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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8137576" data-attributes="member: 87792">This is one of the reasons D&D isn't even close to my first pick for an RPG most of the time. There are, in D&D only either three to six actual mechanical long term consequences on the table ever:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Gaining XP with your power directly increasing as you level up</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Gaining loot</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Death</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Losing loot</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Level drain</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">A long term spell or poison debuff</li> </ol>Losing hit points is not an injury - the only hit point (outside 4e) that has any actual mechanical effect on your abilities is the last one and in no edition does the consequence take longer to recover from than serious fatigue.D&D has, at least since the 1980s (with both the departure of Gygax from TSR and the publishing of the Dragonlance series as watersheds), been steadily de-emphasising the last three consequences with level drain in particular having been steadily cut back until it no longer existed. Which means that the only things D&D itself brings to the table are loot, XP, and death.This doesn't mean that there's nothing on the table in D&D in terms of consequences that aren't death, loot, or XP such as social status and the reaction or survival of NPCs. It means that none of the consequences are provided by the D&D rulebook. Meaning that, unless you enjoy the tactical combat side, the D&D rulebook is rules heavy and does very little to contribute to your enjoyment.Meanwhile other games such as Fate, Blades in the Dark, Leverage, Apocalypse World, WFRP, Pendragon, and others (those are just the ones that spring to my mind) have a range of things including success-with-consequences results, long term injury rules, mechanical support for NPC relationships, costs for holding values - and ability to say with a role that that's what you consider important through meta-currency.  And even ways to make death meaningful and a mechanical watershed for your character but non-permanent. For example one of the options in Apocalypse World when a character runs out of hit points is to come back as a different playbook (i.e. class) such as the Hardholder, the town boss, being left for dead and coming back as a gunlugger looking for revenge. It's in many ways as meaningful as death-and-a-new-character but far more narratively compelling.</blockquote>

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