Narrating Hit Points - no actual "damage"

[FrogReaver]

Well, I don't have the first problem, because I don't have damage represent injury that requires more than a night's rest to heal, and I don't see the second problem as a problem. If I did, I'd add in something like the optional Lingering Injuries rule in the DMG and leave hit points alone.



1. They aren't recovering "unnaturally fast" if they aren't sustaining injuries that require more than an eight-hour rest to heal. As DM, you're fully in control of how severe you describe a PC's injuries to be. If you want damage to represent more serious injury, there's always the Gritty Realism option. Playing with that dial could allow you to use damage to represent injuries that take up to a week or more to heal. The Slow Natural Healing option, on the other hand, requires the expenditure of hit dice to heal at all without magic. So options are available, but theoretically you could still describe injuries so severe that a rules-based solution would be difficult. I don't think that's a problem with the rules, however.

2. I think injury has never been a feature of the game because it's considered un-fun to try to play with a PC that's only partially functional. Lethality, however, is something that provides a lot of dramatic tension to the action, so the idea is you get to play your PC all the way up until s/he's dead, and you don't have to sit on the sidelines with a bum leg or whatever.

I would tend to think the kinds of injuries you get in battle that knock you unconscious and leave in the "process" of dying tend to be severe injuries that take longer than 1 nights rest to heal. Do you agree?

 

[Hriston]

I would tend to think the kinds of injuries you get in battle that knock you unconscious and leave [you] in the "process" of dying tend to be severe injuries that take longer than 1 nights rest to heal. Do you agree?

Only if you fail three death saving throws and actually die do we know you were seriously injured. If not, whatever knocked you out will be healed by tomorrow.

 

[FrogReaver]

Only if you fail three death saving throws and actually die do we know you were seriously injured. If not, whatever knocked you out will be healed by tomorrow.

So you wait 3-6 rounds later to decide how to narrate the blow that knocked the PC unconscious?

 

[Hriston]

If we take it as a given that nobody wants to play a mutilated character who can't contribute, then that leaves us with two options:

1. It's impossible for anyone to get seriously injured. You're either perfectly fine (maybe slightly tired), or you're dead.
2. You can suffer significant physical injury, but we choose to not model it mechanically.

I agree that serious injury is possible. It's just that it isn't represented by hit points, as per your second bullet. Also, I wouldn't say it's impossible for anyone to be seriously injured, since death can be assumed to have been caused by serious injury.

Both fourth edition and fifth edition are solidly in the first camp, and even third edition was leaning strongly in that direction. It's very difficult to reconcile significant physical injury with overnight healing.

I can't speak for 3rd or 4th edition, but there's nothing in 5e that I'm aware of that absolutely precludes the addition of an injury track if that's desirable, but yes, it does seem to embrace an interpretation of hit point damage as not representational of any serious physical injury.

Earlier editions were more open to interpretation. When you only heal 1hp per night, it's easier to say that you're actually physically beaten up. We're not necessarily talking spear-through-the-chest physical injury, but the sort of injury that would take a week or two to heal. There's a wide range of possible injuries between things that can heal overnight and things that can heal in two weeks.

Using the Gritty Realism and/or Slow Natural Healing options may help achieve something like this in 5e, but to really nail it down I think you'd have to get rid of short rest healing all together. I think the simpler solution is to add a separate injury track, like the Lingering Injuries option, that doesn't rely on hit points to represent injury.

 

[Hriston]

So you wait 3-6 rounds later to decide how to narrate the blow that knocked the PC unconscious?

The outcome of the attack that drops a character to 0 hit points is that the character is unconscious, so that's what I narrate at that moment. It remains to be resolved over the next 18 to 30 seconds whether any harm sufficient enough to end the character's life has been done. Once the character's death saves have been resolved, then I can narrate that outcome.

 

[Lanefan]

If we take it as a given that nobody wants to play a mutilated character who can't contribute, then that leaves us with two options: ...

And that 'given' takes away the often-interesting in-play choice of whether to press on with a badly injured party member or stop and wait a day or three for said person to heal up before continuing.

 

[Lanefan]

The outcome of the attack that drops a character to 0 hit points is that the character is unconscious, so that's what I narrate at that moment. It remains to be resolved over the next 18 to 30 seconds whether any harm sufficient enough to end the character's life has been done. Once the character's death saves have been resolved, then I can narrate that outcome.

Which is fine provided that nobody at the 12-second point needs to know whether or not the character will die if left untended - a very important choice for a healer with limited spells wo doesn't want to waste one on someone who will get up on their own without it.

 

[Hriston]

Which is fine provided that nobody at the 12-second point needs to know whether or not the character will die if left untended - a very important choice for a healer with limited spells wo doesn't want to waste one on someone who will get up on their own without it.

The healer's decision is whether to use a resource or to leave a party member's life in the hands of fate. And it isn't a completely uninformed decision either. At 12 seconds, the healer will know if things look good and their companion's going to make it at least another 18 seconds, or if immediate intervention is needed.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Using the Gritty Realism and/or Slow Natural Healing options may help achieve something like this in 5e, but to really nail it down I think you'd have to get rid of short rest healing all together.

Yeah, you would definitely need to get rid of the concept of Hit Dice entirely, or else the slowest possible set of options in the book will still allow you to heal up to full overnight. The only difference is that you can't pull it off on consecutive nights; you need a couple of weeks to recharge, before you can go from zero up to full overnight again.

I think the simpler solution is to add a separate injury track, like the Lingering Injuries option, that doesn't rely on hit points to represent injury.

Adding in an entirely new injury system is definitely more complex than using a system which had already worked well for decades, and which is already in the game regardless.

The only thing we really lose out on, by using HP damage to track physical injury, is the ability to model short-term fatigue and luck and fighting spirit or whatever. And honestly, modeling vague whatevers is never going to be a priority for a game system.

 

[MechaPilot]

The only thing we really lose out on, by using HP damage to track physical injury, is the ability to model short-term fatigue and luck and fighting spirit or whatever. And honestly, modeling vague whatevers is never going to be a priority for a game system.

That's not accurate. Slow healing inherently slows the pace of the adventure as characters take days or weeks (possibly even months) of time to heal before continuing the adventure. Going back to healing only 1 HP per day (which your individual table can already do if you want) causes us to lose out on faster-paced adventures.