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

[Cadfan]

I prefer the low fantasy style where people don't miraculously heal, unless magic is involved in the healing.

How often does magic get involved in healing in your game?

If you're like most people, the answer is, "All the time, multiple times per day. Magic healing happens continuously."

Which is fine and all, but I don't think its compatible with "low fantasy." That's high fantasy. I think "low fantasy" is much more compatible with the idea of hit points representing not physical wounds, but simply how far you are from falling unconscious in a sort of nebulous sense.

Enjoy what you enjoy, I guess, but I don't think that making magical healing of sucking chest wounds into a multiple-times-per-day occurrence makes your game "low fantasy."

 

[Dragonblade]

You've demonstrated that you can construct a damage model for a character which exhibits "Schroedinger's Wounding" - one in which regaining hit points has different physical effects depending on the power source of the healing.

Actually that's not quite correct. I should know since I invented the theory of quantum hitpoints as they applied to 4e back in March.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...tpoints-modelled-after-quantum-mechanics.html

Basically, the quantum theory of hitpoints states that the actual physical effects of hitpoint damage to a 4e character exists in an indeterminate quantum state until the damage is recovered from, or the character dies.

So "Schrodinger's Wounding", as the term has come to be called, doesn't mean that regaining HP has different effects depending on the source of the healing.

What it means is that the nature of the original hitpoint damage (i.e. actual wounds vs. fatigue vs. morale) sustained by a character cannot be determined until those hitpoints are recovered by a character. It is the source of the hitpoint recovery that determines the original nature of the damage sustained.

For example, if a character suffers damage in combat, and then is healed by the Warlord's Inspiring Word ability, then the damage in question was fatigue or morale damage. Not wound damage, since words of encouragement cannot heal physical wounds.

Therefore if the DM had described that damage as wound damage when it occured, the DM would be proven wrong if the PC is then healed by an ability such as Inspiring Word. This would result in a retroactive time paradox because the DM would then have to revise their prior description of the source of the damage. Otherwise known as a "retcon".

To avoid such game "reality" paradoxes, HP damage can only exist in an indeterminate quantum state until the damage is recovered from, at which point the quantum wave function collapses and the DM can now accurately describe the original damage based on the nature of the recovery.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Defining a game mechanic during play is not role-playing and consistently requiring a player to define those elements just says the game cannot mimic reality without constant redefinition into something other than what it is. Lack of operational symmetry is a fault for any kind of role-play.

But I think in the context of role-playing games, it doesn't have to be a problem. It can in fact be something players enjoy, especially if it grants particular freedoms that a harder game-rule/game-world mapping can't provide.

If you are free to interpret certain game mechanics in different ways, you avoid the problems of rules that can become too complex. If you try to have a rules framework that allows you to map any (or at least a large enough subset) conceivable gameworld actions into rules, your rules might become to complex. You might, for example, want to have a rule for called shots, the difference between an uppercut and a bashing attack, the rules for fighting (and perceiving) with or without a helmet, and so on. All these can be things to describe in the game world and probably would matter in it - but we don't always want to bother also applying rules for this. I think the goal of rules is not just to provide a way to resolve situations at all, but to resolve them in interesting ways without requiring to much of our mental efforts.
Maybe this is just a "gamist" approach, but I think rules complexity should be geared towards providing a certain "tactical" element - how do I solve a problem? That is basically the same thing we do outside the rules framework: "How do we free the captured slaves? How do we navigate through this dungeon?"
One of the disadvantages of matching game rules and game world to close is that you think constantly in rule terms. You can't just freely narrate what your character does, you have to describe everything accurately in the rules. But that's not really how your character would think - he just does his thing. When you're swinging a sword, you probably don't think about skill checks, DCs, weapon hardness, handedness and what-else the game rules offer. And removing the rules a little more from this strictness means you can operate more freely on the descriptive level, and still have all the fun of using the rules in a clever way.

Actually that's not quite correct. I should know since I invented the theory of quantum hitpoints as they applied to 4e back in March.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...tpoints-modelled-after-quantum-mechanics.html

Basically, the quantum theory of hitpoints states that the actual physical effects of hitpoint damage to a 4e character exists in an indeterminate quantum state until the damage is recovered from, or the character dies.

So "Schrodinger's Wounding", as the term has come to be called, doesn't mean that regaining HP has different effects depending on the source of the healing.

What it means is that the nature of the original hitpoint damage (i.e. actual wounds vs. fatigue vs. morale) sustained by a character cannot be determined until those hitpoints are recovered by a character. It is the source of the hitpoint recovery that determines the original nature of the damage sustained.

For example, if a character suffers damage in combat, and then is healed by the Warlord's Inspiring Word ability, then the damage in question was fatigue or morale damage. Not wound damage, since words of encouragement cannot heal physical wounds.

Though maybe words of encouragement make you willing to go on despite painful or nasty-looking wounds? That would bring us back to "Schroedingers hit points" - we don't know what the hit points you currently have represent - do you have all those hit points due to experience, training and a good health? Or is it because you're still highly motivated?

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Actually, the more I read these threads, the more I think the issue comes back to this:
What level of fantasy do you want in your game?
Do you play gritty, low fantasy games with long healing times?
or
Do you play action packed, high fantasy games with healing times hand waved to be more like Bruce Willis/Bond characters?

I prefer the low fantasy style where people don't miraculously heal, unless magic is involved in the healing.

It is comments like these that add feul to the fire are are unnecessary.

I didn't read any offense in what Zustiur said. Don't stress too much about it.

One could more politely say:

I prefer low fantasy...where healing takes longer...etc.

Its not a matter or miracles that PCs heal in 4E, its just faster than your preference.

Hmmm...the rate of healing in 4E does seem pretty miraculous; at least when compared to the "real" world. With the rules as written, you can go from death's door to premium grade health in about a day without any outside assistance. I would not myself be offended by someone calling this timespan miraculous - 4E characters are heroic aren't they?

I believe looking at the RAW, the quantum wounding/healing situation does exist - see Dragonblade's post. For some players, this is just going to be a complete non-issue and completely irrelevant to their fun at the table. For others (combined with the quicker than realistic hit point recovery, as well as their more "traditional" concepts of what hit points are), this is going to be a source of awkwardness that pops up more than just occasionally. I can't see why both sides of the fence don't just agree to disagree. To put up the hand and so "yes" or "no" this does/doesn't affect how our group plays, we're still having fun or whatever.

For me, the biggest problem with hit points is that they are generally trying to account for physical damage as well as other aspects such as skill, divine favor, inner power, the will to go on and so on. If hit points were split into their constituent parts (physical damage-hit points; and everything else-combat points), then I think you would find that almost all the hit point anomalies go away, and people are free to interpret the non-physical damage however they wish. But that is a subject of another thread I started here.

Anyway, peace people. There have been lots of great ideas expressed here, be it imaginitive interpretations for hit points and how they are roleplayed, or the sharp analysis of the 4E RAW.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I believe looking at the RAW, the quantum wounding/healing situation does exist - see Dragonblade's post. For some players, this is just going to be a complete non-issue and completely irrelevant to their fun at the table. For others (combined with the quicker than realistic hit point recovery, as well as their more "traditional" concepts of what hit points are), this is going to be a source of awkwardness that pops up more than just occasionally. I can't see why both sides of the fence don't just agree to disagree. To put up the hand and so "yes" or "no" this does/doesn't affect how our group plays, we're still having fun or whatever.

I don't really know, but some "positive" motivations I'd like to offer:
- They want to really understand the other side. How do they come to experience the problem or not to experience it? What thought processes do they follow?
- They want to see if there is a mechanic that works good for both sides. Maybe, if we discuss it long enough, someone will have a genius idea that will satisfy both sides.

Maybe these motivations are hopeless. I sure never had the impression we got closer to achieving either end (certainly not to satisfy any of the still involved posters...)

 

[crash_beedo]

Enjoy what you enjoy, I guess, but I don't think that making magical healing of sucking chest wounds into a multiple-times-per-day occurrence makes your game "low fantasy."

QFT. Every time I've seen a complaint that the 4E hit point and healing system isn't realistic, the alternative is usually the CLW wands and magic, magic magic. If hit points never equal physical damage, than surges don't equal physical healing... its kinda simple.

But I think all this discussion of D&D's hit point has convinced me to go back to THE real gritty system... I'm dumping my books for RoleMaster! We need herbal healing and months of game time healing those broken bones and internal organ damage.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

QFT. Every time I've seen a complaint that the 4E hit point and healing system isn't realistic, the alternative is usually the CLW wands and magic, magic magic. If hit points never equal physical damage, than surges don't equal physical healing... its kinda simple.

But I think all this discussion of D&D's hit point has convinced me to go back to THE real gritty system... I'm dumping my books for RoleMaster! We need herbal healing and months of game time healing those broken bones and internal organ damage.

Totally. My sense of wonder is destroyed unless I require seventeen weeks of bed rest attended by a character with the correct combination of skills in order to recover from a mace injury to the left clavicle.

 

[Dragonblade]

Though maybe words of encouragement make you willing to go on despite painful or nasty-looking wounds? That would bring us back to "Schroedingers hit points" - we don't know what the hit points you currently have represent - do you have all those hit points due to experience, training and a good health? Or is it because you're still highly motivated?

Indeed. Game physicists everywhere continue to seek answers to this quantum quandry.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I believe looking at the RAW, the quantum wounding/healing situation does exist - see Dragonblade's post.

It's an issue if you assume that a decrease in hit points of X, followed by an increase in hit points of X, returns the character to the identical cinematic state he was in prior to the two events.

In Doom, your health is expressed as a percentage... and there's a little picture of your face at the bottom of the screen. At 100%, you look fine. At 50%, you show some a bloodied nose. At 20%, there's more blood, and one eye is blackened and swollen. (Numbers are vague and approximate!)

If you pick up a health pack and go from 20% to 50%, some blood disappears, and your eye unblackens and unswells. When you go from 50%, to 20%, to 50% again, your cinematic representation is identical before and after the -30, +30 sequence. If 30% damage meant "More blood, black eye", then 30% healing means "Heal the eye, wipe some blood".

If you treat 4E hit points the same way - "I said that when he lost 6 hit points, that was a shallow slice along his ribs, and when he lost 12 hit points, it was a club to his face that broke his nose" - then healing must reverse the cinematic effects of damage. When you heal him 12 hit points, his nose becomes unbroken. When you heal him another six, the gash along his ribs disappears.

And this is where Quantum Wounding appears.

But if you don't require an increase in hit points to cinematically reverse exactly the effects of the decrease in hit points, Quantum Wounding doesn't occur. If 6 damage can be a slice in the ribs, but then 6 points of healing can represent a reinvigoration of fighting effort? Then after the cycle, you are not returned to an identical cinematic state (you still have a slice in your ribs, but it's not impairing you); thus it's not necessary for you to know the form of the healing before cementing the form of the damage.

It's only when you assume that healing reverses not only the hit point loss, but exactly reverses the cinematic description of the effect of the hit point loss, that Quantum Wounding rears up.

So I don't make that assumption, and it's not a problem.

-Hyp.

 

[vagabundo]

Indeed. Game physicists everywhere continue to seek answers to this quantum quandry.

Maybe the new Goblin collider can solve this issue. Where the hell is that link....