Why Not Just Call Them Stamina Points?

[Jeff Wilder]

I invite you to demonstrate to me how somebody keeps fighting at all. Any serious wound, in a battle, means you are likely to be out for the count.

Unless you're a hero. In which case you can fight fine, because you suck up the pain and keep going. But afterward, you're gonna need to lick your wounds for a few days or weeks. (Or call a cleric.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

4) In 4E, unless one actually dies, the fast healing rate changes this effect from being wounded to being "out of luck, will, stamina, divine favor, or something else". There is no reason to consider them wounds in any way, shape, or form in 4E unless the PC actually dies. If the PC dies, then one can consider that the last attack was real damage and the rest were not.

It's a different mindset. Hit points do not really mean damage anymore in 4E at all.

There's damage from poison. And the bloodied condition. And it makes more sense to interpret a weapon attack as causing a physical effect. And the names 'Healing Surge' and 'Healing Word' (the cleric power). That's six reasons to think of hit points as still having a physical component.

Sure, healing is faster in 4e than in 3rd but it's not a massive difference. 3e healing was much too fast to represent recovery from broken bones and the like.

Thus I conclude that hit points in 4e continue to represent both the physical and non-physical, with perhaps slightly more emphasis on the non-physical than previous editions, due to Second Wind and 6 hour full healing.

 

[KarinsDad]

Getting hit makes you tired. Protecting yourself from getting hit worse makes you tired. This is from personal experience as a bouncer for a couple of years at a very big, very busy, moderately redneck bar.

That may be true to some extent, but I don't buy it for a single round. The 20th level PC can either fight for 30 rounds and only be moderately tired/wounded, or he can fight for a single round and be seriously tired/wounded. It just doesn't wash at all for me that any significant portion of that one round combat is being tired. I see no reason to add tired into the equation at all because it doesn't seem reasonable that it is such a big factor in the large scheme of things.

I did TKD for years and was only tired after a long sparring session, not after the first six seconds.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

With one exception, I think 4E has done a very good job with HP, mainly due to its emphasis on "percentages" rather than "absolute numbers." Assuming that the fluffy-crunch for HP allows for things like scratches, cuts, and abrasions (for the introduction of poison), but otherwise divorces HP from actual injury, it's a very good abstract model.

The one thing that the overall health system -- as opposed to HP specifically, which is fine -- lacks, and the lack of which I hate, is the possibility of longer-term injury. (And there may well be rules for that, though I doubt it more and more as the flow of information increases.) I just can't accept a rules-set, in a games as combat-focused as D&D, that allows for "injured and dead," but not "injured, but alive and in need of significant rest or magic to heal."

I also have my doubts. And I might also miss it - but probably only from a ... "philosophical" point of view. Since I can't think of many adventurers where the story or flow would benefit much from serious wounds that require long treatment/recovery. And that's the crux - I know it is "stupid" to not have such a rule, but I also know it usually hurts the game having such a rule. But in the end, having no mechanic (especially none that can be "accidentally" be triggered by a critical, being bloodied or anything else happening over the course of a regular encounter) is acceptable to me.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

And that's the crux - I know it is "stupid" to not have such a rule, but I also know it usually hurts the game having such a rule.

Usually hurts whose game?

 

[Jeff Wilder]

That may be true to some extent, but I don't buy it for a single round.

Okay, but if you accept it at all, then you're accepting "tiredness" into the 1E-3.5 HP equation, right? That's really the only point I was making. Whether it can happen in six seconds ... enh, not really important. It's happened to me in six seconds, but it's possible I was just a 6'5", 210 pound pussy.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Usually hurts whose game?

Well, my games. Should have been more eloberate there, but I am wasting way too much time on these boards anyway.

I know that most of my adventurers are not about sitting in a resting place and waiting to recover a broken limb. Which isn't that bad, since it can be glossed over ("Okay, you rest 9 days in Pleasent Ville, what do you do now, since..." But I also don't leave room in the story for such break-down time. ("... since the evil archmage already completed his ritual of summoning the Great Dark Demon, and the virgin is sacrificed?")
And I got the feeling that, for example, the Paizo Adventure Paths didn't leave that much room either, so I might not be alone.

 

[HatWearingFool]

Unless you're a hero. In which case you can fight fine, because you suck up the pain and keep going. But afterward, you're gonna need to lick your wounds for a few days or weeks. (Or call a cleric.)

Funny this is exactly the same logic that I use to rationalize the new healing rules. And it works for exactly the same reasons.

 

[KarinsDad]

There's damage from poison. And the bloodied condition. And it makes more sense to interpret a weapon attack as causing a physical effect. And the names 'Healing Surge' and 'Healing Word' (the cleric power). That's six reasons to think of hit points as still having a physical component.

Sure, healing is faster in 4e than in 3rd but it's not a massive difference. 3e healing was much too fast to represent recovery from broken bones and the like.

Thus I conclude that hit points in 4e continue to represent both the physical and non-physical, with perhaps slightly more emphasis on the non-physical than previous editions, due to Second Wind and 6 hour full healing.

I see your point, but the issue I have is that there is no serious wounding (i.e. takes days or weeks to recover) in the 4E game system at all. All wounds are totally superficial unless one dies in 4E and then that last one was devastating. But only if a fellow PC does not use the Heal skill first, in which case it was a mere flesh wound after all (Schrödinger's Cat and all that ).

At least 3E did some lip service to serious wounds, and 1E/2E effectively had them (what with slower natural heal rates and fewer cure spells). We've had games where one of the party healers (we tend to have multiple PCs that can heal, but most to a lesser extent) got incapacitated in some manner and it was a lot of fun trying to figure out how to surivive and continue without. That enjoyable game element is mostly gone in 4E. I disagree with your assertion that the difference between 3E and 4E healing is "not massive". It changes decision making in the game system.

Effectively, the 4E designers stated "Serious wounds are not fun in the game, so we will remove serious wounds".

This conversation really is a matter of player verisimilitude, expectations, and likes. You find the difference small. I find it considerable. Different strokes.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I got the feeling that, for example, the Paizo Adventure Paths didn't leave that much room [for downtime] either, so I might not be alone.

I haven't read the Pathfinder or GameMastery adventures yet, but the Dungeon adventure paths were written and structured to allow for weeks of downtime occasionally, yeah. They also had sidebars with things like, "What to do if the PCs get their asses kicked ... "

This is a tangent to the thread, so I'll forgo arguing it, and just put it out there. If anybody really wants to discuss it with me, start a new thread and I might do so. (I also might not, and please don't hold that against me. A couple of days ago when I was in a very satisfying but very heavy discussion here, I "lost" about 12 hours over two days. I'm just not gonna do that again.)

One of problems I have with "no injury but death" is that it only grants the players two possibilities for their characters: they can be perfectly fine, or they can be dead. This is a bizarre sort of script immunity, if you see what I mean. The story can only go to those two places. The characters can't fail, except by dying. (That's a simplification, but not much of one. Folks keep talking about how "it's no fun waiting for an injury to heal while the BBEG carries out his plans," after all.)

Granted, in 3.5 the issue doesn't arise very often -- due to the prevalence of magical healing -- but sometimes the story -- in accordance with the rules -- takes the PCs in a third direction ... seriously hurting, and needing to find something to do other than slug it out with the bad guys, until they're back on their feet.

(To forestall those people who claim this doesn't happen in 3.5, you're wrong. It happens sometimes in my game, and, more importantly, I have the options of setting things up so that it's a real possibility. As I said, not often. But sometimes.)

Can a DM running 4E just decide his PCs are injured and need rest, to prod them into doing something besides seeking more enemies to kill? Sure. The DM can also decide by fiat that one of the PCs has chronic diarrhea. If the average player is anything like my players -- and after all these years of gaming, I do think my players are pretty typical, if not more laid-back and dude-abiding -- they're willing to accept something that happens in the story that's supported by the rules, but out-and-out DM fiat annoys them. (At best.) This is especially true when DM fiat makes their character "less badass" and "less hypercompetent" than the rules allow them to be.

1E through 3.5 rules allowed the possibility of injury-without-death. Because it is in the rules, logical or not, players accept that it happens to their characters. And injury allows more stories to happen within the framework of the rules. It allows failure, without requiring the failure to be due to death. To me, that's a big plus ... so the absence of it is, obviously, a big minus.