April 3rd, Rule of 3

[Andor]

This is the first time I've heard the theory that "natural healing" really isn't natural at all!

I don't think it's assumed to be low grade magic, I'm suggesting that you can refluff it that way if it helps you come to grips with it. Although I will note that 'natural' healing explicitly assumes competent wound care for the fastest recovery rate so it's natural in the same sense that an ICU is natural.

In my view neither is remotely feasible - no one heals from a broken limb, a torn tendon or ligament, a ruptured lung, etc - in either a day or a week.

Which is why I say that no hp loss from which a PC recovers, or can recover, naturally (in any edition of D&D) amounts to a wound like that.

Which is why I further say that all hit point recovery is (i) recovering from bruises, scrapes, etc - like those narrated by REH in the Conan stories (Conan's lips are bloody, he has cuts all over him, but no soft tissue is torn, no bones broken, no major vessels severed); and (ii) is restoration of the mojo necessary to fight on despite such wounds.

Heals completely? No. Recovers to the point of functionality? I saw an interview once with G. Gordon Liddy. He had been run over by a pickup truck the previous week, and had a broken arm. He had refused a cast because he preferred mobility to a lack of pain and seemed to be getting around just fine.

The flip side which you are ignoring is that nobody bleeds to death from bruises and scrapes. And yet a D&D character left alone at -1 hp might be dead within the hour, or he might be fine in a week. So was he bleeding out or just bruised? I don't like schroedingers wounds particularly.

Full Hp can mean completely perfect health, or it can mean covered with half-healed wounds, none of with inflict impairment or represent vulnerabilities that make you closer to death. I've come home from work covered in scratches, cuts and bites. The next day I went back. Were those unhealed cuts and bruises hp damage? Was I risking my life if I took one more bite? I doubt it.

I've taken a few hits which would certainly represent hp damage in D&D. Stepping of a rusty screw, slashing my knee open on a nail plate, bitten by a nile monitor - In one case my boss made me go get stitches, the rest of them I just did minimal first aid and kept working. No impairment either way.

OTOH overworked muscles, or a whacked knee, which certainly do NOT represent HP damage in D&D can cripple you for moments or days.

So perhaps separating status effects and stat damage from HP damage does make sense?

 

[pemerton]

for those who think it is silly to assume HP largely reflects damage that cant be hand waved or walked off, why did previous editions require magic healing to get full hp back

They didn't. Natural healing could return you to full, given enough time. (After a month, I think, in AD&D, anyone returns to full - I'm going from memory here.)

why was natural healing so slow? Clearly there is an attempt in there to model physical damage (even if it is somewhat abstract and not 100% realistic).

My contention is that this falls so far short of recovering from something like a ruptured lung or broken limb that it cannot have been intended as a model of that. It's modelling recovery from bruising and light bleeding, in my view.

Your arguments keep addressing my points as if i am arguing for gritty realism,

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i would rather have D&D be more realistic than te quick heals of 4E

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Is a week enough time to realistically heal from a sword slash? No, but it is realistic enough for me and greatly more realistic than shrugging it off after a battle.

if a guy lost half his HP i certainly would describe it as a deep wound. As has been offered, this is far fom perfect realism

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The downside of the simple nature of D&D hp is it has blind spots like this and only serves as a rough approximation.

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week-long mundane heals are more of a nod to realism than second or day long mundane heals. The first is vaguely believable

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The second is just so jarring, it can only be used to explain hp as mojo and light bruising.

As I've said, I find the first sufficiently implausible that I favour the second as the interpretation of hp loss (short of death). Mojo, in particular, can also permit pushing on despite moderate bruising and superficial cuts and scrapes - the PC looks beaten up but is unimpeded in performance.

In case it's ambiguous - I find that the second interpretation is the one that gives the greater nod to realism. I can see a nod to realism in pushing on through minor wounds. I can't see any nod to realism in recovering from ruptured organs (as mentioned by another poster above) or even deep wounds after a week of rest.

I agree to an extent...but who decided there was a broken limb?

IMO that's where the problem lies, once we add that into the game, then yes, a week becomes very non-feasible.

Well, it was suggested upthread (by Andor, at least), that a crit from a charging lance means that the PC's chest has been run through and lung ruptured. I'm not sure if Bedrockgames agrees fully, but the phrase "deep wound" was used just above.

My view is that, because the healing times are so short, no amount of hp loss short of death can be reflecting these sorts of traumatic injuries. As I posted above, my model is REH's Conan - who is bruised and bloodied but does not suffer broken bones or the severing of major vessels, let alone rupturing of organs - or Frodo's survival of the blow from the cave troll.

A week of healing is a long time if a typical D&D adventure takes place over 1-2 days, which is the case, and has been the case, for example D&D adventures and published modules since the 1970s.

The game, and mind you D&D is a game, wants to keep players engaged. Leaving the scene of an adventure for a week periodically so someone can heal is not engaging to me--yes, the DM can make recovering from wounds "part of the adventure"! I'm not interested in that game--I want to play D&D.

This is all true. But what does it tell us about the physical consequences of hit point loss? For me, it is a series of reasons to adopt the approach that hit point loss short of death does not represent serious injury. To put it another way - the game's strategy for maintaining engagement is to ensure that, as long as your PC is not dead, s/he is not too badly hurt.

I don't see the game as one in which we assume that PC's have ruptured lungs, broken limbs and the like but just (i) ignore this when it comes to resolving actions, and (ii) pretend that these sorts of injuries can be recovered from in a week or two of rest.

 

[Guest 85555]

They didn't. Natural healing could return you to full, given enough time. (After a month, I think, in AD&D, anyone returns to full - I'm going from memory here.)

Mispoke. Meant magic healing can do it immediately, natural healing takes a long time.

 

[Argyle King]

Interesting. The group I GM went for 6 or so levels without a leader, but did have two cleric, one warlord and one bard multi-class, and one paladin PC and one dwarf fighter with Comeback Strike.

When PHB3 came out, the ranger (multi-class cleric) was rebuilt as a hybrid ranger-cleric, and since then two of the other three leader multi-class feast have been retrained away.

I have to push the party pretty hard for healing to become an issue as far as quantity is concerned (managing the timing of access to it continues to be an important part of play).

I don't understand... ?

 

[pemerton]

The flip side which you are ignoring is that nobody bleeds to death from bruises and scrapes. And yet a D&D character left alone at -1 hp might be dead within the hour, or he might be fine in a week. So was he bleeding out or just bruised? I don't like schroedingers wounds particularly.

I think that fortune-in-the-middle resolution is close to inevitable for a coherent application of a plot protection mechanic like hit points. (While Gygax doesn't talk about it in relation to hp, he does for saving throws - you can't know what a saving throw represents, in the fiction, until after the die is rolled and mechanically resolved.)

I mean, if you narrate the bleeding as dying to death through major organ trauma or blood loss, how are you going to explain stabilisation and recovery via natural healing? (No blood transfusions in the D&D world!)

But if you narrate as as something less than that, then you can't explain how the PC died a minute later.

So you have to hold off on the narration of the fiction until the mechanical resolution is completed.

 

[Guest 85555]

Pemerton, we disagree and that is fine. If mojo works for you as an explanation, great go with it. For me it doesn't work. Nor does fast mundane heals. It simply isn't conducive to how i understand hp or the game working.

And my impression is half or more of the people who play D&D feel the same way. For this reason, i cant only see 4E style healing working as a option, not as the default. Lets remeber that is one of the chief complaints leveled against 4E. People can think we are being sillly or illogical (i think we a being neither) but whether that is the case or not, it is a big enough issue that people wont play the new edition if it contains 4e healing.

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand... ?

I thought in technical rolespeak taking a multi-class feat doesn't change your role.

The PCs were a fighter (multi-warlord), a ranger (multi-cleric), a sorcerer (multi-bard) and a wizard (multi-cleric). And a paladin. So no leader, but 4 daily heals from MC feats.

That's quite a way short of what you get from a leader, or even from a hybrid leader, but it nevertheless mostly saw them through.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

i agree, that beeing down to negative hp should have consequences. If you can die from beeing at -1, so should you not recover in 5 minutes from those wounds. Schroedinger wounds are something that I´d rather not have n 5e. In 4e, i can accept them and as long as noone questions them there is no problem.

 

[Argyle King]

I thought in technical rolespeak taking a multi-class feat doesn't change your role.

The PCs were a fighter (multi-warlord), a ranger (multi-cleric), a sorcerer (multi-bard) and a wizard (multi-cleric). And a paladin. So no leader, but 4 daily heals from MC feats.

That's quite a way short of what you get from a leader, or even from a hybrid leader, but it nevertheless mostly saw them through.

I misunderstood your original post.

Actually, I'd say having everyone multi-class into a healing class pretty much covers the healing portion of a leader role well enough to get by. I wasn't taking into consideration multiclassing (which is odd for me since I usually am someone who multiclasses a lot.)

 

[Guest 85555]

I

I mean, if you narrate the bleeding as dying to death through major organ trauma or blood loss, how are you going to explain stabilisation and recovery via natural healing? (No blood transfusions in the D&D world!)

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Again you are applying high levels of realism here most peopoe are willing to gloss over. No one has said they want 100% medically factual modeling of wounds. I haven't said that, at least. What we do want is some minimal nd to realism in regard to recovery time. We want to be able to do what we and probably over half he gaming community does, assume hp damage indicates actual damage to the body that takes time to heal. Some want to describe actual blows, including things like deep wounds and even critical injuries, without a mundane healing creating an inconsistency. None of us are applying granular level realism to this (if we were our characters would being walking around with fistulas, infections and weakened muscles). We just want more than: 1) walking away from battles with only bruises and muscle cramps or 2) recovering from serious blows in a matter of moments. For us your interpretation (2) doesn't work, and number 1 absolutely don't work. And we only ever had this issue with 4E.