D&D 4E The problem I've having with 4e.

[Ourph]

Player characters routinely demonstrate that they know about hit points--they don't have a digital readout in their heads, of course, but a PC knows when he's in danger and when he isn't. How do I know that? Because he's making decisions on that basis! A fighter with full hit points is apt to stand and fight, where a fighter in single digits may decide to turn and flee. If hit points are purely metagame, and don't describe anything in the game world, that decision has no basis.

A fighter PC doesn't decide to turn and flee because of his HP total, the player controlling the fighter decides that the character turns and flees because of the HP total (a metagame decision). The rationalization behind the character fleeing can be anything the player imagines. Characters don't make decisions in D&D, players make decisions and then (if they want to) come up with in-game reasons why their imaginary character made that imaginary decision in the imaginary gameworld.

You can shove that decision-making back to metagame level, too; maybe it's the player making the decision, and the low-hit-point fighter is just experiencing a sudden sense of his own mortality. But the more you do that, the more of a gulf you open up between the player and the PC, and the harder you make it to get into character. A system that pushes players to this level of metagaming is a system with problems.

I'm sorry, I'm not understanding this. How can a set of game rules make it more or less likely that the realworld player is making decisions rather than the imaginary character? I'm not aware of any game system that somehow endows imaginary characters with their own volition which allows them to make decisions independent of the player controlling them. The player is always making the decisions and the ability to "get into character" may very well depend on how well the player likes the rules being used, but any perception that the rules are making it possible for the character to control his own actions while the player simply goes along for the ride is, at best, a delusion voluntarily entered into by the player.

There will always be some undefined elements, but I'd prefer to minimize their impact. Experience points are undefined, or at least extremely ill-defined, but they seldom have much impact while the game is actually being played (and to the extent that they do have an impact, it's usually bad--PCs seeking out fights they could have avoided, for no other reason than to push them over the threshold for the next level).

Hit points are something PCs deal with constantly during play. They affect every aspect of combat. Something so pervasive should not be a purely metagame concept.

By making them a metagame concept, you eliminate the need for PCs to deal with them at all. That's the whole point. The player is free to imagine the narrative however he wants within the bounds established by the metagame results of HP gain and loss. It seems to me that taking a weird amalgam of gameworld concepts, mashing them all together, tying them to living and dying but without any impact on the ability to function between full health and death and then trying to impose that construct on the consciousness of a PC (to whom it would obviously make very little sense) would be more immersion-averse than simply understanding that PCs are detached from HPs and their only concerns are the narrative established by HPs (am I still able to go on) and the narrative established by the player's imagination (everything else).

 

[eleran]

Eleran is right

Sorry, didnt mean to dwell, but I am married so i dont see these words all put together in this order very often.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

#1: You don't get a lot of opportunities to use some of the martial powers, as they require a lot of work to set up and the circumstances have to be right. It just so happens to work out that you get about one chance per encounter to use some powers, and one chance per day to use others. (A nice explanation that solves most of the problems, but does not explain how characters know in advance how many uses of their powers they'll get.)

Characters DON'T know. Their player does and choses for them when he or she feels it's the right time tactically. This is the point at which the character spots the opening to use his or her best tricks.

Otherwise it's metagaming, like expecting that your character really CAN see the whole battle from a birds-eye view.

Fitz

 

[Sunderstone]

The easiest way to explain the Healing Surge and Per-Encounter Spells...

"You rest your combat weary self on a nearby rock on the roadside, bleeding from claw wounds and spent from casting powerful magics this day.
You suddenly realize that the food you've been nibbling on refreshes you, closing wounds and strengthening your magic once more. You think back to the mysterious Mage with the floating refreshment table you met on the roadside earlier that sold you the wondrous food.... Mana Biscuits or somesuch he called them.
Thoughts enter your mind about franchising this wondrous food......"

My question is... Do we have to sit down and drink/eat to get these surges?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

My question is... Do we have to sit down and drink/eat to get these surges?

I think food is generally left up to the players to role-play. (But if it suits your fancy, the "bubble tea of healthy refreshment" can work.)

Fitz

 

[JohnSnow]

The easiest way to explain the Healing Surge and Per-Encounter Spells...

"You rest your combat weary self on a nearby rock on the roadside, bleeding from claw wounds and spent from casting powerful magics this day.
You suddenly realize that the food you've been nibbling on refreshes you, closing wounds and strengthening your magic once more. You think back to the mysterious Mage with the floating refreshment table you met on the roadside earlier that sold you the wondrous food.... Mana Biscuits or somesuch he called them.
Thoughts enter your mind about franchising this wondrous food......"

My question is... Do we have to sit down and drink/eat to get these surges?

And while that works for some people, "narrative abstraction" is a perfectly valid explanation for others. Personally, I far prefer "it just is" to magical tea, mana biscuits and other Ptolus-style silliness.

As others have said, the only thing I have any difficulty with conceptualizing a rational for are the "Per Day" Martial Exploits. I can come up with explanations, but the "too tired to try again" is a pretty weak one most of the time. That leads me to prefer the rationale that "the proper circumstances only rarely come up" but leaves the decision of when in the day those circumstances occur up to the player.

Personally, as a DM, I don't mind sharing that level of narrative control with my players.

 

[The Little Raven]

My question is... Do we have to sit down and drink/eat to get these surges?

You made it up, so you answer it.

 

[BryonD]

Except it is not a new approach. It is precisely the approach Gary Gygax (may he RIP) took in the 1e DMG. I think John Snow mentioned elsewhere it was around page 82 or so. It may be that a lot of people weren't playing it this way in 3e doesn't mean that it wasn't that way.

So?
Trade, "retro" for "new". It doesn't change the point.

 

[BryonD]

Eleran is right in that the 4e approach to hit points is nothing new at all. Hit points have pretty much always been this way.

But I will state again that the main difference between editions is in the recovery of hit points. In earlier editions, some form of magical assistance was required which allowed us a little more freedom in describing some of the loss of hit points as actual and serious wounds. Now, the ability to shrug off damage via healing surges, while they may make sense in an action sequence since adrenaline certainly can enable someone to act as if the nasty wounds they have taken aren't there for a short time, also entails the ability to shrug off things that we would have described as actual injuries without the external explanation of healing magic. And that's what this whole discussion is getting at. What in-game mechanism are we supposed to construct to explain this while still retaining the freedom to characterize some injuries as serious in our fighting descriptions?

To address ByronD's points again, it's not any recharacterization of hit points, it's a recasting of how they are recovered that is the fundamental issue as I see it.

(It's Bryon)

Pretty much. Gary never had fighters taking a deep breath and regaining their hit points. And looking back over all the fiddley bits he was so into, and all his complaints about being to easy on characters at times, I doubt calling Gary's name really adds any credibility to the issue.

But the bottom line is that making hit points function this way has a specific flavor to it and people are allowed to think that flavor sucks. You can get your boxers in a bunch over the vague descriptions that may have been used in the past, but it doesn't matter because a) this mechanical implementation is still narrow and b) it is narrow whether you admit to the new method or not.

 

[JohnSnow]

So?
Trade, "retro" for "new". It doesn't change the point.

Which point?

That "Hit points are more than physical damage" is in most cases far less SoD breaking than a human being going for a swim in a pool of lava?

Yeah, you're right. It doesn't change that point.

The interpretation of hit points as actual physical damage capacity creates far, far more problems than it solves. By contrast, the interpretation of them as predominantly representing your ability to avoid receiving serious injuries solves far more problems than it creates.

It creates, basically, one. Some people don't have enough imagination to deal with the abstraction.

I suggest they either get over it, keep playing 3e, or houserule in something they like better.