Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5320298" data-attributes="member: 92305">Well, there's no magical healing in Conan (extremely little), so they had to do something.  Armor doesn't increase AC either.  It absorbs damage.  Dodging without armor is a viable defense, and a lot of character types shun armor.  Plus, most of the weapon types do more damage than in normal D&D.  A Battleaxe does 1d10.  An Arbalest (heavy crossbow) does 2d8.  A War Club does 2d6.  And a Greatsword does 1d10+1d8 (2-18). With the Massive Damage threshold set at just 20 points of damage, it's a dark, brutal game.   I still have a problem, though, with Justin's take on hit points in his article, even from a D&D prospective.  Going by your link above, a character returns his level in hit points after 8 hours of rest.  OK. But, that's just looking at would recovery--how long it takes a wound to heal. You must also look at would effect. Let's say you have a 6th level Fighter with 41 hit points, and a couple of gobbies come up and plow him full of arrows.  He takes 9 arrow hits that totals 35 points of damage. He's a porcupine. First off, he's still got  6 hit points....and he can run, he can continue to fight, he can do anything he wants because he's not penalized for being hit and wounded by 9 arrows. Now, don't you think that if even ONE arrow pierced his skin and lodged deep in any part of his body (leg, arm, torso, back, neck, you name it), that he'd at least be subject to the rules of "Disabled"? This is why I don't agree with Justin's article.  Those 9 arrows cannot have actually done a lot of damage to the Fighter because he's not penalized in any fashion. With no magical healing, only getting his 6 hp a day back (the D&D game should at least throw in his CON modifier to up that a bit), it will take him about 6 days to get back to full health.  AFTER BEING SHOT BY 9 ARROWS!!?? I think not. None of those arrows could have done that much damage. I think, therefore, that Justin is wrong and my take on hit points (earlier in the thread--copied below, in green, for easy reference) makes more sense.     Hit points represents physical damage, and they do represent non-physical damage. They're an abstract way of expression small cuts, nicks, bruises, strained muscles, pulled tendons and other physical damage that is not critical. That's one reason why they take so long to heal--these types of things take time. But, in addition to those minor physical traits of hit points, they also cover luck, expertise, Fate and the whim of the gods, fatigue, endurance, catching your breath, and all sorts of intangible, uncountable hindrances that can come into play during a battle. The game doesn't specifically model that you twisted your ankle yesterday and, everytime you step on it, it hurts, but something like that would make you less effective in combat (thus you would have lower hit points than max). And, besides that, hit points take into account that moment, right in the middle of your swing, when sweat drops into your eye, stinging it so much it autmatically blinks at the wrong instant, distracting you by just a fraction of a second--which can be deadly in a face-to-face combat. Hit points are all this, plus the effects of that cold you're fighting off or the headache you have from last night's romp, all rolled together with all of your minor aches and pains and other distractions that would make you less effective in combat.</blockquote>

Verification