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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 4794931" data-attributes="member: 63763">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. ----------------- 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.</blockquote>

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