What is a Wound? An attempt to bridge the divide.

[Bedrockgames]

We are not going to be able to arrive at a definition of wound or hp everyone here can agree on. That is clear from the multiple threads on the subject that just result in both sides attacking each other's assumptions. The only solution that will work is if D&D Next is able to support both ends of the spectrum. If you favor one, or try to meet half way, you will just displease a large number of players.

The secret to these debates is, instead of trying to get the upper hand through definitions and deconstructions (i.e. But if you think a wound is x, surely healing surges are not a problem because of y), people should just sincerely try to understand why the other side takes its position and hwy their assumptions matter to them (instead of trying to understand only with the intend of uprooting the assumption). I get that people who like one day heals or like 4e healing surges do so for a range of completely reasonable assumptions about what is more realistic and what works well in play. I could attack these assumptions, but there is no reason to. Everything fails under scrutiny, because we are dealing with abstractions, but that doesn't make them unreasonable to hold their position. Likewise people like me, who feel the physical component of hp is key and who feel longer natural healing times are better for realism and game play are holding an equally reasonable position. But there is little point in me trying to convince the other side of my point of view. The best thing we can do is say what our preferences are, say what we'd like to see in Next, and hope WOTC makes a hp/heaping system in next we can live with. But these discussions about the nature of hp, the nature of wounds, etc just muddy the waters. All that matters is how many people like hd and one day healing and how many don't. That is what wotc will base their decisions around, not arguments for why one approach is better than the other.

 

[Hussar]

Because he has less hit points. It's more difficult to survive a fight. No one wound is bad enough to bring him down, but they add up. He's slower to react, he can't quite block that blow to the left, etc. This is represented simply by hit points, otherwise we'd have a dozen different conditions to track.

But, even that rationale doesn't always work.

My character takes 1 point of damage. Now, by your definition, I've been wounded and this will not heal overnight. Only thing is, it does. I could be wrong, but I think pretty much every edition gives you at least 1 HP per night.

Therefore, 1 HP damage isn't actually a wound.

And it gets a bit trickier from there. If I have proper bedrest, I heal faster. Makes sense, totally believable. But, now, at least 2 HP of damage disappear overnight. That's a REALLY comfortable bed if a wound disappears.

On and on. At what point does damage actually become a wound? The threshold of whatever a particular edition allows you to heal overnight?

I'd much, much rather see wounds be taken onto the disease track. You drop below zero HP and you gain a wound. It takes days to disappear and it might actually get worse, just like a disease. In my mind, this is a better model.

 

[Hussar]

Likewise people like me, who feel the physical component of hp is key and who feel longer natural healing times are better for realism and game play are holding an equally reasonable position.

Totally agree with this.

Where I tend to disagree is when perfectly reasonable work arounds are proposed and rejected, simply because they don't baseline to a particular viewpoint. 1 day healing as a baseline is more flexible. It's much easier to simply slow it down, since, for most players, it doesn't really matter - it's going to be one day whether by rules or by spending healing resources. If we baseline a much slower healing rate, the only way to get a faster healing rate is to introduce a higher baseline of magic. Which has all sorts of knock on effects for campaign design. This was largely the default in 3e and earlier editions.

I'm just trying to see if the base problem is simply trying to use HP for something that another system might be better at tackling. I do honestly believe that wounds are better modeled with the disease track. It opens up all sorts of interesting goodies when you decouple wounds from hit points. Since the link was always tenuous to begin with, I'm not seeing what's being lost.

 

[HeinorNY]

A wound is a wound, in the game as it is in RL.

Hit Points don't represent wounds, they represent the amount of hits your character can take and keep standing.

When your character is hit, he is hit. Being hit means taking damage. It is always a physical hit (or a mental hit in the case of some magical attack). There may be blood, or bruises or just scratches. A hit always causes some type of wound.

The loss of hit points is caused by hits, that cause wounds, but it is not the wound itself. The loss of HPs represents the effects of the hit, or wound, on the character's capacity to keep standing and fighting.

When these effects reach a critical point, 0 HP, the character can't stand and fight anymore.
The effects can be blood loss, pain, weariness, stress, loss of morale and even fear. The effects can be physical or mental.

When the character cancels these effects by any means, he regains some of his Hit Points and his capacity to keep standing and functioning BUT just because the effects are gone, or supressed, it doesn't mean that the wounds that caused them are gone.

When a character rests a full day and recover many HPs, those sword cuts from the last encounter that caused the loss of HPs are not gone. They are still there, but they are stitched, burnt, and treated by any means the character has access to. The effect of the wounds are partially gone, but not the wounds themselves.

When a character regains some of his Hit Points by using any non-magical ability, the wounds that caused the loss of HPs are still there, but their effects don't matter anymore to the mechanical part of the game. When the Warlord says to his ally that everything is going to be okay, his ally can overcome the pain and the fear of that arrow to the knee, but the wound that caused the pain and fear is still there, it simply no longer affects the character.

Hit Points can also represent luck, but losing HPs doesn't mean you traded some of your luck for not being hit. A hit is always a hit. Having some luck as HP means that your hits, or wounds, are never as bad as the next guy's (because you have more HPs for being lucky), but a hit is always a hit. So a magical, or non-magical, ability that increases your luck could easily be represented by giving you some extra HP.

 

[Gold Roger]

Looking at all those hp and wounds discussions, I begin to think that a "real wound" system like whfrpg 2ed had would be a nice module for DDN.

For those not familiar with wfrpg 2, the characters have wound points that are pretty much hp (though far less). As long as a character has his wound points he can pretty much keep going, but when an attack takes him below 0 he starts aquiring proper wound, depending on how much the attack damage exceeded the chars remaining wounds. The injury is taken from tables, sorted by damage type and hit location.

To adjust this to D&D, remove the hit locations (which would be a horrible thing in D&D) and add damage tables for the energy types, which are far more common in D&D. As the system does add quite a bit of complexity (though I don't feel it's to bad if the use is optional), it should be used only for PC's and important NPCs.

With something like this in place, I feel I could even accept lightning fast hp recovery and maybe the reaper, if it's melee only.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Another poster once said something that really resonated with me:

Anything that can cause Hit Point Damage can kill you.

Therefore, anything that you can die of should cause HP damage.

And anything that you cannot die of shouldn't be using HP to represent it.

If this means we need to update the definition of HP so that it means explicitly that thing -- a force that could potentially kill you -- I'm down with that.

What seems clear to me is that we DO need a way to differentiate the two, since conflating them is just annoying everyone.

What is less clear is: which one should damage from a sword come from? And which one can be restored with a night's rest? Because if a sword wound can be completely recovered from with a night's rest, it's not really potentially deadly.

1 day healing as a baseline is more flexible. It's much easier to simply slow it down, since, for most players, it doesn't really matter - it's going to be one day whether by rules or by spending healing resources. If we baseline a much slower healing rate, the only way to get a faster healing rate is to introduce a higher baseline of magic. Which has all sorts of knock on effects for campaign design. This was largely the default in 3e and earlier editions.

Changing the timescale in either direction, IMO, is pretty simple. And I find the weeklong scale REALLY useful for things like training, dynamic changes over time, things like weather, and even simple verisimilitude: the only time when people are up and at 'em again 8 hours after being nearly killed is when there's magic involved.

What the healing debate is partially getting at is an issue of pacing: how much time should be spent to get all of your resources back? IMO, this should be a longer timescale, because it reinforces the idea that each encounter is a small part of a whole.

 

[Varigg]

I was actually thinking of trying to add Fate's consequences as a wound system. HP would just represent resolve, stamina and battle luck. As long as you have HP you are fine. If an attack would take you below 0, you would take a consequence instead. 5 points for minor, 10 points moderate, 15 serious, 20 critical. You have one slot for each, if you have to take another consequence and the slot is already taken, you have to take the next higher one. Minor would cause a -1 to your checks, moderate another -1 plus long lasting damage, serious another -1 plus loss of function in some body part , critical - your pretty much dead unless stabilized. Of course healing would have to be adapted, i.e. healing spells would remove consequences, why abilities and actions like second wind would be stamina recoveries and affect HP. Short rests would also restore HP completely (1 per minute). You could expand this and for instance have backstab attacks cause consequences direcly, to enable silent take outs.

 

[Mercutio01]

I'd much, much rather see wounds be taken onto the disease track. You drop below zero HP and you gain a wound. It takes days to disappear and it might actually get worse, just like a disease. In my mind, this is a better model.

I would not be totally averse to something like this, in all honesty, but to agree to something like that, I'd need to see HP scaled way down. I'd still have them increase with each level, as experience and skill adds to the ability to avoid damage, but I would absolutely prefer to see that after two or three critical hits there's an actual wound. To that end, you would have to change the terminology. You can't continue to use the words hit, damage, and healing if they don't actually refer to hits, damage, and healing.

And that, I'm afraid, pushes too far away from D&D identity for most people to agree "feels like D&D."

 

[AngryMojo]

I kind of like the idea of a wound or injury being a status condition, one that doesn't go away easily and is only gained when you suffer some sort of meaningful hit.

Imagine if you will:

A critical hit, being dropped to zero hit points by a damaging ability or any other special ability that specifies it causes a wound. This wound confers disadvantage to relevant checks until it's healed. Change the "unconscious" condition to "incapacitated" and it makes a lot more sense.

Savage Worlds uses something along those lines for wounds, if your character has taken a wound it's an actual physical injury and a bad one at that. For minor injuries you're considered "Shaken" until you get over it, but the same status condition is used for being blinded, deafened, distracted or frightened. The system specifies that while a second shaken condition results in a wound, it must be from an actual damaging source.

Throw a little common sense into the HP abstraction and it works fine. The word "incapacitation" can mean many things, from unconscious to fleeing to complete loss of morale, all have the same net effect of removing a character from a fight.

 

[Harlekin]

We are not going to be able to arrive at a definition of wound or hp everyone here can agree on. That is clear from the multiple threads on the subject that just result in both sides attacking each other's assumptions. The only solution that will work is if D&D Next is able to support both ends of the spectrum. If you favor one, or try to meet half way, you will just displease a large number of players.

The secret to these debates is, instead of trying to get the upper hand through definitions and deconstructions (i.e. But if you think a wound is x, surely healing surges are not a problem because of y), people should just sincerely try to understand why the other side takes its position and hwy their assumptions matter to them (instead of trying to understand only with the intend of uprooting the assumption). I get that people who like one day heals or like 4e healing surges do so for a range of completely reasonable assumptions about what is more realistic and what works well in play. I could attack these assumptions, but there is no reason to. Everything fails under scrutiny, because we are dealing with abstractions, but that doesn't make them unreasonable to hold their position. Likewise people like me, who feel the physical component of hp is key and who feel longer natural healing times are better for realism and game play are holding an equally reasonable position. But there is little point in me trying to convince the other side of my point of view. The best thing we can do is say what our preferences are, say what we'd like to see in Next, and hope WOTC makes a hp/heaping system in next we can live with. But these discussions about the nature of hp, the nature of wounds, etc just muddy the waters. All that matters is how many people like hd and one day healing and how many don't. That is what wotc will base their decisions around, not arguments for why one approach is better than the other.

You are overlooking that there is also a group of players that would have liked to keep full 4th healing rules in place that allow you to go into multiple combats a day with full HP. They are as unhappy by the HD/heal overnight rules as you are, but they want them to change in the opposite direction. Maybe the present rules are a compromise between all these fractions.

I can easily see that this may be a compromise that satisfies no one, but that is one of the many impossible goals D&Dnext is trying to archive.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Totally agree with this.

Where I tend to disagree is when perfectly reasonable work arounds are proposed and rejected, simply because they don't baseline to a particular viewpoint. 1 day healing as a baseline is more flexible. It's much easier to simply slow it down, since, for most players, it doesn't really matter - it's going to be one day whether by rules or by spending healing resources. If we baseline a much slower healing rate, the only way to get a faster healing rate is to introduce a higher baseline of magic. Which has all sorts of knock on effects for campaign design. This was largely the default in 3e and earlier editions.

I think your assumptions here are not correct. For most people natural healing time does matter. That is why we have these constant back and forths. It was one of the central points of dispute in the controversy over 4e. Really all you are saying here is we should accept 1 day heals and work around them with modules. While that is exactly what I plan to do, I think one day heals bother enough people that having that as default is a terrible idea. It will only serve to drive away potential players. It is very easy to do baseline natural healing that is inline with previous editions (days to weeks) and simply have an optional 1 day heal rule for people who want it. That is incredibly simple.

I'm just trying to see if the base problem is simply trying to use HP for something that another system might be better at tackling. I do honestly believe that wounds are better modeled with the disease track. It opens up all sorts of interesting goodies when you decouple wounds from hit points.

But lots of us keep saying we don't want a wound system. We are happy with the simplici of traditional Hp and think it works just fine when used to loosely model physical damage. The only problem I have with the Next system is the HD mechanic and one day heals. Take those out and I am a happy man. The last thing I want is more fiddly bits surrounding HP.

Since the link was always tenuous to begin with, I'm not seeing what's being lost.

Simplicity and functionality. Tack on wounds to Hp and the game not only gets more complicated, it plays differently (some of the d20 variants showed this). That is all fine on its own, but it isn't what I want from D&D. Like I said before. I am totally fine with pre-4e style HP and heaing. I thought it worked great for what it did. They could easily satiafy both camps by making that baseline, and just hacing 1 day healing and HD as add on optional rules (and if they prove popular they will become defacto core over time -like NWPs in 2e).

 

[Bedrockgames]

You are overlooking that there is also a group of players that would have liked to keep full 4th healing rules in place that allow you to go into multiple combats a day with full HP. They are as unhappy by the HD/heal overnight rules as you are, but they want them to change in the opposite direction. Maybe the present rules are a compromise between all these fractions.

I can easily see that this may be a compromise that satisfies no one, but that is one of teh many impossible goals D&Dnext is trying to archive.

I do see this and realize there are more than two camps.

This just shows how the mushy middle solution isn't a good one. They should give clear and focused options (standard pre-4e healing for people like me, 4e healing for people like you, etc).

 

[Harlekin]

We are not going to be able to arrive at a definition of wound or hp everyone here can agree on. That is clear from the multiple threads on the subject that just result in both sides attacking each other's assumptions. The only solution that will work is if D&D Next is able to support both ends of the spectrum. If you favor one, or try to meet half way, you will just displease a large number of players.

The secret to these debates is, instead of trying to get the upper hand through definitions and deconstructions (i.e. But if you think a wound is x, surely healing surges are not a problem because of y), people should just sincerely try to understand why the other side takes its position and hwy their assumptions matter to them (instead of trying to understand only with the intend of uprooting the assumption). I get that people who like one day heals or like 4e healing surges do so for a range of completely reasonable assumptions about what is more realistic and what works well in play. I could attack these assumptions, but there is no reason to. Everything fails under scrutiny, because we are dealing with abstractions, but that doesn't make them unreasonable to hold their position. Likewise people like me, who feel the physical component of hp is key and who feel longer natural healing times are better for realism and game play are holding an equally reasonable position. But there is little point in me trying to convince the other side of my point of view. The best thing we can do is say what our preferences are, say what we'd like to see in Next, and hope WOTC makes a hp/heaping system in next we can live with. But these discussions about the nature of hp, the nature of wounds, etc just muddy the waters. All that matters is how many people like hd and one day healing and how many don't. That is what wotc will base their decisions around, not arguments for why one approach is better than the other.

Unfortunately, I think you are right. As Wotc is mainly interested in getting money from all the people that have some connection to D&D now, they need to follow closely to the majority opinion and avoid as many potential points of contention as possible.

If Wotc wanted to design a version of D&D that would attract new players and be a cornerstone to build the brand's future on, the situation would be different. Then they should very much be interested in the rationale for different preferences and determine which version of the rules makes for the best game for the most people.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Related to my above post (and perhaps clarifying it a little):

Anything that can do HP damage can kill you.

So anything that heals HP damage needs to be able to actively remove things that can kill you.

That is, if a hit with a sword deals HP damage, it can kill you. And if an effect heals HP damage, it can mend sword wounds. Permanently. You get those points back, after all.

This looks at the debate in a slightly different light: anything that heals HP is an effect that undoes something potentially fatal. Even if everything but your last 1 HP is all luck and plot points, if a shout from a warlord heals HP it does undo the wound that drops you from 1 hp to 0. You don't just ignore it, you don't just power through it, it effectively never happened.

If HP damage can kill you, then HP healing can undo fatal things.

It's possible to design a game without these assumptions, but D&D definitely has them, and if you want to keep HP as they have been, you need to make sure that (1) nothing is dealing HP damage that is not in some way deadly (forex, cat scratches), and (2) anything that is healing HP is something that can heal potentially fatal injury (forex, magic, guts, regeneration, etc).

 

[Herschel]

Except that doesn't take in to account what's "really" going on with HP. It's kind of like falling: It's not the fall itself that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom.

I do think Incapacitated is a more accurate term than unconscious. That was a good call Angry Mojo.

 

[Deadboy]

Related to my above post (and perhaps clarifying it a little):

Anything that can do HP damage can kill you.

So anything that heals HP damage needs to be able to actively remove things that can kill you.

That is, if a hit with a sword deals HP damage, it can kill you. And if an effect heals HP damage, it can mend sword wounds. Permanently. You get those points back, after all.

This looks at the debate in a slightly different light: anything that heals HP is an effect that undoes something potentially fatal. Even if everything but your last 1 HP is all luck and plot points, if a shout from a warlord heals HP it does undo the wound that drops you from 1 hp to 0. You don't just ignore it, you don't just power through it, it effectively never happened.

If HP damage can kill you, then HP healing can undo fatal things.

It's possible to design a game without these assumptions, but D&D definitely has them, and if you want to keep HP as they have been, you need to make sure that (1) nothing is dealing HP damage that is not in some way deadly (forex, cat scratches), and (2) anything that is healing HP is something that can heal potentially fatal injury (forex, magic, guts, regeneration, etc).

I disagree that D&D has those assumptions and would argue that you're building a ton of assumptions into the system that frankly just aren't there.

Worse, taking such a regimated view of what a HP is totally de-abstracts them, which is not a particularly good thing for either side of the argument.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I disagree that D&D has those assumptions and would argue that you're building a ton of assumptions into the system that frankly just aren't there.

What I'm saying is that this is what HP does, functionally. Regardless of your view of the fiction, mechanically, loosing HP kills you. Thus, regardless of your view of the fiction, mechanically, restoring HP removes the effects of things that can kill you.

By that functional definition:
If it can't kill you, it shouldn't be dealing HP damage.
If it can't repair a mortal wound, it shouldn't be restoring HP.

If you want to change those facts, you have have to change what HP does mechanically (such as not letting 0 hp be the prelude to death).

Worse, taking such a regimated view of what a HP is totally de-abstracts them, which is not a particularly good thing for either side of the argument.

If we're going to talk about these things, we should at least anchor the convo in what they do in the game by the rules.

Then we can see what we might need to adjust to represent different things.

Things like making 0 hp nonfatal, or adding CHA or DEX to HP instead of CON might help to model an abstract/luck/chance model better.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

But, even that rationale doesn't always work.

My character takes 1 point of damage. Now, by your definition, I've been wounded and this will not heal overnight. Only thing is, it does. I could be wrong, but I think pretty much every edition gives you at least 1 HP per night.

Therefore, 1 HP damage isn't actually a wound.

And it gets a bit trickier from there. If I have proper bedrest, I heal faster. Makes sense, totally believable. But, now, at least 2 HP of damage disappear overnight. That's a REALLY comfortable bed if a wound disappears.

No, it's not realistic, but it's a hell of a lot closer than all wounds healing overnight. I can make a concession for speedier gameplay, but my suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No, it's not realistic, but it's a hell of a lot closer than all wounds healing overnight. I can make a concession for speedier gameplay, but my suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

This is basically where I stand on the issue. Others don't have to agree. I am not terribly interested in persuading anyone to take my position, but at least understand this is where we are coming from. I am totally willing to play Next and work around HD and 1 day heals by houseruling them away, but they are glaring issues for me and I would be much happier if they were not baked into the core as default.

 

[nnms]

Sure. In say Rolemaster, you can have broken ribs, that stab you in the lungs, and cause internal bleeding. But the system also allows for healing broken bones, organ damage, and bleeding. Historically that's not D&D, and it is highly doubtful D&D would adopt such a system. I made the assumption we were talking about D&D here.

Remember, Rolemaster started as a product that supplied optional rules modules for AD&D. Similarly, Runequest started as house rules for D&D (it also has more specific wounds and damage by location). So the traditions of these approaches are part of D&D, back to its early years.