Good and valuable stuff snipped so I could say that there are cases where hit points can represent shear brute toughness. If you run a game in the style of, say, Naruto, then a high level fighter is quite literally more resilient than a stone wall (and his bones might well make good construction material...).
Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!
- Thread starter Kzach
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Good and valuable stuff snipped so I could say that there are cases where hit points can represent shear brute toughness. If you run a game in the style of, say, Naruto, then a high level fighter is quite literally more resilient than a stone wall (and his bones might well make good construction material...).
Absolutely.
I have previously run high level D&D one shots where HP's did represent actual capacity to take damage. A giant would smash you through a stone wall and you could get up and shake it off.
It doesnt work for all games by a very large margin but it can be useful.
I suppose it mostly goes to show that HP can be many things to many people. On the face of it they make little to no sense but as a mechanic for actually running games they can and do work well across all editions of the game.
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If I was to rename one thing from 4e damage & healing etc, it might be to rename "Healing Surge" as "Adrenaline Surge".
For me, that would mesh well with either a person themselves (or perhaps a nearby warlord) getting that 'surge of adrenaline' which gets them up and back into the action.
It would also open up the possibility of allowing people to expend their adrenaline surges to bend bars and open gates, for particular feats of strength and endurance and such like.
Conceptually I find some of the problems with hit points come in the distinction between 'real' damage and 'not real' damage - stuff like the harpooned issue that has already been mentioned. I've always quite liked the 'wounds and vitality' approach which was used in SWd20 (and in fact used something almost exactly the same in my variant D&D games from the 1980's) although I understand the objection that some people have to the additional vulnerability it gives to PCs.
As I've mentioned before, my favourite RPG is RuneQuest2 which has fixed hit points (per location), active parries, armour reducing damage - stuff which many people decry but which in RQ2 made the most absorbing RPG combat I've ever experienced. In the simulation <-> abstract axis, I definitely strongly prefer the simulation end.
Cheers
For me, that would mesh well with either a person themselves (or perhaps a nearby warlord) getting that 'surge of adrenaline' which gets them up and back into the action.
It would also open up the possibility of allowing people to expend their adrenaline surges to bend bars and open gates, for particular feats of strength and endurance and such like.
Conceptually I find some of the problems with hit points come in the distinction between 'real' damage and 'not real' damage - stuff like the harpooned issue that has already been mentioned. I've always quite liked the 'wounds and vitality' approach which was used in SWd20 (and in fact used something almost exactly the same in my variant D&D games from the 1980's) although I understand the objection that some people have to the additional vulnerability it gives to PCs.
As I've mentioned before, my favourite RPG is RuneQuest2 which has fixed hit points (per location), active parries, armour reducing damage - stuff which many people decry but which in RQ2 made the most absorbing RPG combat I've ever experienced. In the simulation <-> abstract axis, I definitely strongly prefer the simulation end.
Cheers
I am a big fan of RQ, we played RQ3 for years and I am an avid Glorantha collector.
I am still not sure I would call RQ's system all that realistic. While it did try to simulate lots of real time speed activity the tendency for you to get your limbs chopped off fairly easily always struck an odd note.
Raven Crowking
First Post
RCFG has adrenaline surges. They give you an extra reaction at the cost of slower init next round.
It also has "shaking it off", which is a (IMHO) better version of the "healing surge" concept.
RC
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Hahaha, I'm a tiger! Rawr!
Yes, it is very close to what we have in 4e. The problem for me is that HPs are pulling double duty, representing both kinds of endurance, when they should only represent the one. Healing surges force HP to do more elaborate tricks to make sense of itself, and it's really demanding, IMO, too much of the little guys. They're having an existential crisis in 4e.
I'm okay with the shift from HPs representing long-term endurance to representing only short-term endurance. HPs in 4e are really more luck, energy, adrenaline, spike health, heroic inspired valliance...but then they're ALSO wounds and broken bones and death's harbinger. Doing both makes them sloppy. They can't hold up under the weight.
If HP's are going to be "spike health," get something else to be "death's harbringer." If HP's are an encounter resource, get something totally different to be the daily (or even per-adventure!) resource. A place for everything, everything in its place.
Or, flip-flop it and make HP's the long-term resource, and give us something else to be the "spike health." Maybe something that can be consumed and spent on activation of abilities, rather than just continued combat operation.
It kind of boils down to: "Nix healing surges. Replace them with the rule that (a) you heal all HP to full after a short rest, and (b) every time you take a short rest you consume 1 "fart" ("fart" being a placeholder for whatever you want to call your long-term resources). If you're out of "farts" you won't heal HP anymore."
Maybe "farts" can be bought in town (Shopkeep, give me an order of 30 "farts" We're going into that dungeon!). Maybe "farts" come as part of your character class (I'm a fighter! I've got 10 "farts!"). I kind of think the former would be better as it would allow PC's to kind of set their own pace and be co-equal members of this dungeon endurance mission, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that HP only do one thing. The other side of this is handled by something else.
This is kind of related to my "noncombat roles" post in that these "farts" would be another kind of HP's representing how much time you have until you fail, but they're more about the pressures of time and staying power, rather than the pressures of defense and healing.
Denke! It's always amazing to hear about my little ideas helping someone out. Now all you need to do is train the next generation of DM's to do the same. Go little idea, GO!
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D'karr
Adventurer
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
I think the primary mechanic that's creating the "problems" is the fact that you risk dying if you are below 0 hit points and still have hit points.Hahaha, I'm a tiger! Rawr!
Yes, it is very close to what we have in 4e. The problem for me is that HPs are pulling double duty, representing both kinds of endurance, when they should only represent the one. Healing surges force HP to do more elaborate tricks to make sense of itself, and it's really demanding, IMO, too much of the little guys. They're having an existential crisis in 4e.
I'm okay with the shift from HPs representing long-term endurance to representing only short-term endurance. HPs in 4e are really more luck, energy, adrenaline, spike health, heroic inspired valliance...but then they're ALSO wounds and broken bones and death's harbinger. Doing both makes them sloppy. They can't hold up under the weight.
In Warhammer 2e, you never go below 0 hit points. But every hit you take when at 0 hit points risks killing you, since it is considered a critical hit (which is not your D&D critical hit, it's the "your head is crushed by the opponents attack" or "your weapon hand is cut off...".
If we'd let hit points merely represent "ability to shrug off serious injury" (and I mean serious injury - scratches are still allowed, to avoid poisoning people only when they are basically dead
), then 0 hit points means you are entirely at the mercy of your enemy. You are too exhausted to roll with it (and maybe even exhausted to act - in Warhammer, you can still do that, but to ensure "compatibility" with the current system, you might not want that). If you are hit, the damage taken means you took a serious injury.The question then becomes how to treat these serious injuries (literally and figuratively.
)Healing Surges could still restore hit points - at least as long as you didn't take serious injuries (at that point, you might want to avoid free healing, I don't know.)
I favor "heroic surge," myself, mostly because it's shorter and fits the fantasy theme better. But yes, "healing surge" is a terrible name, since it frequently involves no actual healing.
The one model of hit points I've never been able to stomach is the one where you can lose hit points due to somebody missing you. It's ridiculous to have a system in which you make an "attack roll" that "hits" and the target "takes damage" that results in losing "hit points," but you didn't actually... y'know... hit anything.
Unless WotC is willing to carry out a radical renaming of pretty much every combat mechanic, I think it should be a given that damage (loss of hit points) represents an attack that actually connected and inflicted injury. That said, I can get on board with the idea that the injury is not always significant, and that recovery of hit points is not necessarily healing.
The way I see it, in 4E, it's all bruises and buffets until you become Bloodied. After that, you're taking more serious punishment, but still nothing really major until you go negative. At that point you've taken a dangerous, potentially mortal wound; without magical healing or a surge of heroic willpower, you're liable to bleed out and die.
If you get healed by the cleric, then your wound closes up thanks to the power of the gods. If you get inspired by the warlord, then you struggle back to your feet and keep on fighting through sheer grit and determination: "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
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