Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!

[ExploderWizard]

HP loss does not always equal physical damage.

Therefore, hp recover does not equal physical recovery.

For example - in a fight, you are frightened half to death by a dragon & it claws you, causing you to lose hp. In 4e, after 6 hours rest you are back at full hp. You can, however, still narrate the scars on your side & the damage to your armour if you so wish. It just won't have a mechanical effect.

So I'm not sure what you mean when you say there is no way to be actually injured.

I can't speak for Jeff, but what I interpret the "no injury" comment
to mean is that no matter how much pounding, slicing, crushing, or exhausting
punishment a PC takes, its nothing that a 6 hour nap won't fix.
For me, this is one element that turns 4E from a swords & sorcery
fantasy game into a supers fantasy game. PC's effectively only have
"stun points". Too much stun damage at once can still kill but anything
less than obliteration is shrugged off like a mild headache.

It really doesn't matter how you choose to describe the effects. The effects of damage don't have to be descibed like wounds at all.
You can say that a PC who is down to 1 hp after a fight is very winded and bruised, but after 5 minutes of catching his breath, he is ok to fight again.
While this mechanic is functional you end up with fluff that more closely resembles a combat with the X men than a group of fantasy adventurers.

 

[Imaro]

HP loss does not always equal physical damage.

Therefore, hp recover does not equal physical recovery.

For example - in a fight, you are frightened half to death by a dragon & it claws you, causing you to lose hp. In 4e, after 6 hours rest you are back at full hp. You can, however, still narrate the scars on your side & the damage to your armour if you so wish. It just won't have a mechanical effect.

So I'm not sure what you mean when you say there is no way to be actually injured.

I think he means that there is no reduction, mechanically, in a characters effectiveness in any way. I mean I can say a character is the "best swordsmen alive" but that don't make it so.

Also hp's not always meaning physically injury is a big difference from hp's never being physical injury.

 

[Lacyon]

1e specifically allowed for a severed arm (Sword of Sharpness). It didn't tell the DM what the effects of that would be, specifically, however.

Precisely. 1E has to end-run around the HP system to get specific wounds, too. If 4E added a sword of sharpness, it would also end-run around HP. HP are generally bad at representing specific injuries.

I don't know about you, but when I was playing 1e, description was king. If the DM said your injury reduced your movement rate, your injury reduced your movement rate. He was allowed -- nay, encouraged -- to determine the effects situationally.

Don't ignore the fact that the DM can still do this. Such effects are (still) contingent on DM discretion rather than built-in to the HP system.

But even were this not the case, losing 4 hit points that remain lost for days is far more of a game effect than popping up after a short nap to have everything recovered.

Losing 4 HP is supposed to be a lesser wound for the higher-level character. But it still takes the same 4 days to recover, leading to inconsistency in the other direction.

In 3E, a character heals 1 hp per day per level, which means that a wizard recovers from 'badly hurt' to 'fit as a fiddle' faster than a fighter of similar level whose wounds are supposedly less severe (i.e., a smaller proportion of his total hit points). Again, the inconsistency remains.

In 4E, everyone recovers from injuries at the same rate, with a system in place that fairly easily scales to whatever recovery rate you actually want. The default rate is really fast, though.

No, as parsed out to death in the previous thread, you can adjust all you want without eliminating the problem. If you attempt to use the "All Previous Editions" method in 4e, contradictions will occur.

The "all previous editions method" is "use healing magic to cover for the inconsistencies in the system, or else ignore them". Both options still work fine in 4E.

 

[Imaro]

I love irony. I just happen to be reading ERB's A Princess of Mars for the first time right now. Got an Ipod Touch for Christmas and downloaded a free version. Been reading it in my spare time. Came across a section that I thought was very fitting for this discussion. Just to set the scene a bit, John Carter is battling a green Martian.



That ends chapter 14 A Duel to the Death. Sounds like a DM describing a death blow to me. Then we have the start of chapter 15:

Ok, I can see that...

Well, there you have it folks. Schroedinger's wounding in action. The DM describes the baddie running our hero through the chest, the sword exploding out his back, and it then gets turned into a flesh wound. Such a minor wound that our hero can pull the sword out HIMSELF and then walk away unaided. Sure, he's sore, but, that's about it.

And you're telling me you wouldn't have any problems where this happens fight, after fight, after fight? Where the protagonist never suffers any type of wound beyond something he can't shake off. Maybe it's cool the first time, but if this is how all fights have to be narrated it gets real absurd real quick.

And ultimately I guess that's my problem, the game rules can be abstract enough to get out of my way (basically not creating anything to contradict my story) and let me tell the story I want too... but these rules are abstract and right smack dab in the middle of the road, directing the type of narration I will present, and for me that's just way to far on the gamist spectrum. IMO, my simulation/narration should never be jumping through hoops to accommodate rules...

But wait, it gets better. That was the Second Wind mechanic described rather well IMO. Now how about burning some Healing Surges?



So, he walks over to the healer, they patch him up and he's good to go. No magic. No incantations. Although, perhaps a bit of alchemy.

Eh, this is really stretching it... exotic, alien poultice might as well be magic. It sure ain't him going and sitting in a corner and miraculously knitting all his wounds on his own.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Don't ignore the fact that the DM can still do this. Such effects are (still) contingent on DM discretion rather than built-in to the HP system.

Absolutely. But TSR-D&D is far more "DM over rules" than "rules over DM". It is a point that is driven home in TSR-D&D repeatedly. Some might say, to the point of great redundancy.

4e is far more (IMHO) "DM over rules" than 3e, and that is a step in the right direction. Again, IMHO.

Losing 4 HP is supposed to be a lesser wound for the higher-level character. But it still takes the same 4 days to recover, leading to inconsistency in the other direction.

Not really, because the higher-level character, even with that 4 hp damage, is still in much, much better shape than a lower-level character at full hp. But, even so, please bear in mind that I am saying here that there is a difference between the levels of vagueness in the approaches, and that said difference can be discussed meaningfully. I am not saying that all subsystems of pre-4e D&D were perfect. Falling damage, for example, is something that I agree can cause some real problems with verismilitude.

But, as described at length in the SW thread, the inconsistency about healing is a misreading of the system, that assumes "4 hp" means the same thing every time it is applied.

In 4E, everyone recovers from injuries at the same rate, with a system in place that fairly easily scales to whatever recovery rate you actually want. The default rate is really fast, though.

If you have no problem with the Wolverine Approach ("That's just what humans are like on this world") then you are unlikely to have a problem with this paradigm!

Eh, this is really stretching it... exotic, alien poultice might as well be magic. It sure ain't him going and sitting in a corner and miraculously knitting all his wounds on his own.

Exactly.


RC

 

[Hussar]

For me, this is one element that turns 4E from a swords & sorcery
fantasy game into a supers fantasy game.

What sword and sorcery genre novels have you been reading where the protagonist requires extended bed rest after being injured? Can you give three examples? Sword and sorcery heroes are almost never incapacitated, other than perhaps being knocked out and captured, and certainly NEVER receive any wounds of lasting effect.

And you're telling me you wouldn't have any problems where this happens fight, after fight, after fight? Where the protagonist never suffers any type of wound beyond something he can't shake off. Maybe it's cool the first time, but if this is how all fights have to be narrated it gets real absurd real quick.

Read A Princess of Mars. It happens pretty much fight after fight. Any time John Carter gets wounded, he gets back up, shakes it off and when the actions over, gets a band-aid from a green martian. Sure, you can call it magic if you want to. That's up to you. He does describe being expertly bandaged more than a few times.

But, that's my point. People keep making claims that 4e hit point mechanics are incredibly bizarre, to the point of non-sensical. Yet, you can point to example after example after example where these mechanics fit pretty darn well with genre fiction. Whether it be action movies, novels, short stories, comic books, what have you. There is a list as long as my arm for examples which these mechanics model pretty well.

Yet, that's apparently not good enough. The fact that you can point to literally hundreds of examples dating back almost a century in the genre of second wind and healing surge style naratives isn't apparently a good enough pedegree for these mechanics.

 

[Lacyon]

Not really, because the higher-level character, even with that 4 hp damage, is still in much, much better shape than a lower-level character at full hp. But, even so, please bear in mind that I am saying here that there is a difference between the levels of vagueness in the approaches, and that said difference can be discussed meaningfully. I am not saying that all subsystems of pre-4e D&D were perfect. Falling damage, for example, is something that I agree can cause some real problems with verismilitude.

But, as described at length in the SW thread, the inconsistency about healing is a misreading of the system, that assumes "4 hp" means the same thing every time it is applied.

The thing is that when you're non-magically recovering from that 4 HP loss, it does mean the same thing - 4 days of rest. But when you're describing the damage as it occurs, it doesn't mean the same thing.

In 4E, when the healing doesn't line up with the injury, you call it out for Shroedinger's Wounding. In 1E, you just shrug it off. I don't blame you for doing it - in 1E, you're very likely to get a cleric to wave the magic (it's okay that the magic is also inconsistent, because it's magic) stick over the issue. But it's really the same problem.

If you have no problem with the Wolverine Approach ("That's just what humans are like on this world") then you are unlikely to have a problem with this paradigm!

Or if you're willing to mod the game.

 

[ExploderWizard]

What sword and sorcery genre novels have you been reading where the protagonist requires extended bed rest after being injured? Can you give three examples? Sword and sorcery heroes are almost never incapacitated, other than perhaps being knocked out and captured, and certainly NEVER receive any wounds of lasting effect.

Frodo Baggins perhaps? He needed quite a bit of recovery time
for his wound, which also never "fully" healed.

His uncle Bilbo was laid out by a nasty cold in The Hobbit.

The problem isn't that there are situations where the hero can shrug
off the effects of injury and keep going, you are correct that this happens
quite a bit in the fantasy genre.
A situation where every little scrape incapacitated a PC for days wouldn't
be very desirable either. A system that supports a bit of both is a happy
medium. In some older editions all healing was sometimes a bit too slow
for abstact hp. In 4E its the opposite, all healing is just a bit too fast.

The mechanics for older edition healing treated hp loss like physical wounds.
4E mechanics treat all hp loss like stun damage. Something between the two would be great.

 

[Fifth Element]

Frodo Baggins perhaps? He needed quite a bit of recovery time
for his wound, which also never "fully" healed.

His uncle Bilbo was laid out by a nasty cold in The Hobbit.

In D&D terms, these have the character of diseases rather than hp loss. In 4E, for instance, you'd probably use the disease track to resolve these. 6 hours rest wouldn't be enough to recover from them.

 

[Lacyon]

Frodo Baggins perhaps? He needed quite a bit of recovery time
for his wound, which also never "fully" healed.

His uncle Bilbo was laid out by a nasty cold in The Hobbit.

The problem isn't that there are situations where the hero can shrug
off the effects of injury and keep going, you are correct that this happens
quite a bit in the fantasy genre.
A situation where every little scrape incapacitated a PC for days wouldn't
be very desirable either. A system that supports a bit of both is a happy
medium. In some older editions all healing was sometimes a bit too slow
for abstact hp. In 4E its the opposite, all healing is just a bit too fast.

The mechanics for older edition healing treated hp loss like physical wounds.
4E mechanics treat all hp loss like stun damage. Something between the two would be great.

HP loss pretty much is "stun" damage unless you tack on other game effects besides having fewer HP. This is true even when it takes a long time to recover from that loss, though it does become easier to pretend otherwise.

IMO, meaningful injuries need another system to track them entirely, if you're going to use them. Personally, I'm okay with the idea that any serious wound is pretty much going to kill the character, if not immediately, then soon enough that we can pretend it's immediate.