FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
Say what I'm about to say slowly and think before you respond...
If you've determined that hp is always meat then you aren't playing hp is an abstraction.
D&D 5E ludonarrative dissonance of hitpoints in D&D
- Thread starter Arch-Fiend
- Start date
Say what I'm about to say slowly and think before you respond...
If you've determined that hp is always meat then you aren't playing hp is an abstraction.
Arch-Fiend
Explorer
my completely interpretive abstraction that can mean literally anything i want it to mean in order to shape a creative narrative in the middle of playing the game is supernatural durability 100% of the time. if you dont like that, then play with your own completely interpretive abstraction that can mean literally anything i want it to mean in order to shape a creative narrative in the middle of playing the game.
we are no longer arguing about the topic of this thread considering we are now arguing about our preferred completely interpretive abstraction that can mean literally anything we want it to mean in order to shape a creative narrative in the middle of playing the game. when the topic of my thesis was about a specific interpretation of the rules. if you dont want to talk about it, then i don think we have anything further to discuss.
FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
As soon as you nail hp down to 100% anything you've lost the abstraction part. You've stopped treating hp in your game as an abstraction. Your hp now has a particular non-abstract definition. Get it?
Arch-Fiend
Explorer
what hitpoints are is an abstraction, what is hitpoints an abstraction of? stuff, the game says what its an abstraction of but does not give the quantities and i think we also have the right to inject our own qualities as well if we want to considering the only other stats in the entire game hitpoints is actually based on is class; and by way of class, experience, and constitution. many people have different ideas about what these qualities could be and the game changes its tune slightly depending on edition, however 5e is what we are talking about. im not going to argue one way or another about which types of qualities should be added that arnt there but i will say its valid. considering many things that the game says hitpoints can be while connecting them to so few stats some interpretive work must be done to fit them all anyway. additionally the game is very open to the idea of the gm's interpretation given what they want to do in the play of their game, further reinforcing the idea that other qualities can be considered for what makes hitpoints.
however im only going into detail about D&D being open to adding qualities not specified to what hitpoints are stated to mean simply to give some credit to those who have exposed their own ideas about what it can mean and also to back up various older edition's interpretations which included other things or didint include some things that 5e does. what im really going to argue is that the game also doesn't specify quantity either, quantity of those qualities, not does it specify the interpretation of those qualities relationships to hitpoints, it just says they are there, it makes no mention of what they mean in their connection to what hitpoints are, hit points just involves them.
SO if the game is open to the idea of gm's ability to have control over the interpretation of what hitpoints is in both quality and quantity and the interpretation of what quality actually means. in my game, with me as gm, 99.infinite integer of 9's behind this decibel point, percent of the quantity of the abstraction of hitpoints in my game is the added quality of durability fortified by the characters constitution and the rest is everything else people seem to think hitpoints are.
now, as i said before, we are no longer arguing about the topic of this thread, if you dont want to talk about the topic of this thread, i dont think we have anything further to discuss.
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FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
99.99% allows for them to be called an abstraction. Something like - I'm going to typically treat hp as X but there may be a few exceptions that come up during play. That's still an example of hp as an abstraction. But as soon as you say hp are only going to be X in my game then those hp are now completely defined and not an abstraction.
And the thing is - it's still fine to play that way - just be aware that you are departing both from the traditional meaning of hp in D&D and more specifically 5e's meaning as written. Again, nothing wrong with doing that.
I think there's some pretty big reasons to not do that - but if that's something you and your groups will enjoy then have at it. You can even still be playing by the 5e rules as long as you leave open the possibility that hp can sometimes mean the other things it iterates in your games. That must be a real possibility though and not just something you are paying lip service to.
Aren't damage types meant to correlate to the fiction? Eg if something does piercing damage that means it is a threat primarily because it can stab you. If it does fire damage that means that it is a threat primarily because it can burn you. Etc.
If someone wrote up a description of a club that does piercing damage, or a refrigerator trap that inflicts fire damage, I don't know if that would literally count as a rules violation but it would clearly show the person doesn't understand the function of damage types in the game. Their function is not limited to triggering resistance and vulnerability.
When I Google a definition of abstract I get this: "existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence."
That doesn't establish any contrast with being defined nor with being consistently one thing. Hit points as durability is still an abstract conception of hit points, because durability is an abstract notion - actual concrete human beings don't have any property of durability but rather have various physical and biological properties like bones with a certain degree of strength, tendons with a certain degree of flexibility, cells that rupture in various ways and muscular and other systems that cope with certain degrees of rupture within them, etc.
That doesn't establish any contrast with being defined nor with being consistently one thing. Hit points as durability is still an abstract conception of hit points, because durability is an abstract notion - actual concrete human beings don't have any property of durability but rather have various physical and biological properties like bones with a certain degree of strength, tendons with a certain degree of flexibility, cells that rupture in various ways and muscular and other systems that cope with certain degrees of rupture within them, etc.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
One would think so, wouldn't one?
Ah, but is one only considering mechanics (in which case triggering resistance and vulnerability may well be their only function) or also narrative (in which case they work much more as you note in your first paragraph, above).
A mechanics-only DM might put a slashing club or a bludgeoning arrow into the mix just to mess things up, in the same vein as adding in a troll that's cured by fire but is vulnerable to cold. The troll, however, can be narrated in ways that make sense. The off-damage weapons, not so much.
(in case it's not clear, I'm in fact agreeing with what you say and merely pointing out a thought process that might make a different viewpoint make sense to someone else)
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
I don't know about him but forgetting about yesterday is getting to be progressively more common.Have you forgotten more about D&D than I will ever know?
What is a "slashing club" but a sword?
Unless we're talking about a magical weapon that causes flesh to rend with its touch.
Anyway, I don't think I know what a "mechanics-only DM" is. I think it's largely accepted that part of what distinguishes a RPG from a boardgame is that the former takes narrative/fiction as input, and yields the same as output, in way that a boardgame does not.
