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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Embracing Hit Points as Fatigue
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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6102014" data-attributes="member: 58197"><p>The core problem with all "hit point as fatigue" explanations boils down to names. Very few people learn D&D by reading the rulebook cover-to-cover and memorizing every line. Most people skim the basics, get some guidance from experienced players, and pick the rest up at the table as they go. As such, they expect that "hit" will mostly mean "physically connect," "damage" will mostly mean "physical harm," and "heal" will mostly mean "recovery from wounds." They grasp that there will sometimes be a little fudging to get the narrative lined up with the mechanics, but they're not going to accept a wholesale rewriting of the dictionary.</p><p></p><p>D&D has been trying since 1E to put across the idea that "hit" mostly means "near miss." Every Player's Handbook has had a section explaining this. If that narrative were ever going to gain traction, it would have done so long ago, and 4E's approach to hit points would have been uncontroversial. It's not going to fly. When the Player's Handbook fights the dictionary, the dictionary wins.</p><p></p><p>One solution, of course, would be to change the names of hits and misses and damage, and that would likely have worked if Gygax and Arneson had done it way back at the dawn of days. But D&D has forty years' worth of commitment to the present terminology, and D&DN is trying to avoid radical breaks with the past. So we're stuck with the current names for those. It might be possible to get rid of "heal," though.</p><p></p><p>I'd say the place to start is to ask <em>why</em> people are attracted to fatigue-based explanations in the first place. From where I'm standing, the value in such a narrative is that it enables short-term hit point recovery without divine magic. Why is that a good thing? Because short-term hit point recovery provides a survival buffer, which lengthens the adventuring day and lets the DM push players harder in any given encounter; and not every party is going to contain a cleric.</p><p></p><p>So what we're really trying to do is provide ways for non-clerics to provide a survival buffer. That opens up a whole lot of design space, such as temporary hit points, or hit point recovery that isn't called "healing" and has limits on what it can do (e.g., no coming back from zero, can't put you back to full hit points). I think that's the place to focus, rather than trying for a grand reshaping of the whole hit point system.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 6102014, member: 58197"] The core problem with all "hit point as fatigue" explanations boils down to names. Very few people learn D&D by reading the rulebook cover-to-cover and memorizing every line. Most people skim the basics, get some guidance from experienced players, and pick the rest up at the table as they go. As such, they expect that "hit" will mostly mean "physically connect," "damage" will mostly mean "physical harm," and "heal" will mostly mean "recovery from wounds." They grasp that there will sometimes be a little fudging to get the narrative lined up with the mechanics, but they're not going to accept a wholesale rewriting of the dictionary. D&D has been trying since 1E to put across the idea that "hit" mostly means "near miss." Every Player's Handbook has had a section explaining this. If that narrative were ever going to gain traction, it would have done so long ago, and 4E's approach to hit points would have been uncontroversial. It's not going to fly. When the Player's Handbook fights the dictionary, the dictionary wins. One solution, of course, would be to change the names of hits and misses and damage, and that would likely have worked if Gygax and Arneson had done it way back at the dawn of days. But D&D has forty years' worth of commitment to the present terminology, and D&DN is trying to avoid radical breaks with the past. So we're stuck with the current names for those. It might be possible to get rid of "heal," though. I'd say the place to start is to ask [I]why[/I] people are attracted to fatigue-based explanations in the first place. From where I'm standing, the value in such a narrative is that it enables short-term hit point recovery without divine magic. Why is that a good thing? Because short-term hit point recovery provides a survival buffer, which lengthens the adventuring day and lets the DM push players harder in any given encounter; and not every party is going to contain a cleric. So what we're really trying to do is provide ways for non-clerics to provide a survival buffer. That opens up a whole lot of design space, such as temporary hit points, or hit point recovery that isn't called "healing" and has limits on what it can do (e.g., no coming back from zero, can't put you back to full hit points). I think that's the place to focus, rather than trying for a grand reshaping of the whole hit point system. [/QUOTE]
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