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

[Raven Crowking]

On the contrary.

If you could get somebody to believe that mustard was a flying alien, that would be MAD creative.

Can't you just see a little glass jar bobbing down the condiments aisle at Kroger's, getting more and more furious until it starts breaking out the death rays?

One could only get another to believe that mustard was a flying alien by finding some sort of resonance between the two ideas -- thus become "less creative" by the standard you espoused earlier.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

If the distinction between 3E natural healing mechanic and 4E natural healing mechanic is that the 3E character can be badly wounded and the 4E character cannot, then what is the mechanical definition of 'badly wounded'?

In 3E, in the negatives is good enough for me. They're going to have to stabilize, and slowly work their way back to consciousness and some form of health. In 4E with the RAW, the only time you seem to be enter a condition of "badly wounded" is if you die. As I said before though, I still don't think D&D has got the whole hitpoints/damage/healing thing right.

Is it any time the character takes more than 6 hours to regain his full hit point total?

No, although if one can naturally heal within 6 hours back to unhindered health, I think it's fair enough to say that they were not "badly injured" - pretty much what I said.

If so, the 3E Barbarian with 19 hit points at first level is 'badly wounded' if he takes 2 points of damage. He won't be at full for two days unless he gets complete bed rest.

-Hyp.

In the scheme of things, a 1st level 3E barbarian with 19 hit points and another one with 17 hit points, will perform similarly in combat. As such and in context, I don't think describing the 17 hit point barbarian as badly wounded would be accurate.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Hypersmurf]

In the scheme of things, a 1st level 3E barbarian with 19 hit points and another one with 17 hit points, will perform similarly in combat. As such and in context, I don't think describing the 17 hit point barbarian as badly wounded would be accurate.

The wizard with 4 hit points and no remaining spells won't perform similarly in combat to the barbarian with 19 hit points. Is he badly wounded, by virtue of having expended his spells?

-Hyp.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Because in six hours, with absolutely no treatment, he's at perfect peak fighting form.

No version of D&D deals with debilitating wounds properly, The week recovery for wounds with out magical care is just as unreal as the 6 hours in 4th edition and no version models the long term debilitating effects of suffering such wound either not to mention the death due to oppurtunistic infections.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

No version of D&D deals with debilitating wounds properly, The week recovery for wounds with out magical care is just as unreal as the 6 hours in 4th edition and no version models the long term debilitating effects of suffering such wound either not to mention the death due to oppurtunistic infections.

I am afraid we are still running circles, because this has been said before.

I think these are the cruicial differences regarding hit points:
1)
Healing all damage and regaining all healing surges per day means that most concern for "operational" play or sandboxes is gone. Even if healing time and rules have always been unrealistic, this affects the play style the strongest. I am not sure how people dealt with Cure Light Wound Wands, though, since they mostly had the same effect on play. Of course, that is just an artifact of 3E and didn't exist before, as far as I know.

The only thing I'd like to point out: Once you have Clerics with healing spell in the mix, it is not unlikely (and I think that is even true before 3E) that you can recover all damage in one day by blowing all healing spells on the injured characters. I am still not convinced that a difference of 16 hours in rest period is that relevant to play. Unless magical healing was in fact removed from game, short healing times will be part of the game.


2)
Since you do no longer need any magical regenration abilities to regain hit points, hit points become more abstract or imprecise. Either you assume wounds regenerate incredibly fast (few would do that), or you assume that characters can be at full hit points and yet be injured (only thanks to a heightened moral and soldiering on they managed to ignore the pain), or that real injuries are only ever taken if a character died. The latter means you have a state where you don't know if there was a serious wound or a superficial wound until the dying character is stabilized or dies.
In both the later cases you have to accept that the rules do not describe the characters status entirely, they really only describe his fighting ability, not whether he looks or is injured or not.

Where do people disagree on these observations? (avoiding to tell me that this is a terrible thing to do to the game or to tell me that this is the greatest invention ever.)

 

[GlaziusF]

2)
Since you do no longer need any magical regenration abilities to regain hit points, hit points become more abstract or imprecise. Either you assume wounds regenerate incredibly fast (few would do that), or you assume that characters can be at full hit points and yet be injured (only thanks to a heightened moral and soldiering on they managed to ignore the pain), or that real injuries are only ever taken if a character died. The latter means you have a state where you don't know if there was a serious wound or a superficial wound until the dying character is stabilized or dies.
In both the later cases you have to accept that the rules do not describe the characters status entirely, they really only describe his fighting ability, not whether he looks or is injured or not.

Where do people disagree on these observations? (avoiding to tell me that this is a terrible thing to do to the game or to tell me that this is the greatest invention ever.)

I disagree that real injuries even need to be taken if a character died. Plenty of people die all the time by, say, falling down and cracking their heads, or drowning, and heck, even if you want to get into mythology, at the end of John Henry, John just lays down his hammer and he dies, with the whole "it burst in his chest" bit being added in many years after the original legend.

The steam drill didn't have to come over and punch through his chest, he was just so tired that when he sat down he couldn't get back up again.

I also disagree that having wounds regenerate incredibly fast is somehow not fitting. It isn't always, of course, but it's a great way to model damage to the servant of a god of healing or sacrifice.

You know, like I said in the original post?

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I disagree that real injuries even need to be taken if a character died. Plenty of people die all the time by, say, falling down and cracking their heads, or drowning...

Cracking one's head... drowning... not real injuries? I think if a character has died to a bunch of kobolds and a goblin with a big weapon, they've taken an injury. While I appreciate once more your imaginiation, I think its best to keep things within the context of a game that's modelling armed heroic characters and monsters fighting each other. If you die, it's extremely likely that it's a "real injury" that's going to have done it.

I also disagree that having wounds regenerate incredibly fast is somehow not fitting. It isn't always, of course, but it's a great way to model damage to the servant of a god of healing or sacrifice...

Great idea (I personally think) but as you allude to, this will apply to only an incredibly small minority. Within the context of D&D as I mentioned above, wounds regenerating very fast doesn't make sense (to the vast majority of campaigns), leading to the situations the good Mustrum Ridcully details.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I disagree that real injuries even need to be taken if a character died. Plenty of people die all the time by, say, falling down and cracking their heads, or drowning, and heck, even if you want to get into mythology, at the end of John Henry, John just lays down his hammer and he dies, with the whole "it burst in his chest" bit being added in many years after the original legend.

The steam drill didn't have to come over and punch through his chest, he was just so tired that when he sat down he couldn't get back up again.

That is a possibility, too, but I would consider it as rare. (But is cracking a head not some kind of injury?)

I also disagree that having wounds regenerate incredibly fast is somehow not fitting. It isn't always, of course, but it's a great way to model damage to the servant of a god of healing or sacrifice.

It would work for that, but I think this would still be a rare case. Especially for those that the 4E hit point model is a problem, this still seems to be a problematic approach.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

The wizard with 4 hit points and no remaining spells won't perform similarly in combat to the barbarian with 19 hit points. Is he badly wounded, by virtue of having expended his spells?

-Hyp.

Obviously not. The expenditure of spells has no effect on the wizard's hit points. The 4hps represents the fact that if the wizard is hit, chances are the shot's going to take him down (into the negatives) fighting for his or her life.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Hypersmurf]

Obviously not. The expenditure of spells has no effect on the wizard's hit points. The 4hps represents the fact that if the wizard is hit, chances are the shot's going to take him down (into the negatives) fighting for his or her life.

So having low hit points and not being as effective in combat doesn't define the badly-wounded state either.

So when is someone badly wounded in 3E? We can't say "3E allows for people to be badly wounded, but 4E does not" if we can't say when someone in 3E is badly wounded.

-Hyp.