Camping: It does a body good!

[FitzTheRuke]

Because at 0 hit point, you are 3 roll away from being dead. Sure, you can stabilize (with a 10 ), but the need to stabilize imply that you are dying and that the wound is a serious one.
.

You misunderstand the dying rules. You do NOT stabilize on a 10. You simply don't come any closer to dying. Next round you roll again.

However, you're point stands on a roll of a 20, in which you can be dying a round before (with two failed checks! One more and you're toast!) and now you're up at 1/4 HP.

I however look at it as "you were only dying if you die." The two failed saves count for nothing, but the character thinking "Oh, s#1t is THIS it for me?" and then catching his wind and realizing that it wasn't as bad as he feared.

 

[Zelc]

On the point of abstract HP, it seems like writers like R.A. Salvatore have been using it since forever to describe his combats. For instance, in one of Drizzt's fights against Artemis, the only hits before the winning attack (more of a disarming attack, I think?) were minor scratches and a headbutt to the eye. Right before the winning attack, Drizzt made a series of attacks not designed to injure Artemis, but to bring his opponent's weapons to a vulnerable location and set his own feet for the next attack. That sounds exactly like a hit in D&D described in an abstract way.

So abstract HP might take a while to get used to, but you can definitely RP with it.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

But you will heal from that real injury in six hours, even if you were dying and stabilized at the last round...

Think about it :
round 1 : Joe fighter slip off the wall, fall 120 feet. Take huge damage, ends in negative HP, dying.
Round 2 : Joe fighter roll to stabilize : 7, it's a miss, he is still dying.
Round 3 : Joe fighter roll to stabilize : 4, it's still a miss, he is stille dying.
Round 4 : Joe'player throw the dice but close his eyes and wait for the other player to announce the result. 14. Joe is not dead.
...
There is no magical healing in the party. Joe Fighter is still unconscious. Assuming he is not eaten alive by scavengers, he wake up 6 hours later, without a scratch.




That's what I don't like with 4e insta-healing. It makes a good game-play in NWN, but it sounds bad on a table-top game.

Joe doesn't just get up without a scratch, he gets up with 1/4th his health, so he is badly beaten and bloodied so any creatures he comes across they can seriously attack him with their Bloodied Condition Powers. Also if his Second Wind is gone and he can't Heal, or all his Healing Surges are gone then he can't heal himself anymore.

The only way to regain health would be a extended rest, which when by yourself in the wilderness is probably a bad idea.

 

[ZappoHisbane]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest people look at it from a different angle. If we can accept, as I think we all can, that hit point damage does not necessarily equate to the presence of stab wounds, contusions, and other direct physical injuries, why must we assume that being at full hit points equates to being free of those injuries?

Consider the finest heroic action movie of the last 25 years, Die Hard. John McClane gets the ever-loving crap beaten out of him on several occasions, and yet he always manages to shake it off and get back into the fight. In 4E terms, he takes a "short rest," blows a few healing surges, and gets himself back up to full hit points. He's still battered all to hell and back, still suffering from cracked ribs, slashed-up feet, concussions and God knows what else, but he's such a big damn hero (and now I'm mixing metaphors) that he just refuses to let those injuries slow him down.

QFT. This. I agree.

And why is it that posts such as these that make such fine points get ignored and the debate continues back and forth as if no one had ever seen them? Just wondering....

 

[Aloïsius]

You misunderstand the dying rules. You do NOT stabilize on a 10. You simply don't come any closer to dying. Next round you roll again.

Well, it's even worse : Joe fighter was really dying.

I however look at it as "you were only dying if you die." The two failed saves count for nothing, but the character thinking "Oh, s#1t is THIS it for me?" and then catching his wind and realizing that it wasn't as bad as he feared.

But he is supposed to be unconscious... Maybe he saw the light in the tunnel and decided to go back, but, after a 120 feet fall, such an injury should NOT be healed naturally in six hours.
as for the "it was not so bad" trick, it can work once or twice in a story, but in a campaign, it will quickly be running joke...

 

[smetzger]

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. :\

eh, poison was taken care of with ability damage in 3e.
touch attacks you just shake it off cause your a hero.
You are correct about falling damage, thats why my house rule for falling damage is...
1d20 per ten ft divided by 1d6. This results in about the same average as 1d6 per ten ft, but with the possibility of much much more damage and also allowing for the very unlikely 1pt of damage from a 60 ft fall.

 

[helium3]

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.

Well, isn't the whole reason for that because a "realistic" system would either be too complicated or too lethal?

 

[Cmarco]

It's definitely the cinematic-hero approach to damage, in most cases, that I prefer. I want my heroes to be like John McClane (Die Hard)... he can get beaten up, shot at, thrown from vehicles, etc., but he can soldier on. In fact, he can rest between the fights and regain most of his health. Despite the fact that he is usually cut up, battered, and has suffered all manner of wounds, that resting means he is able to enter the next fight with no penalty to his physical prowess. There are even moments when McClane has become bloodied (he usually reaches this status about once per movie). If I recall correctly, there is even one or two times when he has recovered with 1/4 his hit points, allowing him to regain consciousness and fight on. I can see this abstraction in 4e, and I really like it. The PCs are dramatic action-based heroes, and I really appreciate that.

"Okay, quiet on the set... Keep on the Shadowfell, scene three, take number one... and roll dice... action!"

 

[Kordeth]

It's definitely the cinematic-hero approach to damage, in most cases, that I prefer. I want my heroes to be like John McClane (Die Hard)... he can get beaten up, shot at, thrown from vehicles, etc., but he can soldier on. In fact, he can rest between the fights and regain most of his health. Despite the fact that he is usually cut up, battered, and has suffered all manner of wounds, that resting means he is able to enter the next fight with no penalty to his physical prowess. There are even moments when McClane has become bloodied (he usually reaches this status about once per movie). If I recall correctly, there is even one or two times when he has recovered with 1/4 his hit points, allowing him to regain consciousness and fight on. I can see this abstraction in 4e, and I really like it. The PCs are dramatic action-based heroes, and I really appreciate that.

"Okay, quiet on the set... Keep on the Shadowfell, scene three, take number one... and roll dice... action!"

I think there's an echo in this thread.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I don't think the it was actually a miss thing will work well when a maneuvers fluff is described with contact involved.

The sinister assassin strikes out at you and narrowly misses, your artful dodge strains some muscles and you take 3 points of damage. The assassin with an evil look on his face twists the knife in your would and now you are bleeding, take 5 HP a round. Um Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

This is why I asked about DR earlier. Hp were claimed to be abstract in 3e as well (it's been the fluff of every edition) but the DR rules list two fluff ways of description, both of which depend on a wound which should have caused physical damage. More importantly, it explicitly says "in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective".

So the mechanics of DR depend on a hp model in which not only in a hit a hit and damage damage, but a 15 hp hit is distinguishable both visually and as you deliver it from a 5 hp hit. This is not a "corner case", this is a mechanic which can come up as early as 1st level and can be reasonably be expected to come up in any adventure. Heck, in my tenth level party, 3 of the PCs could potentially have damage reduction in a given fight.

I don't particularly have anything against an abstract hp model, in the abstract as it were, but the entire system must be built around the assumption and make sense with it, rather than the "but it's abstract!" flavor excuse being thrown on the top to explain a couple of mechanics while it directly contradicts others.