Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9230000" data-attributes="member: 8461">This is your own presumption, which is reflected nowhere in the actual operations of the game. Someone being hit with a red dragon's breath weapon for over a hundred hit points of damage and surviving because they have two hundred hit points has not taken "cosmetic level" injuries. They've taken serious, massive injuries that they're nevertheless gritting their teeth and pushing through, showcasing action movie-levels of toughness. The very idea that something like that is no more than "paper cut" level of injury isn't something that the game tells us; quite the opposite, really.Which entirely validates what I said about that spell and others like it curing the physical injuries that hit point loss represents, hence why they all restore hit point damage; the fact that the regenerate spell specifies that it restores severed body parts is indicative that hit point loss doesn't represent the severing of limbs, which you seem to think indicates means that hit point loss doesn't actually represent any sort of injuries (except for "cosmetic" ones) at all. Which is to say, you're once again making my argument for me, which brings up the question as to exactly what point you're pressing here, since you seem to be saying "you're right, but not really right" without clarifying what any of that means.Yeah, heal is a spell that cures physical damage as well as conditions that cause non-hit point related debuffs. Now, you seem to be implying that this means that no other spell which restores hit points also cures wounds...leaving aside the fact that they spell name flat-out says that they do, even if you ignore their description. For instance, cure light wounds flat-out says:When laying your hand upon a living creature, you channel positive energy that cures 1d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +5). Since undead are powered by negative energy, this spell deals damage to them instead of curing their wounds. An undead creature can apply spell resistance, and can attempt a Will save to take half damage.I suppose if you're sitting down with the idea that the only wounds hit point loss represents are paper cuts, and that a spell has to explicitly spell out which wounds it cures, then you might not read very much into that. But that's your house rules, not what the game is saying. Regenerate will bring back a lost limb, but if you think there's no middle ground between a lost limb and a paper cut, well, that one's on you.So in other words, you don't think that there's any informative aspect to the names of the spells, and are looking at the effects purely in terms of hit points being a "lifebar" that measure nothing except the occasional bit of cosmetic damage. That's entirely your presumption here, and not at all what the game actually spells out. Which certainly explains why you've flat-out rewritten Healing Word to be a placebo that only grants cosmetic healing when the description says otherwise.And yet you're still unable to refute that "nonsense," which is quite the referendum on your stance.Because in the world of D&D as it's written in the book, that gives no penalties, since D&D heroes are able to continue using a limb even when it's broken, since they're just that heroic. Don't judge them by your own limitations.Did you overlook that I explicitly referenced the sword of sharpness before? Because this is, what, the fifth or sixth time you're repeating something I already affirmed.Leaving aside that "not clearly expressed" is a problem unto itself, there's also the fact that in some cases what they're trying to express isn't adequately represented by what the rules do. Again, there's nothing wrong with wanting to model a fatigue/stamina system in the game. But 4E botched the execution by trying to fold that into hit points, which already modeled injuries. It's not immune to critique in that regard just because you say "I can fix it."It's more correct to say that you're taking a step forward by realizing that hit point loss does model injury (even if you're backtracking from your "lifebar" comment by now saying that you "always" said it was injuries), but you're wrong in saying that it never represented anything besides that. A character taking fire damage does not have a cut or a bruise. A character reduced from full hit points to less than half due to falling damage or immersion in lava is not dealing with some minor injuries that are only slightly painful and not at all debilitating. They've taken serious wounds and are simply forcing themselves to keep going despite them.Again, real people can't. Your D&D character is capable of jumping off a mile-high cliff and not only surviving, but carrying on a life-or-death battle immediately after they land, so they clearly can.4E did not produce multiple metrics. Not in any way, shape, or form. It made hit points the sole metric for both injury and stamina, which was a poor decision in terms of modeling them both. Healing surges aren't the differentiation you wish they were.No, it didn't. Healing surges are still using the same operation, which is hit point recovery, that's used by spells such as cure light wounds. If they had done something different, then it would be different, but they didn't.Incorrect. You're defending a non-existent version of 4E based around your house rules, which is why you've so drastically rewritten how Healing Word works, as per your own description.Which speaks not at all to their interaction with hit points being that they restore hit points, the same as other curative methods which are explicitly representative of recovering physical damage. Hence why they're not what you wish they were. The entire issue of healing surges is a distraction, because their interaction with the operations of gaining and losing hit points is no different in that regard (and no, how many hit points they restore at a time isn't a salient difference).Again, your statement here is completely founded on your having rewritten how 4E works, and fifteen years later insisting that your house rules are how the game actually played. They aren't. Healing Word is not "a placebo effect" no matter how vehemently you insist that it is.The cost being different does not change the operation that's performed under the game mechanics.And this is what is colloquially known as nonsense. If you've just taken massive damage from a red dragon's breath weapon, catching your breath isn't going to give you back vitality such that you can survive the 8 hit points' of damage you take from the stab wound next round that would have killed you if not for the hp you just regained from that healing surge you spent due to the warlord's having used Inspiring Word."Assume that hit points are a genuine measureable thing"? Because you can't measure the total of subtracting X damage from a current point total of Y? How does that make sense?"You whisper a brief prayer as divine light washes over your target, helping to mend its wounds." That's what Healing Word does. There's no aspect of "exhausted" or "drained" there; it's using divine power to mend wounds. Which apparently won't work if the target is feeling depressed. That's less a cognitive gap than a cognitive Grand Canyon.The person who thinks that Healing Word is all about the target's state of mind has no right to lecture other people on what 4E actually says. Literally, you just presented your own house rules as if they were what's in the books, and then lectured someone else about what's in the books. Unbelievable.I suspect that a lot about how 4E works baffles you.Except for the parts that aren't, which are considerable.Which is indicative of the 3.5 version altering the nature of the power, keeping it entirely in the realm of mental effects, unlike the 1E one. It was a fairly apt change in that regard.That stat point damage went...where?So Healing Word is causing "trivial" actual healing...does "trivial" mean that there's no hit point effect whatsoever, and that's why it doesn't work under the game rules? Because if so, that's emblematic of you having to ignore the written text to make the in-character representation match the mechanics, i.e. bridging the cognitive gap.And where does the flavor text say that it's only doing a little actual healing and is mostly a placebo? What part of that "actual healing" is represented in the game's operations?Do you know where it says that in the power description for Healing Word? Go ahead and quote it, if you can.It's not two different things, it's one thing: healing injury. That it can heal multiple different types of injury is self-evident if you actually read the description instead of making things up like "it's a placebo." Restricting it to healing different kinds of injuries is much easier to create a coherent game than having it be "it heals all sorts of injuries AND it makes you feel better about yourself!"Which, again, would have been fairly good if those two things hadn't been operating on the same pool of points, which 4E wants to represent different things at once. But if you've taken massive burns from falling into lava, or fallen off a mile-high cliff, etc. then recovering only a small point of physical damage and a lot of personal resilience isn't going to bridge the cognitive gap if you then immediately take another source of hit point loss that's mostly damage instead of being something depressing, since your stats then say you're not dying (i.e. above 0 hit points) and yet your "wound recovery hp" is depleted, even though you have plenty of "resilience hp" left.When there's one mechanic, it helps if it doesn't represent two different things."Recovered," in this sentence, is a confusing mixture of how wounded you are and what your state of mind is. Having hit points represent both doesn't help, and that problem gets worse if you've expended healing surges for a non-recovery mechanic, and then have to explain why when you're injured you're suddenly healing less because you feel depressed about having performed those rituals.Notice that you're once again talking about "realistic" in a D&D game, which has never been intended to showcase realistic limits for what characters can do.Oh here we go. Yes, let's once again assume that the game where your character can potentially challenge gods to a fight and win should absolutely be working to model something realistic, rather than an action movie-style fantasy. Because that's not something I already explained to you earlier.No, don't see the boxers. The boxers example is entirely built on faulty premises in support of a level of design that D&D was never intended to utilize. The boxers make a case for why hit points under any paradigm don't work to model reality, in a game that doesn't even try to model reality. It's a fantasy game because it presents an amalgamation of fantasy genres, and people who want hit locations, wound tracking, exhaustion mechanics, and "death spirals" in terms of personal ability deteriorating when you take wounds should be playing something else! If you want to inject those into the story on your own terms, that's fine, but trying to contort the hit point system into representing that many disparate things is a recipe for disappointment, which explains why you've had to introduce "placebo" effects into abilities that don't mention anything like that.You think that just because you're not flat-out contradicting the entirety of what the power description says, that means that you're not making something up that changes what it represents? Nothing in the Healing Word description says or even implies that it's a "placebo." That one's entirely yours.Yes, because he's taking serious (not just cosmetic) injuries. I don't know how you overlooked that the screenshot above is only showing his face and not his whole body, but that's not the support for your argument you seem to think it is.That's because it wasn't calibrated properly to begin with.Says the guy who's added the placebo effect to Healing Word. Again, if you can fix things and don't mind doing so, that's good for you. But that doesn't change the critical analysis of what's actually in the books.So them not being able to use their encounter and daily powers without limit means that they've lost strength? Because that loss of strength seems to be reflected almost nowhere else in their combat prowess. A 4E fighter can still use their daily powers without limit, and even their encounter powers reset after five minutes (because reasons), so where does it become more "realistic" (to use the term you keep reintroducing) that they're too tired to perform their daily power again, but can us their other powers indefinitely?Explicit in saying that healing surges can "sometimes" be the cost for failing a skill check, is what I think you're trying to say. So when the characters make a "gruelling trek" that's somehow the result of a failed check, that means that they're demoralized to the point of losing a healing surge. Okay, great. Except then that sidebar says that "other times" it can be shorthand for taking damage, i.e. that there are times you lose a healing surge that are taking damage, and times that aren't. Note the cognitive gap here, as the same operation is two different things: damage and non-damage.Again, it's not a problem for you because you don't seem to mind the extra workload that's a result of the game offloading more of the work that comes with figuring out what its rules are representative of. But just because you're fine with that extra cognitive burden doesn't mean we can't critically analyze it, despite fans rushing up to say "no, you can't be critical of the game I love!"</blockquote>

Verification