Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[Deadstop]

As I said, that PCs and NPCs are different is something @Micah Sweet already disagrees with, so any argument that hinges on the PCs being special and distinct from the rest of the world is irrelevant

This part of the conversation is with me, not Micah. And while Micah indeed does not like too much PC/NPC separation, even he has said that only some of his NPCs have the equivalent of class levels. What he seems to care about is that no ability is ultimately PC-only or NPC-only, not that every NPC has as much access to any such ability as a 1st-level PC.

In 5e (including 5.5e and A5e), class levels and feats are building blocks for PC creation. The abilities they confer exist in the fiction, but outside of a LitRPG-based setting, the building blocks themselves are meta elements. You can build an NPC out of class levels and feats if you want, or just assign them NPC traits and actions that mimic those things for PC/NPC consistency, but unlike in 3e, none of the 5e rulesets recommend or illustrate doing so. Even in 3e, where NPCs had class levels and even monsters had a feat progression, there was a set of less capable classes for non-adventuring NPCs, so that not every soldier was a fighter and not every spellcaster was a wizard or cleric.

It is impossible to conclude from the 5e ruleset that any particular percentage of the setting’s population must reasonably possess the abilities represented by the Magic Initiate feat. It’s not that kind of rulebook. There are no suggested percentages of people with a certain level in a certain class, as 3e had. There is no automatic or even suggested way for NPCs to gain feats. All the rules tell us is that it’s possible for someone to possess the knowledge of a couple of cantrips and a beginner spell without having even one full class level in a spellcasting class. By the rules alone, a designer or GM or group could build a world where every village baker is taught the warming and flavoring aspects of prestidigitation, or one in which a person has to have at least flunked out of magic school or an apprenticeship to know even that much.

Yes, if the PCs are the chosen ones then they might be the only ones with magic in the world while everyone else has not yet figured out how to make a fire. But if PCs are just regular people like everyone else, then things look very different

The hyperbole is unnecessary. A lower-magic setting does not require that PCs be narratively Chosen, nor that the common NPC be ignorant of basic facts. It just requires picking and choosing what is described and portrayed. And 5e makes that easier in some ways than 3e, because most of the characters in the setting are not even constructed of the same building blocks that make it easy for a low-level PC to pick up a handful of spells apart from their class. “Magic Initiate” is not a discrete thing that exists in the game world. Someone with preferences like Micah’s would presumably insist that the ability to cast a handful of minor magics without committing to magic as one’s vocation be available to NPCs as well. But how common it is, or whether it implies specific backstory events for both PCs with Magic Initiate and NPCs with similar capabilities, is a setting-specific, group-specific decision, not one with an answer mandated by the ruleset.

 

[mamba]

This part of the conversation is with me, not Micah.

I know, I already said that it is based on the premise that PCs are regular people, not chosen ones, so you are just reiterating something I already conceded, namely

It is impossible to conclude from the 5e ruleset that any particular percentage of the setting’s population must reasonably possess the abilities represented by the Magic Initiate feat.

This has nothing to do with NPCs being built differently however, to me that is just an abstraction / simplification because there is no need for that level of detail. That in itself does not mean the PCs are special within the setting.
Since the rules do not outright state that, you are free to have a world in which the PCs are the chosen ones rather than people on a journey from zero to hero

 

[Thomas Shey]

True, but it also is true that the D&D has over the years gotten less gritty and more high fantasy. It was never particularly gritty or low fantasy, but there still has been quite a significant change.

From my point of view it doesn't matter much; it was already waaay too far from that to be a good choice from day one. The combination of numerous weird monsters (many well beyond routine troops having a chance against them), plentiful magic items, and erratic but really punch magic (not to mention the whole elevating-hit-point thing, all in combination was just going to require enough houseruling to move it toward anything grounded that there were very quickly better options.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Earthdawn, of course, has never been low key about its fantasy.

Uhm, that was my point? I was noting that it was pretty overt about it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think the right treating hit points as stamina works best if you want somethnig diegetic that doesn't contradict itself all the time. I would prefer to add some mechanics that allow injuries to still happen.

The problem has been these always treated a normal hit as enough to deliver poison. As such you pretty much have to assume some damage.

 

[Umbran]

That is very different from saying that conceptually PCs and NPCs are the same and you just not detailing out every NPC to that level. That conceptual equality is bleeding into the setting itself.

Depends what you mean by "equal", now doesn't it?

Like, there are ways you and I are going to be different, right? Some of those will be fundamental, some will be upbringing and personal history. We are not exactly equal in all ways.

But we are fundamentally still basically the same kind of critter.

If Jeb the Baker could have turned out like Conan, if their situations were reversed, then Jeb and Conan are still the same basic critter. Doesn't mean Conan won't mop the floor with Jeb in a fight.

If you design the setting and take the premise of PCs and NPCs being fundamentally the same thing into account, your setting will look different from one where the PCs are indeed the chosen ones and none of the NPCs are anything like them.

Always beware when you lay about with absolutes. It probably contains hyperbolic overstatement of reality.

Like, some of those NPCs are a lot like the PCs. Sure, many are not. But there are far more Jeb life paths than Conan ones.

Eberron fits the D&D rules much better than Middle-earth does.

That is a completely different argument. Especially because Middle Earth is explicitly not a place where all people are the same. Aragoen is not just another human. Neither is Boromir.

 

[Baron Opal II]

So, all that said, how do you feel about metacurrency?

Type A: Adjusting Dice Outcome

I appreciate a metacurrency that allows the player to override the dice in a limited fashion. Turning a miss into a success or a success into a critical once or twice every other session is perfect. I / we accept that the dice have a place in the development of events, but some days you just can't roll higher than a 4. And that gets really frustrating. So, having a limited resource that lets you override your dice when the Law of Large Numbers has snubbed you is great.

Type B: "I am the Protagonist, dammit!"

These, not so much. I would rather have "you missed me" abilities as actual abilities where the class / archetype / power suite allows you to ignore the BBEG's critical hit once per session or whatever. If you want to know someone in every town, play a bard. Or, if they're shady, a rogue.

 

[aramis erak]

Reading through this, it seems like others use the term "meta-currency" differently than I do. (And maybe my version isn't just different but wrong.)

I use it to mean any currency/resource whose only purpose is to gate the use of abilities, but that doesn't map to a "real" resource. So hit points may be abstract, but they aren't meta-currency. But a Battlemaster's "expertise dice" are a meta-currency, even if the thing they are spent on isn't a "meta-game" intervention.

XP are a metacurrency, too... The XP don't represent any tangible thing, and are used solely to change the game state by unlocking new or improved abilities. And sometimes, not even permanently. (WEG Star Wars d6.)

There is an interesting question: what if metacurrency can only be refreshed or gained by actions by the characters in the fiction? is it still metacurrency? (Yes, this is leading us toward that worst of all discussions: Are Force Points Meta Currency?")

YES. If it doesn't exist as a countable thing in the fiction, but is countable on the sheet, and spendable for some effect, it's a metacurrency.

I still have the Rolemaster Companion that had an alternate system for simultaneous actions - essentially every action had a 'units of effort' points cost and the game just kept counting down until the units had been spent and that action resolved. So every character's actions effectively go into the oven at the same time, with different cooking speeds, and the game continues with players declaring, counting down, and resolving actions without any turn structure.

Sounds interesting but looked like a nightmare, especially if you're the GM running 20 different goblins.

The problem with that one was that it was two numbers, not one, per item.
You roll your initiative; on your initiative total, you get your first action, and it spends a certain pile of initiative points and a different pile of "percentage of action" (PoA) for the round; You only have 100 PoA, and many things take 50+; an attack is, IIRC, 75 PoA, but 100 initiative. And there's the option to only get to resolve it at the end of its intitiative point cost.

 

[mamba]

Depends what you mean by "equal", now doesn't it?

to a degree maybe, but I feel that my usage is a pretty normal usage of the term

But we are fundamentally still basically the same kind of critter.

If Jeb the Baker could have turned out like Conan, if their situations were reversed, then Jeb and Conan are still the same basic critter. Doesn't mean Conan won't mop the floor with Jeb in a fight.

precisely, this is the kind of equal I am talking about. Equal in possibility, not in outcome

That is a completely different argument. Especially because Middle Earth is explicitly not a place where all people are the same. Aragoen is not just another human. Neither is Boromir.

I chose Middle-earth as a low magic setting, that it has an Aragorn stomping around is irrelevant to this. Pick a low magic setting of your choice then.

Discussing whether Boromir is not just another human is a tangent. I am not aware of anything other than his title setting him apart, in which case that is even less of a difference than between Conan and the baker.

 

[aramis erak]

The goblin doesn't stab you in the luck. Yes, yes, there is a handwavy explanation about hit points being everything but meat, but we all know they represent injury -- even if it is John McClane kinds of injury. It's disingenuous to try and wink-wink that away.

And yet, that's what gygax did in AD&D...
"Thus, the majority of hit paints aresymbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces." AD&D PHB p34 §CHARACTER HIT POINTS. Last line of ¶1.

Right but every time the previous blows landed, there is a very high probability that the fiction was about getting hit: bruises, blood and the whole bit. I have never seen in 40 years, running for literally hundreds of people,a table that did not describe hit point damage as, well, damage 95% of the time.

And lo, many games with Hit Points do define them as the meat. Not many define HP as luck, parries, dodges, and light scrapes... that's mostly a D&D-ism.

But note that D&D 5.x is reasonably explicit: damage doesn't show until 50% of HP are gone, as the bloodied condition, which is just a cue to the DM to narrate some visible damage, so the players know how bad off the NPC is.

It can be argued that people describing every HP loss as a bruise or scrape are not playing the game as intended. Nor are those who describe it all as luck or skill or innate resistance every hit but the one to zero... tho' at least once in print someone from TSR argued that all damage was non-hits until the one dropping your character to 1 HP or below (since 1 was KO, and 0 was dead, unless you only had max HP of 1...)