D&D 5E Starter Set Character Sheet Revealed!
Uller
Adventurer
This.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Sorry, but I don't think you're going to sway anyone with that argument. I mean, we are trying to create a simple model for the purposes of gameplay, right? That's why we aren't just applying all of the known physical laws to their fullest extent, and we're happy with just one number representing your Strength or Wisdom. Appeals to special relativity shouldn't be necessary.
I will grant that they could stand to be a bit more clear in where the numbers are coming from, and why one type of dodging gives you +AC while another type of dodging gives you +Reflex or +HP, but that's beside the point. Regardless of what reality is causing the +AC or +HP or whatever, and regardless of any debates or opinions on the matter of what represents what, you still have the consistency that X undefined property of the harpy results in it having 31 hit points. You can't change the mechanical reflection of that reality without either altering that undefined property or introducing inconsistency.
Careful! We're not even supposed to mention there's a curtain there, let alone look behind it!
Hussar
Legend
Saelorn said:
And that undefined property is gamism. The reason that the harpy has that many HP is because it's supposed to be a challenge for a fairly specific range of PC's. There is nothing being simulated here. And, the consistency only exists in that it's meant to be a foe for a fairly low level party.
Well, in fact, there is a whole edition of D&D that deploys the very idea I stated.
The point of the appeal to special relativity is simply to show that one property, which is constant, might be the function of two properties that are context-relative. In the case of special relativity, the space-time interval, which is constant, is a function of location and time, which are relative. In the case of a harpy in 4e, the toughness, which is constant, is a function of level and role, which are relative.
Thus, a high level minion, and a low-level solo, can have the same toughness, although the mechanical mode of expressing that toughness has changed: the high level minion has high attacks and defences and low hit points, the low-level solo has low attacks and defences and high hit points.
The 4e model is pretty simple. I've encountered many posts by people on these very boards describing how they use it. None of them seemed to find it hard to work with.
Not only is the 4e model not very complicated, it does not create any inconsistencies either: the harpy's toughness is held constant.
This simply isn't true. I can change the distance between Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes, at a certain time and place, by speeding up Moriarty. (But the Holmes-to-Watson space-time interval won't change.)
Likewise I can change a harpy's level and hit points by changing the level of her opponents. That doesn't change the constant reality of her toughness. It just changes those things which are the context-relative expressions of that toughness.
As I said, given that in the real world we have context relative properties of which constant properties are functions, yet the real world is (presumably) consistent, there can be no basis for denying the feasibility of rules that work along similar lines.
You may prefer to think of hit points as a constant, caused by certain hidden variables that you can't identify. But there is no basis on which you can argue that that is more consistent than my approach, or the only pathway to consistency. (And that is before we even get to the issue of what it means for a purely fictional entity to contain hidden variables within it. What do you tell the players when their PCs start doing experiments to discover these "hidden variables"?)
What next - are you going to start insisting that Sherlock Holmes doesn't really exist?!
MartyW
Explorer
Are we ready to move on yet?
So the Hit Point debate is really dead horse now because it is out of Second Winds.
I said it before. D&D is not a simulation. Hit points are an abstraction for fatigue, wounds, adrenaline, gumption, chutzpah, attitude, will power and pixie dust. So... can we talk about something else?
Mike Mearls has a really good rebuttal about the so called "infinite second wind problem" in the Starter Set unboxing video. Jump to minute 46:00.
http://www.twitch.tv/wotc_dnd/c/4523741
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Raging Owlbear -- http://ragingowlbear.blogspot.com
So the Hit Point debate is really dead horse now because it is out of Second Winds.
I said it before. D&D is not a simulation. Hit points are an abstraction for fatigue, wounds, adrenaline, gumption, chutzpah, attitude, will power and pixie dust. So... can we talk about something else?
Mike Mearls has a really good rebuttal about the so called "infinite second wind problem" in the Starter Set unboxing video. Jump to minute 46:00.
http://www.twitch.tv/wotc_dnd/c/4523741
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Raging Owlbear -- http://ragingowlbear.blogspot.com
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Are you really suggesting that the same harpy could either be a level 1 elite or level 17 minion, and a level 17 character is just so powerful that 1 point of damage from a level 17 character is the equivalent to 50 damage from a level 1 character?
I'll concede that the possibility is within the bounds of consistency provided by earlier editions, but you have to admit that the complexity is ludicrous. You would literally have to define each character thirty times, just to figure out how it interacts with all other characters. You could save an order of magnitude in complexity if you only defined everything once, as they did in every other edition.
It would be like describing a situation in terms of special relativity, where it could be simplified down to Newtonian physics with negligible loss in accuracy.
Mostly.
But no 4e character is going to do only 1 hp of damage on a hit except in the most extreme corner cases, so the minion's 1 hp is simply a handy convention - you could make it 5 hp, dropping your suggested ratio by 10, and changing nothing about how the game plays. Let's say, therefore, that one round of combat from a level 17 character is the equivalent of between 10 and 20 rounds from the 1st level one. This is why, at 1st level, the PCs in my game struggled to fight groups of half-a-dozen hobgoblins, whereas by 15th level they were able to take on phalanxes of hobgoblins.
In fact the edition exists. It is called 4e. And it is generally accepted that designing monsters and NPCs in 4e is an order of magnitude simpler than designing for 3E. (With hobgoblins, for instance, I have used them statted as standard creatures of around 3rd level, as minions of around 12th level, and the as swarms (phalanxes) of around 16th level. The game makes this very easy. You don't need to do it 30 times, in part because monsters remain useable over a range of levels without any major distortions, and in part because not every creature is encountered by every party at every level - apart from anything else, a party of PCs will finish the game after earning 300-odd standard encounters worth of XP, of which probably no more than 2/3 is going to come from combat even in a rather combat-heavy campaign.)
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