Camping: It does a body good!

[roguerouge]

During the day, your PC fighter faced a dozen swordsman and suffered being hit by 3 fireballs. One night of camping later, after an "extended rest," he's back to full hit points. How are you, as a DM, are going explain this crunch narratively?

Warning: Hit points have always been abstract, of course, so I'm curious for pro and con views, not slamming the edition.

Apology: I'm sorry if this has been debated before. I generally don't go in this part of the forum, so I wasn't able to easily find it if it had been debated already.

 

[Aloïsius]

During the day, your PC fighter faced a dozen swordsman and suffered being hit by 3 fireballs. One night of camping later, after an "extended rest," he's back to full hit points. How are you, as a DM, are going explain this crunch narratively?

Warning: Hit points have always been abstract, of course, so I'm curious for pro and con views, not slamming the edition.

Apology: I'm sorry if this has been debated before. I generally don't go in this part of the forum, so I wasn't able to easily find it if it had been debated already.

It's one of the subject discuted in the "healing" thread.

The only narrative I have found to explain such a rejunevation is to add "totem" or "spirit" binded to the heroes and giving them this extraordinary regeneration. It can make a good campaign background...

 

[shilsen]

During the day, your PC fighter faced a dozen swordsman and suffered being hit by 3 fireballs. One night of camping later, after an "extended rest," he's back to full hit points. How are you, as a DM, are going explain this crunch narratively?

You've already answered the question in your first sentence. Your PC is apparently able to survive being hit by 3 fireballs, each of which is so hot it can "melt metals ... such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze" (3.5 PHB). And he can take one of those and walk away from it. Clearly your PC is not a normal human being by our real-world standards. So his recuperative powers are greater than that of people in our world. Simple. If Robert Howard and Hesoid and the "Mahabharata" can explain it narratively, so can I (I'm soooo much better than that hack Veda Vyasa).

 

[Alnag]

a) The injury was just a bad dream... you have those every day.

b) Fairy-tale. Once Winnie-the-Pooh wakes up he and his friends are allright.

c) Sitcom... (see above Fairy-tale)

d) The heroes just cure quickly. Blows and punches in 5 minutes. Broken or missing limbs - 6 hours. Wellcome to epic, cinematic high-fantasy world.

 

[Wormwood]

Wellcome to epic, cinematic high-fantasy world.

Sounds good to me.

 

[Li Shenron]

During the day, your PC fighter faced a dozen swordsman and suffered being hit by 3 fireballs. One night of camping later, after an "extended rest," he's back to full hit points. How are you, as a DM, are going explain this crunch narratively?

There is an extreme but effective way out of the problem:

describe only killing blows as an actual hit, everything else is just a near-hit that wears you down during battle

After all, most hits by a sword or axe in real life would cause the target to die.

 

[Nytmare]

You're limping, aching, and covered in bruises and scorch marks, but somehow you find the strength to go on?

 

[hong]

There is an extreme but effective way out of the problem:

describe only killing blows as an actual hit, everything else is just a near-hit that wears you down during battle

After all, most hits by a sword or axe in real life would cause the target to die.

Indeed, this was also the underlying conceit of VP/WP. The system itself was meh, but there's nothing wrong with the rationale itself.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Loss of hit points doesn't mean being cut to ribbons, it just means getting cut, bruised, singed (unless you die - when your luck ran out, that was when you got evicerated).

So when they camp for the night they are exhausted, battered, bleeding from numerous minor cuts and demoralised - but in the morning feel fit to face the world again.

It may be a problem to explain for those who want hit points to represent purely physical damage, and who consider 'down to 1hp' to be almost holding your guts in with one hand while blood pours out - but then again that introduces the difficulty in explaining how a sword thrust that would disembowel a commoner has to be done 15 times to kill an experienced fighter!

Essentially I think that healing is just being brought in line with how hit points have been described (and lost in battle) rather than being a strange outlier as before.

 

[FourthBear]

During the day, your PC fighter faced a dozen swordsman and suffered being hit by 3 fireballs. One night of camping later, after an "extended rest," he's back to full hit points. How are you, as a DM, are going explain this crunch narratively?

Narratively, I don't think there's much to explain. Obviously, the results of those swordsmen and fireballs couldn't have been permanent, crippling injuries that requires long term recuperation. After all, when they started the extended rest, the fighter wasn't impaired beyond the loss of healing surges. All of his at will and per encounter abilities were available to him and he had no penalties to skills, attacks and other checks. He was worn down to the point where he no longer felt he had the resilience to face another significant challenge without an unacceptable chance of failure and death.