My solution

[RodneyThompson]

One thing I always did in my 3rd Edition campaigns is describe characters as battered, bruised, and bloodied even after the wand of cure light wounds has been passed around. At the end of an adventure, the heroes return to town bloodied and bandaged, with holes in their clothes. The healing magic they received just sort of patched them up, and their characters always needed some downtime to get back to their pretty, pretty selves. Also, nasty wounds leave SCARS in my campaigns!

There wasn't any mechanical "need for rest" but it was a convenient narrative construct that my players and I sort of agreed upon for the sake of telling a good story.

 

[Kordeth]

Those of us on the simulationist side of the gamer spectrum, those of us who think that the rules must reflect a reality that those in the game world are aware of, that abstract hitpoints are absurd because they fail the "does that make sense" test on the basis of falling, and fire, and rider effects, and touch attacks, etc....

I've said this before, I'll say it again: Abstract hitpoints does not mean "hit points represent dodging, evading, and luck." That definition is every bit as concrete as "every hit point lost is a stab wound." Abstract hit points, by the very definition of the word, means that hit point loss represents more than one thing, and we generally don't specifically track the precise nature of every hit point lost. At best, we might for narrative purposes, but we don't worry about "well, these hit points were lost to fatigue, so a regeneration spell can't give them back."

When you actually apply abstract hit points, not "hit points as no damage," a lot of those problems go away.

We've been having some trouble getting our heads around the healing rules in 4e, and I think I've come up with a solution, that I at least can work with. It's not that HP are abstract and no blood has been shed until the final stroke, quite the opposite. Each loss of HP is an actual wound, and the character is near death at 1 or 2 HP but it's not death from a critical injury like a severed artery or punctured kidney, it's cumulative fatigue, shock, and bloodloss. So conversely when a charater has been (nonmagically) healed after a 6 hour rest, it's not that all his wounds have cleanly healed into smooth scars, instead he is still covered in bandages. But! All his wounds have been cleanly bound, he has his wind back, the shock is gone, and he has replaced his lost fluids. It's not that the wounds are gone, but they no longer hamper him enough to be reflected by the game system.

This. Healing surges = John McClane points.

One could argue against the realism of a game where all wounds are flesh wounds, but so what? Until D&D has a system for loss of limbs and eyes, why worry about internal organs?

Anyway, thinking about it this way, I can internalize 4e a bit better. What do you think?

Exactly how I run things. D&D PCs are heroes in the classical sense of the word, and capable of pulling stunts like Cuchulainn against the entirety of Mebd's army, Leonidas and the three hundred at Thermopylae, or Horatius at the bridge over the Tiber.

 

[sinecure]

It sounds like 4e is shrinking the playing field so all those who dislike one type of play can dance on its' grave singing merrily as they slouch towards Bethlehem. And all those who like wahoo unrealism can blithely forget whatever tenuous relationship the game had with being another person.

But I could be wrong.

The poor, but fun hit point mechanic, taken up by pretty much any semblance of RPG anywhere now, left the door open for even more unrealistic representations without recourse or appeal to a more accurate past.

 

[kennew142]

It sounds like 4e is shrinking the playing field so all those who dislike one type of play can dance on its' grave singing merrily as they slouch towards Bethlehem. And all those who like wahoo unrealism can blithely forget whatever tenuous relationship the game had with being another person.

But I could be wrong.

The poor, but fun hit point mechanic, taken up by pretty much any semblance of RPG anywhere now, left the door open for even more unrealistic representations without recourse or appeal to a more accurate past.

Here we go again. Those who prefer the fact that D&D hp now have mechanics that reflect the flavor they've had in every edition are just folks who like wahoo unrealism and want to blithely forget whatever tenuous relationship the game had with being another person.

We've heard all these arguments before. We're bad role-players. We like video-games, anime, board games, whatever better than RPGs.

The arrogance and condescension gets a little thick around here sometimes. Different folks have different styles of play. Not everyone who plays differently from you is a bad gamer. It shouldn't be hard to understand.

 

[Halivar]

I don't know what "simulationism" is (isn't that Forge jargon? I never bothered to learn that stuff), but it sounds like your beef with 4th Edition is that there aren't enough rules. I rather like it like that.

 

[Zinovia]

You could always play Rolemaster if you like simulation in your RPG's.
Rules for everything.
Dozens of spell lists that no player would ever use, or want to, but do reflect the integration of magic into the world setting.
Combat that is often deadly, messy, and unpredictable, but far more believable than D&D ever was.
Heavy armor causes you to be hit more often, but take far fewer and less severe criticals. Light or no armor made you hard to hit, but boy did it ever hurt when you someone landed a solid blow on you.
Difficult weapons have higher fumble ranges than simple ones (Flails were 1-7 fumble, daggers 1-2 on percentile dice).
Tons and tons of skills, with secondary skills and points that you spend just on those flavorful background skills and hobbies.
Healing requirements were incredibly specific, to the point where we hauled around an NPC healer just to patch us up. Someone severs your hand on a nasty critical? Get ready to channel your power points to the healer, cause honey, she's gonna need it. She will have to cast spells to repair the bone, nerves, muscles, and blood vessels, and perhaps the superficial damage as well (but that one I'd have to look up and I'm too lazy to get the books out of the basement).
Rolemaster used facing, parry, flanking with different bonuses for front flank, rear flank, and rear (hex grid).
The only thing it really lacked was targeted hits. You couldn't aim for a specific part of your foe - the crits come as they may.

It's very simulationist in ways - and more believable than D&D. There are critical results that say "You take a massive blow to your head. If you are wearing a helm, you are stunned no parry for 8 rounds. If you are not wearing a helm, you are dead." No one died from HP loss (although it was possible). Deaths are due to criticals and the nasty results. One of the spell crits read "Fetch a mop" after saying how thoroughly you obliterated your foe.

D&D has tried to reach a compromise, balancing playability with verisimilitude. Not everyone will agree on where that happy medium lies, which is why no one game system is ideal for everyone. Fortunately, the WotC ninja book recovery patrol has yet to sneak into my house to burn my Rolemaster, GURPS, 3.0, or 3.5 books. Yet. Besides, I want to try 4E and see how we like it. We've got some novice players in our group who would run screaming out of the living room if we tried to explain Rolemaster to them.

 

[Imp]

For me I suppose it's the difference between a system where the realistic physical consequences of spending days slinging around fire and sharp steel are mandatory, and a system where those realistic physical consequences are even possible. I don't need the first, but not having the second breaks it for me.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Anyway, thinking about it this way, I can internalize 4e a bit better. What do you think?

I think that if it works for you, great! I encourage you to think of HP in whatever way that results in the most fun for you and your buddies. It's your table, after all.

For me, I think of HP as nothing more or less than a measure of ability to fight. Exhaustion, dehydration, muscle fatigue, wounds, despair, fear, equipment failure--all these things contribute to HP loss as a result of attacks or hazards. Physical healing, medicine, inspiring words, repairs, hope, valor, duty, "fighting spirit"--all these result in HP replacement.

From a top-level view, I'm very comfortable with D&D characters reacting to combat like John McClane, Neo, Inigo Montoya, The Dread Pirate Roberts, Indiana Jones, and other heroes. They get beat down, and sometimes they drop, but in the next scene they're kicking butt again. I don't mind that in the real world one punch can drop (or even kill) a fit, healthy combatant. I'm not interested in a playing a game where my character (or his opponent!) can be taken out by a single die attack. I want long dramatic combats with multiple exchanges of attacks.

I guess I want the same kind of combat that boxing or MAA spectators want. Those crowds feel ripped off if the fighters tentatively jab and play defense, or if a fight ends in a first-round KO. No, they want to see big punches given and taken over multiple rounds. So do I.

EDIT: added Inigo. "Hello!]/u] My name is Inigo Montoya! Prepare! To die!"

 

[LostSoul]

My advice to you is: simulationist gaming is great, it is demanding on the GM (takes more time and effort to come up with adventures and setting when you cant rely on just throwing some Gnolls at the party) but is fun and rewarding. Don't use DnD for your simulationist gaming needs. Plot driven series of tactical mini games set in a fantasy setting is also great, when you play it forget about the simulation. DnD is awesome at it.

I feel the same way, except on the "narrativist" gaming side of things. Once I accepted this, I embraced D&D.

 

[Imp]

I don't think The Princess Bride is the very best example of the Chumbawumba hit-point model, or at least Westley isn't, since he spends a good quarter of the movie as cargo. Inigo Montoya works better. Use him.