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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7843385" data-attributes="member: 996">Well, an emergent quality of the game, that emerges from those mechanical & other properties ('victory conditions') and how players use them. Doesn't seem in any way abstract, though.Well, that's a minimal look at the game play - the ludic part.  Where the narrative part? The DM might try to impose a narrative like the "story side" - set-up and cut-scenes and whatnot - of a video game.  But he can also run a total sandbox that's prettymuch /just/ the gameplay, with no preconceived storyline or theme.Because, until we establish that there's even a "story of the game" for the gameplay to be dissonant with, I don't think we even have a case of Ludonarrative dissonance.  Just a case of picking at abstract mechanics in mere dissatisfaction with how abstract they are. It's as simple as it is abstract: they're harder to kill.  Barbarians are harder to kill than Fighters are harder to kill than Wizards.Not directly, but skill/experience/class could feed directly into the mental portion of durability, for instance, and/or with will to live. I mean, class gives you all kindsa stuff - take it up with Class. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I omitted mentions of healing and 0 hps, because they were mechanical.I mean, you can but it won't mean anything, because you're going into a lower level of abstraction to do so. I am aware of no such requirement, whatsoever.  Where are you getting that?  That there are even necessarily "related" or "subordinate" concepts to an abstract idea or rule, let alone that they must have relationships to eachother?I'm sorry, but none of that makes a sword-swing or a magic missile a creature, nor a creature an attack. They're still very different things.  Like I said, there /may/ be a Save-or-die mechanic lurking somewhere in 5e, and the should be a rule for death by drowning, that may well not involve hps.  Those could be held up as inconsistencies. But, the humble D&D hit point could be used to denominate any sort of lethal attack or hazard. The hit points of a creature are those things.The hit points of damage done by a fireball are none of those things.  Because attacks aren't creatures. It doesn't matter and it doesn't need to, because the resolution of an attack leading to damage reducing a creature's hit point total all happens at the same level of abstraction, a level /higher/ than, say 'physical durability' by itself.You're not finding or uncovering, let alone proving inconsistencies, you're manufacturing them, by examining the function of a mechanic at a lower level than that at which it actually functions.What would an example of such an abstraction between "properties" (in the sense of ownership  or the sense of qualities? not sure what you're getting at) and "verb use" Not important, because that's happening at a lower level of abstraction.  If you attack a creature with fire  - that is neither resistant nor vulnerable to fire - it's hp are reduced by the basic hit-point-denominated value of the damage inflicted.  A creature that is resistant takes less, vulnerable, more.  That's as for as the function of the damage type go.  If the creature is not reduced to half it's maximum hit points, it's not even supposedly showing "visible signs of wear" so you can't say it's burned (badly enough that it's visible, anyway) let alone 'burned more badly' than the next creature also not reduced to at least half hps.  That could be true if the creature were resistant or vulnerable or neither.  Heck, a resistant creature with not many hps could be killed outright by a fireball that doesn't even visibly burn a much more powerful creature that /is/ vulnerable.It means closer to being killed. Because it's an abstract measure of how close it is to being killed.Seriously.It's an abstraction of that state, to a simple total number of hit points. Well, that's at the hit point level of abstract (for once) yes.Can be, because they'd be more shaken by being /nearly/ killed by something they know is particularly deadly to them. (Seeing what's stabbing you is not the only way to know you've been stabbed!)Not so clearly.  But, sure, that will could be eroded more rapidly when already harmed by something deadlier to you than other things.You can certainly 'run out of luck' and, depending on where the attack leaves you relative to your max hps, could have received a physical injury, as well - be it too minor to be visible to those around you, visible 'signs of wear' (assuming you're not also invisible), or, if dropped to 0 something more serious.But none of that is deterministic, it's all below the level of abstraction of the system that resolved the attack, assigned the damage, and noted the consequences of the hp reduction.  So it could be whatever combination of the above makes sense in context.Not 'you can't' like it's difficult or impossible, but "you can't" like it's meaningless. Though, yes, more abstractions (that are at a lower level of abstraction) may well be there, you can also get down to concrete things. But you're not examining the original abstraction at that point it exists at it's own level of abstraction.  It could be examined from a higher level, how it fits into the rest of the system, for instance, but not at a lower level, because it doesn't exist there.</blockquote>

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