D&D 5E Why are potions of healing so expensive?

[Democratus]

Yes, it can be accumulation of minor injuries. Perhaps even some bigger ones and adrenaline still keeps them functioning. Cinematic, somewhat vague, but they clearly are not physically fine and they know it.

How can they tell how physically "un-fine" they are? Humans in the real world often have no idea how seriously wounded or close to death they are. Do characters in your games have a much more accuracte sense of their own wounds?

 

[Cadence]

Yes, it can be accumulation of minor injuries. Perhaps even some bigger ones and adrenaline still keeps them functioning. Cinematic, somewhat vague, but they clearly are not physically fine and they know it.

At some point I want to try playing in a game that uses something like the Pathfinder 1e Wounds and Vigor system (the wounds are the actual physical damage, the vigor is the ability to avoid it).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How can they tell how physically "un-fine" they are? Humans in the real world often have no idea how seriously wounded or close to death they are. Do characters in your games have a much more accuracte sense of their own wounds?

I mean experienced combatants might be better at gauging that sort of things than us nerds would. But yeah, the characters obviously don't know the exact amount of HP they have left. They probably just have some vague idea of "just a scratch, I'm mostly fine," "oh gods, it hurts" "feels like I'm about to collapse any moment" etc.

 

[Cadence]

How can they tell how physically "un-fine" they are? Humans in the real world often have no idea how seriously wounded or close to death they are. Do characters in your games have a much more accuracte sense of their own wounds?

Touche.

Preternaturally so in a lot of games I've played in and run. "Whose hurt the most" asks the cleric, to which they receive a bunch of numeric replies. Somehow being able to quickly and accurately assess physical injury hasn't seemed that bad to me, anymore than the idea of knowing how much "damage" each hit we made inflicted.

 

[Mort]

And it seems to get glossed over a lot in some systems, like 13th age with Minions or a lot of 5th edition where monsters die at 0 but PCs get death saves. It's really #$%!% frustrating to not be able to question the bad guys if you miscalculate how tough they are.

With any melee attack (so not ranged or spell attack) you can choose to knock out instead of kill when you reduce to 0 HP. That's per the PHB.

 

[Democratus]

If I recall correctly, in earlier editions there were spells to let you know how damaged other characters were.

 

[Chaosmancer]

People rarely survive huge falls even if it does sometimes happen. But I think people are well within their rights to look askance at a player who is blasé about a 100 foot fall because the player knows they have the hit points to survive it.

And we all know that heroes never survive falling off cliffs. Especially in serious media. Like Lord of the Rings and Aragorn.

 

[billd91]

And we all know that heroes never survive falling off cliffs. Especially in serious media. Like Lord of the Rings and Aragorn.

He wasn't blasé about it, was he?

 

[Vaalingrade]

He wasn't blasé about it, was he?

He landed in water instead of performing a proper 3-point landing with his fist down.

Bad form nearly killed him.

 

[Chaosmancer]

He wasn't blasé about it, was he?

You are adding the blasé part yourself. Double check the argument

Dragonsbane77: Fighters shouldn't be able to fall 100 feet and live.

Mort: I hate this argument.

At no point did Dragonsbane or Mort say the word "blasé". And the Character isn't being blasé, the player is. Just like the player of a 13th level fighter is blasé is running into a pair of Hill Giants, which aren't really a serious threat to their life.