fail realistic fear of a deadly weapon for the given scenario.
Yeah IMO the problem isn't the buff to Fighters, which is minimal. It's the huge buff to typical arcane nuke caster and maybe to Rogues. Bards should be weaker too given they're not really Fighter/Thieves with special songs any more. And it's the speed at which characters level.

[DomesticHausCat]

When you get to high levels you're essentially as strong as a superhero anyway. Would Thor from the MCU fear a crossbow being held against him or a knife? Not really. But being choke held by a beast such as Thanos or the Hulk does change things.

[Schwann145]

When you get to high levels you're essentially as strong as a superhero anyway. Would Thor from the MCU fear a crossbow being held against him or a knife? Not really. But being choke held by a beast such as Thanos or the Hulk does change things.

But no character you make in D&D is anywhere even close to Thor. The best you're gonna get is Cap, and if Cap gets shot, he's in trouble.

[animorte]

But no character you make in D&D is anywhere even close to Thor. The best you're gonna get is Cap, and if Cap gets shot, he's in trouble.

Actually I don't think it would be that difficult to recreate Thor in 5e, but you're also not likely to be threatened by the likes of Thanos.

[Unoriginal]

Actually I don't think it would be that difficult to recreate Thor in 5e, but you're also not likely to be threatened by the likes of Thanos.

What do you mean?

Thanos (in the movies) is portrayed as stronger, more durable and probably as skilled in fighting as the Asgardian, before even taking their respective arsenals.

That's threatening.

[animorte]

What do you mean?

Thanos (in the movies) is portrayed as stronger, more durable and probably as skilled in fighting as the Asgardian, before even taking their respective arsenals.

That's threatening.

That's exactly what I mean. It seems that his level of power specifically is significantly above that which we are likely to face in D&D.

Meanwhile recreating Thor wouldn't be nearly as difficult.

[EggKookoo]

I tell (and reiterate to) my players that hit points are a combat mechanic and that's it. They have absolutely nothing to do with how physically durable you are. High HP only have value if you're free to act and defend yourself. A 20th level PC tied up will die to a mundane dagger across the throat as quickly as a commoner NPC.


Actually I don't think it would be that difficult to recreate Thor in 5e, but you're also not likely to be threatened by the likes of Thanos.

Thor in D&D would have a Strength somewhat north of 26,000. Okay, half that if you give him Powerful Build. Not sure if there's a variant rule that would enable that. :smallwink:

[Tanarii]

High HP only have value if you're free to act and defend yourself.They still have value when you're asleep, unconscious, or even paralyzed.


A 20th level PC tied up will die to a mundane dagger across the throat as quickly as a commoner NPC.Sure. Kind of. But HPs currently being greater than the damage represent the ability of the PC to avoid a mundane dagger across the throat even if tied up. Or asleep. Or fully unconscious. Or paralyzed. Because they're just that good. That's the 'plot armor' aspect of HP.

"Kind of" as in they also still get death saves. And NPCs may go straight to dead without those.

[animorte]

A 20th level PC tied up will die to a mundane dagger across the throat as quickly as a commoner NPC.

Sure, if you don't include their supreme ability scores and proficiency contributing to saves and skill checks. That and all their potential bonus action or reaction abilities that don't require the use of hands or weapons.

[EggKookoo]

They still have value when you're asleep, unconscious, or even paralyzed.

Not really at my table. If you're unable to move or invoke any kind of special protection (magical or whatever), you're probably just toast.

In reality, I only enforce this with NPCs. PCs slitting enemy throats is fun. NPCs slitting PC throats is not.


Sure. Kind of. But HPs currently being greater than the damage represent the ability of the PC to avoid a mundane dagger across the throat even if tied up. Or asleep. Or fully unconscious. Or paralyzed. Because they're just that good. That's the 'plot armor' aspect of HP.

So I guess I move the plot armor from HP to "rule of fun" (where it belongs, IMO).


"Kind of" as in they also still get death saves. And NPCs may go straight to dead without those.

I don't do NPC death saves as a matter of course. Maybe in special circumstances.

[Tanarii]

Not really at my table.
Ah gotcha. I didn't realize you were talking about a house rule.

I must say it's not like it hasn't been directly suggested (even by Gygax) for D&D before. But for 5e and rules, there's nothing to suggest that the worst possible situation (unconscious or paralyzed) results in more than "critical hit" for damage.

[EggKookoo]

Ah gotcha. I didn't realize you were talking about a house rule.

Sorry, I thought the discussion was in the vein of "how would you handle..?" I didn't mean to be confusing.


I must say it's not like it hasn't been directly suggested (even by Gygax) for D&D before. But for 5e and rules, there's nothing to suggest that the worst possible situation (unconscious or paralyzed) results in more than "critical hit" for damage.

Yes, RAW works differently. But I find RAW unsatisfying in many places (as do many DMs, I imagine).

Most of my houserules come from my players, to be honest. Something will happen, a player will do the dog-head-turn over some inconsistency in the rule. We'll talk about it, and I'll work up a replacement. If we like it, we keep it. I think it happens that way because I'm the RAW expert (as far as that goes) at our table, where the players really only tend to their PCs. So a "hit the tied up dude" situation gets filtered on their common sense and gameplay expectations, which doesn't always map to the actual rules.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm a heretic. I accept fully the idea that HP is meat and bake that fact into the worldbuilding. It's a well known fact that really powerful individuals can, actually, take a lot more punishment and that a simple dagger to the throat of a powerful creature just isn't all that much of a threat. Some organizations have actually figured out how to roughly measure "soul capacity" (of which HD are one consequence) and use that as part of a ranking system with legal implications.

So tension-based-on-threats-of-death mostly comes from threatening other people or things that the high-power people care about. Or upping your game from a simple crossbow bolt or dagger.

[Tanarii]

Sorry, I thought the discussion was in the vein of "how would you handle..?" I didn't mean to be confusing.

Yes, RAW works differently. But I find RAW unsatisfying in many places (as do many DMs, I imagine).
Indeed. My fault for reading the last posts and not thinking about the context of the thread.

As I say, your solution is an old traditional "fix" (and iirc not always a house rule) for D&D HP, especially TSR D&D. Hit points are for combat. Not certain death situations, as ruled by the DM.

[Willie the Duck]

The irony here is that levels 1-4 are really the only times a PC is a risk of death from HP loss.
As most folks in this thread admit, in T2+, the HP scales much faster than the damage.
There's definitely a chuckle to be had there about that specifically. I think it's real, though -- they made the default game relatively easy (after the first two levels or so, with an XP chart which rushes you through them) so that casuals and looky-lous and such might stick around long enough to get the D&D bug themselves (and then there are a dozen or so ways to up the challenge level in the DMG for those gamers who are tired of playing on easy mode).

once you start telling people what THEY are feeling and thinking, you are attacking the person, not the argument. that was my point.
Regardless of whether you agree with my determination that OP was sliding into a rant or not, you took my diplomatic post attempting to reinforce that everyone was here to try to help as an attack? I'm going to walk away from this as I have no idea how to deal with it.

I am seeing a disconnect between folks who say they prefer fewer guardrails in their games, but defending 5e's plethora of gaurdrails. I haven't seen data showing that a lot of 4th graders are playing DnD, let alone DMing the games, so I do not think the game should be tailored to them.
I think the game should have all sorts of variations, based on who is playing, what style of play is preferred, what goals people have for the rules, and so on. However, I strongly believe that the default setting -- the one that will play out when you choose not to make any optional decisions -- ought to be the one with an output favoring those least experienced with, and/or least invested in, the game. Those are the ones who need things straightforward the most. Experienced players ought to be willing and capable of selecting amongst the optional rules to cultivate a specific gaming experience; or even house rule and modify based upon their preferences.



Sorry, I thought the discussion was in the vein of "how would you handle..?" I didn't mean to be confusing.

Yes, RAW works differently. But I find RAW unsatisfying in many places (as do many DMs, I imagine).

Most of my houserules come from my players, to be honest. Something will happen, a player will do the dog-head-turn over some inconsistency in the rule. We'll talk about it, and I'll work up a replacement. If we like it, we keep it. I think it happens that way because I'm the RAW expert (as far as that goes) at our table, where the players really only tend to their PCs. So a "hit the tied up dude" situation gets filtered on their common sense and gameplay expectations, which doesn't always map to the actual rules.

I think this is probably the place where optional or house rules work best, along with situational application of common sense. RAW is tied up (heh) in various responsibilities, including page space, too-many-rules issues, or just not creating thousands of individual exceptions to primary rules (ex. 'characters interact with violence through a specified rules structure involving initiative, armor class, and hit points') each ripe for explicit wording-mining for exploits. House rules have the luxury to be focused on what comes up in individual campaigns, as well as being safeguarded from unintended consequences because 'you know what we mean' works.

[Segev]

For me, hp are as much "plot armor" as they are anything else. It is unlikely that the high-level NPC is going to die from Bob the Butler sneaking into his room and slitting his throat, narratively speaking. It might happen, but it's unlikely. More likely, something will interfere and cause the attempt to fail. Sure, he might give him a nasty cut, but if he cannot roll high enough with an automatic critical hit (which is about as far as I'm willing to go on "sleeping/unaware target can't defend himself, and you have all the time in the world to line up the attack"), then that means some plot contrivance, some defense that the NPC has, some lucky roll or flail... something prevented it from being a lethal throat-cut. It can, but doesn't have to be, "meat" that just wouldn't cut. What it is depends heavily on the situation, the target, Bob's skills and nature, etc.

If the character being held hostage with a gun to his head is of the sort that his hp simply are too high for that to be a threat in the hands of this mook, then having the action hero nonchalance about the situation is thematically appropriate. I have no problem with the NPC mook getting to the point that he's flabberghasted and annoyed at being ignored as only vaguely important despite his threatening hold on the creature that has so many hp that his threat is negligible.



Alternatively, in such a threatening situation where I want to really build the tension, all those dramatic "I'll do it!" moments in fiction that prolong the scene? Those are actual attacks and damage rolls. The knife drew blood with a slight bit of pressure because the holder made a full-on attack. The fact that it didn't reduce the hostage to 0 hp is, in this case, representing a certain amount of narrative nerve the hostage-taker has. He hasn't yet decided to finish the job. He's not shocked and surprised he can't cut the hostage's throat; he's working his way up to the narrative moment where he will. And the hp represent part of that countdown timer.

[Willie the Duck]

For me, hp are as much "plot armor" as they are anything else. It is unlikely that the high-level NPC is going to die from Bob the Butler sneaking into his room and slitting his throat, narratively speaking. It might happen, but it's unlikely. More likely, something will interfere and cause the attempt to fail. Sure, he might give him a nasty cut, but if he cannot roll high enough with an automatic critical hit (which is about as far as I'm willing to go on "sleeping/unaware target can't defend himself, and you have all the time in the world to line up the attack"), then that means some plot contrivance, some defense that the NPC has, some lucky roll or flail... something prevented it from being a lethal throat-cut. It can, but doesn't have to be, "meat" that just wouldn't cut. What it is depends heavily on the situation, the target, Bob's skills and nature, etc.

Yeah. I think part of the frustration that could be had in situations like this is that the game still treats it as 'you make an attack roll, do HP damage, and it just doesn't kill them,' which sure feels like attacking a defenseless target with a knife (where it seems like it should kill them). A more narrative-mechanics-based system might instead have a mechanic which actually intervenes, keeping from the assailant from 'attacking' at all. This is a place where D&D's abstractions can grate (HP are definitely designed to work best in a dungeon battle scene, or the occasional fall into a pit of spikes or the like).

If the character being held hostage with a gun to his head is of the sort that his hp simply are too high for that to be a threat in the hands of this mook, then having the action hero nonchalance about the situation is thematically appropriate. I have no problem with the NPC mook getting to the point that he's flabberghasted and annoyed at being ignored as only vaguely important despite his threatening hold on the creature that has so many hp that his threat is negligible.
We saw that with Black Widow in the first Avengers movie. There certainly is a place for it.

[EggKookoo]

Yeah. I think part of the frustration that could be had in situations like this is that the game still treats it as 'you make an attack roll, do HP damage, and it just doesn't kill them,' which sure feels like attacking a defenseless target with a knife (where it seems like it should kill them). A more narrative-mechanics-based system might instead have a mechanic which actually intervenes, keeping from the assailant from 'attacking' at all. This is a place where D&D's abstractions can grate (HP are definitely designed to work best in a dungeon battle scene, or the occasional fall into a pit of spikes or the like).

This is when I try to remind myself that the order of operations is that the DM first decides if the action succeeds or fails, and only calls for dice when it's not clear. If you hold a knife to a truly defenseless but high-HP enemy and decide to slice his throat, I can simply say, yes, you cut his throat and he's now rapidly bleeding to death.

[Doug Lampert]

Controversially, I've had certain things kill or drop to 0 HP before with no real reference to the rules. A character got hanged once; I think they were expecting the drop-and-stop to inflict massive damage, or maybe start inflicting death saving throws, and were surprised and a bit miffed when I said "Your neck snaps and you die." That player later said they were ok with it (they had blown a lot of opportunities to get out of that fate), but it was shocking in a way I don't think it should have been. Nowadays I probably would have given them more direct warning of "this will immediately kill you", but I otherwise don't think I would handle it differently.

I've done the same for non-PC death before. Sleeping characters that aren't huge monsters can be slain instantly and without a roll if you can strike them while they're still asleep. Falls from a certain height result in getting knocked to 0 HP regardless of HP total, and a certain height above that results in death.

At the end of the day, HP are good for modeling survival and endurance in conditions of heroic combat, and not good for much else. If you want to model dangers outside of those conditions, go outside the HP system. Just have a little talk with your players first so they're aware that HP is not the sole measure of how much danger they're in.

What height is instant death? In the real world the record for falling without a chute and living is over SIX MILES, the record for walking away effectively unhurt is over two miles. You can't actually breath particularly well at six miles, your D&D character isn't flying that high. Thus whatever the "sure death" height is in the real world, there is NO CHANCE that your D&D character is falling that far unless he gets there in something like a presurized aircraft cabin.

In the real world, an executioner's axe against a completely helpless foe with a skilled and specially trained wielder resulting in an unacceptably high chance that the victim thrashed arround and took one or two additional blows to finish off, this is why they went to the Guilloteen and various other methods that were supposed to be quicker and surer, because in a world with NO healing magic, it's simply too hard to reliably kill someone quickly no matter how you are armed and how helpless they are. In a world with healing magic, "noisily expires over the next 30 seconds" (5 full rounds) and "instant death" are very different things, and a knife to the throat is AT BEST a threat of a sure thing on the first.

Just say no to "this is totally unsurvivable". Even falling onto lava is completely survivable in the real world.

[EggKookoo]

In the real world, an executioner's axe against a completely helpless foe with a skilled and specially trained wielder resulting in an unacceptably high chance that the victim thrashed arround and took one or two additional blows to finish off, this is why they went to the Guilloteen and various other methods that were supposed to be quicker and surer, because in a world with NO healing magic, it's simply too hard to reliably kill someone quickly no matter how you are armed and how helpless they are.

Now you've got me curious about the survival rate of being guillotined.

[PhantomSoul]

Just say no to "this is totally unsurvivable". Even falling onto lava is completely survivable in the real world.

But that's not what the totally officially supported rules tell us!
(source (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/55269/Lava-Rules-Fire-and-Brimstone) / pdf (http://www.scratchfactory.com/Resources/LavaBanners/LavaRules.pdf))

[Segev]

Just say no to "this is totally unsurvivable". Even falling onto lava is completely survivable in the real world.

I mean, to be fair, there were industrial accidents (still might be, but I remember these coming up in history class in high school) with various kinds of stamp-presses that resulted not just in squished limbs, but limbs being torn off by the falling press's sheer speed and then obliterated to unrecognizable smears underneath them. If the victim had had his head in the way instead of his arm, or had just been standing under it, "There's no surviving that," actually is a sure thing. The "surviving that" all involves the stamp somehow not falling or the target being removed before it is squished.

That said, fiction is also full of "nobody could survive that!" collapses of buildings, squishings by giant feet, etc., where the target super-strengths his way into pushing the squishing surface up and off of himself, or at least crawls out from under it somehow. So, in a game, the general rule of "there's nothing that's totally impossible to survive, conceptually" is probably a good one. Sure, if the math works out that way, fine and dandy, but objecting that the math is unrealistic is only a good idea if you really think the math is too generous in MOST cases.

Use hp as a dramatic tension tool. That's their purpose. When you want to threaten a creature important enough that its hp are that high, you ALSO probably want to string out the dramatic tension to the point that one round instant killing would be disappointing.

Have the hostage-holder nick the hostage's throat, and dig a little deeper each round as he rolls attacks and deals damage. It's superficial up until that last hp, but when he gets his hostage to 0 hp, NOW he can finish the hostage off with one action. You can even bend the rules a little and have 0 hp still keep the hostage conscious, if tension and circumstances demand it. Or you can halt it at 1 hp, using the same notion that permits the melee attack that drives someone to 0 be non-lethal at the attacker's preference.

[Doug Lampert]

Now you've got me curious about the survival rate of being guillotined.

As far as I know, that would be approximately equal to the rate of serious failures in the mechanism. The device was designed to kill as a more reliable alternative to an executioner's axe, and it was. People reputedly still blinked and showed facial and eye movements for some time after having their heads removed from their body. which presumably means not dead yet in some sense, and given that in fifth edition any healing at all prior to actual death brings you back to "alive", that might count as a failure in D&D land, but I'll accept a claim that this is in fact instant and unavoidable death.

But an executioner's axe on a bound and helpless target is VASTLY more dangerous than a dagger to a sleeping man's throat, and in both D&D land and the real world, even the executioner's axe would not reasonably be modeled by "instant and unavoidable death".

Let's have a scenario:
Conan is sleeping in an inn. The serving wench has been blackmailed by the villian of the week, and sneeks in to kill him. She rolls absurdly well on stealth, is Conan killed?

Heck no.
1) He could be lying awake when she sneaks in and no amount of stealth will help.
2) He could be squatting over the chamber pot when she sneaks in and no amount of stealth will help.
3) Some noise outside the room could happen to wake him at just the wrong moment, and no ammount of stealth will help.
4) The henchman of the week might have overheard the evil wizard's agent blackmailing her and have warned Conan so he's lying in wait for her.
5) The girlfriend of the week is a separate character (unlikely but possible) and she cast an alarm spell prior to getting down to business.
6) Conan happens to have an item that casts alarm (conveniently acquired earlier in the session).
There are any number of other possiblities and HP include luck and divine favor which can result in pretty well any of the above.

There is NO stealth roll that should let the untrained servant girl kill Conan with a single stealth roll and dagger strike; because HP are luck and divine favor and plot armor, and this is not a situation where any of those are irrelevant or where an infinite stealth roll could render any of those irrelevant, so his HP are in fact still relevant in this situation of "someone sneaks in to cut his throat".

Similar comments for pretty much any other certain death. You need to get pretty lucky to survive a multiple mile fall, but multiple people have done it in the real world, so it's plainly possible.

Someone wants the dagger to the throat to be a real threat to Conan, the assassin rogue subclass exists for a reason. NPCs of similar ability are quite possible.

[Angelalex242]

I might also say, with Kings in particular, that the kingdom may have accumulated magic items it expects the king to wear and be attuned to in order for the King to stay alive. If the Kingdom has a headband of intellect, a amulet of health, and some kind of defensive item, the king should probably be wearing those...pretty much always.

[Damon_Tor]

If you're a high enough level... If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

I can't get past your premise here. A high level character should absolutely feel like "someone pulling a dagger" is a non-threat. Because it should absolutely be a non-threat. If you're reading a Batman comic and somebody pulls a knife on Batman, are you going to be all "Oh no! Batman is in danger!" No, of course not. Some random jerk with a knife pulling a knife on Batman isn't a threat to him. Deathstroke pulling out A Thanagarian Plasma Dagger? Yeah, that right there are reasonable stakes.

In other words, you maintain tension by actually putting the PCs in danger. If the PCs are not in enough danger, then continue to increase the danger until somebody dies. There you go, tension maintained.

[EggKookoo]

As far as I know, that would be approximately equal to the rate of serious failures in the mechanism. The device was designed to kill as a more reliable alternative to an executioner's axe, and it was. People reputedly still blinked and showed facial and eye movements for some time after having their heads removed from their body. which presumably means not dead yet in some sense, and given that in fifth edition any healing at all prior to actual death brings you back to "alive", that might count as a failure in D&D land, but I'll accept a claim that this is in fact instant and unavoidable death.

I would have to say that, for the level of resolution a game like D&D provides, a guillotine is 100% instantly lethal, every time it's used. I'm not talking about a malfunction. I wouldn't model a guillotine malfunction by having it deal a mass of HP damage, and if the victim remained above 0 HP, saying that happened because the device jammed or whatever. I mean you could do this, but I just don't think it's a good approach.

I would give a guillotine a save-or-die kind of thing, and the save would basically be to see if the device malfunctioned, and the DC would be insanely high unless someone had tinkered with it or it was an old thing in disrepair. Sure, if someone with appropriate magic can quick reattach the victim's head (whatever magic that would be), they could survive. But it would all be independent of hit points.

[PhantomSoul]

I would give a guillotine a save-or-die kind of thing, and the save would basically be to see if the device malfunctioned, and the DC would be insanely high unless someone had tinkered with it or it was an old thing in disrepair.

And even then, a DC for the potentially-decapitated doesn't feel applicable (unless it's that they're actually trying to pull their head out at the last moment, not about the guillotine itself); (Ability Check) DC for repairing the guillotine after a previous failure, (Ability Check) DC for building the guillotine, maybe just a percentile altogether!

[Schwann145]

If you're reading a Batman comic and somebody pulls a knife on Batman, are you going to be all "Oh no! Batman is in danger!" No, of course not.

Batman has plot armor. Your character absolutely shouldn't.
The reader knows Batman is safe from any knife, but Batman himself doesn't. That's why he treats anyone attacking him seriously. With the way HP works, you can literally ignore threats done to your character until your HP gets low enough to be a concern, and if you started at full (and at a high enough level), there is no scenario where you should even bother caring that you're being attacked with that first attack. If someone swings a 6ft greatsword at you, you ignore it, because it cannot possibly hurt you through your 120hp. And the greatsword is way more dangerous than the dagger, or the bolt.
:smallsigh:

[MeimuHakurei]

High HP is supposedly a hallmark of a martial whose alleged job it is to protect the rest of the party. Deciding that HP is too unrealistic and having commoners with knives be a real threat strips away what little martials still have in terms of contribution, where casters need not rely on their HP pool to stay alive.

[Angelalex242]

I don't know. If you somehow got the 20th level fighter in a guillotine, the guillotine simply hits the back of his neck and...stops. It just doesn't hit hard enough. It does...10d10 damage?

It'd be truly badass if the fighter's head simply couldn't be severed by the guillotine.

Heck, I remember a comic where Conan the Barbarian was crucified. The 20th level barbarian survived it.

In Dragon Quest 5, Pankraz, the young hero's father, has to let himself die. It takes the bad guy's cronies like 10 to 15 turns of beating on him before he runs out of HP and dies, and even then the bad guy has to finish him off with the biggest fireball he can throw.

[mysticflame]

Ways to kill off PCs

1: HP Damage. Duh.
2: Max HP reduction (great for poisons/diseases/curses whittling you down over time)
3: Exhaustion levels (6 stage death spiral)
4: Target Death Saves directly (Three strikes and you're out!)
5: Attribute reduction (straight up from previous editions)
6: Prof bonus reduction (Emulates previous edition's energy drain nicely, also a handy death spiral)
7: Save or Suck/Lose/Die
8: Overhealing (explode when THP exceeds your max HP)
9: Reducing XP
10: Aging (in both directions)
11: Sap spell slots
12: Damage vulnerability (as in giving it to you temporarily)
13: Drowning/Choking

Oh, and never forget that threatening people/things other than the PCs themselves is also a totally viable option.


This is an excellent list. All of these are great threats to keep tension alive for a very long time.

[Segev]

Batman has plot armor. Your character absolutely shouldn't.
The reader knows Batman is safe from any knife, but Batman himself doesn't. That's why he treats anyone attacking him seriously. With the way HP works, you can literally ignore threats done to your character until your HP gets low enough to be a concern, and if you started at full (and at a high enough level), there is no scenario where you should even bother caring that you're being attacked with that first attack. If someone swings a 6ft greatsword at you, you ignore it, because it cannot possibly hurt you through your 120hp. And the greatsword is way more dangerous than the dagger, or the bolt.
:smallsigh:

I don't see why hp can't be seen as "plot armor" as much as they are anything else. Why shouldn't your high-hp character, who has high hp specifically to model the fact that he lasts a long time in a fight and isn't easy to kill, be hard to kill?

[mysticflame]

The title of your thread is a part of the problem. If the encounter(s) at hand are consistently a race to run out of HP, then something’s wrong.

There are many ways to create tension in a combat scenario other than running out of health. Time sensitive objectives, actively trying to guide the opposition away from or to something else, and environmental awareness are some vague examples.

A.K.A: The DM could try to get more creative.

Would definitely agree with this. Hp inflation is a big pitfall

[mysticflame]

I don't see why hp can't be seen as "plot armor" as much as they are anything else. Why shouldn't your high-hp character, who has high hp specifically to model the fact that he lasts a long time in a fight and isn't easy to kill, be hard to kill?

would agree with this. I think we tend to think of our characters as just people in 5e. In reality, even a level one character is thought of as an exceptional member of society, in either intelligence or power. A level 10 characters is bordering on a national hero in terms of how powerful they are. Their amor is top class, their bodies have magical and nonmagical protections, their reflexes are at the pinacle of racial achievement, why should they be afraid of a simple crossbow?

[EggKookoo]

I don't see why hp can't be seen as "plot armor" as much as they are anything else. Why shouldn't your high-hp character, who has high hp specifically to model the fact that he lasts a long time in a fight and isn't easy to kill, be hard to kill?

It's not a question about being tough to kill in a fight. High HP represents (among other things) your PC's combat awareness, ability to minimize incoming damage through things like body positioning and angles, and various other "fluid" things like that. Unless you're leaning way into Meat Point Space (I suppose like PhoenixPhyre?), HP are typically not meant to only represent physical durability and toughness. That is, a creature with 100 HP isn't made of material that's literally 10 times tougher than a creature with 10 HP. At least not all the time, and (probably) not in the case of PC races like humans.

Barring a specific magical or unusual protective property, a 20th level human PC's throat is no tougher than a commoner NPC human's throat. It'll slice open just the same if a mundane, sharp blade is drawn across it. In a fight -- like you'd likely see with Batman and the thug -- the PC's high HP makes it hard for an enemy to land a good, deadly slice. But that's because the PC moves in ways that makes it difficult, not because the knife hits and "pings" off those HP like the PC's throat is made of Kevlar. Armor that increases the PC's armor class could be more of that kind of defense.

The above is how I view HP, and how I believe the game wants us to view them. I'm not knocking Meat Points. It's a perfectly valid way to play the game. But it's not my preferred way and I don't think it's the intended way. I have problems with things that allow the players to play their PCs as though the PCs know they're characters in a game. Meat Points encourage that kind of thinking, and I would rather discourage it. But that's just me.

So the question is, what happens when you take the 20th level PC out of a combat situation? Into a situation where all that combat experience is rendered worthless, or at least severely deprecated? Batman is hit with a tranq. He fails whatever saving throw he would need to resist the effects. He is now completely, totally paralyzed. The thug takes a knife to his throat (first removing any armor protection Batman's cowl might provide). Can he slice Batman's throat? Or will he have to saw away nonsensically like Bruce Wayne was a closet Kryptonian or something?

[mysticflame]

It is entirely possible to insert a wound-like system or other gritty elements into 5e, or approximate with things like exhaustion, conditions, lingering injuries and reduced resting benefits.

I really wish 5e had better optional rules for this. Ive always wanted wounds more fleshed out, but I havent found homebrew to fill the gap that I really like.

[mysticflame]

I might also say, with Kings in particular, that the kingdom may have accumulated magic items it expects the king to wear and be attuned to in order for the King to stay alive. If the Kingdom has a headband of intellect, a amulet of health, and some kind of defensive item, the king should probably be wearing those...pretty much always.

yeah magic items throw a whole other can of worms into this convo

[mysticflame]

I assumed most folks here also viewed 5e as having too much HP.

Do yall actually like having such high safety nets?

Past T1, risk of death is low.
There isn't even tension about a hostage dying, cuz a 3rd level spell will fix her right up.

My players are at risk of dying every week.
5e is as terrifying and risky as the dm wants it to be. I constantly throw monsters at my party that are more powerful than they can handle. Sometimes these monsters have way less hp than the party, but because of their makeup, or the sheer amount of them, they are a real threat! As dm its our jobs to make it threatening. Traps, conditions, powerful spells, curses, and strategic combats all play into that.

[mysticflame]

my take on it is the Weekly Long rest Variant rule.

Long rests take a Week of not adventuring. Everything else is handled by Dayly short rests.

That way, loosing HP actually means something. Yes, even if you have a Cleric, because it costs a resource to have it cast on you.

An other take is the PF2e take where Long Rests only restore Con modifier HP (or something along those lines, can't remember the specifics but I'm pretty sure there is at least one more modifier you regain). It's wonderfully simple.

huh. Ill have to try this sometime. does it ever get really boring or irritating? for instance, in could see players in the wilderness in search of their main quest, and in need of a long rest, trudging back to town to count down seven empty days just so they can march back out to the dangerous wilderness.

[Easy e]

In other words, you maintain tension by actually putting the PCs in danger. If the PCs are not in enough danger, then continue to increase the danger until somebody dies. There you go, tension maintained.

Sure, that is one way to raise tension.

To borrow your comics example, the best Superman stories are ones where Superman is not in danger, but his ideals or values are. You can of course create tension outside of physical danger, and perhaps the OP needs to think about that a bit more.

Warning: Gamer story ahead!

We were playing a Highlander themed Immortals style game. A character and the villain were engaged in a duel. They were both Buddhist characters, and during the duel is was not just a battle between swordsmen; but a battle between the interpretations of Buddhist philosophy and how to apply it to the modern world. In the end, the character defeated the villain in combat, but the villain had gotten so into the character's head that the Character spared the villain and sent them on their way in order for the villain to atone and try to achieve enlightenment.

The tension in the battle was not about who would win, but about who had the moral high ground and correct interpretation. This combat sticks in the groups minds to this day, a few years later.

[Segev]

It's not a question about being tough to kill in a fight. High HP represents (among other things) your PC's combat awareness, ability to minimize incoming damage through things like body positioning and angles, and various other "fluid" things like that. Unless you're leaning way into Meat Point Space (I suppose like PhoenixPhyre?), HP are typically not meant to only represent physical durability and toughness. That is, a creature with 100 HP isn't made of material that's literally 10 times tougher than a creature with 10 HP. At least not all the time, and (probably) not in the case of PC races like humans.

Barring a specific magical or unusual protective property, a 20th level human PC's throat is no tougher than a commoner NPC human's throat. It'll slice open just the same if a mundane, sharp blade is drawn across it. In a fight -- like you'd likely see with Batman and the thug -- the PC's high HP makes it hard for an enemy to land a good, deadly slice. But that's because the PC moves in ways that makes it difficult, not because the knife hits and "pings" off those HP like the PC's throat is made of Kevlar. Armor that increases the PC's armor class could be more of that kind of defense.

The above is how I view HP, and how I believe the game wants us to view them. I'm not knocking Meat Points. It's a perfectly valid way to play the game. But it's not my preferred way and I don't think it's the intended way. I have problems with things that allow the players to play their PCs as though the PCs know they're characters in a game. Meat Points encourage that kind of thinking, and I would rather discourage it. But that's just me.

So the question is, what happens when you take the 20th level PC out of a combat situation? Into a situation where all that combat experience is rendered worthless, or at least severely deprecated? Batman is hit with a tranq. He fails whatever saving throw he would need to resist the effects. He is now completely, totally paralyzed. The thug takes a knife to his throat (first removing any armor protection Batman's cowl might provide). Can he slice Batman's throat? Or will he have to saw away nonsensically like Bruce Wayne was a closet Kryptonian or something?

I do not lean much into hp-as-meat, though for specific creatures and characters, it might be. I am fine with a warrior with a body of steel to explain his high hp, the knife barely drawing a scratch of blood when the murderous barmaid sneaks up on him in his sleep and tries to saw through his rock-hard neck.

But I also do not think that is what most high-hp PCs have going on.

As I said in the post you're responding to, it is often some variation on plot armor.

I see no reason why the same plot armor that keeps the burglar who broke into Bruce Wayne's hotel room and tries to slay him in his sleep while committing a robbery wouldn't also protect the 7th level rogue. Sure, other factors may also play into it, but in the end, even if we grant the mook burglar position and opportunity to stand over the rogue's bed and make the attack with advantage while the rogue is out of armor and unaware, the sheer number of hp that are likely to keep it from being fatal can still be represented by a number of things besides meat.

Including the rogue waking up and catching the wrist as the knife barely scratched him, or rolling out of the way at the last moment, or throwing the blanket up to deflect the worst of the strike, or even the burglar himself not accounting for how soft and unbalancing the bed is and during the knife in the pillow, nicking the rogue's ear.

Plot armor takes many forms, and hp-as-plot-armor makes sense. The point of hp in combat is the same as plot armor outside of it: extend the drama of a scene and force any deaths that do happen to feel at least somewhat earned by virtue of building sufficient dramatic tension for the death to be built up to.

It isn't dramatically tense to one hit kill an important character who has done amazing things with no build up. Let hp work for you: have their loss in a scene reflect the same "clock" they do in combat.

[Willie the Duck]

Batman has plot armor. Your character absolutely shouldn't.
The reader knows Batman is safe from any knife, but Batman himself doesn't. That's why he treats anyone attacking him seriously. With the way HP works, you can literally ignore threats done to your character until your HP gets low enough to be a concern

I see where you are coming from. I believe, as far as the game is concerned (certainly how things have been set up with the HP dynamic since the early versions of the game), your character doesn't actually do so. Hit Points are them being a capable character treating his opponents seriously and positively not ignoring threats. They may take calculated risks, exposing themselves to more dangerous tasks (represented by some action which provides advantage to their opponent), but they are always trying to defend themselves. If you the player choose to just stand there for a while, choosing not to act and laughing at the low-level-character doing pitiful damage, that probably represents toying with your opponent (which Batman rarely does, but several perfectly mortal comic book characters do with pitiful opponents). The game doesn't really cover people just choosing to let someone run up and hit them wherever they want (including across the throat with a blade, or other 'probably deadly' attacks) because the situation where a character would do that is vanishingly small enough not to cover (certainly not at the expense of complicating the normal combat play loop with a bunch of side rules and potential rooms for abuse).

D&D has since forever had it both ways as to whether the combat is abstract or actual individual actions (certainly ammo tracking having 1 arrow/bolt per attack suggests that each attack roll is a specific attempted weapon strike), but HP are strongly in the abstract. The Hit Points roll into themselves defenses taken which also are part of other game components (AC, dodge actions, not just standing there). That leaves a wibbly-wobbly inconsistent smear that I totally get someone not preferring. It does prevent the situation found in wargames like Chainmail and RPGs like RuneQuest where high-powered characters/opponents are incredibly hard to hit, but that lucky crit takes them out suddenly and instantly. In the former, it makes people not get invested in their wargame pieces and in the latter it makes even the most combat capable PCs very careful about when to enter combat (something I believe the devs believe is not preferred by the player base as a whole).

[Damon_Tor]

Batman has plot armor. Your character absolutely shouldn't.

If you really feel that way, massively reduce HP. Only increase HP at levels, 5, 11, and 17. There you go, every encounter is fully lethal.

If that's too lethal, increase HP at levels, 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20.

If it's still too lethal increase HP at levels, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 20

If that's still too lethal increase HP at odd levels.

Find whatever level of "plot armor" suits you and your players.

[Segev]

I know I addressed it, but I feel like this needs to be examined directly: "Batman has plot armor. Your character absolutely shouldn't."

Why shouldn't your character have plot armor?

[EggKookoo]

I know I addressed it, but I feel like this needs to be examined directly: "Batman has plot armor. Your character absolutely shouldn't."

Why shouldn't your character have plot armor?

Because D&D doesn't have a plot. Well, it kind of does, but only after the fact. Just like real life!

[animorte]

Because D&D doesn't have a plot. Well, it kind of does, but only after the fact. Just like real life!
Well the interesting note is that we don’t actually know whether or not we have plot armor…

I was going to list some outrageous survival stories of people coming out on the other side and living to see years of success. You get my point.

I don’t think that our PCs have plot armor by default, but they certainly can have it. I know for a fact that many DMs will often include an NPC with plot armor, including myself.

[Damon_Tor]

Well the interesting note is that we don’t actually know whether or not we have plot armor…

I was going to list some outrageous survival stories of people coming out on the other side and living to see years of success. You get my point.

I don’t think that our PCs have plot armor by default, but they certainly can have it. I know for a fact that many DMs will often include an NPC with plot armor, including myself.

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics implies that we do, in fact, have plot armor. One cannot observe a universe in which one does not exist, and so by necessity the universe you observe is always the one where things have gone exactly the right way to ensure your survival up to that point.

In other words, Schrödinger's cat is always alive from the perspective of the cat itself.

[Schwann145]

I know I addressed it, but I feel like this needs to be examined directly: "Batman has plot armor. Your character absolutely shouldn't."

Why shouldn't your character have plot armor?

Plot armor is designed to protect the character from ultimate harm and/or support the character into success that isn't actually earned. Doing so totally removes the "G" from "RPG."
Batman has plot armor because he's supposed to win; to beat the bad guy in the end and return to do it again in the next issue. Sherlock Holmes is supposed to solve the mystery so he will, guaranteed, regardless of the details.
Player Characters in D&D aren't supposed to do anything except make interesting decisions that may lead to winning, may lead to losing, or anything in between. By protecting players from consequences with plot armor, you're no longer playing a game. There has to be stakes.

Now, I don't think HP is full-on plot armor, but it's definitely "plot padding." You all-too-often (as evidenced above in many replies already) have to post-hoc justify why you were able to survive as long as you did. You know the dagger stab won't be dangerous, so you have to do mental gymnastics to explain why getting stabbed didn't seriously hurt you. When it's a fair fight and you know what's coming, that's easy to do. When it's an unfair fight or you don't see what's coming, suddenly verisimilitude gets seriously strained in order to justify it; "you got lucky" ends up being a catch-all explanation for, "there's no better way to explain why you survived that surprise attack, because you didn't see it coming so none of your skill could explain avoiding it." Etc.

[PhantomSoul]

I personally prefer having PCs not inherently special: they're actual agents in their success, rather than fate deciding they survive in an intentional sense. What makes them special is the players' decisions in play, not that the universe is conspiring for their survival. Most others could have been great, but these specific characters are making themselves great. (There are also going to be other impressive characters that aren't PCs.)


The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics implies that we do, in fact, have plot armor. One cannot observe a universe in which one does not exist, and so by necessity the universe you observe is always the one where things have gone exactly the right way to ensure your survival up to that point.

In other words, Schrödinger's cat is always alive from the perspective of the cat itself.

Not sure how you get plot armour out of that without blue text! :) The cat might always perceive itself as alive, but they doesn't mean it thinks the box is providing life support! (Though I suppose that might explain cats's obsession with boxes...)

[EggKookoo]

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics implies that we do, in fact, have plot armor. One cannot observe a universe in which one does not exist, and so by necessity the universe you observe is always the one where things have gone exactly the right way to ensure your survival up to that point.

Survivor bias. History is full of dead people, right up until this very instant.

[Damon_Tor]

Survivor bias. History is full of dead people, right up until this very instant.

Exactly correct. The entire point of the Copenhagen interrelation is that at any given moment any point of uncertainty in the quantum sense, each of the possible outcomes occur, but we can only ever perceive one chain of events. And so mind-boglingly numerous are relevant quantum events that this effectively makes us live in a multiverse with infinitely improbable branches in the causality chain. This means that no matter how unlikely, if there is even a hair of a chance that you will survive a given event or circumstance, in sine timeline or another, things will happen to work out that way. And because you can only ever observe a universe in which you exist, you are guaranteed to be in one of the timelines in which you happen to survive absolutely everything.

This is the basis of "quantum immortality" which is fascinating.

And it's exactly "plot armor". Batman exists in the context of the "Batman" comics, which only exist because he does: that means we're necessarily observing a reality where Batman somehow manages to survive despite the odds. That's Batman's plot armor, and it's almost the exact same thing as quantum immortality. You are the main character of the universe you observe.

[animorte]

quantum stuff
I recently started looking into quantum physics and the like so this is fascinating to me.

[EggKookoo]

Batman exists in the context of the "Batman" comics, which only exist because he does: that means we're necessarily observing a reality where Batman somehow manages to survive despite the odds. That's Batman's plot armor, and it's almost the exact same thing as quantum immortality.

Every living character has plot armor. Alfred has it. Two-Face has it. Random civilian #9 walking down the street has it. There's nothing special about Batman in this sense.

When people talk about plot armor, it's typically used in a predictive fashion. You know Batman will survive because he has plot armor. That's very different from saying he (or anyone) has it after the fact.

[LudicSavant]

Every living character has plot armor. Alfred has it. Two-Face has it. Random civilian #9 walking down the street has it. There's nothing special about Batman in this sense.

When people talk about plot armor, it's typically used in a predictive fashion. You know Batman will survive because he has plot armor. That's very different from saying he (or anyone) has it after the fact.

It can also be used after the fact to suggest that the manner by which the character survived challenged the reader's suspension of disbelief, revealing the hand of the author in a manner they found unsatisfyingly conspicuous.

For example, if Darkseid successfully punches an unprotected Batman and it only affects him like he got punched by Bane, a person might say that plot armor saved him.

[rel]

A few things to note:

D&D games, at least most published adventures and modules, do have a plot. And most of the time a PC dying or even a TPK just means the players come back with new characters and keep following said story with little interruption.

A game where PC death is explicitly not on the table can still have stakes. In fact, the games I've played with the highest stakes, the hardest won victories and the most disappointing failures were games where death wasn't a real possibility for the PC's.
By contrast, character death, particularly if it's very common, has never been as impactful. Often it's a complete non issue, an excuse for the player to bring in a new character with cool new mechanics rather than something to agonise over.

HP as meat results in a world that doesn't match other fiction that well. But the resulting world is very internally consistent and matches the D&D mechanics very well.
High level PC's are inhuman beings who can cross continents in an eye blink, bring the dead back to life, and invade heaven on a whim. Try to stab one and your knife probably breaks against their hide of scars. Or they go down, only to come back to life a moment later, reanimated by the eldritch forces within them.

As an alternative, you can go the other way and say that no part of HP is meat. Rename HP 'fate' and treat it as such.
This results in a less consistent world, but does match a lot of other fiction more closely.

[PhoenixPhyre]

HP as meat results in a world that doesn't match other fiction that well. But the resulting world is very internally consistent and matches the D&D mechanics very well. .

Personally, I'm much more concerned with the latter than the former. D&D is D&D. D&D is not a "fantasy fiction simulator". The best settings and games take the system at face value instead of trying to shoehorn unrelated concepts into it (either frontally or by the back door). Same goes for characters, which is why I have no patience for "<fictional character> in D&D" conversations.

[Tanarii]

Because D&D doesn't have a plot. Well, it kind of does, but only after the fact. Just like real life!
Yeah, the term "plot" armor isn't the best. It's just a game mechanic to represent how incredibly hard PCs are to kill. Even if they're unconscious or paralyzed. Because they're just that good (at not dying). Descriptions of how good they are have to follow the game mechanic.

If you prefer, call it retroactive-description-required armor. :smallamused:

Or, yknow, don't. If you don't agree and decide to override the game mechanic sometimes.

[Schwann145]

High level PC's are inhuman beings who can cross continents in an eye blink, bring the dead back to life, and invade heaven on a whim.

Are they, though?
Barbarian
Fighter
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Artificer
None of the above seem very "inhuman" at level 20 to me. None of them can do any planar travel, teleporting across the world, and only the Paladin can hope to Raise Dead. The toughest character on the list is only ever Resistant to damage (not Immune, ever). The vast majority will never surpass what is accepted as capable by humanoids (Ability Score cap of 20).

Where... where, did this idea that D&D characters become so otherworldly come from?? Because magic users exist and spells allow for otherwise impossible things, therefore all classes are equally impossible? That leap of logic is so massive...

A level 18 Rogue gains the Elusive class feature, which makes it so no attack roll has advantage against you while you aren't incapacitated. My god, we should just call them Franklin Richards with that level of unstoppable, reality-warping, power!

[Sneak Dog]

Are they, though?
Barbarian
Fighter
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Artificer
None of the above seem very "inhuman" at level 20 to me. None of them can do any planar travel, teleporting across the world, and only the Paladin can hope to Raise Dead. The toughest character on the list is only ever Resistant to damage (not Immune, ever). The vast majority will never surpass what is accepted as capable by humanoids (Ability Score cap of 20).

Where... where, did this idea that D&D characters become so otherworldly come from?? Because magic users exist and spells allow for otherwise impossible things, therefore all classes are equally impossible? That leap of logic is so massive...

A level 18 Rogue gains the Elusive class feature, which makes it so no attack roll has advantage against you while you aren't incapacitated. My god, we should just call them Franklin Richards with that level of unstoppable, reality-warping, power!

Normal people have single-digit health in D&D. A level 5 barbarian is capable of besting five men I'd say quite reliably. They're now level 20. This is someone capable of taking on dragons. Their combat capability has been inhuman for 15+ levels. I can't help it 5e doesn't grant them exploration and social capabilities to match though. Different threads exist for that one.

EDIT: My bad. Guards may be considered normal and have an exceptional 11 hp! Far beyond commoners and nobles.

[MoiMagnus]

I personally prefer having PCs not inherently special: they're actual agents in their success, rather than fate deciding they survive in an intentional sense. What makes them special is the players' decisions in play, not that the universe is conspiring for their survival. Most others could have been great, but these specific characters are making themselves great. (There are also going to be other impressive characters that aren't PCs.)[/COLOR]

Though if the "plot armour" talked about here is HP, the PCs are not inherently special, since every character in the universe has HP. The universe is "conspiring" for the survival of literally every living being in the universe, and reward those who rise to the occasion and push their limit with more protection (more HP when you level up) than those who settle with simply living.

[Schwann145]

Normal people have single-digit health in D&D. A level 5 barbarian is capable of besting five men I'd say quite reliably. They're now level 20. This is someone capable of taking on dragons. Their combat capability has been inhuman for 15+ levels. I can't help it 5e doesn't grant them exploration and social capabilities to match though. Different threads exist for that one.

EDIT: My bad. Guards may be considered normal and have an exceptional 11 hp! Far beyond commoners and nobles.

Define "normal?"
Because that's really not the case. The "normal" Bandit Captain has 65hp. The Cult Fanatic has 33hp. The Gladiator has a whopping 112hp. The standard NPC Knight has 52. The Noble has 9 but the Priest has 27! The Veteran has 58 which isn't that much more than a random street Thug who has 32.
It's very very very clear that HP is based on the arbitrarily assigned "levels" that the NPCs are stated as. You could just as easily have a Guard with 111hp as have one with 11.

Edit: Just for funsies, your level 5 Barbarian's "five men" to best are 4 Thugs and a Bandit Captain. Lemme know how that goes. :smallwink:

[stoutstien]

HP is a poor tension mechanic all together. The balloon analogy is apt where it pops and when tension pops it's done until you replace it and start over. the race to zero mentality is anti-tension as a rule.
Tension needs four things to work well: agency, limits, uncertainty, and incremental shifts. At face value HP has it but if you look closely its nothing more than a facade.

HP can support other forms of tension (resource management, action denial, lose of progression/of options, set backs) but alone it's nothing more than what it is. A rough attempt to balance PC opinions.

[animorte]

None of the above seem very "inhuman" at level 20 to me.
They still have access to some superhuman feats. I don’t think they’re necessarily otherworldly though. I mean, if you’re comparing to our world, I would still say so because they literally are in their own little (or big) world.

Relative to their own world, however, it does tend to level up with them in many circumstances (as you made very clear with your direct examples). It doesn’t always level to match the pace of the PCs though, and the PCs don’t always match the pace of the world.

[EggKookoo]

HP is a poor tension mechanic all together.

In my experience with non-D&D TTRPGs, HP is the worst mechanic except for all the others.

[Segev]

Where... where, did this idea that D&D characters become so otherworldly come from?? Because magic users exist and spells allow for otherwise impossible things, therefore all classes are equally impossible? That leap of logic is so massive...

A level 18 Rogue gains the Elusive class feature, which makes it so no attack roll has advantage against you while you aren't incapacitated. My god, we should just call them Franklin Richards with that level of unstoppable, reality-warping, power!

Which is more a problem with those classes that are so limited than with the notion that level 20 characters should keep up with the casters. A level 20 character should be roughly as powerful as a level 20 character. If one class is much stronger than another at the same level, one of two things should be done: the stronger class should be made weaker at that level, or the weaker class should be made stronger at that level.

If you want lower-power games, you're absolutely in your rights to desire them. That's what lower levels are for. If you want higher power games, you're absolutely in your rights to desire them. That's what higher level games are for.


Why is it that people hold up weaker classes at level 20 as if they're evidence that level 20 shouldn't be that powerful, rather than as evidence that the weaker classes aren't doing what level 20 characters should be doing? Where is it written your games must go to level 20 even if you prefer a lower power level?

[Sneak Dog]

Define "normal?"
Because that's really not the case. The "normal" Bandit Captain has 65hp. The Cult Fanatic has 33hp. The Gladiator has a whopping 112hp. The standard NPC Knight has 52. The Noble has 9 but the Priest has 27! The Veteran has 58 which isn't that much more than a random street Thug who has 32.
It's very very very clear that HP is based on the arbitrarily assigned "levels" that the NPCs are stated as. You could just as easily have a Guard with 111hp as have one with 11.

Edit: Just for funsies, your level 5 Barbarian's "five men" to best are 4 Thugs and a Bandit Captain. Lemme know how that goes. :smallwink:

Yeah... That's fair. D&D has no real setting, no world, no sense of scale and conflicting if any guidance to help the GM. If a GM does make one with consistency of actually using commoners, nobles and guards rather than... that, then you suddenly regain a degree of verisimilitude. Swords being lethal, wolves being scary and things that are threatening in the real world being appropriately threatening in this resource management combat game.

But if your normal bandit captain has 65 hp, then a wolf is a nuisance and a dagger laughable. The world becomes fantastic in a wuxia-like way and not everyone is up for that. See this thread.

[LudicSavant]

Are they, though?
Barbarian
Fighter
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Artificer
None of the above seem very "inhuman" at level 20 to me. None of them can do any planar travel, teleporting across the world, and only the Paladin can hope to Raise Dead. The toughest character on the list is only ever Resistant to damage (not Immune, ever). The vast majority will never surpass what is accepted as capable by humanoids (Ability Score cap of 20).

:smallconfused:


None of them can do any planar travel
All high level Monks can planar travel, with no material components, numerous times per day.


The toughest character on the list is only ever Resistant to damage (not Immune, ever).
Multiple classes on that list have access to ways to get immunity to at least one damage type. One of them just automatically has an immunity in their base class progression.

I don't know what you think the "toughest character on the list" is but I hope it's not Barbarians because they sort of fell out of the running for that title by like, tier 3 at the latest. Zealots could maybe jump back in the running specifically at 20, but only if nothing they fight can beat their death gate (and it's not hard to find things that can beat said gate at level 20).

Even then, I'd say the ability to just not die, like, ever from conventional attacks seems rather inhuman, even in the case of the Barbarian.


only the Paladin can hope to Raise Dead.
Artificers, Monks, Paladins, and Rangers (so, more than half of your list!) all have the capacity to resurrect allies. Alchemists specifically do it with the spell named Raise Dead. The others don't literally have the specific spell named that, but that in no way stops them from resurrecting people.

[KorvinStarmast]

Because D&D doesn't have a plot. Well, it kind of does, but only after the fact. Just like real life! That's how it's worked for our games.

I don’t think that our PCs have plot armor by default, but they certainly can have it. The taste for this varies by table and by the people at it, and their relationships.

I personally prefer having PCs not inherently special: they're actual agents in their success, rather than fate deciding they survive in an intentional sense. What makes them special is the players' decisions in play, not that the universe is conspiring for their survival. Most others could have been great, but these specific characters are making themselves great. We prefer that approach at our tables. And PCs can die as a result of that agency.

..., which is why I have no patience for "<fictional character> in D&D" conversations. I have always viewed the PC is a unique character in their own story, and that story is told after the adventures are completed, and/or, after the demise of that PC. For example, the story of Korvin Starmast was not a long one, given his abrupt demise and final disposition as a pile of ogre poop in a deep dark cave somewhere to the east of Yartar ...

In my experience with non-D&D TTRPGs, HP is the worst mechanic except for all the others. I hear Mr Churchill's voice ... :smallsmile:

[KorvinStarmast]

Artificers, Monks, Paladins, and Rangers (so, more than half of your list!) all have the capacity to resurrect allies. Alchemists specifically do it with the spell named Raise Dead. The others don't literally have the specific spell named that, but that in no way stops them from resurrecting people. Hmm, which monk. Mercy? (PS, nice post :smallsmile: )

[LudicSavant]

Hmm, which monk. Mercy? (PS, nice post :smallsmile: )

Yeah. Mercy Monks get one of the better resurrection features in the game at 17th. Unlike Raise Dead, it's much more immediate; it brings you back with ~27 hit points (instead of 1), cures a variety of status effects that Raise Dead doesn't (so it can even counter stuff like a Divine Word death combo), and works in 1 action instead of 1 hour.

[Schwann145]

Which is more a problem with those classes that are so limited than with the notion that level 20 characters should keep up with the casters. A level 20 character should be roughly as powerful as a level 20 character. If one class is much stronger than another at the same level, one of two things should be done: the stronger class should be made weaker at that level, or the weaker class should be made stronger at that level.
An opinion you're certainly entitled to, but goes against what D&D has presented for 90+% of it's life. Classes were explicitly imbalanced prior to 4th Edition, balanced for 4th Edition, then class balance again abandoned after 4th Edition.
The game has never been designed in such a way that Character X and Y need to be equal power at all times. As a group-coop design, individual power doesn't matter. Heck, even character leveling isn't assumed by the game to be equal; if DMs didn't hate dealing with XP so much that milestone leveling didn't catch popularity, there's no reason to even assume characters would all be equal level, never mind equal level-power.


All high level Monks can planar travel, with no material components, numerous times per day.
So, yes, technically Ethereal travel is planar travel. But we both know it's wildly different than the intention as presented (ie: invading heaven on a whim). :smalltongue:


Multiple classes on that list have access to ways to get immunity to at least one damage type. One of them just automatically has an immunity in their base class progression.
Got me again. Monks and Poison. But you said multiple classes? Are you counting Diseases as well? Cuz I wasn't. Also, any damage types that aren't so niche, or just Poison?


I don't know what you think the "toughest character on the list" is but I hope it's not Barbarians because they sort of fell out of the running for that title by like, tier 3 at the latest. Zealots could maybe jump back in the running specifically at 20, but only if nothing they fight can beat their death gate (and it's not hard to find things that can beat said gate at level 20).

Even then, I'd say the ability to just not die, like, ever from conventional attacks seems rather inhuman, even in the case of the Barbarian.
I was considering "toughest" as "able to withstand the hits the best," and as far as I know that title still belongs to a Bear Totem Barbarian. Is someone else taking hits better than that? (Again, overall "defense" is not what I'm discussing here - avoidance is not toughness.)
Also, I'd still hesitate to call them "inhumanly" durable. I wouldn't describe John McClane that way and he's *the* tough guy example, IMO. (Edit: eh, maybe John Wick's taken that title now that I think about it...)


Artificers, Monks, Paladins, and Rangers (so, more than half of your list!) all have the capacity to resurrect allies. Alchemists specifically do it with the spell named Raise Dead. The others don't literally have the specific spell named that, but that in no way stops them from resurrecting people.
It's a stretch to say, *class* can do this, when what you really mean is *subclass,* but again, technically you got me:
•Sometimes it's hard to remember Alchemist Artificers exist with how unpopular they are, but you're right, they specifically get access to Raise Dead.
•9 out of 10 Monks agree they can't Raise any Dead, but Way of Mercy exists, so again, you got me.
•The spell list I was using apparently updated to include Tasha's new spells but not the expanded list they gave Ranger, so that's just on me. Thx for the catch.

[NaughtyTiger]

Which is more a problem with those classes that are so limited than with the notion that level 20 characters should keep up with the casters. A level 20 character should be roughly as powerful as a level 20 character. If one class is much stronger than another at the same level, one of two things should be done: the stronger class should be made weaker at that level, or the weaker class should be made stronger at that level.

If you want lower-power games, you're absolutely in your rights to desire them. That's what lower levels are for. If you want higher power games, you're absolutely in your rights to desire them. That's what higher level games are for.


Why is it that people hold up weaker classes at level 20 as if they're evidence that level 20 shouldn't be that powerful, rather than as evidence that the weaker classes aren't doing what level 20 characters should be doing? Where is it written your games must go to level 20 even if you prefer a lower power level?



It sounds like you are conflating power with HP.
OP is lamenting that DnD doesn't support the fragility of T1 with the abilities granted in T4.

And doesn't provide a good explanation of why not.
A tactical game doesn't really need to. An imagination game kinda does.

[truemane]

I have not read the whole thread, so apologies ahead of time if I repeat something or miss some context.

As much as I love Bounded Accuracy and think that, as a whole it was a change the game really needed, I do lament that it means one of the sole remaining "dials" for challenge is HP. Sometimes that's fun, but sometimes it just turns things into a grind when they don't need to be.

I have a collection of tool I use to help manage this:

1. The Brute Force method. Once the PC's hit 4th/5th level, I start giving all monsters half-HP and double damage. It's a simple change, easy to do on the fly, and makes every round in combat significant. Especially with multiple combatants.

2. I avoid random encounters. I try to make sure every combat has stakes outside of itself. Fighting a half dozen orcs in a forest is a grind. But fighting a half-dozen orcs when you're in a rush and something bad will happen if you're late, that's tense.

3. I cut combat short the moment the tension is gone. If there's outside stakes, it's over once they're resolved. If the combat is the stakes, as soon it's clear the PC's will win, I say "And you mop the remaining few bad guys." And we're done. It feels weird at first, especially to more simulationist-minded players, but I've never had a group not love it once they got used to it.

4. Kind of an off-shoot of #2, I try to always have stakes in a combat that draining HP can't solve. A knife to a PC's throat may mean nothing, but a knife to the throat of the cheerful, helpful kid who's been guiding them through the forest? Whole other thing. You can just give one bad guy a super important, extremely fragile thing that the PC's need and suddenly the dynamics of combat are very different.

5. A secondary off-shoot to #4, but something I have used to good effect often enough that, in my mind, it's its own thing: emotional stakes. Have the standard bad guy do something that really makes the PC's angry. My go-to is to introduce an NPC that everyone loves, make them a stable part of the world, and then have my villain do something mean to them (kill, hurt, steal from, kidnap, etc). People at the table, for the most part (in my experience) are ready to buy in to whatever you've got for them. So you only need the merest soupçon of justification to turn even the grindy bits into emotionally-charged grudge matches.

As far as plot armour goes, I just ask the table what they prefer. My standard options are something like:
-No plot armour. The dice say you die, you die.
-Full plot armour. If the dice say you die, you're out of the scene, but you can 'miraculously survive' with some kind of scar or trauma or injury to show for it.
-Optional plot armour. The party, as a whole, has access to X number of 'Extra Lives' that individual players may use, or not use, as they wish, to invoke the 'miraculous survival with injury' thing.

More often than not, a group of people who don't know each other will opt for some version of #3. In my experience, even hard-core simulationist players will use an Extra Life if the dice really turn against them in a way that's narratively unsatisfying.

[Segev]

An opinion you're certainly entitled to, but goes against what D&D has presented for 90+% of it's life. Classes were explicitly imbalanced prior to 4th Edition, balanced for 4th Edition, then class balance again abandoned after 4th Edition.

Incorrect. Classes were explicitly imbalanced up through 2e, where instead XP totals were balanced. 3e attempted to have balanced classes at all levels, or at least to have the imbalance wobble back and forth so that if there is an imbalance at a particular level, it corrects or overcorrects the next level, and keeps trying to stay near a balance point. The fact that it failed doesn't mean that it was "explicitly imbalanced."

4e made every class a martial adept. It wasn't "balance between classes" that was the goal so much as "perfect mathematical precision" in every aspect of the game, including numbers of rounds of combat a combat takes.


I mean, though, if you WANT to make the argument that classes shouldn't be balanced, then you have no leg to stand on for complaining when classes aren't balanced.

I, personally, think that as long as XP totals are the same for every class at every level, every class should be balanced at every level (or at least use the 3e theoretical idea that any imbalance is temporary at a particular level and will correct as you level up).

I have zero sympathy for a position that says, "Classes aren't supposed to be balanced, so balancing martials to keep up with casters' established power level at level 20 is not necessary and shouldn't be pushed for. And that's unfair to martials; casters shouldn't be the only ones who get that kind of power, and thus shouldn't have that kind of power."

If that isn't your position, I am not aiming my point at you. My point is that if you're upset about martials being underpowered compared to casters, then buffing martials at the levels this is a problem - primarily 11 to 20 - is the correct solution, and any complaint that that makes martials too powerful for the kind of fantasy you want is resolved by sticking to lower level play.

There is nothing forcing high-level play if you want a lower power level.

[Ignimortis]

So how do you get that tension back? Or is that just asking too much from D&D?
You don't spring a couple of bandits with hand crossbows on a party of highly dangerous warriors who have, by level 5, quite possibly accumulated a shared killcount over a hundred. Threats should be proportional. No single character, unless they are a shapeshifting dragon/demon lord/lich/insert super high CR enemy here, is capable of meaningfully backstabbing the player characters physically after a certain level. This is an intended effect of the game as described in Tiers of Play.

If you want to meaningfully ambush a level 5 party, you should have several archers that are aware of how to kill a mage first, and some means of preventing scatter tactics, preferably with some sort of AoE on top. In short, be ready to blast the room in its' entirety.
A level 10 party is probably much the same, but you'll need three times the men.
A level 13 party needs to be hit with something to prevent instant escape if anyone has Teleport or DimDoor or Plane Shift.
A level 20 party needs an army to try and stop them, and honestly, playing out the slaughter of two hundred mooks is not as exciting in D&D as it should be. Keep in mind that by level 20, that dragon/lich/demon lord is probably a fair fight.

Do take note: this game has a class that could, in the situation your post describes, catch that arrow and be almost guaranteed to be able to launch it back at equal force. At level 3. And another class that could cut them both down before they even move, at level 2. While I lament the martial capabilities in this game quite often and vocally, they are more than enough to handle situations of this sort.



I was considering "toughest" as "able to withstand the hits the best," and as far as I know that title still belongs to a Bear Totem Barbarian. Is someone else taking hits better than that? (Again, overall "defense" is not what I'm discussing here - avoidance is not toughness.)
Also, I'd still hesitate to call them "inhumanly" durable. I wouldn't describe John McClane that way and he's *the* tough guy example, IMO.

John McClane is not that tough. He does not stare down dragons. He does not go on planar adventures. He would not survive a 150-ft fall. In short, he is not a D&D character and is not expected to perform like one.


I have not read the whole thread, so apologies ahead of time if I repeat something or miss some context.

As much as I love Bounded Accuracy and think that, as a whole it's was the the change the game really needed, I do lament that it means one of the sole remaining "dials" for challenge is HP. Sometimes that's fun, but sometimes it just turns things into a grind when they don't need to be.

I have a collection of tool I use to help manage this:

*snip*
You know, most of this, IME, would probably make 5e combat much less dull. Thank you. This is some of the best DMing advice I've seen for 5e, and I'll probably pitch it to GMs who would have me for their 5e games.

[Schwann145]

*snip*
Knowing, as a player, what the characters are capable of is a whole different story than the characters themselves and the world they live in knowing. HP is still an abstract after all. A crossbow bolt through the eye is deadly to a level whatever Fighter, and the character knows that. We as players just so happen to know that, because of the system designed math, that's not the case and a single crossbow bolt has to go through a lot of HP before it's actually a threat.
But again, the character doesn't know about HP.

I'm fine with the idea that my initial example isn't enough to be a threat to a group of adventurers. After all, it was a scenario involving untrained merchants, not seasoned folk. But, even upping the stakes to a reasonable level just isn't enough. Let's say the level 10 party is negotiating with the local bandit/warlord/pirates, whoever, and talks go south, and the party is ambushed. Suddenly, good faith talks turn into trained, preloaded, crossbows aimed down from above. Not even just a couple, but like, 12.
Well, unless they all go for one specific target, that's ignorable. 12 trained crossbows on the party should not be ignorable.


John McClane is not that tough. He does not stare down dragons. He does not go on planar adventures. He would not survive a 150-ft fall. In short, he is not a D&D character and is not expected to perform like one.
I don't know why this made me think to ask this, but it did: How would you describe Sir Bowen from Dragonheart? Nothing he's doing in that movie would put him above tier 1, yet he single-handedly slays dragons... so many dragons...

[LudicSavant]

So, yes, technically Ethereal travel is planar travel. It's not Etherealness, it's Astral Projection -- and it's higher level for a reason.


you said multiple classes? Yes.


Are you counting Diseases as well?
No.


I was considering "toughest" as "able to withstand the hits the best," and as far as I know that title still belongs to a Bear Totem Barbarian. Is someone else taking hits better than that? Yes.


Also, I'd still hesitate to call them "inhumanly" durable. I wouldn't describe John McClane that way and he's *the* tough guy example, IMO. (Edit: eh, maybe John Wick's taken that title now that I think about it...)
Neither John McClane nor John Wick are that durable.

[Segev]

Knowing, as a player, what the characters are capable of is a whole different story than the characters themselves and the world they live in knowing. HP is still an abstract after all. A crossbow bolt through the eye is deadly to a level whatever Fighter, and the character knows that. We as players just so happen to know that, because of the system designed math, that's not the case and a single crossbow bolt has to go through a lot of HP before it's actually a threat.
But again, the character doesn't know about HP.Indeed, though I confess that it feels hollow to pretend your PC's fear for his life is real when you know better. I am definitely more in the "Black Widow scene" camp where the cocky confidence of the PC who knows that crossbow bolt isn't going to get anywhere near his vulnerable eyeball because he's just that awesome is warranted.


I'm fine with the idea that my initial example isn't enough to be a threat to a group of adventurers. After all, it was a scenario involving untrained merchants, not seasoned folk. But, even upping the stakes to a reasonable level just isn't enough. Let's say the level 10 party is negotiating with the local bandit/warlord/pirates, whoever, and talks go south, and the party is ambushed. Suddenly, good faith talks turn into trained, preloaded, crossbows aimed down from above. Not even just a couple, but like, 12.
Well, unless they all go for one specific target, that's ignorable. 12 trained crossbows on the party should not be ignorable.Imminently reasonable to give the multi-round-aimed crossbows advantage on the attacks. 12 crossbow bolts should be aimed at the most dangerous, imminent threat - probably the mage or the healer. The bandit leader and his personal guards should be braced for the counterattack by the front-liners, and then round 2 should have the crossbows trained on the most dangerous person left.

This is a tense situation and a real threat, but it isn't "instant death the moment talks break down," either.


I don't know why this made me think to ask this, but it did: How would you describe Sir Bowen from Dragonheart? Nothing he's doing in that movie would put him above tier 1, yet he single-handedly slays dragons... so many dragons...Whatever je ne se qua he has that keeps him from being killed by them? That's represented by hp. He has LOTS of hp.

[Unoriginal]

Knowing, as a player, what the characters are capable of is a whole different story than the characters themselves and the world they live in knowing. HP is still an abstract after all. A crossbow bolt through the eye is deadly to a level whatever Fighter, and the character knows that. We as players just so happen to know that, because of the system designed math, that's not the case and a single crossbow bolt has to go through a lot of HP before it's actually a threat.
But again, the character doesn't know about HP.

I'm fine with the idea that my initial example isn't enough to be a threat to a group of adventurers. After all, it was a scenario involving untrained merchants, not seasoned folk. But, even upping the stakes to a reasonable level just isn't enough. Let's say the level 10 party is negotiating with the local bandit/warlord/pirates, whoever, and talks go south, and the party is ambushed. Suddenly, good faith talks turn into trained, preloaded, crossbows aimed down from above. Not even just a couple, but like, 12.
Well, unless they all go for one specific target, that's ignorable. 12 trained crossbows on the party should not be ignorable.

Again, it depends on who are the crossbow wielders.

12 regular Bandits are not a lethal threat and should not be a lethal threat. They can still weaken the PCs significantly enough that they can't ignore them.

12 Scouts or Spies can be a threat if the PCs don't take them seriously immediately.

12 Thugs are more of an obvious threat, and one the PCs have to take seriously if they also have to fight the boss.

12 Assassins are likely a significant danger to their lives even if the boss doesn't do anything.

Now, you may ask "but the players/PCs don't know who those people are, they just see crossbow-wielding criminals". And you would be correct.

The tension comes from not knowing.

[Ignimortis]

Knowing, as a player, what the characters are capable of is a whole different story than the characters themselves and the world they live in knowing. HP is still an abstract after all. A crossbow bolt through the eye is deadly to a level whatever Fighter, and the character knows that. We as players just so happen to know that, because of the system designed math, that's not the case and a single crossbow bolt has to go through a lot of HP before it's actually a threat.
But again, the character doesn't know about HP.
But the character does know that they can dodge the crossbow bolt well enough to make it maybe hurt, but not kill - that is, if the dodge goes poorly, if it goes well, tink goes the bolt. That's the point. Higher-level adventurers are insanely good at combat, and they are, to some extent, aware of that fact. If you can beat down a dozen orcs all by yourself and come out of it slightly wounded (but nothing that won't heal in a couple of days tops), you are not a normal warrior anymore. And I could see a level 5 or 7 Fighter managing that if they get lucky, and a level 10 Fighter managing it without luck.



I'm fine with the idea that my initial example isn't enough to be a threat to a group of adventurers. After all, it was a scenario involving untrained merchants, not seasoned folk. But, even upping the stakes to a reasonable level just isn't enough. Let's say the level 10 party is negotiating with the local bandit/warlord/pirates, whoever, and talks go south, and the party is ambushed. Suddenly, good faith talks turn into trained, preloaded, crossbows aimed down from above. Not even just a couple, but like, 12.
Well, unless they all go for one specific target, that's ignorable. 12 trained crossbows on the party should not be ignorable.
And unless they all go for the squishiest target and all hit, it will likely be ignored. It's the nature of higher-level D&D. You're not grounded, even if some aspects of the game suggest that you are. You can live through a hail of arrows or a blast of fire hot enough to scorch a normal man to cinders with but nicks and singed eyebrows. The only people who can actually compare are the people who are at least close to them in skill. Like Assassins, maybe.

But I warn you - this tends to go poorly with players. One of my GMs will never live down a moment when the party was attacked by a robber baron's eunuchs (that's what he called them) that had +13 to-hit and triple-digit HP because the party was level 12 or so, and the GM wanted to keep them low on the power pole. It's been almost eight years and it still gets mentioned every now and then, usually as a knowing "ah yes, eunuchs, gotcha".



I don't know why this made me think to ask this, but it did: How would you describe Sir Bowen from Dragonheart? Nothing he's doing in that movie would put him above tier 1, yet he single-handedly slays dragons... so many dragons...
Never've seen it. I've watched a clip, but it's a staged battle? Honestly, I have no idea how a normal guy like that would slay those kinds of dragons. Even the staged fight uses a stationary ballista, so probably not through his own skill and strength?

[LudicSavant]

Indeed, though I confess that it feels hollow to pretend your PC's fear for his life is real when you know better. I am definitely more in the "Black Widow scene" camp where the cocky confidence of the PC who knows that crossbow bolt isn't going to get anywhere near his vulnerable eyeball because he's just that awesome is warranted.

Good example. Black Widow is fully confident that she's not going to get hurt in such scenes.

Characters don't need to know about HP. They do, however, know about the in-world skills that HP symbolize. That high level martial has probably already been dipped in lava (or worse) a few times in their adventuring career and been fine. To not be aware of this would require some awfully selective amnesia.

[KorvinStarmast]

Again, it depends on who are the crossbow wielders.
{snip the examples}
Now, you may ask "but the players/PCs don't know who those people are, they just see crossbow-wielding criminals". And you would be correct.

The tension comes from not knowing. *golf clap* That's the key point. :smallsmile:

[LudicSavant]

If someone has a hand crossbow trained on you, it should be threatening. If you're a high enough level, there's nothing in the world that would actually make that a threat though.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, it should be tense... but it's not. It almost never is.

The heart of the matter is that it should not be tense if a random thug pulls a knife or hand crossbow on a high level D&D character. The thug isn't fast enough or skilled enough to drive in a lethal blow against a person with the preternatural reflexes or pure meat to dodge or absorb lightning bolts every Tuesday.

To make it tense, you either need the thug to be threatening someone or something that isn't a superhero, or you need the one doing the threatening to be of a threat level commensurate to that of the PCs.

[Schwann145]

The heart of the matter is that it should not be tense if a random thug pulls a knife or hand crossbow on a high level D&D character. The thug isn't fast enough or skilled enough to drive in a lethal blow against a person with the preternatural reflexes or pure meat to dodge or absorb lightning bolts every Tuesday.

To make it tense, you either need the thug to be threatening someone or something that isn't a superhero, or you need the one doing the threatening to be of a threat level commensurate to that of the PCs.

But, I maintain that you're not a superhero. Even for the folks who do ascribe to that notion. Because this topic isn't relegated to tier 4. It starts being noticeable at the end of tier 1, long before even the pro-"you sure are a superhero" folk would say you are.

[Angelalex242]

A sword to your neck doesn't look lethal...until the guy wielding is a 20th level Oathbreaker using the same banishing smite/divine smite combo my Paladins use and autocrits because that's what you do to helpless opponents.

[LudicSavant]

But, I maintain that you're not a superhero. Even for the folks who do ascribe to that notion. Because this topic isn't relegated to tier 4. It starts being noticeable at the end of tier 1, long before even the pro-"you sure are a superhero" folk would say you are.

You start absorbing or dodging lightning bolts every Tuesday at like, level 5.

That low level Barbarian is already accustomed to having an ogre swing tree trunks at her. She would be fully justified in a description like "The small dart buries shallowly in their neck with skin like rhino hide, and they snap the shaft with a flex of their shoulder as they limber up, looming towards the idiot thug."

If you want to threaten the characters, you need to either be threatening someone or something weaker than them, or you need the threat to be commensurate to their level of power.

I have never had difficulty creating super-high tension, but I don't do it by saying "a random commoner pulls a dagger on a professional Witcher, I demand you be scared." I do it by things like "the yuan-ti decides to dive into the quicksand after constricting the injured warlock, brackish water threatening to rush into their lungs as they try to mouth spell components" or "as you're chasing the Summer Eladrin leaping, teleporting, and kiting you through the treetops, dryads (using Tree Stride) emerge from the trees behind you and try to kidnap the NPC you were escorting." Neither of those are even hypothetical, I just used those in sessions and they worked like a charm. :smallsmile:

[Unoriginal]

But, I maintain that you're not a superhero. Even for the folks who do ascribe to that notion. Because this topic isn't relegated to tier 4. It starts being noticeable at the end of tier 1, long before even the pro-"you sure are a superhero" folk would say you are.

Let me ask you a question: should a D&D PC be worried about fighting a tiger?

[Schwann145]

I do it by things like "the yuan-ti decides to dive into the quicksand after constricting the warlock, brackish water threatening to rush into their lungs as they try to mouth spell components"
I mean, I'm sure they'll manage to figure out something in the... *checks notes,* 20-40 (assuming a Con of +1 to +3) rounds they have of breath holding. :smalltongue:


Let me ask you a question: should a D&D PC be worried about fighting a tiger?
Short answer: IMO, yes. (*Insert off-topic tangent about how unsatisfyingly weak animals are in 5e...*)

[LudicSavant]

I mean, I'm sure they'll manage to figure out something in the... *checks notes,* 20-40 (assuming a Con of +1 to +3) rounds they have of breath holding. :smalltongue:

It's not the length of time you can hold your breath that's the problem. It's that the monster (that's a threat for the whole party) with a swim speed has you constricted, underwater, and unable to use spells while the party can't easily follow or find you.

[Segev]

Indeed, if you're holding your breath, you're not using verbal-component spells. Now, that's not much of a threat to a martial character, but we all know how overpowered martials are compared to casters in 5e.

But, I maintain that you're not a superhero. Even for the folks who do ascribe to that notion. Because this topic isn't relegated to tier 4. It starts being noticeable at the end of tier 1, long before even the pro-"you sure are a superhero" folk would say you are.

It's not about being "a superhero." Frank Moses (to use another Bruce Willis character) or Chuck Norris or whoever Samuel L.M.F. Jackson is playing today are all highly likely to view the trio of mooks backing up the cannon fodder mini-mastermind in the first act's opening scene with equal contempt.

Or, put another way: "Action hero" is more than enough to not be bothered by random thugs holding you up at crossbow point. It's also plenty to know that the sneaky assassin who isn't already established as a major threat in her own right isn't going to one-hit kill the action hero in his sleep. Heck, even if she IS a threat in her own right, we expect it's going to wind up being a fight scene, not a slaughter.

Heck, Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman's character in RED)...
...is an old man in a nursing home whose been giving Frank some telephone advice, but is clearly past his prime and is out of the game. An assassin shows up in his room, and his last line is to look at the thug in the mirror and ask, "Oh, so that's how it is?" with a resigned expression as the gun comes up and the scene fades to black to the sound of a movie-silencer gun shot.

And then he shows up later in the movie, and we get a flashback to him taking the guy down and turning the gun around on him before walking out of the nursing home to go join the team.

Now, you could argue that it's other mechanics playing in, here, but you can also just use the fact that a 10+ level Assassin such as himself has too many hp to be taken out by a single thug with a crossbow before he can turn around and deal lethal damage to said thug.

I would argue that "action hero" starts as early as level 1, and certainly no later than level 5.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I would argue that "action hero" starts as early as level 1, and certainly no later than level 5.

Strong agree with this. Baseline, D&D characters (assuming positive con-mod) are between 1.5x (d6 HD + 0 con) and 8x (d12 HD + 4 con + rage) as durable to common attacks[1] as a commoner. Not even counting armor. Just about every character will be at least 2x as durable.

A commoner can be KO'd by a single punch from a normally-strong person (+3 STR) or by 4 average-strength punches. A level 1 wizard with +1 con cannot be KO'd by a single punch from any "normal" individual (ie 20 STR). Or a dagger wielded by anyone with a +2 modifier or lower (except on a crit).

PCs are action-hero class (in durability at least) starting at level 1.

[LudicSavant]

Yeah. The party went from thinking they had the fight in the bag to basically panicking when I did that. The Warlock very nearly died -- IIRC they were fished out of the quicksand with 0 hp and swallowed muck. A good time was had by all.

(Later that adventure, the Fighter did die, from another encounter that could be used as an example of even higher tension. It's okay though, they managed to gather up enough of their remains to get resurrected later).

Maintaining tension isn't accomplished by throwing a weak mook out there and doing something that would threaten a commoner -- unless of course the person they're threatening is a commoner the PCs care about.

[Segev]

I think all of this really boils down to: tension doesn't (typically) come from the risk of suddenly dying from full hp in D&D, and that is a good thing.

Additional caveat: you can model the stand-off scene where "nothing is happening" as an actual combat encounter where the hostage is losing hp if you frame it right. Sure, the narrative excuse might be that the hostage-holder is merely threatening to kill right now, and hasn't yet pulled the metaphorical or literal trigger, but he can be mechanically doing steady damage. Now, this brings up the question of why are the other PCs holding off? If you want to model it as a stand-off, maybe they aren't. Maybe they're making attack rolls and ability checks and the other guy is opposing them, and the fact he hasn't been grappled and pulled away or been reduced to 0 hp is why he's still standing there.

Yes, it requires a little more abstraction, but you can easily use the existing combat mechanics to model the tension and timers and resources here. When the final blow is stricken to reduce somebody to 0 hp is when the stand-off turns into "suddenly, violent death."

Imagine a samurai iaijutsu duel fought like this. They're technically both standing off, the attacks all happening in their minds as they read each other, watching for openings and reading the twitches and eye movements of the attacks they're contemplating, the defenses they're calculating against them, and then, when somebody's hp hits 0, they both actually strike, and deal all of the damage at once. One falls, the other is injured much more than a single sword stroke, but the fight is concluded with the proper tension and timing.

[animorte]

Imagine a samurai iaijutsu duel fought like this. They're technically both standing off, the attacks all happening in their minds as they read each other, watching for openings and reading the twitches and eye movements of the attacks they're contemplating, the defenses they're calculating against them, and then, when somebody's hp hits 0, they both actually strike, and deal all of the damage at once. One falls, the other is injured much more than a single sword stroke, but the fight is concluded with the proper tension and timing.
Sorry, this instead got me imagining Holmes vs Moriarty.

[Unoriginal]

Short answer: IMO, yes. (*Insert off-topic tangent about how unsatisfyingly weak animals are in 5e...*)

Should a Druid be able to Wildshape into a tiger, then?

[Segev]

Sorry, this instead got me imagining Holmes vs Moriarty.

That's fair. I was picturing a fight scene from Hero when I wrote it.

[Unoriginal]

Imagine a samurai iaijutsu duel fought like this. They're technically both standing off, the attacks all happening in their minds as they read each other, watching for openings and reading the twitches and eye movements of the attacks they're contemplating, the defenses they're calculating against them, and then, when somebody's hp hits 0, they both actually strike, and deal all of the damage at once. One falls, the other is injured much more than a single sword stroke, but the fight is concluded with the proper tension and timing.


Sorry, this instead got me imagining Holmes vs Moriarty.


That's fair. I was picturing a fight scene from Hero when I wrote it.

Hero is pretty amazing, but for this particular trope I gotta say I favor the Star Wars version:


https://youtu.be/jeG215-yu-k

[LudicSavant]

Hero is pretty amazing, but for this particular trope I gotta say I favor the Star Wars version:


https://youtu.be/jeG215-yu-k

I like how he tries the exact move he used to take out Qui Gon, and it's clear Obi Wan has been practicing to counter exactly that move, and then Darth Maul (and the audience) slowly realizes what happened.

Also how Obi Wan treats his enemies with respect.

[NaughtyTiger]

Let me ask you a question: should a D&D PC be worried about fighting a tiger?

A D&D PC should be worried about being attacked by a tiger. But the player isn't

because:
at 5th, a D&D PC can stop a tiger in 1 round.

however,
at 5th, a D&D wizard can sleep naked through 2 rounds without being bothered
at 10th, that jumps to 7 rounds


Should a Druid be able to Wildshape into a tiger, then?
yes, sure. an 8th level druid (2nd level Moon) should be able to tiger.



I think all of this really boils down to: tension doesn't (typically) come from the risk of suddenly dying from full hp in D&D, and that is a good thing.
why is that a good thing?

[PhoenixPhyre]

why is that a good thing?

Edit: forgot the main reason I was going to post: Tension can't meaningfully come from things you can't do anything about. That's just stress. Dramatic tension comes with the implicit promise that the situation can be resolved, even if it's not easy. That actions matter. And if any random attack can kill you from full...it's not under your control. Someone walking down the street could pull out a crossbow and shoot you and you're dead. Yay. Much dramatic tension. That's just obnoxious play IMO.

Because swish-swish-splat isn't fun for most people? It's the definition of lol-random. Why have hit points at all in that case? Why not just say "if you're hit, you die?"

Personally, save-or-die (or even worse just-die-randomly) abilities suck. It's like spawn-campers in FPS games--you can't do anything. If you step outside of your spawn area, you just die.

Because in D&D, you can't avoid ever being attacked. If any attack has an appreciable chance of killing you, then the chances of surviving even one fight at all, let alone an entire adventuring day or (heaven forfend) an adventure is very slim. And it falls worse on those whose classes revolve around being up there in the front of things--wizards and ranged types can avoid attacks more easily (not 100%, but better) than the heavy-armor type.

No, to make D&D possible, the "random chunky salsa" possibilities must diminish with time. And I'd even say that they're too high at level 1.

[Schwann145]

Should a Druid be able to Wildshape into a tiger, then?
Sure, appropriate level notwithstanding and all that, I'd say a Druid should be able to Wildshape into a tiger; an animal which should generally be a threat to PCs.


Dramatic tension comes with the implicit promise that the situation can be resolved, even if it's not easy.
Agreed.

And if any random attack can kill you from full...it's not under your control.
Disagree here though. The keyword is "can," and "can" is not "will," which is an important distinction.
If any old attack will kill you, I'd definitely agree that there is no dramatic tension and no fun to be had in such a scenario/game. However, the opposite is just as true: If any old attack won't kill you, there's also no dramatic tension and no fun to be had in that scenario/game either.
It's all in the "can."

[Evaar]

The heart of the matter is that it should not be tense if a random thug pulls a knife or hand crossbow on a high level D&D character. The thug isn't fast enough or skilled enough to drive in a lethal blow against a person with the preternatural reflexes or pure meat to dodge or absorb lightning bolts every Tuesday.

To make it tense, you either need the thug to be threatening someone or something that isn't a superhero, or you need the one doing the threatening to be of a threat level commensurate to that of the PCs.

That reminds me of this scene from the Watchmen movie - characters without superpowers but who are gifted fighters are cornered in an alley by a gang of thugs. It's not scary for them. It's thrilling. They're having fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uFkyVVyqa0

Just pasting the link because of the level of violence.

[Bovine Colonel]

Edit: forgot the main reason I was going to post: Tension can't meaningfully come from things you can't do anything about. That's just stress. Dramatic tension comes with the implicit promise that the situation can be resolved, even if it's not easy. That actions matter. And if any random attack can kill you from full...it's not under your control. Someone walking down the street could pull out a crossbow and shoot you and you're dead. Yay. Much dramatic tension. That's just obnoxious play IMO.

Because swish-swish-splat isn't fun for most people? It's the definition of lol-random. Why have hit points at all in that case? Why not just say "if you're hit, you die?"

Personally, save-or-die (or even worse just-die-randomly) abilities suck. It's like spawn-campers in FPS games--you can't do anything. If you step outside of your spawn area, you just die.

Because in D&D, you can't avoid ever being attacked. If any attack has an appreciable chance of killing you, then the chances of surviving even one fight at all, let alone an entire adventuring day or (heaven forfend) an adventure is very slim. And it falls worse on those whose classes revolve around being up there in the front of things--wizards and ranged types can avoid attacks more easily (not 100%, but better) than the heavy-armor type.

No, to make D&D possible, the "random chunky salsa" possibilities must diminish with time. And I'd even say that they're too high at level 1.

To add onto this, OP has earlier said:


D&D is advertised as a role-playing game, not a combat game. Yet, a combat game is exactly what it has become. Forgive my lamenting over the loss of story-driven mechanics. ;(

What story-driven mechanics has D&D ever had, and what edition were they in? Does it reward the players for writing backstories, introducing complications, helping to build the world? Is there any mechanically significant part of any D&D system that has anything to do with character beliefs or goals, foreshadowing, rising action, climax, resolution?

No. Its primary set of mechanics -- and again this is not just 5e -- is a detailed turn-based combat system on a battlemap. Players engage with the system by visually absorbing the tactical information that's presented to them, and using that information to decide how to budget the [action|standard action], [move|move action], and they will have on their next turn as well as the [reaction|immediate action] they may or may not still have in the meantime. In other words, if you're not running a game with regular combats, you've thrown the most substantial part of D&D's mechanics out the window.

Which brings me to my main point: [B]how do you want the players to understand that they're supposed to feel threatened?

By the mere description of a crossbow being pointed at a PC? That won't do it, they just fought a dragon. I don't care what setting or game system you're in, a random guy with a crossbow is less threatening than a 20 ft armored flying lizard that breathes fire. And if every fight is threatening then you've either thrown the combat system away or you've made PC death statistically inevitable while also failing to achieve a good narrative. Stories consist of rising tension followed by resolution, not 100% tension 100% of the time.

By telling them explicitly that they could lose their characters? That'll break suspension of disbelief. Again, they just fought a dragon.

By simply killing one of their PCs with no warning? You could introduce a new villain that way, but if it's a narratively insignificant opponent you'll rightly get called out for bad DMing. That's "Rocks Fall, Your PC Dies" with extra steps.

Regardless of what you do, in a combat-heavy game there's no easy way to distinguish between "he has a crossbow, time to roll initiative" and "he has a crossbow, one of us could die". If you're a good narrator I'm sure you could pull it off, but D&D is not designed exclusively to be DM'd by really good narrators. No, the best way to create a sense of danger is by doing it through the game system, using what the players already understand about their PCs and the game world rather than telling them to throw that accumulated knowledge away. After all, the players are not just the actors on your stage - they're also your audience.

And hey, if you do give them a really tough fight using the game rules, that also achieves your goal of creating tension. Now the players know their PCs are not the biggest fish in the pond, and depending on how the fight went the shark is potentially very angry.

[Frogreaver]

I know the answer for me really is, "should probably just find a game better suited," but (as we all know in our hearts) other games are a fiction we tell ourselves when we can't find a D&D group. They don't exist. D&D name recognition is just too powerful and people are too unwilling to try different games. :smalltongue::smallsigh:

Stars without Number. (Played it and highly recommend). It's fairly popular and limits hp bloat.
Worlds without Number. (Haven't played it). It's the fantasy version of Stars without Number.

I think either of those would be more likely to give you the kind of experience you are looking for.

5e is much more on the heroic scale. HP are meant to allow you to emulate heroism in your actions. Heroics like not taking crap from the bandit with a hand crossbow pointed toward your head. Whereas you prefer such situations to be a real threat for the PC's.

[animorte]

That's fair. I was picturing a fight scene from Hero when I wrote it.
Nice! I can respect that.

Hero is pretty amazing, but for this particular trope I gotta say I favor the Star Wars version:
Ah, yes. Thanks for the reminder!

Also how Obi Wan treats his enemies with respect.
Agreed, he’s probably my favorite. :smalltongue:


If you want to threaten the characters, you need to either be threatening someone or something weaker than them, or you need the threat to be commensurate to their level of power.

The tension comes from not knowing.
I think both of these are extremely important, though they don’t always need to be utilized.

I don’t really want to go into ridiculous amounts of examples, but here’s a quick one:
Two simple guards each with some basic looking armor and a sword stand outside the gate to the palace. A party of 10 scary looking bad guys are about to knock off these guys and crash the royal wedding. One guard sprints away in fear, possibly to alert the event. He takes an arrow to the back of his knee neck and instantly drops. The second guard stands steady as a witness and a smirk crosses his face…

6-12 seconds later and there’s a big pile of not-so-scary-anymore bad guys. Whoops, turns out that “guard” was a high level Wizard (with one of many ways to be proficient in light armor).

The point is whether they’re threatening your PC or someone valuable to your PC, don’t underestimate the enemy. There are also a great deal of various things more dangerous than just HP. Sure you’re a high level whatever with HP, damage, and high level PC things. That doesn’t mean the little dagger wielding, cloak wearing pigmy can’t banish you to Timbuktu.

Or maybe I’m just paranoid and I approach any opposition with caution. :smallamused:


Stars without Number. (Played it and highly recommend). It's fairly popular and limits hp bloat.
Worlds without Number. (Haven't played it). It's the fantasy version of Stars without Number.

I think either of those would be more likely to give you the kind of experience you are looking for.
I have done the exact opposite; I’ve played Worlds (also highly recommend), but not Stars. I agree with this.

[Unoriginal]

Sure, appropriate level notwithstanding and all that, I'd say a Druid should be able to Wildshape into a tiger; an animal which should generally be a threat to PCs.

Now let's imagine that the Druid Wildshapes into a tiger. Should a tiger be a threat to this particular PC?

Follow up: if the Druid-in-tiger-form fights the not-magical tiger with another PC helping the Druid, should the not-magical tiger be a threat?

[Schwann145]

Now let's imagine that the Druid Wildshapes into a tiger. Should a tiger be a threat to this particular PC?
Yes. Tigers can be a threat to other tigers, after all.


Follow up: if the Druid-in-tiger-form fights the not-magical tiger with another PC helping the Druid, should the not-magical tiger be a threat?
Yes, albeit the threat to the two PCs will obviously be lessened since facing a tiger with a friend is generally a better idea than facing one alone.

I'm honestly not sure where you're leading with this.

[Unoriginal]

I'm honestly not sure where you're leading with this.

I'm reaching my point soon, I promise, I just need to know one more thing before that to be sure we are on the same page.

That thing being: according to you, should the Druid-as-a-tiger on their own be as big a threat as the not-magical tiger?

[Schwann145]

I'm reaching my point soon, I promise, I just need to know one more thing before that to be sure we are on the same page.

That thing being: according to you, should the Druid-as-a-tiger on their own be as big a threat as the not-magical tiger?

Physically, yes. The Druid shifts into the facsimile of a tiger so it wouldn't make much sense to be less-than the original.
As an overall "encounter," the Druid should be a higher threat because it's still mentally the Druid, with all the critical thinking, cognition, etc that comes along with being the (probably?) humanoid it otherwise is (mechanically represented with something along the typical lines of, "you retain your mental stats when you shapechange").

[Sneak Dog]

Sure, appropriate level notwithstanding and all that, I'd say a Druid should be able to Wildshape into a tiger; an animal which should generally be a threat to PCs.


Agreed.

Disagree here though. The keyword is "can," and "can" is not "will," which is an important distinction.
If any old attack will kill you, I'd definitely agree that there is no dramatic tension and no fun to be had in such a scenario/game. However, the opposite is just as true: If any old attack won't kill you, there's also no dramatic tension and no fun to be had in that scenario/game either.
It's all in the "can."

With a non-5e mecha system, I've experienced this. There's a small chance an enemy ignores your armour, a small chance they hit an internal part and a tiny chance it's the cockpit directly. One PC lost to this already. Luckily it happened to not be an outright mook doing it, but pretty close. And while it does up tension, I wouldn't call it dramatic tension. The chance is just too small for it to be dramatic. And if you increase the odds, then you'll acquire a meatgrinder. Which leads to tension, but of a different kind.

[Unoriginal]

Physically, yes. The Druid shifts into the facsimile of a tiger so it wouldn't make much sense to be less-than the original.
As an overall "encounter," the Druid should be a higher threat because it's still mentally the Druid, with all the critical thinking, cognition, etc that comes along with being the (probably?) humanoid it otherwise is (mechanically represented with something along the typical lines of, "you retain your mental stats when you shapechange").

Thank you for indulging me.


Now, the question is: should a person with a dagger be a threat to this Druid?


As in, let's imagine the party is protecting a noble lady. The Druid is alone in the room with her as the rest of the group is patrolling. Druid hears a noise that would indicate someone is trying to climb the outer wall to get in the room via the window, so Druid, anticipating violence, decides to turn into a tiger.

Then the noble lady they were protecting pulls a hidden dagger and put it under the Druid's currently feline throat, telling them to do everything they're told or else.

Druid doesn't know if the lady is mind-controlled, coerced by non-magical means, has been replaced by an imposter or was just antagonistic all along. What they know is they have a dagger to their throat and the lady doesn't seem to be bluffing about enacting harm on them.

Now, should the lady with the dagger be a lethal threat to the Druid-as-tiger?

If yes, then tigers aren't much of a threat. Because PCs can have daggers and the situation where they face a tiger is rarely an 1vs1.

Should the tiger be a lethal threat to the lady with the dagger?

If yes, then "opponents with a dagger" aren't much of a threat. Because the Druid PC can turn into a tiger, meaning that any PC of the same level as the Druid should be roughly as powerful as the Druid-as-a-tiger, and so they should all be able to handle the lady in one way or another.


Should they *both* be lethal threats to each other?

Then the game becomes a game of who-act-first, and in this case it means the tiger-with-Druid-mind is no threat to the lady, because she has the drop on them.


My point being: you can't have that dagger-using attackers should always/generally be a threat to PCs, that tigers should always/generally be a threat to PCs, *and* that a PC should be able to turn into a tiger and be more dangerous than an actual tiger.

Either the tiger is capable of tossing that lady like a ragdoll with the dagger being, while potentially harmful, not immediate death if hit, meaning that any PC as powerful as the Druid shouldn't be that threatened by someone threatening them with a dagger, or the lady can just one-hit-kill a tiger as long as she get the drop on them, meaning that PCs can similarly one-hit-kill tigers in such a circumstance, making tigers not that hard to deal with.

So, who is the mortal danger here: the lady... or the tiger?

[MoiMagnus]

So, who is the mortal danger here: the lady... or the tiger?

I think the most reasonable way to solve this is the following:
(1) A defenseless opponent can be one-shot by a dagger cutting the throat, whatever their HP.
(2) In normal combat situation, reaching for the throat is impossible (as long as the target has HP) so the dagger should be mostly useless and the tiger should be a danger.

As a (possibly unwanted) side effect, sleep/paralysis effects are now particularly OP.

[Ignimortis]

I think the most reasonable way to solve this is the following:
(1) A defenseless opponent can be one-shot by a dagger cutting the throat, whatever their HP.
(2) In normal combat situation, reaching for the throat is impossible (as long as the target has HP) so the dagger should be mostly useless and the tiger should be a danger.

As a (possibly unwanted) side effect, sleep/paralysis effects are now particularly OP.
3.5's Coup de Grace wants a word with you. Also, some characters could live through that too, and it was badass.

[Sneak Dog]

I've always appreciated 3.5/Pathfinder for proclaiming a coup de grâce to be deadly, but in a way that doesn't ignore the rules. Automatic critical and make a fortitude/constitution save based on the damage or die.

[KorvinStarmast]

I've always appreciated 3.5/Pathfinder for proclaiming a coup de grâce to be deadly, but in a way that doesn't ignore the rules. Automatic critical and make a fortitude/constitution save based on the damage or die. My first DM in D&D 5e kept that 3.5ism. It didn't harm play, but the campaign stopped at level 7 so I am not sure of the OP's 'problem' ever confronted us.

[EggKookoo]

I think the most reasonable way to solve this is the following:
(1) A defenseless opponent can be one-shot by a dagger cutting the throat, whatever their HP.
(2) In normal combat situation, reaching for the throat is impossible (as long as the target has HP) so the dagger should be mostly useless and the tiger should be a danger.

This is, in essence, how I run things at my table. Hit points are mostly not meat points, and become less so as the PC levels. Also, I do account for things that impact HP, like damage resistance. If a creature resists a particular damage type, there's no one-shotting them that way. Not that it comes up much, because of what I say below...


As a (possibly unwanted) side effect, sleep/paralysis effects are now particularly OP.

A good amount of rule-of-cool (or RAF) needs to be applied here. D&D requires this kind of curation for a lot of things, so it's really just a bit more. I tend to minimize powers or features of NPCs that remove control from the players over their own PCs. I learned early on that being charmed or possessed or anything like that is not fun for my players. That applies to situations where the player can't "fight back." Sneaking up on and slitting the throat of a sleeping PC isn't (IMO) playing D&D. It's the player sitting there listening to the DM narrate a story. It's less of a problem when the PCs do it, and I can manage that situationally.

In practice, this has come up only once or twice in play. The PCs came across a drunken, sleeping goblin guard. They debated what to do -- he could theoretically wake up at any point and sound the alarm. Even tying him up could cause problems. The question came up about slitting his throat in his sleep (the players were mostly new to D&D at this time), and we had a conversation that was very similar to much of this thread. In the end, I let one of the PCs simply do it. It felt sensible in the moment. The players got a good RPG-like discussion about it. The player that did the slitting actually expressed some mild guilt about it. I saw no reason to break out the dice and turn it into a mechanical event. The players were getting as much value out of the situation as they were likely to ever get. To this day I'm still considering bringing back the ghost of that goblin to haunt the players...

It helps me that I view the mechanics not as the driver behind what "actually" happened, but as a way to interpret what happened. If the mechanics are inconsistent, it's really our interpretation that's inconsistent. The fictional reality of the PCs is perfectly consistent.

[Segev]

Re: The (presumably low-level) Lady and the (druid who is a) Tiger, the druid should not feel particularly threatened.

That said, the scenario as presented presumes a lot when the Lady - who is, again, established in the scenario to not be particularly powerful in her own right - manages to slip that dagger right up to the tigerform Druid's neck. I daresay that a real tiger - established to be less of a threat than the druid wild shaped into a tiger - would be QUITE the struggle to get into that position with. And even then, I would find it believable (not saying I'm right in buying it, just narratively believable) if the Lady found to her consternation and fatal surprise that, when the tiger spun to attack her, a real tiger she had in that position would not have its neck fatally sliced open before she was dislodged. Whether fur-as-armor blunts the cut just enough, the neck is too thick, or she just doesn't have the right angle as the tiger moves too suddenly.

So, then, even in the scenario-as-presented, where the Lady is given every possible advantage (aside from being a high-level character in her own right) to conveniently position the knife for the best possible attack she could make, I do not expect the Lady to be a serious threat to the Tiger.

And that's before the Tiger turns back into a druid at full hp if she actually manages to kill the Tiger.

[Willie the Duck]

My point being: you can't have that dagger-using attackers should always/generally be a threat to PCs, that tigers should always/generally be a threat to PCs, *and* that a PC should be able to turn into a tiger and be more dangerous than an actual tiger.

Either the tiger is capable of tossing that lady like a ragdoll with the dagger being, while potentially harmful, not immediate death if hit, meaning that any PC as powerful as the Druid shouldn't be that threatened by someone threatening them with a dagger, or the lady can just one-hit-kill a tiger as long as she get the drop on them, meaning that PCs can similarly one-hit-kill tigers in such a circumstance, making tigers not that hard to deal with.

So, who is the mortal danger here: the lady... or the tiger?

I think the most reasonable way to solve this is the following:
(1) A defenseless opponent can be one-shot by a dagger cutting the throat, whatever their HP.
(2) In normal combat situation, reaching for the throat is impossible (as long as the target has HP) so the dagger should be mostly useless and the tiger should be a danger.
As a (possibly unwanted) side effect, sleep/paralysis effects are now particularly OP.


That said, the scenario as presented presumes a lot when the Lady - who is, again, established in the scenario to not be particularly powerful in her own right - manages to slip that dagger right up to the tigerform Druid's neck. I daresay that a real tiger - established to be less of a threat than the druid wild shaped into a tiger - would be QUITE the struggle to get into that position with.

I think where I stand on this is that, in normal circumstances, getting that dagger to the tiger's neck is supposed to be accomplished by bringing it down to 0 hp through the existing combat mechanism. Bypassing that setup might be possible, particularly as makes sense narratively (although there is plenty of fiction people might be trying to emulate with their gaming where a character is 'just that good' that they can get around this threat and know they can), and (as MoiMagnus points out) those bypasses become incredibly powerful (and potentially subject to abuse). While I sympathize with the struggles of the Original Post situation (or generally PCs treating what should be life-threatening situations as not-so because they can HP-power through it), but I also worry about the counter-situation when there are hp-bypassing mechanisms. The (hopefully inexperienced) DM who puts the PCs in knife-at-throat situations when they reasonably wouldn't have let someone do so (I know as a kid I saw a DM who thought the enemies could walk up and put a knife to the throat of PCs if they won initiative, since the PCs were frozen in place -- nice mixing and matching of whether the normal combat rules are at play or not to suit their needs). The cagey PCs who figure out the limits of the technical definitions of helpless to invoke it at every opportunity, bypassing the threat of dangerous monster (PCs certainly have done in the past with other exploits).

Generally, what I'd prefer is rules for being able to insta-kill an unconscious opponent if combat is over and/or they are truly (experienced DM's call) unthreatened. Otherwise, 3e's coup de grace rules work fairly well for attacking unconscious or paralyzed opponents while the coup de grace-r is in a combat/adrenaline situation. However, in that case paralysis should be harder to invoke upon others. I recall hold person being a really overly-effective way of taking out opponent front-liners, as a mere Attack of Opportunity from an ally of the paralyzed individual (if there even is one close enough to invoke it) isn't enough threat to stop someone from doing so to an opponent when their wizard or cleric paralyzes them. 5e's rules work okay, but there I envision that the Hold Person isn't really holding them fixed in place, so much as it is trying to and they are struggling to retain control.

Long story short, I think a knife to the throat should (depending on how you envision high level characters) be a serious threat to near anyone, but that getting that dagger to the throat ought to normally be accomplished through the basic combat engine of reducing someone to 0 hp, and rules which bypass this mechanic ought to be highly scrutinized for abuse potential.

[NaughtyTiger]

As in, let's imagine the party is protecting a noble lady. The Druid is alone in the room with her as the rest of the group is patrolling. Druid hears a noise that would indicate someone is trying to climb the outer wall to get in the room via the window, so Druid, anticipating violence, decides to turn into a tiger.

Then the noble lady they were protecting pulls a hidden dagger and put it under the Druid's currently feline throat, telling them to do everything they're told or else.

That was a lot of build up for a let down.

You must not know this, but a dagger in the throat of a tiger will kill it. The rub is that it is very difficult to get close enough to the tiger to get the dagger into the throat.
Your setup was great... guile/subterfuge was used to bypass the defenses of a well-known mankiller.
So because of planning (either the lady or another force) the dagger is at the throat of the druid.

In this case, the druid must make a choice:

try to attack, hope for high initiative and kill her
obey

nevermind, it's only a d4. the druid can just roll his eyes at her for a couple rounds.



Now, the question is: should a person with a dagger be a threat to this Druid?
yes

Now, should the lady with the dagger be a lethal threat to the Druid-as-tiger?
yes

Should the tiger be a lethal threat to the lady with the dagger?
yes

Should they *both* be lethal threats to each other?
in this scenario, yes

So, who is the mortal danger here: the lady... or the tiger?
40(+PC HP) druid is not in danger from a 3 dagger. 9HP noble is prolly in danger from 8 bite.

[Unoriginal]

Re: The (presumably low-level) Lady and the (druid who is a) Tiger, the druid should not feel particularly threatened.

That said, the scenario as presented presumes a lot when the Lady - who is, again, established in the scenario to not be particularly powerful in her own right - manages to slip that dagger right up to the tigerform Druid's neck. I daresay that a real tiger - established to be less of a threat than the druid wild shaped into a tiger - would be QUITE the struggle to get into that position with. And even then, I would find it believable (not saying I'm right in buying it, just narratively believable) if the Lady found to her consternation and fatal surprise that, when the tiger spun to attack her, a real tiger she had in that position would not have its neck fatally sliced open before she was dislodged. Whether fur-as-armor blunts the cut just enough, the neck is too thick, or she just doesn't have the right angle as the tiger moves too suddenly.

So, then, even in the scenario-as-presented, where the Lady is given every possible advantage (aside from being a high-level character in her own right) to conveniently position the knife for the best possible attack she could make, I do not expect the Lady to be a serious threat to the Tiger.

And that's before the Tiger turns back into a druid at full hp if she actually manages to kill the Tiger.

Even if the lady is an high-level specialized assassin, the point is that OP declared "a tiger should be threatening to D&D 5e PCs", "a person with a daggger should be threatening for D&D PCs" AND "A Druid should be able to Wildshape into a tiger and be more of a threat than a natural tiger due to still having their Druid mind".

Those three positions are mutually exclusive.

Either the Druid-tiger is in serious danger from the dagger-handling assaulter, which makes the less-threatening-than-the-Druid real tiger not a threat to a group of PCs including several bigger-than-dagger-handling assaulters, OR the Druid-tiger is not in serious danger, which means a group of PCs as a whole would not be in serious danger from the dagger-handling assaulter, OR the tiger and dagger user are both serious dangers to each other and who gets the drop on whom decides the result, which still mean the PCs don't have to worry about either so long as they roll higher initiative.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Generally, what I'd prefer is rules for being able to insta-kill an unconscious opponent if combat is over and/or they are truly (experienced DM's call) unthreatened.

Why do we need rules for this? That's the sort of thing that already exists and is already done by lots of DMs. DMs decide when combat is over and how it resolves. If there's no uncertainty...there's no need for combat rules.

And any set of rules would only lock things down and cause absurdities. Because that's what rules do when they create bright lines in fuzzy spaces.

[Segev]

Even if the lady is an high-level specialized assassin, the point is that OP declared "a tiger should be threatening to D&D 5e PCs", "a person with a daggger should be threatening for D&D PCs" AND "A Druid should be able to Wildshape into a tiger and be more of a threat than a natural tiger due to still having their Druid mind".

Those three positions are mutually exclusive.

Either the Druid-tiger is in serious danger from the dagger-handling assaulter, which makes the less-threatening-than-the-Druid real tiger not a threat to a group of PCs including several bigger-than-dagger-handling assaulters, OR the Druid-tiger is not in serious danger, which means a group of PCs as a whole would not be in serious danger from the dagger-handling assaulter, OR the tiger and dagger user are both serious dangers to each other and who gets the drop on whom decides the result, which still mean the PCs don't have to worry about either so long as they roll higher initiative.

There's a level of threat here, too. An 11th level rogue with a dagger is "a person with a dagger." He also is able to do 1d4+6d6+[stat mod] with that dagger. But even a 5th level fighter with a dagger is going to be able to slash twice with it, possibly for reasonable enough damage that the druid is in for a fight. Sure, the threat isn't certain to work, and the fight is even in the tiger-druid's favor (fighters are better with other weapons, generally speaking), but the druid isn't going to just ignore a fighter with a dagger slashing at him.

He probably isn't going to ignore Noble Lady who can only do 1d4 damage every 3 or 4 rounds through the druid's AC, either, when you remember that AC includes dodging and weaving (even if it sometimes is a little wonky because it still applies in full when paralyzed due to 5e's simplification of AC calculations). She's still a threat, just not an immediate "oh crap if I don't comply I'm dead" threat.



A genuine mook with a dagger is not a threat to most PCs' personal health and safety. Not by himself, or even in a small group (though that can change fast as action deficit racks up). Certainly not in a "I will kill you before you can do anything about it" sense. That's by design.

Such threats really don't work well in combination with the notion of player agency, anyway.

[Unoriginal]

There's a level of threat here, too. An 11th level rogue with a dagger is "a person with a dagger." He also is able to do 1d4+6d6+[stat mod] with that dagger. But even a 5th level fighter with a dagger is going to be able to slash twice with it, possibly for reasonable enough damage that the druid is in for a fight. Sure, the threat isn't certain to work, and the fight is even in the tiger-druid's favor (fighters are better with other weapons, generally speaking), but the druid isn't going to just ignore a fighter with a dagger slashing at him.

He probably isn't going to ignore Noble Lady who can only do 1d4 damage every 3 or 4 rounds through the druid's AC, either, when you remember that AC includes dodging and weaving (even if it sometimes is a little wonky because it still applies in full when paralyzed due to 5e's simplification of AC calculations). She's still a threat, just not an immediate "oh crap if I don't comply I'm dead" threat.



A genuine mook with a dagger is not a threat to most PCs' personal health and safety. Not by himself, or even in a small group (though that can change fast as action deficit racks up). Certainly not in a "I will kill you before you can do anything about it" sense. That's by design.

I know, and agree. A person with a dagger in 5e is *sometime* a threat, and a tiger is *sometime* a threat, by design.

But OP disagrees with the design chosen for 5e. I am only pointing the impossibility of the coexistence of OP's three expressed positions.

If one PC can turn into a tiger at X level, then a tiger cannot be that much of a threat for 4 PCs at that level.

[Schwann145]

Even if the lady is an high-level specialized assassin, the point is that OP declared "a tiger should be threatening to D&D 5e PCs", "a person with a daggger should be threatening for D&D PCs" AND "A Druid should be able to Wildshape into a tiger and be more of a threat than a natural tiger due to still having their Druid mind".

Those three positions are mutually exclusive.
No, they're not.
You're trying to treat "is it a threat" like a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors. That's not how being a potential threat works. You don't "outgrow" things that can should be able to kill you. One of the thematic points of "bounded accuracy" is just that.

Ignoring the realities of 5e rules as they exist currently:
•Is the lady-with-dagger a threat to the Druid-as-tiger? Yes. Because the Druid-as-tiger assumed the lady was not their enemy and abandoned any sense of self-defense against her.
•Is the Druid-as-tiger a threat to the lady-with-dagger? Yes. Because, even if she does manage to stab/slice the Druid, they're still an 800lb murder kitten and death from the dagger won't be guaranteed, and even if the strike is true and death is certain, it won't be instant.

The lady "has the high ground," so to speak, but that doesn't mean she is free from danger of a tiger right next to her. And the tiger is a frickin tiger but that doesn't negate the fact that it has a foot of razor sharp steel at it's throat either.

Any suggestion that the lady is no threat at all because a tiger is a tiger and a noble lady with a dagger doesn't match up is both ridiculous, and how 5e currently works:
Assuming the realities of 5e rules as they exist currently:
•Is the lady-with-dagger a threat to the Druid-as-tiger? No. Because the Druid has 39 HP and even if the lady auto-crits and does max damage and is a scrappier-than-usual noble with a +1 Str, the max damage done will be 10, and 10 isn't 39, so even if she lands the best strike to the Druid-tiger's throat she can possibly hope for, the Druid can ignore it and murder her at his leisure.
•Is the Druid-as-tiger a threat to the lady-with-dagger? Yes. Because, as already stated, a noble with a dagger cannot possibly threaten a tiger with a single strike, ever, and the average damage of a tiger bite (d10+3) is only 1 point short of outright killing a noble, so the tiger only has to do slightly better than average damage from a normal bite to one-shot the noble.

Is the tiger ever in trouble? No. It literally just had it's throat slit by a stat-buffed noble who rolled a max damage crit with a foot of razor sharp steel... and it's totally fine. Not even in any danger of potentially dying. Could even take a couple more identical hits and still be totally fine.

[Unoriginal]

You don't "outgrow" things that can should be able to kill you.

That seems to be the core of your preference/belief for how things should be in a RPG.

It also is something many people, I included, do not favor. But that is a question of taste.



The entire point of "bounded accuracy" is just that.

Incorrect. The point of bounded accuracy is that a creature that was a threat against a lvl 1 PC can still do something against a lvl 20 PC, but the lvl 20 PC has absolutely, factually outgrown the threat a long time ago.

One hobgoblin mook can be dangerous for one lvl 1 PC. One hobgoblin mook is not dangerous for one lvl 10 PC, even. Thirty hobgoblin mooks vs one lvl 10, though? That's another story.

In fact, bounded accuracy for 5e specifically work by keeping beings relatively easy to hit but making hits have less impact the stronger the being is.

So, it would be more correct to say that one of the things you don't like in 5e is the entire point of bounded accuracy.

[Tanarii]

In fact, bounded accuracy for 5e specifically work by keeping beings relatively easy to hit but making hits have less impact the stronger the being is.
And of course vice versa. The more powerful a creature is, the larger chunk of another powerful creatures hit points it can take out in a single blow.

Expanding Hit Points and Damage is the core of gaining power in 5e. Low level threats being not a one shot threat is very intentional. The characters are that good. They just aren't completely immune to attacks good any more.

From the original explanation:

The basic premise behind the bounded accuracy system is simple: we make no assumptions on the DM's side of the game that the player's attack and spell accuracy, or their defenses, increase as a result of gaining levels. Instead, we represent the difference in characters of various levels primarily through their hit points, the amount of damage they deal, and the various new abilities they have gained. Characters can fight tougher monsters not because they can finally hit them, but because their damage is sufficient to take a significant chunk out of the monster's hit points; likewise, the character can now stand up to a few hits from that monster without being killed easily, thanks to the character's increased hit points. Furthermore, gaining levels grants the characters new capabilities, which go much farther toward making your character feel different than simple numerical increases.

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The DM's monster roster expands, never contracts. Although low-level characters probably don't stack up well against higher-level monsters, thanks to the high hit points and high damage numbers of those monsters, as the characters gain levels, the lower-level monsters continue to be useful to the DM, just in greater numbers. While we might fight only four goblins at a time at 1st level, we might take on twelve of them at 5th level without breaking a sweat. Since the monsters don't lose the ability to hit the player characters—instead they take out a smaller percentage chunk of the characters' hit points—the DM can continue to increase the number of monsters instead of needing to design or find whole new monsters. Thus, the repertoire of monsters available for DMs to use in an adventure only increases over time, as new monsters become acceptable challenges and old monsters simply need to have their quantity increased.
(Bolding mine)
Archived link to article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140715051206/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120604

[Lunali]

D&D is a system for attrition based tactical combat. It is not a system for narrative tension. If you want narrative tension, you either need to hack in rules for it or you need to play a system that already has them.

[Segev]

D&D is a system for attrition based tactical combat. It is not a system for narrative tension. If you want narrative tension, you either need to hack in rules for it or you need to play a system that already has them.

Narrative tension is not mutually exclusive with attrition. In fact, I would go so far as to say a major reason a lot of fiction struggles to have real narrative tension is that there is no sense that the stakes are rising throughout the scene, and instead that it is just a coin flip that hasn't been made yet. And often, this means the coin flip's result is predictable due to other narrative tropes and conventions.

Use of hp to ratchet up tension as the scene progresses towards the crisis point seems a good thing, to me.

In the end, I just don't see where "mook holds knife to high-level character's throat" has all that much narrative tension, anyway. Especially if the mook isn't menacing her with it for long enough for a tense negotiation or something, and instead just slashes and kills her. And if he is holding her hostage for a lengthy interrogation, that time is best modeled by his repeated attacks against her lowering her hit points until the crisis point is reached that he's about to "really do it" this time and deal that last hp of damage to reduce her to 0.

[Frogreaver]

D&D is a system for attrition based tactical combat. It is not a system for narrative tension. If you want narrative tension, you either need to hack in rules for it or you need to play a system that already has them.

Exactly. Attrition based tactical combat rarely creates much narrative tension. It's not mutually exclusive with narrative tension as when the resources get low enough (hp, spell slots, etc) then there will be tons of narrative tension. But there's also nothing guaranteeing the resources get low enough that such narrative tension occurs. In D&D terms, most of the adventuring day doesn't produce any real risk.

[Lunali]

Narrative tension is not mutually exclusive with attrition. In fact, I would go so far as to say a major reason a lot of fiction struggles to have real narrative tension is that there is no sense that the stakes are rising throughout the scene, and instead that it is just a coin flip that hasn't been made yet. And often, this means the coin flip's result is predictable due to other narrative tropes and conventions.

Use of hp to ratchet up tension as the scene progresses towards the crisis point seems a good thing, to me.

In the end, I just don't see where "mook holds knife to high-level character's throat" has all that much narrative tension, anyway. Especially if the mook isn't menacing her with it for long enough for a tense negotiation or something, and instead just slashes and kills her. And if he is holding her hostage for a lengthy interrogation, that time is best modeled by his repeated attacks against her lowering her hit points until the crisis point is reached that he's about to "really do it" this time and deal that last hp of damage to reduce her to 0.

Fair, narrative tension isn't really what I meant, I just don't really have a good way to describe the difference between tension from the escalating danger of fights throughout a day versus the tension from a single dangerous situation. Someone holding a knife to a high-level character's throat has a lot of tension in a non-attrition based world where a simple movement could completely end the character being threatened.