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

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I didn't piss your point at all.

Evidence suggests otherwise.

You claimed that without something explicitly saying there was no hemorrhaging, you believed that the truth was that it existed.

Not quite. I claimed that without something explicitly calling out hemorrhaging as not existing that it existed within the abstraction of all other forms of injury - equal treatment for not having special mention, rather than the lack of special mention being special confirmation of non-existence even in abstract form.

I pointed out that there is no such truth that exists. Crying semantics over something like that is like saying that it's semantics to point out to someone who claimed a gunshot to the body doesn't cause a hole, that it does in fact cause a hole.

I formally apologize for using the word semantics. I should know better, because I have seen that you prefer to argue the semantics of the word semantics than to acknowledge when an argument you made is only in existence because you are insisting upon using different meanings for some of the words or phrases that the other person used.

I will thank you, however, to not use charged words like "crying" in your future disagreements with me - of which I am sure there will be many.

The closest the game has ever gotten to including hemorrhaging as a "truth" is bleeding wounds from wounding weapons.

And after you argued against what you thought my point was - the point that you missed - you show a piece of evidence that supports my actual point: hemorrhaging exists within the game world, but it is represented in abstract fashion like all other forms of injury.

And it's not just wounding weapons - as I said earlier, death saves and "bleeding out" rules (by which I mean to refer to the rules that were standard in 1st and 3rd editions, and presented as an option in 2nd edition, where you lose hit points over time while not stabilized and die if you lose too many) also represent hemorrhaging in an abstract fashion (but not only hemorrhaging, which is the beauty of abstraction).

 

[pemerton]

What is completely whackadoo crazy is when one character gets hit and dies while the other character gets hit but has no sign of injury which is where mechanics and description part ways.

The mechanics and description part ways, yes. (Except in the most general sense, that if both characters have got hit then, for both of them, the momentum of battle is not running entirely their way.) This is what makes it a non-simulationist mechanic. (A Rorschach test.)

But I don't see what's crazy about it.

Ok, so what if the "hit" was from a "snake" which caused you to become "poisoned".

Did the snake actually bite you and should the cleric be allowed to treat you since you have no appearance of being "damaged"?

See my post 286.

As you yourself noted, the narration doesn't have to be the same for different episodes of hit point loss. If you get poisoned, then we narrate it as a snake bite.

Gygax dealt with all this in his DMG over 25 years ago.

There's no reason anyone has to like this sort of mechanical system, but it's pretty clear how it works if you do like it (or otherwise are happy to use it).

Of course, Gygax was talking about a different edition of D&D where damage from poison worked differently. In 5E, there is no saving throw against drow elite warrior poison, for example, and "the saving throw" Gygax refers to doesn't exist.

The same is true of 4e. Now it's all just wrapped up in the roll to hit. (Instead of separate rolls to hit and to save.) That doesn't change the basic point: if the mechanics tell you the character has been poisoned, you narrate the snake bite. That doesn't mean you have to narrate a sword blow, or a fireball, or . . ., in the same way.

 

[pemerton]

And yet, if you look at the topic that the rules concern themselves with (especially in Ye Olde AD&D), everyone we care about modeling is either armored, or magic. Fighters, clerics, and rogues wear armor. Wizards are magic (and probably have Mage Armor).

The armour spell - the precursor to mage armour - came into the game with Unearthed Arcana (and presumably was in a Dragon magazine a few years earlier).

As far as unarmoured MUs were concerned, I think the game assumed that when they go surrounded by goblins there was going to be some blood and gore involved!

 

[pemerton]

The only problem I have with 1e hp being 'luck, etc'.. is how slow it was to recover this 'luck, skill, etc' hps, without magic healing that is.

Surely this is just a matter of taste. I mean, what's the "realistic" rate for the restoration of luck and divine favour?

Clerics did not get extra hit points for being especially pious

Are you sure?

From Gygax's DMG, pp 111-12:

[T]he accumulation of hit points and the ever-greater abilities and better saving throws of characters represents the aid supplied by supernatural forces.​

How do we know that part of a cleric's d8 per level isn't an extra dose of divine favour?

 

[pemerton]

Gygax
If we're going to start putting stock in his beliefs and arguments from the DMG - how he viewed game design and D&D - we have to apply all of his little essays and rants. We can't pick and choose.

Huh? I take Frege's work on foundations of mathematics seriously, but disregard his political views.

I take Newton's physics seriously, without worrying too much about his occultism.

Gygax gave very skillful, and very early (in the history of RPG design) expositions of how fortune-in-the-middle mechanics work. They do a better job than (say) the 4e rulebooks of explaining how hp are best understood in 4e.

This in no way obliges me to have any regard to his silly stuff. I "pick and choose" the same way I do with Frege and with Newton. (And with everyone else I've ever encountered who sometimes says sensible or important stuff and sometimes says silly or irrelevant stuff.)

Absolutely. But so much of what is said here hinges on one such discussion in what amounts to a huge appeal to authority.

I'm not appealing to authority in any problematic sense. I'm pointing out that hp have, in fact, been a metagame mechanic, and are not a simulationist one. And that this doesn't cause any problems, unless what you are looking for is a simulationist mechanic.

 

[pemerton]

So, you know how you punch a nerd like three times and they go down, but you have to punch Mike Tyson like a thousand times to get the same effect? It's the same thing. You're applying the same amount of force from each punch, but one victim requires a much greater total amount of force to be imparted in order to reach the limit of consciousness.

But injury to a biological system is not, in general, proportional to the sum of the total "force events" inflicted. That's part of the difference between hurting a person and chipping away at a rock.

As previously mentioned, some pages back, Gygax's game does not meet the strictest definition of an RPG, by the standards of the modern era.

I'm a person in the modern era. I have been playing RPGs - including Gygax's - for longer than you. Given that he is one of the inventors of the game form, and one of those who coined the phrase "roleplaying game", I believe his game is a paradigm of the game-form.

I just don't think you have the authority to stipulate otherwise.

It's an approximation of reality. It's a simulation.

A system for tracking motion (ie position over time) which cannot tell you where anyone is at any given time, and which in fact requires "freeze frame" for most of the participants through most of the resolution process, and has no notion of simultaneity (because of the aforementioned "freeze frame") and which, on any attempt to unpack it systematically, will yield inconsistent results without the deft overlay of some more-or-less ad hoc narrative, is not a simulation.

And it's not as if you can't easily get more simultaneity and less freeze-frame: AD&D and earlier editions actually did so, via "side initiative".

And none of the above is a criticism of turn-by-turn initiative. It's just making the point that it's not a simulation. It's a device for constraining the narration of what happens during the combat.

You can't choose to be inspired, though. You can be inspired, surely enough, and a reasonable game system may well include mechanics to that effect, but it's not a choice, any more than you can choose to be hungry or afraid.

But you can choose to try hard. You can choose to hope - or, at least, can fail to give up hope. You can resolve to go on. These are the sorts of things that are happening, in the fiction, when a player cashes in those inspiration chips.

If players don't have luck-type mechanics (be they hp, fate points, re-rolls, whatever) then the metaphysics of the fiction are the same as the physics of dice - cold, uncaring randomisation.

do you want to pretend to be a real elf, in a world where dragons and magic are actually real? Or do you want to pretend to be a character in a story, where dragons and magic are plot contrivances? Because you can't be both at the same time.

What makes you so confident that the world (not the real world - that would be contrary to board rules - but the game world) is cold and uncaring. Why can't I play in Middle Earth, in which the world is not cold, uncaring and random but rather unfolds in accordance with a providential logic?

Why did Wormtongue through out the palantir - of all possible objects - just at the moment when it could come into the hands of Aragorn who, having already announced himself to the Rohirrim was now ready to claim his title openly before Sauron? Providence.

There are mechanics for replicating this sort of thing in an RPG. But they don't involve process-simulation.

The premise of role-playing is that you're pretending to actually be an elf, and you can't do that while you're simultaneously choosing to invoke fate or luck or whatever.

Yet my players do it all the time.

What you are presenting as a logical truth is in fact a psychological conjecture, which I know from experience to be false.

 

[Maxperson]

Evidence suggests otherwise.
Not quite. I claimed that without something explicitly calling out hemorrhaging as not existing that it existed within the abstraction of all other forms of injury - equal treatment for not having special mention, rather than the lack of special mention being special confirmation of non-existence even in abstract form.

I formally apologize for using the word semantics. I should know better, because I have seen that you prefer to argue the semantics of the word semantics than to acknowledge when an argument you made is only in existence because you are insisting upon using different meanings for some of the words or phrases that the other person used.

I will thank you, however, to not use charged words like "crying" in your future disagreements with me - of which I am sure there will be many.
And after you argued against what you thought my point was - the point that you missed - you show a piece of evidence that supports my actual point: hemorrhaging exists within the game world, but it is represented in abstract fashion like all other forms of injury.

And it's not just wounding weapons - as I said earlier, death saves and "bleeding out" rules (by which I mean to refer to the rules that were standard in 1st and 3rd editions, and presented as an option in 2nd edition, where you lose hit points over time while not stabilized and die if you lose too many) also represent hemorrhaging in an abstract fashion (but not only hemorrhaging, which is the beauty of abstraction).

It exists in very specific mechanical instances. Bleeding weapons, bleeding effects, dropping in negative hit points, and other explicit instances if any. Nowhere else.

If you want it to be anywhere else, you have to add it to your game. There is no "truth" that makes it exist.

 

[snooggums]

Sometimes I roll up a PC for kicks since I always DM, and use it in game because I have it on hand.

Otherwise I just add a class feature or two since NPCs are likely to have one main trait or be killed before using multiple class features.

 

[Shasarak]

The mechanics and description part ways, yes. (Except in the most general sense, that if both characters have got hit then, for both of them, the momentum of battle is not running entirely their way.) This is what makes it a non-simulationist mechanic. (A Rorschach test.)

A Rorschach test is probably more useful.

 

[Shasarak]

Surely this is just a matter of taste. I mean, what's the "realistic" rate for the restoration of luck and divine favour?

Are you sure?

From Gygax's DMG, pp 111-12:

[T]he accumulation of hit points and the ever-greater abilities and better saving throws of characters represents the aid supplied by supernatural forces.​

How do we know that part of a cleric's d8 per level isn't an extra dose of divine favour?

I guess in a strict mathematical sense a -2 could be considered to be an extra dose of divine favour.