Schrodinger's HP and Combat

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't understand how inspirational healing or second wind would get in the way of this: second wind equates to using your action to summon up your heroic fortitude, and inspiration equate to someone else bringing out your inner heroism via encouragement, benediction etc.

The problem that I had was that the damage was still on your character sheet. If HP loss = physical injury, then no HP loss = no physical injury, but a dude who was impaled (taken down to 3/50) and then inspired (brought back up to 50/50) would still have a 47-point hole in his chest in spite of being at full HP.

That's why, if you want a consistent model (which is important to me, but not necessarily a lot of other people), I always thought that a better way of representing heroic inspiration to keep fighting would be with temporary HP. With temporary HP, you could be brought down to 3/50, and then gain 47 tHP to keep you in the fight, but the actual physical wound (and corresponding HP deficit) are still there. And if you lost those tHP, then that doesn't correspond to a physical wound, because it's not real HP loss. (So it prevents the problem where you repeatedly drain someone of meat points and fill them back up with inspiration points, even after the body has taken 9000 HP damage over the course of a week.)

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Gygax explains hit points very thoroughly and clearly in the 1e DMG. I have no idea where this myth that hit points don't have an explanation comes from.

If Old Geezer of RPGnet, who played at Gygax's table, is to be believed, it wasn't a myth at the beginning. Gygax only came up with his explanations for hit points after fans kept asking him what they meant. When hit points were originally implemented, they were just a means to pace the party's trek through a dungeon, and build tension. It didn't occur to Gygax that a game device like hit points needed an explanation, and so that was the beginning and end of them back then.

You're free to put however much stock in this third-hand account as you will.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

in a 5e thread I have been told I have been playing 4e wrong (my fav edition so far) because I describe hits, misses, and HP the same way I did in 2e and 3e... I have been told it is schridinger's HP until you get healed... is there any 4e players who actually run like this?

Lol, edition warriors gonna hate!

It's funny; despite popular perception, I find hit points and 4e in general much easier to refluff into something resembling a 'real' fantasy world than any other edition. But hey, what do I know? I'm just a 4e fan. One of these days I'm bound to realize that I too have been playing it wrong by role playing too much.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

in a 5e thread I have been told I have been playing 4e wrong (my fav edition so far) because I describe hits, misses, and HP the same way I did in 2e and 3e... I have been told it is schridinger's HP until you get healed... is there any 4e players who actually run like this?

They're engaging in a hyperbolic argument that completely excludes the vast middle ground. People describe their wounds, the orc cuts you with his axe, and then the warlord heals you with Inspiring Word, so what? Bruce Willis, Indiana Jones, and a dozen other characters ran around with a rag tied around some dire-looking wound which they recovered from completely after getting 'pumped up' by whatever inspiration to go on and do one more round with the BBEG. Its not "Schroedinger's Hit Points", its just that there never was a whole lot of realism there, not even in OD&D. Hit points don't measure 'wounds' or anything else like that, they measure how close you are to defeat. A pumped up Indiana Jones with a bandaged rib is no closer to defeat than a well-rested one without a scratch. There simple isn't a linear additive set of factors that sum up to a hit point total, never was, never will be.

 

[LostSoul]

The problem that I had was that the damage was still on your character sheet. If HP loss = physical injury, then no HP loss = no physical injury, but a dude who was impaled (taken down to 3/50) and then inspired (brought back up to 50/50) would still have a 47-point hole in his chest in spite of being at full HP.

That's why, if you want a consistent model (which is important to me, but not necessarily a lot of other people), I always thought that a better way of representing heroic inspiration to keep fighting would be with temporary HP. With temporary HP, you could be brought down to 3/50, and then gain 47 tHP to keep you in the fight, but the actual physical wound (and corresponding HP deficit) are still there. And if you lost those tHP, then that doesn't correspond to a physical wound, because it's not real HP loss. (So it prevents the problem where you repeatedly drain someone of meat points and fill them back up with inspiration points, even after the body has taken 9000 HP damage over the course of a week.)

I don't see why that 47-point hole in the chest is anything more than a scratch or a bruise. That scratch or bruise can still be there when you're at full HP - it's not like it slowed you down when you were at 3 HP, and it's not causing a problem when you're back at your full, 50 HP total.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On a slightly related point, the quote from Gygax on poison saves shows how different AD&D saving throws are from 3E and 5e saving throws. In AD&D, the poison save is essentially a luck roll, perhaps with a hint of skill thrown in: it determines whether or not the hit point loss corresponded to a scratch or wound through which poison entered, or the mere lose of "metaphysical" hit points. A successful saving throw means that the character wasn't poisoned.

This is completely different from the Fortitude save in 3E, which is all about the ability to withstand being poisoned, not to avoid being poisoned. The only rules elements in AD&D that resemble that are the bonus to poison saves from CON (which dwarves and halflings get automatically, and which all characters gets at CON 19+).

The original D&D saving throw was EXACTLY that, a last ditch chance to avoid some terrible fate which had just befallen your character. You foolishly decided to open the chest and you set off the trap. By rights you're dead at that point, however, Mr Gygax is a sport, he pulls out this little chart and says "If you can roll 14+ on your d20 I'll give you back your character sheet!" Its as simple as that, just a sporting chance to get back into the game without needing to go back to level 1 and start another character. It was never intended to 'mean' anything or have any specific logic. Presumably even Gary put some narrative to the results of making a save "OK, you managed to hold your breath long enough to get clear of the cloud of poison gas!" or whatever, but it wasn't a mechanic that rested on some sort of specific game logic. The mention of the scratch in the poison section is simply an example of such narrative, and one which ironically shows just how malleable Gygaxian hit points were.

And yes, its true, FORT in 3e was entirely different and it set the stage for 4e's move to defenses. Nor does 5e have a classical notion of saves either, they are just defenses reverted to a confusing defender rolls mechanic. Part of 3e's problem is that it removed the modest Gygaxian plot armor of the save-as-second-chance but didn't put anything in its place. Where in say 1e a high level PC is not so much subject to insta-gank because of high saves in 3e high level play is the opposite, if you get to the save part you're already toast. 4e (and to a large degree 5e as well) put alternative forms of plot armor in place so the job that was classically done by saves is now in 4e done pretty much by hit points, hence the "only die at negative bloodied or 3 death save fails" rules (and here of course we see the only vestigial survival of the old save in 4e, the death save).

 

[dream66_]

I understand he got the whole ball rolling, but I don't know why Gygax's opinion on the definition of hit points mean anything in 2015, the rules are VERY VERY different now they don't have to have the same definition.

Me, I prefer for the game to feel like an action movie. So HP as being physical damage don't make sense to me, and hurt my enjoyment of the game. I want inspirational healing.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't see why that 47-point hole in the chest is anything more than a scratch or a bruise. That scratch or bruise can still be there when you're at full HP - it's not like it slowed you down when you were at 3 HP, and it's not causing a problem when you're back at your full, 50 HP total.

And that was my ultimate solution for 5E, was to accept the idea that no amount of HP loss can possibly correspond to any sort of meaningful wound. (The Lingering Wounds option really helps here.) My problem was that I was trying to carry over my old AD&D expectations of what it meant to be hit, based on how many weeks it would take to recover, and the necessity of a Cure Wounds spell to actually cure actual wounds, and all of those other things. Trying to reconcile that with overnight full heals and inspiration, I was left with Schrodinger's Hit Points.

Taken on its own, 4E is mostly consistent about what HP represent, at least as far as PCs are concerned. It may not be a terribly satisfying choice, for a lot of people, but that's just a matter of taste.

It also gives no guidelines for what HP mean for anyone else - if an ankylosaur (or dragon) has a ton of HP because it can actually sustain a lot of physical wounds before dropping, then we don't know how fast those HP might be recovered or how that interacts with inspiration (because it's unlikely to ever come up, so the rules weren't designed to cover that sort of situation).

 

[billd91]

On a slightly related point, the quote from Gygax on poison saves shows how different AD&D saving throws are from 3E and 5e saving throws. In AD&D, the poison save is essentially a luck roll, perhaps with a hint of skill thrown in: it determines whether or not the hit point loss corresponded to a scratch or wound through which poison entered, or the mere lose of "metaphysical" hit points. A successful saving throw means that the character wasn't poisoned.

This is completely different from the Fortitude save in 3E, which is all about the ability to withstand being poisoned, not to avoid being poisoned. The only rules elements in AD&D that resemble that are the bonus to poison saves from CON (which dwarves and halflings get automatically, and which all characters gets at CON 19+).

The only resembling rule element? That's pretty much the 3e poison save right there. AD&D's saves may have left the group a lot more leeway to interpret a successful save in many creative ways, but drawing some bright line of difference between 3e saves when the main core of the 3e saves is right there? The similarity is even more apparent with the Wisdom bonus for saves against enchantments and charms - it's essentially the template for the Will save.

3e saves do depart from AD&D saves. But the most far-reaching element of that departure is in terms of setting the Save DC, not the saves themselves.

 

[Bluenose]

3e saves do depart from AD&D saves. But the most far-reaching element of that departure is in terms of setting the Save DC, not the saves themselves.

I think it's worth noting that the amount those saves improve is generally lower in 3e than it is in earlier editions as well. For the warrior types, it's universally a smaller increase - the worst AD&D save improves by 11 points from 1st to 17th level, compared to the best 3e one improving being 10 points higher at 20th level. That those are made in 3e against save DCs that increase exacerbates the situation.