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

[DND_Reborn]

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).

Anyway, I reconciled any problems I had with the system by using the variant Injuries rule in the DMG (falling to 0 hp can give you a permanent wound) and expanding upon it a bit.

Yep, we use the injury rules as well. Adds a bit of flavor to the game and I recommend it as well.

 

[Don Durito]

Is this sort of thing a product of 5E's success?

I ask because HP are basically a break point of D&D. They'll always be there; they'll never really make sense; and there's no simple solution without hacking the game apart.

Surely you just have to live with them or play a different game?

(I guess one things I've seen change is that in the 90s they seemed widely derided and viewed as ridiculous -then we got to 3E and everyone agreed to pretend that HPs don't represent actual physical injury - something that sort of works as long as you agree not to think about it too deeply).

 

[Tony Vargas]

(I guess one things I've seen change is that in the 90s they seemed widely derided and viewed as ridiculous -then we got to 3E and everyone agreed to pretend that HPs don't represent actual physical injury - something that sort of works as long as you agree not to think about it too deeply).

just shift that 20 years. Hit points seemed rediculous (to wargamers who had it in for the nascent RPG concept, is my impression) and were roundly mocked, then EGG, in the 1e AD&D DMG, came up with the exhaustive defense of them that was a lot more nuanced and verbose, but, yeah, boiled down to not representing actual physical injury.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Is this sort of thing a product of 5E's success?

I ask because HP are basically a break point of D&D. They'll always be there; they'll never really make sense; and there's no simple solution without hacking the game apart.

Surely you just have to live with them or play a different game?

(I guess one things I've seen change is that in the 90s they seemed widely derided and viewed as ridiculous -then we got to 3E and everyone agreed to pretend that HPs don't represent actual physical injury - something that sort of works as long as you agree not to think about it too deeply).

(Ninja'd! by @Tony Vargas LOL )

This isn't due to 5E's success. HP have been controversial topic since the beginning. While many of us (myself included) mistakenly thought of HP as the damage the character can take in the beginning, it was never intended as such. A small fraction of HP represent actual physical injury, especially as HP grows due to leveling. This was apparent since the AD&D 1E DMG. This is not a new idea at all, certainly not since 3E.

We have mostly new players at our table (well, new as of 10 months ago) and they understand how HP works (at least how we use them) without issue. I completely understand the confusion other players have, such as the OP, with reconciling how HP and damage works.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

very little about the mechanics of damage in D&D reinforce the idea of hitpoints in the game being an expression of avoiding death by avoiding body harm but rather expressions of the body avoiding death by being harmed less as hitpoints of a character increase. this creates a ludonarrative dissonance between what the game is telling players hitpoints represent and how they actually lose those hitpoints.

It was kind of a long post, but yes, this is the central issue. The fluff about HP is trying to say one thing, but the actual reality of the mechanics says something else entirely.

And as the saying goes, "when your belief about the world disagrees with reality, your belief is wrong." Regardless of what the game tries to claim that HP represent, the actuality reality of the game world says something different.

The two methods of correcting this dissonance are to either: 1) change your beliefs about what HP represent; or 2) change all of the game mechanics until they actually support that belief. The second option is a lot more work, and even if you did make all of the necessary changes, I'm not sure that it would still qualify as D&D at that point.

After all D&D has never actually supported the claim that HP measured damage avoidance. There's never been an edition where you could be hit by a poisoned sword, and the poison didn't affect you while you still had HP remaining. There's never been an edition where you failed to fall over a cliff, because you had too many HP for the fall to kill you.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

i didn't really make this thesis to provide any alternatives to the narrative of how hitpoints work, the only alternatives i can think of are either uncreative and unoriginal or require basically altering how damage completely works in the game. i will share my thoughts on solving this issue here however and leave my analysis completely intact in its purely analytical form.

i find the way hitpoints are implied to function and the way damage is implied to function are inherently contradictory to each other, so the solution must follow the bias of one of these systems and make the other system reflect the one we favor. personally i favor damage because it is the most detailed system of the 2 and requires the least work to implement, in fact changing the system to work with damage as it is written simply requires a change in perspective. damage in 5e acts like it hurts the character that takes damage, so hitpoints can simply act like a characters durability. now a lot of people do not like this solution because it implies characters who pursue different career paths and characters who gain experience somehow gain access to durability to shrug off damage that would instantly kill them otherwise. its not realistic but how much of D&D is? but it is consistent with how damage works, and a simple rationalization of this change to hitpoints is that your characters are truly becoming epic heroes which reflect those of perseus, jason, achielles, hercules, and odyseus.

ironically the alternative i am going to write less about but it would be considerably more work, and that is to make damage function in a way to better reflect the hitpoint narrative, that might be more creative and original than what i propose, but at the same time i wonder if it would be more fun, perhaps it could be made fun, but on the face of it the criticisms i've brought up in my thesis is what would have to be addressed.

i propose these alternatives not because they are the only options available as i'm sure you are all aware, but simply because i follow the principle of change as little when i look at 5e (not necessarily other systems). as for homebrew anyone can do as much as they would like, but as a solution to the game's ludonarrative dissonance the solution should be minimum at best i think.

 

[DND_Reborn]

i didn't really make this thesis to provide any alternatives to the narrative of how hitpoints work, the only alternatives i can think of are either uncreative and unoriginal or require basically altering how damage completely works in the game. i will share my thoughts on solving this issue here however and leave my analysis completely intact in its purely analytical form.

i find the way hitpoints are implied to function and the way damage is implied to function are inherently contradictory to each other, so the solution must follow the bias of one of these systems and make the other system reflect the one we favor. personally i favor damage because it is the most detailed system of the 2 and requires the least work to implement, in fact changing the system to work with damage as it is written simply requires a change in perspective. damage in 5e acts like it hurts the character that takes damage, so hitpoints can simply act like a characters durability. now a lot of people do not like this solution because it implies characters who pursue different career paths and characters who gain experience somehow gain access to durability to shrug off damage that would instantly kill them otherwise. its not realistic but how much of D&D is? but it is consistent with how damage works, and a simple rationalization of this change to hitpoints is that your characters are truly becoming epic heroes which reflect those of perseus, jason, achielles, hercules, and odyseus.

ironically the alternative i am going to write less about but it would be considerably more work, and that is to make damage function in a way to better reflect the hitpoint narrative, that might be more creative and original than what i propose, but at the same time i wonder if it would be more fun, perhaps it could be made fun, but on the face of it the criticisms i've brought up in my thesis is what would have to be addressed.

i propose these alternatives not because they are the only options available as i'm sure you are all aware, but simply because i follow the principle of change as little when i look at 5e (not necessarily other systems). as for homebrew anyone can do as much as they would like, but as a solution to the game's ludonarrative dissonance the solution should be minimum at best i think.

First off, thanks for making that shorter LOL. I am much more inclined to read it all and participate.

I am all on-board for alternatives. I would begin with the idea if you want to make HP actual physical damage and nothing else, there are two things to keep in mind (probably obvious, but just in case).

1. HP would be drastically fewer unless you are planning an uber-heroic style of play (not my cup of tea, but nothing wrong with it either).
2. Healing should be much slower! You aren't going to recover physical wounds and injuries overnight.

I'm interested to see what you do, especially if you can do it succinctly.

 

[Don Durito]

Off by 20 years. Hit points seemed rediculous (to wargamers who had it in for the nascent RPG concept, is my impression) and were roundly mocked, then EGG, in the 1e AD&D DMG, came up with the exhaustive defense of them that was a lot more nuanced and verbose, but, yeah, boiled down to not representing actual physical injury.

(Ninja'd! by @Tony Vargas LOL )

This isn't due to 5E's success. HP have been controversial topic since the beginning. While many of us (myself included) mistakenly thought of HP as the damage the character can take in the beginning, it was never intended as such. A small fraction of HP represent actual physical injury, especially as HP grows due to leveling. This was apparent since the AD&D 1E DMG. This is not a new idea at all, certainly not since 3E.

We have mostly new players at our table (well, new as of 10 months ago) and they understand how HP works (at least how we use them) without issue. I completely understand the confusion other players have, such as the OP, with reconciling how HP and damage works.

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.

 

[Garthanos]

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

Exactly!

 

[Arch-Fiend]

i think the pressure to be realistic is kinda something that the designers of D&D have always been under, which is understandable but not something they should really cave into. this is a game where you can have a greatsword "hit" you for maximum damage 8 times at level 20 and not die later for any reason unless your reduced below 0hp and whatever the editions rules for dying begin to apply to you.

D&D doesn't need to be defensive for what it represents itself as, a game about characters becoming demigods, and it starts much earlier than 20th level.