Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6460431" data-attributes="member: 37579">The status quo isn't *really* a side. It's a middle ground. There's never just two sides without a middle, there's alwatys Both 1e and 2e were vague on the nature of hit points. With nonlethal damage, 3e skewed to "meat" and with martial healing, DoaM, and healing surges 4e leaned heavily to energy. 5e now returns to the middle ground of 1e/2e and the status quo of hit points being vague and abstract. That's the thing, no version of hit points represents reality or cinema very well. The Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya fight and one is knocked unconscious after the first blow. But it also takes more than a single night's rest to restore Westley to health after the fire swamp. To say nothing of the reality of Frodo being slammed against the wall with enough force to stun him. He should have shattered ribs at the very least. But, it could be argued, they spend a couple weeks letting breaks and sprains heal in Lothlorien (checking a timeline, the Fellowship actually spends a full month with the elves before departing.)Hit points are a terrible system for representing health. But they work. And they work so long as you don't draw attention to the problems or focus on them being health or energy. Once you start unraveling hit points the entire thing falls apart. You want to focus on hit points and their nature as little as possible, and any additional rules beyond the minimum increase the risk of breaking the suspension of disbelief in someone's game.Healing is one of the aforementioned "minimum". You need rules for healing. The speed of healing is a concession, and a necessary one. The playtests showed that a large number of people (the majority or largest minority) wanted faster healing, so that's why we have that. But there are rules for slower and faster healing provided for everyone else. It's an easy fix, which lets you play one way or another without impacting characters. The change is made on the DM's side. Likewise, you could add non-lethal damage as a rules module. Or wound points/vitality. Maybe even a form of martial healing. But Damage on a Miss is trickier as it's harder to produce as a separate concept kept in the DMG. Not in the way fans of DoaM seem to be arguing for. (Okay… that said, it would be very easy to allow as a combat option ala cleave. The Glancing Blow option. Which would very certainly work, as it could totally be worded so DMs could veto it in situations where it doesn't work. That would actually be a very cool option for some games. And if DoaM fans were arguing for something like that, the conversation would be different. But most of the calls for DoA want it as a fighter power or base part of the game.) I disagree with that. It's not as if healing magic is mandatory. You can heal just fine without magic, and adventure just fine without magic. Magic is just an accelerant for healing. And, again, there are options that greatly increase non-magical healing making that work just fine. We have the baseline which is good for most and fairly standard while still "feeling like D&D", and variations for everything else. I disagree with that as well. There's tonnes of other health system. The big pile of hit points is almost non-standard when you look at other games. Especially in games that aspire to realism. Soaking and/or damage reducing armour is the plot armour of choice.  That's the catch, for me DoaM only takes away and doesn't add anything. And, again, there's totally a place for a healthy middle ground and the two extremes supported by optional rules. But DoaM as part of the base assumptions of the game… no thank you. And from a general perspective, DoaM doesn't really add much. Tell me, what does you see DoaM as adding to the game? Not hit points as energy, not fast healing. Just DoaM. It doesn't provide any extra opinions in combat, and it doesn't increase combat effectiveness more than any other form of static DPR increase. You don't roll more dice. It doesn't help you visualize your character. It doesn't define the role of your character or separate a class from another class. What does DoaM bring to the table that is unique and essential?</blockquote>

Verification