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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5707819" data-attributes="member: 6668292">I say, "I dislike 4e natural healing mechanics because they do not support a narrative where a wound takes a while to heal", and I get back, "well, 3.X didn't have realistic mechanics on wounds healing naturally either!"This entirely misses the point of my complaint. It's not about realism, it's about narratives. I want the mechanics to abstractly represent something that I can model to fit a particular narrative. I want to be able to have a narrative unfold where it a wound takes a small amount of time to naturally heal, or it takes a long time to naturally heal.My point is that realism is being used as a measuring stick. I want the opportunity for heroism, and pressing on with no penalties is fine for me to represent that, as is recovery that happens faster than is "realistic". You don't need a completely realistic mechanic to negate my complaint, you need wounds that take a while to heal.That said, the repeated use of realism as a defense is missing the point, to me. Again, if I say, "I dislike 4e natural healing mechanics because they do not support a narrative where a wound takes a while to heal", then I shouldn't hear, "well, 3.X didn't have realistic mechanics on wounds healing naturally either!" I didn't complain about realistic rules. I'm complaining that the current rules are not supporting a standard modern fantasy-genre narrative where someone is out of the action for a bit with a wound.Don't apply a realistic measuring stick when it isn't appropriate. You say "neither 3.X nor 4e had wounds represented realistically, so they're both equal." That's your opinion, and that's fine. However, it's not addressing my issue. I'm saying that 3.X represented a heroic attitude of persevering despite bad wounds, and 4e represents pushing on through the healing surge or second wind mechanic. Clearly, my issue is not with realism. I'm okay with either being seen as heroic. I just want the narrative space available to easily access wounds that take a long time to heal naturally.The rules of the "narrative challenge" in the thread include:In the rules of the thread, the wound must be fully recoverable within 2 weeks of bed rest without any magical intervention. I assume this is based on realism. What I'm saying is that it's missing the point of some complaints in the other thread that this thread forked from.It's not the fact that you don't don't take penalties that bugs most people, it's that you can't really be wounded for the long term. It's not because it's "more realistic" that they want it to happen, it's that it's more believable, because the narrative flows more naturally. They jump through less hurtles saying, "you're bleeding out" and moving on than by saying "you may or may not be bleeding out, we don't know yet." I've had parties that were all spellcasters, and I've had parties that were all melee characters. I've had all rogues, or fighters, or clerics. I've had balanced parties more often than not, but sometimes the guy who goes down is the cleric, and magical healing isn't available. In times like these, falling into the negatives isn't a "corner case", it's directly applicable to the game at hand, and I've seen natural healing come up often.Personally, long term wounds vs. short term wounds isn't a corner case for my group, as they're two very distinct types of wounds you can receive. Having a wound that heals over the course of a day versus having a wound that heals over the course of a week are two very different things. The former might be some bad bruising or a scratch, while the latter might be minorly infected, or a bruised rib, or a head blow.The point is, most of the time, it's "you were gravely injured, but we were able to nurse you back to health" or "I was injured, but I camped in the woods, nursing my wounds until my health returned." It's not the actual quality of injury that is in question, but the type of injury: serious or minor.People don't like that 4e seems to have "minor or dead" and that's it. And to me, that's perfectly reasonable. You and others may be okay, since neither is realistic enough to matter to you. To others, the narrative space of "minor wounds" and "dead" is separated by "serious wounds", and they'd like the mechanics to support that narrative within the core rules.Wrapping the whole issue up as one of realism is missing the point of the complaint of the current implementation of healing times. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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