D&D General D&D isn't a simulation game, so what is???

[DND_Reborn]

If someone is shot and they die immediately after, we don't question what killed them. We assume the gunshot killed them. Same with the giant ant bite. Maybe your physical reactions a bit slower because of previous damage that meant the ant got a clean shot it wouldn't have had otherwise and so on. But in a game where you can take multiple hits, I'm not sure how you could get the level of detail you seem to want.

A good approximation in the real world would be boxing. Take the example of a boxing match that ends in a KO. Boxer A connects with a hook and boxer B goes down, out for the count. The way you seem to be defining it, we don't know why boxer B went unconscious. While technically true, we can ascertain with a 99.9% accuracy that it was that left hook. Same way with the ant bite - there was damage that preceded that final blow but we know the blow that took out the target. To say that we can know the ant bite or the left hook ended the fight for the target is really pushing technicalities. You could add more granularity to HP and break it up into different pools, but I don't see how that would be any more "realistic".

I must admit I am a bit surprised you didn't take the route more directly supported by 5E...

However, even that leaves it open due to the "other trauma". Again, you assume the ant bite probably caused a bleeding injury, but the point is the narrative supports "striking you directly", not the "ant barely missed so caused a heart attack" I said could happen.

And yes, I am being very technical, and that was my intention. Because, again, in such things the game doesn't give you enough information to know what happened for certain--other than a successful attack and a reduction of hit points. Lacking specific information gleaned from the mechanics of the game--it is all fluff.

It just doesn't seem there's just a clear definition of what that means, and I disagree with the whole "we don't know that the ant bite caused the damage" thing.

Feel free to disagree, of course, because as the highlighted text above shows, according to the actual rules, the only attack that we know ever actually hits (that is "strikes directly") a creature--is the one that takes it to 0 hit point.

That is the only case--everything else is just "successful attack" and "reduce hit points".

So... what about my longbow and STR-based mechanics comment? Do you have anything to say about that part of the post? You seemed to have missed it. (Maybe for later?)

 

[pemerton]

I'm not seeing the "playing to find out" in pre-authored fiction.

If there is a chart with 20 entries, and the rules tell me to roll some dice now to see which entry is introduced into the fiction now, that is "playing to find out".

So the fluff - or let's say fiction - does matter. Why then does it matter when it's pre-authored by game designers, but not when a group author it as they go?

I don't understand this question, in the context of this discussion.

Most fiction in (say) a session of Apocalypse World will not have been pre-authored. Nevertheless, it matters. That doesn't make AW a simulationist RPG - I think it obviously is not one. It doesn't use the mechanics to establish the fiction. It uses the mechanics to distribute responsibilities, and set parameters around, the authorship of fiction.

I'll just note for the D&D comments here and by others that they don't represent what is entailed by the game text. Particulary in regard to the abilities mechanics.

I am talking about D&D combat.

In RM, or RQ, or for that matter Burning Wheel Fight! (but not Bloody Versus, nor a Torchbearer kill or drive off conflict), by the time the resolution of each declared action is complete, we know what has happened in the fiction: whether or not a blow was attempted, whether or not it was parried/dodged/blocked, if it landed where it landed (with a degree of precision that varies across systems - RQ gives us left or right sides more often than RM but RM gives us thigh vs calf more often than RQ), and how bad the injury was.

D&D does not give us that: if a character has 30 hp, and is being attacked by giant ants that deal 6 hp per hit, then if the PC is dropped to zero hit point and next round is stabilised with the use of a healer's kit, or a 1 hp heal spell, we know that none of the attacks caused a mortal injury. If, after the PC is dropped to zero hit points, they die, we know that at least one of the attacks caused a mortal injury. This shows that the fiction of a given attack cannot be settled until after some other actions have been resolved.

We can also look at it this way: each injury is mechanically identical - 6 hp of damage - but in the fiction clearly they are not identical - the first one or two are (per Gygax's AD&D and 5e) mere grazes or near-misses or wearing down, whereas later ones may be more serious physical injury - though, as per the previous paragraph, that is all up for grabs based on subsequent action declarations.

Here is Robin Laws's advice on page 150 of the original Hero Wars book:

When a character suffers a big loss of AP that does not remove him from a contest, describe the event as vividly as you can without describing permanent consequences to that character. Until a character is at 0 AP, he can always come back and win the contest, escaping unscathed. This is especially important in combat situations; otherwise, you might describe a terrible wound which unaccountably disappears at the end of the contest! . . .

AP reflect much more than a combatant's physical condition. Mostly, they measure a fighter's position . . . AP also measure a character's emotional state. Is he ready and willing to fight . . . ?

Until the character drops to 0 or fewer AP, any injuries he suffers will be superficial. They may well cause considerable pain, ruining his concentration and slowing him down.​

As I posted upthread, I see this as a clearer version of Gygax's account of hit points in his DMG. It is an excellent account of how to adjudicate non-simulationist points-ablation resolution, where the relationship between points lost, points recovered, and overall consequences in the fiction, cannot be settled until a whole host of action declarations have been resolved and some final state reached.

In some of the text I've elided, Laws also makes comparisons to presentations of combat in film. (I gather films inspired Gygax, although he doesn't discuss it in his rulebook.)

Reading this in Laws had to effects on me. First, it gave me a new appreciation of what Gygax was trying to achieve with hit points and saving throws as discussed in his DMG. Second, it gave me a clear idea of how to connect the fiction to the mechanics of hit points and healing surges when GMing 4e D&D.

This is also why I find the description of this thread as "hit points suck" frustrating. Identifying a mechanic as non-simulationist isn't a rejection of it, or a criticism of it. I have an active 4e D&D campaign at present. I have never played HeroWars/Quest, but would be happy to do so if the opportunity arose and time permitted - it's a brilliant example of RPG design.

Do you mean that if everyone playing D&D would just harden up and say something like - down to CON hit points it's vitality, and after that wounds - or better yet if that was written into the game text, then your view of D&D hit points would change?

The first version of vitality/wounds I know of was published in White Dwarf #15 - "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive", by Roger Musson. It exhibits a clear simulationist ethos, though also is intended to enhance game play in certain respects (eg he has hit points - his version of vitality - returning at 1 per two minutes after a turn of rest; this anticipates the recovery tempo of 4e D&D). Similar simulationst underpinnings are evident in Musson's work on dungeon design - it's not Glorantha, but it contrasts with (say) Lewis Pulsipher's step-on-up motivated discussions of the same era.

 

[pemerton]

When the ants bit M, I narrated biteyly. That fit the fiction and the mechanics. Hit points helped us track the accumulation of bites over time.

I don't know what, in the fiction, is meant by "the accumulation of bites over time".

Even moreso if we make it "the accumulations of sword-blows over time". Or "the accuumulation of scorchings-by-fireball over time".

It's true that RM can - in theory - produce similar cases: in theory, a character might suffer nothing but 2 concussion hit nibbles from the giant ant warriors, suffer 20 of those and fall unconscious, then another 30 and start dying from concussion hit loss. In the fiction, we have to imagine someone who has suffered so many mostly superficial abrasions that they are dying from pain and shock. But this is a purely theoretical possibility that will never happen in practice, because of the variation in rolling d% and also because of the attack bonuses that the ants will gain when nibbling on an unconscious target.

Furthermore, if the character in RM is dying from being below (in my example) -60 concussion hits, the spell to restore them immediately to consciousness (ie by restoring more than 60 concussion hits instantaneously) is 11th level (heal 7d10) or 15th level (heal 10d10). That's quite different from what is required to heal any individual nibble (a 1st level spell will heal d10 concussion hits). And when the PC regains consciousness, but is on a low concussion hit total, they will be at -30 to most actions.

This all establishes a sense of what is happening that is quite different from that which is involved in hit point loss. Personally I think Robin Laws and Gygax are on track when they say that the logic of an ablation-and-restoration of points system is dramatic and cinematic - we know that M is being swarmed by ants, and that M is failing at fighting them off! But not until everything is resolved - the combat is at an end - do we actually get a clear picture of what it was that happened to M. If M survives, we know that the ants caused no harm but superficial abrasion; if not, we know that the ants literally tore pieces off M with their mandibles.

The notion of an "accumulation of bites" seems to me to have no place in the most attractive way of using hit points and their analogues. (Here I would count not only HeroWars/Quest, but Torchbearer and Prince Valiant, both RPGs that are dear to my heart.)

 

[Hussar]

We disagree. I have as much detail as I want or need. How you would add detailed fluff to hits in a consistent fashion is something I discussed above. How do you have something that can encompass being bitten by an ant, hit by a sword, crushed by tentacles or smashed by a giant's club?

But you keep insisting that just because a giant ant has an attack described as a bite that somehow you don't really know that the target was bitten. By a giant ant. That something is missing ... you just insist that you need "more".

Kind of like saying something is bad and then when people ask how to improve it you respond by saying "make it better". It's a pointless, meaningless argument if you can't back it up.

Yeah, because a bite attack means absolutely that you have taken a physical wound. Except when you haven't. Again, HP DON'T MEAN ANYTHING. Which part of that is unclear? If HP is this mish mash of luck, physical wounds, and anything else you feel like, then how can you say that a successful attack must be a single narration?

I don't know how to make it any clearer than that. Losing 5 HP doesn't tell us anything. It's entirely self-referential. Any meaning you have derived from it is 100% on you. You've added it in. Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that and I do the same thing.

But, I don't pretend that it's somehow a simulation that's giving me that narration. It's 100% freeform narration that has zero actual meaning and can be contradicted and invalidated a moment later.

 

[Hussar]

However, even that leaves it open due to the "other trauma". Again, you assume the ant bite probably caused a bleeding injury, but the point is the narrative supports "striking you directly", not the "ant barely missed so caused a heart attack" I said could happen.

And yes, I am being very technical, and that was my intention. Because, again, in such things the game doesn't give you enough information to know what happened for certain--other than a successful attack and a reduction of hit points. Lacking specific information gleaned from the mechanics of the game--it is all fluff

And, again, this only applies on a hit that drops you to zero HP. And, even then, any narration can be invalidated in the next round - a player could roll a 20 and gain 1 HP, allowing the PC to act again. So, while you could say that the ant bites you so hard that you drop, and you are dying... oh wait... nope you weren't dying actually because you immediately stand up again - maybe not even six seconds later, it might actually be the next action after the ant's bite, depending on the initiative order.

But, that does rather ignore the fifteen previous attacks that didn't drop the PC to zero HP that we cannot determine anything about.

I just don't get this ardent defense of why D&D has to be a sim game. It was never intended as such, never pretended to be one. Saying D&D is mostly gamist is pretty much like saying rain is wet. Even saying, "Oh, well, it's a 3 out of 10 on the sim scale" is basically saying that it's not a sim based game.

The only reason I can see to insist that D&D is a sim game is to ensure ammunition in case someone wants to suggest new mechanics for the game.

 

[clearstream]

Taking my definition for simulationist, expanded to articulate what it entails for metagaming, as called attention to by @Thomas Shey

A simulationist design is one whose models and rules take inputs and produce results including fiction, corelated with pre-existing references; so that we know when we say what follows that our fiction accords with the reference, and perforce the imagined inhabitants of the world will know its rules.

Now looking at the 5e game text @DND_Reborn located

DESCRIBING THE EFFECTS OF DAMAGE Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious.

And given that posters including @Hussar and @pemerton believe that 5e hit points are not simulationist, the definition ought to exclude 5e hit points from counting as simulationist. Before considering that, it's worth noting that asking this question raises additional concerns.

1. Is a game simulationist only if all its mechanics are simulationist, or can it be be simulationist so long as enough of (or the right ones among) its mechanics are simulationis?
2. Is a mechanic simulationist if it can sometimes yields results that don't correlate well with its reference?
3. Does the text @DND_Reborn located (or any other text in 5e) count as a reference? Have we yet said enough about what counts as a reference? Do we find ourselves choosing between
   1. Our putative reference (P) is not a reference (R)?
   2. P is an R, but not the kind we count valid (and how do we justify such picking-and-choosing)?
   3. P is an R, but mechanics aren't correlated with it?
   4. P is an R, but it contains specified problems preventing its use as an R (does it just needs revising)?
   5. There is no P (or R)?

Before going futher, does the text @DND_Reborn count as a reference? That is to say, does 5e contain (there or anywhere in the game text) any preexisting reference for hit points?

 

[DND_Reborn]

And, again, this only applies on a hit that drops you to zero HP. And, even then, any narration can be invalidated in the next round - a player could roll a 20 and gain 1 HP, allowing the PC to act again. So, while you could say that the ant bites you so hard that you drop, and you are dying... oh wait... nope you weren't dying actually because you immediately stand up again - maybe not even six seconds later, it might actually be the next action after the ant's bite, depending on the initiative order.

Yeah, which is why I specified you gain that information only on a hit that takes you to 0 HP.

And another issue with the recover time you mention, is the death save should be made at the end of your turn not the start. This way, if the ant takes you to 0 hp, you go next, you still don't get to act on at least one turn.

Not perfect, of course, but better IMO.

But, that does rather ignore the fifteen previous attacks that didn't drop the PC to zero HP that we cannot determine anything about.

Also true and follows what I wrote...

I just don't get this ardent defense of why D&D has to be a sim game.

To be clear, for myself anyway, I don't see D&D current as a sim game, only that I wish the rules were so that it was a sim game (or at least more of one...).

does the text @DND_Reborn count as a reference?

It does for me, albeit a weak one, since it is in a design note instead of the main body text.

Even as such, it gives very little information (in a sim sense) and only in one particular instance: going to 0 hit points.

 

[Hussar]

Taking my definition for simulationist, expanded to articulate what it entails for metagaming, as called attention to by @Thomas Shey


Now looking at the 5e game text @DND_Reborn located


And given that posters including @Hussar and @pemerton believe that 5e hit points are not simulationist, the definition ought to exclude 5e hit points from counting as simulationist. Before considering that, it's worth noting that asking this question raises additional concerns.

1. Is a game simulationist only if all its mechanics are simulationist, or can it be be simulationist so long as enough of (or the right ones among) its mechanics are simulationis?

No. No game will ever be 100% anything. Well, I take that back. There probably are games that are 100% one way or another, but, I'd say that most games are going to have tendencies and intentions of design, rather than hard and fast rules that it must be all one thing or another.

1. Is a mechanic simulationist if it can sometimes yields results that don't correlate well with its reference?

Sure. Again, nothing's perfect, and it would be unreasonable to think that any sim mechanic will work 100% of the time.

1. Does the text @DND_Reborn located (or any other text in 5e) count as a reference? Have we yet said enough about what counts as a reference? Do we find ourselves choosing between
   1. Our putative reference (P) is not a reference (R)?
   2. P is an R, but not the kind we count valid (and how do we justify such picking-and-choosing)?
   3. P is an R, but mechanics aren't correlated with it?
   4. P is an R, but it contains specified problems preventing its use as an R (does it just needs revising)?
   5. There is no P (or R)?

Before going futher, does the text @DND_Reborn count as a reference? That is to say, does 5e contain (there or anywhere in the game text) any preexisting reference for hit points?

I'm sure there are. Again, you're trying to apply a scientific definition to a genre and it's not going to work. Actually, a better model would be a biological one where you can't really make any definitive statements but you can make broader generalizations - mammals are defined by giving live birth, except for the few exceptions where they come from eggs, for example.

A mathematically precise definition simply isn't possible here. At best, you can really only look at the intentions of the game and then judge whether or not it is achieving those goals. Since something like 5e D&D makes no pretense about being a simulation game, there's no need to prove or disprove that it is one. It simply isn't because it was never intended to be one. Any mechanics that do work as a simulation are akin to a mammal that lays eggs - it's not really disproving anything.

Like I said to @Oofta - if 5e is only a 3/10 on the sim scale, then, well, we're basically in agreement. The only thing is, we're two surfs arguing over who is more blue. To me, a 3/10 means it's not really a sim game whereas @Oofta is insisting that it is. At the end of the day, we both agree that it's not much of a sim game.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, because a bite attack means absolutely that you have taken a physical wound. Except when you haven't. Again, HP DON'T MEAN ANYTHING. Which part of that is unclear? If HP is this mish mash of luck, physical wounds, and anything else you feel like, then how can you say that a successful attack must be a single narration?

I don't know how to make it any clearer than that. Losing 5 HP doesn't tell us anything. It's entirely self-referential. Any meaning you have derived from it is 100% on you. You've added it in. Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that and I do the same thing.

But, I don't pretend that it's somehow a simulation that's giving me that narration. It's 100% freeform narration that has zero actual meaning and can be contradicted and invalidated a moment later.

There is no truly meaningful way to track how long someone will stay conscious in a fight in a game. Splitting up HP into different categories, renaming things just makes it more granular and complicated. Whether that adds value is personal opinion and preference. Without a fully body damage and exhaustion simulator run by a more advance computational system than currently exists, we can't accurately track anything.

Even if we just simplified things and tracked only hand-to-hand combat, basically two people punching each other. Assume it's an unregulated match where two people simply punch each other until one drops, what would you track other than something that looks an awful lot like HP? I don't think you can't get that much more accurate than HP. Anything we do is going to be an oversimplification. You can put lipstick on a pig but it will still oink.

In any case, D&D does a decent job for me of simulating fantasy fiction. There's always going to be a compromise between simulation, speed of play and fun. I don't see how you can say that D&D is not a simulation at all or that HP are meaningless; it may not be enough of a simulation for you, HP may not include enough detail for you*. It does for me, for pretty much everyone I've ever played with, and apparently millions of players around the world. Is there anything else to say?

*The only alternatives I've seen people actually explain simply break up HP into categories, which honestly I don't think is much better just different. Unless I missed it you have yet to explain what would be better.

 

[Cadence]

@Oofta @Hussar
I wondering about what would be needed to be added to the rules to make HP more clearly tie into the story (e.g. not carry 0 information to some) and still be easy to use and D&Dish. What about something like:

"Each character's hit point total represents both capacity to take actual damage (roughly 3/4 of their starting hitpoint total at 1st level rounded up) and ability to avoid taking actual damage from attacks due to skill, stamina, luck, etc.. (the rest of them).

So, each "hit" to a character could be thought of as doing a (roughly for higher level characters) 1/(2*level) fraction of the total of damage of the appropriate type (burns for fire, frost-bite for cold, cuts for slashing, bruises for bludgeoning, etc...) and the rest as a reduction in capability to avoid damage.

To smooth gameplay, the amounts are not tracked separately, and the default is to give no penalty for different amounts of damage taken, but the character will certainly have a rough idea how close they are to death and act accordingly.

The allocation of damage doesn't typically result in integer amounts. For narrative purposes, any "hit" at all involves a minor singe, tingle, scratch, or soreness as appropriate. A single hit for twice the characters level or more is definitely a noteworthy burn or cut.

A "simple gritty" version gives a -2 on all rolls if the characters is 'significantly bloodied' (that is significantly injured and at half hp or below) and gives a scar for any significant wound (single blow that causes 2*level of damage).

The optional rules also allow for the two types of hit points to be tracked separately as "wounds and vigor" with different healing options, healing rates, and penalties for each type of damage. This is facilitated by using an app or online tool (and is an option in DnDBeyond, for example)."