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<blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 6259723" data-attributes="member: 8461">I disagree, though I can understand where you're coming from there. It's not unreasonable to look at the idea that you can rest for a night and non-magically go from &quot;almost dead&quot; to &quot;perfectly fine&quot; and take away the message that, since this is so unrealistic, the former message (&quot;almost dead&quot;) can't be what it's telling us, ergo hit point loss can't be physical damage.The issue I have is that I see a lot of other (what I feel are) compelling reasons to presume hit point loss is physical damage. Thus, the idea of major non-magical healing from a single night's rest has to say something else instead of &quot;rethink what hit points are.&quot; The conclusion I come to is that this particular instance is not a simulationist model; the game is breaking any semblance of suspension of disbelief in this area in favor of keeping the game going. The rules are saying &quot;no, this doesn't make sense - the alternative is to keep your characters down for days, more likely weeks, while they heal, and that kills the fun. So we're hand-waving this one in the name of 'gamism,' and we're okay with that.&quot;There's nothing necessarily wrong with that; every RPG that I know of does that somewhere, and certainly D&amp;D does. Hence, it's not something that I feel needs to be resolved with an in-game explanation.That said, I'm a bit of a hypocrite in that I'd be happier if this particular break from simulationism was reconciled; in this case, by changing the rule to something closer to First Edition's more harsh rules on the rate of natural healing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Alzrius, post: 6259723, member: 8461"] I disagree, though I can understand where you're coming from there. It's not unreasonable to look at the idea that you can rest for a night and non-magically go from "almost dead" to "perfectly fine" and take away the message that, since this is so unrealistic, the former message ("almost dead") can't be what it's telling us, ergo hit point loss can't be physical damage. The issue I have is that I see a lot of other (what I feel are) compelling reasons to presume hit point loss is physical damage. Thus, the idea of major non-magical healing from a single night's rest has to say something else instead of "rethink what hit points are." The conclusion I come to is that this particular instance is not a simulationist model; the game is breaking any semblance of suspension of disbelief in this area in favor of keeping the game going. The rules are saying "no, this doesn't make sense - the alternative is to keep your characters down for days, more likely weeks, while they heal, and that kills the fun. So we're hand-waving this one in the name of 'gamism,' and we're okay with that." There's nothing necessarily wrong with that; every RPG that I know of does that somewhere, and certainly D&D does. Hence, it's not something that I feel [i]needs[/i] to be resolved with an in-game explanation. That said, I'm a bit of a hypocrite in that I'd be happier if this particular break from simulationism was reconciled; in this case, by changing the rule to something closer to First Edition's more harsh rules on the rate of natural healing. [/QUOTE]

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