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

[Arch-Fiend]

Localized necrotic effects? makes me think of Partial Stoning attacks heroically shrugged off (most of the time) but starting the process never the less.

without wounding penalties or lingering effects of damage,5e (and typically D&D in general) really stops short of the narrative potent that damage could reflect in the game. of course homebrew is there to cover for that if people want it to but there's a lot of potential for what these things could mean if people wanted to take the extra steps and put them into their games.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

-removed post-

 

[Umbran]

How can my character within the game world draw the healer's attention to this fact if hit points represent skill, luck or divine favour? My PC couldn't know they are low on these things.

Why not? For skill, the minor muscle fatigue garnered as you use that skill will be a signal that you can't take many more threats. For luck and divine favor... haven't you ever gotten the feeling in a day that you are pushing your luck? You already avoided getting hit by a car, tripped and almost fell down the stairs, and grabbed a hot pan on the stove without an oven mitt, and just barely got your hand away without getting burned. Maybe you can't risk much more...

The abstraction of hit points goes both ways. Just as we can come up with whatever colorful narrative we want for the damage coming in (or, probably more frequently, not bother to explicitly narrate it), we can come up with whatever colorful narrative we want for the character noting how much oomph they have left (or, probably more frequently, don't bother, and just say the character knows, without needing a specific narrative).

 

[DND_Reborn]

-can someone delete this comment, i did a goof when trying to edit and accidentally replied to myself

Just click edit and delete it all, add a caveat "removed post" or something if you have to.

 

[Garthanos]

without wounding penalties or lingering effects of damage,5e (and typically D&D in general) really stops short of the narrative potent that damage could reflect in the game.

In 4e if I make a stoning glance do 4D8 damage and target hit gets an effect 50% slowed save ends or 50% weakened til end of next turn. With an on defeat clause subject is stoned permanently and requires the blood of the one who stoned them or a remove affliction ritual.

Its pretty much exactly the effect I am describing and pretty solidly in keeping with 4e power design.

 

[Ovinomancer]

your arguing the definition of abstract inproperly because an abstract by definition is a representation of a group of specific things and expanded into a broader catagory for use in conversation about what they represent for the purpose of that abstract. for example a polystirine soccer ball full of air is a ball, the abstract would be talking about balls and that abstract would still be in reference to the soccer ball but also balls in general if the conversation can be applied to balls in general.
so because your arguing with a false interpritation of a definition i will try to counter your point by interpriting what i think you are trying to say.

Well, no, that's not what abstraction means. You cannot logically argue from the specific to the general, only from the general to the specific. To take your example, the abstract category of "all balls" allows for soccer balls to exist in the category. The abstract category of "soccer balls" does not allow for tennis balls to exist in the category. So, when I pointed out that you've created a narrower set of abstraction for hitpoints, specifically that hitpoints are abstract representations of meat, this is not the same set of things that hitpoints generally represents -- you cannot logically equate the two, they are different things.

hitpoints are not defined purely as an abstract in any edition of the game, they are an abstract by definition. what hitpoints are defined as in 5e for example is the following

And, now you're misusing abstract. Hitpoints are definitely purely abstract in that the do not represent anything specific, they lack factual meaning. There are traits of abstractions, though, and D&D in general uses a wider set of traits for the abstraction of hitpoints that you use in your argument. The point I'm making here that that you claiming that "all meat" is an equal abstraction to the definition you quoted above is logically flawed -- they are different things.

this outlines a number of qualities that hitpoints represents, it does not specify their quantity it allows the dm to interpret them on their own for the use of narration in play when it becomes important. conflating hitpoints as an abstract measure of SOMETHING (that something being different between me and the game writers and most of the people complaining to me that i dont understand hitpoints) and hitpoints as a zero representation stand in for dm narration would be an invalid logical argument, but i havent done that, because no one is saying hitpoints represent nothing but interpretation, people and the game itself are saying hitpoints represent an abstraction of several qualities that relate to whatever damage means.

Sure, and, if such misrepresentations bother you I'd suggest discussing it with the people that made those claims. I did not, so this is utterly irrelevant in response to me. You conflate arguments between posters. You should work to improve this as it makes discussion difficult when you just revert to attacking a different argument that's easily defeated (as the above) and use that to imply you've defeated the argument quoted.

we really havent been arguing what is ridiculous or not in this thread, at least i havent, because i dont care, my initial post here was about comparing the different narratives the mechanics of the game seem to represent and how there is a conflict between those narratives, for some reason were not talking about that anymore and for the life of me i have no idea why. i dont see why its so ridiculous that in a game about dragons, magic, divine intervention, alternate planes of existence, psionic powers, ect, that characters who gain the ability to die slower to being hit by attacks is what stands out and breaks the camels back. the only thing i can think of is thats just not how various people here want to play the game, its a good thing im not telling them they have to do it my way or no way.

If the difference wasn't ridiculous to you, you'd not have bothered discussing it. There are many such differences in D&D that are often elided over because the disruption they cause to our imaginings of the fiction are not large enough. When it gets large enough, it seems ridiculous to us. You've engaged in a semantic argument here over the word ridiculous while ignoring the thrust of the argument -- that your appreciation of the difference in hitpoints is due to what assumptions you've brought in, not a fundamental requirement of the RAW.

If you want my opinion about your choice of interpretation, I think it's far too limiting on the kinds of stories that can be told. If my characters must have supernatural ability to absorb damage with meat, then I can only have games that feature themes compatible with that, so no swashbuckling, or highly skilled martial artists, etc. I only have bricks that soak massive damage as a trope. It's too limiting.

If you use hitpoints as a broader abstraction, then you can use a broader set of tropes. This is the fundamental reason I disagree with your argument -- such a limit on usable tropes is entirely absent from the materials out for the game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Here's an uncomfortable way to view hitpoints: they are a post hoc narrative device. Ever time you "hit" it's lethal, or defeating, whichever term you want. The DM tells the player they're hit and defeated, unless they want to buy off the hit with hitpoints. The cost is determined either randomly or has a fixed value. If the player can pay, then they can narrate the "hit" however they want (or let the DM do it, depending on the table).

Different damage types in this construct are cost adjustment tools. If your character is resistant to fire, for instance, then the cost to pay off fire damage is lowered. If they are vulnerable, the cost is higher. That's how damage types play in. Poison, in this case, represents the danger of the strike, not actual damage to the PC if it's paid off -- so some attacks cost more to pay off with hitpoints because they're costlier.

This framework works for everything, and is simple enough in understanding that you can automate it by just declaring the buy-off cost on a hit (the damage) and expecting the player to deduct the cost unless they specifically decide that this strike indeed goes home and kills/defeats them (or engages the death saving throw mechanic in 4/5e). The assumption here is that players will, of course, want to buy off as many hits as they can.

This leaves narration of a hit the doesn't defeat as a function of the fiction at the table, not the mechanics. It also means hitpoints do not represent anything specifically until a specific payout of them is rendered in the fiction for that single payoff -- every payoff is different.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Have you forgotten more about D&D than I will ever know?

Sadly, I have forgotten far less about 1e than I should have. OTOH, I have trouble retaining things about 5e that I read last week. In the whole Older & Wiser aphorism, the 'wiser' part is more of a stretch goal for me.
(Actually, I routinely accept a lot of what you, personally, say about 5e, because the time's I've cracked a book and checked up on you, you've always been right on the facts.)

What is a "slashing club" but a sword?

Oh! a Klanth?

Anyway, I don't think I know what a "mechanics-only DM" is.

A wargaming-era-style 'Judge' who only interprets rules, to settle disputes between players, perhaps?

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.

I don't think anything's largely accepted, a consensus, or non-controversial, when you're in an on-line forum. There's /always/ someone willing to offer themselves as a counter-example to any universal assertion, just to tag someone 'wrong' for whatever imaginary points their toting in their head.

There's no meaning of abstract that makes Gygax's account of hp, or @Tony Vargas's account of hp, abstract but makes a durability account not abstract.

OR? I'd like to think that I'm a pedantic Gygaxian apologist on this issue, with no ideas of my own, at all.

If you've determined that hp is always meat then you aren't playing hp is an abstraction.

I mean, unless 'meat' is literally taken to the point of an animated pile of hamburger - undifferentiated physical structure that must be destroyed, as hps would tend to represent with a clay golem, for instance.

Yeah, I guess that's another thing: Hit points work the same, mechanically, for PCs, NPCs, and monsters, that last category of which includes noncorporeal entities, macroscopic single-celled organisms, plants, animated lumps of stone or clay or dead flesh and/or bone, fantastic machines, swarms of much smaller things working in concert, conjured forces, whirlwinds & conflagrations from their corresponding elemental planes. Heck, in 3e objects had hit points (in 1e they /generally/ didn't, but made saving throws, but some did, too), and in 4e traps often did (5e, I forget, see above).

So, abandoning my self-appointed role as Gygaxian apologist for whom it's still 1979, I'd have to say that, hps are, necessarily an abstraction, representing many different things that stand between a specific creature and defeat - death for most monsters, destruction for many monsters & objects worth the trouble, banishment/dispelling for a few monsters and spells effects, and unconsciousness & death saves for PCs and those NPCs worth the trouble - so while a 'standard' interpretation that makes sense for PC races might be viable (and couldn't reasonably include supernatural durability without /actually/ getting into the wuxia/anime/Exalted paradigm so often presented as unthinkable when the possibility of giving martial concepts some cool toys comes up), it couldn't ever be universal.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Here's an uncomfortable way to view hitpoints: they are a post hoc narrative device. Ever time you "hit" it's lethal, or defeating, whichever term you want. The DM tells the player they're hit and defeated, unless they want to buy off the hit with hitpoints. The cost is determined either randomly or has a fixed value. If the player can pay, then they can narrate the "hit" however they want (or let the DM do it, depending on the table).

Different damage types in this construct are cost adjustment tools. If your character is resistant to fire, for instance, then the cost to pay off fire damage is lowered. If they are vulnerable, the cost is higher. That's how damage types play in. Poison, in this case, represents the danger of the strike, not actual damage to the PC if it's paid off -- so some attacks cost more to pay off with hitpoints because they're costlier.

This framework works for everything, and is simple enough in understanding that you can automate it by just declaring the buy-off cost on a hit (the damage) and expecting the player to deduct the cost unless they specifically decide that this strike indeed goes home and kills/defeats them (or engages the death saving throw mechanic in 4/5e). The assumption here is that players will, of course, want to buy off as many hits as they can.

This leaves narration of a hit the doesn't defeat as a function of the fiction at the table, not the mechanics. It also means hitpoints do not represent anything specifically until a specific payout of them is rendered in the fiction for that single payoff -- every payoff is different.

This, coincidentally, was the basis for my idea about avoidance instead of hp in another thread and has been also suggested (in a manner) by @Garthanos. As you say, it is already sort of there and basically assumed a character would rather pay the cost than be taken out of the fight.

 

[Garthanos]

So, abandoning my self-appointed role as Gygaxian apologist for whom it's still 1979

I periodically accept that role but honestly in 1979 I didnt like the abstraction at all... it umm grew on me.