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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5707288" data-attributes="member: 22779">And therein lies the problem.  That "greater narrative range" never really existed.  Outside of some fairly corner case examples (the 1hp fighter running marathons - more on that later) being at 1 hp or being at full hit points made no mechanical difference.Again, and outside of concussions, name me a potentially lethal wound that I can completely recover from in a week of bedrest.  As soon as you start actually narrating wounds in D&D, you have departed from what the mechanics actually represent.  If I take a heavily bleeding leg wound, for example, I could possibly die.  But, since I can heal from this in a week of bedrest, it is impossible that that wound did any ligament damage, broke any bones or did any serious injury.  And, even a deep cut will take a heck of a lot longer than a week to get better.Now, when you cloud the issue with genre conventions, I'd point out that by and large, genre books don't allow the hero to recover from potentially lethal wounds in a matter of days without magical intervention because to do so breaks the believability of the narrative.  When Conan gets nailed to a cross, he takes months to heal.  How long does Frodo take to recover in Rivendell, even with magical healing?Now, on the point about running a marathon.  We're comparing apples to oranges.  In 3e, running a marathon uses the hit point mechanic.  Do really strenuous stuff and you lose temporary hit points which come back faster than regular hit points.  It's bolting on a sort of variant hit point mechanic onto the base mechanics.  And it works fairly well.4e doesn't do this though.  There are no separate hit point pools in 4e.  In 4e, running a marathon is modeled by your Endurance skill.  If you fail your Endurance check, then you cannot make another Athletics check until you've had an Extended rest.Since DC's in 4e are very much subject to DM interpretation (not that they aren't in 3e, I'm not saying that, but, 4e DC's are very explicitly the purview of the DM in 4e) a character with 1 hp and no healing surges would likely have a pretty high Endurance DC in order to run a marathon, and, it would likely be a DC that would continue to increase with each check.IOW, 4e would model this action differently than 3e would.  Using this example to say how HP work differently between editions isn't really fair since 4e wouldn't use the 3e system at all.</blockquote>

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