Pathfinder 1E So what do you think is wrong with Pathfinder? Post your problems and we will fix it.

[Ahnehnois]

Maybe... but at least one poster in this thread has stated outright that a rogue who describes his martial powers as a form of magic get's more leeway in the usage of said powers than one who describes them as just being that good...

I believe that's called "balance".

 

[herrozerro]

I believe that's called "balance".

If you really want to go there, then let's just clear the air. I am a very lenient dm when it comes to stuff like this. It takes a lot and I mean a lot for something to just not work. If the player can describe how it works then it's golden. Even if they can't I will try to find a reason why it works from the other side of things.

It has to be a real corner case for something not to work. I've never come across it in the 4 years I ran 4e. since it's never happened, most of this is hypothetical. So, in all honesty I've never had to disallow a power. But if I ever did, it would be at a point where everyone at the table is stumped as to how it actually worked.

 

[Bluenose]

Come on man. Your definitions in 619 are cherry picked to include only the usage of regeneration which includes tissue regeneration. That is not the only usage in common vernacular and certainly not the only usage that merriam webster has available. This is absolutely ridiculous that we're here, but of the 3 transitive verb usages for regenerate, the reference to physical tissue regeneration is but one.

What makes it amusing to me is that if "Restoration leads to recovery of hit points" = "Restoration is magic" then "Resting leads to recovery of hit points" = "Resting is magic". I don't know how many newts we have posting here but I've never known anyone who went to sleep and grew their hand back. Maybe hit point loss should be described some way other than body part removal, for the sake of consistency in the explanation if nothing else.

 

[pemerton]

Barbarians do have a rage powers that gives them vigor and fast healing.

So, following this lead I found the following ability on the PF srd site (from the Ultimate Combat supplement, I think):

Regenerative Vigor (Ex)

Prerequisite: Barbarian 6, renewed vigor rage power

Benefit: After using her renewed vigor rage power until her current rage ends, the barbarian gains fast healing 1 for every 6 barbarian levels she has (maximum fast healing 3). She regains hit points from fast healing at the start of each of her turns.​

This power uses the word "regenerative", which is an adjectival form of "regeneration", in its name. It is labelled as EX, which means that it is non-magical. And it confers fast healing. Both terminologically, and in mechanical effect, it is virtually indistinguishable from Boundless Endurance.

For those PF players who take the view that regeneration means knitting together damaged tissue, is that what this "regenerative vigour" involves? And if that is possible, non-magically, in PF world, why is it impossible in 4e world?

[MENTION=91812]ForeverSlayer[/MENTION] and [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], is this power actually magical despite being labelled non-magical by its authors?

every example of damage being dealt in this definition is physical injury... That makes it kind of hard to take seriously any claims that damage is purely the subtraction of hit points, especially since you yourself have claimed the fiction matters...

Here's another excerpt from the dying and death defintion of the compendium...

<snip>

This is just to re-affirm the fact that your character actually dies... not stops fighting or looses the correct pacing or whatever from hit point loss... How is this possible if they are in no part a representation of physical injury to the character?

<snip>

no one argued any edition of D&D has general death spiral or debilitation mechanics and that fact has no bearing on whether damage and the resulting hit point loss is tied to physical injury.

Damage is described in 4e, at the very least in part, as physical injury (see the above examples)... so if one is physically injured then one takes damage and that physical injury is, again at least in part, represented by missing hit points...

Now, if you are able to heal hit points to the point that you are no longer missing any you are, for the third time...at least in part, healing physical injury.

This is all non-sequitur. Except in the case of the claim about the irrelevance of the absence of death spirals, which is just false.

Here is an analogy. A person who runs out of money, and who can't pay his/her bills, is insolvent. A consequence of insolvency is bankruptcy. But that doesn't mean that money is a measure of or representation of your solvency (accountants can create such representations, but at that point we're not just talking about your money). Nor that every time you spend money it's useful to think of that as moving up and down on a scale towards bankruptcy. Money is not "solvency points" or "staving off bankruptcy points".

Hit point's in 4e are, as the game rules indicate, a measure of verve and endurance. As verve and endurance are lost, so are hit points. As verve and endurance are regained, so are hit points. One way to lose verve and endurance is to be injured, but there is no rule in the game that correlates severity of injury to loss of verve and endurance (eg some characters, especially certain NPCs, may have so little verve and endurance that even the lightest injury incapacitates them, while other characters, especially PCs, may be able to sustain quite serious injuries while retaining verve and endurance). Furthermore, even if suffering an injury causes me to lose verve and endurance, I can recover that verve and endurance without healing the injury. (This is the whole premise of the absence of a death spiral in D&D.)

Finally, if you look at the descriptions of the "injuries" in the ongoing damage passage, they are all rather abstracted and don't refer to debilitation other than by way of pain: non-fatal, non-performance-impeding burns, or poison, or a "plague chant" (whatever exactly that is - something that magically corrupts the flesh, I'm guessing). There is no reference, for instance, to severed limbs, damaged organs, or other injuries that can't be overcome by any degree of verve and endurance. I regard that as deliberate. It is consistent with the overall hit point model.

TL;DR: a fighter who regenerates hit points lost to plague chant or ongoing fire damage is not magically healing damage flesh. S/he is fighting on despite the damage, with renewed verve and vigour. Much like the AD&D fighter who fights on unimpeded despite having lost all but 1 of his/her 80-odd hit points.

 

[pemerton]

There is no need for the martial equivalence of midichlorians. A fighter trains relentlessly, considers innumerable ways to control and harry his opponents, etc. They are what they are.

Outrageous! Martial midichlorians are mandatory! Anything less will ruin my immersion (how could anyone immerse into Star Wars with all that Force nonsense until we got midicholrians to spell it out?).

at least one poster in this thread has stated outright that a rogue who describes his martial powers as a form of magic get's more leeway in the usage of said powers than one who describes them as just being that good

And? For all you know that same character is also vulnerable to anti-magic effects, or being detected by enemy magic-detecting traps, or whatever else, than the self-described purely martial rogue.

The game rules leave it open whether or not martial power is a form of non-traditional magic. They leave it open what magic means, also, which was Campbell's main point. is Jet Li's character in the Once Upon a Time in China movies magical or not? For that matter, is his character in Tai Chi Master magical, or not? The game doesn't need to take a stand on that. It seems to me that its the prerogative of [MENTION=86211]herrozerro[/MENTION] and the players at his/her table to take advantage of that flexibility as they see fit.

 

[Ahnehnois]

For those PF players who take the view that regeneration means knitting together damaged tissue, is that what this "regenerative vigour" involves? And if that is possible, non-magically, in PF world, why is it impossible in 4e world?

It means, that against all odds, you've made an on-topic post. Barbarian rage powers are probably one of the most tangible and fixable problems with PF, for precisely this reason (i.e. that they don't belong in the PF world), as several posters noted in the early pages of this thread.

However, I would note that with regards to [MENTION=6774827]EnglishLanguage[/MENTION] 's line of thinking that brought this up, this must mean that the barbarian is "playing a fake cleric".

 

[Wicht]

So, following this lead I found the following ability on the PF srd site (from the Ultimate Combat supplement, I think):

Regenerative Vigor (Ex)

Prerequisite: Barbarian 6, renewed vigor rage power

Benefit: After using her renewed vigor rage power until her current rage ends, the barbarian gains fast healing 1 for every 6 barbarian levels she has (maximum fast healing 3). She regains hit points from fast healing at the start of each of her turns.​

This power uses the word "regenerative", which is an adjectival form of "regeneration", in its name. It is labelled as EX, which means that it is non-magical. And it confers fast healing. Both terminologically, and in mechanical effect, it is virtually indistinguishable from Boundless Endurance.

For those PF players who take the view that regeneration means knitting together damaged tissue, is that what this "regenerative vigour" involves? And if that is possible, non-magically, in PF world, why is it impossible in 4e world?

Regeneration in Pathfinder, as well as Fast Healing, are generally understood to be the knitting together of damaged tissue and are magic only by exception. They are both Extraordinary abilities which are biological in nature and will thus work in non-magic zones. That being said, one can gain these abilities via magic and then they are magical.

But, I must disagree with you that it is virtually indistinguishable from the 4e ability. As I said, they are biological abilities in Pathfinder and conform to the definition of biological regeneration, which, as we all know at this point, has nothing whatsoever to do with 4e regeneration. So, in fact, they are completely different things.



[MENTION=91812]ForeverSlayer[/MENTION] and [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], if I may be so bold, I suggest you simply accept the wisdom of Pemerton and his co-debaters that 4e hp has nothing to do with health and everything to do with verve and endurance. The fighter rent by the troll obviously just feels more discouraged than his comrades and is that much closer to slipping into a dark morass of deadly malaise from which he will not awaken. 4e Regeneration just restores his verve and will to live.

 

[Wicht]

It means, that against all odds, you've made an on-topic post. Barbarian rage powers are probably one of the most tangible and fixable problems with PF, for precisely this reason (i.e. that they don't belong in the PF world), as several posters noted in the early pages of this thread.

Hurrah, a post back on topic...

As someone who does not actually have any problems with a barbarian, may I ask what your problems are with rage?

Maybe we can fix it?

Now, my having said that I don't have a problem with them - I do think they are one of the classes most open to min-maxing without regard to internal story coherence.

 

[Ahnehnois]

As someone who does not actually have any problems with a barbarian, may I ask what your problems are with rage?

Rage, while no longer uses per day, is still time per day, rather than something fatigue-based. Rage powers, beyond the rather ominous name, also house some dubious content (not just that regeneration thing) and are needlessly complicated.

To me, playing a barbarian should feel like you're playing a barbarian. No menus of powers to select from, no resource management. Just say what you want to do and do it. Which to me, means that rage should be limited by fatigue and that the bonuses should be static and broad.

 

[pemerton]

Regeneration in Pathfinder, as well as Fast Healing, are generally understood to be the knitting together of damaged tissue and are magic only by exception. They are both Extraordinary abilities which are biological in nature and will thus work in non-magic zones.

A 6th level barbarian can have this ability. When a 6th level barbarian is fast healing 1 after having healed 1d8+ CON from Renewed Vigour, what is happening in the fiction? Are you telling me that it looks like Wolverine in the X-Man movies?