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

[Garthanos]

@Arch-Fiend = Perhaps I failed my read statement fully check .. we are closer to agreeing than not, but I do think maybe I am just less picky ie fear effect might be just the thought "damn I dodged that attack it might have killed me" and breaks out in a sweat, nobody sees it and its stress that adds up.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

@Arch-Fiend = Perhaps I failed my read statement fully check .. we are closer to agreeing than not, but I do think maybe I am just less picky ie fear effect might be just the thought "damn I dodged that attack it might have killed me" and breaks out in a sweat, nobody sees it and its stress that adds up.

well, i think it might be best explained that at dinner time i dont like my peas and mash touching

ive also been arguing a lot on the word of the rules here and you've really brought up more of a homebrew point with combining them. if we dont combine them i just wonder what the point of having hitpoints removed with the narrative your character is now has their will to live reduced along the context of fear if fear is already a mechanic of the game. you've argued a bit that it represents a lesser cost compared to how powerful the frightened condition is to the game, but i would ask to what extent is it lesser? is losing 20% of your hp less than frightened? 50%? 70%? damage doesn't really work well as a balancing point vs a static condition because a static condition is unchanging in what it does to your character, while damage is a veritable on the spectrum of 100% alive to 0% alive.

i disagree that fear is evidence for lass will to live, its actually a reflection of a higher will to live, but maybe fear isnt being used as a will to live connection but instead mental durability

 

[Fanaelialae]

ah sorry right, forgot about that. so the game does actually specify the quantities of each ingredient in hitpoints very vaguely. which is interesting as that was a contention earlier. so essentially above half hitpoints is all mental durability, will to live, and luck (whether it makes sense or not, though ill assume these guidelines are as intended but subject to the dm's will, interpretation, and how the game progresses considering ANYTHING can happen in combat). below half minor injuries so thats when physical durability pops up, though its strange that the game kinda underemphasizes physical durability here, though one could argue physical durability was at play in the upper half too based on the interpretation i argued against in the first post of this thread, but i think i debunked that one pretty good. once you take 0hp you take a serious injury and are down. interesting how theres no room for multiple serious injuries regardless of your level, your class, your constitution, ect, all related concepts to hitpoints which impact what number of hitpoints you have seems to have no baring on how serious the injury you can sustain is, which even further reinforces the idea i argued against, its almost like it doesnt make sense based on what we know about damage.

heres the thing though, the type of damage that is done to you relates more strongly to some ingredients in hitpoints than others, i pointed out ones that wernt consistent simply because it didn't make sense, but thats not saying that something that only makes sense shouldn't be the last kind of damage your character takes before they die. psychic damage could be the last damage you take before you die, it makes a lot of sense then that what happens to your character is that they are reduced to a coma that they fail to wake up from after 3 death saves. it could be that necrotic damage could be the last damage you take before you die, and while necrotic damage does imply that it can harm flesh, ripping ones soul from their body is also quite a narrative for necrotic damage as the last damage a character takes before they die, especially if its ripped by a creature that can turn it into a wraith.

im not against some types of damage applying to hitpoints in different ways than physical durability, what im against is nonsensical narratives created by some damage types being used against the components of hitpoints that really dont fit or would fit better one way rather than the other.

By default, you're free to narrate the damage however it makes most sense. Even in the case of a character that has greater than half hp, it only says that they typically show no injury. The implication there is that sometimes they might have a visible injury (such as when suffering a small wound for the purposes of poison damage).

There are tons of things that are abstracted and simplified in D&D. For example, many poisons should have a delayed onset time. However, unless you have a computer tracking everything (or are the rare person who can track dozens of things at a time in their head without error) that's just extra overhead at the gaming table.

Plus, it's not that fun. Who wants to wait 5 rounds to see their poisoned dagger have an impact? Additionally, there's balance to consider. If the average fight lasts only 3-4 rounds then that 5 round onset poison arguably needs to have an overwhelming impact, since most combats will be over before it comes into play. However, then you end up with players who shoot a boss with a poisoned arrow and then run away and wait for the poison to take it down. Makes sense from a CAW perspective, but it's anticlimactic as heck. It reminds me a statement I once heard, something to the effect of: "Given the option, players will optimize all the fun out of a game."

Personally, the reason I dislike the idea of meat points is because I've had ridiculous experiences with DMs who preferred that outlook. They would describe a 50 hp bite from a dragon as 'ripping into your barbarian's arm, which is left hanging by only a few threads of sinew'. My character would still have 75 HP left and I'd respond, "okay, well, I heft my two handed axe and return the favor". It's absurd because if my character's arm is barely attached he shouldn't be able to wield a two handed axe, for obvious reasons. Moreover, he should probably be on the ground bleeding out, not still in the fight with the bulk of his hp. It turned what was supposed to be a serious campaign into essentially the scene with the black knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail. It ruined the verisimilitude for me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

By default, you're free to narrate the damage however it makes most sense. Even in the case of a character that has greater than half hp, it only says that they typically show no injury. The implication there is that sometimes they might have a visible injury (such as when suffering a small wound for the purposes of poison damage).

Or, a not immediately-visible injury. How often does a movie/TV character get through a fight visibly unscathed, then, later, there's a close-up showing that, oh no! they were hit by the poison weapon/bit by the zombie/exposed to the disease/curse/whatever, afterall?

 

[Arch-Fiend]

By default, you're free to narrate the damage however it makes most sense. Even in the case of a character that has greater than half hp, it only says that they typically show no injury. The implication there is that sometimes they might have a visible injury (such as when suffering a small wound for the purposes of poison damage).

There are tons of things that are abstracted and simplified in D&D. For example, many poisons should have a delayed onset time. However, unless you have a computer tracking everything (or are the rare person who can track dozens of things at a time in their head without error) that's just extra overhead at the gaming table.

Plus, it's not that fun. Who wants to wait 5 rounds to see their poisoned dagger have an impact? Additionally, there's balance to consider. If the average fight lasts only 3-4 rounds then that 5 round onset poison arguably needs to have an overwhelming impact, since most combats will be over before it comes into play. However, then you end up with players who shoot a boss with a poisoned arrow and then run away and wait for the poison to take it down. Makes sense from a CAW perspective, but it's anticlimactic as heck. It reminds me a statement I once heard, something to the effect of: "Given the option, players will optimize all the fun out of a game."

Personally, the reason I dislike the idea of meat points is because I've had ridiculous experiences with DMs who preferred that outlook. They would describe a 50 hp bite from a dragon as 'ripping into your barbarian's arm, which is left hanging by only a few threads of sinew'. My character would still have 75 HP left and I'd respond, "okay, well, I heft my two handed axe and return the favor". It's absurd because if my character's arm is barely attached he shouldn't be able to wield a two handed axe, for obvious reasons. Moreover, he should probably be on the ground bleeding out, not still in the fight with the bulk of his hp. It turned what was supposed to be a serious campaign into essentially the scene with the black knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail. It ruined the verisimilitude for me.

so its more of a guideline than a rule (thought if we start bringing up how the book basicly claims everything about it are guidelines rather than rules we wont be able to argue about anything)

im aware the game makes concessions of compromise between reality and gameplay. back in the day poison wasent hp damage but ability damage, and while there was initial damage there was also secondary damage every minute afterword, but that too is a compromise between reality and abstraction. massive overwhelming pain is something that immediate effects of poison can represent though, some venoms are very fast acting and disablingly painful, which is probably the best argument for poison damage applied to mental durability or even more so the will to live if will to live is interpenetrated as the will to preserve your own survival due to some distraction and thus being at risk of fatal blow.

sure the idea of meat doesn't make much sense when its presented in a senseless way narratively. however if the added details of your characters arm "is left hanging by only a few threads of sinew" are removed and downplayed into "leaving a massive gash in your arm spouting blood" then the description given for the damage is likewise more abstract. the issue with the way your dm described the damage being taken by your barbarian is that it clearly added an element that could not be interpreted as anything but disarming yet the mechanics showed no signs of it. in that instance what happened was ludonarrative dissonance, and ive never claimed hitpoints as physical durability could not create ludonarrative dissonance. ive argued that hitpoints as physical durability as default has the least instances of ludonarrative dissonance, but one could easily fail to describe hitpoints in this way without falling to the same trap as representing the effect of damage in other ways. one can not treat 12 physical damage against a 1st level character and 12 physical damage against a 20th level character the same way. typically i don't really describe physical damage as disabling or lethal until the rules actually give a reason for it. 12 damage to a character with 13 hitpoints is a critical wound, 12 damage to a character with 300 hitpoints is a minor wound, never disabling or lethal until some other element of the game implies it is.

 

[Umbran]

so its more of a guideline than a rule (thought if we start bringing up how the book basicly claims everything about it are guidelines rather than rules we wont be able to argue about anything)

GASP! The horror! Rather than argue about who is right, we could... I dunno, maybe discuss the strengths and weaknesses about various approaches and interpretations, without trying to have a Winner and Loser of an argument!

The mind boggles!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Because this thread isn't confusing or talking in circles enough, I'd like to circle back to my first reply...

Had to look that one up, it sounds, at a glance, to be more about theme than simulation or abstraction.
So a classic example would be DM trying to run a campaign about selfless heroes struggling against overwhelming odds to save the land from terrible evil, while the game gives exp for acquiring treasure, power for acquiring magic items, and the best chance of defeating enemies when jumping them with overwhelming force then hiding away to recharge spells.

Really, having looked up the term, I don't even think this thread /is/ about "ludonarrative dissonance."

Rather, it's whinging over degrees abstraction.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

Because this thread isn't confusing or talking in circles enough, I'd like to circle back to my first reply...

Really, having looked up the term, I don't even think this thread /is/ about "ludonarrative dissonance."

Rather, it's whinging over degrees abstraction.

a few people have actually brought things up about my first post on this thread, but most people havnt and ive pointed out multiple times that arguing over what subordinate concepts that different types of damage relate to or not and whether hitpoints can be quantified is not really about the same thing my initial thesis was about and i even later went back to my initial thesis and stated how its by in large talking about an unofficial interpretation of hitpoints while the majority of the argument about abstractions has been about what the official interpretation of hitpoints can/should be. mostly with people telling me my interpretation is wrong and me saying "its only wrong sometimes but heres when its wrong "A. B. C." but heres where it fits as the best interpretation "D. E. F"" and then mostly people telling me im wrong about "D. E. F" even though it would invalidate the rest of the alphabet including the ones before it if i was wrong. furthermore saying im wrong to even bring the alphabet up and that no one could actually connect the alphabet in a meaningful way to the language being used.

but your right, most arguments about abstractions havnt been about the topic of this thread. i was annoyed at that a bit but i kinda just guess that is how conversations on internet forums go, they never stay on topic forever when possible closely related tangents are ones other people care more about.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

but hey im willing to argue about anything, maybe someone will find it useful

 

[Umbran]

Really, having looked up the term, I don't even think this thread /is/ about "ludonarrative dissonance."

Rather, it's whinging over degrees abstraction.

Well, you cannot talk about whether the mechanical and narrative bits are aligned without coming to agreement on the abstraction first.

Of course, since folks in general don't agree on the abstraction, that means you never get to consensus to then talk about whether those abstractions are dissonant with the fiction.