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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rogue Agent" data-source="post: 5717479" data-attributes="member: 6673496">This is true. Large chunks of 4E aren't roleplaying mechanics. You have to accept that mechanics like this have no association with the game world whatsoever. If you can do that, of course, the game works just fine.But I tend to have problems with this because I keep trying to run 4E as a roleplaying game. When I do that, though, these mechanics are a huge impediment because I can never figure out how to describe the game world without having the mechanics contradict me five seconds later.In the specific case of wound systems, I've never liked any system in which shooting someone with a gun causes a vague "maybe you got hit, maybe you just dodged and winded yourself really bad" resource depletion. (The old VP/WP system for Star Wars D20 suffered the same problem.) The mechanic doesn't make any sense in the context of the game world, so it inherently prevents me from roleplaying.When I'm running games, I've got less of a problem with an explicit luck mechanic (where the character has a limited supply of luck for turning otherwise successful blows into unsuccessful blows). At least I know how to describe the outcome.But 4E's hit-point-and-surge system just leaves me in the position of being unable to describe anything. Can't describe it as wound, because then somebody curing it by shouting at the character doesn't make any sense. Can't describe it as a lucky miss, because then somebody tending the nonexistent wound with a Heal check doesn't make any sense.In pre-4E a depletion of hit points always represented a physical wound. The exact nature of that physical wound was completely nonspecific and could vary from character to character -- but it was always a physical wound. And while the cure spells might get a little wacky if you look at them too closely in terms of how much physical healing they provided, all of the mechanics in the game reflected that every hit point lost was part of some physical wound inflicted on the character.By way of metaphor, pre-4E hit points were like a bank account that inexplicably allows you to put in different currencies, simply total up the number of bills you deposited, and then withdraw that numeric value in whatever currency you'd like. A little weird if you think about it too hard, but at least it was all money. 4E hit points are more like a Schroedinger's piggy bank -- sometimes you put in a gold nugget and it comes out a gold nugget; sometimes you put in a bread crumb and it comes out a squirrel.I find the whole discussion of "well, no edition of the game ever modeled the debilitating effects from wounds (until you got to 0 hp or thereabouts)" kind of a red herring. I may or may not care if a system doesn't model something (no system worth playing is going to include a defecation mechanic; they're always inherently incomplete). My problem is when the system models something that isn't there. I dunno what to do with that in the context of a roleplaying game.To address this in another way: From my POV, the verve explanation of hit points never made any sense. It apparently did for some people who don't really care about dissociated mechanics, and that's great. But it didn't make any sense to me.Fortunately, pre-4E, there was another explanation of hit points that made perfect sense to me.But in 4E the only explanation that makes any sense is the verve explanation. Irrelevant to you if you were always comfortable with the verve explanation. But a huge frickin' deal for me and anyone else for whom the verve explanation doesn't make sense.</blockquote>

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