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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by JNAProductions View Post
    Yeah, I can understand a correlation between Size and AoE damage (a Small target has less space to roast than a Huge one) but not number of targets.
    Makes for a weird visual too: dropping equivalent of a nuke on an extremely populated city would result in mildly irritating millions of people.

    More on topic: I am split a bit here. I like part of my character growing stronger being able to survive hits more easily, but I also understand that the scaling needs to be reasonable. DND 3.5 scales insanely, even with caster types, but Black Crusade's lack of scaling makes surviving a sustained attack as anything but a servant of Nurgle difficult. No one likes losing their character to one unlucky roll.

    I feel the best answer is scaling but slowly or with limits. I like M+M because it is cheap and there are a ton of different ways to acquire it but you can only go so high. WW is okayish with growing your soak pool and doing things to acquire more wound boxes, but it gets insanely expensive after a while.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    Huh, cool.

    Wonder why I've never heard of it before.

    Gotta say I don't like that AoE rule on initial reading -- it seems to invert the value of tactical positioning.
    You have to think about it a little bit. You can have characters with over 100 levels in the game. If you used AD&D1st edition fireballs, what would that 30th level magic user spell do to someone who gains HP slowly. Think about it, a magic user gains 1 HP every 3 levels but if you were to get 1d6 damage per level for a fireball spell, how over powered is that. You have to look deeper. It really is a major plus of the system if you really look at it.

    FYI, in case you didn't know, it is a mana based spell system. So potential for round after round of fireballs. So if players have 50 hp and take two 36 damage fireballs per ad&d, they better make their savings throws or they are dead.

    The stated goal of the HP system is to allow a 1st level character to play with a higher level character without there being a hundred hit points difference. On the HP basis, it works.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FreddyNoNose View Post
    The stated goal of the HP system is to allow a 1st level character to play with a higher level character without there being a hundred hit points difference. On the HP basis, it works.
    Which is 1: unintuitive and 2: (more importantly) trying to fix a serious design flaw that existed all the way until 3.0 by introducing a different design flaw (which is funny since 3.0 is the 5th edition of DnD. Good job there WotC. I see what you did...)

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    Which is 1: unintuitive and 2: (more importantly) trying to fix a serious design flaw that existed all the way until 3.0 by introducing a different design flaw (which is funny since 3.0 is the 5th edition of DnD. Good job there WotC. I see what you did...)
    OMG, I knew someone would bring up their little pet issue about the "serious design flaw" that is all in their mind.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Floopay View Post
    The concept is simple actually.

    A low level character gets stabbed in the arm, takes 10 points of damage, and is knocked unconscious and bleeding; because they fall below 0 hit points. A high level character gets stabbed in the arm, takes 10 points of damage, and is still up and functioning.
    So what does 10 points of damage represent, then?

    What does an attack that succeeds represent?
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-09-16 at 11:18 PM.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    HP is plot armour.

    Higher level PCs have access to more plot armour then low level PCs.

    This allows them to casually brush off an attack that would fell a lesser PC.

    D&D is a game that's generally about heroic adventurers going out and doing heroic things, while also getting stronger in the process, which allows them to take on more and more dangerous things.

    Within that context, HP in D&D is fine as it abstracts exactly what it needs to.

    How any given attack affects the PC will depend on the PC. HP is a mix of luck, skill, divine intervention, magical boons, gear, and everything in between.

    A thief & a fighter who take 30 points of damage will narrate it differently. The thief barely dodges it while the fighter soaks the hit with his shield. 30 points of damage is done to their plot armour. When HP reaches 0, they're out cold: exhausted, fainted, knocked unconcious, left bleeding for dead and incapacitated... whatever. They're out of the fight.

    D&D HP is not a complex thing.

    It's plot armour.

    Is it realistic? No but if D&D were big on realism, we wouldn't have Bhaube the Elven Warmage: we would have Bob, the crazy hobo who glued leaves to his ears and runs around in only bathrobe throwing duracells at people and screaming LIGHTNING BOLT!

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    Quote Originally Posted by FreddyNoNose View Post
    OMG, I knew someone would bring up their little pet issue about the "serious design flaw" that is all in their mind.
    Forcing someone to start at 1 regardless of everyone else's EXP is a serious design flaw. You may love that mistake to death but that does not suddenly make it good. This is a common and annoying thing people do: "If I like it it is good and if I do not like it it is bad." This is simply untrue. AD&D (and it's predecessors) and a ton of stupid design decisions, including gender segregation. 3Rd Ed also had a ton of stupid design decisions. I cannot speak on 5th ed as I have not played it but every edition of DnD has decisions that make me bang my head against a wall. That is the nature of design: mistakes will be made and you are free to enjoy a system in spite of or even for them, but that does not suddenly make them not mistakes.

    As a secondary note: if you legitimately think starting a character over at 1st level regardless of party power level is not a flaw, please explain this position instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by FreddyNoNose View Post
    OMG, I knew someone would bring up their little pet issue about the "serious design flaw" that is all in their mind.
    "You see, the fireball spell has a pre-set damage limit, so I simply stood in the middle of a group of my own men in order to reduce the damage to myself. Show them my medal, Kif."


    Quote Originally Posted by Lalliman View Post
    But explanations aren't really what I'm after. What I want to know: How do you feel about this mechanic existing, inside or outside D&D? Do you see it as a logical part of becoming more powerful, as a necessary weasel, as a stupid contrivance? I frankly can't make up my mind about it.
    Let's get back to the topic.

    Most editions of D&D allow damage to scale pretty high. As pointed out above, a "30th level fireball" presents a problem for fixed-HP characters. If your HP can't scale to match greater & greater damage, you'll just die.

    D&D 5e has a good answer to this: fireball has fixed damage (8d6), unless you expend a higher-level slot to cast it. So a 5th level Wizard or a 30th level Wizard casting fireball will on average hit for ~28 damage (~14 on a save).

    I think that 5e could be wrangled into a system that handles much slower HP advancement, yet remains fun throughout all levels. Keep the overall structure of 5e intact, just tweak some specifics.

    I'd probably use elements like:
    - More class features to reduce damage, including passive DR and reactions.
    - Armor as DR (not just that one heavy armor feat).
    - Limited number of healing surges per day.

    If the DR applies to monsters, and it should, then probably:
    - At least two different options for melee attacks: lots of smaller attacks, or one big attack. The big attack's damage scales faster. Some classes will favor one or the other.


    Oh, there is one other thing I'd change, but I'm not sure it's on topic except that it does deal with HP. Healing in 5e seems to be "solved": don't do it until someone drops, then spend an action to recover the dropped PC. That's ugly in how trivial it makes the decision process, and it's ugly in how it feels counter-intuitive and "gamey". Maybe a solution would be something like:
    - If you're above 0 HP, then you spend one healing surge to heal _______ damage.
    - If you're at or below 0 HP, then you must spend TWO healing surges to heal the same damage.

    That makes timing the heals a game of balancing risk & tension rather than a solved problem.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    I think my biggest problem with DND style HP is that weird corner cases appear (such as drowning in lava before dying to damage...okayish that is the biggest one).

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by oxybe View Post
    HP is plot armour.

    Higher level PCs have access to more plot armour then low level PCs.

    This allows them to casually brush off an attack that would fell a lesser PC.

    D&D is a game that's generally about heroic adventurers going out and doing heroic things, while also getting stronger in the process, which allows them to take on more and more dangerous things.

    Within that context, HP in D&D is fine as it abstracts exactly what it needs to.

    How any given attack affects the PC will depend on the PC. HP is a mix of luck, skill, divine intervention, magical boons, gear, and everything in between.

    A thief & a fighter who take 30 points of damage will narrate it differently. The thief barely dodges it while the fighter soaks the hit with his shield. 30 points of damage is done to their plot armour. When HP reaches 0, they're out cold: exhausted, fainted, knocked unconcious, left bleeding for dead and incapacitated... whatever. They're out of the fight.

    D&D HP is not a complex thing.

    It's plot armour.
    IMO, that's exactly what makes it horrible. Plot armor is a bad fictional trope, not a design goal.


    Quote Originally Posted by oxybe View Post
    Is it realistic? No but if D&D were big on realism, we wouldn't have Bhaube the Elven Warmage: we would have Bob, the crazy hobo who glued leaves to his ears and runs around in only bathrobe throwing duracells at people and screaming LIGHTNING BOLT!
    That's just drifting off into something like The "But Dragons!" Fallacy.
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

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    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Many of the problem with the Hit Dice approach can be mitigated by having more hit points at level 1 (the D&D 4th edition approach), or just start playing at level 3 (and every commoner you meet that's not completely inexperienced are level 3 too).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    IMO, that's exactly what makes it horrible. Plot armor is a bad fictional trope, not a design goal.
    Tropes are tools.

    To dismiss a trope as bad without considering why it's used within the framework of the movie (or game in this case) and why the designers used it over something else doesn't make the trope bad, it just makes it seem like the point went over your head.

    D&D doesn't work on realism. It never tried to, since day one. D&D, especially modern D&D, is trying to emulate the feats of heroic characters but understands that no two characters would necessarily react to the same threat in the same way. HP, as plot armour, allows the player, rather then the system, to describe how a threat affects his heroic character.

    It allows the player to take narrative control and describe or imagine how awesome his character is.

    IE: Brick the Buff tanks hits while Dirk the Dextrous dodges them. Both chip away at their HP/plot armour.

    It's not bad, it's just not realistic. And that's fine for D&D which never claimed to be.

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
    That's just drifting off into something like The "But Dragons!" Fallacy.
    Dragons in D&D work only because of player buy-in of the tropes, genre and themes of D&D, same as the Plot Armour we call HP.

    Toss a living, breathing red dragon in a game of GURPS where the setup is a gritty WW1 trench warfare game and you'll have a ton of jank and pushback because it doesn't fit.

    But "But Dragons" is very much a viable counter to the "unrealisticness" of HP because both dragons, elves, magic and HP are all 100% fictional things that only make sense in the narrative of the game if the players buys into the concept the designers and/or GM presents... and the default setting of D&D, where the PCs are a group of heroes of various skillsets and walks of life, HP as Plot Armour does work with the default buy-in.

    These things are all acceptable breaks from reality that allow us to enjoy the sometimes janky ride that is the rollercoaster called D&D.

    It's fine not to like the trope, just don't dismiss it as bad "just because".

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    I find levels and HP immersion breaking. At best it is a fun distraction.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    I find levels and HP immersion breaking. At best it is a fun distraction.
    Levels also immersion breaking for you? How? You prefer a story where there's no character growth?
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    Quote Originally Posted by ahyangyi View Post
    Levels also immersion breaking for you? How? You prefer a story where there's no character growth?
    Or, mayhaps, they prefer a story where character growth is gradual instead of resembling a go/no-go gauge, such as you would find in GURPS, WW, or M&M to name some big names. Levelling up is weird conceptually: you spend time, possibly months or years, and gain literally nothing and then, suddenly, it all catches up with you. While it can be justified in world it is certainly a bit more unusual than taking a Biology Course online and justifying it by getting a rank in some sort of Biology skill.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    Or, mayhaps, they prefer a story where character growth is gradual instead of resembling a go/no-go gauge, such as you would find in GURPS, WW, or M&M to name some big names. Levelling up is weird conceptually: you spend time, possibly months or years, and gain literally nothing and then, suddenly, it all catches up with you. While it can be justified in world it is certainly a bit more unusual than taking a Biology Course online and justifying it by getting a rank in some sort of Biology skill.
    In ye olde editions, you got XP after every encounter, but you didn't actually get the benefit of a level-up until you spent weeks of downtime training.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ahyangyi View Post
    Levels also immersion breaking for you? How? You prefer a story where there's no character growth?
    You can have mechanical character growth without levels. Lots of systems distribute skill or ability points that get directly spent on improving character skills without doing so at discrete "levels".

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen Feet
    If HP and damage both increase, you get a weird effect where effectiveness towards equal level opponents does not improve, but lower level obstacles and enemies become less and less of a threat.
    I mean that's not a particularly weird effect, and can in fact be exactly the effect the system is trying to produce, because it means combat can still be a challenge whilst letting people feel the growth at long as they still encounter "easy" enemies from a couple of levels ago from time to time.

    Especially if they face something that used to be a big worry but now isn't because they have the good saves and more beef. Feels like revenge.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    In ye olde editions, you got XP after every encounter, but you didn't actually get the benefit of a level-up until you spent weeks of downtime training.
    That feels like a band-aid on a gushing wound to me, but it is dramatically better than Rifts' solution of making levels an actual in world thing that exists and some people are aware of (in a non-4th wall breaking sense). That was just silly.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ahyangyi View Post
    Levels also immersion breaking for you? How? You prefer a story where there's no character growth?
    I prefer stories where my character can grow in more than one dimension.

    Let me give you an example- the last game I was in, set in a dystopian sci-fi future using the shadowrun game mechanics. My character was a low ranking military member of Regime, the military dictatorship that controlled all of Earth. Each session we played the PCs gained some exp, not enough to grow substantially in skill but we could grow gradually. I choose to bank all of my exp.

    Each session I advanced my character's role in the story and became more and more important to the plot, I made contacts with criminal elements that lead to having the ear of the local crime lord, I helped the crime lord destroy his rivals while taking credit for it, which gained me increased ranking in the local military.

    Before the game was over my character was the local ruler of the town we were, had managed to put the other players in positions of power and created a mutually beneficial cooperation with the crime lord.

    Now THAT is the kind of development I wanted. He started out as a slightly paranoid scheming character who acquired as many levers as he could, used the leverage of one side to improve his position on the other, back and forth until he was the most powerful man in town.

    All without spending a single experience point. He didn't advance in any of his skills or abilities.

    You don't need levels or hit points to advance your character and this was much more satisfying to play than merely increasing some stat on a paper to become a better killer or whatever.

    Edit-

    Getting ninja'd by people arguing that gradual increase in ability makes more sense than levels. Yes, I agree. But I'd take it a step further and say even that is a distraction- a fun distraction- from an even more satisfying roleplaying experience. Having character stats is a means to an end, the roleplaying is the end and leveling, hit points and I daresay even gradual exp gain is an active distraction from that. It has taken me years to realize this.
    Last edited by Mastikator; 2017-09-17 at 08:25 AM. Reason: addendum
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by oxybe View Post
    Tropes are tools.

    To dismiss a trope as bad without considering why it's used within the framework of the movie (or game in this case) and why the designers used it over something else doesn't make the trope bad, it just makes it seem like the point went over your head.

    D&D doesn't work on realism. It never tried to, since day one. D&D, especially modern D&D, is trying to emulate the feats of heroic characters but understands that no two characters would necessarily react to the same threat in the same way. HP, as plot armour, allows the player, rather then the system, to describe how a threat affects his heroic character.

    It allows the player to take narrative control and describe or imagine how awesome his character is.

    IE: Brick the Buff tanks hits while Dirk the Dextrous dodges them. Both chip away at their HP/plot armour.

    It's not bad, it's just not realistic. And that's fine for D&D which never claimed to be.
    I'm aware of all that, the same excuses for D&D Hit Points have been posted dozens of times before, here and elsewhere -- and it makes no difference to my thoughts on the matter.

    Plot Armor is a bad idea, a narrative contrivance. If D&D Hit Points are trying to emulate that bad idea, that doesn't make D&D Hit Points better, it just makes it a bad mechanic emulating a bad idea.

    But then, most tropes are less tools to be used... and more landmines to be avoided. (And then there are the tropes so generalized and broad as to be pointless. "OMG I've seen three characters who use magic and have white hair, the white haired magic user is totally a trope!")


    Quote Originally Posted by oxybe View Post
    Dragons in D&D work only because of player buy-in of the tropes, genre and themes of D&D, same as the Plot Armour we call HP.

    Toss a living, breathing red dragon in a game of GURPS where the setup is a gritty WW1 trench warfare game and you'll have a ton of jank and pushback because it doesn't fit.

    But "But Dragons" is very much a viable counter to the "unrealisticness" of HP because both dragons, elves, magic and HP are all 100% fictional things that only make sense in the narrative of the game if the players buys into the concept the designers and/or GM presents... and the default setting of D&D, where the PCs are a group of heroes of various skillsets and walks of life, HP as Plot Armour does work with the default buy-in.

    These things are all acceptable breaks from reality that allow us to enjoy the sometimes janky ride that is the rollercoaster called D&D.

    It's fine not to like the trope, just don't dismiss it as bad "just because".
    "But Dragons!" -- the fallacy that any break from reality justifies all breaks from reality in a fictional setting. When you say "Is it realistic? No but if D&D were big on realism, we wouldn't have Bhaube the Elven Warmage:", that's pretty much "But Dragons!" stated as "But Elven Warmages!". Not all breaks from reality are created equal, and not all breaks from reality are fitting or consistent for any particular setting.

    D&D Hit Points, like the contrivance of plot armor they attempt to emulate in a fuzzy and badly abstract way, aren't even a "break from reality" of the same sort that a dragon or an elf would be. They're a game mechanic, not a setting element. Using one sort as a justification for the other sort doesn't fly. A game can have dragons and elves and warmages and magic lightning without trying to emulate bad narrative contrivances like plot armor. Plot armor, and D&D Hit Points, aren't bad because they're not realistic, they're bad because they don't feel like they could be real (see sig below).
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-09-17 at 09:02 AM.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    Or, mayhaps, they prefer a story where character growth is gradual instead of resembling a go/no-go gauge, such as you would find in GURPS, WW, or M&M to name some big names. Levelling up is weird conceptually: you spend time, possibly months or years, and gain literally nothing and then, suddenly, it all catches up with you. While it can be justified in world it is certainly a bit more unusual than taking a Biology Course online and justifying it by getting a rank in some sort of Biology skill.
    That makes sense, though every level-based system can do that with little modifications too. You just spread out the leveling bonus, like the Staggered Advancement system in Pathfinder Unchained does.

    Ultimately, any system where you can learn new, distinct abilities (as opposed of just adding numbers), are discrete. That means there must be a moment where you move from "can't use ability X" to "can use ability X". So every system are, in some sense, a leveling system, but with different granularity of levels.
    Last edited by ahyangyi; 2017-09-17 at 09:22 AM.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    I prefer stories where my character can grow in more than one dimension.

    Let me give you an example- the last game I was in, set in a dystopian sci-fi future using the shadowrun game mechanics. My character was a low ranking military member of Regime, the military dictatorship that controlled all of Earth. Each session we played the PCs gained some exp, not enough to grow substantially in skill but we could grow gradually. I choose to bank all of my exp.

    Each session I advanced my character's role in the story and became more and more important to the plot, I made contacts with criminal elements that lead to having the ear of the local crime lord, I helped the crime lord destroy his rivals while taking credit for it, which gained me increased ranking in the local military.

    Before the game was over my character was the local ruler of the town we were, had managed to put the other players in positions of power and created a mutually beneficial cooperation with the crime lord.

    Now THAT is the kind of development I wanted. He started out as a slightly paranoid scheming character who acquired as many levers as he could, used the leverage of one side to improve his position on the other, back and forth until he was the most powerful man in town.

    All without spending a single experience point. He didn't advance in any of his skills or abilities.

    You don't need levels or hit points to advance your character and this was much more satisfying to play than merely increasing some stat on a paper to become a better killer or whatever.

    Edit-

    Getting ninja'd by people arguing that gradual increase in ability makes more sense than levels. Yes, I agree. But I'd take it a step further and say even that is a distraction- a fun distraction- from an even more satisfying roleplaying experience. Having character stats is a means to an end, the roleplaying is the end and leveling, hit points and I daresay even gradual exp gain is an active distraction from that. It has taken me years to realize this.
    That'll work if all the character development is about social position, or wealth.

    That won't work if you actually hone your skills. Like the classical wizard who can only cast magic missile in the beginning of a game but he can cast time stop in the end. You can't just talk to people and be a good wizard like that. You need a mechanism to explain why your wizard can't cast time stop in the beginning and now he can. And experience probably makes the most sense.
    Last edited by ahyangyi; 2017-09-17 at 09:18 AM.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ahyangyi View Post
    That'll work if all the character development is about social position.

    That won't work if you actually hone your skills. Like the classical wizard who can only cast magic missile in the beginning of a game but he can cast time stop in the end. You can't just talk to people and be a good wizard like that. You need a mechanism to explain why your wizard can't cast time stop in the beginning and now he can.
    You don't need levels or hit points to add capabilities to your character. If your character is a sorcerer then or psychic then their powers can awaken through story elements and merely measured as stats (ie you can do away with exp), for wizards it's a matter of learning. In that case levels don't make sense since there's no in game reason your character shouldn't be able to cast time stop if he had it inscribed in his book at the start of the game. It's actually not well explained in the player handbook and the players are expected to accept a game balance argument as a roleplaying one.

    This is what I don't like about D&D, it's DragonballZ masquerading as Lord of the Rings. The mechanics do not sync with the setting. I'd argue that Rift is better in this way since it finds a way to marry the game mechanics and the setting.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    You don't need levels or hit points to add capabilities to your character. If your character is a sorcerer then or psychic then their powers can awaken through story elements and merely measured as stats (ie you can do away with exp), for wizards it's a matter of learning. In that case levels don't make sense since there's no in game reason your character shouldn't be able to cast time stop if he had it inscribed in his book at the start of the game. It's actually not well explained in the player handbook and the players are expected to accept a game balance argument as a roleplaying one.

    This is what I don't like about D&D, it's DragonballZ masquerading as Lord of the Rings. The mechanics do not sync with the setting. I'd argue that Rift is better in this way since it finds a way to marry the game mechanics and the setting.
    OK. If your point is that one can do with experience points without leveling, then I agree. I just see "experience points with levels" and "experience points without levels" mathematically near-equivalent, though... So that's kind of word-play for me.

    And I never liked the D&D hit dice to begin with. I'm not trying to argue about that. The hit dice actually works better for the monsters, since the larger monsters (like dragons) are indeed supposed to be tough and hit dice represent that pretty well. It never worked as well for adventurers though.
    Last edited by ahyangyi; 2017-09-17 at 09:38 AM.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ahyangyi View Post
    OK. If your point is that one can do with experience points without leveling, then I agree. I just see "experience points with levels" and "experience points without levels" mathematically near-equivalent, though... So that's kind of word-play for me.

    And I never liked the D&D hit dice to begin with. I'm not trying to argue about that. The hit dice actually works better for the monsters, since the larger monsters (like dragons) are indeed supposed to be tough and hit dice represent that pretty well. It never worked as well for adventurers though.
    I'm sympathetic to the camp that thinks experience and gradual increase is better than leveling but that's not the camp I am in because I think they both suffer from the same problem.

    Here's the problem, the way your character grows mechanically is in direct conflict to how they grow as a character. Let me flesh this out with an example so you can see where I am coming from.

    If I were to travel the world, meet exotic people and see new things I would widen my horizons and grow as a person. It would not make me better at fencing with swords or shooting with guns.
    How do I get better at fencing with swords? Practice, I have to practice sword fencing.

    But if my character just spends all day practicing with swords in a game like D&D then that won't do diddly squat, instead I'd have to go on an adventure and then take a level as a fighter. Which is literally the opposite of how it should work.
    And changing from a level system to a experience system would make it easier to excuse it still wouldn't actually resolve the conflict.

    I think this is a dangerous distraction, because you should want to go on adventure with your character, that's the point. But if your goal is to be a better fencer then the way you do that is by practicing, the only reason you might travel is to find sparring partners. That is boring.

    You should want to advance the plot and grow your character within the setting, not grow it mechanically. The game mechanics based growth is a red herring.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Well, the thing is, adventures (at least in D&D) tend to involve a lot of fighting. So it makes sense that you're going to get better at it-you're not JUST practicing it, you're practicing it in live situations, where you can learn very much more than against a training dummy or in a controlled environment against a sparring partner.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by JNAProductions View Post
    Well, the thing is, adventures (at least in D&D) tend to involve a lot of fighting. So it makes sense that you're going to get better at it-you're not JUST practicing it, you're practicing it in live situations, where you can learn very much more than against a training dummy or in a controlled environment against a sparring partner.
    That's a good point. You just can't practice how to deal with a dirty trick user or how to deal with a dragon. You need to face a new one. There's something that you can't replace with mere dummy practice.

    We need some arguments for wizards and the like though. Why adventuring seems a better alternative than researching in his lab?

    A real world analogy though, the good real-world researchers actually go to lots of conferences, talk to many different people, and stuff like that. They don't actually stay in their labs every day. Not sure if this is convincing enough, but maybe it's a good start.

    I was thinking about this issue Mastikator raised for some time, but then concluded that just different people have different ideas about what an RPG really is.

    Mastikator is more simulationist than me, for example. And I am definitely a different kind of player. I am interested in actual game mechanics, as well as discovering awesome stuff or unexpected things on the run. I would have been bored to death if all I get to do is to talk to this people and talk to that people. Hell, I hate meetings in everyday work, and why do I have to do more meetings when I am not at work?

    And for D&D 3R (and Pathfinder). No, it doesn't have the problem where the mechanic disconnects with the setting. In D&D 3R, the mechanic is the setting. If you think the setting is something else (like DragonballZ or LotR), it's your problem. In a world where detect alignment and smite evil are a thing, and color spray works differently on creatures with different HD, you can't really talk in phrases like "suspension of disbelief". You have to believe as if the HD and the alignment are real things in the setting. And suddenly lots of problems disappears...
    Last edited by ahyangyi; 2017-09-17 at 11:32 AM.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    On that note, I really like how Bethesda did leveling in Skyrim. You grow as a character for any interaction you live through, failures and successes. As you achieve milestones in your career, you grow in actual, measurable strength (whether strength of health, stamina, or magical aptitude), and you learn a new trick like a class feature, but which tricks you learn are limited by your skill and practice in that particular field.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    If you want your characters to improbably survive dangers that ought to kill them, like fictional heroes do... there's a great many better ways to do it than ever-escalating hit points. Likewise for heroes being straight-up superhuman and surviving lethal situations through skill and/or magic.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    I lean toward "sim", but IMO, experience / character growth is one of those areas where simulation can get easily become burdensome at the cost of the enjoyment of the game.

    Tracking training time, or restricting experience expenditure or other mechanical growth to things that the character has been doing "on screen", is an added overhead and restriction that to me doesn't have an offsetting benefit in terms of actually making the game more enjoyable or immersive.

    Just let the character grow the way the player wants them to grow, IMO (within the limits of the game, obviously, this is specifically about training and skill-use tracking and downtime/uptime concerns).
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-09-17 at 12:12 PM.
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