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

[Don Durito]

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!

Runequest is a game I haven't played. However...

• one advantage of HP is that they don't really represent anything. They are, as is often said, a pacing mechanism.
• As a result they're the perfect mechanic for a zero to hero game. They do a good job of tiering monsters.
• They're simple to track - the maths is simple - you're not tracking separate wounds for hit locations etc.
• there's no death spiral - it's like a game of tennis rather than a game of Basketball - in theory no matter how far you are behind you can still win right up until you can't.
• All of this pretty much makes them the perfect mechanism for a game of resource management and attrition - which is D&D.
• They're abstractness, once one learns not to think about it, faciliates some of the basic assumptions of D&D i.e. that you can be in the epicentre of a fireball and not be dead (or that right in the centre you can still somehow save from half-damage.)

On the other hand:

• it's not all that clear what actually happens - other systems with hit locations can create a more concrete fiction.
• "Critical existence failure" - the "I'm fine until suddenly I'm dead" situation - doesn't feel realistic and D&D does a poor job of really getting across the feeling that you're PC is heroically struggling to carry on despite wounds.
• The maths may be simple but it's still maths - a system such as Savage Worlds cuts out almost all of this maths.

In conclusion, I think I would say that HPs proved to be the most popular approach because they're the best approach for D&D style of gaming. They are the system that best handles resource management and attrition, zero to hero scaling and allows the illusion of plausibility to exist in the face of implausible situations (What exactly does your longsword do to that Tarrasque?).

So HPs are popular because D&D is popular. (There is an element of circularity to this of course - one could argue that one of the reasons that D&D is popular is because they use HPs, but it's a part of a whole ecosystem.)

 

[Fanaelialae]

HP have always been explained as being largely about damage avoidance and grit, and the explanation works well enough IMO.

D&D characters are larger than life, particularly after a few levels - they're closer to action movie heroes than something dark and gritty. Sure a hero who has been poisoned can't dodge poison damage, but they can oftentimes badass their way through it. If they shouldn't be able to completely tough their way through the poison, just slap on the Poisoned condition.

It doesn't work so well as a mechanic if you want a highly realistic setting (as opposed to a world of heroic PCs) but realism has never been a focus of D&D. HP as a mechanic is simple, effective, and moreover fun (because feeling like a movie action hero is generally not a bad thing, even if it isn't everyone's preference).

 

[Charlaquin]

The alternative to abstract hit points is a death spiral.

And while a death spiral is tragically-fun (useful for drama or squad-based wargames) they aren't heroically-fun (useful for playing a single character who is a hero).

Another alternative is rocket tag - where actual hits are relatively rare, but it only takes one hit, maybe two if you’re lucky, to take you down. That would be a more direct mechanical interpretation of the narrative that abstract HP creates. Not sure it would be much fun to play though.

 

[Don Durito]

Another alternative is rocket tag - where actual hits are relatively rare, but it only takes one hit, maybe two if you’re lucky, to take you down. That would be a more direct mechanical interpretation of the narrative that abstract HP creates. Not sure it would be much fun to play though.

No, I think you're right. It wouldn't. The sense of incremental progress is important to D&D. That pacing mechanism matters.

Savage Worlds works a little like that. PCs (and some NPCs) have 3 wounds. Most NPCs and allies (extras have one). But Savage Worlds is designed for combats where the PCs may face larger numbers of foes and may have allies on their side so resolution needs to be quick and require little book keeping. And there are Bennies which work as a metacurrency to help soak damage.

In Savage Worlds rather than the adventure climaxing toward a battle with a big monster it's more likely to climax towards a large skirmish with bigger numbers on both sides. It's a system for doing something like Seven Samurai where the PCs can train up the villagers and have them join in against the bandits without the combat becoming an endless slog.

It's why the whole ecosystem matters.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you want a game that narratively tells you what happens via mechanics then you will find hitpoint very dissonance inducing.

If you want a game where you know the mechanical effects and create your own narrative such that those mechanical effects make sense to have occurred in the fiction then hitpoints are avoid nearly any kind of dissonance imaginable.

 

[FrogReaver]

Another alternative is rocket tag - where actual hits are relatively rare, but it only takes one hit, maybe two if you’re lucky, to take you down. That would be a more direct mechanical interpretation of the narrative that abstract HP creates. Not sure it would be much fun to play though.

Probably would be more fun if done right.

 

[Charlaquin]

Probably would be more fun if done right.

It depends on the system. I don’t think it would be fun for D&D. Chronicles of Darkness kind of works that way, and I enjoyed those games for a long time. Like Don Dorito said, the whole ecosystem matters.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

D&D 3e with saving throw magic always felt like rocket tag, and some spells there was just no saving against like control weather summoning a tornado

 

[Azzy]

If you're thinking about hit points and trying to rationalize them, you're doing D&D wrong. Just sit back, relax, and don't think too hard about it—that'll improve the game experience for you.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

i mostly made this thesis because of everyone telling me i was wrong to introduce DR to armor in homebrew because "thats not how hitpoints work" but i also wanted to explain why it makes more sense for armor to function as dr when damage in the game functions more like it injures your body rather than your character losing stamina from dodging a deadly attack or a metaphysical hands of the gods protecting you until the other guy's gods win and you end up dead