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

[Raven Crowking]

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.

Using something regularly and fully understanding it doesn't lead to viewing it through rose-coloured glasses.

The problems with 3e, for example, were hard to see for many folks until they had sufficient experience with the system. Experience removes RCG; it doesn't put them on.

Let folks play 4e for a few years, and experience will cause most people to see it differently than they did when it first came out. It might cause me to see it far differently; lack of experience can create "mud-coloured glasses" as easily as it can rose-coloured ones.


RC

 

[Fifth Element]

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.

I think the point is, many of your posts come off as calling the 4E way badwrongfun. You may not intend it that way, and if so, you should be more careful how you phrase things.

I mean, I've never even played 4E and your posts often get my back up, because they read like screeds against 4E and its fans.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think the point is, many of your posts come off as calling the 4E way badwrongfun. You may not intend it that way, and if so, you should be more careful how you phrase things.

I mean, I've never even played 4E and your posts often get my back up, because they read like screeds against 4E and its fans.

You are, perhaps, correct.

There are several things about 4e that get my back up. This is mostly because there are several things that I think were good, and/or had far greater potential than what the designers actually did. I'm also not a big fan of the business model that intentionally puts important parts of the core into later books in order to make them sell better. And the GSL...don't get me started about the GSL. 4e came out at a time where D&D could have used a new edition. I just wished it was an edition I liked.

4e fans though? I got nothing against them as a group. I've got friends (in the real world, not just the InterWeb) who really like 4e. I'm happy for them. Because I don't want a new BMW, it doesn't mean that I can't be happy for someone else who wanted, and got, one.

(I do wish WotC would put the earlier editions in a Print-on-Demand service, though. You having your BMW shouldn't prevent me from getting a new set of tires for my van. Or bike. Or smart car, depending upon preference.)

(And, if nothing else, all the discussions about 4e made me look at game design with new eyes, and made me look at previous editions with a new respect.)

Historical revisionists are another story.....


RC

 

[Fifth Element]

(I do wish WotC would put the earlier editions in a Print-on-Demand service, though.

It would be nice, but there's a big question about whether it would be cost-effective for them to do so. Losing money on old products is not a good business plan.

Historical revisionists are another story.....

Yes, facts and interpretations are the same thing.

 

[FireLance]

Until his buddy gives him a pep talk, and then either all those nicks and scratches either get "talked away", or they are no longer represented by hit points (and the description given above becomes less accurate).

I think it's a fine distinction, but an important one. A nick or scratch on a character indicates that he has lost hit points because he turned a major wound into a minor injury. Pre-4e, when the hit points are restored either by magical healing or through the passage of time, the nick or scratch disappears. In 4e, when a character recovers hit points quickly through non-magical means (inspiring word, second wind, healing surges during a short rest, etc.), the nick or scratch remains.

Hit points still work the same way in 4e in that they allow you to turn major wounds into minor injuries. However, the exact one-to-one relationship between your hit points and the number of nicks and scratches you have no longer applies. A character may be covered in nicks and scratches and still be at full hit points because the intangible aspects of hit points that allow him to turn major wounds into minor injuries, e.g. skill, divine favor, luck, etc. have been replenished.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Yes, facts and interpretations are the same thing.

Your sig says "I have never played 4E. Please bear that in mind before assuming that I'm some 4E fanboy." Is that because you write like a 4E fanboy, or because people read what they expect to find?



I think I'll pick this up tomorrow.


RC

 

[Delta]

But I think it makes decent sense to allow you to regain hit points by regaining determination. It fits the genre- I stab you a bit, you look like you might die, but then you surge to your feet in defiance and desperately battle some more, and I have to stab you a few more times before you actually die.

I'm just trying to establish what's in 4E, without an edition war. You agree that the above is new to 4E, I assume?

 

[Oni]

Hit points are a bad model of "reality", but so are most of the more detailed models that are more "realistic". That's because reality has the nasty habit of throwing up really strange events every so often, which the rules aren't going to repeat. I don't think there's many sets of rules which can cope with Alexander the Great surviving a ballista bolt in the chest while other people are being killed by one lucky hit with an arrow. And rules which allow someone to be struck through the eye slit of their helm with a sword, turn on their attacker and strike them down, and then collapse and die aren't easy to find.

And yet HP (with a dash of simultaneous initiative) could allow for the situations you described to happen.

 

[FireLance]

Thanks for quoting that. So it seems like "resolve" is newly added in 4E, do you agree with that? (It's not in 1E or 3E from my lookup.)

You say "should arguably" and "you could add a clause" and "you could find some way to narrate", etc. But you agree that's not part of RAW pre-4E, right?

Yes, since I don't recall any specific pre-4e effects that targeted luck, resolve or some other intangible aspect of hit points that did not also have some potentially lethal component.

There are some grey areas, though. Nonlethal damage in 3e, while not taken off hit points per se, did reduce a creature's ability to keep fighting in the same way as lethal hit point damage. Even further back (in BECMI and 1e, IIRC), if you dealt subdual damage to a dragon equal to its full normal hit points, you could force it to surrender to you. Effectively, it seemed as if dragons had a "resolve" point total separate from but equal to their normal hit point total.

 

[Delta]

Yes, since I don't recall any specific pre-4e effects that targeted luck, resolve or some other intangible aspect of hit points that did not also have some potentially lethal component.

Agreed.