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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5688152" data-attributes="member: 58197">Because D&amp;D is inconsistent on this question.Before 4E, there was always a &quot;Hit Points Are Not Physical Toughness Paragraph,&quot; claiming hit points are a mixture of skill and luck and yadda yadda yadda. And then the entire rest of the rulebook treated hit points as if they represented physical toughness and nothing but. All of the terminology, spell names, and sub-mechanics (poison, falling damage, etc.) reinforced the &quot;physical toughness&quot; concept. When the rules pound into you, game after game, that hit points = physical toughness, it's pretty easy to forget that one unsupported paragraph claiming otherwise.4E was the first edition to take that paragraph seriously and integrate it into the rest of the rules. That was a major whack upside the head for people who'd gotten used to more or less ignoring it. And to make things worse, 4E kept the old terminology (&quot;healing surge,&quot; &quot;healing word,&quot; &quot;cure light wounds,&quot; &quot;damage,&quot; et cetera), so now the names are fighting the rules.It's a perfect example of why flavor (I refuse to call it &quot;fluff&quot;) is important. It really does matter what you call stuff and how you justify it in the game world, because without flavor, all you've got is a fairly crappy board game. 4E forgot about that and it's the source of many of my beefs with the system.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 5688152, member: 58197"] Because D&D is inconsistent on this question. Before 4E, there was always a "Hit Points Are Not Physical Toughness Paragraph," claiming hit points are a mixture of skill and luck and yadda yadda yadda. And then the [I]entire rest of the rulebook[/I] treated hit points as if they represented physical toughness and nothing but. All of the terminology, spell names, and sub-mechanics (poison, falling damage, etc.) reinforced the "physical toughness" concept. When the rules pound into you, game after game, that hit points = physical toughness, it's pretty easy to forget that one unsupported paragraph claiming otherwise. 4E was the first edition to take that paragraph seriously and integrate it into the rest of the rules. That was a major whack upside the head for people who'd gotten used to more or less ignoring it. And to make things worse, 4E kept the old terminology ("healing surge," "healing word," "cure light wounds," "damage," et cetera), so now the names are fighting the rules. It's a perfect example of why flavor (I refuse to call it "fluff") is important. It [I]really does matter[/I] what you call stuff and how you justify it in the game world, because without flavor, all you've got is a fairly crappy board game. 4E forgot about that and it's the source of many of my beefs with the system. [/QUOTE]

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