Camping: It does a body good!

[Incenjucar]

It's distinguishable visually because your opponent doesn't wince as much as they should, or don't get as deep a flesh wound as you anticipated.

Not that hard.

 

[Kordeth]

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.

As I said in another thread, hp as purely "last-minute dodges and parries" break down just as completely as hp as "every successful attack is a bleeding flesh wound." It is, as it always has been, up to the DM to describe successful attacks in a way that is logical and interesting. If an attack hits, and that attack has a rider that causes bleeding damage, obviously you don't describe that particular blow as a near miss. "The assassin lashes out with his dagger and scrapes it along your ribs. The cut doesn't look that bad (10 damage), but a moment later it begins to bleed copiously."

Abstract hit points are not the same thing as "no damaging attack actually hits until you die." The latter is exactly as concrete as "every hit is a physical wound on your tender adventurer flesh." "Abstract," by its very definition, means that hit points don't represent any one thing. Sometimes it's a flesh wound, sometimes it's a last-second dodge,sometimes it's just pure, heroic moxie that lets you keep fighting even when you've got a sword sticking through your torso.

 

[Imp]

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.

I don't care about this for genre reasons. It's a pre-modern fantasy game. Things move slower, and you can handwave the time lapses. Why make things move slower if you're just going to handwave it? To stop straining credulity quite so damn much as if it's a matter of principle.

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.

This I don't care about for new-game-balance reasons. One of the problems with 3e is that if you are performing below par it's entirely possible to get killed before you can react. 4e combat is not that lethal that fast (apparently), so that if your character that sucks a little now finds himself unable to win, he can do something about that because there is time to assess the threats in combat. So in that sense it shouldn't matter as much how easily you can predict what kind of foes the party can effectively face, because they shouldn't be as prone to getting instantly splattered by a superior enemy.

I don't mind steps in an action-movie-direction with regard to hit points but it is kind of risible as a general model – sure, you can buy your tough-guy sword-lunks always being able to shrug off those injuries, but all the wizards and warlocks and skinny little rogues? There are also other action movie tropes, for example, the hero that gets his butt thoroughly kicked, spends a couple of weeks letting his bones knit, and then comes back ready to fight. And these are in the fast-paced wacky modern world!

It would be nice to have some sort of mechanic to simulate "you're going to feel that in the morning", because in the current set-up nothing ever does.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

My House Rule for 4E IF I adopt it:

Players reduced to bloodied satus can heal up to half their maximum hit points and not beyond it with one day of full rest or one night of sleep. This essentially means that it will take at least two full days to recover from grievous wounds.

 

[Henry]

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.

My take on it: Why does no hit points lost necessarily mean "scrape free?" Someone who had rested for a day might be in shape enough to get moving again, but they might still look like hell. After the cuts and bruises of 12 attackers, narrowly avoiding being roasted to death by 3 fireballs, and gods knows what else, they rest for the rest of the day, get a fresh start, and they look like John McClain warmed over, but they have enough willpower and stamina to keep functioning. It's only after the adventure is over that they spend three weeks in town, rest up, spending on ale and whores, and they're healed over enough for the next adventure.

Has anyone ever looked at the Die Hard movies and wondered, "how the HECK does he keep going?!?!?" Healing Surges are one way to describe it. If people can accept that hit points are a mix of health, luck, and skill at staying alive, then is it really too much of a stretch to imagine cut-up heroes who still have most or all their hit points?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

That is how I always played it, I usually have the players go through the normal RP motions when they get into a town, inn, etc.

Where they wash out the blood and dirt out of their clothes, beat the dents out of their armour, sharpen their weapons, stitch and guaze their wounds, etc.

Any NPC can really tell when they have been out adventuring with how badly messed up they look when they return.

I also use a good amount of adrenaline-pumping for when adventuring. Then when travelling back, the wounds and strain really hit them, so while adventuring they may have been striding fine, walking back to town their limping and leaning on eachother.

 

[Cmarco]

I think there's an echo in this thread.

Sorry Kordeth! I didn't notice you had made a similar comment earlier on. Glad to see that great minds think alike, though.

So, John McClane... paragon-level fighter?

 

[Henry]

I think we should call it "The Kordeth Theory of Hit Point Explanation." because having a Theory or Maneuver named after you is always cool. Of course, "The McClane Effect" is catchier, though....

 

[glass]

-good stuff-

Can you repost this at CM so I can posrep you?


glass.

 

[Kordeth]

Sorry Kordeth! I didn't notice you had made a similar comment earlier on. Glad to see that great minds think alike, though.

So, John McClane... paragon-level fighter?

Definitely. And the scene where he finally gets to the bathroom and cleans himself up is a "short rest."

I think we should call it "The Kordeth Theory of Hit Point Explanation." because having a Theory or Maneuver named after you is always cool. Of course, "The McClane Effect" is catchier, though....

Definitely the McClane effect. I may rename hp to jmp in my games.