Are Adventurers Inherently Supernatural?

[@SupergeekMike]

What do you think - our D&D heroes at level 1 the same as normal people, or are they exceptional superheroes? Thanks so much to Into the AM for sponsoring this video! Visit IntoTheAM.com/Supergeek to save 10% off of your order! IntoTheAM.com/Supergeek

[@cjpettie]

TLDR: in AD&D PCs are adventurers (high stakes), in 5e they are superheroes (low stakes). I don't think there's anyone who plays 5e that wouldn't really enjoy AD&D (with an experienced DM) and, arguably, enjoy it more than 5e for the higher-stakes. I think you do a good job of making the distinction between the latest and the older editions of D&D. In AD&D, PCs were adventurers seeking treasure and fame. In 3e+, PCs shifted to being heroes, whether they earned it or not. In 5e, PCs start as superheroes. Great strategy for a company to increase their consumer base. Who wants to be an adventurer? 50 people put their hands up. Who wants to be a hero? 50,000 people put their hands up. Who wants to be a nigh-invulnerable superhero? 500,000 people put their hands up. This is all good for the TTRPG-space. Now that those 500,000 have been introduced to the game, some of them might be amenable to playing a high-stakes, older version in which it is more challenging to survive, but also more rewarding. I'm going to take this opportunity to compare and contrast by assuming your viewers are familiar with 5e and then describe how AD&D addresses some of the topics. Re: 7:13. Encumbrance. In AD&D, the base that a PC can carry is 35# without penalty and this is improved/penalized by the Str mod. E.g. My 17 Str Ftr can carry an additional 50# before the weight would impact his movement. Up to 85# mv120', up to 120# mv90', up to 155# mv60', up to 200# mv 30', beyond that, no movement. An 18/100 Str would allow the PC to carry 335#!!! without penalty to movement. I could see that PC being someone like Bjornsson (which fits with your estimation if he represented someone with an 18/100 strength). By the way, this was incredibly hard to roll in AD&D. I would argue that PCs are more inclined to adventuring the same way a 14 year old kid who is more athletic than his peers is inclined towards and excels in hockey. He's not a superhero but he's definitely better than his peers at that specific set of skills. And the thing that distinguishes PCs from "average" folks is their experience (a few hockey camps under his belt). A 1st level Ftr already has training with weapons, a 1st level MagicUser already had tutelage in magic, etc. So they are already experienced in their profession (i.e. they aren't zero-level) and have an aptitude (ability score-wise) for that profession/class, rather than being superheroes. By contrast, 5e, as you described, definitely starts characters out as superheroes, whereas AD&D starts them out as experienced in a field and with an aptitude. Of note, PCs starting age in the AD&D (DMG pg. 12) reflect this training/experience before they begin to adventure: Ftr 16-19 (in the middle ages young men 14+ would go on campaign, and in England, training with long bows would start in childhood), Cleric 19-22, MagicUser 26-40. I.e. These are normal people with a volume of training and an aptitude. Re: 8:50. I think HPs make sense if you don't see them as damage (except those that drop the PC or deal a lethal blow). i.e. the last 1-4 HPs are the only real damage, everything else represents the PC's ability to avoid the damage based on their experience. The fact that HPs increase with experience (due to engaging in and/or observing combat) and based on the class HD (Ftr-types have superior HD) is suggestive that they largely represent the PC's ability to avoid damage in combat. In AD&D you don't receive scars until you hit 0 or fewer HPs because the PC isn't getting cut up with each hit. So, based on HPs, I don't see the PCs as superheroes in AD&D. As you suggest, per 5e, if PCs are getting gutted and sliced and bludgeoned and pierced and bounce back with a rest, that's certainly more like a superhero's invulnerability. I'm less invested in low stakes gaming and 5e, increasingly, feels like a low stakes game. Re: 11:50. In AD&D it could take a MONTH to recover HPs. This leads to a corollary; not only does it make healing matter, it also encourages the players to deal differently with encounters than to just fight. Engaging in combat is risky and can take the PC out of action for weeks while the other PCs continue to adventure or the dungeon re-populates. Better to parlay, hide, flee, etc. Many of these decisions are influenced by the reaction roll at the beginning of the encounter, and or morale checks during combat (which can really change the tide of a combat). Given that advancement in AD&D is based on accumulating loot, ideally, without taking any damage (XPs for treasure), PCs are well-served by judicious HP expenditure. ;). In 5e, however, it's all about the combat with little consequence. The stakes are too low for me to feel engaged. BTW I play and DM 5e as well as AD&D. They are two totally different games. Re: 13:00. Taking "carrying capacity seriously"... AD&D is your game. ;) Even in AD&D, most tables (including mine in the past) hand-waved encumbrance or doled out a bag of holding early on. To address the complexity, I have coded my own website that facilitates tracking items, encumbrance and movement and it has made it much easier. For anyone else that's interested, there's a character spreadsheet on Dragonsfoot for AD&D that tracks encumbrance and movement for you. It sounds like you would really enjoy AD&D; if you haven't, you should give it a try (that's easier said than done because you really need to dig into the rules, whereas 5e is much more easily consumed - the 5e DMG is actually a very good book and the optional rules for a grittier experience, in my opinion, are superior to the default). Re: 16:03. 5e definitely. But in AD&D, that's the path: Joe blow with some experience, and aptitude and some luck can reach the highest-heights. Irl, a 15 year old with some experience, an aptitude and luck (dice rolls) can embark on a path which leads him to the NHL, a geeky computer nerd with experience, an aptitude and luck (dice rolls again) can parlay that into being a billionaire philanthropist. An 18 year old that joins the armed forces can become a Navy SEAL. They aren't superheroes. Rare? Absolutely. But, in AD&D at least, how many PCs even make it out of the dungeon before level 3? That's rare too. ;) Thanks for a great video; lots to chew on. :D

[@ehjorth]

My druid was a biology professor on a scientific expedition when his research ship sunk and he was saved by an arch druid. When he noticed that Eldon had a big interest in nature and how to preserve it he was taught the ways of the druids to help him on his journey. My paladin is an actual demigod.

[@crimfan]

I think it depends a lot on the game. You can mix the two, as well: Aragorn is an example of someone with divine ancestry (literally... one of his forebears is Melian the Maia) and Frodo Baggins definitely isn't; try game balancing THAT!

[@troikas3353]

A lot of people tend to argue that they want "realism" in their games or media when in actuality what they want is the feeling of authenticity. It doesn't need to be literally realistic so long as it is reasonably close enough to feel authentic and is internally consistent with the fiction its set within.

[@HSuper_Lee]

I believe the term is "verisimilitude", or "truthfulness". It comes down to Aristotle's idea that a story is a rational argument. Basically, every story is saying, "suppose x, then what would happen?" In the case of D&D, there are a lot of suppositions that go something like, "Suppose there are wizards capable of performing magic, and that magic is arranged into 10 levels with wizards of certain proficiency only being able to cast so many of these spells a day..." plus all the other game mechanics being used. Those are the suppositions, the actual game is meant to be the conclusion: the answer to the question of, "assuming all these suppositions, what would the world look like?" Verisimilitude means the question has been answered in a reasonable way. An example that lacks verisimilitude would be something like, "In a world where dragons exist, everyone would have pink hair." Most violations of verisimilitude are more subtle than that, but generally, when people talk about their "suspension of disbelief", they're talking about verisimilitude and how rationally the story is building off it's suppositions.

[@jeanleongerome4098]

​@@HSuper_Lee I personally think this is why Eberron is the superior setting for at least 5e, because it takes the "suppose x" of DND's magic system and the biological diversities of its ancestries seriously. Faerun being in many ways a bog standard feudal medieval world seems absurd when there are elves that live to be 700 years old running around and first level sorcerers could burn an entire village to the ground with fire bolt and clean an entire village's clothes in an afternoon with prestidigitation.

[@MySqueezingArm]

Exactly. I like grittier games because it helps me feel immersed. The believability is important to me.

[@crimfan]

@@HSuper_Lee JRR Tolkien used the words "secondary reality." It's not suspension of disbelief per se because we all know it's a game/movie/book, etc., but we shouldn't feel a lot of violations of established consistency. Spell levels, for instance, probably exist in game because of how strongly they affect how casters work. Rounds are more of an abstraction we need to keep the game moving.

[@FattyMcFox]

My head canon is that anyone who takes up the adventurer life not only gain muscle like someone who exerts themselves on the regular, but they also start interacting with the weave in a way different from magic use. Weather born to it or not, when you start adventuring, you start to get more powerful than you would naturally. Everyone can do this.

[@xdrkcldx]

Exactly. And even sorcerers, although born with it, they don't get better at it until they start adventuring.

[@urktheturtle2988]

it doesnt need that explanation, the narrative explanation is more than enough.

[@bryanwoods3373]

Not an unrealistic interpretation. From my perspective, I think people have too low an estimation of adventurers. The NPCs we call adventurers are mercenaries, and they can be argued as the best 1% towards that skillset. Your party is 1% of those mercenaries. A campaign is an epic tale of ascension to demigods. You are Beowulf, Odysseus, and Cu Chulainn. Your force of will infused you with supernatural ability.

[@geoffdewitt6845]

One of the things the designers mentioned about the assumptions of 5E is that world has a certain degree of "background magic." That's the sort of magic that seeps into the cracks and crags of the world, regardless of source. To me personally, that means adventurers have been saturated by magic, which explains things like magic martial arts, fighter's attack speed, and wild magic barbarians.

[@TF2PNub]

Fighter's attack speed, hilariously enough, is something regular trained people in real life can do. Level 20 as a fighter is just doing what mundane people can do with training compared to all the other fantastical classes.

[@EndyHawk]

Colville's contribution, "hit points are a measure of your heroism. That would would have killed you, but YOU...[Insert player narration here]" has served me extremely well. Let being 'bloodied' be the first hit a character actually takes, and everything past that point is sliding downhill from exhaustion and wounds. That way, surviving a dragon bite isn't shrugging off steel-crunching force, but instead a daring leap that a rogue never knew he could make, or the party paladin trusting battle-trained reflexes to shift her heavy plate to bear the force of the bite. (In my game, the latter example has led my paladin's player to 'patch' his crumpled armor with resources from every fight he's bloodied in, assembling pauldron-hinges of giant shark jaws and underweave of dragonskin. Wonderful stuff.)

[@horus486153]

this, this, this, this, thIS, THIS, THIS, THISSSSSS

[@Alex-cq1zr]

This does get in the way of poison attacks... Ig it could be narrated as escaping brunt of the poison? Liks, a scratch rather than a full on heavy wound? Idk

[@azurewraith2585]

It doesn’t makes sense under a microscope but hp being luck or heroism works really well thematically. That said under a microscope it’s actually hilarious that dodging a club removes more of your heroism than dodging a knife

[@flamingcow5916]

I like the idea of combat being mostly cuts and bruises, large hits being chunks of flesh, and resting is simply patching those wounds so the bleeding doesn't tire you.

[@EndyHawk]

@@Alex-cq1zr lol, good point. Maybe it's a lucky bible/pocketwatch/badge/medal/behelit/etc. that gets in the way?

[@lovely_poekie]

For me, playing a (variant) human actually fulfills a fantasy that even as a human I can be more badass and do ridiculous thing I wouldn't be able to in real life. It gives me sort of hope that anything in life is possible

[@SLorraineE]

Having only ever watched live play games online, it seems like most adventurers have a backstory that would make them a little more than average too. Like, whatever spurred them into adventure has hardened them somehow, either physically or mentally. Happy, wholesome, content people who haven't experienced pain usually don't leave their lives behind for an open road and hardship

[@cjpettie]

I agree. They are already experienced in their field/profession/class. In AD&D the starting ages are different for each class, indicating the type of training they've had to that point. Ftrs 16-19 (in the middle ages young people 14+ would go on campaign, and in England, training with long bows would start in childhood), Clerics 19-22, MagicUsers 26-40. I.e. These are normal people with a volume of training and an aptitude already who then embark on an adventure.

[@zefiewings]

I definitely feel about the characters the same way one thinks about heroes in an action movie. They aren't "supernatural" per se but like...yeah they kinda are. Even Indiana, as you said, in the first few movies is supposed to be like a regular guy but he STILL does stuff that an average guy really can't do. So while supernatural isn't the word I would use, I certainly have always felt that the assumption is that player characters have a little something special about them. But also that they live in a world where the universal average is also just a bit higher. A world where multiple people could possibly have that special str 20 stat, whereas in our world we have one guy and he is considered THE best EVER. It's superhuman, not supernatural. Like the level of 'supernatural' in the Unbreakable trilogy. They certainly aren't Superman, but it's certainly hanging out on the highest end of the human bell curve and for extended time rather than just reaching what we can manage in our world.

[@viciously_zen]

I think of hit points being more a measure of effort spent avoiding a *lethal* wound. The reason you now survive a fireball that would have killed you 5 levels ago is that you've learned to recognize those gestures and the smell of guano and seek what cover you can sooner, etc. The hit points you gained in the last five levels, that extra bit of experience, that's what keeps you alive, not some supernatural toughness (not that I don't see the fun in that). You're still drained...surviving cost you something, but it also makes it ever-so-slightly more reasonable to regain all hit points on a long rest. If you weren't at 0 hp or hit with a critical, you probably weren't wounded in a notable way. Each temporary hit point is a coffee or energy drink. Magical healing is an adrenaline rush. I still let it get mortally wounded characters on their feet, but I do like more long term injuries (I'm not actually a sadist, but I do think criticals should matter and for players that want to do downtime things, recovery time can be a good time).

[@SingularityOrbit]

There are two assumptions people often make about D&D worlds. One is that "adventure stuff" is rare -- almost nobody in the world has the abilities adventurers have, so PC wizards tend to be the strongest wizards in the world, and few clerics exist who can cast Raise Dead. The other is that "adventurer stuff" is common -- a king's arcane adviser will likely have some high-level spells, there will be mercenary fighters with Battle Master and Eldritch Knight features, and Raise Dead is common. I tend to go a third way and say that adventuring exposes the characters to a lot of magical effects -- think of it as magical radioactivity in dungeons and crypts -- that the adventurers have to absorb and adapt to in order to survive those environments. In essence, your character is a turtle in the sewer; when bathed in radioactive sludge, you either die in it, or you adapt and mutate and, if you have the right teacher, learn ninjutsu.

[@vandermore]

Having hiked in Nepal, these porters are amazingly strong. They are also amazing people.

[@juli6266]

The way I do things in my campaigns is have the players start normal. But as they defeat powerful foes or uncover magic relics, they absorb some of that power and become superhuman over time. I got the idea from how destiny deals with the idea of paracausality

[@rheklas1]

Just wanted to jump in with a quick correction on the "The Mountain" being the strongest man. Between him, Brian Shaw and Eddy Hall, they all have deadlifted around 1000 lbs at this point, which is just insanity.

[@lukerabon7925]

I'm of the opinion that you can be supernatural without being anything other than "just a guy" in the same way many ancient heroes and even modern action heroes are. You do things that are physically impossible, but not because you're special, you just worked hard and learned how to do impossible things. In other words, my view is that maybe not everyone can be a cleric or bard or even a wizard. Anyone, with the right training, could end up as powerful as a high level fighter or rogue or whatever.

[@auroraasterix]

The thumbnail for this video is everything

[@BlacklokHimself]

In my campaign they are all supernatural for a very clear in-world reason. What I do is change how things work for everybody else. PCs and some other exceptional individuals are called 'godshards'. They regenerate on short and long rests, they can withstand incredible amounts of punishment, they never get an infection due to an arrow wound, etc. Normal people take months to recover from wounds, can have those wounds become infected, etc. This results in very interesting in-world dynamics. People try to control godshards, there are organisations (usually run by them) that manage them, etc. They are immediately recognisable as superhuman simply for their regeneration abilities and this engenders envy in some, awe in others and requests for help from most.

[@FrostSpike]

I take a similar approach in my current campaign - "The Fate Touched" are feared, respected, and envied by the general population.

[@RottenRogerDM]

I haven’t heard adventurers being supernatural. BUT. Even before 5E we were describing PCs as exceptional, and other words. But supernatural is a great to the point word. Other comments deleted because not on subject.

[@SmilingTomatoes101]

I think my preference for adventurers being normal people who become great is tied to the way I approach combat as more a puzzle than a fight. I'm the type of person who likes finding weird/creative solutions instead of causing bigger damage, which fits much more with the scrappy underdog power fantasy

[@manueltorresart2345]

I tend to see D&D average adventurers as (using the mini from your previous video) as Netflix-Daredevil. Your normal humanoid, able to get really hit and cope with everything because you are slightly better than your regular human(oid). And that works for NPCs too. Not all NPCs I create would say "yes" to accompany the heroes (or perhaps yes, but I'll make their hit points really low).

[@xenostar6482]

In my games it is that adventurers are kinda supernatural, but only because they have pushed beyond that natural limit and even the non casters draw in some of the weave into themselves to enhance their might

[@Quintzal]

Re: carrying capacity: I ran a campaign where players were kobolds with the creature stats as a standard array. No classes. Characters would participate in a 'caper of the week,' in which they would need to carry back as much treasure as they could for their temple to Tiamat. Then they would grovel with a charisma check to beg Tiamat for new abilities (stat bumps, class features, even slow transformation into dragonhood). Tiamat's Love Crusade (TLC). To this end, we tracked their ability to carry treasure back to their warren. We had an Excel sheet running and players needed to make choices of quantity vs quality and explore the world to find ways to carry stuff back. It was a lot of fun, but also a pain in the butt to track & calculate.

[@BlackOpMercyGaming]

I was in Boy Scouts growing up and they have a trek called Philmont… it’s 10-14 days of hiking 80-150 miles through New Mexico Mountains…(depending on the path) and midway through, we picked up a new supply of food and water and my pack was between 150-190 lbs depending on how much water was in the bladder… and I’m no Steve rogers… So it’s definitely doable and within range, but not everybody can do it

[@ElizaGWR]

Every day in high school I carried around 100-150 lbs daily because I had a large military duffle bag that I had filled with heavy notebooks, textbooks, actual books for reading, binders full of trading cards, and other things needed for school as well as a secondary bag filled with frozen bottles of water so I had something to drink throughout the day as I was going to high school in las vegas, and my high school was an outdoor campus. I also had to walk a mile to get to the school and a mile back home On Wednesdays I also had to carry a change of clothes because I was in AFJROTC and needed to carry my uniform on me and change at the school, and on tuesdays and thursdays I had to carry my golfbag as well that weighed about another 35-40 lbs.

[@PyrotechNick77]

This is how my roommate and I rationalized how PCs are and it help me understand carry capacity and strength when we first started dnd. Roommmate was a Boy Scout he explained it to me as such

[@BlackOpMercyGaming]

@@ElizaGWR to be fair, nobody was forcing you to bring your MTG/Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, etc cards to school…. Lol Either way, that is WAY too much for a Highschool kid to have to drag around every day

[@bryanburgess3950]

Of course, adventurers also fight while loaded up like that, which is a whole different thing.

[@ElizaGWR]

@@BlackOpMercyGaming I never said anyone forced me too, I just did it because I wanted to take part in the social aspect of TCG's and I didn't trust the school lockers after in my first year of high school someone snapped my lock and robbed my locker. So I just kept everything on me.

[@soeveth]

The way i see it, everyone starts normal but the process of adventuring is what makes them trun into superheroes. Being exposed to magic, alchemy, mystical creature goo. It all has an effect on the heroes. And over time the heroes become stronger, tougher, faster, able to wield more magic.

[@carso1500]

This, low levels still respect the whole "we are normal people trying to survive in a world of monsters and dragons" but trying to carry that fantasy beyond level 10 is just not ideal, the game expects that after level 10 all playable characters are some degree of super human

[@pedrogarcia8706]

I've had so many arguments with people who insist that all martials are regular people and all casters are exceptional, and that's how it SHOULD be. To me that simply cannot be. The things you can do in dnd, the enemies you fight and defeat, just don't bear that out. Your example at the beginning about the totem warrior barbarian is actually really interesting because I just don't see the difference between the two options you present. why is "sheer mental will" enough to resist psychic damage considered something a regular dude could do? That's obviously an exceptional individual. You break the argument down at the end as "people who wanna be exceptional" vs "people who wanna start out as normal and become exceptional" but both of those people are exceptional. They're better than normal people. They didn't both start out that way but it's just a basic fact that they are. They're more survivable and more deadly. If you interprete hp (which is based on constitution btw) as being physical damage they're more durable, and if you interprete hp as "luck" or whatever, they're supernaturally lucky. Even if the physical feats of strength on paper don't bear it out, "regular people" just cannot do the things that the most basic dnd characters can do.

[@carso1500]

Yeah, dnd mechanics forcé you to interpret adventurers as súper human, maybe not at low levels where you are in real danger of dying because a gobling just got really lucky with his bow and arrow but at higher levels where a giant can hit you straight in the face and you just sort of stand there and take it like nothing that breaks that little fantasy of wanting your character to stay "realistic" from level 1 to 20 Because high level characters are intended to be super human, the books themselves support this there are levels of play for a reason and the reason why "you got lucky and the hi barely misses you but you lose 50 hit points" breaks at higher levels is because at least partially hp is supposed to be how much meat your character has in his bones

[@ryanlytle8521]

I’ve also settled on the interaction with the magic flowing thru the planes explaining heroes and their capabilities. As they apply themselves, more of that magic resides within them. So gaining experience isn’t just learning and practice, but it’s a measure of how much magical power they have accrued within them. It also helps explain them pushing thru mortal wounds - they are not just flesh and bone, but of magic as well. I prefer that nobody really thinks they are anything special, other than they might see signs of considerable potential, until level 3. Many people in my world have achieved level 1 or 2, or something akin to that minus the epic stats adventurers seem to have.

[@falionna3587]

I think we can use the tiers of play as guidelines on this subject. A tier one adventure is more mundane and regular folk, whilst the tier four is demigods. Another part of it is also the rags to riches sort of style, the farmboy that becomes a hero and destroys the empire.

[@carso1500]

Yeah for some reason a lot of this "i want my character to stay realistic from level 2 to 20" forget that 5e was designed with levels of play in mind, it's in the players handbook it's in the dungeon master guide

[@NumPad]

This is the reason I exchange "Stamina/Endurance" in place of "Health/Hit Points". It re-contextualizes taking damage in fights. "Hit Points" implies that your character is just tanking hits left and right and making no effort to avoid getting hit. It's a measure of how badly your character can get the crap kicked out of him before he just flops over. It feeds into that whole "supernaturally hearty" feeling that can break immersion. "Stamina" implies how winded you're getting over the course of the fight. It's a measure of how well your character can _avoid_ a direct hit, not how well they can _take_ one. Your character isn't just shrugging off getting bitten by a dragon or shot with 5 arrows, they're actively dodging out of the way; ducking and weaving their way through the onslaught. Every hit that "lands" is either a blow that their armor/shield managed to absorb, a strike that they had to exert extra effort in order to avoid, or a non-fatal blow. I tend to narrate my combats thusly: 100-75% - "The enemy barely manages to raise his weapon in time to intercept your strike. The block is clumsy, and he staggers backwards, but regains his footing and readies himself once again." 74-50% - "The enemy is breathing heavily, sweat beads on his face, and his movements begin to slow." 49-25% - "The enemy's eyes are pinpricks in their sockets, his skin flush from exertion. He grunts with every attack, and every movement flings drops of sweat and blood around the arena." 24-10% - "Sweat pours down his face, mixing with the blood of fatal strikes narrowly avoided. His attacks have become clumsy, but a solid blow would still be dangerous." 9-1% - "Your opponent's eyes drift in and out of focus, his breath coming and going in great heaves. Trails of blood follow him as he staggers around the battlefield. The only things keeping him fighting are adrenaline and desperation." 0% - "How do you end the fight?"

[@MorningDusk7734]

I've talked a few times on my solution to the idea that all damage is healed after a good night's rest, and that's remembering that D&D takes place in a world where magic is literally woven into the very fiber of every living thing. Every time you rest, you attune to the energies of The Weave, and they aid and accelerate your ability to repair damage to your body subconsciously. The same reason a Bard's song can literally knit flesh wounds back together, and hit dice work too. If you really want the character to feel mortal, consider more permanent flesh wounds, like losing fingers, gaining scars, etc.

[@BlackOpMercyGaming]

I also have heard about the health pool “debate” a lot… my table(I’m a player, not GM) look at your HP as a mixture of your stamina to push through pain and block/dodge on coming attacks and actual health/life force…. You can regain all of your stamina with a long rest, but if you broke your arm somehow, that will take time/magic/medicine to heal… even if you have all of your points back

[@ahealthkit2745]

I was thinking of how to remedy this for my own game, and my idea was to implement a new rule I call, 'Only the last hit is fatal'. Essentially, HP is treated more like a 'composure' bar. Every time a hit lands, it's described as a brush with danger that **could** have been deadly. Only the last hit that would knock a creature or player unconscious is described as a 'lethal' blow. Ie; A hero hitting a dragon with an axe the first few rounds might notice the dragon grows weary, there is fear in it's eyes, it's clearly aware of the danger that it's in. But when the dragon lunges forward, two hits make the barbarian fear for his own life. A claw swipes inches from their face, leaving a flesh wound across their face. A tail swipe narrowly misses their legs, but if it landed, it would've broken bones. But, the dragon's maw closes around the barbarian, crunching their chest and leaving them broken and bloodied on the ground, unconscious and rolling their first death save.

[@SNDKNG]

Drawing this out would make for a great game mechanic. What if stamina actually was a separate resource, that you used to fuel your attacks, gain extra bursts of movement, or shrug off blows? I've been experimenting with a system like that for a little while (first inspired by the Banner Saga) and I haven't quite hit the right balance or mechanics for it. The problem is in making sure that a combat can last long enough to be rewarding without completely retooling AC and HP.

[@pedrogarcia8706]

Yeah 5e does have lingering injuries but they're optional as well

[@Youkaiyami]

I played my Bloodrager (PF1e) as supernatural. His ability to take so much and deal so much damage was due to the magic in his blood causing his body to become an absolute tank. He could take sword strikes and arrows beyond basic human abilities, tearing through encounters and making a common man shake in their boots. He's very much a power fantasy, and I wanted that reflected in his capabilities. A monster of muscle and constitution beyond your average person. Even at level 1.

[@SingularityOrbit]

The go to example for me is the heavy crossbow. A D&D person can load and loose a bolt every 6 seconds. Ever seen a proper medieval crossbow? They typically require 30 seconds for an experienced operator to span, load, and shoot once. They're for having one shot ready in an instant for hunting, self-defense while riding, or sniping from a fortification. The heavy crossbow in D&D is an 18 pound device. The real historical crossbows of that weight were braced on fortifications like today's heavy machine gun, not carried, and there's no way the world's strongest soldier could load one without a mechanical crank or the help of a horse. However, a D&D person can fire every round . . . unless they're an adventurer. An adventurer can learn the Crossbow Expert feat, and then they can span, load, and shoot a heavy crossbow twice or more in six seconds. That is literally superhuman.

[@mattball8622]

A TTRPG system that does a good job with carrying capacity (imo) is Blades in the Dark. You just choose a size of load out, and then you have that many 'item slots' to play with (in BitD, you basically say you have gear when you think you need it instead of pre-planning it). Something I run with when it comes to HP is the Uncharted Principle, which is that HP actually represents a character's luck. Attacks are either superficial or 'miss' until they reach 0HP, and then that's the attack that connects with real force. Saves you from the Mortal Kombat paradox of a character getting their spine shattered and just carrying on like it's no big deal.

[@BigKlingy]

Me, since I view D&D as creating a story, I justify this as "it's a story, and you're the main characters". While there are limits, like the Crystal Skull and Die Hard examples you mentioned, in general main characters in fiction are unnaturally resilient and can pull off physics-defying feats because without them you wouldn't have a story. It's why they don't come down with mundane illnesses unless it would be narratively interesting or funny. Heck, now I'm reminded of a skit in a comedy anime called Nichijou that plays out like Castle In The Sky, except partway through the main villain falls over, hits his head and dies, and nobody, hero or evil minion, has any idea what to do next. It was weirdly eye-opening to the fact that these kind of mundane accidents happen all the time in reality but would completely derail the story if they were as common in fiction.

[@Duhad8]

The way I think of D&D heroes is, ironically, best described by another RPG called Unisystem. Specifically its most iconic game, All Flesh Must Be Eaten. AFMBE is a zombie sandbox game, instead of having fixed zombie types, it offers allot of rules for building various flavors of undead based on what kind of zombie movie/book/series your using for inspiration and to go along with that it offers 3 types of player character, one of which is largely incompatible with the others. Norms are basically average people. You play them in a game that's focused on disempowerment and horror or just one where the game master doesn't want combat and heroics to be the primary focus. Survivors are not inhumanly strong, BUT they are meant to be more cinematic. Ash in every Evil Dead movie after the first or Indiana Jones or... Basically any action, adventure or even horror movie character where they are meant to be COOL rather then fully relatedly vulnerable. Finally Inspired at made to be balanced to go with Survivors, being weaker over all, but getting supernatural powers like psionics or faith based abilities or in the fantasy supplements, full on wizard powers. The point of this is to allow the game master to sort of pick and chose what sort of experiences they want to give there players. Are they going for horror where a single zombie is a problem and a gunfight is almost DEFINITELY going to kill someone? Norms! Are they going for a cinematic experiences where stakes are high, but a couple undead are pretty easy to take out with a one liner? Survivors! Are they going for something more fantastical where the characters are truly special, but still recognizably human? Survivors AND Inspired! And that last one is what I think of when I think of (lower level) D&D! Your NOT fully supernaturally gifted super humans (even mages and sorcerers, est. are still just coming into there powers) BUT you are NOT average, normal folks. Rather, your 'stars of the movie' characters, people with a bit of plot armor and a 'just go with it' ability to shrug off damage and pain that the vast majority of normal folks would need to see a doctor about. You are, in a word, heroes. ... Then you go up 10 levels and suddenly your in arguably special. Like, no commoner is gonna train really hard and learn to do what a 10th level fighter is doing or rack up the sort of monster body count that would put a Witcher to shame, not unless they also have narrative on there side. But that's sort of the fantasy of high level D&D to me, that your no longer playing just anybody, by that point you've done and survived enough crazy stuff that its clear there is something special about you and probably a god or destiny or SOMETHING has picked you out to do something important. (In reality, the Dungeon Master, they who control everything and have selected you and your buddies to be, in effect if not explicitly, the fated heroes who will be at the center of most world shaping events till the campaign ends.)

[@carso1500]

Yeah this, low level adventurers are a cut above the rest but still pretty mortal and pretty squishy, low level adventures can be very deadly and you can die in a single hit But beyond level 10, that breaks apart and your characters are superhumanly strong and tough, no way around it this is the reason why "the way i describe damage breaks at higher levels all the time" is because high level adventures are meant to be super human You wan gritty and "realistic" gameplay, stay at low levels it's really that easy

[@starscream71288]

Ive always been able to suspend disbelief with most stats in D&D with the exception of movement speed. The idea of a person moving 30 ft in 6 seconds seemed so unreal that it was hard to suspend disbelief. Let alone when you consider the dash action and bonus action for rogues. That is the potential for 90 ft in 6 seconds without the assistance of feats, spells, or magic items. Seems absolutely insane. Then I did the math. Moving 30 ft in six seconds equates to 3.4 miles per hour. 90 ft equals 10.22 miles per hour. The average NFL Wide Receiver runs at a top speed of around 20 mph. Usain Bolt's world record run was 23.35 mph. A person in good physical condition can easily pull of 30 ft every six seconds. Maybe not for long but definitely doable. And when you consider the fact that most combat encounters don't run longer than 5 or 6 rounds, keeping that pace for 30 - 35 seconds (or even a minute for longer encounters) seems like the most realistic part of D&D. That also got me thinking about the fastest you can go (without the benefit of feats, magic items, or spells). And the answer is 22.16 mph. In order to do this, you have to be a Wood Elf Monk of at least 18th level wearing no armor. Wood elves get a 35 ft base walking speed, 18th level monks get a +30 ft bonus to their speed while unarmored, and the ability to dash as a bonus action. This makes for a base speed of 65 ft. Add a dash as an action and bonus action, and that makes it 195ft every six seconds, which equals 22.16 mph. Conclusion, Usain Bolt was wearing boots of haste.

[@pedrogarcia8706]

This is also movement speed in combat, while under attack from hostile parties and potentially also attacking yourself. There aren't really any 5e mechanics for absolute maximum feats of strength. There's no max sprinting speed, there's no max deadlift, there's no max throwing distance, because these aren't things you would do in a normal adventuring day. There's "how much can you carry and still move", "how far can you accurately aim a javelin", and "how fast can you run while under attack?"

[@ilmari1452]

I believe strongly in the "all PCs are superhuman" philosophy simply because the rapid power climb in the 5e system to me can't be rationalised without a supernatural component. Perhaps, if you ran a game that takes place over many years, maybe it would be plausible but - most campaigns really take place over few years at most. A charcter might climb 5 levels in a month of game time. I like the zero-to-hero underdog character progression, but I have to have some sort of supernatural rationalisation. In my own campaign setting, I actually eneded up deciding that *everyone* in the world is at a baseline, just a little bit magical, and the PCs (and powerful NPCs) are just the few who - usually through early campaign events - have unlocked the potential to grow that inherent power.

[@FamfritFW]

I totally get the abstraction of Hit Points as being "lucky" or getting better at scraping by and just barely avoiding getting hit, but I think the one place where that breaks down is when it comes to falling damage. There might be an argument for learning how to fall when it comes down to jumping off a roof; but when your talking about falling from the sky at terminal velocity.

[@TheOprative9]

I feel like I'm weird that i have my cake and eat it too in the way that I am pretty pulpy in my approach to damage. I have my players can their skin scorched, a chunk of flesh bitten off, take an arrow to their side cracking a rib, or a sword slash that gashes some blood. But they're still able to fight at peak efficiency. As a side note I describe the healing in this world as closing up their injuries and they're healed, but the healing only works as well as a natural body can heal. A 3rd degree burn heals instantly but leaves a patch of scarred skin. A broken bone or dislocated shoulder resets but now you have a hitch in your shoulder. My players seem to like it. They get to be cinematic and awesome, but they still feel like there are stakes.

[@TheLordofMetroids]

Related to this idea, I played a Star Wars TTRPG a few years ago. (I'm not really sure which one, because there are probably like 20 different ones at this point) Anyways it had to deal with the question of how does a regular Joe Smuggler manage to stand beside a Jedi in any realistic form of power scaling in universe. The solution it came up with was in my opinion quite elegant. Every player charicter is Force Sensitive, but how they used their powers may be different. The Smuggler may be unconsciously putting illusions in the stormtroopers minds that hide his presence and allow him to sneak better, he may be subtly influencing his blaster to hit his target, he may be using light mind control whenever he makes a persuasive argument. The Wookee warrior may be using the force to complement her already incredible strength and durability. She is able to lift weapons that should be impossible, even for her massive form. She may seem to withstand even the strongest blows, but in reality the force healing her of even the most grievous of wounds. Her roars while naturally loud and strong, may also come with the full psychological might of facing a Sith Lord, making the enemies run from her vary presence. I thought it was a neat idea, and it was the first time I ever thought of all player characters in a game as superhuman.

[@SNDKNG]

In 3rd edition, the game designers showed us that adventurers weren't superheroes by providing detailed info on the residents of every city, town, village, and settlement. If the average borderlands hamlet had a 10th level chief, 7th level cleric or druid, and 5th level captain of the guard/watch, 1st level adventurers knew they couldn't just do whatever they wanted. In 5e, where design choice of "NPCs as monsters" has taken root, these are replaced by a veteran, priest, and a tribal warrior. A first level party will defeat each of them about half the time, and a second level party will often wipe the floor with them. Basically, if everyone in the game world has access to the mechanics of the game (gygaxian realism), then the adventurers aren't superheroes. And while 5e allows a DM to play it that way, it certainly isn't the default.

[@mkang8782]

I have always subscribed to the outlook that adventurers are a little special compared to commoners and nobles. It's not just in their stats, but, also in their willingness to step outside the relative safety of a basic existence. So, in that sense, the ability to carry significant weight falls in with that. Regarding the hit points, Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) has morale in place of hit points, since there's no resurrection magic in Middle Earth. This would work well as an interpretation of hit points for 5E. It makes sense that, as you encounter and survive experiences, your morale (will to live) gets stronger; you get a better sense of the various forms that harm and danger take. Regarding the Gritty Realism optional rule, my main objection is that it takes a week to complete a long rest. With a lot of class and item features requiring a long rest to refresh, that's a lot of potential for frustration on the part of the players. At the end of the game session, you have to remember it is an abstraction.

[@VitoWolf-me3tq]

Great video. I’m super interested in this concept. I like Grit points that are like you parrying swords, getting cut, a glancing blow and you recover them after a long rest . then hit points that would drop and add permanent damage like when you are hit with a fire ball or fall in lava. Etc

[@baie_nuuskierig]

My players tend to start as obsessive regular people - so my wizard has always been bookish, the fighter developed their skills due to becoming more agile than the bullies who had a go at them every day as a kid, the druid grew up as a kid that today would be in today's version of Junior Rangers, as well as my rogue, who is just SUPER curious, and tends to remember small facts, so she is a really good spy. Our paladin is just…weird. We also started on the low levels with healing being a very slow process. You only heal half of your outstanding HP per night. Now, in the mid-levels, we work on a two-day heal, as long as potions or poultices are used. I think that heroes should grow into some of their properties.

[@DMZknightley]

I personally think of 'hit points' is more the 'will' to keep going when they have taken damage. Barbarians have an internal rage to just push through damage and that is why they have more hit points, wizards who have spent time learning have less will to push through taking damage therefore have less 'hit points'

[@JustinWPruett]

“Here’s the thing, it’s summer now, so I’m gonna be sweaty more often.” Same, Mike. Freakin’ same.

[@Stephen-Fox]

Not wanting to go all Pathfinder Does It Better, and I'm only bringing it up because of how long you talked about encumbrance, and brought in abstractions at the end, but I _really_ like the abstraction Pathfinder 2e uses for encumbrance - Instead of having real world weight which winds up being a lot of small numbers that aren't fun to track and can easily break someone's immersion if they have a different understanding of how good humans are at carrying stuff than the game's designers, objects have an abstracted bulk rating - An integer (e.g. 1 or 2), L, or -. The sum is typically fairly small (I think the rogue I made recently can carry 5 before he starts suffering penalties), 10 L items = 1, making it really quick and easy to add up and keep track of, and while I don't know if the PF2e designers did this, it could also be used to bake a representation that some weight is easier to carry than others by making two items that are about the same weight different bulks because one is a really awkward shape to carry which doesn't stow into a backpack easily. (Of course, for carrying capacity, IMO the gold standard for games that actually care about carrying capacity is Mausritter with its tile laying subgame to fit your items into a representation of your backpack on your character sheet, making for an extremely tactile and visual experience for fitting your items into your characters pack. Really cute, no numbers to worry about, lets different sizes of items take up more or less space which item slots don't allow for. Geometry is just inherently more fun to interact with at a tabletop than arithmetic is because you can have little cardboard cutouts to physically manipulate) As for Power Fantasies - I don't find playing as a human inherently boring... I just don't want to do it in a fantasy game unless the campaign setting/concept is specifically about that. I'm happy to play as humans in MotW, CoC, Traveller, or whatnot. Just... If Kobold or Goblin or Ratfolk is on the table, I'm always going to lean towards that in a game with a Kitchen Sink fantasy concept (And, yeah, the more 'monstrous' options tend to have more appeal to me than the more Tolkein hero options. One of the things I liked when reading Fellowship 2e is it's very easy to go Monstrous with even the Tolkein Hero playbook options in that game. You want your dwarves to be Tolkein Dwarves when making your Dwarf character? (And more than most games, the rules kind of require no repeat playbooks (PbtA's equivalent of classes, basically) You can do that. You can also do more of a Snow White take on Dwarves. But you could also make them Gorons with the serial numbers filed off, literally having them made of rock. But I do have a PF2e character concept for a Gnome. Not because I particularly want to play as a Gnome, but because the lore behind Gnomes in PF2e inspired a specific character idea in my head. And I did recently play a Dwarf in Quest.)

[@Alex-cq1zr]

A good idea about hits which knock characters unconscious is that such hits would grant wounds. So, a character is knocked unconscious, crawling on the floor or however you do so, but said character is gonna need some time to recover from the wound.

[@Blerdy_Disposition]

I think the biggest point you being up too Mike is that it depends on the players and GMs at the table. Adventurers can be mythical and supernaturaal by nature but that can also not be the case. Its dependent on the game in question and what everyone at the table wants from said game.

[@b1uel1ght52]

The way I've always conceptualized it is that powers create powers. So for instance, someone with super strength would also need some degree of invulnerability so as not to break their hand when punching a brick wall. The adventurer is much the same. As they level up and their abilities become stronger, so to does their ability to take a beating in order to withstand the toll power like that would take on their bodies.

[@starsapart9311]

I've done it both ways as a DM. In most of the games I've run and played in, we've gone with "they're regular people who trained hard, don't look too hard behind the curtain" and just sort of accepted the cognitive dissonance. This is fine, and it's fun, and I'll probably keep doing exactly that for most high fantasy games. It makes it easier to give NPCs class levels, after all. 😂 However, I do run one game where I've leaned into the "inherently supernatural" thing and it has been FASCINATING. It's an Isekai-style plot, where my PCs were normal average college students from the real world who fell into a magical world, suddenly had magic and superpowers, and everyone else in the world has basically been waiting for these "legendary heroes" to arrive and save the world. I've narrated the speed healing of short and long rests as actively disconcerting - and when NPCs get hurt, they do NOT heal quickly or easily. Most people in the world don't have magic, either. NPCs who can fight have purely martial builds, and even the trained warriors recover no more than 5hp with a day of rest. Framing it this way has made the party feel their role as outsiders and supposed saviors of the world VERY keenly. It's been extremely fun for me to watch them navigate their new superhero status, and it's been a great experience for the players, too. So I think there's a time and place for the "inherently supernatural" approach... It can be amazing if done right.

[@crimfan]

If you look back to the adventure fiction we know about, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh or The Iliad and The Odyssey, the adventurers are, quite often, literally demigods of divine ancestry. Hercules is a descendent of Perseus and also half-brother because both are sons of Zeus, Odysseus is a great-grandson of Hermes (in some traditions, not others), Achilles is the son of Thetis, etc. Indeed, the word "hero" means "offspring of human and god".

[@user-fe2ne7qx9z]

Honestly, I like how Shadowrun handles character competency. Shadowrunners are supposed to be professional specialists in their field, much stronger and more competent than the average Rent-a-Cop. Still, a bullet to the braincase can kill you dead just the same. Hit points in SR are literal meat points. Characters have comparately less HP than DnD and it takes longer to recover from Physical Damage. There's also a death spiral system in place so that if your character does take damage, you take penalties to your rolls. A guy bleeding out from a shotgun wound to the chest would be less competent at his job than a guy with a full amount of blood in his system.

[@Cthulhuftagniaia]

For me the thing that makes dnd always feel "Superhuman" is that your character gets better at more or less everything they do when they level up.

[@nergatron8237]

In an older video you made mentioned about HP being how much luck one has before being struck with the final death blow. This could be argued that having an extreme amount of luck is also super human, look at Domino in the X-men universe. But I agree with you about how 5e is supposed to be a fantasy gameplay. From lifting mountains to out charming the devil himself, to even getting fully rested after sleeping for 8 hours.

[@tykinnerjr]

Great video, as per the norm. The one qualm that I have is that you under sold how freakishly strong Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson is. His deadlift record is actually 501 kg, or 1104 lbs. Other than that, no problems lol. And I'd like to say that in the games that I've run me and the players just like the idea that the PCs are just cut from a different cloth. At the very least we imagine that they start out at level 1 as essentially Olympic athlete type people in their respective classes. My players really enjoy being treated like they're the only people fit for the tasks they receive. Though I do understand why some people like to think of their characters as regular folk. It's inspiring to think that regular people can be influential and impactful as the PCs tend to be in D&D. It's what gives LOTR a lot of its appeal. It's empowering to think that if some unassuming Hobbits can survive the ordeals that they went through and can rid the land of evil, no matter how little others would think of them. Anyways, that's enough out of me. Keep up the good work.

[@arandomnamegoeshere]

My take is that we lean in to the narrative aspects of our experience. It doesn't have to be supernatural. You'll find individuals throughout history who were caught up in remarkable events inspiring a remarkable story. Sometimes these are individuals who had unique traits and a lot can be said for their awareness and character that allowed them to make it through situations that would swallow most others. But sometimes they're just unremarkable people thrust in the midst of remarkable situations with luck on their side. And sometimes... maybe even more often than we would feel comfortable with... remarkable people survive through sheer luck. They roll the dice and make it through. Sometimes they do it enough times until they outpace historic events and simply fade away. Sometimes they roll until the one time the roll turns on them and they don't survive. That sounds an awful lot like our tabletop. With the conceit that the characters we play are fate-kissed to have better-than-average odds.

[@kweh8122]

I do like the idea of player characters being not innately superhuman, but who become mythical figures spoken of in whispers over the course of the game. Although with that being said, I also like the notion of the level 1 character already being an exceptional person to start with, that most people in the world, including combative roles like guards, do not have class levels. So I guess...I don't want to be an ordinary human, but I want be someone who became exceptional. I like the idea that enemies are terrifying and challenging, but the players having a unique advantage in being a group of skilled adventurers working together with abilities that complement one another, and that leads to explosive growth. And then high level play reminds me of stories like Beowulf, where the protagonist IS killable, but is also this larger-than-life, awe-inspiring figure, while still being just barely bound by the concepts of the world around him.

[@Cassapphic]

most 5e characters stats have most of them a decent mark above 10 which is meant to be avergae joe, even at level 1, they still feel like normal people working together in early levels that become superhuman over time, but thats never bothered me maybe in part from how much I've played ffxiv, where you start as an adventuring nobody but as the game progresses you become infinitely more powerful, soon slaying false imitations of gods forged through desperate prayer and magical energy, and much later, actual universe ending threats through sheer willpower, and honestly to me the journey and ability to suspend disbelief maoss that a satisfying progression.

[@carso1500]

Yeah this soo much

[@carso1500]

I mean both the players hand book and the dungeon master guise straight up say that yeah even level 1 adventurers are already above most people, they are already a cut above the rest and as they level up they eventually reach súper human levels of power This is in both main books of dnd alongside the "levels of adventure" so by design adventures are supposed to be super humans, or at least they are designed to start as a cut above the norm, someone still normal if a little stronger than the rest of folks and end as basically demigods

[@Keovar]

I think it depends on the tone of the game/setting. I think the "Forgotten Realms is default" stuff leans toward PCs being superheroes, even if they're more like Steve Rogers than Thor. Other settings can be different, and it's not too hard to cut back on the superhero stuff. In my game, falling to 0 HP is a significant wound, represented by taking a level of exhaustion (the newer version where 11 kills, rather than 6). Each failed death save gives another, and since each means another -1 to all d20 rolls, the more exhaustion you have, the harder it gets to succeed. You only recover 1 exhaystion per long rest, and while you have any exhaustion, HP healing is halved. It does mean you don't die at 3 failed death saves, but it's even more important that someone helps you as soon as possible.

[@angelusdemorte3]

I justify it with the philosophy,"Whatever doesn't kill you, simple makes you stronger" or more skilled in literal terms. But while watching this I am reading Wheel of Time, and... Ta'veren? Or in CR terms: Fate Touched.

[@Heavensrun]

Re: long rest, rather than thinking of it as the players being superhuman, I think of it as the inherent magic of the setting giving the environment itself magic healing properties.

[@Kephazard]

it definitely depends on the game and the accompanying setting/theme/genre/etc. My current game is a fantasy pirate setting. I want it to be grounded, where the players don't feel inherently superior to everyone, but also want them to enjoy the fantasy of swashbuckling. I try to achieve this by having them meet a lot of other similarly powerful creatures and people. Early on, some of the NPCs on their ship outpowered them, and they frequently face foes that are tougher than expected. This works because the players understand this. They know sometimes they need to retreat - and usually TPK is not the only failure state. Anyways, we seem to have struck a nice balance of fantasy empowerment without the players becoming gods on earth.

[@michaelbenson5677]

I'm copying a comment from the Hit Point video for the benefit of people who really don't like the idea of adventures being superhuman: there is a way to conceptualize hitpoints that is actually pretty naturalistic and makes sense of with all D&D HP-related mechanics as far as I know: Hit points represent discipline--your capacity for focus in spite of distraction. Loosing hit points does represent taking actual damage, just not in a way that's life-threatening: weapon damage causes painful or inhibiting wounds, acid damage causes ongoing burning and itchiness where you got hit, cold and poison causes numbness, fire and lightning burns you, thunder and psychic disorients and may cause lack of balance or alertness, and necrotic, radiant, and force damage can be characterized any number of ways. As you loose hit points and accumulate these injuries, you get more shaken and slow to react until you make the critical mistake that allows an enemy to strike true and take you down. This makes sense of both magical healing (all HP recovery is literally healing damaged tissue and easing pain), and of temporary HP: having a detailed strategy in mind (Inspiring Leader), getting a calorie boost before combat (Gourmand/Chef), and having a magical field absorb energy from attacks (spells, artillerist cannon, etc.) all make it easier to keep focus on what you need to do to stay alive and do your job even when dealing with pain and other distracting factors. It also makes sense of gaining maximum hitpoints as you level up: you aren't literally getting more beefy (aside from CON ASI)--rather, it's your increasing professionalism and veterancy that allows you to endure more setbacks/pain without flinching or panicking. This works for some enemies (especially humanoids), though I think the traditional concept of HP loss works better for large monsters that can reasonably retain combat functionality when taking direct hits.

[@Malkuth-Gaming]

slight correction.. Hafthor Bjornssons record is 1104lbs. And we got rules for lifting which is 30x your strength, or twice your carry capacity.. and for that lift, his strength would be 36.6.. For the 750lbs lift his strenght would have been a "lowly" 25 so hes packing Gauntlets of Fire Giant Strength :P

[@peterhaberstroh8017]

Except that he’s exerting himself for a moment, the encumbrance rules are more like “I can carry this comfortably for 8 hours of marching.”

[@Malkuth-Gaming]

@@peterhaberstroh8017 PHB, page 176, Push, Drag or Lift. You can push drag or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your strength score). While pusing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops by 5 ft

[@peterhaberstroh8017]

@@Malkuth-Gaming Maybe a 5e character could lift even more since your movement would logically drop to 0. I guess that’s not what the book says, but the circumstances of a weight lifting competition are fairly niche. Sort of like how professional divers must have an impossibly high constitution score.

[@Arcon1ous]

The Way I've always looked at it is that they probably aren't superhuman in their world, but they probably would be in ours. maybe not for the first few levels, but by level 5, even the weakest of classes physically can do some pretty insane feats of strength/agility regularly, let alone their mental acuity, or magic or whatever.

[@Pumpky_the_kobold]

In my game, I use the word "exeptional". They might be supernatural, if they're magic or something, but your regular Joe Fighter is just "that good". Adventurers are exceptional, and exceptionally rare. I think it's much easier to strech the reality of what is "natural" in a world where we have oozes and owlbear, rather than trying to rationalize our reality into game mechanics.

[@kingzant99]

I had a couple of thoughts, particularly on the HP section, but also just on the topic in general. I don't believe that every adventurer is inherently supernatural. However, I DO believe that every long-running adventurer eventually attains a level of supernaturality which accounts for these things happening. Basically, my view is that long exposure to high amounts of magic, divine powers, and general weird stuff slowly imbues adventurers with those effects, causing them to level up, gain new abilities, become more resistant to damage, etc. And I think this ties in to the statements Brennan Lee Mulligan has said, something along the lines of "why would anyone go to wizard's college when they could just kill a hundred goblins (in an XP based game)?" My view is that, while learning and performing magic does increase one's abilities, it will be obviously slower than, say, going out and fighting demons. However, the inherent mortal peril you are putting yourself in by being an adventurer means this is far less enticing for someone who just wants to learn how to create teleportation circles, for instance. That's why you see mages who have spent decades or centuries honing their craft and are lower level than PCs. They chose the slower, safer option.

[@bryanburgess3950]

I think that everyone in the dnd world is inherently magical, but people who put in a bunch of work, like adventurers, can increase their magicalness

[@angiep2229]

I feel like people who buy into this theory are forgetting that having a character class is (mostly) meant to be something a character has spent a good chunk of their life training for. Wizards study for years, fighters train, so do rogues and bards. (Don't worry about Warlocks and Sorcerers. They're special.) So, no, I think it's silly to think adventurers are basically super-powered by default. I interpret it that they're basically just like anyone else, until they take on a class.

[@datDrowningFish]

How I see my dnd games, the pcs are the main characters in a tv show or movie. They can take more punches than the unnamed bandits but not as many as the big bad. It’s the narrative payoff that the more important characters (pc and npc) have more “screentime” in combat or more impact on the world. I’ll have to ask if they think of their characters as inherently supernatural or not, but I don’t necessarily see them as such.

[@matthewparker9276]

I like a bit of a hybrid approach. Level 1 adventurers are exceptional people, but no more than e.g. a professional athlete, but as they level up, they grow beyond the limits of their mortal roots to essentially the level of demigods. I think this approach is supported best by the mechanics of the game. Thete are npc statblocks of mundane humanoids that are comparable in power to around a 5th level character, so this must be acheivable by regular beings, even if rare.

[@leeway3739]

I'm currently in a Rime of the Frostmaiden game. I'm playing a human scientist from Earth who got abducted by mind flayers and their ship crash landed on the "dnd planet" (tm). I'm having a lot of fun pointing out the ridiculous things in the game, like all damage healing after a long rest, and then finding a "scientific" explanation for it, like "hmm...the air on this planet seems to have healing properties." Its not that anything is supernatural, just it is a different planet so a different environment and physics...things "work" different here.

[@KingdomJackFantasy]

I play both D&D and Hackmaster (based on 2nd ed D&D I think) on a regular basis and I enjoy both systems for different reasons. The power fantasy of D&D has its charm and the "oh shit I'm going to fucking die" feeling of Hackmaster. But it is annoying that healing in Hackmaster takes weeks without a healer, it stops the game and the character has to stay in bed for a long time without any narrative gain except "realism". But spell points makes more sense to me than spell slots. Guess that's why I like to play different systems, it scratches different itches

[@Wolfbane971]

I've heard hp be known as essentially luck, each hit is nearly fatal, but you manage to dodge out of the way till the last hit, if you manage to get up you got the winds knocked out of you, if not it was a fatal blow

[@debraames8685]

My general approach to this is that Player Characters are Average for their worlds. . . which is to say by our standards they may be overpowered or heightened but in a dnd world they Just Guys. Most people don't go out and acquire the kind of skills that equal a level 20 adventurer, because you have to be some kind of driven or crazy to do that, but anyone could.

[@jubalrahl]

Not better, just different. In a way that makes them better 😂

[@SuperSGFreak49]

Slightly unrelated, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on putting the party into hopeless or seemingly hopeless positions. I like to use it as a narrative device but it is always hard to find the line where it works in the game and doesn't just frustrate people. I'm talking about situations like thrusting the party into the middle of something like a natural disaster, which they have no chance of stopping, and seeing what they do. How do you validate their agency when the game world is kind of taking it away from them?

[@PVSR]

Fun topic! In my game adventurers absolutely are supernatural. Being able to heal from anything in a single night’s rest is their defining feature. It’s a way for this magical universe to balance the monsters, demons, eldritch beings, etc. that would otherwise utterly destroy regular societies and perhaps the entire world.

[@SummerOtaku]

In the anime Log Horizon I enjoy how they describe adventurers as fundamentally different as if they were some heaven blessed race that get resurrected for a soul price, have abilities, but this means the people of the land (non adventurers) have strong opinions on the adventurers that are so powerful and might be not using these powers how they think they should (like super heroes that should be saving people all the time) while some see them as unnatural threats.

[@SingularityOrbit]

One note for anyone who looked at the Gritty Realism healing rules and thought about them: that doesn't just affect healing, it also slows down recovery of spell slots. Under Gritty Realism, your 1st level cleric doesn't get those two spell slots back the next day, they get them back in a week. I rather recommend a combination of two rules from the DMG. Slow Natural Healing only allows spending Hit Dice for both short and long rests, slowing healing down enough to feel more earned. Healer's Kit Dependency requires spending one use of a healer's kit after an injury before any healing is allowed from a short rest -- the character can bandage up and heal during a short rest, or just have to tough it out until they get a long rest. Combine these and the results are not real-world accurate, but at least characters who take a lot of hits aren't likely to just sleep away getting mauled by a pack of dire wolves.

[@dontmisunderstand6041]

It also messes with classes that get resources back on a short rest, making them significantly more powerful due to how much more often short rests will happen when long rests effectively only exist between adventures.

[@Gnomelord0]

My issue with "PCs are superheroes" disign is a bit ideological, I don't like systems where somebody is superior just because. And this isn't a "Oh this guy read Camus and he hates fun' I actually felt this when I was in middle school, I've alctually relaxed on this as I got older but narratives where some people are just superior just because always made me uncomfortable, which is why my games always rejected the idea that there are no level 20 NPCs. I'm ok with Exalted where that is baked into the system itself, but there is something very....Great Man about the notion that anybody who a player creates is just a superman

[@zippomage]

i kinda take some of my philosophy from the comic Planetary. in that, there are just people who were born with adventuring in their blood. they can, when prezsed begin to do things nobody else can. sometimes they even develop magic, but thwy all have Power.

[@FrostSpike]

So a question for DMs would be... do your (nameless) NPCs heal up at the same rate as the adventuring party? Those caravan guards that were beaten black and blue whilst taking on that rogue griffon that mauled the wagons, are they healed back up to full HP by a good night's sleep?

[@alexanderchippel]

Its funny you mention Nepal because just the other day I learned that Sherpa is an ethnic group, not a job. It's just an ethnic group that occupies the region where most Everest guides would live. And it's even more funny because of how much sense it makes. Like around where I live, if you're building something like a deck or a shed or need a lot of lumber, you call the Amish. If I wasn't from the area and didn't know about the history of the Amish, I'd probably assume that Amish was just a job title, not it's own ethnic group.

[@Flawless-Walrus]

I have always believed that Adventurers are indeed supernaturally powerful and skilled at high levels, but there's actually another facet that wasn't touched on in this video. Adventurers are absurdly quick to learn and GAIN that power above those who are not adventurers. Over the course of your average campaign, adventurers will gain a bevy of abilities, skills, and knowledge arcane. Other people who have spent their whole lives building up to knowing seventh level spells will see an adventurer who's spending more time nuking the threat of the day than studying grow much more powerful over the course of typically less than a year. An adventurer who at the start of the campaign was a bottom rung guard, will find themselves on equal footing with the authority of their old guard captain, and then later, far beyond them. Adventurers evolve, while for the most part, everyone else remains where they are. This is naturally something that a DM can get past with planning, but most DMs simply aren't going to bother thinking about the corporate ladder for all their NPCs every time the party rolls into town.

[@voiceofthevoid2284]

I have to disagree on this one. The average person has stats somewhere between 8-12. They even have their own NPC classes they can level through. To be an adventurer, and have a Str of 18-20 (Barbarians can literally get up to 24) literally makes you superhuman. Thor Bjornsson (Sorry, not going to take the time to look up how to do the accents, just take it phonetically), The Mountain, is superhuman. He is the strongest human on the planet. I think that makes him Str 22 or so, but that is the definition of superhuman. Int 20-22 would be someone like Stephen Hawking. We are talking about the people who stand out among humanity as the absolute best at what they do. I would argue that makes them superhuman. Edit to add: Adventurers are supposed to have specialized training, or some form of magic to help them. They may have been a city guard already, and gained levels in an NPC class like Warrior, but those aren't taken into account in adventurer class levels, they are already above and beyond normal people. These are the things that the rules point out, specifically with Backgrounds in 5e, the adventurer already had a life as something before becoming an adventurer, before something set them apart to become a hero.

[@voiceofthevoid2284]

I have actually run adventures where I have the players start as NPC classes, and later become adventurers. It's kinda weird, and the rules aren't exactly set up for it, but it can be done, and that is how I like doing the Zero to Hero type play.

[@carso1500]

This, adventures specially high level ones are super human, low level adventurers are simply a cut above the rest but still very much normal people but level 20 adventurers are demi gods

[@andrewburgess9578]

Possible follow up videos on what alternate games hit what power level fantasies; and the linked power curve for progression? Important especially with longer campaigns not to progress beyond the system's sweet spot. With suggestions for genre adaptation ... say you are looking for a pulpy feel in classic high fantasy would say Ubiquity system be good option; or superheroic from the character introduction with Godbound?

[@Kaiser8513]

I rule mine to where KO hits are heavier blows but if the player survives they do have to manage with the wound possibly opening depending on location but 100% the time that blow will leave a scar

[@thatoneflowergirl9776]

And then there’s my character, who has a soul curse that prevents her from having average or above physical stats (-1 Strength, -1 Dexterity, -2 Constitution) and is more of a twig than her walking stick / arcane focus

[@Middleman_93]

A good video with many things to contemplate! I'd like to ask a (small series of) question(s) on the issue of hit points and the way you describe losing them. Is your description of a character whose AC is exceeded by an opponent's attack roll similar to your description of a character succeeding on a DEX save against Disintegrate? As in, do they both deftly move out of the way of the danger? Narratively, why would the former of these cost a character hit points while the latter does not? I'm open to your idea, but 1) damage types and 2) DEX/CON saves seem difficult to reconcile in my mind unless hit points are just meat. Can definitely see why that concept doesn't appeal to people, though :) I guess I'm clearly in the "adventurers are natively superhuman" camp. I hope to hear back from you, and I hope that life is treating you well and continues to do so!

[@Lexicophage]

Thanks, Mike, for exploring a good topic, which contains plenty of complex considerations, even after breaking down the history of how we got to our 5th edition situation. Power fantasy is understandable, even sometimes healthy, and I also feel the need to work against some of D&D's legacy as a wargame, when I see someone playing without empathy or consideration for the people of the world (i.e. NPCs). Murder Hobos are usually focused on the message D&D sends that they are special supers and that Winning D&D is requires a calculus of violence. Any wonder, then, when they act as if the villagers are nobodies (they're only fictional, after all), and that they can inflict whatever violence they wish? Heroes seem better than Murder Hobos, yes... Heroes also, here, seem largely measured by their possible damage output, or their ability to avoid, resist, and/or absorb damage. Heroic fantasy is also bound up with D&D, so I'd feel foolish saying we should do away with it. But I do chafe when I'm told it's the ONLY way to play the game.

[@trinitydalfae8478]

If you're going by the DMG then yes, even 1st level PC's are explicitly stated to be stronger than the vast majority of people could ever hope to be. How true that statement is at any given table is another matter.

[@spacecat8511]

Haven’t played a dnd game yet (still need to find a party who’s 1) welcoming to brand new players and 2) welcoming to players who aren’t cichet white guys) but I prefer to think of the DnD World vs Power Fantasy somewhat like this: Batman and his proteges are predominantly regular humans. Not metahumans, not inhumans, not demigods, not aliens, etc, but just humans with a lot of training and gear. And that’s what an adventure is to me-the powerfantasy to be Batman at the most “mundane” ancestry and class, with, say, fae or giant etc ancestries or arcane clases etc then pushing a character closer to… Wonder Woman or Superman or the Flash. Basically, the internal logic of superhero shows of being “just” a highly trained human surviving getting smashed through 5 layers of drywall, or cracking concrete, but still able to hobble back to your feet and keep on fighting, anyway. Standard. (With civilians using that durability to run away while a kid choosing to become Robin running towards danger or causing a distraction. But I digress.) So…to me it’s Less that “adventurers are more durable” and more “the people in DnD are just more durable than we are IRL, and therefore have the potential to choose to become adventurers.” Granted…my 5e player’s handbook basically claims that “all adventurers are more specialer than everyone else in their world” iirc, but that…honestly puts a sour taste in my mouth and I don’t think a DM would /have/ to run their game that way if they don’t want to. (Also I personally think “automatically chosen” takes away the appeal of playing classes like, say, warlocks or paladins or clerics where that usually is the entire point of their class to set them apart from, say, rogues, monks, and wizards.)

[@loka7783]

I always get a little irked by people who want a "gritty realism" experience also want to play characters that can wiggle their nose to make fireballs happen. In almost all versions of D&D the world altering spell Wish is an acquirable thing, so why do people argue that healing completely overnight is "unrealistic"? Hit points exist in order to make the gameplay flow smoother, not be realistic.

[@mechanicat1934]

I generally hold anime martial arts rules. That what adventurers can do is something anyone can do under the right training. It's just that the training involved is unreasonable for typical people. Granted this worked better in earlier editions where you started as more normal people that became extraordinary over time, and in 5e you start already beyond normal people. That is part of the power fantasy though isn't it? Not just to be powerful, but not needing to earn it either.

[@spacepiratecaptainrush1237]

we all know the most unrealistic thing about a long rest is getting 8 hours of sleep and feeling rested.

[@Esperologist]

There is one aspect of D&D that makes me think 'adventurers are supernatural.' And that is general NPCs. Walk up to a random town person and shank them. They go down, usually in only one or two hits. And they don't get death saves. Sure, level 1 player characters go down to monsters fast... but take a level 1 player against a generic NPC, and the PC would have to fail horribly to lose. With that in mind, how does anyone travel between towns without hiring adventurers? A party of level 2 PCs could come across a merchant caravan in the wilds and probably wipe them out. So... how does the general population of D&D realms survive? They would need to have strong walls around their cities, including farming fields. Villages without walls would be quickly wiped out by a wandering group of wargs, trolls, goblins. Phase spiders might even be able to take down small walled villages. Basically, with how weak the general population is... D&D should be more like Attack on Titan. Massive walls trying to keep everything out, and just hope that nothing bigger (or ethereal) shows up.

[@pleimer7026]

For me PCs aren't special in the sense that they have supernatural abilities but rather that they are meant for something great. If this is due to fate/destiny/being blessed by the gods or just because the plot needs this too happen is something everyone can decide on their own. This helps me explain how PCs gain power so quickly or why they have things like death saving throws. For the death saving throw I also use this as the reason why low level enemies don't finish of unconscious PCs. Because from the enemies perspective that PC is already beyond saving because they themselves would already be dead at this point.

[@rebeccacurtin3787]

I was introduced to 5e with the explanation at lvl 1 characters were significantly stronger than the *average* person but not in a super natural way but in a professional athlete way

[@pedrogarcia8706]

at level 1, sure. But beyond level 1, characters are simply too capable to be considered normal people by any metric.

[@carso1500]

Basically levels of play, level 1 to 5 you can consider them above average, they are stronger and tougher than your average person but stuff that would easily kill you or me would also kill them Level 20 adventurers are demigods capable of taking a lot of punishment and survive stuff that would destroy a castle wall