Schrodinger's HP and Combat

[GMforPowergamers]

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?

Actually, you're absolutely required to play with Schrodinger's HP and Combat.

If I lose HP's in a battle no one can explain what happened to cause my HP loss until we know the source of HP recovery. If I recover HP's by drinking a Potion of Healing or by having a Cleric cast Cure Wounds, then I could only have been hit and I could only have been wounded because Healing and Wounds are the direct products of physical injury. If I recover HP's by a Warlord talking to me, then I can only be fatigued, I cannot be wounded, because talking doesn't heal wounds but it might give someone an adrenalin flow to let them recover from fatigue.

Your example written in a system where the Warlord is present:
System Egnotsic example:
Player 1: I hit a 18
DM: You cleave through the shield and land a glancing blow on the Orc's shoulder.
DM: I hit a 23
Player: Yea, that's almost 10 over my AC...
DM: He swings his war hammer at you and something happens causing you to lose...10 HP!
Player: What do you mean? What happened?
DM: Well, either he hit you and wounded you or you dodged out of the way and became fatigued. We won't know which until we determine how you recover the HP, because the methods of HP recovery all are either wounds or fatigue but never both. After the battle when you recover the HP ask me what happened and I'll tell you if you were hit or if you dodged.

 

[Lindeloef]

Nope never played like that. Never even thought about doing it that way. Is this possibility of play even mentioned in any of the books?

 

[innerdude]

To a degree, this is a straw man with D&D of any flavor, simply because the nature of hit points is nebulous in pretty much every edition. 4th Edition is different from predecessors in that there is non-magical / non-"natural" healing due to surges, warlord powers, etc.

But is any other edition really any better, with the whole "Hey, I have ONE MEASLY HIT POINT LEFT, BUT IT'S OKAY.....I'M GOOD"?

That said, there is a certain logic to the quote you posted in the OP. When a character takes HP damage, what really did happen? Was he hurt? How badly? Badly enough that a warlord offering encouragement isn't going to increase combat capacity? Or only semi-hurt / bruised / battered, but still able function on a level where non-physical / non-magical "healing" will make a difference?

However, the real question is, even if this Rygar fellow is right......who cares? Does it have any material effect on how you run or play the game? Is there some essence of realism or verisimilitude or fun you're missing by implementing, or not implementing Schrodinger's Hit Points? Because if it's a realism / verisimilitude issue . . . then uh, why 4e in the first place? One would think that the choice to run and / or play 4e is a natural acceptance of 4e's inherent strengths and weaknesses, and realism / verisimilitude isn't generally considered a strength of the ruleset (I'm sure more conscientious 4e GM's like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] might disagree, but I'll defer to them to offer an opinion if they so desire). On the whole, though, I can't imagine what possible reason there would be to use Schrodinger's Hit Points playing any variety of D&D, other than to try and make sense of what hit points are in some kind of "rational" sense. Otherwise, don't worry about it and play on.

Bottom line: hit points in D&D by their very nature are nebulous---in definition, use, game impact, "verisimilitude," and whatever else.

And just for the record, I have absolutely ZERO "skin in the game" with D&D these days. I've completely dropped 3e / PF as a system I'll GM, have played exactly 3 sessions of 4e in my entire life, and haven't looked at D&D 5e since the November 2013 playtest, and have never run or played a single game with it.

 

[Bluenose]

The only time I ever hear people describing hit point loss as physical injury (at least when we play D&D) is when they're doing it to parody someone who's insisted hit point loss always means physical injuries. At which point they're still merrily swinging two-handed swords after having both their arms cut off. Not something I do, "You lose five hit points," Being the description I provide.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The only time I ever hear people describing hit point loss as physical injury (at least when we play D&D) is when they're doing it to parody someone who's insisted hit point loss always means physical injuries. At which point they're still merrily swinging two-handed swords after having both their arms cut off. Not something I do, "You lose five hit points," Being the description I provide.

I always described hit point loss as physical injury, up until 4E. You could be impaled for 47 damage on a critical hit, and power through it if you were heroic enough. (Think Brock Samson, not the Black Knight.)

When 4E came along, I actually did describe it as the OP suggests, because I was stuck on the idea that Cure Wounds must actually repair physical injury and full HP corresponded to no signs of injury. I dropped 4E after six months, in part because I couldn't get the narrative to jive in any meaningful way. I went back to playing Pathfinder, mostly because it made sense to me.

With 5E, I'm finally going along with the concept that 4E had suggested all along - that no amount of HP loss could possibly correspond to lasting injury. Everything is just "soft" damage, like a boxer recovering from a bout. It changes the way I narrate in a significant way, but at least it's consistent. (In part, this is thanks to the Lingering Wounds option, which makes it possible for a sword to inflict an injury that won't just heal overnight.)

 

[Jan van Leyden]

HP were, are, and forever will be a gamist construct with a dubious connection to fictional reality. Therefore, I don't elaborate on the nature of loss. Schrödinger's HP are a cute way to describe this.

For me it's alltogether possible not to 'know' what exactly happened when you are hit. Sword cut to the arm? Your body experiences an adrenalin surge and you keep on fighting until combat is over, your adrenalin level goes back and you can take stock of your situation.

This doesn't cover things like loss of a limb, but where in D&D's history has this been accounted for? I never heard of a DM who told you "great, the orc hits you for max damage with his battleaxe, so he chops off your right leg". If you want to pseudo-realistically describe the effect of each hit, you should be prepared to go so far, and introduce game changing effects as well.

Or is the lowly orc unable to chop off a limb with his axe? The I pity the poor executioner's whose workload increases so much...

 

[delericho]

in a 5e thread I have been told I have been playing 4e wrong...

I've run virtually no 4e, and played very little, but I wouldn't pay much notice of being told you're "absolutely required" to run it any specific way. If something works for you, go for it.

(my fav edition so far) because I describe hits, misses, and HP the same way I did in 2e and 3e...

I've always taken the view that an attack that does even 1hp of damage entails some amount of physical damage (as well as some amount of luck, and fatigue, and divine favour, and...), but that greater amounts of hit point damage, both as a raw number and as a percentage, doesn't necessarily mean a greater amount of physical damage. So a 'hit' with a sword means at least some bruising, whether it does 1hp or 25hp damage.

As a consequence, I've described in terms of 'hits' and 'misses', but have tried always to go for "plausible deniability" - maybe it turns out the hit wasn't as bad as previously feared, or adrenaline sees the character through, or whatever. I deliberately stay away from describing specific injuries (to PCs) for anything short of a killing blow.

This model does run into some difficulties with 4e Warlocks, because such characters do seem to have the ability to heal someone from the point of death, or even to maximum hit points, using nothing but words. But my view there is that there is something magical, or at least supernatural, about such characters doing such things. Tagging it 'martial' doesn't change that - since such characters can do things that are outright impossible, why not this?

YMMV, of course. I'm just describing what works for me.

 

[delericho]

Oh, and as regards specific injuries: these are better modelled using conditions anyway, given that they should by rights have effects beyond simply "you have fewer hit points". Mearls' "The Book of Iron Might" is pretty useful here, though of course that's for 3e.

 

[Trum]

While running 4E I always treat all damage before "bloodied" as superficial blows, exhaustion, demoralization and overall battle fatigue. Only after "bloodied" hit's become wounds, hence the name.
This way "second winds" before B are exactly, what it says on the label - catching a breath, trying to concentrate on battle at shake away any distractions. Second Wind after B - you are trying to close your wounds by crude, but fast and effective ways, like binding them with a piece of your clothes, removing foreign objects from them or forcing your joints back in place.
Healing potions before B? No problem - healing magic clears your mind and bolsters your spirit. Same with other methods of healing.

 

[Manbearcat]

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?

To a degree, this is a straw man with D&D of any flavor, simply because the nature of hit points is nebulous in pretty much every edition. 4th Edition is different from predecessors in that there is non-magical / non-"natural" healing due to surges, warlord powers, etc.

But is any other edition really any better, with the whole "Hey, I have ONE MEASLY HIT POINT LEFT, BUT IT'S OKAY.....I'M GOOD"?

I agree with Innerdude's words here. Let me also say GMforPowergamers that when folks are quoting like 3 out of 4 folks don't care about the changes from 4e to 5e or 4e was this terrible aberration "because anecdote", understand that this is just edition warrior nonsense. Unfortunately, there are a large number of extremely thoughtful 4e advocates who just flat out don't post here much at all (or at all) anymore. Its a shame as its created something of an echo chamber and lots of utterly erroneous stuff and a edition warrior salvos really mostly go unchallenged now. I couldn't care less anymore personally so you don't see me posting much in response to those things.

To your point:

To whatever degree you, me, or anyone else have decided that a singular instance of hit point loss is % meat, there is verifiably no consequence to the actor, within the fiction, who sustained said loss. Therefore, Hit Points have never been any consequential percentage of meat. They have been, and still are, an artefact of a war-gaming chassis which merrily serves its ends:

1) Play procedure expedience at the table

2) Narrative malleability

Depending on whatever other abstractions (eg armor class mesh of avoidance and mitigation, action economy in n seconds) that are layered upon and interface directly with the nebulous ablation system of HP, you are going to have a system that renders incoherent any arbitrarily chosen instance of HP loss as consequentially meat.

Conversely, impose a death spiral/injury mechanic (*) upon the system and remove those abstractions (eg break out AC into mitigation and avoidance), and you're approaching territory where "any arbitrarily chosen instance of HP loss as consequentially meat" becomes more tenable.

But again, if you're going to go that far, you will have likely eschewed HP already because 1 and 2 above are not top-level play priorities for you. (1) Play procedure expedience becomes subordinate to process-simulation mechanics which, by their nature are less expedient but offer something else in return. Further, (2) narrative malleability is anathema to your play agenda because you want "I attack with my sword, hit, and cause damage" to always and only mean "dude 1 strikes 1 time with weapon and cleaves/smashes/stabs musculoskeletal system (and possibly organs) of dude 2 and causes physical harm to dude 2."

That is enough for now. I'll try to post more later with specific play examples and talk specifically about 4e's machinery and genre expectations.


* Amusingly enough, 4e is the first D&D system to come stock with a perfectly synthesized mechanic that makes handling of lasting, consequential injury a seamless thing - the Disease Track.