Do characters know what spell levels and HP are?

[Felix]

Regarding the cure spells, I don't see those being evidence of characters in a game world knowing about HP. After all, they're "Cure Light Wounds", not "Cure 1d8+1/level (up to 5) Hit Points".

Yeah, but say a cleric walks up to a wounded person, who looks after a Heal check to be around 30% health. Does the Cleric cast Cure Light Wounds or Heal? There has to be some way for the Cleric to be able to decide which spell he should expend, and that decision is based wholly on how many HPs the target has lost.

 

[Klaus]

Yeah, but say a cleric walks up to a wounded person, who looks after a Heal check to be around 30% health. Does the Cleric cast Cure Light Wounds or Heal? There has to be some way for the Cleric to be able to decide which spell he should expend, and that decision is based wholly on how many HPs the target has lost.

By that same token, the characters are aware of attack and damage bonus, since a fighter has to decide how much Power Attack he'll use, or AC, since a character has to allocate bonus from attack to AC with Combat Expertise, etc.

 

[Ace]

Spell levels yes, HP and regular levels no.

HMMMM -- Add my voice to the chorus

Curiously I use "valences" as spell slots as well.

 

[Felix]

By that same token, the characters are aware of attack and damage bonus, since a fighter has to decide how much Power Attack he'll use, or AC, since a character has to allocate bonus from attack to AC with Combat Expertise, etc.

I don't see this as analagous; with PA and CE, the character decides to hit a little harder with less accuracy, or use his weapon to fend off his opponent's. The exact mechanics must be known to the player, but not necessarily to the PC.

But the cleric who takes a look at Joe Soldier on the battlefield doesn't know if he's a Warrior1 or a Fighter7, and there's no real way to figure that out in-character. So it is more likely that the cleric would have some method to figure out how many HPs the guy has lost so he can use the best spell available to cure him.

There's no rule for this, but since the PC can't ask, "How many HPs are you down?", and he also needs to be able to know if he should cast Cure Light or Heal, there should be some mechanic for the cleric to figure it out. The Heal skill works well in this function. It might not give an in-game response of, "He's 4/12 HP", but it would let the cleric know which spell to cast; the PC would understand what the Heal skill told him in the same way players understand when they say, "I have 15 HP left".

 

[Koewn]

By that same token, the characters are aware of attack and damage bonus, since a fighter has to decide how much Power Attack he'll use, or AC, since a character has to allocate bonus from attack to AC with Combat Expertise, etc.

I've got a printout of a spreadsheet I used with my barbarian - it shows me, at a glance, what BAB gets me what percentage to hit against a certain AC, from 20 to 40 or so.

Knowing my BAB, I pick the spot on the table that I can put some Power Attack on while still keeping my hit percentage at an acceptable level for any given AC and situation.

Ridiculous? Sure. But that feral, raging barbarian can figure it out instinctively. My pasty office-sitting butt can't.

The HP bit is really strange when you think about it in terms of "what the PC may know", with regards to which spells are effective for what levels of curing. That's abstraction for you.

Koewn

 

[Zhaleskra]

I'm going to break the theme here and not give a definitive answer for hit points.

Hit Points: Depends on the game system and/or what "hit points" represent. If hit point only represent actual "aliveness" and are measurable in the game world, yes. In all other cases, no.

Spell Levels: Unquestionably.

Levels (be it class or character): In absolute terms no, in a vague sense, yes. Still, I'd prefer to know specifically how Character A is better than Character B than to know that Character A is better in general, which is what I feel levels represent.

 

[Asmor]

Think of it like this:

A level 2 cleric using his best spell can pretty much heal his equally-powerful comrade from "the brink of death" back to "fit as a fiddle" by casting his best cure spell twice.

A level 8 cleric using his best efforts can pretty much heal his equally-powerful comrade from "the brink of death" back to "fit as a fiddle" by casting his best cure spell twice.

Although amusingly, this argment basically ignores the fact that the concensus (and my personal) opinion that the cleric knows he's casting a significantly more powerful spell...

Ultimately, as I said before, HP are just an abstraction for the sake of game play and any discussions about whether PCs can deduce them is inherently flawed.

 

[Slife]

Hit points I think yes because healing spells heal hit points (not conditions). Part of the wonkyness of hit points as a mechanism is that there is a strong implication that they are in some sense measurable.

Easy measurement:

Number of cure minor wounds that work on a disabled person.

 

[Klaus]

I don't see this as analagous; with PA and CE, the character decides to hit a little harder with less accuracy, or use his weapon to fend off his opponent's. The exact mechanics must be known to the player, but not necessarily to the PC.

But the cleric who takes a look at Joe Soldier on the battlefield doesn't know if he's a Warrior1 or a Fighter7, and there's no real way to figure that out in-character. So it is more likely that the cleric would have some method to figure out how many HPs the guy has lost so he can use the best spell available to cure him.

There's no rule for this, but since the PC can't ask, "How many HPs are you down?", and he also needs to be able to know if he should cast Cure Light or Heal, there should be some mechanic for the cleric to figure it out. The Heal skill works well in this function. It might not give an in-game response of, "He's 4/12 HP", but it would let the cleric know which spell to cast; the PC would understand what the Heal skill told him in the same way players understand when they say, "I have 15 HP left".

But HP aren't an absolute value. A 10hp-loss is near-death experience for a Fighter1, but is just a scrap for a Fighter 10.

"How bad are, brave ser?"
"If I take another stab like this, I'll be greeting Athena in person."
"Ooh, nasty. A 3rd-level Cure Wounds spell for you, then."

 

[Rystil Arden]

Easy measurement:

Number of cure minor wounds that work on a disabled person.

Hmm...somehow I could actually see clerics of Boccob or some similar god trying this on people empirically and analysing the results to determine how many 'Cure Minor Wounds' worth of injury someone can withstand. Heck, guard forces or mercenary groups could latch onto this idea and proclaim proudly "On average, when tested by the Clerics of Boccob, our mercenaries took 20 'Cure Minor Wounds' worth of injuries to become disabled, which is 10 more than our leading competitor!"