D&D 5E Those who come from earlier editions, why are you okay with 5E healing (or are you)?

[Hriston]

You have a funny definition of refuse. I’ve said many times how I have no problem with people interpreting however they want. That’s the opposite of refusing to acknowledge. What my beef is, is when someone says they view hp like meat, and don’t like the super fast healing to Max after 8 hours, and people like you telling them they are wrong. There is one paragraph saying HP is abstract. Literally every other reference, in the books, in the live streams, and in the novels, narrate or describe actual wounds. So it’s entirely reasonable for people to make the accosiation that HP loss in combat means actual wounds. If there’s anyone refusing to acknowledge things, it’s you, with those.





Most of the surviving ones. Because most of the ones who did go below 1hp, they died. You’re arguing that as long as a PC never went below 1hp, they didn’t ever receive a physical wound. Ever. Because every hp loss from any source will be healed to max after 8 hours, and no wound does that. Heck, many types of fatigue don’t heal that fast. And frankly, the idea that adventurers never receive wounds in combat over their career unless they also go unconscious (which is what happens below 1hp) is laughable.

This is the problem with correlating loss of hit points with wounds. A PC can be wounded in battle. That’s not a problem. The hit points heal up over night. The wounds do not. The following day, the PC fights on with full hit points and wounds.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The dark secret of all major RPG game designers.
There are very few successful RPGs that are not designed-by-committee.

That depends on how you measure success.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In all fairness, they like how they play, and you will note that they're still playing D&D despite all the complaints about how HP work.

Eh, I play D&D in the same way that Castles & Crusades is D&D. If you check up-thread, you'll note that I found the HP issue to be irreconcilable, so I wrote my own variant in order to fix it. Unless you have significant house rules to address this exact issue, I wouldn't play 5E if you paid me.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Sure. So it is good practice to insure that the narrative represented by the mechanics is consistent with the narrative that occurs absent the mechanics. A good argument in support of narrating HP loss as largely not equating to serious injury.

It would be a terrible argument for that, since physical injury is something which frequently needs to be portrayed within the background narrative, and the abstract loss of vague whatever is not something that ever comes up in the narrative (aside from your feeble attempts to justify HP mechanics).

...huh? You got citation for that?

I'm away from my books at the moment, but it shouldn't be hard to find. I think it's even in the index.

Is that “you as a player” or “you as the DM”?

Oddly enough, taking into account whether the character is being played by a player or the DM, would be meta-gaming. That is out-of-game information, which cannot rightly inform any in-character decision.

 

[Tony Vargas]

view hp like meat, and don’t like the super fast healing to Max after 8 hours... it’s entirely reasonable for people to make the accosiation that HP loss in combat means actual wounds.

Thats an example of introducing an inconsistency. The suggested narration of hps, along with other mechanics, including overnight hp recovery, do hold together moderately well.
An alternate narration of hps as serious wounds, is inconsistent with overnight recovery and the lack of wound penalties - so, if you want to go there, use a variant that rests take a lot longer, and use exhaustion, disadvantage or some novel sub-system to model wounds.

 

[Chaosmancer]

One of the big things about D&D is to emulate stories. They are the inspiration behind D&D. The whole reason appendix N exists. You can’t divorce the two as easily as you suggest. Also,as mentioned earlier, outside of a paragraph that says HP are abstract, literally every other part of the rules, and how every combat session is narrated, treats losing hp in battle as actual wounds. Language use is important. So treat them however you want, but this attitude that people are wrong for treating or wanting to treat hp loss in battle as wounds, or that people who have issues with super fast hp healing to full after 8 hours are wrong, needs to stop. There is a mountain of supporting evidence that supports people feeling that way.

Yeah, except that they have to be separated, because you can't run the game like a novel.

For example, I read a book series a few years ago (I believe the first book was Rhapsody) where the three main characters spend a good third to half of the book walking through a dark cave and talking. They encounter no one, they fight nothing, they see nothing, it is just them traveling a massive distance, underground, and getting to know each other.

In a book, this works (actually surprisingly well, the author did an amazing job of keeping my interest with their dynamics despite nothing else going on) but if I tried to run a campaign where even a single full session was set up that way with them moving through a dark, featureless cavern with nothing to do except talk to each other, would it be fun?

Or, how about when we take directly from some of the inspiring myths of Western Mythology and have an unstoppable hero who is multiple times stronger than any enemy or ally, whose ally's are really just symbolic scene dressing for the hero being epic and cool. Think that game would work out? It makes a great story, but having a single person hog all the attention, glory, action, and fun doesn't work in a team game.

The two mediums create entertainment in different ways, because they have different mechanics and different goals. You cannot compare them 1 to 1 and expect to get anywhere.

The concept of only being able to do so much magic within a given time is sound, if only because were magic to be unlimited in a setting that setting would quickly become unrecognizable from anything we can relate to - for the short time it existed before self-destructing, that is.

So, the question becomes how to quantify those limitations; and while neither slots nor spell points (I've used both) is a perfect answer by any means, they'll have to do until a better method comes along.

The other option, of course, would be to do away with spellcasting classes entirely; but somehow I don't think that idea's gonna fly very far.

Yeah, I get they are a "best workaround" for right now. But the fact that you can't combine them, or break them apart, and gaining them seems incredibly odd and mechanical if looked at through a lens of story just bothers me when I try and make a world using the rules of DnD.

At least Hp work in a way I can model.

 

[Charlaquin]

It would be a terrible argument for that, since physical injury is something which frequently needs to be portrayed within the background narrative,

But HP loss doesn’t need to be the way to represent that narrative mechanically.

and the abstract loss of vague whatever is not something that ever comes up in the narrative (aside from your feeble attempts to justify HP mechanics).

In order for the narrative to accurately line up with the mechanics of 5e, the loss of HP must be represented narratively by something other than serious injury. Minor cuts and bruises, along with general fatigue, fits that bill well.

I'm away from my books at the moment, but it shouldn't be hard to find. I think it's even in the index.

The only explicit discussion of metagaming I can think of is in the DMG, and it’s in the context of an example of table rules the DM might set. The implication being that whether or not to discourage metagame thinking is something the DM should give thought to and set their own rules about for their own game. Granted, the example is listed as a recommendation, but the fact that it is not listed as a rule suggests to me that 5e considers rules against metagame thinking optional, if a good idea. Of course, it’s quite possible there’s another reference I’m forgetting about that might change my information. If you’re aware of one, let me know and I’ll look into it.

Oddly enough, taking into account whether the character is being played by a player or the DM, would be meta-gaming. That is out-of-game information, which cannot rightly inform any in-character decision.

...What are you even talking about here?

 

[Iry]

That depends on how you measure success.

True! If success is never getting published, then we have winners in the millions.
The unfortunate fate of most RPGs.

 

[Sacrosanct]

In order for the narrative to accurately line up with the mechanics of 5e, the loss of HP must be represented narratively by something other than serious injury. Minor cuts and bruises, along with general fatigue, fits that bill well.

No, no it doesn’t. Minor cuts and bruises don’t heal back completely after 8 hours on their own. Not remotely close. So that would be the opposite of “fitting the bill well”. As I mentioned a couple times already, most significant fatigue doesn’t either. Let me run you though some serious physical exertion and see if you still don’t have any effects after 8 hours.

 

[Charlaquin]

No, no it doesn’t. Minor cuts and bruises don’t heal back completely after 8 hours on their own. Not remotely close. So that would be the opposite of “fitting the bill well”. As I mentioned a couple times already, most significant fatigue doesn’t either. Let me run you though some serious physical exertion and see if you still don’t have any effects after 8 hours.

As I’ve said before, it doesn’t need to heal completely, just enough that the character is able to continue fighting. Cuts and bruises wouldn’t even have much of an impact on that, and wouldn’t be a necessary component if it weren’t for poisons that take effect on a hit and the fact that a character is supposed to have visible signs of damage at half HP. Fatigue is likely to affect one’s ability to fight far more in the short and long term. And yes, characters do recover from fatigue unrealistically quickly. This can be chalked up to the fact that HP is not purely fatigue but also partially luck, divine favor, etc., and the fact that (again) going back up to full HP doesn’t necessarily mean you have completely recovered, only that what is affecting you is no longer meaningfully reducing your ability to keep fighting. There’s also a certain amount of action movie heroism going on. If that’s still not satisfying, you can easily change the amount of time a long rest takes. Many people do.