# In the heat of battle, is hit point loss a wound?



## Blood & Bones (Jun 4, 2012)

How do you actually think about hit points in the middle of a game; is hit point loss a matter of endurance or real physical damage?


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## Fifth Element (Jun 4, 2012)

Considering the amount of physical damage a mid- to high-level character would require to be taken down, it makes no sense that it would all be physical damage. Gygax explained this all decades ago, and it will apply so long as a massively abstract system like hit points is used.


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## jadrax (Jun 4, 2012)

Blood & Bones said:


> How do you actually think about hit points in the middle of a game; is hit point loss a matter of endurance or real physical damage?




Gygax always claimed the Errol Flynn movies where what he was trying to emulate, its all flashing blades and very little actual contact.


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## Blood & Bones (Jun 4, 2012)

I'm not talking about what Gygax thought; I'm talking about what happens in YOUR mind's eye. Often times what we intend to say is different than how others perceive it; game rules vs. fluff can be seen in the same manner. How do you honestly perceive hit points?


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## Minigiant (Jun 4, 2012)

Hit Points is an abstraction of many excuses why a character is not dead.

It's "I'm not dead because I blocked/parried/dodged/shoulder roll or You only scratched/bruised/nicked/shook/winded/dizzied me" with a usage limitation.

Sometimes it is a wound, sometimes a scratch, sometimes a harmless parry, sometimes a forced miss with no contact


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## Ahnehnois (Jun 4, 2012)

I think the word "hit point" should be used to describe actual physical damage from actual physical hits.

As others have pointed out, this becomes nonsensical with the amount of hit points high level characters have, which is why I stopped using hit points a long time ago.

In any case, physical wounds are the main outcome measure of combat and should be explicitly tracked in some fashion.


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## Nytmare (Jun 4, 2012)

I voted for peanut butter and jelly because the upper end of the poll didn't have enough abstraction for me.


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## GX.Sigma (Jun 4, 2012)

We don't really think about it too much. High HP is "looking fine," low HP is "looking pretty bad," 0 HP is "it dies."


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## Gold Roger (Jun 4, 2012)

Depends entirely on the creature hit and what attack it was that hit. On a bulette every hit is a proper wound, on a pixy, only the lone that takes it down. PC's are in the middle, but with large variance. 

The halfling rogue mostly aquires fatigue, minor bruises and luck running out, the large in-your-face barbarian starts of with aquiring cuts and goes all the way to arrows and large gashes all over his body.

An attack that goes under 0 is a potentially mortal wound by default, unless other options (and optional rules for going to 0) are explicitly agreed by the group.


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## CleverNickName (Jun 4, 2012)

I've always thought of damage as physical harm.  Never had a problem.


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## VannATLC (Jun 4, 2012)

There are two blows I narrate as significant, The one that introduced (in 4e) a bloodied condition, and that would usually be a minor scrap, cut or crush, and the blow that drops the monster, which could be significant or not, depending on whether it dropped it to over -10, or just below 0.

Monsters on 0HP drop, but don't die, in my campaigns.


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## Dannager (Jun 4, 2012)

Ahnehnois said:


> I think the word "hit point" should be used to describe actual physical damage from actual physical hits.




Why?


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## Old_Skool (Jun 4, 2012)

We are asking the wrong question.  What we should be asking is: should the DM subtract hit points from a target regardless of the attack roll result?


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## Dannager (Jun 4, 2012)

Old_Skool said:


> We are asking the wrong question.  What we should be asking is: should the DM subtract hit points from a target regardless of the attack roll result?




That question does not allow for a particularly nuanced answer.


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## Zaukrie (Jun 4, 2012)

I don't really think about hitpoints as anything other than a number that goes down when creatures are hit, and goes up when they are healed. It is totally abstract to me. That way, I don't get all obsessed over what they mean and get all annoyed with rules and fluff and whatnot. Just like AC is a number that helps you adjudicate if you should subtract hitpoints or not. Totally abstract to me.


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## Deadboy (Jun 4, 2012)

Nytmare said:


> I voted for peanut butter and jelly because the upper end of the poll didn't have enough abstraction for me.




I did as well, for the same reason.


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## Ahnehnois (Jun 4, 2012)

Dannager said:


> Why?



First, because that is the closest thing to a common language meaning for the term "hit point"; it's what someone who doesn't play rpgs likely thinks of, someone who hasn't been in endless message board debates about hit point philosophy.

Second, because, and I cannot stress this enough, combining all possible types of physical harm into one number is already an _extremely abstract measure_. Combining bruises, broken bones, bleeding wounds, injured joints, the interactions between all the different body systems, and the pain of injury into one measure is far more abstract than just about anything else in D&D. Trying to take that and make it even more vague by throwing in a bunch of metagame factors and other considerations creates endless confusion and tons of bad mechanics feeding off of this one fundamental mistake. Fix hit points, and all the healing, save-or-die, fighter vs. wizard, and any number of other endless debates are radically changed for the better.


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## Raith5 (Jun 4, 2012)

HP for me is a number that goes up and down. I laugh at my enemies when it goes up and I cry and hide behind the fighter when it goes down.


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## CleverNickName (Jun 4, 2012)

Old_Skool said:


> We are asking the wrong question.  What we should be asking is: should the DM subtract hit points from a target regardless of the attack roll result?



Yep, that's the elephant in the room.


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## Blood & Bones (Jun 4, 2012)

Old_Skool said:


> We are asking the wrong question.  What we should be asking is: should the DM subtract hit points from a target regardless of the attack roll result?




If it's an abstraction, then the question becomes, "Is it balanced?" Evidence from polling suggests that very few people actually believes it is unbalanced - myself included. From a purely mechanical point of view, that's all that matters.

However, when dealing with a RPG, internal consistency/logic within the game along with a small measure of real-world logic has an affect on the ability of the players to immerse themselves into the game. My hypothesis was that Hit Points as merely abstraction is not how the majority of people actually think about hit points. With how this poll is shaping up, it looks like I might be wrong, or we might be looking at a 50/50 split.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 4, 2012)

Peanutbutter Jelly Time!

Each and every "hitpoint of damage" can be described as stamina-damage or meat-damage depending on the thematic needs.

You are at full HP and take a 1HP swing from a wyvern's tail, necessitating a Con save against poison?  Which you then fail?  Well, then, you at least got scratched in the process.


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## Hussar (Jun 4, 2012)

The only hit point that matters is the last one.  Everything else is just bumps and bruises.  It's the only interpretation that actually makes sense given healing times and the complete lack of any actual consequences of taking damage.


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## Lanefan (Jun 4, 2012)

Early h.p. - luck, endurance, minor nicks
Mid h.p. - endurance, nicks, bruises
The last 10 or so h.p. - more significant injuries, cuts, head shots
0 to -10 h.p. - wounds fatal if not treated
-11 and below - fire up the barbeque

Lanefan


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## the Jester (Jun 4, 2012)

It very much depends.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 4, 2012)

A character acts at full capacity while they have 1 or more hit points. It is hard to justify any form of serious injury under these conditions. At zero hps or below, the character goes down. This presumably means they have been physically attacked hard enough to incapacitate them (although I've never been a fan of auto-unconciousness).

As such, hit points are best used as an abstraction to represent morale, luck, skill, toughness, divine providence, and so on rather than having anything to do with physical injury. Physical injury is what happens if you go to zero hps or below and could just as adequately be represented (if not a lot more so) by some form of condition track, separate pool of "wounds" or some other mechanic better representing physical damage.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Ti-bob (Jun 4, 2012)

"Hit points measure the degree of Script Immunity of a character."

Hit Point represent ANYTHING which means that the character should not die and can continue fighting or acting; lack of Hit Point means means that the character should would fall over.  It screen time is over!

A character have many hit point if the spectator believe they are important to the story and expect them not to give up easily.  If a character is important to the story, it have more Hit Point then an unimportant one.

Blood or not, wound or not is not important to Script Immunity.


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## Viktyr Gehrig (Jun 4, 2012)

Everything that inflicts HP damage involves some form of physical harm to the body.

Your HP total (and now your Hit Dice) represents the reservoir of Positive Energy your body is capable of containing at once. Fighters have high HP because they are healthy and physically active. Wizards have low HP because they constantly expend their life energy on casting the spells. Hit Points are obviously your body's ability to generate instant healing, while Hit Dice are the 'deeper' reservoirs of energy that restore your corpse to health when you rest.

That's also why your ability scores go up when you level. It's not diet and exercise. You're more full of life stuff.


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## thewok (Jun 4, 2012)

I chose "It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!" because that's the only option with which I fully agree.

I don't view hit points as any real measure of physical injury.  For me, everything up until 0 or below is an awkward parry, an arm-jarring block, or a twisting dodge that screws up your footing.  Then, when the hit points hit the 0 threshold, every hit becomes a physical injury (unless it's subdual damage).  Some may be more serious than others, and some may not be as serious as they seem upon initial examination.

Scratches and bruises can happen at any point in the dwindling of hit points.  They're superficial, and they don't mean anything.  It's so incredibly easy to bruise or scratch a person that trying to assign some sort of hit point value to such an injury is a waste of time to me.


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## mlund (Jun 4, 2012)

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

Seriously, though, it all depends - who's taking the damage?

Humanoids with more than 1 or 2 Hit Dice are probably taking nicks and bruises at best until something bloodies then (a wound), or kills them (a mortal wound). You really can't be run through or disemboweled and keep fighting. An attack that creates a relevant wound as opposed to a flesh wound is going to put you out of a fight and probably at serious risk of dying without magical healing.

Big dumb monsters with a ton of meat to them by just being a Dragon / Golem / Cave Troll? Wounds wounds and more wounds. It's just that the PCs can't get at the vital stuff until the foul beast has been beaten down or they have some sort of amazing opportunity (Vorpal Sword Critical, massive Rogue Sneak Attack).

The narrative device is the responsibility of the DM and should be used in appropriate contexts to the best effect. Just be careful not to narrate yourself into a corner!

- Marty Lund


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## underfoot007ct (Jun 4, 2012)

I think we need to have at least 5-6 more threads just like this one, and all the previous threads. Just to see if anyone ever changes their opinion, but I doubt anyone is being swayed on either side of this never ending debate.


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## Jan van Leyden (Jun 4, 2012)

As the fighting ability of a PC is a binary affair (either in full fighting condition or down), HP-loss doesn't mean physical injury IMHO.

For me a PC should only take one or two serious blows to go down: the blow which sends him to 0 or less HP and perhaps another one shortly before that telling blow, which should serve as a warning. In pre-4e versions I'd narrate a strike which brings a PC to one-digit HPs as such a first blow.

4e's "bloodied" serves a similar purpose, but, as it doesn't have any consequences, I re-engineer it in the narrative context: It's the first time the PC really feels the extra effort necessary to avoid being hit. May be his shield arm tingles or hurts from blocking the blow or he's got  a stitch from his awkward jump to the side.


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## Campbell (Jun 4, 2012)

Why choose? Right now I'm playing in a 6th level AD&D game that pretty much embraces the hp as meat space narrative and its great gonzo fun. My dwarf fighter is pretty much a super hero. He is almost impervious to poison, and puny mages have no effect on him. I've also run 4e games with all martial PCs where I completely embraced the meta aspects of hp and all the PCs were mortal. Sometimes you want something in between the extremes. Why not have a game that provides the tools for groups to decide for themselves. That means its okay for things like warlords, damage on misses, etc. to be completely optional mechanics. Plus nothing says that narration between adventurers and monsters needs to be consistent. The ogre could be a big bag of meat while the lithe fighter deftly dodges attacks and eventually wears out leaving an opening for the ogre to smash him to pieces.


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## delericho (Jun 4, 2012)

Strictly IMC:

Hit points represent a combination of many things: simple physical toughness, skill, luck, divine provenance, script immunity...

The loss of hit points represents some whittling away at all of these things. But, in particular, _the loss of even 1 hit points represents *some* measure of physical injury_ - even if it is as little as a paper cut.

This is quite important, since it makes it clear how poison and the like work - if the character is able to reduce the damage to 0, he isn't affected, but if even 1 hp damage remains then there is at least a nick for the poison to enter his system.

That said, greater damage doesn't necessarily mean a greater injury - whether as a raw number ("the ogre hits for 20 damage!") or as a percentage of the target's total ("oh no, I've only got 100 hp left!").

The only wound I narrate as being particularly bad is one that kills a character outright - so if a PC gets dropped straight to -10, then he gets beheaded, run through, or otherwise suitably terminated. Otherwise, they'll be bruised or battered, or bleeding from a dozen cuts. But even the blow that takes them below 0 merely reflects the cumulative effect of several things, not necessarily a single particularly nasty blow.

(The problems with this abstraction are, of course, twofold: there are those cases where a character's raw toughness shouldn't be able to save them and skill doesn't apply (though luck, divine provenance, and script immunity _always_ do); and the _cure light wounds_ spell, and the like, don't scale right. I deal with that by not worrying about it.)

Oh, and FWIW: I'm not a big fan of Fighters doing damage on a miss, either. Though depending on the specifics of the situation I may well accept it - and it's not an automatic deal-breaker for me in any case.


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## Li Shenron (Jun 4, 2012)

Physical damage is the most natural way to see it, every casual gamer spontaneously sees HP loss as wounds. It is only when a more experience gamer patronizes the casual gamers in the group about this topic, and suggests to reason more about it, that people starts complicating the interpreration.

5e has a more explicit definition of HP damage as non-wounds until negative HP, so I'll try to make the effort of seeing them more like this from now on.


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## VannATLC (Jun 4, 2012)

This is why 4e moved diseased and poisons to event tracks, for the most part, and its probably my favourite method of dealing with them.


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## slobo777 (Jun 4, 2012)

Ahnehnois said:


> In any case, physical wounds are the main outcome measure of combat and should be explicitly tracked in some fashion.




Any major wound from damage - a bleeding gash, a broken bone, a severed muscle or tendon, concussion etc - is badly represented by hit points. These things would most likely take a combatant out of a fight, or at the very least penalise them.

As a "measure" of wounds, I have always taken "over 0 = not seriously wounded" and "0 or less = seriously or fatally wounded". As such, it* is* an outcome for the fight - whether or not you are seriously injured at all - and what hit points represent for me is the journey to that outcome.

One thing is for certain, a figure such as "10 hit points" does not represent the same thing to different targets, or in different circumstances where it is applied. 

Everything else under discussion is really the *degree* to which that is true in each play style. Some people like a bit of grit and gore, some people like cinematic everything's "just a flesh wound" until the drama of death. 

Because it's a game, and follows game mechanic rules, not simulated medical science, both sides to interpretation have their problems when it comes to believability.

Definitely using the word "hit" in a purely game mechanic sense, and having to separate it from its obvious non-rule meaning is not a winning formula for quite a few posters. I'm ok with it, and my group though, so that's the way we're heading . . .


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## billd91 (Jun 4, 2012)

delericho said:


> Strictly IMC:
> 
> Hit points represent a combination of many things: simple physical toughness, skill, luck, divine provenance, script immunity...
> 
> ...




I would XP this post if I could. It pretty much describes my preferences in the matter as well.


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## tuxgeo (Jun 4, 2012)

If a PC goes down in a fight, there was probably some physical damage in there somewhere, but the physical damage doesn't have to be the first, the middle, or the last chunk of HP loss in the fight. The PC might have received a severe cut early but kept fighting through sheer adrenaline, then later collapsed due to exhaustion and fright. 

Short version: Hit Points are abstract, so there is no point in trying to determine (and "rule") which hit points were which kind of damage, and which other hit points were which other kind of damage. 
_Individually, Hit Points don't "represent" anything in particular._


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## Gadget (Jun 4, 2012)

Ti-bob said:


> "Hit points measure the degree of Script Immunity of a character."
> 
> Hit Point represent ANYTHING which means that the character should not die and can continue fighting or acting; lack of Hit Point means means that the character should would fall over.  It screen time is over!
> 
> ...




Quoted for truth.  Ablative Script Immunity.  However you want to define that in game, this is what it boils down to.


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## Mishihari Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

Logically it has to be luck/endurance first.  The damage endured by a high level PC is crazy otherwise.  Unfortunately that screws up combat descriptions.  I once tried "The orc's arrow narrowly misses your head, doing 4 points of damage."  The players hated this approach so I stopped using it.

Logically it also has to be cut/scrape first.  "You take 4 points of damage from the spider's poison" requires a physical puncture even if you're at full hit points.

I really dislike hit points.


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## sheadunne (Jun 4, 2012)

It's all blood! Or rather every hit is some blood, some endurance, some everything else. If you take 8 points of damage maybe only half or a third is actual injury, but some of it always is. Perhaps your hp for class is endurance and your con modifier is injury. It doesn't really matter because each hit brings me closer to death! I don't think, how that hit make me tired. I think, a couple of more hits like that and I'm dead!


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## Alan Shutko (Jun 4, 2012)

I've always treated HP like John McClane in Die Hard.  He had a ton of hit points. Everything did damage to him, and by the end of the movie he's full of nicks, cuts, holes, contusions, and everything else, but he keeps going.

I have no problem with people doing damage on a miss.  Sure, the axe was blocked by the armor/sword/whatever, but the fighter hit so hard it bruised you.  

Beyond this, I just remind myself to stop over thinking things. This is D&D, that's just how it works here.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 4, 2012)

The other possibility is that hit points are purely a game construct - we don't conceive of them as being anything other than hit points.

I reckon that in actual gameplay, I either see hit points as representing nothing real, or as physical wounds. I've never followed the Gygaxian interpretation of them being mostly skill, luck, stamina, sixth sense, or magical protection.

The problem of the high level fighter being as tough as a warhorse is simply ignored. I find it's quite easy to just ignore stuff if you want to.


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## thewok (Jun 4, 2012)

Alan Shutko said:


> I've always treated HP like John McClane in Die Hard.  He had a ton of hit points. Everything did damage to him, and by the end of the movie he's full of nicks, cuts, holes, contusions, and everything else, but he keeps going.
> 
> I have no problem with people doing damage on a miss.  Sure, the axe was blocked by the armor/sword/whatever, but the fighter hit so hard it bruised you.
> 
> Beyond this, I just remind myself to stop over thinking things. This is D&D, that's just how it works here.



Perfect example to use for the hit dice mechanic, too.  He gets in a fight, damn near dies, but comes through in the end, then he grabs a smoke and heads off to the next encounter.


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## Herschel (Jun 4, 2012)

Hit points are like the gas tank in my car, I'm okay so long as I don't run out but get nervous when I get pretty low and if I run out I'm not going anywhere until I get some more.


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## Skyscraper (Jun 4, 2012)

You know, an early hit could mean a wound and a later hit could mean loss of endurance/luck. 4E brought the concept that, whatever the earlier hits were (you deicde), the last one hurts that's for sure.


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## Blood & Bones (Jun 4, 2012)

Okay, Ladies and Gents... I'm going to call it. My hypothesis has been proven wrong, and as such there is no sound argument that can be made against the fighter's slayer ability. There is only whining and gnashing of teeth left...


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 4, 2012)

Blood & Bones said:


> Okay, Ladies and Gents... I'm going to call it. My hypothesis has been proven wrong, and as such there is no sound argument that can be made against the fighter's slayer ability. There is only whining and gnashing of teeth left...




Just because a thousand people say something, does not make it right.  A hit point loss is always a wound, though doesn't necessarily mean blood.  It could be a bruise or welt.  To quote Jason Alexander, who says it much better than I, 







> The trick to understanding the hit point system is understand that a hit point is not equal to a hit point. In D&D, 1 hit point of damage always represents a physical wound. However, the severity of the wound represented varies depending on how many hit points the victim has.
> 
> For a character with 1 hp, that 1 hp of damage represents a serious wound -- a punctured lung, a broken leg, or something of that ilk.
> 
> ...




Hit points are luck, divine grace, AND general toughness.  It's not one of these, it's all of these.  Which means some portion of every hit does some damage.  This is the way it has always been until 4e.  This is the way it must remain.  A hit not being an actual hit presents problems in narration and immersion.  The opposite does not hold, so the default should be that a sword, hammer, axe, or whatever actually causes injury.  Imagine that!


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## Lanefan (Jun 4, 2012)

Viktyr Korimir said:


> That's also why your ability scores go up when you level. It's not diet and exercise. You're more full of life stuff.



"You're more full of life stuff."  Brilliant! 

Life stuff must be what's left over when you die, much like residuum is left over when a magic item breaks.

Lanefan


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 4, 2012)

delericho said:


> <snip for readability and to save space>



This. Absolutely the way I've always played it.



Alan Shutko said:


> I've always treated HP like John McClane in Die Hard.  He had a ton of hit points. Everything did damage to him, and by the end of the movie he's full of nicks, cuts, holes, contusions, and everything else, but he keeps going.
> 
> I have no problem with people doing damage on a miss.  Sure, the axe was blocked by the armor/sword/whatever, but the fighter hit so hard it bruised you.
> 
> Beyond this, I just remind myself to stop over thinking things. This is D&D, that's just how it works here.



I can stop over-thinking everything right up until a character takes a nap and wakes up completely healed.



JRRNeiklot said:


> Just because a thousand people say something, does not make it right.  A hit point loss is always a wound, though doesn't necessarily mean blood.  It could be a bruise or welt.  To quote Jason Alexander, who says it much better than I,
> 
> Hit points are luck, divine grace, AND general toughness.  It's not one of these, it's all of these.  Which means some portion of every hit does some damage.  This is the way it has always been until 4e.  This is the way it must remain.  A hit not being an actual hit presents problems in narration and immersion.  The opposite does not hold, so the default should be that a sword, hammer, axe, or whatever actually causes injury.  Imagine that!



Yes. As I said above, this is exactly the way I've played for almost 30 years.


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## Warbringer (Jun 5, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> "You're more full of life stuff."  Brilliant!
> 
> Lanefan




Just replace Hit Points with Life Stuff; no more confusion


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## Dannager (Jun 5, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> A hit not being an actual hit presents problems in narration and immersion.  The opposite does not hold, so the default should be that a sword, hammer, axe, or whatever actually causes injury.  Imagine that!




There are many of us who have run into no problems with narration or immersion when dealing with hit points in 4e. Clearly, therefore, problems with narration or immersion are not a necessary function of abstract, 4e-style (and I don't _really_ mean 4e-style hit points, since hit points are defined the same in 4e as they are in pretty much every other edition) hit points. Rather, I would argue, they are a function of the group adjudicating them, and of that group's willingness to accept hit points as they have been defined.

By the way, if *anything*, non-abstract hit points cause problems with narration and immersion. A beef-tacular barbarian with 200 hit points can take Fireball after Fireball after Fireball after Fireball after Fireball _to the face_ and still have half his hit points remaining. If those hit points represent actual wounds associated with the attacks, your barbarian should be (narratively speaking) the adventurer equivalent of carne asada. But if those hit points are _not_ actual wounds, then your barbarian can simply be exhausted and battered from repeatedly diving out of the way of explosions and flying debris, action-movie style.


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## El Mahdi (Jun 5, 2012)

Warbringer said:


> Just replace Hit Points with Life Stuff; no more confusion




Just as long as everybody keeps their Life Stuff to themselves!


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Dannager said:


> There are many of us who have run into no problems with narration or immersion when dealing with hit points in 4e. Clearly, therefore, problems with narration or immersion are not a necessary function of abstract, 4e-style (and I don't _really_ mean 4e-style hit points, since hit points are defined the same in 4e as they are in pretty much every other edition) hit points. Rather, I would argue, they are a function of the group adjudicating them, and of that group's willingness to accept hit points as they have been defined.



So, what you're saying, is that those of us who have a "hit" and "damage" follow the actual dictionary definitions of the real words are _playing D&D wrong_? Because that's complete and utter BS.



> By the way, if *anything*, non-abstract hit points cause problems with narration and immersion. A beef-tacular barbarian with 200 hit points can take Fireball after Fireball after Fireball after Fireball after Fireball _to the face_ and still have half his hit points remaining. If those hit points represent actual wounds associated with the attacks, your barbarian should be (narratively speaking) the adventurer equivalent of carne asada. But if those hit points are _not_ actual wounds, then your barbarian can simply be exhausted and battered from repeatedly diving out of the way of explosions and flying debris, action-movie style.



You're falling into a fallacy here. The answer to "no wounds" is not "all wounds." It's "mitigated wounds." The barbarian wouldn't be barbecue, but he'd have some inflamed skin. He ducked his head and managed not to be barbecue, but the flames still licked against his skin and probably hurt like hell. He ducked beneath the flames as they burst, and didn't take the full brunt of the flame (even if he didn't save for half).

This is the commonest objection to hit points = wounds and it's a fallacy.

Once again, those people for whom a hit is actually a hit and a damage actually damage do not describe an axe hit as "cleaving into your ribs and disemboweling your barbarian," at least until the hit that kills a character. What we do do is say, "The orc's axe blow slices across your thigh, leaving a small cut." Or, with your fireball example, "The fireball explodes and the flames surround you, but you duck and huddle down as the fire licks against your back and singes a few hairs, with most of the heat passing by you. It's going to hurt in a few minutes when the adrenaline runs out."

See? A hit that's a hit. Wounds that need to be taken care of. The hit points lost are simultaneously representing a mix of luck, skill, endurance, and physical wounds. *Which is what the rules say.*


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Dannager said:


> By the way, if *anything*, non-abstract hit points cause problems with narration and immersion. A beef-tacular barbarian with 200 hit points can take Fireball after Fireball after Fireball after Fireball after Fireball _to the face_ and still have half his hit points remaining. If those hit points represent actual wounds associated with the attacks, your barbarian should be (narratively speaking) the adventurer equivalent of carne asada. But if those hit points are _not_ actual wounds, then your barbarian can simply be exhausted and battered from repeatedly diving out of the way of explosions and flying debris, action-movie style.




Emphatically this.  If hit points are not largely abstract then my suspension of disbelief breaks hard as soon as the number of hit points a PC has exceeds the amount of damage an orc can do with an axe on a critical hit.   It's not fireball after fireball to the face, it's axe blow after axe blow biting deep into their body that causes my brain to break.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Emphatically this.  If hit points are not largely abstract then my suspension of disbelief breaks hard as soon as the number of hit points a PC has exceeds the amount of damage an orc can do with an axe on a critical hit.   It's not fireball after fireball to the face, it's axe blow after axe blow biting deep into their body that causes my brain to break.



See above. It's not "axe blow after axe blow biting deep into their body." And neither is it, "The orc rolls a hit. You narrowly avoid having your head chopped off." It's "The orc rolls a hit. His axe slams into your chest. Your armor softens the blow, but it's going to leave a bruise."

Why do "HP is NEVER damage" people seem as obstinate and unimaginative as they claim we are?


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> See? A hit that's a hit. Wounds that need to be taken care of. The hit points lost are simultaneously representing a mix of luck, skill, endurance, and physical wounds. *Which is what the rules say.*




*Then why are you arguing against this?*  Why are you arguing that PCs can't recover luck, endurance, and skill by resting?  Why are you arguing that wounds are every bit as serious _after_ they are bandaged as before?  You claim that hit points are luck, skill, endurance, and physical wounds.  But mysteriously you hate mundane healing and hate catching a breath actually getting some of your endurance back.

Why in your world is the only way to recover your endurance to have a magic spell cast on you?  Why are wounds just as crippling when the blood has clotted and they have been bandaged as they were when they were fresh, immediately painful, and flowing freely?  And why is the only way to recover luck to have the Cleric wiggle his fingers at you?


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> *Then why are you arguing against this?*  Why are you arguing that PCs can't recover luck, endurance, and skill by resting?  Why are you arguing that wounds are every bit as serious _after_ they are bandaged as before?  You claim that hit points are luck, skill, endurance, and physical wounds.  But mysteriously you hate mundane healing and hate catching a breath actually getting some of your endurance back.
> 
> Why in your world is the only way to recover your endurance to have a magic spell cast on you?  Why are wounds just as crippling when the blood has clotted and they have been bandaged as they were when they were fresh, immediately painful, and flowing freely?  And why is the only way to recover luck to have the Cleric wiggle his fingers at you?




Did I EVER say that I don't want "some of your endurance back"? EVER? No, I said you shouldn't get ALL of it back.


EDIT: Hell - I even looked at some of the "compromise" proposals and thought they might make some sense. My objection has always been that sleeping for 8 hours takes you back to perfectly normal. A long rest grants every last single hit point back.


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## Grydan (Jun 5, 2012)

[MENTION=717]JRRNeiklot[/MENTION] I don't think Jason Alexander's quoted examples really hold for any edition of D&D. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge there's never been an edition of the game where a good night's rest didn't recover at least 1 HP. 

If such is the case, then in any non-fatal scenario, even for a 1 HP character, it seems rather unlikely that 1 HP of damage represents a punctured lung or broken limb, unless we are to believe that the less health one has to begin with, the more one's rate of healing resembles Wolverine's.

HP as representing anything other than abstract distance from unconsciousness and/or death are rather a dismal failure. They certainly are a poor system for modelling punctured lungs and broken limbs, things that would most certainly have an actual impact on further activities an adventurer might partake in.

If my character is down to his final hitpoint, and yet can still run as fast, jump as far, lift as much weight, and wield his weapon just as well as he could at full health, then I'm rather disinclined to think that any HP damage short of death is inflicting wounds worthy of being called wounds.

I think the HP system is a wonderful and highly successful gaming tool. However, if one actually wants to model _injury_ rather than _arbitrary lifebar_, one should probably look to some other system.

I should note that any system that actually _tries_ to model injury in any meaningful way is pretty much inevitably going to have death spirals, which appeal to some gamers, but are rather a turn-off to others.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Did I EVER say that I don't want "some of your endurance back"? EVER? No, I said you shouldn't get ALL of it back.




You said, and I quote "I hate mundane healing" over on the other thread.  Getting your endurance and hence your hit points back from resting _is_ healing.  It's getting your hit points back.



> EDIT: Hell - I even looked at some of the "compromise" proposals and thought they might make some sense. My objection has always been that sleeping for 8 hours takes you back to perfectly normal. A long rest grants every last single hit point back.



And here I offered another compromise which you rejected out of hand.  I'll get rid of the 8 hour rest when wizards need to go to a tower, library, or lab to prepare spells and clerics need time in the temples.  This is a gamist issue and one that makes the 15 minute adventuring day even more absurd.

While your precious wizards get everything back after 8 hours, so do the fighters.  Change one and the other moves with it.  And I'll gladly move both in my games.

Edit: And please find me these mythical "hp is never damage" people.  Because I'm not one and I've never met one.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> You said, and I quote "I hate mundane healing" over on the other thread.  Getting your endurance and hence your hit points back from resting _is_ healing.  It's getting your hit points back.



Again, the restoration of all hit points by taking a long nap is my problem.



> And here I offered another compromise which you rejected out of hand.  I'll get rid of the 8 hour rest when wizards need to go to a tower, library, or lab to prepare spells and clerics need time in the temples.  This is a gamist issue and one that makes the 15 minute adventuring day even more absurd.
> 
> While your precious wizards get everything back after 8 hours, so do the fighters.  Change one and the other moves with it.  And I'll gladly move both in my games.



Would it surprise you to know that I can count on one hand the number of wizards or clerics I've played? In fact, I play rogues about 50% of the time, fighters about 25%, and monks about 15%. The rest are various other classes. So it's not about my love of wizards. I just think of wizards minus spells as worthless. I don't agree that HP for fighters and spells for casters need to be on the same recharge cycle. For one, a fighter who's down even half his HP is far more effective than a wizard who's out half his spells.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> For one, a fighter who's down even half his HP is far more effective than a wizard who's out half his spells.




What level wizard, what edition, and what's he done with his spells - are any of them used on ongoing buffs?  Also how does the wizard fight?  A 3.X conjurer is massively more effective than an evoker.

This ties into Linear Fighter/Quadratic Wizard and the notorious Giant In The Playground duels pitting level 3.5 level 20 fighters vs level 13 wizards (end result 1:1 with one draw - and it was only close due to the fighters having a massive advantage from the wealth by level rules - the initial proposal was core only wizard vs dumpster diving fighter).


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Those are problems with spell power balancing, not spell availability balancing.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Those are problems with spell power balancing, not spell availability balancing.



I fail to see a meaningful difference between the two.  Especially if the wizard gets both more spells each level and more powerful ones.


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## thewok (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> So, what you're saying, is that those of us who have a "hit" and "damage" follow the actual dictionary definitions of the real words are _playing D&D wrong_? Because that's complete and utter BS.



I wouldn't say that you're playing D&D incorrectly.  I would say that, while you're using the dictionary definition of "hit," so are we.

Hit | Define Hit at Dictionary.com
7. to have a marked effect or influence on; affect severely.
10. to reach or attain (a specified level or amount).

Damage | Define Damage at Dictionary.com
1. injury or harm impairing the function or condition of a person or thing

So, when I hit someone, I have hit (reached or attained (via the die roll)) their AC.  I have also hit them in that I have a marked effect on them (by reducing their hit points).

Damage to the hit point pool impairs its function; there is less of it to account for the next hit, and the one after that.

Now, a hit can certainly be an actual physical hit.  I doubt many people here have said that it's not (though I'm sure some have).  But it need not be.  And, unless it puts someone into the ground, it's not a blow that can't be healed naturally or via magic.

The trick is not to narrate yourself into a corner.  If you have no magical healing, then don't describe a vicious assault that skewers your fighters gut, pulling out his intestines when the spear is removed.  No one is going to survive that kind of wound without magical help.  Even if the damage could be repaired, the chance of infection is too high.  If your healer is, for example, a warlord, perhaps a solid critical hit slams into your shield hard enough to make it feel as if your arm has broken.  Or maybe an arrow pierces the thigh muscle, but goes through cleanly, easily disinfected and wrapped; it will be painful to continue, but the person can continue.  Or maybe that orc's axe hits hard enough to crease the fighter's plate, causing a bruise, and maybe a rib fracture--painful, but possible to work through if wrapped, especially with a high pain tolerance.

Narrate the combat to the capabilites of the group.  That's the idea here.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

I do. As I noted in several examples above. I do narrate to the capabilities of the group. I don't narrate myself into a hole. Or, at least, until 4E I didn't. 4E changed how healing works from every other edition (even if Gygax's hit points are abstract, the healing rules just didn't support that), and thus I would have either had to change how I play (I like how I play. I'm invested in how I play. How I play makes sense to me and has worked for decades.), change how 4E works (I don't like to break systems, and changing how 4E's healing works is too major a change for my liking and too much work to really do right), or not play. After a year, I chose option 3.

I think I could even have accepted the warlord's shouts if they granted temporary HP instead. But the complaints against that are either complexity (let's face it, 4E is complex enough as is, with a dozen+ conditions, keywords, etc) or that since it's not true healing, you still need a cleric.

I, frankly, don't understand the cleric hate. I know people have to bite the bullet from time-to-time, but couldn't that be fixed by adjusting playstyle just as much as changing "hits" to "near misses" is adjusting playstyle?

Anyway, until 3E came along with its negative hit points, that argument about hits only being hits when someone drops was a nonstarter. I think I'd rather do away with negative hit points but keep the death saves around.


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## Obryn (Jun 5, 2012)

Hit points are a nonsensical, abstract game construct.

I don't think there's any reason to give them such deep thought.  If the game works well, they're doing their job.  If it doesn't, they're not.

Edit: Basically, this


Alan Shutko said:


> Beyond this, I just remind myself to stop over thinking things. This is D&D, that's just how it works here.




-O


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Obryn said:


> I don't think there's any reason to give them such deep thought.  If the game works well, they're doing their job.  If it doesn't, they're not.



Fair enough. They don't won't for me as written in 4E or D&DNext.


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## Obryn (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Fair enough. They don't won't for me as written in 4E or D&DNext.



...Which is fine?  HPs are a game construct, and like any other game construct, they exist to serve a purpose.  If they don't adequately fulfill their purpose for you, then you either find a way to make them work better or you move on to something different.

-O


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Obryn said:


> ...Which is fine?  HPs are a game construct, and like any other game construct, they exist to serve a purpose.  If they don't adequately fulfill their purpose for you, then you either find a way to make them work better or you move on to something different.



Right, and my point in posting in this thread was explaining why they don't work for me, and what it would take for them to work for me.

Hopefully the modularity buzzword that gets bandied about makes it so that I don't have to work too hard on fixing them to my preference, but if not, if they stay as written, then I'll house rule them.


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## Ratskinner (Jun 5, 2012)

Well, I selected Peanut Butter and Jelly. I kinda would like the first option, but D&D healing/recovery mechanics usually get in the way of that. I'm a big fan of the playtest version so far, because its a system that I can easily modify to fix all my issues with the simple HP system. (I think. I haven't tried it yet.)

I really want to change the way healing spells work, though. That whole thing with the peasant vs the fighter getting the healing spells reversed drives me a little bonkers. I know, I know, probably too much, but still....I don't like quantum-mechanics in my game mechanics.


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## Quickleaf (Jun 5, 2012)

Nytmare said:


> I voted for peanut butter and jelly because the upper end of the poll didn't have enough abstraction for me.




Exactly this. Plus, it depends on the damage vector.


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## Hussar (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Right, and my point in posting in this thread was explaining why they don't work for me, and what it would take for them to work for me.
> 
> Hopefully the modularity buzzword that gets bandied about makes it so that I don't have to work too hard on fixing them to my preference, but if not, if they stay as written, then I'll house rule them.




I think what causes such consternation Mercutio01, is that there is really very, very little difference in any d20 D&D.  Yup, in 4e you get your full hp back in 24 hours.  In 3e, it was a couple of days.  Neither of them are even remotely realistic.  Other than a couple of head wounds, there are no potentially lethal wounds that you can fully recover from in a week, even with modern medical care, let alone sleeping outside in a tent with no medicine.

Which is why, I think, a lot of people just don't see your point.  You have no problem believing one impossible thing, but, apparently the other impossible thing is just "too impossible"?  

IOW, there are no narrations that you can do in 3e that you cannot do in 4e.

Now, earlier D&D with its somewhat longer healing times?  Sure.  Even then, it wasn't that long.  You were fully healed in a couple of weeks from near death.  Again, completely and utterly unrealistic.  Again, there are very few narrations that you can do in 1e that you cannot in 4e and still be believable.

And, honestly, this is ludicrously easy to fix.  Eject the full healing after a complete rest rule.  Done.  Simply slow it down to 3e levels, or 1e levels if that's your preference.  

Where's the problem?


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## Dannager (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> So, what you're saying, is that those of us who have a "hit" and "damage" follow the actual dictionary definitions of the real words are _playing D&D wrong_? Because that's complete and utter BS.




That's not what I'm saying at all, and it's *weird* that you've decided to see it that way.

What I'm saying is that the game of D&D defines - and *has* defined, for literally *decades* now - certain terms according to certain guidelines. If you choose to *reject* those definitions, as you have clearly been doing, it seems silly to imagine that the game will continue to function optimally. In other words, you've been told what the game assumes in terms of how hit points work. You have rejected those assumptions, and then complain that in that rejection you have lost immersion. Well of course you have.

D&D is not a magic box that can be anything you want it to be equally well. It is a game, and it has its strong points, its not-so-strong points, its focuses, its areas that are glossed over, and it actually takes stands on some important gameplay issues. The idea that D&D can be all things to all people is a *bad idea*, and one that is not grounded in reality. It isn't possible to play D&D *wrong* (since right and wrong are issues of morality and really have no place here) but it is _*very*_ possible to play D&D in a way that is contrary to the stated intentions of its design.



> See? A hit that's a hit. Wounds that need to be taken care of. The hit points lost are simultaneously representing a mix of luck, skill, endurance, and physical wounds. *Which is what the rules say.*




That's not what the rules say. The rules say that hit points can represent any of those things, but it says nothing about every hit point representing every one of those simultaneously, and it *certainly* doesn't say that every hit point must represent a physical injury of some sort. That's *your* personal take on hit points, and it is not reflected in the game's design or in the game's evolving explanation of what hit points are.

Now, you're free to argue that hit points *should* be physical wounds, but that's a harder argument because there's really no support for it as far as I can tell; it's just an opinion, with nothing concrete in terms of value-added to gameplay that isn't just as adequately applied in the opposite direction.


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## Lanefan (Jun 5, 2012)

Dannager said:


> That's not what the rules say. The rules say that hit points can represent any of those things, but it says nothing about every hit point representing every one of those simultaneously, and it *certainly* doesn't say that every hit point must represent a physical injury of some sort. That's *your* personal take on hit points, and it is not reflected in the game's design or in the game's evolving explanation of what hit points are.



Until poison gets lobbed into the equation.

Because when using a poisoned weapon every hit - even if for only 1 h.p. damage - *is* a physical injury, even if only a small nick; as that's how the poison gets in. (one could easily argue that a made save means the skin didn't break, but my point remains)

Now, for consistency, extrapolate that thinking to non-poisoned weapons and bingo - every hit represents at least some sort of minor physical injury.  And note the use of the word "minor" here - a tiny cut on the upper arm is still a physical injury.

Lan-"the answer, of course, is to make sure they're dead before they ever get a swing in"-efan


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Dannager said:


> That's not what I'm saying at all, and it's *weird* that you've decided to see it that way.
> 
> What I'm saying is that the game of D&D defines - and *has* defined, for literally *decades* now - certain terms according to certain guidelines. If you choose to *reject* those definitions, as you have clearly been doing, it seems silly to imagine that the game will continue to function optimally. In other words, you've been told what the game assumes in terms of how hit points work. You have rejected those assumptions, and then complain that in that rejection you have lost immersion. Well of course you have.



I posted in another thread 2E's definition of hit points and OD&D's definition, both of which are not the same as 1E's and are no less valid. Indeed, I'd posit that OD&D's are more definitive, if we're going to play that "Gary said" game. The definition is a combination of luck, skill, endurance, and physical damage. It's always been that way. In fact, since it doesn't list what that portion is at all, everyone along the entire continuum is correct.



> it is _*very*_ possible to play D&D in a way that is contrary to the stated intentions of its design.



I would point you to the descriptions of play sections in the various editions, including the 3.5 DMG (which I read through again last night) that encourages DMs to specifically narrate hits as being hits. Seriously, read it again. Unfortunately, my 1E D&D DMG is in storage, so I can't look through that. But 2E has the same kind of advice. So, tell me again how I'm playing contrary to the intentions.



> That's not what the rules say. The rules say that hit points can represent any of those things



I'll stop you there because you're wrong. It doesn't say "can represent." That's your interpretation. It does say that hit points represent all those things, not that it's possible to do so.



> Now, you're free to argue that hit points *should* be physical wounds, but that's a harder argument because there's really no support for it as far as I can tell; it's just an opinion, with nothing concrete in terms of value-added to gameplay that isn't just as adequately applied in the opposite direction.



Again - if you want proof that hits are supposed to be hits, look at the DMG advice on narration, as recently as 3E. Example of Play, page 8 of the 3.5 DMG. And then read through "Describing the Action" starting on page 16.

Look to BD&D the 1978 edition page 7. "[Hit points] represent the amount of damage a character can take...if a character receives a blow, a dice roll will be made to determine the number of damage points inflicted."

And further down the same page when talking about healing, "Otherwise he must continue on in his wounded state until the game is over and he returns to the surface. Each day of rest and recuperation back 'home' will regenerate 1 to 3 of his hit points for the next adventure."

4E DMG, page 22 under the "Narration" headline has this bit of advice - "Instead, use such statistics, along with your knowledge of the scene, to help your narration. If 26 is barely a hit, but the 31 points of damage is a bad wound for the enemy, say: “You swing wildly, and the dragonborn brings his shield up just a second too late. Arrgh! Your blade catches him along the jaw, drawing a deep gash. He staggers!”

We can play quote the books and rules all day, and for every insistence you guys have that hit points never represent wounds and a hit is never a hit, I can find something that says differently.

So, quit telling people who narrate hits as hits that they're playing D&D wrong or not as intended, because as far as I can tell, that's just not the case *even in 4E*.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I posted in another thread 2E's definition of hit points and OD&D's definition, both of which are not the same as 1E's and are no less valid.



What is OD&D's definition? Is it that hit points are purely physical?


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## jadrax (Jun 5, 2012)

Doug McCrae said:


> What is OD&D's definition? Is it that hit points are purely physical?




I can't actually find a definition in OD&D...


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Doug McCrae said:


> What is OD&D's definition? Is it that hit points are purely physical?



That is indeed the implication. There's nothing to indicate otherwise, and in the absence of another definition, the dictionary default is the correct one, no? But there is no definition at all. And, as I just said, in the absence of another definition, we should default to the real definition, as in the one that Merriam-Webster or Oxford has as the default.

A first level fighter has 1d6 hit points and a first level orc does 1d6 damage. The implication is that 1 solid hit or 6 minor nicks will kill the fighter. And none of this negative hit point stuff either. 0 and below is dead. As you level up, you gain 1d6 hit points. Assume a 3rd level fighter who's maxed his hit points at each level, unlikely though that may be. With 18 hit points, three solid hits kill him. 18 minor cuts and bruises build up and do the same thing. There's nothing to indicate otherwise.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 5, 2012)

One issue is that, per Gary's 1e definition, hit points for high level characters don't mean exactly the same thing as hit points for most monsters. Character hit points are mostly a variety of non-physical properties such as sixth sense, skill, luck and magical protection. Reading between the lines, I think Gary intends this to be class dependent - fighter hit points = skill, thief hit points = luck, magic-user/cleric hit points = magic. The hit points of a large creature, such as an elephant or bulette, are, I think, all physical, going by Gary's contrast in the 1e PHB between a high level fighter and a warhorse. So a hit point and a hit point aren't the same thing. It depends whose hit point it is! Stranger and stranger.

This is also true in 3e. By the SRD, "Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one." Obviously characters have both. But inanimate objects in 3e also have hit points. Presumably a wall has no ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one, so again, its hit points mean something different.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Doug McCrae said:


> One issue is that, per Gary's 1e definition, hit points for high level characters don't mean exactly the same thing as hit points for most monsters. Character hit points are mostly a variety of non-physical properties such as sixth sense, skill, luck and magical protection. Reading between the lines, I think Gary intends this to be class dependent - fighter hit points = skill, thief hit points = luck, magic-user/cleric hit points = magic. The hit points of a large creature, such as an elephant or bulette, are, I think all physical, going by Gary's contrast in the 1e PHB between a high level fighter and a warhorse. So a hit point and a hit point aren't the same thing. It depends whose hit point it is! Stranger and stranger.
> 
> This is also true in 3e. By the SRD, "Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one." Obviously characters have both. But inanimate objects in 3e also have hit points. Presumably a wall has no ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one, so again, its hit points mean something different.



Yes, and I think we agree on that piece. A 10 point sword slash against a piece of wood would be narrated differently from one against a PC. Which would be narrated differently than one against a monster. And is different still depending on how many hit points are left from the maximum, etc.

My objection is to the idea that a hit is a miss and should be narrated as such, and then that taking a nap fixes the cuts and bruises. A 10 point sword hit when something has 10 hp is described as a killing blow. Against a 20 hp creature, it's a tough hit that opens a pretty significant cut. Against a 100 HP elephant it's a tiny cut that barely penetrates its tough hide. Now, if that elephant is down to 10 HP, that 10 point sword cut slashes across its abdomen and disembowels the elephant.

But you'll note that in all of my descriptions above, each hit is a hit. It actually connects. It is never a miss in my game. That's what "misses" are for.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> That is indeed the implication. There's nothing to indicate otherwise, and in the absence of another definition, the dictionary default is the correct one, no? But there is no definition at all. And, as I just said, in the absence of another definition, we should default to the real definition, as in the one that Merriam-Webster or Oxford has as the default.



Yes, I suspect Gary and Dave never thought about it much, early on. So one could either see OD&D's hit points as being undefined, not needing to be defined, allowing for whatever definition is put on them, or, the 'naive interpretation' of hit points as being 100% physical.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Doug McCrae said:


> the 'naive interpretation' of hit points as being 100% physical.



Please, if you're going to go for the personal attack crap, be a man about it. Own it. Don't pussyfoot around with backhanded snide personal attacks.

To hit something is to make physical contact with it. The definition of points in this case is a measure of something. What are those points measuring? The number of hits something can take? I wonder how a textbook definition, one literally out of a dictionary, becomes naive.

The first two definitions of "hit" from Merriam-Webster:
1. a : to reach with or as if with a blow
b : to come in contact with <the ball hit the window>
c : to strike (as a ball) with an object (as a bat, club, or racket) so as to impart or redirect motion
2. a : to cause to come into contact
b : to deliver (as a blow) by action
c : to apply forcefully or suddenly <hit the brakes>​


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## avin (Jun 5, 2012)

*In my mind a loss* of HP should always represent damage on body. I understand that in Dungeons & Dragons that's not the case.

But OP asked what's in my head, so...


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Please, if you're going to go for the personal attack crap, be a man about it. Own it. Don't pussyfoot around with backhanded snide personal attacks.



I apologise, I certainly didn't intend the term as a personal attack. It's actually my own preferred interpretation of hit points, and I've used the phrase for a while now.

The word naive is intended to refer to this being, in my view, the interpretation most commonly held by D&Ders when they first start playing. It's an unexamined interpretation. It's only with experience that one starts to worry about stuff like whether a high level fighter is as tough as a warhorse, just as it only began to concern Gary Gygax after years of play.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Thanks for the clarification. The word "naive" is often used as denigration.

In any case, here's the closest thing to a definition of a hit point that OD&D provides. It's in the third LBB, page 35.

HEALING WOUNDS:
As noted previously, energy levels can only be regained by fresh experience, but common wounds can be healed with the passage of time (or the use of magics already explained). On the first day of complete rest no hit points will be regained, but every other day thereafter one hit point will be regained until the character is completely healed. This can take a long time.​
Which, to me, clearly indicates that hits provide wounds.

EDITED to add: But I think those who insist on hits that don't actually hit will obviously stick with the 1E definition, since that's the Gary they choose to believe. And that's fine, but it's a fallacy to suggest that hits have never meant hits (only 2 editions seem to support that definition - 1E and 4E, and even 4E has recommendations for narrating a hit as a hit). I'd be willing to bet that 1E's DMG has similar advice for describing combat, but I don't have that handy. (The older games like Basic and OD&D I bought after my move, and thus are not in storage.)


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## Dannager (Jun 5, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Now, for consistency, extrapolate that thinking to non-poisoned weapons and bingo - every hit represents at least some sort of minor physical injury.




There is nothing about this that requires extrapolating to non-poisoned weapons for the sake of consistency.


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## Dannager (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I posted in another thread 2E's definition of hit points and OD&D's definition, both of which are not the same as 1E's and are no less valid. Indeed, I'd posit that OD&D's are more definitive, if we're going to play that "Gary said" game. The definition is a combination of luck, skill, endurance, and physical damage. It's always been that way.




That's what we've been saying, this entire time. What we *haven't* been saying is that every single hit point is represented by all of these things at once. Some hit point loss can be chalked up to loss of endurance. Some hit point loss can be chalked up to pushing your luck. Some hit point loss can be chalked up to demoralization (see: psychic damage). And yes, some hit point loss can be chalked up to physical injury.



> 4E DMG, page 22 under the "Narration" headline has this bit of advice - "Instead, use such statistics, along with your knowledge of the scene, to help your narration. If 26 is barely a hit, but the 31 points of damage is a bad wound for the enemy, say: “You swing wildly, and the dragonborn brings his shield up just a second too late. Arrgh! Your blade catches him along the jaw, drawing a deep gash. He staggers!”




It's a little weird that you think this runs counter to any of our ideas of what hit points represent. Why do you think this is a counter-example to anything?



> We can play quote the books and rules all day, and for every insistence you guys have that hit points never represent wounds and a hit is never a hit,




I don't think anyone has insisted that, at all, in this entire thread. Is this what you think you're arguing against?


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## Naszir (Jun 5, 2012)

To me a "hit" just represents a successful attack. I've even gone so far as to change the wording when I DM. No longer do I describe a good combat roll as a "hit", instead it is now a "successful attack". It is amazing that simple wording from back when the game was in its infancy now turns into heated debate because the game has grown. 

"Hit Points" to me represent a variety of different things (endurance, luck, skill, the ability to withstand punishment).  It makes the most sense to me when it comes to characters. Depending on what makes the attack, or how the character loses hit points will let me know whether or not I can say it was actual physical damage or a character using up some energy or using some skill to narrowly avoid an attack.

In this sense it completely is believable that a character should be able to regain SOME hit points back from a short rest or a long rest without magical healing. However, I do not want to track every single hit to decide what was physical damage and what wasn't. Micro-managing hit points is not my idea of fun.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Dannager said:


> It's a little weird that you think this runs counter to any of our ideas of what hit points represent. Why do you think this is a counter-example to anything?



Because the admonition from hits/=hits crowd invariably points to "stop narrating the hit as a hit, and all your problems are solved."



Dannager said:


> I don't think anyone has insisted that, at all, in this entire thread. Is this what you think you're arguing against?



Yes. Whenever anyone like me expresses an intense dislike for super-fast mundane healing, the answer is invariably along the lines of "stop describing every hit as a hit" or "hits are near-misses, and the only hit that's a hit is the last one." Both of those phrases have indeed been said, if not in this thread specifically, definitely in other threads on HP and D&D.

This comes particularly to the foreground whenever warlord martial healing in 4E is discussed. Or when we talk about sleeping for 8 hours without magical assistance and being perfectly healed the next day.

The only other argument against "hits = hits, damage = damage, and healing = healing" is the gamist (little "g" not Ron Edwards') one, and that's one I just reject out of hand. I'm not interested in treating hit points completely as a game mechanic, and, indeed, the rules and narrative descriptions in the rules books actually discourage me from treating them as out of game constructs.



Naszir said:


> To me a "hit" just represents a successful attack. I've even gone so far as to change the wording when I DM. No longer do I describe a good combat roll as a "hit", instead it is now a "successful attack". It is amazing that simple wording from back when the game was in its infancy now turns into heated debate because the game has grown.



And the wording continued for 30 years. The term hasn't changed. As I said above, I'm not interested in changing how I've played since I was a kid. For that, I've got other games to play.



> In this sense it completely is believable that a character should be able to regain SOME hit points back from a short rest or a long rest without magical healing. However, I do not want to track every single hit to decide what was physical damage and what wasn't. Micro-managing hit points is not my idea of fun.



Mine either. And I also agree that some hit points could be returned without magical healing. But not all of them.


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## Hussar (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:
			
		

> We can play quote the books and rules all day, and for every insistence you guys have that hit points never represent wounds and a hit is never a hit, I can find something that says differently.




Hang on.  Wait... what?  Who's saying hit points NEVER represent wounds or that a hit is NEVER a hit?

What is being said is that a hit MIGHT be a hit or it might not.  Depends on what's going on in the game.

However, you are stating, quite emphatically, that a hit MUST ALWAYS be a physical hit.  That is, I think, what is being objected to.

AFAIK, no one is saying that hit points can never be physical wounds.  That would be reasonably easy to show - after all, every definition of hit points includes that option.  However, there is nothing precluding the OPTION of a hit not actually making contact and providing a wound.

Of course, we can get really, really nit picky and talk about "nicks and scratches" but, that gets wobbly too.  No one ever dies from nicks and scratches.  Yet, somehow, I can be nicked and scratched to death?  Well no.  Whenever that blow drops you below zero hit points, you KNOW that it connected somehow.

But, that's the only time you can definitively say that it did.  Any other time, you can't prove it either way.

Then again, I have a sneaking suspicion that Mercurio01 isn't listening to me, so this is going to fall on deaf ears.


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## Naszir (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> And the wording continued for 30 years. The term hasn't changed. As I said above, I'm not interested in changing how I've played since I was a kid. For that, I've got other games to play.




Fair enough. And I'll agree that I don't particually like that all damaged is healed fully with a single nights rest (unless magically aided).

However, I also do not like every "hit" being considered as physical damage. It's imaginitively restrictive and mechanically restrictive.


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## Nytmare (Jun 5, 2012)

Just to see where everybody stands:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/324520-hit-point-narration.html


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Hussar said:


> AFAIK, no one is saying that hit points can never be physical wounds.  That would be reasonably easy to show - after all, every definition of hit points includes that option.  However, there is nothing precluding the OPTION of a hit not actually making contact and providing a wound.



It started with the objection to mundane healing. People objected to the idea of sleeping healing wounds. People who don't like hits as wounds said "I don't narrate hits as wounds and I never have a problem. Only people who narrate hits as wounds have a problem with mundane healing." That is probably true. But then that argument gets larger and becomes "And you should, too." That's the breakdown. I cannot accept mundane healing as fixing up cuts and bruises and making characters completely healed simply by sleeping. And the response to me has been, unequivocally, "Stop calling a hit a hit." I'd look back through multiple threads if I had the time, but that's been the general answer. That's not a good answer.



> Whenever that blow drops you below zero hit points, you KNOW that it connected somehow.



Except when the Warlord shouts at you and you magically get up.



> Then again, I have a sneaking suspicion that Mercurio01 isn't listening to me, so this is going to fall on deaf ears.



Works both ways, Hussar. Works both ways. I'm not willing to embrace mundane healing to full hp simply by sleeping for a night. It doesn't fit how I play, and doesn't fit the rules as written from OD&D to 3.5, and it breaks immersion. The response has been to stop narrating the hits as hits and the damage as damage. Or to just play it as a boardgame without engaging in description. Or just pretend its super gonzo and the wounds do magically heal over night. None of those suggestions work for me.

The only thing that will work for me is a slowed return of hit points via mundane healing. That said, I've said it (and I know you have, too), modularity is the only real answer that will satisfy both of us. I'm hoping we see some of that soon.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> The response has been to stop narrating the hits as hits and the damage as damage. Or to just play it as a boardgame without engaging in description. Or just pretend its super gonzo and the wounds do magically heal over night. None of those suggestions work for me.



Or that a long rest is an indeterminate period of time, potentially much longer than 8 hours. Or that damage does represent real physical wounds, and those wounds do vanish overnight, and it's not magical, but no one in the game-world ever mentions it cause they don't lampshade hang.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Doug McCrae said:


> Or that a long rest is an indeterminate period of time, potentially much longer than 8 hours. Or that damage does represent real physical wounds, and those wounds do vanish overnight, and it's not magical, but no one in the game-world ever mentions it cause they don't lampshade hang.




The first would be okay, but I don't think that slowing spell replenishment also is the answer. I did mention the second one as being completely unacceptable. If I wanted to play a cartoon world, there are systems that do just that (Cartoon Action Hour for one). Furthermore, in a world where all wounds vanish after sleeping, why in the hell would there be a cleric who performs healing? I understand that there are people who actually like that idea. I'm not one of them.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 5, 2012)

Is mundane healing a major issue in most peoples' games? I'm not sure, but as far as I can recall, the large majority of healing has been magical in our pre-4e D&D games.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

I'll just make use of this double post--




Doug McCrae said:


> Is mundane healing a major issue in most peoples' games? I'm not sure, but as far as I can recall, the large majority of healing has been magical in our pre-4e D&D games.



When it's magical, it doesn't bother me. It's magic. It requires someone to cast a spell. And none of this circular argument to wands of CLW (which was never really an issue in my experience). That's a separate issue that could be solved in a different manner.


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## epochrpg (Jun 5, 2012)

They should change the name of the spell from "Cure Light Wounds" to "restore light luck / endurance".  

If they keep the name of the spell "Wounds" and the players insist that HP only represents luck and endurance until 0HP,  I will insist that clerics only know to use the spell when they actually SEE blood come out of the character in question.  if they try to cast a Cure Wounds spell on a character who isn't below 0 HP, I'll rule it "out of character knowledge".  

Now if you think that sounds ridiculous, consider the alternative.  HP represents luck and endurance, but if you lose some, a cleric can cast a healing spell on you that "cures wounds", and for some reason, even though you haven't been wounded, it makes you luckier?


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## billd91 (Jun 5, 2012)

epochrpg said:


> They should change the name of the spell from "Cure Light Wounds" to "restore light luck / endurance".
> <snip>
> 
> Now if you think that sounds ridiculous, consider the alternative.  HP represents luck and endurance, but if you lose some, a cleric can cast a healing spell on you that "cures wounds", and for some reason, even though you haven't been wounded, it makes you luckier?




This serves to underscore why I think it's just easier to assume all hit points involve some physical component. Rather than look at the whole pool of hit points and say the first x hp are luck, the next y hp are morale, and the final z hp are physical or what not, I prefer to think in that way per individual hit point. A hit point may be mostly morale, luck, and divine grace but it's also a small fraction of physical. Thus, all hits involve *some* physical beatdown, though not necessarily much. It may be a bruise, a welt, a scratch, a scrape, a gash, a puncture, a strained muscle, a slightly turned ankle, whatever. I don't really care much about specifics. What I really care about is that every hit that penetrates the PC's protection has a physical effect.

I think this makes the game a lot easier to visualize consistently and design around consistently rather than have some hit points be one factor (morale) and others another (divine grace) and yet have both healed with something that is described as healing wounds.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

billd91 said:


> This serves to underscore why I think it's just easier to assume all hit points involve some physical component. Rather than look at the whole pool of hit points and say the first x hp are luck, the next y hp are morale, and the final z hp are physical or what not, I prefer to think in that way per individual hit point. A hit point may be mostly morale, luck, and divine grace but it's also a small fraction of physical. Thus, all hits involve *some* physical beatdown, though not necessarily much. It may be a bruise, a welt, a scratch, a scrape, a gash, a puncture, a strained muscle, a slightly turned ankle, whatever. I don't really care much about specifics. What I really care about is that every hit that penetrates the PC's protection has a physical effect.
> 
> I think this makes the game a lot easier to visualize consistently and design around consistently rather than have some hit points be one factor (morale) and others another (divine grace) and yet have both healed with something that is described as healing wounds.



I wish I could XP you because that's exactly how I look at it. I'm glad I'm not the only one.


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## Dannager (Jun 6, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Because the admonition from hits/=hits crowd invariably points to "stop narrating the hit as a hit, and all your problems are solved."
> 
> Yes. Whenever anyone like me expresses an intense dislike for super-fast mundane healing, the answer is invariably along the lines of "stop describing every hit as a hit" or "hits are near-misses, and the only hit that's a hit is the last one." Both of those phrases have indeed been said, if not in this thread specifically, definitely in other threads on HP and D&D.




Right, we're saying to stop describing *every* hit as dealing physical damage. We're not saying that *no* hits deal physical damage. But for some reason, you're telling us that that's exactly what we're saying. We're not.

No one is telling you that a hit never results in physical damage. We're telling you that one of the problems with the inability to reconcile rate of D&D healing with the rate of hit point loss in combat is that you are narrating *every* hit as dealing a physical injury. Stop doing that, and you will no longer have this narrative dissonance. Narrate *some* hits as dealing physical damage, and _*some*_ hits as other things (like tumbling out of the way, or a lucky break, or a jarring strike, or a glancing blow, etc.).

This isn't all or nothing, and it was never supposed to be.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 6, 2012)

Dannager said:


> Right, we're saying to stop describing *every* hit as dealing physical damage. We're not saying that *no* hits deal physical damage. But for some reason, you're telling us that that's exactly what we're saying. We're not.
> 
> No one is telling you that a hit never results in physical damage. We're telling you that one of the problems with the inability to reconcile rate of D&D healing with the rate of hit point loss in combat is that you are narrating *every* hit as dealing a physical injury. Stop doing that, and you will no longer have this narrative dissonance. Narrate *some* hits as dealing physical damage, and _*some*_ hits as other things (like tumbling out of the way, or a lucky break, or a jarring strike, or a glancing blow, etc.).
> 
> This isn't all or nothing, and it was never supposed to be.



I agree to a point. The damage inflicted by a hit is relative to how long that damage takes to no longer affect the injured character/creature. This is a process that D&D has not done well with in the more recent editions and it would be nice if they could fix this up in 5e. Some issues:

[3e]The feebly insipid low con but high level wizard can heal to full capacity in a day or two. The hale high con low level barbarian on the other hand can take several weeks to heal back to full capacity in comparison.

[3e]The stabilize as a standard action was just dumb.

[4e]Everyone can heal from the worst position health-wise to premium combat primed and ready in under two days.

If you don't want to cause issues with your flavour not meshing with the mechanics of hit point restoration, don't narrate injury that the mechanics of natural healing do not support.

Essentially, hit points do an excellent job of representing luck, morale, toughness, divine providence, and skill (culminating under the umbrella of "screen-time" but do a really crap job of representing physical injury. I'd love it if physical damage was stripped out of hit points and just left to a simple gauge (or set of wound points) representing how badly wounded the character was. That way, the character can still use their restored hit points as usual despite being wounded (perhaps receiving some form of wounded penalty to their actions, but otherwise leaving them free to adventure with the party). That way, you know when to describe something as a physical injury and when you don't.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 6, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:
			
		

> If you don't want to cause issues with your flavour not meshing with the mechanics of hit point restoration, don't narrate injury that the mechanics of natural healing do not support.



And for almost 30 years and the four editions I've played (Mentzer Basic, 1E, 2E, 3E) the way I narrated and played worked perfectly well. It was only in 4E that I was presented with this problem, and the options presented left me in the position of playing something other than the current edition of D&D. So I did and do. But DDN is actively looking to woo me back into the fold, and as a long-time fan of D&D, I'd like to do that.

I deleted a long involved response to [MENTION=73683]Dannager[/MENTION] a few times, and I'll just keep it simple instead. I think mundane healing in 4E was a mistake and that it changed D&D for the worse (IMO). So I moved to a competitor (several of them, in fact) who gave me the gameplay experience I desired. Now D&D wants me back as a customer and is giving me the opportunity to voice my opinion, with the hopes that I might begin giving them my disposable income rather than sending it to their rivals.

I realize some people like what 4E did. I don't, and I'd like it to not be repeated in DDN. And, if DDN does deliver on modularity, then it will have done what a lot of people have asked for: support people who disliked 4E and invite them back into the fold while simultaneously not pissing off fans of 4E.


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## Blood & Bones (Jun 6, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Just because a thousand people say something, does not make it right.  A hit point loss is always a wound, though doesn't necessarily mean blood.  It could be a bruise or welt. ... <snip>




Actually, seeing as I was trying to get a pulse on how players think about hit points in the heat of the game, I think it is right... and would be more right the more people who say it, statistically speaking.

I'm amazed that this thread is still going...


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## Dannager (Jun 6, 2012)

Blood & Bones said:


> Actually, seeing as I was trying to get a pulse on how players think about hit points in the heat of the game, I think it is right... and would be more right the more people who say it, statistically speaking.




Not only from the perspective of a playtest, but for language in general.

"The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows  themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it  according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path  undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow  path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often  profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn't  know where it was or where it led to." - E.B. White

By the way, it is apparent from the results of this poll that a majority of respondents (or very close to it, depending on where those in the "PB&J" category truly fall) operate from the perspective that hit point damage is not always the result of a physical wound; it is likely that their style of play would be negatively impacted by the definitional shift of hit points invariably representing physical injury.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 6, 2012)

Yeah, the take away appears to be 49% have some hits as hits and some as misses, and 32% have hits that always hit, with 19% special snowflakes.


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## Blood & Bones (Jun 6, 2012)

Dannager said:


> Not only from the perspective of a playtest, but for language in general.
> 
> "The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows  themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it  according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path  undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow  path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often  profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn't  know where it was or where it led to." - E.B. White
> 
> By the way, it is apparent from the results of this poll that a majority of respondents (or very close to it, depending on where those in the "PB&J" category truly fall) operate from the perspective that hit point damage is not always the result of a physical wound; it is likely that their style of play would be negatively impacted by the definitional shift of hit points invariably representing physical injury.




Interesting quote...

And you are right. As much as I'd hate to admit it, you are right... I'm beginning to think that the definition of hit points need to be flexible enough to accommodate the whole spectrum. 

HOWEVER - in my games, hit point loss will always mean some form of physical trauma.


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## Obryn (Jun 6, 2012)

Blood & Bones said:


> I'm amazed that this thread is still going...



Me too, but there you have it.

I try not to overthink perfectly good mechanics.   The simple fact is, as far as I can see, for every argument proving what a hit point is, there's a perfectly good counter-argument proving that it's not.  It's insanely abstract - it doesn't represent anything in particular other than how close you are to dying.

I get that some people are confused about how to narrate hit point loss and reconcile it with system mechanics.  And I honestly understand why - the system _actively works against_ any realistic narration of combat, given that there's no possible physical representation of a hit point.  Me?  I just narrate it however it feels right at the time.  Neither my players nor I get hung up on the details, as long as it doesn't get too silly - no limb severing, organs falling on the floor, eye loss, etc.  This isn't something new we picked up with 4e; it's how we did it in 3.x, Arcana Evolved, SWSE, and AD&D 1e.  I don't remember ever doing it differently, or playing in a game where such vagaries had any import whatsoever.

-O


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## Lanefan (Jun 6, 2012)

Dannager said:


> There is nothing about this that requires extrapolating to non-poisoned weapons for the sake of consistency.



Now that's kind of a backwards argument, in that it is in fact the preservation of consistency that requires the extrapolation.

If every hit with a poisoned weapon has a physical damage/injury component, however minor, then consistency requires the same effect be applied to the same event when the weapon is not poisoned.

The presence or absence of poison should not make any difference whatsoever to the narration of the actual damage, though obviously it might make a significant difference to the narration of what comes next. 

Lanefan


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 6, 2012)

Blood & Bones said:


> HOWEVER - in my games, hit point loss will always mean some form of physical trauma.




Mine too. And although I appear to be outside the plurality opinion, there is still a sizeable portion of gamers who game the way I do, which in itself is fairly reassuring.


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## Blood & Bones (Jun 6, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Now that's kind of a backwards argument, in that it is in fact the preservation of consistency that requires the extrapolation.
> 
> If every hit with a poisoned weapon has a physical damage/injury component, however minor, then consistency requires the same effect be applied to the same event when the weapon is not poisoned.
> 
> ...




Yeah... if we are talking internal game logic, one would have to concede this. Then again, some poisons can also work on contact.


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## Dannager (Jun 6, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> If every hit with a poisoned weapon has a physical damage/injury component, however minor, then consistency requires the same effect be applied to the same event when the weapon is not poisoned.




Consistency requires no such thing. Or, perhaps more accurately, the game does not require consistency of that sort to function properly.



> The presence or absence of poison should not make any difference whatsoever to the narration of the actual damage,




Why not?


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## Lanefan (Jun 6, 2012)

epochrpg said:


> They should change the name of the spell from "Cure Light Wounds" to "restore light luck / endurance".



Two different spells required:

1. Cure (Light - Serious - Critical) Fatigue.  Only works if target is at or above 5 h.p.* at time of spell resolution.

2. Cure (Light - Serious - Critical) Wounds.  Only works if target is below 5 h.p. at time of spell resolution.  Points cured by this spell that would take a character beyond 5 h.p.* are not lost, and restore fatigue damage instead.**

* - an arbitrary number below which h.p. loss starts representing significant injury.

** - I think the die rolled for Cure xxx Wounds should be smaller than for Cure xxx Fatigues, but that's something each DM can decide.

Lan-"either way, just cure me up and get me on my feet"-efan


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## Lanefan (Jun 6, 2012)

Dannager said:


> Consistency requires no such thing. Or, perhaps more accurately, the game does not require consistency of that sort to function properly.



There's all kinds of things the game doesn't need in order to function, but does need in order to remain believable and stay within the bounds of common sense.  This is one.


> Why not?



"You get nicked in the arm for 5 points damage."
"You get nicked in the arm for 5 points damage.  Saving throw, please."

Adding on those last three words does not affect the preceding sentence; and nor should it.

Lanefan


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## Dannager (Jun 6, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> There's all kinds of things the game doesn't need in order to function, but does need in order to remain believable and stay within the bounds of common sense.  This is one.




Not at all. First, let's stop resorting to "common sense" as an explanation for anything. "Common sense" is a rhetorical crutch, and there's no good reason to resort to if you can deliver your argument in a way that makes _actual_ sense.

Second, there is nothing unbelievable about altering the narration of the game according to its circumstances. That's one of the nice things about narrativist gameplay. D&D, at its core, isn't about making a world that is perfectly coherent in that sense. You don't need to consider the explicit consequences of each butterfly flapping its wings. The story that centers around the PCs' and their actions is more important. If I swing my non-poisoned sword and hit, it makes good mechanical and narrative sense to describe a low-damage hit as simply being a rattling but glancing blow off the opponent's armor. If I swing my _poisoned_ sword and hit, it makes good mechanical and narrative sense to describe that low-damage hit as just barely snaking past the scales of the enemy's armor and delivering a deceptively lethal nick.



> "You get nicked in the arm for 5 points damage."
> "You get nicked in the arm for 5 points damage.  Saving throw, please."
> 
> Adding on those last three words does not affect the preceding sentence; and nor should it.




Sure it should - or at least it gives you the option - if the weapon in the first sentence is not poisoned.


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## Ratskinner (Jun 6, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I cannot accept mundane healing as fixing up cuts and bruises and making characters completely healed simply by sleeping. And the response to me has been, unequivocally, "Stop calling a hit a hit."




Just a suggestion, FWIW. I've taken (and dealt) plenty of little hits that just left a sore spot, not even a bruise. Gone overnight, if not sooner. I know, I normally wouldn't think to track such a thing as injury, but if the 100 hp fighter is just so darn good at reducing the impact of blows, maybe some of those hits still leave a sore spot without a bruise or cut. Perhaps you could adjust your "minimum physical injury" threshold or something. Although if you find it intolerable to narrate getting hit with an Ogre's sword as the equivalent to a "noogie", I can understand that as well. 

On the other hand, HP + healing has always been a narrative sore spot for me (this particular issue being the least of my concerns). I do like the mechanics presented so far, because they seem easy to "dial" up or down by modifying a few things. Like: 


Changing the Hit Die reset trigger/time. (a week of rest, never, when you level up.)
You can only use one hit die to heal during a short rest.
When you use your hit dice to heal, your resulting total becomes your temporary maximum HP. Magical and conventional convalescent healing increase this temporary maximum HP.
Maybe too much of a dial, the more I think about it.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 6, 2012)

Ratskinner said:


> I do like the mechanics presented so far, because they seem easy to "dial" up or down by modifying a few things.




I think a dial is the saving grace we all need here.


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## Hussar (Jun 6, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> /snip
> 
> Except when the Warlord shouts at you and you magically get up.




But, that's the thing.  Not all hit points are physical.  We all agree with that.  A warlord shouting at you to get up doesn't restore all your hit points.  In fact, he restores NONE of your hit points.  All he does is allow you to spend a healing surge.  In point of fact, your total hit points have not changed one whit.  However, instead of potentially dying (from a wound that can NEVER be specified in any edition because of unrealistic healing rates), you fight through and get back up.

Just like in a bajillion examples of genre fiction.



> Works both ways, Hussar. Works both ways. I'm not willing to embrace mundane healing to full hp simply by sleeping for a night. It doesn't fit how I play, and doesn't fit the rules as written from OD&D to 3.5, and it breaks immersion. The response has been to stop narrating the hits as hits and the damage as damage. Or to just play it as a boardgame without engaging in description. Or just pretend its super gonzo and the wounds do magically heal over night. None of those suggestions work for me.




But, that's the point.  Why is one night so bad when three nights is fine?  



> The only thing that will work for me is a slowed return of hit points via mundane healing. That said, I've said it (and I know you have, too), modularity is the only real answer that will satisfy both of us. I'm hoping we see some of that soon.




Again, I'm not seeing the issue here.  Ok.  That's such an incredibly easy fix, I don't even know why you'd need a module.  "You regain X Healing Surges per night of rest"  Set X to whatever you feel is fine, and off you go.

Does this really need a whole new module?

/edit to add

I'd say that most of the time, when we narrate hits, it's usually the blood and guts variety.  Although, it has always been pretty non-specific.  Your character gets tagged for 15 points of damage.  "Oof, that hurt" is a pretty common response.

But, on the other hand, we simply don't think about it after that.  We don't track things to this detail.  I took X number of hits during the day - well, I have no idea how many times my character was hit.  Nor do I really care.  Cleric less healing is a VERY good thing for the game.  I mean, if you want all healing to be magical, go ahead.  It's not exactly difficult.  I don't.  I want the more "action story" vibe going.  Which means that my damaged character shakes it off the next day and moves on.

If I want longer lasting wounds, I've got the disease track sitting right there, begging to be used.  Works ten thousand times better than trying to shoehorn HP into something resembling a believable narrative.


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## Ratskinner (Jun 6, 2012)

billd91 said:


> I think this makes the game a lot easier to visualize consistently and design around consistently rather than have some hit points be one factor (morale) and others another (divine grace) and yet have both healed with something that is described as healing wounds.




I'm not sure how you figure that. 4+ editions so far have managed to fail on the consistent narrative. I know 4e is the outlier so bear with me as I talk in 3e terms (most of this would also be valid in almost all the AD&D I played.)

Exhibit A: Mr. Peasant normally has 6 hp. An monster has clawed him for 8. So he's down. Will likely die (is dead in some editions RAW). Yet, he can be restored to life with a _Cure Light Wounds_ spell. Seems rather odd that the cleric would choose that spell with Mr. Peasant knocking on death's door, doesn't it?

Exhibit B: Mr. Fighter normally has 100 hp. He has just fought a monster and is down 50 hp. He can move, fight, speak, carry a load, run, etc. just as well as he could before the fight. (At worst, you can say he has a little less staying power in his next fight.) Nonetheless, friend Cleric decides to burn a _Cure Critical Wounds_ spell in an attempt to heal Mr. Fighter. 

"Critical" is defined as follows:
crit·i·cal adjective
<snip movie-critic type definitions>
6.pertaining to or of the nature of a crisis: a critical shortage of food.
7.of decisive importance with respect to the outcome; crucial: a critical moment.
8.of essential importance; indispensable: a critical ingredient.
9.Medicine/Medical . (of a patient's condition) having unstable and abnormal vital signs and other unfavorable indicators, as loss of appetite, poor mobility, or unconsciousness.
<snip physics definitions>

Now, it seems to me that none of these descriptions fit the fighter, but would fit the peasant. 

If you're looking for consistency in mechanics, D&D's HP and healing rules are not the place to start, and making every HP partially physical doesn't help much. One of the things that always irks me in the game is that during combat, every wound is a scratch, welt, bruise...whatever. Then, when combat is over, and the Cleric offers healing....suddenly sucking chest wounds open on all the fighters....which immediately close once the Cleric runs out of juice. 

That said, I don't have anything better to offer, other than patches like fixing the healing spells to reflect the level of the _target_ rather than the caster.


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## epochrpg (Jun 6, 2012)

If Hit Points were just "endurance and luck" what the heck was Subdual Damage supposed to be?  "endurance and not luck"?


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## IanB (Jun 6, 2012)

I voted Peanut Butter Jelly Time, by which I mean it is whatever I feel like describing it as at the time.


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## jadrax (Jun 6, 2012)

Cleric Healing, Poison and Subdual damage are all things that have always kind of made the system squeak a bit.

As I understand it, the problem is that Hit Points have been a kludge from Day 1. Dave Arneson introduced them from a Battleship Wargame, they are representing a humans health as if he was a large ship. This is intrinsically a bit silly, but D&D *was* silly. (Just look at the spell component puns). Arneson pretty much played Hit Points straight as physical damage.

Gygax did not. He ran his combats as Errol Flynn fights, he basically used the definition from 4th edition, much as certain people hate it. That is why he wrote rules like 'Drinking Whisky Heals you'. Again possibly silly, but in a different way.

So out of the two original GMs, you have one where you heal best in a hospital and another where you heal best by going out on the town. That is a divide that continues to this very day. Its always been a Dial, its just a lot of people do not seem to have realised that.


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## pemerton (Jun 6, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> If you don't want to cause issues with your flavour not meshing with the mechanics of hit point restoration, don't narrate injury that the mechanics of natural healing do not support.
> 
> Essentially, hit points do an excellent job of representing luck, morale, toughness, divine providence, and skill (culminating under the umbrella of "screen-time" but do a really crap job of representing physical injury.





Grydan said:


> I should note that any system that actually _tries_ to model injury in any meaningful way is pretty much inevitably going to have death spirals, which appeal to some gamers, but are rather a turn-off to others.



I agree with both these posts, at least as far as PCs are concerned. (For giant slugs, goblin mooks and the like you can narrate hit point loss as bloodthirstily as you like! Swords fly, blood flows, heads roll. Turn it up to 11!)

As I read the rules, 4e is a game where the mechanics render it impossible for a PC to be seriously injured in combat but not killed. Just like the 3E mechanics. And not unlike the AD&D mechanics (these are a little more severe - without dying, you can still find yourself with an injury that might take a week to recover from).

That's not to say that the PCs are immune _in the fiction_. It's just that the mechanics provide no pathway for taking them to those fictionally possible states. (Just as, unless an opponent is wielding a sword of sharpness, the mechanics provide no pathway for taking any D&D PCs to the obviously fictionally possible state of losing a finger in a fight.)

For me, this is what gives D&D it's gonzo feel. I've got nothing against injury mechanics (Rolemaster has them, for example, and I've played a hell of a lot of Rolemaster). But I regard the lack of them as a reasonably distinctive feature of D&D.



Grydan said:


> to the best of my knowledge there's never been an edition of the game where a good night's rest didn't recover at least 1 HP.
> 
> If such is the case, then in any non-fatal scenario, even for a 1 HP character, it seems rather unlikely that 1 HP of damage represents a punctured lung or broken limb, unless we are to believe that the less health one has to begin with, the more one's rate of healing resembles Wolverine's.
> 
> HP as representing anything other than abstract distance from unconsciousness and/or death are rather a dismal failure. They certainly are a poor system for modelling punctured lungs and broken limbs, things that would most certainly have an actual impact on further activities an adventurer might partake in.



Good post.

I've made the point about natural (so-called) healing in the past - that in all editions, the rate is so rapid that no degree of non-fatal hit point loss can properly be conceived of as any sort of serious injury. And hence that (for example) overnight restoration of hit points is not a verisimilitude issue (but is, perhaps, a pacing issue).



Mercutio01 said:


> In any case, here's the closest thing to a definition of a hit point that OD&D provides. It's in the third LBB, page 35.
> 
> HEALING WOUNDS:
> As noted previously, energy levels can only be regained by fresh experience, but common wounds can be healed with the passage of time (or the use of magics already explained). On the first day of complete rest no hit points will be regained, but every other day thereafter one hit point will be regained until the character is completely healed. This can take a long time.​
> Which, to me, clearly indicates that hits provide wounds.



That is also a healing rate that is about half that of AD&D (which, from memory, is 1 hp per day plus CON bonus at the end of each week), and one quarter that of B/X (which, from memory, is 2 hp per day) and much much slower than 3E (which is up to twice level per day, I think).

But even with that longer healing rate, a typical mercenary with 4 hp can recover from any non-fatal hit point loss in less than a week (6 days to recover 3 hp). How can anyone think that that is recovery from any sort of serious injury?



Mercutio01 said:


> And for almost 30 years and the four editions I've played (Mentzer Basic, 1E, 2E, 3E) the way I narrated and played worked perfectly well.



As I and Hussar have asked, how did you get away with narrating serious injury in 3E, when every non-fatal wound will heal naturally in a week or so? That doesn't sound very serious to me.



epochrpg said:


> They should change the name of the spell from "Cure Light Wounds" to "restore light luck / endurance".



Presumably that's why, in 4e, the default healing spell is Healing Word. Which inspires through divine grace.



billd91 said:


> A hit point may be mostly morale, luck, and divine grace but it's also a small fraction of physical.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think this makes the game a lot easier to visualize consistently and design around consistently



Which game? It makes it harder to visualise and design 4e consistently, given that 4e has both psyhic damage (not a lot of physicality to that) and warlord healing (not a lot of physicality to that either).



epochrpg said:


> If Hit Points were just "endurance and luck" what the heck was Subdual Damage supposed to be?  "endurance and not luck"?



Well that's why 4e got rid of it (and AD&D didn't really have it, except for a few corner case abilities like Slippers of Kicking). It is inconsistent with the overall framework.


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## pemerton (Jun 6, 2012)

Minigiant said:


> Hit Points is an abstraction of many excuses why a character is not dead.
> 
> It's "I'm not dead because I blocked/parried/dodged/shoulder roll or You only scratched/bruised/nicked/shook/winded/dizzied me" with a usage limitation.
> 
> Sometimes it is a wound, sometimes a scratch, sometimes a harmless parry, sometimes a forced miss with no contact





Gold Roger said:


> Depends entirely on the creature hit and what attack it was that hit. On a bulette every hit is a proper wound, on a pixy, only the lone that takes it down. PC's are in the middle, but with large variance.
> 
> The halfling rogue mostly aquires fatigue, minor bruises and luck running out, the large in-your-face barbarian starts of with aquiring cuts and goes all the way to arrows and large gashes all over his body.





Raith5 said:


> HP for me is a number that goes up and down. I laugh at my enemies when it goes up and I cry and hide behind the fighter when it goes down.





Campbell said:


> nothing says that narration between adventurers and monsters needs to be consistent. The ogre could be a big bag of meat while the lithe fighter deftly dodges attacks and eventually wears out leaving an opening for the ogre to smash him to pieces.





Ti-bob said:


> Hit Point represent ANYTHING which means that the character should not die and can continue fighting or acting; lack of Hit Point means means that the character should would fall over.  It screen time is over!
> 
> A character have many hit point if the spectator believe they are important to the story and expect them not to give up easily.  If a character is important to the story, it have more Hit Point then an unimportant one.
> 
> Blood or not, wound or not is not important to Script Immunity.



I wanted to XP all of these. They capture my sense of what hp are.

Like Raith5 says, they are first and foremost a number that shows who's winning and who's losing. (HeroWars, and pre-revision HeroQuest, used a somewhat, similar very abstract notion for conflict resolution called "action points".)

But when that going-up-and-down has to be translated into an ingame description, Campbell, Gold Roger and Minigiant are spot on: it is entirely contextual. When I ran a behemoth (= 4e dinosaur) with 200-odd hit points, it had gashes, and arrows sticking out of it, and the full works as the PCs fought it (a bit like the Oliphants in the LotR movies). When I ran a high-level mage NPC with a comparable number of hit points, hit point loss represented parrying with her staff, and the wearing down of her magical defences, and the like - no actual physical injury was narrated until she was down to her last handful of hp.

As Ti-bob said, it's about "script immunity" - I gave that NPC wizard had that many hit points because I wanted the confrontation with her to occupy a certain amount of dramatic space in the game.

I voted for the first option in the poll because (i) it's somewhat closer to what I think is typical, especially for a PC, and (ii) it was the only option for "not all hp loss is physical injury", but I could just as well have voted for Peanutbutter Jelly. It seems that's what most of those with whom I agree voted for.



Doug McCrae said:


> One issue is that, per Gary's 1e definition, hit points for high level characters don't mean exactly the same thing as hit points for most monsters.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So a hit point and a hit point aren't the same thing. It depends whose hit point it is! Stranger and stranger.



I have always taken this for granted. And Roger Musson talked about it way back when in his White Dwarf article "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive". As far as I know, that was the first published wound/vitality system for D&D, and in discussing how it applied to monsters Musson distinguished between "NPCs" like bugbear chieftains, who will use PC-style wound and vitality pools, and creatures like a giant plug, where all there hit points should just be plonked down into the wounds pool, because "a giant slug never dodged or parried anything in it's life" (a rough paraphrase without the actual text in front of me).



tuxgeo said:


> If a PC goes down in a fight, there was probably some physical damage in there somewhere, but the physical damage doesn't have to be the first, the middle, or the last chunk of HP loss in the fight. The PC might have received a severe cut early but kept fighting through sheer adrenaline, then later collapsed due to exhaustion and fright.



This is a good point, and makes me think I should have voted for Peanutbutter Jelly.



thewok said:


> The trick is not to narrate yourself into a corner.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Narrate the combat to the capabilites of the group.



Very sound advice.



Lanefan said:


> Until poison gets lobbed into the equation.
> 
> Because when using a poisoned weapon every hit - even if for only 1 h.p. damage - *is* a physical injury, even if only a small nick; as that's how the poison gets in. (one could easily argue that a made save means the skin didn't break, but my point remains)
> 
> Now, for consistency, extrapolate that thinking to non-poisoned weapons and bingo - every hit represents at least some sort of minor physical injury.  And note the use of the word "minor" here - a tiny cut on the upper arm is still a physical injury.



Two things.

First, you don't _have_ to be consistent. That's the importance of the point about context: in a poison context, you have to narrate even minor hit point loss as some sort of physical injury. But nothing in the rules, or the logic of gameplay, obliges you to extend that narration to other cases.

Second, "one could easily argue that a save made means the skin didn't break": _Schroedinger's Wounds!_. As I've often said, 4e didn't introduce fortune-in-the-middle mechanics into D&D. Gygax spells them out in his DMG, in his discussion of hit points and saving throws. (Though it's true that, in AD&D, the playtime elapsed between resolving the attack and resolving the poison save will often be less than that in 4e between resolving the attack and resolving the death save. But the reversal of ingame causation and at-the-table resolution is still present.)



Lanefan said:


> The presence or absence of poison should not make any difference whatsoever to the narration of the actual damage



Why not? That's the whole point of "contextual" hit points. And you've already agreed that the saving throw result can modify the narration.



Li Shenron said:


> Physical damage is the most natural way to see it, every casual gamer spontaneously sees HP loss as wounds. It is only when a more experience gamer patronizes the casual gamers in the group about this topic, and suggests to reason more about it, that people starts complicating the interpreration.



Is this true? Especially given that you don't get debilitated by hit point loss. I came into D&D from Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. In this books you have Stamina points, that you lose in combat. And there is a strong sense in the narrative of those books that losing Stamina isn't about being wounded, but about being worn down. (Eg you can replenish Stamina by eating rations, and when the books do narrate serious injury or disablement it tends to be in the form of a penalty to your attack bonus.)

When I started playing D&D, I think I though of hp as being pretty much the same as Stamina. And in due course I read the Gygax passages that set this out in detail.



Campbell said:


> Why choose? Right now I'm playing in a 6th level AD&D game that pretty much embraces the hp as meat space narrative and its great gonzo fun.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I've also run 4e games with all martial PCs where I completely embraced the meta aspects of hp and all the PCs were mortal. Sometimes you want something in between the extremes. Why not have a game that provides the tools for groups to decide for themselves.



Sounds reasonable. Do you envisage any problematic corner case situations where it would be hard to set up a uniform mechanical structure into which individual tables can plug their current preferences? I'm thinking maybe some forms of poison delivery, and some healing spells, might require careful design to make sure that the basic structure doesn't prejudge the issue one way or another.


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## Li Shenron (Jun 6, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Is this true? Especially given that you don't get debilitated by hit point loss. I came into D&D from Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. In this books you have Stamina points, that you lose in combat. And there is a strong sense in the narrative of those books that losing Stamina isn't about being wounded, but about being worn down. (Eg you can replenish Stamina by eating rations, and when the books do narrate serious injury or disablement it tends to be in the form of a penalty to your attack bonus.)




IMXP yes, it is true. Casual gamers or rather first-timers to RPGs probably have computer games as the closest experience, but in any case it is quite natural for someone without previous RPGing experience to just see the equation *weapon damage = HP loss = wounds*. 

Only after thinking about it for a while at least they start seeing HP as a more complex abstraction with different meanings. There is actually no need for a wounds rules system to make them see HP as physical, just the fact that weapon damage (and damage from traps, fire, falling, crushing etc.) is the main or even the only source of HP loss, which in turn is the most common way to die, is enough to suggest that first, simplistic but spontaneous interpretation of HP.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 6, 2012)

pemerton said:


> But even with that longer healing rate, a typical mercenary with 4 hp can recover from any non-fatal hit point loss in less than a week (6 days to recover 3 hp). How can anyone think that that is recovery from any sort of serious injury?




[MENTION=23279]Mercutio[/MENTION]001 appears to be arguing the opposite side to the side he plays.  He's in the small cuts and bruises camp until the final few hit points and just has an aesthetic objection to healing being overnight so far as I can tell.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 6, 2012)

pemerton said:


> As I and Hussar have asked, how did you get away with narrating serious injury in 3E, when every non-fatal wound will heal naturally in a week or so? That doesn't sound very serious to me.



I can answer this one: healing magic. With a magical healer in the party or ready access to magical healing potions, it becomes quite easy. 3e has a very slippery slope when you hit negative hps giving a feel that death is imminent (with the mechanics definitely supporting this). Knowing that healing magic will be used as soon as available (or the character dying), there is nothing stopping you with the guts across the floor description because the magic is going to shove the guts back in or the character is going to *die.

4e however with a warlord in the party complicates this by not allowing such description. Additionally, if the injured party does not get magical healing and simply makes their saves, gets some rest, gets their surges back and zing, the guts across the floor description never becomes available. Essentially, you really have to work at it to kill your 4e character.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

*The only exception here is that stupid standard action heal check to stabilise the injured character. We always joked about that when combined with the guts across the floor description It was a move action to run to the injured character and then a standard action heal check to kick their intestines back in. So 3e could upon occasion compromise the over-the-top description if the magical healer didn't get there first.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 6, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> [MENTION=23279]Mercutio[/MENTION]001 appears to be arguing the opposite side to the side he plays.  He's in the small cuts and bruises camp until the final few hit points and just has an aesthetic objection to healing being overnight so far as I can tell.



As you note that yes. EVERY hit leaves a small cut or bruise. A hit means actual physical contact, but that doesn't mean I narrate all the hits as serious wounds, which is where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s disconnect with my style of play is. In the poll, I voted that early hits are scratches and bruises and late hits are wounds (every hit is a hit), but if people take that to mean I'm describing hacked off limbs or broken bones, then you're mistaken. If you care enough to see how I do describe combats, take a look here at the XCrawl game I'm currently running as a PBP (Stage One: Surviving the Elements - Online-Roleplaying.community)

I'm in the camp where every hit is a hit and leaves a mark. A week of rest will heal scrapes and bruises back to near normal. But one night will not.

[MENTION=11300]Herremann the Wise[/MENTION] does a good job of explaining what I would have answered.


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## Campbell (Jun 6, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Sounds reasonable. Do you envisage any problematic corner case situations where it would be hard to set up a uniform mechanical structure into which individual tables can plug their current preferences? I'm thinking maybe some forms of poison delivery, and some healing spells, might require careful design to make sure that the basic structure doesn't prejudge the issue one way or another.




This really requires an in depth response. I'll get back to you on Friday once I'm not swamped with academic work.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 7, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> I can answer this one: healing magic.



I thought the question was "_how did you get away with narrating serious injury in 3E, when every non-fatal wound will heal *naturally* in a week or so_?"

A response about _natural_ healing can't be "it's _magic_!", by definition.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 7, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> I thought the question was "_how did you get away with narrating serious injury in 3E, when every non-fatal wound will heal *naturally* in a week or so_?"
> 
> A response about _natural_ healing can't be "it's _magic_!", by definition.



How are you defining a serious injury? And why is the assumption that I must be narrating every hit as a serious wound? I don't understand how that misconception gets created. 

Furthermore, you are assuming 3rd Edition rules as my preference, which is not the case. It is the one I've played the most, but not my preferred edition. Now, using the standard 3E rules, a 3rd level character with 30 HP dropped to 0 will take 10 days to recover, or 5 if he does nothing other than sleep in a bed for all 5 days. In 4th Edition, that same character will heal in 8 hours.

Now, let's consider 2E (the edition I do actually prefer), 1 HP per day, or for full bed rest 3 per day + Con bonus per week. Even if you assume the fighter (warrior) has an 18 Con, that's still only 25 hit points of natural healing in 7 days. So it's 9 days of complete and total bed rest. And that's 216 hours. (Not to mention specific only to the fighter. It's longer for every other class) Versus 4E's grand total of ... 8 hrs.

Yes, the 5 days (or 9) of complete bed rest is unrealistic, but not nearly as stupidly fast as 8 hours. It's the difference between 8 hours and 120 (or 216) hours. That's 15 to 27 times longer. And that's if we're not considering characters that are still actively moving and fighting and taking more damage along the line.

It's a matter of attrition over time, and 4E doesn't allow for that, and neither do the playtest DDN rules. In all previous editions, the wounds/HP loss carried over from day to day. In 4E and DDN, you either die in one day, or you heal back to full as if you were never hit in the first place. That's a major problem with how I game.

And, thankfully, DDN is supposedly being designed such that it can support the style of play that I desire as well as supporting the style of play that 4E fans like.

Edited to add: And in a world with magical healing, sometimes I could get away with narrating a more serious wound, with the assumption that characters WOULD spend resources for magical healing, and thus would not rely solely on natural healing.


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## Lanefan (Jun 7, 2012)

Re: subdual damage







pemerton said:


> Well that's why 4e got rid of it (and AD&D didn't really have it, except for a few corner case abilities like Slippers of Kicking). It is inconsistent with the overall framework.



AD&D does have it - 1e DMG, page 67, "Striking to Subdue".  It's also mentioned again a few pages later in the unarmed combat section.

Non-lethal damage is kind of essential to have in the game for story reasons if nothing else: press gangs and slavers roll into town, round up whoever they can find, beat the tar out of any who resist, and either sell their new captives or put them to work.

But when beating the tar out of those who resist said beating has to be non-lethal, as why would slavers ever want to kill off perfectly good inventory?

And PCs need it too: "Put him down but leave him in one piece, we don't want him bleeding all over the place when he explains his crimes to the King!"

And it's really not at all inconsistent.  All it does is reverse the idea of temporary hit points - some effects allow you to gain temporary h.p. for a while and then you lose them; subdual damage allows you to temporarily lose some h.p. and then get them back.

Lanefan


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 7, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Non-lethal damage is kind of essential to have in the game for story reasons if nothing else: press gangs and slavers roll into town, round up whoever they can find, beat the tar out of any who resist, and either sell their new captives or put them to work.




You're arguing that it is required (or, at least, beneficial) to be able to defeat enemies in combat without killing them.  Totally agreed!

However, this, in no way, requires a subdual damage mechanic that sits alongside the normal damage mechanic.  Instead, the 4E version of, "When you drop an opponent to 0 or fewer HP, you can pick if they're dead or unconscious" works just fine.  I house-ruled it into my 3.75 game, as well.


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## Lanefan (Jun 7, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> You're arguing that it is required (or, at least, beneficial) to be able to defeat enemies in combat without killing them.  Totally agreed!
> 
> However, this, in no way, requires a subdual damage mechanic that sits alongside the normal damage mechanic.  Instead, the 4E version of, "When you drop an opponent to 0 or fewer HP, you can pick if they're dead or unconscious" works just fine.  I house-ruled it into my 3.75 game, as well.



The choose-when-dropped mechanic is one answer, but it has a problem: how do you narrate it during the fight, particularly if you don't know what choice will be made?

For example: if a foe is striking to subdue, a trained warrior might pick up on this during the battle and adjust her tactics accordingly; or at least ask herself (and-or her friends) "why are they trying to keep us alive?"

I'd rather have the strike-to-subdue declared ahead of the battle (or at least prior to each individual attack) if only for this reason.

Lanefan


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 7, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> The choose-when-dropped mechanic is one answer, but it has a problem: how do you narrate it during the fight, particularly if you don't know what choice will be made?




Well, with hit point loss not representing serious physical wounds*, and with mundane healing being pretty quick, you just say that they're striking to subdue - and you still take 10 points of damage.



* At least until the very end of the pile, at which point the decision to kill (and cause a serious wound) or KO (and continue to not cause a serious wound) is made.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 7, 2012)

Not to jump in the middle of this subdual damage argument, but hitting to knock out with a sword is a problem. That's one of the reasons non-lethal damage was separated from lethal damage.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 8, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> I thought the question was "_how did you get away with narrating serious injury in 3E, when every non-fatal wound will heal *naturally* in a week or so_?"
> 
> A response about _natural_ healing can't be "it's _magic_!", by definition.



I think you're being deliberately obtuse here as this seems very straightforward. You are not talking about a non-fatal injury, you are talking about an injury serious because the character in all likelihood is about to be killed by it (the slippery slope I mentioned when talking about deep negatives in 3e). You narrate serious injury in a situation when the character is about to die (-8, -9 in 3e and decreasing) and the only thing that is likely to help them is magical healing. The context here is quite obvious. You are _not _talking about a wound that has any likelihood of healing naturally in a week or so. 

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Fifth Element (Jun 8, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> You narrate serious injury in a situation when the character is about to die (-8, -9 in 3e and decreasing) and the only thing that is likely to help them is magical healing. The context here is quite obvious. You are _not _talking about a wound that has any likelihood of healing naturally in a week or so.



You're not answering the question that was asked. The question was, given that the 3E healing rules mean that any wound (loss of hit points) can be recovered within a week of rest, how you do narrate serious injury at all in that system? A 3E character, with complete bed rest, recovers 2 hit points per character level today. So a 20th-level fighter with 175 hit points, reduced to -9 but stabilized with a mundane DC 15 Heal check, will be fully recovered in five days.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 8, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> You're not answering the question that was asked. The question was, given that the 3E healing rules mean that any wound (loss of hit points) can be recovered within a week of rest, how you do narrate serious injury at all in that system? A 3E character, with complete bed rest, recovers 2 hit points per character level today. So a 20th-level fighter with 175 hit points, reduced to -9 but stabilized with a mundane DC 15 Heal check, will be fully recovered in five days.



I did answer the question that was asked.

In 3E, 5 days of full bed rest appears to be the standard to heal from 0 to full for most characters. That's 5 24hour days, or 120 hours of doing nothing but laying in a bed. Contrast that with 4E and DDN playtest as currently written where 8 hours heals from 0 to full. That's 15 times as fast as 3E. Yes, 3E is unrealistic, but 4E/DDN is insanely unrealistic.

And, again, in a system with magical healing, magical healing is assumed when describing grievous wounds. And even though 120 hours is still unrealistic, it's not the absurdly quick 8 hours of 4E/DDN.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 8, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> In 3E, 5 days of full bed rest appears to be the standard to heal from 0 to full for most characters. That's 5 24hour days, or 120 hours of doing nothing but laying in a bed. Contrast that with 4E and DDN playtest as currently written where 8 hours heals from 0 to full. That's 15 times as fast as 3E. Yes, 3E is unrealistic, but 4E/DDN is insanely unrealistic.



The question asked was about 3E in particular. If 3E is unrealistic, how did it not interfere with your interpretation of hit points and your narration of serious wounds?


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## Fifth Element (Jun 8, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Not to jump in the middle of this subdual damage argument, but hitting to knock out with a sword is a problem. That's one of the reasons non-lethal damage was separated from lethal damage.



Gary explained this one long ago - strike with the flat of the blade!

I'd say it's actually more problematic with a weapon like a mace.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 8, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> The question asked was about 3E in particular. If 3E is unrealistic, how did it not interfere with your interpretation of hit points and your narration of serious wounds?





Fifth Element said:


> The question asked was about 3E in particular. If 3E is unrealistic, how did it not interfere with your interpretation of hit points and your narration of serious wounds?




If you'd go back one page, you'd see my full answer. Since you appear to be ignoring it, you are either being deliberately obstinate, or simply seek to not listen to the answers you are provided.

But, in short, since magical healing is an deliberate assumption, the natural rate of healing only came into play if magical healing was missing, in which case the injured PC would hobble along at less than full HP until such time as magical healing was available. He didn't simply get up the next morning with all his HP.

You can call that invalid if you wish, but in every other edition of D&D, I was not forced to accept overnight natural healing.



Fifth Element said:


> Gary explained this one long ago - strike with the flat of the blade!
> 
> I'd say it's actually more problematic with a weapon like a mace.



I don't disagree, but 3E had you taking a penalty to attacks with lethal weapons being used counter to their stated purposes of killing humans. To wit, using the flat of your blade is not what it was designed for, and thus harder to execute properly. In particular, when I was deep in martial arts training, it took determined effort to pull punches or redirect focused blows so as to not cause damage, and thus the attacks themselves were not quite as properly aimed.

Now, even assuming that there is no penalty for non-lethal damage, would you not make your players declare that they are using weapons in a non-lethal manner before their attacks? If not, why not?


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## pemerton (Jun 8, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> I think you're being deliberately obtuse here
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The context here is quite obvious. You are _not _talking about a wound that has any likelihood of healing naturally in a week or so.



Actually, [MENTION=48135]Fifth Element[/MENTION] got my question right. I was asking how these injuries can be narrated as serious, when the game rules state that they will heal naturally in a week or so.

If the answer is "Because we ignore the natural healing possibility, and focus on the fact that, at the table, magic will be used" that's very interesting. Because when I read people complaining about martial encounter and daily powers (for example), they don't run their argument based on any actual facts of play at the table. They focus on the _possibility_ that, in the gameworld, the PCs could notice the power is an encounter or daily one.

So for me, this is another case where I don't really see what is driving the application of process simulation considerations in some context, but results-oriented interpretation of the rules in other contexts, except familiarity and tradition.



Mercutio01 said:


> And in a world with magical healing, sometimes I could get away with narrating a more serious wound, with the assumption that characters WOULD spend resources for magical healing, and thus would not rely solely on natural healing.



This can be feasible in 4e too, if the party has a paladin and cleric but no warlord. But I would agree it's more feasible in earlier editions.


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## pemerton (Jun 8, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Re: subdual damageAD&D does have it - 1e DMG, page 67, "Striking to Subdue".



I think I always assumed that was for dragons only.



Lanefan said:


> The choose-when-dropped mechanic is one answer, but it has a problem: how do you narrate it during the fight, particularly if you don't know what choice will be made?



Generally my players announce whether they're attacking to subdue or to kill.

That said, if they hadn't declared but wanted the foe to fall unconscious rather than be killed, I would generally let them narrate that - but it would be a result of luck rather than deliberate choice by the PC.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 8, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> You're not answering the question that was asked. The question was,* given that the 3E healing rules mean that any wound (loss of hit points) can be recovered within a week of rest, how you do narrate serious injury at all in that system?* A 3E character, with complete bed rest, recovers 2 hit points per character level today. So a 20th-level fighter with 175 hit points, reduced to -9 but stabilized with a mundane DC 15 Heal check, will be fully recovered in five days.



Your example assumes that the character is stabilized which is not inherent in your highlighted question. If a character has been described with their guts across the floor [mechanically at -9 with stabilization uncertain and thus the wound highly likely to be fatal], and your character has the option of magically healing them (through spells, magical equipment or abilities), or performing a mundane DC 15 heal check, which option are you most likely to take? The guaranteed one or the possibly uncertain one? In play, this typically works just fine (we have a particular 2e/3.5 DM in our group who loves this sort of over the top damage) and that is why you can narrate serious injury and not have that narrative compromised.

Could it be undone by someone doing a heal check? Of course. It can even be undone by the player rolling that 10% chance (although by then, someone has usually tried to apply guaranteed healing). Does it allow for guts across the floor description having a very good probability of not being compromised? Yes it does.

However, is the 3e system healing mechanic perfect? Far from it, this is something D&D has never really gotten within the realms of believability. 3e has such ridiculousness as a high level but insipidly sick wizard healing to full health in a day while a low level hale barbarian will take weeks to reach full health. Would it be nice if they could give us something more believable in terms of healing, hit points and damage? Most likely not as then there will be people complaining of their characters dying of infection or spending months recuperating back to adventuring health unless you have access to magical healing. 

What _would _be good though is having the flexibility to go one way or the other with a rules modules catering to each group's tastes. In this, despite the fact that they are still mashing physical and metaphysical concepts in together when they would be much better split (due to the believable and differing recovery rates of physical and metaphysical hit points); I still think that they can give the gamers who want to keep their characters in the action without halt the capacity to do so, while alternatively giving those of us who wish for something more believable our lollies too. I look forward to seeing how the 5e designers will cater to each.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 8, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Actually, [MENTION=48135]Fifth Element[/MENTION] got my question right. I was asking how these injuries can be narrated as serious, when the game rules state that they will heal naturally in a week or so.



Your assuming the character has stabilized (which is not necessarily guaranteed when providing such narration). As such, the considerable likelihood is that the guts across the floor injured character will die rather than get the opportunity to heal naturally in a handful of days as I described above.



pemerton said:


> This can be feasible in 4e too, if the party has a paladin and cleric but no warlord. But I would agree it's more feasible in earlier editions.



I agree it is more feasible in earlier editions. In our 4e games, most of the time character's will use their own resources to recover. It is quite possible in fact that that is exactly what at least one character will do after a nasty combat, even with access to a cleric (who can only look after a couple of patients at a time). As such, any guts across the floor description is going to be quickly found out as ridiculous.

The most perilous 4e situation is when you have a character with no healing surges left and they're waiting for someone to stabilise them. Even then, because of either a warlord or other mundane assistance, the chance of the guts across the floor being compromised is still there and possibly more so than 3e because of the general standard of healing surge recuperation.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 8, 2012)

pemerton said:


> So for me, this is another case where I don't really see what is driving the application of process simulation considerations in some context, but results-oriented interpretation of the rules in other contexts, except familiarity and tradition.




I can see this argument, but with magical healing being a presence in the game world, the characters would also know about magical healing, and would by relying on it. In fact that's exactly why a well-rounded group would actively seek out an adventuring cleric. The alternative is almost certain death.

FWIW, dailies didn't bother me the way encounter powers did.


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## jeffh (Jun 8, 2012)

Ignoring the ongoing discussion, which I don't have the context for, and just looking at the original question, a hit has to indicate _some_ injury or at least physical contact, doesn't it? Think of how, for example, poisonous snakes work - if you take 10 hits from them, you need to make 10 saves, not some lesser number, and they don't get harder as your hit points wear down. 

Nothing I've said should be taken to mean hit points are entirely physical, or that these very minor injuries are the _main_ explanation for hit point loss in all situations. Notwithstanding the flowchart on today's front page, I don't think _anyone_ actually thinks that, and if such people exist, I am most certainly not one of them. I'm just saying there must be _some_ contact involved.


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## pemerton (Jun 8, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> Your assuming the character has stabilized (which is not necessarily guaranteed when providing such narration).



I wasn't particularly talking about injuries that reduce a character into negative hit points, which have their own complexities (in 1st ed AD&D, a week's recovery after binding, and in 3E the need for binding - though, frankly, binding wounds in 6 seconds or so isn't redolent of anything very serious).

I was thinking more of, say, a 2nd level PC who drops from 15 hp to 1 hp in two blows from an orc in a combat. Thos 14 hp will heal in 4 days (at 4 hp per day), or in 2 days (at 8 hp per day) with nursing care (which nearly any trained nurse will be able to provide by taking 10). Therefore they cannot, in my view represent anything very serious.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 8, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I wasn't particularly talking about injuries that reduce a character into negative hit points, which have their own complexities (in 1st ed AD&D, a week's recovery after binding, and in 3E the need for binding - though, frankly, binding wounds in 6 seconds or so isn't redolent of anything very serious).
> 
> I was thinking more of, say, a 2nd level PC who drops from 15 hp to 1 hp in two blows from an orc in a combat. Thos 14 hp will heal in 4 days (at 4 hp per day), or in 2 days (at 8 hp per day) with nursing care (which nearly any trained nurse will be able to provide by taking 10). Therefore they cannot, in my view represent anything very serious.



In which case then we are in perfect accord.

A character at 1hp is still acting at full capacity and so is not troubled by their "injuries" or perhaps more precisely their current condition based purely on hit points. Complicating this (from trying to work out what is going on) is that tougher characters can most likely take quite a bit of roughing up yet still be at combat capacity where as a non-combat wizard takes a thump to the stomach and they're more than likely incapacitated. JeffH raises an interesting point in regards to poison saves, with a poisoning hit representing some form of physical contact and injury. But realistically, the damage caused is purely relative to the time taken to heal from it and so an injury that can be naturally healed in a day (4e/5e) or a handful of days (3e) is never going to be that serious, and certainly not to the violence level of guts across the floor.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 8, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I was thinking more of, say, a 2nd level PC who drops from 15 hp to 1 hp in two blows from an orc in a combat. Thos 14 hp will heal in 4 days (at 4 hp per day), or in 2 days (at 8 hp per day) with nursing care (which nearly any trained nurse will be able to provide by taking 10). Therefore they cannot, in my view represent anything very serious.



The numbers are off. It'd be 2 HP per day or 4 for total bed rest (so 7 days or 4 days).

Otherwise that's not untrue. But they are wounds (cuts, abrasions, bruises) and the difference between 4 days and 8 hours is too big of one for me to accept.


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## pemerton (Jun 8, 2012)

jeffh said:


> just looking at the original question, a hit has to indicate _some_ injury or at least physical contact, doesn't it? Think of how, for example, poisonous snakes work - if you take 10 hits from them, you need to make 10 saves



One of the things that's been discussed in this thread is how flexible hit point narration is allowed to be.

So, for example, just because a 1 hit point blow from a snake, delivered to a 100 hp fighter, has to be narrated as making physical contact, does that mean that _every_ 1 hp blow has to be narrated that way? 

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is the only person so far to have been strongly arguing "yes" in answer to that question, but even he seemed to allow that, if the 100 hp fighter made the save, that could be narrated as the skin not having been broken by the snake.


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 8, 2012)

pemerton said:


> As I read the rules, 4e is a game where the mechanics render it impossible for a PC to be seriously injured in combat but not killed.




I'm inclined to disagree.

Consider the little picture of the PC's face at the bottom of the screen in _Doom_.  When you're at 100% health he looks fine.  As he takes damage, the face becomes bloodied, then bruised - you can glance at that face and get a readout of how much health you have left.

If you treat a 4E PC the same way, then yeah, you can't narrate an injury that can't heal overnight.

But what if you don't?

Let's say I have 30 hit points.  On the attack that Bloodies me - drops me from 21 to 14, say - we decide to narrate it as a goblin stabbing me in the shoulder with a spear.

Now, the cinematic description of "stabbed through the shoulder" has no actual mechanical consequence.  All that mechanically matters are two things - I have the Bloodied status, and I'm 7 hit points closer to being rendered incapable of further direct influence on the course of the narrative.

We polish off the goblins and take an Extended rest.  _Voila_, I'm back at 30 hit points.  We could take the _Doom_ approach, and say that this means my shoulder is completely unblemished.  But that's not the only way to do it.

I'm happy to say that I have 30 hit points, and there's a nasty wound in my shoulder that's still oozing into the bandages we strapped on me after the fight.

Yesterday, when I was at 14 hit points, the shoulder wound had no mechanical effect on my combat capabilities.  Today, when I'm at 30 hit points, the shoulder wound has no effect on my combat capabilities.  So it doesn't mechanically break anything to say "I'm at max health, but the little face at the bottom of the screen still looks battered and bruised".

I can complain about how my shoulder is still aching like blazes for the next couple of in-game months, if I like.  What the extended rest has done is to replenish my capacity to resist attempts to prevent my direct influence on the narrative, _rather than removing any medical evidence within the fiction that someone stuck a spear in me_.

In summary - I don't think that "being at full hit points" mandates "showing no evidence of physical trauma narrated to explain previous hit point loss".



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is the only person so far to have been strongly arguing "yes" in answer to that question, but even he seemed to allow that, if the 100 hp fighter made the save, that could be narrated as the skin not having been broken by the snake.




Yeah.

You obviously can't narrate an attack before the attack roll is made.  You don't know if it's a successful attack or an unsuccessful attack.

It's generally accepted that it's a bad idea to narrate an attack before the damage roll is made.  vs AC 15, an attack roll of 15 sounds less impressive than an attack roll of 27, but if it's 15 for 13 points of damage vs 27 for 2 point of damage, the damage roll will presumably impact on the description you choose.

It's a bad idea to commit to a narration before DR is considered.  If you deal 8 damage but the creature has DR 10, that consideration will influence the narrative.

It's a bad idea to commit to a narration before the existence of poison is confirmed or denied, since poison may mandate physical injury to be involved in the narrative resolution of the attack.

But, as Lanefan concedes, a successful saving throw against poison may negate that mandate - if we know that the attack did not result in the character succumbing to poison, then we retain the freedom to narrate the attack without the poison being successfully introduced to the victim's bloodstream... which means physical injury is no longer a necessity.

In the D&DN playtest or 4E, we also need to consider if the attack can reduce the target's HP total despite an unsuccessful attack roll.

Once all of those factors are considered, you know what is forbidden in the narrative ("He failed his poison save, so you must incorporate physical contact"; "DR prevented all hit point loss, so you shouldn't narrate major inconvenience"), and anything else is really fair game... assuming one allows for hit points to represent multiple avenues of plot resilience.

(For certain types of DR - zombies, say - even the reduction of damage to zero doesn't require no wounds in the cinematic depiction.  You can carve big chunks out of a zombie with an axe, and he keeps coming... perfectly valid zero-damage attack!)

-Hyp.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 8, 2012)

Hypersmurf said:


> In summary - I don't think that "being at full hit points" mandates "showing no evidence of physical trauma narrated to explain previous hit point loss".



I agree with this. However, if you describe a spear through the shoulder, it is a little difficult to believe that the character is at full capacity the following day striking effectively with a sword in one hand and defending stoutly with a shield in the other. Where this line of believability is drawn is highly dependent upon the group, campaign style and individual.

Hit points as they stand do a really poor job of representing physical wounding as well as all their metaphysical aspects. Primarily, a character is either at operational capacity or they are incapacitated. Occasionally, a character has to deal with a handful of extremely transient conditions but there is nothing mechanically representing a condition where the character is substantially injured and impaired, but they still have the use of some or most of their hit points. I think having this bridging state between incapacitated and operational capacity would aid the believability of combat and injury.

Unfortunately, it can also potentially represent a death spiral. However, by allowing an impaired character to still use the majority of their hit points to avoid being damaged, I think it gentles the slope. It can further nullify the spiral by allowing heroic opportunities (action points, surges, spending _x_hit points) for a character to momentarily ignore such penalties. In essence, I would love to see this bridging health state as a possibility in 5e.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 8, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> Primarily, a character is either at operational capacity or they are incapacitated.




That's essentially my point.  Yesterday, with a spear in his shoulder, the character was capable of using his sword in one hand and shield in the other at full effectiveness.  Today, having been speared in the shoulder, the character is capable of using his sword in one hand and shield in the other at full effectiveness.

The difference is that yesterday, he was more likely to end up in a situation where he's rendered incapacitated by a different attack (since the probability of going negative from 14 is higher than the probability of going negative from 30).  But while the spear was the narration that accounted for 7 points of the 16 damage he'd taken, the abstract nature of hit points means that we don't need to inextricably bind _those 7 points_ to _that spear wound_ thereafter.

_If_ the nature of the injury imposed an interwoven mechanical impairment (and by interwoven, I exclude the Bloodied condition which is tied to a hit point threshold, regardless of how many times you cross back and forth over that number since sustaining the injury), the narrative freedom would be curtailed by that impairment.  "Spear in the shoulder" provides condition X, and anyone without condition X does not have a spear wound in the shoulder?  Then something that removes condition X must somehow remove the wound.

But those impairments don't exist in 3E, or 4E, or D&DN.

(Most of my gaming of late has been in a FATE system, which separates basic damage ('Stress') from lasting injuries ('Consequences'), and those injuries heal at different speeds depending on their severity.  (A Minor Consequence might be "Bruised Ribs", and cease to be mechanically significant at the end of the Scene.  A Severe Consequence might be "Broken Ribs", and it will continue to impact the character until the end of the Adventure, for example.))

-Hyp.


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## Lanefan (Jun 8, 2012)

Hypersmurf said:


> I'm happy to say that I have 30 hit points, and there's a nasty wound in my shoulder that's still oozing into the bandages we strapped on me after the fight.
> 
> ...[...]...
> 
> In summary - I don't think that "being at full hit points" mandates "showing no evidence of physical trauma narrated to explain previous hit point loss".



An interesting reversal, to be sure; though I think "a nasty wound ... still oozing into the bandages" is not exactly full h.p. territory.   In fact, that's a narration I might use to describe somebody who is what we call "incurable", having been below 0 h.p. recently and still recovering.





> You obviously can't narrate an attack before the attack roll is made.  You don't know if it's a successful attack or an unsuccessful attack.



Except with the Reaper, you can!  She's always going to hurt you somehow, provided she swings at all...

And I just thought of another ridiculous thing about that auto-damage ability: with a poor roll on the damage die it is now possible to do more damage on a rolled miss than on a rolled hit.  Sigh...



> It's generally accepted that it's a bad idea to narrate an attack before the damage roll is made.  vs AC 15, an attack roll of 15 sounds less impressive than an attack roll of 27, but if it's 15 for 13 points of damage vs 27 for 2 point of damage, the damage roll will presumably impact on the description you choose.
> 
> It's a bad idea to commit to a narration before DR is considered.  If you deal 8 damage but the creature has DR 10, that consideration will influence the narrative.



Both true, though I don't have to worry about DR. 



> It's a bad idea to commit to a narration before the existence of poison is confirmed or denied, since poison may mandate physical injury to be involved in the narrative resolution of the attack.
> 
> But, as Lanefan concedes, a successful saving throw against poison may negate that mandate - if we know that the attack did not result in the character succumbing to poison, then we retain the freedom to narrate the attack without the poison being successfully introduced to the victim's bloodstream... which means physical injury is no longer a necessity.



I still think minor or trivial physical injury is necessary most of the time - the 100 h.p. Fighter example being the exception rather than the rule (100 h.p. characters are mighty rare in these parts).  I've almost always narrated made saves vs. poison as either "your body fights off the effects" or "you quickly do what's necessary to get the poison out of you"; or words to those effects.



> Once all of those factors are considered, you know what is forbidden in the narrative ("He failed his poison save, so you must incorporate physical contact"; "DR prevented all hit point loss, so you shouldn't narrate major inconvenience"), and anything else is really fair game... assuming one allows for hit points to represent multiple avenues of plot resilience.



Where you say "plot resilience" I say "pain tolerance". 



> (For certain types of DR - zombies, say - even the reduction of damage to zero doesn't require no wounds in the cinematic depiction.  You can carve big chunks out of a zombie with an axe, and he keeps coming... perfectly valid zero-damage attack!)



Brilliant!  Same could be used, in this case anyway, for regenerative effects; with a Zombie, who can tell?

Lan-"things requiring brains: zombies, scarecrows, me..."-efan


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## pemerton (Jun 8, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> The numbers are off. It'd be 2 HP per day or 4 for total bed rest (so 7 days or 4 days).



My understanding of the rules, which I double-checked on the online SRD, is that it is 1 hp/level/8 hr of rest, or 2 hp/level/day of bed rest, and that a successful Heal check at DC 15 doubles either rate:

Providing long-term care means treating a wounded person for a day or more. If your Heal check is successful, the patient recovers hit points or ability score points (lost to ability damage) at twice the normal rate: 2 hit points per level for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 4 hit points per level for each full day of complete rest​
Taking 10 for the DC on the nursing check requires a +5 or better bonus - which is 4 ranks, +1 for stat or +2 for feat - hence my comment that nearly any trained nurse can provide the requisite level of care.


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## pemerton (Jun 8, 2012)

Hypersmurf said:


> We polish off the goblins and take an Extended rest.  _Voila_, I'm back at 30 hit points.  We could take the _Doom_ approach, and say that this means my shoulder is completely unblemished.  But that's not the only way to do it.
> 
> I'm happy to say that I have 30 hit points, and there's a nasty wound in my shoulder that's still oozing into the bandages we strapped on me after the fight.
> 
> ...



Sure. [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] and I were running just this line on a hit point thread around here a month or so ago.

But there is another consideration, in my view, namely:



Herremann the Wise said:


> if you describe a spear through the shoulder, it is a little difficult to believe that the character is at full capacity the following day striking effectively with a sword in one hand and defending stoutly with a shield in the other.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> there is nothing mechanically representing a condition where the character is substantially injured and impaired, but they still have the use of some or most of their hit points.



I would add to the last line of this - there is nothing mechanically representing injury and impairment when a character has lost most of their hit points either.

I'm happy to narrate bruises, cuts and the like that are inflicted, and that PCs complain about even after their hp are recovered. That's fine (for the reasons you give, and that Firelance and I were running on that earlier thread). But I can't happily narrate a spear through a PC's shoulder, given that their use of their arm is in no way mechanically impaired.

I don't have the same objection to narrating a spear through an NPC's arm - they don't go into a death spiral either, but they're likely to roll sufficiently few follow-up attacks that the effects of injury can all be subsumed into the variability of to hit and damage rolls. But the idea that a PC has been stabbed through the shoulder, and yet is unimpeded in climbing, swimming, carrying etc is more than my suspension of disbelief can handle.

Hence my view that 4e PCs can't suffer serious injuries _pursuant to the combat rules_. That qualification is important, in my view - it leaves it open that other mechanical techniques (say, a skill challenge) or even free roleplaying could produce some kind of injury that was serious and that did (for example) impede future climb and swim checks.

My view is also that those powers (clerical, warlord etc) that simply restore hit points are incapable of healing serious injury (like broken bones, blindness etc). In my game it requires Remove Affliction to heal such hurts.


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 8, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> An interesting reversal, to be sure; though I think "a nasty wound ... still oozing into the bandages" is not exactly full h.p. territory.   In fact, that's a narration I might use to describe somebody who is what we call "incurable", having been below 0 h.p. recently and still recovering.




If you'd never use a stab in the shoulder as the cinematic expression of an attack that doesn't take someone negative, then it's not an issue you need to deal with in the first place.



> And I just thought of another ridiculous thing about that auto-damage ability: with a poor roll on the damage die it is now possible to do more damage on a rolled miss than on a rolled hit.  Sigh...




No, it isn't.  Reaper deals ability mod.  A rolled hit deals rolled damage, _plus ability mod_.  A rolled hit will always be, at minimum, 1 point more than Reaper can deal.



> I've almost always narrated made saves vs. poison as either "your body fights off the effects" or "you quickly do what's necessary to get the poison out of you"; or words to those effects.




And those are both perfectly serviceable explanations for why the poison doesn't affect someone.  I'm saying that "the poison never entered his bloodstream in the first place" also explains it... and that might be because the poisoned dagger didn't touch him.  He still lost hit points as a result of the attack action, but those hit points can represent something other than "Sliced by the dagger".



> Where you say "plot resilience" I say "pain tolerance".




Sure.  But because I allow that hit points are a broader concept than "things that cause pain", I'll stand by the phrase 

The orc successfully beat my AC with his attack roll; consequently, it's more likely that at some point in this combat, I'll be rendered unconscious.  Whether that's because I'm wounded, or I used up some luck, or I'm demoralised, or winded, or off-balance, or my deity is getting tired of intervening on my behalf... in some fashion, a later attack might knock me out when, had it not been for the orc just now, I might have remained conscious.

Only one of those possibilities is opposed by my pain tolerance, but all of them affect my plot resilience 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> I don't have the same objection to narrating a spear through an NPC's arm - they don't go into a death spiral either, but they're likely to roll sufficiently few follow-up attacks that the effects of injury can all be subsumed into the variability of to hit and damage rolls. But the idea that a PC has been stabbed through the shoulder, and yet is unimpeded in climbing, swimming, carrying etc is more than my suspension of disbelief can handle.




From a realistic perspective, sure.  From an action-movie point of view, though, the shoulder wound is the stand-by for "He's hurt, but it's not going to stop him from dealing to anyone who crosses him".  I _like_ my gaming to feel like I'm in an action movie.

-Hyp.


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## FireLance (Jun 8, 2012)

Well, since pemerton game me a mention, I thought I'd chip in.

I consider hit points to be almost completely skill, endurance, vigor, luck, etc.

That said, a character who takes hit point damage from a physical source should probably have a minor scratch, cut, bruise or some other sign of that damage to account for stuff like poison.

_That_ said (again), the scratch, cut, bruise or other sign of physical damage would be so minor that it wouldn't even be worth one physical hit point. Give the same injury to the weakest (1 hp) person in the world, and it wouldn't kill him. For that matter, replicate all the minor scratches, cuts and bruises sustained by a high-level fighter in a duel that takes him from 200 hp to 1 hp on that 1 hp commoner and the commoner would still be alive, conscious and at 1 hp.

The only time that I would narrate a character taking a serious injury is if he was reduced to 0 hit points or less. And even then, if he was brought back to positive (or even full) hit points by mundane means, I would continue to narrate that the wound existed, but it somehow (good bandaging and other mundane medical care, the PC's on willpower and determination, inspiration from another party member, or some combination of these and other explanations) wasn't hindering him in any way. 

That is just my personal choice, however, and a DM who doesn't want to deal with that could simply require a week of bed rest for any character who has dropped to 0 or fewer hit points and had no access to magical healing. 

Or he could complain that all his PCs have magical regenerative capabilities. Whatever floats his boat.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 8, 2012)

I had a longer response, but I'm sure it would fall on deaf ears. So, I'm bowing out of this discussion because it's ridiculous, and because it has circled yet again (again, again, again) and we are starting back at the top of CleverNickName's chart.

Suffice to say I am no more convinced that sleeping for 8 hours should heal everyone with no mechanical indications of injury than you all seem to be that hit points ARE mechanical indications of injury.


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## Hussar (Jun 8, 2012)

mercutio01 said:
			
		

> Yes, the 5 days (or 9) of complete bed rest is unrealistic, but not nearly as stupidly fast as 8 hours. It's the difference between 8 hours and 120 (or 216) hours. That's 15 to 27 times longer. And that's if we're not considering characters that are still actively moving and fighting and taking more damage along the line.




See, and that's the crux of the issue.  9 days or 1 day, why does it matter?  They are both ridiculously fast.  Anything less than a month is ridiculous.  

This is why people have such a difficult time coming to any sort of agreement here.  1 day or 9 days?  It's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Who cares?  If realism is the issue, both rules are about equally realistic.  No matter how much you want to play with numbers.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 8, 2012)

Hussar said:


> See, and that's the crux of the issue.  9 days or 1 day, why does it matter?  They are both ridiculously fast.  Anything less than a month is ridiculous.
> 
> This is why people have such a difficult time coming to any sort of agreement here.  1 day or 9 days?  It's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Who cares?  If realism is the issue, both rules are about equally realistic.  No matter how much you want to play with numbers.



I disagree slightly here. Players will sit their character's out a day if they know they will be at full capacity and "insta-healed". They won't sit out 9 days though and instead they'll seek their nearest depository of magical healing. The end result is that both groups will be ready to go the next day. However, the first will be "magically" healed while the latter group _will _be magically healed and feel like they've spent resources to get back in the action. The feel of each scenario is quite different. One feels like healing for free but the other feels like healing has at least been paid for; and that some sacrifice to the god of resource management performed.

Anyway, you and I have had fun discussing this previously and I think we both agree that neither 3.x or 4e had a logically consistent way of dealing with healing and damage. I'm really hoping they come out with a rules module that takes a better stab at this crucial part of the game.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Derren (Jun 8, 2012)

Hussar said:


> See, and that's the crux of the issue.  9 days or 1 day, why does it matter?  They are both ridiculously fast.  Anything less than a month is ridiculous.




9 days or longer is downtime from adventuring for the characters to recover which is most of the time only possible when they currently do not have a quest as in 9 days the PCs will have missed a deadline.
It also gives the PCs time to do something else than constant dungeon crawling. YOu know such things as social contacts etc.

1 day means its just a matter of locking the doors and posting a guard and on the next day the party continues to hack their way through hordes of XP bags. That leads to non stop dungeoncrawling reducing the PCs from characters to robots.


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## billd91 (Jun 8, 2012)

Hussar said:


> See, and that's the crux of the issue.  9 days or 1 day, why does it matter?  They are both ridiculously fast.  Anything less than a month is ridiculous.
> 
> This is why people have such a difficult time coming to any sort of agreement here.  1 day or 9 days?  It's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Who cares?  If realism is the issue, both rules are about equally realistic.  No matter how much you want to play with numbers.




Because we have thresholds where the acceptable becomes unacceptable. There comes a point where willing suspension of disbelief crosses over into "aw, come ON!" Plus, you have the change in behavior between just spending an overnight and spending several days. I'm not sure that you need to have realistic times past a certain point - you'll get changes in strategy either way.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 8, 2012)

To me the problem is that 8 hours is almost literally nothing.  It's the time you spend asleep.  Even one full day of rest (two nights) would be _massively_ better.

I have exactly the same problem with the wizard and cleric.  It's the time you spend asleep plus a token amount of time while everyone else is cooking breakfast/striking the tent.  The wizard and cleric get given their spells just for shirking chores.


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## airwalkrr (Jun 8, 2012)

Personally, I have always perceived hit points as more about skill than anything else (and to a lesser extent endurance). A commoner with 2 hit points has very little combat skill. If he gets hit, almost any wound is going to be potentially mortal. A fighter on the other hand, even a level 1 fighter, has a great degree of skill with which he is able to turn what would be a mortal wound to a commoner into a mere scratch. I ascribe to the philosophy that any hit point loss involves physical damage of some kind. But the seriousness of the physical damage is directly in proportion to the character's total hit points. A high number of hit points indicates a high level of skill at turning otherwise nasty blows into flesh wounds, cuts, or scrapes that can be easily recovered from with enough rest or magical healing. A low number of hit points indicates a lack of fighting skill and low tolerance for telling blows.

As for the type of injury, that depends on the attack. If you are being attacked by a sword, you likely sustain a cut. If you get clobbered with a mace, then you are bruised and contused. If you have your mind blown by a psychic, you suffer brain hemorrhage. But all of these injuries are minor until they take you to 0 hp or below. That is the only point at which they become life-threatening. My favorite system was from the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana where attacks that brought you to 0 hp or below required a Fort save to see how bad the attack was. This way there was not such a narrow field between disabled and unconscious.


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## Uller (Jun 8, 2012)

Hussar said:


> See, and that's the crux of the issue.  9 days or 1 day, why does it matter?  They are both ridiculously fast.  Anything less than a month is ridiculous.




Precisely.  I served in the Infantry in the US Army in Iraq.  In the first week there we had a guy break his foot...just a hairline fracture.  He was out of action for THREE MONTHS.  Real, life threatening wounds take soldiers out of action for at least the remainder of their tour more often than not.  This is with the best modern medicine has to offer (i.e. "magic").  When a warrior receives an incapacitating wound, there is no mundane healing that is going to put him back in the game at full capacity that could in anyway be called "realistic" and "fun" at the same time. Not in an hour, a day, a week, a month...so you are arguing about one unrealistic model over another.

These arguments always boil down to people saying "my style should be core.  Your style should be a house rule because mine is better."


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## Derren (Jun 8, 2012)

Uller said:


> These arguments always boil down to people saying "my style should be core.  Your style should be a house rule because mine is better."




Its more a question of "I want the PCs to be hack&slash machines who clear dungeons non stop" or "I want PCs to be (very powerful) humans who still need resting and down time between adventures and thus have to manage the "resource" healing and time.


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## Uller (Jun 8, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> To me the problem is that 8 hours is almost literally nothing.  It's the time you spend asleep.  Even one full day of rest (two nights) would be _massively_ better.
> 
> I have exactly the same problem with the wizard and cleric.  It's the time you spend asleep plus a token amount of time while everyone else is cooking breakfast/striking the tent.  The wizard and cleric get given their spells just for shirking chores.




That's what you effectively have.  You can't have more than one rest in any given24 hour period. So if your party start a rest at 10pm, they can't start another unitl 10 pm the next evening.

In the game I played last night th pcs fought an encounter at 9pm, rested then exploed a ruin starting at 8am.  After 4 encounters (and accidentally releasing a vampire into the world) they decided to rest again. But its only 10 am. So they have to safely hole up for 12 hours before they even begin their rest.   In that time the villains can take actions to prepare defenses and even start to work against the pcs.  Its short enough to keep the game moving and long enough to allow npcs to adjust to the latest actions of the pcs.

In my experience 24 hours is a pretty good time frame for the adventure environment to adjust.  When you start talking weeks its effectively a new adventure


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## Aenghus (Jun 8, 2012)

Derren said:


> Its more a question of "I want the PCs to be hack&slash machines who clear dungeons non stop" or "I want PCs to be (very powerful) humans who still need resting and down time between adventures and thus have to manage the "resource" healing and time.




That's negative and inaccurate language for the style you don't like and more positive language for the one you do. Which isn't a good way to win any converts, or encourage reasonable debate..

An action-adventure style of game with a lower mortality rate is a perfectly fine style of play, even if it isn't to your taste. 

Just as a style with more danger and more hp management is a valid style, even if it is no longer to my taste.

I do think something closer to former is more accessible to new players though, and the hobby needs new players.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 8, 2012)

Derren said:


> Its more a question of "I want the PCs to be hack&slash machines who clear dungeons non stop" or "I want PCs to be (very powerful) humans who still need resting and down time between adventures and thus have to manage the "resource" healing and time.



And this is why I want a few paragraphs on setting the extended rest dial.  If you have everything major connected to a long rest, it's _trivial_ to houserule what a long rest is to change the feel of the game to the one you want.  I don't honestly care much about what the default value for the length of a long rest is - I care that it's set cleanly enough to houserule into a gaming style I like


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## Uller (Jun 8, 2012)

Derren said:


> Its more a question of "I want the PCs to be hack&slash machines who clear dungeons non stop" or "I want PCs to be (very powerful) humans who still need resting and down time between adventures and thus have to manage the "resource" healing and time.




Thanks for making my point....


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## Derren (Jun 8, 2012)

Aenghus said:


> An action-adventure style of game with a lower mortality rate is a perfectly fine style of play, even if it isn't to your taste.




This has nothing to do with mortality, at least not directly. It has to do with the PCs being able to clear dungeons non stop by just resting for a night or by having to manage their health and healing resources because they have no way to fully heal without magic while in enemy territory.


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## Uller (Jun 8, 2012)

Aenghus said:


> An action-adventure style of game with a lower mortality rate is a perfectly fine style of play, even if it isn't to your taste.
> 
> Just as a style with more danger and more hp management is a valid style, even if it is no longer to my taste.




I think the higher danger is with the former.  As a DM, I tend to feel I can really beat the crap out of the PCs and force them to their limits knowing that even if I drop one or two into dirt nap status they will be back in the game soon.  So I don't hold back on what the monsters do.  That leads to tougher fights and more pc death


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## Uller (Jun 8, 2012)

Derren said:


> This has nothing to do with mortality, at least not directly. It has to do with the PCs being able to clear dungeons non stop by just resting for a night or by having to manage their health and healing resources because they have no way to fully heal without magic while in enemy territory.




Again...I served in combat in the infantry.  I assure you....no one gets any real rest in "enemy territory". If your players are finding places to get that kind of rest in the middle of an active enemy stronghold its either because you built a place into the adventure for them to do that or they are very skilled at hiding and securing themselves.

On a rare occasion the pcs become desperate enough to try that make them earn it if you want it to be a challenge for them.


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## Aenghus (Jun 8, 2012)

Derren said:


> This has nothing to do with mortality, at least not directly. It has to do with the PCs being able to clear dungeons non stop by just resting for a night or by having to manage their health and healing resources because they have no way to fully heal without magic while in enemy territory.




Now I think of it, the slow healing game isn't a good match for plot-based games with time limits such as "save the princess". A quicker recover game suits this sort of premise better,as the players aren't forced to  choose between stopping to rest (which can be acting out of character) or pressing ahead  while too weak and probably losing. Slow healing doesn't fit a more dramatic genre, and that genre doesn't result in a party that mechanically hacks through dungeons, as they have more personal and plot based motivations.

Whereas I can see slower healing and hp management can be a better fit for more player driven games, depending on tastes in the group concerned. 

The can't be a "one size fits all" answer to this conundorum.


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## Herschel (Jun 8, 2012)

*In the heat of battle, decapitation is a wound. Everything else is abstract. *


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## Derren (Jun 8, 2012)

Uller said:


> Again...I served in combat in the infantry.  I assure you....no one gets any real rest in "enemy territory". If your players are finding places to get that kind of rest in the middle of an active enemy stronghold its either because you built a place into the adventure for them to do that or they are very skilled at hiding and securing themselves.
> 
> On a rare occasion the pcs become desperate enough to try that make them earn it if you want it to be a challenge for them.




And yet when they succeded, were all the wounded in the unit suddenly be able to fight at 100% again?
i admit I skipped the draft so I can't speak from experience, but lets take for example the events in Mogadishu (Blackhawk Down). They had wounded personell and managed to hole themselves up for a night. In D&D that means that the wounded would be combat ready again the next day. Also there will certainly be magic which makes resting pretty easy (rope trick etc.) Even 4E had it.




Aenghus said:


> Now I think of it, the slow healing game isn't a good match for plot-based games with time limits such as "save the princess". A quicker recover game suits this sort of premise better,as the players aren't forced to  choose between stopping to rest (which can be acting out of character) or pressing ahead  while too weak and probably losing. Slow healing doesn't fit a more dramatic genre, and that genre doesn't result in a party that mechanically hacks through dungeons, as they have more personal and plot based motivations.
> 
> Whereas I can see slower healing and hp management can be a better fit for more player driven games, depending on tastes in the group concerned.
> 
> The can't be a "one size fits all" answer to this conundorum.




And why is that a problem? When the quest has a strict time limit it just becomes another obstacle to overcome. The PCs have to press on even when not at full HP or with some empty spell slots. That imo adds challenge to the game and also makes it more believable than full healing after a nights sleep even when you were knocked below 0 several times the last day without any form of supernatural intervention.


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## tomBitonti (Jun 8, 2012)

*The Elephant in the room (more PB&J please)*

Hi,

There is a bigger problem: D&D has no meaningful damage state.  You are either "fully functioning", "out of it, but within a rest of being on your feet", or "dead".  Treating hit points like actual damage is silly when there is no meaningful consequence of the damage.  Real wounds have recovery times in months, if not more, and many leave lasting impairment.

Net: Treating hit points as more than an abstraction leads one down a path detail that has a bottom much below the notion of hit point reduction being actual damage.

My best interpretation of hit points as the same sort of abstraction that we use to model electrons _en-masse_.  In large numbers, you can treat electrons as having continuous behavior, as the quantum behavior manifests consistently.  In detail, electrons work discretely, and the continuous math must be re-interpreted to fit it to the quantum level.

Like-wise, hit points are an abstraction meant to measure some level of "probably of being killed", formulated to allow possible killing blows to work ablatively.

TomB


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## Aenghus (Jun 8, 2012)

Derren said:


> And why is that a problem? When the quest has a strict time limit it just becomes another obstacle to overcome. The PCs have to press on even when not at full HP or with some empty spell slots. That imo adds challenge to the game and also makes it more believable than full healing after a nights sleep even when you were knocked below 0 several times the last day without any form of supernatural intervention.




Because I'm talking about a style of play in this case that can put story concerns over "realism" and mundane believability, one where player challenges come in different guises than hit point management. Bending over backwards to fit semi-gritty hp management to a more dramatic style of game is missing the point and mismatching the mechanics to the genre.

Slow healing just doesn't fit every conceivable style of play, and it doesn't have to, as the new game is supposed to give options to fit most play styles.

In a more action-adventure game, hp damage is superficial cuts and scrapes which doesn't impede the PCs (and indeed hp damage in the standard game doesn't penalise players). Recovering sufficiently to be functional overnight fits the action-adventure genre, even though its unrealistic.

Damage descriptions need to fit the type of game intended, and applying an inappropriate description to hp damage can result in glitches where what's described doesn't fit the game as it turns out.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 8, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> Your assuming the character has stabilized (which is not necessarily guaranteed when providing such narration).



We're talking about the capability to heal naturally and its effect on narration. If you have a dedicated healer you can auto-make a DC 15 Heal check by what, 3rd level? It's a mundane source of healing, and not magic.



Herremann the Wise said:


> As such, the considerable likelihood is that the guts across the floor injured character will die rather than get the opportunity to heal naturally in a handful of days as I described above.



Of course, and if the party's resting then the healers will be using all of their spells for healing on those days. But that has nothing to do with the natural healing rules.



pemerton said:


> My understanding of the rules, which I double-checked on the online SRD, is that it is 1 hp/level/8 hr of rest, or 2 hp/level/day of bed rest, and that a successful Heal check at DC 15 doubles either rate:
> Providing long-term care means treating a wounded person for a day or more. If your Heal check is successful, the patient recovers hit points or ability score points (lost to ability damage) at twice the normal rate: 2 hit points per level for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 4 hit points per level for each full day of complete rest​Taking 10 for the DC on the nursing check requires a +5 or better bonus - which is 4 ranks, +1 for stat or +2 for feat - hence my comment that nearly any trained nurse can provide the requisite level of care.



I forgot that entirely. So now we have a 20th-level fighter with 195 hit points, going from -9 to full hp in three days rather than five, through natural healing only.

Almost died from your wounds on Thursday? No problem, take the long weekend to rest and you'll be full strength on Monday!



Hussar said:


> This is why people have such a difficult time coming to any sort of agreement here.  1 day or 9 days?  It's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Who cares?  If realism is the issue, both rules are about equally realistic.  No matter how much you want to play with numbers.



Agreed. If realism is important, I suppose 9 days is better than 3, but arguably not because it's still extremely unrealistic.



Herschel said:


> *In the heat of battle, decapitation is a wound. Everything else is abstract. *



Dig it.


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## Grydan (Jun 8, 2012)

Derren said:


> And yet when they succeded, were all the wounded in the unit suddenly be able to fight at 100% again?
> i admit I skipped the draft so I can't speak from experience, but lets take for example the events in Mogadishu (Blackhawk Down). They had wounded personell and managed to hole themselves up for a night. In D&D that means that the wounded would be combat ready again the next day.




No, that's not what it would mean. 

In D&D terms, their injuries simply _cannot_ have been solely or even primarily HP loss in the first place, or else they would still have been able to fight at 100% without requiring the rest in the first place.

An injury that doesn't have an impact on your ability to fight or flee isn't worth calling an injury.

If you actually want to model injury, you have to step outside of the HP mechanic, and start imposing lasting negative conditions that require significant time and/or significant resources to remove.


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## Derren (Jun 8, 2012)

Grydan said:


> An injury that doesn't have an impact on your ability to fight or flee isn't worth calling an injury.




And yet those injuries bring you close to death so that only outside intervention within seconds can save you.

No, there is no way to describe something as this as not an injury. The problem is simply that D&D has no penalties for being injured. But that doesn't negate that the way D&D is structured such things are injuries and not abstract "chances to be hit" or morale or something like that.

In D&D you do not loose HP when something lowers your morale and you can't get poisoned by a non-hit.


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## Grydan (Jun 8, 2012)

[MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION]

As I've said before, HP is purely an abstract measure of how likely your character is to fall unconscious and/or drop dead.

It's quite easy to describe something that doesn't impair you in any way as not an injury. It's much harder, in my mind, to do the reverse.

Take two characters with mechanically identical character sheets.

Hit one for 50% of his HP. 
Hit the other for 10% of his HP, and impose a condition that gives him a -1 penalty to AC and Reflex, as well as to attacks, and all Dex, Str, and Con based checks.

One of those characters is a lot closer to death. The other is actually _injured_.


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## Nethel (Jun 8, 2012)

Hey everyone, I've posted my thoughts to this debate over in http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...l-solution-hit-points-debate.html#post5939624 I figured it was divergent enough to warrant its own thread.

Might be worth a look


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## Aenghus (Jun 8, 2012)

Those who are content with abstract hit points don't need a more elaborate wound tracking system. Adding such a system for everyone is an unnecessary complication.

That's not to reduce it's usefulness to those who do want such a system. 

But the simplicity of the hit point mechanic shouldn't be casually discarded without a clear idea of the desired result. While abstract hp lack the detail some people obviously crave, they have served D&D well for decades, and are sufficient for most games IMO.

A more complex system will need extensive testing to shake out any bugs and discover and deal with any unintended side effects. And it will need to be strictly optional.


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## Derren (Jun 8, 2012)

Aenghus said:


> While abstract hp lack the detail some people obviously crave, they have served D&D well for decades, and are sufficient for most games IMO.




So? Remember the 4E launch and the discussions about surges which were one of the things which drove people away.

Maybe more people carve for more immersive games than what abstract HP deliver? Maye what was good enough 20 years ago is not good enough now as the expectations of players have changed?


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## Uller (Jun 8, 2012)

Derren said:


> And yet when they succeded, were all the wounded in the unit suddenly be able to fight at 100% again?




What makes you think they succeeded in anything like complete rest for 8+ hours with no more strenuous activity than 2 hours of light guard duty?  They were maintaining a > 50% security detail and some of them were too wounded to pull guard duty (much less fight).  The guys that were at 0 hp when they entered the building were still there when they left (maybe some were at 1...they could hold a weapon...

The 5e rules as written definitely leave room for this scenario.  You can't gain ANY hp short of magic without several hours of time passing.  If you are at 0 hp you can't begin a long rest (or even a short rest) until you have at least 1 hp.  You can't have the benefits from more than 1 long rest in any 24 hour period (so there must be at least 16 hours between the end of one and the start of the next...This leaves lots of room for a party to have to make choices and face challenges of having to manage who is resting, who is not, who has priority to get to full HP or full spells, etc.  

The only thing I find lacking in it is you go from 1 hp to full the instant your 8 hour rest is complete....IMO it would be better if there was a little more granularity...maybe you start gaining hp after 4 hours of rest at a rate of 25% of HP per hour or some such...but since this is something that so rarely comes up for most group, it hardly seems worth worrying about it much.

If they put in a healing rate, it is easy for groups to increase the length of time needed to heal (or regain spells).


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## Uller (Jun 8, 2012)

Aenghus said:


> Those who are content with abstract hit points don't need a more elaborate wound tracking system. Adding such a system for everyone is an unnecessary complication.
> 
> That's not to reduce it's usefulness to those who do want such a system.
> 
> ...




Right.  The game designers have to create a game that attracts new players AND maintain old ones. New players (and lapsed players who return) are going to play the 'default' game and they are going to come at it with an expectation of a hit point model that matches what they have experienced in pretty much any other popular game (a character is alive and once it sustains a certain amount of damage it is dead).  They will look at systems that simulate wounds or have extended healing times as punishment for participating.  

Experienced players such as Derren who want something a bit more robust will house rule to suit their needs or pick up optional systems suggested in the core books.


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## Derren (Jun 8, 2012)

Uller said:


> they are going to come at it with an expectation of a hit point model that matches what they have experienced in pretty much any other popular game (a character is alive and once it sustains a certain amount of damage it is dead).  They will look at systems that simulate wounds or have extended healing times as punishment for participating.




Quite some divinations skills from your sides. How do you know that this is what new players expect? Becuse thats how it works in reality?
Unless you set their expectations with sentences like "Its like WoW with dice" I don't think many new players will see a rule the mimicks reality (when wounded you perform worse) as punishment but see it as normal.
Anf when they come from other systems, well, I spontaneously can't name any other system where there are no wound penalties. Imo systems without them like D&D are the minority. Maybe some supers games don't have them either but thats all.


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## Obryn (Jun 9, 2012)

I dunno about you, but I find it a lot more damaging to versimilitude that a single dagger-strike can't kill anything except a low-level commoner unless they're sleeping, or the wielder has a special ability.

Figure that part out with D&D's default HP rules, and I'll take these sorts of arguments a lot more seriously. 

-O


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## Viktyr Gehrig (Jun 9, 2012)

I would love to have a system in which hit points are entirely abstract-- in which strikes that deal hit point damage are negligible wounds, until the strike that reduces you to zero-- and recovered at daily intervals or even faster, but which also contained real injuries for certain grievous attacks and for those strikes which *did* reduce you below zero and had 'realistic' healing times (adjusted for superhuman healing factors) and required healing magic to recover from instantly.

I'm actually working on that system now. But you know that that system is? Not D&D.


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## Lanefan (Jun 9, 2012)

Viktyr Korimir said:


> I would love to have a system in which hit points are entirely abstract-- in which strikes that deal hit point damage are negligible wounds, until the strike that reduces you to zero-- and recovered at daily intervals or even faster, but which also contained real injuries for certain grievous attacks and for those strikes which *did* reduce you below zero and had 'realistic' healing times (adjusted for superhuman healing factors) and required healing magic to recover from instantly.
> 
> I'm actually working on that system now. But you know that that system is? Not D&D.



Sure it is. 

Start with a body point/fatigue point h.p. system (another bang on the drum!) - f.p. are relatively easy to recover and-or cure, b.p. are harder as they represent actual injury.

Lanefan


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## Obryn (Jun 9, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Sure it is.
> 
> Start with a body point/fatigue point h.p. system (another bang on the drum!) - f.p. are relatively easy to recover and-or cure, b.p. are harder as they represent actual injury.
> 
> Lanefan



Well, sure - any problem is solvable via house-rules.  (I used the VP/WP house rules for d20 Call of Cthulhu, fwiw, so I saw them in play.  They tended to make healing longer, but characters last longer in a fight since you were generally conscious up to that -CON point.)

I don't think that tells us anything about what HPs represent in baseline D&D, though, so I think "not D&D" is a fair assessment.

-O


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> Players will sit their character's out a day if they know they will be at full capacity and "insta-healed". They won't sit out 9 days though and instead they'll seek their nearest depository of magical healing. The end result is that both groups will be ready to go the next day. However, the first will be "magically" healed while the latter group _will _be magically healed and feel like they've spent resources to get back in the action. The feel of each scenario is quite different. One feels like healing for free but the other feels like healing has at least been paid for; and that some sacrifice to the god of resource management performed.



This is an interesting point, and I think this thread is the first time I've heard it (from you and [MENTION=37277]Mercutio01[/MENTION]) - so there can be something new in a hit point thread!

That "sacrifce to the god of resource management vibe" doesn't do a lot for me personally, but I can see that others might find it important.



Derren said:


> In D&D you do not loose HP when something lowers your morale



That's not true. In 4e some psychic damage is loss of morale (eg when you take 1d6 psychic damage from the Horrid Visage of a Deathlock Wight). You can also deal hit point damage via socia skill checks that demoralise a foe (see eg Heathen in Dungeon magazine, or Cairn of the Winter King in the Monster Vault boxed set).



Derren said:


> 9 days or longer is downtime from adventuring for the characters to recover which is most of the time only possible when they currently do not have a quest as in 9 days the PCs will have missed a deadline.
> It also gives the PCs time to do something else than constant dungeon crawling. YOu know such things as social contacts etc.



Just as in the real world, so in my game - the PCs are capable of engaging in social activity, and setting aside time for it, without being injured.



Derren said:


> 1 day means its just a matter of locking the doors and posting a guard and on the next day the party continues to hack their way through hordes of XP bags. That leads to non stop dungeoncrawling reducing the PCs from characters to robots.





Derren said:


> Its more a question of "I want the PCs to be hack&slash machines who clear dungeons non stop" or "I want PCs to be (very powerful) humans who still need resting and down time between adventures and thus have to manage the "resource" healing and time.





Derren said:


> When the quest has a strict time limit it just becomes another obstacle to overcome. The PCs have to press on even when not at full HP or with some empty spell slots. That imo adds challenge to the game



These comments read to me like some sort of projection of your own concerns about D&D play. Not everyone is playing D&D as a gritty challenge game. Or as a dungeon crawl game. The default mode of 4e, it seems to me, is heroic, mythic fantasy. As in (for example) LotR, the protagonists mostly avoid injury, rather than having to recover from it.



Derren said:


> And yet those injuries bring you close to death so that only outside intervention within seconds can save you.
> 
> No, there is no way to describe something as this as not an injury.



It's actually not true that there's no other description available. From many threads, it seems to me that the most common way of narrating this in 4e play is to be reasonably non-commital in the narration of the blow that drops a PC to 0 hp (a bit like Tolkien is with the spear thrust that drops Frodo) and then to render the description more precise (as a serious, mortal wound, or as a less serious blow that caused temporary reeling/swooning) once the mechanical resolution is complete: 3 failed death saves, stability but unconsciousness, or a quick recovery when inspired by a leader or drawing on one's own inner reserves.



Aenghus said:


> Slow healing doesn't fit a more dramatic genre, and that genre doesn't result in a party that mechanically hacks through dungeons, as they have more personal and plot based motivations.
> 
> Whereas I can see slower healing and hp management can be a better fit for more player driven games, depending on tastes in the group concerned.
> 
> The can't be a "one size fits all" answer to this conundorum.



There a lot of possibilities. Burning Wheel has slow recovery, is dramatic and is player driven. My 4e game has fast recovery, is dramatic and is player driven. Rolemaster has slow recovery, is often gritty rather than dramatic, and can be player or GM-driven depending on other variables. Etc etc.

You are right that there is no "one size fits all".



Aenghus said:


> Those who are content with abstract hit points don't need a more elaborate wound tracking system. Adding such a system for everyone is an unnecessary complication.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> A more complex system will need extensive testing to shake out any bugs and discover and deal with any unintended side effects.



I agree with this.

[MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] has been posting for at least a while now that spell recovery and hit point recovery should be on the same cycle (so spellcasters and warriors are on a common resource recovery cycle).

Burning Wheel links its health recovery cycle to its lifestye maintenance cycle, its training rules and other longer-term aspects of gameplay.

A well-designed game will take account of how all these aspects of play fit together.


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 9, 2012)

Viktyr Korimir said:


> I would love to have a system in which hit points are entirely abstract-- in which strikes that deal hit point damage are negligible wounds, until the strike that reduces you to zero-- and recovered at daily intervals or even faster, but which also contained real injuries for certain grievous attacks and for those strikes which *did* reduce you below zero and had 'realistic' healing times (adjusted for superhuman healing factors) and required healing magic to recover from instantly.




I could support an Injury system which stole from FATE - the idea that the player can elect to soak X points of hit point damage by the character incurring an injury of some sort.

Hypothetical example:
A character can at any given time have one Light, one Moderate, and one Serious injury, which carry with them certain mechanical consequences and certain healing requirements.

A Light Injury can be incurred instead of [Character Level + CON Mod] in hit points, a Moderate twice that, and a Serious three times that.

Tim the Fighter is 3rd level and has a CON Mod of +2.  His Max HP is 30, but he's currently on 9 hit points.  An orc attacks him with a greataxe, and hits for 15 damage.

"That'll put me well negative," Tim's player says, "so I'll take a Moderate Injury of _Lacerated Thigh_ to soak 10 points of damage - that leaves me on 4 hit points."  Until he can get the injury healed, he'll be at -2 on attack rolls and all Dex checks.

In the next round, the orc hits him again, for 11 damage.  "Even soaking with a Light Injury will still leave me unconscious, and I can't take a second Moderate Injury," Tim's player realises.  "I can only stay conscious if I take a Serious Inury - that will soak all 11 with some left over!  But we don't have a cleric who can cast Cure Serious Wounds, and I don't want to be carrying a -3 penalty to all my attack rolls for a month while the injury heals naturally!  I guess I'll take the 11, and Tim's unconscious."

After the combat, once Tim's been stabilised, the cleric can use Cure Moderate Wounds to fix the Lacerated Thigh... otherwise he'll need a week or two to get rid of it, and he'll continue to take the Moderate Wound penalties until it's gone.

(While the numbers work for this example, it'd need tinkering to be workable across a range of levels.  Character level probably needs to be a multiplier in whatever formula it ends up being, rather than just being added on, for example.)

-Hyp.


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## Derren (Jun 9, 2012)

pemerton said:


> That's not true. In 4e some psychic damage is loss of morale (eg when you take 1d6 psychic damage from the Horrid Visage of a Deathlock Wight). You can also deal hit point damage via socia skill checks that demoralise a foe (see eg Heathen in Dungeon magazine, or Cairn of the Winter King in the Monster Vault boxed set).




So how much HP do you loose when your liege lord falls in battle? How much HP do you loose when your dog runs away?


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2012)

Derren said:


> So how much HP do you loose when your liege lord falls in battle?



The way that 4e action resolution works, I think that that would give a bonus to an appropriate attack or skill check, rather than cause damage in its own right.


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## Derren (Jun 9, 2012)

pemerton said:


> The way that 4e action resolution works, I think that that would give a bonus to an appropriate attack or skill check, rather than cause damage in its own right.




And yet people have comcluded that HP also represent morale. So why do you not loose HP when an outside event lowers it?


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## Viktyr Gehrig (Jun 9, 2012)

Hypersmurf said:


> I could support an Injury system which stole from FATE - the idea that the player can elect to soak X points of hit point damage by the character incurring an injury of some sort.




That's where I came up with the idea. I was attempting to modify the FATE rules to accommodate a more D&D-style combat system... and then, because of the specifics of how combat functions in FATE, it occurred to me that Rolemaster-style criticals could be easily incorporated.

Imagine a system like FATE, in which your total bonus for a skill check was the sum of two 'skills'-- essentially an ability score + skill system, in which the bonus *and* the number of Fudge dice you rolled was determined by your total ranks. You would inflict Stress normally, but characters would have much longer Stress Tracks. However, for each *minus* on the successful attack you would roll one Fudge die on a critical chart; the more total plusses and minuses rolled on the critical chart, the more severe the degree of critical injury, which would function as a Consequence.

There would be no upper bound to the number of Consequences, but you'd have an Injury Track-- get taken out on the Stress Track it's 'lights out', and any Stress overflow gets added to the critical check dice on the attack that floors you. 

Get taken out on the Injury track and it's not so much 'lights out' as it is 'going into the light'.

It's a lot less FATE-like at that point, but it retains the core elements of the system with a more viscerally satisfying combat system.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 9, 2012)

Derren said:


> So how much HP do you loose when your liege lord falls in battle? How much HP do you loose when your dog runs away?



I think this particular way of looking at hit points (morale as one of the many metaphysical components) is pretty cool and from a 4e perspective is central to the concept of the warlord. I would love the fighter to kill the warlord and steal his stuff in fact. I think this would overcome one of the key hurdles of the fighter: affecting multiple enemies with a single action.

A fighter who has just taken out the opposition leader is in a position to truly demoralize the surviving enemies. If you incorporate an element of morale into the metaphysical aspects of hit points, then you can see a demoralizing attack affecting most of the opposition (the _Fighter's Fireball _so to speak). However, because hit points uncomfortably also incorporate physical damage, you end up with all the usual anomalies and the whole thing becomes quite unbelievable (as in lack of believability). Again, this works best if you split physical damage out of hit points and track it separately.

As for the dog running away, or a character having their heart broken or mourning the death of a loved one, I can see a hit point total cap being appropriate (half hit points or even quarter hit points). To balance this, I could imagine that the characters gets access to a number of surges that could be used in certain appropriate circumstances. I'm not the greatest fan of mechanics forcing certain roleplaying options but this could be a fun idea for some. Again, this only really works if you split physical damage out of hit points so you can play the metaphysical aspects of hit points to the hilt without breaking believability.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2012)

Derren said:


> And yet people have comcluded that HP also represent morale. So why do you not loose HP when an outside event lowers it?



There's no reason in principle why you couldn't - see @Herreman the Wise's post. But as I said, 4e's approach to action resolution mechanics tends to require some affirmative action (attack, skill check) to deplete hit points.

If you're looking for an ingame reason why PCs don't lose the will to live when their dogs die? Maybe they're stronger than that. Maybe it's the same reason why they never get attacked while taking a leak (at least at any table I ever played at).

Here's the description of "cackle fever" from the d20 SRD:

Symptoms include high fever, disorientation, and frequent bouts of hideous laughter.​
Yet it doesn't cause any hit point loss, nor penalty to attack and defend. And there are plenty of other diseases that make you sick, yet don't make you easier to kill. Why not? Whatever story you tell, tell that about how PCs endure some burdens on their morale without losing hit points.


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## billd91 (Jun 9, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> A fighter who has just taken out the opposition leader is in a position to truly demoralize the surviving enemies. If you incorporate an element of morale into the metaphysical aspects of hit points, then you can see a demoralizing attack affecting most of the opposition (the _Fighter's Fireball _so to speak). However, because hit points uncomfortably also incorporate physical damage, you end up with all the usual anomalies and the whole thing becomes quite unbelievable (as in lack of believability). Again, this works best if you split physical damage out of hit points and track it separately.




I think it would work better if you completely split morale out of hit points, frankly. Forcing a morale check once you kill the leader would be a fine element to the game - AD&D had it back in the day. It should be quite effective at breaking up a group's cohesion as a group. But I would *never* consider that as something that would potentially, directly *harm* an individual. Picture the situation: The fighter kills the raiding group's leader. The raiders quail at the event and scatter. The fighter or some of his allies pursue and manage to corner one. He fights like a, well, cornered animal because now he *has* to or die. The unit is no longer much of a threat, but the individuals, if not allowed room to flee, are because they're now fighting for their very lives.


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## tomBitonti (Jun 9, 2012)

*All and none*

From the beginning, hit points were an abstract resource system derived from managing unit cohesion coupled to a role playing framework.

Hit points are and always have been a fantasy resource that role players could use without the distraction of actual wounds, and the consequences there-of.

Hit points have always been weakly coupled to physical damage, but only weakly.  They can be mapped to any of actual damage, morale, exhaustion, mental fatigue, ablated luck, or none of those, under the control of the players and the game master.  The abstraction, I believe, was never meant to necessarily map to any of the preceeding, but _could_ be, if that is what you wanted.

Put another way, hit points, to stay useful, _have_ to stay only very roughtly mapped to any actual damage system.

What hit points become, as used, is a means of narrative control: A player can operate toe-to-toe to a physical adversary for so long, but for only so long, but they can keep going when they share the narration with the other folks in the party.

TomB


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## Hussar (Jun 10, 2012)

billd91 said:


> Because we have thresholds where the acceptable becomes unacceptable. There comes a point where willing suspension of disbelief crosses over into "aw, come ON!" Plus, you have the change in behavior between just spending an overnight and spending several days. I'm not sure that you need to have realistic times past a certain point - you'll get changes in strategy either way.




I'm just picking bill91's quote out of the shuffle because it was at the top of the page.  It does nicely capture the essence of the argument though.  Which, basically, boils down to a taste issue.  It has nothing to do with realism or anything like that.  It's all about personal taste.  It's flying snowmen (to quote John Scalzi).

Which is totally fine.  There's nothing wrong with that.  Everyone has their own tastes.  

What my problem is, though, is why can't you make a very simple adjustment and get what you want?  You want 9 day healing rates?  Ok.  Add the following rule:

Characters do not heal any HP after an extended rest.  Characters regain 1 healing surge after an extended rest.  Characters can regain 2 healing surges if attended by someone with a DC 15 Healing check.​
There.  Voila.  End of problem.  Now everyone gets what they want.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2012)

Hussar said:


> You want 9 day healing rates?  Ok.  Add the following rule:
> 
> Characters do not heal any HP after an extended rest.  Characters regain 1 healing surge after an extended rest.  Characters can regain 2 healing surges if attended by someone with a DC 15 Healing check.​
> There.  Voila.  End of problem.  Now everyone gets what they want.



Many 4e players, over the past few years, have pointed out this sort of completely trivial house rule option. Several posters on this board - at least LostSoul and Neonchameleon - have implimented some version of it.

In D&Dnext, at least as per the playtest, it seems that it might be at least a little bit trickier: because the number of surges (sorry, Hit Dice) is level dependent, a one-HD-per-day mechanic would reintroduce the "low levels heal easier than high levels" wonkiness of classic D&D (and 3E's magic healing). Although admittedly that is a wonkiness that many seem to have coped with over the years!


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## billd91 (Jun 10, 2012)

Hussar said:


> What my problem is, though, is why can't you make a very simple adjustment and get what you want?  You want 9 day healing rates?  Ok.  Add the following rule:
> 
> Characters do not heal any HP after an extended rest.  Characters regain 1 healing surge after an extended rest.  Characters can regain 2 healing surges if attended by someone with a DC 15 Healing check.​
> There.  Voila.  End of problem.  Now everyone gets what they want.




Are you saying that WotC should add this as one variation of the healing rules module or that *we* should personally add it as a house rule?


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## billd91 (Jun 10, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Many 4e players, over the past few years, have pointed out this sort of completely trivial house rule option. Several posters on this board - at least LostSoul and Neonchameleon - have implimented some version of it.




And when 3e fans (or even older edition fans) said that critics could fix their games with house rules rather than resort to the drastic changes WotC added to the game, we were told that was unacceptable. What makes it acceptable now?


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## FireLance (Jun 10, 2012)

billd91 said:


> And when 3e fans (or even older edition fans) said that critics could fix their games with house rules rather than resort to the drastic changes WotC added to the game, we were told that was unacceptable. What makes it acceptable now?



Without going into specifics, I think the extensiveness of the changes required may be a factor. Fixing something like linear fighters, quadratic wizards (for those who saw it as a problem, that is) requires changes to class features, feats, spells, etc. In comparison, changing (say) the healing rate is much simpler.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2012)

billd91 said:


> And when 3e fans (or even older edition fans) said that critics could fix their games with house rules rather than resort to the drastic changes WotC added to the game, we were told that was unacceptable. What makes it acceptable now?



What [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] said.

Changing the restoration rate from 1 day to 1 week, or (say) 1 day of rest in a safe and friendly place, etc is trivial, in at least two senses: (i) it is extremely easy to make the change; (ii) the change has no effect on any other part of the system.

What comparably trivial house rule for 3E do you have in mind?


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2012)

The closest analog I can think of to hit points are ships' shields in Star Trek. That's what hit points do. They are a magical ablative force field. When they are up, you know you are safe. You know a goblin's spear, or whatever, can't kill you, though it can wear your shield away a little. But when they are down you know you're in a lot of danger.

Thinking of them in this way also explains why there are no penalties to other combat stats, such as damage or movement rate, for being low on hit points. In Star Trek, a ship's shields can be low, while its weapon systems and drives still function at peak capacity.

Now I know Gary says that hit points represent a whole bunch of stuff, physical and non-physical, and that they are healed by spells named Cure --- Wounds, and that they recover quite slowly prior to 4e, which suggests they are physical wounds.

But those are, I think, subsidiary to what hit points actually do. We could change all of that, we could change the textual explanation, we could rename the cure spells, we could change the healing rate. But we would still be left with the basic function of hit points, which is that they're points that stop you from being incapacitated or dead, until they've run out.

So that's what hit points really are. They're ships' shields in Star Trek.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 20, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> I think this particular way of looking at hit points (morale as one of the many metaphysical components) is pretty cool and from a 4e perspective is central to the concept of the warlord. I would love the fighter to kill the warlord and steal his stuff in fact. I think this would overcome one of the key hurdles of the fighter: affecting multiple enemies with a single action.
> 
> A fighter who has just taken out the opposition leader is in a position to truly demoralize the surviving enemies.



The latest blog post by Mike Mearls on monsters suggest that they will try to go a slightly different route than in 4E:

(Humanoid) monsters in 4E did have some special ability that all of the same race shared - stuff like the Kobold minor action shift or the Hobgoblins Phalanx Soldier thing. Instead, D&D Next will denote certain "leader/champion" type of NPCs that will have a similar flavour. Removing this champion will apparantly mean that his lesser allies will lose the special perks he provided. 

So instead of a generic "morale loss" mechanic, each race of enemies would have its unique champions and leads with some group-benefitting feature. That is still somewhat close to a "moral loss", and it could definitely be interesting.

(Also cool: You could start doing this already now in 4E, or whatever else you're playing.)


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 20, 2012)

Doug McCrae said:


> Now I know Gary says that hit points represent a whole bunch of stuff, physical and non-physical, and that they are healed by spells named Cure --- Wounds, and that they recover quite slowly prior to 4e, which suggests they are physical wounds.




For the record they recover really _really _fast prior to 4e.  A distance athlete is advised to rest for one day per mile of race they just ran.  So never mind physical damage, hit point loss tends to take less time to recover from than the fatigue from running a marathon (almost a month).  A broken wrist takes several months.


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## HeinorNY (Jun 20, 2012)

Blood & Bones said:


> How do you actually think about hit points in the middle of a game; is hit point loss a matter of endurance or real physical damage?




Hit points loss = HP loss doesn't represent the physical harm itself, only its effects on the character's capacity to keep standing and functioning. These negative effects are called Damage, which is an abstract concept in the game.

Damage: All the effects a character endures from a physical harm. Damage can be physical (blood loss, weariness), mental (pain, loss of morale), etc. Damage always comes from a hit, be it from a weapon, spell or trap. A hit is always a hit.

Hit: Always causes some kind of physical harm, be it a cut, scratch, burn, frostbite, disintegration, bruise, hole, etc.

Physical harm = wounds, injuries, burns, cuts, etc. It can be roleplayed
but it isn't represented in the rules and is not tracked mechanically itself, only its negative effects(Damage) on the character. 

Handling wounds/Damage: In my games healing Damage (HP recovering) does not necessarily mean that the wounds and injuries that caused it are gone. 
A character can heal most of his Damage by resting or any other non-magical healing, which means his cuts are stitched, his bruises don't cause him pain anymore, he is not bleeding from that bite and he is well rested. All this is represented by HP gain, but going back to full HP doesn't mean all those wounds disappeared; the cut is still there and will be for some time, the bite will take some time to heal, but they don't affect the character anymore, so they  are not relevant to the mechanical part of the game, maybe only for the roleplaying part.
Magical healing of course can be handled anyway we want. The Cure Wounds spells fit this interpretation of the rules nicely, because they actually do what the name says: they cure the wounds themselves (they are gone for good), and not only the Damage they caused.

This is how I handle this matter in my games.


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## HeinorNY (Jun 20, 2012)

Derren said:


> And yet people have comcluded that HP also represent morale. So why do you not loose HP when an outside event lowers it?




Because loss of morale may be represented by loss of HP when it is part of the Damage your character suffers from a hit, or attack or some type of physical harm.

Your king dying in battle is not a physical harm to your character. He may suffer some loss of morale but that specific loss would not be represented in the rules as HP loss because you can't die, or be disabled, by seeing your lieges dying. D&D would handle this as a penalty to attack rolls, maybe.


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## Derren (Jun 20, 2012)

ainatan said:


> Because loss of morale may be represented by loss of HP when it is part of the Damage your character suffers from a hit, or attack or some type of physical harm.
> 
> Your king dying in battle is not a physical harm to your character. He may suffer some loss of morale but that specific loss would not be represented in the rules as HP loss because you can't die, or be disabled, by seeing your lieges dying. D&D would handle this as a penalty to attack rolls, maybe.




Which shows that the whole "HP represents moral" is just silly.
A nick with a sword in a fight hardly lowers morale at all. But seeing someone close to you dieing does. But as this does not lower HP we can safely conclude that morale has nothing to do with HP.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 20, 2012)

Derren said:


> Which shows that the whole "HP represents moral" is just silly.
> A nick with a sword in a fight hardly lowers morale at all. But seeing someone close to you dieing does. But as this does not lower HP we can safely conclude that morale has nothing to do with HP.



Great! So this means HP is purely physical damage then?

Or, perhaps logical analysis of an inherently abstract mechanic is misplaced and tends to lead to wonky conclusions?


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## HeinorNY (Jun 20, 2012)

Derren said:


> Which shows that the whole "HP represents moral" is just silly.
> A nick with a sword in a fight hardly lowers morale at all. But seeing someone close to you dieing does. But as this does not lower HP we can safely conclude that morale has nothing to do with HP.




You only really need "HP as moral" when you have non-magical healing abilites that work by "increasing morale", like Warlord powers from 4E, or if you just want to.
If a nick of a sword deals Damage,  some of that damage may be loss of morale, even if a very little loss of morale.


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## Uller (Jun 20, 2012)

Derren said:


> Which shows that the whole "HP represents moral" is just silly.
> A nick with a sword in a fight hardly lowers morale at all. But seeing someone close to you dieing does. But as this does not lower HP we can safely conclude that morale has nothing to do with HP.




We can imagine someone using "magic" from a distance to stem the flow of blood to allow a fighter to continue fighting.  But imagining a charismatic leader lending words of encouragement to get an injured person back into the fight is "silly".  Got it.  

Of course one of these things happens in the real world on battlefields,in sports, even at physical therapy everyday....


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## Campbell (Jun 20, 2012)

When running 4e I co-opt Burning Wheel style beliefs in lieu of alignment mechanics. If a player had chosen "I will protect my liege lord at all costs" as a belief I would have no problem delivering hp damage to the player if they failed to protect their king. I would let the players know such a mechanic was in play before the encounter. If the hp loss brought the character down to 0 hp I might narrate that the character is overcome with grief and unable to act. After the encounter they would definitely have to reevaluate their beliefs.

Of course 4e also has fear mechanics that deliver psychic damage . You can literally be scared to death.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 20, 2012)

Campbell said:


> Of course 4e also has fear mechanics that deliver psychic damage . You can literally be scared to death.



As I recall a bard can actually mock you to death, which I think is awesome.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 20, 2012)

Uller said:


> We can imagine someone using "magic" from a distance to stem the flow of blood to allow a fighter to continue fighting.  But imagining a charismatic leader lending words of encouragement to get an injured person back into the fight is "silly".  Got it.
> 
> Of course one of these things happens in the real world on battlefields,in sports, even at physical therapy everyday....




Really?

Braves' Beachy to have Tommy John surgery - Yahoo! Sports

Why doesn't Gonzalez just yell at him and send him out to pitch?


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## Fifth Element (Jun 20, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Really?
> 
> Braves' Beachy to have Tommy John surgery - Yahoo! Sports
> 
> Why doesn't Gonzalez just yell at him and send him out to pitch?



Doesn't always happen <> cannot happen.

Or are you saying that since some injuries require surgery, all injuries _must_ require surgery?


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## Derren (Jun 20, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> Or are you saying that since some injuries require surgery, all injuries _must_ require surgery?




All injuries which have the potential to kill you (HP loss in D&D) do require surgery, yes.


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## HeinorNY (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Really?
> 
> Braves' Beachy to have Tommy John surgery - Yahoo! Sports
> 
> Why doesn't Gonzalez just yell at him and send him out to pitch?



Because his injury in D&D would not be represented by loss of HP, it wasn't caused by an attack, and even if it was so, there are no rules in D&D for disabling injuries unless it's from a specific ability or power. The close to that condition would be stat loss, or some effect of a specific disease.


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## Derren (Jun 21, 2012)

ainatan said:


> Because his injury in D&D would not be represented by loss of HP, it wasn't caused by an attack, and even if it was so, there are no rules in D&D for disabling injuries unless it's from a specific ability or power. The close to that condition would be stat loss, or some effect of a specific disease.




Ok. Then please show me the army medics who go into the field with a megaphone, boom boxes and a pack of motivational posters as equipment.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 21, 2012)

Derren said:


> All injuries which have the potential to kill you (HP loss in D&D) do require surgery, yes.



This isn't true in D&D, or in real life. Many life-threatening injuries heal themselves with time, no surgery required. In D&D, all injuries heal themselves given time.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 21, 2012)

Derren said:


> Ok. Then please show me the army medics who go into the field with a megaphone, boom boxes and a pack of motivational posters as equipment.



So you're saying D&D hit points don't model real-life battlefield injuries well? I don't think you'll get much of an argument there. Hit points are very abstract, and expecting them to model reality is foolish.


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## HeinorNY (Jun 21, 2012)

Derren said:


> Ok. Then please show me the army medics who go into the field with a megaphone, boom boxes and a pack of motivational posters as equipment.




Why would they do that? You can't heal a wound with boom boxes and motivational posters, that's silly.


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## Lalato (Jun 21, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> This isn't true in D&D, or in real life. Many life-threatening injuries heal themselves with time, no surgery required. In D&D, all injuries heal themselves given time.




time and/or magic

In D&D it doesn't matter how often you're below 0 HP... you can bounce back to your normal self in record time... even if penalties are applied... you can bounce back to 100% effectiveness and HP.  Heck, even if you have a condition from a disease or some other source, you can bounce back from it pretty easily.

In the real world... I broke my leg and arm (and am still recovering), I doubt very much that I'll ever be back to 100% effectiveness.  Even though I now have metal in my leg and arm, and I probably will never break those particular bones again, there will always be something that holds me back a teensy bit from 100%.

In order to actually get back to even 99% effectiveness, do I just rest and wait for everything to heal?  No... I rested for the first 6 weeks.  After that, I actually have to start working to get my muscle back... so it's not like I can just lay in bed all day and suddenly get back to full health.  Nope.  I have to exert myself in order to get back to full health.  How's that for turning D&D healing on itself?


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 21, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> So you're saying D&D hit points don't model real-life battlefield injuries well? I don't think you'll get much of an argument there. Hit points are very abstract, and expecting them to model reality is foolish.




As is expecting them to completely disregard reality.  I want something in the middle.  Healing overnight ain't it.


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## HeinorNY (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Healing overnight ain't it.




Only if you consider HP gain = wounds disappear.


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## pemerton (Jun 21, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> As I recall a bard can actually mock you to death, which I think is awesome.



I like this too - it seems to me closer to the sort of magic one sees in Celtic and Nordic writings than traditional D&D magic.

I tend to think of it as the bard reciting a derivisive verse, which undermines your self confidence (if you're a conscious being) and undercuts your metaphysical constitution. In the case of oozes, the verse would be one that mocks Juiblex; in the case of undead, one that mocks Orcus or Vecna; etc.


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## Lanefan (Jun 21, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> So you're saying D&D hit points don't model real-life battlefield injuries well? I don't think you'll get much of an argument there. Hit points are very abstract, and expecting them to model reality is foolish.



Expecting them to perfectly model reality is asking a bit much, but I'd like them to at least wave at reality as it goes by and make some sort of effort to model it.

Lan-"the best design model is to go with reality until something - usually magic - says otherwise"-efan


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## Campbell (Jun 21, 2012)

I *really* dislike this notion that abundantly available magic gets a free pass to do extraordinary things in a game that presents those who do not possess magical talent as peers to Clerics, Wizards, and Sorcerers. Magic is a fictional construct that can be defined in whatever way we please. If a fighter is supposed to be an equally valued companion to a wizard or cleric than constraints need to be placed on the spell caster that makes the fighter just as valued. High level play need not devolve into an arms race of magical ability vs. magical countermeasure (looking at you mind blank, true seeing, death ward). If spell resistance and anti-magic fields are necessary to make a fighter feel valued there is something wrong with the game.


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## Viktyr Gehrig (Jun 21, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Lan-"the best design model is to go with reality until something - usually magic - says otherwise"-efan




Being higher than 4th level is magic.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 21, 2012)

Campbell said:


> I *really* dislike this notion that abundantly available magic gets a free pass to do extraordinary things in a game that presents those who do not possess magical talent as peers to Clerics, Wizards, and Sorcerers.



But isn't that what magic is all about? Making the impossible possible? What can those who do not have such magic do to be on equal footing with their magical counterparts?



Campbell said:


> Magic is a fictional construct that can be defined in whatever way we please. If a fighter is supposed to be an equally valued companion to a wizard or cleric than constraints need to be placed on the spell caster that makes the fighter just as valued.



I think this goes two ways. The wizard does need to be constrained, but the fighter also needs to be raised. Personally, I think it should be more difficult for a wizard to cast spells in combat. Keeping up a rate of 5 spells in 5 rounds should not be typical, regardless of at-will magic. There should be times in combat where wizards know they are in too much danger to risk  casting a spell. Spellcasting should not be the automatic action it has become in the most recent editions.

However, I think two of the biggest issues with the fighter are:
- The rogue has sucked out the natural room for the fighter to be highly skilled (and has sucked out the room for all characters to be highly skilled). I would love to see the rogue as a derivative of the fighter with a suitable background/theme.
- The fighter as a possible leader (ala warlord) should be encouraged (and at this stage is not). With this, the fighter should be hitting but they should also be getting an additional effect that their allies can use to their advantage. Opening up battle management for the fighter is a very important area of design space I would like to see taken advantage of.



Campbell said:


> High level play need not devolve into an arms race of magical ability vs. magical countermeasure (looking at you mind blank, true seeing, death ward). If spell resistance and anti-magic fields are necessary to make a fighter feel valued there is something wrong with the game.



High level 3.x play is certainly it's own beast. I think if the fighter is taking on an important social role (a leader of men and cities), then their capacity to bring along armies with them can be very important. This is of a scale completely different to regular play. I think Sepulchrave's Wyre stories on these boards encapsulate this perfectly.

However, this style is certainly not what many players are after and the fighter in such circumstances will usually be left very far behind.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Campbell (Jun 21, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> But isn't that what magic is all about? Making the impossible possible? What can those who do not have such magic do to be on equal footing with their magical counterparts?



This is a hard question to answer. In part I think you really need to respect the space of what defines the martial character. A fighter is not just someone who knows how to use a sword. They dedicate a significant portion of their mental energy towards different ways to kill people. They can see combat play out in their head before it happens. Martial  characters are hyper focused. No spell caster can match them in their area of expertise without dedicating a significant portion of their allotted power and then not for very long.

Another element of the equation in my mind is removing the ability for spell casters to completely reinvent themselves everyday. They shouldn't be as focused as martial characters, but they should have to chose a couple areas to excel in. 5e Domains are a step in the right direction here. Generally I'm fine with plot magic like teleport, turn undead, planar travel, raise dead, some healing and the like. It's one area where casters can differentiate themselves without stepping on toes. It's spells like knock, long term invisibility, and powerful combat magic that make martial PCs blush that I take issue with. Spell casters should have an edge in a single encounter, but not too strong of one.

Another area that can easily improve upon things as they stand is to embrace the supernatural elements of hybrids like monks, paladins, etc. You can justify a lot more interesting abilities if a paladin is more than a fighter with smite evil and a few weak divine spells. Give them some flexible mechanics all their own. 

The final element for me is the level playing field of mechanically interesting play. Skill use and combat need to at least be as interesting of a challenge for fighters and rogues as spell management is for casters. Through whatever mechanical means martial PCs need the ability to make interesting decisions that have real opportunity costs. Smart play needs to be rewarded from all participants.



Herremann the Wise said:


> I think this goes two ways. The wizard does need to be constrained, but the fighter also needs to be raised. Personally, I think it should be more difficult for a wizard to cast spells in combat. Keeping up a rate of 5 spells in 5 rounds should not be typical, regardless of at-will magic. There should be times in combat where wizards know they are in too much danger to risk  casting a spell. Spellcasting should not be the automatic action it has become in the most recent editions.
> 
> However, I think two of the biggest issues with the fighter are:
> - The rogue has sucked out the natural room for the fighter to be highly skilled (and has sucked out the room for all characters to be highly skilled). I would love to see the rogue as a derivative of the fighter with a suitable background/theme.
> - The fighter as a possible leader (ala warlord) should be encouraged (and at this stage is not). With this, the fighter should be hitting but they should also be getting an additional effect that their allies can use to their advantage. Opening up battle management for the fighter is a very important area of design space I would like to see taken advantage of.



This is good stuff. I'd XP but I need to spread. Part of the issue here is that so far there has been reluctance for the rules to address what is happening in the wider fiction. I think at a certain level you need to move past the game rules only handling personal action resolution. I favor something similar to FantasyCraft's Reputation mechanics with an edge given to martial characters to reflect that they're more active in the world than spell casters tend to be as absorbed in magic and religious politics as they tend to be.



Herremann the Wise said:


> High level 3.x play is certainly it's own beast. I think if the fighter is taking on an important social role (a leader of men and cities), then their capacity to bring along armies with them can be very important. This is of a scale completely different to regular play. I think Sepulchrave's Wyre stories on these boards encapsulate this perfectly.
> 
> However, this style is certainly not what many players are after and the fighter in such circumstances will usually be left very far behind.
> 
> ...




I'm also a fan believe it or not. Probably wouldn't be interested in playing a game like that, but it makes for good fiction. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the fact that Eadric occupies the same level of relevance in the fiction as a near godling as Mostin does.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 21, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Expecting them to perfectly model reality is asking a bit much, but I'd like them to at least wave at reality as it goes by and make some sort of effort to model it.
> 
> Lan-"the best design model is to go with reality until something - usually magic - says otherwise"-efan



Exactly!



Campbell said:


> I *really* dislike this notion that abundantly available magic gets a free pass to do extraordinary things in a game that presents those who do not possess magical talent as peers to Clerics, Wizards, and Sorcerers. Magic is a fictional construct that can be defined in whatever way we please. If a fighter is supposed to be an equally valued companion to a wizard or cleric than constraints need to be placed on the spell caster that makes the fighter just as valued.



The answer to this is limiting high level magic. If my daughters have unequal numbers of cookies, there are two ways to fix the problem. Provide more cookies so that there is an even split (which means providing too much *WAHOO!*) or taking away cookies. I know which one my daughters would prefer, but that doesn't make that the right answer. 

There are two reasons I like magical healing to full after a night's rest while I *hate* non-magical healing.


It's magic. It's a world where gods actually exist, people channel arcane energies to create fire from nothing, and intelligent creatures other than humans actually walk the ground. In a world where you can literally bring someone back from the dead, I have zero problems with gods granting someone the ability to heal wounds.

The healing character has to expend valuable resources that are then _not available for the rest of the day_. No throwing out the "healstick wand of CLW" argument BS, because that's a separate issue that could easily be solved by some other means. Indeed, it's as simple as disallowing it, which I've done before and will likely do again. (It also was only an issue in 3E that didn't occur in 2E and before.)

I'm not asking for the world to go back and pretend 4E didn't happen. I'm asking for 5E to support my preferred playstyle. It's fine if they don't. I'll play something else. But if they'd like me to provide them with some of my disposable income, they'll need to find some way to go back and provide the playstyle that previous D&D editions supported, something 4E just didn't do. So far, even after playtesting, my only real gripe with 5E is the overnight healing to max HP/HD.


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## Uller (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Really?
> 
> Braves' Beachy to have Tommy John surgery - Yahoo! Sports
> 
> Why doesn't Gonzalez just yell at him and send him out to pitch?




D&D does not attempt to model long term debilitating injuries.  If you want a system that does, you're talking about something that is not what D&D is or ever has been (not saying a wound system is not within scope of what 5e could end up being...but that's a different animal).  Long term healing _sort of_ models this, but not really...after all you still can do everything as before.

In D&D you have characters that operate at full capacity with a pool of resources to resist an incapcitating injury, dying, stabilized and dead.  I am all in favor of some additional "injured" state for those who want it and wounds for those who want those as long as I can happily ignore it.


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## Herschel (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Really?
> 
> Braves' Beachy to have Tommy John surgery - Yahoo! Sports
> 
> Why doesn't Gonzalez just yell at him and send him out to pitch?




Why doesn't the trainer drive him to the nearest church and have the minister/priest heal him?

Hit points do not and have not ever modeled real world injuries, nor have they tried. Had Beachy pitched seven innings in 90-degree heat and gotten knocked around a bit, Gonzalez may give him a quick pep talk or say something to settle him down so he can get back in rhythm.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 21, 2012)

Herschel said:


> Why doesn't the trainer drive him to the nearest church and have the minister/priest heal him?
> 
> Hit points do not and have not ever modeled real world injuries, nor have they tried. Had Beachy pitched seven innings in 90-degree heat and gotten knocked around a bit, Gonzalez may give him a quick pep talk or say something to settle him down so he can get back in rhythm.




That would be a pep talk to increase morale, which I can totally agree with.  Kind of like a paladin's aura giving a bonus to fear saves.  But yelling at someone injured will not make them less injured.  It might make a whiny brat who's faking an injury get up and play on.  Or it might make the guy with the ankle injury play on and and end up crippled for life.  In play, it lessens my character.  If I'm hurt, and out of the fight, and simply yelling at me allows me to get up and fight on, I wasn't hurt too badly to fight, I'm merely a wimp, lying on my ass whining while the rest of my team is in danger.  Some hero.

I'm aware that D&D doesn't model Tommy John surgery very well, lol.  My point - stemming from this qoute - 







> Of course one of these things happens in the real world on battlefields,in sports, even at physical therapy everyday....



  was that nothing in real life can be modeled by warlord yelling, either.


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## fenriswolf456 (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> That would be a pep talk to increase morale, which I can totally agree with. Kind of like a paladin's aura giving a bonus to fear saves. But yelling at someone injured will not make them less injured. It might make a whiny brat who's faking an injury get up and play on. Or it might make the guy with the ankle injury play on and and end up crippled for life. In play, it lessens my character. If I'm hurt, and out of the fight, and simply yelling at me allows me to get up and fight on, I wasn't hurt too badly to fight, I'm merely a wimp, lying on my ass whining while the rest of my team is in danger. Some hero.




4E, at least to me, is very much about being cinematic. It's flashy, it's got lots of maneuvers and abilities for heroes to use, it gives characters a goodly amount of HP with which to have long exciting battles in it. One of the things I think it does fairly well is to emulate heroes taking a lot of damage over the course of an adventure, but to keep on going.

One of the tropes in cinematic adventure is the ability for heroes to find strength in the words of others. There are many scenes in which the hero is down and out, even dying, only to be brought back to consciousnesss/lucidity by the words of loved ones or allies. I recently rewatched Terminator, and near the end after their car flips, Kyle is injured and down for the count. Sarah finally orders him to his feet, and they manage to avoid getting run down by the Terminator. Kyle's wounds certainly aren't healed up, and yet he has gone from being all but unconscious to fully functional (as much as his wounds would allow, at any rate, but wounds are not part of D&D).

Now you could consider Kyle a 'wimp' for being overwhelmed by his wounds, or you can consider him as being even more a hero for overcoming the pain of his likely mortal wounds to keep on fighting, after some encouragement. How you perceive things is up to you. I prefer the latter, myself.

Now, this certainly isn't a perfect example, but I believe it to be an illustrative example of the inspiration behind the Warlord's abilities.



JRRNeiklot said:


> I'm aware that D&D doesn't model Tommy John surgery very well, lol. My point - stemming from this qoute - was that nothing in real life can be modeled by warlord yelling, either.




Then why bring up a point that has nothing to do with the system being talked about?

It's likely that a game that truly models real world injury and recovery would likely be unfun (except to a minority of players who do want that sort of thing in their games). D&D has always been rather fast paced, and even old school healing wasn't all that accurate to RL. We play to adventure, not to sit bandaged up in an inn.

I play with HP being abstract. It makes sense to me that when someone takes damage, that there is an emotional reaction to taking that damage as well and should be encapsulated in the damage total. Despair, worry, anger, fear, all of that comes into play, weakening the character overall and making them prone to possibly taking that fatal hit. So for me, a Warlord's 'healing' is perfectly valid. 

Healing surges were a good core idea, and I think would have been better accepted if not for the extended rest rules. I'm currently using a house rule that if a character is dropped below 0 at some point during the adventuring day, they recover 1 less healing surge duing an extended rest. They won't get these lost surges back until they have a full day or two of actual relaxing rest (and not sleeping out in the woods or cold dungeon floor). Though going through Scales of War, it will likely be hard to judge if there's any real effect from this rule, as there's really only one or two extended rests in most of the modules.

And while I think the designers could certainly put in some wound/recovery system, I don't know if it would be as accurate or detailed enough for those who truly want it.


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## HeinorNY (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> But yelling at someone injured will not make them less injured.



It doesn't need to. All the yelling needs to do is to make the injuried character recover some HPs to be able fight a little longer.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 21, 2012)

ainatan said:


> It doesn't need to. All the yelling needs to do is to make the injuried character recover some HPs to be able fight a little longer.




Which involves wounds healing from 1974-2008.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 21, 2012)

fenriswolf456 said:


> We play to adventure, not to sit bandaged up in an inn.




Without the chance of sitting bandaged up in an inn - or worse - it's not an adventure.


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## HeinorNY (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Which involves wounds healing from 1974-2008.



Not really.
In 3E there were mechanics that recovered/increased HPs that didn't involve  wound healing. Off the top of my head:
-Barbarian's Rage
-Aid spell
-Bard's Inspire Greatness


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## Herschel (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Which involves wounds healing from 1974-2008.




Except it didn't, which has been quoted from books 74 ways 'til Sunday. The closest HP EVER got to being defined as representing wounds is the indexed blurbs in 2E. The full write-ups have never represented them as such.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 21, 2012)

Herschel said:


> Except it didn't, which has been quoted from books 74 ways 'til Sunday. The closest HP EVER got to being defined as representing wounds is the indexed blurbs in 2E. The full write-ups have never represented them as such.




Except where they did.

I'll not repost it here, but it's been shown in a number of threads quoting various passages of a half a dozen or more books  that hit points have always been a combination of many things, one of those being actual damage.  It's been that way from day one until 4e threw a wrench in things.  Whenever you deduct from your hit points, you have sustained an injury.  Period.


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> I'll not repost it here, but it's been shown in a number of threads quoting various passages of a half a dozen or more books  that hit points have always been a combination of many things, one of those being actual damage.  It's been that way from day one until 4e threw a wrench in things.  Whenever you deduct from your hit points, you have sustained an injury.  Period.




Isn't there a difference between "Hit points are a combination of many things, one of those being actual damage" and "_Each_ hit point is a combination of many things, one of those being actual damage"?

If I have a handful of tokens, which can be spent on a combination of items including food, beverages, and clothing... and I undertake a transaction which deducts from my handful of tokens... does that mean that I have purchased food, beverages, and clothing?  Or, in other words, can it be said that "Whenever I deduct from my handful of tokens, I have purchased food"?

Even though the handful in total represents the potential to purchase any of those things, can't any given transaction omit one or more of the elements, without changing the definition of the total handful?

-Hyp.


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## HeinorNY (Jun 21, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Whenever you deduct from your hit points, you have sustained an injury.  Period.




I agree completely. But just because the loss of HP is caused by some type of injury, it doesn't mean the loss of HP represents that injury.
The loss of HPs represents other things caused by the injury, and the recovering of HPs represents mitigating them.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 21, 2012)

Hypersmurf said:


> Isn't there a difference between "Hit points are a combination of many things, one of those being actual damage" and "_Each_ hit point is a combination of many things, one of those being actual damage"?
> 
> If I have a handful of tokens, which can be spent on a combination of items including food, beverages, and clothing... and I undertake a transaction which deducts from my handful of tokens... does that mean that I have purchased food, beverages, and clothing?  Or, in other words, can it be said that "Whenever I deduct from my handful of tokens, I have purchased food"?
> 
> ...



The problem with this line of thinking is that everyone who argues from this point ignores that damage is part of that equation. In point of fact, just about everyone who argues for the HP = Mix has said that only that last hit point is actual damage, and even that is questionable in 4E since anyone can be healed non-magically from even negative HP.

Even if we allow for the idea that HP are a mix (as Gary noted in AD&D, but not, interestingly, in OD&D), when pressed, not a single one of the mix proponents has agreed to what the ratio is/should be, and, in a great many cases, thinks that even that is too complicated, and thus no hit point represents damage, at least by 4E's standards. Again, because any hit ever in 4E can be healed non-magically instantaneously, something that couldn't happen in any other edition of D&D.

Edited to add: It's a playstyle difference. 4E wants to allow for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "The Avengers" as default game modes. That's not my playstyle. It hasn't been my preferred playstyle for D&D ever. There are other systems for me when I do want to go gonzo Looney-Tunes-Daffy-Duck-shotgun-to-the-face-instant-healing. D&D wasn't that for me, until 4E forced that playstyle (among other things, such as separating player actions from character actions--AEDU for example). Which is why I abandoned 4E after salivating during the run up, being a part-time player in the power card design mock-ups, buying the core books, and playing for a year. I found that 4E's prescribed gameplay wasn't what I wanted. If 5E is to get my money, it needs to provide the ability to play the way I have since I first started gaming. That means creator-designed rules, not Rule 0 corrections on my part. If it's going to rely on house rules, I'll play a version of the game where I don't have to do that and save myself the time and trouble.


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 22, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> The problem with this line of thinking is that everyone who argues from this point ignores that damage is part of that equation. In point of fact, just about everyone who argues for the HP = Mix has said that only that last hit point is actual damage, and even that is questionable in 4E since anyone can be healed non-magically from even negative HP.




ainatan above you doesn't appear to be arguing that, and I think ainatan's position is similar to mine:

I don't mind someone being on maximum hit points without all evidence of physical damage they previously sustained (along with lost hit points) having vanished.

If I lost ten hit points, narrated as cuts and bruises from a skirmish with goblins, and then the Warlord gives me a pep talk which game-mechanically restores ten hit points, then a/ I'm at max hit points, and b/ I have a bunch of cuts and bruises.

-Hyp.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 22, 2012)

Hypersmurf said:


> ainatan above you doesn't appear to be arguing that, and I think ainatan's position is similar to mine:
> 
> I don't mind someone being on maximum hit points without all evidence of physical damage they previously sustained (along with lost hit points) having vanished.



Then what, exactly, does being at full HP really mean? I think it, again, is a playstyle preference difference. I'm not interested in changing the way I play/narrate D&D. You are fine with HP not representing wounds. I'm not. I'm not changing my preferences just because one (and only one so far) edition of D&D says I have to. I'll play one of the others (and there's no lack of those) where I can continue to play the way I always have. Again, this is about whether or not WotC can win my money by providing a product I want to support (and, in all honesty, I'm pretty positive I'll pick up the core three no matter what) but keeping the playstyle that 4E created is not the way to get my money. It's not my playstyle. I don't like it.



> If I lost ten hit points, narrated as cuts and bruises from a skirmish with goblins, and then the Warlord gives me a pep talk which game-mechanically restores ten hit points, then a/ I'm at max hit points, and b/ I have a bunch of cuts and bruises.
> 
> -Hyp.



See, that's a situation that's ripe for temporary HP, in my experience and my opinion. You can ignore the pain for awhile, but after awhile, the cuts and bruises are still there, probably after the adrenaline has worn off.

That's how I'd have handled the Warlord. And I think you'd have avoided a great portion of people pissed off at Warlord shout-heals.


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## jadrax (Jun 22, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> (as Gary noted in AD&D, but not, interestingly, in OD&D)



I don't believe they realised anyone would really interpret them any other way.

As Tim Kask put it, 'Hit points are not bruises and slices and contusions and fractures causing you to stagger and your knees to turn to 3-day-old celery stalks. HP’s are the number of those whacks you can take before being kayoed. HP’s are the cat’s nine lives, the number of times it can do something horribly dangerous and not die. HP’s are a quantification of the number of times you can keep Marcus Mercenary from piercing you in that fatal spot. 2 HP’s No problem, no staggers no reeling on your pins; you’re just that much closer to running out of luck and feeling 10 inches of finely-honed steel stab into your vitals.'

And he was sat at the table when Hit Points were created.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 22, 2012)

jadrax said:


> I don't believe they realised anyone would really interpret them any other way.
> 
> As Tim Kask put it, 'Hit points are not bruises and slices and contusions and fractures causing you to stagger and your knees to turn to 3-day-old celery stalks. HP’s are the number of those whacks you can take before being kayoed. HP’s are the cat’s nine lives, the number of times it can do something horribly dangerous and not die. HP’s are a quantification of the number of times you can keep Marcus Mercenary from piercing you in that fatal spot. 2 HP’s No problem, no staggers no reeling on your pins; you’re just that much closer to running out of luck and feeling 10 inches of finely-honed steel stab into your vitals.'
> 
> And he was sat at the table when Hit Points were created.



Oh, gee, silly us. I mean, how else would people define "hit" "hit point" "damage" "heal"? It would be totally absurd to use the standard agreed upon dictionary definition of those words, wouldn't it?


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 22, 2012)

I've just found the single best post on hit points in D&D that I've ever read.



> Hitpoints just don't make sense. Gygax's description of what they represent is not an explanation of how they work, it's a justification after the fact. And it's a lousy justification.



I think that's probably the best description of what happened, so I'll just continue to use my justification that fits my preferred playstyle, and to not play the games that don't fit my playstyle.

Link


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## Uller (Jun 22, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Even if we allow for the idea that HP are a mix (as Gary noted in AD&D, but not, interestingly, in OD&D), when pressed, not a single one of the mix proponents has agreed to what the ratio is/should be




Because that's the point of abstraction (for HP, round length, position, monetary systems, etc).  It frees the DM and players to imagine the game in a way that makes sense at the moment and keep it manageable.  

What proportion of a round does a character actually spend in the square he is in on the grid (or how far does he wander from his space in TotM if you prefer that)?   Surely there is no agreement on that because just like HP it's an abstraction that people vary the answers for as needed.

Is a round always exactly 10 seconds (or whatever it is) or is it just an abstraction of a small increment of time that is convenient for modelling turns that varies?  If it is always really 10 seconds you are saying that all characters every where have the same rate of attacks, spell casting, etc.   Really?


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 22, 2012)

Uller said:


> Because that's the point of abstraction (for HP, round length, position, monetary systems, etc).  It frees the DM and players to imagine the game in a way that makes sense at the moment and keep it manageable.



That's true, but then the problem becomes, only in 4e mind you, that imagining and describing the game one way becomes an impossibility with mundane restoration to full hit points and shout-heals. So the imagination of the game at the moment (the hit was a hit) is negated a moment later (the hit really actually didn't hit), and this problem is only present in one edition of the game.

Again, it's a playstyle difference. I don't like 4E's playstyle. I'm not interested in changing how I've played since I was 11. The way I narrate every hit as a hit (ie, it leaves a mark) has worked for me in every game I've played over nearly 30 years. Until 4E. And thus after a year of playing 4E, I stopped.


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## Uller (Jun 22, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> That's true, but then the problem becomes, only in 4e mind you, that imagining and describing the game one way becomes an impossibility with mundane restoration to full hit points and shout-heals. So the imagination of the game at the moment (the hit was a hit) is negated a moment later (the hit really actually didn't hit), and this problem is only present in one edition of the game.
> 
> Again, it's a playstyle difference. I don't like 4E's playstyle. I'm not interested in changing how I've played since I was 11. The way I narrate every hit as a hit (ie, it leaves a mark) has worked for me in every game I've played over nearly 30 years. Until 4E. And thus after a year of playing 4E, I stopped.




Oh, I don't think it's only a problem in 4e. Before 4e, if a giant "hits" a 10th level wizard for 15 hp damage (enough to outright kill a low level fighter) the wizard still can act as if he is completely unhurt (did the giant actually hit him? How did the wizard survive?) and then a cleric "heals" him with a "cure" spell, what the heck does that even mean?  Nothing at all other than changes in a number on your character sheet.  If I look at it as morale or luck and you look at it as somehow he took a bump but managed to roll with it, fine.  

Yes, 4e introduced a very different play style and I agree, it's a little too easy to jump right back up into the fight.  5e seems to take a step back toward older editions.   But I have no problem seeing someone inspiring a comrade to shake it off and get back into the fight and having that be reflected in an hp gain (or temp HP or a bonus to defenses or grant a free save or what have you)

Sure...it's play style.  To each his own.  But when someone (no, not you) says that another person's way of looking at a game where adults pretend to be wizards who shoot lightning from their bums  is "silly", well...it's a game.


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## Lanefan (Jun 22, 2012)

ainatan said:


> It doesn't need to. All the yelling needs to do is to make the injuried character recover some HPs to be able fight a little longer.



OK, I've loudly recovered some hit points - but I won't be much use fighting until someone fixes this ankle that won't support my weight; oh, and I think a couple of gods named Tommy and John want a word with my right elbow too.

Lan-"ouch"-efan


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 22, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> OK, I've loudly recovered some hit points - but I won't be much use fighting until someone fixes this ankle that won't support my weight; oh, and I think a couple of gods named Tommy and John want a word with my right elbow too.
> 
> Lan-"ouch"-efan




Please excuse me for hopping back into a hit point discussion thread. I know I shouldn't but sometimes I can't help myself. [*Disclaimer*: I believe splitting hit points into "wounds" and "everything else hit points represent" is the only way of solving the many various issues of hit points.]

Now, where does it say that a loss of hit points causes ankle or elbow issues? When my character loses hit points, the DM may narrate such things and if I'm a good boy, I'll roleplay them. But mechanically speaking, the quality of my guy's actions at 1hp is just as good as at full hit points. If there was a mechanical penalty representing such physical injuries, then I'd be inclined to agree that a warlord yelling at me to move my arse is not going to make this penalty go away (wound damage in my preferred wound/hp system).

However, if hit points are partly represented by my character's will to go on, I can see the warlord giving my guy a buff here. For example, if my character's ankle was a little sore, the warlord reminding me that Joe over there who's in far worse condition but still up and fighting most likely encourages my guy to ignore the ankle and focus on killing that Orc over there who's about to smash Joe's braincase in. The warlord does not heal, he just encourages or inspires characters to give a little more. Now I think this is better represented by temporary hit points rather than formal hit points but heh, you get the idea.

And so, my main point is that the warlord does not make the wounds go away, he or she just helps the character get up and ignore/cope with the pain for just a little longer. Now this would be fine if physical injury was stripped out of hit points and the remainder of hit points (leaving us with luck, skill, divine providence, morale, will to go on, capacity to turn a serious blow into a less serious one, mental and physical toughness etc.)
In this case, the warlord or even just a regular joe fighter or paladin could have a similar influence on their allies when they down the enemy leader and turn the tide. Giving your allies hit points in this case makes a little sense and is a cool extra.

However, while physical injury and everything else hit points represent are uncomfortably combined into the one mechanic, this discussion is going to keep going around and around and around. The feedback from WotC as discussed by Mike Mearls in several places is that the current hit point healing mechanics are not satisfying everyone and they need to go back to the drawing board (the tome podcast most recently). *Surely it is time to split physical injury out of hit points!!!* Do this and hit points have the room to actually represent what everyone says they represent without physical injury getting in the way. This way, the mechanics can tell you that your ankle's stuffed and it will be mechanically represented so. A room full of win I say... and sorry for the broken record.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Even if we allow for the idea that HP are a mix (as Gary noted in AD&D, but not, interestingly, in OD&D), when pressed, not a single one of the mix proponents has agreed to what the ratio is/should be, and, in a great many cases, thinks that even that is too complicated



There _is_ no general ratio. It's free narration within the parameters established by the mechanics (in 4e those parameters can include things like being bloodied, swooning/being knocked down, suffering a poisoning, running in fear, etc).



Mercutio01 said:


> There are other systems for me when I do want to go gonzo Looney-Tunes-Daffy-Duck-shotgun-to-the-face-instant-healing.



For this, I would run 3E with hit points as meat. Because a high level 3E fighter will have no trouble taking multiple shotgun blasts to the face and keep going.

To flip it around: the main incentive on my part for rejecting hit points as meat is that it mandates that my game include stupid things like high level fighters taking multiple shotgun blasts to the face.

Whereas hit points as morale and heroism (including morale and heroism in the face of moderate but not debilitating physical injury) makes the mechanics and the narration work together, rather than push against one another.



Uller said:


> Before 4e, if a giant "hits" a 10th level wizard for 15 hp damage (enough to outright kill a low level fighter) the wizard still can act as if he is completely unhurt (did the giant actually hit him? How did the wizard survive?) and then a cleric "heals" him with a "cure" spell, what the heck does that even mean?  Nothing at all other than changes in a number on your character sheet.



Exactly. I can understand how those who are wedded to Rolemaster or Runequest-type simulation might bridle at hit points (in either the AD&D, 3E or 4e version).

But I don't understand what AD&D and 3E players think is going on in the sort of scenario that you describe that is so radically different from 4e.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> I believe splitting hit points into "wounds" and "everything else hit points represent" is the only way of solving the many various issues of hit points
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Surely it is time to split physical injury out of hit points



I think this would be an utterly huge change for D&D, and very risky.

Letting hit points be equivocal between meat and morale is utterly crucial for a range of approaches to play. Just consider the reasonably common ENworld poster who seems to fit the following criteria:

* doesn't like "wuxia", "arrow-cutting", etc;

* doesn't want high level fighters to be killed or seriously impeded by a single successful arrow shot;

* doesn't like the fiction of his/her PC running around stuck with arrows like a pincushion.​
Once you separate hit points from wound poins you can't have all of these - either all successful arrow attacks deal wounds (and high level fighters either die from single shots, or can take multiple arrow wounds without flinching), or high level fighters are arrow-cutting machines until they run out of hit points.

Whereas the current melange allows my hypothetical player to equivocate, from episode to episode, and even between narrations of the very same episode, over what exactly is going on when a high level fighter takes 20 arrows hits from 100 arhcers and then proceeds to charge in and cut them all down.


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I think this would be an utterly huge change for D&D, and very risky.
> 
> Letting hit points be equivocal between meat and morale is utterly crucial for a range of approaches to play.




Sure, but a distinction between hit-point-damage-causing-mechanical-penalty and hit-point-damage-without-mechanical-penalty doesn't preclude any particular existing interpretation of hit-point-damage-without-mechanical-penalty.

At the moment, Lanefan's PC can take damage resulting in a twisted ankle... but it's a twisted ankle that doesn't affect his movement rate, his Dexterity, his Tumble skill, his AC, or anything else.

With Herreman's proposed split, Lanefan's PC can still take damage which imposes no penalties and call it a twisted ankle.  But if he takes damage which _does_ impose a penalty, maybe he can instead call it a _badly_ twisted ankle.

Since whatever interpretation of hit point damage people currently have imposes no penalties, and since Herreman's split continues to allow for hit point damage which imposes no penalties, there's room in Herreman's split to accommodate any interpretation which currently exists.  His proposal simply adds the additional capability for the system to handle hit point damage which imposes penalties.

-Hyp.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Hypersmurf said:


> Sure, but a distinction between hit-point-damage-causing-mechanical-penalty and hit-point-damage-without-mechanical-penalty doesn't preclude any particular existing interpretation of hit-point-damage-without-mechanical-penalty.



That's true, but I think it applies a degree of pressure that has the potential to be destabilising (particularly where the coherence of a player's current narrative for hp loss is teetering on a precipice).

This pressure comes out in the very first (as far as I know) treatment of the issue, in Roger Musson's "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive" (White Dwarf, c 1980). On the ground that a giant slug "never parried anything in its life", Musson suggests that all its hit points be treated as wound points. And, having stated as one of the motivations for his system that it's silly that a chained fighter's "abstract" hit points let it survive a direct breath from a dragon, he then struggles with how to make dragon breath and fireball - which against most targets are going to deal pretty serious physical damage - work in his system without being completely overpowered.

You might feel that this pressure could be resisted, or even that I'm exaggerating its force. I don't think I am, but I could be wrong. I think it's a big risk, but I wouldn't bet my house on it being a failure with the fans.


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> And, having stated as one of the motivations for his system that it's silly that a chained fighter's "abstract" hit points let it survive a direct breath from a dragon, he then struggles with how to make dragon breath and fireball - which against most targets are going to deal pretty serious physical damage - work in his system without being completely overpowered.




Maybe that's why I don't see the problem - I have no trouble with abstract hit points letting someone survive a fireball, so I don't feel the pressure to define fireball damage as automatic wound points.

To be fair, 'wound points' wouldn't actually be my choice for modeling consequential injuries.  I described earlier a spitballed system I could get behind, which makes incurring a consequential injury a meaningful narrative choice on behalf of the player.  Under that system, any attack dealing damage _could_ be a serious wound, but no attack _must be_ a serious wound.

Sometimes a player might be in a position where he has to choose between taking a long-term injury versus winding up unconscious or dead.  And it leaves room in the system for special attacks which say "deals 3d6 damage and causes an injury".

-Hyp.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Hypersmurf said:


> I described earlier a spitballed system I could get behind, which makes incurring a consequential injury a meaningful narrative choice on behalf of the player.  Under that system, any attack dealing damage _could_ be a serious wound, but no attack _must be_ a serious wound.
> 
> Sometimes a player might be in a position where he has to choose between taking a long-term injury versus winding up unconscious or dead.  And it leaves room in the system for special attacks which say "deals 3d6 damage and causes an injury".



 [MENTION=11300]Herremann the Wise[/MENTION] can correct me if I'm wrong, but given that in another thread Herreman is on the anti-encounter-power-because-too-metagamey side of a conversation, I suspect he wouldn't be the biggest fan of an injury system based on player narrative choice.

Now obviously Herremann's not dictator of D&D, but in the current post-4e design climate, I wouldn't expect to be seeing a narrative, player-metagamed injury system in a hurry!


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## Hypersmurf (Jun 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Now obviously Herremann's not dictator of D&D, but in the current post-4e design climate, I wouldn't expect to be seeing a narrative, player-metagamed injury system in a hurry!




Yeah, but I can dream 

-Hyp.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 22, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> The problem with this line of thinking is that everyone who argues from this point ignores that damage is part of that equation. In point of fact, just about everyone who argues for the HP = Mix has said that only that last hit point is actual damage, and even that is questionable in 4E since anyone can be healed non-magically from even negative HP.




Not true. Anyone can be _brought back to their feet non-magically from negative HP_. But this is not the same as actually being healed. The damage is still there and will still be there until the healing surges are recovered. This is a cinematic trope (as illustrated by the Terminator example). 



> Even if we allow for the idea that HP are a mix (as Gary noted in AD&D, but not, interestingly, in OD&D), when pressed, not a single one of the mix proponents has agreed to what the ratio is/should be, and, in a great many cases, thinks that even that is too complicated, and thus no hit point represents damage, at least by 4E's standards.




No. It is _missing the point_. Gygax said that only the last few hit points represent real damage and one of the purposes of the hit point system is to model Eroll Flynn style swashbuckling. As for AD&D vs OD&D, AD&D was pure Gygax and has much more information. And I believe Arneson's approach was different to Gygax's. Gygax was absolutely clear when he addressed the issue directly. Only the last few hit points represent anything other than trivial physical damage.



> Again, because any hit ever in 4E can be healed non-magically instantaneously, something that couldn't happen in any other edition of D&D.




Once more you are distorting. Any hit in 4e can, with the right non-magical encouragement _be shrugged off or worked through_. There is a vast difference between that and healed.



> Edited to add: It's a playstyle difference. 4E wants to allow for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "The Avengers" as default game modes.




Those, Terminator, The A Team, Princess Bride, Indiana Jones, Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Erroll Flynn style swashbuckling, and just about every action movie ever. FFS you can even see spending healing surges in combat in Leverage on occasion when Eliott's having a big showdown. You even have healing surges being spent between rounds in _mundane boxing matches_.

You know the list of things I can think of where you have routine magical healing but people not pulling themselves back in through grit and determination? I can get as far as D&D, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, Everquest, and knockoffs. I can't even go for anything gritty with the ubiquity of magical healing.

And I know which my preferred playstyle is.



Mercutio01 said:


> Oh, gee, silly us. I mean, how else would people define "hit" "hit point" "damage" "heal"? It would be totally absurd to use the standard agreed upon dictionary definition of those words, wouldn't it?






Mercutio01 said:


> That's true, but then the problem becomes, only in 4e mind you, that imagining and describing the game one way becomes an impossibility with mundane restoration to full hit points and shout-heals.




No. The problem is that they changed what hit points were in 4e without really going into detail about how. The damage is in surges, the hit points measure shock.



Lanefan said:


> OK, I've loudly recovered some hit points - but I won't be much use fighting until someone fixes this ankle that won't support my weight; oh, and I think a couple of gods named Tommy and John want a word with my right elbow too.
> 
> Lan-"ouch"-efan




Well I guess you can spend the next three weeks laid up in bed. And utterly prohibit any cinematic games without magic.  Me, I'm going to point out that D&D in no way models the ankle that won't support your weight.  If you're above 0hp then it can and if you're below it's not your ankle that's the problem.  So stop malingering.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I think this would be an utterly huge change for D&D, and very risky.



A much needed and significant change in my opinion, but I would like to contend not that risky.



pemerton said:


> Letting hit points be equivocal between meat and morale is utterly crucial for a range of approaches to play. Just consider the reasonably common ENworld poster who seems to fit the following criteria:
> 
> * doesn't like "wuxia", "arrow-cutting", etc;
> 
> ...



I disagree and would suggest the following:

***The highest privilege given to a character is the capacity to use their hit points rather than suffer wound damage. Now this is a privilege that will sometimes be denied the character but more of that later. The main thing is that a character takes wound damage unless they are allowed to use and can use their hit points. I suppose the typical two caveats are:
- When a character runs out of hit points, they cannot use hit points and thus take wound damage.
- Certain attacks are so skillful that they may deny the character the privilege of using their hit points to avoid it {the classic critical hit}.

*Wuxia Style; Arrow-Cutting*
I think this comes down to how you describe things as much as other factors. The bottom line is that if a character is allowed to use their hit points, the attack on them has been mostly ineffective; how that is described is really a style preference for the group. Avoiding wuxia style stuff should not be that difficult. Arrows are ineffective (do not deal wound damage) because the character uses their skill to avoid what would have been a certain shot (by expending hit points). Or by getting lucky, or the arrow glances off armor, or the arrow gets caught in their hat, or bounces painfully off of the toe of their boot, or is seemingly diverted as if Pelor himself had bent the arrows path. [Effectively this is a case of describing it in accordance with what the hit points are being attributed to: luck, skill, divine providence, morale, will to go on, capacity to turn a serious blow into a less serious one, mental and physical toughness etc. The halfling rogue is a lot of luck while the half-orc barbarian is a patchwork of scars, cuts and bruises.]

*The Single Successful Arrow Shot*
There are times where this _should _be able to happen. However, for the sake of the game, there also needs to be a concession that most of the time, the character gets to use hit points to maximize death avoidance. Where you draw the line would be a classic case for a dial.

Does the character get to use hit points if they are surprised or flat-footed? Do they get to use hit points if they are unaware of the attack? What if they are incapacitated? These are all reasonable situations where hit point use could be denied the character. However in these cases, perhaps the priest can react immediately to the attack with a blessing that allows the character to use their hit points when they otherwise would not be able to. Perhaps a halfling's luck allows them to use hit points when they otherwise would not be able to. Perhaps an allied fighter can get their shield in the way so that the ranged attack is possibly nullified (or not). Perhaps a rogue with "uncanny dodge" can never be denied their use of hit points due to surprise? Perhaps a character's armor can offer damage resistance to lessen the resulting wound?

In other words, there is a heap of ways how you can stop that single shot killing the character from avoiding it completely to copping a non-mortal wound. *BUT*, if a 20th level character _is _asleep and cops a dagger directly through their braincase, they are copping one hell of a wound that they are almost certainly not telling their friends about. I think it important that this threat should always be there (even if such things are in the control of the DM). By having a relatively small amount of wound points, even a high level character can be killed in a single shot; they just have a whole heap more resources at their disposal to not find themselves in such a vulnerable position.

*The Arrow Pincushion*
I think this is actually where the split model I'm promoting is at it's strongest. The only time an arrow is going to be stuck in a character's body is when it is causing obvious physical damage or wounding. Losing hit points means that the character has not been stuck bad enough to be wounded. Describe it how you want but there's your line. If the attack wounded the character, then make sure it sounds like it hurts. If the character has only lost hit points, make sure that you don't describe something that sounds like a significant wound. This provides clear directions for the DM in terms of description (or for the players if that is your style). What the pincushion thing is saying is "don't describe something that sounds completely ridiculous". Having wounds clearly separated allows you to do this.



pemerton said:


> Whereas the current melange allows my hypothetical player to equivocate, from episode to episode, and even between narrations of the very same episode, over what exactly is going on when a high level fighter takes 20 arrows hits from 100 arhcers and then proceeds to charge in and cut them all down.



I think the above split system does too with the added bonus of not getting caught out when you attempt to restore hit points and heal wounds. Hit points are quickly restored and hyper-importantly can continue to act as a buffer, vastly reducing the slope of the potential death spiral. In addition, there is now a plethora of viable ways that hit points can be restored in combat. Morale based increases, second winds, leader encouragement and so on are believably applied. A fighter can believably menace multiple opponents, stripping them of hit points through demoralizing them without having to occasionally explain how such things kill such opponents. It just leaves such demoralized opponents incredibly vulnerable.

Wounds however can take longer to heal as suits the group. Mundane healers can alleviate wounds well enough that it is a viable and dare I say become the standard way of dealing with such things. Divine healing becomes a gravy or perhaps a resource that is carefully metered out. Funnily enough, cure light wounds, cure critical wounds etc. actually make sense now. You don't have that weird circumstance where a cure critical wounds does almost nothing for a high level character. I would prefer such things in fact to be rituals that take time and are not spammed out like so many wands of cure light wounds.

Perhaps the hardest thing is connecting hit points to wounds in terms of measurement. I think the most obvious unit of measurement is in fact the hit point. A 1 hit point wound takes 1 day for the average humanoid character to be not affected by. [It is not completely healed, it just at that point no longer affects the character any more.] A 9hp wound takes 9 days to heal. Wounds are treated individually (and are rare enough that this takes only minor accounting work). I have a set of rules in this regard that I designed a while ago but that might be best left for another time.

So yeah, I still think this would be a pretty cool way to go for an advanced rule module and that it can be trimmed up for the core.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 22, 2012)

Uller said:


> <snip>



Can't XP you, but good points. For your first example, I would have narrated it as a glancing blow, something that maybe knocked the wind out of the wizard, but nothing more serious than that. But it would *still have been a hit.*


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> There _is_ no general ratio. It's free narration within the parameters established by the mechanics (in 4e those parameters can include things like being bloodied, swooning/being knocked down, suffering a poisoning, running in fear, etc).
> 
> For this, I would run 3E with hit points as meat. Because a high level 3E fighter will have no trouble taking multiple shotgun blasts to the face and keep going.
> 
> To flip it around: the main incentive on my part for rejecting hit points as meat is that it mandates that my game include stupid things like high level fighters taking multiple shotgun blasts to the face.



That's not how I've ever played 3E, 2E, or 1E. Indeed, high level fighters take barely a scratch from the shotgun aimed at their faces because they duck away at the last second and get a grazing wound---*but they still get hit*.



> But I don't understand what AD&D and 3E players think is going on in the sort of scenario that you describe that is so radically different from 4e.



In 4E, characters cannot take a hit, or else the entire healing system retcons everything that happened before the heal.



Neonchameleon said:


> Not true. Anyone can be _brought back to their feet non-magically from negative HP_. But this is not the same as actually being healed. The damage is still there and will still be there until the healing surges are recovered. This is a cinematic trope (as illustrated by the Terminator example).



And _that is a playstyle preference_ that is not my own. I don't *want to play* cinematic D&D and have never really done so. This is why I say 4E specifically ushered in a playstyle that is not to my tastes at all.



> No. It is _missing the point_. Gygax said that only the last few hit points represent real damage and one of the purposes of the hit point system is to model Eroll Flynn style swashbuckling. As for AD&D vs OD&D, AD&D was pure Gygax and has much more information. And I believe Arneson's approach was different to Gygax's. Gygax was absolutely clear when he addressed the issue directly. Only the last few hit points represent anything other than trivial physical damage.



Worship at the altar of Gygax all you want. He was an interesting guy who was part of making a great game, but he wasn't the only one. It's like lauding George Lucas for the original Star Wars trilogy, when it was actually a combination of a lot of people's work. I think Gygax's ex post facto explanation for hit points was wrong. Gygax is Stan Lee to Arneson's Jack Kirby. Furthermore, Basic D&D came out before AD&D, and it's practically identical to OD&D, in that hits were obviously meant to be hits (d6 HP and d6 damage). It wasn't until Gygax did AD&D later that HP took on the nebulous explanation that they did. And, if thinking about where hit points actually came from initially (the number of hits ships could take in old wargames), it becomes obvious that Gygax's interpretation took a turn away from what they initially meant. OD&D and Basic had them as real damage. 1E doesn't. 2E does. 3E is a weird in between case in that they are both, but not at the same time. 4E appears to go back to 1E, but adds the healing surge mechanic, which creates (as I realized below) a de facto wounds/vigor system.



> Once more you are distorting. Any hit in 4e can, with the right non-magical encouragement _be shrugged off or worked through_. There is a vast difference between that and healed.



_Which is a change from previous editions._



> Those, Terminator, The A Team, Princess Bride, Indiana Jones, Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Erroll Flynn style swashbuckling, and just about every action movie ever. FFS you can even see spending healing surges in combat in Leverage on occasion when Eliott's having a big showdown. You even have healing surges being spent between rounds in _mundane boxing matches_.



Terminator, sure. A-Team (no one ever gets hit in the A-Team, unless we're talking punches, and that's something D&D has never modeled well). Princess Bride simply doesn't belong on this list. It literally has magical healing and resurrection. Conan doesn't belong, and neither do Leiber's works. In the Errol Flynn swashbuckling movies like "The Sea Hawk" people who get stabbed, get stabbed. And die. I have played versions of Flynn type swashbuckling in 3E without changing anything and it worked perfectly well. Tell me again how I must be doing it wrong.



> You know the list of things I can think of where you have routine magical healing but people not pulling themselves back in through grit and determination? I can get as far as D&D, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, Everquest, and knockoffs. I can't even go for anything gritty with the ubiquity of magical healing.



Now who's making crap up and putting words in people's mouths? You want to know how I model people pulling themselves back in to a fight with grit and determination? *By continuing to fight when they are missing hit points.* There's no need at all to restore hit points in a mundane fashion to simulate fighting through the pain. _Characters are already doing that when they are fighting despite missing hit points._



> No. The problem is that they changed what hit points were in 4e without really going into detail about how. The damage is in surges, the hit points measure shock.



Which is fine, but that's an Oberoni fallacy. It requires a house rule to fix something that is broken out of the gate. Let me ask this question then: If damage is in surges left, doesn't 4E then already *have wound and vigor points* if not expressly called that? Where HP are vigor and HS are wounds? If that's the case, why in the hell didn't that become the actual stated purpose? If healing was my only real gripe with 4E, maybe you could have made a convert out of me based on that.



> And utterly prohibit any cinematic games without magic.



You could houserule a lot of stuff to make 3E play cinematically. It would probably take just as much work as it would to make 4E _not_ play cinematically.


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## Steely_Dan (Jun 22, 2012)

Ever since back in the day I never describe HP loss as actual wounds until the character is getting low on HP.

If a character with 100 HP gets smacked for 9 HP, that would represent no actual injury, but a 10 Hp character getting smacked for 9 HP would be bad news.


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## jadrax (Jun 22, 2012)

An interesting thing that cropped up recently is that AD&D actually has rules for inflicting long term damage.

'If any creature reaches a state of -6 or greater negative points before being revived, this could indicate scarring or the loss of some member, if you so choose. For example, a character struck by a fireball and then treated when at -9 might have horrible scar tissue on exposed areas of flesh -- hands, arms, neck, face.' -AD&D, DMG, p. 82.

There is also some stuff about if you go under 0 Hit Points you are wounded and require medical attention to move again, even *if* your hit points are brought back up magically.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> That's true, but I think it applies a degree of pressure that has the potential to be destabilising (particularly where the coherence of a player's current narrative for hp loss is teetering on a precipice).



I agree that the pressure is there. I also believe it a pressure that can be successfully alleviated.



pemerton said:


> This pressure comes out in the very first (as far as I know) treatment of the issue, in Roger Musson's "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive" (White Dwarf, c 1980). On the ground that a giant slug "never parried anything in its life", Musson suggests that all its hit points be treated as wound points.



I agree with this, although a giant slug is going to have some pretty handy DR but still not be much of an opponent for most PCs. In the main, I can imagine most animals not being graced with hit points. In fact, this would seem the ideal definition of a minion (from my perspective ).



pemerton said:


> And, having stated as one of the motivations for his system that it's silly that a chained fighter's "abstract" hit points let it survive a direct breath from a dragon, he then struggles with how to make dragon breath and fireball - which against most targets are going to deal pretty serious physical damage - work in his system without being completely overpowered.



I think it makes sense that using the split system, the chained high level fighter loses his or her privilege of using hit points. Thus both characters (the high level fighter and low level wizard from the article) are going to be taking wound damage, and as their capacity for wounds would be somewhat similar, both are going to be fried, badly fried or dead depending. However as an aside, while the fighter might have a capacity to take 26hps worth of wounds, and a low level wizard might be able to take 19hps worth of wounds before dying, I think it is worth noting that both characters would be quite different in terms of how much damage they could take before being incapacitated. The fighter might be able to take 18hps worth of wounds before being incapacitated while the wizard takes a punch to the gut and he goes down like a sack of spuds with his incapacitated limit being perhaps only 9hps.

The thing is, how many situations are there going to be where the character is denied their use of hit points? These attacks like any attacks are going to be particularly vicious when hit points are restricted from being expended. The challenge is to make sure these situations are well moderated. I think the big change with this split system is keeping damage output well controlled. You don't want damage to escalate significantly as they are planning in 5e. You instead want this burden taken up by skill instead.



pemerton said:


> You might feel that this pressure could be resisted, or even that I'm exaggerating its force. I don't think I am, but I could be wrong. I think it's a big risk, but I wouldn't bet my house on it being a failure with the fans.



The pressure is there and the trick as I say is controlling damage and the options you allow to deny a character their use of hit points. With this a 5d6 fireball is going to be pretty effective if it works, but in the end be fairly easy to avoid it's full effect. I could see a fireball doing 0 wound damage if it misses the target, light wound damage if it is "saved against" and significant wound damage if the character gets caught flat-footed. While it's a "thing", I believe it easily dealt with so long as it is considered.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Herremann, all sensible stuff. It will be interesting to see if we get it as a module.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> high level fighters take barely a scratch from the shotgun aimed at their faces because they duck away at the last second and get a grazing wound---*but they still get hit*.



Not in the face, I'm assuming!



Mercutio01 said:


> In 4E, characters cannot take a hit, or else the entire healing system retcons everything that happened before the heal.



Of course they can be hit. It's just that, like your shotgun guy, it's generally not serious enough to impede them, or stop the refocusing and pushing on.

Sometimes they get hit and dropped. As per the advice in HeroWars, you narrate these ones at a sufficient level of generality that either death or recovery is feasible (like Aragorn's fall over the cliff in the 2nd LotR movie - the filmmakers show us he's hurt, but leave it unspecified exacty how badly).




Mercutio01 said:


> In the Errol Flynn swashbuckling movies like "The Sea Hawk" people who get stabbed, get stabbed. And die.



Well likewise, a 4e PC who gets badly stabbed will die. But most hit point loss to a rapier attack does not represent being badly stabbed. It's a bit like your shotgun guy you mentioned.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Not in the face, I'm assuming!



Sure? Why not? One of the pellets grazes along the cheek bone, or takes off a small piece of the ear.



> Of course they can be hit. It's just that, like your shotgun guy, it's generally not serious enough to impede them, or stop the refocusing and pushing on.
> 
> Sometimes they get hit and dropped. As per the advice in HeroWars, you narrate these ones at a sufficient level of generality that either death or recovery is feasible (like Aragorn's fall over the cliff in the 2nd LotR movie - the filmmakers show us he's hurt, but leave it unspecified exacty how badly).



Again, that's reasonable, but it is not how I've ever played, and thus, requires me to change my approach to the game, which is something I'm not interested in. I don't feel the general need to change my approach to the game if I can choose not to change my approach to the game by not using the rules that require changing my playstyle.



> Well likewise, a 4e PC who gets badly stabbed will die. But most hit point loss to a rapier attack does not represent being badly stabbed. It's a bit like your shotgun guy you mentioned.



Here's a question: Let's use Flynn's turn as Captain Blood for an example. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uog-mJYyloQ"].[/ame]. What level fighter would you think he is? And, in his fight with Basil Rathbone (which he wins), how many "hits" would you think are taken by either character and how much "damage" is delivered? It's totally subjective, but from my own point of view, they are both rogues (d6 HP in 3E), I would call them level 3, with about 15 hit points. I'd call Flynn hit three times each for about 4 damage* (he stumbles at about :21 after missing an attack and hits the rocks behind Rathbone, he is knocked down at 1:30, and then at 1:36 he's pushed back to the rocks rather hard), and Rathbone hit four times, each for about 4 damage, with the last hit being a crit (Flynn's attack misses at :20 but he's knocked into the rocks, he falls down at 1:00, he's hit at 1:37 when Flynn's counter-attack swipes across, and he's skewered at 1:50). The entire rest of that 2 minute long fight is miss after miss. 

*Figure a rapier's damage as 1d6 + 1 (neither are particularly strong men, but not weaklings) and attack bonuses of +3.

I would have to imagine that you view this fight as a higher level with more hits and a higher HP count.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 22, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> OK, I've loudly recovered some hit points - but I won't be much use fighting until someone fixes this ankle that won't support my weight; oh, and I think a couple of gods named Tommy and John want a word with my right elbow too.
> 
> Lan-"ouch"-efan




Ah, yes - that -10' penalty to your speed that you gained from that ankle injury incurred when the duergar attacked you two rounds ago, and that -2 penalty to all attacks involving your left arm that you suffered because you engaged in more than 20 rounds of combat each day for three weeks.

Yeah, I briefly remember reading that table from the Rules Cyclopedia, 1E DMG, 2E DMG, 3E DMG, 3.5E DMG, and Pathfinder Core Rules Book.  But can you remind me what page it was on?  I need to brush up.


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## fenriswolf456 (Jun 22, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Oh, gee, silly us. I mean, how else would people define "hit" "hit point" "damage" "heal"? It would be totally absurd to use the standard agreed upon dictionary definition of those words, wouldn't it?




It certainly would be without taking the context of the word into consideration, or rule explanations. Otherwise, we could just as well be speaking about how popular a song is, or taking tokes on a spliff, and how does a 'hit' narrow to a sharp tapered end? 

It always seemed pretty clear to me that damage meant a loss of hit points, and healing meant to regain hit points, with 'hit points' being a measure of the damage your character can take before reaching the unconscious, dying or dead states. There's no need to go fishing through dictionaries to figure out what the game is using these terms for.

Even if we ignore the fact, that I'm sure every edition has stated, that a hit is simply equalling or surpassing the target's defense, most definitions of hit seem to indicate it is a 'blow'. Would this mean that things like touch attacks could never actually 'hit' something?

Now if every 'hit' draws blood for you, that's fine. Most of my hits do the same; cuts, scratches, bruises, etc. But we can talk about hits to intangible things; "taking a hit to morale", "her leaving like that hit him hard", and damage and healing can be emotional and/or spiritual in nature. Nor do I think there is an issue with a character taking say psychic damage, which would inflict no physical wound, or need a physical blow to actually hit in the first place.

And in looking over definitions and rules, I'm now interested to see if there is any written rule about magical healing actually sealing up and removing physical wounds from a person. Most of what I see is talk that healing, even magical, simply "restores hit points", or the characters "regains X hit points". The closest I see is some spells 'curing' X hit points. I don't have access to 2E or older editions, and it's been 15+ years since I've played those, so I have no certainty on any actual descriptions of magical healing.


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## Nathal (Jun 22, 2012)

fenriswolf456 said:


> Now if every 'hit' draws blood for you, that's fine. Most of my hits do the same; cuts, scratches, bruises, etc. But we can talk about hits to intangible things; "taking a hit to morale", "her leaving like that hit him hard", and damage and healing can be emotional and/or spiritual in nature. Nor do I think there is an issue with a character taking say psychic damage, which would inflict no physical wound, or need a physical blow to actually hit in the first place.
> .




Hitpoints has from the very beginning referred to more than physical harm. Does Dexterity refer only to manual dexterity in D&D? No. It is a similar issue...the words used in the game have taken on broad connotations, all within the lexicon of the hobby. These meanings are so common I'm surprised people still argue over it. I can understand how somebody might say, "I don't like how Hitpoints depict more than physical damage," but to argue over the word itself? That is a waste of time.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 23, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Here's a question: Let's use Flynn's turn as Captain Blood for an example. .. What level fighter would you think he is? And, in his fight with Basil Rathbone (which he wins), how many "hits" would you think are taken by either character and how much "damage" is delivered? It's totally subjective, but from my own point of view, they are both rogues (d6 HP in 3E), I would call them level 3, with about 15 hit points. I'd call Flynn hit three times each for about 4 damage* (he stumbles at about :21 after missing an attack and hits the rocks behind Rathbone, he is knocked down at 1:30, and then at 1:36 he's pushed back to the rocks rather hard), and Rathbone hit four times, each for about 4 damage, with the last hit being a crit (Flynn's attack misses at :20 but he's knocked into the rocks, he falls down at 1:00, he's hit at 1:37 when Flynn's counter-attack swipes across, and he's skewered at 1:50). The entire rest of that 2 minute long fight is miss after miss.




I'm with you on the number of hits taken by both Flynn and Rathbone.  And that is an excellent illustration of a sword fight with hit points.

But what I don't understand is your contention that it must take Flynn _days_ to recover from running into rocks, and being knocked down.  My view is that with a few minutes rest he will have back most of his hit points and just be a little bruised at most.  Most of his hit points will therefore have healed non-magically.  And in a single short rest.  And he'll be ready for the next swashbuckling swordfight if he needs it.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 23, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I'm with you on the number of hits taken by both Flynn and Rathbone.  And that is an excellent illustration of a sword fight with hit points.
> 
> But what I don't understand is your contention that it must take Flynn _days_ to recover from running into rocks, and being knocked down.  My view is that with a few minutes rest he will have back most of his hit points and just be a little bruised at most.  Most of his hit points will therefore have healed non-magically.  And in a single short rest.  And he'll be ready for the next swashbuckling swordfight if he needs it.



I think he could heal a portion of those overnight, but probably not all of those. I think even after a short rest, he'd be hard-pressed to take the same amount of punishment in a second battle of the same length and difficulty. Even the next day I don't think he'd be fighting at full strength.

That said, I've already gone on record supporting the way Hit Dice are in play in the playtest document and think that recovering Hit Points via the Hit Dice in that manner is just fine. But I don't think he'd be able to fight that same kind of battle again without taking far fewer hits.


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## Hussar (Jun 23, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Can't XP you, but good points. For your first example, I would have narrated it as a glancing blow, something that maybe knocked the wind out of the wizard, but nothing more serious than that. But it would *still have been a hit.*




But, there is zero lasting effect to having the wind knocked out of you.  You recover 100% from that within minutes, or a day at the absolute most.

So, you have no problems with our putative wizard recovering 100% of his hit points overnight?


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 23, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I think he could heal a portion of those overnight, but probably not all of those. I think even after a short rest, he'd be hard-pressed to take the same amount of punishment in a second battle of the same length and difficulty. Even the next day I don't think he'd be fighting at full strength.
> 
> That said, I've already gone on record supporting the way Hit Dice are in play in the playtest document and think that recovering Hit Points via the Hit Dice in that manner is just fine. But I don't think he'd be able to fight that same kind of battle again without taking far fewer hits.




_Far_ fewer hits?  How can you take far fewer hits than three?  A negative number of hits?  I think his offence would have suffered more than his resilience there.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 23, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> _Far_ fewer hits?  How can you take far fewer hits than three?  A negative number of hits?  I think his offence would have suffered more than his resilience there.



I guess "far" isn't necessary, really. Fewer hits, meaning one more might have been the end. In fact, it very nearly was the end there. Yeah, I think even if he had five minutes to rest, another hit might have dropped him. He really only won because he got a lucky crit. (Not to mention that Rathbone was clearly the better swordsman but the narrative forced him to lose.)


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 23, 2012)

Hussar said:


> But, there is zero lasting effect to having the wind knocked out of you.  You recover 100% from that within minutes, or a day at the absolute most.
> 
> So, you have no problems with our putative wizard recovering 100% of his hit points overnight?



In 3E, he'd have received back 10 of those 15 hit points (10th level wizard). So, not quite back to full HP (his chest would probably still be tender) but mostly back to fighting shape.


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## Hussar (Jun 24, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> In 3E, he'd have received back 10 of those 15 hit points (10th level wizard). So, not quite back to full HP (his chest would probably still be tender) but mostly back to fighting shape.




Yup, and got tapped with a cure light wounds, or a simple Heal check and he gets twenty points back.  It's a 10th level party and a DC 15 check.  It doesn't even need a roll.

So, you have no problems with all hit points being recovered overnight without magic?  10th level wizard without a Con bonus averages (4+2.5*10=) 29 hit points.  He can lose over two thirds of his hit points, IN A SINGLE HIT, and recover from it in a single night of rest.

And that's apparently believable.  But, 4e HP aren't?  

This is why this discussion can never progress.  The HP=Meat argument is so full of holes that it makes swiss cheese look solid.  Everyone points to the fighter and he's got lots of hit points, so it takes a bit longer to heal.  This 10th level wizard cannot EVER take a wound in 3e that cannot be healed in two days.

Not ever.  You cannot narrate any wound that doesn't kill this character that cannot be fully healed in two days.  Actually, that's not even true.  You cannot narrate any wound that doesn't outright kill this character that cannot be healed in a single day because with a full day of rest, this character regains FORTY HP.  He's only got 29 to start with and 39 with the death's door rule.  

Even a 10th level fighter who takes 39 points of damage in a single hit - certainly a pretty solid hit, cannot ever be narrated as taking a wound that cannot be FULLY recovered from in one day.

To me, and I've argued this before, the only resolution here is to have two baselines.  You have the "HP=Meat" rules and the "We don't want to bother screwing around with healing" rules.  HP=Meat looks a lot like 3e and earlier and makes clerics and/or other magical healers a pretty much required member of hte party.  The other crowd looks a lot like 4e.  Since both crowds will heal up to full in close enough to the same time (sorry, but three days vs one day REALLY isn't going to radically change most scenarios) you can have them both as baselines and everyone is happy.

Or, you take the "You heal full" rules, slow them down and you make the HP=meat crowd happy again.

What you can't do is use the 3e and earlier rules as the baseline and tell everyone else to screw off.  Because the HP=Meat rules are too limited to be broadly applied.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 24, 2012)

Hussar said:


> (sorry, but three days vs one day REALLY isn't going to radically change most scenarios)




It changes everything.  Unless you're running a game in which nothing happpens until the pcs kick in a door, things change.  The high priest finishes his summoning, the princess gets sacrificed, the dragon burns down 3 more villages, the scout returns with valuable information, etc.  A LOT can change in 3 days.

Not to mention 3 days worth of random encounters that you must face low on hit points.


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## Hussar (Jun 24, 2012)

JRRNeiklot said:


> It changes everything.  Unless you're running a game in which nothing happpens until the pcs kick in a door, things change.  The high priest finishes his summoning, the princess gets sacrificed, the dragon burns down 3 more villages, the scout returns with valuable information, etc.  A LOT can change in 3 days.
> 
> Not to mention 3 days worth of random encounters that you must face low on hit points.




Yup, if your game is the fantasy version of 24, then, sure, it matters.  

Look at Keep on the Borderlands.  What exactly happens in three days?   Nothing.

Heck, I ran the Savage Tide Adventure Path.  One adventure takes SIX MONTHS of travel time.  Three days to heal?  Yup, not going to matter.

That dragon is so fast that it's mowing down one village every single day?  Yeah, that's so much more believable than compound fractures that heal in two days.  Scout manages to make about forty miles in 3 days.  Again, probably not going to matter.  Yet, it's funny how the DM's scout never, ever runs into all those masses of random encounters that plague the PC's, yet, it's supposed to be a "living" world.

Can you make it matter?  Sure.  Should you make it matter EVERY SINGLE TIME?  Probably not.

Sorry, I try to run fairly believable campaigns where communication takes days, travel times take weeks, and repopulating areas takes DECADES.

OTOH, if your campaign features regularly spawn points, monsters that make kamikaze dashes to every single population center as soon as they are grown and unlimited numbers of baddies, then, sure, three days is going to make all the difference every single time.  

See this is why this discussion can never make any headway.  People are trying to wrap up their preferences as some sort of "realism".  It's utter and complete ballocks.  It's about as believable as cardboard hammers.  But, people insist, "oh, no, two or three days will ALWAYS make all the difference in the world.  It's so much more believable that a character can be six seconds from DEATH and fully healed, without so much as a scratch, in three days than in one."

Please.  State your preference.  That's fine.  But stop trying to pretend that it's anything other than your preference.  It's not more realistic, it's not more believable.  It really, really isn't.  It's only more believable TO YOU.  Because it's your preference.

Once people start realizing that, we can finally start making some headway towards creating a system that makes most of us happy.


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## Derren (Jun 24, 2012)

hussar said:


> sorry, i try to run fairly believable campaigns where communication takes days, travel times take weeks, and repopulating areas takes decades.




ROFL.

With all the magic in D&D, communication and travel time is cut down quite a lot.
And even without magic, "a few days" is and always have been crucial. Sure, there are periods where nothing happens as everyone is regrouping, but once things are in motion days matter.
When a dragon has a gruge against a kingdom it can burn down several villages a day considering that it is highly mobile and villages don't tend to be that far apart. And when the PCs are attacking something hours are enough for the enemies to organize a defense. Days would allow them to strengthen that defenses somewhat.

If you want to run a game where nothing happens unless the PCs are directly involved, fine. But don't pretend that this has anything to do with realism.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 24, 2012)

Deleted a long post before hitting submit that can be summed up in this post by Merric Blackman on the RPGGameGeek boards



> That incoherence is all the way through AD&D. Part of it is a number of rules that were never or very rarely used - natural healing being one of them. How often do you actually need that rule in a D&D game?
> 
> The answer is: very rarely! Most healing is done by the cleric. However, having a natural healing rule makes us feel better about the verisimilitude of the game, even if it's largely irrelevant.




Until 4E, natural healing to full HP was not a concern except in the most extreme circumstances (like when the cleric was dead or out of spells completely). 4E changed the default assumption by doing two things I didn't like: it took healing out of the hands of clerics (I acknowledge that I'm in the minority, but I liked that healing was only in the hands of clerics and hate the opening up of healing) and it sped up healing from several long rests to one.


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## billd91 (Jun 24, 2012)

Hussar said:


> (sorry, but three days vs one day REALLY isn't going to radically change most scenarios)




I'd say that's the difference that matters the most. Three days vs seven vs ten - those differences probably don't matter as much when it comes to healing because many of the reactions to a lair invasion and retreat can be accomplished over the first day the party is in retreat - an extra week would mostly be gravy (though it may give them time to come off highest alert). What matters is that it's not just a virtually immediate bounce-back - time must be taken and considered.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 24, 2012)

Hussar said:


> > That dragon is so fast that it's mowing down one village every single day?  Yeah, that's so much more believable than compound fractures that heal in two days.  Scout manages to make about forty miles in 3 days.  Again, probably not going to matter.  Yet, it's funny how the DM's scout never, ever runs into all those masses of random encounters that plague the PC's, yet, it's supposed to be a "living" world.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Lanefan (Jun 24, 2012)

Hussar said:


> The HP=Meat argument is so full of holes that it makes swiss cheese look solid.  Everyone points to the fighter and he's got lots of hit points, so it takes a bit longer to heal.  This 10th level wizard cannot EVER take a wound in 3e that cannot be healed in two days.



The problem here is using hard numbers rather than percentages.  If you use percentages then, if all else is equal, the same relative amount of damage will naturally heal in the same amount of time for everyone, give or take for rounding error.

Most easily explained using a contrived example: the whole party each has been reduced to 1 h.p.  Natural resting will give back 10% of total each day.
So:

Fighter total 87 h.p. will get back 9 per day, full in 10 days
Cleric total 63 h.p. will get back 6 per day, full in 11 days
Thief total 40 h.p. will get back 4 per day, full in 10 days
Wizard total 14 h.p. will get back 1 per day, full in 13 days (remember, he started at 1)
If wizard had 15 h.p. he'd get back 2 per day, so full in 7 days - low level is a bit swingy here.

Note that the above assumes resting in the field; another aspect is to say no matter how long it would normally take to recover you're considered to be at full after x days of complete rest in town (I usually use x=7).

Lanefan


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## Hussar (Jun 25, 2012)

billd91 said:


> I'd say that's the difference that matters the most. Three days vs seven vs ten - those differences probably don't matter as much when it comes to healing because many of the reactions to a lair invasion and retreat can be accomplished over the first day the party is in retreat - an extra week would mostly be gravy (though it may give them time to come off highest alert). What matters is that it's not just a virtually immediate bounce-back - time must be taken and considered.




By this argument though, there is no difference between 1 day and longer either.  Since, as you say, many of the reactions can be accomplished in that first day, it makes virtually no difference whether the PC's fall back for one day or for three.

And what's going to usually happen, since resting in the dungeon is typically seen as a bad idea, is that the PC's are going to fall back several hours of travel, rest, and then move forward again - thus 1 day.  

I really have a problem with, "It's not about realism, it's about believability" when we're talking about this.  Do people honestly believe that I can go from six seconds away from death to completely unwounded, not so much as a scratch, in two days?

Lanefan - Yeah, I could get behind that.  I've always said that that was the way to go with healing surges.  "You regain X healing surges per day of rest" and set X to whatever healing rate tickles your fancy.  It seems a pretty easy solution to this.  But apparently, just having "healing surges" is a bad thing.  I suppose if you set healing to a percentage of max HP, it works the same.

Or the HP dice mechanic that 5e is using.  Mix it up a bit and make it a bit random.  That's groovy and a nice compromise.  Changing the "You heal fully overnight" is an extremely easy mechanic to tweak to taste.  Throughout this whole fruforol I've never really seen the issue.


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## Lanefan (Jun 25, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Lanefan - Yeah, I could get behind that.  I've always said that that was the way to go with healing surges.  "You regain X healing surges per day of rest" and set X to whatever healing rate tickles your fancy.  It seems a pretty easy solution to this.  But apparently, just having "healing surges" is a bad thing.



It is when you can just do this... 







			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> I suppose if you set healing to a percentage of max HP, it works the same.



...instead, and bypass the surge mechanic in favour of straight h.p. 



> Or the HP dice mechanic that 5e is using.  Mix it up a bit and make it a bit random.  That's groovy and a nice compromise.  Changing the "You heal fully overnight" is an extremely easy mechanic to tweak to taste.



I'd like to think it'll be easily tweakable but we won't really know for sure until we see not only the whole system but the first few "official" adventures, to see what they're designing for.

With 4e, the first few adventures were obviously designed for a full-heal overnight rest; converting "Keep on the Shadowfell" to 1e made this blindingly clear once in play, as an adventure that's designed-as-written to take just a few days ended up taking a few weeks, and that's not counting the many more weeks spent travelling back and forth to town.  There are also no notes at all in that module to cover the "what-if" where a party takes much longer to finish than expected*.

I'm currently running "Marauders of the Dune Sea", again converted to 1e, and what I'm noticing there in the dungeon part is that the encounters can be all kinds of nasty - with no built-in time limit the party can easily pull a  retreat-rest-return sequence between each encounter, facing each one in perfect condition, which gives the module writer much more room to crank up the opposition. (side note: if you throw in a few more connections (secret or not) between rooms to make it less linear MotDS actually isn't a bad little adventure at all)

* - if 5e is to have healing rates on a dial the first real clue will be how (and-or whether) the adventure modules answer this particular what-if.

Lan-"and of course as with all dials this one must go to eleven"-efan


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## Hussar (Jun 25, 2012)

Added a bit later.

I'd point out that you can certainly up the healing rates in 3e without making huge problems.  In fact, I found it improved my game considerably when we added in healing wands.  Pacing increased considerably for us.  So much so, that for any 3e campaign I would have run afterwards, I would have made full healing standard and likely made full healing after every encounter standard.  

And, really, that wouldn't break the game in any meaningful way.  It is a fairly easy tweak that improves the game for me.

Note, the entire above is solely for me, not for anyone else.  My point is, it's not exactly difficult to "adjust the slider" to get what you want.  For me, tracking HP and healing is not something I enjoy.  I don't.  I like the resource management mini-game, but, not this particular subset of it.  So, I dump it.  And, in either 3e or 4e, it works for me.  I can't speak to earlier editions because I never tried it there.

So, yeah, sliders and dials are what is needed here.  Of course, now critics can truly point to something and say, "That's so videogamey".  After all, what's more video gamey than a slider to adjust difficulty?


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## Lanefan (Jun 25, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Added a bit later.
> 
> I'd point out that you can certainly up the healing rates in 3e without making huge problems.  In fact, I found it improved my game considerably when we added in healing wands.  Pacing increased considerably for us.  So much so, that for any 3e campaign I would have run afterwards, I would have made full healing standard and likely made full healing after every encounter standard.
> 
> And, really, that wouldn't break the game in any meaningful way.



Depends how one wants to play, I suppose: for me, it would not just break the game but shatter it - both as player and DM.

Question: if using that system would you also refresh casters' spell slots/points/abilities after each encounter?



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> Note, the entire above is solely for me, not for anyone else.  My point is, it's not exactly difficult to "adjust the slider" to get what you want.  For me, tracking HP and healing is not something I enjoy.  I don't.  I like the resource management mini-game, but, not this particular subset of it.  So, I dump it.  And, in either 3e or 4e, it works for me.  I can't speak to earlier editions because I never tried it there.



I can immediately think of one type of game situation where this would not work well: where one group is trying to slowly wear down the other.  An example:

A low-ish level party stumbles upon a few Giants; and has a good hiding place nearby to raid from.  They know they don't have a chance in a slugfest with these Giants, so they nibble and retreat, nibble and retreat, day after day and try to each day inflict a bit more damage than the Giants can recover - until the Giants either leave the area (a victory) or are weak enough that the party *can* think about finishing them off in a straight-up fight.

Doesn't work if the Giants can fully recover every night.  And if the Giants cannot fully recover every night but the party can there's a severe consistency problem within the game world.

Lanefan


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## Campbell (Jun 25, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> I can immediately think of one type of game situation where this would not work well: where one group is trying to slowly wear down the other.  An example:
> 
> A low-ish level party stumbles upon a few Giants; and has a good hiding place nearby to raid from.  They know they don't have a chance in a slugfest with these Giants, so they nibble and retreat, nibble and retreat, day after day and try to each day inflict a bit more damage than the Giants can recover - until the Giants either leave the area (a victory) or are weak enough that the party *can* think about finishing them off in a straight-up fight.
> 
> ...




I have a slightly different perspective on this. It's the equivalent of poking the mixed metaphor that hp represent in the chest and saying "I know what you're up to." Exchange the giants in your example for higher level adventurers and you can see how silly it is unless a higher level fighter can actually survive get stabbed in the chest, having his throat slit, and getting burned alive and still kick your ass. That's not really something that makes me too comfortable. I'm a firm believer that hit points only work in play if you don't look too closely at them.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 25, 2012)

Campbell said:


> I'm a firm believer that hit points only work in play if you don't look too closely at them.




I think that's a good piece of info there. And I think I agree, so I think a large portion of my objection 4E's style of hit point recovery is tied directly to the fact that I'm forced to look more closely at them than I ever did in 2E or 3E. Healing surges, the increased number of HP and the exponential increase in recovery forced them further into the light than they ever were for me previous to 4E.

I will say that because I was forced to look at HP closer in 2008, that I think I've become a better user of HP and healing than I was prior to that, mostly by seeing an approach I totally didn't like and thinking about why and how to then use that better in my own games in other editions.


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## Hussar (Jun 25, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Depends how one wants to play, I suppose: for me, it would not just break the game but shatter it - both as player and DM.
> 
> Question: if using that system would you also refresh casters' spell slots/points/abilities after each encounter?




Nope.  Just hit points.  Mostly because 3e combat is so bloody lethal.  A par CR creature can potentially kill most PC's in a single round of attacks.  To me, that means that going into any combat at less than (close enough to) full hit points is just radically increasing the lethality.  When I ran 3e straight up, I was ganking a PC every three sessions.  About once every 6-8 encounters.  That's WAYYYY too lethal for me.

So, to get around that, I'd just refresh HP after each encounter.  Makes a fairly easy fix.  And, like I say, tracking HP isn't something I enjoy. It forces too many concessions on pacing.  I want the party to have a choice between going right back at the lair and hit them while they're still reeling, or wait a few days and try to be sneaky.  I don't want the mechanics to say, "Sorry, you really, really shouldn't go back right away because you will almost certainly die" and push the players towards using meta-game and quite honestly for me, boring reasons for decision making.



> I can immediately think of one type of game situation where this would not work well: where one group is trying to slowly wear down the other.  An example:
> 
> A low-ish level party stumbles upon a few Giants; and has a good hiding place nearby to raid from.  They know they don't have a chance in a slugfest with these Giants, so they nibble and retreat, nibble and retreat, day after day and try to each day inflict a bit more damage than the Giants can recover - until the Giants either leave the area (a victory) or are weak enough that the party *can* think about finishing them off in a straight-up fight.
> 
> ...




Yeah, but, two things.  One, I have zero problems with PC's having different recovery rates.  Doesn't phase me in the slightest.  It works for virtually all protagonists in fiction, so, not going to bother me here.  But, probably more importantly, this is a REALLY small corner case.  You're setting up a situation which is just very, very rare, IME.

I mean, heck, the odds of the PC's being able to do enough damage to the giants without the giants doing MORE damage to them makes this scenario REALLY out in left field.  After all, if the party can reliably out damage the giants, why are they falling back in the first place?  If they cannot out damage the giants, then this plan isn't going to work.  Not unless the PC's are tapping in magical healing.  In which case, the PC's get a healing rate similar to what I want anyway.  

Cleric healing or "story chutzpah" I don't really care to be honest.  The end result is all I care about.


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## pemerton (Jun 25, 2012)

Campbell said:


> It's the equivalent of poking the mixed metaphor that hp represent in the chest and saying "I know what you're up to." Exchange the giants in your example for higher level adventurers and you can see how silly it is unless a higher level fighter can actually survive get stabbed in the chest, having his throat slit, and getting burned alive and still kick your ass. That's not really something that makes me too comfortable. I'm a firm believer that hit points only work in play if you don't look too closely at them.



Nice post.

As I see it,  "wearing down" the enemy adventuers by gradually depleting their hit points is, in effect, wearing them down by depleting their metagame resource faster than they can replenish it within the game rules.

I don't see that there is any "believability" or "realism" metric by which this can be judged - whether or not you want the rate of resource replenishment to permit this sort of play depends, I guess, on what sort of pacing you want your game to have, and how you want ingame pacing to relate to at-the-game table.

It's pretty easy to envision a variant of 4e that expressly turns "encounter" and "daily" resources into "per scene" and "per session" resources instead, and then would permit the stalking of the adventurer party to be resolved as a single scene. Scene-based recovery of hit points wouldn't interfere with that at all.

Conversely, if I wanted to run the stalking as an adventure - a sequence of scenes - then it would be nicer to have some sort of in-fiction story to tell about what exactly the "wearing down" consists of. This is the sort of thing that I would look to Runequest or Rolemaster to run, rather than D&D.


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## Lanefan (Jun 25, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Nope.  Just hit points.  Mostly because 3e combat is so bloody lethal.  A par CR creature can potentially kill most PC's in a single round of attacks.  To me, that means that going into any combat at less than (close enough to) full hit points is just radically increasing the lethality.  When I ran 3e straight up, I was ganking a PC every three sessions.  About once every 6-8 encounters.  That's WAYYYY too lethal for me.



This is, of course, about more than just 3e; though 3e certainly was its own animal when it came to combats and how they played out, and the game design certainly didn't encourage things like combat avoidance, negotiation, etc.


> So, to get around that, I'd just refresh HP after each encounter.  Makes a fairly easy fix.  And, like I say, tracking HP isn't something I enjoy. It forces too many concessions on pacing.  I want the party to have a choice between going right back at the lair and hit them while they're still reeling, or wait a few days and try to be sneaky.  I don't want the mechanics to say, "Sorry, you really, really shouldn't go back right away because you will almost certainly die" and push the players towards using meta-game and quite honestly for me, boring reasons for decision making.



What's meta-game about realizing you're thrashed and need to rest for a while?


> Yeah, but, two things.  One, I have zero problems with PC's having different recovery rates.  Doesn't phase me in the slightest.  It works for virtually all protagonists in fiction, so, not going to bother me here.



Where to me, this is a complete non-starter.  If the PCs can recover near-instantly then so can their foes...and, as someone else mentioned, what happens if the foes are themselves adventurers?


> But, probably more importantly, this is a REALLY small corner case.  You're setting up a situation which is just very, very rare, IME.



Rare, yes; mostly because some players don't have the paticnce to pull it off.  But I've seen it, and done it.



> I mean, heck, the odds of the PC's being able to do enough damage to the giants without the giants doing MORE damage to them makes this scenario REALLY out in left field.



Actually, not as far out as you might think...and this actual example comes from a 3e game.  A single 8th-ish level wizard casts fly, improved invis., and flies over strafing the giant village with a few fireballs every day hoping that a) the giants don't have magic healing and b) she can hurt them more each day than they can recover each night.  Very little chance of damage to the wizard (they can't see her, even if they can their throwing range is severely cut when the target is straight up, and giants don't fly so they're not about to come up and try to bash her), lots of chance for damage to the giants; and she got rid of quite a few of their little orc and goblin helpers too.

And it worked!  It took a while, but she finally whittled them down to the point we could all charge in and finish them off. 


> After all, if the party can reliably out damage the giants, why are they falling back in the first place?



Because the whole point of this tactic is to not give the giants any chance to do damage in return; so we don't need to worry about our own healing/rest/whatever.

Collectively, the giants might have had 2000 or more h.p. (the village had about 30 of them, with various lesser helpers) - if we can net-of-recovery out-damage them an average of 75-0 each day we will win; provided we are patient.  The important part is the 0 - defense wins championships! 

But any situation where the giants get full recovery each night (or worse, after each battle) renders this useless, and removing that tactical option makes the game just that much less interesting.

Lanefan


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## Hussar (Jun 26, 2012)

Yay for wizards.  Bleah.  So, not to my taste anymore.   

As far as PC's go, again, I have zero problems with PC's being different from everyone else.  It's already largely baked into the game anyway - Action Points being a big example, but, even in earlier editions, PC classes were extremely rare and the PC's were meant to be pretty unique.

But, yeah, it's a taste thing.  I have no problems treating PC's as different.  The game has presumed such since day 1.  After all, funnily enough, PC adventures are almost always scaled to the rough level of the PC.  The PC's are the center of the world, or at least the campaign.  At least IMNSHO.  

All you have to do is look at examples where the PC's are not the center of the world and you get some of the most loathed products in D&D - Time of Troubles anyone?


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 26, 2012)

Hussar said:


> I have no problems treating PC's as different.  The game has presumed such since day 1.



I think you and I have very different ideas on this. OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D had PCs start out as pretty much regular people.



Hussar said:


> After all, funnily enough, PC adventures are almost always scaled to the rough level of the PC.  The PC's are the center of the world, or at least the campaign.  At least IMNSHO.



And that's exactly what I mean when I say I have a different playstyle than you. In my games, while the PCs are the center of the gaming session, and their actions have an impact on the world, they are far from the center of the world.



Hussar said:


> All you have to do is look at examples where the PC's are not the center of the world and you get some of the most loathed products in D&D - Time of Troubles anyone?



There are a few entirely different reasons for hating the Time of Troubles than because it wasn't centered around the PCs, but that's a whole other topic.


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## Hussar (Jun 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I think you and I have very different ideas on this. OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D had PCs start out as pretty much regular people.
> 
> And that's exactly what I mean when I say I have a different playstyle than you. In my games, while the PCs are the center of the gaming session, and their actions have an impact on the world, they are far from the center of the world.
> 
> There are a few entirely different reasons for hating the Time of Troubles than because it wasn't centered around the PCs, but that's a whole other topic.




I'd say the whole "railroaded and then turned into a spectator" thing is pretty much the heart of the problems with Time of Troubles.  Which is exactly what happens if the PC's are not the center of the universe.  Or, if not the center, at least in the ballpark.

As far as earlier D&D goes, sure, 1st level PC's were only a few steps up from regular people (note, regular people had d4 hp, and no stats as opposed to PC's which had considerably more), but, within a level or two, PC's were considerably more than just a regular guy.

But, that's not really my point.  The point of play is the campaign, not the world.  The world is just where the campaign happens.  The campaign should be the most important thing at the table.  And the campaign should place the PC's squarely at the center of the actions, otherwise, why bother playing?  Many play problems can be traced to DM's forgetting that the PC's should be the center of what's going on.  That's the whole point of being protagonists.

Reread the introduction to pretty much any edition of D&D and you get the same message:  The players are the whole point of playing.  Which, to me, means that I have no problem adapting the campaign to the players and what they want out of the campaign.


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## nightspaladin (Jun 26, 2012)

This whole conversation is a good example of how why something like Vitality and Wounds should be an option in all editions. If you have a definitive view of luck versus real damage, a system like that breaks down the option to it's purest level. It allows fast healing for continued play(something that 4e did well) without breaking the verisimilitude of taking real injury and having consequences for getting hurt (something 4e was horrible at).

Also a system like that allows you to deal with stuff like slitting throats and critical hits, without having to bleed through rounds of you slashing the fighters throat over and over again to get through his "luck/endurance shield".


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I think you and I have very different ideas on this. OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D had PCs start out as pretty much regular people.




Regular people in all the editions you cite were _0th level_.  The wizard never has been a regular person; he could cast spells (well, a spell per day) - far out of the reach of any regular person ever.  A fighter didn't even need to roll to kill a regular person.  And even the fighter was explicitely a "Veteran".

If I want a game where the PCs look more like regular people I'll reach for 3.X or 4e.  3.X gives a lot of people class levels.  And 4e, sure the PCs can cut the shopkeeper (level 1 minion) or the human thug with a club (level 2 minion brute) down without breaking a sweat - but ordinary trained town guard (level 3 soldiers) are going to give first level PCs serious headaches.

And that's exactly what I mean when I say I have a different playstyle than you. In my games, while the PCs are the center of the gaming session, and their actions have an impact on the world, they are far from the center of the world.

There are a few entirely different reasons for hating the Time of Troubles than because it wasn't centered around the PCs, but that's a whole other topic.[/QUOTE]


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Regular people in all the editions you cite were _0th level_.  The wizard never has been a regular person; he could cast spells (well, a spell per day) - far out of the reach of any regular person ever.  A fighter didn't even need to roll to kill a regular person.  And even the fighter was explicitely a "Veteran".



The differences between a 0th level commoner and a 1st level fighter or rogue or cleric was fairly minimal.



> If I want a game where the PCs look more like regular people I'll reach for 3.X or 4e.  3.X gives a lot of people class levels.  And 4e, sure the PCs can cut the shopkeeper (level 1 minion) or the human thug with a club (level 2 minion brute) down without breaking a sweat - but ordinary trained town guard (level 3 soldiers) are going to give first level PCs serious headaches.



You're comparing apples and oranges. By definition, a trained town guard is not ordinary, especially not one that has an elite array and in 3E would have 3 class levels. Of course a level 3 character is going to be stronger than a level 1 character. That said, you're really arguing against Hussar here, whose point was the PCs are special and better than the regular common NPC. I simply noted that characters in other games started out as pretty much regular people, particularly in those editions that used the default 3d6 in order character creation system. The average level 1 character in 2E and earlier could be one-shot killed by the average person wielding a deadly weapon. I think that is fantastic. That's where I want to start. I don't want to start with a character who can step on puny farmers or streetsweepers without fear of dying, and for those times when I do, I'll start bounced up a few levels, say level 3 or 4.


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## Campbell (Jun 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> You're comparing apples and oranges. By definition, a trained town guard is not ordinary, especially not one that has an elite array and in 3E would have 3 class levels. Of course a level 3 character is going to be stronger than a level 1 character. That said, you're really arguing against Hussar here, whose point was the PCs are special and better than the regular common NPC. I simply noted that characters in other games started out as pretty much regular people, particularly in those editions that used the default 3d6 in order character creation system. The average level 1 character in 2E and earlier could be one-shot killed by the average person wielding a deadly weapon. I think that is fantastic. That's where I want to start. I don't want to start with a character who can step on puny farmers or streetsweepers without fear of dying, and for those times when I do, I'll start bounced up a few levels, say level 3 or 4.




It's a pretty severe mistake to equate monster level in 4e with class levels. 5 standard monsters of the PCs' level make up a standard encounter. That town guard is explicitly not the equal of a 3rd level fighter. If alone that fighter should be able to take on 3-4 town guards in the course of a day. Not to mention that 4e is based on a different scale. In AD&D a 10th level fighter is routinely staring giants down and leads his own private army. In 4e a troll is still a credible threat.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 26, 2012)

Campbell said:


> It's a pretty severe mistake to equate monster level in 4e with class levels. 5 standard monsters of the PCs' level make up a standard encounter. That town guard is explicitly not the equal of a 3rd level fighter. If alone that fighter should be able to take on 3-4 town guards in the course of a day. Not to mention that 4e is based on a different scale. In AD&D a 10th level fighter is routinely staring giants down and leads his own private army. In 4e a troll is still a credible threat.



I wasn't just using his monster level to equate class levels. I was looking at his hit points AC, elite array, and his attacks and damage. He's clearly way better than a 1st level fighter in 4E, so even if he's not the equivalent of a third level, he's still implicitly better than 1st, which is what my real argument was, if you'd bothered to read that part.

You can't compare an explicitly more powerful creature to an explicitly lower powered creature and point to it as a fact that the lower powered creature is thus less powerful than a normal human. That's what I meant by comparing apples to oranges. You need to compare the actual average human in 4E (which I suppose would be the "rabble") to the actual average 1st level PC. Then do the same thing for previous editions. The chance of the rabble killing a PC are so slim as to be completely non-existent, not to mention their ability scores and special abilities (or lack thereof). That wasn't true in OD&D, BD&D, AD&D or 2E. There is very little to distinguish a 1st level character from a 0th level character, either in ability scores, special abilities, or combat skills. Or, and here's where it applies to this thread in particular, hit points.


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## Lanefan (Jun 27, 2012)

Campbell said:


> It's a pretty severe mistake to equate monster level in 4e with class levels. 5 standard monsters of the PCs' level make up a standard encounter. That town guard is explicitly not the equal of a 3rd level fighter. If alone that fighter should be able to take on 3-4 town guards in the course of a day.



A town guard is not a monster (well, in most towns anyway); and thus in theory should be treated just like a PC in terms of mechanics.  She's a 3rd-level fighter?  Great!

4e for whatever reason made PCs their own special breed of creature; partly, I think, built on a design assumption that the PCs would be the only adventurers in the setting (one of the ideas behind the whole PoL thing, if memory serves).  Well, unfortunately, in most settings that just ain't the case; there *are* other adventurers out there, and non-adventurers - such as our erstwhile town guard - can gain class levels in ways other than adventuring.*

* - this is something that dearly needs a solid mechanical basis - how non-adventuring types such as the research wizard, the temple cleric, etc., gain their class levels.

Lanefan


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## Campbell (Jun 27, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> A town guard is not a monster (well, in most towns anyway); and thus in theory should be treated just like a PC in terms of mechanics.  She's a 3rd-level fighter?  Great!
> 
> 4e for whatever reason made PCs their own special breed of creature; partly, I think, built on a design assumption that the PCs would be the only adventurers in the setting (one of the ideas behind the whole PoL thing, if memory serves).  Well, unfortunately, in most settings that just ain't the case; there *are* other adventurers out there, and non-adventurers - such as our erstwhile town guard - can gain class levels in ways other than adventuring.*
> 
> ...




It's not about assuming that PCs are the only capable folks around. It's about realizing that the mechanical needs of PCs and NPCs are very different. PCs are an ever present feature of the fiction and need to be modeled on a long term basis and since they are controlled by one person you can get more in depth with them. The needs of NPCs are different in the fiction. They interface with the fiction of the game only briefly and are controlled by a player (the DM) who must juggle a multitude of characters all at once. 

Of course this all comes down to what you see as the needs of a game when it comes to rules. When NPC A faces down NPC B in a situation off stage do you roll dice? I sure don't.  If you notice when I talk about gaming I never refer to some 'game world'. I always refer to the game's fiction because to me that's what gaming is about - generating shared fiction that no one person would anticipate. I see characters and setting as extremely fluid. They exist only in the minds of the participants and serve to suit the whims of those  involved in the game. 4e is a game that embraces this view.

Note: I'm not entirely opposed to attempting sand box play or process simulation although I think D&D is a game not particularly suited to the task because the resulting simulation is nothing like anything found in fiction or history. I also think abstract mechanics like AD&D saving throws, armor that can be completely overcome with combat skill, and mixed metaphor of hp don't jive well with process simulation.

If it tells you anything about the way I approach gaming even when I want to go sandboxy I reach for a system that is middle of the road between process simulation and more narrative play. I love Legend/MRQ but probably wouldn't touch classic RuneQuest with a 10 foot pole.


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## Hussar (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> The differences between a 0th level commoner and a 1st level fighter or rogue or cleric was fairly minimal.
> /snip




Wait, are you kidding me?

A 1st level fighter has three to four TIMES more HP than the commoner (6+Con - which he can have up to +4, a feat no commoner can ever match), has saving throws better than the commoner, can use all armor and several weapons, AND can gain xp.  A very, very important distinction.  That commoner in AD&D will ALWAYS be 2 hp, no matter what.

Clerics had spells.  Thieves had thief abilities, again, feats which no commoner can ever match.

I also notice that you ignored the other classes - rangers start out possibly with TEN TIMES more HP than a commoner (2d8+con).  Monks are in a class all on their own.

And, besides that, by third level, the PC's are essentially super human.  Even if they only start "a little" above Joe Average, by the end of a fairly short period of play, they're no longer Joe Average.

Considering that we only play 1st level for a handful of sessions, what's your point?  If a campaign lasts 1 year, we'll say 50 sessions, and goes from 1st to 6th level, the PC's probably hit 3rd by session 10, and spend 40 sessions from 3rd to 6th (considering the doubling of xp per level, that's probably about right).

So, if 80+% of the time, PC's are super-human, capable of feats no "average person" could EVER match, what's the point of continuously pointing to the fact that they spend a very short amount of time, STILL better than normal humans?

In other words, who cares?  Most play is not at 1st level.  Most play is 2nd or 3rd level and higher.


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## Lanefan (Jun 27, 2012)

Campbell said:


> It's not about assuming that PCs are the only capable folks around. It's about realizing that the mechanical needs of PCs and NPCs are very different. PCs are an ever present feature of the fiction and need to be modeled on a long term basis and since they are controlled by one person you can get more in depth with them. The needs of NPCs are different in the fiction. They interface with the fiction of the game only briefly and are controlled by a player (the DM) who must juggle a multitude of characters all at once.



All true; but when they do interface with the fiction/game/PCs they need to be consistently modelled as if the PCs are just a part of their world...assuming, of course, that such is the case and you're not running a Vikings-in-the-Sahara type of game...so the whole thing is and remains believable.

I'm not saying one needs to stat up every person the PCs are ever going to meet, but I am saying that if the case arises that you do need to stat 'em up they follow the same guidelines as PCs. 



> I think D&D is a game not particularly suited to the task because the resulting simulation is nothing like anything found in fiction or history.



This is, in fact, why it is wonderful; and is better suited to the task than anything else: because the result *is* nothing like what one might find anywhere else.


> I also think abstract mechanics like AD&D saving throws, armor that can be completely overcome with combat skill, and mixed metaphor of hp don't jive well with process simulation.



Quick rule of thumb: use reality until something gets in the way.  Some saving throws, along with mostly-undefinable h.p., certainly break reality; as does almost all magic...and that's fine, as those things just become part of the game world's reality and life goes on.


			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> Considering that we only play 1st level for a handful of sessions, what's your point? If a campaign lasts 1 year, we'll say 50 sessions, and goes from 1st to 6th level, the PC's probably hit 3rd by session 10, and spend 40 sessions from 3rd to 6th (considering the doubling of xp per level, that's probably about right).



Speak for yourself. 


> So, if 80+% of the time, PC's are super-human, capable of feats no "average person" could EVER match, what's the point of continuously pointing to the fact that they spend a very short amount of time, STILL better than normal humans?
> 
> In other words, who cares? Most play is not at 1st level. Most play is 2nd or 3rd level and higher.



While it's true most of the game is played at higher than 1st level, it can still take time to get there.  My background - as you can probably see by my .sig - is not with 1-year campaigns. 

And yes, PCs by and large are a cut above the commons; and once they get some levels under 'em I'm cool with that.  Where it falls down for me is when there's such a big gap between commoner and 1st.  1e solved this by introducing the idea of 0th level as a bridge.  3e tried to solve it by allowing levels in - among other things - commoner; interesting idea but a bit of a nightmare for bookkeeping.  4e ignored it, and made the gap bigger as well.

Lanefan


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I wasn't just using his monster level to equate class levels. I was looking at his hit points AC, elite array, and his attacks and damage. He's clearly way better than a 1st level fighter in 4E, so even if he's not the equivalent of a third level, he's still implicitly better than 1st, which is what my real argument was, if you'd bothered to read that part.




And a 1st level fighter in AD&D is way better than a 0th level character - and in 3.X a first level fighter is way better than a 1st level commoner. 



> The chance of the rabble killing a PC are so slim as to be completely non-existent, not to mention their ability scores and special abilities (or lack thereof).




You'd be talking about the 0th level NPC here?  Who dies automatically if he doesn't win initiative?  And who dies again automatically if he doesn't one-shot the armoured fighter?

OK, so the rabble might be a match for the wizard - but the fighter can _automatically_ kill 1/round.



Lanefan said:


> A town guard is not a monster (well, in most towns anyway); and thus in theory should be treated just like a PC in terms of mechanics. She's a 3rd-level fighter? Great!
> 
> 4e for whatever reason made PCs their own special breed of creature;




As far as I can tell it was only 3.X that made PCs anything else.  AD&D had the majority of the population (including kings) being 0th level.  It also had certain extremely useful NPCs like the Sage who were explicitely different from PCs but pretty powerful.

[quoet]partly, I think, built on a design assumption that the PCs would be the only adventurers in the setting[/quote]

Mostly built on the idea that as DM I don't need the whole pile of information that goes into a PC's character sheet.  Or the hassle of designing a PC for an expendible encounter.  3e took things extremely far one way, 4e possibly overcompensated.



> * - this is something that dearly needs a solid mechanical basis - how non-adventuring types such as the research wizard, the temple cleric, etc., gain their class levels.




Where you say 'clearly' and 'solid mechanical basis', I think you mean 'light dusting of fluff'.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Wait, are you kidding me?
> 
> A 1st level fighter has three to four TIMES more HP than the commoner (6+Con - which he can have up to +4, a feat no commoner can ever match), has saving throws better than the commoner, can use all armor and several weapons, AND can gain xp.  A very, very important distinction.  That commoner in AD&D will ALWAYS be 2 hp, no matter what.



4 x as much isn't 28 times as much, as in 4E, so yes I stand by my point that in OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D, the difference between a regular 0th level farmer and 1st level PC is minimal, especially when a 0th level farmer legitimately has the ability to kill a 1st level PC.



> Clerics had spells.



Not at first level they didn't.


> Thieves had thief abilities, again, feats which no commoner can ever match.



With stupidly low percentages that ensured that even 0th level commoners routinely caught thieves in the act.



> I also notice that you ignored the other classes - rangers start out possibly with TEN TIMES more HP than a commoner (2d8+con).  Monks are in a class all on their own.



Yes, I ignored optional characters that are obviously unbalanced. Perhaps when we consider the fact that a commoner in 4E is a minion with 1 HP and all starting characters have 20+ HP you could see that the gap between 0th level commoners and PCs has grown exponentially.



> And, besides that, by third level, the PC's are essentially super human.  Even if they only start "a little" above Joe Average, by the end of a fairly short period of play, they're no longer Joe Average.



Which I *did point out* did I not? Didn't I say that if I wanted to play a game where I didn't start out as Joe the slightly above average that I would start at level 3 or 4? I believe, in fact, that *I said exactly that!*



> Considering that we only play 1st level for a handful of sessions, what's your point?



Who's we? And my point is that *I like those handful of sessions* which aren't replicable in 4E, but so far seem to be exactly so in 5E.



> Most play is not at 1st level.  Most play is 2nd or 3rd level and higher.



But some play is at 1st level, and that style of play is ignored if we just skip to the equivalent starting power of much more powerful than a commoner, as 4E did. Low level play didn't play as low-level for me when I played it. 5E, thankfully, does.



Lanefan said:


> AWhile it's true most of the game is played at higher than 1st level, it can still take time to get there.



Exactly.



> Where it falls down for me is when there's such a big gap between commoner and 1st.  1e solved this by introducing the idea of 0th level as a bridge.  3e tried to solve it by allowing levels in - among other things - commoner; interesting idea but a bit of a nightmare for bookkeeping.  4e ignored it, and made the gap bigger as well.



That is exactly what my point was.



Neonchameleon said:


> And a 1st level fighter in AD&D is way better than a 0th level character - and in 3.X a first level fighter is way better than a 1st level commoner.



I dispute that completely. A 0th level character has the legitimate ability to kill a 1st level character in either of those editions, which simply is not the case in 4E. That rabble "monster" simply cannot kill the PC. Its ability scores are dwarfed by the PC. The PC is not just a bit above average. The PC starts out already a hero. That's my objection.

So far, in the 5E playtest, gameplay has gone back to where I think it should be. The 1st level party is not already a group of heroes. Indeed, in the first encounter with kobolds, my current playtest group had the fighter knocked down to 3 HP, and two others knocked down to half total HP, which honest-to-goodness felt awesome, and I'm playing one of those knocked down to half (the halfling rogue).



> You'd be talking about the 0th level NPC here?  Who dies automatically if he doesn't win initiative?  And who dies again automatically if he doesn't one-shot the armoured fighter?



We're not talking 3E here, which increased the starting power level but also added NPC class levels to try to compensate. Does that NPC have the chance to one-shot the fighter in 1e?



> OK, so the rabble might be a match for the wizard



Really? You really think that in 4E a rabble might be a match for the wizard? The wizard can easily kill 1/round with Magic Missile, forever. And the rabble cannot do enough damage to even really hurt the wizard, let alone kill him in one shot.



> Mostly built on the idea that as DM I don't need the whole pile of information that goes into a PC's character sheet.  Or the hassle of designing a PC for an expendible encounter.  3e took things extremely far one way, 4e possibly overcompensated.



Would it shock you to know that I actually agree with this? The prep time as DM is the major problem I have with 3E, even using random-creators for NPCs. It's the one thing I think 4E did the best, until the numbers didn't work. And I don't/didn't have the time, money, or inclination to kick in even more money to buy a book* that fixes a system that shouldn't have been broken in the first place.

*MM3, right? So the third supplement of monsters finally fixed monster math? That didn't come out until almost exactly 2 years later? I don't play a game for 2 years hoping for a fix. I play a different game instead, which I did.

And all of this really is moot because I think 5E has done extremely admirably well in bringing back my preferred playstyle, with the only exception being the healing rate, and that's already been addressed by the designers.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 27, 2012)

Umm, just as a point, the only edition where 1st level clerics didn't get spells was OD&D and Basic.  I'm not sure if that changed in Rules Cyclopedia, I didn't play those rules.  But an AD&D cleric got at least 1 first level spell and with even a minimal Wis (13 I believe) got 3.

And when were rangers an optional class?  They weren't in 1e.  They were a subclass of fighters and I think you're the first person I've ever heard complain that rangers were broken.

I'd point out that a 0 level commoner doesn't really exist in 4e.  Anyone who isn't going to get into combat doesn't even get stats.  He just dies if you really want to kill him.  If the PC's are actually going to mix it up, then we go into encounter design.  So, no, a wizard will actually die pretty quickly vs a reasonable number of Human Rabble.  I don't know why you need hyperbole, but, 4e characters do not have that much more HP at 1st level.  Somewhere in the neighbourhood, depending on class between 20 and 35 at 1st level. Which is certainly not 28 times as much.  And, isn't a whole lot more than some AD&D classes got out of the gate.

Look, I get you don't like 4e.  But, you really don't have to start making things up to show your point.  At least if you're going to criticise editions, take the thirty seconds to actually look up the rules beforehand.  It makes conversation work so much easier because we don't have to spend a bajillion pages screwing around trying to correct each other.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Umm, just as a point, the only edition where 1st level clerics didn't get spells was OD&D and Basic.  I'm not sure if that changed in Rules Cyclopedia, I didn't play those rules.  But an AD&D cleric got at least 1 first level spell and with even a minimal Wis (13 I believe) got 3.



You're right. I was thinking of Basic when I said that.



> I'd point out that a 0 level commoner doesn't really exist in 4e.  Anyone who isn't going to get into combat doesn't even get stats.  He just dies if you really want to kill him.



This is exactly my point. This makes the basic 1st Level PC start off so much more powerful than the regular Joe that it completely obviates an entire playstyle (that of average Joe who becomes a hero - like Bilbo Baggins or any number of other fantasy stories where regular people save the world through hard work, determination, and the drive to win).



> I don't know why you need hyperbole, but, 4e characters do not have that much more HP at 1st level.  Somewhere in the neighbourhood, depending on class between 20 and 35 at 1st level.



Wait, what? Are you honestly trying to tell me that starting HP for a 1st level PC in 4E isn't vastly greater than in previous editions of D&D? You have got to be the first person who's ever argued that. The absolute maximum that a barbarian (with the largest hit die) could have, even in 3E (and spending a feat to get it) was 19. In 2E, the warrior had the highest hit die (d10) and the highest HP he could have at first level was 15.



> Which is certainly not 28 times as much.  And, isn't a whole lot more than some AD&D classes got out of the gate.



I was comparing the 1st level character to a commoner in 4E (the rabble, a minion, with 1 HD, compared to average for 1st level characters in 4E which is 28 (27.5 rounded up). That gives the 1st level character in 4th Edition 28 times more hit points than the average Joe.

Taking the minimum from 4E (20) and comparing it to the max in AD&D (15) is disingenuous if that's what your using to compare starting HP. Comparing max to max gives the starting HP more than doubled, while starting HP for the average Joe is halved.



> Look, I get you don't like 4e.  But, you really don't have to start making things up to show your point.  At least if you're going to criticise editions, take the thirty seconds to actually look up the rules beforehand.  It makes conversation work so much easier because we don't have to spend a bajillion pages screwing around trying to correct each other.



Those were looked up numbers and comparisons. As in, I had 4E, 3.5, and 2E books open to starting HP and comparing the first level characters of each to the commoners in each edition.

Starting HP for each edition (until 5E broke the curve, so far), is practically a Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34).

```
PCs                       NPCs
OD -- 1-6                  1
BD -- 1-6                  1
AD -- 1-15                 2
3E -- 4-19                 4
4E -- 20-35                1
5E -- 16-20                5
```
That makes the ratios:
6:1
6:1
7.5:1
4.75:1
35:1
4:1


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> 4 x as much isn't 28 times as much, as in 4E, so yes I stand by my point that in OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D, the difference between a regular 0th level farmer and 1st level PC is minimal, especially when a 0th level farmer legitimately has the ability to kill a 1st level PC.




On the other hand a 1st level commoner has literally no chance to _survive_ a first level fighter unless they kill them.  They can't even run away effectively pre-4e.  To the commoner this is more important.



> Yes, I ignored optional characters that are obviously unbalanced. Perhaps when we consider the fact that a commoner in 4E is a minion with 1 HP and all starting characters have 20+ HP you could see that the gap between 0th level commoners and PCs has grown exponentially.




And yet the commoner in 4e is _tougher_ than the 0th level character.  You do not need to roll for fighter vs commoner.



> Who's we? And my point is that *I like those handful of sessions* which aren't replicable in 4E, but so far seem to be exactly so in 5E.




You mean those handful of sessions which absolutely _are_ replicable in 4e by the simple expedient of _not using minions?_  They just aren't in the _default_ playstyle.  And why are you attacking human minions anyway?



> So far, in the 5E playtest, gameplay has gone back to where I think it should be. The 1st level party is not already a group of heroes. Indeed, in the first encounter with kobolds, my current playtest group had the fighter knocked down to 3 HP, and two others knocked down to half total HP, which honest-to-goodness felt awesome, and I'm playing one of those knocked down to half (the halfling rogue).




Your experience is very different from mine.  In 5e as both player and DM, the PCs were wading in where 4e characters would have run like buggery.  As a group of first level PCs we took on a room full of hardened orc warriors.  In 4e you couldn't have paid a first level party to challenge a room full of a couple of dozen Battletested Orcs.  Instant TPK with added Darwin Award.  As for the Kobolds, it would depend on whether the sentries were tunnellers or a mix of Quickblades and Slingers with the tunnellers busy ... tunneling.

If it was quickblades and slingers the PCs would be in serious trouble.  If it was tunnellers the big question would be whether the PCs could stop the tunnellers before they ran for help; tunnellers would not even try to stand and fight.

So yes, our experiences differ.  A lot.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Your experience is very different from mine.  In 5e as both player and DM, the PCs were wading in where 4e characters would have run like buggery.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So yes, our experiences differ.  A lot.



Wow. Totally different outcomes. I suppose some of it could be that the kobolds had good attack rolls, but we very nearly lost the fighter in the first round of combat. Luckily the last kobold was killed before it could attack again, or else we'd have been going into the caves with one seriously hurt fighter. Three uses of a healing kit and 15 minutes later with some decent die rolls, we finally went into the cave.


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## Nytmare (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Wait, what? Are you honestly trying to tell me that starting HP for a 1st level PC in 4E isn't vastly greater than in previous editions of D&D?




4th Ed hp = Apple

Non 4th Ed hp = Orange

Apple != Orange


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Nytmare said:


> 4th Ed hp = Apple
> 
> Non 4th Ed hp = Orange
> 
> Apple != Orange



You're right. Because if you add in Healing Surges, 4E HP pool is even 6-14 times larger, plus overnight full heals and full Healing Surge restoration, something commoners definitely don't have. You just made my point even stronger. First level PCs in 4E are so far above the commoner that they should rightfully be lords and ladies.

That's not my preferred playstyle. If it's yours, then have at it, but don't attempt to restrict my own (PCs start as above average but otherwise fairly regular people and grow into their status as heroes throughout the campaign).


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Wow. Totally different outcomes. I suppose some of it could be that the kobolds had good attack rolls, but we very nearly lost the fighter in the first round of combat. Luckily the last kobold was killed before it could attack again, or else we'd have been going into the caves with one seriously hurt fighter. Three uses of a healing kit and 15 minutes later with some decent die rolls, we finally went into the cave.




Our encounter with the Kobolds involved buzz-sawing through the Kobold sentries and rats, and following up into the Kobold common room (where we lost the fighter).  We ran away and replaced the fighter with a second Cleric of Moradin at which point the monster's ability to break through our battle line was almost over.


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## Nytmare (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> You're right.




You are misunderstanding me.   

You can't compare the worth or value of a 4 edition hit point to other versions of D&D, because they are totally different things.

You're taking two completely different abstract mechanical systems that are attempting to find common ground between real life and a double handful of narrative constructs, and are missing the fact that they are using different units of measure.

They're both called hitpoints, and they both represent the same thing, but that's where the similarities end.


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## Griego (Jun 27, 2012)

I should try narrating all hit point loss as wounds. I want to describe my PCs as walking slabs of shredded beef by the end of the session.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Nytmare said:


> They're both called hitpoints, and they both represent the same thing, but that's where the similarities end.



I wasn't comparing just hit points to just hit points. I was comparing the relative hit points of a 1st level character to a regular commoner in each edition. By taking into account the fact that 4E characters even have more HP than actually listed (since Second Wind is a fact, and adds another quarter HP to any single encounter without fail), that ratio is even more inflated for 4E than 35:1 it is based on face value.



Griego said:


> I should try narrating all hit point loss as wounds. I want to describe my PCs as walking slabs of shredded beef by the end of the session.



I _love_ this argument because it's such a ridiculously stupid strawman. But then, it also shows no ability to actually think critically.


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## Campbell (Jun 27, 2012)

This comparing a PC to a commoner business seems weird to me. I've never seen the need to mechanically represent commoners.


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## Nytmare (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I wasn't comparing just hit points to just hit points.





Which one of these is bigger:

A 10 pennies

B 3 quarters

C 500 Botswanan 20 Thebes

D 1 navel orange


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## Lanefan (Jun 27, 2012)

Campbell said:


> This comparing a PC to a commoner business seems weird to me. I've never seen the need to mechanically represent commoners.



Your PCs must be the best-behaved party in all of D&D in that case, as they have clearly never:

 - attacked an innkeep after being shortchanged
 - captured a street urchin picking pockets
 - started (or tried to stop) a town riot
 - been involved in (or, as happened in my game, been the quarry of) a torch-and-pitchfork brigade
 - participated in a bar brawl with the locals
 - needed to neutralize a town guard in order to sneak in
 - needed to neutralize some prison guards in order to reach someone and free him
 - been involved on either side as a local farm gets raided
 - etc.

All of these require at least some mechanical representation of the commoners involved, even if their only further contribution is to flee, die, or do nothing.

Lanefan


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Campbell said:


> This comparing a PC to a commoner business seems weird to me. I've never seen the need to mechanically represent commoners.




My point in all this is what power level the characters start at. In AD&D 2E and previously, characters started out as commoners with a bit more skill or blessed with some magic, but weren't really all that much more powerful and couldn't really risk pissing off a few people in the bar. 3E increased starting PC power, but also made class levels for starting commoners to kind of even it out so that it did roughly the same thing as AD&D and before did. 4E increased power even further, such that PCs start out already way ahead of commoners. The point of comparison is about relative starting levels. I think the numbers show that the average power level of 1st level PC in 4E is probably closer to what a 4th level PC would have been in AD&D and before, and a 3rd level PC in 3rd edition.

My problem with that is I generally like starting out not already a hero who can wipe his ass with the common people in the town. I like the idea that the character while maybe a little smarter or stronger, really isn't all that much better than the people he grew up with in town. If he picked a fight in a bar, he might get his butt thoroughly kicked. I don't think that holds true in 4E.



Nytmare said:


> Which one of these is bigger:
> 
> A 10 pennies
> 
> ...



If I compare the relative hit points of characters versus commoners WITHIN EACH EDITION to determine what the starting power level of a character is, that is a fair measure of starting power. Regardless of how much you really want that not to be true. Does a 4E PC start out relatively way stronger than a commoner than in previous editions? Does this then mean that PCs are actually starting out with a higher level of power than in previous editions?

If not, give me a legitimate measuring stick. I know that kobolds vs PCs is a common one, but that's not what my initial point was. In all editions prior to 4E, player characters were slightly above average. In 4E they start out already powerful heroes. I don't think there's really any denying that fact.

Again, thankfully, 5E appears to have pared down the relative ability of PCs versus the people they grew up with.


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## Campbell (Jun 27, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Your PCs must be the best-behaved party in all of D&D in that case, as they have clearly never:
> 
> - attacked an innkeep after being shortchanged
> - captured a street urchin picking pockets
> ...




I've handled the street urchin stuff outside of the combat rules. Simple checks to see if they notice. Set an Athletics DC to tackle the guy. Bar fights are not well modeled by rules that assume violent confrontations where you're trying to kill someone. Town guards and prison guards are not be commoners. No to your other examples.


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## Griego (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I wasn't comparing just hit points to just hit points. I was comparing the relative hit points of a 1st level character to a regular commoner in each edition. By taking into account the fact that 4E characters even have more HP than actually listed (since Second Wind is a fact, and adds another quarter HP to any single encounter without fail), that ratio is even more inflated for 4E than 35:1 it is based on face value.
> 
> I _love_ this argument because it's such a ridiculously stupid strawman. But then, it also shows no ability to actually think critically.



Oh please, it was just a joke, a silly one-liner. Don't take yourself so seriously.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 27, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Your PCs must be the best-behaved party in all of D&D in that case, as they have clearly never:
> 
> - attacked an innkeep after being shortchanged




Quick roll to see whether the inkeeper dies or flees.  Now what?



> - captured a street urchin picking pockets
> - started (or tried to stop) a town riot
> - been involved in (or, as happened in my game, been the quarry of) a torch-and-pitchfork brigade




Skill challenges based on the difficulty of what's being attempted.  How well the Urchin knows the streets isn't in any statblock I'm aware of.



> - participated in a bar brawl with the locals




Athletics counts more than swordsmanship here.



> - needed to neutralize a town guard in order to sneak in
> - needed to neutralize some prison guards in order to reach someone and free him




Skill challenges.



> - been involved on either side as a local farm gets raided




Is the farmer fighting?



> All of these require at least some mechanical representation of the commoners involved, even if their only further contribution is to flee, die, or do nothing.




Most of them require a represnetation of the mob or the city rather more than the individuals.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Quick roll to see whether the inkeeper dies or flees.  Now what?



Surprise attack, roll for initiative, as I'm fairly sure killing the innkeeper won't be the end of this conflict.



> Skill challenges based on the difficulty of what's being attempted.  How well the Urchin knows the streets isn't in any statblock I'm aware of.



Combination of skills and combat depending on how things happen. If NPCs try to fight and skills don't convince them not to, then it's roll initiative and go to combat.



> Athletics counts more than swordsmanship here.



Combat. Maybe with nonlethal damage being rolled until the first guy draws a dagger, but it's definitely a combat scenario.



> Skill challenges.



Skill rolls to avoid being seen/heard. Attack/damage rolls if the PC attacks the NPC (including spells). If neutralizing via other means (trickery) skill checks.



> Is the farmer fighting?



If he is, combat. If not, there's still combat with the other people involved, and the farmer still has to take actions to avoid getting skewered while he runs away.



> Most of them require a represnetation of the mob or the city rather more than the individuals.



Different playstyles completely.

Here's the thing, I avoid combats as a necessity if I can avoid doing so (unless I'm running a straight dungeon crawl for the hell of it, as I am now). But players pick fights, frequently when they don't really need to do so. And then fights require the rules for fighting.


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## billd91 (Jun 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Skill challenges.




Yeah, yeah, skill challenges, blah blah. But you're basically having to come up with all of those on the fly or otherwise putting the situation into your favored mechanic and setting the difficulty. Why not use the mechanic that's already there and been there since the beginning? Combat rules.

Shouldn't the game be designed to handle both methods effectively?


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 27, 2012)

billd91 said:


> Shouldn't the game be designed to handle both methods effectively?



Yes.

For myself, I prefer to think of the modes of play and which is the most appropriate. If a situation needs to focus in on the specific order and interaction of finer actions, I think this is best handled in initiative although I see nothing wrong with a skill challenge for certain situations where the gaming lens does not need to be zoomed in quite as much. I suppose if there is a chance for loss of hit points, initiative is most appropriate.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Lanefan (Jun 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Quick roll to see whether the inkeeper dies or flees.  Now what?



OK, does he die?  Roll to hit.  What's his AC?  How many h.p. does he have (in case you roll poorly on damage)?  What's his BAB/fight level/HD rating/whatever you use to determine his skill level at fighting back should he decide to do so?  Is he unusually strong or weak? Etc.



> Skill challenges based on the difficulty of what's being attempted.  How well the Urchin knows the streets isn't in any statblock I'm aware of.



Assumes use of a skill challenge mechanic.  The Urchin's street knowledge will only help her if she evades your attempt to grab; so what's her AC (and how does it get there)?  How many h.p. does she have (in case you grab too hard)?  Etc.

As for the mob scenarios, every pitchfork thrown at the target gets a roll to hit - luck is luck, after all; and in my game a PC died because of this - he pissed off a village so badly they came after him with pitchforks and torches, and he didn't run fast enough.



> Athletics counts more than swordsmanship here.



Fistsmanship, swordsmanship - pretty much the same, really; only with different weapons.  AC?  Hit points?  Etc.



> Skill challenges.



Maybe, though if the guard raises an alarm and stands her ground (thus producing a combat) you need AC, h.p., etc.  And a town guard can be - and often is - a 0th-level type or a commoner.



> Is the farmer fighting?



Possibly, along with his family, the hired hands, and whoever else might be nearby...  AC, h.p., etc. - I think by now you see the pattern.


> Most of them require a represnetation of the mob or the city rather more than the individuals.



Perhaps, but the mob is made up of individuals; and particularly at very low level each of those individuals could pose a threat.

Lan-"commoner no more"-efan


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## Hussar (Jun 28, 2012)

I'd point out that the whole point here is that our innkeeper was a 1st level commoner with 2 hp on average.  He dies automatically if the fighter hits, and he has a 10 AC since he has no stats.

Anything else and he's no longer "Joe Commoner".  And if the innkeeper is no longer Joe Commoner, then our PC's starting out stronger than Joe Commoner isn't really a big deal either.



> Wait, what? Are you honestly trying to tell me that starting HP for a 1st level PC in 4E isn't vastly greater than in previous editions of D&D? You have got to be the first person who's ever argued that. The absolute maximum that a barbarian (with the largest hit die) could have, even in 3E (and spending a feat to get it) was 19. In 2E, the warrior had the highest hit die (d10) and the highest HP he could have at first level was 15.




Yup, about double HP.  That sounds about right.  Note, that your figher has SEVEN TIMES more HP than the commoner.  Note, a "commoner" doesn't exist as a distinct entity in 4e.  That's where the apples and oranges comment comes in.  3e tries to say that all commoners are identical, within a very narrow variance.  4e says, "Hey, what would make a more interesting game.  It doesn't try to model the world.   So, our commoner ISN'T a minion.  He might be, or he might not be.  Depends on the situation.

So, no, a 1st level character in 4e isn't that much stronger than a commoner, because that commoner's stats are not dictated by the system.


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## Lanefan (Jun 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> 4e says, "Hey, what would make a more interesting game.  It doesn't try to model the world.



Failing to at least try to model the world - even to model the internal game world to itself* - immediately makes it much less interesting.

* - evidenced by commoners not having stats where PC-type people do, among other things


> So, no, a 1st level character in 4e isn't that much stronger than a commoner, because that commoner's stats are not dictated by the system.



All that tells me is the system has a leak.

I hope it gets fixed in 5e.

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Your PCs must be the best-behaved party in all of D&D in that case, as they have clearly never:
> 
> - attacked an innkeep after being shortchanged
> - captured a street urchin picking pockets
> ...



With the attacks against random inhabitants (urchins, innkeeps etc) I would be likely to make success automatic: if the players want their PCs to kill such people, they succeed. In my game, what would make that scene interesting is not its mechanical resolution, but its downstream consequences in the story.

As far as neutralising single or even small groups of guards is concerned, I have (and would) resolve this as a skill check or skill challenge: on a successful check, the guard in question is "minionised", and a power can then be used to kill him/her. If the check fails, then a "real" combat is required - the logic of this is that, on a failed check, the player doesn't get what s/he wants - the guard has the opportunity, within the mechanics, to try and flee for help.

Riots and brigades sound to me like swarm rules. I have run a couple of recent encounters with hobgoblin phalanxes, statting up the phalanxes as swarms (that had the ability to "kill" adjacent hobgoblin minions in order to heal their damage).



Campbell said:


> Bar fights are not well modeled by rules that assume violent confrontations where you're trying to kill someone.



Agreed.



Neonchameleon said:


> Skill challenges based on the difficulty of what's being attempted.  How well the Urchin knows the streets isn't in any statblock I'm aware of.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Most of them require a represnetation of the mob or the city rather more than the individuals.



More agreement.



billd91 said:


> Yeah, yeah, skill challenges, blah blah. But you're basically having to come up with all of those on the fly or otherwise putting the situation into your favored mechanic and setting the difficulty. Why not use the mechanic that's already there and been there since the beginning? Combat rules.



In my own case? Because the combat rules (in 4e, at least) are for running interesting combats, not the cutting down of urchins by heavily armed and armoured warriors! As I indicated above, the only reason for moving to tactical resolution would be to give the NPC a chance to escape, thus introducing some extra complexity into the situation.

As to your comment about making up stuff on the fly - running a skill challenge on the fly is no different from statting up an urchin on the fly. That's what the game has encounter build rules for, to support this sort of stuff!



Lanefan said:


> Failing to at least try to model the world - even to model the internal game world to itself* - immediately makes it much less interesting.



That depends pretty heavily on what you play the game for.

Lots of other fictional products (books, movies, etc) don't try to model a world, but just use the world as a backdrop for their real narrative point. An RPG can be like that too, and still be pretty interesting.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 28, 2012)

billd91 said:


> Yeah, yeah, skill challenges, blah blah. But you're basically having to come up with all of those on the fly or otherwise putting the situation into your favored mechanic and setting the difficulty. Why not use the mechanic that's already there and been there since the beginning? Combat rules.
> 
> Shouldn't the game be designed to handle both methods effectively?




It can.  But these aren't anything like ordinary combats so combat rules aren't very applicable.



Lanefan said:


> OK, does he die? Roll to hit. What's his AC?




10.  He's an inkeeper behind a bar and flat footed.  He also gets killed automatically by the fighter because he's level 0.



> How many h.p. does he have (in case you roll poorly on damage)?




1d4.



> What's his BAB/fight level/HD rating/whatever you use to determine his skill level at fighting back should he decide to do so? Is he unusually strong or weak? Etc.




He's a level 0 character unless I've established him as otherwise.

Seriously, you really want to bother to roll that out?  When there's no rolling needed in AD&D because a fighter can kill a number of level 0 characters up to their level?

If I've established him as a former adventurer, things will be different.



> Assumes use of a skill challenge mechanic. The Urchin's street knowledge will only help her if she evades your attempt to grab; so what's her AC (and how does it get there)? How many h.p. does she have (in case you grab too hard)? Etc.




Grabs do no damage as a default in 4e.  As for the AC, small size and high dex.  That's assuming you spotted in time.  We're in skill challenge territory - which basically gives a list of numbers behind the DM screen that feel about right (the same thing DMs have always done as far as I can tell).



> As for the mob scenarios, every pitchfork thrown at the target gets a roll to hit - luck is luck, after all; and in my game a PC died because of this - he pissed off a village so badly they came after him with pitchforks and torches, and he didn't run fast enough.




If the PCs fail the challenge to either calm the mob or escape, they are in combat with a swarm.



> Fistsmanship, swordsmanship - pretty much the same, really; only with different weapons. AC? Hit points? Etc.




Very much not the same.  In a bar brawl_ you don't actually want to kill anyone_.  It's about as similar as boxing for sport and a real fight - some things cross over but the assumptions are very different.



> Maybe, though if the guard raises an alarm and stands her ground (thus producing a combat) you need AC, h.p., etc. And a town guard can be - and often is - a 0th-level type or a commoner.




Then I have a monster manual if things go that pear shaped.



> Possibly, along with his family, the hired hands, and whoever else might be nearby... AC, h.p., etc. - I think by now you see the pattern.
> Perhaps, but the mob is made up of individuals; and particularly at very low level each of those individuals could pose a threat.
> 
> Lan-"commoner no more"-efan




If the farmer is staying to fight then I need stats.  In which case it's a good job I've the best monster manuals ever written for D&D.  If the farmer is doing the sensible thing and taking potshots out of the window with his crossbow while the PCs fight I don't really.



Lanefan said:


> Failing to at least try to model the world - even to model the internal game world to itself* - immediately makes it much less interesting.
> 
> * - evidenced by commoners not having stats where PC-type people do, among other things
> All that tells me is the system has a leak.
> ...




This is not a leak.  This is a different assumption on how RPGs should work.  What's important when I'm trying to bluff the princess for setting difficulty is not how likely she is to see through me (although that will be a factor) - it's how likely she is to do what I ask her to.  NPC on NPC combat offstage is resolved by DM fiat and pretty much always has been.


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## billd91 (Jun 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> It can.  But these aren't anything like ordinary combats so combat rules aren't very applicable.




They are when the PCs are sufficiently low level.


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## jadrax (Jun 28, 2012)

Bah, all Innkeepers in D&D are retired Fighters of at least 10th level.


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## Dour-n-Taciturn (Jun 29, 2012)

35 pages and going; so excuse me if I reiterate any points made earlier:

The main issue I see with wound/special damage modules, is what effect those have on challenge ratings.  Such a module or dial or switch, will have to apply across the board or risk altering challenges to a point where they may be too difficult (which some may like, but at what cost?).

I like healing to occur at a flat rate, roll your HD per # (say 4) of hours of light activity, and apply modifiers based on level of activity if more or less intense.  Constant heavy activity such as a forced march or dungeon crawl may simply disallow recovery of HP at all, whilst bed rest may double or add a bonus, and so on.  This is already in play by current play-test rules to some extent with rests.

So now you have a dial what affects HP recovery, based on how intense the adventure is, driven by the PCs, or possibly by plot devices that are time sensitive.  Now if a group pushes itself too hard, their HP will be limited, but they can take a break or slow things down, preventing an immersion breaking retreat into town to kick back a few ales...


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## pemerton (Jun 29, 2012)

Dour-n-Taciturn said:


> The main issue I see with wound/special damage modules, is what effect those have on challenge ratings.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...


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## pemerton (Jun 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> there's no rolling needed in AD&D because a fighter can kill a number of level 0 characters up to their level?



In AD&D that rule permits attacks, but not auto-kills: the attack dice still have to be rolled (though, especially with specialisation, minimum damage is likely to be 4+, which will be fatal for many targets of fewer than 1 HD).


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