Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.

[pemerton]

The difference is my wizard knows in character that he can only cast a spell once per day and knows why. My rogue not only can never know he can use trip once per day, but can also never know the reasoning behind it.

And when your wizard orders his/her fighter henchman to charge a group of archers, because you (the player) know that the henchman is chock full of hit points and therefore can't die to even 10 successful arrow hits, what does your wizard know in character?

That your fighter is going to be lucky? But will gradually use up that luck, which can only be recovered by bedrest (in the special lucky bed?) or by a blessing from a cleric?

 

[jadrax]

What puzzles me is that some people think this can be reconciled with hit points.

Yeah, Hit Points make no 'in character' sense and I wish they were consigned to the dust-bin of eternity, but I think that ship has sailed tbh.

Edit: But, just because a game has some rubbish mechanics, dosen't mean it should have more.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, Hit Points make no 'in character' sense and I wish they were consigned to the dust-bin of eternity, but I think that ship has sailed tbh.

Edit: But, just because a game has some rubbish mechanics, dosen't mean it should have more.

Fair enough. But why not just play a game without hit points - there are plenty around (Runequest, Rolemaster/HARP and Burning Wheel are three that come to mind that can otherwise provide a pretty D&D-ish generic-ish fantasy experience).

 

[jadrax]

Fair enough. But why not just play a game without hit points - there are plenty around (Runequest, Rolemaster/HARP and Burning Wheel are three that come to mind that can otherwise provide a pretty D&D-ish generic-ish fantasy experience).

Sometimes you don't want generic fantasy. If I have a campaign idea for Forgotten Realms, its easier to use a D&D ruleset. If I have an idea for Warhammer, then WFRP is my system of choice. A ran a very long running Rolemaster game, (although that system has Hit Points btw) and a very long running Runequest one as well. Its about all about matching systems to settings.

 

[Campbell]

You know it's funny - whenever discussion of specialized combat maneuvers like tripping or bull rush come up I'm amazed that so many people are comfortable with codified rules that don't take what's happening in the fiction into account. I am far more comfortable with engaging a meta resource to occasionally trip someone than I am of the 3e trip attack fighter who trips, trips, and trips some more. I find that far more immersion breaking. Honestly given how abstract D&D combat is I have trouble actually viewing myself as living in the moment of what's going through my character's mind.

That being said, I have no real issue with relying on DM adjudication for those moments because the DM can look at the fiction of what's happening at the table in a way that no codified rules set can without making the rules overly specific.

On the issue of hit points, I've never really seen the value in viewing them in such a literal sense, especially when it comes to clerical healing. Some people might not mind the idea that even low level Clerics are constantly bringing their compatriots back from the brink of death as if it were nothing. That does not result in a satisfying narrative for me though. I allows assumed that a good portion of Clerical healing was reinvigorating the spirit and restoring the stamina of those they healed.

 

[pemerton]

A ran a very long running Rolemaster game, (although that system has Hit Points btw)

Rolemaster hit points aren't D&D hp. They are not meta. They are "concussion hits" earned by "body development". They represent muscle. And given that 0 hp is unconciousness and negative CON is death, hp also represent the ability to suffer pain without fainting. It's a "hit points as meat" mechanic.

A 1st level wizard with a 60 CON and 10 concussion hits can take 70 points of brusing/blood loss before death - but will fall unconscious from nearly any serious pain. A 10th level fighter with a 90 CON and 120 concussion hits can take 210 points of brusing/blood loss before death, and will stay conscious through much of that. It's intended to be simulationist.

And no RM character can charge a dozen archers or jump over a 100' cliff knowing that s/he cannot die.

Runequest is the same as RM in both these respects - the hp are meat, not meta, representing physical toughness and endurance. And you don't get meta-driven decisions like charging archers and jumping over cliffs.

 

[OneRedRook]

And, conversely, if you're happy that no decapitation occurs until 0 hp are reached, then hadnle tripping this way: when the foe reaches 0 hp, you tripped him/her!

It's entirely reasonable to do it this way, and I've used it before. But it doesn't address what I've been referring to.

The difference between decapitation as you've presented it (can't happen before 0 hp) and something like tripping, is that decapitation necessarily represents a result - that particular fight is over. When things like trip, etc, are given as options, they represent options to get to the finish of the fight; that is, they can happen before the target hits 0 hp, and don't necessarily signal the end of the fight.

The reason we have (martial) fighting maneuvers in the game is to bring a shared context to the details of the to and fro of a fight: this is how hard it is to disarm someone (say), this is what it means when someone is tripped. So when they're presented as options for a fight, the idea is that it changes the fight in a way we find engaging. What I'm saying is that when these maneuvers are presented like that, using a daily mechanic to implement them feels false to me.

So while I have, and will continue to use, 0 hp as a marker for 'you got your intent', it doesn't really speak to why I don't like daily martial maneuvers.

Hroc

 

[pemerton]

given how abstract D&D combat is I have trouble actually viewing myself as living in the moment of what's going through my character's mind.

Related to that is the stop-motion nature of 3E and 4e turn-based combat, compared to the more abstract nature of AD&D, and the continuous initiative that you get in more simulationinst systems like RQ and RM.

That's why I'm a big fan of immediate and oppy actions in 4e - they break up that stop motion feel.

 

[jadrax]

Rolemaster hit points aren't D&D hp. They are not meta. They are "concussion hits" earned by "body development". They represent muscle. And given that 0 hp is unconciousness and negative CON is death, hp also represent the ability to suffer pain without fainting. It's a "hit points as meat" mechanic.

I still think they are hard to visualise in character. The main thing that makes Rolemaster better (in this respect) is the fact that Hit Points are not as important as Critical Damage.

You could of course add a similar system on top of the D&D system straight (in fact you could use Rolemaster's, my battered copy of Arms Law even suggests it). It would be nice to see it a rules module for 5th, but I must admit I am not holding my breath.

 

[nnms]

For me, hit points can be pretty "de-immersifying" in a pretty short space of time. "I'll charge those archers - I'm at full hp, so I can take whatever they'll shoot at me." It may not take very long to resolve, but clearly it is not the player reasoning about the ingame situation and acting on that.

I'm not sure I'd agree with this being the result of hit points, but hit points in relation to weapon damage.

Historical aside: Unless you've got hardened and tempered full plate (developed near the end of the Hundred Years War) which is effectively arrow proof. Then charge away. Unless the archers have heavy crossbows, in which case you are hosed.

The other stuff I agree with completely. As soon as I learned about Rolemaster as an alternative high fantasy RPG to D&D, I jumped ship for all the same sorts of reasons that motivated Runequest.

A couple gaming buddies love Rolemaster and advocate for it whenever we finish up with one game miniseries and are talking about the next one. I'd like to give it a try, but both of them want to play it and won't GM it, so yeah. That's probably not going to happen.

What I like about 4e is that it takes all the metagamey stuff inherent to D&D and, for me, makes it consistent and makes it work. As well as passive stuff (hit points, saving throws) we have active stuff (action points, encounter and daily powers, etc).

This. Absolutely. It provides a certain type of play and does it quite well.

I envisage that my 4e game will come to its conclusion in 2 or 3 years, and then I'm hoping my group will agree to play Burning Wheel for a bit at least. Which is somewhat RQ-ish mechanics (though on a different probability curve) but with "story game" stuff layered over the top.

Burning Wheel looks like a trad game with stuff added on top, but I think the procedures of play really end up shifting the focus onto the added on stuff. Excellent game for running GMless once everyone has bought into the procedures.

The sort of game that I don't want to play is one like 3E or (perhaps - certainly as you describe it) AD&D, which is a sort of unstable mixture of gritty/simulation and gonzo/meta.

I'd play Pathfinder Beginner Box or the D&D Next playtest (as they are very, very similar) but I think I'm done with full-on 3E. Though E6 combined with the free OGL Grim & Gritty rules is a good implementation of 3E.

I think this is a bit unfair. Contrary to what MarkCMG suggested upthread, there's no correlation between metagame mechanics and railroading.

I should have expanded more on what I wrote there. I didn't mean it in terms of railroading per se, but just that the movie scene was the result of preplanning rather than spontaneously being produced by some sort of resolution system. I think full on story games where you resolve the whole conflict are far better at producing movie-like play.

From the point of view of control over the plot, things going or not going the player's way depending on what player resources are expended is no different from things going or not going the player's way depending on whether a die roll comes up high or low.

I'm just not convinced 4E's halfway is the best way to do this. I think I'd rather use something like In A Wicked Age and get some "For Love" and "With Violence" going on to get the right to narrate the outcome of Sheriff of Nottingham's men getting reduced in potency as a far reaching advantage of the sheriff.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoWtY_h4xo]Bryan Adams - (Everything I Do) I Do It For You - YouTube[/ame]