D&D 4E 4e: the metagame.

Currently there are no powers or abilities that require the player to know the exact HP of a monster, so that isn't something a DM should be forthcoming about (except in descriptive flavor perhaps).

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It definitely helps when you want to decide on which power to use on it. If it still has a healthy dose of hp, then maybe you want to use a powerful ability like a daily. But if it has only a little hp left, then no point going all out. Might as well conserve your resources and use an at-will, or maybe an encounter power at most.

It is the same concept as with minions. Would a rogue bother wasting an encounter power like torturous strike on a kobold when a simple at-will will suffice, if he knew that it was just a minion with 1hp?

"He's starting to show signs of wear. He's moving a bit slower and covered with countless small wounds, all dripping ichor. Nothing too major, though -- he's got a lot of fight left in him, unlike his allies. He isn't yet bloodied."

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Great narration, but I have one question. How feasible is it to expect the DM to be able to come up with all sorts of appropriate descriptions for every monster in every encounter the party faces? That was one problem I faced when I tried something along this line in my 3e games. The first few encounters worked great. But by the 4th fight, I was rapidly running out of different and ingenious ways to describe the extent someone (or something) was wounded without giving too much away. It soon became tedious and tiring to repeat myself over and over again like a cracked record, and the players quickly caught on as to what sort of status each description was referring to anyways.

It is interesting to note that in my games, hits are sometimes really direct hits, and not just misses. So you do get scenarios where fighters are literally trading blow for blow.

raven_dark64 said:

The player likely asked the GM the question for one of two reasons: 1) to get an idea of how it compares to other potential targets, or 2) to figure out if the creature is bloodied or not (for abilities that work off of it).

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I usually ask such things to get an idea if our tactics are working at all, or if the critter is pretty much shurgging them off. Knowing something is "near to death" or "barely wounded" can be useful for a lot of reasons, such as resource allocation. (Also, sometimes, you just want to know what your character is seeing, to help you keep track of the battle in your head.)

So far, I don't recall seeing anything in the books suggesting that players should know in advance which monsters are minions - even Monster Knowledge checks don't get you information on role or hit points.

The way I've played it and seen it played so far is that you find out whether a particular critter is a minion the first time you hit and damage it, after which point you'll be reasonably sure that its similarly-described buddies are also minions. So far, that's made for fun combats where a significant aspect of the first round or two of combat consists of assessing your opponents' capabilities.

The Bloodied condition feels, to me, a much less metagamey solution to assessing combatants' health than paraphrasing their health status into carefully packaged assessments like "he's barely scratched" or "he's still standing, but only just" that went on in previous editions, and if you're firm enough to stick with just that binary "bloodied / not bloodied" set, I've found that it tends to encourage players to pay more attention to how much damage is being dealt out to friends and foes, so that instead of asking for a health assessment every other round, they get better at keeping track of things themselves.

As for metagame-vs-descriptive ways of indicating "bloodied" status, I'm starting to really appreciate status counters used with miniatures during combat. You get the best of both worlds - the DM gets to describe that bloodying blow and its effects as clearly or subtly as he likes, whilst sliding in a red token under the critter's base, so that the players can see that it's now bloodied, and that their characters can visibly perceive that it's wounded.

To me, metagaming is concerning things that are outside the game.

Knowing that the DM has a penchant for black slimes, and therefore having new characters be paranoid about the possibility of a black slime attack is metagaming.

Losing 3 characters to black slimes, and therefore having existing characters be paranoid about the possibility of black slime attack is not.

Knowing that the latest dragon magazine, which your DM loves, featured hobgoblins with a high ac and reflex, and switching out your powers for ones that target will and fort is metagaming.

Asking your DM "does that hobgoblin seem well armoured and dextrous" and being told "yeah, his ac and ref are high", then targeting his will or fort save is not.

MarkB said:

You get the best of both worlds...

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For another best-of-both-worlds situation, I'm finding it's working well in our 4E PbP to have all the mechanical information in an sblock at the end of a descriptive post.

Regdar covers the distance to the bandit chief in three quick strides; his long blade sweeps a glittering arc to smash past the ruffian's frantic parry and cut a deep gash in his side. The bandit staggers back a pace and clamps his free hand over the wound, hissing in pain, but his own sword returns to a guard position as Regdar advances relentlessly...

[sblock]Move action: Move to J6.
Standard action: Silverstep (Fighter Encounter 13), attack roll 1d20+16 = 25, damage 2d10+11 = 19. Push bandit one square to J8, shift one square to J7.

Bandit chief has now taken 32 damage total, and is bloodied.[/sblock]

-Hyp.

My attitude is that one should not try to hide mechanical information, but one also should not reveal it ahead of time.

When the PCs go into battle, I don't announce which monsters are minions and which not (though it's often obvious in context); but once they knock down a minion in one hit, I won't try to hide the fact that all the similar-looking monsters in the fight are also minions.

I won't tell them what a monster's AC is before combat starts, but after a few attacks I'll go ahead and let them know - by that point they've usually got it bracketed anyway.

I don't announce monster special abilities before they're used, but after the monster rips some PC a new one and the players say, "What the hell? How did he do that?" I'll explain (with a gleeful smirk) how the attack works.

I find this approach minimizes confusion at the gaming table, while preserving my ability to surprise and terrify.

I tend to describe about 50% of the hits - usually, the ones that matter, like criticals, significant hits that make the creature bloodied, and cinematic ones, like a shot to the face right in the middle of a guy's monologue, LOL.

However, we use a Virtual Tabletop that tracks hp right on the token, so most of the time, my players have an idea of how hurt the creature is, without knowing numbers. D20pro uses a red damage bar, so they know rough percentages, that's all.

Dausuul said:

My attitude is that one should not try to hide mechanical information, but one also should not reveal it ahead of time.

When the PCs go into battle, I don't announce which monsters are minions and which not (though it's often obvious in context); but once they knock down a minion in one hit, I won't try to hide the fact that all the similar-looking monsters in the fight are also minions.

I won't tell them what a monster's AC is before combat starts, but after a few attacks I'll go ahead and let them know - by that point they've usually got it bracketed anyway.

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This is exactly how we play. There is a certain point in a combat where the various abstractions become time-wasting and counter-productive for us to bother with. After the players have peppered Monster X with several hits, they're going to bracket the creature's AC sooner or later. "Did you hit him with a 15?" "No, but Ed's 18 did hit him, so he's got a AC 16-18.".

When the first minion goes down, I don't try to conceal the fact that they're minions. They can figure that out and they'll adjust their tactics accordingly. Just like revealing if a creature is Bloodied. Some characters have powers that trigger off of that knowledge. Just as HP don't directly relate to physical wounds, neither do the other abstractions of rules need specific purple prose to present to the players.

Runestar said:

The first few encounters worked great. But by the 4th fight, I was rapidly running out of different and ingenious ways to describe the extent someone (or something) was wounded without giving too much away. It soon became tedious and tiring to repeat myself over and over again like a cracked record, and the players quickly caught on as to what sort of status each description was referring to anyways.

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Also, this. By the third or fourth: "Your arrows appears to be bouncing off of it, doing no damage.", the players have figured, by process of elimination, what they're dealing with or the likely range of abilities that they need to overcome. For new players, these creative descriptions might be fun...but for 30 year veterans like my group, they can be an unnecessary abstraction. I can understand how some players would not enjoy such concepts, but for us, our time is too valuable to waste playing meta-text semantics to try and obscure game terms. The notion that our DMs and players would go to great lengths to veil that actual mechanics isn't that appealing to us. It doesn't disrupt our story flow to use the actual rules system in practice without the need to dress it up. YMMV.

raven_dark64 said:

IIt is such a waste of time when DMs try to prance around the rules like that!

Seriously, jsut be up front with the info and be as clear and concise as you can and the game flows tons smoother.

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Agreed.

Description is great.

Description that slows down the game is not great.

The difference between those two is a judgement call.

I reveal information.

Look, if a character has Bloodhunt and I don't tell the players that a foe is bloodied, I've basically just cheated my player out of one of his class abilities. Through my negligence, no less, not even through anything intentional. So I can't claim that I was using my discretion as a DM.

I try to give descriptions as best I can (though I omit run-of-the-mill attacks, and encourage my players to describe things themselves), but after the flowery prose I just go ahead and tell them what the heck is going on.