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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4470866" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree that if you like a coupling between hp and injury at every point then 4e won't work - warlord healing will make little sense, for example.And as RC's posts show, it's worse than that: 4e makes it possible to narrate a given episode of hp loss as an injury, and then to narrate the healing of that very loss as merely moral/spiritual/mental recovery (eg via warlord healing or second wind). So a given quantity of hp changes it's ingame meaning between being suffered and being healed. Even if one is prepared to allow that some hp loss is sometimes non-physical, this possibility might be too much to come at, as it allows a given bundle of hp to cross the categories in a non-simulationist fashion.That's why I think simulationists probably shouldn't play 4e. But I don't think it means that 4e has to lead to retconning or stupid narration (putting to one side the gonzo issue, which is quite properly a matter of taste).I have done a hell of a lot of your second option, playing Rolemaster. I think HARP and TRoS show that this sort of approach can be coupled with overall narrativist play. But I find the 4e approach intriguing because of its narrative flexibility.By "true decoupling" I assume you mean a system where all conflict is resolved via the ablation of "hit points"/"action points" (choose whatever terminology you like), and thus physical combat isn't handled in a mechanically different fashion from other conflict. HeroWars would be like this; 4e is not, because of the great difference between combat and skill challenges.Assuming I'm interpreting you correctly, what I like about the 4e approach - the refusal to fully decouple - is that it gives combat a special status in conflict resolution (like superhero comics do, for example) which itself can serve a particular thematic/aesthetic purpose. In this respect it resembles Rolemaster or HARP, which treat combat in a mechanically very different fashion from other situations of skill use. For some reason (psychopathology? slightly infantile taste? too many John Woo movies? too many X-Men comics?) I find this aesthetically appealing.EDIT: The 4e "refusal to fully decouple" does make it a little hard to carry over the consequences of conflict resolved via combat into a skill challenge, and vice versa (interestingly, RM allows at least the first direction of carry over, because crits can give a bonus on next roll, and next roll need not be an attack). Inspired by some of the actual play examples Lost Soul has been posting, I think that the way to do this is to apply +2 or -2 circumstance modifiers as the carryover.</blockquote>

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