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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5804267" data-attributes="member: 82106">So you must HATE the pre-4e version of hit points then. After all, nothing bad happens to the character no matter what the narrative says until that magical moment when the character hits 0 hit points, and then suddenly they die. You have no way to distinguish between fatigue and physical wounds at all. "Schroedinger's Wounds" is in full force. Resting for 5 minutes (or an hour etc) has no benefit whatsoever even though hit points clearly aren't wounds. The character that took 10 points of damage always has to rest for 10 days to 'heal' even though one character might have absolutely nothing wrong but a minor hit point loss (whatever that means) and another who is at death's door heals to full health in the same 10 days. I agree, it is there for primarily gamist purposes, but in what way is it any less realistic than the pre-4e system? In either one most PCs can survive things that would kill any real human. There is in neither system any distinction between physical damage and anything else. Why is it that magic must have no limits either? MOST minor healing magic in 4e simply draws on the internal reserves of the character that is healed. Look at the way it works. Your cleric (etc) can pretty much heal people with minor healing magic almost any time they want (every 2.5 minutes on the average). Not only that but even this minor healing magic draws from more than just the character's reserves. The average clerical Healing Word is going to be healing HS+1d6+WIS (usually +4), and on your average say 40 hit point fighter that means 10+7.5 HP average, so almost half of the healing is PURE magic. Then on top of that you can cast surgeless healing spells just as often as a 1e cleric ever could. Many other magics that are commonly available can transfer vitality between PCs as well.I just don't think the limit on MINOR healing magic is 'arbitrary' (any more than any magic is). If you want to really fix people that should take some powerful magic, not dimestore stuff you find in every other chest. In fact really that whole cheap tawdry healing magic feel is a big thing that always drove me away from using D&D for anything beyond beer & pretzels dungeon delves for 20 years. I think it would be fine to have automatic non-magical recovery slowed down. I think really it just won't change the game because as soon as you do that you have to do what AD&D did and lard in enough unlimited magical healing to make it relatively immaterial. Otherwise you end up with all your plots consisting of one fight every 3 weeks and the PCs holed up in some bolt hole licking their wounds the rest of the time. What starts out 'gritty' soon becomes cheapened healing magic. The problem is that you loose out on an equal number of stories with 'gritty' healing. The PCs can't take risks. Gone are all the fun stunts and things that PCs can risk in 4e because nobody is going to swing on a chandelier or leap off the balcony onto the table or whatever. Beyond that you have a much less interesting combat system inevitably. With only small numbers for hit points relative to damage you have to reduce chances to-hit by a good chunk (having a 15 to-hit in AD&D was pretty unremarkable but terribly boring). This means you also now need other conditions to be dire when they do happen, tactics are too unreliable to bother using, etc. It all devolves quickly back down towards the boring static combats and endless poking and prodding of AD&D era combat and exploration. Then on top of that either every encounter is the end of a day, or you have to drop in tons of cheap dimestore healing magic. Methinks your cure is worse than the disease.Hit points don't make more sense your way than the 4e way though, that's the problem. Nor does teleport make more sense etc etc etc. Nor does the ability of PCs to teleport all over the place or detect evil or charm key NPCs with a wave of a hand add to the story telling ability of the system. In fact all of those things destroy at least as many story possibilities as they add (and I would argue it is a net loss). This whole issue though will be the fault line on which 5e breaks. You cannot build a system at all without an assumption built in about what damage means. You can't write a fireball spell and decide how much damage it does unless you know what a hit point means and what the implication of doing hit points of damage is. Either 5e builds on your paradigm in which case it won't do what I want, or vice versa apparently. There's no 'module' you can simply graft on that will fix that because it would have to rewrite the damage expressions of every single thing that does damage and every thing that restores or grants healing. You can't simply write a monster stat block and certainly not an adventure without building on that basic assumption.I know what I'm going to advocate for. Certainly would be great if you can get the game you want, but I'm going to press hard for the one I want and I don't see a whole lot of middle ground really. I can see a few ways to create something that is closer to the middle, but someone is going to get a game that doesn't play the way they'd like.</blockquote>

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