How do you reconcile hit points?

[Greenfield]

This is an old topic,being given new life due to the power of boredom: I wanted something to talk/think about.

The paradox of hit points isn't obvious to everyone, so I'll explain.

A Fighter's body isn't really 2.5 times harder to hurt than a Wizard's, according to most theories of the game. And a 10th level Fighter's body isn't really 25 times harder to hurt than a 1st level Wizards either. He's just learned to roll with the punches, to tough it out.

A sword blow that cuts the commoner nearly in half becomes a minor bruise or shallow gash on the hardened veteran because he knows how to move, how to turn the edge or give with the blow, how to minimize damage. The sword blow was just as good in either case, but the fighter managed to turn what should have been a disemboweling strike into a mere flesh wound.

That all makes sense, even if the degree to which it can be taken stretches credibility.

The paradox is that the 10th level fighter is also 25 times harder to heal than the 1st level Wizard.

A deep cut on the Wizard represents two, maybe three hit points of damage. A cut of equal severity on the fighter represents somewhere between fifty and seventy five hit points.

One is healed casually with Cure Light, while the other will take several castings of Cure Critical.

Left to themselves, the Wizard will heal naturally in two or three days (pretty impressive for a near fatal injury). The fighter will take months.

So how do you handle the apparent contradiction? That the toughest, healthiest human being you've ever known takes months to recover from an injury that the weakest nerd in the world bounces back from practically over night?

 

[Obryn]

Personally? I recognize them as an abstract game mechanic. As long as they are serving their purpose - being a number that show how far you are from dying - I'm okay with that.

-O

 

[dkyle]

I handle it by playing an edition where healing scales sensibly. Namely, 4E.

 

[Nezkrul]

4e may scale but healing in that edition doesn't make sense - you can only regain hitpoints a few times per day? dumb

Reconcile hitpoints? I don't. I just play the game and deal with it, because the more you think about it the less sense any scaling rules make in the game. So, the solution is- don't think about it; it's fantasy, when you try to mix real-life into it you take away the fun.

 

[Obryn]

4e may scale but healing in that edition doesn't make sense - you can only regain hitpoints a few times per day? dumb

Reconcile hitpoints? I don't. I just play the game and deal with it, because the more you think about it the less sense any scaling rules make in the game. So, the solution is- don't think about it; it's fantasy, when you try to mix real-life into it you take away the fun.

I don't think these two paragraphs belong in the same post.

-O

 

[Knight Templar]

IMC hit points have absolutely nothing to do with how much damage you can take, they represent your ability to avoid damage. You don't take 12 points of damage from an ax blow, you expend 12 hit points to avoid the ax. With that concept, increasing hit points as you go up in level makes complete sense.

 

[TerraDave]

Right, there has to be a point at which they are actually taking more damage, and can just handle it better. Some kind of conditioning means that they operate with wounds, not attack or hits, but wounds that would drop others.

This is not entirely unrealistic. I mean, the way its done in D&D is, but there are though stories of people getting really really hurt and still up and doing stuff.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I use this (Troy, Achilles vs Hector)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ygRholyh5g

Only a couple of actual hits, mostly exhaustion and luck etc running out. Big fight lots of HP lost (in a DnD sense) but mostly only the killing blows (brought to 0 then coup de grace) do real damage.

But yeah, I mostly know it is a game and HPs don't make 100% sense, but they work!

 

[dkyle]

4e may scale but healing in that edition doesn't make sense - you can only regain hitpoints a few times per day? dumb

It doesn't make sense that there are limits to how much a person can shake off before they are too exhausted to keep going? Seems eminently sensible to me. I'm not seeing how unlimited healing makes any more "sense".

However, the basis of your complaint is false, anyway. You can regain hitpoints an indefinite number of times per day. It's just that a certain set of healing abilities are limited by healing surges. Surge-less healing is certainly available, such as via Cure Light Wounds, and powers that heal as a side effect.

But in any event, it's still an abstract HP system, and thus doesn't make much sense when you look at it too closely. Which has been the case from the start. But overall, 4E's treatment of HP and healing is more consistent and logical than any other edition of D&D.

 

[Mallus]

So how do you handle the apparent contradiction? That the toughest, healthiest human being you've ever known takes months to recover from an injury that the weakest nerd in the world bounces back from practically over night?

The answer to the question is not to ask it in the first place.