How many hit points do you have?

[I'm A Banana]

I run the 500 feet to close to him and attack him because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he cannot kill me."

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

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

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

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

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

Which is AWESOME.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[delericho]

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

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

 

[Dungeonman]

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

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

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

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

 

[Celebrim]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Dungeonman]

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

I've had groups refuse to let new PC's into the party unless IC justification was provided. At times this has led to two parallel parties that play alternated between.

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Celebrim]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Dungeonman]

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

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

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

 

[Lanefan]

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

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

Which is AWESOME.

To you.

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

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

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

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

Lanefan

 

[I'm A Banana]

To you.

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Lanefan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I take mild offense to this.

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

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

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