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

[Oofta]

I didn't say it was my complaint (or remark if that sounds negative).

Didn't mean to imply otherwise.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I think a wound/vitality split is probably cleaner and provides better play. In your version, we still have the weird attrition thing that is far from clear in the fiction, with there never being a clear moment when a dead PC actually received a mortal wound.

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

In AD&D combat, which does not track position once characters are engaged (Gygax actually calls for random determination of targets as the default for both melee and missile fire) and in which hit point loss that does not reduce to 0 tells us nothing but whether or not the PC is set back in the fight, there is no simulation: the mechanical processes are not modelling and yielding information about in-fiction causal processes and the resultant unfolding events beyond what we already knew going in - these people are fighting - and what we know at the end - these people are dead/dying.

4e D&D combat introduces a lot more information, and so (compared to AD&D) is more simulationist, but not in virtue of its hp rules which are basically the same: it uses position and effects (including force movement, which iterates on position) to provide information about in-fiction events during a fight. This is what makes it much more visceral than AD&D combat, at least in my experience.

I don't have enough experience with late 2nd ed C&T resolution, 3E or 5e to comment on the non-hp aspect of those systems.

No one has said that hp are literally meaningless in every respect. They convey information about whether or not the character is losing the fight. @Hussar accepts that. They are meaningless as an indicator of what is actually going on in the fiction. They don't tell us how or why someone is losing a fight. And that's a design decision, as Gygax explained back in 1979.

 

[pemerton]

Just because you've decided HP are terrible doesn't mean they serve well enough for most people.

How does this tell us anything about whether or not hp are a simulationist mechanic? Simulationism is a term of analysis, not a term of praise.

I just don't agree with HP adds literally nothing to the narrative. You have to have some way of tracking how much a person can sustain before losing consciousness.

How much what? Maiming? Bleeding? Shock? Fear? Utterly debilitating pain?

As @Hussar and I have both pointed out, a 5e D&D character who is on zero hp may die in less than a minute, or may recover consciousness within a few seconds, and within a day be right as rain, simply under their own steam. It's not plausible that, in the fiction, the character is in a state that admits of both those possibilities. (I don't even know what such a state would be, in physiological terms.)

In the fiction, the character either is about to die, or is merely swooning from pain and shock as Frodo was in Moria. The function of the death and dying system is to generate uncertainty, among the game participants, as to what the true state of affairs is. Just like JRRT, in LotR, generates uncertainty in the reader as to what Frodo's true state is. It's not to model an in-fiction state of affairs.

A system like RQ or RM or Burning Wheel never generates this sort of uncertainty among the game participants, because it nails down the in-fiction situation at every point.

An account of the strengths of hp as a resolution framework doesn't begin as an apology for what they don't do, especially because - as @Thomas Shey and I have pointed out - it is trivial to come up with workable mechanics that are more simulationist. An account of the strength of hp focuses on their virtue as a gameplay device. I already mentioned, upthread, that both Gygax and Robin Laws draw the express comparison to cinematic technique, in which tempo ebbs and flows and we're never sure how bad a particular blow was until the conclusion, when the final state of the protagonist is revealed.

In my view it was a great strength of 4e D&D to lean into this feature of hp resolution, and rely on other features of the system - positioning and effects, as I already posted - to carry information about the fictional state of affairs as the combat unfolds.

 

[Oofta]

I think a wound/vitality split is probably cleaner and provides better play. In your version, we still have the weird attrition thing that is far from clear in the fiction, with there never being a clear moment when a dead PC actually received a mortal wound.

In AD&D combat, which does not track position once characters are engaged (Gygax actually calls for random determination of targets as the default for both melee and missile fire) and in which hit point loss that does not reduce to 0 tells us nothing but whether or not the PC is set back in the fight, there is no simulation: the mechanical processes are not modelling and yielding information about in-fiction causal processes and the resultant unfolding events beyond what we already knew going in - these people are fighting - and what we know at the end - these people are dead/dying.

4e D&D combat introduces a lot more information, and so (compared to AD&D) is more simulationist, but not in virtue of its hp rules which are basically the same: it uses position and effects (including force movement, which iterates on position) to provide information about in-fiction events during a fight. This is what makes it much more visceral than AD&D combat, at least in my experience.

I don't have enough experience with late 2nd ed C&T resolution, 3E or 5e to comment on the non-hp aspect of those systems.

No one has said that hp are literally meaningless in every respect. They convey information about whether or not the character is losing the fight. @Hussar accepts that. They are meaningless as an indicator of what is actually going on in the fiction. They don't tell us how or why someone is losing a fight. And that's a design decision, as Gygax explained back in 1979.

But the wound/vitality split is equally arbitrary. I tried to explain my thoughts in my example, but the percentage of that split could well vary wildly between two individuals.

It's just as arbitrary as HP. As far as narration, I use a little chart for my PCs:

Category	% of HP
Bruised	75-99
Wounded	50-75
Bloodied	25-50
Critical	1-25

Not sure how much more you would want, or what other information would matter. You can tell roughly how beat up someone is. People keep talking about how you can't tell someone was killed by an ant bite just because they died after being bitten by an ant is silly.

How does this tell us anything about whether or not hp are a simulationist mechanic? Simulationism is a term of analysis, not a term of praise.

How much what? Maiming? Bleeding? Shock? Fear? Utterly debilitating pain?

As @Hussar and I have both pointed out, a 5e D&D character who is on zero hp may die in less than a minute, or may recover consciousness within a few seconds, and within a day be right as rain, simply under their own steam. It's not plausible that, in the fiction, the character is in a state that admits of both those possibilities. (I don't even know what such a state would be, in physiological terms.)

In the fiction, the character either is about to die, or is merely swooning from pain and shock as Frodo was in Moria. The function of the death and dying system is to generate uncertainty, among the game participants, as to what the true state of affairs is. Just like JRRT, in LotR, generates uncertainty in the reader as to what Frodo's true state is. It's not to model an in-fiction state of affairs.

A system like RQ or RM or Burning Wheel never generates this sort of uncertainty among the game participants, because it nails down the in-fiction situation at every point.

An account of the strengths of hp as a resolution framework doesn't begin as an apology for what they don't do, especially because - as @Thomas Shey and I have pointed out - it is trivial to come up with workable mechanics that are more simulationist. An account of the strength of hp focuses on their virtue as a gameplay device. I already mentioned, upthread, that both Gygax and Robin Laws draw the express comparison to cinematic technique, in which tempo ebbs and flows and we're never sure how bad a particular blow was until the conclusion, when the final state of the protagonist is revealed.

In my view it was a great strength of 4e D&D to lean into this feature of hp resolution, and rely on other features of the system - positioning and effects, as I already posted - to carry information about the fictional state of affairs as the combat unfolds.

No matter how you dress it up or prop up your opinion with terminology it's still just a preference. It's still just a game, games that may well be trying to model different fictional assumptions.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I was not going for the middle at all there and apologize if it sounded like I was. On my original suggestion I was trying to go as close to D&D as possible with a bit of narration. And the Phoenix Command one was in response to @Oofta 's super detailed fighting example was either.

I figured, but I just think the whole idea its "Detailed to the tiniest margin or just do a big broad strokes thing" is one of those kind of arguments I see a far bit when this sort of topic comes up, and frankly, it makes me roll my eyes really hard (its actually worse when coming from some super-rules-light proponents than it is from people in the D&D sphere, because the former seem to think anything non-minimalist is "overcomplicating things" whereas at least non-OSR D&D people are usually too self-aware to go to that idea).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just because you've decided HP are terrible doesn't mean they serve well enough for most people.

And this statement makes a bunch of assumptions out the gate, including "most people" and "well enough" meaning what you seem to think it means here.

I'm okay with change, I just have yet to see a system that would be that much better and not just tweaking the HP concept in ways that don't really seem to add all that much value to the game.

I don't have a problem if you prefer different systems. Just don't insult others by claiming that the only reason to keep HP is tradition.

I'm not going to say the only reason to do so is. But I think the implication that nothing else can be done that isn't overcomplicated or brings nothing useful to the table is one that isn't well supported, and just because the first-entry system in the hobby doesn't do it doesn't say there's any great virtue to how it does things either. If that's insulting to you, then I reserve the right to suggest you're oversensitive here.

 

[Cadence]

I figured, but I just think the whole idea its "Detailed to the tiniest margin or just do a big broad strokes thing" is one of those kind of arguments I see a far bit when this sort of topic comes up, and frankly, it makes me roll my eyes really hard (its actually worse when coming from some super-rules-light proponents than it is from people in the D&D sphere, because the former seem to think anything non-minimalist is "overcomplicating things" whereas at least non-OSR D&D people are usually too self-aware to go to that idea).

I've pondered the to-hit and then soak, with fatigue and physical damage with penalties, but haven't gotten to the point of liking one on paper enough to find playtesters. If it doesn't add too much mental overhead it would be something that I'd like sometimes. If it does, then not so much. I assume if I ever try it I'll post the results.

 

[Thomas Shey]

4e D&D combat introduces a lot more information, and so (compared to AD&D) is more simulationist, but not in virtue of its hp rules which are basically the same: it uses position and effects (including force movement, which iterates on position) to provide information about in-fiction events during a fight. This is what makes it much more visceral than AD&D combat, at least in my experience.

Though I think that I'd argue that 4e is still far, far more interested in supporting gamist interests than simulationist ones; too many of its powers are interesting from a tactical POV, but don't seem to really match up with their fluff all that well (as shown by the frequent suggestions to reskin them for other purposes). Probably its strongest simulationist element is simply the fact it actually puts a priority on positioning.

No one has said that hp are literally meaningless in every respect. They convey information about whether or not the character is losing the fight. @Hussar accepts that. They are meaningless as an indicator of what is actually going on in the fiction. They don't tell us how or why someone is losing a fight. And that's a design decision, as Gygax explained back in 1979.

Yeah. Their primary strength is they do provide a fairly measured pace-of-resolution structure, which I expect is a strong virtue to many people. Its not the only way to do that, but most of the others are overtly metagame in structure (i.e. expended metacurrency, which can do the same thing while leaving the basic wounding process alone) which some people don't like, and they are slightly more complicated.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How does this tell us anything about whether or not hp are a simulationist mechanic? Simulationism is a term of analysis, not a term of praise.

He's partly responding to me, probably; I've indicated even though I'm far less simulationist, I still don't think D&D style hit points are a good model; I don't think they serve a gamist or even dramatist set of desires that intrinsically well either. The fact they're ultra-minimalist when it comes to simulation is just the cherry on the sundae.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've pondered the to-hit and then soak, with fatigue and physical damage with penalties, but haven't gotten to the point of liking one on paper enough to find playtesters. If it doesn't add too much mental overhead it would be something that I'd like sometimes. If it does, then not so much. I assume if I ever try it I'll post the results.

Well, as I said, you could hack D&D style hit points into something that seemed to tell you something about process without even going that far. You need to do at least three things though:

1. Formally accept that every hit does some actual physical damage, but that as the (humanlike) target's hit points expand, that amount becomes less and less, and possibly that the amount of damage when the hit points present are high isn't unitary with the amount when its low. You could then, among other things do something like (and this is just an example): 50% or more HP, mildly injured, 80% or more moderately injured, 90% or more severely injured, 100% dying.

2. With the above you'd need to revisit both mundane and magical healing, so the lesser wounds are easy to treat and recover from, and the more severe ones less so.

3. Address some of the more odd cases and be overt about what's going on with them; if you're going to use the hit point model for falling and other environmental damage, be outright that its a representation of the luck of heroes, and recognize that's what going on up-front.

Its still not that great a model outside of pace-of-resolution IMO, but it at least makes some of the logical problems that have been coming up for 45 odd years now go away. But edition after edition has heavily resisted doing anything like it, sometimes for gamist reasons, sometimes because its just a bridge too far in violating tradition.

Edit: I should also acknowledge that the quick-and-dirty solution I mention above is going to make things more difficult for a badly hurt PC than most modern versions do. There are ways around that, but at the end of the day, you can serve a gamist master, a simulationist master, or keep things really simple, but you only really get to pick two unless you're compromising one or both of the first two.