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5e, Heal Thyself! Is Healing Too Weak in D&D?
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8620654" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>These conversations are never going to get anywhere until we can all agree on the following:</p><p></p><p>* HP are not meat. They cannot be. They may be in small part meat in very, very particular and infrequent circumstances...but they're virtually never meat in any part.</p><p></p><p>* Position is not a fixed thing in combat and so it cannot possibly be a fixed thing in D&D whether you're playing on a grid or TotM. If you've never been in an actual fight, never seen an actual fight, never been involved in combat sports, then let me disabuse you of your notion that martial artists are statically stuck in the same spot over even the smallest fraction of time (not even a second, let alone 6 solid seconds!). They're circling left, circling right, advancing, retreating, feinting w/ attacks which involve all manner of movement and every appendage and their head, leaping. Same goes for D&D. If you're interpreting your PC standing next to a monster for 6 seconds as static, rock-em-sock-em robots...with respect, your fiction is utter nonsense. </p><p></p><p>Play the game with fixed position and in fixed intervals of 6 seconds. But imagine stuff that makes actual sense and map it as best you can to the suite of resources being deployed by the participants of the combat.</p><p></p><p>* Attack rolls are not singular instantiations of a single attack for the overwhelming % of play particularly for martial exchanges. If you've never been in an actual fight, never seen an actual fight, never been involved in combat sports, then let me disabuse you of your notion that martial artists engage in exchanges that are reliable in their frequency (eg I attack you 1/2/3 times every 6 seconds!...all the time...forever!). Exchanges happen with crazy suddeness and intentional lack of frequency (because human operating systems are pattern-finding machines and the last thing you want as a martial artist is to have "your puzzle solved"). In one 6 second interval, you might throw 10 strikes including a double leg takedown attempt and including a few more feints to detect patterns or create openings. The next 6 seconds you may through nothing (merely circling or advancing and retreating). The next 6 seconds may be more of the same or less of the same. Totally infrequent. Any attack matrix is utter nonsense. It is a complete gamist construct meant exclusively to facilitate functional play. If you are perceiving an attack matrix as process simulation...with respect, your fiction is utter nonsense.</p><p></p><p>Play the game with fixed attack frequency/numbers and in fixed intervals of 6 seconds. But imagine stuff that makes actual sense and map it as best you can to the suite of resources being deployed by the participants of the combat.</p><p></p><p>* Same goes for AC and Defenses and anything of the like. They're all constructs. They make no sense whatsoever under scrutiny (neither quantitatively nor qualitatively) given what happens in actual fights/martial combat. They're the other end of the game construct equation to resolve collisions in the gamestate. If you're looking at them through a lens of process simulation...that is on you. As is either (a) course correcting or (b) admitting that you're attempting to look at gaming constructs meant to resolve gamestate collisions as something even close to approaching a 1:1 relationship with a shared fiction that makes any sense whatsoever within the framework of what actual martial combat entails (including how the OODA Loop of each participant manifests and resolves) and what it looks like to participants and onlookers alike.</p><p></p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p>So yeah. If HP and Position and Attacks and Defenses are all just basically gamist constructs meant to resolve gamestate collisions...then the shared imagined space is pretty well up for grabs. </p><p></p><p>Ravenous Abyssal Ghouls advance with deranged hunger and speed and implacability and randomness with claws and jaws and spittle which you have to keep away from your flesh and your eyes. If all you're doing is spending your gas tank and its costing you because you're heart rate is increased dramatically and you're dealing with an adrenaline dump and your muscles are tiring...then yeah, the 5 HP aura is just exhaustion damage which makes you less capable of maintaining for an extended duration.</p><p></p><p>Or you recoil because of the impact to your creed/alignment or your deity recoils at this abomination and, because they work through you, you feel it; 5 HP damage.</p><p></p><p>Or any other genre appropriate explanation for interpreting the completely nonsensical gamist constructs colliding in D&D gamestate space (regardless of edition...and by the way, D&D 4e's forced movement + movement + marking/OA attack + interrupt system + at-will/encounter model is the first D&D game engine that remotely actually felt anything even approaching what it felt like to assume the OODA Loop of an actual martial artist...in a fight or a grappling match) which you then have to map onto the shared imagined space.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 8620654, member: 6696971"] These conversations are never going to get anywhere until we can all agree on the following: * HP are not meat. They cannot be. They may be in small part meat in very, very particular and infrequent circumstances...but they're virtually never meat in any part. * Position is not a fixed thing in combat and so it cannot possibly be a fixed thing in D&D whether you're playing on a grid or TotM. If you've never been in an actual fight, never seen an actual fight, never been involved in combat sports, then let me disabuse you of your notion that martial artists are statically stuck in the same spot over even the smallest fraction of time (not even a second, let alone 6 solid seconds!). They're circling left, circling right, advancing, retreating, feinting w/ attacks which involve all manner of movement and every appendage and their head, leaping. Same goes for D&D. If you're interpreting your PC standing next to a monster for 6 seconds as static, rock-em-sock-em robots...with respect, your fiction is utter nonsense. Play the game with fixed position and in fixed intervals of 6 seconds. But imagine stuff that makes actual sense and map it as best you can to the suite of resources being deployed by the participants of the combat. * Attack rolls are not singular instantiations of a single attack for the overwhelming % of play particularly for martial exchanges. If you've never been in an actual fight, never seen an actual fight, never been involved in combat sports, then let me disabuse you of your notion that martial artists engage in exchanges that are reliable in their frequency (eg I attack you 1/2/3 times every 6 seconds!...all the time...forever!). Exchanges happen with crazy suddeness and intentional lack of frequency (because human operating systems are pattern-finding machines and the last thing you want as a martial artist is to have "your puzzle solved"). In one 6 second interval, you might throw 10 strikes including a double leg takedown attempt and including a few more feints to detect patterns or create openings. The next 6 seconds you may through nothing (merely circling or advancing and retreating). The next 6 seconds may be more of the same or less of the same. Totally infrequent. Any attack matrix is utter nonsense. It is a complete gamist construct meant exclusively to facilitate functional play. If you are perceiving an attack matrix as process simulation...with respect, your fiction is utter nonsense. Play the game with fixed attack frequency/numbers and in fixed intervals of 6 seconds. But imagine stuff that makes actual sense and map it as best you can to the suite of resources being deployed by the participants of the combat. * Same goes for AC and Defenses and anything of the like. They're all constructs. They make no sense whatsoever under scrutiny (neither quantitatively nor qualitatively) given what happens in actual fights/martial combat. They're the other end of the game construct equation to resolve collisions in the gamestate. If you're looking at them through a lens of process simulation...that is on you. As is either (a) course correcting or (b) admitting that you're attempting to look at gaming constructs meant to resolve gamestate collisions as something even close to approaching a 1:1 relationship with a shared fiction that makes any sense whatsoever within the framework of what actual martial combat entails (including how the OODA Loop of each participant manifests and resolves) and what it looks like to participants and onlookers alike. [HR][/HR] So yeah. If HP and Position and Attacks and Defenses are all just basically gamist constructs meant to resolve gamestate collisions...then the shared imagined space is pretty well up for grabs. Ravenous Abyssal Ghouls advance with deranged hunger and speed and implacability and randomness with claws and jaws and spittle which you have to keep away from your flesh and your eyes. If all you're doing is spending your gas tank and its costing you because you're heart rate is increased dramatically and you're dealing with an adrenaline dump and your muscles are tiring...then yeah, the 5 HP aura is just exhaustion damage which makes you less capable of maintaining for an extended duration. Or you recoil because of the impact to your creed/alignment or your deity recoils at this abomination and, because they work through you, you feel it; 5 HP damage. Or any other genre appropriate explanation for interpreting the completely nonsensical gamist constructs colliding in D&D gamestate space (regardless of edition...and by the way, D&D 4e's forced movement + movement + marking/OA attack + interrupt system + at-will/encounter model is the first D&D game engine that remotely actually felt anything even approaching what it felt like to assume the OODA Loop of an actual martial artist...in a fight or a grappling match) which you then have to map onto the shared imagined space. [/QUOTE]
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