DnD Hit Points vs Lightning Bolt

This was asked on facebook the other day:

How much damage should a lightning bolt (one from the sky, not magic) do?

Resulting in a BUNCH of answers, Most of them answering with the premise that the question uses the world "Should" and suggests the DMG is wrong and the OP wants a more realistic answer.

The underlying problem is, DnDs HP system doesn't easily allow for 'pure' damage, its 'related' damage.

When a character takes a blow from an opponent, its suggested that the HP loss is a total combined amount from sweat, exhaustion, pain, bruising as much as broken skin, bleeding, internal damage and destruction of vital organs.

It also suggests that higher level characters can take more sweat, exhaustion, pain and bruising, before getting severly tired, and actual damage is mitigated by the character dodging enough to reduce any real damage, relaxing the body enough at the time of impact to reduce muscular damage, AND the idea that a higher level character likely has taken a few blows and their skin is a tad tougher.

So a 1st level character with 8hp, taking 8hp wound is going to be in so much pain and shock, they are reduced to a blubbering mess, and possibly will die just from the shock of the blow.

ok, so you take
3d4, 7d6, 7d8, 9d10 and 3d12 damage,
Still alive? 

While a 10th level character with 80hp, is going to feel a pang of pain, but will have 'mitigated' the blow as though it was only actually 1hp of damage if he were a 1st level.

This of course is often forgotten, players get the wrong impression that their character can take several hits from several weapons, and just keep going.

But when you get involved with actual damage, it goes awry.

Spell lightning involved factors such as dodge, target missing, arcing off nearby metals, seeing the spell coming and getting partially or mostly out of the way, even when hit, where a higher level character can 'notice' these things and mitigate the damage taken, a low level character takes the full brunt of it.

But pure damage should ignore level, and be as equal in killing a high level as it does a 0th peasant.

I think DnD 2nd edition used to have damage dice as a value, and pure damage was multiplied by damage dice. Creatures had damage dice, so certain spells or effects would do d10 x damagedice. But some creatures had d4 damage dice, so a d10dd effect would likely kill them, but other d12 or d20 dd creatures, could likely survive.

<rant>Of course, the modern gamer can't even add up basic numbers to do their own experience, so trying to calculate damage dice would ruin the experience and destroy their immersion</rant>

This is one of the main reasons I liked Dragon Warriors. your health was just that, Health. Checking if the attack was better than your opponents defence, if their armour was thick enough to absorb the blow all came way before health. and health represented the wounds that would bring you closer to death. You were lucky if you got 1 per rank, so while a 10th ranked barbarian with 16 HP fared better against a 10th ranked sorcerer with 9 HP, it was not in such a magnitude of difference than a d20 fireball couldn't kill them both, and all the 6HP peasants standing around.

I took it a few steps further for DungeonWorld v1->3 but HP was a staple for roleplaying games, so I stuck with what players expected..

Version 4, was a time of stripping back to basics and redoing the engine from the ground up with what worked, and trashing the flawed, old-school, chunky rules and looking at what really mattered.

Game Speed, Player Understanding, Luck and Realism.

Players, looking at a situation, see 100HP, see 2d10 damage from opponent, see average 10damage, see 8 rounds of safe combat. Wade in, taking blow after blow, not caring, just need to burn down the opponents HP.
Some DMs will tell them the HP of the monster, and the players will cross reference their damage and say "oh no, we need X more rounds, then include a few heal spells, and viola", why bother rolling the dice.

Sometimes players will slow down their game, to figure this kind of thing out..

So for games speed, My research suggested that players should just 'take damage' as the GM tells them, and if its excessive, make a check. The check should slow them down a few seconds.. because like their character, they are grasping at their chest/wound, life and death on the line.. ANY time a check is being made vs damage, the player can die right there, the tension is real, players are far more engaged and understand the threat.

This could be a lucky 1st level
or an unlucky 20th level

Artist:Gui Guimaraes

Whats more interesting is that a character can, and should, be able to be taken down in any given hit. Not being hit at all should be priority no.1. Also, monster can and should, be taken down with one hit too, if its placed well. Players should be looking to get that hit, and not be hit. and be creative with that.

Luckily, they are Heroes, and can mitigate the wound or the check vs death with the luck rules, allowing lower level characters the chance to avoid mistakes made, and higher level characters should have players who have learnt not to make such mistakes.

There is no way to tell if your going to die from a single 8pt wound or 20 x 2pt wounds, so you can't calculate the odds of surviving several blows from a creature. Don't get hit is the way to survive.

Eventually if you keep putting your character in extremely dangerous situations, odds are they will die, so players will often retire a character that's reached a point of no return, and use them as a support character for their next character to join and learn from.

The Game runs faster, Players don't have 'pure numbers' to game, luck plays its part and its far more realistic without sacrificing game play.

and a lightning bolt will kill 20% of people, no matter their level.. though, holding a metal blade in a lightning storm is more likely to get you hit.

Careful what you say you may ruins someones play.

This blog goes into a few different topics, I'll try to break it up with headings.Mostly its about GMing

Pro GMs Chatting with Casual GMs

Sometimes when your talking to someone that seems to understand what your saying, is on the same page as you, you might get a bit deeper into the topic, but if the other person wasn't really there on the same page, and they have a different world view on the topic, your deeper thoughts can trigger negative thoughts. 

I belong to several RPG chat groups. Its quite common to engage in discussions about new rules. Its as common to me that people pull the strings of rules to see if they are knotted well, or robust enough, so that players won't pull said strings in the middle of the game.

When describing how the players can or might pull at the strings, examples are given.

So, when I saw a fellow community member mention a new rule, I did what I thought was normal and pulled some of the strings of the rule, presenting ways in which a player or a situation could ruin the rule.

Instead I offended the guy, he got extremely defensive of his rule, politely attacked me and when I apologised, politely slapped my face. I was of course miffed, I had too late realised it was a public post, not a group post, so I was likely jumping into his realm and just rambling on about his rule having holes.

Facepalm: Meaning, Oh, Oh sorry, I made a mistake, my bad.. lets look at this differently.

------------------------------

Player Agency: This was my point in the pulling of strings. And brevity was my downfall.

------------------------------

I have often forgotten that I'm not thinking about things like others do, and I often don't want to write a paragraph of explanation to get people onto the same page as myself. So I'll often not bother, but when I think that I'm talking to a fellow games master / games designer, I just jump straight in, and I'll talk at the person, like they know exactly what I'm talking about. which often gets mis-interpreted.

Gamesmastering is not simple or easy

Case in point: Story Telling is an Art, not just in that its artistic, but that it requires an artist, to get it right. One key factor that many casual GMs will quote "its just a game". The problem is that regardless if they think its a game or not, Its also an exercise of the mind, it teaches us things, about ourselves, our players, and the world in which we live.

If you present your players with a cliff, and they talk about how to scale UP this cliff, they spend minutes talking about pitons, rope, how far up is it, your players are engaing in player agency, you've given them a chance to shine, for them to solve the problem in a creative way. Do they have pitons, do they have rope, does anyone have the climb skill, do we have spells that can break the laws of gravity, can we go around? Is there anyone nearby that can supply us with tools for scaling? should we actual scale it? is it a good idea. The discussion of how to solve the problem is players engaging in the game. Its part and parcel of roleplay.

You know what it also does? it teaches players, regardless if you want it to or not, it teaches them to be creative in their ability to solve problems. It makes them better people.

Its one of the reasons why Roleplay IS such a great medium. The Agency of creative thought.

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Two ways you can destroy this part of a roleplay experience, either directly or indirectly, is to take away this agency, the players choice in what solution should they use. Because players will often, if not always, take the path of least resistance.

The First, is why the above disagreement happened: Give players an out. Give them the choice to teleport the simple material objects, pitons and rope, to their characters, without any consequence.

If players can, teleport or retroactively buy components, tools, arrows and the like directly to their character, they will always do so. No need to ask around town before leaving, 'what kind of terrain will we cross' and pre-buy the goods needed, No need to worry about packmules for the goods, nor the path chosen, to get to the quest, not even a care, if the character steps on a weight based trap.. his back pack is now empty, but later, it'll be retroactively full, breaking the immersion of the game.. 

The Second, slightly less common, is when the solution is so impossible to solve, that the players, having 0 agency in the situation can only give up, a frustrated GM can't understand why the players can't see the forest for the trees, and the frustrated players can't understand how the GM can think they CAN see the forest, since they're in a desert.

As an example, back at our cliff, no material objects and the instructions clearly say they need to walk this direction, but the players are being chased by a dragon. They cannot think how to solve it, the GM keeps saying he's given them all the hints, and yet the dragon arrives, the GM has to fudge the encounter (the players gain too much XP and become OP for the rest of the campaign) change the plot (the big nasty dragon is actually goblins in disguise, but if that's so.. then how did the goblins manage to enact all those creature powers & fly & breathe fire?) or stick to the reality and kill off the party with a single flame of the dragon.

Face Palm.

The GM points out after killing off the players, that they needed to 'walk' up the cliff, its enchanted. The quote "walk this direction" was so obvious.. was it not? 

Well, unless the players had ANY experience that walking up the side of the cliff was even possible.. this is 0 agency.. they can't make the choice, because they can't foresee it being possible.

The Problem is that Casual GMs might see that arriving at the cliff without pre-purchasing pitons and rope, as 0 player agency, so giving them a retroactive purchase seems like a good idea.

But its not. because you made the choice for the players: You will need equipment, I want you to use equipment, but I know you won't buy the right stuff, so I'll let you buy it retroactively. you took away their agency.

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Player Agency, Don't take away choices

I had a player, who wove elven nets into his clothes, and carried a ball of string. He'd tie objects to his body as A) access easy items and B) crude armour. When in town, he'd buy up sets of things that he felt were needed by the group. often he was asked "why are you buying a fishing hook? we're going to a dungeon!

I had another player who would guide the group on regular outings to find rare and curious material components for spell casting. Each and every time, he'd end up with something curious, and as often as not, the group would encounter some creature, guarding its lair or out hunting or protecting its territory. Not often so horrible, but always a welcome side quest, with XP.

Another player, loved to try out different woods to craft arrows, sharpening his skills as a fletcher. At one point he managed to craft a masterwork redwood sapling arrow with a crystal holder head, allowing a crystal of ice to create his +6 distance +3 armour penetration +6 ice damage arrow , which helped take down a malicious fire demon. 

If I played any of those games where arrows, spell components or mundane equipment and or backpack arrangement was cast to the side by the game or the GM, those players would not still be talking about those events, to this day.

Player Agency allows players to choose to create interesting games, They can do things, without needing to change the plot or rules or interfere with the world building.

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Yet.. for all that's said and done.. players need choice.. so if your players are new.. get them used to the nitty gritty to start with, get them experienced with how it 'can' be done.. then after 5-10 sessions, let them relax on those rules, and present them with faster approaches to do the same thing.

in Dungeonworld, we have a thing called "down time" between adventures, Its done instantaneously for us, but takes weeks in game: Often while the warrior is healing, the mage gathers components, the rogue brews up potions, the archer crafts arrows and the merchant straps all these crazy things to his next set of armour.. Facepalm. 

Does Story trump rules? Only in cartoons and comedy

Over at Raging Owlbear, There is a thread about how Story trumps Rules. He makes some good points, yet at the same time misses some (IMHO) critical issues. This is not just Owlbear, This has been seen across the board with so many threads on so many forums, and its really scary that anyone should/would box RPGs up, to exclude anyone that doesn't agree with this.

If you haven't or are not going to read it, or just to clarify what I think he's saying:

Story Trumps Rules:

Owlbear talks first about how rules provide a framework for us to tell a story so we can have fun. He then goes into why you should not break the rules, I agree . Then how you should learn the rules, so you can know when to break them.. and lastly, When to break the rules, mostly this was "is it fun? then break the rules"

Whose fun?

The bulk of the posts these days seems to be "oh, the situation is too hard, just let them have their fun, scale down the difficulty, pull out the problems, let the players have fun"

At whose expense?

Owlbear doesn't go down this path, he uses example that seem fair, realistic, but read between the lines, and you can see that none of these 'rules' needed to be broken.

How do I portray this to you, the reader, clearly.. How about this: for the older crowd: We all knew it was illegal to record shows from TV onto a VCR and watch it later, the law was to stop people from setting up micro-cinemas, and showing lots of people, denying the production company the money to pay for the movie/show. For the younger crowd, Its Illegal to record Youtube Videos, and watch them later, same reasons. Yet people do it, why? because the rule is broken, its a blanket rule to cover all situations. Laws can't cover all instances fairly, neither can roleplay game rules. and that's why the Gamesmaster exists, She/He can gauge the situation and determine, does that rule apply to this situation or not.

Scafford of Consistency

When Owlbear talks of not breaking the rules, he talks of Consistency: A scaffold of consistency allow players agency to use their own world knowledge to play the game without needing to know the rules off by heart. If in real life, they think they can jump from a pillar to a window frame, they should be able to, If in real life, they can 'target' the head, with their sword swing, they should be able to. The Rules, are supposed to be an abstraction of physics to game mechanics, to allow players to do what they want to do.. or at least try.

Newer GMs

Newer GMs don't know when to use rules and when they don't, Often they'll break immersion to look up a rule, players go off, get a drink, return and have lost some of the flow of the game. so GMs learn quickly or look up on the internet how to do it better and what do they hit first?, 'break the rules to make sure the fun doesn't stop' and like the VCR/Youtube example above, they'll do what everyone does. to get done what needs to be done, so the game doesn't come to a crashing halt.

One of the reasons I advocate that new GMs should first be DMs, is to get familiar with a stricter set of rules. Dungeonworlds: Dungeon Delvers Twelve, puts the DM in charge of a dungeon, players have a more structured environment, a Dungeon, to get familiar with the rules, but so does the DM. Over time, after learning how to run a dungeon a few hundred times, they might advance to GM to deal with the outside world, the travel between locations, the open world, the sandbox and all the aspects of roleplay that both players and GMs need to get used to.
As they go though, they'll get used to what rules work in certain situations, but not others. If a rule doesn't exist, (like 99% of the time) the GM has likely learnt enough on how to gauge the situation, use a rule that matches best, and if no rule exists, make a ruling on what to do. No rule has been broken, players can maintain consistency, keep their agency and get on with the game, without thinking "Oh, the GM just fudged that, ok, so I don't need to think about what I can do, I should instead think about what is cool, fun, exciting and the GM will allow it, because 'fun!'.

Maybe they do that subconsciously, maybe the make a decision to do so, I know I fell into the trap, when my GM wanted my character to succeed, I felt no push-back to my antics, so I just kept pushing, not on purpose, just to know the limits. I quit the game when I should have died for the 3rd time and he just hand waved me through.. for plot.. sorry, I want to enjoy the challenge, and to understand the challenge, I need to know the bounds of the game.

What kind of fun? What kind of story?

Everyone has an opinion of what fun is, as they do what a story is. Romeo and Juliet is a classic tragedy, its an awesome story, its known around the world, yet I can't see a shred of fun in it. So why does fun trump story again? I think restricting all forms of roleplay to only 'fun' stories, is like limited TV to only cartoons and comedy. when so many other genres exist...

This is really another topic, but at the core of what we're talking about:

Limiting Roleplay to Plot and Story is, to my mind, akin to Railroading. Any kind of decision by the forces of nature (the GM) that pushes the plot in any direction, especially for Plot (story) will be viewed by the players as taking away their agency. So if Fun trumps Story.. doesn't that mean that guiding the game, to be more fun, is another form or railroading? What if the natural progression of the 'story' is to become a classic tragedy? If the GM obeys the fun rule, it forces a comedy, from what could have been an awesome tragedy, to something in the middle, and no-body wins.

Yes, Personally, I'm a Sandbox GM, I think we create stories in real life from moments of the mundane, I went to the shops, met a man, who sold me some beans for my cow and when I got home my mother scolded me.. Each of these events are fleshed out in roleplay, and more so in life, but when we tell them later, we only state the sentence that sums up all those events "met a man", did a GM somewhere make an encounter roll? sure, and he did so for the 20 people that met that man before me, but each one failed to swap the beans, and they went to different stories, not one of them is going to include the "met a man with some beans" in their story, unless its somehow relevant. Not everyone has the beanstalk 'fun' but for some reason, this topic keeps popping up, telling new GMs, misguiding them from the path for this 'fun' version of roleplay.

Why Using XP and Levelling is a Waste of Time

Last Fortnight I wrote about how roleplaying requires Experience Points to be allocated for understanding Levelling, as an absolute Must! While researching the blog, I came across compelling points about why Experience points systems are old hat, old school, outdated and dust.

Experience Points and Levels are Bad Design and Bad Karma.

The Number one complain against XP is the time taken to add up the numbers, since they don't mean anything anyway, why use them.

<rant On>

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to go back on my last post, if this is why you don't want to use XP, then you are a Lazy Lazy GM and you should not be in the industry, normally I would say, get out, stop GMing, and make room for more level headed GMs who know what they are doing. Unfortunately, there is a lack of decent GMs and sometimes if as a player you are stuck in a rut, and just want to get your game on, you will deal with any hack who can mash out a harry potter plot on crack, allow the crazy fumbles and criticals of a broken system to be the entertainment of the day, while munching on chips and guzzling coke.

<rant over>

There are legitimate reasons for going non XP, being lazy is not one of them.

Instance worlds and Instance Games

An instance world, is a slice of a potential reality, usually published games are instances, because someone else, somewhere else is playing a different set of heroes through the same dungeon, and we can't all be doing the same dungeon.

In an Instance game, the parameters are set, the DM & Players have come together and agreed that they are going to be the dwarves and the hobbit from Middle-Earth, or Luke, Ben, Solo and Chewie, and save the Princess. They have a pre-agreed understanding that for the next 1-3 months of their lives, they are going to replay a classic or printed adventure (or something made up for laughs) and enjoy it.

As often as not, when playing a board game or card game, we don't want to deal with all the extra stuff that takes place in reality, we just want to play and have fun. As a GM, maybe I don't want to flesh out the world, or the places that players might go. Maybe the backstory for the barwench in the tavern is not going to be relevant, If players ask, just tell them, its just a game, its not relevant.

As a result, there is no problem with levels. Just like Heroquest, Descent or Talisman, Levels are really some arbitrary number that means nothing. So why use it?

In an Instance Game, its far simpler, and makes more sense, to decide to 'get better' every 3-4 sessions, to represent the growth of the character.

Casual Sessions

Much Like the instance world, you might find yourself in a One-off game, character progression is not part of the game, you're not playing these characters again, there is no need to understand what is going on behind the scenes. 

These kinds of games can be great fun to play, and sometimes very useful to run for the advancement of your main plot. 

Maybe an old man by the fire begins to tell the story of a group of adventurers, entering the dungeons of death.. the GM passes pre-made Heroes over to the players, and they play out these characters when 'years ago' they tried to best the dungeon, and failed.

Rather than the GM Telling the story, which may not be 100% interesting to the players, the players play as the 'heroes of the story' which informs the group to some nuances of the quest their about to undertake. 

First time Trial run

As often as not, the first time players ever roleplay, the GM would create and run some kind of simplified, easy to follow structure, with as much intrigue as possible, but not so much chance of death. This ensures the players feel like they are getting the hang of things without drowning them in rules and errata, and in case some players decide that while it was fun, its not 100% for them, or that they are not so interested in devoting a few hours every week for.

The first thing you could do at the next session is to introduce them to the concept of XP vs non XP, but frankly until these players are really going to be devoted to the craft, they are not going to be interested to learn the nuance, so stick to XP-less.

So Why even have Levels?

The Logical conclusion to running an XP-less system is to get rid of the levels too. They only exist to give the players a straight forward way to assigning bonuses from character progression based on XP gained from adventures. But if you run a game where you level up every 3 sessions.. wouldn't it just be more interesting (and make far more sense) to gain 1 of the bonuses for your class, each session? plus a bonus at the end of certain quests? why 'group' them at all? (like Skyrim)

Why not assign them determined by what your character actually did?

Lets look at D&D Warrior (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Warrior)

between 1st and 2nd level, you gain d10 HP, +1 to Hit, +1 to Good Save & 1 Feat.

If you run your system, as 1 level up per 3 game sessions, wouldn't it be more fun/interesting to gain one of those bonuses per session, and get all remaining on the 3rd week? based on what you did in the last session?

E.g. Last Week, Symon the Warrior, took a heavy blow, was knocked unconscious and took a few blows, so the GM & Symon agree that his weekly bonus will be his d10 Health. This week Symon had to make a reflexes save a few times, so GM & Symon agree that he gains his Good Save [Ref] Next week, Symon gains both the Hit and Feat. 

Conclusion

At the end of the day, The players need to understand that the world is cohesive, that actions have consequences and that their characters are progressing in a fair manner. If you have player trust, you can do all the calculations behind the scenes and tell players when they get their next bonuses.

But honestly, do you really want to do all that yourself? its not a paid job, so why not ask the players to help with the bean counting and share the work load, so you can spend more time making a great adventure.