How Do You Plan To Interpret Hit Points, Healing Surges and Damage?

[Pseudopsyche]

If "bloodied" is more than a "condition to be a condition" (i.e., it is a condition that represents something in the game world), how does it interact with the logical consequences of that something in the game world? Or, if it doesn't represent anything in that game world, how/when do PCs and monsters know that condition applies?

I would say that "bloodied" IS a "condition to be a condition." In particular, you could replace every instance of "bloodied" with "has at most half its maximum hit points" and the game would be formally identical. It's just a term for succinctly describing a character's immediate health/stamina/whatever. PCs know whether it applies in the same way they knew before how many hit points another character had remaining: they ask the DM, who describes whether the character looks "really hurt" or not.

 

[TheWyrd]

I personally like "Bloodied" as the first hit that actually 'Connects'. This actually makes a combat duel to 'first blood' a valid option.

Sure you may heal up above your bloodied line and it may just be a scratch.. but hitting that line for the first time means something to me.

 

[Korgoth]

Damage in D&D has always been sort of binary. You either take a grave wound that leaves you bleeding out, or nothing much happened to you at all (except perhaps for a cosmetic gash here or there).

In a game like Rolemaster you can get hamstrung, have a cracked patella, get a punctured lung, whatever. All of these injuries that haven't killed you immediately but are making your life miserable. That's not the way it has ever been in D&D. Even in 3E which had conditions like "Exhausted"... apparently you weren't Exhausted from being stabbed in the lung. Which I would think would be rather exhausting, especially if the guy who did it is 10 feet tall and can juggle oxen.

In D&D a hit either kills/mortally wounds you, or something happens that has no other game effect besides just depleting your hit points. Thus a non-killing blow could be a flesh wound of some kind, or it could be a near miss or a strike that "knocked the wind out of you" to some extent.

Likewise, since D&D has always had 1 hp dudes walking around (and not dying from proud carpet tacks), it must be possible to suffer physical injury that doesn't amount to 1 hp of damage. So a "miss" could constitute a clean miss, or it could constitute a hit that was not life-threatening in any way.

Since 1 hp of damage is enough damage to kill a grown man, we should assume that anything that does 1 hp of damage is a potentially lethal blow. So in general I'd rule that hit points "spend down" the severity of a potentially lethal blow to something either cosmetic and non-lethal, or even something that takes the form of a near miss.

The thoroughly abstract nature of the mechanic means that in the game world, if you were looking through the eyes of a character, you'd see some Misses that miss and some Misses that hit but don't do anything more than a cosmetic injury. Likewise, you'd see some Hits that hit and do a cosmetic injury, and some Hits that miss... you'd see a mortal blow when somebody gets hit by a Hit and taken below 1 hp.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I would say that "bloodied" IS a "condition to be a condition." In particular, you could replace every instance of "bloodied" with "has at most half its maximum hit points" and the game would be formally identical. It's just a term for succinctly describing a character's immediate health/stamina/whatever. PCs know whether it applies in the same way they knew before how many hit points another character had remaining: they ask the DM, who describes whether the character looks "really hurt" or not.

Ah, but in previous editions, the mechanics of your actions were the same regardless of your opponent's hit points.

There will be different answers at different tables, but I think it valid to ask if you automatically know that the monsters are bloodied (and vice versa) as it changes the tactical nature of the game. Can you, for instance, Bluff to seem less wounded than you are?

Knowing what the conditions represent in the real world allows for quick adjudication of unexpected cases as they arise in the game world.

For instance, it might make sense to say that you don't look obviously bloodied until you are both bloodied and have no healing surges left. Maybe that means the monsters don't automatically know; maybe that means you have to attempt a Bluff check to avoid them knowing.

Since some abilities work better on a bloodied opponent, it is in your interest to conceal that information so your opponent uses sub-optimal tactics. Does the DM have to track PC conditions, or will the players automatically tell him when they're bloodied?

I like the idea in principle (and there is much of 4e I would not say that about!), but I do think it opens up questions that should be examined prior to the middle of combat.

RC