How many hit points do you have?

[lehcym]

The usefulness of knowledge is to help you to do the right choice. If the character does the right choice every time (thanks to the player), is he still ignorant ?

The character is either perfectly aware of his character sheet or he is some kind of psychic.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6775975]Dungeonman[/MENTION], it seems like you're describing the Forgotten Realms!

 

[Ahnehnois]

[MENTION=6775975]Dungeonman[/MENTION]
I think that scenario also ties into assumptions about non-adventuring life. Personally, I go a lot by Experts d20, which talks a lot about XP and character advancement for everyday professional life. A lot of D&D texts either ignore the issue of how NPCs compare to the PCs, or establish ludicrously low baselines (the 3.5 DMG indicates that the world is essentially full of level 1 commoners, despite there being several NPC classes and 20 levels of advancement available).

Assuming that NPC life really sucks, your example follows. Assuming that it doesn't; if we make higher baseline assumptions about the level, financial resources, and overall power of people in the world at large, it becomes more of a choice whether one wants to go into the adventuring business or not.

That being said, if we assume that the general population has 3d6 bell curve ability scores, most of them would fail and/or just die if they tried adventuring, so that enters into the equation as well.

 

[Dungeonman]

Assuming that NPC life really sucks, your example follows. Assuming that it doesn't; if we make higher baseline assumptions about the level, financial resources, and overall power of people in the world at large, it becomes more of a choice whether one wants to go into the adventuring business or not.

I'm wrapping my head around this kind of setting and it reminds me of that movie Tai Chi Zero, about a village of seemingly normal hardworking folk who also happen to be kung fu masters. If most NPCs had levels, that sure would explain how humans survive against the hordes of monsters, and it would unflinchingly embrace the D&D ruleset with the fiction.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If most NPCs had levels, that sure would explain how humans survive against the hordes of monsters, and it would unflinchingly embrace the D&D ruleset with the fiction.

To an extent. Even a level 5 commoner isn't much of a combatant. He certainly can't beat what a PC would consider a "level appropriate" challenge. But he is a much better laborer, and he is in general more resilient.

What it does when you start using the d20 system as a worldbuilding tool is it takes away some of the sense that adventurers and/or player characters are "special" or operate on a different plane of existence than everyone else. Instead, they are simply incrementally better at various relevant tasks. That increment may be a lot, but there isn't the same sense of "if you want to get better/smarter/tougher, go slaughter some goblins". Instead it's "if you want to get better, the amount you get better will depend on the risk you take; if you tend bar, you'll slowly advance, whereas if you try to save the world, you'll probably die young but you'll live hard up until then".

Another idea that's tied up here is the method of advancement. The D&D rules themselves are largely oriented around XP for adventuring tasks like acquiring treasure or killing monsters, but most people (at least most people who respond to ENW surveys on this topic) either substantially modify or ignore the XP rules, making more diverse outcomes possible and lessening the whole "killing goblins makes you a better person" vibe.

 

[pemerton]

The D&D rules themselves are largely oriented around XP for adventuring tasks like acquiring treasure or killing monsters

This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about. For instance, in 4e acquiring treasure isn't a source of XP; it's a consequence of XP (because XP drives levels, and levels drive treasure parcels).

XP are earned by completing quests, engaging with and resolving challenges, and free roleplaying that drives the ingame situation forward: in other words, for playing the game (as the designers conceive of it). The basic idea is that 12 or so hours of playing the game in this sense, with a 5-player group, will earn a level's worth of XP.

the "killing goblins makes you a better person" vibe

This seems to be an artefact of 2nd ed AD&D and 3E. In AD&D, for instance, there is no particular incentive to kill goblins - the incentive is to loot them. And in 4e there is no particular incentive to kill goblins, unless that is the particular way you want to engage the ingame situation and thereby drive the game onwards.

 

[Lanefan]

This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about. For instance, in 4e acquiring treasure isn't a source of XP; it's a consequence of XP (because XP drives levels, and levels drive treasure parcels).

While I realize how it's supposed to work, every time I see the term "treasure parcels" my gut reaction is 'bleah!'; it sounds so pre-packaged, the antithesis of the freeform and random type of game I far prefer.

Then again, in the 4e adventure modules I've run some of the most valuable treasure found by the party isn't considered treasure at all by the system. Example from Keep on the Shadowfell

***SPOILER ALERT*** - if you don't want to know stuff about Keep on the Shadowfell, please jump to the next post now

In KotS there's an enemy - I think it's a Hobgoblin just near the stairs between the first and second decks - who carries around a staff that when touched to an opponent does something like 4d6 electrical damage. The module doesn't consider this to be treasure at all, but when my crew killed that Hob. and figured out how to get that shock-staff working they thought it was the best thing they'd ever seen! So into party treasury it went, meaning that later I had to assign a value to it for treasury division...it ended up being the most expensive thing in the adventure!

I don't think 4e wants things to work that way, but if an opponent can use something then in theory the PCs (usually) can too.

Lan-"that shock-staff hung around in the party for about 2 years until it got stolen from its owner by another PC who then lost it when he died"-efan

 

[Ahnehnois]

This depends very heavily on which edition you're talking about.

To an extent. I don't think any of them are really giving you experience for gaining life experience though. It's always been some variation of rewarding people for adventuring rather than modeling learning through experience.

Which of course is why many people ignore that part of the rules.

 

[Obryn]

In KotS there's an enemy - I think it's a Hobgoblin just near the stairs between the first and second decks - who carries around a staff that when touched to an opponent does something like 4d6 electrical damage. The module doesn't consider this to be treasure at all, but when my crew killed that Hob. and figured out how to get that shock-staff working they thought it was the best thing they'd ever seen! So into party treasury it went, meaning that later I had to assign a value to it for treasury division...it ended up being the most expensive thing in the adventure!

I don't think 4e wants things to work that way, but if an opponent can use something then in theory the PCs (usually) can too.

Lan-"that shock-staff hung around in the party for about 2 years until it got stolen from its owner by another PC who then lost it when he died"-efan

In this case, it's a matter of the hobgoblin casting a spell through the staff, not the staff itself being magical. The fighter can't cast all the wizard's spells by borrowing his wand, either.

This was an attempt to avoid the wretched state of affairs in 3e of NPCs needing an overabundance of gear. 1e faced similar problems, so you had stuff like drow weapons that evaporated in sunlight.

 

[Dungeonman]

In this case, it's a matter of the hobgoblin casting a spell through the staff, not the staff itself being magical. The fighter can't cast all the wizard's spells by borrowing his wand, either.

This was an attempt to avoid the wretched state of affairs in 3e of NPCs needing an overabundance of gear. 1e faced similar problems, so you had stuff like drow weapons that evaporated in sunlight.

In 4E, are drow weapons mundane or are they magical and salvageable? If you disarm the hobgoblin's staff, does he lose his implement for shocking? How do the PCs "know" to spend 10 minutes or not differentiating the useful magical loot from the useless loot that were merely implemental to their owners? What do treasure parcels imply is happening in the fiction, or is it merely uninteresting to the story? I'm curious, because it seems to mirror the hit point self-awareness angle as well.