D&D 4E 4e Heal info in new Confessions article

[HeavenShallBurn]

It would seem that you've been using a definition of HP at odds with the rules in every edition. Hit points have never been solely about physical damage. It's a bit much to expect a new edition to conform to your house rules.

The text has said that but the system has never matched. I notice you left out the last part of the post. If HP are a purely abstract representation then why are the various conditions not handled with HP? Why were all those conditions, some 40+ by the end of 3.5e handled outside of the HP system when in an abstract HP system many would have been dealt with via HP damage. For example morale, if loosing and gaining morale should be modelled under the "abstract" nature of HP then why were fear effects a seperate condition? The bit about it being abstract was only a sop to people who's suspension of disbelief and preferred fantasy didn't allow characters who could soak up damage like high level characters can.

 

[Dragonblade]

Hi Dalvyn and Darkwolf,

I thought your posts were interesting and in many circumstances I would agree with you guys. I too like the rules of the game to be able to match the narrative. See my thread on Per Encounter power recharging.

However, in the case of hit points I have to agree with Chris that abstracting them is best. Having hit points represent pure physical damage lends itself well to grittier systems but for D&D which is very heroic cinematic fantasy, I don't think it works well.

You could easily come up with an alternative two tiered system akin to the Wound/Vitality system we originally had for SW and that might work for your game without excessive rule mods.

Keep all rules generally as is but give PCs an extra pool of Wound points equal to their Con score. When they run out of Vitality they take Wound damage. There is no more such thing as negative hitpoints or death's door. A character with 0 wound points is dead.

Otherwise the damage system functions identically to the current rules and just think HP = Vitality. Vitality represents near misses, luck, etc. Wound damage is actual physical damage.

Wound damage heals at 1 point per day with rest and care, or heals at 1 pt per die of actual healing spell/ritual cast. In battle, morale-based healing such as a Leader character's healing surge powers heal Vitality but not Wound damage.

The system may need to be tweaked and fleshed out since I haven't seen the 4e rules yet, but this should meet your need to have a damage system that represents real physical damage.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The first one is from Races & Classes, where we learn that the Warlord has a power that allows all his companions to draw a ranged weapon and shoot an arrow ("Feather me Yon Oaf!"). Huh? How can a warlord or any other character give all his friends the ability to instnatly do things that would normally take them 1 round to do? Time (as in: what you can do each round) is a precious resource in D&D combats, one that is firmly anchored in the "realistic imagination". That is, in that "realistic imagination" world, it takes a given amount of time to draw a bow, and it takes another given amount of time to shoot an arrow. It does not make sense that, suddenly, those actions do not take any time at all?

The second example is from the new Miniature rules (it might not be entirely 4th edition, but that's another example), where it is said that the yuan-ti can perform what looks like a whirlwind attack (attack vs all the adjacent opponents) when one of those adjacent opponent is bloodied. Once again ... huh? The cause (one opponent is bloodied) and the consequence (you are able to make a whirlwind attack) do not match. It's yet another example of a rule that fails to translate into that "realistic imagination" world. In other words, it does not make sense, it's inconsistent.

The third example is from a playtest report, where we learn that a dragon can immediately breathe as a free action when he gets bloodied. Yet again ... huh? Why does being bloodied suddenly allow the dragon to perform an action for free? Now, there were similar example in the latest 3.5 Monster Manuals, but those actually made sense because the action was a natural consequence of the damage. For example, in MM5, there's a creature that looks like a living blurb of magma encased in rock. Once it reaches 50% of its hit points, the rock case is damage enough that jets of magma are created. That actually is consistent, because it's not a reaction from the monster, but a "physical" reaction.
.

1st example: a round is an abstract amount of time. While you can´t react to anything, others do their actions. In 3.5 you could do up to 5 more or less very accurate ranged attacks with a bow in 6 seconds... sorry, that was highly unrealistic.

What the warlord does is helping your party out with some orders, where you can get an advantage you maybe didn´t see without his orders and waiting for the right moment to shoot, missing out some of them. You should look at it like a range attack of opportunity.

2nd: performing spectacular weapon skills when your enemies are more or less exhausted isn´t that illogical (maybe all should be bloodied though)

3rd: getting angry when you are hurt, doesn´t sound unreasonable. From a mechanical point of view (as it is explained on wizards.com) it sound right that dragons should have abilities to defend themself when fighting intruders. In 3.5 I lost one BBEG due to 3 players appearing out of a dimensional portal, hasted. It took them two rounds to kill my illithid LVL 13 Cleric when they were only 3 LVL 11 chars. An ability to do something out of your turn sounds totally right for solomonsters. As explained: better more attacks with less damage and without SoD out of their order than If you strike first = win.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

However, in the case of hit points I have to agree with Chris that abstracting them is best. Having hit points represent pure physical damage lends itself well to grittier systems but for D&D which is very heroic cinematic fantasy, I don't think it works well.

Which is funny because HP as pure physical damage is a much more heroic fantasy view than abstraction. A 15th level Barbarian having enough HP to wade through a field of enemies being brutally stabbed and hacked at dozens of times while mowing down lower leveled nobody enemies by the dozen is the opposite of gritty, it's the height of mythic fantasy.

 

[hectorse]

I Don't want to interfer with your arguments (I like abstract HP the best though) but I really liked her article better than the last. She is focusing more in the game but it still funny and light-hearted, which I like in light of the kind of rumbling fans all we tend to be.

You can see how she wouldn't care for abstract or physical HP

 

[Raduin711]

PC death is only one option (and in my estimation, one of the more boring options) to add excitement and drama to the game in general and combat in particular. What is needed to make combat meaningful is the possibility of failure, and repercussions for said failure. And there are dozens of repercussions for failure which are, for me, much more interesting than PC death. I run a game where I've essentially taken PC death off the table, but the players are often on the edge of their seats during combat, because all sorts of horrible things can happen to their PCs if they fail (and sometimes even if they don't).

If your DM is incapable of making combat meaningful without PC death, then he isn't thinking of all the various possibilities, and should hang out on ENWorld a lot more, since there are lots of DMs here who de-emphasize PC death and still run very exciting games/combats. Chances are your DM is also being very kind. One of the reasons I don't kill PCs is because I'm not that nice. A dead PC has escaped me and doesn't have to live with the repercussions of his failures. A living PC, on the other hand, does have to.

I agree completely. In most cases, PC death doesn't work at all to build suspense. It just drags everyone down. One player is unhappy, the rest are calculating in their heads how much gold it will cost to raise them, and who is paying for it, and how soon we can get the person left out of the game playing again. Doesn't. Work.

"No ressurection" houserules don't help, either. It just means that the player is even more unhappy, and the other party members give them a burial, with the assumption that the dead character left the other party members all his stuff in his will. Then the party becomes richer, a new character is added (with less-awesome equipment than the party members, because the party just made a profit off of their dead companion) and the player keeps going , wishing he could play the character he just lost. It isn't more suspenseful, it just means that we have to look forward to different consequences for our character's death.

The sort of "price of failure" advice Shilsen gives is great. They should put that in the DMG.

 

[Dalvyn]

Re: unrealistic abilities

1st example: a round is an abstract amount of time. While you can´t react to anything, others do their actions. In 3.5 you could do up to 5 more or less very accurate ranged attacks with a bow in 6 seconds... sorry, that was highly unrealistic.

What the warlord does is helping your party out with some orders, where you can get an advantage you maybe didn´t see without his orders and waiting for the right moment to shoot, missing out some of them. You should look at it like a range attack of opportunity.

The 5 accurage range attacks in 6 seconds might be unrealistic in the real world, but I can "see" (as in: imagine) a fantasy hero doing it. I actually simply have to take another look at the Lord of the Rings movies and I do not even need to imagine it anymore.

On the other hand, I can't "see" an action that always took some time suddenly not take any time at all. In the example of "Feather Yon Oaf", you have to consider that those allies did something on the round before, and are going to do something on the next round. That is, they have already spent their 6 seconds before and their next 6 seconds on other actions; and in the middle of all that, they get to take a bow, aim, and shoot for free ? I could buy the "warlord makes you use better your time in battle" explanation, but that would put all high level fighters to shame.

2nd: performing spectacular weapon skills when your enemies are more or less exhausted isn´t that illogical (maybe all should be bloodied though)

Right. If all were bloodied, and if bloodied = exhausted, then I could imagine this "whirlwind" attack. But bloodied is not exhausted I think (because exhaustion is dealt with in other ways, e.g., stat penalties in 3nd edition). Bloodied seems to be "I can no longer be heroic, I can no longer turn fireball damage into small burns and huge sword cleaves into minor scratches". I really have a hard time seeing how that would mean that other people can now use whirlwind attacks while they couldn't before.

3rd: getting angry when you are hurt, doesn´t sound unreasonable. From a mechanical point of view (as it is explained on wizards.com) it sound right that dragons should have abilities to defend themself when fighting intruders.

Getting angry does not mean you get to do things more quickly (or "for free") suddenly though. Nor does bloodied = angry. That actually is part of my problem with bloodied: it sometimes is read as "exhausted", sometimes as "angry", sometimes as something completely different. It has many different interpretations (nearly one for each power that uses it). That's its big problem: in order to make it work, you have to make it mean anything and everything. In the end, the interpretation becomes so complex that you have to give up on interpreting it altogether ... then we have rules for rules' sake, and not rules to describe the imagination.

Note that it does not mean that it's bad to have rules for rules' sake ... card games, dice games, and many other games have rules for rules' sake and that's all fine. I would just expect roleplaying games to have rules that correspond to something.

In 3.5 I lost one BBEG due to 3 players appearing out of a dimensional portal, hasted. It took them two rounds to kill my illithid LVL 13 Cleric when they were only 3 LVL 11 chars. An ability to do something out of your turn sounds totally right for solomonsters. As explained: better more attacks with less damage and without SoD out of their order than If you strike first = win.

I am all fine with giving solo monsters abilities so they are not overwhelmed by a group of PCs in a few rounds. I am all fine with, for example, allowing dragons to act twice a round instead of once, because they just are combat machines with lots of natural attacks (you would for example have 2 initiative scores for the dragon). What I do not get though is that the dragon does something for free, out of its turn.

 

[Wolfspider]

I agree completely. In most cases, PC death doesn't work at all to build suspense. It just drags everyone down. One player is unhappy, the rest are calculating in their heads how much gold it will cost to raise them, and who is paying for it, and how soon we can get the person left out of the game playing again. Doesn't. Work.

"No ressurection" houserules don't help, either. It just means that the player is even more unhappy, and the other party members give them a burial, with the assumption that the dead character left the other party members all his stuff in his will. Then the party becomes richer, a new character is added (with less-awesome equipment than the party members, because the party just made a profit off of their dead companion) and the player keeps going , wishing he could play the character he just lost. It isn't more suspenseful, it just means that we have to look forward to different consequences for our character's death.

The sort of "price of failure" advice Shilsen gives is great. They should put that in the DMG.

You are making quite a few assumptions here about character death. It doesn't absolutely have to result in the things you have described here.

Last weekend a character died in the game I was running. It was a highly emotional event. The party gave their dead companion a truly fitting heroes burial, with all of his equipment (magical and non-magical). The ranger did keep one item, though, the (non-magical) bastard sword that the deceased had carried and used in his adventures since he joined the party a couple years ago. He had noticed on the hilt a family crest that had been concealed before, and decided to seek out the dead character's family in order to return the blade and sing the praises of the dead hero. Once they finally left the burial site, the characters (and players) spent a good time reminiscing about their fallen friend and (of course) swearing revenge.

Quite a bit more than hard feelings there, and also the genesis of many good adventures to come. (Wait until the party discovers exactly why their friend never revealed his past to them...bwahahahaha!)

 

[MerricB]

The text has said that but the system has never matched. I notice you left out the last part of the post. If HP are a purely abstract representation then why are the various conditions not handled with HP?

Err... HP are an abstract representation of how close someone is to death, not of all the other conditions that may be affecting them.

For example morale, if loosing and gaining morale should be modelled under the "abstract" nature of HP then why were fear effects a seperate condition?

Morale has never been modelled by HP. Instead, a fear effect was triggered by loss of HP - there's a definite difference. (Not that morale exists in 3e...)

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Right. If all were bloodied, and if bloodied = exhausted, then I could imagine this "whirlwind" attack. But bloodied is not exhausted I think (because exhaustion is dealt with in other ways, e.g., stat penalties in 3nd edition). Bloodied seems to be "I can no longer be heroic, I can no longer turn fireball damage into small burns and huge sword cleaves into minor scratches". I really have a hard time seeing how that would mean that other people can now use whirlwind attacks while they couldn't before.

Bloodied = Vulnerable. Given what we've seen about 4e, if you're not bloodied, it's extremely unlikely that you can die from a single attack or ability. However, once you're bloodied, one attack could kill you. You've used up enough of the "divine protection" or luck that hp partly represent.

However, knowing that you're on the verge of death does allow some characters to perform special actions; the "if I'm going down, so are you" idea. Adrenalin does wonderful things.

Cheers!