OOTS #1224 - The Discussion Thread

[bunsen_h]

I'm pretty sure these are the things where it comes to "ask your DM".

It seems to me that Disintegrate would act on the first object that it strikes, which would include things like force walls and glass but not air. Rock to Mud isn't so obvious. For example, if one wanted to use it under water, would one have to be touching the stone in question, so the spell wasn't expended on the water? Can Disintegrate be used under water?

EDIT:

So I'd never again have my favorite sweater wear out? Sign me up!

It would save me enormous time and stress to avoid having to shop for clothing, then having to modify said clothing to fit me. I'd be thrilled.

[Ghosty]

Trying to understand the PHB on this subject is confusing me terribly. Disintegrate is a ray effect. Line of effect isn't mentioned by name under ray effects, but it's mentioned that intervening objects can provide cover. Meanwhile you "must have a clear line of effect to any target that you cast a spell on", which is blocked by a solid barrier, and line of effect is defined as just like line of sight for ranged weapons except it's not blocked by visibility factors. Under the cover rules, if I don't have line of effect to my target they have total cover, which means I can't make an attack against them at all. Whereas Mage Armor is a field of force, not a solid object, so does not provide cover. This all seems to work out fine except that it leaves me in the position of not being able to fire a crossbow bolt or hurl a brick at a target through a glass window?

It sounds to me---and it's very ironic that a bunch of grognards would make this mistake---like the PHB writers confused the concepts of "cover" and "concealment." Despite actually having separate entries for both in their rules.

I'd think your plate glass window would provide limited, destructible cover for that first bolt---especially if the angle of impact isn't close to perpendicular---and should be reflected in a temporary AC boost for whoever was sitting behind it. It's not concealment though. (Absent the Sun reflecting off it or the equivalent.)

Forcecage is a great example. Why shouldn't a Disintegrate ray keep on truckin through a Forcecage to zap the inhabitant within (or at least roll to see if the ray hits), if that's pretty much what it does to Epic Mage Armor? They're both using walls of force to protect or confine things. Why is it that one set of force walls gets taken down by that ray, but doesn't damage whatever's inside; but another set of force walls ignores the passage of the ray, and isn't harmed, yet allows whatever is on the other side of it to take the full brunt of the ray?

Add it to the Celestia-sized mountain of rules quirks we know and love about this game.

[Lemarc]

It sounds to me---and it's very ironic that a bunch of grognards would make this mistake---like the PHB writers confused the concepts of "cover" and "concealment." Despite actually having separate entries for both in their rules.

I'd think your plate glass window would provide limited, destructible cover for that first bolt---especially if the angle of impact isn't close to perpendicular---and should be reflected in a temporary AC boost for whoever was sitting behind it. It's not concealment though. (Absent the Sun reflecting off it or the equivalent.)

Forcecage is a great example. Why shouldn't a Disintegrate ray keep on truckin through a Forcecage to zap the inhabitant within (or at least roll to see if the ray hits), if that's pretty much what it does to Epic Mage Armor? They're both using walls of force to protect or confine things. Why is it that one set of force walls gets taken down by that ray, but doesn't damage whatever's inside; but another set of force walls ignores the passage of the ray, and isn't harmed, yet allows whatever is on the other side of it to take the full brunt of the ray?

Add it to the Celestia-sized mountain of rules quirks we know and love about this game.

Wall of Force, and hence Forcecage, at least are explicitly called as blocking spells from passing through as part of their effect. I'd have taken that as the exception showing the general rule - they are specifically magic-blocking objects, forcefields not noted as such aren't - except for the line of effect stuff making that redundant by saying any solid object will block any spell. So apparently the difference between Epic Mage Armor and Forcecage, in this case, is much like how wearing clothes won't help against Disintegrate, but hiding behind a curtain will provide complete protection.

[Ironsmith]

Forcecage is a great example. Why shouldn't a Disintegrate ray keep on truckin through a Forcecage to zap the inhabitant within (or at least roll to see if the ray hits), if that's pretty much what it does to Epic Mage Armor? They're both using walls of force to protect or confine things. Why is it that one set of force walls gets taken down by that ray, but doesn't damage whatever's inside; but another set of force walls ignores the passage of the ray, and isn't harmed, yet allows whatever is on the other side of it to take the full brunt of the ray?

I see it as a magical equivalent to being in a Faraday cage versus a suit of armor. If someone comes at you with a cattle prod, the former is much safer for you than the latter.

I should elaborate. The spell description states that, when used on a nonliving target, it can only destroy a 10-foot cube of material. The clear implication of this is that there's an upper limit to how much it can destroy regardless. In the case of a forcecage, the necessary volume is supplied by the cage itself, leaving the inhabitant (who isn't touching the cage) unharmed. In the case of mage armor, after it's chewed through it, there's still volume left, and since the person "wearing" the armor is right there and the armor is tailored to their dimensions, they, too, get dusted.

[Ghosty]

I see it as a magical equivalent to being in a Faraday cage versus a suit of armor. If someone comes at you with a cattle prod, the former is much safer for you than the latter.

I should elaborate. The spell description states that, when used on a nonliving target, it can only destroy a 10-foot cube of material. The clear implication of this is that there's an upper limit to how much it can destroy regardless. In the case of a forcecage, the necessary volume is supplied by the cage itself, leaving the inhabitant (who isn't touching the cage) unharmed. In the case of mage armor, after it's chewed through it, there's still volume left, and since the person "wearing" the armor is right there and the armor is tailored to their dimensions, they, too, get dusted.

That's a great explanation. I can totally buy a, 'this amount of matter or force walls, and no more,' explanation for its effects. Explains it's ability to zip through air and it's great range, while explaining why it doesn't chew through that much material, considering. (I'd expect it to not work well or very far at all, underwater then.)

[danielxcutter]

There's still the issue that if you get zapped by a Disintegrate and survive - which is entirely possible - your Mage Armor spells and the like aren't dispelled.

Considering you can still make touch attacks and such, maybe those spells just don't cover the entirety of your body or something?

[Ironsmith]

There's still the issue that if you get zapped by a Disintegrate and survive - which is entirely possible - your Mage Armor spells and the like aren't dispelled.

Considering you can still make touch attacks and such, maybe those spells just don't cover the entirety of your body or something?

The same holds true for mundane armor, though; a Fighter in full plate tanking a Disintegration isn't suddenly rendered stark naked. If a Mage Armor spell basically provides armor made from "force", of course they'd have similar properties.

[danielxcutter]

The same holds true for mundane armor, though; a Fighter in full plate tanking a Disintegration isn't suddenly rendered stark naked. If a Mage Armor spell basically provides armor made from "force", of course they'd have similar properties.

Well that makes sense, but that circumstance in general is kinda weird. Guess it'd be hard to make rules for that or keep track if there were, though.

[Yirggzmb]

The same holds true for mundane armor, though; a Fighter in full plate tanking a Disintegration isn't suddenly rendered stark naked. If a Mage Armor spell basically provides armor made from "force", of course they'd have similar properties.

That would actually be really funny we one doing a more humor themed campaign...

[skim172]

Magic's ability to recognize and discern a living being and its accoutrements as a single distinct entity separate from the environment around it is actually quite remarkable.

No real world weapons do this. A bullet doesn't "know" what a person is - it plows through air, fabric, flesh, dirt, whatever. A heat-seeking missile only sees a heat source - it doesn't recognize that heat source as a person. A bomb will pulverize everything in a certain radius - its effect area is not defined by the boundaries of a living body.

Yet, a Disintegrate ray hits a person and instantly dusts that person's armor, clothes, skin, muscles, bones, internal organs, blood, gut flora, everything - yet it doesn't touch the air molecules around them, or the ground they're standing on. How does it know? V can use the spell on a dragon the size of an apartment block, and the entirety of its massive body is affected. But if it used on a chipmunk, then only that fuzzy little buddy would die.

How can this be? From a physical perspective, the molecules of your body aren't broadly different from the molecules of the dirt your feet are in contact with. If it worked by dissolving everything that is in contact with whatever it hits - then a single use of Disintegrate should cause a runaway chain reaction, dissolving your body, then the ground under you, then the entire planet and its atmosphere.

From a biological perspective, there is definitely a difference between living cells and non-living matter - but then, why would it affect the clothes you're wearing? And why would it work against golems or undead or other animated entities of non-living matter?

Maybe we could come up with a complex scientific explanation. But I think the simplest answer is that the targeting of a Disintegrate spell is guided by a sentient mind. A consciousness looks upon a scene and identifies what is and what is not "the target". That cognitive distinction marks out the limits of the Disintegrate's area of effect.

Perhaps it's an active thought process of the spellcaster as they cast - they feed the spell the targeting details of what it should destroy. Or perhaps it draws on the caster's subconscious recognition of an object as distinct from its environment.

This creates a frightening possibility: That every caster with a Disintegrate spell in their spellbook could potentially destroy everything that exists on the planet, up to the very boundaries of space, with a simple miscalculation - either conscious or subconscious - of their targeting vectors.

Or an alternative possibility: Every Disintegrate spell is technically a living entity with a sentient mind. It has sensory perception and the cognition to be able to identify what is and what is not an object. It uses this to decide the limits of its intended target, carries out its deed, and then dies. Whenever V casts Disintegrate, V is creating a new life, solely so that it may then destroy itself as V's weapon.

V's a monster.



(BTW - I highly recommend "The Midas Flesh", a short graphic novel by Ryan North, from which I basically ripped most of my thinking process. It's a fun, smart, well thought-out, excellently told sci-fi story about magic. And it also has dinosaurs and spaceships.

The writing is much more coherent, cohesive, and comprehensive than that babble I just posted.)

[Ironsmith]

Magic's ability to recognize and discern a living being and its accoutrements as a single distinct entity separate from the environment around it is actually quite remarkable.

No real world weapons do this. A bullet doesn't "know" what a person is - it plows through air, fabric, flesh, dirt, whatever. A heat-seeking missile only sees a heat source - it doesn't recognize that heat source as a person. A bomb will pulverize everything in a certain radius - its effect area is not defined by the boundaries of a living body.

Yet, a Disintegrate ray hits a person and instantly dusts that person's armor, clothes, skin, muscles, bones, internal organs, blood, gut flora, everything - yet it doesn't touch the air molecules around them, or the ground they're standing on. How does it know? V can use the spell on a dragon the size of an apartment block, and the entirety of its massive body is affected. But if it used on a chipmunk, then only that fuzzy little buddy would die.

How can this be? From a physical perspective, the molecules of your body aren't broadly different from the molecules of the dirt your feet are in contact with. If it worked by dissolving everything that is in contact with whatever it hits - then a single use of Disintegrate should cause a runaway chain reaction, dissolving your body, then the ground under you, then the entire planet and its atmosphere.

From a biological perspective, there is definitely a difference between living cells and non-living matter - but then, why would it affect the clothes you're wearing? And why would it work against golems or undead or other animated entities of non-living matter?

Maybe we could come up with a complex scientific explanation. But I think the simplest answer is that the targeting of a Disintegrate spell is guided by a sentient mind. A consciousness looks upon a scene and identifies what is and what is not "the target". That cognitive distinction marks out the limits of the Disintegrate's area of effect.

Perhaps it's an active thought process of the spellcaster as they cast - they feed the spell the targeting details of what it should destroy. Or perhaps it draws on the caster's subconscious recognition of an object as distinct from its environment.

This creates a frightening possibility: That every caster with a Disintegrate spell in their spellbook could potentially destroy everything that exists on the planet, up to the very boundaries of space, with a simple miscalculation - either conscious or subconscious - of their targeting vectors.

Or an alternative possibility: Every Disintegrate spell is technically a living entity with a sentient mind. It has sensory perception and the cognition to be able to identify what is and what is not an object. It uses this to decide the limits of its intended target, carries out its deed, and then dies. Whenever V casts Disintegrate, V is creating a new life, solely so that it may then destroy itself as V's weapon.

V's a monster.



(BTW - I highly recommend "The Midas Flesh", a short graphic novel by Ryan North, from which I basically ripped most of my thinking process. It's a fun, smart, well thought-out, excellently told sci-fi story about magic. And it also has dinosaurs and spaceships.

The writing is much more coherent, cohesive, and comprehensive than that babble I just posted.)

I see three fatal flaws with this reasoning:

1) Disintegrate would not need to create a sentient entity to accomplish its effect. Even if we grant that it somehow has sensory perception (to set its own boundaries), there are many examples of non-sentient lifeforms that do something similar, some of which are living in or under your house right now (i.e. bedbugs, which can seek out living creatures to suckle from, but are clearly nowhere near sentience). Additionally, given that Disintegrate is only able to take out a 10-foot cube of unliving matter, there are definitely upper limits to how much damage it could do if its caster makes a miscalculation.

2) Dungeons and Dragons uses several ways of distinguishing living entities from non-living matter, which have no real-world counterpart. For instance, the usage of positive and negative energy (as the terms are understood in D&D) does not correlate with any real-world concept (negative energy especially, as it requires the usage of undead creatures to be explained properly). Not to mention that it regularly makes concessions to gameplay that don't work from a "real" perspective. People don't have hit points in real life; if you club a guy over the head with a steel cudgel, it won't matter if he's a seasoned veteran or a simple farmer, his grey matter is going all over the place regardless.

3) Disintegrate is not the only spell which makes distinctions between living creatures and unliving matter. Cure Light Wounds has a regenerative effect that only works on living creatures; how? Does it rebuild the creature itself? If so, how does it know what to make? Does it speed up the natural healing process? If so, how does it know what processes to accelerate? Surely this means every cleric going to heal someone creates a sentient entity for the sole purpose of fixing a paper cut. The inevitable conclusion to draw along those lines is that most forms of magic are Evil by default, for creating a life-form which extinguishes itself for a (usually petty) purpose of the caster's design. A Good wizard would be an oxymoron... and yet is commonplace in Dungeons and Dragons, implying this line of reasoning to be against designer intent.

[danielxcutter]

There's also the fact that it's possible to make homing missiles without making them sentient either, so...

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Not to mention that it regularly makes concessions to gameplay that don't work from a "real" perspective. People don't have hit points in real life; if you club a guy over the head with a steel cudgel, it won't matter if he's a seasoned veteran or a simple farmer, his grey matter is going all over the place regardless.

This has nothing to do with the disintegrate discussion, but it irks me as an example, because I see it so often. HP is not a raw measure of "health", it is an abstraction of the ability to operate in combat. If you hit a peasant's head with a cudgel, he goes down. But the same exact blow to a seasoned warrior will only partially connect: they will know how to duck to lessen the impact, they will have a helmet to help, they will have partially deflected it and weaved so it is not a straight hit. The result is that they can take multiple more such blows before exhaustion causes them to falter and finally collapse. Levelling up doesn't suddenly make you healthier, it just indicates you are better at knowing how to ameliorate hits.

Grey Wolf

[greenfunkman]

And they'll have perfect situational awareness if they station somebody in the Dead End to watch down the monster tunnel until TE comes out. They'll know party order and have at least a quick take on health status.

And I can't help but notice Xykon led the way in, in 1039, and out in 1040.

And the OotS gets a hell of a surprise round(if that's a thing in 3.5.) Xykon walking along, TE trailing behind, the portal drops and suddenly 7 enemies within melee range for at least 3 rounds, and no support. I don't know if Haley can kill the trap altogether or only for another 20 secods.

Let's say they disabled the trap just after Xykon went through, thereby stranding the other three with the party. Would Xykon be able to rescue them?

Downsides, did that just give Xykon a straight shot into the secret area?

[danielxcutter]

This has nothing to do with the disintegrate discussion, but it irks me as an example, because I see it so often. HP is not a raw measure of "health", it is an abstraction of the ability to operate in combat. If you hit a peasant's head with a cudgel, he goes down. But the same exact blow to a seasoned warrior will only partially connect: they will know how to duck to lessen the impact, they will have a helmet to help, they will have partially deflected it and weaved so it is not a straight hit. The result is that they can take multiple more such blows before exhaustion causes them to falter and finally collapse. Levelling up doesn't suddenly make you healthier, it just indicates you are better at knowing how to ameliorate hits.

Grey Wolf

That partly makes sense, but it's entirely possible to sneak up on such a warrior and then smash their head in.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

That partly makes sense, but it's entirely possible to sneak up on such a warrior and then smash their head in.

Again, no it is not. The mechanics say that they do take extra damage to a sneak attack, but not that a sneak attack means that the cudgel literally smashed their head in. Just that it landed. As an abstraction and RPG, you can play it however you want, but my usual go-to is that they noticed the sneak attack too late to stop it, but not late enough to let it go through all the way.

Or in RL: a perfectly healthy regular person cannot take a single punch from a professional boxer. But another boxer takes dozens of punches in combat, all of which land. How is that possible? Well, duh, they know how to block punches, and are wearing the right equipment, and are used to it, and so on and so forth, which in D&D means they have more HP, so that the punch can always do the same amount of damage, and have different results depending on the individual. Which makes the math a lot easier than if every punch's damage had to be adjusted for circumstances like the ones above. Like I said, an abstraction.

Grey Wolf

[Fyraltari]

This has nothing to do with the disintegrate discussion, but it irks me as an example, because I see it so often. HP is not a raw measure of "health", it is an abstraction of the ability to operate in combat. If you hit a peasant's head with a cudgel, he goes down. But the same exact blow to a seasoned warrior will only partially connect: they will know how to duck to lessen the impact, they will have a helmet to help, they will have partially deflected it and weaved so it is not a straight hit. The result is that they can take multiple more such blows before exhaustion causes them to falter and finally collapse. Levelling up doesn't suddenly make you healthier, it just indicates you are better at knowing how to ameliorate hits.

Grey Wolf

Be that as it may, no amount of training will allow you to run and fight mere moments after being skewered.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Be that as it may, no amount of training will allow you to run and fight mere moments after being skewered.

Which is why OotS is a parody of D&D, and not a D&D game. The rules does not say "if the attack by a horned creature hits for max damage, the horn goes entirely through your torso and out the other side". It says "it does max damage". You can then compare to the total HP pool available to the character, and decide from that what kind of hit it was. And if there is a substantial amount of HP left, then the blow must not have been that bad, because the character is good at fighting. And thus, yes, they can still keep running around, because they have plenty of stamina left.

GW

[Metastachydium]

This has nothing to do with the disintegrate discussion, but it irks me as an example, because I see it so often. HP is not a raw measure of "health", it is an abstraction of the ability to operate in combat. If you hit a peasant's head with a cudgel, he goes down. But the same exact blow to a seasoned warrior will only partially connect: they will know how to duck to lessen the impact, they will have a helmet to help, they will have partially deflected it and weaved so it is not a straight hit. The result is that they can take multiple more such blows before exhaustion causes them to falter and finally collapse. Levelling up doesn't suddenly make you healthier, it just indicates you are better at knowing how to ameliorate hits.

Grey Wolf

I can't shake the feeling that a confusion is made here between hp and AC. At any rate, the helmet has nothing to do with being an experienced warrior. It's an item, which – mechanically – provides an armor bonus. Meanwhile, the ability to dodge an attack is a function of DEX rather than experience, and DEX bonus also doesn't have anything to do with hit points. Heck, someone with a low DEX score has no business dodging blows expertly or otherwise.
Additionally, there's the thing that the larger the creature is, the more HD and the more hit points it tends to have, and I don't see how or why a camel should be more seasoned a warrior than a wolf or a hawk.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I can't shake the feeling that a confusion is made here between hp and AC. At any rate, the helmet has nothing to do with being an experienced warrior. It's an item, which – mechanically – provides an armor bonus.

No it does not. There is no AC-granting helmets in D&D.

Meanwhile, the ability to dodge an attack is a function of DEX rather than experience, and DEX bonus also doesn't have anything to do with hit points. Heck, someone with a low DEX score has no business dodging blows expertly or otherwise.

Irrelevant. Dex bonus might give you the chance to avoid the blow entirely, but the premise here is that the blow has landed, since we are discussing HP. How you RP it is up to you, thus the abstraction part. But even a low-DEX character can weave. Low DEX does not mean their body is made of immovable stone. Just that they aren't dexterous enough to get completely out of the way.

Additionally, there's the thing that the larger the creature is, the more HD and the more hit points it tends to have, and I don't see how or why a camel should be more seasoned a warrior than a wolf or a hawk.

Again, irrelevant since we are comparing human beings. It is also trivially obvious that body mass plays a fundamental part in one's ability to survive blows - another difference between a boxer and an average human.

Grey Wolf

[KorvinStarmast]

Magic's ability to recognize and discern a living being and its accoutrements as a single distinct entity separate from the environment around it is actually quite remarkable.

No real world weapons do this.

Actually, I am pretty sure that there are some guided munitions that can, though the last one I remember seeing in development was over a decade ago, so I'm a bit out of date. ... but they are way more expensive than a bullet or a bomb.

A bullet doesn't "know" what a person is - it plows through air, fabric, flesh, dirt, whatever. A heat-seeking missile only sees a heat source - it doesn't recognize that heat source as a person. A bomb will pulverize everything in a certain radius - its effect area is not defined by the boundaries of a living body.

(BTW - I highly recommend "The Midas Flesh", a short graphic novel by Ryan North, from which I basically ripped most of my thinking process. It's a fun, smart, well thought-out, excellently told sci-fi story about magic. And it also has dinosaurs and spaceships. The writing is much more coherent, cohesive, and comprehensive than that babble I just posted.)

Thanks for the tip, sounds like a good read.

And: echoing what Grey Wolf said regarding HP, training, and how a professional soldier or professional boxer is better at dealing with damage than your average commoner/person.

When I was a kid, Muhammad Ali (one of the best heavyweight fighters ever, if not the best) perfected a technique called "rope a dope" that is a fine example of what Grey Wolf is tallking about. It's how he beat George Foreman in one of the great heavyweight matches ever. I guess he had the "tough" feat, if we apply a D&D 5e mechanic to that ...
As it was explained to us, as kids, (by our Physical Education teacher) strenghthening the abdominals is one of the things that all boxers do ... so do twenty more situps, kids!

[Metastachydium]

No it does not. There is no AC-granting helmets in D&D.

„Breastplate It comes with a helmet and greaves. (…) Chain Shirt A chain shirt comes with a steel cap. (…) Full Plate The suit includes gauntlets, heavy leather boots, a visored helmet” Helmets exists and they are part of what grants that armor bonus, sorry.
(Also, how more hp would give you a helmet is beyond me.)

Irrelevant. Dex bonus might give you the chance to avoid the blow entirely, but the premise here is that the blow has landed, since we are discussing HP. How you RP it is up to you, thus the abstraction part.

There are specific mechanisms for reducing damage by „moving with the blow” &c., such as Reflex saves and Defensive Roll (which uses Reflex saves). All are DEX- rather than hp-based.

Again, irrelevant since we are comparing human beings. It is also trivially obvious that body mass plays a fundamental part in one's ability to survive blows - another difference between a boxer and a regular human.

Grey Wolf

No, we are talking about hit points and what they represent, and if they represent „how seasoned a warrior” one is, the MM is full of oddities.

♣

Also, Disintegrate is a ranged touch attack. The way I understand them, once a touch attack hits, it touches the subject. From theat point on, the target may wear as many helmets, swirl around as much as the target wants and may have all the experience in the world, because they got touched and the effect, well, takes effect. If hp worked like you claim it works, more hp wouldn't help against Disintegrate (or for that matter, say, electricity-based non-touch effects).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

„Breastplate It comes with a helmet and greaves. (…) Chain Shirt A chain shirt comes with a steel cap. (…) Full Plate The suit includes gauntlets, heavy leather boots, a visored helmet” Helmets exists and they are part of what grants that armor bonus, sorry.

None of which a peasant wears. Nor is it a requirement to wear armour to have a helmet. You can RP that your wizard has a metal cap, for all the rules care.

(Also, how more hp would give you a helmet is beyond me.)

Like I already said, by knowing how to best use it to ameliorate the blow, because they know what they are doing better than a regular person with the same equipment.

And since you are refusing to acknowledge the meaning of the word abstraction, that is all I will say to you.

Good bye.

GW

[Fyraltari]

Which is why OotS is a parody of D&D, and not a D&D game. The rules does not say "if the attack by a horned creature hits for max damage, the horn goes entirely through your torso and out the other side". It says "it does max damage". You can then compare to the total HP pool available to the character, and decide from that what kind of hit it was. And if there is a substantial amount of HP left, then the blow must not have been that bad, because the character is good at fighting. And thus, yes, they can still keep running around, because they have plenty of stamina left.

GW

Fair enough.

[Metastachydium]

None of which a peasant wears. Nor is it a requirement to wear armour to have a helmet. You can RP that your wizard has a metal cap, for all the rules care.


Like I already said, by knowing how to best use it to ameliorate the blow, because they know what they are doing better than a regular person with the same equipment.

And since you are refusing to acknowledge the meaning of the word abstraction, that is all I will say to you.

Good bye.

GW

You presented what you think hp does and gave two examples of how this can be RP-d. I pointed out that both examples are bad because the game has mechanics other than hp that cover what you claim hp does in your examples, and now you're flingin insults at me, because why not.
You know what? I see no point in continuing this conversation either so your leaving it is most welcome.

[Ironsmith]

This has nothing to do with the disintegrate discussion, but it irks me as an example, because I see it so often. HP is not a raw measure of "health", it is an abstraction of the ability to operate in combat. If you hit a peasant's head with a cudgel, he goes down. But the same exact blow to a seasoned warrior will only partially connect: they will know how to duck to lessen the impact, they will have a helmet to help, they will have partially deflected it and weaved so it is not a straight hit. The result is that they can take multiple more such blows before exhaustion causes them to falter and finally collapse. Levelling up doesn't suddenly make you healthier, it just indicates you are better at knowing how to ameliorate hits.

Grey Wolf

I always understood hp from levels to be a combined matter of pain tolerance and actual, physical toughness. People with more hp are clearly taking more physical damage; they need more powerful magic to get back to an "unharmed" state, and there are clear examples of situations that shouldn't be survivable not killing someone with enough hp (i.e. being thrown off a cliff, having a dragon blast you with solar-level heat, et cetera). The general idea is that, IRL, people are generally better at handling stressful situations they've already handled in the past; take that principle, and extend it to its (il)logical conclusion. A high-level Fighter can handle being impaled by a charging minotaur because he's done it before (well, last time it was a pike, but you get the idea).

This also neatly explains why different classes not only get different starting values for hp, but also gain them at different rates. A Barbarian has shouldered more than his fair share of injuries, some number of which may have even been intentional, while a Rogue generally avoids those sorts of situations (but has still gotten into them before), and a Wizard's idea of a bad injury is accidentally burning their hand on the candlein their study.

But to be honest, it makes total sense that the hp system is unrealistic. That's the point. It's a necessary component of escapism to have things not be like reality, in a good way.

[KorvinStarmast]

I always understood hp from levels to be a combined matter of pain tolerance and actual, physical toughness.

The AD&D 1e DMG first tried to explain this: it used as an example "he just won't die" in the case of the real life person Rasputin. It then went on to given an in-game example. Different editions varied this over time. In other words, Hit Points Are Not Meat.

Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5.5 hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.

I offered a detailed treatment of how things varied between editions here. Interestingly, the first time "negative HP doesn't mean you are dead" came in AD&D 1e. AD&D 2e went back to 'you are dead at 0 HP' and then D&D 3 provided another take on how the negative HP and 'bleeding out' worked. 4e had yet another twist on it (with performance penalties if you were below half HP for some conditions) and 5e did another thing with death saving throws and massive damage. I still think that Gary G's attempt at explanation is one of the better 'HP are not meat' treatments in terms of usability. That said, for the edition that OoTS is based from:

What hit points represent
Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. d20SRD, Injury and Death.

{taking 50+ HP in one blow forces a death save (Fortitude, DC 15)}

This also neatly explains why different classes not only get different starting values for hp, but also gain them at different rates.

Yes.

But to be honest, it makes total sense that the hp system is unrealistic. That's the point. It's a necessary component of escapism to have things not be like reality, in a good way.

No argument with that.

[Jasdoif]

It seems to me that Disintegrate would act on the first object that it strikes, which would include things like force walls and glass but not air. Rock to Mud isn't so obvious. For example, if one wanted to use it under water, would one have to be touching the stone in question, so the spell wasn't expended on the water? Can Disintegrate be used under water?

Water (as opposed to ice) is not a solid barrier, thus doesn't block line of effect. Neither disintegrate nor transmute rock to mud are fire spells, so there are no special rules with regards to using them underwater; they'd work for a creature in water the same as they would for a creature in air. (In the case of transmute rock to mud, that'd mean having line of effect to some point of the shapeable area you're wanting to transmute from rock into mud.)

[Fyraltari]

The AD&D 1e DMG first tried to explain this: it used as an example "he just won't die" in the case of the real life person Rasputin.

The sad truth is that the story of Rasputin taking an ungodly amout of physical damage before finally dying was fabricated by his murderers. Oh, and the fact that his corpse sat up during his cremation (a rare but not unique freak occurence) did not help.

[WanderingMist]

1) Disintegrate would not need to create a sentient entity to accomplish its effect. Even if we grant that it somehow has sensory perception (to set its own boundaries), there are many examples of non-sentient lifeforms that do something similar, some of which are living in or under your house right now (i.e. bedbugs, which can seek out living creatures to suckle from, but are clearly nowhere near sentience). Additionally, given that Disintegrate is only able to take out a 10-foot cube of unliving matter, there are definitely upper limits to how much damage it could do if its caster makes a miscalculation.

I think you've confused sentience with sapience here. They may act solely on instinct, but they are certainly aware of what things are natural dangers to them.