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

[UngainlyTitan]

It's an issue if you assume that a decrease in hit points of X, followed by an increase in hit points of X, returns the character to the identical cinematic state he was in prior to the two events.

In Doom, your health is expressed as a percentage... and there's a little picture of your face at the bottom of the screen. At 100%, you look fine. At 50%, you show some a bloodied nose. At 20%, there's more blood, and one eye is blackened and swollen. (Numbers are vague and approximate!)

If you pick up a health pack and go from 20% to 50%, some blood disappears, and your eye unblackens and unswells. When you go from 50%, to 20%, to 50% again, your cinematic representation is identical before and after the -30, +30 sequence. If 30% damage meant "More blood, black eye", then 30% healing means "Heal the eye, wipe some blood".

If you treat 4E hit points the same way - "I said that when he lost 6 hit points, that was a shallow slice along his ribs, and when he lost 12 hit points, it was a club to his face that broke his nose" - then healing must reverse the cinematic effects of damage. When you heal him 12 hit points, his nose becomes unbroken. When you heal him another six, the gash along his ribs disappears.

And this is where Quantum Wounding appears.

But if you don't require an increase in hit points to cinematically reverse exactly the effects of the decrease in hit points, Quantum Wounding doesn't occur. If 6 damage can be a slice in the ribs, but then 6 points of healing can represent a reinvigoration of fighting effort? Then after the cycle, you are not returned to an identical cinematic state (you still have a slice in your ribs, but it's not impairing you); thus it's not necessary for you to know the form of the healing before cementing the form of the damage.

It's only when you assume that healing reverses not only the hit point loss, but exactly reverses the cinematic description of the effect of the hit point loss, that Quantum Wounding rears up.

So I don't make that assumption, and it's not a problem.

-Hyp.

I would like to add that the expended healing surges repersent the original cut, brakes and nicks that are still there but not bothering you that much.

Would it help to consider healing surges returning at a rate per day that all returned after a nights rest.

 

[Kishin]

And utterly convincing that 4E is not a game I would want to touch with a 10-foot pole. I literally flinched when I read that.

I like how you offered no further elucidation here as to why you thumbed your nose and harrumphed at someone taking a vagary and being creative with it.

The view from your pedestal must be pretty nice indeed.

If you're like most people, the answer is, "All the time, multiple times per day. Magic healing happens continuously."

Which is fine and all, but I don't think its compatible with "low fantasy."

QFT. It isn't. At all. If it were low fantasy, you'd be relying on heal checks and bedrest.

 

[GlaziusF]

What it means is that the nature of the original hitpoint damage (i.e. actual wounds vs. fatigue vs. morale) sustained by a character cannot be determined until those hitpoints are recovered by a character. It is the source of the hitpoint recovery that determines the original nature of the damage sustained.

For example, if a character suffers damage in combat, and then is healed by the Warlord's Inspiring Word ability, then the damage in question was fatigue or morale damage. Not wound damage, since words of encouragement cannot heal physical wounds.

Therefore if the DM had described that damage as wound damage when it occured, the DM would be proven wrong if the PC is then healed by an ability such as Inspiring Word.

Aaaand your theory collapses, because all a player has to do is not describe damage as wound damage if an inspiring word couldn't motivate him, a la the paladin of Juste, to heal physical wounds.

Can you fall unconscious without deep physical wounds? Fifty million gut punches say "yes".

There's nothing in the game that necessitates describing damage as physical wounds beyond the ability of your character to tend to in the six seconds it takes to pop a second wind and get above bloodied.

 

[CleverNickName]

Your post advocates a

( ) gamist ( ) simulationist ( ) cinematic (*) narrativist

approach to understanding hit points. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.

(snip)

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it will satisfy everyone
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

This was awesome. 1 XP for you!

 

[catsclaw227]

...quantum....

I just saw Quantum of Solace and Bond definitely had Second Wind, Healing Surges (which he used between encounters), as well as encounters, dailies and at-wills.

For example, if a character suffers damage in combat, and then is healed by the Warlord's Inspiring Word ability, then the damage in question was fatigue or morale damage. Not wound damage, since words of encouragement cannot heal physical wounds.

Bond seemed to use his own driving desire to make Vesper's death mean something (as well as avenge her), similar to the way a Warlord would shout encouragement to another PC. He also seemed to heal from physical wounds during this time as well.

Now, I know that it is a movie, and we aren't talking about cinematic vs. realism here, but that movie is an example of how 4e's hit points system can work. Without suffering an aneurysm to justify it.

 

[Andor]

QFT. It isn't. At all. If it were low fantasy, you'd be relying on heal checks and bedrest.

For some low fantasy means that everything operates by real world physics unless magic is involved. By that standard a wand of CLW is perfectly acceptable, but a horse running all day is not. Others think low fantasy means there is almost no magic as if it were medieval europe, but cinematic action is just fine. (Never mind that in medieval europe priests held rituals to stop the advance of a glacier, hundreds were burned for witchcraft and some were succesfully prosecuted for being werewolves...)

By definition 1 any wuxia movie counts as high fantasy even if not one supernatural element shows up. By definition 2 LotR could be low fantasy.

 

[Zustiur]

It is comments like these that add feul to the fire are are unnecessary.

One could more politely say:

I prefer low fantasy...where healing takes longer...etc.

Its not a matter or miracles that PCs heal in 4E, its just faster than your preference.

I'm sorry, but I do not see a problem with what I said.

miracle - noun. An effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.

I prefer low fantasy, where extraordinary events or effects in the physical world do not take place without the aid of magic.
Such as; healing from significant battle wounds over-night.

By comparison with the real world (and all previous editions), the speed at which characters heal in 4E is miraculous. Some players like this speed, others like the (marginally) more accurate modeling of the real world provided in other systems. I happen to be the latter, and I gather you're the former. I in no way indicated that either was better or 'badwrongfun'. I merely gave an indication of why I prefer other healing systems.

If anything I expected to be pulled up on the use of 'low fantasy' as in DnD low fantasy typically refers to the abundance of magic (and magic items), not the level of fantasizing required to make the story believable.
--Edit--
Like this in fact:

How often does magic get involved in healing in your game?

If you're like most people, the answer is, "All the time, multiple times per day. Magic healing happens continuously."

Which is fine and all, but I don't think its compatible with "low fantasy." That's high fantasy. I think "low fantasy" is much more compatible with the idea of hit points representing not physical wounds, but simply how far you are from falling unconscious in a sort of nebulous sense.

Enjoy what you enjoy, I guess, but I don't think that making magical healing of sucking chest wounds into a multiple-times-per-day occurrence makes your game "low fantasy."

I'd respond but Andor beat me to it:

For some low fantasy means that everything operates by real world physics unless magic is involved. By that standard a wand of CLW is perfectly acceptable, but a horse running all day is not. Others think low fantasy means there is almost no magic as if it were medieval europe, but cinematic action is just fine. (Never mind that in medieval europe priests held rituals to stop the advance of a glacier, hundreds were burned for witchcraft and some were succesfully prosecuted for being werewolves...)

I was referring to the former - fantasy as in people performing extraordinary actions without the aid of magic.

 

[Wolfwood2]

But if you don't require an increase in hit points to cinematically reverse exactly the effects of the decrease in hit points, Quantum Wounding doesn't occur. If 6 damage can be a slice in the ribs, but then 6 points of healing can represent a reinvigoration of fighting effort? Then after the cycle, you are not returned to an identical cinematic state (you still have a slice in your ribs, but it's not impairing you); thus it's not necessary for you to know the form of the healing before cementing the form of the damage.

It's only when you assume that healing reverses not only the hit point loss, but exactly reverses the cinematic description of the effect of the hit point loss, that Quantum Wounding rears up.

So I don't make that assumption, and it's not a problem.

But don't you still run into the issue on the dying/not dying axis? Let's take this to the simplest possible position. A PC is fighting a goblin. The goblin hits him with a shortsword, and the PC drops below zero hitpoints. A couple of rounds go by, and the unlucky PC fails two death saving throws.

Now... has the PC been stabbed with a lethal wound, or not? If we were to freeze time in the game world, and move in and look at how badly the PC is hurt at this moment, are his guts slashed open and slowly bleeding out into the dirt, or is it just a shallow cut that he can potentially grit through?

We don't know. The DM can get away with vaguely describing the PC as having suffered "a cut", but if the player persists and asks, "No really, how badly is my PC hurt?" then the DM has to admit that he doesn't yet know.

If next round the PC fails a third death saving throw, then it was a lethal wound. If the PC rolls a 20 or is in some other way allowed to spend a healing surge, then it was only a shallow cut. It's a quantum wound.

Now I like 4E and I'm willing to live with this, but I have it admit that it's there.

 

[Xris Robin]

Just say he was stabbed. If he fails the saving throw, he got hit in the lungs or something and died. If he rolled a 20, it missed anything vital and he manages to get up and struggle on. Or he took a blow to the head and passed out. Maybe he wakes up (a 20) or maybe he starts bleeding from his brain and dies (3 failed throws).

Of course you don't know if it's a lethal wound or not, you're rolling to determine that. That's what the death saving throw IS, the roll to find out how badly you were hurt.

 

[LostSoul]

But don't you still run into the issue on the dying/not dying axis? Let's take this to the simplest possible position. A PC is fighting a goblin. The goblin hits him with a shortsword, and the PC drops below zero hitpoints. A couple of rounds go by, and the unlucky PC fails two death saving throws.

Now... has the PC been stabbed with a lethal wound, or not?

The same thing happens in 3e with the stabilization roll. Is it lethal, or not? We don't know until all the stabilization checks have been made.

4e is a little more... thematic. Words and will are more important in 4e. A possibly deadly wound can be recovered from with force of will.

We can narrate how bad his wounds are; what we can't yet narrate, because that has yet to be resolved, is whether or not the PC has the will to carry on.

Are his guts slashed open? Yes. Can he grit through that? Who knows?

edit: nevermind.