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

[ForbidenMaster]

[...]

So, the idea that hit points are the same in 4e as they were in 1st is wrong.

[...]

That wasnt my point, and if you had actually read my posts in this thread I think its pretty clear that wasnt my point. My post was in response to this statement:

Yet in 4e, HP is such that you could roll low enough on damage that you have effectively "missed" me.

Are you telling me that that hasnt been true in all editions of D&D?

 

[Lanefan]

Why would you want a character to have 5 hit points? Any monster would floor the character in one hit.

If you want to play as a peasant why don't you just remove all the powers and abilities of the class and leave them with the lowest hit point value and healing surges of the classes, ie the wizard.

Then as they hit "milestones" or the end of an adventure or what not just let them choose one or more of the abilities of their class. You could even go so far as giving them ability points and assigning a cost to them.
You just need to remember that monsters are written to be a challenge to 1st level characters so a lesser xp value of monsters should be used, and you should be fine.

The same gap exists in monsters...they either have 1 h.p., or 20+...and it too needs filling.

You're quite right that a 25 h.p. 1st-level Kobold skirmisher would be nasty to throw against a party of (-2)nd's each with 8 h.p., but that said, they could handle one by itself.

Lanefan

 

[Tony Vargas]

?

Yet in 4e, HP is such that you could roll low enough on damage that you have effectively "missed" me.

Are you telling me that that hasnt been true in all editions of D&D?

I just flashed back to an argument about D&D I had back in 1985. It was about how unrealistic hps were. I was defending D&D, explaining the abstract hp idea straight out of the DMG, the whole luck/skill/endurance/divine favor thing, and how a 'hit' didn't have to be an actual physical wound to do hit point damage. So the guy (Dexter was his name, I recall) asks "So how do you tell a hit from a 'pseudo hit' then?" I said, if you need to know, just make a poison save.


So, I don't know if it's proveable that it's always been 'true' (unless you know a medium who can contact EGG), but I know it's a concept that's always been out there, and often debated and criticised for being too abstract and unrealistic.

4e might be a little more abstract, but it's certainly not inconsistent about it. Really, healing surges and inpiring words and such make a lot of sense, both from the idea of what hps have always modeled, and in creating a cinematic feel. I mean, it's so easy to picture an action hero in a movie doing what a 4e character does: downing a series of faceless mooks in rapid succession, then having a long, tough fight with a luitenant, displaying some impressive moves and taking some serious hurt (though being mostly recovered in the next scene), then getting his ass kicked by the big bad guy, for some inexplicable reason never pulling the moves that mowed down the mooks and beat down the luitenant, then, finally - inspired by a memory or encouraged by a sidekick or pissed of by the villain's soliloquy, suddenly coming back and aceing the big bad guy with some crazy move or stroke of luck.

 

[Keltheos]

As a non-fan of hit points since the 1980's, the rationalizations of 4th edition and Tony's paragraph about the cinematics of it as well as the rules for healing surges and inspirations have me rethinking how silly it all sounds (within the context of 4e, anyway).

 

[Primal]

How do I build a nebbish bookwork adventurer who can't fight or cast spells but whose intelligence, research abilities, and good luck allow him to survive adventures in any edition of D&D? (The answer, you can't. This isn't even an Expert PC since they fight too well. A wizard with more skill points and no spells? You would have to house rule it.)

Bard/Loremaster with high INT and CHA 9 or less? Lots of skill points and Bardic Knowledge to rely on, and no spells.