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

[Lanefan]

Armor as DR simply doesn't work without completely rewriting D&D.

It punishes multi-attacks more than it does escalating damage. Therefore, it screws Fighters and makes dual wielding even worse.

In all fairness, while I don't want to see Fighters get hosed I have no problem at all with toning down dual-wielding particularly for non-Fighters.

But resistance is largely the only additional tool you've got to work with. (If it was a computer game you could give 1/4 damage or 1/3 damage but nobody want's to be calculating that at the game table).

Doesn't take long at all; anyone over the age of eight should easily be able to divide damage-size numbers by 3 or by 4, and you're already doing the same arithmetic for half-damage on made saves vs AoE spells.

 

[Lanefan]

I think DR is fine to implement in a D&D style game (doesn't work well in the current system without extensive tweaking though).

Depends how you implement it.

Sure, if you go all 3e on it and put DR everywhere except under the kitchen sink and with 97 different types and exceptions then sure, it's not going to work very well.

But if you add it in just in a few always-on situations you could potentially solve a few headaches all at once.

What if, say, instead of leather being AC 12 and studded being AC 13, leather stays at 12 but studded also becomes 12 but with DR 1. Ring then becomes 13, scale becomes 13 with DR 1; chain is 14, splint and banded pair up at 15 with one having DR 1, plate is 16 and field plate is 16 with DR 2...and so forth - net effect: lower the actual AC values of heavy armour (something I've wanted to do for ages).

I really don't see a path toward turning hp and damage into all physical effects - at least not without changing genres into something a little more fantastical.

I don't think it can ever all be made physical; what I'd like to see is that there's an acknowledged physical component to all of it in tandem with the luck-evasion-fatigue piece; with the physical proportion becomeing greater as one's h.p. become fewer.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, it's a totally solvable problem, too - as was shown by the Star Wars d20 RPG way back in 2000. All you need to do is separate things out into VP and WP or something similar. You have the VP ablated without any real injury, and the WP for when real injury occurs. You'd need to modify some rules in D&D, and a lot of spells, to reflect this, I mean really it would need a new edition to be done well, but it could be done, if it mattered that much.

Actually it doesn't take that much modification at all - certainly nowhere near a whole new edition's worth!

The system we use is proof of that. It's for 1e, but could port to 5e in a heartbeat.

All that needs changing/adding is a single die roll during char-gen (to determine BP*: it's a bit random, Con affects it slightly; and it's locked in for life once rolled), some rules around resting and curing (BP* don't rest or cure back nearly as well as FP*), and some mostly-DM-side rules dealing with corner cases that really don't come up very often e.g. loss of a limb.

In 5e you'd also need to start tracking negative h.p. values as, even though a character would never fall below 0 for curing purposes, the negative number reached would determine how long it'd be before any FP could be cured back. We call it "incurable", when you can't go past full BP* because you've been below 0 recently; and the length of time you're incurable is set by how far down you went (in 5e this might also be modified by how many death saves you'd failed before getting patched up)

* - BP = Body Points (cf Wound Points); FP = Fatigue Points (cf Vitality Points).

 

[Doug McCrae]

I mean, it's a totally solvable problem, too - as was shown by the Star Wars d20 RPG way back in 2000.

And by Roger Musson's article How to Lose Hit Points... and Survive in White Dwarf #15 (1979).

Definitions
(i) Hit points: these refer to energy and combat resources at a character's disposal, and not to physical damage... They are lost when a character has to exert himself to avoid injury, or when a character suffers some form of shock...
(ii) Wounds: when a character actually does suffer physical damage, he is wounded. The amount of wounding he can take is limited by his constitution points, which are assessed for each character in the usual way. Constitution points are lost whenever a blow is sufficiently powerful to penetrate all a character's defences.
​

 

[Doug McCrae]

Musson's explanation of the problem, from the same article.

The Advanced D&D Player's Handbook clearly states that hit points do not exclusively reflect physical damage, but also energy, combat ability, etc. And this is the crux of the problem, for such a definition just doesn't work. It tries to sum up two totally different things under one concept, and that is like trying to mix oil and water. They don't go. The party fighting minotaurs loses "abstract" hit points, but recovers them at the rate for healing wounds, while the fighter chained up in the dragon's cave loses "physical" hit points and survives because he has so many "abstract" hit points to lose.​

 

[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".

For the people who are discussing the Vitality/Wounds concept, this was added earlier for the OP. It mostly follows the system from SWSE with modifications (mostly for the wounded, a.k.a. "fatigued" condition).

While it might require a little tweaking (it is the first draft from last night), I think it would work fine in 5E and as @Doug McCrae has posted, separates the ideas of hit points (as most of us few them) from meat points.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

But guess what? I'm the DM. That makes MY interpretation the standard in games I run.
Not Wizards standard, not TSRs, not some game designer, not even Gygax's. And certainly not that of some internet rando. Maybe I'll take the opinions of my group into account.

you seem to be missing the idea im not pushing my interpretation on anyone but pushing against the dogma that there is a correct interpretation of hitpoints. ive only said as much 20 times already. the only extent that i advocate for my interpretation is in the instance that a standard of interpretation is insisted upon in which case see my first post on this thread as to why i bulk the standard everyone seems to use when they push a standard. read the quote just below this for my principle on the matter

what im against is the official narrative and the narrative expositted by folks like matt colville that hitpoints is definitively an expression of the endurance a character expends in order to not take a lethal blow from a weapon. this is the narrative that keeps telling me i dont understand how hitpoints work rather than simply telling me that hitpoints can work any way players of the game want them to work.

what im not against is the best interpretation, which is that any interpretation of hitpoints and damage is valid.

I'm sorry, but that was asked and answered early on.

it wasent answered it was contested, and on the matter of why different damage types exist of course it is to play off of the mechanic of resistance, vulnerability, and immunity, and i raised the point of how are those mechanics supost to be interpreted besides how physical damage can impact a creatures body? its been pointed out that some mechanics can be blatantly interpreted as only physical damage while the overall system itself still remains abstract such as delivery of injury based poison because an abstract system can change at any time so suite the at play narrative of the game, however that does not negate my statement in context referencing a dogmatic interpretation of how hitpoints work at all times which i was specifically arguing against and giving reason to dismiss. i am NOT always talking about abstract hitpoints throughout this thread, the very first post i made on this thread makes it blatantly clear im not only talking about abstract hitpoints, dont assume the things i say are only in reference to abstract hitpoints unless im specifically talking about that.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

Depends how you implement it.

Sure, if you go all 3e on it and put DR everywhere except under the kitchen sink and with 97 different types and exceptions then sure, it's not going to work very well.

But if you add it in just in a few always-on situations you could potentially solve a few headaches all at once.

What if, say, instead of leather being AC 12 and studded being AC 13, leather stays at 12 but studded also becomes 12 but with DR 1. Ring then becomes 13, scale becomes 13 with DR 1; chain is 14, splint and banded pair up at 15 with one having DR 1, plate is 16 and field plate is 16 with DR 2...and so forth - net effect: lower the actual AC values of heavy armour (something I've wanted to do for ages).

3e only had 1 type of DR, that was a blanket dr against all damage except damage that comes from a specified source such as "good" or "evil" or "silver" 5e's resistance system is arguably more complex in the regard of dr being able to be applied to multiple things. as for putting dr everywhere, its not as much of a problem as it might sound, from the dm perspective theres only going to be one source of dr for enemies 99% of the time. for pc's only the highest form of dr stacks from any source, for a long time i never realized that stacking even meant dr/-

that being said my proposal for DR in 5e for armor isint actually dr, effectively it is, it does reduce damage, but it uses a completely different system for it that you can simply calculate before regular resistance or vulnerability in that game. and nothing stacks with it per say considering its a unique system so if you know one number your not going to get it mixed up with any other number nor mixed up with how resistance normally works, i dont even call it DR.

I don't think it can ever all be made physical; what I'd like to see is that there's an acknowledged physical component to all of it in tandem with the luck-evasion-fatigue piece; with the physical proportion becomeing greater as one's h.p. become fewer.

i think that all damage can be physical in 5e but i dont recommend it unless it sounds appealing, it does require changing ones perception of what is going on in the game to the only logical conclusion that every player character is slowly becoming a demigod long before 20th level.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

In all fairness, while I don't want to see Fighters get hosed I have no problem at all with toning down dual-wielding particularly for non-Fighters.

best way to deal with this is if a character rolls high enough on their attack roll they completely bipass dr, thats how the armor as dr system i created functions, multiple attacks per round giving fighter more opportunities to deal damage completely unhampered by the resistance which on the higher end of the scale* could be the difference between doing 0 damage and 100% damage, like armorclass already works but gives room for characters specializing in dealing damage the ability to just power through dr with damage and not worry about ever failing to do any damage at all regardless of their attack roll though still benefit from a high roll.

*which would also be the higher levels of the game where fighter gets the most attacks

 

[Arch-Fiend]

the one thing that is disheartening more than anything else about the thesis i wrote on hitpoints and damage in D&D is how obvious it is that so many people jumped to the section i wrote called "conclusions" then in their responses accuse me of being the one to jump to conclusions