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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6051819" data-attributes="member: 2067">Actually, neither provides the kind of gameplay I'm looking for, because both treat HP as an encounter resource rather than as an adventure resource, and I'm not looking to have people healed up to full HP after every encounter.But by the numbers, CLW are not an unlimited resource. Plentiful, but there's wealth by level, and treasure is awarded based on encounters, and magic items can only be sold in towns of certain sizes, etc. But that's a pretty arcane rules interaction and anyway is besides the point -- both treat HP as an encounter resource, which makes a problem with affecting HP outside of encounters.Those miss the point. HP is the tool with which one models "damage" and "life-threatening injury" in D&D because it's one of the few things that can actually kill your character permanently (running out of surges does not, unless you also combine it with HP damage). But HP cannot be used for that when HP are an encounter resource because life-threatening injuries that are not also part of encounters cannot use HP to model the damage they do.That's a pretty strong disconnect. It's something that 5e is still struggling with, because it wants to preserve HP as this easily-recovered resource, which isn't letting it be used to model damage and life-threatening injury, because those things are mutually exclusive.I like 4e just fine. But it's worse for me for non-combat for one big reason that I point out in the article: there are not rules where I want them.Pre-4e there were rules that played to the archetype. Fighters could bend bars and lift gates. Wizards could charm people. Clerics could command. Rogues could hide in shadows. These were important abilities because other characters didn't really get these capabilities -- they were exclusive to your archetype. Their exclusivity was part of their power. More so than their raw bonus. Okay, Rogues can have the highest Stealth, but everyone else can hide in shadows too, with reasonable success chances, so now my rogue isn't unique, so his ability to hide isn't special, it's the same as everyone else, just more likely to succeed. The "grounded in believability" aspect of the rules helped make for interesting interactions of these abilities, too. Hiding in shadows was a good tactic against humans, but bad for anything that lived in shadows. Commands were useful for temporary reprieves, but had interesting possibilities in interpretation. Charms were useful to varying degrees, but also bad against elves. Breaking down barriers was good in a dungeon or in a locked room, but it attracted attention. In 4e, a skill check does whatever it needs to do to count as a "success," regardless of what skill it is or what character type you're playing as or what situation you find yourself in. It is removed from the actual activity and abstract, grounded in the balance of the game rather than the circumstances of the imaginary world. Again, other editions aren't perfect, and I wouldn't say that everyone needs to play with them. But it's not right to say that 4e is obviously better in this regard. It isn't. It tried to be, but for a lot of players (like me), it failed. Denying that failure isn't going to improve anything. It works for others, and that's fine, too, but just because it works for you doesn't mean it has to work for everyone.</blockquote>

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