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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5882275" data-attributes="member: 27160">Funnily enough, recent research suggestions that wounds in combat seldom cause general performance deterioration - basically, a wound either causes the target to become incapacitated, results in purely mechanical damage that removes or restricts the use of limbs, eyes, etc. or results in no immediate effects on combat performance - have led me to run HM while dispensing with the "Physical Penalty" to skills. In this specific sense, I think D&D may be (albeit unwittingly) more "realistic" than many so-called-realistic RPGs!The real distinction, to my mind, comes with the out-of-combat effects (i.e. when the adrenaline is no longer "turbocharging" the body) and the recovery mechanisms.Yes - or you can add a simple houserule that healing surges are recovered only in part and in an amount depending on the comfort and facilities of resting. Why is this any more of an issue than the "unrealistic natural healing" some complained of in earlier editions?Or you can mix-and-match both views to your own taste - and each individual at the table can do so for themselves, without the need to insist that all others do so in the same way as them. The wounded creature has or does not have physical wounds as suits the viewer's own aesthetic preferences; the only "restriction" is that the mechanics prescribe whether or not the creature is in any way impeded in function by those injuries (or the stress, fatigue, lack of divine grace or whatever is assumed to be the cause of any present or previous loss of hit points).Yeah - so do I.There are differences, but I sincerely doubt that either one of us has any real idea what the "real" system is, let alone has the right to dictate what relation any chosen game system should have to the real-world workings of wounding and recovery in all its many facets.Of course they are mechanically indistinguishable - that's kind of a "by definition" point. So are a character wearing silk stockings and the same one wearing canvas braies. So is a character who currently basks in the approval of the Duke and one who is an outcast from the kingdom. The fiction, as well as the mechanics, can be important in any roleplaying game. Whether or not some imagined identity exists between physical injury and hit points will have no appreciable impact on that, I imagine.Says who?This might be commonly assumed to be true (although there is a matter of degree - does a paper cut cause HP loss?), but the converse is not: the recovery of hit points does not at all necessarily imply the complete healing of a physical wound.So, in your games, if a character stubs its toe, it loses hit points? If it pulls a muscle, it loses hit points? It gets a paper cut, it loses hit points?And, more to the point, as mentioned by Hussar, above, if a character still has a bruise but the knock happened a couple of (game-world) days ago, are they really still down HPs??I can see the attraction of the identity, but I don't think it even holds water, never mind being a mandatory identity in the rules of any edition of D&D (which it manifestly isn't).</blockquote>

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