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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4471023" data-attributes="member: 710">Hit points like they are in 3E are a gamist mechanic, yes, but for a "simulation"/"immersion" perspective, you have the benefit that every time you take damage, you can decide what it represents in the game-world. If a 80 hp character is hit for 75 points of damage, you can describe that as a slashing wound. You don't take any penalties for it (which would make the situation more believable), but you can always stick with this description.If the character is then hit for 10 more points of damage (bringing him to -5), you can describe this as a stab wound with strong bleeding. The only way for the character to overcome this wound is 1) stabilizing (representing the bleeding to stop) and slowly healing over the next day or days. 2) magical healing removing the wound.The Healing Surge mechanic allows you to "overcome" any wounds you have described, but there is a little more going on then that: 1) You can be fully unimpeded by wounds you might have narrated previously. Inspiring Words or Second Wind doesn't close your wounds. While 3E might not give penalties, the wounds still impede your activity since you must avoid taking more hits.You may still describe your character as covered in bandages after the encounter, but you could go on fighting for another 6 weeks if you wanted.2) If you drop below 0, there is a realistic chance of dying per RAW. This invites us to describe the wound taken as something like in 3E - heavy arterial bleeding or something like that. But if you take a second wind or the Warlord inspires you to stand up, you're back in the game at regular capacity. This means that either you magically regenerated, or that the wound wasn't as bad as it seemed. But this means that you are unable to create descriptions for hits that are definite. You must stay vague, providing description that can be interpreted either way, since what "really" happened is only decided once you spend a healing surge or die.Is this good enough for a summary? I hope I didn't misrepresent any position.---I think the mechanic is in either case motivated by gamist concerns, but one mechanic supports a more simulationist approach (look at your character sheet to see how bad things are and base your further decisions on that), while the other a more narrativist approach (allows you to spend a game resource to decide how bad things are). ---A side question for RC and Fenes: How do you deal with temporary hit points in 3E? Theoratically, a character dropped to -1 hit points (bleeding) in 3E could be inspired by a Bard to gain a 2(d8+CON) temporary hit points - does this only work because in the end, it is still magic? Or did you never think about this specific case, and object to it, too?</blockquote>

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