But doen't you think that something as basic as "What HP's are" should be a prime consideration, and should influence the direction the game takes? Without knowing "What HP represent", it's hard to pin down a cohesive feel for the new framework.
...
WHile I appreciate that WotC let us have input (though it did, at times, feel like WotC should be offering R&D checks to the truly devoted playtesters!), it also still feels like no-one truly had their own creative "vision" for D+D Next. (Like 'em or Hate 'em, both 3E and 4E seems like they were the singular vision of a small group of people.)
I think that's what they want, they don't want a vision similar to neither 3e or 4e, which are good to put together everyone who shares a certain playstyle at the cost of alienating the rest. They want to have a vision for 5e that is more inclusive, and that requires sometimes to leave things undefined.
They started from the question "what is the common ground of all D&D editions, what makes people say this is D&D?". Hit Points were one of those elements, but not healing (except healing spells and potions). A minority of people want D&D to have something else than HP, such as a wound system, but eventually they found from feedback and research that the vast majority is fine with that, and since HP were always part of D&D in all editions, they were not going to change that, and at best will add variant rules later to play without HP.
But after agreeing on that, IMHO they found out that the division between gamers who see HP loss as mostly physical wounds VS those who see HP loss as generic steps towards losing a fight, is not really dominated by one majority, not nearly enough at least to justify a choice that would alienate the others.
Actually to be more precise, the problem is not really in the explanation on what HP are, but rather in the implications on (non-magical) healing.
In fact, for the verbal explanation itself, they decided to go with the "more generic than physical", because it is in fact more inclusive. If you still like to see your HP loss as purely physical, you can always think/describe it as such if the book tells you that it's a mix of wounds, fatigue, morale drop and lost luck. It's an undefined mix, so
you can always say that
for your character it's 99% wounds, while another player can always that
for hers it's always something else.
OTOH the implications are very important, because the "purely physical" interpretation makes it generally harder to justify why next day you're fresh as a rose, and much harder if you get full HP after each fight! The "generic" interpretation easily allow any natural healing speed and related mechanics.
But then it is the
healing speed that makes all the difference in the world in terms of
playstyle! One group may want to play a game where heroes just keep going, wave of monsters after another, until they win the adventure or die trying. It's a totally valid playstyle. Another group may want to play a game where heroes have to be careful, where encounters are often better avoided altogether, or simply where battles are spread over time. And that's a totally valid playstyle too. Which of them is more D&D? My guess is that WotC designers and managers did their research and concluded that neither of them dominates the other, and making 5e an edition that support both is the only way to go if they want players of former edition to shift to 5e, instead of creating another rift. And maybe this is why, tracing backwards towards the interpretation of HP, they need to keep it foggy.
Emphasis added by me - the interaction rules are in the current playtest.
Ops... should have been "inspiration".
