I was unconsious 20 minutes ago, but I'm ok now..

[RigaMortus2]

I think my point is that (for me at least) what I want is not "you got hit so the rest of the combat is harder" but "you got really chewed up in that last adventure, so you need to spend a week or two of downtime not getting stabbed. What do you want to do in that time?"

PC: Well, the evil Warlock said he was going to sacrifice the princess at midnight. But if I am so hurt that I have to rest for a week before I am back into fighting shape, sucks to be her. Now would be a good time to take that vacation I've been saving up for...

Congratulations. You just turned the 15 minute adventure day into the 15 minute adventure week. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of believeability in favor of fun.

 

[hexgrid]

Another repetition of untruth.

Every edition of D&D had long-term injury effects. HP loss took time (or magical healing) to heal. 4E has changed that by making HP recovery virtually instantaneous, thus removing a possible state ("injured and healing with time") from the game.

Stop repeating the same old untruths, and I'll stop pointing it out when you do. I promise. It would really be so much more honest to say, "HPs have never been particularly realistic. 4E just decided to scrap a little more verisimilitude in favor of ease of play, which a lot of people favor." There's no effective argument against that, mostly because it's true.

Needing time to recover hit-points is not a "long-term injury effect," because the loss of hit-points doesn't impose any "effects" on the functioning of the character. A fighter reduced to 1 hp can hit just as hard as he could at 100 hp. This is all the post you responded to was saying.

 

[Lackhand]

PC: Well, the evil Warlock said he was going to sacrifice the princess at midnight. But if I am so hurt that I have to rest for a week before I am back into fighting shape, sucks to be her. Now would be a good time to take that vacation I've been saving up for...

Congratulations. You just turned the 15 minute adventure day into the 15 minute adventure week. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of believeability in favor of fun.

You're picking on someone who's on your side, mang. The downtime you're referencing in that post would trigger at the end of the adventure, not the middle.

Or, to put it another way -- the actual rules proposal I gave that matched this replaced character death with character wounding, so it's a pretty easy guess how I feel about during-the-adventure-enforced-PC-downtime.

I know, I know, keeping the sides straight in this edition war is tough.

 

[Xorn]

One of the first campaign jokes I'm going to hear just popped into my head:

Player 1: What makes you so sure that was the end of the adventure?
Player 2: Because he said we're really weary and due for a long rest!

I know my players will say this too. We use a VTT, and out of combat I leave the tokens unlocked, so players can move their own guy. In combat they can only propose a move and I click to allow it. One day I locked the tokens on accident in the middle of some exploration, and one of the players said, "I can't move my token. I think it's an ambush!"

 

[DreamChaser]

Every edition of D&D had long-term injury effects. HP loss took time (or magical healing) to heal. 4E has changed that by making HP recovery virtually instantaneous, thus removing a possible state ("injured and healing with time") from the game.

This is only partly true...

D&D has long had an inherent contradiction when it comes to HP.

Since 1e at least (didn't play before that) there was hand waving and various luck, stamina, dodge, and physical harm to explain hit points. Same old same old.

BUT

Somehow restoring stamina, luck, dodge all got wrapped into the physical harm idea.

There is really nothing realistic (speaking of stretching disbelief) to the idea that getting chomped by a dragon's jaws is somehow less deadly to a 10th level human than to a 1st level human.

In past editions, where disbelief actually got fouled up is that one hand said "HP reflect lots of things and of course you're not actually taking more damage" then the other hand said "You take forever to heal; heck damage doesn't heal overnight! Wait for 100 days or divine (literally) intervention."

The reason the 4e is more "realistic" and consistent is not because it has changed anything about the first hand but because it has made the second hand match. This could have gone either way. They could have made HP purely a reflection of physical injury and tied in conditions and extended healing. That would have also made the system more consistent.

I like the current way. If I want my PCs in a hospital, I will use a plot point to get them there.

DC

 

[Holy Bovine]

It's not the game system that causes this, it's the players of the game. If you want more role-playing, find players that will play the way you want. Irrespective of the game system, you'll have more fun.

Dang - you won the thread in the 2nd post! Basically this is what i wanted to say - thanks!

 

[DreamChaser]

Dang - you won the thread in the 2nd post! Basically this is what i wanted to say - thanks!

All this talk about winning the thread...this thread is so gamist

DC

 

[mach1.9pants]

deleted

 

[Rel]

Jeff, mach, let's take a deep breath please. In general I think we're all better off framing the discussion not in terms of truth or untruth.

 

[Nytmare]

With healing surges it's becoming more - yes - computer gamey. When I first read about surges I thought immediately of the healing packs in the Tomb Raider game I'd played the day before: get hurt, heal up, performance unaffected.

Do you have a problem with adventurers carrying around fourty or fifty healing potions?