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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6351084" data-attributes="member: 42582">I completely agree with this. It is just this sort of concern that motivated the classic sim fantasy RPGs: C&C, RM, RQ, etc. They were reactions to the lack of process modelling in D&D.As Hussar replied, it's not a question of granularity. It's not that D&D lacks detail in answering these questions. Rather, it doesn't answer them at all. It doesn't distinguish between a miss due to the attack stumbling, a parry, a dodge, etc. Nor, in its damage rules, does it distinguish different sorts of injuries, exhaustion etc. The combat rules in fact have only two states - alive and dead - but determine the application of those states via an ablation mechanic that does not actually model any physical process in the gameworld. ("Losing hit points" is a game state; it's not a physiological state, nor the model of any such state.)As Hussar said, "diminished capacity to take more damage" is a description of a game-mechanical state. It does not describe an ingame state, because there is no state of a physiological system which is "a diminished capacity to take more damage". Killing someone with a sword is not like abrading a plank with a plane, or chipping away at a stone block with a chisel.As for the scientific experiment, Gygax doesn't agree with you. For instance, in his DMG he expressly denies that the gaining of XP is a model of what is happening in the gameworld, or that the action economy for combat is a model of what is happening in the gameworld. He explains that they are game mechanical devices to enhance playability and make for a fun game. If you have PCs or NPCs try and subvert that by setting up "hit point" experiments you won't discvoer truths of the ingame fiction - you'll just spoil the game.I think it's more than that. For RQ, RM etc it's not just about plausible results. It's about a plausible process. The objection to hit points isn't just that they're unrealistic (say, in relation to bow shots or falling). It's also that in D&D combat you don't actually know what is going on.At least, that's how I read and experienced it.The first one I know of personally - which I'm sure was not the first one - is from 1980: Roger Musson's White Dwarf article "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive". The evidence that they took place earlier is (i) the existence of RQ and C&S, and (ii) Gygax's anti-simulationist remarks in his DMG. He wasn't talking in the abstract; he was taking a stand in debates that were live at the time in the fantasy RPGing scene.What has changed over the past 10 to 15 years is that people have somehow come to identify D&D as a sim system, whereas throughout the 80s and 90s it was recognised that the sim games were those like RM, RQ etc. I think this is the influence of 3E.</blockquote>

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