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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pentius" data-source="post: 5713706" data-attributes="member: 6676736">The gash was just an example.  Your broken ribs example works fine for me, too.  I'm gonna take a shot at explaining why, and I'll use the ribs for the whole thing.Things in this section are edition neutral unless otherwise specified.By the rules, If your Fighter takes 70% of his HP damage from the giant, and has 30% left, he requires no medical aid.  He is fine.  He can keep fighting for now, he can keep adventuring, bedrest will restore those HP even if no one so much as glances at the wound.  Even if they poke at it with their little fingers.  Even if the Fighter wants to spend the next hour doing cartwheels. The broken ribs and collapsed lung are narrative constructs that the rules themselves neither create nor support.  Does this mean don't make them?  No.  But it does mean that if you make this sort of narrative construct, it is your responsibility to make it work.  You can require the character to get medical aid.  You can restrict him from his nightly practice session where the Monk punches him in the chest 50 times.  You can do pretty much whatever you want, your group just has to be okay with it.  But the rules are not responsible for your broken ribs.  If the rules provide that you can be at max HP(full fightin' capacity) without medical attention, and they do, it's up to you to make that narrative work.  You get the medical attention anyway, or you narrate bravely pressing on with broken ribs, or resting for a week and having them knit together or whatever.  Really, just whatever you are fine with.  But the rules aren't telling you you have to think them broken ribs back together because the game never told you had broken ribs.  The game, not being a thing with the capacity to react to situations outside itself, will trudge on.  It's up to you to figure out how you want to narrate the situation, whether you do it within the rules or by going outside them, or just flat ignoring them.  If you are willing to go as far as making the broken ribs and requiring the character to get medical treatment, not beat on his chest all night screaming like King Kong, or what have you, but you balk at the end and say he healed his ribs by thinking real hard, and you just don't like this narration, the system really has nothing to do with it.  In this hypothetical, you have dropped the ball.  4e does not require you to limit narration to gashes on the arm any more than previous editions did.  It does not require you to let your Fighters think their wounds closed any more than previous editions did.  It requires you to handle your own narrative, even when you take it outside the rules, just like previous editions did.EDIT: 1,000th post, woo!</blockquote>

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