April 3rd, Rule of 3

[BryonD]

That is partly an issue with the base hit point system.

As I have said multiple times now, HP in 4E work for me just as well as they do in other systems. I'm not trashing HP. I'm simply drawing out the distinction between the HP issues and the surges issues.

Such as? Apart from the ability to avoid future wounds (the first scenario) or the ability to press on unhindered despite the sum total of the wounds already sustained (the second scenario), I am unable to recall any significant part of the system that treats a character at full hit points and one down to 1 hp any differently.

A wounded character is less capbale of absorbing more damage before succumbing. This is a critically important distinction.

Yes, after an extended rest, the character's vigor, luck or whatever it is that allows him to avoid taking a serious wound in the first place are restored (the first scenario) or his reserves of willpower and determination, or whatever allows him to ignore the wounds, have been refreshed (the second scenario).

As I mentioned in my earlier post, while it might not be an approach you are used to or are comfortable with, I don't think it's fair to say that it is dysfunctional, convoluted or unacceptable.

And, yet again, you have not addressed the issues that I have actually described as convoluted and unacceptable.

 

[Hussar]

Right. You have named three great things about pre-surge style healing for narrative story telling and three problems with pre-surge style healing for gamist expediency.
/snip

You call it great for narrative. I call it differently. I see it as the mechanics dictating a specific narrative on my game whether I want that narrative or not. Has nothing to do with gamist expediency and everything to do with flexibility. You cannot replicate 4e style pacing with 3e style rules without relying on healing wands. IOW, if I want a faster paced game, I MUST use a specific campaign style - high magic where healing wands are a dime a dozen - in order to get that. OTOH, if I want earlier edition pacing, I can replicate that easily with 4e surge mechanics. I wish I had bookmarked Crazy Jerome's post about how to do it, but, it's relatively simple to achieve.

But the problem is 4E *DOES NOT* have these four states.
I could grab a character sheet up in the middle of a 4E game and show it to you and it would be completely impossible for you to tell if a character was in state (2) or state (4). They are mechanically indistinguishable.

And even that isn't really saying it right. It isn't that they are indistinguishable, it is that they are one and the same.

You keep repeating this but it's not true. State 2 characters would be down healing surges. State 4 characters would not. Both characters can receive exactly the same damage before running out of HP. The state 4 character however, can do it more often than the state 2 character since the state 4 character has more healing surges.

It's only because you insist that we ignore healing surges when determining the state of a character. Two character with the same HP but one with no surges remaining and the other with full surges remaining should not look the same. The first guy should look like he's been through a meat grinder.

 

[BryonD]

You call it great for narrative. I call it differently.

And yet you've never offered an answer for the lack of cause and effect.

You keep repeating this but it's not true. State 2 characters would be down healing surges. State 4 characters would not. Both characters can receive exactly the same damage before running out of HP. The state 4 character however, can do it more often than the state 2 character since the state 4 character has more healing surges.

It's only because you insist that we ignore healing surges when determining the state of a character. Two character with the same HP but one with no surges remaining and the other with full surges remaining should not look the same. The first guy should look like he's been through a meat grinder.

No, you are not following the conversation correctly.

We were talking about characters with all HP and all surges restored.

Again, you can shuffle the deck a variety of ways. It is just playing whack-a-mole. Every issue I have can be solved. But every solution requires a different issue be brought in.

Several of you have now made efforts to solve issue A and ignore that you bring up issue B. I point out issue B and you "solve" it by ignoring that you've restored issue A. You can make any one go away. You can't make them all go away at once.

 

[Hussar]

What lack of cause and effect?

 

[Lanefan]

BryonD's issues seem to revolve around ... (b) despite having realised that having lost hit points does not necessarily mean a creature has physical injury, still not grasping that a creature with full hit points might still have physical injuries.

I'm not BryonD but in my view this is a game-mechanically impossible state. Whatever else hit points might claim to represent, they also reflect physical damage.

Hit points represent the mechanical effects (where there are any) of a range of "damage", including but not limited to physical injury, not the presence of such "damage" when it has no mechanical impact.

Except the direct mechanical impact of physical injury is loss of h.p., pure and simple. In other words, the presence of such damage *always* has a mechanical impact.

Another way to put it: you can lose h.p. without sustaining actual physical harm but you cannot sustain actual physical harm without losing h.p.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

I'm not BryonD but in my view this is a game-mechanically impossible state. Whatever else hit points might claim to represent, they also reflect physical damage.

Except the direct mechanical impact of physical injury is loss of h.p., pure and simple. In other words, the presence of such damage *always* has a mechanical impact.

Another way to put it: you can lose h.p. without sustaining actual physical harm but you cannot sustain actual physical harm without losing h.p.

Lanefan

Why not?

I whack my knee on the coffee table. It hurts, it leaves a bruise. Am I actually down HP? Is that bruise on my knee going to impact my survivability?

Granted, it might. Sure, it makes me a bit slower and that next attack I get whacked instead of dodging it, thus, losing a bit more HP. Maybe. Or, OTOH, the wound is insignificant, does not impact my ability to fight and I can certainly take physical punishment without loss of HP.

Isn't that what temporary HP and non-lethal damage both represent? I can get repeatedly punched in the face until I fall down, yet not lose a single HP.

 

[FireLance]

.And, yet again, you have not addressed the issues that I have actually described as convoluted and unacceptable.

Well, let me try to address this one.

Until a couple days ago I was saying those were the only options. Now suddenly (after years of debates...) a third option is being presented. That is the option that a character with full hit points and full surges can still be "wounded" and not actually healed. In this case the model is making zero mechanical distinction whatsoever between a wounded character and fully healed character. While my gut reaction is to call that "even worse", it si really just shades of unacceptable.

I think what you are grappling with is the idea that a character could mechanically be at full hit points but be narratively wounded. This has not been an issue previously because the only way to restore hit points quickly was to use magic. However, the fact that the previous narratives for rapid restoration of hit points can no longer be applied to rapid non-magical hit point recovery does not make it illogical. It simply means that a new narrative is needed. Hence, the two scenarios I mentioned where the non-magical recovery of hit points is narrated as either the restoration of the ability to avoid future wounds or the ability to keep going despite having sustained serious wounds. Now, whether you like them or not is a matter of taste, but I don't think it's fair to call them dysfunctional, convoluted or unacceptable.

And even that isn't really saying it right. It isn't that they are indistinguishable, it is that they are one and the same.

They are indeed exactly the same mechanically. But the mechanics of making an attack roll are also the same whether the character is participating in an honorable duel, a stealthy assassination, a military skirmish, or trying to eliminate a civilian who is trying to escape genocide. The background and context are needed to tell the full story.

 

[pemerton]

I fully understand that being down a surge is less than at full supply (just as being down a CMW would be). But two 20 HP characters, both currently at 20 HP function exactly the same whether one is down a surge and the other is not.

Whereas if the one down a surge had instead kept that surge and was at 14 HP (or whatever) then a 15 pnt hit would down one guy and not the other. The two conditions are not equivalent.

I don't see your point.

Obviously a PC at full hp, and a PC down 14 hp, are not mechanically equivalent. They may or may not be fictionally equivalent, depending how the hp loss was narrated.

But two PCs at full hp, but one down a surge and the other not, are not mechanically equivalent either. Besides corner cases where they would be different (eg surge-sucking monsters or surge-expenditure items/skill checks), there is the fact that one but not the other has the capacity to regain hp by being inpsired or taking a brief respite.

The two PCs with different surges may or may not be fictionally equivalent, depending on how surge expenditure is narrated. (For example, if surges are narrated as heroic effort, one may look more haggard than the other. If the expenditure of the surge was treated as a purely metagame expenditure of a player (not PC) resource, then in the fiction the two may be indistinguishable.)

Your definitions contradict each other.

One the on hand you are calling it "damage" but on the other you are very careful to confine it to " hurt/shock/dispiritedness".

If the intent was as you have adapted them then "healing surges" is a major misnomer and they should instead be called "spirit surges" or "resolve surges".

Given that I'm putting forward stipulative definitions, there is no contradiction.

As to your suggestion of misnomer: in AD&D an "attack" is in fact many attempts at attack over the course of a minute; in all versions of D&D, I can "save" against an effect and yet still be affected by it (half damage); in 4e, a "miss" can still deliver "damage"; many players of all versions of D&D think that at least some "damage" is mere weakening of resolve (and in 4e this is obvious, given the category of "psychic damage"); in pre-4e versions of D&D "cure light wounds" may be enough to restore a PC on death's door to full health, while "cure critical wounds" may fail to restore a barely injured PC to full health.

These are all technical terms, not terms of ordinary English. Their names are established by tradition, allusive if not fully literal, and in my view at least not actively misleading to those familiar with the systems in question.

I said you can EITHER require that ALL healing is mojo OR instead you can say that surges flash away real wounds. Hussar took exception with the "flash away wounds" part.

Now you are defending his point by demanding that wounds can be just mojo. I agree that you can solve problem set A by introducing problem set B.
What neither of you have offered is a way to solve both problems at the same time.

The "solution" is fairly obvious: the only person who is insisting that a fully-healed fighter (in the sense of full hp and full surges) must be unwounded is you.

On the "mojo" theory of hit point loss, damage may still include mild scrapes and bruises. And I am not obliged to say that a fighter who is fully healed has none of these.

On the "it's not all mojo" theory of hit point loss, damage will include even serious cuts and injuries. But Hussar (or FireLance, or anyone else) is not obliged to say that a fighter who is fully healed has none of those.

24 hours later the fighter's wounds are gone even if he is alone and naked in the woods. There is no cause and effect.

You keep saying this. But on what basis? Where in the rules does it say that a PC at full hit points and full healing surges is not suffering any wounds?

All we can infer from a PC being at full hp and full surges is that there ability to press on despite wounds is as good as it can be.

Regarding "pacing, tropes, and themes" I won't dispute that you have those. But I've always had those and still do. Plus I have things working the way they should work in a great novel. So, for me, I'm theoretically gaining something I already have at a price of losing something else that is in the end even more important.

As far as I'm aware, no one is trying to tell you how to play your game. Nor that you're doing it wrong. Unless I've radically misunderstood you, you're the one trying to tell others that, because their game has healing surges that (i) may be expended to recover hp via inspiration or respite, and (ii) are themselves recovered after a night's sleep, they will have narrative confusion and a lack of cause and effect in their game unless they adopt a "fully mojo" theory of hp.

But for the reasons that FireLance stated, this is not so. Nothing is stopping the participants at the table from describing the fighter, who (mechanically) is fully healed, as suffering various cuts, bruises and even sprains and broken ribs. All the mechanics tell us is that (i) none of those injuries is impeding the character's performance, and (ii) the character is in now way impeded in his/her ability to push on after inspiration or respite.

 

[pemerton]

treating the character a truly and fully healed has been the standard position of 4E fans for the past few years of debating this topic

Now suddenly (after years of debates...) a third option is being presented.

I don't know where you get these "standard positions" from. And this "third position" has not suddenly sprung from nowhere. For as long as I've been playing 4e and posting about it (ie early 2009) I've made the point that a PC at full hit points and full surges may still, in the fiction, be injured. But those injuries are not impeding his/her performance, nor lessening his/her ability to draw on vigour, determination etc. (I'd be surprised if you can't find it discussed somewhere in the big thread from 18 or so months ago that Mercurius started, about "Why 4e is not as successful as it could be".)

I mean, it's an obvious implication of the 4e mechanics that this is one possible interpretation of hit point and healing surge loss and recovery.

But the problem is 4E *DOES NOT* have these four states.

I could grab a character sheet up in the middle of a 4E game and show it to you and it would be completely impossible for you to tell if a character was in state (2) or state (4). They are mechanically indistinguishable.

And even that isn't really saying it right. It isn't that they are indistinguishable, it is that they are one and the same.

I can pick up an AD&D character sheet and from the sheet, it would be completely impossible for me to tell if a PC is injured or not! All I can tell is that they have lost hit points.

To know whether or not the hit point loss was (i) being cut but pushing on, or (ii) a near miss that simply scratched instead of skewering, or (iii) a total miss that required serious exertion to avoid, I would have to actually be present at the table and follow the narration. Good heavens! Who would have thought that would be relevant to settling the content of a shared narrative space in an RPG?

(Alternatively, a player might note on his/her sheet: cut to forearm. And a 4e player might equally do the same.)

You can say "this guy is wounded". But if one model treats the wounded guy as being absolutely in ever way identical to a fully healed guy and just asks you to act otherwise <snip parantheses> and another system treat a wounded guy as being in some way different than a perfectly healed guy, then it is reasonable to consider the second system to be superior.

Yes, I can pretend anything I want. My ability to pretend and you ability to pretend are things we both bring to the table. A game system brings a mechanical model to the table. I want a model that does a decent job of getting things correct.

The issue isn't about "pretending" to be wounded. It's not about "acting otherwise". It's about, whether or not in the shared fiction, a particular character is wounded. This is completely orthogonal to the question of whether or not those wounds have any effect in the action resolution mechanics.

Furthermore, from the fact that the action resolution mechanics for suffering and recovering from the effects of injury don't care about the difference between an injured and an uninjured PC who are both neverthless at full hp and full surges, it doesn't follow that it is irrelevant to all action resolution.

In an AD&D game, for example, the narration of some hit point loss as a cut, a scratch or a dodge might matter to a subsequent determination of the percentage chance of contracting a disease after rummaging through an otyugh lair. In a 4e game, the narration of the PC as injured or uninjured might matter to the subsequent resolution of a social skill check or skill challenge - a PC who has been narrated as uninjured, for example, might have to make a tricky Bluff check rather than a straightforward Diplomacy check to persuade a monastery to take him/her in as a traveller in need of respite.

Fictional positioning is not solely a matter of what is on the character sheet.

But one of those effects is the reduced capacity to absorb future wounds. You are missing that part.

A wounded character is less capbale of absorbing more damage before succumbing.

What is the status of this claim, or of the above-quoted claim about "correctness"?

If you are making it as a claim about game mechanics, than it may be true for some versions of D&D, but is not true for FireLance and Balesir's suggseted version of 4e.

If you are making it as a claim about actual human physiology, than I don't believe it to be correct at all. If I am cut, then provided that I have recovered from any blood loss (eg by drinking some water, eating a bit and resting overnight) my ability to "absorb" future wounds is not impeded at all. If I have a broken toe, or a broken nose, my ability to "absorb" future wounds is not impeded at all. Even a subsequent blow to my face or my foot - which aggravates the existing pain - is one that (on the mooted model) I am able to push through (drawing on my reserves of grit, vigour, determination etc).

(I would add, the whole notion of "absorbing" wounds is one that only has meaning within a certain sort of game model. Real life people take wounds, and thereby become wounded, but they do not "absorb" wounds.)

 

[pemerton]

They are indeed exactly the same mechanically. But the mechanics of making an attack roll are also the same whether the character is participating in an honorable duel, a stealthy assassination, a military skirmish, or trying to eliminate a civilian who is trying to escape genocide. The background and context are needed to tell the full story.

Yet another of your posts in this thread that I sadly can't XP!