Zero Buzz on 5E...Is It Dead Out The Gate?

[name_here]

The thing with hitpoints as plot armor is that the stuff to restore hit points is explicitly healing magic that fixes injuries, plus the whole deal with rider effects. Now, you can argue that twenty points of damage to a first level guy is getting stabbed straight through the heart while twenty points of damage to a twentieth level fighter is a light gash on the arm, although that still raises the question of why healing magic is proportionally less effective, but it definitely corresponds to injury.

There actually are games where they have a separate plot armor/exhaustion track, but DnD is not one of those.

[Fwib]

HP are quantum, both a wave and a particle, both wounds and luck running out, sometimes neither.

[Voss]

Still doesn't help, because you repeating that you like some fluff and don't like other fluff matters even less.

Look, I really don't give a fuck if you want to summarize my arguments in a flippantly dismissive fashion. The problem is that you suck at it, and everytime you try you end up mocking a strawman. That is unacceptable. You did it last time we argued in this very thread five fucking pages ago, and you have done it again. The argument is not that "my fluff is better than your fluff," it is that "fluff X accurately describes the mechanical effects of hitpoints, and some other fluff doesn't." You know, the exact sentence you quoted next in your post. So since you clearly know what the actual argument is and are addressing it, what possible excuse could you have for prefacing that with a strawman that you obviously know is a strawman? That you are a willfully dishonest assface and don't care? One PL is enough, thanks.

Eh, whatever. You seem to believe that repeated statement (for some reason) represents objective truth. It doesn't. It is your preference, stating your argument. Reading it, I see your preference of what hit points are, and a rejection of other fluff. That is literally all that statement conveys to me.

Example:
You can fluff falling damage as 100% pure splatter damage, but you can also (as the monk explicitly does) call out some lucky conditions or clever maneuvering or whatever bullshit action heroes do when they're jumping out of planes without parachutes.

Are you trying to argue that hitpoints can't be physical wounds because there are no wound penalties?

Nope, I was pointing out that the position you just took and I was responding to was absurd.

Beyond that, there are a number of usages of the hitpoint application that conceptually depend on whether or not a physical injury occurs. Examples are littered in this thread. At some point you're going to have to fucking declare that someone is amazingly unrealistically tough, because that is how lava damage and hitpoints work together.

Uh, yeah. They are unrealistically tough. They are also lucky. That's why I've been consistently arguing that hit points are physical toughness, plot armor and luck all mixed together.

As for the first part, yeah, and so? Those specific usages with rider effects are physical damage. That changes nothing, and does not dictate that every source of damage is physical damage. Luck, fate, favor of the gods, whatever. D&D has consistently been 'sometimes you take the sword, sometimes you duck.' Welcome to abstract game concepts that don't really interact between the table and 'in universe' reality.

If the fluff is that level 20 fighters can just take a ballista bolt to the chest and not give a fuck, that is the in-universe explanation

That... isn't an explanation. That is just the situation. The in-universe explanation is 'hit points are an abstracted mix of physical damage and luck, and that is why the fighter survives.' You can easily tell the difference between setting up a situation and giving an explanation because you go on to explain that Superman survives because superpowers.

[Username17]

Voss, can you name a single rule anywhere in the game that crucially depends on characters not taking literal damage from a damaging effect? If not, could you kindly shut the fuck up?

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Eh, whatever. You seem to believe that repeated statement (for some reason) represents objective truth. It doesn't. It is your preference, stating your argument. Reading it, I see your preference of what hit points are, and a rejection of other fluff. That is literally all that statement conveys to me.

Admitting you are an idiot is the first step. Let's see if we can get you to the next step of your recovery. Here are two sentences:
"I like fluff X more than fluff Y. Here is an argument for why."
"Fluff X is more consistent with the results of mechanic Z than fluff y. Here is an argument for why."
Do you understand that these are in fact two different claims, will be supported with different arguments, and will be refuted by different arguments? Do you understand that summarily dismissing the second as the badwrongfun of the first is completely off base? I am arguing the second and you disagree wiith me, but the fact that you disagree with someone does not magically transform their position into something it is not. That is called a strawman. Stop fucking doing it.

Example:
You can fluff falling damage as 100% pure splatter damage, but you can also (as the monk explicitly does) call out some lucky conditions or clever maneuvering or whatever bullshit action heroes do when they're jumping out of planes without parachutes.

What the fucking fuck. An ability named slowfall that uses nearby surfaces to slow your fall and mechanically reduces incoming hitpoint damage is not an example of how when you take hitpoint damage you're avoiding it with plot armor. That is exactly the opposite of a thing that would make sense.

Nope, I was pointing out that the position you just took and I was responding to was absurd.

No, you weren't. You claimed that critical existence failure suggested that hitpoints were not physical wounds. That depends on an hidden assumption of realizarm. If I tell you to shove your realizarm up your ass (like I did), then critical existence failure and hitpoints as physical wounds are not the least bit incompatible, and the thing you said stops holding any water whatsoever. It's a great big nothing.

As for the first part, yeah, and so? Those specific usages with rider effects are physical damage. That changes nothing, and does not dictate that every source of damage is physical damage. Luck, fate, favor of the gods, whatever.

Hitpoints represent physical injury. If you declare them to be plot armor (even partially), then you are dumped into the absurd position of trying to describe how the plot is protecting someone from the bottom of that cliff and why a poisoned weapon is so much more accurate than an unpoisoned one and how characters even fucking know how close to death they are. Those are all stupid.

Congratulations! After three pages of arguing, you are finally caught up to the start of the argument.

Please fuck all the way off. Really. This is crazy dumb.

[Voss]

Yes, it is. You've never moved beyond your absurd decree of opinion as fact to present an actual argument- just more opinion. Just opinion masquerading as ultimate revealed truth. Go thump some bibles or something. The fact that you think I am arguing for realism suggests to me that you're crazy and delusional.





Frank, it seriously doesn't matter. You can do poison damage with a scratch as well as a deep stab. Nothing in the game cares, which is the point. If something takes 5 hp away it doesn't matter if someone literally stabbed you or depleted your fate, are your luck, or took away some of the gods' favor. As far as the game cares it took away 5 hp and that is all. Nothing in the game checks for literal damage, it is entirely identical regardless of how it is described. Some people have developed a preference for literal damage, some people like an elaborate description of ducking, near misses and luck. The game entirely supports both with a lean towards a mix of the two.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I've heard an anecdote (probably from lurking theRPGsite), that between the transition from Chainmail to D&D, the idea for Hit Points was taken from a system for ablative armor in a naval ship wargame.

Whether this is true or not, it does simplify the caulking process for me. You can be one cannonball away from bailing, but the ship is still functioning until it hits. Except, extrapolated to humans. People aren't losing eyes and lying invalid in beds for months and saving their paychecks in order to have a priest restore missing limbs, because D&D has never supported critical injuries, only structural integrity and ability damage. Considering D&D's popularity over Rolemaster and RuneQuest and so on, perhaps that's for a reason.

[virgil]

Most of the comics for D&D I've seen that accurately portray the rules make the PCs act like Jason Voorhees, as well as a couple actual games (especially for the more blood thirsty DMs).

Most games I've seen portray hit points in a sort of cinematic quantum state. Unless the attack needs to touch you, such as poisoned blades or waking someone from sleep, then it's just a bunch of near misses and minor scuff marks. Healing magic works like anime, where your "fighting spirit" is tied to your health. Long story short: RPG hit points are treated like cRPG hit points

[DSMatticus]

Yes, it is. You've never moved beyond your absurd decree of opinion as fact to present an actual argument- just more opinion. Just opinion masquerading as ultimate revealed truth. Go thump some bibles or something. The fact that you think I am arguing for realism suggests to me that you're crazy and delusional.

One: you don't know what the word opinion means, either. Your "that's, like, just your opinion, man" argument is fucking embarrassing. Whether or not the mechanics and the fluff are consistent is not an opinion or a matter of preference or even in anyway subjective. It's a statement with a truth value, and you can argue what that truth value is, as we are doing. You could offer a substantive argument that hitpoints are consistent with hitpoints (you haven't and can't), or you could declare that having fluff-mechanic consistency is a matter of preference (which is... basically true, in the way that I can't technically tell you getting punched in the nuts is objectively badwrongfun). But you can't declare that whether or not the mechanics produce results that contradict the fluff is a matter of opinion. That's fucking insane. Whether or not 4e martial dailies match the fluff they represent is not a matter of opinion.

Two: you actually fucking said that critical existence failure is indicative of hitpoints as plot armor. That is a realizarm argument. I do not know or care whether or not you realize you are fapping to realizarm, the fact is that you are talking about realizarm and your dick is in your hand. If that's not the sort of thing you intended to do, well, maybe you should stop making stupid fucking arguments.

Frank, it seriously doesn't matter. You can do poison damage with a scratch as well as a deep stab. Nothing in the game cares, which is the point. If something takes 5 hp away it doesn't matter if someone literally stabbed you or depleted your fate, are your luck, or took away some of the gods' favor. As far as the game cares it took away 5 hp and that is all. Nothing in the game checks for literal damage, it is entirely identical regardless of how it is described.

Hitpoints represent physical injury. If you declare them to be plot armor (even partially), then you are dumped into the absurd position of trying to describe how the plot is protecting someone from the bottom of that cliff and why a poisoned weapon is so much more accurate than an unpoisoned one and how characters even fucking know how close to death they are. Those are all stupid.

Note how a bunch of those examples specifically apply in the context of mixing plot armor and physical wounds as well as just plot armor, which is exactly why I said them. And then said them again. And then quoted myself saying them.

But beyond what's already been mentioned, if you are really going to mix plot armor and hitpoints then you are declaring that a man who can survive a lava bath can die solely to dropping a torch on his foot after a full recovery. You are declaring that not only do the characters not understand the limits of their own survivability, it's not even a fixed or knowable quantity to begin with. Which is exactly the sort of inconsistency between the mechanics and the narrative that has been at the center of this argument the entire goddamn time.

[Voss]

Again, the argument is not that the fluff says X. It is that some fluff accurately describes the mechanical effects of hitpoints, and some other fluff doesn't. And responding "this is the fluff they used" does not interact with that argument in anyway. It is a non-sequitur. It addresses nothing and is evidence of nothing.

The mechanics of hit points? The mechanics of hit points is that nothing happens until you drop unconscious at zero and dead at some point between zero, -10, -Con, or some other number depending on edition. If anything the mechanics of hit points are that they 100% pure plot armor and physical wounds mean absolutely nothing (Except, amusingly enough, for ISP's hated 4e, where there actually is an effect from taking damage) until the very last hit. And even then its usually a KO punch, regardless of how many feet of metal you're ramming into someone's chest.
Congratulations, you overran my intermediate (and correct) position from one end of extreme insanity to the exact opposite.

This is not me supporting critical existence failure. This is me pointing out what your fluff 'accurately describing the mechanical effects of hit points' actually means. The mechanics of hit points when YOU try to use them like THAT are there are no results until zero. The swords don't hit and the lava doesn't burn until zero or past zero. That is what your 'consistent' fluff looks like with no mix of physical damage and plot armor.

You could offer a substantive argument that hitpoints are consistent with hitpoints (you haven't and can't), or you could declare that having fluff-mechanic consistency is a matter of preference (which is... basically true, in the way that I can't technically tell you getting punched in the nuts is objectively badwrongfun). But you can't declare that whether or not the mechanics produce results that contradict the fluff is a matter of opinion. That's fucking insane.

A thing does equal itself, so... done, I guess. Entirely consistent all the way down.

As to whether the mechanics produce results that contradict the fluff.... if it is a mix, it seriously doesn't. If being stabbed or having fallen produce a mix of physical and luck damage there is no contradiction, it is entirely consistent- you pick up some minor wounds and get lucky, both of which deplete the pool of 'hit points.' The character is wounded, knows he's wounded and knows roughly what shape he is in. The healing spells cure the minor wounds and shit, and also restore some quantity of luck or whatever. The exact number isn't relevant to anyone but the players, but that doesn't mean the character has no sense of his own health.

Over the course of several decades, I've never seen anyone even blink at the idea of a mix of luck and physical damage, and lots of DMs and players who describe them that way. I have seen people blink at 100% physical damage (if you had a ballista bolt through your chest, you'd be dead) or 100% luck (no wounds at all, ever? Yeah right). By far, the majority just treats it as a goddamn number and doesn't give a shit.

But beyond what's already been mentioned, if you are really going to mix plot armor and hitpoints then you are declaring that a man who can survive a lava bath can die solely to dropping a torch on his foot after a full recovery. You are declaring that not only do the characters not understand the limits of their own survivability, it's not even a fixed or knowable quantity to begin with. Which is exactly the sort of inconsistency between the mechanics and the narrative that has been at the center of this argument the entire goddamn time.

Except... neither of those are true. The first is complete gibberish, and there is no reason to suggest that characters don't know their own relative health. No one has a fucking number over their head, nor do they need one to understand that the next punch might drop them, or they are in worse shape now than before the fall/illness/gunshot.

[DSMatticus]

Again, the argument is not that the fluff says X. It is that some fluff accurately describes the mechanical effects of hitpoints, and some other fluff doesn't. And responding "this is the fluff they used" does not interact with that argument in anyway. It is a non-sequitur. It addresses nothing and is evidence of nothing.

The mechanics of hit points? The mechanics of hit points is that nothing happens until you drop unconscious at zero and dead at some point between zero, -10, -Con, or some other number depending on edition. If anything the mechanics of hit points are that they 100% pure plot armor and physical wounds mean absolutely nothing (Except, amusingly enough, for ISP's hated 4e, where there actually is an effect from taking damage) until the very last hit. And even then its usually a KO punch, regardless of how many feet of metal you're ramming into someone's chest.
Congratulations, you overran my intermediate (and correct) position from one end of extreme insanity to the exact opposite.

This is not me supporting critical existence failure. This is me pointing out what your fluff 'accurately describing the mechanical effects of hit points' actually means. The mechanics of hit points when YOU try to use them like THAT are there are no results until zero. The swords don't hit and the lava doesn't burn until zero or past zero. That is what your 'consistent' fluff looks like with no mix of physical damage and plot armor.

Listen very carefully: you are a level 10 fighter. A dude tries to stab you, successfully dealing hitpoint damage. Mechanically, your hitpoints go down and you become closer to death by bodily injury. That is not a non-result, you stupid fuckwit; the result is that you are X points of damage closer to death than you were before the attack. In the physical wounds fluff, you actually get stabbed and you sustain physical wounds which move you closer to death by bodily injury. Note how the abstraction fits the narrative it is representing.

Now, I thought you were arguing that because hitpoint damage had no intermediate effects that implied hitpoint damage as physical wounds made no more sense than anything else. Which is realizarm bullshit. But it turns out you were actually arguing that the mechanic of moving a character closer to death by decrementing their hitpoints does not accurately represent the story event of moving a character closer to death by causing them bodily harm. Congratulations: you fucking win. No one will ever argue anything stupider than that in any discussion about hitpoints ever. You have genuinely asserted that being closer to death is not accurately represented by being closer to death.

If being stabbed or having fallen produce a mix of physical and luck damage there is no contradiction, it is entirely consistent

Day 1: You take a lava bath as physical damage and survive. You recover fully.
Day 2: You take a bunch of attacks from giants as luck damage and survive. You drop a torch on your foot as physical damage and die.

Is it narratively coherent for a character to physically survive a bath in lava but die to singed foot hair after a full recovery?

The character is wounded, knows he's wounded and knows roughly what shape he is in. The healing spells cure the minor wounds and shit, and also restore some quantity of luck or whatever.

A character dodges a bunch of attacks as luck damage, and is in exactly the same physical condition as he was in the morning. The character realizes he is in grave mortal peril, and asks the cleric to cure his wounds.

Is it narratively coherent for a character who is uninjured to (correctly) believe he needs a spell that is literally fucking called cure ____ wounds?

Note: for either question, you are welcome to make any atypical assumptions about the way that the fictional world in question works, provided you specify what they are.

[zugschef]

What's interesting though, is that the cure spells in d&d actually channel positive energy, so yes, you can model the fluff in a way that it fuels your mojo back up after it got reduced by lucking or dodging. At least the cure spells argument is a shitty one. HP can be physical conditon plus mojo and there's no problem fluffing that stuff together with the cure spells.

[Prak]

So, someone on Reddit posted a B&W OCR pdf of the 5th edition PHB. If anyone wants the link, pm me.

[hamstertamer]

What's interesting though, is that the cure spells in d&d actually channel positive energy, so yes, you can model the fluff in a way that it fuels your mojo back up after it got reduced by lucking or dodging. At least the cure spells argument is a shitty one. HP can be physical conditon plus mojo and there's no problem fluffing that stuff together with the cure spells.

The problem is though, dodging mechanics are handled under Armor class and dex based saving throws. Plus your "mojo" would be something handled under Charisma not Hit Points that is based off Constitution and always has been.

The narrative that damage done to your Hit Points is taking away dodge points, luck points, or fear points is a bad one, or at least it's one of worst interpretations of damage. You could model the narrative of damage as taking away invisible faeries that swarm around a creature like a faery force field. You could do that, but no one is going to want to play with DM who has bizarro interpretations of rules, unless they suffer from the same mental illness. Saying that damage done to Hit points is anything other then some sort of wound(even a tiny scratch) pushes you close to bizarro territory. The point of narration is to make it make sense to the players, not to be a justification for weird mechanics like "healing surges."

[Username17]

So, now that Voss has conceded that he cannot find any rule in the entire fucking game that crucially depends on people not being literally injured when they take damage, can we move on to step two where he shuts the fuck up?

If there is even one rule that crucially depends on literal damage being inflicted be game damage (as poison does), and no rule anywhere in the game which depends upon anything else being the case, the discussion is fucking over. Shut. Up.

-Username17

[ishy]

What do the power:word spells depend on?

[DSMatticus]

What's interesting though, is that the cure spells in d&d actually channel positive energy, so yes, you can model the fluff in a way that it fuels your mojo back up after it got reduced by lucking or dodging.

What? Positive energy is not luck force, it's life force. If you go to the positive energy plane you won't become so supercharged with luck that you explode into a jackpot lotto, and you don't protect yourself from this fate by breaking mirrors or walking under ladders. But you do become so supercharged with life that you explode into a bloody mess, and you do protect yourself from this fate by cutting yourself.

[ishy]

I've heard an anecdote (probably from lurking theRPGsite), that between the transition from Chainmail to D&D, the idea for Hit Points was taken from a system for ablative armor in a naval ship wargame.

Whether this is true or not, it does simplify the caulking process for me.

Ah yeah, you might have read it in the online gamespy interview with Arneson. Sadly, the interview has some errors in it.
Blackmoor actually predates chainmail for one.
IIRC Arneson took the concept of hit points from the civil war game Ironclads and implemented it in Blackmoor. Before he actually showed the game to Gygax and they started working on D&D.

[name_here]

What do the power:word spells depend on?

Generalized life force. People who are inherently less sturdy or have had the crap beat out of them are more susceptible.

[nockermensch]

So, someone on Reddit posted a B&W OCR pdf of the 5th edition PHB. If anyone wants the link, pm me.

Welcome to 10 days ago. Next time there's an important release, lurk on /tg/. If there's a leak, it'll pop up there first.

[Ferret]

I also posted a note about it here the day it popped up on /tg/

In this thread, even, I think

[Ferret]

Guy on Something Awful had this summary of topics from the Alpha DMG:

secret DMG is from 07/30, this turd is so fresh the flies haven't showed up yet. no magic items sadly.

highlights:
costs to construct building
costs for hirelings
downtime activites (most of which have a 20% chance of going to jail for 5d6 days)
domains (kingdom builder rules)
using miniatures!!!
travel hazards
diseases
poisons
madness
traps
puzzles
modifying races
creating new races
monsters as characters
modifying classes

optional rules:
training to level up
trading in magic items
flanking
attacking cover
morale
action points
called shots
alternate skill systems (13th age backgrounds are an option)
vitality
spell points
skill points
single strike (1 attack roll, cumulative damage)
second wind
rest variants
proficiency dice
massive damage
marking
facing
cleaving through the horde
automatic success
chases
cantrip slots
action points (again?)
group initiative
weapon speed
passive initiative
gestalt characters

Anybody seen a copy? It hasn't shown up on /tg/ as far as I've seen.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Guy on Something Awful had this summary of topics from the Alpha DMG:

secret DMG is from 07/30, this turd is so fresh the flies haven't showed up yet. no magic items sadly.

highlights:
costs to construct building
costs for hirelings
downtime activites (most of which have a 20% chance of going to jail for 5d6 days)
domains (kingdom builder rules)
using miniatures!!!
travel hazards
diseases
poisons
madness
traps
puzzles
modifying races
creating new races
monsters as characters
modifying classes

optional rules:
training to level up
trading in magic items
flanking
attacking cover
morale
action points
called shots
alternate skill systems (13th age backgrounds are an option)
vitality
spell points
skill points
single strike (1 attack roll, cumulative damage)
second wind
rest variants
proficiency dice
massive damage
marking
facing
cleaving through the horde
automatic success
chases
cantrip slots
action points (again?)
group initiative
weapon speed
passive initiative
gestalt characters

Anybody seen a copy? It hasn't shown up on /tg/ as far as I've seen.

I haven't. I'd be interested to see how the hell half this crap is supposed to work. Monsters are explicitly special snowflake critters who don't play by the same rules, how are they supposed to be PCs?

[Rawbeard]

Probably some 4e style whitewash, where you handwave some ability bonuses, pick some ability that is called the same as something the monster has (but does something else) and call it a PC.

[nockermensch]

Guy on Something Awful had this summary of topics from the Alpha DMG:

secret DMG is from 07/30, this turd is so fresh the flies haven't showed up yet. no magic items sadly.<snip>
gestalt characters

I'll go out on a limb here and say this ToC is fake.