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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9199212" data-attributes="member: 8461">I'm not sure what part you're having trouble figuring out. Previous editions had paid lip service to the idea that non-permanent changes to a character's total hit points (i.e. gaining and losing hit points over the course of an adventure) was about more than just wounds taken/healed, but that was only in vague overviews. Actual mechanics, and presentations thereof, lent themselves almost solely to issues of injures, hence spells being called cure light wounds, regaining hp via bed rest and not plucking four-leaf clovers, etc.4E, however, tried to walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. A character's hit points changing could be due to injuries received/healed or could be a measure of how close they were getting to a loss of combat capability, hence the use of non-magical "spike" healing in the form of the warlord yelling at you to let you use a healing surge (the most famous example).I can understand why some people see that as the full flowering of the ideal that earlier editions only aspired to; again, a lot of them put forward the idea that hit points weren't just about wounds. But in marrying those two concepts, 4E made a serious error in trying to have the same mechanic model two different things, causing them to be conflated in a way that a lot of gamers didn't appreciate. There was a reason that previous editions didn't go that far, and I don't think it was a simple lack of innovation.</blockquote>

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