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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ranes" data-source="post: 6562861" data-attributes="member: 4826">I haven't read this whole thread, so please forgive me if you've already read something along these lines, but here's how I have made my peace with describing wounds and healing, and hit points as a mechanism.When I was ten, I had a bad fall, as in from a tree, via rusty railings. Although I was lucky enough not to be impaled by the railings, I took a bunch of proper smackings on the way down and landed on broken bricks and other non-plush debris. I was dazed for a minute but then got up without too much fuss. At that point, my friend, who had witnessed my fumble, noted that my head was bleeding. I put my hand to the back of my head and then looked at it. It was completely soaked in blood. That's when the panic kicked in.I ran home. Fortunately, my mother wasn't in work that day (we were latch-key kids; a common thing at the time, less so nowadays). She called an ambulance and poured water over my head, to try and wash the crap out of my wound. My panic rapidly receded, because of her composure. Then my brother turned up, inspected my wound, and said, "I can see your brain," at which point my mother's composure counted for nothing.Once I got to the hospital, I was once again reassured by everybody else's calm and professionalism. I was stitched up, bandaged up and returned home as a hero. My only upset was being told that I won't be able to play outside for a few weeks; this was in the middle of the summer holidays.That story isn't relevant to anything but, come on, you enjoyed it.Imagine my PC takes acid damage. The DM says, "Your skin blisters and burns as the acid eats deeply into the flesh on your arms, chest and face." I lose half my hit points.Then, one of the party, a non-magical character, does one of these 4e-plus things where he just gives me a cheer and I suddenly recover most of the lost hit points. Well, the way I've come to accept that is to imagine myself being wounded. I feel  extraordinary pain. I see blood and broken or dislocated bone. The fear and the horror kick in. I take a chunk of hit point damage that affirms my initial assessment that this is bad news. Then someone I trust grabs me and says, "You're okay! You're okay! Get your act together, you tart!" I look at my wounds again. Suddenly, they don't appear so terrible. My reassessment leads me to realise that I can still function. I find myself non-magically healed of most of the damage that moments ago had seemed life-threatening.Key to this rationalisation working, though, is a DM who takes pains (pardon me) to describe combat hit point loss in ways that evoke the idea of serious injury to the player, without being over-specified. If the DM tells me my arm's just been chopped off, my suspension of disbelief isn't going to accommodate someone cheering it back on.</blockquote>

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