D&D General GM's are you bored of your combat and is it because you made it boring?

[Lanefan]

Its a cool idea, would be simple to add to certain monster statblocks with the old "blooded" 4e concept. @dave2008 for some of his monster concepts.

Manticore (Example)

Wounded Wing: If a manticore has 34 or less hitpoints, it loses its fly speed. At the end of its next turn, if the creature is still in the air, it falls.

OK, but to allow variety in hit points (not every Manticore has 78 h.p., or if they all do that's bloody boring!) and to make it a bit less harsh on the creature I'd reword it to:

Wounded Wing: If a Manticore ends its turn with fewer than 50% of its hit points its movement is restricted to gliding downward at its normal fly speed until it lands. On landing, or if already on the ground, it cannot take off. An airborne Manticore reduced to fewer than 20% of its hit points loses its fly speed and falls immediately.

Howzat?

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe not anti-DM but certainly DM limiting. The simple truth is... PCs and NPCs don't serve the same purpose, so if your using the same toolbox for both, one or the other is going to be hindered by a less optimal toolset.

Removing that gives the DMs a lot more freedom to craft NPCs that fit the story and the situation...without having to worry if its fits any kind of rules consistency.

That's just my point: NPCs 'built' differently than PCs means by default that one or the other does not fit the story.

The purpose both serve first and foremost is as inhabitants of the setting. Look at it from a setting-first perspective (as in, the rules and setting somewhat define each other) rather than a game-first perspective and it'll be easier to see what I mean.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Here I'm going to disagree hard with you because you are under the mistaken impression that player sided vs DM sided is a zero sum game.

I... what? Certainly not. I mean, I used "more player sided" and not "player sided entirely." I expressly made my comparisons relative, not absolute.

3.X is player sided and anti-DM. This is because 3.X RAW tells the DM to use the same rules the players do. A good example here is feats. Being able to browse through the rulebook and pick two or three feats to add colour and mechanics is superb for many players. On the other hand having to pick two or three feats out of the 1500 or so available for every minor monster is tooth-grindingly fiddly and obnoxious. As is the hard coding of spells rather than doing what you want.

I don't necessarily disagree with you except that the direction to use the same rules in 3.x is just strongly implied, not absolute. I made the mistake of doing it that way, though, and ended up hating running 3.x by the end of it. Way too fiddly. There was zero chance I was going for follow into Pathfinder, which didn't fix any of the structural issues I had in 3.x. However, if you noted the implication and just ignored it, 3.x could work very well because there were really only a few things you needed to note in the encounter math that mattered and those could be done quite easily. That required a level of awareness I certainly lacked during my 3.x run, but I see it now. Still don't want to deal with the fiddly, though, so no risk of return for me.

4e is player sided and DM sided. There were slightly more feats available by the end of 4e than by 3.5 and far more customisation available. But a fundamental difference here is that 4e DMs are not told to follow the same rules as 4e players. The two roles are considered very different so what you do is different. As a DM in 4e I am actively significantly more empowered than I am in 5e; I can do whatever I like in both games - but I have better tools and fewer constraints to do it. If I want to be a game designer in 4e I can be - the only key difference is that the baseline is much higher so if my game design is crap it will stand out like a sore thumb.

This is exactly what I was saying -- 4e is as player-facing as 3.x, but fixed a lot of the fundamental issues in design that made it work better. Primary among those was asymmetric play across the screen. I wasn't explicit, but there's no disagreement here.

5e on the other hand isn't as player facing as 3.X - but it's less DM facing than oD&D, AD&D 1e, or 4e. If I want to run the game by the intended rules and just design my own monsters 4e is so vastly superior in its benchmarks it is silly. If I want to customise areas or create house rules there is no fundamental difference in doing so.

Now, here we disagree. 5e is much less player facing than 3.x. You have asymmetry across the screen and the core mechanic has shifted from rules adjudication to GM decides again. The GM is the engine that makes 5e run, using the rules when they need to, but the core play loop provides the GM the authority to just rule success or failure without ever engaging the rules -- and this holds across all pillars of play. There's a reason that 5e gets the "DM empowerment" mantra tossed at it as often as it does.

Now, it's worthwhile to note that 4e did a lot of things better, like monster/encounter design, no disagreement. That was, largely, due to the rules structure of 4e, though. I honestly think 4e did things as well as it did by accidental confluence of design rather than intent. I say this because the designers were sooooooooooo bad at expressing how the system works (it took, what, until Essentials until the got it pretty close?). They even contradicted that design in a few published adventures, reverting to a 3.x presentation instead of leaning into 4e's unique design. I will admit I had early trouble with 4e, and didn't really fully grok it myself until well into 5e, again partly because the designers sucked at explaining it and because it did things very different from older versions. Great game, love it, would play it in a heartbeat.

And if I want combat straight out of the books then in 5e I get bullet sponge enemies, minimised tactics, and a much less swingy game but with combats that are little different in length to other WotC editions.

Weird, I run mostly straight from the books and don't have that problem at all. Perhaps I'm bringing in my experience on what makes a good encounter -- variety -- and so never put down 12 orcs or whatever. It's 8 orcs, 2 orogs, and a Priest of Gruumsh, and I remember orcs carry javelins. The worst you can say about 5e here is that it doesn't explain good encounter design enough, not that the rules result in the above. They don't prevent it, but they don't cause it, either.

You still haven't explained why it is a good thing that the DM, in addition to running the world, running the NPCs, and playing the adversaries in combat is also supposed to be a game designer when they laid out probably $150 on a supposedly functional game. Some DMs like to be game designers but not all do. So those that don't like to but have all the other skills required are close to locked out.

I did, you didn't agree. Different things. The idea is to provide a toolset that the GM uses to build the game they want. All D&D is this, with different tropes or genres preferred by the rulesets. 4e was least flexible in this regard because it had high heroes with mystic powers built into it's ruleset -- you'd have to gut the system to remove that genre and it's associated tropes. 5e is more flexible because it doesn't build in as much, but that also makes it easier to fail because there aren't as many clear indications of what the system is supposed to do.

I mean, to answer your question a different way, why would anyone ever buy a model car, painstakingly build it, add aftermarket pieces, paint it and then sand and buff it to showroom shine when you can just buy a die-cast? People like building things. I like that, in 5e, I've run a Big Plot game (heavy central theme/mystery), a hexcrawl, and a Planescape troubleshooters game. Each has had very different feels and play with minimal houserules for each (I vary table rules to better match the feel of the game I want, but try not to alter much if any of the core ruleset so it's easy to get into it). I like the tinkering, and I don't mind having the flexibility to present a range of combats that don't have an expected build structure or format, like in 3.x or 4e. It's on me, and I like that.

And there is a good reason that every single 4e game I have played has at least 50% of the players ready, willing, and able to DM. 5e isn't in my experience quite back to the dark old days of 3.X where groups fell apart because no one would or could DM. But the load is higher on the DM and the tools are worse while the 4e DM has IME significantly more power because they can decide how spells will work rather than these being hard coded by the rules and with a pretty set paradigm.

Argument from anecdote is dangerous. I have more players who are willing to run 5e than 4e, with a large overlap of players. For instance, one of our GMs (since left the group) wouldn't run 4e but loved 5e. Another has run both (rocky both times), and I have two more right now that are thinking of running that didn't do that in 4e. That's not representative of anything but my tables, though, so I don't read much into it. D&D always puts a massive load on the DM. 4e took some off in some places, but added it in others, like being flexible to player introduce content. Other games have this as well, and share the load via it, but 4e it was usually a button press on the player side that required the GM to provide the actual changes. That's what stymied my at first -- adapting to a different cognitive load. Even when I had it down better (again, I didn't fully grok it until much later -- sorry, skill challenges, I love you now!), I didn't feel the load was less, just different. Also, a HUGE amount of the load in 4e was handled through the digital tools. If you played without those, holy crud but that system could crush you in options.

You say "strong vision story", I say "railroading". And flexibility is something we'll have to disagree on. But yes, I agree that if you want a linear story directed by The Storyteller and in which the stakes are defeat or victory then the post-Forge games like Fate Core, Apocalypse World, or Blades in the Dark aren't good. But when the stakes of combat are laid down in advance (as they are in this style of play) then the slow combat that lacks tactical depth because positioning is of minimal importance, and that lacks danger because hit points don't inspire death spirals does not help.

You can say that, but I disagree they're the same thing. You could get railroading, or you could get a strong set of themes and tropes that assist a plot. I ran one, my Big Plot game, where I had things fairly well structured in Act I so as to set the themes firmly, but my Act IV was literally "fight the BBEG here." The Acts got more and more reactive to the players, with just some notes to reinforce a theme here and there and to invoke plot beats. What those were became a lot more malleable. Sadly, that campaign folded in Act III due to out of game circumstances that required the group divorcing a player (illegalities were involved) and that soured the whole thing for me.

Still, the point of this was that you can definitely go a big Story game without a railroad. Set the hook early, get PC buy-in to the plot, and then let go and follow along.

Also, there's a poster on this board that played FATE in a very scripted way. I was surprised, but looked at what they said they did and I could see it. FATE doesn't really require a free-form approach. AW and BitD, though, will fight you tooth and nail if you try.

I disagree stakes are laid down in 5e are victory or defeat, or that a strong story requires that approach. That it's a common thinking I won't disagree, but that, to me, is a failing in how all D&D presents combat: the assumption is that the stakes are death and losing is dying. This isn't at all required by the game design but it's still a strong holdover from it's wargame roots. The easiest "fix" to boring D&D combat is to move the stakes from life or death to something else -- make combat the obstacle to a goal rather than the ends itself.

 

[Stalker0]

The purpose both serve first and foremost is as inhabitants of the setting. Look at it from a setting-first perspective (as in, the rules and setting somewhat define each other) rather than a game-first perspective and it'll be easier to see what I mean.

Your right that there is a level of believability. Sometimes 4e crossed that line (which I think is literally THE criticism of 4e, its obsession with mechanics over flavor).

But used reasonably, it enhances the world, no detracts.

For example, in my world master craftsman don't need high levels to have that skill. Not every city's master blacksmith can just pick up a hammer and suddenly fight monsters like a high level PC could. Why?...because NPCs don't work the same.

Another example, in my standard setting, NPCs use more gritty healing rules (my PCs use the standard), and don't have as many spells per day. And this is something that is commented on in game when NPCs travel with PC groups, noting the specialness of the PCs. This both makes the players feel special, but it also helps explain while most adventuring groups don't adventure nonstop....and why tons of spells are not available everywhere they go. Most people just don't have the "get up and go" of a PC...that is a special quality.


But that is all secondary to my real point.... the actual NPC used in an encounter. If I want a final encounter with a mad wizard to take place, and I want to give the wizard double the normal hitpoints because I want to ensure he's actually a challenge....I don't need a feat, spell, template, etc etc like 3e encourages. I just DO IT! And I don't have to ensure he has the exact same amount of spell slots as the equivalent level PC has....I just give him some spells for the fight...and done. And if you want some flavor for it, I can have the wizard merging with stone around him, or being pumped with arcane energy from the room, or whatever.... it doesn't take a lot of flavor to reasonably explain why an NPC can do something for a short time that PCs don't normally do.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That's just my point: NPCs 'built' differently than PCs means by default that one or the other does not fit the story.

The purpose both serve first and foremost is as inhabitants of the setting. Look at it from a setting-first perspective (as in, the rules and setting somewhat define each other) rather than a game-first perspective and it'll be easier to see what I mean.

On the contrary. If I look at a setting-first approach then I find that D&D characters are all professional adventurers. And if I want the setting to contain people who are not professional adventurers (and indeed may never have taken part in a single fight) I need to be able to ignore PC creation rules

If I want to make the world's best breadmaker and he's using PC rules, he either needs (in 3.X) a spectacularly high BAB or (in 5e) a maximum level proficiency score. Which he has somehow obtained by staying in the bakery for ten hours a day for the past 30 years always baking and refining recipies to the point that he knows things about dough that no one else does. He is an inhabitant of the setting - but he is not an adventurer who spends much of their time fighting for their life. This is perfectly fine if NPCs don't have to use the same rules as PCs of course.

It's even stronger over on the caster side of things. D&D mages are ultimately combat mages, and any D&D wizard can, with only a little time and a couple of books become an excellent battle mage. If my setting has academic institutions of magic then I want my wizards to be academics. And I don't necessarily want the Chancellor to be an Elminster level mage. Instead it's just as likely that he's a political infighter who wrote his thesis and then did his research and lecturing on portal spells. He's not been in a physical fight in his life because why would he have been? And why does making him a master of portal magic mean he can suddenly cast Meteor Swarm with only a little research just because it's the same level for PCs.

Using a class-and-level system and NPCs using the same rules as PCs more or less shatters any hope of a setting-first perspective that is less artificial than Order of the Stick from working. Not that I'm saying OOTS is bad - just that calling it setting first is ridiculous.

Now, here we disagree. 5e is much less player facing than 3.x. You have asymmetry across the screen and the core mechanic has shifted from rules adjudication to GM decides again. The GM is the engine that makes 5e run, using the rules when they need to, but the core play loop provides the GM the authority to just rule success or failure without ever engaging the rules -- and this holds across all pillars of play. There's a reason that 5e gets the "DM empowerment" mantra tossed at it as often as it does.

And yet I find it far less empowering than 4e. And no one has told me a single thing that they, as DMs, can do in 5e but not 4e. Merely things they have to do, and they are claiming that this is empowerment.

Weird, I run mostly straight from the books and don't have that problem at all. Perhaps I'm bringing in my experience on what makes a good encounter -- variety -- and so never put down 12 orcs or whatever. It's 8 orcs, 2 orogs, and a Priest of Gruumsh, and I remember orcs carry javelins. The worst you can say about 5e here is that it doesn't explain good encounter design enough, not that the rules result in the above. They don't prevent it, but they don't cause it, either.

Possibly it's that I'm used to the standards of 4e - but I never put down just 12 orcs either. But 5e gives me less for that sort of mix than 4e did - or a number of other systems.

As I have mentioned earlier in this thread one of the core design mistakes in 5e in terms of tactical considerations is throwing and finesse weapons, and another one is that the penalty for being in melee is disadvantage, which has no effect at all on spellcasters using saving throw spells. This means that archers with shortswords hit almost exactly as hard and accurately with their shortswords as with their bows, orcs with axes and javelins are almost exactly as accurate and hard hitting with the two, and spellcasters can still use almost all their combat spells in melee with exactly the same level of danger. Oh, and there's no flanking.

That's why tactics in 5e are boring - they are almost all focus fire, with positioning not meaning much. And then the game is slow because of the default bullet sponge design; an AD&D ogre had 19 hit points and could be one-shotted on a good roll by a fighter with a greatsword and weapon specialisation but a 5e ogre has 59 hit points. Even the humble goblin has 7hp and with it a good chance of taking a hit from a low level fighter and surviving.

4e was least flexible in this regard because it had high heroes with mystic powers built into it's ruleset -- you'd have to gut the system to remove that genre and it's associated tropes.

This is 100% backwards. 4e is the only version of D&D where you don't have to gut the system to remove all heroes with mystic powers. Every other version of D&D is built round the assumption that there will be healing magic in the party (and that fighters are mechanically bland) - but 4e does not require it in the slightest and you can have an extremely well rounded and competent party using only the martial classes and light oversight of the powers chosen. (And no, Inspiring Word is not actually mystic). Yes you have to be careful especially with barbarian or ranger power picks - but that doesn't mean gutting the ruleset - it just means approving character sheets.

To put things into perspective if I want to remove heroes with mystic powers I need to start by tearing out nine of the thirteen classes in 5e because every member of every one of those classes above a set level casts spells. Then I need to take out the Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster, and Four Elements Monk (not that anyone will miss that last) before looking hard at the monk and barbarian builds. I've most fighters, most rogues, some barbarians, and a few monks left.

Also, a HUGE amount of the load in 4e was handled through the digital tools. If you played without those, holy crud but that system could crush you in options.

That's only from the player side in my experience but is definitely true. There were more feats by the time the run came to an end in 4e than there were in 3.5.

You can say that, but I disagree they're the same thing. You could get railroading, or you could get a strong set of themes and tropes that assist a plot. I ran one, my Big Plot game, where I had things fairly well structured in Act I so as to set the themes firmly, but my Act IV was literally "fight the BBEG here." The Acts got more and more reactive to the players, with just some notes to reinforce a theme here and there and to invoke plot beats. What those were became a lot more malleable. Sadly, that campaign folded in Act III due to out of game circumstances that required the group divorcing a player (illegalities were involved) and that soured the whole thing for me.

Still, the point of this was that you can definitely go a big Story game without a railroad. Set the hook early, get PC buy-in to the plot, and then let go and follow along.

The thing here is that you're not describing anything I haven't seen from Apocalypse World other than a slightly more shared workload. You can lay down the themes early and hard in what the threats are and what exactly the Apocalypse was. It will fight you if you try to script but you can definitely set up themes.

I disagree stakes are laid down in 5e are victory or defeat, or that a strong story requires that approach. That it's a common thinking I won't disagree, but that, to me, is a failing in how all D&D presents combat: the assumption is that the stakes are death and losing is dying. This isn't at all required by the game design but it's still a strong holdover from it's wargame roots. The easiest "fix" to boring D&D combat is to move the stakes from life or death to something else -- make combat the obstacle to a goal rather than the ends itself.

It's fixable - but D&D has several factors that mean that you need to fight the system to fix it. Power being bound up in magic items so players fighting against losing them the way they did level drain is one. Another is how difficult it is to get away. And a third is how inconsequential hit point loss is. If you're even using a WoD style death spiral then pursuers don't want to take injury, and there comes a time when one side is too injured to continue. The assumption of victory or death flows from the game design even if it isn't strictly necessary.

 

[Lanefan]

For example, in my world master craftsman don't need high levels to have that skill.

Maybe not levels in the same way as PC classes, but the underlying structure - training and practicing at something in order to become better at it over time - isn't all that much different. Becoming a better craftsman doesn't give more hit points but it does make you likelier to succeed at whatever you're trying to apply that skill to.

Not every city's master blacksmith can just pick up a hammer and suddenly fight monsters like a high level PC could.

Agreed.

Why?...because NPCs don't work the same.

Disagreed. A typical master blacksmith doesn't have the training in warcraft that a PC Fighter does, nor the hit points; but she is proficient with swinging that hammer and (most likely) has some arm strength to back it up, and could capably defend herself if needed.

3e's idea of having a formalized class for everything is overkill, and doesn't work when put to any sort of real test.

Another example, in my standard setting, NPCs use more gritty healing rules (my PCs use the standard), and don't have as many spells per day.

I have everyone use the same healing rules, but mine are far harsher in any case - closer to 1e than 5e. All casters in theory have access to the same numbers of spells per day, though adventurers in the field are more likely to burn through them more often.

And this is something that is commented on in game when NPCs travel with PC groups, noting the specialness of the PCs. This both makes the players feel special, but it also helps explain while most adventuring groups don't adventure nonstop....and why tons of spells are not available everywhere they go.

I handle the adventuring-nonstop bit, to a small extent, by forcing training at level-up (usually takes 7-10-ish days) which in turn forces some downtime. Quite often treasury division and other things extend this further.

That said, something I generally try to intentionally avoid is making the PCs feel 'special' to any great extent. Instead, I want them to feel like pieces - sometimes significant ones, to be sure, but still just pieces - of and in a world/universe that is much bigger than they will ever be.

But that is all secondary to my real point.... the actual NPC used in an encounter. If I want a final encounter with a mad wizard to take place, and I want to give the wizard double the normal hitpoints because I want to ensure he's actually a challenge....I don't need a feat, spell, template, etc etc like 3e encourages. I just DO IT!

And in so doing, IMO you invalidate your setting. Sorry, but there's no other way to put it.

There has to be an in-setting reason behind whatever's going on; a reason that the PCs, through diligent investigation and-or divination magic, can learn and - maybe - replicate.

If you want the caster to have double hit points, no problem there - but it has to be a) explainable and b) replicatable. A magic item that gives an extra 2 h.p. per class level to whoever wears it - boom, problem solved; the wizard's got a bunch more h.p. You just have to ask yourself as DM whether you want such an item falling into the party's hands if-when they take out its owner; and if you don't, the NPC can't have it either.

And I don't have to ensure he has the exact same amount of spell slots as the equivalent level PC has....I just give him some spells for the fight...and done. And if you want some flavor for it, I can have the wizard merging with stone around him, or being pumped with arcane energy from the room, or whatever.... it doesn't take a lot of flavor to reasonably explain why an NPC can do something for a short time that PCs don't normally do.

As long as the PCs could, all other things being equal, achieve the same results using the same parameters then all is good.

If the wizard somehow has access to different spells than the PCs then the PCs should - again by investigation and-or divination (and, in this case, research) - be able to find out what those spells are and how to replicate them.

If the PCs don't bother to do any of this, of course, that's on them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

3e's idea of having a formalized class for everything is overkill, and doesn't work when put to any sort of real test.

But this is what having the PCs and NPCs use the same rules means. Rather than just writing what the NPCs have.

And in so doing, IMO you invalidate your setting. Sorry, but there's no other way to put it.

There has to be an in-setting reason behind whatever's going on; a reason that the PCs, through diligent investigation and-or divination magic, can learn and - maybe - replicate.

If you want the caster to have double hit points, no problem there - but it has to be a) explainable and b) replicatable. A magic item that gives an extra 2 h.p. per class level to whoever wears it - boom, problem solved; the wizard's got a bunch more h.p. You just have to ask yourself as DM whether you want such an item falling into the party's hands if-when they take out its owner; and if you don't, the NPC can't have it either.

I might agree with this if you could give me an exact in-character explanation of what a hit point was - and why the last hit point mattered so much more than all the others.

While hit points remain an abstract measure (as I normally take them as) I find this approach weird.

Yes, there is an in-character explanation to whatever's going on - but the rules are the user interface to the game world, not the physics model. At least not unless we're playing Order of the Stick.

 

[Lanefan]

On the contrary. If I look at a setting-first approach then I find that D&D characters are all professional adventurers. And if I want the setting to contain people who are not professional adventurers (and indeed may never have taken part in a single fight) I need to be able to ignore PC creation rules

If I want to make the world's best breadmaker and he's using PC rules, he either needs (in 3.X) a spectacularly high BAB or (in 5e) a maximum level proficiency score.

First off, just because everyone can adventure (which, IMO, they can) by no means indicates that the vast amjority of them ever will.

There doesn't need to be a "Breadmaker" class to produce a top-flight baker; just use of the underlying premise that someone doing what they do for a long time and learning from others in the process is likely (though not guaranteed!) to get better at it.

Which he has somehow obtained by staying in the bakery for ten hours a day for the past 30 years always baking and refining recipies to the point that he knows things about dough that no one else does. He is an inhabitant of the setting - but he is not an adventurer who spends much of their time fighting for their life. This is perfectly fine if NPCs don't have to use the same rules as PCs of course.

Thing is, becoming a better baker doesn't give more hit points or fighting capability or really anything else except the ability to produce better baked goods. The baker's not getting formal training in anything else (and may, at such a high degree of proficiency, even be self-training as a baker these days). PC-class training involves getting trained in all the various things that make up a class' abilities; even a pure wizard gets a modicum of fighter training, to explain their slowly-advanging BAB or equivalent.

The baker only ever got trained in how to bake.

It's even stronger over on the caster side of things. D&D mages are ultimately combat mages, and any D&D wizard can, with only a little time and a couple of books become an excellent battle mage. If my setting has academic institutions of magic then I want my wizards to be academics. And I don't necessarily want the Chancellor to be an Elminster level mage. Instead it's just as likely that he's a political infighter who wrote his thesis and then did his research and lecturing on portal spells. He's not been in a physical fight in his life because why would he have been? And why does making him a master of portal magic mean he can suddenly cast Meteor Swarm with only a little research just because it's the same level for PCs.

Lots to unpack on this one but I think we're closer to agreement than you might realize.

I've long had the concept of what I call "stay-at-home" members of the various classes - militia, street thieves, lab mages, temple clerics, etc. - who still gain xp through doing what they do but at a much slower rate than adventurers, largely because adventurers pack as much risk into a day in the field as a stay-at-home might face in two years; and xp to me represent in some ways a measure of risk faced and experience thus gained.

For example, a typical militia person or army soldier might gain a level every several years, almost entirely due to whatever battles they see action in. Most don't stay in those jobs long enough to become really skilled; those who do often end up as officers, which explains perfectly the idea of "A typical patrol will be commanded by a 3rd-level Fighter, and contain 6 1st-level Fighters along with 3d4 ordinary militia." seen so often in adventure modules.

A stay-at-home mage can, over the long haul, gain quite a few caster levels if she wants to (not all do). With these levels comes training; and while your portal-master might specialize in teleport magics he's still got the know-how and training to learn Meteor Swarm should the mood strike him; it's in his pay grade even though he's as yet seen no reason to use it. What he can't do is fight, as his training has all been around casting and hasn't included the broader training an adventurer seeks out.

(if it's not already obvious, you don't gain levels in my game without training, usually from someone else but - much slower but less costly - by yourself if you must)

 

[Lanefan]

But this is what having the PCs and NPCs use the same rules means. Rather than just writing what the NPCs have.

That's what it means in 3e, but I'm not at all convinced 3e did this well even though I believe they had the right idea.

I might agree with this if you could give me an exact in-character explanation of what a hit point was - and why the last hit point mattered so much more than all the others.

Impressive - that's two gargantuan cans of worms in a single sentence - well done!

First off, to avoid triggering the 945th debate over what hit points are, I see them as a measure of injury (be it physical, fatigue, whatever); and thus a character with a device that gave her more hit points would soon realize the benefit of said device once things that previously hurt her now don't hurt her as much.

Second, and I assume here you mean the difference between being at 1 h.p. and 0 h.p., on this I agree with you. It's always been a design problem IMO; but every decent attempt to fix it I've ever seen always seems to end in wails of "death spiral!". I've tried - clunkily - to fix it to some extent, but it's still poor.

Yes, there is an in-character explanation to whatever's going on - but the rules are the user interface to the game world, not the physics model.

I see the rules as ideally being as close to a replication of the in-game physics model as we can manage, tempered by the practicality of trying to maintain a playable game. (take away this tempering and the rule books would become gargantuan and play would slow to an absolute crawl)

Or, put another way, the rules are the (simplified) user interface to the physics model used in the game world. I guess the questions are then a) how much simplification is one willing to accept, and b) how much of that model can be summed up simply by saying it works the same as in real life.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That's what it means in 3e, but I'm not at all convinced 3e did this well even though I believe they had the right idea.

I can think of games that do that - I'm far from convinced that GURPS has the right idea though.

Impressive - that's two gargantuan cans of worms in a single sentence - well done!

First off, to avoid triggering the 945th debate over what hit points are

And that's the point If hit points are as wooly a thing as they are then I don't see doubling them as immersion breaking or even something the PCs themselves would necessarily notice.