D&D General 4e Healing was the best D&D healing

[Fanaelialae]

Hit points are used for virtually every kind of attack, some of which of course have to make contact for there to be any sense at all. Poison is the obvious example, but what's the point of having fire resistance if the fire never actually hits you? If you're not hit, what difference does it make what kind of damage it was? Yet clearly that does matter mechanically.

If you're resistant/immune to an attack, you clearly don't have to make nearly as great an effort to avoid it. I will go to much further lengths to avoid being hit by a real sword than a foam nerf sword.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Is it a miss if you block it with your shield, or it glances off a pauldon, or you deflect it with your sword?

Yes, I'd say it is, unless you parry or block kinda inadequately and end up getting hurt. Because armour and shield affect the AC (duh!) it must mean that some 'misses' are attacks that were blocked by them.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Setting aside that the fundamental point of a statistical model is to find out what happens, and imposing our own preferences on the model would result in losing any inherent meaning from the model, we're back to the original point. No, I can't narrate the effect of that hit to involve any degree of physical injury, because that's entirely inconsistent with damage that disappears after a short rest.

If the goal was to be ambiguous, such that DMs could use whichever interpretation they wanted, then they should have stuck with AD&D healing times. The healing times in 4E and 5E are overwhelmingly biased toward one interpretation at the expense of the other.

AD&D is overwhelmingly biased in the other direction.

The 4e/5e model does allow for injury. It just doesn't tie hit points to injury. Meaning that even if you narrated some hit as giving you a bruise, the next day you're back at 100% irrespective of whether the bruise is still there, because the bruise is not the hit point.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, I'd say it is, unless you parry or block kinda inadequately and end up getting hurt. Because armour and shield affect the AC (duh!) it must mean that some 'misses' are attacks that were blocked by them.

And because HP is not meat, some hits are absorbed by them.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The 4e/5e model does allow for injury. It just doesn't tie hit points to injury. Meaning that even if you narrated some hit as giving you a bruise, the next day you're back at 100% irrespective of whether the bruise is still there, because the bruise is not the hit point.

Which means the game mechanics aren't telling us anything useful. We're wasting a lot of effort and table time on intangibles that will be rendered irrelevant after the next short rest, and any sort of lasting injury is relegated entirely to DM fiat and meaningless flavor text. The priorities for such a model are absurd.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And because HP is not meat, some hits are absorbed by them.

I call that a bruise!

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I think t's pretty clear to everyone on this thread that using just one value to represent ability to stay standing is a to really going to be realistic. Everyone who has seriously fought knows that a combination of energy, bruising and injury are at least three ways of measuring ability to stay standing, and we've all had the experience of losing fights because of each one individually.

• I have fought with a severe cold, defended fine until I just had no energy left and was taken out.
• I fought a weak fighter with a punch like a freight train who didn't score on me at all and I could dance around all day, but he put enough bruises on me that although I won on points (easily) it felt like a loss. The next round was not a good one for me.
• And I've lost because I broke a bone in my foot and couldn't kick with that side for 2 rounds, enough to lose the fight.

Some systems combine energy/bruising -- which works pretty well. In Fate your two tracks are stress + consequences; in Rolemaster it's concussion hits + a ton of status effects; In Savage Worlds it's "shaken" binary status + wounds. In Star Wars Saga in was hit points + wounds.

D&D doesn't have this and so it really is at a huge disadvantage for simulating reality. Hit points are, I would argue, the aspect of the game most removed from any attempt at simulation reality in the whole system. It fundamentally does not bear any attempt at scutiny from a simulation point of view.

Which is why versions before 4E were very vague and handwavey. They were trying to be good simulations, but hit points are completely incompatible with that POV, so hit points and healing have this "don't ask, don't tell" feel to them -- "ignore the fact that they make no sense and carry on with the simulation!". 4E, being primarily concerned with being a game, has no problem with hit points as an abstract gamist concept and that's why it works so well. 5E lives in a middle world, but has turned its back solidly on the simulationist approach of 3E and so it's not too bad either.

• In 3E if you heal hits, you are doing one of fixing wounds, healing bruises or recovering energy -- but we can't say which because hits are used for ll three purposes.
• In 4E if you heal hits, you are increasing your hit point numeric score, which is an abstract representation fo how close you are to falling over. Feel free to describe it any way you like because the game doesn't care.
• In 5E, you're following the 4E system, but the GM is allowed to describe it differently depending on the current story. The same healing is OK to be described as sewing sutures, shaming an orc into fighting on, or magically giving them Red Bull.

 

[Teemu]

Hit points are used for virtually every kind of attack, some of which of course have to make contact for there to be any sense at all. Poison is the obvious example, but what's the point of having fire resistance if the fire never actually hits you? If you're not hit, what difference does it make what kind of damage it was? Yet clearly that does matter mechanically.

The damage and attack types do matter since HP are so abstract. If it’s a poisoned weapon, then I would narrate it as a very small scrape. Context specific. But narrating every single hit as damaging the body takes me out of the fantasy. It starts feeling like a video game where the characters take several wounding hits without actually having to deal with the consequences of being wounded.

Generally I use the half HP threshold for physical injury, assuming physical weapon attacks. Still, HP are always super abstract and handwavey. Hit by a fireball? Why’s your cloak, bags, clothing, etc. all fine? Even when you drop to 0 hit points! Very abstract and gamey, but easy to track.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The damage and attack types do matter since HP are so abstract. If it’s a poisoned weapon, then I would narrate it as a very small scrape. Context specific. But narrating every single hit as damaging the body takes me out of the fantasy. It starts feeling like a video game where the characters take several wounding hits without actually having to deal with the consequences of being wounded.

Generally I use the half HP threshold for physical injury, assuming physical weapon attacks. Still, HP are always super abstract and handwavey. Hit by a fireball? Why’s your cloak, bags, clothing, etc. all fine? Even when you drop to 0 hit points! Very abstract and gamey, but easy to track.

As I've said, I'm well aware that D&D hit points have never been realistic, but the baldness of that stance (and pretty much every other stance) in 4e specifically eventually became too much for me to deal with and still have fun. Obviously, YMMV.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Hit by a fireball? Why’s your cloak, bags, clothing, etc. all fine?

I wouldn't assume that they're fine.