new playtest report by Steve Winter

[Vayden]

It does happen. A lot. But, as far as I know, a new edition is supposed to bring some progress. 4e won't progress in this direction. I guess being badly wounded and unable to re-enter the fight 4.3 seconds after having been disembowled is not fun.
So "on your feet soldier ! And watch for your guts, you have stuck your bowstring in your former lower intestine !".

Big Picture: The main thing to remember is that HP are not ****ing body parts. Most of the time in the fight, your armor is taking the brunt of a blow, it's a flesh wound, etc, etc, etc. -1 to -9, even in 3E is just "unconscious". If you want any kind of suspension of disbelief, you've been playing 3E that way, and hopefully they'll make that even clearer in 4E.

Nit-picking: Which suspends less belief? The heroic figure with the bad gut wound staggering up for a few more swings (Boromir, anyone?) or his guts magically shooting back inside in less than 6 seconds as the cleric goes "Pelorpleasemakehimbetterblessyournamethanksalot"? Even if you go with HP = body parts, then the Warlord bringing someone back from unconscious is more realistic than the cleric doing it.

Tangent: I just had a fun idea - in my current campaign, I'm going to re-name HP, just to get it through the player's heads a bit more that it's not body parts, and I'm also going to re-do death: -11 hitpoints or more = death and/or permanent disablement. Because loosing limbs should be part of the system somehow.
Any ideas on what to re-name HP, and what the Death/Disablement table should look like?

 

[Fifth Element]

I have a problem with dying characters suddenly able to fight. It buggers me in 3e and it looks like it will bugger me in 4e.

Characters near death have always been able to fight, and fight well. From the beginning, a character with only 1 hp (out of, say, 100 maximum) fights as well as if he had max hp. Is there really a difference between that and a character who goes down to -1 hp, but it then revived to resume the fight?

It's not just 3e/4e that has this "problem"; it's inherent to the D&D hit point system.

 

[Sir Brennen]

"You've been mostly-dead all day."

 

[PeterWeller]

It buggers me in 3e and it looks like it will bugger me in 4e.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

I don't like the idea of people fallig one, two, three times per encounter, and being revived during the fight.

Why not? it happens at least once per fight in some anime series!

[ducks!]

 

[Doug McCrae]

Well, I can't wait to shout "THIS IS MY +1 FROST SHOCKING LONG SWORD. THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT, BUT THIS ONE IS MINE. WITHOUT ME, MY MAGIC ITEMS ARE USELESS. WITHOUT MY MAGIC ITEMS I'M USELESS"

Good one.

This thread is really delivering the funny. Or teh funny as I believe the young people are calling it now.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Why not? it happens at least once per fight in some anime series!

[ducks!]

Actually, my favorite vision of what hit points mean for a high-level D&D character comes from the Street Fighter anime (for those paying attention, that is an anime adaptation of a fighting videogame). The example I like in particular is the fight between Ken and Vega.

Fairly early in the fight, Ken is both stabbed in the chest with Vega's bladed claw, and his foot is impaled all the way through. Through sheer force of will, the kind lesser people could not manage, he stands on the impaled foot, gets back into a fighting stance, and eventually uses that foot (which is still visibly bleeding) to launch himself in the air to execute his Dragon Punch finishing move. It is a classic "second wind/dramatic recovery" moment. Lower level characters who suffered such a blow, or those with lower Constitution, would collapse from the pain, and probably bleed to death, but a higher level character can tough it out and keep fighting and survive.

 

[neoweasel]

And they stayed down how long ? One round ? I guess those wounds were not so bad after all.
So, even when they fall, they can still hack and slash through the hords 6 seconds latter. This happen on a regular basis in all the campaign I'm playing.
On a balance-gamist point of view, this is not a problem. But on a "suspension of disbelief" point of view, I don't like it.

I know that, if "falling" meant "you are out of this fight", then encounters will be more dangerous and harder to balance, since losing, even temporarily, a character is crippling the party. But I would rather have some boost to the remaining characters than those boring "respawn" of dying characters.

What is more heroic :
* "Wolbur the warrior rises, fully healed, for the 3rd time, his blood and former internal organs littering the battlefield and finaly take down the blackguard" or
* "seeing her comrades uncouscious or uncapacited, Haldra the cleric feel a rush of anger, charges the blackguard, her forces decupled by the will to save her friends, and slay him with a surprinsingly strong hit" ?

I guess I will have to muse with 4e rules, but I'd rather have a power that allow to give a moral boost to remaining PC rather than moral healing to fallen ones.

I'd rather have the healing to fallen ones, personally. Mostly because given the choice (assuming the two options are exclusive) between "Players A & B no longer get to participate and become passive observers to how awesome Player C's character becomes" and "Players A, B & C all get to participate" I'd rather have the latter.

 

[neoweasel]

Yep, that's D&D.

Also dwarf = drunk* belligerent git.


* Why are dwarves never happy drunks or morose drunks? They're always punch-you-in-the-face drunks.

Because you don't play with my friends and me?

 

[small pumpkin man]

Actually, my favorite vision of what hit points mean for a high-level D&D character comes from the Street Fighter anime (for those paying attention, that is an anime adaptation of a fighting videogame). The example I like in particular is the fight between Ken and Vega.

Fairly early in the fight, Ken is both stabbed in the chest with Vega's bladed claw, and his foot is impaled all the way through. Through sheer force of will, the kind lesser people could not manage, he stands on the impaled foot, gets back into a fighting stance, and eventually uses that foot (which is still visibly bleeding) to launch himself in the air to execute his Dragon Punch finishing move. It is a classic "second wind/dramatic recovery" moment. Lower level characters who suffered such a blow, or those with lower Constitution, would collapse from the pain, and probably bleed to death, but a higher level character can tough it out and keep fighting and survive.

Or the end of the Karate Kid
Or any Rocky movie
Or actually, any sports movie ever

I think the lesson here is Warlord = sports coach.

That didn't really follow, did it? Well, I stand behind it anyway.

Characters near death have always been able to fight, and fight well. From the beginning, a character with only 1 hp (out of, say, 100 maximum) fights as well as if he had max hp. Is there really a difference between that and a character who goes down to -1 hp, but it then revived to resume the fight?

It's not just 3e/4e that has this "problem"; it's inherent to the D&D hit point system.

Yep, the condition track and the bloodied state are a nice move away from the traditional hp system, without being to complicated or fussy.