Cure: One step closer to understanding?

[GMMichael]

I reject the underlying premise of your question so I can't imagine any answer I provide being of any use.

The premise that candy can come from anywhere? Actually, I reject that too. But really, I just found a 1st level 4E goblin that has 30 HP...so it's not like the game is being conservative with them.

I'm pretty sure that 4E didn't have a cure "spell," so yes, not a problem. Odds are, it had an encounter cure power that healed 4-5 HP per caster or target level - as I think scaling was a big concern for 4E designers. I think that still leaves the problem though: what exactly was being cured?

 

[MichaelSomething]

HP was designed to be easy to keep track of, not be a physics engine that explains how the world works...

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) I think that still leaves the problem though: what exactly was being cured?

Hit points. The same thing that is cured in every edition of D&D.

 

[GMMichael]

HP was designed to be easy to keep track of, not be a physics engine that explains how the world works...

Hit points. The same thing that is cured in every edition of D&D.

I see a trend here. Are you suggesting (however unwittingly) that we can't find out what "cure" means until we find out what hit points are?

I'll refer to the classic versions of D&D and Final Fantasy here (pre-90s). In D&D, hit points used the word "hit" intentionally: it was a measure of how many hits your character could take before dying. It seems that most hits didn't actually have an in-game effect; they served only to decrease hit points. In Final Fantasy, there were no hits: enemies and heroes stayed in their respective windows, never making contact with each other. In fact, I'm not even sure that the game had "hit points," since I've only seen the acronym "HP." HP would count down as enemies made attacks (quasi-hits), but characters did not lose capability from the attacks, even when forced to take a knee when low on HP. To restore a character to fighting status, you didn't go to the "morgue" or "priest." You'd go to the "clinic."

The common point: hit points are what keep you in the fight. Losing them means you're being attacked, but otherwise doesn't affect you until you run out.

MichaelSomething's right: these hit points are obviously not a physics engine. So is SoD: the Cure spell cures hit points. My question was about the in-game effect though. When Tordek is leaning back in his tavern chair, drinking a tankard of mead at 1 HP, he looks just like he does at 20 HP. So the White Mage comes over and casts Cure on him. Yet Tordek looks and acts exactly the same. Does the White Mage walk away feeling like a spellcasting failure, or does he accept the mead that Tordek hands him as a way of saying "thanks for strengthening my luck," or "I no longer feel doomed?"

Stranger still: does the cure spell remove the dents from Tordek's armor, the nicks from his sword, and replace the boards of his shield? A valid question for bards, healing surgers, and anything else not channeling the healing power of the gods.

 

[Herobizkit]

In 4e parlance, when Tordek is leaning back in his chair at 1 HP, he is "bloodied" (having lost more than half his HP total). He is a sanguine smear in that chair, beaten to a bit of consciousness by whatever deigned to ding his fighting form.

If his armor was damaged, now you start getting into the Hit Points of items. How do you "cure" item HP? By repairing it. You replace the broken pieces, smash out the dings and what have you. But there's magic for that, too... one wave of the wand and presto! Instantly repaired item, brand new, and all it cost you was some mana.

So, in essence, "Cure" magic is the "Repair" magic for people.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

When Tordek is leaning back in his tavern chair, drinking a tankard of mead at 1 HP, he looks just like he does at 20 HP. So the White Mage comes over and casts Cure on him. Yet Tordek looks and acts exactly the same.

Why would the White Mage make the decision to cast the Cure spell on Tordek, if Tordek shows no discernible signs of needing it? Why would the White Mage, who can only cast Cure twice per day and needs to be picky about it, choose to cast the spell on Tordek but not Mialee, when both look equally uninjured?

The decision to cast a Cure spell can only rationally be made if the effects of its resolution are knowable to the spellcaster. Maybe you could do that in such a way that priests have "luck sense" which lets them see who is in danger of being doomed, but the easiest and most consistent way is to just say that HP correspond to something which is easily observable to everyone - such as state of physical injury. As long as we're talking about scratches and blunt trauma, rather than impalement, the only issue is that we need to handwave the loss of physical capacity as a hero gets beaten up... in which case we already have the convenient explanation that this a hero. Fighting through the pain is just basic hero stuff.

Stranger still: does the cure spell remove the dents from Tordek's armor, the nicks from his sword, and replace the boards of his shield?

Indestructible equipment is close enough to real-world physics that we can probably ignore it. A chain shirt can take a lot of hits before it's deformed enough to no longer function, so as long as we have a passing mention of the fighter maintaining his gear during downtime, we probably don't need to track that. It's just one of those simplifying assumptions which saves us a lot of bookkeeping as long as we remember that we are making an assumption, and as long as we remember to stop making that assumption when the pre-requisite conditions no longer hold.

Likewise, we could make a simplifying assumption that archers don't need to track their arrows, under the conditions that an archer will always recover as many spent arrows as possible and replace the rest during downtime. Thus, we can save a lot of bookkeeping, as long as arrows aren't being shot off of a cliff and there are plenty of trees/vendors in the vicinity to allow for resupply. Once your archer is fighting fire elementals in the desert, those conditions no longer apply, so the simplifying assumption becomes unreasonable and it makes more sense to actually track your ammo.

 

[GMMichael]

In 4e parlance, when Tordek is leaning back in his chair at 1 HP, he is "bloodied" (having lost more than half his HP total). He is a sanguine smear in that chair, beaten to a bit of consciousness by whatever deigned to ding his fighting form.

Yes and no. One thing I like about 4e: it recognizes that a change in hit points should mean something. But Tordek isn't about to pass out - he makes all his checks normally, and sometimes gains an advantage from being bloodied, no?

If his armor was damaged, now you start getting into the Hit Points of items. How do you "cure" item HP? By repairing it.

True, but some descriptions of hit points, or loss of hit points/damage, include armor deflection, knicks, and dents. I'm not talking about item HP, I'm talking about PC HP. Which is why a Cure spell would remove such things, if that's what your damage represents.

The decision to cast a Cure spell can only rationally be made if the effects of its resolution are knowable to the spellcaster. Maybe you could do that in such a way that priests have "luck sense" which lets them see who is in danger of being doomed, but the easiest and most consistent way is to just say that HP correspond to something which is easily observable to everyone...

Good point. Luck sense is a cool idea. If the gods regularly grant you the ability to Cure people, they might as well grant you the ability to detect who needs it.

GM: As you approach Tordek, he leans back in his chair, draining his tankard. Now that you can see him better, he looks sickly pale to you, like a corpse drained of all its blood.

As long as we're talking about scratches and blunt trauma, rather than impalement, the only issue is that we need to handwave the loss of physical capacity as a hero gets beaten up... in which case we already have the convenient explanation that this a hero. Fighting through the pain is just basic hero stuff.

Touche'. This is actually a big assumption in D&D (& other systems?) that doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves. D&D is an action movie. It's highly fantastic. A character can take damage, sometimes all day long, and not even break a sweat. It's not what you'd call gritty.

Likewise, we could make a simplifying assumption that archers don't need to track their arrows, under the conditions that an archer will always recover as many spent arrows as possible and replace the rest during downtime.

Wrong thread, right point. Why can't we hand-wave arrow counts while hand-waving the effects of damage? That's a bit of a slippery slope though...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Wrong thread, right point. Why can't we hand-wave arrow counts while hand-waving the effects of damage? That's a bit of a slippery slope though...

From a practical scientific standpoint, you could run some tests. Play 100 encounters where you assign roughly equal penalties to all injured parties - even if it's just a -2 to attacks and AC while you're under half - and then run the same 100 encounters without tracking the penalties. As long as the sets don't play significantly different from each other, we could determine that the extra bookkeeping is not worth tracking.

And yeah, I guess I did cross the streams, but it's the same way I'd convince someone that tracking ammo is unnecessary.

 

[Herobizkit]

Yes and no. One thing I like about 4e: it recognizes that a change in hit points should mean something. But Tordek isn't about to pass out - he makes all his checks normally, and sometimes gains an advantage from being bloodied, no?

True, but at 0 HP he falls unconscious, barring any special feats powers etc. I would submit that even 1 HP of damage will knock him out, suggesting that he must have suffered some sort of trauma to get to that point - otherwise, he'd be a minion. ^_^

True, but some descriptions of hit points, or loss of hit points/damage, include armor deflection, knicks, and dents. I'm not talking about item HP, I'm talking about PC HP. Which is why a Cure spell would remove such things, if that's what your damage represents.

Armor deflections, nicks and dents are purely cosmetic unless an item's physical HP is also reduced. Cure spells don't work on items, but people can, and for sake of narration, it's assumed they do in their off time/"off-camera" time.

Wrong thread, right point. Why can't we hand-wave arrow counts while hand-waving the effects of damage? That's a bit of a slippery slope though...

We can hand-wave damage, but 4e is not designed to do so. You then start getting into full narration-style systems that only track health status instead of mathematical HP... or, again, every PC becomes a minion or even "super-minion" who can take two 'real' hits before he collapses.

4e isn't a Real-would combat simulator, or even a "real-life" fantasy world simulator. Not even a little bit.