Schrodinger's HP and Combat

[D'karr]

Why can't inspiring words heal HPs lost by being wounded? Nowhere in the book it says that when a character recovers HPs it means his wounds just vanished.

That is a good question. Mechanically there is nothing preventing it. If you look at HP as the capability to stay in the fight, then inspiring word can easily be seen as recovering HP, but the "wound" is now "transferred" to the Healing Surge mechanic. The "wound" still exists. This is part of the methodology I implemented for having short and long term injuries in the game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

That is a good question. Mechanically there is nothing preventing it. If you look at HP as the capability to stay in the fight, then inspiring word can easily be seen as recovering HP, but the "wound" is now "transferred" to the Healing Surge mechanic. The "wound" still exists. This is part of the methodology I implemented for having short and long term injuries in the game.

Inspireing word always seemed to me to be pushing past wounds, not closeing them

 

[D'karr]

Inspireing word always seemed to me to be pushing past wounds, not closeing them

Correct, and since D&D has always used hp to show a capacity to stay in the fight then it makes sense that anything that recovers hp allows you to stay in the fight (push through) despite "wounds".

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Why can't inspiring words heal HPs lost by being wounded? Nowhere in the book it says that when a character recovers HPs it means his wounds just vanished.

I think the logic goes something like "if you're at full hit points, then you MUST be in the best possible state you could be in, and having any sort of wound is clearly not the best possible state". This is again part of thinking of game mechanics as rigidly mapped to narrative in an invariant way, there can only be one state that is described by full hit points.

Of course this begs the question of things like when you don't recover to full hit points, in which case there's no issue. It also begs questions like "well, I have less healing surges than I had before" which in 4e you would perforce have to take into account (and yet IME the focus of the argument never strays to HS).

Nor, finally is it clear to me that what a Warlord does cannot heal physical damage. It may be 'inspiration', but in a fantastical world the concept of "mind over matter" sure isn't a big reach. If I believe I'm all set to go, then by gosh maybe I really am!

 

[HeinorNY]

I think the logic goes something like "if you're at full hit points, then you MUST be in the best possible state you could be in, and having any sort of wound is clearly not the best possible state". This is again part of thinking of game mechanics as rigidly mapped to narrative in an invariant way, there can only be one state that is described by full hit points.

This logic is flawed because Hit Points are not a wound tracker, they "measure your ability to stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your feet throughout a battle." Being at full HP doesn't mean your character is "intact", it means he has all of his capacity to stand, be at his feet functioning and not down and dying.

A boat's Hit Points represent its ability to float and not sink. If I burst a hole in its hull, it loses HPs, it loses some of its ability to float. If I fix the hole, it regains Hps. But if instead I throw away some of its extra cargo, or if I attach some barrels to his sides, the boat heals because it recovers its ability to float. In D&D if an intact boat and a boat with holes and barrels attached to it have their maximum float-ability, they are both at full Hit Points.

Nowhere it says in 4E, and I think not in any D&D edition ever, that the effect that recovers Hit Points must "counter" the effect that made the character lose Hit Points. They are independent things, adding or subtracting to the same abstract variable. The character loses HPs because he was wounded by a sword, and then regained some Hps because his friend gave him some encouraging words, or he had some adrenaline or morale burst, or whatever effect that increases his ability to keep up on his feet fighting.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This logic is flawed because Hit Points are not a wound tracker, they "measure your ability to stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your feet throughout a battle." Being at full HP doesn't mean your character is "intact", it means he has all of his capacity to stand, be at his feet functioning and not down and dying.

What you say is true for 4E, but may or may not be true for other editions. The wording and rule interactions, especially during AD&D and 3.x, left it ambiguous that your current state of Hit Points might be used to track wounds.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This logic is flawed because Hit Points are not a wound tracker, they "measure your ability to stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your feet throughout a battle." Being at full HP doesn't mean your character is "intact", it means he has all of his capacity to stand, be at his feet functioning and not down and dying.

A boat's Hit Points represent its ability to float and not sink. If I burst a hole in its hull, it loses HPs, it loses some of its ability to float. If I fix the hole, it regains Hps. But if instead I throw away some of its extra cargo, or if I attach some barrels to his sides, the boat heals because it recovers its ability to float. In D&D if an intact boat and a boat with holes and barrels attached to it have their maximum float-ability, they are both at full Hit Points.

Nowhere it says in 4E, and I think not in any D&D edition ever, that the effect that recovers Hit Points must "counter" the effect that made the character lose Hit Points. They are independent things, adding or subtracting to the same abstract variable. The character loses HPs because he was wounded by a sword, and then regained some Hps because his friend gave him some encouraging words, or he had some adrenaline or morale burst, or whatever effect that increases his ability to keep up on his feet fighting.

I completely agree with you. IMHO your logic is perfectly sound. I was just pointing out that there is a very vocal and fairly numerous school of D&Ders for whom there can be but one mapping of mechanics to narrative and for that group of people there can be only one way to explain healing. Its possible there are subsets of that group that have DIFFERENT explanations, but they all share the common element that multiple narratives mapping to the same mechanical outcome (or vice versa for that matter) is not something they want to countenance. 4e was thus clearly and explicitly not their cup of tea, and the OP's post here was obviously a response to that sort of opinion.

Honestly, there are games in which I agree with them. Traveler for instance, while it doesn't EXACTLY have hit points per-se has effectively the same mechanic, and its pretty clear that in that game its MEAT. There is no component of luck, morale, etc. Damage is physical wounds (maybe extreme exhaustion might count).

 

[pemerton]

there are games in which I agree with them. Traveler for instance, while it doesn't EXACTLY have hit points per-se has effectively the same mechanic, and its pretty clear that in that game its MEAT. There is no component of luck, morale, etc. Damage is physical wounds (maybe extreme exhaustion might count).

There are lots of games where I agree with them - that loss of "hit points" (or whatever analogue is standing in for them) equates to physical wound and/or extreme exhaustion. Not just Traveller but Runequest and all the other BRP games; HARP and RM (although these are more complex systems that combine "hit points" to measure some injury and exhaustion with condition-imposition via critical rolls to model other injury and exhaustion); Burning Wheel (which in some way resembles Traveller, with injury penalties being applied as deductions to stats and skills); and I'm sure many others that I'm not remembering at present.

Another thing most if not all of these systems have in common is a "death spiral": losing hit points, or accruing penalties to stat and skills, means that a character who is being worn down also becomes less able to function effectively.

It's the absence of the death spiral from D&D's hit point system, plus the extreme propensity of character hit points to grow with level, that create the obstacles for me interpreting its hit point system in the same way.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There are lots of games where I agree with them - that loss of "hit points" (or whatever analogue is standing in for them) equates to physical wound and/or extreme exhaustion. Not just Traveller but Runequest and all the other BRP games; HARP and RM (although these are more complex systems that combine "hit points" to measure some injury and exhaustion with condition-imposition via critical rolls to model other injury and exhaustion); Burning Wheel (which in some way resembles Traveller, with injury penalties being applied as deductions to stats and skills); and I'm sure many others that I'm not remembering at present.

Another thing most if not all of these systems have in common is a "death spiral": losing hit points, or accruing penalties to stat and skills, means that a character who is being worn down also becomes less able to function effectively.

It's the absence of the death spiral from D&D's hit point system, plus the extreme propensity of character hit points to grow with level, that create the obstacles for me interpreting its hit point system in the same way.

Well, BRP pretty much lacks anything like a death spiral. OTOH characters are pretty fragile, I think it tends to try to be realistic basically. You can if you are lucky survive a small number of hits, but then you die, so there's not a huge reason to have a death spiral. I think Traveller is basically the same, there's a 'wounded' threshold, an 'incapacitated' one, and then dead. Generally Traveller weaponry is so lethal that only fairly benign situations 'only' damage you. A PGMP for instance dishes out I think around 9 dice of damage (its been a while). Even a revolver will generally incapacitate most people that get shot with it.

 

[pemerton]

Well, BRP pretty much lacks anything like a death spiral. OTOH characters are pretty fragile, I think it tends to try to be realistic basically. You can if you are lucky survive a small number of hits, but then you die, so there's not a huge reason to have a death spiral. I think Traveller is basically the same, there's a 'wounded' threshold, an 'incapacitated' one, and then dead.

In Classic Traveller there is a death spiral: injury deducts from your stats, and minimum stats are needed to gain bonuses, or avoid penalties, on making attacks; and losing END reduces your number of non-weakened blows and swings.

I can't remember how/if RQ handles death spirals - I'll look it up when I get home!