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

[Manbearcat]

That begs the question, though: how do you explain in-character decisions based on knowledge they aren't supposed to have? Why would you decide to drink a potion, if it didn't have an observable effect? Why would you even spend such incredible sums of wealth on "magical" potions that - as far as you can tell - do nothing?

The same reason why athletes proactively drink Gatorade to maintain electrolyte levels before cramping up. The same reason why everyone proactively drinks coffee/tea before they're so sleepy/fatigued that they can no longer keep their eyes open. Its preventive maintenance and placebo as much as anything else. In some cases though, there may be a twinge of something that alerts them to "fuel up".

In our historical D&D games though it has worked just as everything else; "shrodinger's wounds" or post-hoc narrative justification. The player is aware of HPs. The character's relevant awareness is only loosely related to rituals they regularly fulfill in their lives (the behavioral regime variety, such as quaffing the stray potion) and the sensory information available to them in their world (of which only a small sum would be available to the player). This sensory information is married to their systemic HP ablation and restoration only so far as a player or GM wishes them to be in the present moment (possibly for visceral or genre concerns...or possibly for some measure of internal consistency). Here are a few examples from my game:

Player (with character suffering from severe HP loss): "After my latest foe falls at my feet, I turn to race to another. The twist of my torso takes my breath away. I reach inside my leather jerkin. No blood. No matter. I can't be slowed by anything. I quickly pull a small vial from my belt (minor action) and empty the silvery contents into my mouth (minor action - I lose a healing surge and gain 10 HP). Whether it truly made a difference or not, the practice of imbibing it immediately renews my fighting spirit."

Player (administering a potion to an unconscious character): "I didn't see what took Raynor from his feet and I don't see any blood coming from his nose or mouth nor injuries needing poultice. I've yet to feel the sting of their cruel blades but poison is a weapon common to scoundrels. I think I saw a nick slip past his sword's guard when we were fighting close. Perhaps that is the culprit (he was indeed suffering from 5 OG poison damage). I unclasp the potion from his belt (minor action) and administer unto him (standard action - he loses a surge, gains 25 HP, and makes a saving throw) a single drink and pour the rest on his breast. When he opens his eyes to regard me awkwardly pouring liquid on his chest in the middle of a battle I say 'a midfight bath is typically supposed to be in the blood of your enemies..."

Those sorts of examples are more than sufficient to the cause. Sometimes it will be even less provocative than that - just premptively staving off being winded after 3 rounds of intense fighting, or clearing the cobwebs after a collision (which should happen regularly in a melee skirmish whether the rules stipulate they do or don't).

 

[Manbearcat]

I believe that 4E has less outcome based design as compared to 3E. If you look at the Red Dragon from the Monster Vault (I think; I'm looking at my spreadsheet) it has an AC of 22 if you take out its DEX and 1/2 Level bonus. Which is pretty close to magic plate. Which is what you'd imagine a Red Dragon's armour to be. There are a few strange results, but for the most part they actually fit a formula. (Armour + dex + 1/2 level.)

Though that's only the published materials, and the Monster Vault at that, but still. Kind of an interesting find.

You're referring to the level 7 Young Red Dragon (Solo Soldier), I presume?

Level 7 standard defenses are:

AC 22, NAD 20

level 7 Young Red Dragon (Solo Soldier) defenses are:

AC 23, Fortitude 21, Reflex 18, Will 18

The standard formula typically calls for a + 2 for Soldier AC buffing. Any nonsoldier + 1 AC buffing asks for an offsetting of that with a - 2 to an NAD. Any shuffling of other defenses is on a 1:1 basis but you don't want to be straying too terribly far (perhaps within 4 or so) of the mean (in this case 20).

So it looks like they gave it a nonsoldier AC buff (+ 1 ) with Reflex adjusted downward. They buffed Fort + 1 and Will is adjusted downward (but 2 instead of 1). The soldier AC buff was eschewed a lot toward the end, in favor of other, more interesting activatable defenses or melee control capabilities (I think most approve).

They were pretty close to the mean target numbers with the Red Dragon here. What they didn't have to do, in order to do so, was vest it with some arbitrary kludge Natural Armor bonus in order to achieve that hitting of mean target numbers for the expectant challenge it is supposed to provide for heroes of that level. They just made him extremely physically tough but slower and more prone to attacks that may naturally impact his insatiable avarice and overwrought ego (lower Will). He is basically immune to all of the physical impacts of attacking WIll due to the traits of Action Recovery and Instinctive Result. He's mostly impervious to fire of attacks from that level. He flies, breaths fire, and attacks with claws, maw, and tail with an unbridled fury. He is a perfect Young Red Dragon and he works out that way in the fiction when you do battle with him (especially when you give him thematic lair stuff or lackeys). The Elder and the Ancient are even moreso (as they should be).

I agree with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] on the 3.x dragon. The idea of a Natural Armor extremely exceeding the most magical of plate armor is silly and not an intention of the system. Its an ugly wart of a formula kludge to provide expectant challenge without buffing numbers they didn't want to buff (which have the consequence of making the dragon absurdly vulnerable to things like Dex poison and Shivering Touch...such that PCs are constantly looking to engage in non-thematic asymetric warfare against him to leverage that...meanwhile the dragon is engaging in very "UnRed" like behavior of being a giant flying sorcerer - because its a million times more powerful than his melee abilities). Just like HP, you aren't meant to stare too hard at it in an effort to make sense of the nonsensical.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The same reason why athletes proactively drink Gatorade to maintain electrolyte levels before cramping up. The same reason why everyone proactively drinks coffee/tea before they're so sleepy/fatigued that they can no longer keep their eyes open. Its preventive maintenance and placebo as much as anything else. In some cases though, there may be a twinge of something that alerts them to "fuel up".

The major difference being that Gatorade and coffee/tea are fairly cheap, where a healing potion costs enough to feed a small village for a week. I mean, I get that you can make full use of abstraction to hide the causality and make it less weird if you've already made the decision to go with post-hoc narrative justification, but can you see how the alternative makes sense for people who start with an objective reality as a premise? Why it's more satisfying to some people for a magical potion to have an obvious magical effect, so that using it confers the same degree of certainty to both the player and the character, and why it's important that a thing be defined as it occurs rather than in retrospect?

If you don't mind another scenario, what would happen in the first situation you described if you didn't have a healing potion on hand? The player knows that the character has only a few hit points left, and the character knows that he's un-wounded but can't complete his customary ritual. Would the character then decide to not press the fight? Or would you decide, in retrospect, that this time those wounds are real injury and you can't go on because you might die?

 

[Ahnehnois]

The same reason why athletes proactively drink Gatorade to maintain electrolyte levels before cramping up.

Actually, this example you gave kind of illustrates the problem. People did not drink Gatorade from the beginning of time; they drank water, even though if you're sweating a lot you do need electrolyte replacement. People did not intuitively know that they needed this; they just knew that they were thirsty.

Moreover, it remains debatable how useful sports drinks really are and what the ideal composition is, but that's a total tangent.

Back to the point, I find it very difficult to buy any in-game rationale for the purposeful, rationed utilization of healing resources without the character having some understanding of the underlying mechanics.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Back to the point, I find it very difficult to buy any in-game rationale for the purposeful, rationed utilization of healing resources without the character having some understanding of the underlying mechanics.

I'm just imagining a snake-oil salesman, selling cheap healing potions that don't actually do anything, because who would ever know? They might even do something, if any of it is psychosomatic. The salesman could even be convinced that they do work, because how would they know any better?

Unless your setting has active interventionist deities, of course.

 

[Hussar]

Healing potions are magical and that is objective and fairly easily knowable in the game world. Detect magic is hardly a rare effect.

Would you want to see a Know Hp spell or effect in the game? Heck, shouldn't that be a skill? If hp are objective then why can't my character know how many hp an NPC has?

 

[Ahnehnois]

Would you want to see a Know Hp spell or effect in the game?

I wouldn't. However, someone in the other thread indicated that there was one in 4e (as well as a feat in 3e).

Heck, shouldn't that be a skill? If hp are objective then why can't my character know how many hp an NPC has?

The number of times your heart beats in a minute is objective. The amount of phosphate-based energy stored in your body is objective. The number of synapses in your brain is objective. That doesn't mean it's feasible for someone to determine exactly what those numbers are by looking at you. Let alone could they determine something that is ostensibly a composite of those and many other things.

 

[Hussar]

I wouldn't. However, someone in the other thread indicated that there was one in 4e (as well as a feat in 3e).

The number of times your heart beats in a minute is objective. The amount of phosphate-based energy stored in your body is objective. The number of synapses in your brain is objective. That doesn't mean it's feasible for someone to determine exactly what those numbers are by looking at you. Let alone could they determine something that is ostensibly a composite of those and many other things.

But you are claiming that the PC knows his own hp. Yet what's the difference? I certainly couldn't determine any of those things for myself. But I can know how much luck and morale I have?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Healing potions are magical and that is objective and fairly easily knowable in the game world. Detect magic is hardly a rare effect.

So you know that it does something, even though there's no tangible effect. The skeptic in me will assume Nystul's Magic Aura, which is much cheaper to produce and lasts multiple days, because that has the exact same tangible effect.

Would you want to see a Know Hp spell or effect in the game? Heck, shouldn't that be a skill? If hp are objective then why can't my character know how many hp an NPC has?

It makes sense to me, both in real life and in-genre, that you can tell roughly how tough someone is by looking at them (although real-life toughness would have more to do with physical strength, and there's not nearly the range as there is in fantasy).

I've played in games in the past where the DM just came right out and said it. "This is a big tough guy warrior, you can tell by the way he carries his weapon that he's level 10 and has 108 hit points." Not that those numbers mean anything to my character, of course, but it's a kind of short-hand for "this guy is obviously way tougher than you," or "he's obviously the toughest guy in the room, but you could probably take him," depending on how strong my own character is.

 

[Ahnehnois]

But you are claiming that the PC knows his own hp. Yet what's the difference? I certainly couldn't determine any of those things for myself. But I can know how much luck and morale I have?

Knowing oneself is different than knowing someone else.

However, even given that, I don't know that I or most people will claim that a character knows the exact number. For example, a character with a base value of 100 hit points might not be able to tell the difference between an attack that causes him 49 damage and an attack that causes him 51 damage.

But can he tell that he's lost about half of his hit points, and that another such attack might knock him out? Does he know whether it would take days or weeks for that damage to naturally heal (depending on the edition of choice's natural healing rate)? Does he know that he now has roughly the same amount of durability as the party's 55 hp wizard? I think so.