D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[Fifth Element]

Sure they are or the healing spell would not be called Cure Light Wounds.

Yes, if you fail to read what the rulebooks say about what hit points represent, you can believe this.

The names of the healing spells have never bene congruous with the description of what hit points represent. That's a legacy issue.

 

[Fifth Element]

So if losing hit points isn’t wounds…why do you die from taking damage? Embarrassment?

Losing your last hit point is always a wound. Pretty simple. Wounds is one of the things included in hit points, but it's not the only thing. That was the point.

 

[Cadence]

A game where characters never suffer wounds sounds even more super heroic to me than one where they all recover from wounds overnight.

 

[Hussar]

A game where characters never suffer wounds sounds even more super heroic to me than one where they all recover from wounds overnight.

I dunno. That's actually fairly realistic. Most people when they take a wound (beyond simple cuts and scratches) take weeks or months to recover, if they ever do, and never go back to the type of situation that saw them wounded in the first place. Barring a few exceptions, soldiers are usually healthy or dead. It's completely unbelievable that someone would be taking multiple threatening wounds, repeatedly, over and over again, and never suffering a single lingering effect.

Good grief, I almost lost my hand to a freaking splinter when I was in my 20's. Spent two weeks in the hospital and major surgery plus months of rehab to get the use of my hand back. People taking repeated stab wounds, bites and whatnot and never getting so much as a fever despite a complete lack of modern medicine?

Sorry, no, not buying that.

 

[loverdrive]

Yes, if you fail to read what the rulebooks say about what hit points represent, you can believe this.

The names of the healing spells have never bene congruous with the description of what hit points represent. That's a legacy issue.

If hitpoints aren't meat and high HP count doesn't represent superhuman durability, why exactly can you swim in acid, somersault from skyscrappers and all that, and then just shrug off and get back to fight as if nothing happened? No amount of luck, stamina and will to live are gonna help with such feats.

 

[Remathilis]

If hitpoints aren't meat and high HP count doesn't represent superhuman durability, why exactly can you swim in acid, somersault from skyscrappers and all that, and then just shrug off and get back to fight as if nothing happened? No amount of luck, stamina and will to live are gonna help with such feats.

Ain't that the rub? If HP = meat, then a high level warrior is nearly immune to weapons. If HP doesn't = meat, you can't survive a fall from a high place. It's almost like HP is completely abstract and can't represent anything in the fiction.

 

[Cadence]

I dunno. That's actually fairly realistic. Most people when they take a wound (beyond simple cuts and scratches) take weeks or months to recover, if they ever do, and never go back to the type of situation that saw them wounded in the first place. Barring a few exceptions, soldiers are usually healthy or dead. It's completely unbelievable that someone would be taking multiple threatening wounds, repeatedly, over and over again, and never suffering a single lingering effect.

I would certainly not say the projection of the real world onto D&D rules space was even vaguely simulationist (hp, ac, single to hit roll in 6 seconds, etc...).

I was marking both "never takes wounds" and "recovers overnight" as super-heroic.

I was marking "never takes wounds" as more super-heroic than "recovers overnight".

Which of those are agreeable/disagreeable to you?

 

[Cadence]

Ain't that the rub? If HP = meat, then a high level warrior is nearly immune to weapons. If HP doesn't = meat, you can't survive a fall from a high place. It's almost like HP is completely abstract and can't represent anything in the fiction.

It feels like HP, AC, and to-hit rolls are a quick and dirty, very pixelated, projection of a super high dimensional activity down to three dimensions to help facilitate play. Just like ability scores are a projection of the nigh-infinite number of characteristics to six dimensions. Or like skill challenges take very complicated activities and boils it down to picking from a list and making three dice rolls. Or...

The fact that a picture is blurry and pixelated doesn't mean it has no information.

 

[Remathilis]

I would certainly not say the projection of the real world onto D&D rules space was even vaguely simulationist (hp, ac, single to hit roll in 6 seconds, etc...).

I was marking both "never takes wounds" and "recovers overnight" as super-heroic.

I was marking "never takes wounds" as more super-heroic than "recovers overnight".

Which of those are agreeable/disagreeable to you?

The Star Wars d20 RPG got so close on fixing this. They gave PCs a pool of wound points equal to Con (good) which heal slowly. Then they gave them a large pool of vitality (good) which heals quickly and represents luck, skill, and other intangibles. Attacks that damage vitality are never real hits, and you have to exhaust vitality before you take wound. (Good).

Then they made crits go directly to wound and bypass vitality, making a game centered around lightsaber combat basically "stack crit and hope you crit before your enemy did" because vitality was useless. (Very bad) PCs often died with 54 vitality left and -6 wound in one hit. Improved crit was god-tier. A common house rule that allowed you to survive a crit by instead losing a limb instead made PCs look like Darth Vader by 10th level. Lightsaber duels between jedi and sith lasted 3 rounds tops. The body count would make a killer DM using 3d6/order blush.

We were on the verge of greatness. We were this close!

Saga abandoned it, and that was the end. But it had some neat potential, if only to allow a mix slow healing wounds and fast healing vitality.

 

[Cadence]

The Star Wars d20 RPG got so close on fixing this. They gave PCs a pool of wound points equal to Con (good) which heal slowly. Then they gave them a large pool of vitality (good) which heals quickly and represents luck, skill, and other intangibles. Attacks that damage vitality are never real hits, and you have to exhaust vitality before you take wound. (Good).

Then they made crits go directly to wound and bypass vitality, making a game centered around lightsaber combat basically "stack crit and hope you crit before your enemy did" because vitality was useless. (Very bad) PCs often died with 54 vitality left and -6 wound in one hit. Improved crit was god-tier. A common house rule that allowed you to survive a crit by instead losing a limb instead made PCs look like Darth Vader by 10th level. Lightsaber duels between jedi and sith lasted 3 rounds tops. The body count would make a killer DM using 3d6/order blush.

We were on the verge of greatness. We were this close!

Saga abandoned it, and that was the end. But it had some neat potential, if only to allow a mix slow healing wounds and fast healing vitality.

PF had a system that tried to do that too (was it based on something from 3.5?):

Wounds and Vigor – d20PFSRD

www.d20pfsrd.com