D&D 4E How does 4E hold up on verisimilitude?

[Falling Icicle]

4e has completely tossed verisimilitude to the wind. Whether thats a good or bad thing is a matter of personal taste. Here's a few examples:

1 Every character cna heal themselves, multiple times per day, without magic. Hit points in 4e are more of an "abstraction" than ever before.
2 Warlords can heal characters by "inspiring" them or ordering them around. They are just as good at healing as clerics, but are a martial (mundane) class.
3 Martial classes have spectacular, anime-like moves. High level Rangers can shoot everyone in range in one action, for example.
4 Every class has daily limits on some of their powers, even Fighters
5 The economy is very "gamist", players can only sell items for 20% of their value and spend full market price to make their own items.

The only ones on that list that really bothers me (and I mean absolutely loathe) is #5.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

4e has completely tossed verisimilitude to the wind. Whether thats a good or bad thing is a matter of personal taste. Here's a few examples:

1 Every character cna heal themselves, multiple times per day, without magic. Hit points in 4e are more of an "abstraction" than ever before.

Abstracting HP would actually increease 'realism', for what it's worth.

If losing HP meant getting actually hit, then let me ask you, realistically, how many time do you think you can get stabbed by a dagger before dropping out of the fight?

Because in 3e, at level 10, the answer would be over 10 time. Yay realism. Real life says getting stabbed once in the chest by a dagger is usually fatal.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Abstracting HP would actually increease 'realism', for what it's worth.

If losing HP meant getting actually hit, then let me ask you, realistically, how many time do you think you can get stabbed by a dagger before dropping out of the fight?

Because in 3e, at level 10, the answer would be over 10 time. Yay realism.

Well, there have been people who have survived many, many stab wounds in real life, so...

That said, with all this talk of hit points representing "luck, morale, etc", tell me, why is it that only injuries take away your hit points? Why don't I lose hit points every time I'm turned down for a date? Why not every time the bad guy gets away or does something to ruin my morale? If hit points can be restored by the positive aspects of those things, why not the negative? Someone might say that losing hit points for getting turned down for a date would be ridiculous. Well, that's just how I feel about someone being miraculously healed because a warlord yells at them.

 

[Campbell]

Well, there have been people who have survived many, many stab wounds in real life, so...

That said, with all this talk of hit points representing "luck, morale, etc", tell me, why is it that only injuries take away your hit points? Why don't I lose hit points every time I'm turned down for a date? Why not every time the bad guy gets away or does something to ruin my morale? If hit points can be restored by the positive aspects of those things, why not the negative? Someone might say that losing hit points for getting turned down for a date would be ridiculous. Well, that's just how I feel about someone being miraculously healed because a warlord yells at them.

To be fair there are a number of effects that do hit point damage in the course of assaulting a target's mind.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

Well, there have been people who have survived many, many stab wounds in real life, so...

That said, with all this talk of hit points representing "luck, morale, etc", tell me, why is it that only injuries take away your hit points? Why don't I lose hit points every time I'm turned down for a date? Why not every time the bad guy gets away or does something to ruin my morale? If hit points can be restored by the positive aspects of those things, why not the negative? Someone might say that losing hit points for getting turned down for a date would be ridiculous. Well, that's just how I feel about someone being miraculously healed because a warlord yells at them.

The entire HP argument is nothing new to D&D. Im sure someone can if they want to link to where Gygax explains the abstractions of HP in 1st edition.

As for loosing HP because of low morale, isnt that charisma damage? And you dont loose HP when you get dumped the same way you dont loose HP when you prick your finger. Its just not mechanically relevant.

 

[VannATLC]

Facetiousness isn't relevant.

The HP has been done to death. There is nothing inconsistent, nothing miraculous about the warlords 'healing'. At least, nothing more miraculous than watching a personal trainer or a drill sergeant eek that last bit of effort from a trainee or a squaddie. 4e healing is wholly and utterly consistent within the system, and far better than 3e's efforts. Furthermore, its a better model of a system. You get hit, seriously, twice, in 4e, before you get reduced to 0 hitpoints. Everything else is a flesh wound at worst.

WRT to your list, the only thing that is internally flawed, is #5. As you say, it is totally and utterly a gamist issue, and one that really does cause nasty flow-on effects in the rest of the game, if you were to extrapolate it out. Economy is not a function of personal power.

#4 is iffy, to say the least, and certainly gamist, but not inconsitent, and narratively believable.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Well, there have been people who have survived many, many stab wounds in real life, so...

I said 'before dropping out of the fight'. All these people got stabbed more than once because they stopped being able to fight after the first thrust or two, usually.

And they survived because they were getting stabbed by kitchen knives or pocket knifes, not daggers.

11 inches blade, blade is much thicker than on a pocket knife. How many time you think you can get this through the chest and keep fighting? In the opinion of sister who is a MD ; Once. Maybe you'll die, maybe you won't, but you won't be fighting anymore. Maybe you could manage to kill your attacker before he wrenches his blade away. Like, if you are the MAN. But failing that, you lost the fight. He'll wrench his weapon away and if you don't pass out, you'll proceed to bleed profusely, probably to death.

To imply that this is what happens when a 3e PC suffers a critical blow from a a dagger in 3e, whether he has 10 hp or 100hp, makes more violence to realism than using abstract hp. Yet if you argue that the wound isn't as severe if you have 100hp (maybe it nicked instead going through the chest) you are already abstracting HP and are but one tiny step from 4e.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yes, there is more verisimilitude in 4th ed than in 3rd.

More?

Not once the splat books come out.

 

[Lurker37]

Merchants buy magic items for the value of the residuum they can have the item reduced to if they cannot find a buyer. They're actually giving the PCs a pretty good deal, since the ritual to extract that residuum costs money.

 

[Coplen]

It's not doing too well on the realism front; it has dragons, and demons and magic and stuff.

And?