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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragoslav" data-source="post: 5957926" data-attributes="member: 6690267">I read every post but still don't understand the intrinsic link between being able to knock an ooze prone and FitM. The ooze problem seemed more like a strawman argument. You can have a system based on FitM without letting players knock an ooze prone. You can knock an ooze prone in 4e, but you can't intimidate a golem or use a power with the "rattling" (fear-based) keyword on a zombie. All you have to do is go into every entry of an ooze monster and add this: "Ooze: Monsters in this category cannot suffer from the Prone condition."Furthermore, the Warlord's inspirational healing doesn't necessarily entail FitM, either, and I never really saw it that way until I learned about "fortune in the middle" on here. Let's say that a character is at half of his HP: By the definition of HP that D&D has carried from the beginning, this character has suffered some cuts and bruises and is getting physically exhausted from the combat. So then one of two things happens: either a cleric uses a healing spell on him, or a warlord uses Inspiring Word. Either way, the wounded character gains HP, but you don't have to retroactively change the type of wounding that the character had suffered. If he got a healing spell, then his cuts close up, and his muscles don't feel strained anymore; if he got the inspirational command, he's still cut up, but he pushes through it and fights like everything's just fine.Really, the problem with HP and HP recovery isn't FitM. It's DMs who insist on narrating hits as being more lethal than they should be narrated. "Does a 23 hit your AC? Yes? Okay, *rolls*, he, uh, stabs you in the gut and does 17 damage." Then Mr. Warlord says something peppy and restores 20 HP to that character. "Wait a minute, how does an inspiring speech change the fact that my entrails are hanging out? I HATE 4TH EDITION!"ANYWAY, me, personally, I like fortune in the middle. It allows you a lot more narrative freedom. We had a recent situation in our last session that cemented this for me: My character went below 0 HP and was, incidentally, taking ongoing damage from a Beholder's disintegration ray. He saved against the damage eventually but died from 3 failed saving throws, and after the battle I narrated that the disintegration had burned away flesh from his bones (don't worry, an archfey healed him and brought him back to life, so he's alive now). However, if I had rolled a 20 on my last death save, healing and getting back into the fight, I couldn't have said that, because I'm not a doctor, but you can't function with your skin and muscle being burned off of your body, you know? I would have said, "The disintegration ray was excruciatingly painful, but after heroically shrugging it off I get back into the fight to save my friends."If you don't want FitM, you have to have explicit rules to explain what is happening, narratively, when a character is below 0 HP. As a result, you have to have either one of two things: 1) a dying character who takes damage isn't actually taking any serious physical damage, and will either be able to get back up and function normally at a later point in time or will pass away quietly; or 2) a dying character who takes damage is physically mangled and will never be able to function normally again even if stabilized, so they either pass away quietly over time or are ripped to shreds and die violently. So you have to pick between being able to have heroic death scenes or being able to survive after going below 0. You can't have both without FitM. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't have a problem with making that choice, but me, like I said, I prefer the narrative freedom of FitM.</blockquote>

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