Take the Narrative Wounding Challenge.

[Saeviomagy]

We've once again reached a place where it's okay to use a healing surge as a heroic way to ignore wounds you've taken, but you're not able to be heroic enough to heal for a few days and be mobile before most other people are able to.

I don't think anyone has said that - what I'm seeing is people saying that both are pretty much equivalent. Neither is realistic, so neither is better or worse than the other. This thread is a defense against the premise that "4e healing leaves less ways for me to explain damage than prior editions". People pointing out that prior editions were less than realistic is merely getting the same sort of ruler applied to pre and post 4e mechanics, ie an unrealistic one.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Hussar I dont need a system that replicates the real healing process. I am fine with a character recovering from a serious wound in a week in a heroic setting. What i dont like is the wound instantly healing without the aid of magic. This is a spectrum and for me healing surges just go too far in the direction of forcing me to backtrack on what only happened seconds ago. If healing zurges took a week, i would not have much of an issue. So for me point three of your rules is kind of meaningless. I dont think d&d does that kind of realism well. But that doesn't meaning healing surges dont cause a radical shift toward even less realistic combat.

 

[JamesonCourage]

We've once again reached a place where it's okay to use a healing surge as a heroic way to ignore wounds you've taken, but you're not able to be heroic enough to heal for a few days and be mobile before most other people are able to.

I don't think anyone has said that - what I'm seeing is people saying that both are pretty much equivalent. Neither is realistic, so neither is better or worse than the other. This thread is a defense against the premise that "4e healing leaves less ways for me to explain damage than prior editions". People pointing out that prior editions were less than realistic is merely getting the same sort of ruler applied to pre and post 4e mechanics, ie an unrealistic one.

I say, "I dislike 4e natural healing mechanics because they do not support a narrative where a wound takes a while to heal", and I get back, "well, 3.X didn't have realistic mechanics on wounds healing naturally either!"

This entirely misses the point of my complaint. It's not about realism, it's about narratives. I want the mechanics to abstractly represent something that I can model to fit a particular narrative. I want to be able to have a narrative unfold where it a wound takes a small amount of time to naturally heal, or it takes a long time to naturally heal.

My point is that realism is being used as a measuring stick. I want the opportunity for heroism, and pressing on with no penalties is fine for me to represent that, as is recovery that happens faster than is "realistic". You don't need a completely realistic mechanic to negate my complaint, you need wounds that take a while to heal.

That said, the repeated use of realism as a defense is missing the point, to me. Again, if I say, "I dislike 4e natural healing mechanics because they do not support a narrative where a wound takes a while to heal", then I shouldn't hear, "well, 3.X didn't have realistic mechanics on wounds healing naturally either!" I didn't complain about realistic rules. I'm complaining that the current rules are not supporting a standard modern fantasy-genre narrative where someone is out of the action for a bit with a wound.

Don't apply a realistic measuring stick when it isn't appropriate. You say "neither 3.X nor 4e had wounds represented realistically, so they're both equal." That's your opinion, and that's fine. However, it's not addressing my issue. I'm saying that 3.X represented a heroic attitude of persevering despite bad wounds, and 4e represents pushing on through the healing surge or second wind mechanic. Clearly, my issue is not with realism. I'm okay with either being seen as heroic. I just want the narrative space available to easily access wounds that take a long time to heal naturally.

The rules of the "narrative challenge" in the thread include:

Rules:
The wound must be fully recoverable within 2 weeks of rest without any magical intervention.

In the rules of the thread, the wound must be fully recoverable within 2 weeks of bed rest without any magical intervention. I assume this is based on realism. What I'm saying is that it's missing the point of some complaints in the other thread that this thread forked from.

It's not the fact that you don't don't take penalties that bugs most people, it's that you can't really be wounded for the long term. It's not because it's "more realistic" that they want it to happen, it's that it's more believable, because the narrative flows more naturally. They jump through less hurtles saying, "you're bleeding out" and moving on than by saying "you may or may not be bleeding out, we don't know yet."

I've had parties that were all spellcasters, and I've had parties that were all melee characters. I've had all rogues, or fighters, or clerics. I've had balanced parties more often than not, but sometimes the guy who goes down is the cleric, and magical healing isn't available. In times like these, falling into the negatives isn't a "corner case", it's directly applicable to the game at hand, and I've seen natural healing come up often.

Personally, long term wounds vs. short term wounds isn't a corner case for my group, as they're two very distinct types of wounds you can receive. Having a wound that heals over the course of a day versus having a wound that heals over the course of a week are two very different things. The former might be some bad bruising or a scratch, while the latter might be minorly infected, or a bruised rib, or a head blow.

The point is, most of the time, it's "you were gravely injured, but we were able to nurse you back to health" or "I was injured, but I camped in the woods, nursing my wounds until my health returned." It's not the actual quality of injury that is in question, but the type of injury: serious or minor.

People don't like that 4e seems to have "minor or dead" and that's it. And to me, that's perfectly reasonable. You and others may be okay, since neither is realistic enough to matter to you. To others, the narrative space of "minor wounds" and "dead" is separated by "serious wounds", and they'd like the mechanics to support that narrative within the core rules.

Wrapping the whole issue up as one of realism is missing the point of the complaint of the current implementation of healing times. As always, play what you like

 

[Summer-Knight925]

You are struck by the orc's cruel blade, it skims across your armor and finds you're left arm, as the blade sinks in deep you are spun around, landing on the ground. You are at -2.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Now, I disagree. I don't think the narrative space has changed much at all between 3e and 4e.

I don't particularly like how damage and healing is presented in either 3e or 4e. I don't like that skill, toughness and divinity are mixed in with capacity for damage through hit points alone. An ideal system for me is one that separates the "D&D definition" of hit points from the physical capacity for damage.

As such, narratively speaking I like neither but I have particular narrative issues with 4e. My main narrative issue is that any damage that puts a character into negatives (that is knocks them out or playing around with it incapacitates them for an undetermined period of time) is either going to kill the character or be recovered from in a day. Both these options are at either end of the spectrum with nothing in between. 3e at least allows the capacity for the in between (taking days or perhaps weeks to recover) and as such has a greater narrative playground with which to describe wounding as well as a greater range of effects.

A 4e fix for this is easily enough done by having certain "injuries" (I think this has been done using a disease track) restrict how quickly healing surges are recovered. This requires bashing the system around a little and certainly changes the feel from traditional 4e to something a little more gritty.

Setup: A PC is attacked by an unarmed troll and hit. The PC is dropped to negative 5 hp by the attack.

Challenge: Describe that hit.

Rules:
Your description must be potentially lethal.
Your description cannot be immediately fatal since the PC could make his stabilization check.
The wound must be fully recoverable within 2 weeks of rest without any magical intervention.

[DM]You duck but the troll's fist thumps into your brain case with a gout of blood spraying in all directions. You fall to the ground with blood pooling under your unmoving skull.

This could be potentially lethal.
It has conveyed an incapacitating wound but not immediate fatality.
The wound could take days or even weeks to heal unassisted.

For bonus points, explain how this wound could be narrated in 4e.

The hit could be described exactly the same but without the pooling blood which would seem to indicate a longer term or possibly fatal wound. As we don't wish to convey a long term or fatal wound when the PC could literally get up and after a short rest be acting at capacity (and be at full capacity within a day), the narrative space for something seriously grizzly but not fatal is restricted with 4e RAW.

In 3e, because in practice healing magic was abundant, the DM would feel free to perhaps be a little more gonzo with their wound description (such as steeldragons above) knowing that either:
a) You would have a TPK and the troll a belly full of PCs - and thus the description does not matter or
b) The rest of the party pulls through and heals the savagely wounded PC immediately with magical healing (they are not going to let him heal naturally with abundant healing resources typically available).

In 4e, the narrative spectrum can be further compromised in practice by the presence of a warlord (possibly as the only "healer"). If a stern or encouraging talking to can get a fallen PC up, then the DM is going to be especially wary with their wound descriptions, perhaps just leaving the description until after the fatality or otherwise of the damage has been established. As a DM, I don't like having my hands tied this way and as indicated above, I prefer the divorcing of skill/toughness/divinity from physical damage so the system informs me exactly of the physical damage I have to describe.

Sorry Hussar but I think you are wrong on this one.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Hussar]

We've once again reached a place where it's okay to use a healing surge as a heroic way to ignore wounds you've taken, but you're not able to be heroic enough to heal for a few days and be mobile before most other people are able to.

It's beginning to feel repetitive and like something that isn't going to be grasped at best, and purposefully disingenuous and misleading at worst. It's not about complete realism. It's about having the mechanic leave the narrative opportunity for long term or short term wounds. I don't care if a PC gets knocked out for a few days before he heroically gets up and moves around without penalty. This is similar to using a healing surge to heroically ignore wounds.

But honestly, you can do a lot with blood loss and an infection. Blood loss for unconsciousness (and potentially bleeding out), and an infection that keeps you down for a few days (unconscious, or conscious but delirious). The infection eases, you get up, still injured but heroically pressing through it. You'll go down in one hit, because you can't take much punishment, but as a hero, you're ignoring most of the injuries (like a healing surge lets you).

This is why I say it's one-sided treatment. Healing surges are potentially heroically brushing aside the pain and wound, but getting up after days is too far (for some reason I can't understand). It's perfectly believable for healing surges to work, but not for healing naturally and being injured but ignoring penalties.

This call for complete realism being applied to one side, and the other side is getting the pass because it's "heroic". Let's apply both evenly, please. If you want heroism in your 4e, allow it to work in pre-4e wound healing. As always, play what you like

That's one HELL of a fast acting infection to drop me moments after the initial wounding.

The reason for the 2 week time limit was based on the original thread where the example came up.

So, basically, we're stuck with "As long as some time passes I'm okay" vs "As long as one day passes, I'm okay".

My point is that because both time periods are ridiculous, who cares? If you can narrate complete healing from these wounds in a matter of days, why does it suddenly break your disbelief to do it in a day?

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Thank you Herremann for actually stepping up instead of just whining that the challenge is rigged. Apparently it's too difficult for other people to actually provide examples to back up their claims.

"[DM]You duck but the troll's fist thumps into your brain case with a gout of blood spraying in all directions. You fall to the ground with blood pooling under your unmoving skull."

/snip (bold mine just for reference)

The hit could be described exactly the same but without the pooling blood which would seem to indicate a longer term or possibly fatal wound. As we don't wish to convey a long term or fatal wound when the PC could literally get up and after a short rest be acting at capacity (and be at full capacity within a day), the narrative space for something seriously grizzly but not fatal is restricted with 4e RAW.

In 3e, because in practice healing magic was abundant, the DM would feel free to perhaps be a little more gonzo with their wound description (such as steeldragons above) knowing that either:
a) You would have a TPK and the troll a belly full of PCs - and thus the description does not matter or
b) The rest of the party pulls through and heals the savagely wounded PC immediately with magical healing (they are not going to let him heal naturally with abundant healing resources typically available).

In 4e, the narrative spectrum can be further compromised in practice by the presence of a warlord (possibly as the only "healer"). If a stern or encouraging talking to can get a fallen PC up, then the DM is going to be especially wary with their wound descriptions, perhaps just leaving the description until after the fatality or otherwise of the damage has been established. As a DM, I don't like having my hands tied this way and as indicated above, I prefer the divorcing of skill/toughness/divinity from physical damage so the system informs me exactly of the physical damage I have to describe.

Sorry Hussar but I think you are wrong on this one.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

/edit - missed the "pool of blood" part the first time around. Sigh, must learn to read more carefully. I suppose it really depends on how big your pool is. The dead guy, sure, he's swimming in it. The guy who's not dead? Well, that pool has a pretty limited size no matter what, otherwise he'd just be dead.

Well, since your description is pretty vague, there's nothing saying that the character couldn't recover very quickly. After all, head wounds do bleed rather a lot, even relatively minor ones. The Warlord shouts at the wounded character, he wakes up from being knocked unconcious and discovers that his wounds are not quite as bad as they looked. After all, there's nothing specifically saying that the character is seriously wounded, other than a lot of blood.

I would say that this narration would work perfectly well in 3e or 4e.

Now, as to the point whether the presence of magical healing makes for a wider narrative space, that I would likely agree with. It's not so much the healing surges or 4e hp mechanics, it's that in 3e, the only way you heal (by and large) is through magic. It's pretty rare for natural healing to play much of a role, so, go nuts. That's an argument I'll buy.

 

[Hussar]

You are struck by the orc's cruel blade, it skims across your armor and finds you're left arm, as the blade sinks in deep you are spun around, landing on the ground. You are at -2.

Sorry about that SK925, missed you on the first time through. Nice. I could totally buy that as something that would drop you, perhaps killing you with shock and blood loss later, or as something you could recover from reasonably quickly.

Like, perhaps, the next day.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I know it isn't strictly playing by the rules here, but in d&d I've never used narrative description of wounds (except possibly on death if hp are grossly exceeded). Ive always embraced the abstractness of hp and not worried about it.

By contrast, in RQ it was always narrated, since in that system there was a 1:1 relationship between hp and physical damage. You knew when someones gut was bleeding or an arm had been cut off!

 

[JamesonCourage]

That's one HELL of a fast acting infection to drop me moments after the initial wounding.

Um, did you read it? I said, "Blood loss for unconsciousness (and potentially bleeding out), and an infection that keeps you down for a few days (unconscious, or conscious but delirious)." The shock of the wound, or blood loss from it, can take you out quickly. The infection keeps you down.

But again, the argument keeps coming back to realism, rather than the want of narrative range. Which is what I've been saying; it misses the point.

The reason for the 2 week time limit was based on the original thread where the example came up.

So, basically, we're stuck with "As long as some time passes I'm okay" vs "As long as one day passes, I'm okay".

My point is that because both time periods are ridiculous, who cares? If you can narrate complete healing from these wounds in a matter of days, why does it suddenly break your disbelief to do it in a day?

You're missing an entire narrative range there. You have "minor wound" and you have "dead". Some people like the narrative range that includes "serious wound" that falls in between those, and the fact that you can't have that is a drawback to me, and obviously to others. You may not care, and that's fine, but the inability to accept that others care if baffling.

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Thank you Herremann for actually stepping up instead of just whining that the challenge is rigged. Apparently it's too difficult for other people to actually provide examples to back up their claims.

You're not addressing the issue, you're framing it incorrectly. Which was the point of my post. Framing it as a realism issue is missing the point. As always, play what you like

 

[Hussar]

I know it isn't strictly playing by the rules here, but in d&d I've never used narrative description of wounds (except possibly on death if hp are grossly exceeded). Ive always embraced the abstractness of hp and not worried about it.

By contrast, in RQ it was always narrated, since in that system there was a 1:1 relationship between hp and physical damage. You knew when someones gut was bleeding or an arm had been cut off!

To be honest PS, this is exactly how I play as well.

Which, I guess, is why I've never really had the issues that people are claiming for 4e.

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Jameson Courage. Hey, if you don't want to play, there's nothing forcing you to hit that submit button. You've repeatedly claimed that 4e narrows the narrative set. Either put your money where your mouth is or don't take the challenge. No skin off my nose.

But, constantly whining about how the challenge is "rigged" is off topic and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop spamming my thread. You want to talk about what you want to talk about, the Start Thread button is right there. Otherwise, step up to the plate. Let's see examples of these narrative wounds that I cannot narrate in 4e.