D&D General D&D Combat is fictionless

[Sepulchrave II]

pemerton said:
Not true at all! In LotR, during the siege of Minas Tirith Gandalf takes charge of the city's defences, and wherever he goes, hearts are lifted.

And Gandalf is what ? A Warlord ? No, he is a demigod wizard...

Sepulchrave II said:
Yadayada Henry V

Only the last two are magical and therefore can have an effect that looks magical to onlookers and to people following the fiction.

Given that Gandalf is overly magical and Henry V is insufficiently magical, do you you think that a D&D character reasonably meets the criteria necessary to satisfy your narrative needs?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The HP system has always pulled towards being easier to use in play/make the game functional over simulating wounds/being realistic.

How much friction will you accept for fiction? That's for you to decide...

Right, I like to say that hitpoints are the worst possible system, except for all the rest That is honestly pretty much where its at too. MANY games have attempted to parse this differently, very few have produced a result that is both as workable as the D&D solution, and appreciably more realistic OR appreciably more amenable to narration without any ambiguity.

Actually the 2nd best system out there, maybe even first best, IMHO is Traveller's attribute damage mechanism where you actually take hits on STR, END, and DEX until they are all reduced to zero. If one is reduced to zero you are temporarily incapacitated, if 2 are, you are seriously wounded and require medical treatment. If the third one goes to zero, you start growing daisies (maybe high tech medicine applied instantly can still save you, but Traveller doesn't actually give out very many effects for higher tech).

That system still doesn't really SOLVE the issue. It is mainly just less significant because nobody has 100 hit points vs normal people with 6 or even 1 and weapons doing 1d8 damage. Traveller PCs are ALL normal people, or pretty close. Its unclear how any D&D-like system could get around its issues. I guess you could NOT add any hit points at each level and just make it harder to get hit, or incorporate in layers of DR and whatever. That might not be a horrible solution. Your fighter always has 9 hit points, but at 18th level his AC might be -5 and he might have a whole bunch of points of DR. It would probably be too swingy though, that one time some damage got through, squish! Plus it wouldn't really clarify what Inspiring Word is doing...

 

[pemerton]

To be honest I think temporary hit points are an unnecessary complication. Because all hit points are really temporary. The distinction feels artificial.

Agreed. My first encounter with them - before the concept was officially defined - was the Aid spell in Unearthed Arcana. They causes messy corner-cases back then, and they still do. (4e had various bits of rules minutiae around temp hp to help handle those corner-cases.)

In 4e, abilities that grant temp hp would actually make more sense if they restored a spent healing surge. (And if you're at max hp and max surges that just shows you can't be inspired any further.)

 

[pemerton]

I see it all as heavily NARRATIVE. So, imagine a narrative description of this brutal sword fight. Its dark, smelly, frightening, and people are hacking away at each other, going down, getting up again, etc. Who the heck knows why the fighter is down? Did the orc just slam him to the ground and he's at zero hit points because he is so stunned and intimidated by this crazy orc that he just can't will himself to stand up again, or does he have a gaping chest wound? In a 40x40 torchlit room filled with 10 combatants there's no knowing. Heck, even the FIGHTER probably doesn't know if he's dying or not!

So, that's my general view of things. I mean, yes, it means that any specific description of action, such as "The orc plunges her axe into the fighter, who goes down in a spray of blood." is PROVISIONAL. That's the perception of the narrator at that instant in time, but it isn't necessary going to turn out to have been the actual situation. Maybe the blood was imagined, or already on the blade, or it was a shred of the fighter's armor seen in dim light, whatever. I equate this more to CINEMATIC action than LITERARY action. That is, if you are watching some movie with a certain type of cinematography you see a kind of crazy frenzy of action and motion and sound and fury, with the characters reacting in split seconds to things they barely even saw.

Just to add to this: JRRT does this in a literary (not cinematic)context in the fight in Moria. We learn that Frodo has fallen by a wall after having been stabbed with a spear by the Orc chieftain; we think he's dead or at least gravely hurt; but it turns out he's fine one he's had a chance to regain his breath (short rest, spend surges) and/or once Aragorn rouses him (in the book, he picks him up and carries him; in 4e, this could easily be the use of a warlord power that lets Frodo's player spend a surge).

What I'm struck by is that @Lyxen expressly invokes Fortune in the Middle for the 5e shield spell - ie there is a provisional narrative (the attack hit) but then the final narrative involves a correction of that (No they didn't! Shield - +5 AC!) - yet tells us that the same thing can't possibly work in 4e (for forced movement, for death saves, etc).

We can even link this back to @FrogReaver's OP. What, at the table, prompts the player to use the Shield spell? The knowledge that without it they're going to be hurt! What, in the fiction, prompts the character to use the Shield spell? The fear that, without it, they may be hurt. The character, in the fiction, is acting defensively in response to a threat and simply can't have the same certainty that the player has. We can of course tell a completely coherent story - fearing injury, the PC conjures up a magical shield - but the actual reasoning process of the player and the character cannot be completely aligned. (This can be compared to, say, Rolemaster, which is obsessed with trying to keep those reasoning processes aligned and hence doesn't have an FitM resolution - with one consequence that it's defensive magic (Bladeturn and the like) doesn't really work like it should, because the structured nature of the declaration, initative and resolution process means that there's never a point at the table where the player can "see" the threat of the attack as their character would, and hence respond by using the protective magic.)

The same thing happens with Come and Get It used as I described above. At the table, the players moves his PC to a certain point on the map, and - seeing that the goblins, on the map, are X distance away, used CaGI to pull them closer so that his PC can then cut them down. So the player's decision takes, as input, the depicted location of the goblins on the map. In the fiction, though, the fighter charges and comes close to the goblins running down the stairs and some turn back to see who's chasing them and the resulting bottleneck means the more rearward goblins can't get down the stairs at all. Hence the PC can cut them down. So there is an alignment of player and character decision-making at the point of these goblins are all about me and I'm going to cut them down; but there is not at the point where the player decides to pull them closer using Come and Get It.

But is any of this a problem? I am sympathetic to FrogReaver thinking that it is - that tips into my well-honed Rolemaster instincts. But for me, personally, it's not a problem. The ability to generate fiction which has Dr Strange-style erection of magical defensive shields, and that has goblins who don't just move like unflappable automata but stop and look back and get in the way of their friends, is worth the compromise of these momentary ruptures of cognitive alignment of player and character.

Of course, my aesthetic judgement here is no more binding on @FrogReaver than his is on me! It's a big world with lots of different sorts of RPGing in it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's a bit more complicated than this, because contrary to a book/movie where the writer/director can sort of lie to the reader/watcher or twist their perception, D&D is a shared narrative, which means that whatever vision there is needs to be shared in real time with all participants.

So yes, for me it's narrative, but there needs to be a shared truth as to whether the fighter is dying or not, otherwise people will not be telling the same story at the same time.

Is that really necessary though? I mean, in RPGs generally there's always some element of different knowledge, potentially, between characters, and maybe players too. This is one of the distinguishing features of these games. Need we have ANY final unequivocal narrative at any specific point in time? I think its reasonable to assume that a canonical narrative will emerge eventually, but even that seems like potentially an assumption and I'm strongly tempted to question it. lol

Not that I don't see any point to your comment, but is it really necessary, and SO critical that it happen RIGHT NOW BEFORE THIS GUY'S TURN ENDS that I as a game designer am forced to restrict myself to only a subset of all possible approaches? Is that worth it? I personally have embraced the concept of a lack of complete clarity and definitive resolution, at least contingently, as a potentially beneficial and useful game design concept. The authors of 4e apparently concur with me on that...

And this is where I have a different perception, because in particular of the above. It cannot be provisional, because the other players will make decisions based on what has been described by the DM, and going back on this will just throw other players into confusion.

No, they will make decisions based on their acknowledged to be contingent and limited character-eye view of what the situation is. Battle has been described as "20 seconds of terror." Well, in 4e it is actually about 30-40 seconds, but that is literally the length of a standard battle. Its quite likely not all the bodies from round 2 have even hit the floor yet by the time the thing is over. This is how I think about it. It is in fact basically pretty much inconceivable to me to imagine that any of the PCs has even a friggin clue what is going on DURING the fight. They are operating largely on guesses, instinct, long practiced and rehearsed tactics, etc. The idea that anybody is aware of the fighter's medical condition, including the character himself, is pretty tenuous at best. It is certainly in no way realistic.

This is why true retcon like the one that you mentioned (I found it, and it has nothing to do with just going through the mechanics of a single attack, whether there is a shield or not) where an orc had moved, but it was later moved back because of forced movement is troubling, people acting between the description and the retcon (which, once more does not happen with the shield action) will base their own action on incorrect information.

I agree that it is possible someone will act mistakenly. This happens in the real world too. What I would say is, the retcon itself is a contingent explanation. It isn't the only possible one, just one of several. Maybe the orc did move, maybe it was just so plain to everyone that was where the orc was going, that it was assumed in the response, but then suddenly the fighter blocked it. I entirely admit this is all just making up narrative, but is it any more made up than whatever way you describe a hit in any edition of D&D? The game clearly leaves leeway for mechanics to have some degree of give and take in what they represent.

This might work for standard fiction but it cannot work in a shared fiction like D&D.

Again, I just question any such statement, hehe. You can call me Dastardly Alhazred for that...

And this is why I find it extremely frustrating as soon as 4e fans are involved, you guys are so touchy about this that you take everything as criticism of your dear edition. I have nothing against it, play it to your heart's content if that is your preference, but please allow me my own preferences, different from yours, because I'm very possibly not looking for the same thing in a game. A Landcruiser is a wonderful car, a Porsche is a wonderful car too, but they are not interchangeable depending on where you want to drive them if it's not simple roads. One will perform better than the other in its favoured environment, that's all.

Right, well, it was a few years back, but if you dig down in the thread archives, you will find it was beyond ridiculous. I mean WotC literally gave up and closed their boards in the wake of all that. I mean, I criticize 5e, there's just certain things about it I really honestly don't like, but its not some sort of war. It is all long past, but all the rhetoric is still with us, it cannot be undone.

And again, I'm all for it, but my reproach, explained many times now, is that if it's a different power source because it's not magical, make it brilliantly so rather than saying that it's a mish mash of magical/divine. Once more, look at the Wheel of Time, the Flame and the Void / Oneness, it's a martial power source that is brilliant in itself and creates unbelievably cool scenes, but it does not try to mimic the One Power, and the other way around.

It is magical though. I mean, there is not the slightest chance that the things even 5e fighters pull off at higher levels is physically possible. Whatever it is, its supernatural.

And I'm all for it, just give it its individuality, don't make it different by just saying "It's different", make it really different, with effects which are logical and just different. Don't give it exactly the same power as arcane and divine, just by changing "divine" into "inspiring" in the name of the power.

Well, that's a bit of a different discussion. I mean, sure, there could be more variety in design of classic 4e leaders, but NO MATTER WHAT the design is, I guarantee you the result is that it will be unsatisfactory to traditionalists, and that is flat out because the boundaries of what a D&D fighter can do is set by something, 1e I'm guessing basically, and anything that treads on that gets the Body Snatcher alert cry! I don't think its sameness that is actually the issue is what I'm saying. Otherwise why isn't there a Warlord in 5e? Its not that hard to create some different leader type mechanics. Yet MM absolutely categorically denies the possibility of ANY such thing being added to the game, period end of discussion WotC.

 

[pemerton]

Actually the 2nd best system out there, maybe even first best, IMHO is Traveller's attribute damage mechanism where you actually take hits on STR, END, and DEX until they are all reduced to zero. If one is reduced to zero you are temporarily incapacitated, if 2 are, you are seriously wounded and require medical treatment. If the third one goes to zero, you start growing daisies (maybe high tech medicine applied instantly can still save you, but Traveller doesn't actually give out very many effects for higher tech).

That system still doesn't really SOLVE the issue. It is mainly just less significant because nobody has 100 hit points vs normal people with 6 or even 1 and weapons doing 1d8 damage. Traveller PCs are ALL normal people, or pretty close. Its unclear how any D&D-like system could get around its issues. I guess you could NOT add any hit points at each level and just make it harder to get hit, or incorporate in layers of DR and whatever. That might not be a horrible solution. Your fighter always has 9 hit points, but at 18th level his AC might be -5 and he might have a whole bunch of points of DR. It would probably be too swingy though, that one time some damage got through, squish! Plus it wouldn't really clarify what Inspiring Word is doing...

In Burning Wheel every character/creature has (what is called) a set of Physical Tolerances. These are a series of numbers from 1 (lowest) to 48 (highest - actually for other system reasons the scale is Black 1 to Black 16, Grey 1 to Grey 16, White 1 to White 16, but that can be ignored in what follows).

The tolerances are labelled by wound severity: Superficial, Light, Midi, Severe, Traumatic, Mortal. And the tolerances are derived from the Power (= STR) and Forte (= END/CON) attributes, with possible modifications from Traits (roughly comparable to D&D feats).

So a pretty generic character with Po 4 and Fo 4 (healthy and fit human average) will have Su 3, Li 5, Mi 7, Se 8, Tr 9, MW 10. (I won't bore you with the actual derivation formula.)

Physical injury is numerically rated, and when suffered it causes an injury equivalent to the highest tolerance rating that is lower than the incoming injury rating. So if the character above suffers injury rated at 6, they take a Light wound. An injury rated below 3 doesn't hurt them at all. An injury rated at 10 or greater is mortal.

BW has multiple ways to resolve violence - comparable, in 4e terms, to a single opposed check vs the intricacy of the full combat resolution process. When the simple approach is used, the upshot of the resolution will tell us who (if anyone) got hurt, and how badly, and we move on. But in the full system, there are more moving parts!

So first, injuries are debuffs, and can also trigger Steel checks - so in BW the equivalent of Inspiring Word is a character using Command to overcome hesitation that results from a failed Steel check.

Second, armour in BW is not DR, but nor is it just a bonus to defence like AC (shields in BW do work more like a D&D AC bonus). Armour gives a distinct roll to negate incoming injury (and weapons have a Versus Armour rating that can make that roll harder than its default). If the armour check fails, the full injury comes in.

And third, yes, this can make things very swingy. (Though BW uses dice pools rather than a linear roll, which flattens things a bit; and players have "fate point"-type resources which they can use to flatten things a bit.) The system leans heavily into "fail forward" narration to handle this - ie a PC takes an injury and/or fails a Steel check and so is in effect hors de combat, but rather than being eaten by the ghoul like the gnome in Gygax's DMG example of play, the PC wakes up in a prison cell with the evil count gloating about what will happen now to the PC's family . . .

 

[pemerton]

That's one way of looking at those scenes. Another would be that all three were in the process of physically regaining consciousness already when those events occurred. In the case of Aragorn and Percival, their already waking minds came up with constructs while they were coming to.

Either interpretation is valid.

But only one presents the work consistently with its underlying theme and context.

Given that Gandalf is overly magical and Henry V is insufficiently magical, do you you think that a D&D character reasonably meets the criteria necessary to satisfy your narrative needs?

Yes. In part because I don't think Gandalf is overly magical. Looking at Aragorn's ability to lead (eg Gimil entering the Dimholt) or Faramir's similar ability (as per my quote upthread) or Gandalf's ability to lift the hearts of the defenders as magical is in my view a distortion of the work.

In a 4e representation of these PCs, I think it would be fair to give Gandalf Healing Word (he is a messenger of the Valar - an angel, as JRRT noted in some of his correspondence) whereas Aragorn and Faramir would have Inspiring Word (they are inspirational battle captains) but that tells us the origin of their power. (In 4e, this is the power source.) It doesn't tell us the nature of the effect, which is to be ascertained from the keywords and mechanics.

The relevant keyword in this context is healing, with the mechanical concomitant of hit point recovery. And we know that this includes the shoring up of resolve (which JRRT describes as the lifting of hearts).

I can understand the possible aesthetic criticisms of this sort of fiction, and hence of a RPG system that emulates it. But I don't think there is any puzzle about the mechanics and the fiction in itself.

 

[Garthanos]

Yes. In part because I don't think Gandalf is overly magical. Looking at Aragorn's ability to lead (eg Gimil entering the Dimholt) or Faramir's similar ability (as per my quote upthread) or Gandalf's ability to lift the hearts of the defenders as magical is in my view a distortion of the work.

Miracles in Tolkeinverse are at their deepest level composed of music, that uplifting feel you get from an anthem that is gandalf "lifting of hearts" it's more authentic and subtle than any strict this is magic this is mundane model which many folk embrace. It skirts the line like Martial Power does in a sense.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Its unclear how any D&D-like system could get around its issues. I guess you could NOT add any hit points at each level and just make it harder to get hit, or incorporate in layers of DR and whatever. That might not be a horrible solution. Your fighter always has 9 hit points, but at 18th level his AC might be -5 and he might have a whole bunch of points of DR. It would probably be too swingy though, that one time some damage got through, squish! Plus it wouldn't really clarify what Inspiring Word is doing...

But Imagine it!!! Whenever there is an attack, you have to roll to make contact, roll to bypass shield/parry, reduce damage through armor, apply heroic resistance, divine luck, moral (each with its own subsystem) and more. That's make each attack a seven step process but it's a small price to pay for immersion.

 

[FrogReaver]

We can even link this back to @FrogReaver's OP. What, at the table, prompts the player to use the Shield spell? The knowledge that without it they're going to be hurt! What, in the fiction, prompts the character to use the Shield spell? The fear that, without it, they may be hurt. The character, in the fiction, is acting defensively in response to a threat and simply can't have the same certainty that the player has. We can of course tell a completely coherent story - fearing injury, the PC conjures up a magical shield - but the actual reasoning process of the player and the character cannot be completely aligned. (This can be compared to, say, Rolemaster, which is obsessed with trying to keep those reasoning processes aligned and hence doesn't have an FitM resolution - with one consequence that it's defensive magic (Bladeturn and the like) doesn't really work like it should, because the structured nature of the declaration, initative and resolution process means that there's never a point at the table where the player can "see" the threat of the attack as their character would, and hence respond by using the protective magic.)

My initial reaction was Shield is a great example. Then I thought more about it and I don't really have a problem with the shield spell. I think that's because I don't view the attack roll as 'final' until everything that can effect it is accounted for. Personally that initial high attack roll translates into the fiction as the enemy is about to hit the me. The fictional action I'm taking is to Shield myself with magic. IMO that tracks very well with the mechanics I'm invoking on the player side.