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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kahuna Burger" data-source="post: 4013306" data-attributes="member: 8439">yeah, you can give "No Prize" explainations all day long, but the primary issue I see is that the extended mechanics have not flowed from the official flavor of hp, and in most cases are described in ways that make the most sense with a "hp loss = physical injury" flavor. poison rules : One dose of poison smeared on a weapon or some other object affects just a single target. A poisoned weapon or object retains its venom until the weapon scores a hit or the object is touched (unless the poison is wiped off before a target comes in contact with it). Damage reduction :  A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly (in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective). The creature takes normal damage from energy attacks (even nonmagical ones), spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. A certain kind of weapon can sometimes damage the creature normally, as noted below. The interaction between poison and damage reduction : If a creature has sufficient damage reduction to avoid taking any damage from the attack, the poison does not affect it. Traps that cause damage from weapons, needles, and the like sometimes contain injury poisons. And abilities like improved grab or the monk's stunning fist which make the difference between hitting and missing a non abstract propisition...On the other end of the scale, abilities are added that are redundant of what hit points supposedly already represent.Defensive Roll (Ex) : The rogue can roll with a potentially lethal blow to take less damage from it than she otherwise would.(heck, between that, evasion and improved evasion, why not just give the rogue a ton of hit points since everything she is doing to avoid damage is supposedly already represented in them)****Anyway, probably devoted too much energy to this brick wall, so I shall just say : If one of the 4e articles faced head on how the abstract hp flavor text had come to less and less match the mechanics, and gave examples of things they were going to remove and change to make a truely abstract system, that would be one thing. But so far, all I've seen is explaining new mechanics with "well, hp has always been abstract, afterall...." To take it seriously I would need to see "...and in this edition we're taking a hatchet to all the rules that have diluted that and making it mechanically fit." Then give us  a single example, like DR disapearing.</blockquote>

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