D&D 5E Is it worth taking damage in order to do your stuff?

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Kabouter Games]

But the HP rules say nothing at all about pain. They just say you regain HP after a night's rest, so you're no longer close to death. It would be totally compatible with RAW to ask your players to track the amount of HP damage taken over the past week (completely ignoring healing) and use that as a guide to how much pain a PC is in right now.

If a centaur guts you with his lance for 30 points of damage, and then you fall off a 30' bridge for another 10 points of damage, a night's rest may give you back all your HP, but it's perfectly fair and consistent with RAW to say that your gut still hurts a few days later. And it might leave a scar.

NB: I don't want to hijack this to muse on the intent of HP, but since we've gone there...

I think you just hit on the head an issue which could use some official clarification. In most cases, I don't think HP signify real wounds. Rather, they signify fatigue. The more fatigue you suffer, the more sloppy your guard. The more sloppy your guard, the more likely you are to be struck a blow that will take you out of the fight. When you, as a Fighter, are battling a hobgoblin, your longsword against his morningstar, when you "hit" each other for "X HP of damage," it's not a slash with the sword or bash with the morningstar that causes a wound. It's a simulation of his - and your - mounting fatigue as you try to kill your foe and avoid being killed by him. You're frantically dodging (not Dodge per the rules, but the normal shifting of position in the fight) and parrying and feinting and everything involved in a duel to the death. When he "hits" you, your adrenaline spikes. Your muscles go into overdrive when you desperately fling your shield to interpose it between your head and his spiky thing, the shattering THUD that travels up your arm when you successfully block it. When you "hit" him for enough HP to reduce him to zero, it's a numerical simulation of his fatigue causing his guard to drop to the point that you find the perfect angle of attack to stab him in his throat.

It's easy for me to envision this thanks to my background in HEMA. I can attest that, in a fight, I can never once be struck by my opponent - not even a love tap - but still be struck a killing blow once i get so fatigued my guard drops. One mistake = shish-ka-Bob. [insert rimshot right there, if you please. I think I earned that one.]

That's pretty easy to envision. Harder is the simulation-of-fatigue for things like spike growth and fireball and other effects. There I suspect it's to simulate the bumps and scrapes you experience that add up to a Pile of Ouch which causes your fatigue to mount. Thunderwave throws you across the room, and sore muscles and bruises make for sloppy defense. Scrapes and punctures from trying to get through whacking great thorny bushes is distracting, which affects the attention you can devote to your guard.

Of course, there's always the certain circumstances which cause you to suffer enough damage all at once to snuff out your life, like a whole bunch of lightning bolt damage. I recommend envisioning a convicted murderer getting the full effect of the electric chair. He's healthy, at "full HP," as it were. But he simply gets hit with so much juice all at once that it fries him to a crisp.

In-game Rests are much easier to understand using this visualization. After a good night's sleep - a Long Rest - your fatigue is gone. You can face the next day's fights with a clear head and rested muscles. A Short Rest lets you tend to those niggling aches and pains, those scrapes and bumps, and take a bit of a breather to rest tired muscles. You can have a snack to replenish your body's stores of energy, maybe ten minutes of naptime.

Powers like the Fighter's Action Surge are also more easily explained. Fighters have learned to draw upon a reserve of energy and concentration which allow them to attack when otherwise they couldn't.

TL;DR - Envisioning HP as simulations of the rigors of combat makes wrapping your head around "a breather (e.g., a short rest) makes it a bit better" and "a good night's sleep makes it all better."

 

[Uchawi]

I dislike that approach because it doesn't kick in until too late. Getting stabbed should be unpleasant even if you do have fifty HP left, or else every fighter would be twentieth level from constant fighting.

I don't have the DM guide (for optional rules) but I would add a feature like HP thresholds to lingering wounds. Once a hp threshold value is exceeded for a character (like their starting hit points + level) then you automatically go to lingering wounds without reaching zero hit points. Critical hits could do the same thing. The trick is to try to keep hit points generic, and then add in after zero rules, or bypass to after zero rules.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

NB: I don't want to hijack this to muse on the intent of HP, but since we've gone there...

I think you just hit on the head an issue which could use some official clarification. In most cases, I don't think HP signify real wounds. Rather, they signify fatigue. The more fatigue you suffer, the more sloppy your guard.

I don't think you can square "HP as fatigue" with the observable facts of D&D combat, such as the way poisoned weapons take effect on a hit, but even if you could it wouldn't be relevant to problem I identified (and outlined a solution for), which is that PCs are remarkably willing to take HP damage, compared to real human beings, because HP return after a long rest. Decoupling pain relief and HP restoration is already a sufficient fix, and works fine for either interpretation of HP, meat or fatigue/karma/meta, inasmuch as both views eventually involve actual physical injury.

 

[Kabouter Games]

I don't think you can square "HP as fatigue" with the observable facts of D&D combat, such as the way poisoned weapons take effect on a hit

That I'll grant. I can't square that.

but even if you could it wouldn't be relevant to problem I identified (and outlined a solution for), which is that PCs are remarkably willing to take HP damage, compared to real human beings, because HP return after a long rest.

You've never played a contact sport, have you?

I played rugby and hockey, and served in the US Army as a Ranger. Human beings are more willing to take HP damage than you imagine.

Anyway. /hijack

 

[jodyjohnson]

I agree that everyone should find a fix that works for them.

There are lots of options.

Karma/Luck/Fatigue covers the poison conundrum with what 'might' have happened. The HP as 'plot armor' position covers those types of HP loss as what 'almost' happened opposed to trying to model what did happen (based on the way it was narrated). Poison, fire, falls, sneak attacks, necrotic, and ax blows are no different if you work backward from what actually happens by the rules -- recovery to possibly full on a short rest, and full recovery on a long rest which implies that it didn't happen the way it may have been narrated.

I wish each side would stop trying to paint the other as irreconcilable with the way the game works.

The default game takes the middle position that HP are an indefinable statistic that represents a resource which can be traded, recovered, and lost. You can lose them all and not even miss a turn or notice. It's a game mechanic by default. That's how we play AL.

If you want to delve into more depth (which I believe is only a fraction of players) then you pretty much have a desire to house rule something even if it is only re-evaluating how the fiction works (Wolverine healing factor). Or alternately, redefine what 'hit' and 'damage' mean in the fiction. Or as the early editions, having much lower 'hit' rates and make HP recovery very slow naturally (possibly incorporating Wound tables).

They are all workable, they are all D&D, and I support them all on a table by table basis.