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

[Manbearcat]

As you say. Because of abstraction, I don't mind a bit of hockey button sludge. The one-to-one relationship between player and character decisions is not important to me, or to the definition of association.

1) Hockey players do not deploy "hockey skill sludge button" or anything in the same universe of that level of zoom. They orient themselves toward the resolution of micro-processes (something as simple as taking the correct angle of pursuit or maintaining their back-checking integrity to having their head on a swivel in traffic) that facilitate the success or the failure of the greater, more complex system (the game).

2) Hockey players are not aware of any "hockey skill sludge button" and they aren't aware of any fortune resolution tied to it (because it doesn't exist outside of TTRPG mechanics).

3) Therefore, hockey players and the TTRPG players who are "having their characters play hockey" are not sharing a similar decision-making process nor a decision-making portfolio.

4) Consequently, if 3 is true, then they can't possibly be making the same decisions for the same reasons.

Hence, lacking association in the way that you are attributing is necessary to avoid the dissociative label (but attributing it nonetheless).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This applies to the account of hit points you put forward, plus the fact that farming would cause fatigue but fighting doesn't.

Try fighting for ten hours straight, or with only a short break for lunch, and then get back to me. If your DM isn't imposing some sort of check for fatigue after that sort of thing, then that's kind of weird; the rule merely omit such a thing because it's basically never done, at least within common game scenarios. You might fight for ten minutes, if it's a really long fight, but you'd be hard pressed to have more than an hour of combat in a given day.

Hit points as "plot armour" is easy to narrate and not at all inconsistent.

I've never been able to treat it as plot armor without questioning how the character's perceive it. If you're at 5 out of 100 hit points, then you are in severe need of a Cure spell, but how do you ask for that if you don't know how hurt you are?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

3) Therefore, hockey players and the TTRPG players who are "having their characters play hockey" are not sharing a similar decision-making process nor a decision-making portfolio.

It's not exactly the same process, but they are working from exactly the same information and making the exact same decisions. The player is just doing it at a significantly abstracted level.

Your inability to see that does not make it any less true.

 

[Manbearcat]

It's not exactly the same process, but they are working from exactly the same information and making the exact same decisions. The player is just doing it at a significantly abstracted level.

Your inability to see that does not make it any less true.

You're talking to someone who has spent their life in athletics and martial endeavors. I've played and been a part of a considerable number of sports at a high level of play. I've been involved in martial arts for most of my life. I've seen real world combat (including multiple participants) dozens of times. What you say above is grossly untrue. They aren't working remotely from the same level of information; not the sensory input, nor the understanding of their own capabilities and the capabilities of their opponents, nor the spatial orientation of objects moving in space around them. The decision-making process of "simulating a combat round with attack vs defense" or "simulate a game with skill check versus target number" are not decisions that actual martial actors make....only players make them...and they make them to conveniently facilitate task/conflict resolution with a minimum of fuss, a minimum of table handling time, and a minimum of mental overhead.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It's not exactly the same process, but they are working from exactly the same information and making the exact same decisions. The player is just doing it at a significantly abstracted level.

Your inability to see that does not make it any less true.

There has been quite a bit of research into what people see and use as information - and the OODA loop in high stress situations; narrowing things down to the local problem and using your trained and prepared moves is what actually happens. And this tight focus (of the sort [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] I think will support) and breaking things into localised problems of which the overall skill check is not even close to an abstract is necessary - if you start wool gathering about the big picture you are spending too long with your head in the clouds to avoid taking a sword in your guts.

Your claims otherwise do not make them true. And this is why I say that Apocalypse World and its offspring are the only tabletop RPGs I can think of that come close to the decisions made by the player actually matching those of the character. (D&D 4e isn't that bad a simulation of the OODA loop for that matter - and is a lot better than any with vanilla attack rolls).

 

[Nagol]

What's your angle here? I said characters couldn't manipulate probability unless they were the Scarlet Witch in the post you were replying to - which was the only thing I said they couldn't do. The example I gave of stealing candy from babies was a different aspect. So I assumed that you were objecting to the idea that they couldn't manipulate probabilities. Apparently that wasn't it.

You were gaining the Fate Points through your character's aspects, and spending them through your character's aspects. How exactly do you think I'm accusing that specific aspect of being BadWrongFun if it's nothing to do with probability manipulation? I genuinely do not understand how I have offended you here.

I'm probably working with an extra side of snippy today. Please accept my apologies.

 

[Hussar]

Try fighting for ten hours straight, or with only a short break for lunch, and then get back to me. If your DM isn't imposing some sort of check for fatigue after that sort of thing, then that's kind of weird; the rule merely omit such a thing because it's basically never done, at least within common game scenarios. You might fight for ten minutes, if it's a really long fight, but you'd be hard pressed to have more than an hour of combat in a given day.

I've never been able to treat it as plot armor without questioning how the character's perceive it. If you're at 5 out of 100 hit points, then you are in severe need of a Cure spell, but how do you ask for that if you don't know how hurt you are?

Yeah, but, "How hurt are you" is a pretty vague question. For example, how hurt is this character? He's lost 95% of his HP, but, what does that actually mean? First off, if this is a 10th level character (not unreasonable with a 100 HP) in 3e, none of the wounds he has taken can take longer than three days to completely heal (Long term healing is 4hp/level/day and if you narrate anything that takes longer than three days to heal, you've into the whole Schrodinger's HP thing).

So, what wounds has this character taken? He is not impaired in the slightest and will be 100% healed, not so much as a bruise, in three days.

IOW, he's not wounded at all. He's tired and that's about it.

Which basically shows how ludicrous the whole HP=Physical wounds thing really is. It just never really comes up, because everyone just magically heals HP anyway.

 

[Manbearcat]

There has been quite a bit of research into what people see and use as information - and the OODA loop in high stress situations; narrowing things down to the local problem and using your trained and prepared moves is what actually happens. And this tight focus (of the sort @Manbearcat I think will support) and breaking things into localised problems of which the overall skill check is not even close to an abstract is necessary - if you start wool gathering about the big picture you are spending too long with your head in the clouds to avoid taking a sword in your guts.

Your claims otherwise do not make them true. And this is why I say that Apocalypse World and its offspring are the only tabletop RPGs I can think of that come close to the decisions made by the player actually matching those of the character. (D&D 4e isn't that bad a simulation of the OODA loop for that matter - and is a lot better than any with vanilla attack rolls).

Yup. That is precisely what I'm trying to get at, specifically with "breaking things into localised problems". All martial decisions (and subsequent actions) are oriented toward the successful resolution of those localised problems. As soon as the abstraction smooths over all (or most all) of the component parts that are the signal of those localised problems, you've lost all the information relevant to the kinds of decisions that martial actors undertake. Once that is done, you've confirmed that the player and martial actor can't possibly be making the same decisions (and then, naturally, they aren't making the same kinds of decisions for the same reasons).

I also agree on the Apocalypse World engine and that 4e, while not localised enough, has a decent swath of the components of the OODA loop for a reasonable approximation (the much decried encounter power, rather than being absurd. especially fits the bill). More importantly, both of those engines do a great job at emulating the tropes of genre fiction and creating dynamic decision-points for players and dynamic outcomes within play (both with a pretty basic chassis).

I've seen dissociative mean all manner of things. If the thesis hangs on players and martial actors making the same kinds of decisions for the same reasons then it is utterly lost (and can only have been contrived by someone with little to no actual experience as a martial actor).

 

[pemerton]

If you're at 5 out of 100 hit points, then you are in severe need of a Cure spell, but how do you ask for that if you don't know how hurt you are?

I don't really understand the notion of "knowing how hurt you are". I've been moderately hurt in my life - I've sprained ankles and knees from running or being knocked off my bike, and ended up on crutches a couple of times. There was no "how hurt I am", though - there was much more concrete knowledge ("It hurts when I do this", "My ankle won't take my weight", "I can't bend my leg", etc).

In 4e, almost all healing is inspirational healing - the healer can see that the character is flagging, and so rouses his/her spirits (with a divine blessing, an inspiring word or song, etc). Surgeless healing is closer to magically spontaneous rest. Actual injury, in 4e, either leads to the "dead" condition - so no asking for cure spells - or is tracked on the condition track, which is much like knowing that your leg isn't working properly (and if you want magical help, that would be Remove Affliction).

In earlier editions of D&D I don't really understand hit points very well - part of the attraction for me of 4e is that in 4e hit points make sense.

Try fighting for ten hours straight, or with only a short break for lunch, and then get back to me. If your DM isn't imposing some sort of check for fatigue after that sort of thing, then that's kind of weird; the rule merely omit such a thing because it's basically never done, at least within common game scenarios. You might fight for ten minutes, if it's a really long fight, but you'd be hard pressed to have more than an hour of combat in a given day.

The notion that a character would farm for a day and be tired, but fight for an hour in a day and not be particularly tired, seems to me to underestimate the physical rigours of melee combat. But then I'm no expert in that department.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

They aren't working remotely from the same level of information; not the sensory input, nor the understanding of their own capabilities and the capabilities of their opponents, nor the spatial orientation of objects moving in space around them.

That's what I said. It's not the same level of information. What the player does represents what the character does. It is on a much more abstract level.

And if that breaks association, because of whatever bizarre definition of association you're using, then my issue with the game isn't with the thing that you refer to as association. My problem is with characters operating on information that they cannot possibly have, or with players acting in any capacity beyond what their characters can control. What do you want to call that? Is it just meta-gaming?