D&D 5E On the healing options in the 5e DMG

[aramis erak]

That's the thing Saelorn, it didn't take weeks to heal. It took days. Until you hit fairly high level in 1e and 2e (which had instantaneous non-magical healing per the Healing profiency) it took days to heal. Who says Golems and Undead can't heal? I don't recall reading that anywhere. In fact, I cannot recall any discussion whatsoever of healing rates for non-humanoids. The only thing the healing rates actually cover are PC races. How fast does a Yeti heal? Does a Polar Bear heal faster or slower than a badger? Or, does everything in the world always heal at the same rate?

Moldvay Basic takes it even further. It flat out states that HP have no meaning whatsoever - it's simply a game mechanics to determine whether you are alive or dead. Did they expand on that in later Basic/Expert rules?

There are so many giant glaring holes in the interpretation of HP as meat that I have trouble wrapping my head around it. You have to ignore so much of what's going on to arrive at that conclusion.

Council of Worms, as a matter of need, does so. It notes, in reference to the Healing proficiency, that healing for dragons is as normal for hominids.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Not to play gotcha, but both the 1e DMG and 2e PHB mention the "near miss" as part of the category of attacks that do damage.

You'll have to quote it because the verbiage is pretty clearly making contact with hits. Even if there is 1 line you can take out of context to read incorrectly to say a miss does damage, there are 50 you can't take any other way than being contact and meat.

The very idea of being winded in 10 seconds by someone swinging a sword at you is laughable on it's face. I seriously can't even see how this discussion even exists. Even if your character is 500 pounds of lard, exerting themselves to unconsciousness in the tiny amount of time combat takes place in is silly.

 

[Hussar]

Just as a point because this is using 2E as the rules under discussion, but in AdnD, rounds are 1 minute. Not ten seconds.

Lutecius, why do you think anyone would not take the target into account when narrating damage?

 

[ruleslawyer]

You'll have to quote it because the verbiage is pretty clearly making contact with hits. Even if there is 1 line you can take out of context to read incorrectly to say a miss does damage, there are 50 you can't take any other way than being contact and meat.

Books are in storage but I will find quotes and post ASAP. That said, this entire thread has been pretty asymmetrical in terms of who's offering a burden of proof. Can you post a quote that talks about hp being "contact and meat"? You seem to think you can post 100, given that pemerton currently has two upthread that directly say that hp represents metaphysical factors, luck, and skill as much as physical resilience.

The very idea of being winded in 10 seconds by someone swinging a sword at you is laughable on it's face. I seriously can't even see how this discussion even exists. Even if your character is 500 pounds of lard, exerting themselves to unconsciousness in the tiny amount of time combat takes place in is silly.

We're not talking about being winded in 10 seconds here; as Hussar mentioned, earlier editions use 1-minute rounds, but more to the point, a 5-hp damage longsword hit on a fighter with 110 hp is going to have to be narrated as a near miss, a dent in the armor, or at most a light scrape if we are to assume with any degree of plausibility that (a) it would take 15 more such hits to bring down the fighter; (b) the hits impose no penalties to combat or movement on the fighter; and (c) the fighter can recover from any such hit overnight.

Again, the discussion here is asymmetrical. What the idea of hp as mixed bag means is that a "hit" can represent a bit of wearing down, a bit of luck running out, a bit of distraction that leaves you more vulnerable to a subsequent attack, AND/OR a wound. Gygax made this clear 34 years ago and I don't see why it needs to be re-litigated.

What I find "silly" is the idea that every single "hit" represents a real injury from a weapon, because that posits the idea that PCs are superheroes who never suffer any penalties from weapon damage, recover at a pace that is bizarrely fast but at the same time not really consistent, and all simply accumulate harder flesh as they gain more combat experience. It doesn't really make sense.

 

[Chocolategravy]

We're not talking about being winded in 10 seconds here; as Hussar mentioned, earlier editions use 1-minute rounds, but more to the point, a 5-hp damage longsword hit on a fighter with 110 hp is going to have to be narrated as a near miss, a dent in the armor, or at most a light scrape if we are to assume with any degree of plausibility that (a) it would take 15 more such hits to bring down the fighter; (b) the hits impose no penalties to combat or movement on the fighter; and (c) the fighter can recover from any such hit overnight.

At 1hp/day it would take 5 days to recover in earlier editions. 1 Day in 3E 1hp/level/day. 5 minutes in 4E, 1-8 hours in 5E.

Being down 5 HP is an imposed combat penalty. It is just bizarre people keep insisting that being wounded magically slows you down or makes it harder to hit someone. This has no basis in reality Yes certain major injuries to specific body parts may impose a specific penalty, but that would involve tracking hit locations, damage per location, having tables to randomize the injury etc. Instead, being down 5 HP means being 5 HP worse at fighting and 5 HP more likely to lose the fight rather than win because of the effects of the wounds.

Again, the discussion here is asymmetrical. What the idea of hp as mixed bag means is that a "hit" can represent a bit of wearing down, a bit of luck running out, a bit of distraction that leaves you more vulnerable to a subsequent attack, AND/OR a wound. Gygax made this clear 34 years ago and I don't see why it needs to be re-litigated.

What he made clear was every HP has a meat component to it because every mechanic in the game that reduces it requires it, from poison to additional weapon effects to losing HPs from attacks you don't even know were there. It's built right in to the language of the game. Skill and luck from leveling has a multiplicative effect on how effective you are at turning lethal blows into injuries, but it is a dilution of the meat points, you're pouring water into the jug and diluting, you're not putting skill and luck marbles in a bag filled with meat marbles. Every single HP is meat and skill and luck. 1 HP damage injection poison darts REQUIRE it, practically every mechanic in the game requires it, and it's obvious from his description of how he came up with them.

What I find "silly" is the idea that every single "hit" represents a real injury from a weapon, because that posits the idea that PCs are superheroes who never suffer any penalties from weapon damage, recover at a pace that is bizarrely fast but at the same time not really consistent, and all simply accumulate harder flesh as they gain more combat experience. It doesn't really make sense.

That is the point of these threads. It isn't consistent and it doesn't make sense... in 4E and 5E. It does in 3.5E and before. It works extremely well previous to 4E and 5 minute rests and 5E and overnight healing, second wind, survivor, healer feat etc.

 

[MechaPilot]

It is just bizarre people keep insisting that being wounded magically slows you down or makes it harder to hit someone. This has no basis in reality Yes certain major injuries to specific body parts may impose a specific penalty, but that would involve tracking hit locations, damage per location, having tables to randomize the injury etc.

Major injury? Minor injuries do that too. I pulled a muscle in my back when I was fresh out of high school, presumably the physical prime of my life, and I would have been horribly impaired if I'd had to fight for my life. I've also strained my wrist (strained, not sprained) lifting things at work, and I would have been very hard pressed to use a weapon in that hand, especially a weighted one like a mace or hammer. I've also had calf spasms that wore out the muscle so badly that my movement was impaired for hours.

What he made clear was every HP has a meat component to it because every mechanic in the game that reduces it requires it, from poison to additional weapon effects to losing HPs from attacks you don't even know were there. It's built right in to the language of the game. Skill and luck from leveling has a multiplicative effect on how effective you are at turning lethal blows into injuries, but it is a dilution of the meat points, you're pouring water into the jug and diluting, you're not putting skill and luck marbles in a bag filled with meat marbles. Every single HP is meat and skill and luck. 1 HP damage injection poison darts REQUIRE it, practically every mechanic in the game requires it, and it's obvious from his description of how he came up with them.

Actually, poisons don't require even fractional meat damage as long as their effects are just HP loss. As long as one of the factors present in HPs is luck, and it always has been part of it, and as long as one thinks that avoiding a poisoned blade is luckier than avoiding a regular one, then it absolutely makes sense that the HP damage could be dealt without even the slightest narrative nick.

Further, can you please point out where it says that every single, individual HP MUST have some fraction of meat in it?

That is the point of these threads. It isn't consistent and it doesn't make sense... in 4E and 5E. It does in 3.5E and before. It works extremely well previous to 4E and 5 minute rests and 5E and overnight healing, second wind, survivor, healer feat etc.

Only if you think that a low Con mage healing from nearly dead to full HPs quicker than a high Con fighter healing from half HPs to full is consistent. At least in 2e a high enough Con score gave you regeneration. In 3e the stat that determines your physical health contributes in inverse proportion to your healing time (Con penalty to HPs means you heal to full faster, while bonus HPs from high Con means you heal slower).

 

[ruleslawyer]

What he made clear was every HP has a meat component to it because every mechanic in the game that reduces it requires it, from poison to additional weapon effects to losing HPs from attacks you don't even know were there. It's built right in to the language of the game.

Um, no. Poison in 1e-3e uses non-hp mechanics (condition effect in 1e/2e, ability damage in 3e) so you're actually even more off-base there than you would be if you used 4e/5e mechanics... and apparently you loathe the latter mechanics so you're kinda stuck.

 

[ruleslawyer]

That is the point of these threads. It isn't consistent and it doesn't make sense... in 4E and 5E. It does in 3.5E and before. It works extremely well previous to 4E and 5 minute rests and 5E and overnight healing, second wind, survivor, healer feat etc.

And the exact point is that it's entirely INCONSISTENT in 1e-3e and quite consistent in 4e-5e. "Healing" in 1e-3e:

1) Is too fast and involves no condition penalties so is not consonant with physical damage
2) Makes no sense when dealing with how higher-level/high-hp characters heal compared with lower-level/low-hp characters
3) Is not slow enough to be "realistic" in terms of how people recover from injuries in the real world.

4e/5e healing works on the assumption that hp damage represents getting beaten up a bit and worn down, and that heroes recover from that and find the will to go on. And *they have consistent recovery mechanics to embrace that fact.*

 

[pemerton]

There's the part where being hit by a sword causes damage, and that damage is removed by curing the wounds. And if you weren't able to heal magically, then it could take weeks to heal.

That's the thing Saelorn, it didn't take weeks to heal. It took days. Until you hit fairly high level in 1e and 2e

I don't understand why this "weeks to heal" claim keeps getting reasserted. I did the maths upthread. It is impossible for a 1st level MU in AD&D to take damage that is both (i) not potentially fatal and (ii) takes a week to heal, because the maximum hit points for that character are 6 (4 on the dice +2 for CON). For a thief with 16 CON, to take weeks to heal (as in, more weeks than just one) requires having to heal 16 hp (7 per week +2 for CON in the second week). That means a 17 hp character, if the injuries were not potentially fatal. On average, a 16 CON rogue won't have that many hit points til 3rd or 4th level (3rd level is 5.5*3 - 16.5).

For almost every person in the gameworld - all 0-levels, and almost all characters with 1 HD - the maximum healing time for an "injury" that is not potentially fatal is a week or less. In other words, those hit point losses aren't modelling serious injury.

There's the part where golems and undead don't heal, because only living creatures are capable of healing naturally. There's the part where - at least in core 2E and 3E - the only things capable of causing HP damage are those things which are capable of causing physical harm (albeit psycho-somatic-ally in a handful of edge cases), and where everything that influenced luck or skill or divine protections used a game mechanic other than HP.

Who says Golems and Undead can't heal? I don't recall reading that anywhere.

Golems can heal from having certain spells cast on them (eg fire attacks heal an iron golem). Vampires can regenerate. From memory, a cure wounds spell in AD&D can't heal a creature hit only by magical weapons, which will include all golems and some undead. I don't recall any general discussion of healing for non-living creatures, however.

I have heard that there was at least one earlier edition which claimed a "hit" with a poisoned dagger could actually be a narrative "miss" if the save was made, but such things were noticeably absent for the better part of twenty years.

Gygax, in his discussion of saving throws in his DMG, explains pretty clearly that they are a "luck" mechanic as much as a "toughness" mechanic. And he says that one possible narration of a successful poison save is that the poison failed to be delivered because the stinger failed to penetrate the skin.

The only thing which fails to 100% unequivocally support the meat position is the part where Gygax describes what HP are supposed torepresent

<snip>

You could try to re-define every word in the game to mean something other than its actual definition, of course. You could say that "hit" and "damage" and "wounds" and "healing" are just metaphors for what is actually going on. But to what purpose? To satisfy your desire for realism? Because you can't stand to have a meaningful injury that doesn't cause a mechanical penalty, so you would prefer that you can never have a meaningful injury period? Because it makes no sense to heal that injury over a week or a month, and if it doesn't take months or years of rehabilitation then the model it entirely worthless?

It seems to me that the second half of this quote contradicts the first - namely, the lack of penalty for injury, and the lack of physiological plausible recovery times, does not provide unequivocal support for the view that hit points are "meat". I don't think it provides even equivocal support for that position. I think it is something that those who prefer hit points as meat either have to turn a blind eye to, or hand-wave away using such techniques as those you have indicated above - eg assuming that ordinary healing in the D&D world is somehow more magical than real life, or assuming that "non-heroic chumps" - ie the vast bulk of the gameworld population - never suffer injuries that are serious but not potentially fatal.

As to the purpose? In my case, the purpose is verisimilitude.

Dissatisfaction with hit points was one major factor that led me to drop AD&D as my FRPG system of choice and adopt Rolemaster instead. Combat in RM includes active defence and armour as damage reduction, so you don't get the two combined into a single AC score modified by both DEX and armour worn. Injury in RM is measured via two, sometimes overlapping, mechanics. There is bruising and blood loss, measured in terms of "concussion hits" taken. These are expressly "meat" - the skill for developing them is called Body Development - but no human-sized creature can have 10 or 100 times more of them than another, although training in Body Development will significantly improve your unconsciousness threshold. A low-level mage will typically have 70 or so concussion hits but fall unconscious if 10 or 20 are taken, whereas a maximally beefy warrior type will typically have 200 to 250 and will fall unconscious when 150 or so are taken. The other system for injury in RM involves debuffs, called "criticals", which take the form of specific injuries plus associated mechanical penalties. Defeats in RM often take the form of inflicting critical penalties rather than wearing down concussion hits.

4e showed me that hit points could be a viable combat mechanic when their "metaphysical", non-meaty nature is fully embraced: "healing" is mostly about reviving the spirits (via Inspiring, Healing or Majestic Word), hit point loss corresponds to set-backs, being winded etc rather than serious physical injury, and the game embraces the genre trope that the PCs typically do not suffer serious, debilitating wounds (rather than having it that they take such wounds but heal them at a rapid yet oddly inconsistent pace, with healing being slower for tougher characters). This also made it much easier to treat actual injuries suffered by NPCs in a narrative rather than mechanical fashion, without worrying about how much hit point loss from a blade trap corresponds to a severed wrist, or similar inane conundrums.

What I find "silly" is the idea that every single "hit" represents a real injury from a weapon, because that posits the idea that PCs are superheroes who never suffer any penalties from weapon damage, recover at a pace that is bizarrely fast but at the same time not really consistent, and all simply accumulate harder flesh as they gain more combat experience. It doesn't really make sense.

This is a good summary of what I think the purpose is of treating hit points as primarily metaphysical rather than physical, and for adopting the "flexible"/"mixed bag" approach that [MENTION=1757]ruleslawyer[/MENTION] has set out (following Gyagx).

What the idea of hp as mixed bag means is that a "hit" can represent a bit of wearing down, a bit of luck running out, a bit of distraction that leaves you more vulnerable to a subsequent attack, AND/OR a wound. Gygax made this clear 34 years ago and I don't see why it needs to be re-litigated.

I don't "have" to do anything. The precise point is that *I can narrate it any way I feel like.* The flexibility of hp is a feature, not a bug.

<snip>

120 hp on a huge red dragon means something a lot different from 120 hp on a halfling rogue. Likewise, 30 hp damage to that dragon likely "looks" different from 30 hp damage to the rogue.

<snip>

I can just use game speak and say "you're hit by five crossbow bolts; your character takes 34 damage." The nature of that damage can stay comfortably abstract. It's really simple; the only thing you "have to [] track" is hp. Everything else is flavor text.

I agree with this. And for me it was 4e that really made this clear to me, and shed practical light on the Gygaxian explanations that, in the past, had not assuaged my dissatisfaction with hit points as mechanic.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Further, can you please point out where it says that every single, individual HP MUST have some fraction of meat in it?

Can you point out where it doesn't? We're not trying to establish meat as the One True Way of viewing Hit Points. We're just saying that the position is as-consistent or more-so than the alternative.

If you view every HP as at least partially meat, then it can still be entirely consistent with every definition.