Disappointed in 4e

[Serin_Marst]

Or more to the point, how is it more advantageous to role play serious injuries in 1e?

I fail to see how declairing that my character's leg is broken and I've been reduced to a limp when I've been reduced to my last hp will garner a significant advantage over not doing so.

Re: Cure Light Wounds
The problem with they way you're defining it, RC, is that a single wound can reduce a 1st level character to 0 hp, but a single CLW can also restore him/her to full health. As much as you'd loathe to admit it, the scaling healing of the healing surge mechanic probably does better mirror what you term "Gygaxian hp" than the healing mechanics of the previous editions. With surges, you can call a light wound 25% of your hp, regardless of level.

(Ignoring the sticking points of Second Wind and Warlords for the moment) How would you feel about a house rule to the effect of once you have been reduced to 0 surges, you regain surges at a rate of, say, one per week until you have recovered to full hp?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Otherwise, I don't want to hear about the retconning stuff.

Then I suggest that you put me on Ignore.


RC

 

[mmadsen]

RC, you claimed that whatever wound or injury was caused by a hit could easily be described (in-game), based on how much damage was rolled (meta-game) compared to how many hit points the victim still had remaining, and you'd never have to recant:

Pre-4e, any damage can be described given the circumstances under which it occurs, the amount of damage taken, and the number of hit points remaining. No subsequent events in the game will force you to alter your initial description (or discover you've entered Monty Python land if you do not).

Lacyon pointed out that this is not true at all, because a 5-hp sword stroke causes very, very different wounds (in-game) to a 1st-level fighter with, say, 6 hp than to a 10th-level fighter with dozen of hit points -- but they both heal up with the same amount of magical healing -- or mundane healing, for that matter:

Unless the 1st-level Fighter who's taken 5 damage and the 10th-level fighter who's taken 5 damage each recieve a Cure Light Wounds spell.

"Whoa, turns out that gaping hole in my chest was just a flesh wound after all."

Or do you assert that the wounds the 1st- and 10th-level fighters received were both inconsequential flesh wounds? I don't think you do, or this rebuke would make no sense:

Where does it say that CLW cures only flesh wounds?

I think most people agree with your basic outlook on hit points, RC, that, say, the first 5-hp sword stroke to a 50-hp fighter is just a scratch, what one might call a light wound. I think most people also agree that the last 5-hp sword stroke, the one that takes the once-mighty fighter down below 0 hp is a serious wound.

What's ambiguous, I suppose, it what happens in between. If each and every wound is a tiny scratch, it makes no sense for them to add up to a serious, life-threatening injury. If each wound is a little bit worse than the previous wounds, which seems reasonable, then the first 5-hp wound should be light, and maybe the next few too, but after that they should be moderate, and so on. And for the poor 1st-level guy, they should go straight to moderate or serious wounds -- but that's not how the game works.

I love the way you abbreviate cure light wounds while getting indignant that anyone would think such a spell or potion would only cure flesh wounds. Yes, yes, light wounds and flesh wounds are totally different...

Within the context of the spell, they certainly are different, if not totally different. The term "light" refers largely to a number of hit points cured.

Yes, that's the problem. What does cure light wounds mean to the characters living in the game world?

A spell that is able to heal some wounds magically, but is not able to fully recover the most severe of wounds.

Which wounds were the severe ones again? You just said, quite indignantly, that cure light wounds doesn't heal flesh wounds, something the characters in the game world might understand, but refers to a number of hit points. What would that mean to the people in the game world?

The "most severe of wounds" denotes any wound which drops a character to 0 hp or below.

So, is every wound that doesn't drop a character to 0 hp or below just a nick or a scratch? If so, how and why is that character closer to death and in need of healing?

Or is each wound more and more severe as the character gets closer and closer to 0 hp? That seems to be what you're saying, but that clearly implies that 5 hp means a tiny wound some times and a serious -- pardon, not-quite-serious -- wound other times. Each of which takes the same amount of mundane or magical healing.

 

[LostSoul]

Then I suggest that you put me on Ignore.

I'm not going to do that. For starters, I want to hear why it's not advisable to roleplay wounds in 4e!

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think there's still a disconnect here. I'm with you that a good night's rest shouldn't heal all wounds -- but that's still a third issue beside the Healing Surge thing. Consider the following worlds:

I am out of XP to give for the day, or I would have given you some for responding with more than "nuh uh".

1) As in 1e, you have your total X HP and precisely 0 healing surges. You cannot benefit from Healing Word, Inspiring Word, or Second Wind; however, the 2nd level Cleric Utility can still restore hit points. Certain rare elixirs can also restore hit points, but consume a daily use of a magic item.

I don't think that many people have a problem with magical healing per se. The idea that magic can knit wounds isn't a real problem. (That healing potions are tied to healing surges in 4e is weird, though.)

That's a 4e gloss on the 1e system. It doesn't mention normal hit point recovery, only magical healing -- we'd need some sort of rule for recovering hit points in the absence of magical healing -- it could be all (which I'd object to, but there's no reason for it not to be from a game mechanic perspective -- the issue is orthogonal to how 'in game' healing is done!) or it could be 1 hp per day or week or month -- or something in between.

1e does have a mechanic for healing without magic. It just takes time.

Hit points represent... well, something. What they represent is determined by the out of combat way in which they're healed, since magic is magic and tells us nothing. I'd argue that if they come back overnight, they're morale (but why can't nonmagic restore them?!) and if they come back at the rate of 1/month, they're meat points, though severities of wounds correspond to the proportion of hit points of the target that they consume, not the total damage.

This is the Schrödinger's Wounding problem described earlier. How hit points are healed represent what they mean; any description prior to healing may result in retconning or absurdity.

You still probably shouldn't be describing accidental dismemberment too casually

There we agree.

I don't think that there should be rules for this sort of thing (except for how it affects the character's stats); it should be a narrative event. In the most common of instances, it should be a narrative event that affects NPCs, very often in the distant past (i.e., the innkeeper has one eye, or the pirate captain is missing a leg).

2) As in 4e, you have your total X HP and some relatively small number of healing surges -- between 5 and 15. You can second wind, you can benefit from a few kind words from someone who knows how to motivate, the whole schlemiel.

Again, no problem with this as an idea. RCFG has "shaking it off" and a second wind mechanic that grants temporary hit points.

You can get brought down to 0 hp -- you can even die from it! -- but the round before you die, a few kind words can patch you up and get you back into the fight. If the body is under sufficient duress, not even those words will help -- pure divine magic must be used, or perhaps nothing will work.

Sorry, but my "Monty Python & the Holy Grail" meter just went off.

In RCFG, a fighter with the second wind ability, who is knocked to 0 hit points, can use that ability as a reaction, to stay in the fight. Being knocked unconscious and rallying 6 seconds later, IMHO, is a bit too much for a regular game occurance.

This is not in and of itself ridiculous: adventurers have 3 near death experiences before breakfast, and it does not astound me that they'd be able to rally, quickly, from the brink of death and be back to their ornery hellfire-spitting ways.

We differ here. IMHO, successful adventurerers do not have three near-death experiences before breakfast....certainly not the sort of near death experiences that involve bleeding on a battlefield while dead loved ones exhort them to "come to the light".

What I think is flatly ridiculous is the "all better the next morning" system.

I think that this can work in episodic play, where each adventure is a discrete story, as opposed to part of an ongoing sandbox narrative. If the DM takes choice away from the players, he can narrate that they have to heal up over several months once the adventure is done.

(This does completely disjoint hp from wounds, but is not wholly dissimilar to 1e's method of handling things.)

It is only where the PCs have the choice to simply keep going, day after day, with never a rest, that absurdity well and truly sets in.

IMHO, of course.

My suggestion is to have surges be restored at the rate of 1 per night, or 2 per night in the care of a healer or bed rest, or 4 per full day of bed-rest or light (nonadventuring!) activity in the care of a healer.

It's still too quick, but there's usually a cleric or medic in the party on whom we can rely to handwave the speedy recovery.

Again, as I said earlier, it is fairly easy to come up with a better system for handling these problems than the one appearing in the 4e PHB. I fully agree that one can houserule 4e into a better game! It would be nice, though, if the GSL allowed the publication of said houserules, so that they could be referenced across the board.


RC

 

[justanobody]

I'm not going to do that. For starters, I want to hear why it's not advisable to roleplay wounds in 4e!

DM: The fighter just got a gapping wound on his sword arm from the orc's slash.
Fighter: I use my Second Wind and heal.....1/2 the damage.
Class X: My effect triggers when the orc attacked healing him for the remaining damage
DM: NVM what I just said....

There. The damage was ret-conned. Why waste the time describing it or roleplaying it?

Would something have been done differently had the wound not be on his sword arm?

Does the roleplayed wound that no longer exists have any impact on the story now?

With everyone healing themselves and each other, it only wastes time during combat to try to spell out what a wound may be since it will be "erased" as long as healing surges and the powers exist that can be used.

It will only matter and impact the story of the game when all those are exhausted.

OH! But even then, you can just sleep off your arm hanging by a few nerves with an extended rest and you're fully healed the next morning.

When you only healed a single HP per day worth of rest, it meant something more than now where a nap or pep-talk heals all wounds.

 

[Raven Crowking]

RC, you claimed that whatever wound or injury was caused by a hit could easily be described (in-game), based on how much damage was rolled (meta-game) compared to how many hit points the victim still had remaining, and you'd never have to recant:

Pre-4e, any damage can be described given the circumstances under which it occurs, the amount of damage taken, and the number of hit points remaining. No subsequent events in the game will force you to alter your initial description (or discover you've entered Monty Python land if you do not).

Lacyon pointed out that this is not true at all, because a 5-hp sword stroke causes very, very different wounds (in-game) to a 1st-level fighter with, say, 6 hp than to a 10th-level fighter with dozen of hit points -- but they both heal up with the same amount of magical healing -- or mundane healing, for that matter

Which doesn't actually force one to recant any description of damage, assuming that the description actually took into account how much damage was rolled compared to how many hit points the victim still had remaining.

Let's start calling our 1st level fighter Bob and our 10th level fighter Gary for ease of discussion. Bob has 10 hit points and Gary has 80.

Both Bob and Gary get in a fight with some goblins. Both take 5 hp damage in single attacks.

The DM says, "Bob, the goblin slashes at you, and manages to cut your arm. You take 5 points of damage. The goblin's sword is begining to look a bit more deadly to you! Meanwhile, Gary, you also take 5 points of damage, a blow that the goblin thought would be solid, but that you easily turn into a slight graze."

Now Pete the Cleric casts two Cure Light Wounds, getting a result of 5 on each roll.

The DM says "Bob, Pete casts his spell and the cut in your arm heals by magic. Flexing your hand, you discover that the pain is gone. Gary, you have hardly been wounded, and it seems as though your scratch isn't worth the use of a spell, but it is also gone."

Or, if Pete rolled 5 for Bob and 4 for Gary:

The DM says "Bob, Pete casts his spell and the cut in your arm heals by magic. Flexing your hand, you discover that the pain is gone. Gary, you have hardly been wounded, and it seems as though your scratch isn't worth the use of a spell, and apparently Pete's god agrees, for the wound is not entirely gone."

Or, if Pete rolled 4 for Bob and 5 for Gary:

The DM says "Bob, Pete casts his spell and the cut in your arm knits, leaving only a weal. Flexing your hand, you discover that the pain is not entirely gone. Gary, you have hardly been wounded, and it seems as though your scratch isn't worth the use of a spell, and it is entirely gone."

Now, let's stop here so that you can tell me how it is "not true at all" that I can easily describe a hit, based on how much damage was rolled compared to how many hit points the victim still had remaining, without having to recant because of a cure light wounds spell or two?

 

[Lacyon]

Which doesn't actually force one to recant any description of damage, assuming that the description actually took into account how much damage was rolled compared to how many hit points the victim still had remaining.

Let's start calling our 1st level fighter Bob and our 10th level fighter Gary for ease of discussion. Bob has 10 hit points and Gary has 80.

Both Bob and Gary get in a fight with some goblins. Both take 5 hp damage in single attacks.

The DM says, "Bob, the goblin slashes at you, and manages to cut your arm. You take 5 points of damage. The goblin's sword is begining to look a bit more deadly to you! Meanwhile, Gary, you also take 5 points of damage, a blow that the goblin thought would be solid, but that you easily turn into a slight graze."

Now Bob and Gary go to rest. It takes Bob 5 days to heal his relatively important cut on the arm, and the same 5 days for Gary to heal his relatively minor graze. (Or they both heal in 2-1/2 days of bed rest, or whatever).

Bob is at a different place on the Python Continuum in 1E than he would be in 4E, but that doesn't change that he is on said continuum in either game. Only the numbers have changed.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I think that's exactly his beef with the system. If I play an archery, I take on the baggage of being a ranger and the wilderness flavor behind it.

What, exactly, do you mean? The only wilderness flavour to the ranger lies in his class skills, which are easily remedied, and a few of his utility powers. He has no animal companion, he has no druid-ish spells, he doesn't even get Track automatically. The ranger could be called "the skirmisher" without changing much of anything.

I was actually going to use the quick-fix monk they posted in the character conversion articles. If you're not familiar with it, it's the TWF ranger with "ranger" scratched out and "monk" written in, and a couple minor modifications to make it more monk-like (unarmed attacks, no armour, etc.).

If the ranger were positively dripping with woodsy flavour, this wouldn't be possible. But the ranger's powers can summarized like this:

Ranger Power
Effect: Shoot a target or targets with an arrow or arrows, or hit them with two weapons. Maybe you can choose to use the power for melee or ranged, or maybe the power only allows one type of attack. Throw some secondary effect on to the shooting or hitting, as appropriate.

The ranger is two classes: an archer, and a mobile striker with none of the sneakiness of the rogue. It can also blend those roles, and if you really want to you can act like he's Robin Hood or Aragorn while you're at it. But the latter is by no means required.

 

[LostSoul]

DM: The fighter just got a gapping wound on his sword arm from the orc's slash.
Fighter: I use my Second Wind and heal.....1/2 the damage.
Class X: My effect triggers when the orc attacked healing him for the remaining damage
DM: NVM what I just said....

How about...

DM: The wound heals slightly from Class X's magical healing, and your Second Wind lets you ignore the pain, but your wound is still there.

Or if it's a Warlord:

DM: Your Second Wind lets you ignore the pain, and the Warlord's words stir your heart. Your wound is still there.

OH! But even then, you can just sleep off your arm hanging by a few nerves with an extended rest and you're fully healed the next morning.

Yeah, I'm not too fond of that either.