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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zustiur" data-source="post: 4544704" data-attributes="member: 1544">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 upb) 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.</blockquote>

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