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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5957092" data-attributes="member: 2067">I do think it is useful to look at what the 5e rules are right now. While they can change, they're at least a stating point.Right Now the 5e HP rules represent 99% luck, chance, small scrapes, little nicks, divine favor, fate, ankle twists, etc. The last HP in 5e is different, though. That last HP takes, by itself, either magic, or 2d6 hours to get back. This is conceptually the same as someone using the proposal with 1 HP and all the rest Fate. We don't have any "inspirational healers" in 5e yet. What we do have is a nightly rest that restores all your HP unless you're unconscious, and a short rest that restores a good chunk of your HP unless you're unconscious. In the "Everything but the last HP is Fate" model 5e is currently employing, this makes logical sense. Unless you're unconscious, you're not suffering from any physical wounds greater than nicks, cuts, and bruises. The moment you take any actual injury, you also fall unconscious and begin to die, and that takes longer (2d6 hours) to recover from.It doesn't seem that this is what a significant portion of D&D players actually enjoy, judging from the complaints about an extended rest being too much. We need "more meat" in HP for those people. My proposal basically sets that at half.In the model that we have now, an "inspirational healer" in 5e wouldn't be able to use their HP healing abilities on an unconscious character, but on anyone else they'd be fine. Said healer might have some other way to revive an unconscious character (such as a "First Aid" ability that makes them conscious with 1 hp. Can be refluffed as an elfy kiss, if you'd like.).In the model where half your HP is harder to recover (where the other half is Fate), an "inspirational healer" in 5e wouldn't be able to use HP healing abilities on a bloodied character, but on anyone else they'd be fine. Said healer might have some other way to heal a bloodied character (such as a "First Aid" ability that can restore HP to a bloodied character.). The trick is, this point is set-able for different people at different points. Someone who for whatever reason didn't like First Aid could just remove that restriction on inspirational healing, regardless at what point that was set. It's not hard to change to whatever you want, for whatever reason you want.Without resorting to labeling the things in different terms, 5e already has this distinction. Just set at a slightly different point than in my proposal.So I basically solved everyone's problems by giving you what 5e already gave you, just articulated a little differently. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />It really seems like the big material difference is what the thing is called. Because an Meat+Fate system lets you adjust the amount of each, thus letting you determine the narrative you want to tell, and an "HP is meat + fate" system also lets you determine the narrative you want to tell, by letting you determine on the fly which is what. That on-the-fly ambiguity is a problem, since a lot of gripes about a given healing mechanic (inspirational or rest-wise) boil down to "It doesn't fit my vision of what makes sense in the world given how I see HP." What HP are meant to be in the game needs to be announced in big bold letters so that future designs can take them into account, so that we understand what "makes sense" in the realm of D&D, so that we have an objective point for talking about these things. A clear label would at least allow us to use a single definition for each word. "I'm using all Fate" or "I'm not using Fate" would have some meaning that telegraphed the expected play experience to those who otherwise didn't know. It would avoid discontent when the warlord did pop psychology on the unconscious person to make them get back up, because it would be clear that it was not healing a wound. It would avoid discontent with the inability of a full night's rest to heal you to full, because it would be clear that a full night's rest won't erase all your wounds. It would avoid snarky resistance to a bard's words dealing damage, because it would be clear that they are not actually breaking bones and impaling organs. As long as that label was fully adjustable, it also doesn't invalidate any given mechanic.That's why this cosmetic difference causes a problem. Because what people expect when they hear the term "HP" is different. Because it can mean so many different things at once. Rather than forcing the audience to embrace ambiguity as a core game mechanic, the proposal allows you to be clear with what your intent for your game and game-world is.</blockquote>

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