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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 9217201" data-attributes="member: 5142">You say it's different. I say that it's the same. The loss of HP establishes what's being represented per the game's understanding of HP, but it still requires adjudication in terms of the specifics of what's being represented. Again, the game is silent about whether your burns go away. You choose to read "heal" to mean that "your burns go away," but in the context of 4e rules, we are told that healing only represents the regaining of HP, which are a variety of aspects of a character's combat vigor. Nothing more. You are again losing sight of the forest for the trees. I have already referred you to the rules of healing and what they and HP represent in the context of 4e, so "helps them heal" is not the gotcha that you think that it is. I think that this is a consistent problem with your reading of 4e. You read it in isolated pieces. You don't try to understand the rules in the context of the big picture. You have little to no actual game experience with 4e. [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] addressed this already. One mechanic doesn't represent just two different things. It's not just wounds and everything else. In D&D HP represents a variety of elements that factor into a character's survival. Wounds are one among several others. Is that "more complex than if one mechanic presented itself as only one thing"? If so, it appears to be negligibly so for most people who are playing and enjoying the game. So despite what you would assert here, I would say that it is deniably more complicated, even if we were to agree that it was "more complicated." You may call it a semantic distinction, but I do think that it is helpful in that vagueness offers more explanatory power and is a more readily apparent problem that we regularly deal with in communication with little fuss in our daily lives. I think that "cognitive gap" tries to present a simple case of vagueness as a much more insurmountable technical problem of cognitive incomprehensibility than it actually is. For comparison, vagueness of rules is lauded by some as a "feature" in 5e that empowers GMs to make rulings rather than be beholden to rules. It sounds like you are in danger of conflating yourself with the game here. What this tells me is that 4e is internally consistent in word and deed with how the mechanics and operations of HP are reflected in the fiction. Way to go, 4e! I said that your complaint involves an issue of vagueness about HP rather than an inherently problematic cognitive gap. I was not, however, saying that 4e was vague. I think that 4e is quite the opposite. It's quite explicit. 4e powers tell us a LOT about the fiction. The designers were wholly transparent and not one bit shy about what the mechanical processes, terms and keywords, and various operations of the game represent from an in-game standpoint, and it was fairly consistent in that regard. Things may not map perfectly (e.g., square fireballs) but we are told what the mechanics are meant to represent in the fiction. Please stop using the term "gamist" for things that you dislike or go against your own sense of self-proclaimed simulationism, because powers are very forthright in telling you what the meta-game operations represent for in-character happenings. You may not like what they are telling you they represent or are simulating, but they are telling you. There is a difference between those two positions, and it's not even a subtle one. We can't even agree that the stair is broken or not! That's the problem. You asserting the existence of a problem and a cognitive gap that others either don't see as being problem or believe exists at all. You are saying "this is broken and needs fixing!" Others are telling you, "this isn't broken and it's working as intended." If a cognitive gap exists, it's between these two positions more so than anything. I know that you like to turn things back on people in "no you!" games, but I've read and played the rules of 4e. In contrast, I remember that you were surprised in one thread (or maybe here) about the existence of 4e healing surges and their associated rules when people told you about them. I don't think that healing spells or powers restore "the same" HP that was lost by a fireball or a sword or by a monster bite. I think that HP can be restored by different sources and through different means. I think that it has never been as clear cut as losing 20 HP to a fireball and having a healing spell erasing 10 damage from those burn wounds. Do my burn wounds disappear within 24 hours just because I sleep in 5e? Do my burn wounds disappear when I take a short rest and spend HD to heal myself in 5e? I don't think that this is what these operations are meant to represent in the fiction. The same is true in regards to a warlord's abilities. You keep asserting and taking for granted in your argumentation the creation, existence, and problematic nature of this "cognitive gap" regarding HP, but I don't think that you are doing a good job of demonstrating these things in your argument, which comes across as a series of compounded assumptions. Does this cognitive gap exist? Is this phenomenon what creates it or is it something else? How is this even a problem? Let's be clear here. You have an issue with it. You don't know how to reconcile these two things in accordance with your own idiomatic preferences. I and others don't necessarily share agreement that this "issue" exists. There is nothing for us to reconcile as it's perfectly consistent with our understanding of what the mechanics represent in the fiction. [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] and I have already shared our readings of this power and what this mechanic represents in the fiction, using the rules and text of 4e to do so even. So there is little point repeating myself here just because you choose to do so. Except they aren't Schrödinger's HP - which is hardly an apt use of Schrödinger's Cat - because the understanding of HP is consistently applied in 4e as being a variety of factors that contribute to the character's survival. 4e is loud and clear about its HP and what they represent. In fact, I think that it's the vagueness of HP in other editions that you liked, because it was that vagueness regarding HP and associated operations that empowered you to read HP in terms of your stated preferences.</blockquote>

Verification