Schroedinger's Wounding (Forked Thread: Disappointed in 4e)

[Lacyon]

At which point you're at odds with "smart play."

Sure, I guess.

Talk about Shroedinger.... A lycanthrope is both vulnerable to silver and immune to silver.

I guess the DM could make the determination based ona die roll weighted in favor of the MM option being the one that is actually true so that the original "smart" option stays true to being the smartest choice.

That's one option.

Cool. So once you realize that despite being at full HPs your narrative wounds still hurt you, things should remain that way, and now resting to heal your narrative wounds should be the smart option...

...you're barking up the wrong tree, here.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I can think of at least one counterexample:

Phantasmal Killer

Fine, but in general? I think my point still stands.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Sorry to belabour the point but I think it has been generally accepted in previous editions that if a character gets "hit" into the negatives, it has been a physical injury that has done it. 4E clouds the definition of hit points but examples given in the 4E book use physical damage (otyugh slam) and continually express characters taking damage.

As did the interminable (IMO) video of WotC staffers playing out the fight with the mind flayer. Every hit was described, when it was described, in terms of physical damage, sometimes nasty physical damage.

However people want to define hit points in their 4E games, it's pretty clear that WotC intended (and intends) them to represent --in some significant fashion -- physical damage.

 

[pemerton]

From how I'm reading my 4E rules, the problem is caused by how the rules are explicitly and implicitly presented mixed with how groups have typically played in previous editions.

I agree that one of the weakest parts of the 4e rulebooks is the lack of advice and examples of narration of ingame events in light of game mechanical results. In this respect it compares very poorly to a number of other RPG rulebooks.

I think GlaziusF posted upthread that the lack of examples has the advantage of leaving things flexible rather than having some examples become canonical. But I think it is possible to give examples in a way that avoids the problem of rigidity.

 

[Shadeydm]

As did the interminable (IMO) video of WotC staffers playing out the fight with the mind flayer. Every hit was described, when it was described, in terms of physical damage, sometimes nasty physical damage.

However people want to define hit points in their 4E games, it's pretty clear that WotC intended (and intends) them to represent --in some significant fashion -- physical damage.

Did they have a warlord healing too, because that would be interesting in light of this information?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Most definitely!

Of course, we are unsure whether the hackle-raising disappears because of face-to-face communication or because of the pub........

 

[Raven Crowking]

I disagree. The rules guide you down the physical injury path as I showed above, but as you say, it is up to the player's and DM to narrate around this to avoid quantum wounding.

From how I'm reading my 4E rules, the problem is caused by how the rules are explicitly and implicitly presented mixed with how groups have typically played in previous editions. You can either tepidly narrate against it or you can just use the neutral "you take x points of damage" and leave it at that; or you can describe the wound that has knocked a character unconscious and describe the character getting back up to unhindered health the next day (which bothers some) and introduces the Schroedinger's wounding conundrum.

This.

 

[GlaziusF]

I agree that one of the weakest parts of the 4e rulebooks is the lack of advice and examples of narration of ingame events in light of game mechanical results. In this respect it compares very poorly to a number of other RPG rulebooks.

I think GlaziusF posted upthread that the lack of examples has the advantage of leaving things flexible rather than having some examples become canonical. But I think it is possible to give examples in a way that avoids the problem of rigidity.

It's actually not, surprisingly.

Work by Ward and others (for example "Structured Imagination" in Cog Psych 27:11 pp 1-40, 1994) demonstrates the idea that people asked to come up with a creative idea and given an example will tend to hew very closely to that example. It's why most SF aliens tend to be Forehead People. Even better, people given an example and told to judge answers by creativity will judge how different the provided answers are from the example.

Still crazier is the fact that people told to be creative and given something that generally has strong associations will bring those associations in. That's why people tend toward viewing hit points as a continuum between dead and alive, since hit points are expressed in numbers, which as a ratio measure lend themselves to a continuum with a zero point.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Still crazier is the fact that people told to be creative and given something that generally has strong associations will bring those associations in.

If that wasn't the goal, the people should have been told "be creative while avoiding resonance."

Including resonance is not being uncreative.


RC

 

[Scribble]

It's actually not, surprisingly.

I'm not really sure how suprising I find that... I'm guessing it has to do with how humans learn about patterns and the world around them.

If it's know that snake bites cause death by poison...

Those that follow the example of not getting bitten don't die... those that strike their own path, and say let themselves only get bitten on the foot... have a much higher chance of dying.

Anyway that's a difefrent topic...