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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6261039" data-attributes="member: 42582">Maybe you have interpreted the word "process" in a different way from what I (and I'm pretty sure [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]) intended.You could keep a running tally of the number of breaths, or heartbeats, you have taken in your life. But that would not model any process or any component of a process: at least to the best of my physiological knowledge, there is no process in the human organism in wich "number of breaths taken" or "number of heartbeats" is a causally active quantity.Whereas a running tally of the number of kilogram weights I have loaded into your backpack is a modelling of a process, or at least a component of a process: the weight of your backpack is a causally active quantity in various muscular efforts.If you treat XP as a running tally of exciting events or accomplishments in the PC's life, it is analogous to a tally of breaths taken. It's a tally, but it's not a model or representation of any causal process. Unlike an encumbrance tally, which is.But initiative doesn't model that process.Suppose I take three items - a sinker, a facewasher and a ping-pong ball - and I drop them into water. The sinker sinks quickly. The facewasher sinks slowly as it fills with water, and perhaps bobs somewhere not far below the surface. The ball floats. I could then label them by their degree of "floatiness": ball-1, washer-2, sinker-3. The "floatiness" number is not a model of any process. It's just a label for an observed outcome.At best, initiative is a label for an observed outcome of "who is more likely to get the drop on whom".Actually, the 6-second round, and its associated action economy, must be a metagame device. A sufficient proof of that is the following: I can represent exactly the same ingame events via a 6-second round (3E, 4e), a 10-second round (B/X, Rolemaster) or a 1 minute round (AD&D). Changing the length of the round doesn't correspond to any difference of what is happening in the fiction (it's not as if AD&D character are 10 times slower than 3E or 4e ones). Hence, the choice of round doesn't correspond to any modelling of any ingame process. It's a metagame decision about how often to take stock of the ingame situation, try and represent it, and pay attention to changes within it.I don't think the same is true for hit points.Who said that it's insane, or not worthy of consideration? My point is that it's not insane to interpret otherwise either - ie the mechanics don't mandate your favoured interpretation.Remember, the D&Dnext rules themselves suggest, as a default, that hit point loss that leaves the target above half hit points do not correspond to injury. So Mearls, at least, doesn't think your view is the default, or "natural".Not necessarily. Not, for instance, if my PC can do damage on a miss.Also, I as a player roll a die trying to beat the orc's AC. My character is not trying to beat the orc's AC. My character is trying to defeat the orc in physical combat. There is no such thing as AC in the fiction: only armour, and speed, and strength, and grit.As I said, I'm not any sort of fighter or fencer or boxer or re-enactor. But from those who are, I gather there is no such thing as "the attack". Gygax, in his DMG, tells me that the attack roll doesn't model any particular swing of the weapon. I have never watched a boxing match in which punches were thrown at a rate of one every 6 seconds (let alone 1 every minute).I also have read that Gygax envisaged D&D combat looking like an Errol Flynn sword fight. In a Errol Flynn sword fight, every swing involves physical contact (on the other's sword, typically) and only one blow delivers a serious injury (the final one). Prior to that final strike there might be a slash to the face or arm that draws blood, but that doesn't contribute to death: no one dies because they took to many blood-drawing slashes to the face or arm of that sort!In Runequest, that sort of duel is modelled as Parry, Parry, Parry, Dead. But D&D doesn't have a parry mechanic. For those who envisage their D&D fights in this sort of way, though, hit point ablation is the relavent mechanic.This is the bottom line, I think (or the first half of it).In my view the mechanics don't tell me that I injured the target, because the target (absent condition-infliction) is in no way impeded. So for me, the mechanics tell me that, in the exchange that took place over that 6 seconds, the target was worn down in some way (on the back foot; tiring and "on the ropes"; perhaps dazed or distracted).And what I'm saying is that nothing in the core D&D combat rules, including the D&Dnext rules, mandates that an attack roll, or hit point ablation, be given any particular interpretation in the fiction. The mechanics leave it open. They don't stop me envisaging it in an Errol Flynn style, just as they don't stop you envisaging it in whatever style you want to. None of that "specificity" matters to the actual action resolution mechanics, which don't differ depending on whether I declare "I swing at the head" or "I go for the gut" or "I attack him" or "Have at it, yon ogre!"This is the other half of the bottom line. If damage-on-a-miss and morale-based healing are going to be eliminated as options, because their presence upsets the process-sim crowd, I probably won't be buying D&Dnext.</blockquote>

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