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Message: <blockquote data-quote="IanArgent" data-source="post: 4014707" data-attributes="member: 21673">eno problem with HP being primarly a measure of fatigue and the will to fight; especially at the higher levels. Otherwise the HP scaling effect MAKES NO SENSE. Or do you have a problem with a dagger wielded by a peasant in the surprise round being absolutely no danger to a flatfooted fighter? Seriously, under 3.5, the peasant ambushing a mid-fighter from behind a curtain cannot pose a serious threat to that fighter, even if he rolls 20 twice running. Why is that? Because the fighter is so experienced that the rippling of the curtain alerts his subconcious to the attack, and he takes a defensive stance without realizing it. The peasant has no chance to do anything more than graze the fighter.In 4th edition the fight plays (narratively) the same way. And as the rebel horde advances on the party with blood in their eyes, the warlord could tell the fighter "pull yourself together man, it's just a flesh wound!" (the wound continues bleeding a little, but the fighter can ignore it), or the cleric lays on hands and closes up the gash, but the fighter is a little shaken from the near-miss, but not enough to affect his performance. At the end of the fight, if the warlord "bucked him up" the post-battle cleanup includes throwing a bandage on the wound to stop the dripping. If the cleric healed the gash, he has a chance to catch his breath and realize the wound wasn't all that dangerous after all, even though it hurt like hell at the time.If, istead, the lurker has a dangerous attack (perhaps he's a rogue with the ability to deal a decent amount of damage with that dagger) we can look at two cases - the attack does a significant fraction of the fighter's HP without threatening his life, or it was in fact a life-threatening attack. In the first case, the fighter still unconciously readied himself for the attack, but it either was a little more than a flesh wound, or he strained himself in the process of evading. The warlord can help him push through the pain as above, but the effect isn't totally offset. Likewise, the cleric can lay on hands and reduce most of the physical damage, but there's still soem left. If either of them wants to use another one of what ought to be an encounter-limited ability, they can increase the effect... In the second case, he's bloodied in addition to being down HP.I would also look to bloodied being a persistent condition during the fight, unless a specific ability to remove the condition is used. IE, once bloodied, you continue to be bloodied UNTIL something specific happens to remove that condition, even if you heal up above half. I'm OK with that being "the fight's over, you got a chance to bandage"; a passive ability that kicks in when the encounter is over. (When is the encounter over? When I say so as the DM).But I had no problem witht he damage track concept in shadowrun, where, after the battle, First Aid can take someone from "Seriously wounded from a single gunshot" to "completely unaffected by that shot" with a good enough roll. The character was still shot, and has the cosmetic consequences of that; but for mechanical purposes, he's as good to go as before, and more importantly, can take another hit of the same severity.</blockquote>

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