Do characters know what spell levels and HP are?

[lukelightning]

Player: "I threaten the guard: Get out of my way! I'm a 10th level wizard and can cast 3rd level spells that can easily do 30 hit points of damage!"

Zaron the Wizard (the character): "Get out of my way, lowly peon! I am a mage of the 10th Circle, and as such I can cast a spell of the 3rd Depth of Mystery that would easily slay a worm like you three times over!"

The "10th rank" and "3rd Depth of Mystery" would be incomprehensible babble to the guard, but he definitely gets the idea.

 

[Slife]

Spell levels yes, HP and regular levels no.

 

[PallidPatience]

In case you were missing what our artistic Brazilian forumite here was getting out, in D&D, the act of spell preparation is where the bulk of the spell gets cast.

I'm fully aware of that. I was quoting Vaarsuvius from OotS.

 

[GreatLemur]

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.

I've noticed that term around here, and I've always really liked it. Probably because I've been picturing a Wizard's prepared spells as complicated, invisible packets of encoded energy literally orbiting around him--with spells of the same level sharing the same orbit, or course--until he triggers them. I was really surprised to see that somebody else had come up with the electron valence metaphor independently.

 

[Felix]

For folks in the know, however, spell level is a much more concrete thing. To steal a book from Sep's page: valences. Tiered ranks of magical complexity that one must be possessed of X mental flexibility in order to juggle all the components of, in order to bring the spell into effect.

Absolutely. This was a stroke of brilliance on Sepulchrave's part.

Not to detract from Sepulchrave's brilliance, but he did note that he took this idea from someone on the old ENWorld boards (pre-Jan 2002) who proposed a Quantum Theory of Magic. Discrete spell levels, valences, available spell slots all explained therein.

Mostin took it and ran. Love that story hour.

---

On topic: Casters know what spell levels are vis a vis the Quantum Theory. Clerics have an inkling of what HPs are, though they likely don't call them that. Deathwatch refers to different grades as, "Fighting off Death", "Fragile", and "Dead". I imagine clerics have something intuitive to them that works in a similar manner.

 

[Felix]

Zaron the Wizard (the character): "Get out of my way, lowly peon! I am a mage of the 10th Circle, and as such I can cast a spell of the 3rd Depth of Mystery that would easily slay a worm like you three times over!"

The "10th rank" and "3rd Depth of Mystery" would be incomprehensible babble to the guard, but he definitely gets the idea.

What I like is being the Rogue with maxed Bluff and Intimidate and doing this same thing.

 

[Vanye]

In a (non-D&D) campaign I once played in, there was a character with a special ability - Communicate With Player. While not the sort of thing you want happening all the time, it made for some very amusing shtick. Very OotS, long before OotS was in production....

Was it a game based on Tron or something?

 

[lukelightning]

What I like is being the Rogue with maxed Bluff and Intimidate and doing this same thing.

"Same thing"? You mean "better!" since wizards tend not to have any ranks in intimidate.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I gues I'm pretty much alone in saying 'yes and yes' then

Spell levels is easy and obvious for all the reasons already mentioned (number of pages in spell book, etc).

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.

Ideally in games I don't think people should know about 'hit points', and I personally prefer games with condition-related measurements of your condition; the mechanics of everything in D&D just say that for ordinary functioning in that world PCs must know something of the measure which hit points represent. Not ideal, but I think it is there.

Cheers

 

[Klaus]

I gues I'm pretty much alone in saying 'yes and yes' then

Spell levels is easy and obvious for all the reasons already mentioned (number of pages in spell book, etc).

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.

Ideally in games I don't think people should know about 'hit points', and I personally prefer games with condition-related measurements of your condition; the mechanics of everything in D&D just say that for ordinary functioning in that world PCs must know something of the measure which hit points represent. Not ideal, but I think it is there.

Cheers

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".