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

[The Crimson Binome]

As I have pointed out repeatedly on this thread and you have continually ignored, you do not recover hit points slowly.

We should pick an edition and stick with it. Going by AD&D (1E), you get 1 hit point back per day, plus your Con bonus per week. For an average Fighter 10 with 75 hit points and a +2 bonus, that would mean a little more than eight weeks; though, there was a caveat about four consecutive weeks of rest allowing anyone to recover to full, which puts things more in line with 3E healing.

It's fairly slow, considering that we don't have lethal attacks - nobody is allowed to get impaled or decapitated in the middle of combat - but it's about right for the genre.

Making a fudge factor consistent does not make it objective. And it shocks me that anyone would work on the basis that hit points are an "objective" model of reality to the point that you can count sword hits until someone drops by pounding on them. For that matter the idea that most people only make one melee attack in a minute should be dynamite under any attempt to claim that the rules are objective.

So we are going back to AD&D for our rules, then? In any case, an abstract minute worth of orcs swinging at you is not any less objective just due to the abstraction.

It is a true fact that a warrior in plate armor with a shield and of sufficient Dexterity to juggle torches with a X% success rate, can survive Y minutes of combat with an orc of L combat-experience - and capable of carrying M pounds of stone without being slowed down - who is wielding a falchion of N quality, and this is knowable with Z% certainty.

Does the character know all of this? Mostly. It depends on the character. It's all knowable​, though.

If you treat the rules as objective you are playing in an Order of the Stick reality.

This does not follow. The notable thing about OotS is that they actually refer to things as a +4 sword or failing a Spot check, which does not necessarily apply here. Yes, they are aware of probabilities, but so are real people in the real world.

 

[pemerton]

Dissipation of kinetic energy, kind of like a resister in an electrical circuit. You can imagine it as measuring how much force would be required to deform the armor

You haven't actually told me what the property is - you're taking for granted that it exists, and restating its causal properties.

For instance, are you saying that the dragon's hide contains springs? Or diamonds?

Remember, this is "natural armour" that is tremendously stronger than even the most magically enchanted plate armour (which grants a bonus of +13 or so).

They really tried to keep everything straight and orderly in 3.5, but the results were mixed.

The typing and stacking rules are very obviously invented for metagame purposes. The layering over the top of ingame descriptors like "luck" or "natural armour" is just that - a superficial layering. No one actually sat down, wondered how tough a red dragon's skin would be, and decided that in the fiction it is remarkably tougher than the most magical armour that the system permits to be constructed.

 

[Hussar]

Of course [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] can speak for himself. In my own case, the alternative is fortune-in-the-middle: you roll the dice before you fully narrate the situation, and you only complete the narration once all the relevant action resolution has been resolved.

Robin Laws gives good advice on the technique in the original HeroWars rulebook (pp 150-151): "avoid describing the results of sucessful blows with the accuracy of a trauma-unit physician until the final consequences are determined". And he gives some examples, such as instead of "she grabs the spear and twists, dislocating your shoulder" going instead with "she grabs the spear and twists - the pain is incredible; it feels like she's dislocating your shoulder".

In 4e, for instance, you don't know whether or not a blow that knocks someone unconscious is fatal until that 3rd failed death save. So up until that point, you narrate in the experiential but non-definitive way (emphasising the shock/pain rather than the physical injury itself) that Laws describes.

To me, this is precisely right. When Frodo gets smacked by the ogre in LotR, everyone thinks he's dead. In a D&D game, had he taken enough damage, then, yup, he'd be dead. But, because he didn't actually get killed by the attack, he's back on his feet after a good pep talk in 5 minutes. In 4e terms, he'd be down some healing surges. Easily modelled.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You haven't actually told me what the property is - you're taking for granted that it exists, and restating its causal properties.

For instance, are you saying that the dragon's hide contains springs? Or diamonds?.

So you mean like its density? The shape of the molecules which give it those physical properties? Sorry, but I don't know that much about structural engineering. I can guess that it's hard, and probably very thick; we don't have enough to go by.

What we do know is that the game world uses physical laws which are inconsistent with our own. They have giants, and their dragons can fly in spite of being too large to sustain muscle-powered flight. I'm not sure why you would choose this example as something that's unrealistic, just because the hide of a dragon exhibits properties beyond that of known real-world materials. I don't care if it's somewhat unrealistic, as long as it's internally consistent.

 

[pemerton]

So you mean like its density? The shape of the molecules which give it those physical properties? Sorry, but I don't know that much about structural engineering. I can guess that it's hard, and probably very thick; we don't have enough to go by.

What we do know is that the game world uses physical laws which are inconsistent with our own. They have giants, and their dragons can fly in spite of being too large to sustain muscle-powered flight. I'm not sure why you would choose this example as something that's unrealistic, just because the hide of a dragon exhibits properties beyond that of known real-world materials. I don't care if it's somewhat unrealistic, as long as it's internally consistent.

Either I'm failing to convey my point, or we really are looking at the gameworld very differently when correlating mechanics to fiction.

The thing for me that reinforces the absence of genuine objectivity is that whatever the dragon hide is made of, the most magically enchanted plate armour is not equal to it. I don't know how to make sense of that within the fiction.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Either I'm failing to convey my point, or we really are looking at the gameworld very differently when correlating mechanics to fiction.

The thing for me that reinforces the absence of genuine objectivity is that whatever the dragon hide is made of, the most magically enchanted plate armour is not equal to it. I don't know how to make sense of that within the fiction.

It's hard to say, really. Why would you think that the best worn armor should be on par with the best natural armor, in terms of its physical properties? Do you not buy into the idea that you could measure such things? That you could have a magical hardness scale, that starts with talc and gypsum and goes up through lead, aluminum, steel, adamantium, with +3 steel being harder than +1 adamantium but softer than +2 adamantium?

Or do you just not buy into the idea that you could have such a material that's so ridiculously tough that it would rate such a high place on the scale?

Because if it's the latter, then that's just D&D getting weird on you at high levels. You're so far beyond everything that could happen within the normal scale of the fantasy genre that it becomes increasingly difficult to suspend disbelief.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It's fairly slow, considering that we don't have lethal attacks - nobody is allowed to get impaled or decapitated in the middle of combat - but it's about right for the genre.

Which genre? And here's another pretty huge point. oD&D and 1E AD&D were in the Sword and Sorcery genre, and 4e was more often High Fantasy. 3.X (and to a lesser extent 2E) were in the oruboros genre of D&D itself.

So we are going back to AD&D for our rules, then? In any case, an abstract minute worth of orcs swinging at you is not any less objective just due to the abstraction.

Um... yes it is. A 1 minute combat round is intended to represent a minute's worth of defensive skirmishing.

It is a true fact that a warrior in plate armor with a shield and of sufficient Dexterity to juggle torches with a X% success rate, can survive Y minutes of combat with an orc of L combat-experience - and capable of carrying M pounds of stone without being slowed down - who is wielding a falchion of N quality, and this is knowable with Z% certainty.

And this is inworld math? Riiiiiight.

This does not follow. The notable thing about OotS is that they actually refer to things as a +4 sword or failing a Spot check, which does not necessarily apply here. Yes, they are aware of probabilities, but so are real people in the real world.

And people in the real world are aware of consequences. They however can see direct cause and effect rather than the abstracts it's all rolled up into in the mechanics. Which means that they can see the effect of individual sword blows rather than working on 1 minute combat round bases.

It's hard to say, really. Why would you think that the best worn armor should be on par with the best natural armor, in terms of its physical properties?

Because humans are very keen on protecting their own skin if they have enough money. If there's better natural armour than there is worn armour, humans are going to start wearing that instead of steel.

Do you not buy into the idea that you could measure such things? That you could have a magical hardness scale, that starts with talc and gypsum and goes up through lead, aluminum, steel, adamantium, with +3 steel being harder than +1 adamantium but softer than +2 adamantium?

Which ... isn't the way 3.X works with hardness and the adamantium rules.

Or do you just not buy into the idea that you could have such a material that's so ridiculously tough that it would rate such a high place on the scale?

I don't buy into the idea that if you have a material that's so ridiculously tough and is flexible enough to be workable that it would not be used for armour. And if it's not flexible enough for the wearer to move in then the target isn't a threat in combat.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And this is inworld math? Riiiiiight.

Alright then, tell me which of those variables doesn't make sense from an in-game context. You know that plate armor is more likely to deflect/absorb a blow than leather or chain. You know that agile people are better at parrying and dodging. You know that strong people are more likely to get past your dodging/parrying/armor.

Your character in the game may not know the math with any great degree of certainty, but it is perfectly aware of all of those factors which go into the math, and how they relate to each other. Moreover, a lot of those factors could be learned, with a little bit of effort. (If you're training an army, you can practice with or without shields and you would learn the statistical likelihood that a shield would protect you from an attack, if you weren't already familiar with that from personal experience.)

Unless you are going out of your way to change the rules of the game - which is totally your prerogative, of course - it is a true fact that, all else the same, someone capable of lifting 100 lbs without slowing down is going to be 20% more likely to land a telling blow with a longsword than someone who would slow down while carrying just 34 lbs (using 3.5 numbers, because they're at hand).

Anyone who observes a great number of such combats is likely to notice this. They probably won't have enough data to figure out an exact percentage, but they'll get that strong = strong = dangerous, with an idea of how much strength it takes to make someone so much more dangerous. It is an objective truth of the world, which means every experience they have will reflect that.

And people in the real world are aware of consequences. They however can see direct cause and effect rather than the abstracts it's all rolled up into in the mechanics. Which means that they can see the effect of individual sword blows rather than working on 1 minute combat round bases.

Right. They have more information than we have. They see every blow as it lands, while we only get the minute-by-minute updates.

The characters do still have the minute-by-minute information, though. They know everything we know, and more. We might look at the numbers and say that it will take between three and five rounds to defeat a particular enemy, and afterwards we'll know that it took four, but the character can look at the same foe and estimate that it will take more than two minutes but less than five, and afterwards will know that it took exactly 3:17.

I don't buy into the idea that if you have a material that's so ridiculously tough and is flexible enough to be workable that it would not be used for armour. And if it's not flexible enough for the wearer to move in then the target isn't a threat in combat.

Who says that it is flexible enough to work into an armor suit at the human scale? What if it's not possible to work it into armor? I would be surprised if much of that toughness didn't come from its thickness, after all. And how would you even shape it, if its material properties would hold on a small scale? You can't exactly cut it, or sew it, or forge it. Suffice it to say, there are plenty of reasons why people don't go around in tarrasque-skin armor.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Alright then, tell me which of those variables doesn't make sense from an in-game context. You know that plate armor is more likely to deflect/absorb a blow than leather or chain. You know that agile people are better at parrying and dodging. You know that strong people are more likely to get past your dodging/parrying/armor.

The part where the primary goal of combat isn't to kill the other side but to stay alive. Therefore in any known martial art parrying and dodging is correlated with skill far more than it is with raw talent. As there is precisely one edition of D&D where characters get harder to hit as a function of skill (and level) parrying and dodging must feed into hit points in all other editions including 3rd - or we are dealing with characters who do not think remotely like humans.

Parrying and dodging is therefore a function of hit points because it is essential that it is there and that's the only factor that fits. Or our people simply don't parry. At this point hit points can not be damage points. So the entire objective nature collapses like a heap of cards when a successfully parried blow does hit point damage.

And this is why games attempting to be objective invariably fail somewhere. They are written by people who aren't experts in everything the game is trying to model - and will always miss something important out.

Unless you are going out of your way to change the rules of the game - which is totally your prerogative, of course - it is a true fact that, all else the same, someone capable of lifting 100 lbs without slowing down is going to be 20% more likely to land a telling blow with a longsword than someone who would slow down while carrying just 34 lbs (using 3.5 numbers, because they're at hand).

All else being equal - it pretty much never is. And 20% depends on the target.

Anyone who observes a great number of such combats is likely to notice this. They probably won't have enough data to figure out an exact percentage, but they'll get that strong = strong = dangerous,

That's because the rules reflect the game world not the other way round. They will also get that skilled = able to parry well. Because that's one of the key functions of skill. And the rules reflect the game world. Their attempts at matching the game's model will then fall apart because they will work on actual chances to hit - and due to the simplifications made by editions of D&D other than 4th being harder to hit because you are better at parrying and dodging comes under the heading of hit points.

Who says that it is flexible enough to work into an armor suit at the human scale? What if it's not possible to work it into armor? I would be surprised if much of that toughness didn't come from its thickness, after all.

You've never seen samurai laminated armour? As for working into armour, you take the scale or lorica segmentem aproach. You don't work it much at all.

And how would you even shape it, if its material properties would hold on a small scale? You can't exactly cut it, or sew it, or forge it.

Why can't you cut it? It just takes patience and/or magic.

Suffice it to say, there are plenty of reasons why people don't go around in tarrasque-skin armor.

The main one being the Tarrasque is an individual creature, and the second being that it might regenerate.

 

[pemerton]

Why would you think that the best worn armor should be on par with the best natural armor, in terms of its physical properties?

<snip>

Or do you just not buy into the idea that you could have such a material that's so ridiculously tough that it would rate such a high place on the scale?

It seems to me that, more-or-less by definition, the most enchanted plate armour would be the toughest thing there can be. So a dragon's skin being tougher strikes me as verging on incoherence within the context of the fantasy genre.

Gygax dealt with the comparable issue in respect of hit point ratios by saying that, when it comes to high level fighters vs horses, much of the hit point total is abstract "metaphysical" hit points. It seems to me that, desite the system's surface protestations to the contrary, the same must be true of natural armour in 3E. (And as I posted upthread, the same is also true of Lolth's -10 AC in AD&D.)