D&D 5E Do NPCs in your game have PHB classes?

[Shasarak]

By RAW he's wrong and you are wrong.

I made a ruling that current RAW is wrong and original RAW is correct which luckily for me makes the game much more internally consistent.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

How do you cross the room without mussing all that paint?

Can you not tell how beaten up someone is, by looking at them? I mean, a professional boxer at the start of a fight, compared to the same boxer at the end of the fight, there are usually some pretty obvious signs of battle-damage. Their bodily integrity has been compromised. And if you can't tell, because you're blind, then you can ask them how they feel at the end of the fight, and I'm sure they'd be more than obliged to convey that information.

If you're blind, and the person you're looking at is mute, then maybe you can't tell how much damage they've taken. That's why we have a DM on hand, to adjudicate.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Can you not tell how beaten up someone is, by looking at them?

'Realistically' people can't dependably tell how badly injured they are, themselves, and triaging wounded is a tricky medical specialty. So, no, I, living in this unpleasantly real world, and not being a well-trained ER doc, can't do that.

In the context of the two corners you've painted yourself into: how do you tell from 'wounds' that are restricted to through-armor blunt trauma, how many hps of damage someone has taken when a 100 hp character's luck/skill=toughness lets him shrug off a 10hp blow as easily as a 10hp character shrugs off a 1hp blow? Can you tell how many hps someone has by looking at them?

 

[Hussar]

Trolls are magic, but 10 foot half ton giants aren't? Yeah, nice cherry picking there.

But, let's dive down this rabbit hole shall we? Troll regeneration is defined in 3e as specifically NON-magical. It's an EX (as in extraordinary) power. It is specifically defined as non-magical.

So, try again. How come three non-magical monsters of roughly the same size have wildly varying HP?

See, your example of Chimp and Human don't really fit. A full grown chimp weighs in at 150 pounds. Take a human of similar proportions and musculature, and they'd have pretty similar HP. Never minding in D&D terms, a chimp has about 5 HP (using the stats for Baboon), very clearly the same as a normal human.

So, no, your explanation doesn'T work.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

'Realistically' people can't dependably tell how badly injured they are, themselves, and triaging wounded is a tricky medical specialty. So, no, I, living in this unpleasantly real world, and not being a well-trained ER doc, can't do that.

In the real world, we have all sorts of complications that we are conveniently leaving out of our simplified model. There is no internal hemorrhaging in Faerun.

Are you honestly saying that you cannot tell the difference between a boxer at the start of a fight, and the same boxer who has been punched two dozen times over the course of a minute, discounting the possibilities of invisible internal trauma? Just going from external symptoms, and what the boxer can tell you?

In the context of the two corners you've painted yourself into: how do you tell from 'wounds' that are restricted to through-armor blunt trauma, how many hps of damage someone has taken when a 100 hp character's luck/skill=toughness lets him shrug off a 10hp blow as easily as a 10hp character shrugs off a 1hp blow? Can you tell how many hps someone has by looking at them?

I've never said that you can tell how many total HP someone has; I have said that HP represent an observable property, and that you can tell how much damage someone has taken.

I'm not here to defend anyone else's model, and I don't use the proportional model. To me, the difference between 10 damage to the champ and 1 damage to the chump is that the champ is suffering from a much more significant injury, caused by a much more significant impact - significant enough that, were the chump to be on the receiving end of such a blow, it would have knocked them unconscious.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Trolls are magic, but 10 foot half ton giants aren't? Yeah, nice cherry picking there.

But, let's dive down this rabbit hole shall we? Troll regeneration is defined in 3e as specifically NON-magical. It's an EX (as in extraordinary) power. It is specifically defined as non-magical.

Trolls and giants are both examples of game-world-physics being vastly different from real-world-physics. Between the two violations of our sensibilities, the real-time regeneration is a much more fantastical extraordinary ability. But you're right, from our perspective in the real world, they're both magic; and therefore analysis in real-world terms is irrelevant.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Are you honestly saying that you cannot tell....

You can't bring real people into it without bringing RL into it, making the question moot.

I'm not here to defend anyone else's model, and I don't use the proportional model. To me, the difference between 10 damage to the champ and 1 damage to the chump is that the champ is suffering from a much more significant injury, caused by a much more significant impact - significant enough that, were the chump to be on the receiving end of such a blow, it would have knocked them unconscious.

Lets take the very clear example of the 5e instantly-killed chump. He has 6hp, he took 20 'through his armor' (or Mage Armor, more likely) resulting in what kind of instantly fatal injury? Massive head trauma? Brains spattered on the wall, perhaps? I mean, instantly killed has gotta count for something. So the champ? Nah, didn't need those brains anyway? Has his skull pulverisized every day? Or, what if they both fall off a high cliff? Chump takes 70 points of damage, out of 6, *splat.* Champ? Not bothered by having every bone in his body shattered? Or does he actually sustain a much less severe injury because he still has 10 hps left and isn't even unconscious or taking a penalty?

Now, the non-proportional trick works if they're Highlanders in Hemlock's game. Champ hits the granite going 60m/s, splats, pulls himself together /quite literally/, dusts himself off, and moves on. No worries.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Lets take the very clear example of the 5e instantly-killed chump. He has 6hp, he took 20 'through his armor' (or Mage Armor, more likely) resulting in what kind of instantly fatal injury? Massive head trauma? Brains spattered on the wall, perhaps? I mean, instantly killed has gotta count for something.

Significant blunt trauma to the torso. Most sources of damage correspond to significant blunt trauma to the torso. I suppose it could be a lesser trauma to the skull. Nothing like a broken bone, though, of course.

Instantly killed only counts for something if you treat the last point of damage as more significant than the first.

Or, what if they both fall off a high cliff? Chump takes 70 points of damage, out of 6, *splat.* Champ? Not bothered by having every bone in his body shattered? Or does he actually sustain a much less severe injury because he still has 10 hps left and isn't even unconscious or taking a penalty?

Neither of them break any of their bones. MadeOfIron is in effect. MadeOfPlasticine is not.

It might seem silly that it's impossible to break a bone while skydiving, but for practical purposes, it's a reasonable assumption. If you're a high enough level that you survive, then there's no reason why this impact should be treated as any worse than any other source of 70 damage. If you're super-dead from massive damage, then we don't really care how many bones you may or may not have broken. It's an unrealistic model for situations that we don't care about, which is exactly where you can afford to sacrifice realism in the name of simplification.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Significant blunt trauma to the torso. Most sources of damage correspond to significant blunt trauma to the torso.
Instantly killed only counts for something if you treat the last point of damage as more significant than the first.

I should think being dead is somehow significant. If that last point of damage - that 16th point if you have 8, or that 8th point if you're only talking unconsciousness - is not more significant, why does it result in unconsciousness or instant death?

Neither of them break any of their bones.

You can take north of 10x your hp in a-planet-just-hit-you damage and not break bones? And you're worried about what sort of internal consistency, again?

Seriously, you might as well cut to the choice and give everyone visible life bars at this point.

It might seem silly that it's impossible to break a bone while skydiving, but for practical purposes, it's a reasonable assumption. If you're a high enough level that you survive, then there's no reason why this impact should be treated as any worse than any other source of 70 damage. If you're super-dead from massive damage, then we don't really care how many bones you may or may not have broken. It's an unrealistic model for situations that we don't care about, which is exactly where you can afford to sacrifice realism in the name of simplification.

If you're trying to establish that you can just look at someone and know how much damage they've taken, in hps, non-meta-gamely, how is people with different hps taking the same amount of damage, and having radically different effects from it, not something you care about?

And, I really have to wonder where this new-found acceptance of profoundly limiting what non-fatal hp damage can represent came from, and whether it'll vanish conveniently later...? ;P

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Now, the non-proportional trick works if they're Highlanders in Hemlock's game. Champ hits the granite going 60m/s, splats, pulls himself together /quite literally/, dusts himself off, and moves on. No worries.

Well, sort of. You've compared Highlanders in my game to Asgardians at other times; in any case, his higher amount of life force might prevent him from splatting at all in the first place, like a man made out of hard rubber tires instead of jelly and water.