Schrodinger's HP and Combat

[The Crimson Binome]

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.

That's certainly an opinion that someone can have. As long as there are plenty of games out there, and we can each find something that we like, then I'll call that a win-win situation.

 

[Balesir]

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.

Indeed - I didn't say that there were no RPG systems that had a "no-hit-points" paradigm, just that FATE wasn't really one of them. I like HârnMaster for a certain flavour of roleplaying precisely because it has such an approach to character life and health. On the other hand, I like D&D 4E precisely because it doesn't.

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.

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.

I have listed these quotes together because my response to both is covered by the same basic points:

1) I apologise for mis-wording my original post (teach me to post late at night in a hurry to get to bed...), but the description [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] gives of naive realism outstrips mine in just about every respect. I would add, however, that the "fact sampling" of our perceptions can be shown to result in us each having more or less flawed and diverse pictures of the world*, even given such objective reality as there is. One description of the situation might be to distinguish hallucinations - which are perceptions that have no cause in external objective reality, but are generally caused by mental illness or chemical effects on the brain - and differing models of the world generated by our brains, each in response to a randomly sampled set of perceived external objective reference points. Having different mental models of the world as a result of sampling differences or differences of interpretation might reasonably be described as "normal", even though all such models - absent hallucination - will be in conformance with the sampled objective facts that have been registered by the perceptions of the individuals involved.

This might be clearer in example. If we walk together past a tall, blonde woman while in conversation, we will likely both register a random sample of facts about her. I might notice that she is female and tall; you might notice that she is female and blonde. If we are asked about the person standing by the way as we walked by, my mind might construct a picture of a tall, red-haired woman while your brain constructs a memory of a medium height blonde woman. Even though we might disagree on her stature and hair colour, we would agree that (a) there was someone there and (b) it was a woman. Seldom will we completely agree about things that were not facts, whereas the things that we agree upon - especially if asked about the bystander individually rather than together - will generally have been objective facts.

2) I see the objective reality of RPGs as being provided, in part, by the rules. Just as seems to be the case in real life, the objective reality does not look very much like the mental model of the world (be it game world or real world) that we hold in our heads. Nevertheless, if we have world-models in our heads that conflict with the objective reality, we have a problem. From this perspective, the player who imagines "the character beaten and unconscious with broken bones" when the rules are quite clear that they could be roused back into the fight at any moment by an Inspiring Word is suffering from the game-equivalent of an hallucination. They are perceiving something that is not eventuated by the elements present in the game's "objective reality". Players' perspectives of just how the "objectively real" facts about the situation in the game translate into what their character is perceiving and experiencing can harmlessly differ - just as personal perspectives and interpretations differ in the real world - provided that they accord with the "objective facts" presented by the defined game situation and the game rules. Where they do not so accord, the character was either mistaken (as in the case of the "red haired" woman) or deluded.

*: This can be seen for yourself by trying the "flashed face illusion" - you can google for it or, if you are signed up with EdX, watch it in Session 2 of their "Thinking 101x" course.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That much should be obvious, though. You can't reconcile the concept of HP loss as serious injury with the concept that an Inspiring Word can fix it, so something you believe must be false - either 1) HP loss doesn't correspond with serious injury; 2) Inspiring Word doesn't restore HP; or 3) the game isn't an accurate model.

1) Shouldn't be true, because the observer doesn't want it to be true (based on experience with prior editions).
2) Isn't true, because the rules clearly state that Inspiring Word restores HP.
3) Must therefore be true, because it's the only remaining explanation.

The error in that logic should also be readily apparent.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

2) I see the objective reality of RPGs as being provided, in part, by the rules. Just as seems to be the case in real life, the objective reality does not look very much like the mental model of the world (be it game world or real world) that we hold in our heads. Nevertheless, if we have world-models in our heads that conflict with the objective reality, we have a problem. From this perspective, the player who imagines "the character beaten and unconscious with broken bones" when the rules are quite clear that they could be roused back into the fight at any moment by an Inspiring Word is suffering from the game-equivalent of an hallucination. They are perceiving something that is not eventuated by the elements present in the game's "objective reality". Players' perspectives of just how the "objectively real" facts about the situation in the game translate into what their character is perceiving and experiencing can harmlessly differ - just as personal perspectives and interpretations differ in the real world - provided that they accord with the "objective facts" presented by the defined game situation and the game rules. Where they do not so accord, the character was either mistaken (as in the case of the "red haired" woman) or deluded.

*: This can be seen for yourself by trying the "flashed face illusion" - you can google for it or, if you are signed up with EdX, watch it in Session 2 of their "Thinking 101x" course.

Well, part of my way of looking at it is like this. The party crashes the door and rushes into the room full of orcs. A wild melee ensues. The fighter finds himself in a precarious position, orcs all around! Blows fall, suddenly he realizes his helmet is gone and the blurry thing to his right is the floor! Does he have any broken bones? Who the fudge knows! He lets out a low moan and the cleric shoves past one of the orcs, and reaches down while shouting out Klay protect and defend you. The fighter feels his head clear, picks up his helmet and staggers back to his feet. Or alternately its the warlord that shoves his way up, reaches down, grabs the fighter by the collar and hoists him back to his feet, where he staggers momentarily and then raises his sword to block another axe stroke, all the while cursing the blood dripping into his left eye.

Neither of those narrative possibilities forces anyone to reinterpret anything or fail to interpret any information they actually have. Its just not clear to anyone what's up with the fighter and its not clear to me that an Inspiring Word is any less likely to bring him back to his feet than a Healing Word is.

I'm sure you can construct some situation where one or the other seems artificial, but I've run a lot of games of D&D in my time and very few such instantly spring to mind. IMHO the problem is almost always grossly overstated and is mostly a talking point in verbal frays over who's edition of D&D is beyond the pale.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Neither of those narrative possibilities forces anyone to reinterpret anything or fail to interpret any information they actually have. Its just not clear to anyone what's up with the fighter and its not clear to me that an Inspiring Word is any less likely to bring him back to his feet than a Healing Word is.

First, let me preface this by saying I'm not going to argue either side for hit points, because that's pointless and I've made the huge majority of my Wisdom checks on EN World over the past 6+ months. But I had a question for you on how you'd handle something. This isn't a gotcha, but I'm curious what you'd do with it.

Maybe it's just my players, but I've had many healers (magical or otherwise) that inspect wounds (or ask for judgments of them) before healing. Say two PCs are down; which one looked like the worse wound? Was one stabbed multiple times, and the other knocked down with a club? Before I know if I need to use a spell slot on this guy, how bad is his wound? Like, is he bleeding to death, or does he just need to rest and walk it off?

These are questions I've gotten from players since they started playing and learning the rules. They eventually slowed with these questions as they learned the rules (and that "down" meant "bleeding to death" with nearly no exceptions), narrowing the possible narrative options. However, once I created my own RPG, I added mechanics that might down people for a variety of reasons (I added a "hit chart", people can go unconscious from taking too much damage while in armor, etc.), and the questions returned (since my mechanics allowed a broader selection of narratives to play out mechanically).

With that in mind, how would you reply to a player's questioning in D&D (not my RPG)? Like, if they said they wanted to inspect the wound, were trained in Heal, and got a high roll. Depending on the severity and specifications, they'll decide whether or not to use the spell (slot / power). This player is a new player (so asking questions like this is natural for him), but he's smart (and gets saving resources if possible) and a good RPer (his god would only approve of him healing this downed person in a fringe sense; say it's an enemy that he might need to heal).

Just curious how you'd handle that kind of thing (since the large majority of players have engaged in it). Thanks in advance

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

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.

As it happens, I too prize verisimilitude and rules with direct ties to the game world. Since I started gaming in the 90’s, D&D’s amorphous hit points have driven me bonkers! What do they represent in the game world, if anything? Well characters have no other stat to represent dodge/parry skill, so hit points obviously have to represent that in part. (Nevermind why characters have a finite supply of dodginess!) But Con modifies hit points and healing spells…well, heal, so clearly some portion of hit points are ‘meat points.’

I could go on, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the controversy. Point is, rules with ambiguous ties to the fiction bug me too!

That much should be obvious, though. You can't reconcile the concept of HP loss as serious injury with the concept that an Inspiring Word can fix it, so something you believe must be false - either 1) HP loss doesn't correspond with serious injury; 2) Inspiring Word doesn't restore HP; or 3) the game isn't an accurate model.

…However, 4e presents a unique opportunity for gamers like us. Whatever other amorphous rules 4e has*, 4e is unique in granting everyone a level-based AC bonus. Which means that hit points can have a concrete direct-to-fiction meaning! All it takes is throwing out the book’s idea of hit points.

*Prone oozes, 5-foot charge-bubbles, and whatever else peeves your pet.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to preach the 4e gospel to you. I just like to point out that 4e does have one big verisimilitude advantage over other editions. In fact this advantage is so big that I’d rather refluff or house rule 4e’s minor quirks than do the same with any other edition, plus bang my head against traditional hit points.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Since I started gaming in the 90’s, D&D’s amorphous hit points have driven me bonkers! What do they represent in the game world, if anything? Well characters have no other stat to represent dodge/parry skill, so hit points obviously have to represent that in part.

Really? I could have sworn that there was an option to fight defensively in AD&D, taking a fairly large penalty to hit and a level-based bonus to AC. Or maybe you had to spend your action to defend that way in AD&D... it's been a while. In 3.x, parry skill (beyond just natural ability) was gated behind a feat that allowed you to trade BAB for AC (or various feats, class abilities, etc).

In any case, dodge/parry ability was also covered by Dex bonus to AC in every edition. Not to say that the 4E level-bonus to AC wasn't appreciated, but it was hardly the first mechanic to try and represent dodge/parry skill.

With 3.5, in particular, it was pretty easy to determine what every little mechanic was supposed to represent.

 

[pemerton]

You can't reconcile the concept of HP loss as serious injury with the concept that an Inspiring Word can fix it, so something you believe must be false - either 1) HP loss doesn't correspond with serious injury; 2) Inspiring Word doesn't restore HP; or 3) the game isn't an accurate model.

Or (4), the event of hit point loss corresponds to serious injury, but the lost hit points themselves don't correspond to that injury, but rather to the ability to fight on.

On approach (4), which is closer to my preferred approach, the restoration of hit points by way of inspiration doesn't represent the injury being healed, but rather represents the injury ceasing to be a burden on fighting on - because the character has been inspired to fight on in spite of it.

How serious an injury can be, under approach (4), depends on how much fighting on despite the pain and debilitation you are prepared to allow in your fantasy RPG. In my own mind, broken limbs and punctured lungs are probably out, but broken fingers probably are OK, and cuts and bruises certainly are OK.

Most people agree on some common metrics about what makes a game enjoyable - ease of play, verisimilitude, level of engagement, character customization, etc.

<snip>

I prioritize verisimilitude higher than many other people would.

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.

<snip>

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.

On this point I think I'm closer to AbdulAlhazred: I think of myself as valuing verisimilitude, but the drivers of that for me are about character motivation, a sense of mythic depth to the fantasy world, etc. (That's one reason I've never got into Forgotten Realms - for me, at least to the extent I've encountered it, it fails on both these points and hence fails my verisimilitude test.)

For me, the relationship between hit point loss/restoration and verisimilitude is also probably enhanced by my adoption of option 4 described above: I focus on hit point loss and gain as representing events (of being set back, and of overcoming that setback) rather than states (of being injured or uninjured).

Frankly this is why games such as Pemerton's old love, Rolemaster, quickly lost their luster for me.

<snip>

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.

This sort of heresy, on the other hand, needs to be stamped out right quick!

Although, truth be told, I would never run Rolemaster again - the mental overhead is too much, and it breaks down too badly around 15th to 20th level (depending on exactly what spell effects are in play). If I felt like running RM, I'd run HARP instead. But then if I was going to run HARP I'd run Burning Wheel instead, which is similarly complex but has nicer, and more tightly designed, bells and whistles to push play in the sort of direction I'm interested these days.

One attraction of RM, which BW replicates, is the intricate richness of character build (they have comparable, very lengthy, skill lists). For me this helps verisimilitude in non-gonzo fantasy. In gonzo fantasy (which is the category I put 4e into) nuances of character aren't that important, because characters are defined more by their mythic resonance and the mythic conflicts they find themselves in. But in non-gonzo fantasy, where the focus is more on personal or human-level situations, individuals nuances of character become more important to bring a character to life. And a detailed skill list really helps with that, for me: I can look at this PC and see the high ranks in (say) Falsehood and Insight, and note the absence of ranks in Etiquette and Pleasantries, and realise that the character is manipulative, scheming, but socially unpleasant; and then look at another character and see the high ranks in (say) Falsehood, Pleasantries and Seduction, and realise that the character is a manipulative charmer. Another character might have low ranks in Falsehood but high ranks in Negotiation and Leadership and that suggests a different personality again, perhaps a stalwart paladin or clerical type.

In 4e, with only Diplomacy and Bluff to cover all that field, these sorts of nuances disappear. Which is fine in a gonzo context - "gonzo" being pretty much the antithesis of "nuance" - but can lead to shallowness, and very same-y characters, in a less gonzo context. (And I would include classic low-to-mid level D&D - eg B/X and AD&D - as less gonzo, and hence suffering for this lack of nuance.)

Of course nuance can be introduced purely by roleplaying, but putting it into mechanics helps make it matter in play when play is adjudicated by reference to mechanics - which is another thing that BW has in common with RM, although BW's mechanics are much tighter, benefitting from 20 years of RPG design development between the two games!

 

[pemerton]

I've had many healers (magical or otherwise) that inspect wounds (or ask for judgments of them) before healing.

<snip>

how would you reply to a player's questioning in D&D (not my RPG)? Like, if they said they wanted to inspect the wound, were trained in Heal, and got a high roll.

In pre-4e, no idea. It's never come up, and so I've never had to think about it. I think the reason it's never come up is because it doesn't matter to the healing process, and so the players haven't cared.

In 4e, if the check to inspect a downed character succeeds then the character is stabilised, and so the healer discovers that the wound is not going to be fatal, and is not all that debilitating. (In effect, it's player narrative fiat, although the rules for the Heal skill don't state it openly like that.) This hasn't happened very often in my 4e game, but I think may have happened once or twice.

In Rolemaster Diagnosis is an important skill and gets used all the time to identify the nature of injuries, both serious and mild, because without knowing what they are they can't be healed (healing magic in RM is specific to particular sorts of injuries). The same players who don't call diagnosis checks in D&D do call for them in RM precisely because it matters to mechanical resolution.

 

[JamesonCourage]

In pre-4e, no idea.

Thanks. Didn't ask you, though. I've discussed this with you at some length before. Thanks anyway.