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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5936454" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with both these posts, at least as far as PCs are concerned. (For giant slugs, goblin mooks and the like you can narrate hit point loss as bloodthirstily as you like! Swords fly, blood flows, heads roll. Turn it up to 11!)As I read the rules, 4e is a game where the mechanics render it impossible for a PC to be seriously injured in combat but not killed. Just like the 3E mechanics. And not unlike the AD&D mechanics (these are a little more severe - without dying, you can still find yourself with an injury that might take a week to recover from).That's not to say that the PCs are immune in the fiction. It's just that the mechanics provide no pathway for taking them to those fictionally possible states. (Just as, unless an opponent is wielding a sword of sharpness, the mechanics provide no pathway for taking any D&D PCs to the obviously fictionally possible state of losing a finger in a fight.)For me, this is what gives D&D it's gonzo feel. I've got nothing against injury mechanics (Rolemaster has them, for example, and I've played a hell of a lot of Rolemaster). But I regard the lack of them as a reasonably distinctive feature of D&D.Good post.I've made the point about natural (so-called) healing in the past - that in all editions, the rate is so rapid that no degree of non-fatal hit point loss can properly be conceived of as any sort of serious injury. And hence that (for example) overnight restoration of hit points is not a verisimilitude issue (but is, perhaps, a pacing issue).That is also a healing rate that is about half that of AD&D (which, from memory, is 1 hp per day plus CON bonus at the end of each week), and one quarter that of B/X (which, from memory, is 2 hp per day) and much much slower than 3E (which is up to twice level per day, I think).But even with that longer healing rate, a typical mercenary with 4 hp can recover from any non-fatal hit point loss in less than a week (6 days to recover 3 hp). How can anyone think that that is recovery from any sort of serious injury?As I and Hussar have asked, how did you get away with narrating serious injury in 3E, when every non-fatal wound will heal naturally in a week or so? That doesn't sound very serious to me.Presumably that's why, in 4e, the default healing spell is Healing Word. Which inspires through divine grace.Which game? It makes it harder to visualise and design 4e consistently, given that 4e has both psyhic damage (not a lot of physicality to that) and warlord healing (not a lot of physicality to that either).Well that's why 4e got rid of it (and AD&D didn't really have it, except for a few corner case abilities like Slippers of Kicking). It is inconsistent with the overall framework.</blockquote>

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