Realism vs. Believability and the Design of HPs, Powers and Other Things

[Starbuck_II]

Those are the reasons you lose hit points in DnD. 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. As for endurance, likewise, being hit by clearly life-threatening attacks is going to do alot more than make you tired.

Wrong!
You lost a healing surge much more precious.
Yes, just because you didn't do it; doesn't mean it didn't work like that.

 

[Scribble]

Sorry Hussar but the game matching my sense of believability (even if you disagree with it) is more important to me than what a rule achieves in term of game play because without the believability I can't get into the game. For me this has everything to do with my sense of believability and immersion. Granted we all have different threshholds, but believability issues are a chief complaint for 4e and I think that is because it crosses alot of peoples thresholds (everything from surges to mundane encounter and daily powers). you don't have to agree with me at all. You can think I am fool if you want, but lets stop with the implications that it is all "really about something else". Just take our critiques at face value move on. Because this is all in there with people saying our dislike of 4e is really about fear of change or a failure to understand 4e. I don't mean to single you out here, because even though we disagree, i usually get along with you just fine.

What I think is that you're kind of stating things incorrectly.

It's not a problem with 4e being unbelievable when it comes to hit points and healing, but a problem with 4e not matching your personal preference for how those mechanics are interpreted.

Nowhere in the rules does it indicate that the warlord's words literally stitch up physical wounds somehow. You are choosing to interpret it that way.

I think this is important.

4e chooses not to interpret hit points as physical wounds, so healing by use of words is perfectly fine, and believable.

If you as a player have already at some point chosen to interpret hit points as (even in small part) a model of some type of physical injury then 4e is not going to match your interpretation, and you will have weird effects that feel unbelievable.

We didn't encounter this prior to 4e because there wasn't anything that prevented HP from being interpreted as physical wounds (even though to many, myself included) the idea of modeling them as physical wounds is "unrealistic."

 

[Bedrockgames]

What I think is that you're kind of stating things incorrectly.

It's not a problem with 4e being unbelievable when it comes to hit points and healing, but a problem with 4e not matching your personal preference for how those mechanics are interpreted.

Nowhere in the rules does it indicate that the warlord's words literally stitch up physical wounds somehow. You are choosing to interpret it that way.

I think this is important.

4e chooses not to interpret hit points as physical wounds, so healing by use of words is perfectly fine, and believable.

If you as a player have already at some point chosen to interpret hit points as (even in small part) a model of some type of physical injury then 4e is not going to match your interpretation, and you will have weird effects that feel unbelievable.

We didn't encounter this prior to 4e because there wasn't anything that prevented HP from being interpreted as physical wounds (even though to many, myself included) the idea of modeling them as physical wounds is "unrealistic."

Except HP has always been a combination of physical damage and other things, so it isn't like I am coming out of left field with this notion that the Warlord shouting my HP back up is a bit unrealistic. I can certainly see how others dont see it that way, but this is the heart of why 4E had so much trouble with a large base of the fans. They insisted on a very unpopular interpetation of HP and then went and created a healing system that doesn't make sense outside of that interpetation.

Not to rehash the debate we just had on the other thread, we aren't asking for 100% realism either. Nor do we want a wound simulator. But we do want a system that allows for characters to be physically hurt by attacks and not be glaringly unbelievable by incuding instant or single day natural healing.

Obviously much of this will pivot on our core assumptions. I just dont think there is anything wrong or misguided about my core assumptions.

 

[Minigiant]

Dear WOTC 5E game designers,

Please put an entire page explaining the core definition of Hit Points in each of the core handbook. If core hit points losses are meat chunks and physical damage, say so. If core hit points is stamina, tell us so. If hit points is to some point the abilty to cause lethal attacks and obstacles to instead be cuts and bruise, can you write this in? If HP is partially morale and mental resolve to continue despite injury, explain to us this. If it is a combination of all of the above on a case by case basis, write that. This will make a lot of agruments about them to happen less frequently.

-Minigiant

 

[Dragonblade]

Except Warlords don't heal physical wounds with words. They allow you to recover the portion of your hitpoints that constitutes morale and gritty determination, which is the same way that HP have worked in every edition of D&D.

 

[CM]

So, those of you who feel that 4e mundane healing is unrealistic: what is stopping you as DM from disallowing mundane healer classes?

If warlord exists as a mundane healing class in 5e, why can't you just ignore it and let those of us who want it use it? This is all it really comes down to. Why must mundane healer classes be an optional module or eliminated entirely?

The only reasons I can see are:
1. A warlord in some adventure module or splatbook somewhere down the road will threaten your worldview.
2. A player will want to play a warlord despite your outlawing the class.

Neither of these is a very compelling argument.

For my part, a return to the days where the cleric (or his poor cousin, the druid) is the only option for the healer role is a deal-breaker.

 

[Janaxstrus]

So, those of you who feel that 4e mundane healing is unrealistic: what is stopping you as DM from disallowing mundane healer classes?

If warlord exists as a mundane healing class in 5e, why can't you just ignore it and let those of us who want it use it? This is all it really comes down to. Why must mundane healer classes be an optional module or eliminated entirely?

The only reasons I can see are:
1. A warlord in some adventure module or splatbook somewhere down the road will threaten your worldview.
2. A player will want to play a warlord despite your outlawing the class.

Neither of these is a very compelling argument.

For my part, a return to the days where the cleric (or his poor cousin, the druid) is the only option for the healer role is a deal-breaker.

The difference for me is that is a strictly 4e mechanic, better suited to a module than the base core game, in my opinion. If you take a poll, it is one of the most divisive issues in 4e for people who never made the switch, aka how 4e handled healing in general.

 

[hanez]

I have been playing since 2nd edition, and I must say I never really knew about the HP as things other then damage definition. I mean in game, we almost always assume its damage to body and sometimes fatigue. My players have always just thought of that as an assumption. I recognize that this definition has problems, but I see things like healing surges and warlord type healing as adding to the problem.

Personally I never understood what the problem was with potions and other alchemy style solutions. They are predominant in my campaigns.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The difference for me is that is a strictly 4e mechanic, better suited to a module than the base core game, in my opinion. If you take a poll, it is one of the most divisive issues in 4e for people who never made the switch, aka how 4e handled healing in general.

I think this is the heart of it. 4E approaches to healing were so controvertial that this stuff is much better suited to a module. If you want to inlcude a warlord in the core that can work, but it should do something more in linewith the assumptions of the core game (like bestow a morale bonus to attacks). But it is kind of wierd if they go back to pre 4e healing assumptions, yet included the warlord in the standard chatacter classes.

 

[Scribble]

Except HP has always been a combination of physical damage and other things, so it isn't like I am coming out of left field with this notion that the Warlord shouting my HP back up is a bit unrealistic.

Well you are and you aren't and that's what I'm trying to say.

The idea of someone shouting wounds closed (without magic) is unbelievable no question.

I don't have any issue with you coming to that conclusion. The problem is saying that 4e forces this on you and causes an unrealistic/unbelievable situation.

It would be the same as if they for instance said elves are 80 feet tall, so they can't go into 5x5 rooms, or do other things that someone who is 80 feet tall can't do. And then I said no in my campaign they're just 5' tall... but then got upset because the rules still acted as if elves were 80' tall.

Essentially you're modifying one aspect of the game without following through to other parts, and then getting upset because your change had an effect...

I can certainly see how others dont see it that way, but this is the heart of why 4E had so much trouble with a large base of the fans. They insisted on a very unpopular interpetation of HP and then went and created a healing system that doesn't make sense outside of that interpetation.

Well, I don't think either of us really have any data on how popular it was or was not, so there's not much we can say there... I mean it could be that it was a popular view of HPs but they didn't realize how popular modeling them as physical wounds was as well?

So yeah I agree with your last part- they created a healing system that kind of left those that want HPs to model some form of physical wounds out. It doesn't create an unrealistic view of physical wound healing, it just doesn't account for them at all.


So they need to find some kind of way to model them so they can be interpreted in whatever way you want without sacrificing one or the other.

IE if they remove the idea of things like warlords and non magical healing from the ganme some people will be very upset. (Including me.)

If they don't also include some way for people who want them to be a way to model physical Hps then those people will continue to be upset.