Take the Narrative Wounding Challenge.

[Mallus]

I've not kept up with this whole thread, but regarding major battle wounds, maybe just don't narrate entrails spilling out or limbs coming off if the PC has healing surges left? When healing surges are used up, then you know the character is vulnerable to more serious wounds. Am I missing something here, it's still early and I've not finished my coffee yet.

You're missing the desire to present 4e's damage mechanics as ludicrous while holding up the prior edition's mechanics as at least semi-realistic.

The same techniques for sensibly describing damage taken that people have suggested for prior editions --linking wound severity to remaining HP and not just the amount of damaged rolled-- work equally well for 4e.

The only difference is instead of describing the increasing severity of wounds as a character approaches zero HP, you hold off on the truly graphic, sucking chest wound-esque stuff until the character is approaching zero HP -- with no healing surges remaining. Just like you pointed out...

 

[Mallus]

I thought it reasonably explained the rat bite killing the tough fighter but not killing the anemic 2hp wizard.

Hey, I gave it a "B"! That's a respectable grade (unless you have a Tiger Mother) .

I suppose you could still explain it that riding/running/bending bars will weary the fighter (and since he is pretty tough, he can still hang on while producing this effort), but it is the extreme pain of the bite (or alternative attack) that pushes him towards cardiac arrest and his deity. Pain straight to the brain, over adrenalize, and already sorely tested heart goes bye bye. I still like it.

I like your explanation, too. In fact, having to come up with bats*t rationalizations like this for the effects produced by the rules are one of chief joys of role-playing gaming! It's still nonsense, though, from a sensible perspective, to suggest the pain from a bite or a nick will send the fighter into arrest, but heavy cardio performed in armor not just will not, but cannot.

That said, I'm totally using your description should the situation come up in my AD&D campaign tomorrow night! Several PC's are low on HP, and the dungeon is high on rats...

I have to agree that AD&D requires a lot of bashing and interpretation to "be used" in a somewhat realistic manner.

I'd say all editions.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Hard for it to be the next day as Han Solo left before night on the same day to get him, and found him just before dusk.

Yes, but Luke had been staggering around for some time before he collapsed. Just how long, we don't know. Hours? Days?

 

[billd91]

Yes, but Luke had been staggering around for some time before he collapsed. Just how long, we don't know. Hours? Days?

Hours? Possibly. Days? Definitely not supported by the tone or context of the situation.

 

[Hussar]

Actually, we don't know how much time has passed. I'd argue that Luke has been unconscious overnight and awakens at 1 hp.

Except that this doesn't work in 3e mechanics. For one, if he's gone negative after Mr Wampus has beaten the crap out of him, he's almost sure to die. In earlier editions, this is guaranteed, since you bleed out unless someone helps you.

Now, in 3e, which is the edition under discussion, the following rules apply:

Stable

A character who was dying but who has stopped losing hit points and still has negative hit points is stable. The character is no longer dying, but is still unconscious. If the character has become stable because of aid from another character (such as a Heal check or magical healing), then the character no longer loses hit points. He has a 10% chance each hour of becoming conscious and disabled (even though his hit points are still negative).

If the character became stable on his own and hasn’t had help, he is still at risk of losing hit points. Each hour, he has a 10% chance of becoming conscious and disabled. Otherwise he loses 1 hit point.

Luke becomes concious at negative hit points, not overnight. We see Luke becoming concious. I guess you could argue that he'd become concious and then went back to sleep, allowing for a night of rest, however, this is completely unsupported by the movie and runs contradictory to the fact that Han sets out to find him quite quickly.

Fortunately we don't have to use 3e. If you use SWSE, the wampa's attack sent Luke down 5 steps on the condition track or, if it did in his hit points, he spent a Force point to not die.
Then, maybe he used his second wind to get back some hit points.

Keep in mind that it's not always just the change of narrative options, it's the frequency with which this occurs. In SWSE, Luke can only catch his second wind once per day. (Twice if he spent a feat on it. Thrice if he also took a specific talent.) He can only do it so often. I would argue that in 4e, it can happen so often that it cheapens it too much.

ARRRRGGHGHHGH!

Why do you continue to prove my point? My whole point was that you can't do that story in 3e. That you can do it in a different system is the whole point. Now, did we lose this huge narrative space in D&D to gain the ability to do this narrative?

That's the question. In my mind, no we didn't. We lost something that was really quite corner case and idiosyncratic to specific DM's in order to gain a trope that is almost so common as to be a cliche.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

That scene cannot be done in 3e.

Yes it can and in fact it is in 4e that it is highly unlikely to be replicated.

In 3e, once you've gone below zero hp, you're done. It's been argued very eloquently that a character that drops below zero is most likely going to die, but, even if he stabilized, he still couldn't fight.

This is actually the classic case of a PC going into the negatives and miraculously surviving without help. Remember, the force is strong in this one.

1) Luke who appears in good health is ambushed by the wampa, struck once and goes unconscious - into the negatives in either edition [or ii) below looks at an alternative for this]. He is then dragged to the Wampa's cave.
2) Time passes (undetermined).
3) Luke regains consciousness uses the force and kills the Wampa.

In 3e, there are two possibilities:
i)Luke got struck down to -1 hps and stabilized and made all his checks and begins healing naturally back 1 hit point to zero in the wampa cave while it dines on tauntaun (this means Luke has to be able to rest for 8 hours). I'm not too sure how well this fits in with the time frame of the story. While at 0hp and at only a standard action each round, Luke kills the wampa and escapes to eventually be found by Han. The vision of Ben Kenobi just before this indicates that the "force" is definitely at subtle work here.
[The time spent healing is questionable and undetermined, particularly in relation to time spent unconscious or possibly asleep and "resting". While the peculiarities of this situation are unlikely it is somewhat possible if Luke only "just" went into negatives and is of higher than 1st level (a given I feel in "3e")]

ii) An alternative to this is that you could say that Luke had taken x amount of exposure nonlethal damage by being out on patrol in the bitter cold of Hoth. Let's say that the Wampa blow does damage leaving Luke with y hps. However, if x exceeds y then Luke is knocked out and recovers 1 nonlethal hp an hour. If the difference x - y is 3 or less, then that gives luke a couple of hours of unconsciousness and that fits in more securely with the expected narrative I feel with the timing of Luke's escape and Han's rescue of him.

In 4e
Luke gets struck down from full capacity to negatives in one hit. Conventionally speaking using 4e this is highly unusual (where as in 3e a big critical hit on a flat-footed target is a little more reasonable).
Luke now has to stay unconscious for an undetermined but certainly not trivial period of time. Let's say it is for about an hour at minimum. Now because Luke was seemingly at capacity, he presumably has healing surges to burn (he certainly does not appear to be at low or zero surges). And so all he needs to do is make his "20", and then second wind (or if used [unlikely given he was at capacity] short rests before surging away) and bam he's back into the action. Except he stays unconscious for quite a while. In fact so long that the chance of Luke not rolling a 20 and not getting more than two strikes quickly fades to a practical value of zero. He can survive unconscious for a minute (without saving with a 20) but the chance is about 4.5%. He can survive for two minutes but the chance now drops to about 1 hundredth of a single percent. Surviving in this style for about an hour is not exactly reasonable (although again, you could say that the "force" plays a part in this).

The other alternative is that Luke does save (roll 20) in a reasonable time frame (a matter of rounds) but for some reason does not use his second wind when being dragged back to the cave (although again this is compromised by the fact that Luke is still unconscious or at best asleep in the cave [narratively knowing Luke, waiting in such a way until he has been pinned into the cave roof makes little sense]). Why not act with the light sabre as soon as possible? Or perhaps he waited 10 minutes in an unconscious state being dragged back to the cave (statistically incredibly unlikely but again with the force acting) before recovering. Or perhaps Luke wasn't at capacity (having already used his second wind and not recovered it) and had not taken a short rest (again highly unlikely). Thus he needs to wait for a short rest (although as soon as he makes his save, he is supposed to be conscious - maybe he's just taking the opportunity for a quick nap). I have the feeling 4e "should" be able to replicate this but I'm struggling to come up with a reasonable narrative that facilitates it using the mechanics at our command.

And so, I think the point is that neither edition easily facilitates the wampa scene. I think it fair to say that the "force" was at work protecting Luke in some strange way and this is not conventionally facilitated by either of the rulesets although the ii) 3e option I think is the most easily adapted mechanics-wise to the scene.

Again interesting discussion.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Pentius]

Conventionally speaking using 4e this is highly unusual (where as in 3e a big critical hit on a flat-footed target is a little more reasonable).

Nitpick. A solo monster in 4e(like the wampa probably would be) dropping a character with low to middling HPs(like Luke probably would be, the Jedi's strength is not in taking blows) on a crit is not unfathomable, or even, ime, that unusual.

 

[billd91]

ARRRRGGHGHHGH!

Why do you continue to prove my point? My whole point was that you can't do that story in 3e. That you can do it in a different system is the whole point. Now, did we lose this huge narrative space in D&D to gain the ability to do this narrative?

Maybe it's because, for one thing, you keep cooking your proposals in ways that are entirely self-serving of your argument. Did Luke get knocked into negative hit points? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe that wampa had some ability to KO his target without actually removing all its hit points. In such a case, 3e can handle the situation just fine.

If we were to take just your construction of the situation, in which we actually do hit negative hit points, it may be the case that some form of internally tapped healing serves the purpose well. But that's not the only way to achieve the situation in an RPG - something that I would have hoped my post pointed to.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Nitpick. A solo monster in 4e(like the wampa probably would be) dropping a character with low to middling HPs(like Luke probably would be, the Jedi's strength is not in taking blows) on a crit is not unfathomable, or even, ime, that unusual.

This is interesting because it goes against my experience with 4e (but obviously not yours). What do you think Luke's level would be within the 4e structure at this point? How many hps would you expect him to have? How much damage would an appropriate solo do (considering that Luke most likely kills the wampa with a daily which again does not seem to fit in with 4e mechanics but I suppose critical/force/light sabre equals a one shot kill for Luke but not in my experience in 4e). By the way in 4e, our group tends not to be hyper-optimizers so I don't know if that has an effect on this or not (I'm pretty sure it doesn't but heh, who knows what those optimizers get up to these days).

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise.

 

[Pentius]

This is interesting because it goes against my experience with 4e (but obviously not yours). What do you think Luke's level would be within the 4e structure at this point? How many hps would you expect him to have? How much damage would an appropriate solo do (considering that Luke most likely kills the wampa with a daily which again does not seem to fit in with 4e mechanics but I suppose critical/force/light sabre equals a one shot kill for Luke but not in my experience in 4e). By the way in 4e, our group tends not to be hyper-optimizers so I don't know if that has an effect on this or not (I'm pretty sure it doesn't but heh, who knows what those optimizers get up to these days).

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise.

Well, the entirety of Star Wars, in my opinion, would take place during heroic tier(1-10). That puts Empire Strikes Back at around level 4(this was near the start, iirc). I'd class Luke as an Avenger, so assuming 10 con he'd have 42hp(Avengers actually get pretty nice HP, now that I check them).

Lemme crack open the adventure tools to look at some near level solos...

The Young Green Dragon is a level 5 solo skirmisher, pre-mm3 math, that could do 20 damage on a crit(2d8+4) and it gets to make that attack twice if it is against a single target. That's from MM1, assuming the tools don't update to MM3 math he should be doing another 50% or so. So, not quite dropping Luke from full HP, but still able to do it in a turn.