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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5776542" data-attributes="member: 87792">If that's the case then it's an implementation fail rather than a concept fail.  The Warlord is a great concept - and there is nothing wrong with the Sergeant Major shouting someone back on to their feet.  This needs fixing.  Complete rot.  Other than ability to take a hit, a pre-4e PC is every bit as capable if they have one hit point left as if they have 100.  They are functionally undamaged until the final straw breaks the camel's back.  No penalties for shock, for blood loss, for bruising, etc. To me when something is damaged, it is damaged.  It doesn't work as well and isn't as effective.  This was never the case in editions prior to 4e.  Hit points are a pure gamist mechanic to allow people to take more than one hit in a tabletop skirmish game.  They were fluffed as damage but were put in out of pure gamism and otherwise do nothing to impede the damaged party.  You get gashed in the leg and you aren't going to be able to run as fast or effectively.  But this doesn't apply in D&D.  Gashed in the arm and you are going to have problems using it.  So hits in D&D aren't damaging leg or arm.   Or anything else.  They just lack the important component of damage.  Meaningful damage.  They were designed as and are simple raw gamism.  Where "not healthy" means "able to run a marathon as well as if he was at full health, able to see as far and move as fast as he is when healthy.  And eat as heartily and drink as much.  In all ways except his ability to resist being hit he is 100% as healthy as he is on full hit points.This isn't health.  It's a magical anti-weapon force field that takes an arbitrary time to recharge.  You mean they are no longer a gamist mechanic designed to allow swashbuckling fights to go on?  Oh, wait...   It makes more sense than hit points.  They make no logical sense.  None.  Nada.  Zip.  They are damage without being damage.  They allow you to take an orc hitting a human as hard as he can with a two handed axe while unarmoured and only being scratched.  And Gygax wrote them for gamist reasons. That you are used to the truly implausible mechanic doesn't make it more plausible than the justified one.  It just means it's what you are used to.</blockquote>

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