NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6674742" data-attributes="member: 42582">The reason that this is true of hit points is because hit points are just a marker. They are not any sort of physical or metaphysical substance or quantity. In the fiction, events occur which impede the ability of a character to go on. Mechanically, the game notes and responds to such events by mandating the subtraction of hit points from the character's hit point pool. In the fiction, events occur which restore to the character the capacity to go on. Mechanically, the game notes and responds to such events by mandating the addition of hit points from the character's hit point pool.When the hit point pool is full, we can say of the character that his/her ability to go on is maximally replenished. When the hit point pool is empty, we can say of the character that s/he has lost the ability to go on; hence, s/he is unconscious and/or dying.The hit points themselves do not correspond to anything, however. They are just a number, a marker, which goes up or down as events in one or the other of those two categories occurs, and which have a maximum (which corresponds to maximum capacity to go on) and a minimum (which correspond to unconsciousness, dying and/or death).Mechanically, this does not work for two reasons.First, temporary hit points are not a pool of endurance and determination that allows someone to go on despite being physically worn down. (1) A character need not be physically worn down in order to receive temp hp. (2) Temp hp can exceed the cap of "maximal replenishment of reserves" - hence they are not about reserves at all. (3) Temp hp don't help when a character is unconscious and/or dying, yet this is one crucial moment when, in heroic adventure fiction if not often in real life, words of encouragement enable someone to rally, and to go on, despite being physically worn down.Second, the phrase "your injuries (in the form of lost hit points)" seems confused. Being injured can cause the loss of hit points; but lost hit points don't correlate to particular injuries. D&D doesn't even use the notion of particular injuries - as Gygax set out in his original DMG, the notion of "injuries" or "hit location" isn't apposite where hit points are concerned, because the loss of hit points is about the wearing down of someone's ability to go on. That's not to say that, in some particular context, a GM shouldn't say "The orc scimitar slashes your forearm - lose 8 hp". But there is no mechanical correlation between subsequently healing 8 hit points, and healing that cut. For instance, a character could use some non-magical ability to let another character heal some hit points (say, using a "healing kit"), and could narrate that as (say) providing the character with a cup of strong brandy while stitching up the wound, and then some hit points could be replenished although the character's arm is still cut. (Stitching a wound can facilitate its healing; it doesn't, in and of itself, heal it.)As well as the mechanical objections, there is a purely ad hominem objection to the notion of "your injuries (in the form of lost hit points)". You have asserted, in the earlier post that I have also quoted, that hit points are undifferentiated. Yet you also want to say that hit points are differentiated, in the sense that particular bundles of lost hit points correlate to particular injuries. That seems contradictory to me.As someone who has played a lot of D&D, including but by no means limited to a lot of 4e, I can say that from the point of view of practical game play granting temporary hit points is nothing like healing. The former is about prophylaxis. The latter is about recovery. In the fiction, the former is about a rousing speech or blessing in anticipation of action and struggle; the latter is about encouraging a friend an ally to overcome the burdens that action and struggle have inflicted.</blockquote>

Verification