Schrodinger's HP and Combat

[The Crimson Binome]

I think the 5e approach would mostly be fine in AD&D as well, since you could just equate 'lingering wound' with hitting 0 hit points, something most fighters have experienced a time or two! Even high level ones are likely to go there now and then.

In AD&D, you were just dead at 0HP, unless you were using an optional rule. It's slightly weird if a weapon is incapable of injuring anyone physically at all unless it kills them outright - like everyone is a ninja made of balloons, constantly dodging and weaving, until the slightest scratch causes a catastrophic death. And that's one of the reasons why it was more satisfying to treat HP loss as physical injury.

Of course, it's also slightly weird if you can be hit by a sword, to the point of almost dying from it, and still be able to run around and swing your own sword or jump or whatever, without being slowed down in any way. The rules were just vague enough that you could play it either way, and argue that it's preferable to the alternative.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Random wondering...

Should we call it "Schrodinger's HP" or "Schrodinger's Attack"? You don't really know what the PC/NPC has done/tried to do until the attack roll has been made, damage has been rolled, and HP have been subtracted (and compared to the HP max). Until then, what's happening in the game world is a big cloud of uncertainty.

Do you know until the character is healed? If you follow the SHP hypothesis strictly all you can say until either the cleric or the warlord heals the PC is that his hit points are reduced.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In AD&D, you were just dead at 0HP, unless you were using an optional rule. It's slightly weird if a weapon is incapable of injuring anyone physically at all unless it kills them outright - like everyone is a ninja made of balloons, constantly dodging and weaving, until the slightest scratch causes a catastrophic death. And that's one of the reasons why it was more satisfying to treat HP loss as physical injury.

Of course, it's also slightly weird if you can be hit by a sword, to the point of almost dying from it, and still be able to run around and swing your own sword or jump or whatever, without being slowed down in any way. The rules were just vague enough that you could play it either way, and argue that it's preferable to the alternative.

Didn't basically EVERYONE use the -10 rule? I don't recall playing in any but maybe some very early 1e games where that wasn't in effect (and those were probably pre-DMG so sort of demi-AD&D). I agree though. Of course if you think about it, there's really not a lot of 'minor' that is going to happen when people are swinging several feet of sharpened steel at you with deadly intent. If the weapon gets a bite of you, you're probably hors-de-combat at the very least. Its pretty hard to survive 6 inch long puncture wounds clean through ANY part of the body without immediate trauma care.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The idea that there is a unique, "objective" reality that is seen by all is a fallacy known as "naive realism"; I commend an investigation of it to you. It's real science, not some sort of fringe belief.

I am somewhat familiar with the concept, from Harry Potter fan-fiction.

As long as we all agree on whether the character is up and in the fight or collapsed on the floor (but with some chance of getting up again under some specific circumstances), it really doesn't matter if the specifics of injury, dishevelledness and consciousness are different from one person's vision to another.

It matters at least in as much as it actually matters. If one person imagines the character beaten and unconscious with broken bones, and another person imagines the character exhausted and morally defeated and down on one knee, then all is good and well until the warlord inspires the character to get up and charge the oncoming enemy. The poorer the model, the more unacceptable clashes you will have in understanding.

Even if everyone lives their whole lives in their own heads, understanding only their own perceptions of the world, there is still an objective reality which informs those perspectives. Even if what I see as red is different from what you see as red, and we have no way of comparing those experiences, there is still an objective truth about the surface of a red object which causes it to scatter light at a certain wavelength. And our subjective understanding of something is only useful because it allows us to understand the objective truth about the object, and predict how it will interact with the rest of the universe.

Which is why I hold my entertainment products to a higher standard. If our experiences with the game rules don't reflect some underlying objective reality, then they're meaningless for understanding how the game world actually works (rather than how we perceive that it works).

 

[pemerton]

When I think of a genuinely "non-hit-point" system I'm looking for a complete (or near complete) lack of any "life resource". There would need to be no pool of points or set of "levels" or collection of "traits" that, once exhausted, mean a character is "out of action". Rather, "out of action" happens stochastically, with the likelihood of it happening at any specific instant being strongly affected by in-game situation - particularly the condition(s) and hindrances affecting the character at the time.

All of which should not be interpreted to mean that I think "no-hit-points" is a neccessary or even inherently superior attribute in a roleplaying system.

Rolemaster and its offshoots (MERP, HARP) mostly fit this bill. "Out of action" is dictated by conditions/debuffs, which are imposed by crit results.

RM also does have concussion hits, but these are only one component of the "health/life" system, and correspond to only one part of it: bruising and blood loss. Losing concussion hits can inflict penalties, including a dying condition, but it is by no means the only way to suffer those penalties, and as far as serious debilitation is concerned is not the main way that penalties/adverse conditions are acquired.

The idea that there is a unique, "objective" reality that is seen by all is a fallacy known as "naive realism"; I commend an investigation of it to you. It's real science, not some sort of fringe belief.

In English-speaking philosophy, "naïve realism" is normally used as a label for the view that the external world is actually like the world of perception (eg it contains coloured, textured surfaces, sounds and smells, etc). The closest thing to a contemporary mainstream view, I think, would be that there is a single objective reality known by all, but that it does not contain those perceptual properties: scientific realism rather than naïve realism.

The position you are putting forward was held - at least from time-to-time - by Bertrand Russell, and also Moritz Schlick. It has its ancestry in 19th century neo-Kantianism, although the neo-Kantian label is probably more apposite for Schlick than Russell. It is a controversial view. In my own opinion it is refuted by AJ Ayer in his books The Origins of Pragmatism and The Central Questions of Philosophy. The basic gist of the refutation is this: ultimately, our only evidence for the truths of physics is that a certain lamp glowed red rather than yellow, or a certain dial turned this way rather than that way, or a certain image produced from a telescope had a dot in this place rather than that place. If none of that perceptual evidence has objective existence, then we have no rational basis for affirming the evidence on which our scientific view of the world depends.

That's not to say that the relationship between perceptual evidence and scientific reality is easy to explain: for instance, analysing colour in a way that makes it true both that there is (say) a red lamp that I perceive, and that there is physical object (itself made up of colourless constituents with a lot of empty space between them) emitting a certain sort of radiation, is not easy. Ayer doesn't really solve the problem; nor, in my view, do more contemporary authors like (say) Frank Jackson. When I was young and overly ambitious I was planning to do so!, but my career has since taken a different and more modest direction.

 

[pemerton]

In AD&D, you were just dead at 0HP, unless you were using an optional rule.

This isn't true in 1st ed AD&D. The death's door rule is not optional; what is optional is the trigger point. The default rule is that falling to 0 exactly triggers the death's door rule, and that falling below zero is death. The optional rule is that falling to 0 to -3 trigger's the death's door rule, and that falling below -3 is death.

 

[Jhaelen]

in a 5e thread I have been told I have been playing 4e wrong (my fav edition so far) because I describe hits, misses, and HP the same way I did in 2e and 3e... I have been told it is schridinger's HP until you get healed... is there any 4e players who actually run like this?

Ah, nope. I've described hit points loss in D&D the same way in every edition, i.e. however it made dramatic sense to me.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am somewhat familiar with the concept, from Harry Potter fan-fiction.
It matters at least in as much as it actually matters. If one person imagines the character beaten and unconscious with broken bones, and another person imagines the character exhausted and morally defeated and down on one knee, then all is good and well until the warlord inspires the character to get up and charge the oncoming enemy. The poorer the model, the more unacceptable clashes you will have in understanding.

Even if everyone lives their whole lives in their own heads, understanding only their own perceptions of the world, there is still an objective reality which informs those perspectives. Even if what I see as red is different from what you see as red, and we have no way of comparing those experiences, there is still an objective truth about the surface of a red object which causes it to scatter light at a certain wavelength. And our subjective understanding of something is only useful because it allows us to understand the objective truth about the object, and predict how it will interact with the rest of the universe.

Which is why I hold my entertainment products to a higher standard. If our experiences with the game rules don't reflect some underlying objective reality, then they're meaningless for understanding how the game world actually works (rather than how we perceive that it works).

You have an argument when talking about ACTUAL REALITY, but even then its only an argument, nobody can prove that anything objective exists at all. When it comes to an FRPG there simply isn't any such thing as objective reality. So it isn't a matter of a 'higher standard', its a matter of what people enjoy in their entertainment. I don't say this in any sense to appear to be critical of your way of playing, but you have to carefully separate your preferences from some sort of 'objectively superior' form of game or gaming experience. That is in fact exactly what the OP in this thread was (as I understand it) posting about was the inability of the people in the other thread to absorb that they weren't in possession of the objective truth about how 4e must be played.

I do understand your position. From my perspective it was a phase I recall going through when I first became really familiar with RPGs (after the initial 'gonzo' phase of just absorbing the concept). In fact I think that the RPG industry, such as it was, at the time was rather absorbed in the idea of making games realistic and detailed. Gygax seemed to appreciate abstraction from the start, maybe some others as well. Some of us immediately saw the advantage of mechanical simplicity, but there was a long phase of searching for models that would always conform their mechanics perfectly to the narrative and vice versa.

I don't want to say that some of us 'outgrew' that, because it implies one way is better somehow than another, but some of us certainly abandoned that set of conceptions for a looser one. I mean frankly its not that often that you even know if the character is broken on the ground, badly stunned, disarmed and surrendering, or what. He's at 0 hit points, he's not fighting anymore, and probably needs help. Usually that's good enough and when some sort of healing comes up the character gets up, whatever ailed him is fixed however that is described, and everyone goes on their way. If the character was described as beaten and broken and the warlord Inspiring Worded him back up so what? Maybe he's just that bad-assed that he got up again, broken bones and all! Maybe he wasn't quite as badly off as he thought and the warlord pulled him back to his feet and said "you gotta keep going mate!" etc.

I understand preferences, your's are fine, but they do come with some disadvantages. Like you really just can't HAVE warlords, or else all wounds have to be nothing but nicks and such if you're going to have that sort of strictly visualized game where you actually state all this stuff explicitly in every scene.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So it isn't a matter of a 'higher standard', its a matter of what people enjoy in their entertainment.

It's a matter of personal preference, on how you rate a game. Most people agree on some common metrics about what makes a game enjoyable - ease of play, verisimilitude, level of engagement, character customization, etc. If you could have a game that embodied all of those things, then that would be great, but from a design standpoint you have necessary trade-offs between each category. You have to prioritize them, to see where you should sacrifice and what you should strengthen.

I prioritize verisimilitude higher than many other people would. In order for me to accept a game as enjoyable to me, it needs to meet a certain level of verisimilitude. Being able to reasonably convert a defined scenario into game mechanics in order to resolve an action, and then being able to convert that those mechanics back into details to construct the scene, is important to me. If you can attack with a sword, and hit someone for HP damage, and afterward we cannot tell whether the person is actually injured or not, then that system does not meet my standards.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's a matter of personal preference, on how you rate a game. Most people agree on some common metrics about what makes a game enjoyable - ease of play, verisimilitude, level of engagement, character customization, etc. If you could have a game that embodied all of those things, then that would be great, but from a design standpoint you have necessary trade-offs between each category. You have to prioritize them, to see where you should sacrifice and what you should strengthen.

I prioritize verisimilitude higher than many other people would. In order for me to accept a game as enjoyable to me, it needs to meet a certain level of verisimilitude. Being able to reasonably convert a defined scenario into game mechanics in order to resolve an action, and then being able to convert that those mechanics back into details to construct the scene, is important to me. If you can attack with a sword, and hit someone for HP damage, and afterward we cannot tell whether the person is actually injured or not, then that system does not meet my standards.

I think 'verisimilitude' is a flag that has been carried far far too often, it should rest. Many people don't think of verisimilitude in anything like the terms I understand that you do. For me realistic systems of damage and healing aren't particularly high on the list of things that would allow me to engage in a suspension of disbelief and get into the game. Even if I were after a game that realistically portrayed at least some elements of life I wouldn't it put wounds and healing in the top 10 list of areas where D&D (and pretty much all other RPGs) fall short of being realistic. To me it seems pointless to be overly concerned about one narrow area of realism.

I'd MUCH rather see a game's mechanics contributing to a rich and varied narrative filled with interesting plots than that it support some hard and fast notion of what each and every little thing the PCs do in the world means in terms of an imagined physical reality. Frankly this is why games such as Pemerton's old love, Rolemaster, quickly lost their luster for me. I thought IRON LAW and CLAW LAW was GREAT in 1970-whatever when it came out, but I soon discovered that a more realistic combat system didn't make a more fun game, for me. My RM boxed set sits still on the back of my shelf, in quite good shape since we basically played for one 3 month period.