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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5704270" data-attributes="member: 42582">There are two distinct issues (at least) in play here: recovery times, and PC plot protection implemented by way of fortune-in-the-middle.Recovery timeNo. It requires a mechanically trivial change - one that a rookie GM could make. Namely, have healing surges restore at the rate of 1 per week of rest. (If you think the nursing should matter, make it two per week with care - I think AD&D and maybe 3E had similar rules for doubling the healing rate with nursing care.)The only difference in AD&D and 3E is increasing the time required. But time is in fact not sufficient external agency to recover from most serious injuries.Terrible, nasty wounds don't generally recover by means of natural healing, and even when they do don't recover in a few days or weeks. The sorts of injuries that recover in a few days or weeks are bruises, minor sprains, minor burns, and the like. And, at least in my view, there is nothing especially absurd about recovering sufficient grit and fighting spirit to ignore all these with a good night's rest. Yes, it's less gritty than saying that it takes a week's rest to recover that grit and spirit. But that's all that is at stake - the time required to recover the grit to shake off minor injuries.Because the natural healing rules in AD&D and 3E cannot, on pain of absurdity, be taken to be rules for recovering from serious injury.Perhaps it is. Nevertheless, there are few serious injuries that will be inflicted by a sword or spear that can be recovered from simply by bed rest.I can see the issue of gritty vs cinematic flavour. I can't see the issue of realism vs absurdity.PC plot protection by means of fortune-in-the-middleEither the PC was wounded, and died, or wasn't wounded (or at least wasn't badly wounded) and stood back up.I don't follow this. The PC has the quality of "having been stabbed by a spear". Whether or not the PC survives (as determined by the dice rolls) doesn't determine whether or not that quality is possessed. It does determine whether or not the PC has the quality of "having been fatally stabbed by a spear".Of course, one quality the PC does not have, if the dice rolls are successful, is the quality of "being at death's door". That is, there is a distinction here between the gameworld and the mechanics. That a mechanical resolution is being applied - of rolling dice to see whether or not a PC has died - does not mean that the same process, or some analogue of it, is taking place in the gameworld.This is not quite what [MENTION=23094]Patryn of Elvenshae[/MENTION] said. In 4e, the combat mechanics cannot bring it about that a PC dies by any other means that the one you indicate it. NPCs can die in all sorts of ways, in and out of combat. PCs can die in all sorts of ways out of combat.I can see how this might be objectionable to those who want the mechanics governing the infliction of injury in combat to just be a special case of a general mechanic governing the infliction of injury. (I think hit points are also objectionable to many such people - hence the flight to RQ, RM etc in earlier times, and the innumerable variant rules for handling falling, poison etc in AD&D.)In combat, heroes only ever suffer flesh wounds or are killed. That is correct. As I've indicated, I also think it's the only tenable interpretation of hit point mechanics in general. Because non-flesh wounds don't get better, by themselves, over the course of a few days or weeks.Sure. But this has nothing to do with a game being unplayable, or unable to be narrated, without either ignoring or distorting the mechanics.</blockquote>

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