I've made my peace with the hp system.


I basically consider the question when translating a hit and miss in mechanical terms to in game events: Did the attack put actual strain on the character?

Some examples (all sample PCs at full hp):

An Ogre attacks the sword and board fighter wily Ruger. On a miss the Ogre has made a weak attack that Ruger can effeortlessly redirect with his shield. On a hit Ruger loses a fair amount of damage, in game, Ruger still blocks with his shield, but it has such power that his shieldarm now hurts quite a bit.

A dextrous elven wizard is attacked by a Othyough. On a miss, the beasts tentakle is easily sidestepped. On a "hit", the elf still evade, but it's a close call, he has to tumble roughly out of the way and comes back up worse to wear, scratched and bruised from a not so elegant dive over hard rock.


In this perception, it is clear to me why dexterity raises AC, while training, constitution and experience raise hp.

The first increases your chance to avoid an attack without exerting yourself. In all the latter cases, it takes more close calls to get you to the point where you are to exausted and unconcentrated to turn a potential killing blow.



Just an aside, I find these discussions often focus the detriment of hp on imagining in game events, but never examine advantages the system has in this regard. One thing I like about hp is that just by changing how you imagine them, you can change the genre of your games.

If you want an over the top, high action and, dare I say, anime-esque game, make every hit a wound. PC's take wound that would put lesser combatant out right away by the dozen. Even in a less challenging combat, heros loose more blood than people should have and when Rog the Barbarian has finally defeated the dread hordes of the Bloodspire Orcs,he has a twice slashed thoat, a hundred arrows, five swords and a greataxe still stick in his body. Even a sword piercing the heart can be taken care of by a simple healing spell, powered through by sheer will and even slept of.

On the othe end of the scale, you can imagine only hits that actually reduce to zero hit points as drawing blood. Healing spells remove pain and fatigue, but do jack about wounds.

Quote from: jibbajibba;797344Welll i usually run my heartbreaker, which fixes what i percieve as issues so meh. But here i am discussing d&d so talking  about  v&v separated hp into power and hits and how power included bonus for dex, int, etc as they determined that all of those things might help you avoid damage is a little moot right?

No, that is actually interesting and productive; your arbitrary constraint of conversation to complaint that permits no solution is rather perverse, what profit you see in it a mystery.

QuoteAnd i don't think the origins of the rules are of more than a passing interest as is the [fact that stats gave a max +1. The definitive rules for d&d as they came to be codified were in 1e of ad&d surely? That was the flagship product.

The point is evidence that you are barking up the wrong tree: There is no grand theory to be brought to bay. The results are the reason for the rule, no wizard behind a curtain.

QuoteAnyway as i noted i am merely discussing a percieved disconnect and looking for a logical discourse but perhaps i would do better discussing us immigration control on the fox news site :-)

Quote from: Gold Roger;797424I've made my peace with the hp system.


I basically consider the question when translating a hit and miss in mechanical terms to in game events: Did the attack put actual strain on the character?

Some examples (all sample PCs at full hp):

An Ogre attacks the sword and board fighter wily Ruger. On a miss the Ogre has made a weak attack that Ruger can effeortlessly redirect with his shield. On a hit Ruger loses a fair amount of damage, in game, Ruger still blocks with his shield, but it has such power that his shieldarm now hurts quite a bit.

A dextrous elven wizard is attacked by a Othyough. On a miss, the beasts tentakle is easily sidestepped. On a "hit", the elf still evade, but it's a close call, he has to tumble roughly out of the way and comes back up worse to wear, scratched and bruised from a not so elegant dive over hard rock.


In this perception, it is clear to me why dexterity raises AC, while training, constitution and experience raise hp.

The first increases your chance to avoid an attack without exerting yourself. In all the latter cases, it takes more close calls to get you to the point where you are to exausted and unconcentrated to turn a potential killing blow.



Just an aside, I find these discussions often focus the detriment of hp on imagining in game events, but never examine advantages the system has in this regard. One thing I like about hp is that just by changing how you imagine them, you can change the genre of your games.

If you want an over the top, high action and, dare I say, anime-esque game, make every hit a wound. PC's take wound that would put lesser combatant out right away by the dozen. Even in a less challenging combat, heros loose more blood than people should have and when Rog the Barbarian has finally defeated the dread hordes of the Bloodspire Orcs,he has a twice slashed thoat, a hundred arrows, five swords and a greataxe still stick in his body. Even a sword piercing the heart can be taken care of by a simple healing spell, powered through by sheer will and even slept of.

On the othe end of the scale, you can imagine only hits that actually reduce to zero hit points as drawing blood. Healing spells remove pain and fatigue, but do jack about wounds.

One of my problems is the way the system has advanced an morphed and new classes have been given bonuses in certain directions.
Whilst as I stated that I didn't care about where D&D came from, I do agree that the original abstraction was clean it gets confused as it gets elaborated with scant regard for maintaining he abstraction.
So taking that Dex is a fine to improve AC, which I do at its core kind of agree with but that implies skill which implies the potential for improvement and indeed the Monk can improve their AC not through making their skin "Hard as Iron" but by dodging blows. So here we reinforce Dex AC bonus = Skill which can be improved. Yet .... the fighter, the games primary combat master is unable to learn this skill. A little Eastern Martial Arts bias perhaps but probably just a way of giving a new class a cool power without thinking about what that does to the abstraction logic.

So back to my original OP if Dex improves your AC by making you harder to hit and HPs are the mechanic that makes you harder to hit (you block with your shield, you dodge the blow but the effort to do so costs you HP etc) do we need to look at the logic of the abstraction and try and rationalize the model and cascade it through the other systems ?

Now 5e doesn't allow monks to get down to AC -3 instead it applies a wisdom benefit to AC. So a slightly different take and maybe one I prefer. A skill you learn to anticipate the moves of others and can predict them to aid your defense.  The defensive Duelist and Dual Wielder Feats get AC bonus, but here these are skills that can be learnt so maybe they have closed this gap a little in this edition.  

But again we get back to should Dex give you a HP bonus like Con to represent an ability to avoid damage? Or to AC ?

On duels armored vs. unarmored:

Armor in D&D simply alters the rate at which hp are deducted. Better armor or more hp on both sides delays decisive resolution, making fights longer, but does not lessen the consequences. Only relative differences make substantial change, apart from longer fights allowing more chances to withdraw from hostilities.

I think the AC rules as just a natural extension of how combat worked in man-to-man rules in Chainmail, which was really just an extension of how the mass combat rules worked. In these systems, the purpose is to resolve combat quickly and efficiently, and all the various factors that might be relevant for thinking about someone's defensive qualities get abstracted into a probability that you will be killed in a given turn. This probability goes up when attacked by large, dangerous weapons and down when you wear heavy armor, and exceptional combatants must be 'killed' multiple times before they really die. The system we've gotten used to, with AC, HP and variable weapon damage, just takes these ideas and makes an equivalent treatment that is one step more 'granular', so the process gets tracked with a resource metric. It is good game design (at least, it works well when you play!). The earlier versions were also pretty good; I would say just as good. Or possibly better, as they are functionally equivalent but simpler.

Quote from: Larsdangly;797443I think the AC rules as just a natural extension of how combat worked in man-to-man rules in Chainmail, which was really just an extension of how the mass combat rules worked. In these systems, the purpose is to resolve combat quickly and efficiently, and all the various factors that might be relevant for thinking about someone's defensive qualities get abstracted into a probability that you will be killed in a given turn. This probability goes up when attacked by large, dangerous weapons and down when you wear heavy armor, and exceptional combatants must be 'killed' multiple times before they really die. The system we've gotten used to, with AC, HP and variable weapon damage, just takes these ideas and makes an equivalent treatment that is one step more 'granular', so the process gets tracked with a resource metric. It is good game design (at least, it works well when you play!). The earlier versions were also pretty good; I would say just as good. Or possibly better, as they are functionally equivalent but simpler.

But do you think they work as well when the model has been tugged in different directions and no one thinks of the 1 minute combat round and abstract flurries of blows. Like it or not that is not how people describe D&D combats after the fact and it not how they operate in the "theater of the mind" let alone on a grid with minis and special powers and feats and what not.
Combat abstractions are definitely a bit like fractals and the more you zoom in the more complex it gets but D&D wants to have its cake and eat it with the broad smooth curve of HP and AC and the specificity of flanking, ac bonuses for the fleet of foot and specific attacks like sword of sharpness or a monster getting claw/claw/bite

Quote from: jibbajibba;797409It is a bit odd that none of the pcs or npcs you ever ran ever called out at opponent. I know i have done it dozens of times, as a challenge in a courtly intrigue game, as a bar fight, as a precursor to a pitched battle where the champions meet on the field, as a challenge between 2pcs or as a whole adventure thread based arround an annual dueling competition.

Never called out an opponent?  Where did I say that?  Intimidation is a good skill for some kinds of character.  Generally I would expect the weaker side to back down or escalate by bringing in allies.  (I'd also think that one or both sides would suspect some magic item or secret feat or skill that makes a duel a bad idea.)

No courtly intrigue.

Bar fights generally turn into brawls and not duels, in D&D and in real life.

Precursor to a pitched battle?  Delaying a battle was rarely desirable (the enemy was more likely to benefit than the PCs) but we did engage in some kinds of negotiation with the aim of demoralizing or dividing an enemy force.  I could see a challenge working as part of that.  But the duel itself strikes me as imposing someone's expectations on the game situation rather than a natural outcome.

Challenges and competitions involving PCs generally proceeded in other ways, from assassination to indirect adventuring competition (bring back the most gold or the head of the toughest monster).

Never had an annual dueling competition, let alone based an adventure thread on it; it might have been fun to do so but lots of things might be fun and things we did were fun too.

D&D is poorly suited to dueling; it's boring for the players who aren't involved (watching one player and the DM roll dice) and even for the players who are involved (roll to hit, roll damage, back and forth until someone wears down).  You could have a game with more specialized rules with maneuver and resource management that makes a one-on-one fight interesting from a game point of view, or abstracts it out into a few rolls, but then those variations are hard to integrate into larger fights and D&D really isn't that game.

QuoteMy favourite however has to be when a barbarian pc insulted a cavalier and the cavalier demanded justice and the barbarian, as the challenged party agreed but unarmoured with knives in the circle. The cavalier pc of course at this point pissed himself to get out of the fight as he realised the barbarian (1e ua version) would have an ac of 2 vs his ac of 9, and had nearly twice as many hp.... Hohoho try to roleplay your way elegantly out of that...

The duel itself would be really, really dull.  The interesting part of this is the maneuvering by each side to get an advantageous contest.  But that's roleplaying, which I'm happy enough to engage in; I see some fairly easy recourses for the cavalier if he were willing to fight armored with larger weapons.  My roleplaying doesn't tend toward a lot of melodrama about insults and dishonor.

QuoteAnyway i have always assumed that duels emerged fairly naturally out of playing make believe in a world with lots of weapons and lots of folks bigging up the honourable knight schtick. Just goes to show every table is different.

In a world in which the player character races are beset by dishonorable evil forces that threaten their very existence, duels don't tend to arise naturally.  Call it Fantasy Special Forces if you like; it's far from an odd way of playing.

You should note that I am not disparaging yours or anyone's playing style.

Quote from: Bren;797422(snip)

Feel free to address the substance.  Or not.  Sadly, your posting style is not at all unusual.

The D&D rules were certainly not designed for En Garde! type situations, hence the invention of EG!, the similar system in The Dragon for duels between monks in the arena of promotion, and various other systems.

As to pretending it's a blow-by-blow system, that goes back a long way, but in my experience is hardly the uniform habit jibbajibba suggests. Rules sets based on that assumption take a lot of spins, but more commonly away from the hp system rather than piling on hp for dexterity and/or other factors as jibbajibba prefers (which would seem mainly to reinforce, not reduce, apparent oddities).

Quote from: Old Geezer;797402The game plays well, that's what matters to me.

And I've gone back to one minute rounds and all weapons do 1d6.

And it's glorious.

I can't grok the 1 minute rounds with how I describe combat because 60 damn seconds is a long damn time. I'm ex-SCA so even before my car accidents I know how heavy that steel (or fiberglass) feels after a dozen parries.

But going back to 1D6 base for weapons has been glorious! I make some -1/+1 mods depending on weapons, but it means the PCs have been choosing weapons for what they do outside of die size.

Quote from: jibbajibba;797412So how do you roll with the 4e style hp recovery model that has rolled in 5e?

5e leaves me flat. I've stuck with 0e and 4e for my D&D, but my fantasy RPG actual play these days is DCC and 13th Age.

Quote from: jibbajibba;797412I like it and have been using a wound/vitality model for over 20 years with hp recovety fast (i set 10% of max hp per hour as the rate but short rest, hd, and long rest is a much slicker mechanic.) and wound being low and slow to heal and never increasing.

I liked the Wound vs. Vitality split in SpyCraft or the SDC vs. HP split in Palladium Fantasy.

Years ago, I played in a 2e game where our HP was our CON and we had Luck points to burn that was the normal HP per level. We could use the Luck to soak damage or add to rolls, etc. It worked fine.

The only odd part was the DM had us re-roll our Luck each day. So the 5th level magic user would roll 5D4 each day to see how much Luck he got for the day that would last until the next dawn.

Quote from: jibbajibba;797412In 5e i am trying to smooth the join between magical healing and wounds.

In that 2e campaign, you healed 1 HP per die of Cure Magic and got back maximum Luck. So a Cure Lights that did 1D8 gave you 1 HP and 8 Luck back.

Quote from: Phillip;797455The D&D rules were certainly not designed for En Garde! type situations, hence the invention of EG!, the similar system in The Dragon for duels between monks in the arena of promotion, and various other systems.

As to pretending it's a blow-by-blow system, that goes back a long way, but in my experience is hardly the uniform habit jibbajibba suggests. Rules sets based on that assumption take a lot of spins, but more commonly away from the hp system rather than piling on hp for dexterity and/or other factors as jibbajibba prefers (which would seem mainly to reinforce, not reduce, apparent oddities).

I have tried most other combat approaches and made a few of my own. From heavily detailed down to Amber and back.

I guess I like the timbre of D&D combat, I like how it flows in play but the inconsistencies irk me. So I want to see how you can iron out the inconsistencies but keep the same flow to combat. Moving round the elements that make up HP and AC, introcuding HP buffs etc are all things that wouldn't have an impact on the timbre of the combat but would effect how those numbers are generated and some of the consequences of combat.

So if you look at the option of HP as a %, by which I mean ten damage to a guy with 20 hp looks the same as 3 damage to a guy with 6hp, so a deep cut. That makes sense in terms of the combat flow, doesn't alter anything, but outside of combat you need to change healing so maybe you heal a set % per day of your total HPs or you track individual wounds and they all heal at a set rate. The first is easy the second a real pain in the arse. A cure light wounds cures 20% of your maximum HP, etc... You do end up with problems with attacks on helpless opponents (and defining that) and falling and stuff, but not insurmountable.

Or you look at HP as the luck/skill and add a wounds mechanic... this removes the reliance on magical healing and fits the stated abstraction .. etc

So just seeing what is the minimum tweak to D&D combat to remove the glaring inconsistencies of

• Experienced warriors aren't any harder to hit
• Attacks where you aren't able to "dodge" still use HP, so a guy holding a crossbow at you from a foot away isn't at all threatening if you are 5th level
• Passive damage like Falling
• If HPs is dodging why doesn't a good dex make you better at dodging
• Touch attacks
• Healing - too fast 5e/4e too slow AD&D -obviously an issue as its something that changes with each addition and attracts a lot of noise from commentators

Quote from: Phillip;797439On duels armored vs. unarmored:

Armor in D&D simply alters the rate at which hp are deducted. Better armor or more hp on both sides delays decisive resolution, making fights longer, but does not lessen the consequences. Only relative differences make substantial change, apart from longer fights allowing more chances to withdraw from hostilities.

Remember too that the mindset, at least, comes from CHAINMAIL.  At the end of a minute the guy in plate armor will probably be alive and the guy with no armor will probably be dead.  Since CHAINMAIL is a "roll to kill" system, heavier armor means a harder roll.

Quote from: Spinachcat;797376I'm sorta stunned that Dave and Gary didn't describe combat. It's always been so integral to how I've played, but I began as a RPGer and became a wargamer years later.

Well, yeah. When you've got dozens of combats to resolve on the sand table per turn, it's "roll the dice and get on with it."

How do you make D&D combat exciting without descriptions?  By making it FAST.  Half a dozen combatants on a side, I can run in barely more than a minute a round real time; combat is fast and furious and tension is created by watching things resolve.[/QUOTE]

Quote from: Spinachcat;797478I can't grok the 1 minute rounds with how I describe combat because 60 damn seconds is a long damn time. I'm ex-SCA so even before my car accidents I know how heavy that steel (or fiberglass) feels after a dozen parries.

I was in the SCA for many years too.

I ignore it.

D&D is not a game about real combat.  It is a game of furiously swording away at each other a la Conan stories and Errol Flynn movies.

Once I folded up "realism" into a little packet and filed it under "Not Applicable" I started to enjoy D&D much more.

Trying to reconcile it with my knowledge of actual combat, actual armor, actual weapons, and the actual Middle Ages just led to heartbreak.

Quote from: rawma;797449Never called out an opponent?  Where did I say that?  Intimidation is a good skill for some kinds of character.  Generally I would expect the weaker side to back down or escalate by bringing in allies.  (I'd also think that one or both sides would suspect some magic item or secret feat or skill that makes a duel a bad idea.)

Some settings mean that not accepting a challenge is effectivily admitting cowardice this is true from an Arthurian romance to a Rennaisance setting to ancient Japan to the American west so not exactly a narrow range.

QuoteNo courtly intrigue.

Shame

QuoteBar fights generally turn into brawls and not duels, in D&D and in real life.

Disagree here much more likely to be asked to take it outside by the heavy set bald guys in the suits.

Again the two guys squaring up in the car park/street is a pretty common trope.

QuotePrecursor to a pitched battle?  Delaying a battle was rarely desirable (the enemy was more likely to benefit than the PCs) but we did engage in some kinds of negotiation with the aim of demoralizing or dividing an enemy force.  I could see a challenge working as part of that.  But the duel itself strikes me as imposing someone's expectations on the game situation rather than a natural outcome.

but again historically and in the source fiction settling a battle through a contest of champions or using that as a precursor to a battle is really common so ...

QuoteChallenges and competitions involving PCs generally proceeded in other ways, from assassination to indirect adventuring competition (bring back the most gold or the head of the toughest monster).

A duel is a pretty traditional way for a lawful PC to call out an issue with another PC. We have done magical duels as well as martial ones. And depending on the setting not accepting a challenge might well loose you a lot of social capital.

QuoteNever had an annual dueling competition, let alone based an adventure thread on it; it might have been fun to do so but lots of things might be fun and things we did were fun too.

Fair enough

QuoteD&D is poorly suited to dueling; it's boring for the players who aren't involved (watching one player and the DM roll dice) and even for the players who are involved (roll to hit, roll damage, back and forth until someone wears down).  You could have a game with more specialized rules with maneuver and resource management that makes a one-on-one fight interesting from a game point of view, or abstracts it out into a few rolls, but then those variations are hard to integrate into larger fights and D&D really isn't that game.

Well D&D like all RPGS has moments where all of the PCs aren't taking part, from  the rogue scouting ahead to the Hacker, to the guy in the library doing research. Managing that is just a GM 101 task.
Combats in my games are never dull. We never say I rolled a 4 you rolled a 15 you take 4 damage i rolled .. etc never happens. Fightes are detailed with description and repartee, tricks and manuvers and twists and turns. We can recount battles blow by blow 20 years later down the pub and the good ones get written into legend.

QuoteThe duel itself would be really, really dull.  The interesting part of this is the maneuvering by each side to get an advantageous contest.  But that's roleplaying, which I'm happy enough to engage in; I see some fairly easy recourses for the cavalier if he were willing to fight armored with larger weapons.  My roleplaying doesn't tend toward a lot of melodrama about insults and dishonor.

No it wouldn't have been dull it would have been awesome. The cavalier wasn't allowed to choose armour or weapons as he called the duel that was the barbarian's point. Sorry if that wasn't clear.  
The rivalry went on for years after with the duel hanging over them and the Cavalier calling for a battle from horseback with shiled and lance and the Barbarian saying he was challenged and he was ready to finish the job in the circle unarmoured with knives....

QuoteIn a world in which the player character races are beset by dishonorable evil forces that threaten their very existence, duels don't tend to arise naturally.  Call it Fantasy Special Forces if you like; it's far from an odd way of playing.

You should note that I am not disparaging yours or anyone's playing style.

Well there are lots of settings, just look at the number of fantasy novels. I can see that at the actual moment at which the party is actually being beset by creatures trying to harm them a duel is unlikely but a game exists in a far wider context that that. And some settings have dueling as a central tenent I think the D&D Mystera Savage Coast might have had additional rules for it even. But any game that needs a separate combat system for a common combat trope as its core system doesn't fit ... well it might need a tweak.

Quote from: Old Geezer;797508Well, yeah. When you've got dozens of combats to resolve on the sand table per turn, it's "roll the dice and get on with it."

How do you make D&D combat exciting without descriptions?  By making it FAST.  Half a dozen combatants on a side, I can run in barely more than a minute a round real time; combat is fast and furious and tension is created by watching things resolve.

But I would have thought in a game were the combats were so rare becuase you were always negotiating you woudl want to fluff them up a bit and make a bit of a fuss of them

I think that is part of the move from war game to RPG. to me the combats are as much about roleplay as the bit where you are negotiating the price of room and board or dickering with a demon over the terms of it's contract.

QuoteI was in the SCA for many years too.

I ignore it.

D&D is not a game about real combat.  It is a game of furiously swording away at each other a la Conan stories and Errol Flynn movies.

Once I folded up "realism" into a little packet and filed it under "Not Applicable" I started to enjoy D&D much more.

Trying to reconcile it with my knowledge of actual combat, actual armor, actual weapons, and the actual Middle Ages just led to heartbreak.

I don't think it has to be a binary choice here. You can put a bit of the realism in and it doesn't have to break it. The tricky bit is how much. Take Reach. I am thinking of adding reach as a number from 1-10 then using it as an initiaitve bonus on the first round of combat if the combatants have come together that round. This should be easy, give spears etc an advantage in the first round and won't change the pace of combat. The PC forgets to use the bonus well then tough.
Then I might add a feat called "fend" or similar which enables  people proficient with polearms to keep their distance and keep getting that bonus. This in turn will make the grapple manuver more important when fighting a guy with a polearm.
None of this will alter the timbre of combat but might add a pinch of realism or at least psuedo realism which is about as far as you can get.