D&D 5E ludonarrative dissonance of hitpoints in D&D

[Arch-Fiend]

If you still want to do this consider some way of adding in proficiency bonus instead of just starting with such a high number. This means that goblin can still be a threat to a Fighter in heavy armour (at least at low level - bounded accuracy is still a casualty).

i describe a few ways even low level characters can get around armor, such as half-swording, using weapons that are better at getting into niches, and grappling with these weapons and techniques. which i think does a good thing giving grappling more use in the game. low level armors dont have enough damage resistance that you need to worry about low level monsters not being able to damage the party and visa versa. if low level characters are given high level armor by the dm, then well i hope the dm had a good reason for it. however realisticly a goblin skilled as a first level character shouldent be able to damage a 10th level fighter wearing realistic fullplate armor without rolling a 20, unless he uses a dagger while grappling (gaining a +4 bonus to hit)

now, i like the idea of doing something like pack tactics but instead of advantage granting a +1 to hit, then sort of doing the same thing with flanking gaining a +1 so that a guy in full armor getting ganged up on by a horde of goblins is going to simply not be able to guard the niches in his armor.

something like flanking grants a +1 to 2 characters standing adjacent to an enemy where you can draw a line between the center of their square and the center of its square, then every flanking pair around an enemy increases the bonus by flanking by an additional 1 while also granting the flanking bonus to any other enemies adjacent to the flanked character who just dont happen to have a flanking partner, so 4 flankers is +2 6 flankers is +3, so on and so forth. i think goblins would design their homes around exploiting these advantages by doing stuff like having tight tunnels with murder holes that goblins can surround an intruder on all sides but also from above .

 

[DND_Reborn]

@Arch-Fiend , here is a quick house-rule write up using some of the SWSE mechanics (modified) in case you aren't familiar with vitality points and wound points. VP are basically HP as I described, but WP are "meat".

 

[Arch-Fiend]

Well, quite a bit frankly.

As I said before, consider a character with 100 hp and that a longsword does 5 damage on average. That means this character could withstand 20 such hits by a longsword, sufficient to drop 20 commoners. That goes to the point of being ludicrous to a lot of people. People simply can't take that sort of punishment in general. Sure, there are documented flukes, but this character could take all this damage, and then heal it overnight and do it again the next day. It requires people to want to play a game that is not only fantasy, but completely suspends reality.

Consider a Fireball. Average damage is 28. Even making a save for 14 damage kills your typical common instantly. Our fighter with 100 hp could take 4 or more such fireballs before likely falling, and assuming he makes a save or two, more likely 5 to 6 even.

I don't recall if it was here or in the other thread, but I commented on how hp would have to be greatly reduced and healing times lengthened unless you wanted to play a game that is super-uber-mega-hero-like.

So, to repeat myself, you would have to change a lot or be willing to play a game that is not of a sort I want to play.

is it so ludicrous to say the game is just about heroes who gain supernatural powers? because i think that describes dungeons and dragons very well. if you say hit points are meat points, the additional statement would have to be that these are super humans with superhuman durability, but it doesn't change the way the mechanics of the game works, and there's no reason you need to change the mechanics of the game to be realistic for that. characters get so many super powers, why cant health be one?

also ill just site that if hitpoints are so abstract they can mean anything, then this interpretation is still valid. but your free to try and invalidate it.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

I can only comment on the system you present. If you want comments on the system you actually want to use then you will need to present that.

what do you mean? this is what i presented

 

[DND_Reborn]

is it so ludicrous to say the game is just about heroes who gain supernatural powers? because i think that describes dungeons and dragons very well. if you say hit points are meat points, the additional statement would have to be that these are super humans with superhuman durability, but it doesn't change the way the mechanics of the game works, and there's no reason you need to change the mechanics of the game to be realistic for that. characters get so many super powers, why cant health be one?

also ill just site that if hitpoints are so abstract they can mean anything, then this interpretation is still valid. but your free to try and invalidate it.

LOL, maybe it is late where you are but don't start getting all snarky on me!

I already said that you can play with hp and damage as purely physical, I'll quote the post for you:

You can, of course, say all damage is physical as well if you choose, but I don't think many people will agree in the 5E framework. It would require a character with over 100 hp to be able to take a ridiculous amount of physical injury (equal to dozens of sword hits) before even going unconscious. If that is the style you want to play, cool. But while it is a valid point of view, it wasn't IMO want the designers intended or how most tables run.

So, don't challenge me to "to try and invalidate it" when I already said it is viable. I don't agree with it, and I would never want to play in such a "super-heroic" game of D&D because I like a grittier and more challenging game. And other than spells, I don't see much of what many characters get, even at higher levels, as "super powers," but that is simply a difference of perception I suppose.

 

[Don Durito]

i describe a few ways even low level characters can get around armor, such as half-swording, using weapons that are better at getting into niches, and grappling with these weapons and techniques. which i think does a good thing giving grappling more use in the game. low level armors dont have enough damage resistance that you need to worry about low level monsters not being able to damage the party and visa versa. if low level characters are given high level armor by the dm, then well i hope the dm had a good reason for it. however realisticly a goblin skilled as a first level character shouldent be able to damage a 10th level fighter wearing realistic fullplate armor without rolling a 20, unless he uses a dagger while grappling (gaining a +4 bonus to hit)

now, i like the idea of doing something like pack tactics but instead of advantage granting a +1 to hit, then sort of doing the same thing with flanking gaining a +1 so that a guy in full armor getting ganged up on by a horde of goblins is going to simply not be able to guard the niches in his armor.

something like flanking grants a +1 to 2 characters standing adjacent to an enemy where you can draw a line between the center of their square and the center of its square, then every flanking pair around an enemy increases the bonus by flanking by an additional 1 while also granting the flanking bonus to any other enemies adjacent to the flanked character who just dont happen to have a flanking partner, so 4 flankers is +2 6 flankers is +3, so on and so forth. i think goblins would design their homes around exploiting these advantages by doing stuff like having tight tunnels with murder holes that goblins can surround an intruder on all sides but also from above .

Look you ask me to look at some house rules for D&D and then you keep rolling out new assumptions that mean I wasted my time even trying to parse what you had written.

It's a reasonable assumption that characters with low Dex in most recent editions will start the game in heavy armour. That's part of existing class and ability design. If that's not a starting assumption then spell that out. If you're ignoring the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic to give little bonuses that add up here there and everywhere and extend the range of achievable die results then spell that out.

If you want people to comment on your rules changes then they either need to be considered within the ecosystem that currently exists or you need to spell out and define the ecosystem they are designed to exist within.

It sounds like you are redesigning D&D into a new edition here or perhaps some kind of Fantasy Heartbreaker. If so you need to finish writing that game before anyone can comment further.

 

[Umbran]

that expectation lead me to assume i would be treated with enough respect that responses to my thoughts would be thoroughly read as i thoroughly read the responses to it. casting judgement onto an idea without actually understanding that idea because you are to impatient isint useful to anyone.

So, here's the thing, it isn't just impatience and disrespect. It isn't just your expectations that have not been met.

To be effective, an author needs to consider the audience and the medium. The audience expects you to do that... and I'm sorry to say, you didn't do it particularly well. You put up a piece that is difficult to read and absorb, and blame their impatience? That... doesn't look really respectful of your readers.

Some constructive bits:

1) Capital letters. They aren't just historical convention propagated by teachers. In the spoken word, we have tone and cadence that denotes when ideas begin and end. That role is played by capitalization and punctuation in the written form. By leaving them out, you significantly increase the cognitive work required to digest your piece. You could fix that.

2) Segmenation - Messageboards operate as casual conversations. Cognitively, folks approach them as conversations. In effect, you started this conversation by standing up and talking at folks for about seven minutes straight (the time it typically takes to speak 1000+ words aloud) before entertaining their input. That's not the form of a conversation. It is the form of a lecture. If folks here have lots of expertise you hope to engage, don't lecture them. There are several different structures you could use to avoid this large opening salvo.

3) Make sure the point of the work is clear. State it at the beginning. Tell folks what problem you intend to solve, or improvement you are hoping to make, up front. Don't get upset at people for missing the point when you don't clearly and unambiguously tell them what the point is.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

LOL, maybe it is late where you are but don't start getting all snarky on me!

I already said that you can play with hp and damage as purely physical, I'll quote the post for you:

So, don't challenge me to "to try and invalidate it" when I already said it is viable. I don't agree with it, and I would never want to play in such a "super-heroic" game of D&D because I like a grittier and more challenging game. And other than spells, I don't see much of what many characters get, even at higher levels, as "super powers," but that is simply a difference of perception I suppose.

well maybe im snappy but i think i probably just phrased myself poorly while trying to be precise in my language and completely honest, thats kinda sharp and blunt at the same time, but its to avoid misunderstandings (not that i cant cause that to happen for other causes).

sorry for the implication of a challenge, but you did reply to "why cant you do something" with an answer implying you couldn't, when you knew you could so i felt like it required the challenge.

i understand the desire for something gritter, i think you have mentioned more games that could stand in for D&D than anyone else so far in this thread, so you certainly have your options.

the reason why ive been advocating so strongly for the "hitpoints as meat points" thing goes back into my defense of the idea that damage is very reflective of the physical, because i dont like the idea of so many new people coming to the game and seeing how it is and being told they are wrong for the way they naturally interpret the language and the way the mechanics seem to imply how damage works simply because people say hitpoints does something that runs contrary to their intuition. i think gameplay should try to be intuitive, and my entire point in my first post on this thread was about what the mechanics of the game imply to people when they look at them at face value and the typical experience a new player will come to the game with.

when new players come to the game i think they see it the way ive presented in the first post of this thread, and i dont just think that because i think that way to, i sat down and really looked at the way these mechanics work and play off of each other, i wouldn't have sat there and listed every check that constitution and strength bonuses can be applied to in the game to get a general idea about what they actually represent if i didn't want to try to approach this with as little of my own bias as i could.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

Look you ask me to look at some house rules for D&D and then you keep rolling out new assumptions that mean I wasted my time even trying to parse what you had written.

It's a reasonable assumption that characters with low Dex in most recent editions will start the game in heavy armour. That's part of existing class and ability design. If that's not a starting assumption then spell that out. If you're ignoring the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic to give little bonuses that add up here there and everywhere and extend the range of achievable die results then spell that out.

If you want people to comment on your rules changes then they either need to be considered within the ecosystem that currently exists or you need to spell out and define the ecosystem they are designed to exist within.

It sounds like you are redesigning D&D into a new edition here or perhaps some kind of Fantasy Heartbreaker. If so you need to finish writing that game before anyone can comment further.

woah, what new assumptions did i make? i described what my homebrew document actually says, all that stuff about grappling and half-swording are at the bottom of that document.

end of that post your quoting i begin theory crafting on some extra ideas to add to it that might be cool, i wasting saying "hey you need to listen to this because this is how it should be even though i didint show you this before" it was something i just now thought of as a good idea, i still stand behind everything i already wrote in my homebrew, that is realistic armor as a baseline, what i can think of after that is additional stuff but i dont think its necessary. you brought up how low level monsters wouldent be able to harm a character in full plate in my system, i dont think thats wrong unless we can think of some situations where it should be wrong, it certainly shouldnt be right as a rule. so i came up with a rule that could create a scenario where low level monsters like goblins could do it

 

[Tony Vargas]

is it so ludicrous to say the game is just about heroes who gain supernatural powers?

There are no classes and five (out of 40) sub-classes in the 5e PH that gain no supernatural powers, at all (down from 4 full classes out of 8 in the prior edition PH1, and 3 full classes in the PH1 before that).

So, actually, no it's not that unreasonable to just ignore/discount those 5 sub-classes as, er well, second-class options that don't really have a meaningful role in the game, and consider the game only in terms of the remaining 35, sub-class options. But it's not reasonable to think that the game intends that, especially as one of those 5 sub-classes is the Champion, easily the most popular option among new players.

(Or, at least, it'd be really cynical.)