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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5765286" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think the healing surge example is very problematic, and shows that something other than consistency is at work.Your example of inconsistency with healing surges is "I was wounded impaled last round but now I am fine". But there are no wound/impale mechanics in 4e (nor any other version of D&D, except perhaps some of that Players Option stuff in late 2nd ed AD&D). And even the dying condition doesn't have to be treated as an ingame state. Ingame, all that we know about the PC is that s/he is prone and unable to perceive or act - this can be narrated in any of a range of ways, of which literally dying due to wounds or bleeding is only one.So healing surges only produce this consistency issue if:(1) Players narrate hit point loss as wounding/impaling regardless of any rules to that effect; and/or (2) Players treat the "dying" condition not as a metagame state but as an ingame state (ie my PC is literally in a critical condition).(1) and (2) are not the result of players wanting consistency. They are the result of play habits or play preferences (i) for gonzo criticals in narration if not in mechanics, and (ii) for non-metagame mechanics (similar to what Crazy Jerome is calling "process simulation", I think).Which goes back to my post on the first page. The real issue here isn't about "realism" or "consistency". It's about what sort of approach to play the mechanics presuppose. If players are going to treat the mechanics as process simulation rather than as metagame (see also the endless complaints that Come and Get It should involve a Will attack, or is objectionable martial mind control), that has to shape design in ways that don't have anything to do with whether or not the fiction is realistic or consistent.I don't really know what "standard" means here. D&D is not particularly generic - no more so than Rolemaster, for example, and arguably less so. What the 4e episode has shown, it seems to me, is that in certain respects the core D&D audience is rather specific in its tastes: it wants "process simulation" in its mechanics, and is hostile to metagame mechanics that are any more integrated into action resolution that "fate point" style bumps to an otherwise simulationist engine.</blockquote>

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