4e Hit Points and pre-4e Hit Points: A Comparison

[aurance]

Flavor wise, there is some difference. 4e characters are more able to recover without "magic" than 3e characters. Mechanistically, however, I noticed that in both editions PCs recover at about the same rate - 3e clerics simply dump all remaining spell slots into healing before resting for the night, getting everything back.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Flavor wise, there is some difference. 4e characters are more able to recover without "magic" than 3e characters. Mechanistically, however, I noticed that in both editions PCs recover at about the same rate - 3e clerics simply dump all remaining spell slots into healing before resting for the night, getting everything back.

Actually, because 4e is limited by surges, whereas 3e/3.5 is limited by access to magical effects ... you can, with enough curesticks, cure much more HP in 3e. It just happens that 4 surges [likely less] will get someone to full. But for someone that isn't a defender with great CON ... that's probably at LEAST half their surges. Compared to cure light [or lesser vigor] wands that could cure a ton of damage, limited only by access to cash.

 

[TheNovaLord]

i have no problem

it is absolutely no fun with your charcater doing nothing but hobbling around for a half a session

one of the very few problems i have with SW is that if your healer is hurt and you are hurt (eg 2 woiunds each) you are doomed to a dull session as the penalty for you to heal is just to great. Its ok if u have magic like deadlands reoladed, but a killer if playing pirates for example

it may be realistic, but its not fun. I i wanted realistic id read a newspaper, or something that really tries to simulate like rolemaster

 

[FireLance]

Does everyone agree with this? (Does it say explicitly this in the 4E books?)

I wanted to check my books before replying to this. Page 293 of the 4e PH states:

"Hit points (hp) measure your ability to stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your feet throughout a battle. Hit points represent more than physical endurance. They represent your character's skill, luck, and resolve - all the factors that combine to help you stay alive in a combat situation.​

So, a high-level 4e character who is low on hit points because he has turned deadly strikes into glancing blows (and is thus covered in nicks and scratches), out of breath from exhausting his physical endurance, and dangerously close to running out of luck is consistent with the 4e definition of hit points.

It seems like I see a lot of 4E players saying that hp represent anything you like -- possibly disassociated from all physical injury, possibly reduced by Intimidate checks, etc. I suppose that could be a poll question.

It is true that pre-4e, hit point damage was almost always delivered by a mechanism that could conceivably kill a person, whether it was a weapon strike, some sort of dangerous substance or energy, or a psionic attack that overloaded the brain.

However, if you accept the premise that hit points are composed of more than physical endurance and also include intangibles like luck and resolve, effects that curse a character (reducing luck) and demoralize him (reducing resolve) should arguably also be able to lower hit points. Whether this could actually result in death is another matter. If you don't want such intangible damage effects to result in death by themselves, you could add a clause that they cannot reduce the target's hit points to less than 1. Alternatively, you could find some way to narrate how running out of luck or resolve could kill a character. Perhaps a character who is out of luck loses his balance and happens to hit his head on a rock, and a character who is out of resolve is simply frightened to death.

 

[Squizzle]

However, if you accept the premise that hit points are composed of more than physical endurance and also include intangibles like luck and resolve, effects that curse a character (reducing luck) and demoralize him (reducing resolve) should arguably also be able to lower hit points. Whether this could actually result in death is another matter. If you don't want such intangible damage effects to result in death by themselves, you could add a clause that they cannot reduce the target's hit points to less than 1. Alternatively, you could find some way to narrate how running out of luck or resolve could kill a character. Perhaps a character who is out of luck loses his balance and happens to hit his head on a rock, and a character who is out of resolve is simply frightened to death.

Indeed, it doesn't even have to be immediate death. An enemy falling to 0 HP in 4E is "out of the fight", not necessarily dead. This could be achieved via surrender as easily as by being frightened to death--and if the player is bent on killing the foe instead of simply disabling, then you can narrate that the last bit of "resolve"-based HP damage simply caused the enemy to give up and stop fighting, so that a quick blow from the PC (not a rolled attack; a narrative consequence of the "morale" attack) was enough to end the wretch's life.

 

[billd91]

Actually, because 4e is limited by surges, whereas 3e/3.5 is limited by access to magical effects ... you can, with enough curesticks, cure much more HP in 3e. It just happens that 4 surges [likely less] will get someone to full. But for someone that isn't a defender with great CON ... that's probably at LEAST half their surges. Compared to cure light [or lesser vigor] wands that could cure a ton of damage, limited only by access to cash.

And it's worth pointing out that 4e healing is very much limited to the individual and are very hard to find any way to share barring a paladin or extend barring pots of Keoghtum's ointment.

Healing in previous editions, even if the party had limited resources, was always easier to share and concentrate on the character who needed it most.

 

[mmadsen]

The key similarity between 4e hit points and pre-4e hit points is that any hit that does not reduce a character to 0 hit points or less is a non-threatening wound that does not hamper the character's ability to fight.

The key similarity between 4e hit points and pre-4e hit points -- one that's so obvious it's invisible -- is that they're both hit points, which means that damage is cumulative and toughness is ablative. Nicks and scratches -- individually so inconsequential that they do not hamper the character's ability to fight -- add up to impalement.

In real life and in fiction, a human or exotic creature -- be it dragon or bull elephant -- might drop from one arrow in the eye or might soldier on despite dozens of arrows in its armor or armored hide.

So, do hit points badly model reality, or do they cleverly model luck, divine favor, etc.? If the latter, why can't that luck help against anything except damage from attacks that hit?

 

[vagabundo]

Does everyone agree with this? (Does it say explicitly this in the 4E books?)

It seems like I see a lot of 4E players saying that hp represent anything you like -- possibly disassociated from all physical injury, possibly reduced by Intimidate checks, etc. I suppose that could be a poll question.

Generally that is how I imagine HPs in 4e. Although in rare cases the high level character could be severely depressed and any more intimidation could lead to his suicide.

HP: A non linear scale and not easily comparable across levels. A hitpoint at 1st level and a hitpoint at 7th level would requires integrals and fourth dimension math to get it's quantity and position.

Anything more than a five levels difference does not work in 4e, the maths breaks, that's why you reimage a creature as a higher level minion rather than run him as the lower level elite the party faced six levels ago.

Hitpoints follow the Hong-Heisenberg RPG theory of Thinking Too Hard; if you look at them too closely you can't quite pin them down. Step away from the concept a little and it works as an abstraction, with DM-Common-Sense smoothing out the kinks.

To close: HPs do not make sense, but are fun anyway.

 

[Hussar]

Quite aside from the fact that I'm sure many people did in fact use those rules, I think that if you're going to compare what HP mean in each edition, it's only fair to base your arguments on how HP were actually presented, and make it clear when you are in fact discussing house rules (not a swipe at FireLance, who clearly just forgot or never used the specific rule being discussed).

Oh fair enough.

Actually, I just never knew that rule existed to be honest. We played 1e like 2e in that respect. Once you got up from -x, you were good to go. We either ignored or were ignorant of that rule. Probably the latter considering how many rules I am learning about years after the fact.

 

[mmadsen]

Characters getting into fights etc. and then being fighting ready again shortly, may not be realistic - but it agrees with many of the movie and novel tropes I happen to like.

I think it's perfectly realistic that most of the adventurers in a party would be ready to fight again after winning a skirmish; they likely would be unharmed.

Some fraction of the party should be dead or wounded though -- rather than every member of the team being at 80 percent, or whatever.

(An entirely different realism concern is that real-life combat is emotionally draining. Everyone, not just northern barbarians, experiences a massive adrenaline dump during combat, and it wears off soon after a victory. That's when a counter-attack is most dangerous.)