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

[Raven Crowking]

It will never make sense to me that a wound (particularly a minor wound) has to be physically closed and flesh made whole before it can cease to have a detrimental impact on a character's ability to "stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your feet throughout a battle" or his "skill, luck, and resolve - all the factors that combine to help you stay alive in a combat situation."

Have you ever been in combat, or been wounded?


RC

 

[Lacyon]

Have you ever been in combat, or been wounded?

I've suffered plenty of "minor grazes" as you called the 5 hp lost by high-level fighter.*

They generally stopped hurting a long time before they fully healed. Frequently, this would occur within 5-10 minutes of recieving the injury.

It's a shame that such a skilled combatant has to spend a couple of days sucking his thumb to get over those kinds of injuries.

*Before you ask, I've suffered worse injuries as well. Unfortunately, none of the really bad ones were well-modeled by any hp system I've ever seen. I have to assume that they either simply don't happen within the confines of those systems, or that they'll be hand-waved within those systems to one degree or another. (And no, changing the degree, even by a large amount, doesn't strike me as a radical shift in the paradigm).

 

[Scribble]

*Before you ask, I've suffered worse injuries as well. Unfortunately, none of the really bad ones were well-modeled by any hp system I've ever seen. I have to assume that they either simply don't happen within the confines of those systems, or that they'll be hand-waved within those systems to one degree or another. (And no, changing the degree, even by a large amount, doesn't strike me as a radical shift in the paradigm).

My thoughts on this are that it's similar in nature to books and movies. For the most part, those characters get knicks and bruises, and slight "flesh wounds." Random battles don't generate random broken/lost/crushed limbs because when those things happen, the writter is using it as a significant story impact. The story doesn't continue in the same fashion when it happens. It flashes forward to a point where it can continue, and then usually changes scope.

For a bit the story becomes all about that injury, as opposed to the same story just dealing with the injury on top of it.

Same can/should be true with D&D. If a character suffers some sort of grivious injury it shouldn't (in my opinion) be just a crappy thing to deal with in the next scene. It should impact the scope of the game, and even utilize a "cut-scene."

If you're looking for more "realistic" then I can see this being not to your liking... But then again I don't think D&D as a whole has ever beem really suited for that style. (Without significant modification.)

 

[Raven Crowking]

If you're looking for more "realistic" then I can see this being not to your liking... But then again I don't think D&D as a whole has ever beem really suited for that style. (Without significant modification.)

I agree......so long as you ignore all editions previous to the 4th.


RC

 

[Scribble]

I agree......so long as you ignore all editions previous to the 4th.


RC

If that's your opion that's your opinion. We differ...

heavy access to magic, wounds that don't effect your ability to do stuff, armor that causes a miss chance as opposed to absorbing damage and needing to be repaired, monsters, abstract damage from things like falling, walking into lava, surviving poison based on how much life experience you have... surviving ANYTHING based on how much life experience you have, not being able to increase your stats through exersize or study, things that can fly that shouldn't in any way shape or form be able to fly, all characters being able to pretty much read and write, so many people things with the ability to fly, teeport, turn invisible, etc yet the standard noble still lives in a standard european style castle, magic can do just about anything out own level of tech can do (and more) is relatively cheap, yet most people still exist in a fashion similar to the medival ages, creatures living a LOT longer then humans yet still being similar to humans (and not really reallyl sloooowwwww) people who can either fight... or not fight with it making little to no difefrence what they're fighting with, gods that exist and physically manifest in the world, most monsters being more intelligent, faster, stronger, long lived and with better defenses... yet humans still being the creme of the crop, artifacts that have magic powers....

Yeah... D&D has always been the model of reality...

 

[Hussar]

Okay, I gotta admit, comparing this:

Overall, I have argued that the 1e and the 4e hp paradigms are different, not that one is better than the other.

To this

However, that said, I do believe that the 1e hp paradigm is superior to the 4e one, if only because the 4e system consistently leads to absurd results. IOW, while I agree (to a point) that they "all can be shown to be absurd and unrealistic and just flat out not to model anything very well depending on how closely you examine them", it takes little more than casual examination to see the problems with the 4e paradigm.

makes me laugh. Which is it? Is RC arguing superiority or not? He cannot even decide within his own post.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If that's your opion that's your opinion. We differ...

We do. Because, IMHO, it's easy to be more "realistic" than 4e easily allows in anything prior to 4e. Of course, I acknowledge that, while Conan and LotR might not be "the model of reality", they are more "realistic" than DragonballZ....and also, in some ways, more "realistic" than the last Die Hard movie.

"Realistic" in this context is neither good nor bad. Depending upon your preferences, you might be going for more or less realism, or more or less cinemism. Some editions have been really good at either, with only minimal work. Of course, these editions had their own problems.

As a complete aside, based on the "severed artery chart" mentioned above, does anyone remember the "Wandering Damage Table" from one April issue of The Dragon? "Cut yourself shaving; roll on limbs severed table".


RC

 

[Fifth Element]

makes me laugh. Which is it? Is RC arguing superiority or not? He cannot even decide within his own post.

You need to understand that RC thinks both ways are fine, as long as you realize that your way is silly and his is the way EGG intended.

 

[WalterKovacs]

But I don't want to see the current 4e hp paradigm through the rose-coloured glasses some would like to force others to wear, either.

However, the "pre-4e" HP systems are being looked at through rose-coloured glasses simply because they've been used for so long that it's assumed it can be the status quo.

No matter how many wounds you take in ANY version of D&D you are either concious or dying/dead. There are a few exceptions like death from massive damage, etc ... but ultimately, no one gets hurt unless they die [or "may die"]. In 3e they had the "bleed to death regardless of why you are dying" mechanic for dying/stabilization. In 4e it's a different "dying" mechanic.

One thing to remember ... healing surges are one of the things that seperates the hero/PCs from the rest ... NPCs have 1 healing surge per tier, which PCs will always have more per day than that. Thus for the "average person" in that world, they'd only be able to recover from dying because of a warlord's shout [note, not just ANYONE giving encouragement, but a person specifically trained in doing it ... something that a non-warlord can only hope to ever pull off once per day with training] once in a day.

To each their own, but the idea of someone being healed over and over and over and over by magic [i.e. a full curestick] vs. having a limited number of surges per day. Magic is always the "special trick" ... but a person can only really stand up to so much punishment and pain.

Your HP is the equivalent of death by massive damage. Your healing surges is your HP from older editions. And while ... without magic ... you'd have to sleep numerous days to get back your HP ... this "realistic" system was something that was just about subverted by most parties anyway. HP was reduced, for the most part, to a "during the encounter" resource, with the access to healing magic (curestick and cleric spells) being the day long resource. This has been changed to HP and healing surges respectively ... with things further restricted by having a limited number of heals per encounter, instead of the restrictions of 3.5 which are that some effects only heal over time [vigor] and are better out of combat, or that you are replacing a standard action to do a heal [or need to get next to someone, etc].

The entire "issue" with 4e is ultmately the no-magic "healing" ... which alerted people to the fact that HP isn't sword through the chest ... even though it never was before, since people seemed to be suffering NO ill effects (other than the possibility of dying) from that sword to the chest in earlier editions.

 

[Raven Crowking]

You need to understand that RC thinks both ways are fine, as long as you realize that your way is silly and his is the way EGG intended.

Can we please avoid this pettiness?

Hussar has some....personal issues....with me. He sent me an email saying "This constant sniping is making both of us look bad and it's really not very constructive. We bury the past, let it stay buried and agree to go back to arguing the hell out of things we disagree about?" I told him I wasn't sniping (and could not), that I wasn't reading his posts (except as quoted by others), and suggested that he put me on Ignore.

I am afraid that I was not very kind about the way I said it, so I am afraid that there is probably quite a bit more "sniping" that I am not aware of.

However, there is nothing wrong with saying that neither way is wrongbadfun, but that one way is less likely to result in absurd results for most users. If you can avoid the absurd results -- don't think about it, don't narrate it, or make certain house rules seem to be the most popular ways of achieving this -- and the system gives you other things you like, why would you care what I think or what I prefer?

That the new paradigm isn't the one EGG created doesn't in and of itself make the new paradigm silly, either. It does make it a new paradigm. There have been many shifts away from the EGG paradigm over the years, as has already been noted, and they are certainly not all (or even mostly) silly. Some even have a level of realism or deadliness that would make EGG's hit points look silly in comparison.

The aforementioned, though, isn't going to make me deny that the long-term survival of EGG's paradigm isn't indicative of the many strengths that it has. EGG created a fantastic paradigm.

That a person can argue that two things are different, rather than that one is better than the other, even though that person believes one to be better than the other shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Certainly you can argue that a dolphin and a shark are two different things without prefering to swim with one over the other somehow colouring your perception that they are different?


RC