Unicorn's Touch: Free Hit Points Every 5 Minutes?

[Garthanos]

I didn't claim it was less realistic. I claimed there was no longer a damage component to hit points which I personally find problematic. If one has to assign a phrase to that, I would not say "less realistic", I would say "less plausible". It just feels totally gamist without a damage component.

And the way hitpoints worked before did they feel like they had a damage component "I mean really"?

The supposed versimilitude of hp taking longer to heal by time.. was for me deprived by silliness of people with more hp taking longer to heal by time. ... and if hp included fatigue like they claimed before... why were they so slow to recover.. getting unfatigued IRL is well usually a few minutes. "Nobody remembers these questions?"

And healing by time was in actual play almost never used... did you ever play without a cleric? really how odd?

I think scratches and bumps ie cosmetics can still be seen as a part of hitpoint loss now but its cosmetic, not "real" damage (see the link for an idea for real damage). If you look at that wound house rule you see that...it effectively gives the player the option of accepting an impairing wound in place of spending the hp to minimalize an attack.

When you fight to first blood in a duel.. for heros first blood ie bloodied is often just a scratch, ever seen it in the zoro movie? and similar when they first touch the enemy..

The scratches and minor stuff that "might" be washed away by a heal spell (or not), is a visual difference a clue nothing more unfortunately a lucky hero has less scratches a tough hero has more they could have become just bloodied, frodo gets a little but obvious cut when he hits bloodied, Borromir has a whole bunch more cuts and not necessarily because B has more hit points but rather because luck and skill and toughness have different special effects for minimizing damage...

Speaking of which here is

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/256183-hit-points.html#post4794091 as a power ...

And I agree with you. Changing healing to a percentage heal should have been done 3 releases ago. That is a good feature of 4E.

A wound which impairs ability a small amount (maybe only in the next battle ) that is taken from one battle in to the next battle was never ever simulated in D&D. no matter how long the hp took to recover.

Now if you give long term injury rule it should be only amenable to long term form of healing like a ritual... clerics are good at those too I hear.

 

[KarinsDad]

A wound which impairs ability a small amount (maybe only in the next battle ) that is taken from one battle in to the next battle was never ever simulated in D&D. no matter how long the hp took to recover.

Actually it was. If one had 100 hit points in battle #1 and 50 hit points in battle #2, the chances of staying alive in battle #2 were significantly less than battle #1.

It was just a different type of simulation than a penalty to hit. And when the PC goes down in battle #2, it means that there are fewer PCs to handle the rest of the encounter.

This no longer occurs in 4E (or at least not to any significant amount). Everyone is healed up nearly all of the way for the next encounter every time. That did not always happen in 3.5 or earlier.

Now if you give long term injury rule it should be only amenable to long term form of healing like a ritual... clerics are good at those too I hear.

I haven't yet added a ritual, but I do allow once per day wound point healing from a potion, a spell, and an extended rest. Thanks for the idea. I'm sure that my players would like a Heal Wounds ritual where they can swap resources for healing.

 

[Garthanos]

Hit points in earlier versions of the game were described as including luck and fatigue.. its pretty depressing and anti-heroic I would argue to have luck recover slowly.. and fatigue recovering slowly seems really strange?

I haven't yet added a ritual, but I do allow once per day wound point healing from a potion, a spell, and an extended rest. Thanks for the idea. I'm sure that my players would like a Heal Wounds ritual where they can swap resources for healing.

It is fun, I wouldn't make it "real" expensive though, I love including components in creature parts, for nature based rituals.

 

[WalterKovacs]

So if my character spends his allotment of healing surges powering magic items he's going to suddenly look like a bloody wreck? Don't think so.

He won't look like a bloody wreck. He will look exhausted and drained of a ton of energy.

For example, ANY film where use of magic ages/drains the user. You are having your life essense/energy being sapped (as if by a succubus, for example). The Force, specifically the dark side of the Force, has been shown to have this effect (the use of force lightning by Darth Sidious in the third movie) is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

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A few other notes about the thread:

(a) An extended rest is 6 hours. The PCs can get away with a bit less time resting than most (it may turn into 8 hours when you have watches, but rituals and/or eladrin/drow/warforged can reduce the need for watches).

(b) HP representing "real damage" that imposes no magical penalties is fine, but healing surges are not? There is the argument that no films show healing surges like in 4e. What films involved people who are near death fighting EXACTLY as well as they do when they started? In most cases, any damage WILL hamper people during a fight, more so than just the "until the end of the next turn" or "save ends" durations that most have. There are some wounds (like Frodo's) that persist even after long periods of rest that would otherwise get people up to full HP. In the case of the Die Hard movies, he's often lumbering at zombie like speeds near the end of the film. Very few, if any films use the D&D system of "either you have hp and are fully capable, or you are at 0HP and unconcious".

HP, especially in D&D has always been abstract and has been more to make the game fair and fun, than it is to reflect a reality, etc. A system where as you get more hurt, you fight less well ... would be more realistic. It would also make it much harder to mount a comeback, as the closer you are to losing, the easier it becomes to beat you, and thus making the start of the encounter much more important than the end, which is slightly anti-climactic.

In general, the films and the like that have the characters constantly fighting on, and on, and on ... they care a lot more about the fights than detailing in excruiating detail the events of the resting. The rest will often be hilighted by events that occur during the time of rest, like friendships being bonded, skills being learned, equipment being given out, etc. There will likely be a few scenes devoted to showing that yes, so and so is being tended to and will be recovered when they leave or perhaps what's his name has some sort of wound that is worse than normal healing can deal with (more likely a disease of some sort in terms of 4e objects).

In general, the change takes an existing abstract HP concept and changes it. In 3e, many players would load up on magic items and the like so that between encounters they would recharge to full health. The idea was for, over the course of the day, you would be ground down and the last encounter would be potentially fatal. This meant more for spellcasters than for non-spellcasters. A fighter has only hp as a resource, but if the group spends enough cash, they can keep the fighter's hp up constantly.

In 4e, every encounter is potentially fatal. You could die because you run out of surges, but this is a risk you know about before you go into the fight, and thus if the fight could be avoided, someone with a low number of surges may just hold back. However, you can also die because there are only so many ways to spend surges within an encounter.

Does ANY of the HP system that D&D has ever used make sense? In what book series is healing magic as cheap and readily available as it is in 3rd edition? In what films or books does damage do nothing but eventually cause unconciousness or death? The hp system is there because as a GAME, it's necessary to have some system to know how close to death the character is, and a system of ways to manage your hp has built around it. Surges are just another way to manage your hp, and a reason to have the characters sleep (instead of getting spells back which is the main reason for sleeping in 3rd). The system is very simplified to make the game move more smoothly instead relying on the individual attack powers to create the 'side effects' of the damage, instead of having the damage itself have any other effect that track your relative position to unconciousness and death.

 

[KarinsDad]

HP, especially in D&D has always been abstract and has been more to make the game fair and fun, than it is to reflect a reality, etc. A system where as you get more hurt, you fight less well ... would be more realistic. It would also make it much harder to mount a comeback, as the closer you are to losing, the easier it becomes to beat you, and thus making the start of the encounter much more important than the end, which is slightly anti-climactic.

Precisely.

We have been using a house rule that any creature half damaged is at -1 to all D20 rolls for years and it just works.

If the PCs damage their foes early, the encounter becomes ever so slightly easier.

If the foes damage the PCs early, the encounter becomes ever so slightly more difficult and might force the PCs to use more resources.

This gives the non-wounded participants a slight edge and rewards early success, just like in real combat. And, it incentivizes the players to keep themselves healthy in combat.

But anti-climatic? How is it any more anti-climatic than the PCs using a Bless spell?

 

[Garthanos]

Precisely.

We have been using a house rule that any creature half damaged is at -1 to all D20 rolls for years and it just works.

If the PCs damage their foes early, the encounter becomes ever so slightly easier.

If the foes damage the PCs early, the encounter becomes ever so slightly more difficult and might force the PCs to use more resources.

This gives the non-wounded participants a slight edge and rewards early success, just like in real combat. And, it incentivizes the players to keep themselves healthy in combat.

But anti-climatic? How is it any more anti-climatic than the PCs using a Bless spell?

Government Military/Medical studies even seem to agree with the fore mentioned house rule... people lose at most 5 percent of functionality or they are out of the fight from shock. This is not something most
people seem to expect and is only subtly different than the base D&D rule, I certainly never thought D&D was that close to realistic?.

On top of that there is something people also expect... the same injury that left them at only 5 percent performance loss after the battle impairs them in various major ways.... muscles not wanting to be used freeze up
in pain etc.... or shock and death setting in after the fight.

Staving off the intense results is via adrenaline rush, morale various effects that we are now getting described in the newest D&D as either temporary or even real hit point recovery -- and yeah self induced... its a super pain killer your body makes.

This delay of impact can last quite a while but ... normally lasts till the seeming end of immediate danger... ie the end of the encounter.

Anybody want a death save after the battle if they took a wounds over a certain amount and a bunch of heftier impairments? slowed, blinded various other effects and in general hefty penalties?Those are what mister die hard might be fighting through he also puts on bursts of ability at the right time while impaired to surprise over confident foes... but adrenaline can dull the injuries some later after that first rush, when the danger proves to be still eminent, so maybe he is cycling between, -1 vague general impairment and slowed half, -5 to hit etc...

Anybody want a death save during the battle after every hit? The military said it was weirdly unpredictable how nasty a wound would result in shock and incapacitation... from battle to battle even with the same person sometimes a minor wound took em out. I made up a saving throw based system that mirrored this (similar to the one in M&M), but kept armor separate as damage reduction and I didn't like it....I realized I actually like hit points for there predictability and that was the part of them that was un realistic.