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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4544321" data-attributes="member: 42582">Alzrrius, first, a thank-you for the considered reply.I still think that this idea suggests that the spells are misnamed - it should be "cure one wound", "cure several wounds", "cure many wounds" etc. - but otherwise I sort-of see where you're going here. Though I think it odd that it is easier for magic to heal one (near-)fatal wound than to heal two minor cuts or grazes.It is also odd that 1st level characters never suffer minor cuts or grazes - they are always either uninjured or badly injured by a single wound, and thus always healable to max by a CLW - wherease high level characters are plagued by minor cuts and grazes which require powerful magic or many low-level spells to heal. This oddness makes me prefer a non-full-physical reading of hit points in AD&D - ie to agree with what Fifth Element and others were saying upthread that what the high-level character is recovering from is not just minor physical damage but also the ablation of luck, mystical protection etc.My point was that it is no defence of AD&D that 3E solves the problem. This in fact seems to be an admission that AD&D does not have a consistent hit-point system on your interpretation.Well, one person's complexity is another person's suite of options. I'm someone for whom 4e is the first version of D&D I'm interested in playing since 1990 (and the coming of 2nd ed AD&D) precisely because it has adopted a more narratively flexible approach to damage and healing (and in other parts of the game as well).When I compare 4e to 3E I see a game that has reduced the complexity of character build, while shifting the complexity into play and narration. I like that.(And if I want to play a game in which all damage is physical, and a hit point taken or healed realy is a hit point and nothing either more or less, I always have RQ, RM or HARP! I'm one of many who was attracted to RM initially because of the way it handled combat and healing.)I'm not saying a fluff justification isn't possible; I'm just saying that it's not very good.Well, there are two different mechanics in play here - the short rest, and the extended rest.In previous threads on this topic I have suggested that those who don't like the extended rest recovery mechanics should adopt the following option: narrate all short rests, and all within-episode extended rests as teeth-gritting, and then make sure that sufficient time passes between episodes to satisfy their desire for verisimilitudinous healing. (1st ed AD&D requires the same solution, by the way, if we are not to be confronted by the radically non-verisimilitudinous fact that the most serious non-fatal injury can be recovevered in as little as a fortnight or so by a low hit-point character - something I know from experience to be utterly unreaslistic.)An alternative, that works equally well for 4e and AD&D, is to just be a bit less grim-and-gritty. (That is, embrace the genre assumptions of this sort of high fantasy.) Assume that, after a few encouraging words from the warlord and patches from the first aid kit, that the wound is stitched/set, that determination makes it possible to keep going, and that healing is taking place over time.Such a wound can even be brought back into the game - the GM can narrate the next hit against the character as "Favouring your injured leg, you mis-step and the goblin catches you with its spear."Now on this we're agreed.</blockquote>

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