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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5717412" data-attributes="member: 42582">All this makes perfect sense to me, and I would XP your post if I could.In my last few posts I've followed Pentius in expressly excluding unconsciousness/near-fatality - in my case because I agree that 4e does handle these very differently from 3E.As I posted upthread in response to a post from [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION], in 4e properly inspecting an unconcsious ally requires a Heal check as a standard action (ie in mechanicanl terms, a stabilise roll) and the mechanics guarantee that the narrative will proceed in one of two ways - "S/he's fine, and should be up soon if we beat the goblins!", or "I'm not sure, but s/he might be in a bad way". In 4e there is no way of confirming that a PC who is not yet dead is nevertheless dying (unless the group fudges the narrative of death, and allows a PC who "dies" in mechanical terms to be merely dying in the fiction and thus have time to utter famous last words, etc).So there is never mechanical scope in 4e to narrate the "chest sucker", because this would be at odds with the mechanical requirements of the game set out in the previous paragraph.So if one wants to narrate "chest suckers", 4e is definitely not the game!(I don't really see this as an artefact of healing surges but rather of its death/dying rules. I seem to remember that a 3E variant of those rules was published on the WotC website during the transition period, and I imagine it might have produced the same issue without using surges to do it. But this is probably a minor point.)Anyway, now come the bits of this reply where I think I disagree with you, but I hope in only a modest rather than a dramatic way!I haven't seen this part of the other thread, but here's my maths for a PC dropped to -1 hp, and therefore losing 1 hp per round with a 10% chance to stabilise per round: the chance to recover is 0.1, +09*0.1, +0.9*0.9*0.1, and so on up to 0.9^8*0.1, = 0.1* (0.9 + 0.9^2 ... + 0.9^8) = 0.1 * 5.12579511, which is a little over one-half, and hence yields a chance of death a little under one half. Obviously this chance will grow as the initial wound becomes more serious - the chance to die if dropped to -9 hp is 90%!I personally think that, if one is assuming that natural healing will be coming into play, this is a bit of an obstacle to narrating the chest-sucker - certainly with a 50% chance of natural recovery, this couldn't be narrated for a -1 wound, but even for a -9 wound one might wonder what sort of chest-sucker spontaneously stabilises within 6 seconds 90% of the time. (This is is one fact one aspect of the game where AD&D's one minute rounds probably aid rather than undercut verisimilitude.)This is why I think your point about magic is so important - if you narrate the chest-sucker (or, frankly, just mention the negative hit points), the players will reach for their magical healing, and this will explain away the rapid recovery.Because the wounds don't impede the character during that recovery, except in the very abstract sense that the character is more likely, if struck again, to suffer a fatal rather than a glancing blow, I don't know that 3E is any better than 4e. It mandates a longer recovery time for "heroic verve" (the luck/fate part of hp) but I don't have any preconception as to how long this should take to recover.Perhaps, in practice, many groups treat the recovery time as corresponding to actual physical healing, and just handwave over the fact that the imputed physical injuries have no impact on the character's performance. But then, following [MENTION=6676736]Pentius[/MENTION], it seems open to me, when playing 4e, to treat the recovery time as corresponding only to verve, and to treat the recovery of the actual injuries (which in any event don't affect performance) by way of handwaved free narration. Personally, I don't see any way to choose between those two even on aesthetic grounds - as [MENTION=3887]Mallus[/MENTION] has suggested upthread, I find it hard to see a preference for one rather than the other as anything but a preference of habit.Which is not a criticism - habits are important and often make life easier and more comfortable - but does mean that the "narrative space" argument, at least as far as natural healing is concerned, is not very strong.It never occurred to me to narrate hit point loss short of death as serious physical injury until I saw the idea raised on these boards. But I was someone who migrated to Rolemaster in part out of dissatisfaction with hit points - they made no sense at a physical level, and I hadn't yet worked out how to use them as plot protection/heroic verve - and Rolemaster's treatment of wounds is mechanically reasonably satisfactory, although it doesn't always serve the pacing needs of the game that well.Besides their lack of verisimilitude when treated as physical damage, the other reason I disliked hit points is because I found "victory by abalation" boring. And still do. What I like about 4e is that its healing mechanics, plus its liberal use of conditions, positioning etc as important factors in combat, mean that it does not have a "victory by abalation" feel, at least for me.</blockquote>

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