D&D 5E On the healing options in the 5e DMG

[ruleslawyer]

I haven't read the text in question, but given that he ended up in slavery, it stands to reason that not all of his assailants were attempting to kill him so much as merely subdue him. And there's no saying whether he was perfectly fine when he woke up. Nor is there perfect insistence that this can be modeled exactly using game rules, as long as the general concept is close enough.

If you wanted to represent that situation in AD&D or 3E, the enemies would be attacking him non-lethally.

nope. I highly recommend reading the Conan stories; they're available for free on Gutenberg. In short, in the story in question, Conan is attacked by assassins and left for dead (modeled best in d&d as negative hp and stable or 0 hp and successful death save, depending on edition) and then picked up by a galley in need of an extra sailor. There are plenty of other examples of him recovering pretty fast.

As you said, YMMV. Given that hp were pretty clearly explained as early as 1e, I don't see the need to go with a different interpretation and thus I'm fine with hp as a bit of meat and a lot of other factors, meaning that "healing" is part patch-up and part recovery, which fits HD and surges just fine.

 

[mouselim]

Bone Naga causes poison when it hits (2d6+3) plus 3d6 poison damage.

Carrion Crawler causes poison when it hits (1d4+2) plus save or be poisoned which causes paralyzed.

If a character gets hit by either of this monster, how will hit point be defined? Fatigue? Stress? Winded? Luck? Or meat?

Edit: Bone Devil is more interesting. A hit will also include poison for one minute and each turn (or round) a saving throw is required or suffer the poison effects. Again, how will the hit point loss be associated to? Fatigue? Stress? Winded? Luck? Or meat?

 

[ruleslawyer]

If HP were vague mojo, why was there never a single sentence to suggest that a mechanical "hit" might be a narrative "miss", anywhere in those editions? It seems like a simple thing to say, and yet they avoided saying it, just as they avoided the inclusion of anything that caused HP damage without actually causing bodily harm.

Not to play gotcha, but both the 1e DMG and 2e PHB mention the "near miss" as part of the category of attacks that do damage.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

nope. I highly recommend reading the Conan stories; they're available for free on Gutenberg. In short, in the story in question, Conan is attacked by assassins and left for dead (modeled best in d&d as negative hp and stable or 0 hp and successful death save, depending on edition) and then picked up by a galley in need of an extra sailor. There are plenty of other examples of him recovering pretty fast.

I'll be sure to check those out, thanks!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Not to play gotcha, but both the 1e DMG and 2e PHB mention the "near miss" as part of the category of attacks that do damage.

It's been a while since I've read it. I suppose it's possible that I just mentally ignored that part, since keeping track of which hit was a hit and which hit was a near miss would be an arbitrary pain in the face of a system that has otherwise-transparent language about what is a hit and what is a miss, so I just included that in the "definition" of HP - that is to say, the poorly-worded description of HP which thoroughly failed to describe how the system actually worked.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Why do you have to "keep track of which hit was a hit and which hit was a near miss"?

The point is that "hit points," "damage," "saving throws," and "hits" are all game terms. Doing damage to someone is wearing down their combat survivability; the game doesn't descend to the level of granularity that necessitates describing the result as a near miss, a heavy blow that is just barely parried, a superficial cut, or just another dodged attack that wears you down.

Hit points have a long-form definition, which is what pemerton quoted upthread. The simpler definition of hp is "combat survivability"; that can indicate resilience to physical damage, endurance, luck, karma, fighting skill, and so on. A high-level rogue's hp probably represent the character's ability to duck and weave in combat more than do a barbarian's (or a dragon's) equal hp amount, but we don't bother breaking down whether a character is dodging, parrying, rolling with the hit, or simply lucky. The point is that we sacrifice that level of detail for simplicity of play. The same mechanical approach applies to healing/recovery of hp.

 

[lutecius]

Why do you have to "keep track of which hit was a hit and which hit was a near miss"?

The point is that "hit points," "damage," "saving throws," and "hits" are all game terms. Doing damage to someone is wearing down their combat survivability; the game doesn't descend to the level of granularity that necessitates describing the result as a near miss, a heavy blow that is just barely parried, a superficial cut, or just another dodged attack that wears you down.

You don't describe the in-world effects of an attack, a spell, a trap? Without going into the seriousness of each injury, you don't say things like "an arrow hits you", meaning an arrow actually hit the character?

 

[ruleslawyer]

Of course I do! It's just that the narration changes as appropriate.

An arrow hit could be "an arrow lodges in your breastplate, knocking the wind out of you" or "you narrowly dodge the arrow, leaving you off-balance and breathless" or "the arrow lodges in your thigh, but you brush it off as little more than an insect bite" depending on the type of character, the amount of damage, and the circumstances.

 

[lutecius]

Of course I do! It's just that the narration changes as appropriate.

An arrow hit could be "an arrow lodges in your breastplate, knocking the wind out of you" or "you narrowly dodge the arrow, leaving you off-balance and breathless" or "the arrow lodges in your thigh, but you brush it off as little more than an insect bite" depending on the type of character, the amount of damage, and the circumstances.

so you have to take the type of character, the amount of damage and the circumstances into account (ie keep track) to describe the hit either as a hit or as a near miss

 

[ruleslawyer]

so you have to take the type of character, the amount of damage and the circumstances into account (ie keep track) to describe the hit either as a hit or as a near miss

um, no. I don't "have" to do anything. The precise point is that *I can narrate it any way I feel like.* The flexibility of hp is a feature, not a bug.

The point is that hp is a mechanic intended to cover a lot of sins. 120 hp on a huge red dragon means something a lot different from 120 hp on a halfling rogue. Likewise, 30 hp damage to that dragon likely "looks" different from 30 hp damage to the rogue.

Look at it this way. 40 hp damage from a red dragon's breath weapon as inflicted on a 3rd-level fighter is incineration; a blast of flame that reduces that character to a kebab. That same damage to a high-level rogue is the rogue ducking and covering with his cloak and feeling the furnace blast on his back, but escaping without being charred to a crisp.

I can just use game speak and say "you're hit by five crossbow bolts; your character takes 34 damage." The nature of that damage can stay comfortably abstract. It's really simple; the only thing you "have to [] track" is hp. Everything else is flavor text.