NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9213862" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Yep.  Once you were out of surges was when you knew you were riding the ragged edge and seriously vulnerable. That's only one option, though. As Red Castle pointed out, the healing surge system in 4E literally is "a body-fatigue system", in that healing surges can be drained by undead, or by physical exhaustion, sometimes as a consequence of a failed skill challenge, for example, so they represent your overall vitality until you get a long rest.  And your ability to heal is mostly limited/capped by your physical and mental reserves (remaining surges). Agreed.Well, D&D has always done "full combat effectiveness" or "unconscious".  And the "comatose and then combat ineffective" rules for going below 0 in 1E, and the equivalent optional rule in 2E are just "full combat effectiveness" or "totally incapacitated".  Though in practice I always saw people ignore the lingering incapacitation rules in AD&D because it was too awkward and annoying to have a party member left behind or have to put the whole adventure on hold while the party waited for the wounded person to recover. Tangent- I've been talking about The Nightmares Underneath repeatedly lately because I've been reading it, and its take on hit points is one of the main reasons it interests me.  Instead of HP you have Disposition, which resets after a night's sleep (you may also choose to reset it after a four hour rest and a meal). Every time you do that, you re-roll your Disposition fresh (using your hit dice, so, say you're a level 4 Fighter, you'll roll 4d8).  Any damage that exceeds your remaining Disposition goes against your Health score (which replaces Constitution), so there's your "body points", and represents actual injury.  Poison and non-combat injuries also go straight to Health. Longer system excerpt in spoiler tags.[ISPOILER]Disposition Zero and InjuryWhen NPCs are reduced to zero Disposition, they are defeated. The GM is free to decide the fate of any human or animal that has been  reduced to zero Disposition, or turn that decision over to the player who landed the final blow. Because this game is mostly concerned with the lives of the PCs and the nightmares they fight, the specific injuries of NPCs are rarely of any particular importance. Creatures of nightmarelose their ability to affect the material world once they have been reduced to zero Disposition, so their Health scores are also not important when it comes to tracking damage.The injuries of the PCs, however, we do care about. They are the protagonists of the game, so we will follow them into injury and watch them bleed out where otherwise we wouldn’t. When PCs are reduced to zero Disposition, they are still conscious and may continue taking actions. Any further damage taken after being reduced to zero Disposition reduces the victim’s Health score—and the victim may be injured, incapacitated, crippled, mutilated, or killed as a result. Any time you lose points from your Health score, you must roll your current (modified) Health score or less on a d20 in order to prevent the wound from temporarily incapacitating the affected location. You might have blood in your eyes, or have lost all feeling in your arm, for example. It takes at least one round (a complicated action) to pull yourself together and recover your senses. If you lose half of your current Health score or more in a single blow, the affected location has been maimed or mutilated, possibly  permanently. You must roll equal to or lower than your Willpower score on a d20 in order to stay conscious, otherwise you pass out for 1d6 rounds. In order to regain consciousness once those rounds have passed, you must roll equal to or lower than half your Willpower score, rounded down, on a d20, or you remain unconscious for an additional 1d6 rounds.Bleeding     If you lose half your current Health score due to a cutting wound, there is a 50/50 chance you are now bleeding out. When bleeding out, you lose an additional point of Health every round from the blood loss. Once you spend a round tending to the wound, the bleeding slows to 1 point of Health every turn (5-10 minutes). Once you spend a turn tending to the wound, the bleeding stops altogether.DyingIf your character is reduced to zero Health, or must have some vital organ amputated because it was mutilated, your character is dead. You must make a new character if you wish to continue playing.skipping over the hit location tablesIf you are hit in the arm while you are wearing a shield, you may choose to have the shield break instead of losing points from your Health because of the damage.If you are hit in the head while you are wearing a helmet, you may choose to have the helmet break instead of losing points from your Health because of the damage.[/ISPOILER]</blockquote>

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