I think people are getting carried away with the muddy farmer analogy. It's not that people aren't interested in heroes with poor or humble backgrounds, they are quite popular, it's rather that a hero usually has some kind of exceptional abilities that allow them to rise above their humble beginnings. Luke was a young moisture farmer, but he also had the force and was an excellent pilot. Luke also had great ancestry despite his upbringing: like Harry Potter, King Arthur, John Snow, Perseus, and many other noteworthy heroes.

If Luke only had low to average attributes and no Force potential, if moisture farming was the extent of his abilities, then Star Wars would be a very different kind of story.

One thing that throws off our consideration of attributes in D&D is the fact that traditionally, it's been harder to raise a character's attributes than to increase a real human's attributes. Back in early editions, it could take multiple wishes to raise an attribute. In real life, lifting weights for a few days a week for a year can substantially increase your strength. A person who goes through basic training in the military is going to end up having higher physical attributes than when he started. Just becoming a 1st level fighter increases your attributes above what they were before. 5th edition D&D corrects this to a degree, since attribute increases are easier to come by.

Quote from: ShieldWife on August 10, 2021, 10:02:23 AM
I think people are getting carried away with the muddy farmer analogy. It's not that people aren't interested in heroes with poor or humble backgrounds, they are quite popular, it's rather that a hero usually has some kind of exceptional abilities that allow them to rise above their humble beginnings. Luke was a young moisture farmer, but he also had the force and was an excellent pilot. Luke also had great ancestry despite his upbringing: like Harry Potter, King Arthur, John Snow, Perseus, and many other noteworthy heroes.

If Luke only had low to average attributes and no Force potential, if moisture farming was the extent of his abilities, then Star Wars would be a very different kind of story.

One thing that throws off our consideration of attributes in D&D is the fact that traditionally, it's been harder to raise a character's attributes than to increase a real human's attributes. Back in early editions, it could take multiple wishes to raise an attribute. In real life, lifting weights for a few days a week for a year can substantially increase your strength. A person who goes through basic training in the military is going to end up having higher physical attributes than when he started. Just becoming a 1st level fighter increases your attributes above what they were before. 5th edition D&D corrects this to a degree, since attribute increases are easier to come by.

One of the often unappreciated things about the Palladium system (other than 1e Fantasy) was the way you could select physical skills that improved your physical stats. A lot of people found it cheesy, but it makes a hell of a lot more realistic that a guy who starts with a Strength of 11 who takes up body building, boxing, general athletics and wrestling (all of which are core elements of MMA-style fighting) can come out of that training with a Strength of 18, better ability to take a hit and improved Endurance and running speed.

What might be more interesting and realistic would be if each class had its own set of dice rolls to reflect the way that training for an occupation hones your abilities and then race adds its modifiers to those.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 10, 2021, 08:12:20 AM
I think you misunderstand the purpose of CR and encounter budgets. They aren't walls the GM slams into, they're speed limit signs so the GM knows "yeah, your party can handle this" or "you are probably going to have a TPK if the party fights that."

What it really takes away is the ability for the newbie GM accidentally or the killer GM deliberately to throw a killer encounter at the party and afterwards say "Wow, I thought you guys could handle that."

Incidentally, this is one of my gripes with 5e; it's CR system isn't that great at measuring threats so the GM can evaluate them.

Heck, even the original editions had a CR system even if it wasn't called that; it's why you had one or more *'s after a monster's HD to denote special abilities that made them tougher than their HD indicated. Because while the GM had to figure out the ratios for his particular party,  HD + *'s was a reasonable guage of a fight's difficulty and a typical party could handle threats whose total of HD+*'s equaled the total of all their levels.

What's different now is the systems take the time to discuss these matters instead of just leaving it to new GMs to figure out on their own.

No, I don't misunderstand.  Systems like CR show a completely different mentality about how the game is to be run.  Early D&D was often about exactly what was in the name: "dungeons."  No one gave a damn about whether the party "could handle" each encounter, because the encounters were segregated on levels of the dungeon.  This is why HD helped DMs; it gave them an idea as to how deep in the dungeon the monster should appear.  The party chose to go down a level, and were therefore in control of the threat they faced.  In fact, many of the "epic" stories of tournament modules concerned treasure extracted from levels beyond the offensive capabilities of the party.  Even non-dungeon adventures frequently placed dangers that were beyond a party of the recommended level's capabilities in TSR modules.  Threats that couldn't be beaten in combat were intended to be circumvented (bargaining, tricking, going around, etc.).  The idea that most encounters should be winnable via combat is a much more modern assumption.  While no one stops you from playing 5e the old way (which I frequently do), the tools are not designed for that assumption.  Modern gamers expect combat encounters to be designed for them to win.  That's not what "design" meant in earlier contexts...

Quote from: ShieldWife on August 10, 2021, 10:02:23 AMIf Luke only had low to average attributes and no Force potential, if moisture farming was the extent of his abilities, then Star Wars would be a very different kind of story.

Only in detail I think. The force was just a way to get space magic into the mix. Luke barely uses it in Star Wars. It plays a bigger role as the series progresses and the result is a steady decline of my interest in the story. It's great as a mysterious background to the world. But the more we know about it the more boring it becomes. 'Farm boy defeats the empire' is a story you can get behind. 'Chosen one fulfils destiny'... meh.

And then there's Lord of the Rings. Frodo might not be a farmer but he's not exactly Conan either. Him and his mate the gardener's son take on a quest to overthrow the dark lord...

It's popular starting point because it's baked into the genre fiction that inspired RPG's in the first place.

The modern sensibility seems to be to want to skip the journey and create a character whose adventures have already happened. Where's the fun in that?

Quote from: mightybrain on August 10, 2021, 03:27:39 PM
The modern sensibility seems to be to want to skip the journey and create a character whose adventures have already happened. Where's the fun in that?

Serial fiction like Conan, James Bond, Batman. It's fun too.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 10, 2021, 08:12:20 AM
And Luke was a 0 level with amazing stats in the first film (key among them being that 18 Force Ability and above average Dex in a setting that favored piloting and ranged combat).

Luke would have died in his first combat encounter if a high level multiclass fighter/wizard hadn't shown up to save him. He also was totally outmatched in a bar fight with a couple of toughs and again needed the fighter/wizard to save him.

Then he spends the middle chunk of the movie sneaking around in stolen armor after the high level fighter/thief and his barbarian companion kill the guards. He gets pwned by a sewer monster until it retreats because someone turned on the wall trap and only quick thinking by the high level golem thief disables it.

Then he runs around some more and hits a few Stormtroopers (who have been ordered to let them escape so they'll lead them to the Rebel base) on the way out. He tags one TIE Fighter in the escape while the fighter/thief nails the rest.

Having finally earned enough xp to gain a PC class he goes fighter for the mission to destroy the Death Star, gets given the best starfighter in the game as starting equipment and still manages to get it hit repeatedly and has two wingman blown away covering him and the golem thief gets ganked by the bad guy too (fortunately his race is easy to use raise dead on).

Luke is absolutely going to die until the fighter/thief and barbarian come riding to the rescue and the ghost of the fighter/wizard tells him how to actually leverage that 18 in Force Ability to boost his crappy 1st level THAC0.

Then he earns millions of XP by blowing up a moon sized station full of mooks and can basically level up for the rest of the films as quickly as he can find trainers for the levels he wants.

As you can see... my point stands. Luke was a zero-level with insanely high stats until after he completed his first dungeon crawl.

I would seriously watch a YouTube series where you did move reviews like this

Quote from: ShieldWife on August 09, 2021, 07:46:57 PM
So let's assume we have a 100 pound 5'5" teenager who has never been in a fight and can't do a push-up. That person wresting a healthy adult grizzly bear doesn't stand much of a chance - simulating that fight should cause the grizzly bear to win. But what if I don't want to play that teenager, what if I want to play a legendary warrior of nearly superhuman strength who might be able to wrestle a bear? What if I want to play a superhero who could toss the bear aside like a stuffed teddy bear?

Wanting to simulate something doesn't really limit what you simulate. You could simulate any kind of fictional, fantasy, or science fiction idea.

Correct.........are we disagreeing on anything here? I wasn't really talking about that, only how much fiddly detail vs how simplified (or oversimplified) you want it. For instance, if you play Godzilla the 50-50 toss up is still poor simulation, right? Or if you simplify slightly less you could just roll D1000 megadamage dice. Or in the converse case, you could go overboard, including various damage and armor modifiers for burns, crushing, cutting, damage locations etc. For most people there is a sweet spot somewhere in the middle.

Quote from: S'mon on August 04, 2021, 03:03:15 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on August 03, 2021, 06:57:02 PM
Except for all these ways that woman have better Constitution then men, I am going to give them lower constitution?

I remember doing army training, women got injured a lot more easily - because they had less muscle mass. Hit Points should really key off STR, if you want to be realistic.

Would you?  I see the constitutional bonus to HP being an endurance modifier to the pool.  It's reflecting how winded you're becoming as the combat rounds tick by until resolution.

Quote from: AaronThePedantic on August 07, 2021, 05:10:21 PM
I know Lekofka is now notorious for his article on women PCs back yonder times. <snip>

That article was pure genre emulation, at a time that the old genre was being abandoned with all haste.

Quote from: Palleon on August 14, 2021, 06:36:20 PM
Would you?  I see the constitutional bonus to HP being an endurance modifier to the pool.  It's reflecting how winded you're becoming as the combat rounds tick by until resolution.

Fair enough, but we naturally tend to see hp as meat, and women have a lot less useful meat. Even athletic and strong-looking women were injured in training much more than the average-James (it's England) guys they were training alongside. I think stuff like heatstroke did probably hit the men worse though. 

Being injured is not a sign of constitution.

Sounds more like a low Dexterity to me

Quote from: Shasarak on August 15, 2021, 03:52:24 AM
Being injured is not a sign of constitution.

Sounds more like a low Dexterity to me

Everyone gets bashed. The trainers commented on how men get bruises, women get broken bones.

Quote from: S'mon on August 15, 2021, 03:30:40 AMFair enough, but we naturally tend to see hp as meat, and women have a lot less useful meat.

I don't think that was meant to be the case, although hit points are one of the worst thought out concepts in the game. In D&D you can be on 1 hit point and still be 100% effective. There are various house rules / variations to allow for injury and there is system shock, but that's about it. You might roleplay a character that has had his hit points reduced as injured, but this can only ever be superficial in a mechanical sense because it doesn't reduce your abilities. Hit points are meant to combine many things, including mental resilience and luck. Constitution is meant to represent overall health. A good constitution is not going to stop you from getting hit, but it might reduce the debilitating effects of injury, or lower your recovery time.

Quote from: mightybrain on August 15, 2021, 09:21:06 AM

Quote from: S'mon on August 15, 2021, 03:30:40 AMFair enough, but we naturally tend to see hp as meat, and women have a lot less useful meat.

I don't think that was meant to be the case, although hit points are one of the worst thought out concepts in the game. In D&D you can be on 1 hit point and still be 100% effective. There are various house rules / variations to allow for injury and there is system shock, but that's about it. You might roleplay a character that has had his hit points reduced as injured, but this can only ever be superficial in a mechanical sense because it doesn't reduce your abilities. Hit points are meant to combine many things, including mental resilience and luck. Constitution is meant to represent overall health. A good constitution is not going to stop you from getting hit, but it might reduce the debilitating effects of injury, or lower your recovery time.

Hit points are an extremely well thought out concept, from a gamist standpoint. They serve a clear purpose in the game, and provide a unique experience other mechanics struggle to replicate. What they don't do is clearly map to real world injuries. But this is not a weakness, it's a design strength. Games that use escalating hp aren't trying to replicate shock and trauma. They're not even trying to emulate the genre of high fantasy that has knights of pounding away at each other for hours, at least not precisely. Instead, they're focused on the game effects.

From a conceptual standpoint, In find it best to think of hit point as an abstract degree of heroism. It involves will, persistence, skill, and other concrete qualities. But it's not something that's defined by or limited by that list of qualities, or any of the other ones you mentioned. It's primarily composed of that ineffable quality that distinguishes the protagonist from the mooks, or major heroes and villains from the sidekicks and supporting characters. Palleon's point that the Con bonus represents endurance more than systemic resilience is also a good one.

One thing that's worth noting is no matter what happens, hit points do always represent some degree of physical injury. This is usually just a scratch of some kind, but a hero down to their last hp is going to be a bit beat-up, whether it's bruises, lacerations, or singes. This won't amount to a lot, because it's nothing that impairs their functioning, but it has to involve some injury, or things like poison make no sense. A logical corollary is there is always some kind of visual indication that someone has taken a beating, so while PCs won't know a monster's hp, a DM should give them some general indication whether the monster is at full health or barely hanging in there.

What Pat says. Also some games add Constitution as a form of Health points which DO represent actual injuries.