D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[Neonchameleon]

Eh ?

115 HP One hundred and fifteen hit points ?

He's including all the healing surges I think.

 

[slobo777]

Healing surges unlike healing require no external mechanism they are your hit points no magic required just 5 minutes.

Yes, I figured out where the 115 was coming from later om . . .

Really comparing the numbers directly is meaningless, unless you have a hankering for simpler adding/subtracting. I get that when you get into 1d20+27 attacks versus 35 AC. But hit points are another dimension.

In 4E, not only is the 1st-level fighter probably expected to take ~20 damage per fight, by the typical numbers, but they are locked out from accessing most of those 115 points within a fight.

In 3E, the mechanics are very different. The expected damage in a fight at first level is much lower (typically because bad guys have a lower chance of hitting the fighter's high AC). Healing resources are much lower too, but they are available in a daily pool, making the size of a day's adventure of more relevance than the size of an individual encounter.

It's useful to understand these differences, because they affect how you build and play adventures. And different styles may appeal to different groups. The actual numbers, however, are quite low down on what makes the games different.

It should be possible to design a game with tiny hit point numbers, where the variation is held in probabilities to do damage in the first place (perhaps a WoD style of "resisting" damage with your Con). But such a change on its own would say IMO not very much about the feel of the rest of the game.

 

[Obryn]

You still haven't shown me anywhere that I mentioned about knowing your campaign better than you do.

And you haven't answered my question.

Since the last two paragraphs weren't in reference to the balance issue, what exactly were you replying to, if not the style of my campaign and how well the 4e rule set works for it?

I mean, you can clear up any confusion real quick here, if that's not what you meant.

-O

 

[Hussar]

Healing surges unlike healing require no external mechanism they are your hit points no magic required just 5 minutes.

Unfortunately, you're only presenting a small portion of the actual mechanics. For one, you cannot spend healing surges at will in an encounter, thus, in any situation where you might die, you don't actually have access to all those hit points. Secondly, you can easily die with healing surges left. Any attack which drops you below 0 HP is potentially fatal - fail those three saves and you die.

So, yeah, you're presenting a rather skewed view of the mechanics by trying to claim that all HP are available to the character. It's no different than me saying that a character with a wand of Cure Light Wounds now has 400 more HP.

Could we at least make a small amount of effort to try to stick close to the truth?

 

[Obryn]

To suggest that 4E 1st level HP inflation is a little higher than than previous editions is like saying Greece's inflation and jobless rates might be a little high lol.
a 1st level 4E Fighter with a 16 con has 115 HP without even trying to optimize that is way beyond a little higher than any edition that came before it.

Healing surges unlike healing require no external mechanism they are your hit points no magic required just 5 minutes.

...and yet only a small fraction of those are available in a single combat, which is the main context in which HPs tend to matter when we're discussing low-level character lethality. Otherwise, yes, by this logic 3.x fighters have infinite HPs.

You see, the same data could let me argue that healing in 4e is much more limited. In 4e, you have a hard cap on your daily healing in your surges. In 3.x, you have as many HPs as your cleric has spells or your healsticks have charges.

(And I'm pretty much not taking any answer seriously anymore if it boils down to, "because MAGIC!")

-O

 

[Shadeydm]

Unfortunately, you're only presenting a small portion of the actual mechanics. For one, you cannot spend healing surges at will in an encounter, thus, in any situation where you might die, you don't actually have access to all those hit points. Secondly, you can easily die with healing surges left. Any attack which drops you below 0 HP is potentially fatal - fail those three saves and you die.

So, yeah, you're presenting a rather skewed view of the mechanics by trying to claim that all HP are available to the character. It's no different than me saying that a character with a wand of Cure Light Wounds now has 400 more HP.

Could we at least make a small amount of effort to try to stick close to the truth?

Just because you can't soak all 115 HP at once doesn't change the fact that they represent your ability to take hit point damage. No wand no potion no magic no spell just you all by yourself. How exactly am I not telling the truth in this statement?

 

[Obryn]

Just because you can't soak all 115 HP at once doesn't change the fact that they represent your ability to take hit point damage. No wand no potion no magic no spell just you all by yourself. How exactly am I not telling the truth in this statement?

Sure it does. It absolutely changes the fact.

In what pragmatic sense does it matter in a single battle if the Fighter has only theoretical HPs?

Please compare/contrast to potentially unlimited HPs between fights with a healstick or three. Other than, "MAGIC!!" that is.

-O

 

[pemerton]

In the session I GMed earlier today, the 18th level fighter went from 105 hp (about one surge value of max) to minus-sixty-something in a couple of rounds: the hydra breathed fire on him, bit him, and then in his end-of-turn phase bit again twice and critted with one of those for 50 points from that bite alone. (There was also about 30 points of damage from environmental effects and ongoing fire damage inflicted by one of the bites.)

The fact that the fighter had half-a-dozen surges left with a surge value of 40 or so each didn't help him!

Just because you can't soak all 115 HP at once doesn't change the fact that they represent your ability to take hit point damage. No wand no potion no magic no spell just you all by yourself.

What does this even mean until we know what it means to "take hit point damage"? In my own play experience, it means that skilled fighters can win fights - even fights where they get knocked down but get back up - and, after a quick rest, fight again.

That's a distinctive feature of 4e as a version of D&D, but I don't think the best way to convey it is by converting healing surges into hit point totals. For a start, that would give a misleading impression of the ability of a skiled fighter to win a fight.

I think people forget that this game involves dice which means there is a chance that PC's will fail. Movies and books do not work this way. No matter how many times you read it or watch, it will never ever change. What happens is set in stone and will always be, D&D does not work this way. Can you play that way? Yes of course you can but no edition is fully built that way. 4th edition is built more towards that style of play

Two things.

First, I have no idea why you think that 4e is build towards "scripted" play. The most scripted adventures that I'm familiar with are Dead Gods (2nd ed AD&D Planescape) and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits (3E Planescape). The 4e adventures that I know are no more scripted than a 3E adventure like Bastion of Broken Souls. And there is nothing in the mechanics of the system that particularly encourages or pushes towards scripting compared to other editions of D&D.

Second, I have no idea why you identify the possiblity of PC death as the only (or principal) means of departing from a script. There are many ways to introduce surprise, complication and spontaneity into an RPG session without having the PCs die!

I'm not trying to prove that is style badwrongfun (I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader)

This made me laugh, but I couldn't XP it.

 

[Shadeydm]

Sure it does. It absolutely changes the fact.

In what pragmatic sense does it matter in a single battle if the Fighter has only theoretical HPs?

Please compare/contrast to potentially unlimited HPs between fights with a healstick or three. Other than, "MAGIC!!" that is.

-O

You mean beyond the fact that a "healstick" is a (magic) device and a healing surge is your hitpoints (internal, not external intervention required) and while its been a few years since i've played 3.x i'm pretty confident that freshly rolled 1st level character just starting out doesn't have a "healstick". So um yeah ok whatever you say...

 

[Ahnehnois]

So is magic that easy, that you can just come off the farm and start using it like - not a master, but you're certainly not finding it difficult to cast easy spells, and you're probably quite knowledgeable about a variety of academic topics?

A fair point. It is worth noting, I think, that recommended starting ages are significantly higher for classes like wizards than for, say, barbarians (at least under the 3.X rules). There is also some precedent for 0-level characters.

That being said, I have to agree that D&D rules have never handled amateurs and youths or their transition to heroes very well; the 4e classes are only incrementally worse in that regard, particularly because of increased hit points and (for spellcasters) magic at will from the start.