Schroedinger's Wounding (Forked Thread: Disappointed in 4e)

[Raven Crowking]

So having low hit points and not being as effective in combat doesn't define the badly-wounded state either.

See, this is why you have people saying they don't want to play 20 Questions with you.

There is a difference between low hit points as relates to your maximum hit points, and your maximum hit points being low. I suspect you know that, though. IMHO, ultimately, sophistry is unlikely to get anyone to agree with you who doesn't agree with you already, and seems like something that, were you not a moderator, would end with a moderator telling you to stop it.

YMMV, though.


RC

 

[Gort]

I don't understand the purpose of the argument here. D&D is a game in which characters have to survive hundreds upon hundreds of fights in order to reach their peak potential. If they get into five fights and get their limbs permanently disabled, the characters are screwed.

I don't think D&D can afford to realistically model damage or any recurring heroic characters become pretty much impossible, unless you make them so good that they never ever get hurt at all, in which case you eliminate all tense combat situations.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

So having low hit points and not being as effective in combat doesn't define the badly-wounded state either.

Low hps does not mean badly wounded and nor does a lack of spells.

So when is someone badly wounded in 3E? We can't say "3E allows for people to be badly wounded, but 4E does not" if we can't say when someone in 3E is badly wounded.

If the distinction between 3E natural healing mechanic and 4E natural healing mechanic is that the 3E character can be badly wounded and the 4E character cannot, then what is the mechanical definition of 'badly wounded'?

In 3E, in the negatives is good enough for me. They're going to have to stabilize, and slowly work their way back to consciousness and some form of health. In 4E with the RAW, the only time you seem to be enter a condition of "badly wounded" is if you die from it. As I said before though, I still don't think D&D has got the whole hitpoints/damage/healing thing right.

Yeah, I'm sticking with my answer from upthread. I have to be polite here and ask "what is your real question here"? What is the point you're trying to make?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I am afraid we are still running circles, because this has been said before.

I think these are the cruicial differences regarding hit points:
1)
Healing all damage and regaining all healing surges per day means that most concern for "operational" play or sandboxes is gone. Even if healing time and rules have always been unrealistic, this affects the play style the strongest. I am not sure how people dealt with Cure Light Wound Wands, though, since they mostly had the same effect on play. Of course, that is just an artifact of 3E and didn't exist before, as far as I know.

I agree, with your analysis but I suppose that my problem is that I have a hard time going along with the idea that taking a sword thrust through the body can be cured with a week of bed rest, and limited medical care and this adds versimilitude, when it should take longer and your survival would be a matter of considerable doubt.

The only thing I'd like to point out: Once you have Clerics with healing spell in the mix, it is not unlikely (and I think that is even true before 3E) that you can recover all damage in one day by blowing all healing spells on the injured characters. I am still not convinced that a difference of 16 hours in rest period is that relevant to play. Unless magical healing was in fact removed from game, short healing times will be part of the game.

agreed

2)
Since you do no longer need any magical regenration abilities to regain hit points, hit points become more abstract or imprecise. Either you assume wounds regenerate incredibly fast (few would do that), or you assume that characters can be at full hit points and yet be injured (only thanks to a heightened moral and soldiering on they managed to ignore the pain), or that real injuries are only ever taken if a character died. The latter means you have a state where you don't know if there was a serious wound or a superficial wound until the dying character is stabilized or dies.
In both the later cases you have to accept that the rules do not describe the characters status entirely, they really only describe his fighting ability, not whether he looks or is injured or not.

Where do people disagree on these observations? (avoiding to tell me that this is a terrible thing to do to the game or to tell me that this is the greatest invention ever.)

'Realism' (I do deslike versimilitude, its such a pain) would dictate that most characters would die in a ditch of some random fever they picked up wandering about Not much fun, I'll admit so we ignore that stuff and for a similar reason, I ignore the possiblility of serious wounds to a character because that would take them out of the adventure. Though if i was running a more political campaign then i might keep it in.

I agree that the rules only cover fighting ability and have little to say on wounds. I would add that if you have wounds and are full fightining ability then the wounds are not that bad.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

See, this is why you have people saying they don't want to play 20 Questions with you.

Not me. I've found Hypersmurf to be an incredibly intelligent poster who has changed my mind on several other things, based upon his arguments, discussion and careful questioning. However, on this one my mind is not changing and nor do I find his smurfiness's arguments cogent - which is starting to make me feel awkward. It makes me feel like either I'm on a different planet or that Hypersmurf is losing his touch (both poor conclusions from my perspective).

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Raven Crowking]

Not me. I've found Hypersmurf to be an incredibly intelligent poster who has changed my mind on several other things, based upon his arguments, discussion and careful questioning. However, on this one my mind is not changing and nor do I find his smurfiness's arguments cogent - which is starting to make me feel awkward. It makes me feel like either I'm on a different planet or that Hypersmurf is losing his touch (both poor conclusions from my perspective).

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I know what you mean by this, and I would say that, previously, I have not found Hypersmurf's posting to be.....well, as I am finding it now. Certainly, prior to the last two months, I have never found cause to suggest that an EN World moderator might need moderation.

And I am very much hoping that I will not find it so in the future.


RC

 

[Hypersmurf]

In 3E, in the negatives is good enough for me. They're going to have to stabilize, and slowly work their way back to consciousness and some form of health.

So our 80 hit point fighter goes to 1 hit point, and takes 8 days of rest to recover full hit points.

Or he goes to -1, stabilises, recovers, and takes 9 days of rest to recover full hit points.

Our 2nd level wizard with 7 hit points goes to -1, and his buddy bandages him up and puts him to bed; he's back to max in 24 hours.

If we take negatives to be our benchmark of 'badly wounded', then we have someone who was not badly wounded taking 8 days to recover peak condition, while someone who was badly wounded can be there in one day with some non-magical attention.

In 4E, an unaided character who goes negative will likely die. In 3E, an unaided character who goes negative will likely die.

In 3E, a character who goes negative and is then aided will gain back a significant fraction of his hit points in 24 hours. In 4E, a character who goes negative and then takes an extended rest will gain back all of his hit points overnight. If we assume that extended rest activities for wounded characters cover the same sort of ground in both editions - someone bandages your wounds, etc - is there a significant difference?

-Hyp.

 

[Raven Crowking]

A 2nd level character, without the benefit of spells or magic, who drops to -6 in 3e will, at best, be at -2 the next day (2 hp, +2 hp for medial aid, although that should require a day of bed rest, so the DM is being kind not to leave the bloke at -4). The next day, he can recover a maximum of 8 hit points, bringing him to 6 (or 4, without a kind DM). The day after, he might be ready to adventure again.

A 2nd level character, without the benefit of spells or magic, in 4e can surpass the 2nd-day healing of the 3e character without having an extended rest, and can be fully healed following an extended rest.

Big difference? Yes.

In 3e, a high enough level party can have a wizard teleport them just about anywhere. If the game system then assumed that a fighter of that level ought to be able to teleport himself just about anywhere, 'cause, y'know, he could do it if a wizard were there, and this ability is also not magical, it wouldn't make any more -- or less -- sense then the same claim re: healing.


RC

 

[Hypersmurf]

A 2nd level character, without the benefit of spells or magic, who drops to -6 in 3e will, at best, be at -2 the next day (2 hp, +2 hp for medial aid, although that should require a day of bed rest, so the DM is being kind not to leave the bloke at -4).

With a day of bed rest, he'd recover 8; 2 per level, doubled with assistance.

-Hyp.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

So our 80 hit point fighter goes to 1 hit point, and takes 8 days of rest to recover full hit points.

Or he goes to -1, stabilises, recovers, and takes 9 days of rest to recover full hit points.

This is the difficulty of combining physical health and skill, inner power, luck, resolve into the one stat. However in both cases, the character takes a while to get back to their best, but for different reasons.

One has the character up and about but at a point where another hit could kill them. It takes a while for the character to get back to their skilful best. Sure they've taken some bumps and bruises but not enough to force them into unconciousness. For whatever reason though, they're out of luck, don't have as much will power, are fatigued enough to not be able to defend themselves as well as previously; to turn serious blows into lesser ones.

The other has the character attacked and injured into unconsciousness (into the negatives). The 9 days to recover this time is attributed moreso to the injury inflicted.

Our 2nd level wizard with 7 hit points goes to -1, and his buddy bandages him up and puts him to bed; he's back to max in 24 hours.

And here is the crux of the argument. 3E's natural healing mechanic where healing is based upon level is not a realistic one. You could further exacerbate this by having the fighter have a hale constitution (large positive modifier) and the wizard a poor consititution (negative modifier). In this case, the fighter would take even longer to heal naturally, whilst the sickly 2nd level wizard will take even less resources to fully "heal".

So, in terms of the wizard, the 3E natural healing mechanic produces a different frame of reference. Since a wizard can retain their health quickly (4 days in your example if healing without assistance and with all rolls going their way), you would be more inclined to say that a blow that puts them into the small negatives was not serious, while any sort of serious blow will more than likely kill them. Even at -9 and stable, your wizard will only take an extra day to naturally heal (with full assistance - that is first aid and long-term care). And this is the other factor that makes 3E natural healing unrealistic, that such assistance could speed up healing (or return of health) so dramatically.

However, what happens when not receiving assistance? Whilst in the negatives, our wizard has to make repeated stabilizing efforts (10% every hour) or lose a further hit point (and thus get progressively worse). Perhaps then with the wizard, a blow that gets them into the small negatives is not that bad taking into account how little "healing" is required to get them back to their best. However, if in the deep negatives and with a lack of increase in hit points (in fact the character will more than likely go backwards), I think it fair enough to then say the wizard was significantly wounded. However, I think you do have a case for saying that a wizard who is badly injured, is badly injured because they're about to die from those injuries as in 4E. For low hit point characters, their exact situation and what can be considered "badly wounded" is different to high hit point characters. So fair enough, there is more to it than just being in the negatives.

If we take negatives to be our benchmark of 'badly wounded', then we have someone who was not badly wounded taking 8 days to recover peak condition, while someone who was badly wounded can be there in one day with some non-magical attention.

Yes. It makes you then say that the wizard could not have been that badly injured. There is more to it than just being in the negatives. It is also within the context of time taken to return to full health.

In 4E, an unaided character who goes negative will likely die. In 3E, an unaided character who goes negative will likely die.

More than likely true.

In 3E, a character who goes negative and is then aided will gain back a significant fraction of his hit points in 24 hours.

This requires both first aid and long term care, something the rest of the party may not be guaranteed of providing.

In 4E, a character who goes negative and then takes an extended rest will gain back all of his hit points overnight. If we assume that extended rest activities for wounded characters cover the same sort of ground in both editions - someone bandages your wounds, etc - is there a significant difference?

Now, the first aid and long term care is assumed to be automatic and successful. In 3E, only a fraction of the hit points were regained. The significance of this fraction is dependent upon how successful the healer was and that the injured character is able to get full bed rest. In 4E this is assumed to be automatic and successful. So yes there is a difference here.

However, there is a further and more dominant factor here that while not explicit in the rules, is implicit within the context of general gameplay. In the majority of cases in 3E, magical healing is both accessible and often used. This is to the point where I cannot specifically remember a time in a 3.x game I have played where if a character was forced into the negatives, someone did not come along with a magical potion, spell or wand to "save" the character. Because of this, a DM could describe some truly horrible injuries, safe in the knowledge that magical healing was on the way and that the plausability factor of the event would not be undermined (if anything, the horrid injury description would hasten the other PCs to assist).

In 4E though, magical healing is nowhere near as pervasive as it was in 3E. Natural healing is the most common form of healing in 4E. As such, moderation is required in description less the plausibility of the description be undermined. Describe what you want but if it is more than what a PC can recover from whilst returning to unhindered performance in a short space of time, then there will be a disconnect between your description and what is reasonable. As such, in 4E you can never validly describe a character as badly wounded, unless they then die from the injuries (but not until they die).

All told, there is a significant difference between the editions. However, I think it is also fair to say that neither edition deals with hit points/damage/healing very well. There are lots of anomalies that are easy enough to find. The only way to fix these is to separate hit points into its constituent parts, so you can separately track a characters health, and their skill, luck, divinity, inner power, ability to turn blows and more. See my thread on a hit point solution if you're interested.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise