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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7751063" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with Hussar, and think that the second passage quoted from Tony Vargas runs the same way: healing surges, inspriational healing, proportionate healing - these are more consistent with the rationalisation, and that is one reason why they make the abstract nature of hp more evident.When Curing Serious Wounds requires you to pray harder and better than Curing Light Wounds, it's possible to imagine that hp resotration is the healing of wounds. And one can ignore those other parts of the system point in other direction (eg every 0-level character who isn't dead from hp loss can be cured to full health by Cure Light Wounds; for a first level character, it's virtually impossible to be alive and yet have "wounds" that cannot heal with a week of bed rest; etc). In 4e there are only those other parts!What do keywords do? They provide a clear framework for interactions between rules elements; and they provide a clear understanding about how otherwise abstract/metagame mechanics bear upon the shared fiction.D&D has had keywords of various sorts for ever: in AD&D you had one-handed and two-hadned weapons; S, M and L creatures; magic item categories; saving throw categories; just to name a few; and 3E was absolutely replete with them, and with arguments about them too (eg what is the difference between a weapon attack, an unarmed attack and a natural attack?).In AD&D some of those keywords are system-to-system: a creature's size label tells us how much damage it takes form a weapon hit, which in turn tells us how much to deduct from its hp total - none of that is mediated via the fiction. Others are system-to-fiction: a creature's size label tells us (roughly) how big it is; a creature's HD tells us (roughly) how tough it is; a weapon's damage die tells us (roughly) how big it is. Off the top of my head, though, I can't think of any keywords in AD&D class ability or spell descriptions that run from system-to-fiction. (That is all mediated via "natural language" descriptions.)In 3E many keywords are system-to-system (eg a "luck" bonus can't stack with a "sacred" bonus) and some are system-to-fiction (eg a "language dependant: ability requires its user to speak to its target).I've never understood the suggestion that 4e uses more keywords than earlier editions, or that they are more removed from the fiction. I don't think any actual reading of the various editions will bear this out. Even the argument about layout I find hard to take seriously: 3E spells all have descriptor lists at the top of their entries, just like the keywords at the top of a 4e power entry.5e uses keywords much as 4e does, but it just buries them in the text (so we have to read through a paragraph of text to learn that a fireball does fire damage). This creates an illusion of resemblance to AD&D, but in fact I don't think 5e uses much natural language at all to mediate between the mechanics of class abilities (including spells) and the fiction. It uses keywords in much the same way that 4e did.</blockquote>

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