Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 5873144" data-attributes="member: 1879">Mechanics that actually model the effects of wounds are described by the words "Death Spiral."This is because each wound make you less and less effective until you spiral down to defeat like a hair clog circling a drain. Some people like this, many don't.D&D has never been a death spiral system. You are fine or nearly dead, or dead. There is no attempt by the system to capture the granularity of physical impairment. And that's fine because people and wounds are highly unpredictable. A bullet wound from the same gun to the same location to to similarly sized people can cause one to drop dead of shock and the other to get mad. It might do either to the same guy on different days. No system can accurately capture all the variable short of a molecule by molecule sim, and no one wants to roll that many dice.D&D assumes cinematic wounding. It doesn't matter how hospitalized John McClane should be, he keeps fighting without impairment because it's an action film. All D&D characters are that tough. Similarly even though he has had the crap kicked out of him for three movies John still does not have PTSD or arthritis or dementia pugilistica. Likewise your hero gets over being skewered without long-term impairment. Why not? It's fantasy.That does not mean wounds are morale, or luck, or any other such crap. If they were how would you even know you needed healing? "Better patch me up Durkon I'm feeling unlucky." "Really? 'cause V only has half a torso left." "Nope, I need healing more."Rider effects like poison or disease call for saving throws. Why on god's green earth do I need to save against typhus because someone missed me with a dirty blade?The argument presented against magical healing being better than morale based healing seems to be as follows:"It's absurd that steve could have survived falling off a 300' cliff and being knocked to -1 hp. Since he did, he must not actually have been hurt at all because he hit that mysterious pile of pillows. Therefore he is only lying there unconcious due to malingering and it's makes just as much sense for him to be revived by a shouted pep-talk as for his life to be saved by the same holy power that can raise the dead or open a gate to hell."And by extension all damage must be purely morale. Even if it was caused by 30 thrown daggers each of which also inflicted poison.Oddly the same people demanding that wounds must be morale damage because actually getting cut by Orcs with axes would be unrealistic seem to be the same people who thinks it's perfectly reasonably for a Fighter to shove a 10 ton dragon around, or regenerate, or leap 60 feet once, but only once, because that's what his powers do. Every game system has different granularity, and different areas of focus. The details of wounds, impairment and healing have never been D&Ds focus. That doesn't mean they don't happen, it means it wasn't a focus. Like watching an old movie if they kiss and fade to grey they just had sex, just because it wasn't shown didn't mean it didn't happen. In 4e, at 1/2 hp you are bloodied. Clearly, at this stage you are hurt. But there is no default rider to this effect is there? No -2 to hit from pain, no reduced initiative because you are moving slowly now. It is no more realistic than earlier editions."Mundane healing is just as good as magical healing" is a solution in search of a problem. The problem is that no one wants to be stuck playing a heal-bot. There are a thousand ways to solve that problem, non of which require that getting stabbed with a sword not actually draw blood, as if D&D were a disney movie.</blockquote>

Verification