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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6303420" data-attributes="member: 6688937">I hear this argument (or ones that are similar enough) a lot, and...I actually don't think its true. Admittedly, I think its true for a certain subset of the fiction that D&D draws on (although I'm unfamiliar with the Shadowrun novels, I'm not sure they count as genre sources, what with deriving from another game system in a different fantasy sub-genre). I think when it comes to something like the Dresden Files*, I actually flat out disagree. In the novels, we will read scenes when the protagonist is injured (or otherwise hampered) and we are regularly treated to descriptions of how he is hampered or how he is overcoming or working around those injuries and hindrances. To me, that means that the nature of the those injuries, and the hero's struggle against them is important, and not just handwaved away as they must be and regularly are under a HP system. The hero persists and triumphs, in spite of the hindrances that his injuries present, rather than simply ignoring them. It does impact his performance in ways that have dramatic impact.I like your phrase there: "with adequately describing the pain and the effort required to keep going on in spite of his wounds" and I think its very important. The HP system may show us the result of that, but I truly rarely witness any actual recognition of that at table. Wounds and their narrative consequences are commonly handwaved away. That is, we don't see Harry Dresden triumph "without letting it impact his performance" in the novels. In fact, we often are treated to detailed descriptions of how his various injuries do limit his performance. That's counter to (at least my typical experience) with HP, where we don't get to witness (via any rules) the hero experiencing or responding to those injuries. That's something I see in games like Fate, but not in games using a D&D style HP system.Is that a necessary expediency at the table? It seems to be commonly presumed so, but I think games like Fate and Cortex+ show that its not actually all that necessary.To be fair, that doesn't reflect all the fiction that D&D draws on (I won't claim to have read it all.) I know that some of that fiction features heroes for whom injuries are merely color. However, that's only one narrative vein, and it seems (to my eyes) to feature in a minority of the genre sources.  *spoiler:[SPOILER]In the series is gets revealed that Dresdenverse wizards actually have some kind of supernatural regeneration/healing ability, but its rather slow compared to say, Wolverine.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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