People often say that hit points aren't meant to represent real injury to the character.
They represent
more than just physical injury. And they always have, from the start of the game.
But then, what are they supposed to represent? Falling back on things like endurance and morale are really poor excuses, because hit points simulate those things even more poorly than they simulate injuries.
They do? I think they represent endurance and morale much more effectively than injuries. Frankly, replace HP with a "Morale" score, and the whole game makes a lot more sense.
Besides, everyone knows full well that the reason you lose hit points is because your character was injured by some attack or hazard. He fell 40 ft. off a cliff. He got engulfed by a dragon's flaming breath. He was critically hit by a barbarian's axe.
I don't know those things full well. It could also be a narrow miss requiring major exertion or luck.
If they were equally things like endurance or morale, why do I not lose hit points whenever I find out a loved one has died, or when I see the village I've lived in all my life burnt to the ground by some villianous horde? Those things are devastating to one's morale but don't inflict hit point loss, so obviously you can't say that hit points have anything whatsoever to do with morale.
Does not follow.
Just because some forms of fatigue/morale are tracked by HP doesn't mean all of them have to be. Disease and poison can effect people in similar ways to physical injury, yet those are often tracked separately from HP.
"Attacks" do HP damage because there are game rules for attacks, and HP are the mechanical results. DnD doesn't have rules for being really sad. If a DM wanted to house rule them in, HP damage would make sense.
Except when it does. In 4E, lots of attacks deal "psychic" damage, that are basically a serious blow to morale. And I've often represented fatigue, from skill challenges as loss of healing surges, which is effectively the same as loss of HP.
As for endurance, likewise, being hit by clearly life-threatening attacks is going to do alot more than make you tired.
Indeed it would. It would cause serious wounds inflicting serious penalties to actions, and risk of death if not treated. Since simple HP loss does not mean that, then "being hit by clearly life-threatening attacks" is very rare. Most "hits" are really more about loss of intangibles, than actual injury.
The real reason hit points are so unbelievable, to be blunt, is simply a concession of game design.
Hey, no need to apologize. Knowing when to concede to better "game design" instead of pure simulation, is an important part of the art of making good games. HP are a good design.
That said, when 4e came along and introduced healing surges and non-magical characters healing people by yelling at them like a drill sergeant, that pushed the game even further into the realm of unbelievability than it had ever gone before, and that pushed it outside of alot of people's comfort zones.
While I can't deny that it did, I think it has more to do with people being familiar with HP, and not really internalizing what HP were always meant to represent, which was a whole host of intangible factors, with only a small component of actual physical damage. If HP are taken to mean what they were always supposed to mean, non-magical healing makes perfect sense.
Again, to be blunt, 4e's deisgn seems to disregard the believability of things in favor of "what works better for DnD combat as a miniatures wargame."
No need to apologize. That's why I love it. It finally embraced DnDs heritage, and delivered a
good game on that premise, first and foremost. Just because the combat plays like a wargame doesn't mean it isn't an RPG.
Of course, many of us ask "how could the rogue possibly have done that?" It's not that the actual end result was unablanced in the game, it's just that the narrative used to describe it was totally unbelievable and for many people completely breaks their sense of immersion and roleplaying.
I don't think throwing a bunch of knives within a few seconds is outside the realm of possibility. Difficult, sure, but these are meant to be extraordinary people.
I, for one, think that when people design powers they should start with the idea of what the player is doing in the world, in a way you can visualize and explain it, and then make a set of rules for how to represent that in the game. I'm not trying to bash on 4e here, I'm just trying to explain why the design approach that was taken rubbed so many people the wrong way. 4e made alot of great advances in rpg rule design. Had they just taken a different approach and presentation and paid more deference to believability and immersion, I think 4e would have been far better accepted.
So, taking your example of Blinding Barrage, I'm not sure what should have been done differently. The second line is a concise flavor text explaining what the character is doing: "A rapid flurry of projectiles leaves your enemies clearing the blood from their eyes.". If that concept, of throwing projectiles in rapid succession at enemies eyes is not sufficiently realistic to you, then I'm not sure how it can be dressed up differently. I, for one, have no problem visualizing that attack.
Now, they just need to drastically scale back the rate at which they're gained. That will make them alot more believable and make the game more balanced as well.
I disagree. Embrace what HP have always meant, and make it truly clear that they don't just represent physical injury. That will make them more believable.
And I don't see how fewer HP inherently improves balance.
