D&D 5E Assumptions on Hit Points and Armor Class...

[Hussar]

And you apparently missed my point, even though I used the same wording that you did!

Yes, you can describe HP loss as physical damage, just like you can describe it as fatigue or luck or plot armor or whatever. Then you keep saying that HP=Meat lost. But that is not true, nor is the opposite true. You can describe all damage as some sort of physical affliction and the game works just as well.

The trap I did not fall into is saying that those who think that HPs are not meat lost. They didn't. They can still play their way with the 5e rules and it won't even be a house rule. What I did say was that those who say that HPs are not equal to meat lost, because they did. HPs can be meat. Or they can not be. They can be either. To say that one or the other lost is not true.

So no, I don't need to keep trying. I can describe HP loss however I and my group wish. Or we can ignore the description of HPs altogether and just not worry about it.

I will admit that I believe Damage on a Miss is an abomination. The ability to truly fail is what makes success that much sweeter. DOAM dilutes that sweetness. This is pure opinion though and I understand others will disagree. Probably best if we don't open that can of worms any farther.

See, the thing is, the HP=Meat crowd doesn't agree with you. The point that is being made by that crowd is that HP loss is always a physical wound. That's what was lost in 5e. It can be, or it might not be. The rules don't actually tell you. Which means that HP =/= Meat. It might mean meat, or it might not. It's abstract. Describe it however you like, but, you cannot tell anyone else that they are wrong for describing it differently. Which means in the context of this thread, that many of the points being raised are based on a flawed understanding of what 5e says HP are.

All you can actually say, with any certainty is that a successful attack caused you to lose HP. That's it. What that actually means in the game world is 100% up to the group/DM, not the rules.

Which nicely opens the door for all sorts of goodies, like non-magical healing, non-attack damage, and, yup, damage on a miss. Because once you admit that HP are whatever the group wants them to be, then you don't really have any leg to stand on to argue against these things. Don't like them? Fine, don't use them. They conflict with your interpretation of HP? Fair enough, you don't have to use them. But, you don't get to hold up chapter and verse and tell everyone else that they are wrong for wanting these things.

 

[Ratskinner]

The difference in HP though is a reflection of a couple of things. One, it's grounded in the war-game roots where artillery was high damage but easily destroyed. Second, you can easily make the game balance argument. Wizards have far more ways to interact with the "plot" (as in what's going on in the game) than fighters do, and the trade off for that is that they have less plot immunity.

umm...hunh? Maybe I'm glitching here but this reads to me like: "Of course they are plot armor 'cause A) They aren't and B) They aren't for another reason. Also, they are plot armor." Now, are they a (rather clumsy and indirect) way to pace a fight?...yeah, I suppose...

I would say the final point you make about the Wizards v. Fighters varies a lot from edition to edition (and probably table-to-table). Consider how few spells a starting wizard has in the earlier editions (when HP are first installed). I mean, I know my AD&D first-level wizards spend a lot of time trying to avoid notice until they can unleash massive plot device of Sleep or Magic Missile or their other single spell du jour. After that world-altering event, they go back to slinging around the back slinging stones or darts (if that). Maybe later, after you survive all that embarassment, you get to engage your phenomenal cosmic powers, but fresh out of the academy, you're not engaging the "plot-as-combat" any more than the barbarian. Out of combat, especially in early editions, there is precious little to differentiate anyone mechanically.

Maybe I'm splitting too fine difference here, but "plot" and "fiction" (or fictional positioning for forgies) are not the same. I could see the argument, as others have made in defense of 4e, that the traditional caster certainly has "reality scripts" that he gets to insert into the fiction in a way that the non-caster doesn't. However, I'm not so certain that that guarantees the caster more ways to engage the plot - as - premise in ways that the more-reliable-yet-less-defined mechanics of the non-caster do. If I want to stop the Duke's men from harassing a peasant girl as part of the plot, is my engagement with the plot lessened if I do it with 20 swordblows rather than a Sleep spell? Conversely, if I'm trying to use HP as plot armor (immunity to protect the progress of the plot) shouldn't we derive that from how this or that character is important to the plot continuing? Shouldn't we then be designating a character or two as "the hero" and everyone else as either plucky sidekick or disposable secondary character?

I played a game a while back called Sufficiently Advanced that worked exactly like that. You could make your character virtually a demigod, able to blow a ship out of orbit from the ground. Or, you could be a, more or less, normal human. The difference between these two characters was the amount of meta-level plot influence they could bring to bear. The high power character had very little in the way of plot armor or ways to interact with the campaign indirectly. The player of the normal human, OTOH, could cause that ship to malfunction and crash, without actually engaging their character sheet in any way.

I like those kind of "meta fictional" mechanics in theory (I prefer "narrative causality"), but I've had the not-so-good experience of the table grinding to a halt as the "guaranteed fiction" of character A made the "guaranteed outcome" of character B very hard to imagine in a sensible way. Although, that may have been simply some poorly-playtested character mechanics.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

How many people get upset when their computer game character takes damage but show little effect for it? In fact they act just the same as they ever did right up to the end (in most games, at least). Want to know where they got that idea? I'll give you three guesses. In any case computer games can represent and track damage & effects way better than a human can record and interpret it in play. If they still keep it pretty simple why would you complicate a human-driven system?

 

[Ratskinner]

How many people get upset when their computer game character takes damage but show little effect for it? In fact they act just the same as they ever did right up to the end (in most games, at least). Want to know where they got that idea? I'll give you three guesses. In any case computer games can represent and track damage & effects way better than a human can record and interpret it in play. If they still keep it pretty simple why would you complicate a human-driven system?

I think the "simplicity" argument for the HP system is overstated. It's not too bad from the player side, where a person is only tracking one HP total. However, I suspect that all of us have experienced the situation where the GM's accounting abilities go all haywire: "umm...wait, which guy was that?" "He should be dead already, right?" "There should only be four of them left, not six." Simple subtraction turns out to be not so simple. Its one reason I switched to putting dice behind components that were damaged to just track them in play.

I would also point out that many computer games also have a little "shock" mechanism built in when you get hit, or the screen darkening or reddening as you are near death. Those are impacts on play. Imagine "You take a -2 to hit for each hit you took since your last attack" or "You have disadvantage to any physical actions and -10' speed, if you are at less than 25% of max HP".

Personally, I lean towards more specific "state-based" systems nowadays for tabletop. Participants can be "Fine", "Hurt", "Down", or "Out" or some similar array. Such things can be marked right on the minis with a tag or something. Tailor conditions to suit your narrative needs.

 

[Lord Twig]

See, the thing is, the HP=Meat crowd doesn't agree with you. The point that is being made by that crowd is that HP loss is always a physical wound. That's what was lost in 5e. It can be, or it might not be. The rules don't actually tell you. Which means that HP =/= Meat. It might mean meat, or it might not. It's abstract. Describe it however you like, but, you cannot tell anyone else that they are wrong for describing it differently. Which means in the context of this thread, that many of the points being raised are based on a flawed understanding of what 5e says HP are.

All you can actually say, with any certainty is that a successful attack caused you to lose HP. That's it. What that actually means in the game world is 100% up to the group/DM, not the rules.

Which nicely opens the door for all sorts of goodies, like non-magical healing, non-attack damage, and, yup, damage on a miss. Because once you admit that HP are whatever the group wants them to be, then you don't really have any leg to stand on to argue against these things. Don't like them? Fine, don't use them. They conflict with your interpretation of HP? Fair enough, you don't have to use them. But, you don't get to hold up chapter and verse and tell everyone else that they are wrong for wanting these things.

But it doesn't. Because as it stands now the HP=Meat is a perfectly valid way to play if that is what players choose to do. If you add non-magic healing, non-attack damage and damage on a miss you invalidate a currently valid play style. Now there are already some healing in the game that pushes the bounds of credulity for physical damage, but not so much that you can't still play that way.

I will keep a lookout for those "HP must be physical damage" types. I haven't noticed them yet, but maybe I have seen them and just misread their intent.

 

[robus]

The biggest problem I have with HP at the table is the difficulty it gives in narrating damage from attacks.

"The giant hits you with his great axe for X points of slashing damage" is not very illuminating. But describing any kind
of physical damage (and a giant slashing with a great axe has got to be pretty damaging! ) means that healing from rest becomes kind of silly.

And I guess the lack of parity with the damage that the players inflict on monsters is also a point of frustration. There attacks are described as doing some kind of physical damage (in fact my monsters frequently try to escape if they aren't driven to fight to the death for some reason).

I am going try and narrate less gorily for the attacks on the players so that the wounds they receive are more easily recoverable (cuts and bruises mostly). And leave a bad wound for when they hit zero hit points (utilizing the wounded pdf guidelines above).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The trap I did not fall into is saying that those who think that HPs are not meat lost. They didn't. They can still play their way with the 5e rules and it won't even be a house rule. What I did say was that those who say that HPs are not equal to meat lost, because they did. HPs can be meat. Or they can not be. They can be either. To say that one or the other lost is not true.

As a defender of HP as bodily integrity, I have to say that I don't feel like I won. They tried to play the middle, by describing physical damage and mixing it with fast overnight healing, and it just turns into a confusing and inconsistent mess. A literal reading would suggest that you're definitely cut and bruised and seriously injured when you hit zero, but then you have no signs of physical injury whatsoever after you take a nap. That can't really be the narrative they're trying to promote, can it? I can't honestly play my way with the 5E rules, because the mechanics simply don't support it, unless you get into massive house rule territory (on the order of removing Hit Dice entirely).

If you want HP to be consistent in 5E, you need to do something aside from just their default mechanics and explanation. If you want damage to be physical, then it would really help to tone down natural healing rates. If you want damage to be fatigue or something, then it would really help to change the narrative for when you hit zero.

 

[Hussar]

But it doesn't. Because as it stands now the HP=Meat is a perfectly valid way to play if that is what players choose to do. If you add non-magic healing, non-attack damage and damage on a miss you invalidate a currently valid play style. Now there are already some healing in the game that pushes the bounds of credulity for physical damage, but not so much that you can't still play that way.

I will keep a lookout for those "HP must be physical damage" types. I haven't noticed them yet, but maybe I have seen them and just misread their intent.

Sure, you can rule that HP are 100% meat. The game disagrees with you and specifically tells you that you are wrong, but, hey, you are perfectly fine doing it that way. So, your "currently valid play style" actually isn't valid at all. At least, not in 5e. 5e FLAT OUT states that HP might be meat or they might not be.

And all the arguments about how this or that invalidates that play style are just that, . It's forcing definitions on the game that don't exist. It's forcing a play style onto everyone else that isn't actually supported by the game. Guess what? We already HAVE non-magical healing in the game. We already have things that damage you that aren't physically hitting you. True, we don't have damage on a miss, but, that's because people lose their collective minds as soon as it's brought up as a concept.

Like I said, this argument was lost a couple of years ago. Now, it's just folks refusing to actually RTFM.

 

[Lord Twig]

As a defender of HP as bodily integrity, I have to say that I don't feel like I won. They tried to play the middle, by describing physical damage and mixing it with fast overnight healing, and it just turns into a confusing and inconsistent mess. A literal reading would suggest that you're definitely cut and bruised and seriously injured when you hit zero, but then you have no signs of physical injury whatsoever after you take a nap. That can't really be the narrative they're trying to promote, can it? I can't honestly play my way with the 5E rules, because the mechanics simply don't support it, unless you get into massive house rule territory (on the order of removing Hit Dice entirely).

If you want HP to be consistent in 5E, you need to do something aside from just their default mechanics and explanation. If you want damage to be physical, then it would really help to tone down natural healing rates. If you want damage to be fatigue or something, then it would really help to change the narrative for when you hit zero.

Yes, the middle road seems to be where they went.

Personally I prefer the bodily integrity of HPs as well and don't like the full healing overnight. I wanted to use the optional slow natural healing rules (which is still too generous IMHO) and my players shot it down. When I asked how they would heal their wounds overnight they all agreed that whatever healing magic was still available at the end of the adventuring day would be used along with standard healing kits to heal all damage and we would just hand-wave if it wasn't actually enough to finish the job. So basically all wounds were still physical cuts, bruises and other "non-serious" wounds that would be taken care of with bandages and things. While serious wounds were closed by magic. We just didn't bother to keep track of them though, it was just assumed.

So that's how we play D&D 5e with HP equaling physical body damage. Simple really, and 100% supported by the rules. Because they don't say you can't play it that way or that there is a different way that you have to play it. Just suggestions.

 

[Lord Twig]

Sure, you can rule that HP are 100% meat. The game disagrees with you and specifically tells you that you are wrong, but, hey, you are perfectly fine doing it that way. So, your "currently valid play style" actually isn't valid at all. At least, not in 5e. 5e FLAT OUT states that HP might be meat or they might not be.

And all the arguments about how this or that invalidates that play style are just that, . It's forcing definitions on the game that don't exist. It's forcing a play style onto everyone else that isn't actually supported by the game. Guess what? We already HAVE non-magical healing in the game. We already have things that damage you that aren't physically hitting you. True, we don't have damage on a miss, but, that's because people lose their collective minds as soon as it's brought up as a concept.

Like I said, this argument was lost a couple of years ago. Now, it's just folks refusing to actually RTFM.

Wow. It seems that you are the one with the axe to grind, not the other way around. Let's look at the rules you quoted for us earlier...

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 simply knocks you unconscious.

So first sentence says that DMs can describe hit point loss in different ways. That seems pretty clear.

Then it says that you typically show no signs of injury if you take less than half your HPs. Not that you aren't injured, just that show no signs of it, and even then that is only usually the case. You might show physical signs of your injury, but typically you won't.

Really the only absolute statement given is that you do show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises after you take more than half your hit points and worse if you are knocked to 0.

So, yeah. I think I am doing it right. RTFM and all that.