With 5e here, what will 4e be remembered for?

[Manbearcat]

To put things into perspective, I'm not sure that @Manbearcat even suffered any broken bones there. A competitive marathon will take a month for the athlete to recover from. Gruesome wounds? Not even close.

2 minor fractures but nothing to write home about. A "grueseome wound" would be akin to what I saw when I was 18. One of my friends took an 88 mile an hour fastball to the left eye. Broken nose and utterly crushed orbital socket with all kinds of complications (including his freaking eyeball basically being out of socket). That right there. That is the kind of injury you would expect if someone hit you in the face with a flail, morningstar, or warhammer in real combat. You're not doing anything after that. You're done. HP do not have that narrative capacity within them.

 

[Michael Morris]

2 minor fractures but nothing to write home about. A "grueseome wound" would be akin to what I saw when I was 18. One of my friends took an 88 mile an hour fastball to the left eye. Broken nose and utterly crushed orbital socket with all kinds of complications (including his freaking eyeball basically being out of socket). That right there. That is the kind of injury you would expect if someone hit you in the face with a flail, morningstar, or warhammer in real combat. You're not doing anything after that. You're done. HP do not have that narrative capacity within them.

offtopic - Anyone note that the X-ray attacks in Mortal Kombat 9, and the previews of Mortal Kombat X, are fatal (or at least fight ending) in their own right - yet the combatants keep on fighting?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Sorry, didn't mean to imply you did.

This is not a bad point, even with just magical healing I'm not one to describe people getting eviscerated or limbs lopped off. Perhaps my definition of "grievous wounds" isn't really that grievous, I just like to describe some blood now and then, so in that sense it could work for either type of healing. Martial healing is still a stretch for me, but I'll take that viewpoint into account.

Describing blood is fine. James Bond sometimes bleeds - and carries on with no magical healing. Raiders of the Lost Ark has a seriously beaten up Indy - and no magical healing But Indy also recovers a bit between scenes without magic.

Also there's one class that gives martial healing to others (and in my retroclone Warlord there's a non-healing option). I like the Warlord but there's nothing wrong with banning it

 

[Ratskinner]

If someone is on one single hit point they are still fully as physically capable as if they were on all their hit points. You should never have a PC on one hit point with a gruesome wound because a gruesome wound would impede them. If you want to shrug and go for action movie wounds, fine. But then you can have action movie healing.

The mechanics do not support gruesome wounds when you have hit points. So complaining they don't is something I see as not a problem.

Absotively posilutely.

Of course, then you've got the problem of casting Cure Critical Wounds on people who aren't actually y'know critically wounded. (At least in traditional DND.) In any case, the HP and healing spells system has always been a nightmare of inconsistency. Locking yourself into a narrative by actually specifying wounds is discouraged.

 

[Remathilis]

offtopic - Anyone note that the X-ray attacks in Mortal Kombat 9, and the previews of Mortal Kombat X, are fatal (or at least fight ending) in their own right - yet the combatants keep on fighting?

Mortal Kombat characters can all jump twice their height, be punched through ceilings/floors into other arenas, and gush blood in violent sprays from the simplest punch.

Not the best example of "gritty, realistic" combat.

 

[Gargoyle]

It describes what HP are and they are explicitly not "meat points", nor representative of serious wounds in all cases. There's a reason 50% HP is called "Bloodied" in 4E. It rather strongly implies that north of that, you are not "bloodied".

With your example, the attack you insisted on describing as a bleeding gash was healed to full in a single Warlord shout - which is unlikely to be more than 33% of a character's HP - so you were making someone "Bloodied" when the game was indicating that they weren't.

Even the term bloodied implies that hp are indeed, meat, at least sometimes, but of course that's just the name of it and it has no effect by itself. Regarding effectiveness of warlord healing, I honestly don't remember. Perhaps I'm thinking of low levels.

I get that you don't enjoy this kind of argument and I don't mean to force it on you,

I do appreciate your concern, and you're not forcing anything on me; I like the discussion, I just wanted to be clear that I'm not here to argue my viewpoint at all. I just find the topic interesting and don't mind defending my viewpoint as long as I have the time and feel like I have something to contribute. I don't expect everyone to agree with me...indeed, it seems I'm in the minority and that's ok. I'm perhaps not the best communicator, so I'm certain the fault is more on my side, therefore: Epic Lurker.

but you're blaming 4E for a decision you made re: describing HP loss. HP as meat is not a D&D default. People frequently quote 1E and the like which makes it clear HP are NOT meat.

While HP as meat is clearly not correct, HP as "never meat" is also something that is clearly incorrect, even the existence of the term "bloodied" implies this. I'm not sure anyone here is saying that hit points are never wounds, but some seem to be against ever describing hit point damage as wounds more deep than scratches and bruises. Maybe that's the way I should do it to accommodate non-magical healing. But it seems less exciting and more of a stretch of the imagination to me. I'll think about it.

This is true, but that's your decision, and 4E didn't go with HP as meat, nor does 5E (by default), nor, importantly, did earlier editions. If you feel a deep need to describe HP loss as "gruesome wounds", which, mysteriously, have no effect whatsoever on combat performance, do not ever bleed, get infected or the like, that's on you, not on D&D, which I do not think has ever actually encouraged you to do that.

<snip>

And here we have an example of me not communicating well. My definition of gruesome may not be as gruesome as I've implied, and it's not really that big a deal different. Neonchameleon had a good point about that as do you, and I concede that.

 

[Gargoyle]

Describing blood is fine. James Bond sometimes bleeds - and carries on with no magical healing. Raiders of the Lost Ark has a seriously beaten up Indy - and no magical healing But Indy also recovers a bit between scenes without magic.


Also there's one class that gives martial healing to others (and in my retroclone Warlord there's a non-healing option). I like the Warlord but there's nothing wrong with banning it

I did like the Warlord, and if it's in 5e I'll allow it if someone wants to play one. I can get over my quibbles.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Even the term bloodied implies that hp are indeed, meat, at least sometimes, but of course that's just the name of it and it has no effect by itself. Regarding effectiveness of warlord healing, I honestly don't remember. Perhaps I'm thinking of low levels.

HP are usually partially actual injuries, but minor ones. Bruises, scratches, scrapes, shallow cuts, punctures that hit nothing of any importance and aren't very wide/deep. Stuff adrenaline and after-battle care could take care of. The Warlord doesn't close the minor cut, but he does make it irrelevant (and most of what that HP loss indicated wasn't the cut).

While HP as meat is clearly not correct, HP as "never meat" is also something that is clearly incorrect, even the existence of the term "bloodied" implies this. I'm not sure anyone here is saying that hit points are never wounds, but some seem to be against ever describing hit point damage as wounds more deep than scratches and bruises. Maybe that's the way I should do it to accommodate non-magical healing. But it seems less exciting and more of a stretch of the imagination to me. I'll think about it.

No-one is saying "never" (I hope! ). Just "not much meat". Personally I go with at least 1hp of any hit on a PC is definitely actual injury (puncture, bruise, shallow cut, etc.). If a hit straight-up kills, I go as gory as I like, PC or enemy. Heads and limbs are no object!

And here we have an example of me not communicating well. My definition of gruesome may not be as gruesome as I've implied, and it's not really that big a deal different. Neonchameleon had a good point about that as do you, and I concede that.

Hats off to you, frankly!

 

[Emerikol]

The only problem is that prior to 4e people described things however they liked. And plenty of people did it all different sorts of ways. There were plenty of grievous wounds my heroes heroically ignored in all those editions. Nothing smashed me in the fact that this was wrong.

It doesn't matter one bit and you can drone on all day about it if you want if other people played different or the rules said this or that. Apparently those same rules were vague enough to be interpreted in widely different ways. 4e absolutely slammed the door on that style of game. They should have realized they were on dangerous ground but they didn't.

This is a 4e thread though so that is all I will comment on this subjection.


As for umbran's comments, I would just say that I mind not a bit if people attack an inanimate object like a game. I may disagree and I will defend my side but I don't consider it an attack upon me personally. I see it as an attack upon an inanimate object that I happen to like and others don't like. No one is breaking down my door and trying to force me to do anything.

The key is not to stop arguing. Because guess what... enworld would be a ghost town without the debate. So would the D&D boards. The debate drives these forums and makes them interesting. Yes on occasion someone goes too far but that is the exception in my opinion. I've found that arguing my position and defending it has sharpened by understanding of games a lot. I'm far more aware of my preferences than I was prior to engaging. So I consider a person who presents decent arguments and gives reasonable responses to questions and yes counter arguments, to be someone I respect and like. I have many on these and other boards that I never agree with but that I do respect. One quick example would be MechaPilot. She rarely agrees except on the broader concerns of inclusivity but I still feel like a conversation is possible and fruitful.

The people I can't get anything worthwhile out of in a discussion I tend to just block.

 

[BryonD]

HP are usually partially actual injuries, but minor ones. Bruises, scratches, scrapes, shallow cuts, punctures that hit nothing of any importance and aren't very wide/deep. Stuff adrenaline and after-battle care could take care of. The Warlord doesn't close the minor cut, but he does make it irrelevant (and most of what that HP loss indicated wasn't the cut).

No-one is saying "never" (I hope! ). Just "not much meat". Personally I go with at least 1hp of any hit on a PC is definitely actual injury (puncture, bruise, shallow cut, etc.). If a hit straight-up kills, I go as gory as I like, PC or enemy. Heads and limbs are no object!

There have definitely been people saying "all HP damage above 0 is abstract". But I'm certainly ok with just because people say something doesn't mean everyone on the same side of the debate agrees with every specific item.

I agree with you here. Except that, for me, the Warlord goes much too far in making the cut irrelevant. Temp HP would be a far better solution for me. I'd even be OK with some system of capped healing (never above 50%, for example, though not meant to exclude other ideas). If a fighter with 100 HP was hit 10 times for a total of 57 damage, would you limit the Warlord to healing only 47, leaving the 1 HP/ hit as actual injury?