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

[erik]

Well, Blicero, Voss does have a point. Mithril is described as supernaturally strong and light, but no mention is made of the links spontaneously going rigid to work like plate when struck, or absorbing kinetic energy and dissipating it into the aether, or whatever other magical thing would actually be relevant.

What the fuck are you and Voss going on about? Everyone in the story attributes his being fine from the spear thrust to the mithril shirt and go so far as to say it is arrow proof as well. I mean they foreshadowed it slightly before the battle with Frodo thinking about it, and then it saves his bacon against what would be an otherwise fatal blow.

If anything the blow was necessary to make the armor important, not the other way around. I mean that armor first shows up in a previous book, is mentioned several times throughout The Fellowship leading up to the spear hit on Frodo. If Frodo never got hit where the mithril shirt was the difference between life and death that would've been a waste.

Shall we examine frodo, who was smashes so hard it was like being between a hammer and an anvil, but went from certainly dead to lightly bruised in a matter of moments?

Except that never happened. He had the wind knocked out of him and people thought he might have been dead as there as no time to examine him, but instead was seriously bruised.

There was a dark and blackened bruise on Frodo's right side and breast. Under the mail there was a shirt of soft leather, but at one point the rings had been driven through it into the flesh. Frodo's left side also was scored and bruised where he had been hurled against the wall

Stamped with ultra-hard metal rings into the skin through leather with a blackened bruise a short time after is not lightly bruised. That's harsh.

*note the novel uses a sword rather than a spear.

*note. You are wrong again.

Diving under Aragorn's blow with the speed of a striking snake he charged into the Company and thrust with his spear straight at Frodo. The blow caught him on the right side, and Frodo was hurled against the wall and pinned.

Anyway. It is completely pointless to quibble about plot armor in a book because every armor is potentially plot armor. Even if Voss remembered the books correctly it wouldn't matter. It is impossible for you to score a point in your favor from this tack. Outside of a game there is no way to tell if 'cinematic damage' is being done by missed blows, so it's really stupid to try and drag a novel into a cinematic HP discussion.

Angelfromanotherpin already killed the HP isn't wounds argument. Deathfork just totally ignored it.

• If hit point loss isn't wounds, how do they deliver poison, disease, and other rider effects?

[DSMatticus]

That's still "realizmz".

Aaand ignore. You failed that one shot miserably.

But all your specific examples of physical damage doesn't change the fact that the rules for hit points specifically tell you that it is both physical damage and plot armor.

It is true that you can slap any fluff on anything, but it is not true that you can slap any fluff on anything and have it make sense. 4e declared that martial powers were a matter of skill and opportunity and that this would be represented with daily limits. That is the particular flavor coat they chose to apply onto their mechanics, and it very specifically was not the least bit coherent, and that incoherence pissed a lot of people off. But the fundamental incoherence of what they were doing didn't stop them from putting those words on paper; it just meant a bunch of people got to go on the internet and correctly identify that two plus two does not equal five. Exactly like when you try to tell people that D&D hitpoints are plot armor and not actual injuries, a bunch of people get to respond to you that two plus two does not equal five. Because fall damage. Because lava. Because poison. Because the cure spells. Because everything.

For fuck's sake, Voss, you stupid asshole. I want you to think about the ramifications of responding to an argument that already includes as an example the observation that an official product's official rules are inconsistent with its fluff with "b-b-but the rules say!"

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

@Frodo and Mithril: Basically everything you have said on this topic has been completely fucking stupid. Frodo is not an example of a high level character surviving through plot armor, he is an example of a low level character surviving because of actual armor that he is actually wearing. And your argument that the armor can't have mattered therefore he survived because plot armor and not the actual armor he is actually wearing is that because they never explicitly describe mithril as magical it is a completely mundane material with completely realistic limitations and Frodo is dead because realizarm. Next, would you like to argue that Superman can't do any of the things Superman does because his power source is "being an alien," not "being magic," therefore realizarm fucks him over?

I like how you have put forward "unless you are explicitly magic realizarm fucks you, sorry everyone who isn't a wizard" as an argument. This well runs deep, and I shudder to contemplate the horrors at the bottom.

[Hicks]

Voss: Dude. What are you talking about? The mithril shirt was a physical item that was acquired earlier in the story, and was lauded as being awesome armor akin to the invulnerable skin of dragons. It is exactly like having armor that grants damage reduction, and turns a blow that would have totally skewered into one that bruises a little. I'm not arguing against your point, just saying that it was a bad example because it represents "any protection provided by anything in a story is plot armor," and I would hope that wasn't what you were trying to illustrate, because that is dumb.

What I am asking for is a better example to go with your point.

[name_here]

Well, Blicero, Voss does have a point. Mithril is described as supernaturally strong and light, but no mention is made of the links spontaneously going rigid to work like plate when struck, or absorbing kinetic energy and dissipating it into the aether, or whatever other magical thing would actually be relevant.

A spear is pointy. It kills people by making holes in them. Even if the book used a sword, which it didn't (The actual difference was that it was a big-ass orc with a spear instead of a cave troll with a spear), you still wouldn't expect it to necessarily inflict fatal levels of blunt trauma through a decent quantity of padding with a single swing.

[ACOS]

@hit points:

@ falling: fuck the mental gymnastic that people want to go through to justify surviving an arbitrarily high fall: just look at all these examples of people surviving ridiculously high falls. It's a thing that happens - some people are just unbelievably tough. Contrast that with the stories of people dying of 5-ft falls, or just tripping over their own beard, just because they happened to have unluckily landed wrong. That's the breaks.

Survive a spear to the face? Check out THIS woman, and THIS GUY's infamous story.

Also, you've got guys that can punch each other in the face for multiple consecutive hours; yet, apparently, guys like Max Baer can literally punch your brain out of your head.

Point being, having such a huge disparity of HP through even the general population is to be expected. Also - and still don't understand why people still don't get this - once you hit double-digit character levels, you are no longer a normal human - you have been elevated to being a super. And that's not even a "new" concept - they've been telling us that since 1977.

+1 to everything that DSM has said. A wyvern sting or a troll smacking you in the face or whatever, are not simply over-use injuries. They're just not. What's next, we've gotta make exhaustion checks for every round of combat after the first x-# of rounds? Bullshit.
So what that adventurers heal faster than you might expect, or don't get broken bones - exactly how tedious can someone want to make the injury tracking system? WTF - the "abstraction" is simply because further detailing it has proven to be just flat-out bad for play. It's a concession you make so that you don't have to track body-part-hp or NI types of sustainable injuries and their discreet results - it's just unplayable like that.

So yes, you did indeed just get stabbed in the face with a longspear - it's just that your PC is the D&D analog of Phineas Cage. How hard does this have to be?

[PhoneLobster]

Again, the argument is not that the fluff says X. It is that some fluff accurately describes the mechanical effects of hitpoints, and some other fluff doesn't.

Actually your argument is that you can't mix "absorbs damage" with "dodges damage" damage on a mechanical defense resource or mechanic. Ignoring not just HP as written but all the other mechanics that do that like saving throws and Armour Class, because you have a realizmz wank on for blood based HP alone.

And your argument not five minutes ago included that you could not comprehend how to explain taking less damage from falling off a cliff, even though everyone does that all the time already and that happens due to multiple mechanics and fluff types up to and including just rolling low on pure HP damage in a (presumably hypothetical since it doesn't exist) system where HP damage IS in fact fluffed as pure physical injury.

But hey, you don't have to answer the hard questions because you just ignore them. Good thing you set that up in advance in a big pile of ad hominem, I mean what a relief you don't have to produce anything of substance to your demands/claims other than realizmz wank!

[Kaelik]

Again, the argument is not that the fluff says X. It is that some fluff accurately describes the mechanical effects of hitpoints, and some other fluff doesn't.

Actually your argument is that you can't mix "absorbs damage" with "dodges damage" damage on a mechanical defense resource or mechanic. Ignoring not just HP as written but all the other mechanics that do that like saving throws and Armour Class, because you have a realizmz wank on for blood based HP alone.

No that wasn't his argument you complete fucking idiot. He specifically said you could totally fucking do that if you were starting from scratch. He just, correctly, pointed out that fails to describe HP damage, where Snakes do 1 damage and poison you even if you have infinity HP.

[Seerow]

Holy fuck can we get off the topic of the 40 year old argument over what hit points are and get back on the more relevant and interesting topic of making fun of 5e for shit unique to it?

[Wiseman]

"Roll 20d6 points of damage for any character who falls. A
character surviving the damage from the fall should be
assumed to have actually landed on a bridge or ledge 100 or
so feet below rather than falling all the way down."

So say I fall of of a flying dragon a plummet through open sky and survive. What then?

[OgreBattle]

Do people argue as much about the meaning of hitpoints in systems where you have 10 damage boxes and roll soak?

[Voss]

Stamped with ultra-hard metal rings into the skin through leather with a blackened bruise a short time after is not lightly bruised. That's harsh.

And irrelevant after the examination. He's seriously fine

*note the novel uses a sword rather than a spear.

*note. You are wrong again.

So I am. The scimitar (which the orc pulls out immediately afterwards) always caught my attention in that passage, so that was what I remembered.

Voss: Dude. What are you talking about? The mithril shirt was a physical item that was acquired earlier in the story, and was lauded as being awesome armor akin to the invulnerable skin of dragons. It is exactly like having armor that grants damage reduction, and turns a blow that would have totally skewered into one that bruises a little. I'm not arguing against your point, just saying that it was a bad example because it represents "any protection provided by anything in a story is plot armor," and I would hope that wasn't what you were trying to illustrate, because that is dumb.

What I am asking for is a better example to go with your point.

OK, fair point. What I was trying to illustrate was the simple fact that the armor really only exists for that one incident. It doesn't really matter again. And the injuries he did sustain were utterly meaningless after some dialogue and hand waving. He's off hiking like nothing happened, which isn't something that happens when something fucks your ribs. The physical wound wanders off into non-existence.

A better example would be any action movie where the hero is shot, injured, falls significant distances (particularly over water) but it never matters in any way. There are literally hundreds, and Die Hard was somewhat exception for having the glass on the feet actually matter later.


@DSM- huzzah. Meaningless repetition of yourself yet again. Still doesn't help, because you repeating that you like some fluff and don't like other fluff matters even less. You do understand that people are arguing with what you are saying, so quoting your own argument as 'proof' they are wrong is completely meaningless. It is exactly what is in contention.

Happily you followed up with something even more stupid, so I salute you for that.

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

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

Do people argue as much about the meaning of hitpoints in systems where you have 10 damage boxes and roll soak?

Not as much. WW style forbids talking about mechanics at all, and shadow run and the like seem to attract people who are perfectly comfortable with a simple abstraction for game purposes.

[erik]

The mechanics of hit points? The mechanics of hit points is that nothing happens until you drop unconscious at zero and dead at some point between zero, -10, -Con, or some other number depending on edition. If anything the mechanics of hit points are that they 100% pure plot armor and physical wounds mean absolutely nothing

Except you continue to ignore the mechanics of hit point damage where many riders that require harm to be inflicted happen every time you take damage, and only when you take damage.

Certain poison attacks only, yet always, have saves called for when HP damage is inflicted. This demonstrates a damaging wound is caused every time HP damage is inflicted.

Wounding a creature affected by sleep always wakes them up, indicating every time you deal HP damage to a creature that is under the effects of sleep, you actually are hitting them.

So that is 100% NOT plot armor. Physical wounds do mean something.

There's more, but we don't need more. That is sufficient and necessary to demonstrate that HP damage is always concurrent with a wound, despite that there is no wound system in 3.x D&D with regards to HP totals until you hit zero.

[PhoneLobster]

Except you continue to ignore the mechanics of hit point damage where many riders that require harm to be inflicted happen...

No... he doesn't Voss is arguing that HP are an inconsistent mechanic that has it both ways. Which it does.

Pointing out the discrepancy between sudden spontaneous existence failure at <0 HP and poison effects is you simply violently agreeing with Voss that hey, HP are inconsistent and have it both ways. It is the idiots who are arguing that "HP are and can only ever be physical damage, final destination it is never dodging or plot armour or intellect or luck or other bullshit" who are staking out the extreme position readily disproved by a single example.

Like the example of the fundamental basic function of HP as an abstract and meaningless countdown to a discrete KO event.

But hey, the final destination physical damage only extremists can't even explain why high level wizards can have the same HP of low level barbarians with wildly differing constitutions, they decry that it is impossible to explain away damage from falling off a cliff as anything other than your personal ability to absorb it by landing on your face, even if the effected targets are that high level wizard and a low level barbarian with identical HP. And they are, in the terms of their own claims as to what it is "impossible to describe consistently", then dumbfounded in silence over how to explain that one of them could possibly take more or less damage from the fall by variation in the damage roll itself alone.

[spongeknight]

No... he doesn't Voss is arguing that HP are an inconsistent mechanic that has it both ways. Which it does.

Pointing out the discrepancy between sudden spontaneous existence failure at <0 HP and poison effects is you simply violently agreeing with Voss that hey, HP are inconsistent and have it both ways.

No, that is only true if you accept the fundamental mistake that postulates "the ways that the fantasy people operate are exactly the way real life humans do." As has been pointed out MULTIPLE TIMES, fantasy people can be stabbed through the chest with spears and shrug it off, which is consistent with both the statement "people only suffer detrimental effects from HP loss at 0 HP" and the absolutely true statement "all HP damage is in fact damage to the body." In other words, every character in D&D Land can be stabbed in the chest, but each one has a separate amount of physical damage they can absorb before it overcomes their threshold and they collapse. D&D humans don't function like real humans when taking damage in the same way that real humans can't throw fireballs around or wrestle dragons.

Tell me, is there any example you can possibly pull out of your ass that contradicts that? Any actual rule from an actual D&D book that states that being hit by an attack is not actually being hit by that attack?

And as for your big bullshit falling off a cliff dilemma where you've cowed everyone into silence with your amazing argument- bullshit. Damage is variable because dice are variable. In the exact same way that a sword stab sometimes causes 8 damage and sometimes causes 1, a fall causes more or less damage based on certain variables that are abstracted through dice. What the fuck is your argument there even trying to assert? That because damage is variable it can't actually be damage? What the actual fuck?

Also, fucking duh, hit points increase by level because characters can absorb more damage as they increase in level. Hit points also increase by being able to absorb more damage through a high constitution. Having more than one way to absorb damage does not somehow create a divide by zero error, it just means you can either increase your relative toughness for your level (constitution) or your absolute toughness (level) to increase your overall toughness. This is kindergarten shit, man.

There is no inconsistency. Every single rule in the game states the assumption that all HP damage is straight damage to the body, and absolutely no rule in the game ever states that HP damage is not all damage to the body. You don't have a leg to stand on here.

[PhoneLobster]

...

Your post is incredibly stupid you essentially postulate that HP have realizmz because you define realizmz as the ways the rules work and the rules work the way they do! That is not only a non-sequitor it isn't the fucking argument DSM and ISP have been making.

For instance...

And as for your big bullshit falling off a cliff dilemma... sometimes causes 8 damage and sometimes causes 1, a fall causes more or less damage based on certain variables that are abstracted through dice. What the fuck is your argument there even trying to assert? That because damage is variable it can't actually be damage? What the actual fuck?

This "the fuck"...

If you declare them to be plot armor (even partially), then you are dumped into the absurd position of trying to describe how the plot is protecting someone from the bottom of that cliff

You have to describe why the damage varies and that unattributed quote there from me says how that is impossible by any means other than by improved ability to absorb it with your face...

...now I wait a line or two for you to fume and attempt to rationalize how stupid that is...

... and then wait, sorry, did I say that was my quote, not it's DSM's quote actually. The whole POINT of the "explain variable damage from falling off the cliff" thing is that DSM said that having to do that is absurd. HE cannot explain variable damage from falling off a cliff, flat out, apparently, in his own fucking words, you fall off a cliff, you absorb the fall with your face, and the only thing that varies is the number of (purely physical) HP your face has to absorb the fall with and trying to explain the relative variability of the outcome in any other way is "absurd" and unacceptable to him.

And that is the point. The moment you include a damage roll in your HP system you have to explain that variable damage and you have to explain it with the same fucking descriptions as you get from plot armor you dumb ass. Even when we ignore armor class and saving throws and everything bar the basic HP/Damage mechanics to go straight to "final destination, absorb it with your face and nothing else" we STILL end up saying "And the guy with the lower damage roll fell on something less bad to fall on". And that is fucking plot armor almost a definitive example of plot armor, and that is the thing DSM derided as absurd and impossible and inconsistent with the mechanic... that unavoidably produces that very same plot armor outcome.

Also, fucking duh, hit points increase by level because characters can absorb more damage as they increase in level...There is no inconsistency.

Really? Because I'd buy the claim that a "higher level" Barbarian gets more HP because he becomes better at absorbing physical injuries with his face, I'd entertain the argument for a Rogue, but "old man frailthing the wizard with negative cons who advances in levels by reading books and getting older" THAT guy is apparently getting more HP because he is getting better at absorbing physical injuries with his face?

And that's the dilemma for the "face plant fans". If it's all literally physical injury face absorption. Then getting older and wiser is somehow making you more literally physically durable. You don't get to say it's wisdom or divine favor or intellect resulting in avoiding damage or ANYTHING other than "he is better at absorbing physical injury with his face" unless you agree with me and Voss because the "face plant faction" has actually disallowed the use of that sort of thing as "absurd plot armor that isn't realizmz enough".

I know you don't want to accept that, I know that they don't want to accept that. But old man mcfrailpants the wizard and his old age based pile of level HP being bigger than you IS an example of their dumb ass extremist face plant demands rather clearly being a failure.

[ScottS]

A D&D character gets a gigantic boulder dropped on him. The trap description is "PC takes XXd6 damage". If the damage kills the PC, you just say he was crushed by the rock. However, the PC takes the damage and survives. What is the final state of the PC and rock?

a) the rock bounced off the PC and off to the side somewhere (where did it go? what if the trap was some kind of giant column/piston that can't "bounce off to the side"?)
b) the PC is alive but under the rock (does he take ongoing crushing damage? does he have to lift the rock to crawl out?)
c) the rock is somehow stuck somewhere over the PC's space and he can just walk out from underneath it (what if there was no plausible way for it to "get stuck"?)
d) the PC dodged the rock with "luck points" and wasn't actually underneath it when it dropped

"The trap does XXd6 damage" doesn't give you enough information to choose between those options. A conscientious game designer would of course have added some additional riders/crunch to fill out the "trapped under the rock" part. But then again, that same designer probably would have added a "random broken bones and trauma" table to the description of falling damage.

Every interpretation you put on HP requires mind caulk. Even the Berserk/"I totally took the rock to the face and walked away" interpretation. You're always left having to make up some explanation for "why he didn't die", because the game assumes that you don't care about the "explanation", just the "not dead" part.

[infected slut princess]

The "plot armor" crew is truly pathetic and they might as well play 4e every day since they love healing surges so much. Ok the demon snake bites you and you get poisoned and that causes you to be more sad and less lucky which depletes your hit points and then a cleric casts a spell called "cure serious wounds" which makes you less sad and more lucky again. That could be a pretty cute little game but it's seems pretty fucking retarded in a D&D game. But either way maybe the discussion about the general nature of the relationship between hit points and physical injury should continue elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the more relevant issue as far as 5E _specifically_ is concerned: the game has goddamm healing surges. And since healing surges are fucking retarded, this increases the retardation of 5e a lot. And therefore to be even conceivably worth playing, 5e must be houseruled to not have healing surges.

Look at this garbage:

A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, curing which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds. A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a short rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest, as explained below.

I think this is stupid. So basically you can get your face eaten off by a dragon that "hit" you with its "bite attack" and have 1 out of 50 hit points, but you sit down and eat a sandwich and and healing surge yourself back to full health in an hour. Because hit points represent physical health but also sadness and luck and bad-ass attitude.

[hamstertamer]

Do people argue as much about the meaning of hitpoints in systems where you have 10 damage boxes and roll soak?

"What Hit Points are?"is a meme argument in RPGs, trolls and dummies bring it up again and again to derail threads. Notice no answer will satisfy, and they just keep asking a new question or just talk past people who try to explain. Also notice that people making arguments of realism hate realism themselves. Pointing out that real human beings can survive falls (and have) over 200 feet never get any traction.

[spongeknight]

Your post is incredibly stupid you essentially postulate that HP have realizmz because you define realizmz as the ways the rules work and the rules work the way they do! That is not only a non-sequitor it isn't the fucking argument DSM and ISP have been making.

No, dipshit. I am saying that every rule in the book that deals with damage explicitly states that damage is directly having your face pummeled with actual physical injuries, which is the only correct way to interpret the rules. Which is, you know, what DSM and ISP have been arguing. Try to keep up.

The whole POINT of the "explain variable damage from falling off the cliff" thing is that DSM said that having to do that is absurd. HE cannot explain variable damage from falling off a cliff, flat out, apparently, in his own fucking words, you fall off a cliff, you absorb the fall with your face, and the only thing that varies is the number of (purely physical) HP your face has to absorb the fall with and trying to explain the relative variability of the outcome in any other way is "absurd" and unacceptable to him.

And that is the point. The moment you include a damage roll in your HP system you have to explain that variable damage and you have to explain it with the same fucking descriptions as you get from plot armor you dumb ass. Even when we ignore armor class and saving throws and everything bar the basic HP/Damage mechanics to go straight to "final destination, absorb it with your face and nothing else" we STILL end up saying "And the guy with the lower damage roll fell on something less bad to fall on". And that is fucking plot armor almost a definitive example of plot armor, and that is the thing DSM derided as absurd and impossible and inconsistent with the mechanic... that unavoidably produces that very same plot armor outcome.

Are you trying to be as dense as possible? The variable in damage comes from the ATTACKER or the FALL itself. You apparently fucking missed ACOS and his entire post where he linked actual articles of people taking less damage on falls than they presumably should have. Are you claiming that those real live humans had plot armor that broke their falls instead of, you know, taking less damage from the actual fall itself? Because DSM is making the rather valid point that while you will sometimes take more or less damage from a fall, nothing you do will fucking influence that in the slightest- there is no plot armor involved.

THAT guy is apparently getting more HP because he is getting better at absorbing physical injuries with his face?

Yes, dipshit, just like the frail old wizard increases his reflex saves, attacks with a sword, and ability to eat fucking poison because of his increased levels. I don't know why you made a point that retarded, but you're really grasping at straws here.

I know you don't want to accept that, I know that they don't want to accept that. But old man mcfrailpants the wizard and his old age based pile of level HP being bigger than you IS an example of their dumb ass extremist face plant demands rather clearly being a failure.

And now we have a realism argument from the guy railing against realism arguments! Claiming that the frail old wizard can't be tougher than a much lower level barbarian because of his character concept is the biggest fucking realism argument I've ever heard. Did you forget that levels make you a goddamn superhero? That frail old wizard could pick up a club and beat that barbarian to death, no magic, because levels make you better than other people. That frail old wizard, when he gets enough levels, can swim through fucking lava without dying because he's so fucking tough he can just do that. How is being older and wiser protecting the wizard when he teleports directly into a pit of acid?



So- your big argument that falling damage being rolled made it plot armor failed miserably, so you have still failed to deliver a single counter-example to the claim that all damage is pure physical damage. I repeat: do you have any rule at all that states being damaged is actually plot armor and not damage? Because if you don't, this debate has been won.

[Username17]

Do people argue as much about the meaning of hitpoints in systems where you have 10 damage boxes and roll soak?

No.

Of course you'll note that the plot armor crew are basically just bloviating because they don't like what the rules imply, rather than that they have any legs to stand on. Scorpion stings inflict poison effects every time they do damage, no matter how many hit points you have, the end. But people keep arguing because they don't like critical existence failure very much. There are certainly fictional settings that support it, and D&D is one of them, but there's a vocal minority that doesn't like it and won't shut up about it.

The thing about proportional damage is that it makes people tougher in a way that slides under the radar of people who complain about these things. You are no longer explaining how one character survives an amount of damage that would be fatal to another, you're explaining how one character takes less damage than another from a blow of equal strength. That extra layer of abstraction is enough to make all these idiots shut up.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

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

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

The mechanics of hit points? The mechanics of hit points is that nothing happens until you drop unconscious at zero and dead at some point between zero, -10, -Con, or some other number depending on edition.

There is nothing about this that is even remotely relevant. Are you trying to argue that hitpoints can't be physical wounds because there are no wound penalties? Because that's a realizarm argument, and realizarm arguments are stupid and you should feel stupid. Yes, it would be unrealistic for someone on the brink of death to keep fighting the good fight. It would also be unrealistic for a man to wave his hands around and shoot fire out of them. Funny how both of those things happen in fantasy stories all the fucking time and are completely in genre.

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

If anything the mechanics of hit points are that they 100% pure plot armor and physical wounds mean absolutely nothing

Okay, part of the problem is that you legitimately don't know what plot armor means. Plot armor does not mean "offends my realizarm," it means a character's resilience to damage lacks an in-universe explanation. If the fluff is that level 20 fighters can just take a ballista bolt to the chest and not give a fuck, that is the in-universe explanation, and when a level 20 fighter takes a ballista bolt to the chest and doesn't give a fuck that isn't plot armor! For the exact same reason that when Superman gets shot in the eye and doesn't die it also isn't plot armor, it is just a thing Superman can do because he is magic an alien.

a) the rock bounced off the PC and off to the side somewhere (where did it go? what if the trap was some kind of giant column/piston that can't "bounce off to the side"?)
b) the PC is alive but under the rock (does he take ongoing crushing damage? does he have to lift the rock to crawl out?)
c) the rock is somehow stuck somewhere over the PC's space and he can just walk out from underneath it (what if there was no plausible way for it to "get stuck"?)
d) the PC dodged the rock with "luck points" and wasn't actually underneath it when it dropped

All of those "problems" are implied movement problems associated with a projectile which strikes a player and takes up significant space. None of them go away when you declare that the character dodged with luck points. The player still occupies physical space, the boulder still occupies physical space, and you have to place those two objects such that their respective needs and limits are satisfied. If a column is crushing a dude in a pit and he dodges with luck points, you still have to come up with a way to move the pillar and move the player such that he "dodged." And that shit can and will get absurd.

Meanwhile, the idea that a boulder dropped into a confined space (such that the boulder and the character it hits essentially must share a space) would require a strength check or similar to dislodge is so fucking obvious I don't know how that's supposed to be a problem. Is this 4e? Are we supposed to forget everything we know about object permanence and erase boulders away once they've delivered their payload?

It is a problem that 3e doesn't actually have any good rules for what happens when a character and an object would be forced to share a space. There are specific rules for cave-ins and avalanches and moving objects, but no general rule. That's an oversight, but it's an oversight completely unrelated to hitpoints, because it still fucking applies when you drop a column on a dude in a pit and he dodges with "luck points."

[ScottS]

All of those "problems" are implied movement problems associated with a projectile which strikes a player and takes up significant space.

I'm going to start referring to falling damage as "the implied sudden deceleration problem".
Also, surviving multiple facestabs will henceforth be known as "the implied deep puncture wounds problem".

[PhoneLobster]

The variable in damage comes from the ATTACKER or the FALL itself.

Maybe I should try writing this out slowly because you are so incredibly stupid.

DSM cannot explain and calls "absurd" the differentiation of the physical impact of falling off the cliff for any reason other than being physically tougher.

It doesn't matter what source the variation he now needs to explain comes from, he declared that it was impossible and absurd to explain that differentiation by means of "you arbitrarily landed better".

You do NOT get to say that and then get to say "well you arbitrarily landed better" because the damage rolled low because it isn't a meaningful difference. Two characters fell of the same cliff, one is dead one is alive, differentiation because of "moar hp" or differentiation because of "moar damage" is actual functionally fucking identical.

You do not get to declare plot armour absurd on HP and perfectly acceptable on Damage rolls, it's flawed double think even on saving throws and AC, but its total fucking insanity on Hp vs Damage rolls what with them being two sides of the same mechanical fucking coin.

That is the entire POINT of calling out this example and it flew right the fuck over your head at least twice already.

[PhoneLobster]

But people keep arguing because they don't like critical existence failure very much.

I'm curious as to which vocal minority you think that is.

[DSMatticus]

All of those "problems" are implied movement problems associated with a projectile which strikes a player and takes up significant space.

I'm going to start referring to falling damage as "the implied sudden deceleration problem".
Also, surviving multiple facestabs will henceforth be known as "the implied deep puncture wounds problem".

Funny, but I don't think you understood. If you stab a dude, it will cause an injury (or expend "luck points" or whatever stupid shit you are advocating), which you can resolve using the hitpoint mechanic. If you drop a boulder on a dude, it will also cause an injury (or expend "luck points"), which you can resolve using the hitpoint mechanic. Separately from the fact that falling objects cause hitpoint damage, sufficiently large objects also take up space, and any action which causes an object to take up space that would otherwise be occupied by a character is a situation which needs resolved, and that is not a situation which occurs when you stab a dude.