D&D 4E Simple 5e Healing that reconciles pre-4e and post-4e HP styles

[El Mahdi]

A well-designed pit trap...

Ahhh, but now you've revised what you said with it's a well-designed pit trap. I agree, not all pit traps are created equal.

Your statement however was that it was just as logical or illogical to make falling into a pit trap (period, no qualifier), result in instant death just as it would be to fall in lava.

Obviously a well-designed pit trap will have a higher DC than a less well-designed one. But I can still see someone surviving even a well-designed pit trap, although likely seriously injoured. Not so for falling into (onto) lava. It is feasible for someone to continue fighting after falling into a pit trap. Damage from a pit trap that didn't reduce one to zero or less (incapacitation or death), is easily explained as serious piercing wounds to limbs or even the torso. Wounds which people can and have continued fighting with even in the real world.

The wounds which Anakin suffered, which is likely the best case scenario for an encounter with lava, does not leave one able to continue fighting in any way shape or form. That's an automatic reduction to 0 Hit Points (Complete Incapacitation or Death).

They aren't the same thing...

A coup-de-grace is only an automatic critical hit, which is a trained warrior armed with a lethal weapon, against a helpless opponent, lining up a shot for six seconds. It's bound to result in decapitation or otherwise massively fatal injury. Again, it's not something you can shrug off with guts, luck, or reflexes (because you're helpless). Either hit points represent actual physical toughness, and characters can survive things like being dropped into lava or being stabbed in the brain with a boar spear, or they're not, and any situation where a character can't avoid an obviously lethal hazard should be instant death.

I understand and agree. But this post isn't discussing whether a Critical Hit causes Instant Death or not, it's discussing the definition of a Critical Hit. And that's not the point you made in the post of yours I quoted.

In the real world, a coup de grace would accomplish what you're saying. But according to the RAW of D&D, it does not. As illogical as you and I may feel that to be, and as much as we may change that in our games, it's not the rules of D&D.

If you want to use your definition of a Critical Hit to support your position that this is comparative in logic or illogic to instant death from lava, then so be it. Just remember the rest of us are likely using the game rules as the standard for this discussion, and not someone else's personal definition that we can't possibly have known.

But I understand your point. A coup de grace should be instant death also. And I agree.

However, not all Critical Hits are coup de grace.

If you're high enough level to tank the damage caused by lava, you're also at the level where supposedly nonmagical humans are capable of contributing in a fight where Wizards are calling down lightning bolts and meteors on a routine basis, and you can probably challenge a Giant Squid to a wrestling match and win (if you're built for grappling). High level D&D characters are iron age superheroes, and if you want them beating up dragons and demons that out mass them by orders of magnitude without relying on layer upon layer of magical force fields, they're going to have to have superhero-level feats of durability.

If anything, it's even less plausible to suggest that normal humans who just happen to have a lot of skill go regularly go into fights with giant monsters and come out with just a few scratches without ascribing some level of superhuman damage resistance to them. Well, you could make lava as instant death, but also eliminate Huge and larger monsters (since that's at the level where one good hit should turn a normal perfectly healthy human into a pile of broken bones and organs in a pool of gore).

You're describing a default assumption of the game that is not a constant at all tables, nor is presented in the rules as a default assumption.

I agree with most of what you're saying. But it's not the dafault assumption of D&D. It's much more varied and flexible than that. (I'm not speaking of mechanics, but of what the game is...super hero, gritty, sword & sorcery, standard fantasy, etc.)

But that is in essence, the same thing I and others are saying about Lava. So, I understand your point.

A Cure Critical Wounds or two and he'll be good as new.

True. But until that happens, he's at 0 Hit Points or less, automatically. Falling into Lava means Death (most likely), or Incapacitation (best case). There is no other possible realistic outcome.

Until he get's that magical healing, he cannot fight.

That's what people are talking about when they say that Lava should be instant death. D&D RAW disagrees, but that's a change some people want. Whether that would be good for D&D as a game, I don't really know. But I'd like that included, and some of the things you brought up as well.

 

[CleverNickName]

It's not a bad system. It seems balanced enough, and it throws a bone to both sides of the "what is damage" boilerplate. But it's not really my cup of tea. In combat, I don't want to have to keep track of two different life meters for every creature on the battlefield.