That's true, no edition of D&D could posibly model this situation. Oh wait, except for
this one. Or
this one. Or bleeding damage. Or the diehard feat.
There is no modelling of being skewered by a lance in 3E. No permanent injury. No being slowed. No mortal wound mechanic (unless you count the Diehard feat, and then you are still dying in seconds - no recreation of the famous scene(s) from Reservoir Dogs).
I remind you of the sword of wounding.
Yes. Let's also mention vorpal swords and swords of sharpness. So in this verismilitudinous, physcial-injury-heavy world of AD&D, the only way to cause anyone any injury with a sword is to use one of the most powerful magic weapons in the game.
Can we please stop pretending that a crit from a lance from a charging knight on horseback only does damage by scaring you? It does not. You are frickin' skewered. There is a spear in your lungs.
So why can you still move, breathe, fight, drink a beer, etc?
If you still have 1 hp, then you are sufficiently Ramboed up enough to keep fighting with a spear through your lungs. This is why natural healing in any edition prior to 4th would take weeks to heal that wound.
Suppose I'm a 5th level fighter in 3E, with 42 hp. I take 32 hp from a lance crit. I'll heal that back up in a week. Not weeks. One week.
No one recovers from the sorts of wounds you're talking about in one week. (No one "Ramboes" through them, either - you can't manoeuvre properly with a spear through your body, apart from anything else - where is the penalty to AC or DEX?)
The only way to quickly fix a ruptured lung is Magic.
Naturally healing from the sort of injury you are describing is miraculous. Naturally healing from it in a week is beyond miraculous. It's absurd. That's why, in my view, hit point loss in D&D never corresponds to those sorts of injuries.
I certainly have no problem with others not assuming hp loss is primarily physical damage, but surely you can see why some of us ave trouble with this in our own games, and why it was less of an issue for us in previous editions (which had healing rules that appeared to support the notion that damage was largely physical).
In 3E a PC will recover all their hp in around one to two weeks (oddly enough, the higher your CON and bigger your hit die, the longer it takes).
I have suffered comparatively minor physical injuries - sprains, torn soft tissue, very minor breaks. They do not recover in one to two weeks. No one recovers from being (literally) skewered by a medieval weapon in one to two weeks.
The healing times in 3E don't add to any verismilitude or make room for physical injury. The difference between getting my mojo back overnight, and taking a week, is nothing more than a matter of taste. (And desired pacing.)
