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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5755312" data-attributes="member: 42582">In addition to the reply upthread about "bloodied" being a term of art for half-hp, rather than literal, I'll suggest a further possibility - one of the skeleton's bones has been cracked, and the necrotic marrow is now leaking out.But why, then, would you take the Warlock multi-class feat. Or, if you did (because you wanted to play out your paladin's fall from Pelor's grace) wouldn't you expect your GM to set up situations which reflect Pelor's annoyance (eg your rations rot away, it is always cloudy and raining wherever you go, good folk shun you and won't offer you food or shelter, etc). Nothing in 4e that I'm familiar with gets in the way here.I know this has been discussed to death in the past, but clearly - in at least some cases - a player's use of Come and Get It does not correspond to (or correspond only to) things that his/her PC is doing in the fiction.Sometimes, at least, the forced movement reflects something else going on in the fiction (eg the villain zigged when it should have zagged).Similarly, some forced movement - like the fear effects of the Enigma of Vecna and the Deathlock Wight - don't correspond to any pushing done by the monster, but rather to the victim fleeing in fright.When you say "are not", I think you mean "may not". There's a significant difference there, which is important to the way these sorts of mechanics work.My favourite version of this treats the Inspiring Word, on such occasions, as a metagame power. It is analogous to Aragorn's dream sequence in the Two Towers movie, in which (to put it in RPG terms) the player of Arwen uses one of Arwen's powers to heal Aragorn, even though the two are not in the same country. The ally regains consciousness because memory's of the warlord's inspiring presence, or previous urgings to victory, etc, revive him/her.Another version, equally tenable, is this: the PC is unconcious, but as her eyes flicker open she sees the warlord gazing intently at her. His lips are moving, but at first she can't make out what he's saying. Then gradually (as it seems to her - because time has slowed down for her, although in reality this is all happening in mere moments) it dawns on her that she has been wounded, but he is urging her to get to her feet - the battle isn't over, and her friends need her.Not only is this second version tenable - I'm pretty sure that I've seen that scene more than once in war/action films, and I think 4e is the only version of D&D capable of reproducing it.Anyway, there is nothing about any version of Inspring Word on an unconscious PC that is an obstacle to a verisimilitudinous fiction.More generally, there are things to be said for and against these sorts of mechanic, but they don't give rise to verisimilitude issues. The verisimilitude issues arise only if the mechanics areapplied as if they were simulationist ones, even though they manifestly are not. It's like playing The Riddle of Steel and complaining "Why do I hit harder when my destiny is at stake?", or playing HeroQuest revised and complaining "Why do tasks get more difficult for someone who's had a string of successes?" What unreaslistic games these must be! - but only if played under an assumption of simulationism.</blockquote>

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