OK. So you're a mind reader now. You were actually sitting round the table when 4e was created.
No, I'm just reading the books. Look at Commanding Presence, pure gamist effect, no description of how it happens. And again, you have dropped the ridiculous power of teleporting enemies through the power of your commanding presence.
Oh, so what you are saying is that hit points are a purely gamist construction with no actual in-universe description, just a technical effect.
They always have been a technical construct, extremely abstract. Read Gygax' perspective on them in AD&D.
You are also by the same token saying that a to hit roll is a purely gamist construction that does not have an in-universe justification, just a technical effect. You roll to hit and you succeed in hitting but you do not actually hit or produce any marks on the foe's body, merely taking away their divine favour or luck despite the mechanics saying you hit. And this is entirely and completely expected.
It is certainly part of the design. Please tell me where it says that an attack hitting actually causes a wound ?
At this point how do you not think that the entire thing is purely an excercise in gamist abstractions?
The main difference is that, contrary to the absurdity of Commanding Presence, they have multiple in world explanations, and these have been provided again and again, in slightly different form over the editions.
Since your version of D&D has combat where neither the hit points nor the to hit rolls have any resemblance to what is actually happening and are merely the abstract numbers produced by pieces on a board where do you have a problem with 4e making what those pieces on a board do interesting?
Yes, I have, because I can weave a fiction around simple abstract concepts when they have been created with storytelling in mind. Hit points are actually mostly plot protection, if you think about it, making sure that some characters survive things that would instantly kill mooks and unimportant characters, nothing more.
Whereas 4e attacked this from completely the opposite perspective, making a combat boardgame and trying to justify purely technical powers in terms of story, and utterly failing, I've given you many examples.
Which power was it? I genuinely didn't notice the named powers.
I've given you the name of the power each time.
You're talking about Temporary Hit Points here? Something with no actual plausible justification, just a technical effect. And not even an interesting one.
No, temporary hit points serve the narrative by being extra plot protection, you can get them from divine powers or inspiration or luck or spells, they are not typed and have limited effect, but can be weaved in the description of what happens: "the sword should have skewered you, but thanks to the blessing of the gods, the blow is deflected and you are unharmed / it's barely a scratch / a dent in your armor".
You mean that there's less confusion round the enemy so they are easier to target? This is not the opposite.
How do oyu translate "quiet the storm of battle" into "gaining a power bonus to attack" ?
Nope. That's cinematic. Rushing towards the enemy and having the team rush.
But they don't, they can use the move to go in any direction, and I guarantee that it is what will happen, I've actually used it.
I don't know if you have ever watched water move, but if you rush forward the whole thing can be laminar or turbulent - and this is turbulent. You give everyone speed to go where would do most good. Sweeping isn't always in a straight line.
Swept ALONG...
No I don't. They are far less grounded in reality and far more gamist than moving around the battlefield. I consider that there are gamist elements to 4e - and hit points and temporary hit points are among the biggest. The G in RPG stands for Game - and I don't consider this a problem. You apparently do.
No, I don't. It's good that it's a game, and you can play it whatever way you want. I'm just saying, in the context of this thread, that if you play technically, you stiffle your fiction/narrative game, and 4e pushed that to the extreme, that's all.
And 4e is the single version of D&D where hit points are the least abstract and gamist. In every other version of D&D hit points are a purely and completely gamist construct where you belly up to the enemy and mechanically play patty-cake while your abstract gamist hit points go down the way they do in a computer fighting game. You hit each other (and the rules say you hit) like unfeeling, untiring robots who are completely as mechanically capable on 1hp as full hp.
4e on the other hand is a game where you explicitly get blooded.
Not necessarily: "Hit points represent more than physical endurance.
They represent your character’s skill, luck, and resolve—all the factors that combine to help you stay alive in a combat situation."
The "bloodied" only means that you have lost half of your hit points. If all that you have lost is skill, luck, and resolve, you might not even have shed a drop of blood. If you want to implement it as "having shed some blood" in your game, why not, but you will have to be careful because of what follows.
4e shows exactly the same paradigm as the other editions, you fight at peak efficiency until the very last blow, hence all the previous blows cannot have a real physical effect on you, otherwise they would incapacitate you. It's not a bad paradigm, because it's exactly the one that is used by most of the fiction of the genre. But it's a very specific one that requires specific explanations in terms of weaving the narrative.
It's a game where you tire (using up encounter powers and even dailies) over the course of the fight. It's a game where stamina management is a thing - and where you actually need time to recover properly from a fight. You aren't an effectively untiring robot able to fight all day at peak efficiency even if you don't get "hit" (whether or not those hits mark you).
I'm not sure where you get that using encounter and daily powers tire you and are linked to stamina. For spellcasters, it's actually not the case.
The problem is that you see everything in only one interpretation, but there are many different interpretations, even in 4e, and other editions have many more as it is more open.
It's definitely "Batman has no superpowers while in the JLA, honest" level.
You just evaded the question, again, why should commanding presence actually heal you ?
"Are known as healing". If I were being pedantic I'd point out that you wouldn't need to say "they are known as healing" if they actually all caused physical healing. From a gamist mechanic they have similar effects - but bandaging wounds doesn't immediately make them closed. It does cover them and leaves them less vulnerable but that's not instant healing.
Honestly...
Sorry, but all editions of D&D combat by your description is purely and completely 100% gamist by your standards. You are "schrodinger hit" - hit but not hit in a way that costs you hit points but might not even mark you. And the effect is precisely the same as in a video fighting game; you belly up to each other and exchange attacks with some getting through until one of you reaches 0. At that point that person falls.
And the difference is that in an openended edition with "explainable" powers, I'm free to weave the narrative that I want, whereas 4e forces ridiculous powers that make no sense in any narrative.
So stop doing so. And stop doing that with hits and claiming that you can be hit hard and not even marked. Or is having your cake and eating it only a problem with hits and hit points only a problem when someone else is doing it? Or is the real problem here that as far as hit points are concerned 4e is less gamey and gives you something concrete to hold on to rather than simply being a hacked tabletop wargame with almost no concessions to reality?
Once more, the point is that the narrative that 4e forces upon me with its inconsistent powers that create bizarre effects is not the one that fiction supports. I have given you many effects, but you avoid answering the more embarrassing ones...
oD&D was a hacked tabletop wargame, called itself a wargame, and the combat is purely gamist. The hit point model used is precisely the same as that in a video fighting game where things are called hits, have the same effect as hits, may even call themselves critical hits, and may even show x-rays of bones breaking in Mortal Kombat. But the effect is absolutely nothing until the last sliver of that health bar vanishes.
4e by contrast is the least purely gamey version. Rather than just about the whole thing being abstract gamist mechanics it's far closer to cinematic fiction.
And again, you keep telling this with exactly zero support. Please, once more, explain how a simple shout teleports an enemy across the battlefield, and in which cinematic universe you have seen this happen without magic being involved.