D&D 5E ludonarrative dissonance of hitpoints in D&D

[Arch-Fiend]

Briefly, yes, hps in D&D are mostly about avoiding or minimizing harm rather than enduring it.

And, yes, you can resist or be vulnerable to specific types of damage, and greater forces do greater damage, even when they might not seem any harder to avoid.

That means that some attacks are greater threats than others, and some are greater threats to certain creatures than others.

If you're being attacked by a strong man with a huge axe, you have to get out of the way, if it's a kid with a sharp stick, you just need to make sure he doesn't poke you in the eye.
If you have a ring of fire resistance, you can just walk through some fires without harm, and have less to fear from even those that can hurt you - so, you need expend less effort to avoid fire damage.

So, yeah, all those points about damage figures representing what attacks would do if they hit you is perfectly consistent with them also corresponding numbers of hps as you avoid/minimize that danger.

And, though you didn't get into it, the standard model of hps is for PCs, and some monsters may have very different meanings for theirs - a golden for instance, may not avoid attacks at all, you just have to physically destroy it.

so what is hitpoints? the way i described it and how it was described by the game is the idea that hitpoints are a measure of endurance that a character must expend in order to avoid a lethal attack. this kinda assumes that ac is all of the things about a characters defense that does not require effort for them to expend in order to avoid lethal attacks.

if hitpoints (at least for characters) is a measure of endurance they expend then why do different weapons require different expenditures of effort in order to avoid a lethal hit? furthermore how does resistance, immunity, and vulnerability apply? i have considered the idea that creatures with a resistance to damage do not need to expend as much energy to avoid the damage because they naturally take less anyway so what of it does hit them doesn't actually harm them, and creatures immune simply don't react to damage that cant hurt them. however this would imply resistance and immunity gives you omniscience about sources of damage if they will or wont hurt you. cant think of an explanation for vulnerability though?

it highlights the issue of hp as death avoidance though because if hp is abstracted as a reaction to danger then its subjective for a character to avoid damage, they have no idea what will hurt them or not so they should expend hp to avoid damage regardless of its source unless its completely obvious

as far as strength is concerned, strength's ability to make an attack faster and more likely hit you is already expressed by its bonus to hit, there is no need for D&D to have 2 systems to describe avoiding damage if they both basically mean the same thing and have the same bonuses applied to them (at least in the attacks concern)

if your implying that the fact that you are avoiding greater danger in the form of a higher damage has an impact on how much effort you must put into avoiding the attack then i think this is where the ludonarrative dissonance should be breaking most peoples suspension of disbelief as now the very possibility of danger has a physical impact on a characters ability to avoid lethal injury.

additionally there's no explanation for how poison can be transmitted by injury if technically you cant be injured until you run out of hitpoints. nor does it explain how the hitpoints that poison drains from you as it kills you is drawn from the same source as the metaphysical force of damage possibility reducing your characters endurance.

 

[Garthanos]

so what is hitpoints? the way i described it and how it was described by the game is the idea that hitpoints are a measure of endurance that a character must expend in order to avoid a lethal attack

endurance for part, luck for another part, divine favor for another part. Gygaxian definition holds takes more luck to stop an attack you are vulnerable too for instance than one you arent... but you might also be more distressed by the dangerous one even if it only got close (psychic element of hit points and stress)

 

[DND_Reborn]

I didn't say that HPs came to seem ridiculous in the 90s. I said they were widely considered ridiculous (placing the origin point somewhere before that.)

My impression has been that since 3E brought D&D back into the primary position in RPGs the number of people complaining about HPs has grown much smaller - and seems to have been largely limited to either D&D players making there way out of D&D or players of other games taking the occasional sideswipe. I take the point about Gygax's defence but it seemed to me that wasn't really well known - or was simply ignored (because really it doesn't work very well for any edition of D&D before 4) - until 3E brought D&D back to first place and created a need for the internet to popularise it. And make D&D seem respectable again.

The reason I see 5E's success as integral to a lot of posts here lately - is because in earlier times a lot of the people who are trying to fix things in 5E would just have played different games.

But the player base for 5E is now so much bigger than everything else that understandably people want to tweak 5E.

See, this is where we differ. No one I played with ever thought of HP as ridiculous (from '78 to present). It was the original to myself and many others, and we played plenty of other games that used different mechanics such as condition monitors, health levels, etc. and others that used similar mechanics (health points, life, etc.).

Whatever complaining there was before, I think the decline is more to people growing to understand more what the mechanic is meant to represent (in whichever edition). Having more experienced players explain it to newbies also decreases confusion. I do agree that Gygax's intent was not properly understood by a lot of players initially, who thought HP was actual damage you could take. I've never known D&D to not be at the forefront of RPGs, but to be honest it isn't something I really paid attention to at any point so I could be wrong on that point.

And I see a lot of people here recommending other games instead of tweaking 5E so much... it happens all the time. The only reason I am loathe to try other games is because of the capital investment involved. I have a lot of money invested in 5E, and with reasonable house-rules I am fairly happy with it. I am certainly interested in other games, but most I have looked at online don't seem that great to my point of view or I can't find anything free to look at before I purchase.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

endurance for part, luck for another part, divine favor for another part. Gygaxian definition holds takes more luck to stop an attack you are vulnerable too for instance than one you arent... but you might also be more distressed by the dangerous one even if it only got close (psychic element of hit points and stress)

when you say luck and divine favor do you mean narratively or figuratively? because obviously luck is related to the rolling of dice, but divine favor implies you mean in the narrative itself. if that's the case why is it any better that the divine favor come in the form of making a lethal blow be nonlethal instead of simply acting in a way to keep your character alive dispute a growing assortment of massive injuries? i know which one sounds more epic to me, if were not going to be realistic, shouldn't we at least look cool while doing it? ac covers the cool dodges well enough to not need competition from hitpoints.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I didn't say that HPs came to seem ridiculous in the 90s. I said they were widely considered ridiculous

By then it was kinda a non-issue. D&D endured baseless criticism in the 90s for being "ROLL playing not ROLE playing." That it dared to have rules was bad enough.

My impression has been that since 3E brought D&D back into the primary position in RPGs the number of people complaining about HPs has grown much smaller

It was a non-issue in 3e, which like, maybe kicked a sentence to the issue.
The issue was bizarrely resurrected, this time reversing things and insisting D&D was intolerable because hps no longer represented charcters growing to brobdidnagian proportions as they gained HD.

The reason I see 5E's success as integral to a lot of posts here lately - is because in earlier times a lot of the people who are trying to fix things in 5E would just have played different games.

But the player base for 5E is now so much bigger than everything else that understandably people want to tweak 5E.

No, D&D has pretty nearly always been in that position relative to other RPGs, minor exceptions in the late 90s when TSR went bust, and c2010, when you could jump ship from D&D to D&D with the serial numbers filed off.

Tweaking - or heavily modding - D&D was something we did a lot of back in the day, for much the same reason, it's just, everyone starts with D&D, those who don't immediately end with it might seek out something different, but their chances of pulling together a group of a jalf-dozen other gamers who have found the same something different isn't much better than mangling D&D into something different and springing it in their players.

(Sorry if I sound old, bitter, or cynical - it's just 'cause I'm actually all three.)

 

[Garthanos]

when you say luck and divine favor do you mean narratively or figuratively? because obviously luck is related to the rolling of dice

That is erratic arguably player luck no this is the reliable luck of the heroic.

, but divine favor implies you mean in the narrative itself. if that's the case why is it any better that the divine favor come in the form of

Divine favor could come in any of a hundred ways why are you asking that it be a different one? for this particular manifestation, this is convenient to minimize the injury and allow continued service to the cause ... its obviously just one aspect of divine poking in. The narrative of the effect could indeed be different though see my next comment

 

[Garthanos]

Mayhaps I didnt understand your question though. Generally I see hit points variably dependent on the character in question and how they tend to defend themselves and what they rely on, I have Dragon Masters who are regenerative they take horrible wounds from attacks but ignore the damage and they do not last long at all as they have a gift that regenerates them but that gift runs on the same energies that will fatigue one of their skill focused allies when they dodge a little harder or is it the nebulous energies that fuel the lucky hero not really nailed down ... shrug. Plot POWARRRR

 

[Mallus]

Why is the opposite, ”ludonarrative harmony” valuable or desirable?

Early D&D competitors like Runequest had far less ludonarrative dissonance in their damage (and injury) modeling systems.

Yet D&D’s proved to be the more popular approach. Morever, its abstract ablative hit point system became the norm in games far removed from pen-and-paper RPGs, ie games that run on your phone, even.

Discuss!

 

[Garthanos]

Early D&D competitors like Runequest had far less ludonarrative dissonance in their damage (and injury) modeling systems.

RuneQuest lacked the sense of heroic scale out of the box AND tied some odd things in like talking humanoid ducks so while I am not thinking one can really nail it down really tight the first part modelling the heroic is something D&D did better.

 

[Garthanos]

And yeh RuneQuest could have enabled a reliable heroic luck and made it do things like prevent a defense that failed from failing when you really need it not to or some other effect it didnt as its goal was different.

Again it was also a different flavor bronze age fantasy with weirdness inserted and did not evoke Tolkien.

RQ mostly lacked the distinct archetypes and functional roles represented by classes too.