D&D 4E 4E, Healing, and Suspension of Disbelief

[jeffh]

No, you just explained professional wrestling and dragonball Z. I'm not 5 years old, thats not a game I want to play.

-1 HP = bleeding to death. 1 HP = not bleeding to death. HP = wounds. How can you possibly think differently? Healing surges = nonsensical mechanic.

People hit people with swords in this game, or engulf them in bursts of fire. When they do, their HPs get reduced. You think being hit with a sword makes you more tired and not wounded? In children's cartoons they do. If I wanted the Naruto role-playing game, I'd have bought it instead of DnD.

Until I started posting on the Internet, I really didn't think the distinction between "all" and "some" was difficult to grasp, but for some folks, apparently it is.

That some reductions of hit points represent physical injuries (which nobody is denying) does not entail that all of them do. It's context-dependent, with most of the relevant context being given by the current and maximum hit point totals of the person (or monster) on the receiving end.

This isn't any more strange than the fact that, when you utter the word "I", it doesn't refer to the same person as when I do so.

 

[MarkB]

So I'm deliberately ignorant of the game mechanics, I am always wrong, and the answer to my problem is to change my beliefs?

You're not always wrong - you're just wrong about what hit points represent, or have ever represented. Once you change your beliefs to match the facts, your problem with hit points should be much alleviated.

 

[Minigiant]

A long while ago, I played with a DM that changed Hit Points into Parry Points, Toughness Points, or Force Field Points. You got different amounts based on your class (fighter were all parry, wizards relied on force field). When you were hit, one of them went down. When the Hill Giant punched everyone for 20, the human fighter parried it and back flipped out the way, The elf wizard placed a magic force shield in front of his "almost punched in" face, and the troll barbarian took the hit "power Ranger style". So no one actually got hit and wounded 'til they hit negatives unless you were a race that had superhuman toughness like werefolk, undead, constructs, and trolls. When you healed HP, the squishy races regained some stamina and morale to fight on. Only the tough races healed wounds because they are the only ones that got wounded before hitting 0. So healing was mostly stamina and morale regen until you actually went under 0HP.

And that how I thought of HP ever since. You never took a "real scary" hit 'til you went under 0 unless you were some super tough race. Adventure healing was actually "Magic Sports Drink with Extra Sugar", or your "I kick butt" theme song plays, or "lactic acid's all gone, baby".

 

[Mortellan]

If Hitpoints have been decoupled from being purely physical damage then Constitution should not be the only factor in adding extra HP's. If damage can be morale for instance, maybe Charisma should add HP. If damage can be stress-induced maybe Wisdom or Intelligence? Etc. Silly really.

 

[Minigiant]

If Hitpoints have been decoupled from being purely physical damage then Constitution should not be the only factor in adding extra HP's. If damage can be morale for instance, maybe Charisma should add HP. If damage can be stress-induced maybe Wisdom or Intelligence? Etc. Silly really.

I personally think a fighter's first level HP should be 25 + the sum of all his modifiers

OR the sum of your ability scores - 50.

 

[pnewman]

Nothing against competitive wrestling, but in real life or death combat you don't have that luxury. 100% is required at all times. That's not to say that you are constantly on the attack.... Not that D&D should model that at all. Just sayin'.

You do have that luxury in an army if the guy in charge of your army knew what he was doing. Roman centurions would blow a whistle every 45 seconds or so, the soldiers in the front row would rotate to the back of the unit and the second row would step in fresh. In any unit more than 8 guys deep there's your 5 minutes rest right there.

Clearly the 5 minute rest is modeled on the superior fighting ability of the Roman army, as seen through this trick.

 

[plutocracy]

Vitality/Wound FTW!

Seriously, easy fix.

Vitality=luck/fatigue/bruising/fleshwounds
Wounds=bleeding and broken bones, chance of death.

If this makes it too hard to kill the characters, can always take the CON bonus to Vitality away (Since that is represented by the Wounds).

 

[silentounce]

You ever fought, silentounce? I mean, really fought, in inter-personal combat? (Not gunfights. I can't comment on them.)

I knew somebody was going to call me on this. I have not, in a life or death situation, which I described. But, I have been friends with, talked at length, and trained under and with several men who have. And if there is one thing that is ingrained into USMC close combat training, it is that you don't give anything less than 100%. You can't take it easy, or half ass it to conserve energy later. Of course, you have to determine the level of lethality you're going to apply. But if you know that it's a kill or be killed situation, then you go for the kill in the quickest most efficiently way possible, be that gouging eyes, crushing windpipes, hits to the groin, what have you. Granted, I'm not saying that D&D should mimic this... but this should explain what I was saying to the guy I was replying to if you care to go back and look. The giving 10% based on experience with high school wrestling. The big difference is that you can lose in such a situation and it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. In many cases illustrated by D&D, if you lose, your character dies. So, it's not a valid comparison.

 

[Obryn]

If Hitpoints have been decoupled from being purely physical damage then Constitution should not be the only factor in adding extra HP's. If damage can be morale for instance, maybe Charisma should add HP. If damage can be stress-induced maybe Wisdom or Intelligence? Etc. Silly really.

They've always been decoupled from being purely physical damage. Seriously, it's been in every D&D rule set going back to at least AD&D.

And they've always been the only stat modifying HPs.

The only difference is that 1e, 2e, and 4e have limits on how useful your Constitution is for hit points. 3.x, on the other hand, made Constitution extremely important over your whole adventuring career.

-O

 

[IanArgent]

I knew somebody was going to call me on this. I have not, in a life or death situation, which I described. But, I have been friends with, talked at length, and trained under and with several men who have. And if there is one thing that is ingrained into USMC close combat training, it is that you don't give anything less than 100%. You can't take it easy, or half ass it to conserve energy later. Of course, you have to determine the level of lethality you're going to apply. But if you know that it's a kill or be killed situation, then you go for the kill in the quickest most efficiently way possible, be that gouging eyes, crushing windpipes, hits to the groin, what have you. Granted, I'm not saying that D&D should mimic this... but this should explain what I was saying to the guy I was replying to if you care to go back and look. The giving 10% based on experience with high school wrestling. The big difference is that you can lose in such a situation and it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. In many cases illustrated by D&D, if you lose, your character dies. So, it's not a valid comparison.

That was me with the wrestling experience. In the ring you are at ten-tenths effort (IE, 100%, in case you misread my post earlier, not 10%, thankyouverymuch). It's tiring as hell. But, even in the ring, if you get a few seconds breathing room, you can catch a second wind. This is why it was hammered into me that I should never leave the opponent any space to recover, even a few seconds. Sometimes you have to, of course. With a few minutes of rest you'll be back at nearly full energy - but as the day progresses (as it might in a full-day tourney) it gets harder and harder to spring back.

I experienced a similar experience while fencing in college; incidentally. You train for both sports in a similar manner - not just maneuvers and "tricks", but also for short-term burst endurance as well as long-term endurance.

At any rate, D&D 4E isn't necessarily trying to simulate reality - it is trying to be a game of heroic fantasy. In the worlds of heroic fantasy, this is EVEN MORE appropriate for the heores of those stories.