Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6257735" data-attributes="member: 58197">Hit points and related mechanics don't have to hold up under close scrutiny. That isn't what they're designed for. They just have to hold up under the level of scrutiny they will get during gameplay. However, they have to hold up very well under that level.If you get chomped by a dragon, you aren't likely to be inquiring about which organs got pierced by which tooth. You are, after all, in the middle of combat and the wizard's player is impatiently rattling a handful of d6's. The important thing is that you got chomped on, it hurt, and now you're down some hit points. Nobody has to stop and explain what happened. Nobody has to think about how to connect the mechanics to the fiction. It's obvious and simple. Sure, if you take time to think about it, you might wonder how exactly a human being survives getting chomped on by a hundred-foot-long dragon, and what sort of injuries you have, and how you're still on your feet. But you probably won't bother thinking about it. You're more concerned with what you're going to do to the goddamn dragon when it's your turn.Your turn comes up. You swing at the dragon and miss. Drat. Bad luck. But now you announce that you're dealing damage anyway. Uh... what? Wait, didn't you miss? How are you dealing damage? The connection between mechanics and fiction is no longer obvious and trivial. People have to stop and think about it, instead of getting on with the battle.I don't recall there being any "both" there. In each pre-4E edition, the rulebooks had one paragraph that claimed hit points weren't meat, and then proceeded to ignore that paragraph completely throughout the rest of the system. Hit points were treated as meat with perfect consistency. Loss of hit points was synonymous with suffering physical harm; recovery of hit points was synonymous with healing. </blockquote>

Verification