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

[IanArgent]

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.

As I said earlier, it seems that the primary (but certainly not the only) thing that hit points measure is endurance. The Healing Surge mechanic certainly seems to support this interpretation; in which you have a limited store of reserves per day that requires a long rest to replenish. Some magic doesn't depend on these deep reserves; and some well-trained Fighters can ignore a certain amount of fatigue for up to 5 minutes at a time every so often (the Fighter daily that grants him regeneration while bloodied).

Generally, though, you're "inspired" to dip into your body's reserves.

 

[JohnSnow]

As I said earlier, it seems that the primary (but certainly not the only) thing that hit points measure is endurance. The Healing Surge mechanic certainly seems to support this interpretation; in which you have a limited store of reserves per day that requires a long rest to replenish. Some magic doesn't depend on these deep reserves; and some well-trained Fighters can ignore a certain amount of fatigue for up to 5 minutes at a time every so often (the Fighter daily that grants him regeneration while bloodied).

Generally, though, you're "inspired" to dip into your body's reserves.

Exactly. No matter how inspiring someone is, it's only going to help you if you have reserves to dip into.

I'll just add to the 'real life' examples. I swordfight (stage combat, mostly) as a hobby. I should add that I do stage combat at renaissance faires, where we have to fight on target (and maybe a bit out of distance) due to having an audience all around us. Because of that, we can't take the typical stage cheat of fighting off-line. As such, we train by doing real sparring at quarter to half speed - a renaissance training technique called á tiempo (Italian for "at time").

Fighting at full speed, even choreographed stage combat, is exhausting. Á tiempo is less exhausting when you're going slow, but drains you rapidly the faster you go. At nearly full speed, which I've done a couple times, you're wiped out in a few minutes, tops.

Now, we stop when we get tired, because we don't want someone to get hurt. And if we kept going, one of those strikes would penetrate defenses and someone would get hit. It's happened a few times. But with 5 minutes rest, a chance to catch your breath and drink some water and you're (largely) good to go again. You can do this for a while, but NOT indefinitely.

And that's without someone trying to KILL me.

Now, there's a level at which that recovery limitation persists (for me and my friends) from one day (or even one week) to the next. But I'm not an action adventure hero. I can attest that there are times when, if I was to have to perform a fight after a full day, I'd definitely get hurt. In 4E D&D terms, you could say I stop when I'm borderline "bloodied" (and out of healing surges).

The next day, I can do it all over again. Sleep is wonderfully restorative.

Basically, "hit points" are Con-based because, in combat, they're mostly a factor of endurance. And they're called "hit points" because they represent your ability to turn a "hit" (i.e. a good, on-target attack) into a near miss (or, at most, a superficial injury).

In a modern game (one where more firearms are involved), I'd argue that they represent your ability to keep being missed (or grazed). And again, how long you can keep exerting yourself to avoid being hit is a function of endurance. And in D&D, endurance is Constitution, pure and simple.

I agree that the wonky part of earlier editions wasn't the hit point system itself, or even the description of what hit points represent, but the mechanics for healing.

Clearly, Gary felt that it could take weeks to recover all your reserves. His phrase in the 1e DMG was, IIRC, "it can take the character a long time to reach the physical and metaphysical peak of X hit points." But he's quite clear that there was never any notion that 48 hit points represented the ability to take 6 lethal (albeit non-critical) hits from a longsword. Feel free to check out "What hit points represent" on page 82 of the 1e DMG to read it for yourself.

The point is that whether you can recover overnight (as in 4e), or whether it takes a week (or a few weeks), hit points have just never been meant to model "real" damage or serious injuries. That's just never been part of the system.

Now, I can see the validity of a rule that says that falling below 0 hit points should inflict a serious injury penalty of some kind. However, I'm just not sure that it's a good "default" rule, so much as something that should just be houseruled in by those who want to have a mechanic for inflicting serious injuries.

If you're so inclined to consider the latter, something like the condition track from Star Wars Saga Edition might be a good place to start.

My two cents.

 

[Regicide]

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.

Falling is purely physical damage. You lose HP when you fall. HPs are a measure of physical damage.

Funny how when you get hit you take "damage"... the word "damage" implies, I dunno, wounds, and not fatigue?

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

Fighter 1:
3E con 10 fighter = 10 HP, infinite amounts of healing.
3E con 20 fighter = 15 HP, infinite amounts of healing.

4E con 10 fighter = 25 HP, 9x6 = 54 points healed per day = 79 max.
4E con 20 fighter = 35 HP, 14x8 = 112 points healed per day = 147 max.

I think CON is pretty heavily tied to HPs in 4E.

Fighter 10:
4E con 10 = 74 HP, 9x18 = 162 healed per day, 236 max damage/day.
4E con 22 = 91 HP, 15x22 = 330 healed per day, 421 max damage/day.

And CON is still pretty important at higher levels.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Falling is purely physical damage. You lose HP when you fall. HPs are a measure of physical damage.

Falling also scares the living bejeesus out of you (or, me, anyway) and knocks the wind out of you. That sounds like non-physical trauma to me (I say, having fallen off of things... a lot).

Later
silver

 

[Dormain1]

So I'm deliberately ignorant of the game mechanics, I am always wrong, and the answer to my problem is to change my beliefs? 4th Edition sounds better than ever!

You probably didn't mean for that to sound so harsh.

I hope he didn't mean it

Clever if you have access to the old DMG's read Page 82, Gary Gygax explains the HP and what they represent (don't have it with me at work otherwise I would quote it for you)

HP have never been an accurate analogy of damage but it is the only thing we have

cthulhu is the only game which really represents life point

you start with 4(i think, it been awhile) and they never increase

HP=life is a computer game thing

If you have been playing it the other way more power to you. I don't expect you to change now and I don't think your playing style is wrong but neither should you expect others to agree with you or change what they think

I can understand your frustration with 4e if thats where you are heading from, its a big jump and one you didn't expect

If you are a fan of how mechanics explain things then how does a character survive a 100ft fall by taking 10d6 dmg in 3e, people who have survived such falls have fallen on soft ground ie bushes branches swamp, a fall from 100ft onto hard ground would kill anyone not deal 10d6 dmg

Hit Points are just a label like Armour Class is even when a character is not wearing armour he has an armour class

I hope this addresses you concerns

I know someone has gary's quote as a sig but i can't remember who

 

[IanArgent]

Falling is purely physical damage. You lose HP when you fall. HPs are a measure of physical damage.

Funny how when you get hit you take "damage"... the word "damage" implies, I dunno, wounds, and not fatigue?

I'm not sure I've ever cared for the falling damage rules, myself. And they're not the best thing to try and draw a comparison to real life in, since D&D has never had good rules for the kind of damage suffered when you undergo full-body blunt-force trauma. In a setting without modern medicine, smashing every bone in your legs is immediately and permanently crippling, not to mention life-threatening. Plus, the number of people who have survived terminal-velocity impacts without those crippling injuries can be measured on both hands, while the average 10th level fighter is going to live after a few days of bed rest, even without any medical care. Heck, the average 10th level Rogue has a better than even shot at walking away from falling off the mile-high cliffs...

It is apparently an urban myth that the average human body hits terminal velocity at 100' of fall - googling suggests more like 1500'-2000', incidentally.

 

[IanArgent]

Keith Baker (of Eberron fame) ha posted an article essentially on what he is allowed to say about 4E Eberron and how you might run Eberron in advance of the "official" settings books. But what is relevant to this conversation is this comment about how to simulate long-term injury using the disease track mechanism with a broken arm as the example. He notes that this is a "top-of-the-head" improvisation. I think the idea is elegant, myself, and fits right into the rest of 4E in a way that doing a similar thing in previous editions would not have. It uses an existing mechanic almost totally, with the fluff changed.

And before you ask "why wasn't it in core?" I have 2 things to say to that: first, what pages would you have pulled from the DMG for it, and second, is it needed for every campaign?

 

[cangrejoide]

Okay I am just gonna answer this the same way I have answered it the 1000's times a similar thread has gone up:

'The way I see it, Hit points= Morale/Will to fight. When the paladin or cleric heals you he is not only mending your physical wounds but he is encouraging you to continue the good fight. When the warlord 'heals' you he is just bolstering your morale and will to fight. When your hit points reach 0 it just means that you lost focus in mid fight or lost your nerve long enough for your enemy to deliver the killing blow.

Why do traps do damage then if hit points are not health?, well when you are delving into the depths of a dungeon everything can affect your morale and desire to continue forward, especially when that last trap almost cut your head off.

So just replace any instances of 'heal' and 'healing' with 'regaining morale' and you should be okay. '

 

[Calico_Jack73]

But this has never been the case. Agreed, 4E takes the distinction to a mechanical level heretofore unseen--but it's a matter of degree, not direction. In no edition of D&D have hit points equaled sheer physical health. The fact that you interpreted them as such is not the fault of, nor a flaw in, the current edition.

Totally agree... in fact, in the 1e AD&D PHB Hit Points are described as a combination of luck, magical protection, etc. If I had it here with me I could site a page number.

 

[silentounce]

You're right, we've seen that argument 1000s of times, half a dozen in this very thread. So, why don't you try adding something new to the conversation? Repeating HPs are an abstraction over and over again is pointless.