D&D 5E Should the Fighter's "Second Wind" ability grant temporary HP instead of regular HP?

[Rygar]

I want them, for just one edition, to say, "Yes, actually HP are entirely flesh and blood. Every time you lose 8 hp from an axe hit, that axe dug several inches into your body and you are gushing blood. Critical hit by a lance on a charge for 30 damage? Yeah, it's plunged a hole through your ribcage and launched your heart out the other side. Are you happy, gamers? Does THAT ridiculousness work better than a fighter getting a second wind and quote-unquote 'healing' damage mid-combat?"

Nice strawman. You went from "Hit" and "Damage" to mortal wound just to try to portray being hit as "Ridiculous" while ignoring the fact that being hit and wounded doesn't have to mean fatal wound.

Also, yes, even at the extreme degree you strawmanned, it works better. Because the alternative is a fighter who was in hundreds of combats and has never been hit, just tired. I can easily describe any hit on a Fighter as causing a wound of undefined severity but presumed minimal and it would be plausible to anyone, even my grandparents. If I tried to describe every hit in hand to hand combat on a fighter as a "Near Miss" over hundreds or thousands of hits, very few people are going to buy it. Never mind the inevitable "If my dodging out of the way of an attack tires me, why doesn't attacking tire me? Why is it that at level 1 I lose half of my HP's dodging a goblin swinging at me because it tires me, but I could swing at a tree for 16 hours and I don't become tired?"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So what if they were real weapons or real bullets? Would the concern be stamina or wounds? You're getting hit by these things, and if they were real, I doubt the problem would be being tired, and I really doubt sitting would help.

well it depends...are those real weapons hitting me and taking meat off me... if so 1 hit will knock me down... and out... not at all like the example of getting hit and keep going. I used stamina and exustion because if you use a hit by a bullet to mean you just got shot your simiulation is over... your dead. As long as we are simulating then we CAN NOT assume every sword blow that HITs my AC draws blood, or if it did I would pass out from lack blood very shortly....

 

[Obryn]

Do I need to mention again how the words "simulation" and "hit point" should never appear anywhere near one another?

It's a game mechanic, and the only thing I personally care about is what kind of gaming experiences it creates or encourages. You can't ask what a hit point "is" in the fiction because frankly theyre ridiculous and it ends up with threads like ... well, like this one.

 

[Evenglare]

I very seriously doubt they would change anything at this point. Officially anyway. I'd bet money that we will not see many "updates" or eratta like this due to the fiasco that is D&D 4th edition. There's like 100 pages of fiddly crap that changes the core game, and they got reamed for it by fans.

 

[DDNFan]

If you really hate the idea of the fighter healing damage, replace Second Wind with Adrenaline Surge (or Battle Frenzy or Stalwart Defense) and let them spend a bonus action at the start of combat to get 1d10+level temporary hps, regained after a short rest.

I don't know how a total abstraction like "temporary hps" fixes any simulation concerns, but I guess I don't need to.

Because temp HPs used to be wiped out after 5 minutes, so you could keep on fighting despite heavy wounds temporarily (imagine that, a word that fits adrenalin surges that dissipate quickly) similar to how it's done for Barbarians (since 3rd).

Stamina as Temp HP is a much better fit. Adrenalin doesn't negate wounds, spells like Cure Wounds do.

The designers should have either removed Temp HP entirely and merged it with HP for barbarians as well, and make HP go down every round of combat if you were fighting, or kept them separate and gotten a clue about how to make a set of consistent rules. Injuries are not the same as getting tired. I've never met a single person while playing D&D who ever got their character hit by a giant's club or fallen into a pit trap with spikes, or taken poison damage or got singed by a fireball, and ever mentioned or described how their characters just got the equivalent of a brisk jog or running up a flight of stairs.

Every time I see people argue in favor of HP meaning whatever you want it to mean, is done so for a strictly gamist reason without regard to narrative consistency. It's just a facile rationalisation for game mechanical reasons, which places zero value on the game having meaning.

 

[DDNFan]

Nice strawman. You went from "Hit" and "Damage" to mortal wound just to try to portray being hit as "Ridiculous" while ignoring the fact that being hit and wounded doesn't have to mean fatal wound.

Also, yes, even at the extreme degree you strawmanned, it works better. Because the alternative is a fighter who was in hundreds of combats and has never been hit, just tired. I can easily describe any hit on a Fighter as causing a wound of undefined severity but presumed minimal and it would be plausible to anyone, even my grandparents. If I tried to describe every hit in hand to hand combat on a fighter as a "Near Miss" over hundreds or thousands of hits, very few people are going to buy it. Never mind the inevitable "If my dodging out of the way of an attack tires me, why doesn't attacking tire me? Why is it that at level 1 I lose half of my HP's dodging a goblin swinging at me because it tires me, but I could swing at a tree for 16 hours and I don't become tired?"

Between the two extremes of HP means strictly wounds, and HP means no wounds at all, strictly wounds causes a much lower narrative disconnect with typical D&D action scenes and normal causes of HP loss (getting hit or hurt by enemy attacks, which are trying to kill you). People and animals can and are able to suffer multiple independent injuries and blood loss and keep fighting, and survive. It's definitely a strawman to imagine that only the last 1 HP is an actual wound. And the rules actually don't even state that. In 4th, as soon as you went below 50% you were "bloodied", not "sweaty".

Attacking doesn't tire you or cause loss of combat effectiveness, therefore Second Wind stating that HP is stamina is a non sequitur that is just a rationalisation for people who hate clerics and wanting mundane characters to have a natural regeneration ability for purely power gaming reasons.

 

[GSHamster]

It was temporary hit points in the final public playtest and they must have had a good reason to change it later. Even without knowing what that reason is, I'm prepared to trust them on this. I trust them because from all I have seen, they seem to me to have gone about developing 5e in a sound way.

This is a very good point. It's not like temporary HP was never tried. Apparently it was tried and found wanting for some reason. Maybe because it led to players popping Second Wind early in the fight, rather than in the middle.

Not much point in a large playtest if we ignore the empirical results of that playtest.

 

[DDNFan]

The only modular rule one needs in D&D to make it make sense is a broad one, that any time HD or SW or abilities that do not require magic are used to restore lost HP, can only be used as a reaction to incoming HP loss, and used to reduce that amount prior to it actually affecting your character's current HP total.

This makes it not even require using temp HP. Second Wind, when it comes into play, could be used as a reaction to when your character is attacked successfully, and reduce that incoming damage as a kind of active parry & dodge mechanic. What I would even do as a DM is allow the player to roll the total in advance, and allocate the damage reduced by this ability as a free action until it is depleted. HD would be a different animal then, very much an active parry. Fighter's second wind could be an adrenalin rush that instantly reduces a number of incoming damage.

It's fairly easy to houserule this so I'm not too concerned, but the reasons for keeping it in the game are dubious at best, and if they didn't give a "healing is slow" option in the DMG, then we will all know that it was a total lie and a ruse when they said "one size does not fit all" where HP description is concerned. If you turn on a slow healing "module" and it doesn't affect Second Wind, that just makes fighters even more powerful than they already are.

If HP is stamina, why do barbarians get Temp HPs? That was a 3rd ed invention, because back then they didn't give non-magical characters the ability to heal themselves without magic or long periods of rest. 5th edition is trying to appeal to old school gamers superficially, while ignoring their promise that more than one way to play the game would be supported. I highly doubt it at this point.

What's the point of enabling a "lingering wound" module in the DMG when fighters, the guys who spend the most time fighting and getting injured in melee combat, can just summarily ignore them?

 

[RangerWickett]

Joking aside, I do prefer the Warhammer 40k version: you have some HP that represent how well you dodge things, and once those are gone, everything else causes an explicit wound, ranging from bruising to bleeding to "your head catches on fire, the heat pops blood out your eyes, and your body staggers for a few feet, setting alight anything you pass near."

 

[Hussar]

Between the two extremes of HP means strictly wounds, and HP means no wounds at all, strictly wounds causes a much lower narrative disconnect with typical D&D action scenes and normal causes of HP loss (getting hit or hurt by enemy attacks, which are trying to kill you). People and animals can and are able to suffer multiple independent injuries and blood loss and keep fighting, and survive. It's definitely a strawman to imagine that only the last 1 HP is an actual wound. And the rules actually don't even state that. In 4th, as soon as you went below 50% you were "bloodied", not "sweaty".

Attacking doesn't tire you or cause loss of combat effectiveness, therefore Second Wind stating that HP is stamina is a non sequitur that is just a rationalisation for people who hate clerics and wanting mundane characters to have a natural regeneration ability for purely power gaming reasons.

That's a misrepresentation of the argument though. It's not the last HP that is the only wound, it's the last HIT that puts you below zero HP that is the only serious wound. If you have 20 HP, and get hit for 21 damage, that's a serious, life threatening wound. If you have 25 HP, that's a minor bruise that in no way impacts your capabilities.

Taking damage CAN mean physical contact, or it CAN mean near miss. It really doesn't have to always be one thing all the time.