D&D 5E Do NPCs in your game have PHB classes?

The Crimson Binome · Apr 28, 2016

Maxperson said:
It still contradicts your claim. Even as far back as 1e, most of the damage was non-physical, which means invisible. A bruise for 10 out of 100 hit points is the same as a bruise for 1 out of 10 hit points. 10% is 10%. Heck, Gygax gave an example of how many hit points were meat. He listed the meat hit point going up to a max of 23 at 7th level. That meant a fighter with 60 hit points at 7th level had 37 non-meat hit points to lose. Good luck seeing those.

I think you haven't actually read that passage, at least not recently. Gygax doesn't talk about damage. He talks about Hit Points - your capacity to withstand damage.

What he said is that your starting amount of HP (and any bonus HP gained from having a high Con score) mostly reflected your physical health, and that most of the HP gained by a high-level character represent increased skill and luck and divine favor and magical wards and so on.

That doesn't mean you can take 90 damage without it making a leaving a mark on you. That interpretation would be ridiculous, since it would require meta-gaming to address. If you choose to use such a ridiculous interpretation, then that's on you; I won't defend you from your own foolishness. Even if you just use the proportional model, though, that interpretation is sufficient to say that every loss of HP has a physical sign which can be addressed by the character, and is still perfectly consistent with Gary's statement.

The Crimson Binome · Apr 28, 2016

Hussar said:
Heh. Note the "You" in your DMG quote. Who is the "you" in that statement? The player or the DM? Since this cannot be done by a "omnipotent outsider" according to @Saelorn's argument, who is the "you"?

No, it's fine. The statement refers to the DM, whose job is to honestly determine the nature of things that exist within the game world. In making an honest determination, the DM does not thereby change what the thing actually is.

Just as it's not meta-gaming for a player to honestly play their character based on in-game information, and it's not meta-gaming for the DM to determine that there actually is (or is not) a dragon in this particular cave, so it is also not meta-gaming for the DM to determine which spells should function on any given plane. That's just a part of impartial adjudication.

CapnZapp · Apr 28, 2016

I like how NPCs aren't built using PHB rules.

Exhibit A: you can give kobolds or thugs abilities that would be abusable or plain annoying if in the hands of players. (Not that Battlemasters and Bards weren't given annoying abilities...

CapnZapp · Apr 28, 2016

Saelorn said:
If this character has more than 120 HP, and your DM says that it is "certain" that this fall is instantly fatal, then I don't know what to tell you. Your DM is so far removed from the game in the book as to make discussion pointless, and I can't imagine an entire table full of players putting up with that sort of thing.

The rules actually do tell you when an outcome is certain. If a character has less than 10 HP, then a fall from 200 feet is certain death, and you don't even need to roll; if it has more than 10 HP, then death is not certain, and you do need to roll.

The game is supposed to be about the PCs, and the decisions which the players make on their behalf, but none of their decisions mean anything if the DM goes around house-ruling without telling them about the changes. If your DM wants to house-rule that a fall from 100+ feet is certainly fatal, and this is made known to the players beforehand so they can buy into it, then that's one thing. Otherwise, you're telling them that death is certain when they have every reason in the world to believe that survival is certain.

I could tell you your character dies.

Why? I'm the DM.

You're expected to trust me doing so only for a very good reason. However, what won't help you is throwing a tantrum about rules and hit points.

If you really believe you can use rulebook to shield you from the plot, it would be much quicker if you simply got up from the table, left, and never came back.

Cheers

CapnZapp · Apr 28, 2016

Saelorn said:
In some cases, the DM determines certainty, because the DM sets the DC for various tasks. If the DM honestly ascertains that the DC for a given task would be 0, then nobody with a modifer of -1 or greater can possibly fail, so success is certain (as it would be certain for a DC of 12, if the character had a bonus of +11 or greater).

Any DM who says that a fall of 200 feet onto a flat surface without other mitigating factors is certain to kill a character with 120+ HP is a DM who does not know the definition of certainty. Words have meaning, and those meanings remain true regardless of your obvious inability to comprehend them.

About the only thing that is for certain here is your inexperience in dealing with a wide range of playing and dungeonmastering styles.

I really encourage you to seek out a game of a profoundly different role-playing experience than what you're used to (such as a game powered by the aforementioned Apocalypse Now engine).

This will help you express yourself in less cocksure ways, and you will see that Your Way is but one of a multitude of Ways to play rpgs, even if we limit the discussion to only D&D.

Maxperson · Apr 28, 2016

Saelorn said:
I think you haven't actually read that passage, at least not recently. Gygax doesn't talk about damage. He talks about Hit Points - your capacity to withstand damage.

Right, and he says how many of your hit points are meat. Meat hit points are the only kind that can sustain bruising, cuts, etc. The rest of your hit points are invisible and you cannot see their loss.

What he said is that your starting amount of HP (and any bonus HP gained from having a high Con score) mostly reflected your physical health, and that most of the HP gained by a high-level character represent increased skill and luck and divine favor and magical wards and so on.

Right, since most of those hit points gained are skill, luck, etc., the damage done to remove them must be skill, luck, etc.

That doesn't mean you can take 90 damage without it making a leaving a mark on you. That interpretation would be ridiculous, since it would require meta-gaming to address. If you choose to use such a ridiculous interpretation, then that's on you; I won't defend you from your own foolishness. Even if you just use the proportional model, though, that interpretation is sufficient to say that every loss of HP has a physical sign which can be addressed by the character, and is still perfectly consistent with Gary's statement.

What an amazing Strawman. It's almost as if you didn't read my post. I didn't say it didn't leave a mark. I said you can't tell a 10 hit point bruise from a 1 hit point bruise when the victims have 100 and 10 hit points respectively. 10% is 10%. With the 100 hit point victim, there will be 9 hit points lost invisibly and the character will be unable to see those lost luck/skill/divine favor hit points.

TwoSix · Apr 28, 2016

Ehh, never mind.

The Crimson Binome · Apr 28, 2016

CapnZapp said:
I really encourage you to seek out a game of a profoundly different role-playing experience than what you're used to (such as a game powered by the aforementioned Apocalypse Now engine).

I will not play Apocalypse World, for the same reason I won't play League of Legends - there is nothing about such a game which I find even remotely interesting, and to the extent which it resembles I game I might actually enjoy, I find the changes to be inherently repugnant. I like the part of a role-playing that is actually role-playing. I like the part of mechanical systems which is the objective modeling. You can have a game, and it doesn't matter whether you call it an RPG or not, because if you get rid of those things then the game is fundamentally lacking in any reason why I would want to play it as an RPG.

It would be like if you enjoyed Pathfinder because you liked the setting and character possibilities (as a hypothetical), so I suggested you should just solve math problems for hours on end. No characters, no story, just math. Sure, it's an activity which has a lot in common with the way that a lot of people play Pathfinder, but it's kind of missing the entire point of why (this hypothetical) you would actually want to participate, and even making that sort of suggestion (and expecting it to be taken as anything other than a joke) is kind of offensive.

The Crimson Binome · Apr 28, 2016

Maxperson said:
Right, since most of those hit points gained are skill, luck, etc., the damage done to remove them must be skill, luck, etc.

No. Just no.

Because you have more skill and luck and so on, it requires more physical damage to actually put you down. There is no such thing as "luck damage" or "skill damage" to eat away your "luck points" or "skill points". There is just "damage", which is physical damage. There are not two distinct sets of Hit Points, where some of them are physical and you can see them, and some are invisible and you can't see them. That would be a ridiculous assertion, since it would require meta-gaming in order to address.

TwoSix · Apr 28, 2016

Saelorn said:
No. Just no.

Because you have more skill and luck and so on, it requires more physical damage to actually put you down. There is no such thing as "luck damage" or "skill damage" to eat away your "luck points" or "skill points". There is just "damage", which is physical damage. There are not two distinct sets of Hit Points, where some of them are physical and you can see them, and some are invisible and you can't see them. That would be a ridiculous assertion, since it would require meta-gaming in order to address.