How Do You Plan To Interpret Hit Points, Healing Surges and Damage?

Hello Everyone,

Essentially, my question to 4E DMs and Players is:

How are you specifically planning to interpret Hit Points, Healing Surges and Damage that makes sense to you?

By making sense, I mean in a way that your gaming group can play with without someone thinking in the back of their heads "well that's just dumb... as if". Please be as specific as you can.

At this point, I don't have the 4E books (Gift Set arrives next week) so I can only go on what has been published and talked about thus far. I have to be honest though in saying I have some concerns with what I have seen. I would much prefer to be able to interpret them in a way that makes sense without resorting to rules-tinkering with a core part of the new edition.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

Hit points now represent near misses IMHO. Misses that would be hits had the PCs/NPCs not been quite skilled enough to turn that sword thrusted the gut into a glancing blow.

Healing surges then is then kinda like when a hero sees in trouble and redoubles his efforts.

Just, IMHO.

Mr. Wilson said:

Hit points now represent near misses IMHO. Misses that would be hits had the PCs/NPCs not been quite skilled enough to turn that sword thrusted the gut into a glancing blow.

Healing surges then is then kinda like when a hero sees in trouble and redoubles his efforts.

Just, IMHO.

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Pre 4e the above would have been correct. 10 points of damage that would have been a fatal or near fatal wound at first level, is turned into a shallow gash along your arm at tenth level, due to superior skill at dodging, deflecting, etc. In 4e, you dodged it completely, but the near death experience lowered your morale and tired you significantly. Oddly, this is restored by a "healing" surge.

I agree with Mr. Wilson, hit points for the most part are what in the old Star Wars D20 were called Vitality Points. Being wore down. Thus 'bloodied' at half, you're starting to let some come closer, knicking you.

Healing Surges are basically just the 'standard amount healed'. It's an expendable game resource, not an IC function of any kind. Each specific use of a Surge would have its' own explanation, and there's too many for me to go into.

Yep, this isn't anything new, I've been explaining hit points this way for years. The only mortal wounds are the ones that kill. Hits that drop you are hard and possibly even traumatic, but not severe. Hits that only lessen hp aren't really hits at all. Glances or cuts at most. Unfortunately, hits, hit points, damage and healing surges are all badly misnamed....

Amount of Maximum HP: This represents how well that PC can deal with wounds inflicted upon them, and how badly a attack is inflicted upon them.

So for example a Fighter and Wizard at maximum HP are both hit for same amount of damage, however description wise the Wizard's attack was a lot more harsh. With a Minion given the 1 HP that one strike while doing the same damage was much more punishing to the Minion, ie: decapitation.

Decreasing of HP: As HP decreases this shows the the PC/Monster through a combination of wounds, pain, stress, fatigue, and other circumstances is slowly winding themselves down to suffering a incapacitating hit. Essentially their fighting capacity begins to deplete.

Healing Surges: A Healing Surge represents the PC/Monster being able to regain some composure and ignore some of the pain they have suffered and regain some of their fighting capacity. This is why things such as a Warlord's Healing Abilities can work, since he is helping the PC regain some of his fighting capacity, not actually fixing physical wounds.

As Healing Surges decrease however, this shows that it takes more and more effort to work past the various wounds, fatigue and other things piled against the PC to fight/work affectively. Thus when a PC reaches 0 Healing Surges they are at the end of their tether and cannot reach beyond their limitations.

In many regards Healing Surges is a better representation of actual physical health, because the more it decreases the more physically unable the PC is to fight affectively.

Describing This All: Essentially all together, this means that PCs with less Maximum HP when hit suffer worse wounds and are debilitated more by it. Though the actual physical stress these wounds have on the body truly show when Healing Surges begin to run out and wounds and other things pile up.

Thus a fighter with 0 Healing Surges but Maximum HP will look worse then a Wizard with full Healing Surges and almost no HP.

It all depends on the character.

You can be Legolas, who retains his perfect hair even when being beaten down by 100 orcs. In this case, being "bloodied" means a small scar or scratch that throws your innate prettiness into sharp relief. Being at 0 hp means you're down with a small puncture wound above your heart.

Or you can be Aragorn, who's always covered in mud and blood. Being bloodied means you have even more blood on you than normal. Being at 0 hp means there's a big hole where some of your vital organs used to be.

It's all good with an abstract system.

Agamon said:

Yep, this isn't anything new, I've been explaining hit points this way for years. The only mortal wounds are the ones that kill. Hits that drop you are hard and possibly even traumatic, but not severe. Hits that only lessen hp aren't really hits at all. Glances or cuts at most. Unfortunately, hits, hit points, damage and healing surges are all badly misnamed....

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Hit Points were probably the last sacred cow they didn't want to kill.
It would probably be easier if they had renamed them "Stamina" points, damage could be fatigue, and healing surges could be "vitality surges", or something like that.
Well, I don't really care how they name it in the end...

For us, hit points were always an abstraction. We sometimes described blows as dealing some physical damage, but always in relation between damage taken and max hit points. And totally deadly attacks (anything that drops a target below -10) where described in a gory fashion (cutting off arms, spreading blood all over the place, slicing monsters in half, all those nice things)

4E will not change that much, though I think I might use "Bloodied" to indicate a "real" wound - not a large one, but you notice that you wore the target down. A human might have a bleeding wound, a Skeleton might have a broken bone, stuff like that.

Agamon said:

Yep, this isn't anything new, I've been explaining hit points this way for years. The only mortal wounds are the ones that kill. Hits that drop you are hard and possibly even traumatic, but not severe. Hits that only lessen hp aren't really hits at all. Glances or cuts at most. Unfortunately, hits, hit points, damage and healing surges are all badly misnamed....

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This is the best way to do it I believe. I am lucky in that my gaming group isn't concerned for a second about finding the meaning/reason their PC's have healing abilities.

Just as they don't worry about why they can perform magic, it's a part of the game and it's just accepted without concern as are all of the other fantasy elements in the game.

Currently, I see hit points as a model for toughness, a concept which is perhaps vague, but to the same extent that hit points are abstract. They measure a character's ability to keep fighting and therefore to avoid mortal (or even incapacitating) wounds. Anything that reduces this ability is damage. I will narrate some hits in 4e the way I would have narrated some misses in 3e, such as a solid blow to your breastplate that knocks your breath out of you. Even if such hits don't draw blood, you can't take them indefinitely and keep fighting. A true miss makes no contact (and doesn't require extraordinary effort to dodge) or is a glancing blow hardly felt. Healing surges model a character's ability to recuperate some toughness, for example after catching a second wind, although everyone can only do so much on one night's rest.