D&D 4E 4e Healing - Is This Right?

[Sashi]

If we are going to use the argument that "they are 'real' wounds because the spell is called Cure Light Wounds", it is relevant to point out that by that reasoning a 'light' wound constitutes "any injury capable of killing the vast majority of the populace", since most 'people' are 1st lvl, and most have less than 8 hp.

Just sayin'. . .

Lets also not deal with the fact that "cure light wounds" heals wounds, while "heal" cures poison.

 

[JohnSnow]

He doesn't.

A 20th level fighter with 190 HP heals from 1 HP to full in 10 days.

a 1st level fighter with 11 HP heals from 1 HP to full in 10 days.

I think what's confusing you is that it's true that a 20th level fighter with 190 HP heals more slowly than a 20th level wizard with 110 HP. That's a flaw in the 3.5 model of hit point, injury, and healing that, despite improvements with 3.5, stretches back to 1E and 2E.

I think you might be hallucinating that elephant.

The thing to wonder (in addition to the fighter/wizard question) is why does the higher constitution fighter take longer to recover than the fighter with the lower constitution.

Moreover, with bed rest or medical care, said character will recover in 5 days. And with bed rest and medical care, they'll recover in 3 (actually 2 and a bit, but who cares?).

What i fail to understand is that since 3e supposedly allows recovery from seriously physically wounded in 3 days, why does it break SoD for Fourth Edition to do it in 1?

"Well, I can buy Bob recovering from that gut-opening sword wound in 3 days, but 1 night? That's just crazy talk!"

Moreover, Fourth Edition doesn't require the character to recover from a gut-opening sword wound overnight, as some seem to claim 3e allows in 3 days. Fourth Edition instead explains it thusly: there was no gut-opening sword wound. Despite some (perhaps) early bleeding, the character's wounds just weren't that serious.

Do realize that assuming you don't bleed out too much, you can replenish all your lost blood in a few hours. Certainly overnight is plenty of time.

 

[KarinsDad]

Whatever words you care to use to describe them, 'injuries' represented by hp in any edition of D&D do not impair the character in any way. Thus, no edition modelled long-term impairment with hp damage. QED.

So, if I can find an impairment, will you concede the point?

1) Power Word Kill. PC with 150 total hit points dies if he has 100 hit points or less at the moment. He's immune to the spell at 101 hit points. Similar effect for most Power Word spells.

2) Raging Barbarian has 1 hit point. He stops raging. He either dies or is dying.

3) Other PC has 1 hit point. He has an Amulet of Health on. He walks into an Antimagic Field and either dies or is dying.

4) #1 ditto for Symbol spells.

5) Normal hit point damage. A PC at 5 hit points taking 15 points of damage is dead. One at 20 hit points is not. Ditto for additional nonlethal damage.

6) Con Ability Drain or Damage. A PC at low hit points can easily die whereas a Con drain when at full hit points would not kill him.

7) Death Knell.

8) A PC falling.


Can you truly state that a PC at 1 hit point is able to function exactly the same as one with full hit points in all cases? He's not impaired in some way in any of these cases above? He's not prevented from taking some actions because they will kill him before he completes the action?

 

[KarinsDad]

See, Jeff is sort of ignoring the elephant in the room. Answer one question:

Why does the 20th level character at 1 hp take longer to heal than the 1st level character at 1 hp?

I'll answer for Jeff.

In 3E, the 20th level character takes less time to heal than the 1st level character on average, not more.

20th Fighter with 20 CON (+6 Amulet of Health) has ~214 hit points. With complete rest, it takes him 5.35 days to fully recover from being at 1 hit point (40 points healing per day complete rest). 1.5 days faster if he did not have the Amulet in the first place.

1st Fighter with 14 CON has 12 hit points. With complete rest, it takes him 5.5 days to fully recover from being at 1 hit point (2 points healing per day complete rest).

So, the rest of your argument based of your incorrect assumption here is faulty because your elephant assumption here is faulty.

 

[Jon Wake]

So, the rest of your argument based of your incorrect assumption here is faulty because your elephant assumption here is faulty.

You mean aside from the whole, 'Arguing for realism in a game filled with orcs and mythological beings is possibly a sign of mental illness' part?

Okay, here's another one, mentioned about: Why does the high CON character heal more slowly?

Or, wait, how come it doesn't tell me how much a creature in the MM needs to eat? Because obviously a large humanoid like a Giant would deforest huge tracks of land. That just destroys my SOD.

Or where's the explanation of why a warrior's effectiveness at absorbing damage increases with level and their ability to deal it out doesn't scale at the same rate? There that SOD goes again.

Waitaminute! What's with levels anyway? You kill a bunch of things and all of a sudden you suddenly get better at Profession:Cook? How does that make any sense.

You bring realism into a D&D conversation, and all bets are off.

 

[KarinsDad]

You mean aside from the whole, 'Arguing for realism in a game filled with orcs and mythological beings is possibly a sign of mental illness' part?

Careful. People can get banned for this type of insinuation.

Okay, here's another one, mentioned about: Why does the high CON character heal more slowly?

Because the game mechanics are not perfect and the designers could not think of a better rule.

Or maybe because a high CON character can absorb more damage (his body fights to live while lesser beings would die).

But, your question does not support a position that hit points do not equal damage.

 

[keterys]

Curious: Is there any reason that a character at full hp in 4E needs to be fully recovered from all injuries?

Ie, is there any reason the fighter battered within an inch of his life the day before can't rest, get back to his feet the next morning at full hp - tie off his bandages, wince as he walks and go "Yippee Kayo Kayay, I'm gonna go save the Princess" and out-tough his injuries?

 

[Pale Jackal]

So, if I can find an impairment, will you concede the point?

All you've shown is that having less hit points means there are more ways for the character to die.

I don't think anyone would disagree with that, and really, it's an argument ignoring the context in which "impairment" was used. Y'know, like why is my almost dead fighter still able to perform any activity as well as he typically does? e.g. run, climb, swing a sword, disable traps.

But believe what you want.

 

[Lurker37]

Just out of curiosity, for those who keep saying (or buying) that HP are not and have never represented actual injury, do y'all really not describe (or have described to you), "the crunch of his nose breaking under your spiked gauntlet," or "the spray of blood as the orc's blade bites into your shoulder," or "the audible snap as your mace cracks the beetle's carapace"?

Since you asked for opinions:

That blade in the shoulder one? That's when you hit zero hit points. Nothing keeps fighting after an injury like that. I'd get up and walk away from the table if the GM said it did - my suspension of disbelief just couldn't handle it.

So no - grisly injuries that would result in hospital time in the real world do NOT occur to characters or monsters that are going to keep fighting. ( exception: Zombies. Carve them up - they just don't care. )

Either the wound is superficial enough for the victim to keep fighting, in which case there will be no long-term effects (and healing will not take long), or it takes them out of the fight right there and then. The exceptions to this are too rare and specific to be worth modelling.

And if you can handle healing surges restoring 1/4 or your hit points in the middle of a fight - whether you're at 75% of max or 1% - then why is six hours of sleep being 4 times as good as a second wind an issue? Frankly, I find the second wind when below 10% health the hardest to wrap my head around.

We all know that rest is critical to recovery from any illness or injury. If a second wind can restore one quarter of your health, then a full night's sleep fixing all of it is fine by me. You explain it by saying that a good night's sleep is exactly like using a Healing Surge, only four times as effective. The character may still have cuts and bruises, but they've healed enough that they no longer impair the character's ability to fight.

As for the 'show me someone going from 0 to full in six hours' - almost any James Bond movie. 007 gets captured ( usually by KO or poison, which now does damage in 4E, so he does in fact go to 0 ) , learns the Evil Plan(tm) and fights his way out, killing the Bad Guy ( Bond's toughest fight of the movie, where he pulls out all the stops) and blowing up his base on the way out.

So what are you doing in 1E and 2E for the weeks that you're "healing" (game rules term) up to full HP? If you aren't healing from injury, what exactly is it you were doing?

In 3E, what are you doing when you're waiting for days while "healing" (again, game rules term) up to full HP? If you aren't healing an injury, what exactly's going on?

Precisely - this is PRECISELY the problem with the old healing rules. Why the heck did it take so long, when every character and his dog could spend pocket change to buy consumables to heal up to full instantly by the time natural healing took this long? What were the characters resting for so long to recover their ability to duck and weave? How long do you need to rest to recover luck? Why was there such a huge gap between bed rest and clerical healing? Didn't anyone sell blessed bandages or alchemical ointments?

Conversely, if your 200 hp fighter only took 30 points of damage, which meant he really only got nicks and scratches, not a greatsword through the belly, why was a high-level healing spell required to repair the 'damage'?

It wasn't proof of how hit points worked - it was a clear indication that not everyone writing the previous editions AGREED on how hit points worked: non-abstract rules tacked onto an abstract system. It's a jarring disconnect that ultimately got gamed around by healing potions and wands of heal <type> wounds and people trying not to think about the difference between the hitpoints betwen 1 and 20 and the hit points between 181 and 200. I actually found this breaking my suspension of disbelief more than anything. "It's taking days to heal, when I never dropped below two-thirds health? So each blow did a wound? What, did I have ten arrows and three daggers sticking out of me at the end of the fight? If so, why am I only healing in a few days? And how was I still walking, let alone fighting?"

Being back in fighting form the next day because the character never took a life-threatening or movement-impairing injury is a heck of a lot easier to swallow. Sure, it's a little faster than a normal peasant might recover, but you are, after all, playing a hero. You still have cuts and bruises - they're just not slowing you down. Because you're larger than life.

So yes, I think that for me personally 3.X healing breaks verisimilitude far worse than 4E appears to.

That's just my opinion. Yours obviously varies. Nothing wrong with that - we're just using different mental imagery when we play the game.

 

[glass]

So, if I can find an impairment, will you concede the point?

1) Power Word Kill. PC with 150 total hit points dies if he has 100 hit points or less at the moment. He's immune to the spell at 101 hit points. Similar effect for most Power Word spells.

2) Raging Barbarian has 1 hit point. He stops raging. He either dies or is dying.

3) Other PC has 1 hit point. He has an Amulet of Health on. He walks into an Antimagic Field and either dies or is dying.

4) #1 ditto for Symbol spells.

5) Normal hit point damage. A PC at 5 hit points taking 15 points of damage is dead. One at 20 hit points is not. Ditto for additional nonlethal damage.

6) Con Ability Drain or Damage. A PC at low hit points can easily die whereas a Con drain when at full hit points would not kill him.

7) Death Knell.

8) A PC falling.


Can you truly state that a PC at 1 hit point is able to function exactly the same as one with full hit points in all cases? He's not impaired in some way in any of these cases above? He's not prevented from taking some actions because they will kill him before he completes the action?

Until you show some actual impairment, yes I can. As I have already said, those are excellent reasons why it is unwise to to keep adventuring with low hp, but none of them have any bearing on how well you swing your sword until that last blow lands.

Moreover, all of them are perfectly consistent with hp representing stamina/luck/will to fight.


glass.