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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5616195" data-attributes="member: 42582">I like this pair of statements. The GM frames the situations; the players, primarily via their PCs, resolve them. If the dying NPC is going to work, it has to be an element of scene-framing, not scene-resolution.This seems right, but doesn't on its own answer the question - does D&D have rules that permit the GM to frame this sort of scene?Here's one school of thought - that D&D doesn't have such rules, and that any injury is healable via a cure spell.Here's another school of thought - that D&D's combat injury and healing rules aren't a total model of the gameworld.I subscribe to this latter school, at least as far as 4e is concerned (I don't have a view about earlier editions, as far as this particular point is concerned). I've certainly framed scenes where NPCs had injuries that Healing Word couldn't heal - ie the wounds weren't (or weren't merely) hit point loss - and the players didn't quibble. I think that they recognised (at least implicitly) that hit point loss and restoration is part of the conflict resolution mechanics for combat, and also part of the strategic element of gameplay for the players, but not a total model of the gameworld. I mentioned that Remove Affliction would do the job for these NPCs - that being the catch-all healing ritual in 4e.A further feature of 4e that pushes this way is that it has 1 hp minions, and indeed NPCs who have no hit point status at all. Clearly a 1 hp minion can, as RC points out, fall out of a tree and break her/his arm. This makes it clear, right in the mechanics of the game, that hit points aren't the be-all and end-all of injury and healing in 4e.But they are a good chunk of injury and healing within the confines of the conflict resolution rules - so once a combat starts, and the players are (for instance) trying to protect and save an NPC, then I think a GM would do better to assign the NPC some defences and hit points (I tend to default to minion status unless there's a good reason not to), so that the players can then bring their PC's abilities to bear on the situation.This would work in 3E. 4e doesn't have this option, so it becomes a bit more handwavey as I described above.In Rolemaster it is very easy to do this sort of thing, because every sort of injury has its own healing spell associated. The flipside is that once the PCs have access to a good range of healing spells, there is no way of framing the un-healable dying NPC.The same thing would be true in 4e if, for example, the PCs had some sort of cure-all potion, or an ability that negates the dying condition (these tend to appear as utility powers around 16th level).That's why I think it's crucial to do this as part of scene framing, and not by arbitrarily suspending the action resolution mechanics. That is, the GM has to already set the situation up so healing is not possible.Fully agreed with this, which is how I've run this sort of thing in my game.I agree with both these posts, and I think they speak to a slightly different issue from the rules question. A GM who is going to use any sort of self-conscious scene framing has to be confident that s/he is setting up scenes that will grab the players, so that the players engage the fiction and drive the game forward.This is why the unhealable injury, in my view, has to be set up prior to the action resolution mechanics coming into play. Once the players are actually resolving the scene, they should be able to rely on the action resolution mechanics, and in my view the GM has no authority to suspend those mechanics.But as Doug points out, even setting up the unhealable injury as part of scene framing rather than scene resolution is a good way to kill the game, rather than propel it forward, for many players of a healer (not all, of course - you need to know your players). Is this true? I can't remember if it's ever come up, but I'd be pretty happy to allow a dying speech by a PC.</blockquote>

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