L&L 5/21 - Hit Points, Our Old Friend

Healing surges didn't bother me initially. The meta of it eventually started to annoy me.

For example, when a player couldn't be healed because they were out of surges. This idea seems to lead to that same kind of 'breaking immersion' meta gaming that I didn't like about healing surges. Isn't it a goal of 5e to try to not break immersion with meta gaming?

I also think naming them Hit Dice is a minor misapplication of the term.

I would rather have the heal skill provide some small measure of hit point recovery and let other classes have access to minor magical healing.

Something like a fighter with a very devout religious background getting a minor lay on hands ability or a magic user with a religious ritual that takes several minutes to cast or a barbarian brew that grows hair on your chest but leaves you a little tipsy for a few minutes or will get you stinking fall down drunk if you imbibe to much.

If the issue is that there needs to be some kind of cap on this so that players couldn't spam them, then put those limits on the minor magical healing abilities and limit the heal skill. After all isn't it a trope where a healer has done all that they can and must let nature take it's course?

Crazy Jerome said:

Another possibility of somewhat limited Hit Die use in a "short rest" is making food and rest conditions more important.

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I doubt something like that will be the default, as it is very simulationist. But the base system makes such a variant rule easy to include.

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I quite like the idea that recovery is easier, or greater, if the conditions are more propitious. Linking it to the number of HD that may be expended - unless that is expressed as a ratio - will still produce the "low levels heal more" thing that is pre-3E mundane healing (and pre-4e magical healing).

nnms said:

II want the system to be able to handle regular humans in the best equipment money can buy (custom full plate for example) and also regular humans in roughspun jerkins. I think going from AC 10 to AC 20 should probably merit some sort of change in level or XP value or whatever. And I shouldn't have to also increase their hit points, attack bonus etc., if, in the fiction, they are equal in ability to the guys without armour.

I want to be able to ask "What is this opponent the PCs will be facing? What's it like? How armoured is it? How fast? How tough? How deadly? What else can it do?" without the answer of one question limiting (or even predefining) the answers to other questions.

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What you describe here works for me in Runequest or Rolemaster. As in, I can see how the game gives me the resources to answer those questions, and then render those answers in mechanical terms.

I find it harder to do for D&D, because to hit bonuses, saving throw bonuses and hit points all seem to have a meta-element (and I think the degree of meta-element increases as one runs through that list). How much meta should a given opponent have? 4e answers, in effect, "Enough to provide a numerically satisfying encounter, within such-and-such a tolerance range". I've got nothing in principle against a different answer, but what is that different answer going to be?

pemerton said:

What you describe here works for me in Runequest or Rolemaster. As in, I can see how the game gives me the resources to answer those questions, and then render those answers in mechanical terms.

I find it harder to do for D&D, because to hit bonuses, saving throw bonuses and hit points all seem to have a meta-element (and I think the degree of meta-element increases as one runs through that list). How much meta should a given opponent have? 4e answers, in effect, "Enough to provide a numerically satisfying encounter, within such-and-such a tolerance range". I've got nothing in principle against a different answer, but what is that different answer going to be?

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I'm not quite catching the difference you are seeing between D&D and Runequest or Rolemaster in regards to the meta element. I'm quite familiar with Runequest in most of its editions, but have no familiarity with Rolemaster.

Perhaps if you gave what you believe the answer to the "How much meta should a given opponent have?" question from 3.x, 2E, AD&D, Basic or OD&D, I'd understand why "D&D" (rather than just a subset of D&D known as 4E) has to have such a difference in terms of degrees of meta in the stats of a creature than, say, Runequest.

nnms said:

I'm not quite catching the difference you are seeing between D&D and Runequest or Rolemaster in regards to the meta element.

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Well, in RQ there really is no meta-element. Hit points are CON (END? I'm forgetting my RQ stat names) + SIZ. Damage is STR + SIZ. Damage reduction is purely simulationist - if I know how tough a creature's hide is, I can assign it damage reduction by comparison to the armour rules and the other creatures in the rulebook.

To hit numbers, also, are just a reflection of raw ability (stat mods) plus skill (the rest). I assign this as fits my conception of the monster.

The closes to a meta-element in RQ is POW, but I can assign that as I see fit. And there is no way of using POW as a luck stat to affect my to hit, or hit points, or damage avoidance. I can assign it on something like the same rationale that I would assign CHA in D&D, and it won't spill through into other elements of action resolution.

nnms said:

Perhaps if you gave what you believe the answer to the "How much meta should a given opponent have?" question from 3.x, 2E, AD&D, Basic or OD&D, I'd understand why "D&D" (rather than just a subset of D&D known as 4E) has to have such a difference in terms of degrees of meta in the stats of a creature than, say, Runequest.

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Well, I don't know the answer. That's my puzzle.

So, in AD&D, hit points have a meta-element (as explained by Gygax, and as recently recapitulated by Mearls). So do saving throws, per Gygax in the AD&D DMG - unlike in 3E, where I think saving throws are pure process simulation, in AD&D saving throws also reflect luck, divine favour etc. To hit numbers have the least meta-element, but the way they are abstracted into a one minute round suggests that they may not be entirely devoid of it (ie a high level fighter having such an easy time hitting a rust monster perhaps reflects not only increased skill, but perhaps increased luck, divine favour etc).

So in AD&D, suppose I'm statting up a pirate king. How much meta should he have? If I give him 3 HD, does this think I mean he has quite a bit of meta compared to a commoner? Or just that he's really big and muscly? Maybe if I give him an 18 STR and 16 CON that suggests the latter, but perhaps he's strong, healthy, untrained but meta-rich.

Or, to flip it around: I consider the questions you stated upthread:


In RQ, once I've answered those questions, I have the creature's stats and percentiles.

But in AD&D, once I've answered those question, I can't stat up the creature yet, because until I know how much meta it's going to have, I can't finish the job. Perhaps its size puts a floor under its HD (if it's as big as an elephant, it better have at least 8 or 10 HD), and its armour puts a floor under its AC. But setting a floor isn't the same as telling me what the value is.

Like I said, 4e answers the question about how much meta by saying "OK, give it enough meta to be a mechanically adequate challenge for its level". The meta is treated simply as a device for achieving a certain type of challenge level and pacing.

But how does, or should, AD&D answer the question? If it answers it in the same way, then it turns out that AD&D monster design isn't that different from 4e after all - except maybe the meta-elements that 4e distributes across AC and hp, in AD&D get shoved all into hp, with AC being treated in a purely simulationist fashion.

But maybe AD&D can go a different way. For example, you could say, give it enough meta to make it seem about as tough as it does in fairy stories, or mythology, or popular fantasy fiction. I think classic D&D took this route with undead - but then in B/X you can see it breaking down, as a whole lot of crappier made-up undead are slotted in above the vampire and the lich because we needed higher level undead to challenge Companion and Masters level PCs. (That is, they resorted to a 4e-style answer to the question, How much meta?).

And relying on the fantasy tradition also makes it hard to work out how much meta to give your new inventions.

A game like Burning Wheel shows a different sort of solution here. It emphasises very much building monsters in the way you describe - assign the stats that give the correct answers to those questions - but then it allows an appropriate number of Fate Points to be given to the monster, completely orthogonal to answering those questions, in order to give it the right amount of meta for it to do its job in the game.

But D&D can't go this way, because with to hit numbers, saving throws and hit points it bundles its meta into its non-meta in an inseperable combination.

Does that make any sense?

Yes, I think you are making a lot of sense.

Still, I do don't put luck and divine favor exactly into the metagame. In my game, such elements are simulationist. Characters in my fantasy games are aware of those touched by fate, favored by the gods, and so forth. They are actual qualities.

The metagame, for me, is simply the math. That includes skill, size, raw talent, and the rest.

tlantl said:

There was just a system in the 1e dungeon master's guide that did just this. At least the first part. The experience point value of monster's table on pg 85 allow for dm's to add xp to creatures for higher than average abilities gear and defenses.

A similar chart could be just the thing. I may just use the one I have since it is pretty comprehensive. The numerical bonuses might need some tweaking though.

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If it comes to that 4e has guidelines (I haven't read them in the DMG for a while, but they are coded into the Monster Builder which I use all the time) for adjusting HPs, AC, NADs and so on up and down - but you have to use judgement as to how many go up and how many go down before you have really changed the critter's level...

I agree with nnms that more detailed breakdowns here would be useful, but in AD&D and 4e both you essentially have the guideline plus the examples in the monster manual(s) to give you the steer you need. I find the approach and guidelines given in 4e the best so far, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be better.

Mattachine said:

Yes, I think you are making a lot of sense.

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Thanks.

Mattachine said:

I do don't put luck and divine favor exactly into the metagame. In my game, such elements are simulationist. Characters in my fantasy games are aware of those touched by fate, favored by the gods, and so forth. They are actual qualities.

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Cool, that's one way to go. When I've GMed Rolemaster it has been like this - to the extent that divine favour and luck are bestowed by particular categories of spell casting.

But it does raise questions - like, if I cut a PC off from the gods (say by trapping him/her in a DoMT Donjon or a 4e-style Abyssal oubliette) does that drop his/her hit points and saving throws?

It's because, at least on a conventional reading of the rules, these qualities of a creature can't be affected ingame by cutting off the ingame sources of luck and favour, that I think of them as meta.

But I agree there is a lot of straddling and nuance here. I see it as a very distinctive feature of D&D, and a potential strength provided that some thought is given to it by the designers. (Personally, I like best the way 4e has handled it. I can see the case for AD&D, too. I personally find the 3E treatment the least satisfactory.)