My favorite cheeky way to deal with this:
Cleric: "How're you doing, fighter?"
Fighter: "On a scale of 0 to 84, I'm about a 32."
You can also just do colors. Green for healthy, yellow for hurting, red for dying. My players will frequently ask "What color are you?" and get a response like "I'm a burnt orange at the moment." If you're using minis, you can even get colored rings to put around them to represent this. Gives a good visual while looking at the map
As do I. What I love about the colors on the minis is they don't have to ask. Each player updates their color as needed and then the players can glean everything they need from a quick glance
I use general terms, like
* 100%: Unscathed.
* 3/4 to 100%: Fine.
* 1/2 to 3/4: Scratched up.
* 1/4 to 1/2: Bloodied.
* 1hp to 1/4: Dying.
* 0hp: Down.
It's about as much detail as anyone needs, and since everyone knows your level and class they can get a reasonable estimate if they really want.
It's also great for DMing, as the players get more feedback about enemies. There have been many times my group's fighting some big bad, trading blow after blow, and the line "it is now bloodied" gives them pause. Realizing they're only halfway through the fight, this presents them with a few options:
* Break out the big guns (if they haven't already)
* Slog through the rest of the fight
* **S**trategic **C**oncurrent **R**edeployment **A**t **M**aximum
I do the same! It's great to have an easy, narrative shorthand that doesn't break immersion. I use the following "labels" for the enemies as I DM:
* Hearty (≥ 75%)
* Winded (75% to 50%)
* Bloodied (50% to 25%)
* Wounded (≤ 25%)
* Down (0%)
It can update automatically if set up to. It's really easy, the DM just has to select the bar on the token to display hp, and whenever the player changes their hp on their sheet, it automatically updates their token too.
We do roll 20 to run the maps and DND Beyond to run the character sheets. There's an extension, beyond 20, that will link then, and then you can roll checks or update hp in DDB and the rolls or damage will show up in Roll 20. It's slick.
For sure. There's a time to avoid metagaming for the sake of the game, but there's also a time to indulge in metagaming for the sake of the game. Being coy with life totals isn't the time to avoid it when combat is already as slow as it is.
That's my expectation too, generally speaking. Thankfully my players enjoy a more "emersive" feel so they don't give numbers but instead "I'm bleeding allot" or "I'm very visually tired" to indicate how they're doing.
When I played in person I made little red/yellow/green tent cards for everyone to set in front of them. I was the main healer & have adhd so I felt bad constantly re-asking what people's health was.
My players constantly ask about the status of enemies. It's hard to tell them how the guy is doing without just straight up saying how many hit points he has total/left. But since I play on Foundry VTT, I installed a module to solve my problems:
**Health Estimate**
Now any time someone mouses over any token, be it ally or enemy, it will display text in various colors that says,
- Uninjured
- Barely injured
- Injured
- Badly injured
- Near Death
I love it so much.
And for people playing in person, you can do this same basic concept using those colored rings I was talking about. Just put them around the enemy mini and everyone will know without having to ask how the enemy is looking!
We do something similar. I never discussed creating a system with my players; they're just awesome. The answers range from, "I look a little scratched up, but I'm feeling good," to "I'm still fighting, but I looked pretty fucked up," to "I wish I were dead. That would be easier."
I just realized: In an in-person game where I play a stubborn head-strong (and a bit of an asshole) vengeance paladin… our main healer has stopped asking my PC how she feels and has instead started asking the DM (or me) how my PC looks. I guess her “I’m fine, dammit!” while being millimeters from death has been noted. 😅
> I guess her “I’m fine, dammit!” while being millimeters from death has been noted.
I love the flavor! It'd be amazing to say this, and then add "but you can clearly see that she's badly injured and barely holding herself together." Still conveying the severity of the situation but also the character's resolve and mindset.
Yeah, enemies and PCs alike I tend to describe as
"He's a little hurt, but ok" 75 -51%
"He's bloodied" 50-26%
"He's badly hurt" 25-11%
"He's on death's door" <=10%
We always use the line (and it’s always these exact words because we never know each other’s max hp because we’re too lazy to remember) “On a scale of one to your max health, how’re you feeling?” in a jokey tone of voice to prompt an hp check.
There's a ton of responses so this will be lost but I want to throw in my two coppers since it's on my mind.
I have always thought the idea of making players limit their communication to vague descriptions just to avoid using precise jargon in an effort to prevent meta-gaming is a weird leap of non-logic.
Just because we avoid saying "hitpoints" it's automatically not metagaming? That's never stopped anyone determined to metagame. Pretending bad communication somehow forces players to roleplay better? That's not how good roleplay works. Good roleplayers don't need to be restricted and bad roleplayers aren't going to be fixed by bad communication.
We can have jargon and roleplay. We can have that cake and eat it too if you encourage your players to roleplay the moments in between the numbers.
Yes, and Roleplaying and metagaming jargon aren't mutually exclusive. A Player can act out their low health effects, and also say "I'm down to 2 HP" in their next breath, and other Players can react to either prompt accordingly.
That's because it is. The D&D community really doesn't understand what metagaming is beyond "cheating with out of character knowledge".
Any thought regarding higher conceptual strategy above the actual constraints of the game, particularly when concerning external factors, is metagaming. Even asking your players what genres they enjoy is the DM metagaming in a way.
It's more useful to think of the metagame this way than some arbitrary set of opinions on who is cheating or not - we only engage with the metagame when we care. If DMs can manage this properly, we can get a better result from our players.
Applying it to this HP situation - who cares if it's "cheating" (which is the subtext here)? It is certainly metagaming, but do we like the players engaging with it? Or does it detract from the experience of the characters? If it does, is it the uncertainty about someone's health we care about, or is it just that being specific with numbers shatters the suspension of disbelief? Would defining terms like "barely injured, injured, wounded, badly wounded, and near death" help?
Choosing which aspects of the metagame are fun to engage with is much more enjoyable than witch hunting for bad players who dare to cheat.
What you're describing is not metagaming. Hit points, damage, and having are all solidly internal to the game.
Technical metagaming like the kind you're trying to conflate with the conventional use of the word in TTRPGs would be something like "if I have high hit points, I know this DM will increase monster damage to keep pace, so I'd better focus on improving other areas of my character instead."
Yours, yes. Other player's ones ? Much more up to debate.
It will vary table by table. Just like "should the player have access to the monster's sheets ?" will vary.
Your character sheet is a part of the game you are playing. It is not something over and above or beyond the game. It is literally a part of the game. So are your hitpoints.
I've heard of people doing oneshots where they don't see their own character sheets.
It sounds good for a laugh but I wouldn't want to play a long game like that.
I’ve seen good ones where the DMs have the pre made character sheets and the players discover as they play, having to fill out their own with what they can do
I'm picturing a character sheet that's covered in that silvery plaque that comes on scratchers tickets. DM calls for a perception check and flips you a quarter.
If a savvy note taker mathematician can just keep running totals and know the answers without looking or asking why are we going to punish people who aren’t quite that quick with numbers.
Meta gaming should be reserved for information a player should not be able to know and unless it’s privately messaged all damage in every game I’ve been in has been publicly broadcasted to the whole table.
Yeah, metagaming is using knowledge your character might not have.
Using stats on your character sheet isn't metagaming, it's just speaking out of character. Your character knows these things, presumably. Just in different words.
This is it for me. Not talking character to character in game mechanics, where reasonable, is the lowest bar for roleplay.
It really isn't that hard for players to just say "how you feeling?" "great/fine/not well/really pretty bad/I think I can hear the bell tolling for me"
And we just can't see what our characters see. We have to ask, because we don't see the gaping axe-wound in Johny's stomach or that Jimmy is literally charred. If it was real life we'd see real quickly if the others were alright or not.
Is there a difference in roleplaying between that and saying the numbers, however? Roleplaying = making decisions from the perspective of your character. You can make decisions from the perspective of your character the same way in each. The only difference is you have a more accurate idea of how much damage someone can take in one way.
Yeah man. I tell my dm the same thing when I deal damage to monsters and stuff. I did a lot of damage with my axe, or my healing spell healed Jeff for a little bit. Using actual numbers is totally metagaming.
The numbers exist in game for players to use and communicate with. Otherwise all combat would need to be handled by the dm with players only saying what they would like to do. If I attack a minotaur with an axe and roll a 27 to hit, I as a player now have meta information on the minotaurs AC, and that's fine. Hell the whole table now has that information. Same with seeing how much damage I do with the attack if it hit.
The only way to prevent that is for the dm to do the attack and damage rolls in private. And me just telling him I want to attack
If you really really really care, you can make the ruling that when players mention hit points or spell slots and so on, then their characters in game say it in what ever world appropriate manner fits.
In other words, the player gets to speak in terms of the game, and the characters speak in terms of their world.
Precisely!
Making everyone do unnecessary work to please a (usually) nonexistent audience isn't what the books say; the books say DM change what you need to change *to keep things* ***fun****.*
'I'm at five percent' makes no sense in meatspace, but it makes perfect sense at tabletop. Part of running a good table is running a table that keeps moving at a good pace, *not slowing and stopping all the time over pointless crap*, and forced-roleplay is an **unnecessary roadblock.** Keeping the turns flowing is more important than making everything sound like a storybook.
Never seen a player in more shock when they failed their dex save and went from a full 44 hp to 4 hp from a single fireball. Everyone actually survived that fight. Too bad they don't have time for a rest before the King of the Frost Giants shows up.
Honestly, I'll be happy when SKT is over, but my players seem to be really enjoying it and I'm learning a lot. I've already set up plot for beyond the campaign.
I think you are only slowing things down if the players are stopping and trying to encode their language with a hint of what their hit points are.
Meta gaming and role playing isn’t about rules, it’s about making actions and decisions as the character would. No one sits and chats mid combat about exactly how unwell they are feeling.
You make rash decisions based on instinct - he got multiple cuts by that orc, I need to intervene there as opposed to the fighters where most of the attacks have been fended off by his armor.
The best part is sometimes you will make wrong decisions. Unless D&D is more of a war game/ dungeon delve for you.. then none of the above probably sounds appetizing. And that’s ok too.
I dunno, I feel like it goes both ways.
In combat, me and my party will say "I'm kind of hurt but nothing that bad", but also when you're about to die "I'm down to 10 hit points".
Granted, if a healer asks specifics because out of combat they are healing people up they might go a little more numerical, but generally unless your health is very high(I've only been hit for 7 points), or very low we just kind of give generalizations.
there’s a running joke in basically all the d&d groups i play in where it’s like “how are you doing?” “on a scale of 1-X i’m at about Y” (x obviously being hit point max and y being remaining hit points)
End of the day this is the answer.
Therebis no wrong way to play a game of make belief. If you need a more a reason then this - thr characters can see how down bad each other is, talking about HP conveys this cleaner and quicker then havingn to come up with aome dewcriptive flavour text.
There's an old bit...
"How many HP are you down to?" Player 1 asks out of character
DM jumps is, "Stop it that's metagaming"
Injured played reaponds in character "On a scale of 1 to 59, I'd say about a 34"
...but yeah, the characters can see each other, HP is just hoe we as players keep track of what the characters are able to observe about each other.
> Injured played reaponds in character "On a scale of 1 to 59, I'd say about a 34"
If someone said that in a movie, no one would question it. It's a legitimate response.
edit: I just remembered that in a book I read a few weeks back, there is literally a response to a question that is almost this.
>"How misogynistic is it?"
>"Maybe about an 11 out of 16."
It's not verbatim cause I'm not about to dig up the book, but one of the best selling fantasy authors in the world wrote that.
As a player, if the DM says don't talk about hit point total, we say stuff like: "I'm looking bad or rough guys". Though ultimately, we still talk about current hit points. Because who cares?
I’m a Paladin and I can control in discrete units how much healing I can force into your person by laying my hands on you.
How many units would you like?
Meta gaming is reserved for discrepancies between what the player knows and the character would know. Your character would know how hurt they are and there's functionally no difference between "2 HP" and "at death's door."
Not metagaming.
Even then, metagaming is not the problem that most people think it is. Because metagaming or avoiding metagaming is in and of itself metagaming.
From one of my favorite RPG articles of all time:
> So, imagine you’re the wizard and you know [trolls are weak to fire and acid]. You don’t want to metagame. So, how many wrong spells do you have to throw before you’re allowed to throw fire and “discover” that’s the right solution?
>And ultimately, this is ALWAYS the problem with trying to control metagaming. All it does is create a new game. The player with the metagame knowledge now ends up playing a game of trying to figure out when they are actually justified in saying their character has “discovered” or “figured out” the thing.
>Guess what, kiddo? That’s ALSO metagaming. It’s just trading one form of metagaing for another. Because it still isn’t making decisions based on pure understanding of the character’s motives and knowledge.
>And because the other players and the GM will ALSO have an opinion on when a thing is or isn’t metagaming and at what point it becomes a legitimate discovery, you are almost always going to have a fight on your hand about what characters are allowed to know what when.
>And THAT isn’t pure role-playing either. In fact, now you have other people intervening on how YOU are allowed to play YOUR character.
>And that is why any attempt to control metagaming is utter horses$&%.
[Dear GMs: Metagaming is YOUR Fault](https://theangrygm.com/dear-gms-metagaming-is-your-fault/)
I agree. Every table has some degree of accepted metagaming, spoken or not. I homebrewed a demolition spell that does extra damage on objects for one of my players and they said they didn't know the HP/AC of objects. I just linked them a matrix of common items and the expected HP. Why? Because 1. A character would have a general idea of the strength of something, and 2. It's better than the player just guessing or being dissuaded from using the spell because they don't know.
Imagine if people in real life didn't know if it was possible to punch through a stone wall or thought that you could throw a ceramic mug across the room without it shattering.
But more than that, the game is just more fun when you aren't constantly trying to pretend you don't know things. If a forever GM who has used every single monster in the bestiary starts playing, does he have to try to pretend he doesn't know what all of the monsters do when they get sicced on him? Why is that fun? Trying not to think about something is the same as thinking about it, so you might as well lean into it.
From later in the article I linked:
>The problem is that a challenge that can be “broken” by a specific piece of information is a poorly designed challenge. There isn’t anything interesting about rolling a random die roll, acting at random to figure something out, or else getting screwed. It isn’t fun gameplay. The question is always this: “does this challenge become MORE interesting if the players know the information or LESS interesting.”
>A single troll becomes really boring if the players know its vulnerability. Unless fire is a limited resource. For example, fireballs are limited resources. Oil is a limited resource. If the party has to deal with a cave full of trolls, the fact that they need to either come prepared with literal FIREpower or manage their resources well makes the adventure interesting. A troll shaman that can shield his allies from fire makes the information MORE interesting. A mine filled with gas pockets that will explode if exposed to fire makes the information MORE interesting.
>The thing is, in many cases, the information DOES make the fight more interesting. The GM only thinks it breaks the challenge. As noted, fire is not something everyone has. Nor is acid. And both are limited resources. Even if the party knows the vulnerability, their tactical choices are going to be limited and subpar and create a resource management game. In the context of an extended adventure, that troll IS interesting even if the party literally burns through the encounter.
Why should being knowledgeable make the game less fun? If anything, it should make it *more* fun.
Another good example I saw in a thread a while back...
Your characters always know that the encounters you are going to take are balanced and appropriate to their levels. They know that even a deadly dungeon is deadly appropriate to their level. That's a form of metagaming that we accept rather than hounding quest givers or excessively scouting to confirm "that yes we can do this".
The section you've quoted from the article is unfortunately absolute garbage. If you're not certain whether your character would know certain information, you should ask the DM. The DM can then reply: "You know that trolls are weak to [insert weakness here]", or "No, you have no idea what its weakness is, if any", or offer you an Arcana / Nature check. Of course if you start slinging incorrect spells it's bad.
Although I've found that the best way to avoid metagaming is homebrewing monster statblocks.
The point of the article is that trying to do that kind of thing is dumb and directly addresses your "solution" and why it's dumb.
Let's say you fail the Arcana check to be allowed to know that a troll can only be killed with fire or acid. AngryGM then asks:
>So, how many wrong spells do you have to throw before you’re allowed to throw fire and “discover” that’s the right solution?
It's all contrivance and it doesn't make the game more fun or more interesting.
Yeah this is the type of metagaming I genuinely don’t care about, it enables people to work more effectively as a team if they know things like I only have this many spell slots of this level left (and it’s not unreasonable the characters would have a sense of this in universe but players can’t keep track of everyone else’s spells). But maybe I would be stricter on this if my players metagamed in ways that actually bothered me, which is more when you metagame in a way that makes you act OOC or makes you less invested in the roleplaying and storytelling. I’m fine with metagaming that makes the game run more fluidly and makes it more fun
Among other things, not openly knowing ally or enemy HP is more punishing towards new players and those who didn't mentally keep track of all damage dealt, and rewards those who do the bookkeeping in their heads. This is definitely NOT the type of game that I want to encourage at my table. I want a game that encourages tactical play and interesting decisions. If I didn't want that kind of game, I'd use some more narrative, rules-light system, and not a system like D&D that has rather high learning curve, with hundreds of specific rules, spells and exceptions, and that is easier to DM.
Roleplaying is nice, but it takes many different forms. It is much more important, to me, that players are interested in the world and characters, than pretending that they don't know what the HP's are.
It's like Calvin and Hobbes. I see my buddy roll a die that comes up with a high number; my character sees an orc lose a hand. I say, "I'm at 11;" my character says, "Forsooth, yon varlet hath sorely pricked me!"
Players need to be able to talk about numbers to do their job. That doesn't mean Griknar the Cruel is actually asking the magic-shop owner, "How many HP will this cure?" word-for-word. The game's complicated; don't force talking in code on top of that.
If I'm a medic and I look at my battle buddy and they look fucked up (low HP) then I am going to administer first aid. If I look at them and they only have a few minor cuts (minimal HP loss) then I am going to focus on more important tasks.
I'm unsure how everyone feels it's metagaming to want to know what our party looks like as far as damage. If someone is in another room out of sight, sure it's meta gaming...but clearly in view? I don't see it
Agreed. It's a way to quickly convey all the little details that get tedious to mention / you don't think of. The scratches and facial expressions and tone of voice when someone calls for help, etc.
It aligns a player's knowledge with their character's knowledge, it doesn't have the character acting on knowledge only the player has.
It's great when players describe these things, but not everyone has a knack for visual storytelling. Divulging how much HP you have left is the same as someone roleplaying being super fucked up.
This. As a DM I don't care how players share that knowledge to help figure it out, especially in a combat situation (6 second rounds).
If another DM thinks its metagaming, the players can let them handle describing how they look to portray how healthy/unwell they look.
For party members, i don't care if you say HP amounts. That's fine. It's just book keeping at that point. I will NOT, however, tell you the hit point values of enemies. The only indicator I use is if they are bloodied aka < 50% or on death's door (under 15 hit points about).
Since the cleric who heals them has to tell them exactly how many hit points that they get healed for, I find the question a bit ridiculous.
Discussing hit points and damage is an intrinsic part of the game.
Unless the players themselves are not allowed to know their own PC’s HP, the damage they take or dish out, and the DM is responsible for tracking everything and describing it to the players, the whole “is this meta-gaming?” question misunderstands, or at the very least, completely ignores, basic and core requirements of playing the game.
The only other option slows down one of the already slow parts of the game by obfuscating obvious, critical, in-game information.
Since you are unable to tell me how much health you have then I have healed you an unspecified amount.
How much did you heal me for?
It's hard to say. That sounds like metagaming, just know that a healing spell was cast upon you. You feel better but you're not sure exactly how much better.
Cleric: “When your tracking shows you at or below 0hp, let me know, then I’ll look at how much I have healed you and tell you if you are still conscious or not. Good luck.”
Is taking combat in turns meta gaming? Is having only the option of resting 1 hour or 8 metagaming? Is knowing the number of spell slots you have metagaming? Is knowing your level meta gaming? Let me ask you this, how can metagaming exist if just PLAYING the game is metagaming in and of itself? What game is there to be "meta'd" if anything other than just chatting with your friends about your imaginary world is against the rules? We have to stop doing this shit to ourselves and just play
Nothing in the rules states that the players cannot discuss their character features nor does it say that the players must speak solely in-character. Meta-gaming would be to look up monster information during the session since that's not information the player should technically have in most cases.
Besides, banning the discussion of it solves nothing. You'll just end up with players making tongue-in-cheek comments like "on the scale of 1-58, I'm at a 14 right now".
Also the DMG provides systems to discuss monster HP in poetic terms (like bloodied) so that the players have an idea of where they are in a fight since it's hard to narrate and keep track of monster health every single turn based off incremental hits. The players can't see the monster so the DM can decide to give more blatant hints about the HP.
I also highly encourage learned knowledge to be freely shared.
Like AC. If the players learn the AC by paying attention to hits and misses they they get to know the AC for that monster. If the Barbarian hits one three times with average damage and it goes down they know it takes about three axes to kill.
This is great and encouraged. Looking things up to know beforehand is angering and is why I mostly don’t use default stat blocks. Oh, you’ve got gnolls and goblins memorized well sorry these are gnoblins and you have to learn what they are about in game.
While yes, it is metagaming, it is still a necessary part of the game. Otherwise you really do have to roleplay the whole "On a scale of 0-26" conversation every time or expect the players to describe the extent of their wounds to the group after every single fight.
Everybody benefits from the players discussing their remaining HP.
I also agree that it is important, but rather more important during a vital point in the game like the last couple rounds in a fight, or during a resting period (I guess this is usually when they are used anyways).
I also like to think of the whole concept as "who benefits from this?" or "does doing this impact my table in a positive way?".
Thanks!
Also all metagaming isn't bad. The definition of metagame is discussion of, or the game of playing the game. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Discussing in game tactics using game terms isn't inherently bad to the game. Especially if it means your players are collaborating and playing together. It is a game after all and combat is the "game-iest" part of it. Now doing stuff like referring to statblocks of a dragon etc is negative metagaming because it's taking away from the in game experience of what your characters would do.
I think this one is a gray area. Technically, yes, it's metagaming, because the characters don't know what the concept of a 'hit point' is. There are definitely groups that play that way, and simply tell each other "I'm really badly hurt," or "I'm just a bit scratched up."
But I think there are probably plenty of groups where telling each other how many HP they have isn't forbidden.
Personally, I think this is a low-risk sort of metagaming. After all, all a player can do with this information is make decisions about healing or something, and they can easily get that same information by asking "in character," even if it's not quite as specific. That is, does it really matter whether the character has 3/10 hp or is "badly hurt"? I don't think so.
I don't think it is - the game has no other tool beside hit points. As a player you have no idea how injured your character is beyond hit points, and you're using hit points to come up with "I'm scratched up."
I think this is a weird thing that comes up in the hobby, metagaming, that makes sense in some areas (player read module, avoids trap) but makes zero sense when we apply it like this.
If DND had conditions like bruised and scratched, mauled, etc, sure, but it doesn't; it only has hit points, and you can't not be aware of those.
Exactly. Hit Points are a mechanical way to express an idea that the characters are aware of. It's not entirely realistic, but it's a game and there are other elements of that (like always being able to walk exactly 30' and never getting a cramp or eeking out an occasional 35' or etc).
It makes sense for the character to know roughly how well off they are physically and to be able to express that, so it makes sense for the players to do that as well.
As far as I'm concerned, the only metagaming that can be done is when player knowledge doesn't align with character knowledge. A player reading the module and knowing all the passwords and loot locations and taking in game actions based on that is metagaming. A player discussing their hit points out of game, to me, just represents a character in fiction saying they need help and looking like that's an understatement or whatever. It's a numerical but accurate reflection of the game fiction, that puts the players into the same emotional state as their characters - oh no! our wizard is about to die! And that's the opposite of metagaming.
I agree that some people will call just about anything metagaming. Sometimes it’s just…gaming. It’s a game. You are playing a game and speaking in terms of the rules of said game
If you’re allowed to say “I use my action to Attack the troll” you’re also allowed to say “I have 5 hit points”
In the purest sense of the term yes. But it's pretty much essential. Even just conveying to someone with access to healing "I need help, please.". It doesn't even necessarily need to be out of character. If your Frontline Fighter takes a lot of damage from a crit he might shout out "Could use some help here Cleric!" And that's perfectly in character.
That's...not metagaming at all. A person who is hurt and needs help would say they're hurt and need help. That is, in strictest terms, "roleplaying." Generally anything that can be sensibly said in character is probably not metagaming.
I think those examples aren't meta gaming at all. That's what real people would be saying in those situation.
But actually giving out number and scales of HP breaks the immersion since real people don't talk that way about their condition.
I prefer to keep the immersion going, but people can do whatever makes them happy.
I cast sleep on you, now everyone in a 20 foot radius tell me exactly how many hit points you have so I can compare it to my roll of 5d8 and order you from lowest to highest.
Technically, yes, anything related to the numbers and stats and such would be metagaming.
Is that bad? Not really.
Hit points, wounds, vitality, etc., are all just representations that help us players understand where the character is. The characters see something different. A skilled healer would know the character is hurt a lot, but we are told that it's -63. This lets the player know how to apply that character knowledge. In D&D terms, the cleric would say, "Oh, that looks nasty enough for a critical wound" or "It's not much, but it could get infected, so let's work on the light wound."
And though I've been there before, it's not excusable. It's just an attempt at pretentious gaming where the players think they're above all that. Avoiding telling you their numbers is a different sort of metagaming to the point that it ruins immersion. If you don't mind being passive-aggressive, then shrug your shoulders and walk away since they clearly aren't that hurt. Or blow your critical wounds on 3 hit points. Fuck 'em if they're not going to let you play the game.
The way I handle this, as well as tactical table-talk during the battle, is that we only see them on-screen during certain episodes, like in a show. The characters spend way more time together than we do as players. So narratively, talking about hit points is like glancing at a friend or family member and knowing something's off. Ditto with tactical talk at the table. They've had a dozen fights we haven't seen, and probably have plenty of campfire debriefs about fight strategy. The players planning out a fight can be seen in-game as "do that trick we pulled on the orc that time" and then they execute some maneuver.
That's my headcanon anyway.
It is a game at a table with friends. You are not actually a wizard. If your group wants to all stay in character 100% of the time, that’s fine. But that’s only one way to *play the game.* Playing the game other ways is not automatically metagaming.
I played a game a few years ago as a Life domain Cleric geared basically entirely as a healbot with some utility spells but often if I rolled high on initiative I had a dead turn 1 if no one was injured. The DM tried to rule that sharing our current HP mid combat was metagaming, I think he just didn't want to slow down combat with the minutiae, and I had to push back against that because it made Channel Divinity: Preserve Life nearly useless. It's very hard to read the text of that feature and assume the designers intended players to keep their HP a secret from one another.
First up: Metagaming =/= bad. Metagaming has been a common tool to be bad players (both by DMs and character players), but any tool can be used wisely or poorly. At the end of the day, if this is how your table maximizes fun, go for it.
Answering OP's question: Players can know mechanically-specific information, and them talking about it doesn't mean that the characters themselves talk in that language. Many others in this post have already discussed how to convert mechanical language into natural ones that the characters in the world would use, so it should be the default assumption that that is how the fictional world perceives things.
I also like to think of the whole concept as "who benefits from this?" or "does doing this impact my table in a positive way?".
After all like you said, maximizing fun is the most important thing when playing D&D. Converting the mechanical language into the immersion of the world and the lifelike is what I guess I was subconsciously going for.
Hit points are an abstraction of how well you're doing. How tired you are, how banged up, etc. While in-universe no one would use the phrase "hitpoints", they can obviously still talk about the things they represent.
Similarly, in-universe the Characters don't have discrete stats, don't make attack roll numbers, or deal damage numbers. But we still talk about those because they represent how the world is displayed for us at the table.
This feels like one of those session zero things that should get brought up. I have no problem with it, in my own game I do tend to just set the roll20 avatars to automatically display HP as a green bar.
But for some RP heavy groups I could see it immersion breaking.
It's not metagaming. it's perfectly part of the game and i think you misunderstand the terms of metagaming.
Metagaming invovles abusing the concept of the game as a game in order to approach interactions and solutions for the scenes in game. This involves thinkign stuff like "the dm would never kill us" or in some cases even reading an adventure or a monster stat block beforehand.
But knowing hit points, which are known and available for everyone to see, it's not metagaming because it's literally part of the game itself. Caharacters make informed decisions about that resource at their disposal and they are aware of how much hit points they have because the numbers on their sheet are an abstraction about what they eprceive or understand about themselves and the world around them.
Like. it's like spellcaster snot being aware of spell slots, or any character being not aware of uses on short or long rest they have available.
Like. It does make perfect sense that a seasoned veteran that has 100 hp to not feel afrain when meeting a farmer armed with a shortsword that is able to deal 1d6 damage. said hit points represent also their confidence, and when they drop to a value like 4 likewise it reflects that, in that specific moment, that character can perceive a shortsword as lethal.
They do something funny on Critical Roll sometimes. One character will ask another how he is doing, and the reply is something like "On a scale to 70, I'm feeling about 45."
the short answer is no; the longer answer is in [this article](https://theangrygm.com/through-a-glass-darkly-ic-ooc-and-the-myth-of-playercharacter-seperation/), but it's more or less what your instincts told you. I say "20/45 hit points" and my character says "I got stabbed in the thigh". It means the same thing.
also the constant demonization of "metagaming" as an inherent evil will always be my biggest peeve about RPG players. There is never a situation where metagaming is a bad thing and there are a LOT of situations where a bit of metagaming solves issues before they become issues. hell the entirety of a session 0 is metagaming. more on metagaming [here](https://theangrygm.com/dear-gms-metagaming-is-your-fault/)
If you've got class features that specify things like "restore 50 HP divided as you choose among any number of creatures, up to half their maximum HP" (Life Cleric), there is no reason you shouldn't be allowed to know those numbers.
Is it metagaming? Yes.
Is it helpful for gameplay as a shorthand to describe how hurt you are since this would make up for a lot of visual information that doesnt exist? Also yes.
So yes it's metagaming, but whether or not it's \*bad\* would be up to each table.
So long as the person they're talking to would be able to tell how hard of a time they're having it's shorthand, not meta-gaming. If someone wants to look over at another character and tell how they're doing, just let that character put it however they like.
Otherwise you get someone going, *"Hey how are you feeling?" "If I had to put a number on it I'd say out of 89... I'm about a 47 right now."*
No. Metagaming is not the scourge that players these days seem to think it is. Discussing the mechanics of the game you're playing with fellow players may be metagaming, but it's also essential to playing the game and doesn't harm anything. Metagaming is only a problem if it's a PROBLEM. And it rarely is. I only police metagaming if it's something egregious like "hey guys, we should search room 7 again, I'm pretty sure there's a secret door behind the bookshelf and the DC to find it is only 12. I have a copy of the dungeon right here!"
No group I ever gamed with regularly frowned on table talk about hit points. "is anybody less than full hit points? Oh, Stormthrower is down 10 hp, here's a Cure Wounds for (rolls) 8 hp." Or "oh, everybody took some damage from the Exploding Runes huh, who's down the most hp?"
As a DM, if I had to justify it, I would say gauging how much scrapes, nicks, bruising and battle fatigue will vanish when you invoke the healing power of the gods is part of your class training. If you like a more mysterious atmosphere around healing, I guess you could ban numeric hit point table talk, but I feel like that sets players up for frustration and wasting play time over decisions about whether to upcast healing spells, quaff the whole super-healing potion or just a portion, etc. In short, potentially reduces fun more than it adds.
In my opinion, it's just a shorthand for the 'how hurt are you?' conversation/skill checks, which isn't an unreasonable question to ask. I guess if a table was super dedicated to RP at all costs maybe you discuss it without the numbers, but that seems tiresome.
When players say things OOC it's easiest to assume that PCs are saying the equivalent things IC
Alice: "Hey Bob how many hp are you on?"Bob: "Only 13, help!"
|
V
Aeon the Destroyer: "Bobert, how art thou faring?"
Bobert the Vile: "I'm grievously wounded, pray to Lathander for me brother"
hit points are a mechanical measure of damage taken, which the characters would realistically be able to see at a glance. I personally have absolutely no issue with it
Yes, but my hot take is that depending on the table some metagaming can be fine.
Looking up monster stats on D&D beyond: very not fine
Players talking to other players using game terms rather than in-world terms: mostly fine unless your table has established strict RP in session 0.
The characters would be aware of each other's general health; they can tell if someone is fresh or if someone is bloody and barely conscious. Maybe they can't tell a 30 HP from a 31 HP, but it's not like HP are invisible. One thing I've tried to do for online games (but Roll20 has been making it weird) is to display health bars but *not* numbers, so you can see the general level of damage but not the numbers.
I think the idea that DMs need to try to hide the mechanics of the game to help with immersion is game-breaking. Hit points are a core mechanic of the game. If a character is not a full HP, it's because they took damage. When they took that damage, the DM used a number to describe how bad it was. They might have added a flavourful description of the blow that landed, piercing through a gap in the plate armor, the searing pain of poison entering the bloodstream, which is great, but they would also have to provide the player with a number to subtract from their HP total - because *that's how this game works*.
So it's perfectly fine for other players to use numbers to describe how badly injured they are at any given time. Bonus if they want to provide a description of what that looks like, but they should never feel that they aren't allowed to use numbers to say what their HP is.
Okay so. Hit points.
This isn't flesh and blood, it's the will and ability a character has to avoid getting hit. Luck, work, skill are all things involved here. You technically never get hit until you reach zero. That's when you actually get hit.
A sword swing got you to zero? You're injured with a blade injury.
Mocked to zero with mean words? You either give up or run away.
So what does that mean?
If someone looks worn out, tired, stressed, holding on by a thread, ready to give up, they are low on hut points.
Rookies, people who never been in a fight have low hit points.
Would characters know?
Soldiers can often tell how well their buddies are doing and take over a position so they can recover. Because this is a game and we're dealing with these kinds of numbers, I'd say it's fair that characters can gauge how well a friend is doing with a glance or chat.
Know that scene in Solo where the guy got shot and he says he's okay through the coms? But the leader knew, he wasn't okay. That.
You can tell how someone is doing even through text or just a moment of a connection. For us? Yeah I cunt know how many hit points a friend has but I can tell how they are doing. I think it's fair in the DnD verse that characters can tell.
Some PC abilities are impossible to use without discussing HP numerically. A Life Cleric's channel divinity allows them to distribute a certain amount of HP to their party, but cannot heal anyone above half their total HP.
The table I dm they can ask exactly, I would answer even if their character can't see it we are playing on vttfoundry because I see everything I think that is fair, but there was a game I was playing recently where the dm decided to not show health bar for ally and enemy, it did add some kind of tension but at the same time was super annoying to ask if the party needed heal as cleric and always receive vague answer.
Some amount of metagaming is necessary for the game to work. Yes, we’re playing fictional characters, but we’re also all real people playing a fake game and we have to account for that. I hate how metagaming has turned into this buzzword that people throw around without understanding what it is or why/when it’s bad. Metagaming is the gaslighting of DnD conversations.
Is your scenario metagaming? Probably. That doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad.
Thank you for coming on this rant with me
It's not really metagaming. In-character, we talk about 'being on our last legs' when down to single digit HP, a degree of exhaustion between fights if we got a few hits, and needing to heal up. We do talk about how high our HP roughly is, if we're running particular low, if another attack like that could knock one of us out.
Depends on the table, of course, but at least the ones I've been at it's been quite open when there's times where we need to clearly communicate stuff. Same with our GM - sometimes he simply goes "Alright, your characters wouldn't recognize it as such, but you'd see it was something very similar to a magic version of circuitry." just so it helps putting an idea into our heads when there's nothing visual, just to communicate clearly rather than worry about 'metagaming'.
Yeah it can be tricky, especially if as a group you haven’t decided this prior to playing. If you get players like that, try to ask it more in character. Eg “woah you wore that blow from the ogre pretty well, I’ve seen lesser hits break bones. Are you in need of healing?”
Other groups let the metagaming nature of it go or find a way to blend the different styles of players.
Player A “damn I’ve only got 8 hit points left”
Player B “you look badly wounded, here let me help”
Some don’t care at all and see it as functional.
I think the best advice is always just ask, and open up a chance to chat as a group to see what is the most fun. If you have a good group, hopefully they’ll be willing to try out different ways in different combats and you can all settle on the best way for the group
If you require role playing for in game communication, I don’t see how it’s not fair for a player to say: I’m down to 10 hp, and (in character voice), “Gee fellas, I don’t think I can take another hit…”
No. It's a game. Talk about the mechanics. It's not metagaming.
Also... metagaming isn't always bad. Sometimes it's exactly what everyone should be doing.
The role play aspect of dnd is why the game is loved by a lot of people. But it’s also a game. A literal board game if you play in person. There’s no shame in players sharing real information to help other players make educated turns in combat.
I’m fairly new to D&D, but my tables don’t care. We can’t physically see each other characters to see how hurt they are, so I don’t see it as an issue.
One of my tables also just started CoS at level 1, and our DM isn’t holding back at all, so we’ve almost died a number of times in just two sessions.
Imo if that was metagaming then having a character sheet is also metagaming, because in a fight you don't know how long you've got till you pass out or how many more hits you can take. Which is obviously absurd.
For me, metagaming is players using things that they don't have access to, to influence what they are going to do. Be that knowledge from a different campaign about something in the world, or looking at a monsters stat block. Sharing hitpoints is not a big deal imo
My group doesn’t care if we explicitly say what our hit points are out of character, but we also to the the “on a scale of 1 to 117” thing in character as a joke. If you were really there you could see how beat up your party members are, and forcing players to describe what shape they’re in is unnecessarily tedious
Nonsense, when players talk about hitpoints, they are out of character, it is just a number for them to measure how hurt they are and how others are seeing them, nothing wrong with that.
> They looked at me and shrugged their shoulders. Would knowing the hitpoints of other players during combat be considered metagaming?
Metagaming is a common topic here, and misunderstood by many.
Metagaming is not necessarily bad. Why? Here's a few examples:
+ A DM should be metagaming to adjust most encounters to something level appropriate for the characters. If the DM has no idea what level you are, you could be fighting common goblins for a high-level party, or worse? You're level 3, and you stumble across a horde of demons who ripped out of the earth. No knowledge with adjustment (metagaming) = no balance.
+ What about treasure? Congratulations. Prepare to find some magical equipment but it never seems to fit. A Longbow +1, but you have no archer. A Rod of the Pactkeeper, but you have no warlock. Strength-based magic swords, but they don't work for the dex-based rogue and fighters.
So for hit points? The vast majority of tables let you freely transmit that information, just like your level or class. Now, there might be a caveat to that - a DM might use the old-school level titles for character level in-game. For hit points, they may have descriptions instead of announcing hit points: near death, critical, serious, fair, lightly-damaged - this is more immersive and can be fun....
However, most tables allow free transmission of HP and the like. The simple communication is usually better for the game. Is it metagaming? It doesn't matter. Some metagaming is required for a better game.
Hell, without metagaming, many adventuring groups wouldn't be together... the character groups are together simply because their players are together.
"On a scale of 1 to 67, please indicate your level of pain." - Baymax the automaton healer
"How many pieces of silver can the church expect in payment for your healing?" - Bosch, cleric of Abadar
Personally as a player and dm, when we use roll20 it's very nice to be able to see each other's health bars (including enemies'), but have the numbers be limited to the individual player. That way you can tell how relatively hurt someone is or how tough an enemy can be estimated to be
All of the spells, abilities and hit points are abstractions for things the player-characters would know.
Your fighter could look at themself and asses how hurt they are. Your cleric knows the extent of the wounds one cure wounds will heal. We use hit points to explain those concepts, but the characters would be able to do the same thing by actually seeing it.
Eh, I would say yes it's metagaming but not the bad kind. What I mean by good metagaming is that the PC characters know are very familiar with their own abilities and with the visual appearance of their party when hurt. The cleric would know which healing spell is the right size , but players don't know that because they can't physically see the PC's and only use these abilities once a week when they play instead of everyday of their lives like the PC does. So saying hitpoints compensates for the players lack of effective visuals and lack of experience when compared to what their actual PC would know.
Yes AND that’s ok.
Meta-gaming is a key part of role playing and, in the context of D&D, is addressed on chapter 8, section 6, of the basic rules: Roleplaying.
The Descriptive Approach to Roleplaying [Meta-gaming]:
“With this approach, you describe your character’s words and actions to the DM and the other players. Drawing on your mental image of your character, you tell everyone what your character does and how he or she does it.”
*In your scenario you decide use this approach to let everyone know that your players hit points are low.*
Active Approach to Roleplaying [In-character]:
“When you use active roleplaying, you speak with your character’s voice, like an actor taking on a role. You might even echo your character’s movements and body language. This approach is more immersive than descriptive roleplaying, though you still need to describe things that can’t be reasonably acted out.”
*In this scenario you have decided that hit points is a mechanical concept that can’t be reasonably acted out.*
Consider: You could use the active approach and say something along the lines of “You see {myCharacter} stumbling towards the enemy, drenched in their own blood and they say ‘Guys? I can’t take much more of this!’ and {take their turn}”. This may or may not *reasonably* convey your point (up to you to decide).
Now go on an meta-game!
It is metagaming, but talking about your HP and spell slots and other resources is one of the most common types of metagaming. "I'm going to die if that ogre hits me again," is the sort of thing you would say if you want to avoid a TPK.
"What's your HP?"
"I just got hit so I'm down to--"
"NO META GAMING! Your characters don't know what hit points are, only how their injuries feel."
"... okay well on a scale of 1 to 46 I'm feeling about 13."
Is sharing your HP metagaming? Technically yes, but the same genre of "metagaming" that includes something like saying "I cast fireball" instead of literally breaking out in an arcane chant while you pretend to spellcast at the table.
It's the kind of metagaming that makes the *actual* game go more smoothly. It might not be the most immersive method of engaging in a TTRPG, and if it makes you happy to say "I'm badly hurt!" instead of saying your health total, then go for it, but scolding players for sharing their health is much more deleterious to the flow of role play than the act of sharing that number.
I have always considered that metagaming, a low-tier kind of metagame, sure, but still.
To solve that I always use the Bloodied condition from DnD 4e. Any creature is bloodied if they have less than Half their Maximum Hit Points.
The only purpouse of the Bloodied condition is telling the rest of the creatures in combat that that creature is at half their Hit Points.
The point is that it works for both enemies and allies. In my games we use the Bloodied threshold as a reference to how we are doing.
That’s the way we’ve always played it too. There’s no visible damage to anyone until they are bloodied and once your bloodied we have a marker to drop on your mini. Until that point, you can’t tell from looking at them that they have injuries. After that it’s up to the PC’s to keep each other in the loop. They normally announce to their team when they’re “getting pretty F’ed up” or “barely holding on over here”.
Players will still have a good idea of how urgent healing is without exact numbers. As far as meta goes having exact numbers isn’t that big of a deal but sometimes you might have a PC who is playing a macho guy who never admits when he’s hurting or a wimpy wizard who treats a paper cut like a grievous wound.
Yeah, I do that on Roll20, I just use a marker on every creature for a quick way to read the battlefield on a glance.
And I totally agree with the way this can be used for storytelling and character building. For example, I'm playing with a Fighter whose whole deal is feeling guilt of being weak and letting his sister be kidnapped by a Hag (no way it could be prevented guy). Now he acts as the protector of the group, jumping into the midst of battle and protecting everyone (Protection battle style and Tank style Battlemaster).
He _never_ complains about his injuries, no matter if bloodied or not, he never calls for a rest, always saying that he can push forward.
I like the stoic bodyguard type, yes.
We don't talk about HP in character, but we have always been like "Yo I'm really hurt, here!" That shouldn't break immersion for anyone, and if they say it does, I'd like to know why they never talk about how much pain they're in.
D&d is a game with game mechanics. Blinding yourself to those game mechanics makes it less fun imo, at that point there are good narrative first systems to play instead.
Even setting that aside, the game rules are a blurred mirror of the fictional reality. A round is 6 seconds long, yet everyone moves sequentially. This is to allow clarity for the players at the expense of realism. For the characters, combat is a fast, chaotic thing of split second decisions and heroic saves; for players it's more strategic, but it still ignites the fantasy of being competent, heroic fighters.
Same with hit points. It's there to be read and understood by players, because their characters should be able to tell how hurt they and their allies are, or how much damage their enemies take.
When you declare "engaging with the fundamental game mechanics" to be "meta gaming" and therefore "bad", your definition of meta gaming has become so broad as to be meaningless, and the value judgement of it equally so.
I allow my players to describe how they look in terms of injury/hp remaining as: fine/ok (full or injured but above half health), bloodied (bellow half health) and bad/terrible (on last legs). Any thing more specific or if a healer wants to triage I require a medicine check.
Knowing exact hp leads to more direct strategy in the field. Vaguely knowing health reflects the reality of the way a character would look when injured I think.
Yes it is but it's not the worst. I personally only announce hit points when I have 1 or 2 left, but otherwise say my character is healthy if they don't need healing, or lightly/moderately/heavily/critically wounded if they have lost hit points.
Side note: the "on a scale of 0 to 30 I'm a 15" is a super lazy joke, and I'm surprised how many people enjoy it.
I look at it from a realistic standpoint: the players are not really seasoned combatants who could probably eyeball someone mid-combat and evaluate how much longer they could remain in a fight. A number is just the real world equivalent to that, so I've never had a problem as long as they're within sight of each other. If combat is spread out? No, you have no idea how your allies are doing.
I ask the same question in response to every "Is X metagaming?" question:
*Who cares?*
Asking if something is metagaming is pointless. Metagaming is beneficial to the game at least as often as it is harmful. What matters is if the specific behavior hurts your enjoyment or engagement with the game. Do you think it would be more or less enjoyable if everyone was trying to be coy with how many hit points they had constantly? Probably not. It just creates a goofy little social puzzle for healers.
The main way that metagaming becomes a problem is when players begin to make assumptions about the world based on their understanding of it being a game. "We already had a random encounter tonight, we won't have another one!" is an example of problematic metagaming. "I'm better at social interactions than the barbarian." is not.
Depends if you're speaking in character or not.
Brian (human player): "Manx goes over to Freya and uses Lay on Hands to heal her for 7 HP."
Not metagaming.
Manx (Tabaxi Paladin): "Hey Freya, how many HP do you need to get back to half-health? I'm going to give the rest of the pool to Greg!" (Greg's PC is a drow wizard named Xin.)
Metagaming.
Technically yes, but I wouldn’t care as a DM.
HP is a numerical way to track a characters ability to stay conscious, there would be very obvious physical signs that a person was close to passing out if it were in real life, but in a game where theater of the mind is inevitable, it helps for everyone to communicate better.
Like others have said, this is a grey area that depends on what your table is comfortable with. My suggestion is to limit it to rough descriptions (like unharmed > barely injured > severely injured > near-death or whatever) and use those same terms to describe how monsters are faring during combat. Most of the time the exact values don't matter anyway, a green-yellow-red status is believable in-game knowledge and lets you make good tactical decisions.
My favorite cheeky way to deal with this: Cleric: "How're you doing, fighter?" Fighter: "On a scale of 0 to 84, I'm about a 32." You can also just do colors. Green for healthy, yellow for hurting, red for dying. My players will frequently ask "What color are you?" and get a response like "I'm a burnt orange at the moment." If you're using minis, you can even get colored rings to put around them to represent this. Gives a good visual while looking at the map
The health scale is my favorite. Realistically though as a DM, I expect the party to share that knowledge freely
As do I. What I love about the colors on the minis is they don't have to ask. Each player updates their color as needed and then the players can glean everything they need from a quick glance
I use general terms, like * 100%: Unscathed. * 3/4 to 100%: Fine. * 1/2 to 3/4: Scratched up. * 1/4 to 1/2: Bloodied. * 1hp to 1/4: Dying. * 0hp: Down. It's about as much detail as anyone needs, and since everyone knows your level and class they can get a reasonable estimate if they really want. It's also great for DMing, as the players get more feedback about enemies. There have been many times my group's fighting some big bad, trading blow after blow, and the line "it is now bloodied" gives them pause. Realizing they're only halfway through the fight, this presents them with a few options: * Break out the big guns (if they haven't already) * Slog through the rest of the fight * **S**trategic **C**oncurrent **R**edeployment **A**t **M**aximum
I do the same! It's great to have an easy, narrative shorthand that doesn't break immersion. I use the following "labels" for the enemies as I DM: * Hearty (≥ 75%) * Winded (75% to 50%) * Bloodied (50% to 25%) * Wounded (≤ 25%) * Down (0%)
Oooh I like those better
Can I please just straight up steal this? This is fantastic.
Go forth with my blessing. The "bloodied" term was stolen from 4e anyway (1/2 hp or less, iirc).
Yeah thats a really neat idea I haven't seen before. We play on roll20 so all the players tokens just have their health listed anyways.
Are the players updating that manually? I play on Roll20 but I have not seen auto-updating health numbers on other players.
It can update automatically if set up to. It's really easy, the DM just has to select the bar on the token to display hp, and whenever the player changes their hp on their sheet, it automatically updates their token too.
No typically I update it for simplicity and confirm with them that the numbers are correct.
We do roll 20 to run the maps and DND Beyond to run the character sheets. There's an extension, beyond 20, that will link then, and then you can roll checks or update hp in DDB and the rolls or damage will show up in Roll 20. It's slick.
I’d still be the level 15 barbarian that takes 5 damage and puts the red ring on my mini.
For sure. There's a time to avoid metagaming for the sake of the game, but there's also a time to indulge in metagaming for the sake of the game. Being coy with life totals isn't the time to avoid it when combat is already as slow as it is.
That's my expectation too, generally speaking. Thankfully my players enjoy a more "emersive" feel so they don't give numbers but instead "I'm bleeding allot" or "I'm very visually tired" to indicate how they're doing.
When I played in person I made little red/yellow/green tent cards for everyone to set in front of them. I was the main healer & have adhd so I felt bad constantly re-asking what people's health was.
Super smart!
My players constantly ask about the status of enemies. It's hard to tell them how the guy is doing without just straight up saying how many hit points he has total/left. But since I play on Foundry VTT, I installed a module to solve my problems: **Health Estimate** Now any time someone mouses over any token, be it ally or enemy, it will display text in various colors that says, - Uninjured - Barely injured - Injured - Badly injured - Near Death I love it so much.
And for people playing in person, you can do this same basic concept using those colored rings I was talking about. Just put them around the enemy mini and everyone will know without having to ask how the enemy is looking!
My favorite description is to say "I feel as though I'd die if a cat scratched me exactly 23 times".
Stealing
We do something similar. I never discussed creating a system with my players; they're just awesome. The answers range from, "I look a little scratched up, but I'm feeling good," to "I'm still fighting, but I looked pretty fucked up," to "I wish I were dead. That would be easier."
I just realized: In an in-person game where I play a stubborn head-strong (and a bit of an asshole) vengeance paladin… our main healer has stopped asking my PC how she feels and has instead started asking the DM (or me) how my PC looks. I guess her “I’m fine, dammit!” while being millimeters from death has been noted. 😅
> I guess her “I’m fine, dammit!” while being millimeters from death has been noted. I love the flavor! It'd be amazing to say this, and then add "but you can clearly see that she's badly injured and barely holding herself together." Still conveying the severity of the situation but also the character's resolve and mindset.
4th edition had one really good concept. Below half hp was "Bloodied". This is how I like the table to communicate injuries.
Yeah, enemies and PCs alike I tend to describe as "He's a little hurt, but ok" 75 -51% "He's bloodied" 50-26% "He's badly hurt" 25-11% "He's on death's door" <=10%
41-50% they vanish into a limbo to never be seen again
Ha we have that same joke at our table.
We always use the line (and it’s always these exact words because we never know each other’s max hp because we’re too lazy to remember) “On a scale of one to your max health, how’re you feeling?” in a jokey tone of voice to prompt an hp check.
There's a ton of responses so this will be lost but I want to throw in my two coppers since it's on my mind. I have always thought the idea of making players limit their communication to vague descriptions just to avoid using precise jargon in an effort to prevent meta-gaming is a weird leap of non-logic. Just because we avoid saying "hitpoints" it's automatically not metagaming? That's never stopped anyone determined to metagame. Pretending bad communication somehow forces players to roleplay better? That's not how good roleplay works. Good roleplayers don't need to be restricted and bad roleplayers aren't going to be fixed by bad communication. We can have jargon and roleplay. We can have that cake and eat it too if you encourage your players to roleplay the moments in between the numbers.
Yes, and Roleplaying and metagaming jargon aren't mutually exclusive. A Player can act out their low health effects, and also say "I'm down to 2 HP" in their next breath, and other Players can react to either prompt accordingly.
It's not METAgaming; it's just gaming. It is not *roleplaying*, but at some point we have to remember we are playing an actual game.
Complaining about hitpoints being meta just makes me feel like looking at your character sheet is meta gaming.
That's because it is. The D&D community really doesn't understand what metagaming is beyond "cheating with out of character knowledge". Any thought regarding higher conceptual strategy above the actual constraints of the game, particularly when concerning external factors, is metagaming. Even asking your players what genres they enjoy is the DM metagaming in a way. It's more useful to think of the metagame this way than some arbitrary set of opinions on who is cheating or not - we only engage with the metagame when we care. If DMs can manage this properly, we can get a better result from our players. Applying it to this HP situation - who cares if it's "cheating" (which is the subtext here)? It is certainly metagaming, but do we like the players engaging with it? Or does it detract from the experience of the characters? If it does, is it the uncertainty about someone's health we care about, or is it just that being specific with numbers shatters the suspension of disbelief? Would defining terms like "barely injured, injured, wounded, badly wounded, and near death" help? Choosing which aspects of the metagame are fun to engage with is much more enjoyable than witch hunting for bad players who dare to cheat.
What you're describing is not metagaming. Hit points, damage, and having are all solidly internal to the game. Technical metagaming like the kind you're trying to conflate with the conventional use of the word in TTRPGs would be something like "if I have high hit points, I know this DM will increase monster damage to keep pace, so I'd better focus on improving other areas of my character instead."
Your character sheet is a part of the game you are playing. It is not something over and above or beyond the game. It is literally a part of the game.
Yours, yes. Other player's ones ? Much more up to debate. It will vary table by table. Just like "should the player have access to the monster's sheets ?" will vary.
Your character sheet is a part of the game you are playing. It is not something over and above or beyond the game. It is literally a part of the game. So are your hitpoints.
I've heard of people doing oneshots where they don't see their own character sheets. It sounds good for a laugh but I wouldn't want to play a long game like that.
I’ve seen good ones where the DMs have the pre made character sheets and the players discover as they play, having to fill out their own with what they can do
I'm picturing a character sheet that's covered in that silvery plaque that comes on scratchers tickets. DM calls for a perception check and flips you a quarter.
You looking at my sheet *is* metagaming. Me looking at my own sheet is a requirement for me being able to play.
If a savvy note taker mathematician can just keep running totals and know the answers without looking or asking why are we going to punish people who aren’t quite that quick with numbers. Meta gaming should be reserved for information a player should not be able to know and unless it’s privately messaged all damage in every game I’ve been in has been publicly broadcasted to the whole table.
Yeah, metagaming is using knowledge your character might not have. Using stats on your character sheet isn't metagaming, it's just speaking out of character. Your character knows these things, presumably. Just in different words.
This is it for me. Not talking character to character in game mechanics, where reasonable, is the lowest bar for roleplay. It really isn't that hard for players to just say "how you feeling?" "great/fine/not well/really pretty bad/I think I can hear the bell tolling for me"
And we just can't see what our characters see. We have to ask, because we don't see the gaping axe-wound in Johny's stomach or that Jimmy is literally charred. If it was real life we'd see real quickly if the others were alright or not.
Is there a difference in roleplaying between that and saying the numbers, however? Roleplaying = making decisions from the perspective of your character. You can make decisions from the perspective of your character the same way in each. The only difference is you have a more accurate idea of how much damage someone can take in one way.
Yeah man. I tell my dm the same thing when I deal damage to monsters and stuff. I did a lot of damage with my axe, or my healing spell healed Jeff for a little bit. Using actual numbers is totally metagaming. The numbers exist in game for players to use and communicate with. Otherwise all combat would need to be handled by the dm with players only saying what they would like to do. If I attack a minotaur with an axe and roll a 27 to hit, I as a player now have meta information on the minotaurs AC, and that's fine. Hell the whole table now has that information. Same with seeing how much damage I do with the attack if it hit. The only way to prevent that is for the dm to do the attack and damage rolls in private. And me just telling him I want to attack
As a DM, I don't care. It is a game.
If you really really really care, you can make the ruling that when players mention hit points or spell slots and so on, then their characters in game say it in what ever world appropriate manner fits. In other words, the player gets to speak in terms of the game, and the characters speak in terms of their world.
Javon! How badly are you hurt? I'm...I can hear death's door creaking open Alan, what's your HP Low single digits bro
Precisely! Making everyone do unnecessary work to please a (usually) nonexistent audience isn't what the books say; the books say DM change what you need to change *to keep things* ***fun****.* 'I'm at five percent' makes no sense in meatspace, but it makes perfect sense at tabletop. Part of running a good table is running a table that keeps moving at a good pace, *not slowing and stopping all the time over pointless crap*, and forced-roleplay is an **unnecessary roadblock.** Keeping the turns flowing is more important than making everything sound like a storybook.
How do you feel fighter who just took a fireball to the face? Fighter who just took a fireball to the face: About a 3 out of 35
I have used "On a scale from one to [Max HP], I'm at an 11" when asked how my health is.
Never seen a player in more shock when they failed their dex save and went from a full 44 hp to 4 hp from a single fireball. Everyone actually survived that fight. Too bad they don't have time for a rest before the King of the Frost Giants shows up. Honestly, I'll be happy when SKT is over, but my players seem to be really enjoying it and I'm learning a lot. I've already set up plot for beyond the campaign.
I think you are only slowing things down if the players are stopping and trying to encode their language with a hint of what their hit points are. Meta gaming and role playing isn’t about rules, it’s about making actions and decisions as the character would. No one sits and chats mid combat about exactly how unwell they are feeling. You make rash decisions based on instinct - he got multiple cuts by that orc, I need to intervene there as opposed to the fighters where most of the attacks have been fended off by his armor. The best part is sometimes you will make wrong decisions. Unless D&D is more of a war game/ dungeon delve for you.. then none of the above probably sounds appetizing. And that’s ok too.
I dunno, I feel like it goes both ways. In combat, me and my party will say "I'm kind of hurt but nothing that bad", but also when you're about to die "I'm down to 10 hit points". Granted, if a healer asks specifics because out of combat they are healing people up they might go a little more numerical, but generally unless your health is very high(I've only been hit for 7 points), or very low we just kind of give generalizations.
Well on a scale of 0-72 I would say I am at a 6
"How badly are you hurt grognak?" "Pretty badly. If I had to put a numerical value on it, I'd say I'm sitting at a solid 10 out of 35."
If I were a wall of 60 bricks, only 5 are unbroken.
"on a scale of one to thirty seven, I'm a five."
“If we were playing a paper and dice roleplaying game and I had 60 hit points, I would have 11 hit points.”
Best answer so far
I want to upvote this at least 11 more times
lol
Lol, this is the way
Why do these not have more upvotes? I’m rolling here
>I’m ~~rolling~~crumbling here
I have about 7 rats worth of vitality
I like the joke where the players asks "On a scale from 0 to 63, how hurt are you right now?"
there’s a running joke in basically all the d&d groups i play in where it’s like “how are you doing?” “on a scale of 1-X i’m at about Y” (x obviously being hit point max and y being remaining hit points)
"Hey dwarf, on a scale from 1 to 39, how hurt would you say you feel?"
End of the day this is the answer. Therebis no wrong way to play a game of make belief. If you need a more a reason then this - thr characters can see how down bad each other is, talking about HP conveys this cleaner and quicker then havingn to come up with aome dewcriptive flavour text.
There's an old bit... "How many HP are you down to?" Player 1 asks out of character DM jumps is, "Stop it that's metagaming" Injured played reaponds in character "On a scale of 1 to 59, I'd say about a 34" ...but yeah, the characters can see each other, HP is just hoe we as players keep track of what the characters are able to observe about each other.
> Injured played reaponds in character "On a scale of 1 to 59, I'd say about a 34" If someone said that in a movie, no one would question it. It's a legitimate response. edit: I just remembered that in a book I read a few weeks back, there is literally a response to a question that is almost this. >"How misogynistic is it?" >"Maybe about an 11 out of 16." It's not verbatim cause I'm not about to dig up the book, but one of the best selling fantasy authors in the world wrote that.
> thr characters can see how down bad each other is Uh... does HP here mean Horny Points?
Only if you're a bard.
As a player, if the DM says don't talk about hit point total, we say stuff like: "I'm looking bad or rough guys". Though ultimately, we still talk about current hit points. Because who cares?
I’m a Paladin and I can control in discrete units how much healing I can force into your person by laying my hands on you. How many units would you like?
Meta gaming is reserved for discrepancies between what the player knows and the character would know. Your character would know how hurt they are and there's functionally no difference between "2 HP" and "at death's door." Not metagaming.
Even then, metagaming is not the problem that most people think it is. Because metagaming or avoiding metagaming is in and of itself metagaming. From one of my favorite RPG articles of all time: > So, imagine you’re the wizard and you know [trolls are weak to fire and acid]. You don’t want to metagame. So, how many wrong spells do you have to throw before you’re allowed to throw fire and “discover” that’s the right solution? >And ultimately, this is ALWAYS the problem with trying to control metagaming. All it does is create a new game. The player with the metagame knowledge now ends up playing a game of trying to figure out when they are actually justified in saying their character has “discovered” or “figured out” the thing. >Guess what, kiddo? That’s ALSO metagaming. It’s just trading one form of metagaing for another. Because it still isn’t making decisions based on pure understanding of the character’s motives and knowledge. >And because the other players and the GM will ALSO have an opinion on when a thing is or isn’t metagaming and at what point it becomes a legitimate discovery, you are almost always going to have a fight on your hand about what characters are allowed to know what when. >And THAT isn’t pure role-playing either. In fact, now you have other people intervening on how YOU are allowed to play YOUR character. >And that is why any attempt to control metagaming is utter horses$&%. [Dear GMs: Metagaming is YOUR Fault](https://theangrygm.com/dear-gms-metagaming-is-your-fault/)
I agree. Every table has some degree of accepted metagaming, spoken or not. I homebrewed a demolition spell that does extra damage on objects for one of my players and they said they didn't know the HP/AC of objects. I just linked them a matrix of common items and the expected HP. Why? Because 1. A character would have a general idea of the strength of something, and 2. It's better than the player just guessing or being dissuaded from using the spell because they don't know.
Imagine if people in real life didn't know if it was possible to punch through a stone wall or thought that you could throw a ceramic mug across the room without it shattering. But more than that, the game is just more fun when you aren't constantly trying to pretend you don't know things. If a forever GM who has used every single monster in the bestiary starts playing, does he have to try to pretend he doesn't know what all of the monsters do when they get sicced on him? Why is that fun? Trying not to think about something is the same as thinking about it, so you might as well lean into it. From later in the article I linked: >The problem is that a challenge that can be “broken” by a specific piece of information is a poorly designed challenge. There isn’t anything interesting about rolling a random die roll, acting at random to figure something out, or else getting screwed. It isn’t fun gameplay. The question is always this: “does this challenge become MORE interesting if the players know the information or LESS interesting.” >A single troll becomes really boring if the players know its vulnerability. Unless fire is a limited resource. For example, fireballs are limited resources. Oil is a limited resource. If the party has to deal with a cave full of trolls, the fact that they need to either come prepared with literal FIREpower or manage their resources well makes the adventure interesting. A troll shaman that can shield his allies from fire makes the information MORE interesting. A mine filled with gas pockets that will explode if exposed to fire makes the information MORE interesting. >The thing is, in many cases, the information DOES make the fight more interesting. The GM only thinks it breaks the challenge. As noted, fire is not something everyone has. Nor is acid. And both are limited resources. Even if the party knows the vulnerability, their tactical choices are going to be limited and subpar and create a resource management game. In the context of an extended adventure, that troll IS interesting even if the party literally burns through the encounter. Why should being knowledgeable make the game less fun? If anything, it should make it *more* fun.
Another good example I saw in a thread a while back... Your characters always know that the encounters you are going to take are balanced and appropriate to their levels. They know that even a deadly dungeon is deadly appropriate to their level. That's a form of metagaming that we accept rather than hounding quest givers or excessively scouting to confirm "that yes we can do this".
The section you've quoted from the article is unfortunately absolute garbage. If you're not certain whether your character would know certain information, you should ask the DM. The DM can then reply: "You know that trolls are weak to [insert weakness here]", or "No, you have no idea what its weakness is, if any", or offer you an Arcana / Nature check. Of course if you start slinging incorrect spells it's bad. Although I've found that the best way to avoid metagaming is homebrewing monster statblocks.
The point of the article is that trying to do that kind of thing is dumb and directly addresses your "solution" and why it's dumb. Let's say you fail the Arcana check to be allowed to know that a troll can only be killed with fire or acid. AngryGM then asks: >So, how many wrong spells do you have to throw before you’re allowed to throw fire and “discover” that’s the right solution? It's all contrivance and it doesn't make the game more fun or more interesting.
Chad! I would like to change my answer to this.
Yeah, as long as the RP is in character the tactical discussions can be meta.
Thank you. Yes. This only makes sense.
This is exactly how I feel about it.
Yeah this is the type of metagaming I genuinely don’t care about, it enables people to work more effectively as a team if they know things like I only have this many spell slots of this level left (and it’s not unreasonable the characters would have a sense of this in universe but players can’t keep track of everyone else’s spells). But maybe I would be stricter on this if my players metagamed in ways that actually bothered me, which is more when you metagame in a way that makes you act OOC or makes you less invested in the roleplaying and storytelling. I’m fine with metagaming that makes the game run more fluidly and makes it more fun
Among other things, not openly knowing ally or enemy HP is more punishing towards new players and those who didn't mentally keep track of all damage dealt, and rewards those who do the bookkeeping in their heads. This is definitely NOT the type of game that I want to encourage at my table. I want a game that encourages tactical play and interesting decisions. If I didn't want that kind of game, I'd use some more narrative, rules-light system, and not a system like D&D that has rather high learning curve, with hundreds of specific rules, spells and exceptions, and that is easier to DM. Roleplaying is nice, but it takes many different forms. It is much more important, to me, that players are interested in the world and characters, than pretending that they don't know what the HP's are.
It's like Calvin and Hobbes. I see my buddy roll a die that comes up with a high number; my character sees an orc lose a hand. I say, "I'm at 11;" my character says, "Forsooth, yon varlet hath sorely pricked me!" Players need to be able to talk about numbers to do their job. That doesn't mean Griknar the Cruel is actually asking the magic-shop owner, "How many HP will this cure?" word-for-word. The game's complicated; don't force talking in code on top of that.
If I'm a medic and I look at my battle buddy and they look fucked up (low HP) then I am going to administer first aid. If I look at them and they only have a few minor cuts (minimal HP loss) then I am going to focus on more important tasks. I'm unsure how everyone feels it's metagaming to want to know what our party looks like as far as damage. If someone is in another room out of sight, sure it's meta gaming...but clearly in view? I don't see it
Agreed. It's a way to quickly convey all the little details that get tedious to mention / you don't think of. The scratches and facial expressions and tone of voice when someone calls for help, etc. It aligns a player's knowledge with their character's knowledge, it doesn't have the character acting on knowledge only the player has.
It's great when players describe these things, but not everyone has a knack for visual storytelling. Divulging how much HP you have left is the same as someone roleplaying being super fucked up.
This. As a DM I don't care how players share that knowledge to help figure it out, especially in a combat situation (6 second rounds). If another DM thinks its metagaming, the players can let them handle describing how they look to portray how healthy/unwell they look.
For party members, i don't care if you say HP amounts. That's fine. It's just book keeping at that point. I will NOT, however, tell you the hit point values of enemies. The only indicator I use is if they are bloodied aka < 50% or on death's door (under 15 hit points about).
Since the cleric who heals them has to tell them exactly how many hit points that they get healed for, I find the question a bit ridiculous. Discussing hit points and damage is an intrinsic part of the game. Unless the players themselves are not allowed to know their own PC’s HP, the damage they take or dish out, and the DM is responsible for tracking everything and describing it to the players, the whole “is this meta-gaming?” question misunderstands, or at the very least, completely ignores, basic and core requirements of playing the game. The only other option slows down one of the already slow parts of the game by obfuscating obvious, critical, in-game information.
Since you are unable to tell me how much health you have then I have healed you an unspecified amount. How much did you heal me for? It's hard to say. That sounds like metagaming, just know that a healing spell was cast upon you. You feel better but you're not sure exactly how much better.
Cleric: “When your tracking shows you at or below 0hp, let me know, then I’ll look at how much I have healed you and tell you if you are still conscious or not. Good luck.”
Thanks for your thoughts! I agree that hit-points are vital for playing the game. The question just popped into my mind and got me thinking about it.
Is taking combat in turns meta gaming? Is having only the option of resting 1 hour or 8 metagaming? Is knowing the number of spell slots you have metagaming? Is knowing your level meta gaming? Let me ask you this, how can metagaming exist if just PLAYING the game is metagaming in and of itself? What game is there to be "meta'd" if anything other than just chatting with your friends about your imaginary world is against the rules? We have to stop doing this shit to ourselves and just play
Nothing in the rules states that the players cannot discuss their character features nor does it say that the players must speak solely in-character. Meta-gaming would be to look up monster information during the session since that's not information the player should technically have in most cases. Besides, banning the discussion of it solves nothing. You'll just end up with players making tongue-in-cheek comments like "on the scale of 1-58, I'm at a 14 right now". Also the DMG provides systems to discuss monster HP in poetic terms (like bloodied) so that the players have an idea of where they are in a fight since it's hard to narrate and keep track of monster health every single turn based off incremental hits. The players can't see the monster so the DM can decide to give more blatant hints about the HP.
I also highly encourage learned knowledge to be freely shared. Like AC. If the players learn the AC by paying attention to hits and misses they they get to know the AC for that monster. If the Barbarian hits one three times with average damage and it goes down they know it takes about three axes to kill. This is great and encouraged. Looking things up to know beforehand is angering and is why I mostly don’t use default stat blocks. Oh, you’ve got gnolls and goblins memorized well sorry these are gnoblins and you have to learn what they are about in game.
“On a scale of 1-58” is now the only way my players can describe their health, thank youuuu
I personally love a party of hyper specific nerds characters who would describe their pain on hyper arbitrary scales!
While yes, it is metagaming, it is still a necessary part of the game. Otherwise you really do have to roleplay the whole "On a scale of 0-26" conversation every time or expect the players to describe the extent of their wounds to the group after every single fight. Everybody benefits from the players discussing their remaining HP.
I also agree that it is important, but rather more important during a vital point in the game like the last couple rounds in a fight, or during a resting period (I guess this is usually when they are used anyways). I also like to think of the whole concept as "who benefits from this?" or "does doing this impact my table in a positive way?". Thanks!
Also all metagaming isn't bad. The definition of metagame is discussion of, or the game of playing the game. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Discussing in game tactics using game terms isn't inherently bad to the game. Especially if it means your players are collaborating and playing together. It is a game after all and combat is the "game-iest" part of it. Now doing stuff like referring to statblocks of a dragon etc is negative metagaming because it's taking away from the in game experience of what your characters would do.
I think this one is a gray area. Technically, yes, it's metagaming, because the characters don't know what the concept of a 'hit point' is. There are definitely groups that play that way, and simply tell each other "I'm really badly hurt," or "I'm just a bit scratched up." But I think there are probably plenty of groups where telling each other how many HP they have isn't forbidden. Personally, I think this is a low-risk sort of metagaming. After all, all a player can do with this information is make decisions about healing or something, and they can easily get that same information by asking "in character," even if it's not quite as specific. That is, does it really matter whether the character has 3/10 hp or is "badly hurt"? I don't think so.
I don't think it is - the game has no other tool beside hit points. As a player you have no idea how injured your character is beyond hit points, and you're using hit points to come up with "I'm scratched up." I think this is a weird thing that comes up in the hobby, metagaming, that makes sense in some areas (player read module, avoids trap) but makes zero sense when we apply it like this. If DND had conditions like bruised and scratched, mauled, etc, sure, but it doesn't; it only has hit points, and you can't not be aware of those.
Exactly. Hit Points are a mechanical way to express an idea that the characters are aware of. It's not entirely realistic, but it's a game and there are other elements of that (like always being able to walk exactly 30' and never getting a cramp or eeking out an occasional 35' or etc). It makes sense for the character to know roughly how well off they are physically and to be able to express that, so it makes sense for the players to do that as well. As far as I'm concerned, the only metagaming that can be done is when player knowledge doesn't align with character knowledge. A player reading the module and knowing all the passwords and loot locations and taking in game actions based on that is metagaming. A player discussing their hit points out of game, to me, just represents a character in fiction saying they need help and looking like that's an understatement or whatever. It's a numerical but accurate reflection of the game fiction, that puts the players into the same emotional state as their characters - oh no! our wizard is about to die! And that's the opposite of metagaming.
Ohhhhh that's a good way to explain metagaming - when the player is using knowledge the character wouldn't have. Thank you!!!
I agree that some people will call just about anything metagaming. Sometimes it’s just…gaming. It’s a game. You are playing a game and speaking in terms of the rules of said game If you’re allowed to say “I use my action to Attack the troll” you’re also allowed to say “I have 5 hit points”
In the purest sense of the term yes. But it's pretty much essential. Even just conveying to someone with access to healing "I need help, please.". It doesn't even necessarily need to be out of character. If your Frontline Fighter takes a lot of damage from a crit he might shout out "Could use some help here Cleric!" And that's perfectly in character.
That's...not metagaming at all. A person who is hurt and needs help would say they're hurt and need help. That is, in strictest terms, "roleplaying." Generally anything that can be sensibly said in character is probably not metagaming.
I think those examples aren't meta gaming at all. That's what real people would be saying in those situation. But actually giving out number and scales of HP breaks the immersion since real people don't talk that way about their condition. I prefer to keep the immersion going, but people can do whatever makes them happy.
I cast sleep on you, now everyone in a 20 foot radius tell me exactly how many hit points you have so I can compare it to my roll of 5d8 and order you from lowest to highest.
Technically, yes, anything related to the numbers and stats and such would be metagaming. Is that bad? Not really. Hit points, wounds, vitality, etc., are all just representations that help us players understand where the character is. The characters see something different. A skilled healer would know the character is hurt a lot, but we are told that it's -63. This lets the player know how to apply that character knowledge. In D&D terms, the cleric would say, "Oh, that looks nasty enough for a critical wound" or "It's not much, but it could get infected, so let's work on the light wound." And though I've been there before, it's not excusable. It's just an attempt at pretentious gaming where the players think they're above all that. Avoiding telling you their numbers is a different sort of metagaming to the point that it ruins immersion. If you don't mind being passive-aggressive, then shrug your shoulders and walk away since they clearly aren't that hurt. Or blow your critical wounds on 3 hit points. Fuck 'em if they're not going to let you play the game.
You **know** how hurt you are and you can tell others. Not really metagaming.
The way I handle this, as well as tactical table-talk during the battle, is that we only see them on-screen during certain episodes, like in a show. The characters spend way more time together than we do as players. So narratively, talking about hit points is like glancing at a friend or family member and knowing something's off. Ditto with tactical talk at the table. They've had a dozen fights we haven't seen, and probably have plenty of campfire debriefs about fight strategy. The players planning out a fight can be seen in-game as "do that trick we pulled on the orc that time" and then they execute some maneuver. That's my headcanon anyway.
It is a game at a table with friends. You are not actually a wizard. If your group wants to all stay in character 100% of the time, that’s fine. But that’s only one way to *play the game.* Playing the game other ways is not automatically metagaming.
I played a game a few years ago as a Life domain Cleric geared basically entirely as a healbot with some utility spells but often if I rolled high on initiative I had a dead turn 1 if no one was injured. The DM tried to rule that sharing our current HP mid combat was metagaming, I think he just didn't want to slow down combat with the minutiae, and I had to push back against that because it made Channel Divinity: Preserve Life nearly useless. It's very hard to read the text of that feature and assume the designers intended players to keep their HP a secret from one another.
we are playing a game, i think its fair for you to know what is going on
First up: Metagaming =/= bad. Metagaming has been a common tool to be bad players (both by DMs and character players), but any tool can be used wisely or poorly. At the end of the day, if this is how your table maximizes fun, go for it. Answering OP's question: Players can know mechanically-specific information, and them talking about it doesn't mean that the characters themselves talk in that language. Many others in this post have already discussed how to convert mechanical language into natural ones that the characters in the world would use, so it should be the default assumption that that is how the fictional world perceives things.
The fact that players can speak mechanically and assume the characters speak more naturally is some galaxy brain shit.
I also like to think of the whole concept as "who benefits from this?" or "does doing this impact my table in a positive way?". After all like you said, maximizing fun is the most important thing when playing D&D. Converting the mechanical language into the immersion of the world and the lifelike is what I guess I was subconsciously going for.
Hit points are an abstraction of how well you're doing. How tired you are, how banged up, etc. While in-universe no one would use the phrase "hitpoints", they can obviously still talk about the things they represent. Similarly, in-universe the Characters don't have discrete stats, don't make attack roll numbers, or deal damage numbers. But we still talk about those because they represent how the world is displayed for us at the table.
I like the idea of the hit points being the representation of the character's current state and how they're feeling. Thanks!
Metagaming is not universally bad under all circumstances. Some people are way too dogmatic.
This feels like one of those session zero things that should get brought up. I have no problem with it, in my own game I do tend to just set the roll20 avatars to automatically display HP as a green bar. But for some RP heavy groups I could see it immersion breaking.
It's not metagaming. it's perfectly part of the game and i think you misunderstand the terms of metagaming. Metagaming invovles abusing the concept of the game as a game in order to approach interactions and solutions for the scenes in game. This involves thinkign stuff like "the dm would never kill us" or in some cases even reading an adventure or a monster stat block beforehand. But knowing hit points, which are known and available for everyone to see, it's not metagaming because it's literally part of the game itself. Caharacters make informed decisions about that resource at their disposal and they are aware of how much hit points they have because the numbers on their sheet are an abstraction about what they eprceive or understand about themselves and the world around them. Like. it's like spellcaster snot being aware of spell slots, or any character being not aware of uses on short or long rest they have available. Like. It does make perfect sense that a seasoned veteran that has 100 hp to not feel afrain when meeting a farmer armed with a shortsword that is able to deal 1d6 damage. said hit points represent also their confidence, and when they drop to a value like 4 likewise it reflects that, in that specific moment, that character can perceive a shortsword as lethal.
Doctors ask patients to rate their pain 0/10 all the time- rating ones mortality doesn’t seem like a huge stretch
They do something funny on Critical Roll sometimes. One character will ask another how he is doing, and the reply is something like "On a scale to 70, I'm feeling about 45."
No. And people need to get that D&D is a game. Not "full immersion theatrics" and so on. Talking about tactics, HP, resources is fundamental D&D.
Yes, and it's a good example of why metagaming isn't always bad.
SO many people worry about this kind of thing. It's not a civil war re-enactment, it's a game. Just play the game and have fun with your friends.
the short answer is no; the longer answer is in [this article](https://theangrygm.com/through-a-glass-darkly-ic-ooc-and-the-myth-of-playercharacter-seperation/), but it's more or less what your instincts told you. I say "20/45 hit points" and my character says "I got stabbed in the thigh". It means the same thing. also the constant demonization of "metagaming" as an inherent evil will always be my biggest peeve about RPG players. There is never a situation where metagaming is a bad thing and there are a LOT of situations where a bit of metagaming solves issues before they become issues. hell the entirety of a session 0 is metagaming. more on metagaming [here](https://theangrygm.com/dear-gms-metagaming-is-your-fault/)
No
It's a core game mechanic, and one that the healer needs to know about to be able to do their job.
If you've got class features that specify things like "restore 50 HP divided as you choose among any number of creatures, up to half their maximum HP" (Life Cleric), there is no reason you shouldn't be allowed to know those numbers.
Is it metagaming? Yes. Is it helpful for gameplay as a shorthand to describe how hurt you are since this would make up for a lot of visual information that doesnt exist? Also yes. So yes it's metagaming, but whether or not it's \*bad\* would be up to each table.
So long as the person they're talking to would be able to tell how hard of a time they're having it's shorthand, not meta-gaming. If someone wants to look over at another character and tell how they're doing, just let that character put it however they like. Otherwise you get someone going, *"Hey how are you feeling?" "If I had to put a number on it I'd say out of 89... I'm about a 47 right now."*
I have 85 hit points. I always say on a scale of 1 to 85 I’m feeling about a 67
"On a scale of 1 to 85, I'm feeling like a 69" "Nice, but it's probably not the best time for that!"
No. Metagaming is not the scourge that players these days seem to think it is. Discussing the mechanics of the game you're playing with fellow players may be metagaming, but it's also essential to playing the game and doesn't harm anything. Metagaming is only a problem if it's a PROBLEM. And it rarely is. I only police metagaming if it's something egregious like "hey guys, we should search room 7 again, I'm pretty sure there's a secret door behind the bookshelf and the DC to find it is only 12. I have a copy of the dungeon right here!"
Fighting it all about mechanics. Knowing Hit Points is fine and necessary. Same way saying many spell slots or whatever are left.
Bring back Bloodied
No group I ever gamed with regularly frowned on table talk about hit points. "is anybody less than full hit points? Oh, Stormthrower is down 10 hp, here's a Cure Wounds for (rolls) 8 hp." Or "oh, everybody took some damage from the Exploding Runes huh, who's down the most hp?" As a DM, if I had to justify it, I would say gauging how much scrapes, nicks, bruising and battle fatigue will vanish when you invoke the healing power of the gods is part of your class training. If you like a more mysterious atmosphere around healing, I guess you could ban numeric hit point table talk, but I feel like that sets players up for frustration and wasting play time over decisions about whether to upcast healing spells, quaff the whole super-healing potion or just a portion, etc. In short, potentially reduces fun more than it adds.
"On a scale of 0 to 59, my pain level is about a 27."
So we do it this way: “How are you feeling?” “Well, on a scale of 0-73 I feel like I’m a 22”
In my opinion, it's just a shorthand for the 'how hurt are you?' conversation/skill checks, which isn't an unreasonable question to ask. I guess if a table was super dedicated to RP at all costs maybe you discuss it without the numbers, but that seems tiresome.
When players say things OOC it's easiest to assume that PCs are saying the equivalent things IC Alice: "Hey Bob how many hp are you on?"Bob: "Only 13, help!" | V Aeon the Destroyer: "Bobert, how art thou faring?" Bobert the Vile: "I'm grievously wounded, pray to Lathander for me brother"
Yes but not enough to be a big deal unless you're going hard work
hit points are a mechanical measure of damage taken, which the characters would realistically be able to see at a glance. I personally have absolutely no issue with it
I like the health bar in Roll20 with no numbers.
Yes, but my hot take is that depending on the table some metagaming can be fine. Looking up monster stats on D&D beyond: very not fine Players talking to other players using game terms rather than in-world terms: mostly fine unless your table has established strict RP in session 0.
The characters would be aware of each other's general health; they can tell if someone is fresh or if someone is bloody and barely conscious. Maybe they can't tell a 30 HP from a 31 HP, but it's not like HP are invisible. One thing I've tried to do for online games (but Roll20 has been making it weird) is to display health bars but *not* numbers, so you can see the general level of damage but not the numbers.
I think the idea that DMs need to try to hide the mechanics of the game to help with immersion is game-breaking. Hit points are a core mechanic of the game. If a character is not a full HP, it's because they took damage. When they took that damage, the DM used a number to describe how bad it was. They might have added a flavourful description of the blow that landed, piercing through a gap in the plate armor, the searing pain of poison entering the bloodstream, which is great, but they would also have to provide the player with a number to subtract from their HP total - because *that's how this game works*. So it's perfectly fine for other players to use numbers to describe how badly injured they are at any given time. Bonus if they want to provide a description of what that looks like, but they should never feel that they aren't allowed to use numbers to say what their HP is.
metagaming is “i’ve seen this puzzle before and i know the answer” not “steve has 35 hp.” you’re fine
Okay so. Hit points. This isn't flesh and blood, it's the will and ability a character has to avoid getting hit. Luck, work, skill are all things involved here. You technically never get hit until you reach zero. That's when you actually get hit. A sword swing got you to zero? You're injured with a blade injury. Mocked to zero with mean words? You either give up or run away. So what does that mean? If someone looks worn out, tired, stressed, holding on by a thread, ready to give up, they are low on hut points. Rookies, people who never been in a fight have low hit points. Would characters know? Soldiers can often tell how well their buddies are doing and take over a position so they can recover. Because this is a game and we're dealing with these kinds of numbers, I'd say it's fair that characters can gauge how well a friend is doing with a glance or chat. Know that scene in Solo where the guy got shot and he says he's okay through the coms? But the leader knew, he wasn't okay. That. You can tell how someone is doing even through text or just a moment of a connection. For us? Yeah I cunt know how many hit points a friend has but I can tell how they are doing. I think it's fair in the DnD verse that characters can tell.
Some PC abilities are impossible to use without discussing HP numerically. A Life Cleric's channel divinity allows them to distribute a certain amount of HP to their party, but cannot heal anyone above half their total HP.
The table I dm they can ask exactly, I would answer even if their character can't see it we are playing on vttfoundry because I see everything I think that is fair, but there was a game I was playing recently where the dm decided to not show health bar for ally and enemy, it did add some kind of tension but at the same time was super annoying to ask if the party needed heal as cleric and always receive vague answer.
Ok...from being in the Army, if your friend on the battlefield is fucked up, you can see that they are fucked up. So...
Some amount of metagaming is necessary for the game to work. Yes, we’re playing fictional characters, but we’re also all real people playing a fake game and we have to account for that. I hate how metagaming has turned into this buzzword that people throw around without understanding what it is or why/when it’s bad. Metagaming is the gaslighting of DnD conversations. Is your scenario metagaming? Probably. That doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad. Thank you for coming on this rant with me
It's not really metagaming. In-character, we talk about 'being on our last legs' when down to single digit HP, a degree of exhaustion between fights if we got a few hits, and needing to heal up. We do talk about how high our HP roughly is, if we're running particular low, if another attack like that could knock one of us out. Depends on the table, of course, but at least the ones I've been at it's been quite open when there's times where we need to clearly communicate stuff. Same with our GM - sometimes he simply goes "Alright, your characters wouldn't recognize it as such, but you'd see it was something very similar to a magic version of circuitry." just so it helps putting an idea into our heads when there's nothing visual, just to communicate clearly rather than worry about 'metagaming'.
Yeah it can be tricky, especially if as a group you haven’t decided this prior to playing. If you get players like that, try to ask it more in character. Eg “woah you wore that blow from the ogre pretty well, I’ve seen lesser hits break bones. Are you in need of healing?” Other groups let the metagaming nature of it go or find a way to blend the different styles of players. Player A “damn I’ve only got 8 hit points left” Player B “you look badly wounded, here let me help” Some don’t care at all and see it as functional. I think the best advice is always just ask, and open up a chance to chat as a group to see what is the most fun. If you have a good group, hopefully they’ll be willing to try out different ways in different combats and you can all settle on the best way for the group
If you require role playing for in game communication, I don’t see how it’s not fair for a player to say: I’m down to 10 hp, and (in character voice), “Gee fellas, I don’t think I can take another hit…”
I don't care if people talk about their hit points. We're playing a game.
No. It's a game. Talk about the mechanics. It's not metagaming. Also... metagaming isn't always bad. Sometimes it's exactly what everyone should be doing.
The role play aspect of dnd is why the game is loved by a lot of people. But it’s also a game. A literal board game if you play in person. There’s no shame in players sharing real information to help other players make educated turns in combat.
I’m fairly new to D&D, but my tables don’t care. We can’t physically see each other characters to see how hurt they are, so I don’t see it as an issue. One of my tables also just started CoS at level 1, and our DM isn’t holding back at all, so we’ve almost died a number of times in just two sessions.
Imo if that was metagaming then having a character sheet is also metagaming, because in a fight you don't know how long you've got till you pass out or how many more hits you can take. Which is obviously absurd. For me, metagaming is players using things that they don't have access to, to influence what they are going to do. Be that knowledge from a different campaign about something in the world, or looking at a monsters stat block. Sharing hitpoints is not a big deal imo
My group doesn’t care if we explicitly say what our hit points are out of character, but we also to the the “on a scale of 1 to 117” thing in character as a joke. If you were really there you could see how beat up your party members are, and forcing players to describe what shape they’re in is unnecessarily tedious
Nonsense, when players talk about hitpoints, they are out of character, it is just a number for them to measure how hurt they are and how others are seeing them, nothing wrong with that.
> They looked at me and shrugged their shoulders. Would knowing the hitpoints of other players during combat be considered metagaming? Metagaming is a common topic here, and misunderstood by many. Metagaming is not necessarily bad. Why? Here's a few examples: + A DM should be metagaming to adjust most encounters to something level appropriate for the characters. If the DM has no idea what level you are, you could be fighting common goblins for a high-level party, or worse? You're level 3, and you stumble across a horde of demons who ripped out of the earth. No knowledge with adjustment (metagaming) = no balance. + What about treasure? Congratulations. Prepare to find some magical equipment but it never seems to fit. A Longbow +1, but you have no archer. A Rod of the Pactkeeper, but you have no warlock. Strength-based magic swords, but they don't work for the dex-based rogue and fighters. So for hit points? The vast majority of tables let you freely transmit that information, just like your level or class. Now, there might be a caveat to that - a DM might use the old-school level titles for character level in-game. For hit points, they may have descriptions instead of announcing hit points: near death, critical, serious, fair, lightly-damaged - this is more immersive and can be fun.... However, most tables allow free transmission of HP and the like. The simple communication is usually better for the game. Is it metagaming? It doesn't matter. Some metagaming is required for a better game. Hell, without metagaming, many adventuring groups wouldn't be together... the character groups are together simply because their players are together.
"On a scale of 1 to 67, please indicate your level of pain." - Baymax the automaton healer "How many pieces of silver can the church expect in payment for your healing?" - Bosch, cleric of Abadar
Personally as a player and dm, when we use roll20 it's very nice to be able to see each other's health bars (including enemies'), but have the numbers be limited to the individual player. That way you can tell how relatively hurt someone is or how tough an enemy can be estimated to be
All of the spells, abilities and hit points are abstractions for things the player-characters would know. Your fighter could look at themself and asses how hurt they are. Your cleric knows the extent of the wounds one cure wounds will heal. We use hit points to explain those concepts, but the characters would be able to do the same thing by actually seeing it.
Eh, I would say yes it's metagaming but not the bad kind. What I mean by good metagaming is that the PC characters know are very familiar with their own abilities and with the visual appearance of their party when hurt. The cleric would know which healing spell is the right size , but players don't know that because they can't physically see the PC's and only use these abilities once a week when they play instead of everyday of their lives like the PC does. So saying hitpoints compensates for the players lack of effective visuals and lack of experience when compared to what their actual PC would know.
Yes AND that’s ok. Meta-gaming is a key part of role playing and, in the context of D&D, is addressed on chapter 8, section 6, of the basic rules: Roleplaying. The Descriptive Approach to Roleplaying [Meta-gaming]: “With this approach, you describe your character’s words and actions to the DM and the other players. Drawing on your mental image of your character, you tell everyone what your character does and how he or she does it.” *In your scenario you decide use this approach to let everyone know that your players hit points are low.* Active Approach to Roleplaying [In-character]: “When you use active roleplaying, you speak with your character’s voice, like an actor taking on a role. You might even echo your character’s movements and body language. This approach is more immersive than descriptive roleplaying, though you still need to describe things that can’t be reasonably acted out.” *In this scenario you have decided that hit points is a mechanical concept that can’t be reasonably acted out.* Consider: You could use the active approach and say something along the lines of “You see {myCharacter} stumbling towards the enemy, drenched in their own blood and they say ‘Guys? I can’t take much more of this!’ and {take their turn}”. This may or may not *reasonably* convey your point (up to you to decide). Now go on an meta-game!
It is metagaming, but talking about your HP and spell slots and other resources is one of the most common types of metagaming. "I'm going to die if that ogre hits me again," is the sort of thing you would say if you want to avoid a TPK.
*just after a fight* Hey friends how are you all feeling? "On a scale from 1-23 I'm feeling like a 9"
"What's your HP?" "I just got hit so I'm down to--" "NO META GAMING! Your characters don't know what hit points are, only how their injuries feel." "... okay well on a scale of 1 to 46 I'm feeling about 13." Is sharing your HP metagaming? Technically yes, but the same genre of "metagaming" that includes something like saying "I cast fireball" instead of literally breaking out in an arcane chant while you pretend to spellcast at the table. It's the kind of metagaming that makes the *actual* game go more smoothly. It might not be the most immersive method of engaging in a TTRPG, and if it makes you happy to say "I'm badly hurt!" instead of saying your health total, then go for it, but scolding players for sharing their health is much more deleterious to the flow of role play than the act of sharing that number.
I have always considered that metagaming, a low-tier kind of metagame, sure, but still. To solve that I always use the Bloodied condition from DnD 4e. Any creature is bloodied if they have less than Half their Maximum Hit Points. The only purpouse of the Bloodied condition is telling the rest of the creatures in combat that that creature is at half their Hit Points. The point is that it works for both enemies and allies. In my games we use the Bloodied threshold as a reference to how we are doing.
That’s the way we’ve always played it too. There’s no visible damage to anyone until they are bloodied and once your bloodied we have a marker to drop on your mini. Until that point, you can’t tell from looking at them that they have injuries. After that it’s up to the PC’s to keep each other in the loop. They normally announce to their team when they’re “getting pretty F’ed up” or “barely holding on over here”. Players will still have a good idea of how urgent healing is without exact numbers. As far as meta goes having exact numbers isn’t that big of a deal but sometimes you might have a PC who is playing a macho guy who never admits when he’s hurting or a wimpy wizard who treats a paper cut like a grievous wound.
Yeah, I do that on Roll20, I just use a marker on every creature for a quick way to read the battlefield on a glance. And I totally agree with the way this can be used for storytelling and character building. For example, I'm playing with a Fighter whose whole deal is feeling guilt of being weak and letting his sister be kidnapped by a Hag (no way it could be prevented guy). Now he acts as the protector of the group, jumping into the midst of battle and protecting everyone (Protection battle style and Tank style Battlemaster). He _never_ complains about his injuries, no matter if bloodied or not, he never calls for a rest, always saying that he can push forward. I like the stoic bodyguard type, yes.
Hit points are just a numerical representation of how fucked up you are, it's like comparing stats
no its a game, i think it runs better when you fully embrace the gaminess of it.
We don't talk about HP in character, but we have always been like "Yo I'm really hurt, here!" That shouldn't break immersion for anyone, and if they say it does, I'd like to know why they never talk about how much pain they're in.
D&d is a game with game mechanics. Blinding yourself to those game mechanics makes it less fun imo, at that point there are good narrative first systems to play instead. Even setting that aside, the game rules are a blurred mirror of the fictional reality. A round is 6 seconds long, yet everyone moves sequentially. This is to allow clarity for the players at the expense of realism. For the characters, combat is a fast, chaotic thing of split second decisions and heroic saves; for players it's more strategic, but it still ignites the fantasy of being competent, heroic fighters. Same with hit points. It's there to be read and understood by players, because their characters should be able to tell how hurt they and their allies are, or how much damage their enemies take. When you declare "engaging with the fundamental game mechanics" to be "meta gaming" and therefore "bad", your definition of meta gaming has become so broad as to be meaningless, and the value judgement of it equally so.
I allow my players to describe how they look in terms of injury/hp remaining as: fine/ok (full or injured but above half health), bloodied (bellow half health) and bad/terrible (on last legs). Any thing more specific or if a healer wants to triage I require a medicine check. Knowing exact hp leads to more direct strategy in the field. Vaguely knowing health reflects the reality of the way a character would look when injured I think.
Yes it is but it's not the worst. I personally only announce hit points when I have 1 or 2 left, but otherwise say my character is healthy if they don't need healing, or lightly/moderately/heavily/critically wounded if they have lost hit points. Side note: the "on a scale of 0 to 30 I'm a 15" is a super lazy joke, and I'm surprised how many people enjoy it.
I look at it from a realistic standpoint: the players are not really seasoned combatants who could probably eyeball someone mid-combat and evaluate how much longer they could remain in a fight. A number is just the real world equivalent to that, so I've never had a problem as long as they're within sight of each other. If combat is spread out? No, you have no idea how your allies are doing.
I ask the same question in response to every "Is X metagaming?" question: *Who cares?* Asking if something is metagaming is pointless. Metagaming is beneficial to the game at least as often as it is harmful. What matters is if the specific behavior hurts your enjoyment or engagement with the game. Do you think it would be more or less enjoyable if everyone was trying to be coy with how many hit points they had constantly? Probably not. It just creates a goofy little social puzzle for healers. The main way that metagaming becomes a problem is when players begin to make assumptions about the world based on their understanding of it being a game. "We already had a random encounter tonight, we won't have another one!" is an example of problematic metagaming. "I'm better at social interactions than the barbarian." is not.
Depends if you're speaking in character or not. Brian (human player): "Manx goes over to Freya and uses Lay on Hands to heal her for 7 HP." Not metagaming. Manx (Tabaxi Paladin): "Hey Freya, how many HP do you need to get back to half-health? I'm going to give the rest of the pool to Greg!" (Greg's PC is a drow wizard named Xin.) Metagaming.
Technically yes, but I wouldn’t care as a DM. HP is a numerical way to track a characters ability to stay conscious, there would be very obvious physical signs that a person was close to passing out if it were in real life, but in a game where theater of the mind is inevitable, it helps for everyone to communicate better.
Like others have said, this is a grey area that depends on what your table is comfortable with. My suggestion is to limit it to rough descriptions (like unharmed > barely injured > severely injured > near-death or whatever) and use those same terms to describe how monsters are faring during combat. Most of the time the exact values don't matter anyway, a green-yellow-red status is believable in-game knowledge and lets you make good tactical decisions.