Camping: It does a body good!

[Kordeth]

This. Not that this distinction gets much play around here. I like second wind mechanics – beats the omnipresent clergy by a mile – but heroes should get meaningfully hurt from time to time.

The problem is "meaningfully hurt" is hard to do without making the character suck for a length of time sufficient to remove a fair bit of fun for the player. Whether it's a persistent penalty to rolls or a temporarily lower maximum hp total or some other drawback, all a grievous wound does is one of two things:

1) If time is not a factor, it causes the party to retreat and rest for as long as it takes to heal the grievous wound, in which case the rule has accomplished nothing but slowing down the story a little bit.

2) If time is a factor, the grievously-wounded character is forced to suck for several encounters until the adventure is over and the party can take some down-time.

Neither of those options, IMHO, is a desirable one. Also, from a game-design perspective, if you can assume that the players will enter most fights operating at full capacity, and "full capacity" is a very tightly-defined range (as, for example, with 4E's fixed hp and uniform check bonus), it becomes much easier to predict what kind of foes the party can effectively face. Personally, I'd rather have solidly consistent challenge levels in battles than a persistent wound system, and that's why I treat hit points and injuries "John McClane" style as described in my previous post.

 

[LEHaskell]

"You're wondering how they heal and bleed, and other science facts?
Just repeat to yourself 'its just a game, I should really just relax!"

"Play Fantasy Dungeon Craw-awll, 4E!"

 

[JRRNeiklot]

"Bloodied" is a bad word for this interpretation. But think of bloodied as "worn down" or "fatigued" or "winded" instead, and you're all set.

Then why the hell don't they call it that?

 

[Hussar]

But even going by you rexample Plane Sailing, after six hours of rest they suddenly find their cuts, scrapes , singes and bruises all magically healed up? In SIX hours?

Wjhy didn't they just cut down on the damage capability, instead of giving everyone and their grandmother healing surges, healing class abilities, and ability to recover all that AND your hp in SIX hours?

Well, Conan has been doing it for about a century and no one seems to mind too much. Heck, take a look at pretty much every fantasy adventure author and you'll see pretty much the same thing. If it's good enough for Howard, it's good enough for me.

 

[Hussar]

Then why the hell don't they call it that?

Just to start the nerd rage?

Naw, let's face it, bloodied sounds a heck of a lot better than "tired". And, bloodied just means shedding blood. It doesn't mean that your intestines are falling out of your belly. Punch someone in the nose and they're bloodied.

Heck, a really, really good night can leave you bloodied IYKWIMAITYD.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The problem is "meaningfully hurt" is hard to do without making the character suck for a length of time sufficient to remove a fair bit of fun for the player. Whether it's a persistent penalty to rolls or a temporarily lower maximum hp total or some other drawback, all a grievous wound does is one of two things:

1) If time is not a factor, it causes the party to retreat and rest for as long as it takes to heal the grievous wound, in which case the rule has accomplished nothing but slowing down the story a little bit.

2) If time is a factor, the grievously-wounded character is forced to suck for several encounters until the adventure is over and the party can take some down-time.

Neither of those options, IMHO, is a desirable one. Also, from a game-design perspective, if you can assume that the players will enter most fights operating at full capacity, and "full capacity" is a very tightly-defined range (as, for example, with 4E's fixed hp and uniform check bonus), it becomes much easier to predict what kind of foes the party can effectively face. Personally, I'd rather have solidly consistent challenge levels in battles than a persistent wound system, and that's why I treat hit points and injuries "John McClane" style as described in my previous post.

Just brings to me think about it - the "fairest" way to model a lasting injury seems to be to treat any lasting injury as a "virtual monster" in each encounter. The injury itself off course is still some kind of penalty to attacks or defenses or something like that, but for the DM to be able to use the Combat XP guidelines, this must be taken into account. So, a broken leg might reduce a characters speed by 2 squares, and his AC/Reflex by 2 points. This is then calculated as a challenge with a level dependend on the PC - maybe "minion XP" of the PCs level, or regular XP for a 4 levels lower monster or something like that.

This does little to address the problem of injures that are not desirable due to the expected flow of the adventure. (For that you need guidelines on when an injury is supposed to become lasting/permanent)

 

[roguerouge]

You get a nose bleed from dodging. Same thing with falling. Taking 25 points of damage from a 50' fall obviously must be abstracted as involving a near miss with the ground and you're simply fatigued from applying your cartoon style air brakes....

Actually abstract hp have never, ever, made the slightest bit of sense in any edition of D&D, due to their complete failure to interact with falling, poison, touch attacks, etc etc etc. There is a large camp of gamers however who prefer to jam their fingers in their ears and scream "Nyaa Nyaa Nyaa" when this is pointed out to them. :\

QFT.

Let's make it harder for the DM to explain narratively: during combat, your character gets bloodied, then goes below 0 hp and is dying, which HAS to be explained as a serious wound. Unfortunately for the DM, his party lacks a cleric, so when he gets brought back to a smallish number of hp naturally and rests for 6 hours, the DM can't explain it as being the result of divine magic.

I'm really having difficulty conceptualizing going from a punctured lung to completely healed in 6 hours due to a party member putting pressure on the wound, healing surges, and 6 hours of bed rest. There's only so many times you can say "Actually... I... I... think I'm okay," before it becomes camp.

The natural healing rates may not have made a lick of sense either, but they were very rarely used, because every party had to have a cleric, which gave the DM the ability to say it's holy magic and move on. Without that narrative device, the narrative may break down...

As a house rule, perhaps, I would consider making extended rests worthless to a character that went below 0 hp for a day, a week, or a month. That's a serious change, however.

 

[Hussar]

Let's make it harder for the DM to explain narratively: during combat, your character gets bloodied, then goes below 0 hp and is dying, which HAS to be explained as a serious wound. Unfortunately for the DM, his party lacks a cleric, so when he gets brought back to a smallish number of hp naturally and rests for 6 hours, the DM can't explain it as being the result of divine magic.

Why? Why does being knocked unconcious HAVE to be described as a serious wound? Heck, you can get knocked out without serious wounds.

I really have to wonder what the issue is here. You don't describe results BEFORE the action is resolved, so why would you start now.

Player is damaged enough to drop below 0 hp's. He falls down. Note, there is no more bleeding to death - he is only unconcious. Ignoring the death's door mechanics for a second, he get's tapped by the local healer and bumps to 1 hit point.

Hey, look, no more serious wound. In any edition of D&D, he is now just as active as if he had full hit points. However, at this point in time, his luck is pretty much run out and the next time he gets hit, he goes down again. But, that's the only difference between 1 hp and 50 hp's. Physically, he's banged up, but, he's running marathons with no problem.

It's only an issue if you insist that damage=physical damage.

 

[Atreides]

My initial thought was to change 6 hours rest from full heal to heal HP = CON or perhaps heal HP = Level + Con Mod (which is what I used for my 3.5 game). Will it help with the verisimilitude? Maybe.

I entirely appreciate the reasons for the Healing as presented - I see clear advantages to the Healing Surge mechanic - but continuous wide swings of HP troubles me, and the party automatically being full out by just camping just doesn't sit right. Hopefully there is some other information we just haven't seen yet.

 

[Hussar]

Really, in play, is this different from 3e?

Every game I played or DM'd, the cleric would blow every spell he could to get everyone back (or as close as possible) to max before resting so he could have a full load of spells the next day. Once the party had a wand of CLW, this problem went away as well.

So, if everyone played this way, why not make the rules reflect play?