Disappointed in 4e

[Zustiur]

I hesitate to add more fuel to this fire but...

My understanding is that hit points up until 4e have never included moral. Moral usually by-passed HP. Fear spells affected moral, but caused no change in HP. Many monsters had moral checks depending on how many of their fellows had been killed, but their own individual HP didn't affect their moral.

To find that moral is now included is disconcerting. I agree with those who argue that damage has always included SOME physical injury in the past.

The idea that natural healing takes longer the more heroic you are has always been a problem with DnD, but I've been able to ignore it as it didn't stick out enough to make me worry about it. Going from dying to okay, via magic, always fit the picture for me. The concept that 'light wounds' means 'few wounds' and 'critical wounds' means 'lots and lots of wounds' is one that I've understood for a very long time.

What I can't get a grip on is this (and this is where the ret-conning thing comes in):

Character A gets knocked down to say -12 HP from a series of sword blows. This character has a bloodied value of 15 so is effectively 3 HP away from dead. However, the character is also dying, and takes death saves each round. Two turns later the character has failed two saves, and is also 1 HP away from dead. This character is clearly mortally wounded. One more failed save, or one more lost hit point equals death.

But somehow, despite being mortally wounded, and unconscious, someone saying 'get up you sissy' from 25 feet away allows this character to get up and fight as if he'd never been close to death.

So explain how the character is now okay to keep fighting, a mere 6 seconds after being on death's door, without the aid of magic? All of the 'damage' was from a physical source, the character was effectively in a coma, but Mr Inspiration over there said a few words and now Character A has never been close to death to begin with? The same problem applies without the warlord. The player gets lucky and rolls a 20 on his next turn... so the character who was bleeding to death is now awake and physically able, despite having been comatose and a ragged breath away from dying moments earlier.

Can someone explain how this works without ret-conning the near death experience? I just don't get it. Maybe someone can give me a comparable real-world situation where someone is on death's door, and moments later is completely okay without any medical intervention. I just can't explain being that close to death without it being a (near-) mortal wound.
Okay, there are heart attacks and similar - but you don't recover from them instantly and return to full physical activity a few seconds later.

This is what we mean by mentioning Schroedinger. Either the character is about to die, or he's just feeling a bit down and needs encouragement. But we won't know which until -
a) he gets told to get up
b) he dies.
His current state is in question, and cannot be accurately described. Is he okay or not? We can't tell until the next round takes place.

In 3.0, even with magical healing, getting up from a dying state left you unable to participate in the current fight. Now just a few words of encouragement, to a character who is labeled as unconscious and dying is enough to return them to full fighting power. (I quote 3.0 because I'm not sure if the same rule remains in 3.5, having played it so little).


And the secondary issue:
Character B has been fighting all day, and has used up all her healing surges. the party cleric who prays to a god of healing can do no more for her. The party warlord can do no more for her. But the lowly level 1 paladin who prays to someone absurd like Zehir (god of assassins) CAN heal her because that healing uses the paladin's surges, not Character B's surges.
WTF?
Okay, I get that the paladin is selfless etc, that's cool. But the idea that a cleric can do less healing than a paladin in this sort of situation astounds me. The cleric can go on healing people all day, just not this person. Yet the paladin can heal this person. The clerics/god's magic works for everyone except Character B. I admit this is a corner case, it's just something that makes no sense to me.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Really? Because the whole reason I became embroiled in this mess was the claim that they are the same. If no one here now believes they are the same, I would be happy to call it a day.


RC

Just like nobody here is taking hit points too literally?

You skipped my main point in your attempt at humor.

Claims that 4E damage and healing is "absurd" (quoth the Raven) is really ignoring the fact that the alleged absurdity never existed. Prior versions of D&D had their own abstractions that DMs and Players used a fitting narrative to explain. The rules didn't explain how a high level fighter fell off a 200' cliff, got stepped on by an elephant, skewered by arrows from a legion of archers and survived. We had to narrate how he was able to keep on fighting and how he came to be healed. 4E has added new ways to be hurt and new ways to be healed. Do the rules explain how a character deals with all this? No. We still have to narrate it. In any edition of D&D, narration that contradicts the way the rules work will seem like a failuire in the rules. It is really a failure in your narration.

And I ask only out of curiosity, if the elephant didn't step on you when you took that damage that didn't kill you, then why did you take damage in the first place?

Anticipating your answer, the follow-up is then: Can't the same be said for narration in 4E?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Just like nobody here is taking hit points too literally?

Again, hit points are now and have always been an abstraction.

What is changed is that, while in previous editions, they were an abstraction of how much damage the character can take, in 4e they are an abstraction of an abstraction. And that, IMHO, is a paradigm shift.

Moreover, I didn't claim that "4E damage and healing is "absurd"" -- I claimed that the 4e damage and healing paradigm consistently and frequently gives rise to absurd situations in the narrative unless

(1) One chooses not to describe any damage until it has been healed,
(2) One retcons the narrative, or
(3) One simply chooses to close one's eyes to the absurdity (which does not actually make it go away; though it might make it go away for you).

The rules didn't explain how a high level fighter fell off a 200' cliff, got stepped on by an elephant, skewered by arrows from a legion of archers and survived.

1e has a serious problem with falling damage that leads to absurd results.

1e is, however, very clear that non-fatal hit point loss meant that fighter didn't get stepped on by an elephant, and didn't get skewered by arrows from a legion of archers if he survived.

And I ask only out of curiosity, if the elephant didn't step on you when you took that damage that didn't kill you, then why did you take damage in the first place?

Anticipating your answer, the follow-up is then: Can't the same be said for narration in 4E?

The elephant tried to step on you, but you rolled out of the way before his foot came down fully. He still caught you with it, though, and it hurt, causing some bodily injury.

Follow-Up: As soon as you know how the hit points are healed, you can narrate how the damage was taken, if you wish to both keep your eyes open and avoid absurd results. At the time the damage was taken? Not so much.


RC

 

[mmadsen]

It should be noted that there is no edition of D&D (including 4th) in which you "can be stepped on by an elephant and walk away". If an elephant makes a stamping attack, and it doesn't kill you, then you didn't get stepped on.

The elephant did not step on you, yet you must heal from this injury? This is not at all consistent with your previous statements.

It is consistent with the notion of hit points as largely intangible luck, divine favor, etc.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

To find that moral is now included is disconcerting. I agree with those who argue that damage has always included SOME physical injury in the past.

My first point of disagreement. Damage has not always included physical injury. RC's example of not being stepped on by an elephant unless the trampling attack killed you is a good example of no physical injury, but still losing hit points. It the physical exertion to avoid the harm or loss of luck or what-have-you to explain this loss of hit points in any edition.

What I can't get a grip on is this (and this is where the ret-conning thing comes in):

Character A gets knocked down to say -12 HP from a series of sword blows. This character has a bloodied value of 15 so is effectively 3 HP away from dead. However, the character is also dying, and takes death saves each round. Two turns later the character has failed two saves, and is also 1 HP away from dead. This character is clearly mortally wounded. One more failed save, or one more lost hit point equals death.

Again, I would say it normally only takes one solid sword blow to take someone down. So every "hit" in the series of sword blows except for the one that took the character down is actually a *near hit* that the charater exerted himself to deflect, dodge, whatever. The hit that took him down I would describe as being a *potentially fatal* wound of whatever sort fits for narration's sake.

But somehow, despite being mortally wounded, and unconscious, someone saying 'get up you sissy' from 25 feet away allows this character to get up and fight as if he'd never been close to death.

If you want people in your game to yell absurd things like "get up you sissy" that's your perogative. I would envision something more like near-death scenes from some of my favorite action movies. People in movies die because they lose the will to live. Stirring dialogues from their friends to "not go towards the light" or "are you just gonna give up and let these scum ravage our homeland?!" or whatever fits the situation are what allows them to shake the haze of death and push themselves up of the ground to continue the fight.

So explain how the character is now okay to keep fighting, a mere 6 seconds after being on death's door, without the aid of magic? All of the 'damage' was from a physical source, the character was effectively in a coma, but Mr Inspiration over there said a few words and now Character A has never been close to death to begin with? The same problem applies without the warlord. The player gets lucky and rolls a 20 on his next turn... so the character who was bleeding to death is now awake and physically able, despite having been comatose and a ragged breath away from dying moments earlier.

I personally have always had a problem with the Unconscious status from day 1 of OD&D. Where are all the death monologues? Can't, because if you're Dying, you are also Unconscious. So, I treat Dying as "unable to act." You can't perform any conherent actions, but you certainly aren't comatose. You are hovering on death's door with the real world getting hazier as each moment passes.

Can someone explain how this works without ret-conning the near death experience? I just don't get it. Maybe someone can give me a comparable real-world situation where someone is on death's door, and moments later is completely okay without any medical intervention. I just can't explain being that close to death without it being a (near-) mortal wound.
Okay, there are heart attacks and similar - but you don't recover from them instantly and return to full physical activity a few seconds later.

This is what we mean by mentioning Schroedinger. Either the character is about to die, or he's just feeling a bit down and needs encouragement. But we won't know which until -
a) he gets told to get up
b) he dies.
His current state is in question, and cannot be accurately described. Is he okay or not? We can't tell until the next round takes place.

No. He has a mortal wound. The only thing you are waiting to find out is whether:
a) he does what any good action hero does and pushes through the pain to keep fighting
b) he dies

When he has time to rest he bandages his wounds and deals with the pain until he's fully healed. Is this painful wound described in the rules? No. Because there never has been a Wound Rule in core D&D.

In 3.0, even with magical healing, getting up from a dying state left you unable to participate in the current fight. Now just a few words of encouragement, to a character who is labeled as unconscious and dying is enough to return them to full fighting power. (I quote 3.0 because I'm not sure if the same rule remains in 3.5, having played it so little).

Not true. In 3.0, if healed from -9 hit points to 1 or more hit points with magical healing, your character could stand up on his turn and keep fighting.

 

[Fifth Element]

The elephant tried to step on you, but you rolled out of the way before his foot came down fully. He still caught you with it, though, and it hurt, causing some bodily injury.

...and it takes you precisely the same amount of time to recover from this lesser injury as it would someone who took a larger proportion of hit point damage from the same attack.

So tougher people take longer to heal from lesser injuries. That sounds pretty absurd to me.

So while the 1E hit points rules may not be absurd, they consistently lead to absurd results. If you think about them in certain ways.

 

[LostSoul]

Character A gets knocked down to say -12 HP from a series of sword blows. This character has a bloodied value of 15 so is effectively 3 HP away from dead. However, the character is also dying, and takes death saves each round. Two turns later the character has failed two saves, and is also 1 HP away from dead. This character is clearly mortally wounded. One more failed save, or one more lost hit point equals death.

But somehow, despite being mortally wounded, and unconscious, someone saying 'get up you sissy' from 25 feet away allows this character to get up and fight as if he'd never been close to death.

So explain how the character is now okay to keep fighting, a mere 6 seconds after being on death's door, without the aid of magic? All of the 'damage' was from a physical source, the character was effectively in a coma, but Mr Inspiration over there said a few words and now Character A has never been close to death to begin with? The same problem applies without the warlord. The player gets lucky and rolls a 20 on his next turn... so the character who was bleeding to death is now awake and physically able, despite having been comatose and a ragged breath away from dying moments earlier.

Can someone explain how this works without ret-conning the near death experience? I just don't get it. Maybe someone can give me a comparable real-world situation where someone is on death's door, and moments later is completely okay without any medical intervention. I just can't explain being that close to death without it being a (near-) mortal wound.
Okay, there are heart attacks and similar - but you don't recover from them instantly and return to full physical activity a few seconds later.

I'll give it a shot. One thing to remember is that you just have to explain it so that it's cool for your group, so one person's "wicked awesome" is another person's "lame".

The PC come across a Kruthik lair and engage in battle. The Fighter charges up to the Adult and they begin trading blows. Finally, one claw slips past the Fighter's guard and smacks him in the face, tearing his cheek open.

He falls, seeing stars. His muscles won't work, up is down, everything's a blur. (-12 HP, fails death save.)

As he lies on the ground, the Kruthik keeps tearing and gnashing at his armour. It's bound to hit something vital if this keeps up. (Takes two damage, -14 HP.)

The Fighter tries to get up, but he can't. (Fails death save.)

Luckily the Wizard Thunderwaves the Kruthik Adult away just as it was about to slash open the Fighter's neck.

"You're not going to do much good on the ground like that!" the Warlord yells, and the words make it through to the Fighter. Inspired, the Fighter clears his head through a gargantuan effort of will. (Inspiring Word.)

He rises, tastes the blood from his ripped cheek, and takes a minute to gather his breath. (Second Wind.)


Now let's say you got yourself into trouble with the first attack's narration, the one that brought him to -12 HP:

The PC come across a Kruthik lair and engage in battle. The Fighter charges up to the Adult and they begin trading blows. Finally, one claw slips past the Fighter's guard and slashes his throat. (-12 HP.)

The Fighter falls, unconcious, bleeding out. (Fails death save.)

As he lies on the ground, the Kruthik keeps tearing and gnashing at his armour. It's bound to rip open another gash and the Fighter will die from blood loss. (Takes two damage, -14 HP.)

Luckily the Wizard Thunderwaves the Kruthik Adult away just as it was about to slash open the Fighter's neck.

The Fighter sees a light in the darkness, and standing in it is the Raven Queen, calling for him, a blade in one hand and the golden strand of Fate in the other. The Fighter turns away, and sees the face of the Warlord. He remembers the Warlord's courage and he turns his back on the Raven Queen, who stays her hand.

The Fighter's eyes flip open. (Inspiring Word.) The Fighter is bleeding bad, but his will carries him on, and he won't go down until the Raven Queen cuts the strand of his fate.

 

[Shazman]

Zustiur, many share your thougts. A lot of us don't like these kind of ridiculous overly gamist elements in the game. The explanation is that there is no explanation. It doesn't make any sense at all. It ruins suspension of disbelief, but apparently the designers thought it was more fun and balanced so that's the way it is. I don't want D&D to be a completely realist combat simulation because it would be far to complex and deadly to play for very long, but it should have enough realistic elements so I can at least buy into it. Having a cleric or paladin heal someone on death's door with divine magic makes sense to me and works for the game. Having someone on death's door jump up and continue fighting because the warlord tells him to "Shake it off!" doesn't make sense, and is downright silly.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Moreover, I didn't claim that "4E damage and healing is "absurd"" -- I claimed that the 4e damage and healing paradigm consistently and frequently gives rise to absurd situations in the narrative unless

(1) One chooses not to describe any damage until it has been healed,
(2) One retcons the narrative, or
(3) One simply chooses to close one's eyes to the absurdity (which does not actually make it go away; though it might make it go away for you).

(1) I can still describe the *potentially fatal* hit (i.e. the one that drops you to a Dying state) based on what kind of attack caused it. I don't want to describe any other hits as more than light wounds, because as you have pointed out a hit isn't necessarily a hit unless it's potentially fatal.
(2) I don't have to retcon anything. I just have to describe the type of healing the character is benefitting from. If it is a Warlord or natural 20, I describe those as perservering through the pain of the wound and getting back up to fight. If it is magical healing, it heals the wound immediately.
(3) If one chooses to close one's eyes to a new type of "healing" by holding on to the literal meaning of the word healing, they will encounter difficulty in describing the effects of it in 4E.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The elephant did not step on you, yet you must heal from this injury? This is not at all consistent with your previous statements.

Sure is. Do you accept that a sword can physically harm you without successfully skewering you? I sure do. I've experienced it. Do you accept that an elephant that tries to step on you can physically harm you without actually succeeding in stepping on you? Thankfully, I've not experienced that, but I can certainly believe it.

The amount of physical damage done by an attack, IRL, is not an on/off, all-or-nothing switch. A person or creature can fail to skewer/gouge/rip your arm off and still do a heck of a lot of real damage.

My first point of disagreement. Damage has not always included physical injury. RC's example of not being stepped on by an elephant unless the trampling attack killed you is a good example of no physical injury, but still losing hit points.

See above. And see the 1e DMG.

Can I fail to step on you, but still catch you with my heel and cause you physical harm? Or you me? Or an elephant either of us with its toes?

Have you ever seen video footage of animals attacking people? There are many, many cases where the animal fails to gore, step on, what-have-you, but still manages to cause injury.

When I was in high school in rural Wisconsin, I had a classmate who got pulled into a hay baler. His dad managed to shut it off before it did any lasting harm -- he wasn't skewered -- but he had a nasty cut along the side of his head near his eye, a wound in his thigh (a few inches north, and it would have been far worse), etc. The machine failed to skewer him fatally; it certainly did not fail to injure him.

Even if "it normally only takes one solid sword blow to take someone down", that does not translate a hit that fails to take someone down into a "near hit"; it translates it into a hit that is not "one solid blow". Having received a number of hits that cause damage, but are not "one solid blow" over the years, I can safely say that they still cause physical damage.

To non-Kryptonians, anyway.

...and it takes you precisely the same amount of time to recover from this lesser injury as it would someone who took a larger proportion of hit point damage from the same attack.

So tougher people take longer to heal from lesser injuries. That sounds pretty absurd to me.

Again, this is a misunderstanding of what hit points are in 1e.

In 1e it is possible to be damaged without that damage expending a hit point. For instance, a wizard with 1 hp doesn't sit on a tack and die from it. Some damage is simply "below the margin" of substantial damage.

Which means that Gary, our 80 hp fighter, and Bob, our 10 hp fighter, might still have some signs of injury when at full hit points. These injuries are just too insignificant to count.

With me so far?

Part of what gives Gary 80 hit points to Bob's 10 is that Gary is simply a better fighter. When he is in top shape, he can really parry and thrust, and he can dodge major injuries (turning them into minor injuries) like nobody's business. No matter how much Bob rests up, he is never in as good a condition as Gary is. When Bob is at full, and Gary is at half, Gary is still in better shape than Bob.

The difference is that, some of the damage that is inconsequential to Bob is inconsequential because Bob isn't the finely balanced fighting machine that Gary is. When a little injury throws Gary off his game, his game is still very much better than Bob's is. Bob ignores that injury because he isn't good enough for that injury to matter.

To use a modern example, if I wrestle Hulk Hogan, no minor cut I have is really going to affect my chances of escaping the punishment coming my way. I am effectively at "full hit points" because my hit points suck. And no minor cut Hulk Hogan has is going to affect him either, because even with the cut he outclasses me considerably. Although Hulk Hogan isn't at full hit points, in this case, he is still very much better than I am, even if I am at full hit points.

However, if Hulk Hogan were wrestling someone of equal strength, skill, and talent, that minor cut might well be important. That injury matters to Hulk Hogan -- where it doesn't matter to me -- because Hulk Hogan doesn't suck, whereas I do.

In 1e, you can have injury without hit point loss, but no hit point loss without injury. Hit point loss always represents injury; not all injury is represented by hit point loss.

(This is the same in 3e, btw, where some injury is represented by ability score loss, for example.)


RC