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

[Fanaelialae]

its kinda funny to imagine how mental duribility, will to live, and luck play a role in a character falling below 0 hitpoints and dying.

"so how did you die?"
"well a dragon blasted me with hot flames"
"oh man thats brutal, terrible look to find your body in"
"oh my body was fine besides all the other wounds i got from the fight, i just couldent take it so i had a mental and it left me a coma and starved to death"

"so what about you?"
"ah well minotaur gored me"
"oof thats smarts, so where did it get you"
"idk man, life, i just knew it was to much"

"so what about him?"
"oh you dont want to know about him, bad lot he got"
"oh yet? what i can take it"
"ah well, tripped down a pit, took max falling damage from 40ft, and thats just his luck running out. the moment he hit the ground he just disappeared from the material plane and showed up here"

The PHB is quite clear on how this works. I'm AFB but I quoted the page number and the sidebar itself earlier in this thread.

To summarize:
When above half hp, a creature usually does not have visible injuries.
At half hp or below, they have minor injuries (scrapes, bruises, etc).
The attack that takes them to 0 HP causes a serious injury.

Hence those examples are not an accurate portrayal of how the game is intended to function, and if you believe that is the intent then I can understand why you believe that meat points are a superior alternative.

The official guidelines are as follows. Above half hp, damage only includes meat if it needs to for the sake of the narrative (such as inflicting a poison with an ongoing effect). At half or below, a small portion of the damage is meat. At 0 hp, the damage involves significant meat.

 

[Hussar]

Realistically, the only way you can narrate damage in D&D is after combat is completed. There's no other way to do it since narrating any damage in the moment can be contradicted quite easily at a later moment. Was that wound lethal? Well, you didn't die and you dropped a second wind resulting in you gaining more than 1/2 your HP, therefore, you aren't wounded at all.

Any attempt to define HP during combat is bound to fail.

 

[clearstream]

im not going to refute your challenge just yet, but something i think you would be interested in reading is this article that was sent to me a few months ago written much more than a few months ago that i think carries gravity on this subject. know that it isint my replacement for a formal argument though, but sharing both this and my wordy response at the same time would be a bit much i think.

D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations

I’ve been working and playing with the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons longer than most. Ryan Dancey sent me a playtest copy of the new Player’s Handbook back in 199

thealexandrian.net

im curious what your response will be to it, showing me a greater detail of why you think that about human limitations.

I think he unintentionally shows why the game must be fabulist and not realist. Say we look at what might be his most robust example - opening a door. The intuition pump he draws on is as follows. A) It is plausible that several kicks from an average person should open a good wooden door, so B) working back from that outcome, assigning a 10% chance per kick is good high-level simulation. The general form of his claim seems to be - given A) an outcome is plausible then B) a model that yields that outcome is reasonable.

He neglects to explore the chosen model's other features, however. A simple probabilistic model entails that we have flatly the same chance of opening the door on kick one, as kick one thousand. We could never open that door! Suppose I take one-thousand average NPCs and stand them before one-thousand good wooden doors. In the model, all the NPCs are identical and all the doors are identical.

The NPCs all take one kick, and about a hundred of them open their doors while the rest do not. If it is really true that NPCs and doors are identical, then I might decide that their kicks are not identical. That may feel plausible as indeed I do see different numbers on the dice representing kicks. Someone could note here that it's not very plausible that a thousand NPCs and a thousand doors are undifferentiated... but in the model that is certainly true.

So I take my "one-kick" hundred or so, and face them with another set of good wooden doors. Around ten open their doors with one kick. The rest do not. Not satisfied, however, I have left the rest of my NPCs kicking away and discovered that a few of them can't get their door down even by their ninth kick!

So I mix those "nine-kick" failures in with an equal number of my "one-kick" wonders, and let that group have another go. It seems plausible to predict that my "one-kick" wonders will beat out my "nine-kick" failures. I'm so confident I offer 4:1 odds on that outcome. You can guess the result.

Alexander can respond that the simulation captures enough to be meaningful, and that NPCs, doors and kicks are obviously all different, but only in ways that are unnecessary for the model to capture to do its work at the table. Perhaps there were personal histories of previous encounters with doors, faults in the wood, and kick-abetting methods going on such as jemmying or prising? I'm pretty sure Alexander doesn't want to say a DM should never narrate such possibilities.

Entertaining that, we say that what is modelled is that an average person has a 10% chance per attempt of applying some method to get a door open, which could include noticing something about the door. In 5th edition, a DM can decide to engage Wisdom or Intelligence if they think that is what is going on. Alexander might object to bringing in such abilities, as he just argued that what the model plausibly simulates is kicking down doors using Strength. But the form of his argument forces him to concede point, as we started by agreeing with him that if some outcome is plausible then the model yielding that outcome is reasonable. It sure seems plausible that someone notices a fault in a door, and that allows them to open it with expedition, and it is true that the model can yield that outcome perforce it is reasonable.

That then points directly at fabulism because the reasonableness of the model is being tied directly to our subjective, somewhat shady personal sense of what is plausible. The door is in truth being opened symbolically... magically! We know that because identical game events can be narrated in different ways. Alexander proposed one narrative that he personally found plausible, yet there are multitudinous narratives that could be plausible to some group; and no matter how implausible Alexander might find another group's narrative, the mechanic can yield those outcomes. We might eventually think of asking - what is it a model of, exactly?

We are in the world of fabulism because players can describe a plethora of approaches to their DM, who can, if they wish, allow a waggling of fingers or twitching of an eyebrow to have a chance of opening a door. The fact is that we don't really have a simulation of reality, but only a workable rule for letting characters get past things that block their path. We might notice that - being a good mechanic - it leads us to narrate in a certain way... yet crucially it does nothing to prevent us narrating in other ways. And as I have suggested above, those other ways could well be as plausible.

 

[clearstream]

double-post ftw

 

[Arch-Fiend]

Take two they are small take double damage from fire and also take the frightened condition in fact even if if you make the save against the one you can still get the other because stress/shock/fear can actually kill you and doesn't have to be absolute. Humans arent now frightened and now just not so... quit being so monotone with your predefined concept of what you want mechanics to represent.

Binary condition is less "real" feeling to me than the other.

if you were feared and lost hitpoints and didn't get the fear condition it would be less "real" feeling. i agree. im not arguing against that, what im arguing against is not doing that. i dont think its necessary to use fear as a way of dealing damage, but if people want to that's fine i just think it should be with respect of the other mechanics associated with fear, either meaning to combine them, or to favor one over the other, but not to use one at one time then another at another time when its inconsistent to do so.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

"best" represent... why do you think i need the complexity of having separate mechanics. For my lucky hero or my tough guy one or my skilled one there normal abilities/defense they resist with still can "Flavor" the rest.

i think you miss the point of my statement when you only cut part of it out to respond to and ignore the rest

 

[Arch-Fiend]

The PHB is quite clear on how this works. I'm AFB but I quoted the page number and the sidebar itself earlier in this thread.

To summarize:
When above half hp, a creature usually does not have visible injuries.
At half hp or below, they have minor injuries (scrapes, bruises, etc).
The attack that takes them to 0 HP causes a serious injury.

Hence those examples are not an accurate portrayal of how the game is intended to function, and if you believe that is the intent then I can understand why you believe that meat points are a superior alternative.

The official guidelines are as follows. Above half hp, damage only includes meat if it needs to for the sake of the narrative (such as inflicting a poison with an ongoing effect). At half or below, a small portion of the damage is meat. At 0 hp, the damage involves significant meat.

ah sorry right, forgot about that. so the game does actually specify the quantities of each ingredient in hitpoints very vaguely. which is interesting as that was a contention earlier. so essentially above half hitpoints is all mental durability, will to live, and luck (whether it makes sense or not, though ill assume these guidelines are as intended but subject to the dm's will, interpretation, and how the game progresses considering ANYTHING can happen in combat). below half minor injuries so thats when physical durability pops up, though its strange that the game kinda underemphasizes physical durability here, though one could argue physical durability was at play in the upper half too based on the interpretation i argued against in the first post of this thread, but i think i debunked that one pretty good. once you take 0hp you take a serious injury and are down. interesting how theres no room for multiple serious injuries regardless of your level, your class, your constitution, ect, all related concepts to hitpoints which impact what number of hitpoints you have seems to have no baring on how serious the injury you can sustain is, which even further reinforces the idea i argued against, its almost like it doesnt make sense based on what we know about damage.

heres the thing though, the type of damage that is done to you relates more strongly to some ingredients in hitpoints than others, i pointed out ones that wernt consistent simply because it didn't make sense, but thats not saying that something that only makes sense shouldn't be the last kind of damage your character takes before they die. psychic damage could be the last damage you take before you die, it makes a lot of sense then that what happens to your character is that they are reduced to a coma that they fail to wake up from after 3 death saves. it could be that necrotic damage could be the last damage you take before you die, and while necrotic damage does imply that it can harm flesh, ripping ones soul from their body is also quite a narrative for necrotic damage as the last damage a character takes before they die, especially if its ripped by a creature that can turn it into a wraith.

im not against some types of damage applying to hitpoints in different ways than physical durability, what im against is nonsensical narratives created by some damage types being used against the components of hitpoints that really dont fit or would fit better one way rather than the other.

 

[Garthanos]

if you were feared and lost hit points and didn't get the fear condition it would be less "real" feeling. o.

In 4e terms you might have flinches backwards as fear effect enemy is pushed back one square (their vulnerability might increase that distance), We might have gives up the battle entirely as a fear effect. That there is one fear effect does not preclude many other ones and some more subtle than others and it might vary with how extreme the fear is or what opportunities the situation creates for a response. So no to my thinking doing it one way only is actually less "real"

 

[Arch-Fiend]

I think he unintentionally shows why the game must be fabulist and not realist. Say we look at what might be his most robust example - opening a door. The intuition pump he draws on is as follows. A) It is plausible that several kicks from an average person should open a good wooden door, so B) working back from that outcome, assigning a 10% chance per kick is good high-level simulation. The general form of his claim seems to be - given A) an outcome is plausible then B) a model that yields that outcome is reasonable.

He neglects to explore the chosen model's other features, however. A simple probabilistic model entails that we have flatly the same chance of opening the door on kick one, as kick one thousand. We could never open that door! Suppose I take one-thousand average NPCs and stand them before one-thousand good wooden doors. In the model, all the NPCs are identical and all the doors are identical.

The NPCs all take one kick, and about a hundred of them open their doors while the rest do not. If it is really true that NPCs and doors are identical, then I might decide that their kicks are not identical. That may feel plausible as indeed I do see different numbers on the dice representing kicks. Someone could note here that it's not very plausible that a thousand NPCs and a thousand doors are undifferentiated... but in the model that is certainly true.

So I take my "one-kick" hundred or so, and face them with another set of good wooden doors. Around ten open their doors with one kick. The rest do not. Not satisfied, however, I have left the rest of my NPCs kicking away and discovered that a few of them can't get their door down even by their ninth kick!

So I mix those "nine-kick" failures in with an equal number of my "one-kick" wonders, and let that group have another go. It seems plausible to predict that my "one-kick" wonders will beat out my "nine-kick" failures. I'm so confident I offer 4:1 odds on that outcome. You can guess the result.

Alexander can respond that the simulation captures enough to be meaningful, and that NPCs, doors and kicks are obviously all different, but only in ways that are unnecessary for the model to capture to do its work at the table. Perhaps there were personal histories of previous encounters with doors, faults in the wood, and kick-abetting methods going on such as jemmying or prising? I'm pretty sure Alexander doesn't want to say a DM should never narrate such possibilities.

How does the model argue that its certainly true that these doors and npc's are differentiated? Is the 10% of doors or 10% of npcs where the result is different ment to represent determinant differentilization or is it meant to represent temporary differentalization? Is the module there to predict that 10% of doors will open easier? No because the chance hasent changed, is it to predict that 10% of npc's are different? No because the npcs arnt different. This means that the module is representing something that isint a permanent difference between entities in the universe but instead one that is temporary bound up into the abstraction of the action being used to open the door, that action can mean anything that the dm permits to being attempted as breaking the door open. though that could be your point and i just havent reached it yet.

Entertaining that, we say that what is modelled is that an average person has a 10% chance per attempt of applying some method to get a door open, which could include noticing something about the door. In 5th edition, a DM can decide to engage Wisdom or Intelligence if they think that is what is going on. Alexander might object to bringing in such abilities, as he just argued that what the model plausibly simulates is kicking down doors using Strength. But the form of his argument forces him to concede point, as we started by agreeing with him that if some outcome is plausible then the model yielding that outcome is reasonable. It sure seems plausible that someone notices a fault in a door, and that allows them to open it with expedition, and it is true that the model can yield that outcome perforce it is reasonable.

That then points directly at fabulism because the reasonableness of the model is being tied directly to our subjective, somewhat shady personal sense of what is plausible. The door is in truth being opened symbolically... magically! We know that because identical game events can be narrated in different ways. Alexander proposed one narrative that he personally found plausible, yet there are multitudinous narratives that could be plausible to some group; and no matter how implausible Alexander might find another group's narrative, the mechanic can yield those outcomes. We might eventually think of asking - what is it a model of, exactly?

We are in the world of fabulism because players can describe a plethora of approaches to their DM, who can, if they wish, allow a waggling of fingers or twitching of an eyebrow to have a chance of opening a door. The fact is that we don't really have a simulation of reality, but only a workable rule for letting characters get past things that block their path. We might notice that - being a good mechanic - it leads us to narrate in a certain way... yet crucially it does nothing to prevent us narrating in other ways. And as I have suggested above, those other ways could well be as plausible.

The issue of bringing a different skill into the equation of breaking a door is not that it brings an outside element to breaking the door when the original equation was strength vs door. The issue is how it is used, in your example you break a fundamental concept to the argument that i dont think you intended which is noticing a fault in the door, to notice such a thing means that you've now changed the context of the experiment by introducing an element that changes what the doors are from their pre existing state without that change being from "closed without opening" to "open". you also have to describe how noticing this fault allows the door to be opened, the door is still not opening just because you find a fault in it, does that give you a bonus to your strength check to open the door? Do you automatically succeed a strength check to open that door? Either case you've changed the door, but perhaps your argument is that through other means we can still achieve the 10% probability of opening a door without relying on strength, if we use a different skill that the dm's reaction to changes the circumstances of the encounter, but a dm doesent have to do that, you could roll any number on your check to fail to succeed in the answer isint there for you to succeed with.

This is the impossible natural 20 houserule but simply applied to a lower number. What the impossible nature 20 houserule is, is also a bit of a psychological fallacy we as dms can get into when conceding to the attempts of players to allow them to do anything if they successfully roll high enough regardless of what it is that we do. often as a result of them rolling a natural 20 but also we may do this simply because they attempt to make a check that we didnt predict to try and solve a problem in a way we never thought with a logical argument for doing so that appeals to us. However, in this specific case we the dm are changing the fabric of the universe to reinforce the idea that these checks can possibility give a result, specifically in this case trying to adhere to the idea that there should be a 10% chance, but that 10% chance doesn't mean there's a 10% chance that ANYTHING can work, including up to a performance check or diplomacy check. Doing so changes the qualities of the door, remember its not 10% against any door, its a 10% against a door whos properties are clearly defined.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

In 4e terms you might have flinches backwards as fear effect enemy is pushed back one square (their vulnerability might increase that distance), We might have gives up the battle entirely as a fear effect. That there is one fear effect does not preclude many other ones and some more subtle than others and it might vary with how extreme the fear is or what opportunities the situation creates for a response. So no to my thinking doing it one way only is actually less "real"

if you were feared and lost hitpoints and didn't get the fear condition it would be less "real" feeling. i agree. im not arguing against that, what im arguing against is not doing that. i dont think its necessary to use fear as a way of dealing damage, but if people want to that's fine i just think it should be with respect of the other mechanics associated with fear, either meaning to combine them, or to favor one over the other, but not to use one at one time then another at another time when its inconsistent to do so.