Do characters know what spell levels and HP are?

[Felix]

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.

HP are an absolute value, but each individual HP can make up a different % of the total. That 10 HP strike from someone is the exact same hit no matter if it wounds the Fighter1 or the Fighter10. They might react to it differently, but in absolute terms, it inflicted the same damage.

The cleric needs to be able to figure out the character's HP total if he's going to cure people efficiently. Otherwise he'll be handing out high-level cure spells to folks who have 1 HD and an ability for exaggeration.

"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."

Yeah, but a Warrior1 can say he'll be greeting Athena in person after having been hit twice for 2 HP. This does not mean his wounds warrant a Cure Critical Wounds.

 

[MarkB]

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.

But the Cleric's Heal check does not reveal that information. Even spells such as Status or Deathwatch won't give him anything like a numerical value. If the 30%-health character is a 1st-level commoner, the CLW spell will heal him right up, but if he's near-epic-level, even the Heal spell might not suffice - and the Cleric has no objective means to measure character level either.

 

[brehobit]

I think characters must know about spell levels. I just don't see an option.

On hit points, I think characters _would_ know about hit points. As noted the "number of cure minor wounds" needed to heal would be a good measure. And an "average number of CLW needed" would be slightly more difficult, but the math isn't that hard to work out.

That said, at some point "reality" needs to take a back seat to "fun". And I find it more fun to have the hp thing be an abstraction rather than a measurable thing. So no, the term "hit point" isn't tossed around...

Mark

 

[Nightfall]

I guess didn't annoy enough people.

But thanks Crothy.

 

[Slife]

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!"

I can just see the other group's spin on the results.

"On average, when tested by the Clerics of Boccob, our mercenaries needed only half the healing to restore to full health than those of our leading competitor!

 

[Nightfall]

Slife,

LOL! Now that's FUNNY! 300 XP!

 

[Felix]

But the Cleric's Heal check does not reveal that information. Even spells such as Status or Deathwatch won't give him anything like a numerical value. If the 30%-health character is a 1st-level commoner, the CLW spell will heal him right up, but if he's near-epic-level, even the Heal spell might not suffice - and the Cleric has no objective means to measure character level either.

Pardon, I was unclear when I suggested that Heal be used to determine how many HP are lost: that is a possible house rule to fix the problem.

What is the problem?

The cleric needs to have some way of determining which spell to use to cure someone. If it's within the party, player knowledge of the other PCs stats and abilities, and the fact that they can hear how much damage NPCs deal to them when the DM says, "the orc hits you for 8 hp", mitigates the problem. PC clerics will know around about who took the hurt, and who needs how much healing. But that relies soley on metagame knowledge. The character doesn't know. And certainly, NPC clerics won't know about the PC's hurts, nor will PC clerics know about NPC hurts. And finally, not that it affects the PCs, but NPC clerics need to know which spells to cast on NPCs.

So clerics have built in to their class a need to know how many HPs other characters need; if they don't they could spend all day casting Cure Minor Wounds on folks that need Heal, and vice versa. As it stands, there is no in-character way for a cleric to discriminate between someone who is at 10% health with max HP of 10, and someone who is at 10% health with max HP of 200. Clerics need to be able to do that, and so they need to have some kind of awareness of the concept of "HP", even if they don't think of it as Hit Points.

 

[Nightfall]

laalala...

*casts some 1st level spells*

Hey lookie I can cast spells!

*cast some 8th level spells* lookie I can cast spell REALLY well.

 

[Dagger of Lath]

I wrote a joke text once about the mage stephen hawk-wing who discovered quantum units of magic. You know all those spells which are along the lines of "15lbs per caster level" etc or "1 minute per caster level". He'd finally cracked this, done the maths and divided spellcasters into 20 categories of skill (i.e. levels). The whole thing was rather tongue in cheek though.

Usually it depends how advanced magic is. At a proper college of magic, with serious research into its procedures they probably have identified the 11 levels of spells (cantrips, 1-9 and epic) and determine ranking of wizards based on their maximum spell level.

When it comes down to magic being an apprentice and a master learning out in the countryside sometimes they probably don't have the formal classification, but they'd certainly know that a fireball is harder to cast than a magic missile.

Mages might call these things "levels" or they may call them "circles of power", "veils of the great mystery" or whatever... the language you have mages use will say a lot about their personality.

I doubt they've identified Hit Points though.

 

[Dagger of Lath]

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.

This document still around somewhere? I'd love to get my hands on it.