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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4552614" data-attributes="member: 42582">It is true there is no fixed correlation between hit points lost and gained (game mechanical events) and physical damage suffered and healed (gameworld events). But on any given occasion of damage or healing something happens in the gameworld, and it can be narrated with no need for retconning or suspension of description.You are ignoring that you can say that the game mechanical event of regaining hit pionts does not mean that there has been an ingame event of repair to the physical injury, but rather corresponds (on that particular occasion) to an ingame event of recovery of the will to fight.I agree with this. The 4e rules for damage, healing, healing surges, short rests - in short, the bundle of rules that give rise to so-called "Schroedinger's Wounding" - are quite distinct from the rules for recovery after an extended rest. The latter is intended to remove mechanical impediments to play, and (for those who use it) can be written off as a genre convention.I still don't see why it has to be up to the GM, and why players who are offended by the non-verisimilitudinous nature of 4e extended rests won't just call their own longer healing times, even though the rules do not insist upon them (or, alternativley, make sure that there is a cleric in the party and narrate how that cleric heals everyone up during the extended rest). If they won't do these things, yet continue to complain about the mechanically permitted rapid healing ruining their senses of disbelief, they have only themselves to blame.I don't know exactly who you have in mind as the author of these "many statements". But the 4e rules obviously draw on rules systems from other RPGs with narrativist inclinations (eg HeroWars/Quest, The Dying Earth).Those other rules systems have better discussions of how to narrate fortune-in-the-middle action resolution mechanics than the 4e rulebooks (one of the weaknesses of those rulebooks in my view). But there is nothing in my statements (or those from LostSoul, or Scribble, or Lacyon, or TheCasualOblivion) explaining and defending the 4e healing and recovery mechanics that could not be reconstructed pretty straightforwardly from those other rulebooks. Fortune-in-the-middle mechanics really exist (and have existed in RPGs for many years, including the saving throw rules in 1st ed AD&D). People play RPGs using them. And the narration of their games does not collapse into contradiction.I have never seen pages and pages of complaints about so-called Schroedinger's Wounding in HeroWars. It doesn't come up, because the rulebooks explain how to narrate combat in that game. The only reasons I can see for it continually coming up in relation to D&D is that either (i) simulationist views (ie that there must be a fixed correlation between every game-mechanical event of hit point gain or loss and every ingame event of physical injury or recovery) are so entrenched that other ideas aren't contemplated, or (ii) the 4e rulebooks are so poorly written that they fail to communicate the key ideas of narrative freedom and flexibility in the relationship between game mechanical events and ingame events (despite comments in both PHB and DMG that flavour text is just flavour text and ripe for reskinning from moment to moment).That's not to say that anyone should enjoy narrativist D&D. I don't care who does or doesn't enjoy it. But it's possible, it needn't involve contradiction or absurdity, and the 4e rules support it.</blockquote>

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