Do characters know what spell levels and HP are?

[Fieari]

Heck, even in Jack Vance's Dying Earth they at least had the concept of "Lesser" and "Greater" spells. Yes D&D wizards know what spell levels are.

Hitpoints, not so much. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, some weird mad philosopher-cleric might have studied hit points, but it's a vague philosophical concept that people just don't have any truck with. People think in terms of fuzzy logic and degrees instead of fine bright-line distinctions. "I'm hurt!" not "I'm down to 10% of my hp!"

 

[Harlekin]

Neither.

While characters certainly know that Fireball is more powerful magic than burning hands, there are just too many variables out there to predict things like spell levels pecisely from empirical observation. And as my D&D game follows a pre- enlightenment mindset, even scholars only use empirical observation to come to their conclusions.

 

[lukelightning]

Spell levels: Yes. And some traditions may call them that. Others may say "circle" or "ranks" or whatever. If a player wizard asks an NPC "can you cast third level spells?" maybe the actual words that come out of the characters mouth are different but they have the same meaning. Similarly, you can have a character say "this is a +1 sword" but the actual words they say might be different and less "anachronistic."

Even character level can be determined by effects such as spell range, etc. Or at least differentiated by what spells a caster has access to.

As for hit points, I say people know that there are some heroes and monsters out there that can take a lot of punishment before dying. People wouldn't know "this guy has 11 hit points" or whatever, but they would know that some things have a lot more "vitality" or whatever, and the fireball that wipes out the orc warriors may not kill the orc champion.

It's not worth being to hard on people who use technical terms like level and hit points when they RP. Just assume the character is saying whatever people say in the world to refer to them.

 

[Dirigible]

I recall a temple to the God of Magic in the Birthright setting that had nine chambers in its spell library, one for each level; so at least in some official campaign worlds at some times, the characters have in-game knowledge of spell level deliniations.

I've always let spellcasters alk in terms of the 'circles' of spells they know; Zathorn the Mighty is a seventh-circle mage, while the Archmagister Spundlethorpe is of the ninth-circle.

I wonder if this could be expanded to cover other classes. It's easy to think of initiate moks speaking of 'He who has mastered the Quivering Palm' (15th) or 'She of the Perfected Self" (20th). Fighters and rogues might be trickier. Mayeb you could add up a fighter's BAB and feats and say he has 'studied the thirty techniques of the sword'. Oooh, or use specialisation and mastery as benchmarks.

 

[Psion]

Hit points no, spell levels yes.

That one.

In the ever popular Sepulchrave story hour, spell levels were seen as "valences" (likening them to the property of electron shells that occur at quantized energy levels in an atom) and were a discrete known quality.

HP are an abstract concept.

 

[Asmor]

Basically agree with everyone else. HP I'd say no, and that includes the whole healing thing. On the one hand, your logic makes sense if you think of HP literally... but you've got to remember that they're just an abstractions for the sake of game play, so if you're using this abstraction to base your logic, then your conclusion is flawed.

As for spell levels... I'd say it depends on the culture. I could certainly see advanced magical cultures, which take a pseudo-technological view of magic, as referring to spells by levels with numbers. On the other hand, other cultures would have different terminology and maybe even not grasp the stratification if they're not sufficiently advanced (i.e. they only know that a meteor swarm is more powerful than a fireball, but they don't have any way of talking about how much stronger it is).

Check out the Red Star series, available in 3 graphic novels, for some really cool examples of pseudo-technological magic. It's an alternate modern reality where "kasters" "kast" "protocols" (spells) and there's a whole lot of terminology (can't remember anything specific... it would be something along the lines of a kaster saying "Initiating shield protocol overkast 110% 20-meter perimeter").

 

[takyris]

In my old campaign, we didn't use spell levels in character, but it was pretty clear that characters understood that spells had varying levels of power. They probably OUGHT to have just used levels, but we walked around the term.

We didn't use hit points, but we used the good ol' thumb (thumb up -- perfect health, thumb down -- unconscious) to indicate relative health levels. And clerics were allowed to understand that casting a minor spell (CLW) on a villager healed his big cut, but casting the same spell on a veteran warrior might heal a big cut as well, but not heal the little bruises and aches that would still slow that veteran warrior down. That was the flavor of all the big hit points -- grazes and scrapes that don't really affect a low-level character that much, because the low-level character is just trying not to get skewered, but which slow down the high-level character the more he takes them, so that it's harder to avoid future strikes as well.

So I guess "no" to both.

 

[Nightfall]

Do characters know what spell levels and HP are?

Dunno. Do you know what God is or isn't? How about do you know when you're gonna die?

Just saying it's a little odd to worry about this Ranger man when you should worry more about...well other stuff!

 

[Aaron L]

In my view casters do use the term spell levels and refer to 1st through 9th level spells. Thats not too hard to accept, and makes a lot of sen se to me.

But hitpoints are a complete abstraction, and Ive have a really hard time swallowing characters referring to thier hitpoints in-character.

 

[Klaus]

HP no, spell levels yes.

It's much like belts in karate or equation degrees in Math.