While it is possible to do "realistic" wound tracking in an RPG, it would prohibit any form of heroic swordplay. It's simply not fun to play a 2nd-level character with a missing sword arm and an infected chest wound. Heroes regularly do stuff that would be a quick, painless death, or a slow painful one. If a dragon chews on you, if you get swallowed by a purple worm, impaled by a hornet the size of a barn, there simply is no need to track wounds in an abstract way, it's time for a new character.
D&D mercifully abstracts these things to allow the group to create a heroic narrative: Your hand can't be cut off, you never sustain 3rd-degree burns from a fireball, you never lose a limb from wound infection, a fall from 100 ft. never breaks your spine and binds you to a wheelchair, an ogre with a giant club can bash your skull but won't turn you into a babbling imbecile. You'll never suffer an anaphylactic shock from giant bee poison as the system doesn't care about allergies. Even if a hit breaks your kneecaps you'll be walking full speed again with a 55% chance at the end of your next turn.
When you play D&D, all of these are taken for granted. It's no fun to send a crippled beggar into the dungeon.
You can accept all that but you can't accept if a fighter regaining his battle spirit is represented by adding to an artificial number and demand that this is covered by some kind of abstract holy power that is never clearly defined?
Okay, so that's pre-4th edition narrative conventions vs. 4th-edition narrative conventions, but both are equally abstract. Neither is in any way "realistic".
D&D mercifully abstracts these things to allow the group to create a heroic narrative: Your hand can't be cut off, you never sustain 3rd-degree burns from a fireball, you never lose a limb from wound infection, a fall from 100 ft. never breaks your spine and binds you to a wheelchair, an ogre with a giant club can bash your skull but won't turn you into a babbling imbecile. You'll never suffer an anaphylactic shock from giant bee poison as the system doesn't care about allergies. Even if a hit breaks your kneecaps you'll be walking full speed again with a 55% chance at the end of your next turn.
When you play D&D, all of these are taken for granted. It's no fun to send a crippled beggar into the dungeon.
You can accept all that but you can't accept if a fighter regaining his battle spirit is represented by adding to an artificial number and demand that this is covered by some kind of abstract holy power that is never clearly defined?
Okay, so that's pre-4th edition narrative conventions vs. 4th-edition narrative conventions, but both are equally abstract. Neither is in any way "realistic".