D&D 5E Can mundane classes have a resource which powers abilities?

[Manbearcat]

If I get what you're going for, you're saying that people can't readily tell correlation from causation, and that they do all kinds of things regardless of whether those things are truly useful or not. Which has some truth to it. However, on aggregate, people can make some useful observations (for instance, it was accurately determined that white willow bark relieved pain long before we knew that salicylates inhibited cyclooxygenases). To be fair, they can also be wrong.

To go back to a point above, if people were truly as clueless as you're implying, they would probably be quaffing worthless nonmagical potions on a regular basis believing they were just as good as the real thing. But that doesn't happen much in my games. Does it happen in yours?

If not, there has to be some rationale for how the characters are so effectual in their actions.

Though I'm not taking a position of general or insidious cluelessness amongst a populace, You have the thrust of my post right. I would maybe say:

1) The physical body's actual reaction to it's perceived betterment (placebo) is extraordinary (and revealing itself to be even more profound as the science matures).

2). Common sense is (that is 1st order coupling and derivative having primacy in the role of phenomena we interact with and subsequently attempt to predict based on that shallow analysis) mostly a myth. The complex organisms and phenomenon we interact with and perceive are governed by all manner of 2nd and 3rd order functions that defy the silver bullet of common sense we so deeply hope persists (due to our inherent fragility and attendant insecurities) so we can make decisions that we are comfortable with while, inevitably, having very imperfect information.

Beyond that thesis, for my home game, genre expectations bears these things out. As GM, I'm mostly concerned with on-screen thematic conflict (the right NOW) and relentlessly challenging my players with the material and adversity they're interested in engaging with (no forays into thematically benign setting material to prove a "living, breathing world"). We resolve conflicts, things escalate and play (and story) naturally emerges due to that inertia. Ultimately, we find out what happens. Snake Oil Salesman selling worthless potions isn't a trope that we engage with. My campaigns bear no resemblance to the tropes of Gygaxian play. If players secure a stray potion, finding out whether the potion is cursed or worthless will never have a moment of spotlight. It works. Vendor investigation, haggling, or interrogation are not tropes we enjoy. We move on to the conflicts we enjoy. If they run across a curse or something such as that, it will be centrally relevant to a conflict that one of the players have signaled they wish to engage with.

There are a lot of genre and play style agenda assumptions (eg; pacing, player authority and stance fluctuation, tactical or strategic primacy, GMing principles, system complexity) that are just mismatches for our various tables. For example, low fantasy focused on setting exploration is a very different aesthetic (theoretically and in play) than high fantasy focused on addressing theme through serial, conflict-charged scenes. A hybrid of the two is different from both.

 

[Ahnehnois]

1) The physical body's actual reaction to it's perceived betterment (placebo) is extraordinary (and revealing itself to be even more profound as the science matures).

This is true to a great extent (and happens to be right in my wheelhouse in terms of professional expertise). And it is quite fascinating how much psychological factors can influence physical functions and how little of medicine is "specific" (i.e. not placebo).

2). Common sense is (that is 1st order coupling and derivative having primacy in the role of phenomena we interact with and subsequently attempt to predict based on that shallow analysis) mostly a myth. The complex organisms and phenomenon we interact with and perceive are governed by all manner of 2nd and 3rd order functions that defy the silver bullet of common sense we so deeply hope persists (due to our inherent fragility and attendant insecurities) so we can make decisions that we are comfortable with while, inevitably, having very imperfect information.

Okay, yes. We need to be able to walk without watching our feet while they take each step. A degree of "it's close enough for jazz" is inherent to human existence. And yet...

Snake Oil Salesman selling worthless potions isn't a trope that we engage with.
...
Vendor investigation, haggling, or interrogation are not tropes we enjoy. We move on to the conflicts we enjoy.

I think that's the heart of it. You pay attention to things that are interesting to you. Me, I'm interested in biology and psychology and theater, and not interested in history or martial arts or tactics. So the way I interpret the rules reflects that, the problems I have with them and the solutions I implement reflect that. I make an active effort to reconcile health mechanics with reality because I need to know. I rationalize the behavior of characters with respect to these thing because I need to do so to avoid being distracted by that part of the game.

There are a lot of genre and play style agenda assumptions (eg; pacing, player authority and stance fluctuation, tactical or strategic primacy, GMing principles, system complexity) that are just mismatches for our various tables.

No doubt.

I think, as the other thread illustrates, that most people are treating hp as being an in-game phenomenon and assuming that the characters have an understanding of them and are relatively in step with the players in that regard. But not everyone; I'm not here to belittle the dissenters. For those of us that do, all of this follows: you use healing items because you know you need them, and you know how much and when.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

My campaigns bear no resemblance to the tropes of Gygaxian play.

I find that amusing, because - having gone back to read some of the original passages - I would consider the entire concept of post-hoc narration to by a classic Gygaxian trope, albeit one that was more in style since it didn't always show through in the mechanics. I guess we all just take what we like and change the rest, then.

 

[Manbearcat]

I find that amusing, because - having gone back to read some of the original passages - I would consider the entire concept of post-hoc narration to by a classic Gygaxian trope, albeit one that was more in style since it didn't always show through in the mechanics. I guess we all just take what we like and change the rest, then.

To clarify, I meant genre/literary or dramatic trope. I didn't mean technique or principle. Post-hoc narration or fortune in the middle is a technique which is underwritten by a principle and perpetuated by a need inherent to the resolution mechanics.

Gygaxian tropes are classic "murderhobo" stuff. "Black Company". FFV attrition. PCs with a disposable, fatalistic bent to their own nature, the world around them, and to their cohorts/lackeys. 10 foot poles, chests that will eat you when you try to open them, doors that will suck your brains out when you put your ear to them to listen, and flying, invisible Rogues tethered to a rope while exploring the next mad mage/lich's MEGADUNGEON OF DEATH! Swindling pedlars with cursed magic items galore. Pixelbitching to the extreme in order to exhaustively scout and come up with the best way to strategically use your spell loadout + magic items to circumvent an entire dungeon/conflict or as much SoD as possible.

When I get together with old buddies to play a one-off, the above "murderhobo" game (pretty much exclusively in a form of Looney Toons Pawn Stance) is what I am running.

 

[Hussar]

I believe the conventional approach to hp is as a ratio. After all, damage and hit points only produce in-world phenomena when they interact with each other, not by themselves. So a blow that deals 10 damage is not in itself an objective truth; it is considered in the context of what you were attacking. 10 damage dealt to a dragon is a scratch. 10 damage dealt to a kobold is a beheading. 10 damage dealt to an adamantine door is nothing. Someone who has half his hp looks significantly wounded, but still a viable combatant. Someone who has only 10% appears close to succumbing to his wounds. Someone at 80% is noticeably worse for wear but not seriously injured. Relative judgments are much easier to make then absolutes.

I think it's pretty feasible to look at someone and made an intelligent guess as to how they're doing health- and stamina-wise.

But, none of this is actually directly related to HP. Not really. After all, I can lost HP without taking any visible physical effects. Heck, HP can be bypassed in many cases such as magic, poison or various other effects, where I'm dead with full HP.

Sure, most of the time, in pretty broad strokes, we narrate HP damage as some sort of physical effect, mostly because it's the most convenient way of doing it. It would feel weird to narrate a 100 point critical hit as a close miss after all. Yet, if we're going to posit an actual real existence of HP, that's precisely what we should be narrating, if the target has 101 HP. Because there is no rational narration of that hit that actually makes sense if you look at it for more than a few seconds.

In the fighter and fire giant example, change it slightly and now it's a Halfling fighter getting hit. This character is 30 pounds and yet can take more HP damage than an elephant. The axe that hits that halfling is probably about twice his size or more. It's relatively the same as getting hit by a truck. Yet, the wound that the character takes is not only not lethal, it's relatively minor. Heck, if the halfling was 11th level and had another 20 HP or so, it wouldn't even knock him off his feet.

What really surprises me here though is that people can rationalise HP to this degree, where it does not break disbelief that my 30 pound halfling can take more physical punishment than an elephant, but, AEDU cannot be rationalised. I'm trying to bring things back to the original point of this thread. If you can rationalise the character having this many HP by saying that he's a legendary figure, the game equivalent of Beowulf or whatever, what's the issue with any of the powers?

Why is it okay for my character to jump off a 60 foot cliff, dust himself off and jog back up the cliff to do it again, just because I know that it cannot kill me, but it's not okay to have daily limited critical hits?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

After all, I can lost HP without taking any visible physical effects.

By and large, not so much. This really changed in 4E with the introduction of the psychic damage type, but prior to that and barring a few vague spells in 3E, you couldn't really lose HP except as the result of some physical effect.

 

[Hussar]

By and large, not so much. This really changed in 4E with the introduction of the psychic damage type, but prior to that and barring a few vague spells in 3E, you couldn't really lose HP except as the result of some physical effect.

Actually that is pretty true. However, my second point is also true - I can be dead with full hit points.

 

[pemerton]

By and large, not so much. This really changed in 4E with the introduction of the psychic damage type, but prior to that and barring a few vague spells in 3E, you couldn't really lose HP except as the result of some physical effect.

Some examples I can think of from AD&D: the phantasmal killer spell can deal hp damage; and so can psionic attacks. Not to mention hit point damage caused by illusions when the defender fails to disbelieve. (I think someone already mentioned this upthread, or on another similar thread.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Actually that is pretty true. However, my second point is also true - I can be dead with full hit points.

You could also be petrified with full hit points, or banished to limbo with full hit points. If you take hit points to represent the structural integrity of your meat (which, granted, not everybody does) then there are still a few ways to kill a person that don't involve damaging the meat whatsoever.

Back to your previous question, I think the dismay over AEDU is mostly a matter of perception. Even if we don't have experience with a humanoid being able to take twenty arrows and stay standing, it's just an extension of something that we already understand (or think we do, at any rate); as long as we buy that one person can drop after taking a single arrow, but Conan can take an arrow without dropping, then it's just a logical extension of that. (People are really bad at intuitively scaling variables, for whatever reason.) It's the same reason why a +30 natural armor bonus seems okay - it's like something we already except, but just more of it.

With AEDU, we don't really have a basis to extend that from. We don't have context for "you can do this once every five minutes, and it's guaranteed to work every time, but you can never do it twice within that period". Or maybe there is a good explanation somewhere in there about why you can't use one E power twice, even though you could use an E and then follow it up with three D powers in rapid succession, but people stop looking for an answer as soon as someone claims that you're using cinematic logic where you can only use that move once in order to make things more interesting; once they hear one explanation that they know they can disagree with - as any good simulationist will do when presented with that argument - then it's easier to just mark it down as "something dumb than doesn't make sense" than to try and extend your disbelief.

Just this morning, I was reading an article about Supreme Court justices, and how people who feel very strongly about something are disinclined to change their minds in the face of evidence, to the extent that an argument against their beliefs is likely to push them even further toward how they already felt.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Some examples I can think of from AD&D: the phantasmal killer spell can deal hp damage; and so can psionic attacks. Not to mention hit point damage caused by illusions when the defender fails to disbelieve. (I think someone already mentioned this upthread, or on another similar thread.)

Phantasmal killer and the few illusions are actually the vague ones I mentioned, because they don't say how they're doing damage. As for psionic attacks in AD&D, I did look that one up, and pretty much the only way to deal HP damage is by actually setting someone on fire (molecular agitation, I think it was).