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Simple 5e Healing that reconciles pre-4e and post-4e HP styles
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<blockquote data-quote="Buugipopuu" data-source="post: 5850640" data-attributes="member: 41173"><p>A well-designed pit trap (still costing less than a single mid-level magic item) will have spikes taller than a Medium creature and spaced closer than the average width of such a creature's limbs. And be a hundred feet deep. You're not getting out of that with luck, guts and good reflexes (unless you're of the opinion that Evasion works with extradimensional spaces). If having all your internal organs impaled with spikes isn't immediately fatal, falling into lava shouldn't be either. The alternative is to say that HP means your flesh is superhumanly tough, and even falling onto spikes from a hundred feet isn't enough force to drive said spikes into any vital organs, which also works for lava. Or that all spiked pit trap designers in dungeons guarding powerful treasures are retards and don't put in spiked pits capable of killing the sorts of people that would attempt to get said treasure, even though it's a tiny fraction of the dungeon's total budget to do so.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's actually been done in real life, sure it's highly unlikely, but rolling 20 1s on 20d6 is highly unlikely, so that's not a problem.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>A Cure Critical Wounds or two and he'll be good as new.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Buugipopuu, post: 5850640, member: 41173"] A well-designed pit trap (still costing less than a single mid-level magic item) will have spikes taller than a Medium creature and spaced closer than the average width of such a creature's limbs. And be a hundred feet deep. You're not getting out of that with luck, guts and good reflexes (unless you're of the opinion that Evasion works with extradimensional spaces). If having all your internal organs impaled with spikes isn't immediately fatal, falling into lava shouldn't be either. The alternative is to say that HP means your flesh is superhumanly tough, and even falling onto spikes from a hundred feet isn't enough force to drive said spikes into any vital organs, which also works for lava. Or that all spiked pit trap designers in dungeons guarding powerful treasures are retards and don't put in spiked pits capable of killing the sorts of people that would attempt to get said treasure, even though it's a tiny fraction of the dungeon's total budget to do so. 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. That's actually been done in real life, sure it's highly unlikely, but rolling 20 1s on 20d6 is highly unlikely, so that's not a problem. 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). A Cure Critical Wounds or two and he'll be good as new. [/QUOTE]
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