D&D 5E [Warlords] Should D&D be tied to D&D Worlds?

[Starfox]

Well it seems that in 5th hit points are essentially a meat-o-meter; or at least the "starting point" is:

"Hit points represent an element of physical wear that involves a combination of fatigue and physical injury. As you take more damage, you have more evident wounds."
Mearls, Hit My Points

I see this as Meals having the same discussion we're having about what HP are, and making a post in that discussion. But Meals has also shown that he actually listens to the fan base (in polls, and presumably on boards) so I''d not take this as writ in stone. Many of us here would not like a 5E that used this as a base for rules, and it is counterproductive for a "unity edition" - I am in the "HP has never been meat" wagon.

SThere's really nothing else that represents it. So, by process of elimination, if you make the assertion that characters live in a reality where physical wounds exist, are caused by weapons, and can kill you (not exactly hardcore sim assumptions), hp is what describes them..

To me, meat damage has always been represented by subzero hit points.

Personally, I think the easiest way to go is to re-define all positive hp as being non-meat. Meat damage (which could be handled in different ways, modularly) gets triggered by blows at 0 hp. I think I'd call being at 0 HP a condition called vulnerable. That way, you could have spell or attack effects key off of that word, allowing almost all attacks to do HP damage, skipping the SoD issue by putting the "D" part when you would be "D"-ing anyway. So Medusa could have a power:

Petrification Aura: sighted creatures within 20' of Medusa take 1d6 Petrification damage/round. A vulnerable creature who takes Petrification damage is turned to stone.

This is a very elegant solution - I've used it myself under the name "Finisher" - a kind of power that lets you decide what happens to an opponent after you've won over them. A lot of effects, like long-lasting mind control, work very well as finishers. In effect, what was earlier a combat tactic now becomes the objective of the fight - to bind a demon, you have to first defeat it. A single failed save is not enough.

For me this ties in with the link between hp and meat is. Meat damage is what you take when you are reduced to less than zero hit points. All damage before that point is non-meat - which conveniently explains why it has no debilitating effects. It is how I've always understood DnD. WHFB (1 & 2 ed) used a system much like this that was entirely explicit.

 

[Starfox]

I really like the CONCEPT of a warlord class. Like the "loremaster" of dream park, it is a character built around improving the function of the party around him. CONCEPTUALLY, I like that. In EXECUTION, not so much. The Warlord of 4E was a terrible mishmash of ideas

Sadly, this is the story of 4E - good ideas, poor execution. All IMO, of course.

Now, if the idea that a warlord, or "battle captain" should be able to keep his friends in a fight, as opposed to the cleric's function of getting them BACK in the fight, then Warlord mechanics should focus on REDUCING the damage the party takes, whether by defense buffs (not ideal) or by damage reduction (tricky to implement, but feels right) or by giving a 'pool' of hit points that his companions can draw from (very strange, and might result in warlords being super tough on their own).

The problem with DR is as you say - and the length of fights vary so very widely it becomes hard to evaluate the efficiency of the warlord. In addition it works very differently against a beast with many attacks and one with a single, big attack - even if their expected hp/round are the same. I don't feel DR is a good mechanic for this.

Giving temporary hit points to each individual companion could achieve much of this - and avoids the personal immunity problem of a soak pool. It encourages unrealistic focus fire, tough.

Something which could work is a proportional damage reduction - such as halving all incoming damage. That works out the same in long or short fights. The problem is that it is pretty hard to narrate how a warlord reduces incoming damage in this way - probably even harder than to describe inspirational healing convincingly.

Finally, please could you use the normal font and color? This applies not only to you, but to all posters - unusual fonts/colors make posts much harder to read. Had to scale this post up three times to make it readable.

 

[Starfox]

The only difference is that 4e didn't try to hide things. It didn't pretend to have these HP=Meat rules when in play they didn't. It flat out came down on the same side of the fence that EVERY SINGLE EDITION has come down on. The only difference is, it didn't hide it.

4E indeed didn't try to hide these things. That sounds like it would be a good thing, but for me was one of the turnoffs about 4E - it laid the mechanics so bare that suspension of disbelief became overly hard. As I said in the post above - good ideas, poor execution. IMO of course.

 

[Doug McCrae]

What about the bloodied condition? Its name seems to indicate that hit points = physical wounds. Though I agree that in all other areas of 4e, hit points are not physical - warlords, second wind, recover all hit points after a 5 minute rest, recover all healing surges after an 8 hour rest.

 

[Starfox]

What about the bloodied condition? Its name seems to indicate that hit points = physical wounds. Though I agree that in all other areas of 4e, hit points are not physical - warlords, second wind, recover all hit points after a 5 minute rest, recover all healing surges after an 8 hour rest.

Good point. I am a fan of the bloodied condition. "Bloodied" to me (as I recently explained in another post, upthread or in another thread) has always been "first blood" - a nick, not really serious, but a clear indication that the fight is turning serious. Historically, a duel would often end at first blood. In local games, we used "He shakes his head to clear it" as an indication a creature reached half hit points - very similar to bloodied in concept. This was before 4E.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well, since HP sans magic in every edition aside from 4e only return at a very slow rate naturally, it's certainly possible that they represent broken bones, severed limbs, deep puncture wounds, and infections, all abstracted out.

Let me just stop you there. In the versions of D&D with the absolute slowest healing, all hit points return to almost any character in about a month of rest (2hp/night). Which is, coincidentally, about the time it takes a marathon runner to recover from going flat out in a big race. In short hit points under the very slowest models recover about as fast as real world fatigue. Hit points do not recover "very slowly" in any edition of D&D that I am aware of. They recover overall at a rate ranging from "Real world fatigue" to "Action hero fatigue".

As for broken limbs, 6 weeks in a cast is considered usual. You're trying to abstract out the cast as something that doesn't actually slow people down when the hit point recovery is on track for fatigue on its own. Right.

Take both those factors into account and it might be possible that they represent broken bones, severed limbs (excuse me? Are PCs now starfish-hybrids?), deep puncture wounds, and infections all abstracted out. But I do not find it terribly plausible.

And because the heroes are big dang heroes, they fight at full effectiveness through all the scars and scabs and limps because they're big dang heroes and not 4 hp turnip farmers.

And here all I can say is that I don't care how big dang a hero you are. If I break your swordarm badly enough you are going to have to wield your sword in your off hand.

Which is why a modular rule there is a smart way to cut the Gordian knot. 5e doesn't need to be a game without metafictional HP, but it also doesn't need to be a game that assumes metafictional HP.

I seriously, however, doubt that 5e is going to be the first version of D&D in history that doesn't assume metafictional hp, and has genuinely slow healing rates, broken arms, and everything else implied.

I like gradual HP attrition and PC's getting battle damage as their HP drops lower, and injuries that still hurt the next day, which works well with HP-as-meat, and which HP-as-not-meat doesn't sit with quite as easily (fast healing is not a good survival mindset!).

There's a reason extended rests in my campaigns take longer than 8 hours. And if you're down healing surges you are still fatigued and your wounds are still hurting.

Now if everyone's done telling me that I can't possibly have fun playing the game how I like to play it....?

I don't think that anyone is telling you you can't have fun playing in a setting where people heal ridiculously fast from wounds and in which a broken arm gives no penalties. I am, however, saying that it makes almost no fictional sense when compared to the mechanics of hit points - or to real world healing. And as such the default should be one that actually makes physical sense.

Had a game once where a barbarian plummeted at terminal velocity into magma, and swam out and killed a few salamanders while his skin peeled off. Superstitious, you know, so he didn't want magical healing. Fine in a week (high CON, 3e, mid-level, possibly involving a magic item re-fluffed as an inherent part of the character, IIRC). Heck yeah.

In short the damage was special effects. I can get behind that. Hit points as divine protection, luck, and magic. This sort of thing is exactly what the "HP aren't meat" group are saying.

This is about psychology. It's the same thing that goes into SAN loss in a CoC game, or pulls from the Jenga tower in a Dread game. It is about the creeping presence of the reaper breathing down your throat at all times, the reminder that each kobold you fight is one little step closer to an impending demise.

Not up everyone's ally, but up mine, and certainly well within the spirit of a huge chunk of the history of D&D.

Oh, agreed. Which is one reason I love the 4e rest mechanics. I've got one of my current groups terrorized using them right now. Because I'm running survival horror and denying them their short rests. I'm also taking 2hp off them here and d6 hp there. They are scrabbling around right now for somewhere to rest and bandage their wounds - just a five minute breather.

Call me a weirdo, but I don't like my character's status as a big dang hero contingent on some pushy jerk reminding me of it twice every five minutes. I also don't like my character to be deluded and panicky. So that don't work for me personally.

Call me a wierdo, but I have much stronger objections to a fighter's endurance being cleric or happy stick (wand of CLW or Lesser Vigor) derived than I do to warlords. And this is one of the many reasons why HP and Healing Surges work much better for me than any previous D&D iteration.

Second, you're being overly literal. HP is meat, but 1 hp doesn't represent a descrete poundage of bodyflesh or anything. This isn't some sort of strict simulation of mass. Rather, when you get HP when you level up, it represents turning a significant blow into a less significant blow.

You mean it's a mix of skill and luck, with only a very few blows connecting fully? Right.

Also, how in your model do you account for critical hits? When an orc wielding a greataxe makes a critical on a human what does that even mean?

A hit that goes deep at level 1 goes less deep at level 2, and at level 20 it's more of a scratch or a knick or the tip of your ear coming off or something.

In short hp aren't meat and the damage is almost entirely cosmetic until you pass below a threshold. This is the down the line "HP aren't meat" position. Except that you also have HP as meat when the barbarian falls into lava at terminal velocity.

That would matter if I were appealing to some authority to insist that my version of HP is THE CORRECT VERSION, but I'm not.

You're asserting that HP aren't meat except when they are. They are largely skill, luck, and fatigue - as you've just shown above.

Or maybe if I gave half a baboon rump what kind of justification the authors gave. I'm just asserting that it's a way people play the game, and a way people have always played the game, with the partial exception of 4e, because 4e's mechanics worked against that playstyle, because 4e wanted to include non-magical spike healing, and non-magical spike healing only really works with HP-as-not-meat.

However 4e HP work perfectly if hit points include the ability to turn a blow into a less serious one. As your HP do.

And why do you accept the Skald's spike healing and not the Warlord's? I genuinely can't see much of a difference.

This isn't a controversial statement. Inspirational healing doesn't work with HP-as-meat, and HP-as-meat doesn't work with inspirational healing. Only one e of the game has had inspirational healing, so, aside from that, HP-as-meat has worked fine.

Inspirational healing doesn't work with HP as meat. But it works perfectly with HP as the ability to turn a blow into a lesser one. Which is the position you hold. And HP as meat doesn't work with D&D recovery rates in any edition. The only difference inspirational healing brings is that it points directly at the elephant in the room in the hp-as-meat style.

"Kinds of wounds" isn't a distinction the HP system makes. Vaguely, a hit that takes a bigger % of your HP is harder than a hit that takes a smaller %. Or, a hit that gets you closer to 0 is a bigger hit than a hit when you're at full. But specificity isn't something I'm interested in. And either way, when the cleric says a healing prayer over you, it actually removes some of your wounds of various kinds.

But it isn't the actual wounds you are measuring. Or CLW would have a proportional effect (the way it does in 4e).

Sick to "death"? I'm not sure if melodrama helps in this case.

So I'm genuinely curious: what's with the magic hate? Has magic become uncool sometime with some segment of the fanbase? What caused that?

"If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly" - E. Gary Gygax

Magic itself isn't uncool. The idea that magic can and should be able to do anything is deeply uncool, and just throwing a standardised spell at problems stifles creativity and challenge.

 

[urLordy]

For those for whom imagination of the infiction situation is the pre-eminent aspect of RPGing, I would not expect warlords (or 4e more generally) to be that appealing.

Thanks for acknowledging that! <- sincere smiley face

 

[Neonchameleon]

First. A few thoughts on the Warlord. Many of these are opinions of mine, and therefore, BIASED.
I really like the CONCEPT of a warlord class. Like the "loremaster" of dream park, it is a character built around improving the function of the party around him. CONCEPTUALLY, I like that. In EXECUTION, not so much. The Warlord of 4E was a terrible mishmash of ideas. It was constrained by the clerical armor restrictions (until feat support improved the situation), it was lacking in offensive punch, it took too many attributes to function, often it sacrificed it's actions to give actions to other characters in, what I saw to be, the most reprehensible demonstration of poor self-esteem building ever, e.g. "I'll just stand here. You take my actions. You can do better with them than I would." It seemed built to do this, at a design level. It had some non-denominational healing, and it gave out actions. When it took actions, they were lackluster, which enhanced the 'low-self-esteem' image. Sure, there were a couple of builds, suicidal, arse-to-the-wind builds, that were different, and cool, and took hits for others, and punished the enemy for attacking the warlord. IF DM's didn't go around you, ignoring your tricks to eat the creamy center of the party you were trying to protect. In EXECUTION, the warlord was an exercise in misery, designed to diminish the self-esteem of the player until he finally was a passive-aggressive ball of hate who could properly play his class. That's bad design.

There are many classes I don't like and am unlikely to play. On the other hand the warlord may just be the single class I have had the most fun playing and is one I consider to have been executed superbly. And not because I found Martel to be a passive ball of misery. When he took turns, the DM dreaded it. The single biggest spike damage turn in the party came from Martel using Provoke Overextension meaning he got an attack in, the party fighter got an attack in, and the party thief got an attack in. The power in the party the DM hated most was Powerful Warning. Which turned one of his hits into a miss - and gave one of my allies an attack. You can call the warlord a ball of misery. But this bears no resemblance to my experience of playing them.

I don't understand the point of "metagame tool to fill a hole in the rules". What's the hole we're talking about? Healing?

Allowing a party with no spellcasters to be efficient.

A few more thoughts on DR aura.

I've already dealt with this upthread. In order to be anything like as useful tactically a DR aura must look overwhelmingly strong when compared to clerical healing. Because spike healing allows your buffer to be applied where it is needed and as a response to trouble rather than through precognition.

 

[urLordy]

RE: HP-as-meat

I always imagined "meat" as a combination of wounds, maybe pain, and fatigue. (Yes, I'm aware that less hp as pain and fatigue generally doesn't cause penalties or conditions).

Then I would tweak it depending on the character.

A small-sized PC would have a much smaller fraction of wounds: a halfling could have lots of extraordinary luck, a rock gnome more fortitude, a monk more dodging. A warforged absorbs more physical blows relative to thinner skinned and lightly armored companions. A large sized minotaur barbarian could very well be bruised and bleeding and keeps going and going.

Pre-4E, I find it rather easy to imagine or not imagine all those things, for my PCs as well as the condition of other PCs.

With a 4e warlord, I think I'm actually less likely to imagine those things or not with the same confidence. I could imagine a physical blow to my warforged barbarian and then a warlord shouts and then I'd have to retcon my own imagining (and for what, for an imposing metagame I don't like.)

One possible solution is that the warlord is a priest of war whose inspirational cry rings with the voice of a war god. Thunder of Thor, the death of fear, enemies look small and weak. That should circumvent most of my fictional angst. Ironically, that's the exact opposite need of those who don't like magic interfering.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Strangely enough, most of the fantasy heroes I read about and enjoy spend a lot of time vexing over their injuries and getting hampered by them. Usually, they are keenly aware of the extent and nature of their injuries and precisely how they are being hampered. Basically, the generic HP mechanic supports a very narrow field of fantasy and playstyles. I'm hoping for more from 5e.

I think the article I linked to mentioned a gritty injury module, which sounds like this. Which is keen. But certainly not required for HP to be meaty.

Yeah, I more or less disagree with that philosophy entirely.

Part of what's cool about 5e to me is the idea that people who find my style repellent can still have fun in their own way with the thing. I think this is cool because I'm under no real delusions that my preferences will hold over time, so it'll be awesome to be able to play 5e in different modes myself when I'm feeling less like The Last of Us is really cool.

You're really stuck on this "people who want a warlord are whiny whiners narrative, it seems.

Nah, I just think some of the people who insist on a warlord class or feel that 4e is being disrespected and abandoned are getting hung up on terminology and presentation. Kind of like my buddy who decries 5e because it doesn't have a wizard that can run out of spells -- because he might have to use a magic module to get his swingy magic, 5e is obviously just some insincere attempt to win over the OSR crowd to him. I'm pretty sure he's working himself into a mild tizzy over something that won't ever really be a big concern for him in actual play, but he doesn't trust the designers, so he can't really believe that.

And then maintaining that "HP not as meat" mechanics need to be cordoned off in a module or a class that engages heavily with the "HP not as meat" paradigm needs to be disassembled for segregation and pruned meticulously for "HP as meat" lobby approval because the "sensibilities" that distinguish an 8 - 12 week injury healed in 3 days versus the same injury healed in 1 day (and consider that 2 day window the line in the sand for legitimacy) deserve primacy?

I think 5e would be smart to embrace a light touch. The needs of a "classic, simple D&D" as the basic rules will be mean that HP doesn't need to be very solidly defined -- the healing is rest and from the cleric. How much is meat and how much is skill or whatever is fairly open -- mearls's definition of hit points upthread is probably just enough.

On top of that simple, classic D&D basic rules chassis, you can go grittier and meatier (long-term injury modules) and you can go lighter and more meta (heroic fast-healing modules, non-magical healing modules). Because this is more of a table-wide decision, involving the "genre" of the game, and less of a relevant choice for any individual player to declare, a class is not the most appropriate place to put this decision point.

Inspirational healing doesn't work with HP as meat. But it works perfectly with HP as the ability to turn a blow into a lesser one. Which is the position you hold. And HP as meat doesn't work with D&D recovery rates in any edition. The only difference inspirational healing brings is that it points directly at the elephant in the room in the hp-as-meat style.

The problem with this thesis is that it assumes there's some inherent problem with my style objectively -- that it is an impossible style. That I cannot have meaty HP and simultaneously not care about fast off-screen healing, because I cannot possibly have an enjoyable and internally consistent world where I don't model broken bones precisely but also have them regularly. That if I use meaty HP but don't have some gritty wound-sim or extended "realistic" convalescence, that I'm doing it wrong.

That assumption is incorrect, and because of that, it forces a false choice between "you must have rules that account for detailed long-term injury!" and "you must use metafictional HP!"

It's possible to use meaty HP and not use rules that account for detailed long-term injury and everybody has a fun time playing their big dang awesome heroes who recover from third-degree burns in a few days.

It's less possible to use meaty HP and inspirational spike healing, because while injuries can disappear with some days'/weeks'/months' rest offscreen and no one cares, if those same injuries disappear because someone inspires you on the battlefield, that's not gonna work as well.

But the mearls's definition of HP work fine with a 5e's day-or-two recovery period, for instance. I don't see any inherent contradiction there (though I personally prefer the recovery period to be significantly longer...yay downtime mechanics!).