Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink

[Bluenose]

That's the Inspiring Leader feat. It's already in the game. Which is how a wizard like Gandalf or ranger like Aragorn can use it.
It's not like they inspired Faramir back onto his feet or Strider was able to speech Frodo into surviving a knife wound.

Well, if you're going to use those as examples I'll note that the characters struck down by attacks didn't die within a short time due to being unconscious and bleeding out either. It's possible that they aren't actually using D&D rules in their game.

 

[jayoungr]

Temporary hit points don't make a lot of sense in a hp = energy/luck system.

I don't have a problem with them being extra energy/luck. You can never have too much of either!

 

[Lord Twig]

I don't see why hit points have to be all one thing or the other. The rules even say it is a mixture of both.

Magic can obviously heal or restore both meat and mojo. Inspiring talk has more trouble.

 

[jodyjohnson]

If think the consensus was that "HP as Meat" refers to understanding that when you lose Hit Points it always causes some sort of injury that must heal even if the majority is non-physical (luck, stamina, mojo). There aren't times when you take "Damage" from a "Hit" that was actually not an injury, no matter how minor (bruise, scratch, nerve trauma, light blistering). When a character goes to zero and needs to stabilize or die - that is always an injury and likely serious.

"HP as Mojo" generally means Hits do not necessarily cause injury, but it depends on the final result which usually isn't apparent until the target dies ("I guess it was serious") or the target recovers completely in a short period without using any healing magic (short period being a 'Short Rest'). Unconsciousness is not necessarily serious depending on how (Nat 1, failing 3 Death saves, Nat 20, natural recovery - X hours, then add short rest) and how quickly the subject dies or pops back up. This is the "Schrodinger's cat" aspect - you can't actually narrate what happened until you know the final resolution of the combat (did the target die, did it use magical healing, did it require extended natural healing, or did it return to full capacity within hours or less). Your narration is likely to be nonsensical if the recovery needed doesn't match the severity of the narrated wound.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't see why hit points have to be all one thing or the other. The rules even say it is a mixture of both.

But they also don't differentiate between the two. You can be killed by an attack that only does 'meat' damage or only does 'mojo' (psychic for instance) damage. You can be healed from psychic damage that leaves your flesh un-marked by a spell that specifically cures "wounds." You can heal back from devastating meat-grinder damage with an hour's short rest (and all your HD).

You can't really reconcile those things if you think that the damage 'healed' must match the type of damage inflicted, not without adding more granular rules. You can just assume that they work past eachother. A spell that cure wounds can fill you with unnatural vitality ('virtual meat' or meat-energy, I suppose you could say) to make up for being demoralized or psychically crushed. A short rest can leave you able to press on in spite of wounds that haven't had time to heal.

Magic can obviously heal or restore both meat and mojo. Inspiring talk has more trouble.

What magic can do is pretty arbitrary. It wouldn't be at all unreasonable to imagine 'Cure Wounds' as literally only curing actual wounds, for instance.

If one were to make the game more granular, and go with the sidebar description of damage, for instance, Cure Wounds wouldn't be of any use until you've been knocked past half your hps and started taking actual wounds, while resting and spending HD wouldn't restore any hps inflicted after that point, only the 'mojo' damage-dodging hps. And, psychic damage, 'damage' inflicted by illusions, and the like would only take you down to half, since it doesn't inflict wounds. You'd probably have to just break down and track two different pools - hps & wounds or vitality & hps or STUN & BODY or whatever. Other games have used such systems, and D&D Variants like that have been tried before, FWIW.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Oh look! Another warlord discussion turned into a hit point = meat debate...

 

[jayoungr]

Well, if you're going to use those as examples I'll note that the characters struck down by attacks didn't die within a short time due to being unconscious and bleeding out either. It's possible that they aren't actually using D&D rules in their game.

Well, of course they actually weren't , but to continue with the conceit for just a little longer: in both cases, the big problem was the magical component of the attack. Their physical wounds were fairly minor, and both got emergency first aid for that part.

 

[Lord Twig]

I think you have to really try to come up with reasons for magic healing to not work on any injury. I mean, you can't heal psychic damage magically because it's not real damage? Or something?

Magic has the advantage of being, well, magic. It heals all types of damage because that's what magical healing does.

Non-magical healing is the reverse. You have to make reasons for why it actually works immediately (as opposed to over time like normal non-magical healing). Usually the reason is: "Well, it didn't actually damage you. It just wore you down, and you were getting tired, but you are all better now!"

This leads to battles where no one was actually hit at all. No one took any real damage, it was all just... not-damage damage. If that's what you like, that's fine, but that doesn't fit the narrative that usually plays out in my head.

And STUN and BODY is a great damage mechanic for Super Hero games. Champions is still my favorite all-time Super Hero RPG.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Magic has the advantage of being, well, magic.

The 'advantage' of being arbitrary, yes. A design advantage, really. Whether that advantage is used to arbitrarily make magic a balanced/playable/fun part of a game, or to make arbitrarily broken/overpowered/game-wrecking is apparently a matter of taste - and tradition.

And STUN and BODY is a great damage mechanic for Super Hero games. Champions is still my favorite all-time Super Hero RPG.

Worked fine for Fantasy Hero and others, as well, and when it finally went officially 'universal.'

It completely misses the rapid run-up of hps total with level in D&D, that so nicely models the 'plot armor' inherent in genre. You can literally make yourself some plot armor in Hero, of course, but D&D has really captured that genre bit with hps like no other game, in a very simple, abstract way - hps. It's too bad they didn't initially have equally simple/abstract hp-restoration, but just had magical wound-healing as the primary thing.

 

[pemerton]

I love warlords granting temporary hit points, because it works with the conventions and tropes of the role so much better than healing.
You give the big inspirational speech before a battle or rally allies between skirmishes in a prolonged fight. You don't give your big speech to just one person occasionally in the middle of a fight or mostly at the end. But the nature or healing in D&D (4e excluded) focuses on healing after battles.

I believe that, in 3E, in-combat healing was also a significant factor in the game - at least at a number of tables.

There seems to be some disagreement on whether, in 5e, in-combat healing is important. That suggests to me that it is, at least in part, a table thing.

I agree that inspirational healing as a post-fight thing, rather than rousing or rallying, isn't very inspiring. I personally don't like it much for clerics either - when you look at the archetypes for prophets and wandering miracle works, very few of them perform their healing as a form of post-combat medical care.

I reeeeeeeeally don't think we should be using Gandalf as an example of completely mundane inspiration, because he is not a mundane being. Let's also not forget that shortly before this "inspiring and heartening," he had rescued Faramir from the nazgûl with some kind of bolt of white light, in full view of the entire city. I don't think this is completely unconnected to his ability to rally the Gondorian soldiers.

<snip>

I'd be more interested in literary examples of inspiration coming from a completely mundane non-magical human who (1) is not already a leader/commander thanks to some kind of authority structure such as social class or military rank, and (2) does not end up being granted command over others thanks to his/her inspiring abilities (i.e. "We'll all willingly follow you because you inspire us!"). An inspirer among equals, in other words, which is what I think the warlord is theoretically aiming for? (Correct me if I'm wrong about that.)

Aragorn isn't a commander of Legolas or Gimli, but clearly inspires them. (The run across Rohan also shows how inspiration has applications in non-combat contexts.)

There is also a question of how much archetype slippage is tolerable in a class-and-level-based FRPG based around the "adventuring" paradigm. The adventures of most D&D paladins, for instance, hold only a passing resemblance to the deeds of literary knight-errants. And they travel with non-knights rather than on their own, with other knights or with their squires and entourage.

Likewise, as noted above in this post, D&D clerics depart in many practical ways from the deeds of the prophets and miracle workers who (in part) underlie the archetype.

A 1st level cleric can work pretty impressive miracles, and we tolerate the departure from archetype for reasons of playability in a level-based, adventuring-party based, FRPG. I think the same sort of tolerance has to be extended to a 1st level warlord - s/he is inspiring, and recognised as such, even though when looked at from another perspective s/he is not very established as a leader and commander.

Whether archetype examples have to be mundane - I think that's a deeper source of division than the concessions for playability necessary for D&D to be D&D.

In LotR, and other work, Tolkien doesn't have categories of "magic" and "mundane". There is no categorical contrast between the "natural" fear of being attacked by an oliphant and the "supernatural" fear of being terrorised by a Nazgul. Similarly, there is no categorical contrast drawn between being inspired by Merry and Pippin, being inspired by Aragorn, and being inspired by Gandalf.

I think if you reduce all that to spells, you misfire: spells in D&D are little discrete rituals - like Gandalf igniting pinecones or trying to open the doors of Moria - and in that sense I think it's clear that Gandalf's heartening of the defenders of Gondor does not involve spell-casting.

In mechanical terms it might be an aura or something similar - but I don't think 5e generally forces these effects to be classified, does it (and in that way is more like 4e and less like 3E). I know the Anti-Magic Field spell refers to "spells and other magical effects", but what counts as a "magical effect" is left as a table thing, isn't it? For instance, a table which read the description of barbarian rage ("In battle, you fight with primal ferocity. On your turn, you can enter a rage as a bonus action.") and decided that it was a magical effect that is suppressed in an Anti-Magic Field wouldn't be breaking any rule. And, conversely, a group who decided that a warlord's aura of courage (or however it is handled) was not the sort of magical effect to be suppressed by an Anti-Magic Field wouldn't be dong anything wrong. Would they?