As a man of few words, it is difficult for me to express my sympathies. My condolences to you Traderjodie, and to your children. Wrecan will be very missed. He was and always shall be my friend. He was very insightful, and his support of this game was unparallelled on these boards. But, I'd like to think of him as participating in the greatest LARPing session in existence. He can borrow my axe till I get there.
I just realised I may not have been clear in my short reply. What I meant was that I understand D&D is not all simulation, and that it is a game, but it has always held a level of believability, regardless of whether the topic was magic or fantasy. The mechanics are all designed to in some way mimic or emulate life in some way (or a specific concept of life), but whenever abstraction is used, it is always done to turn something that is purely a game mechanic into something we should...
View full commentI just realised I may not have been clear in my short reply. What I meant was that I understand D&D is not all simulation, and that it is a game, but it has always held a level of believability, regardless of whether the topic was magic or fantasy. The mechanics are all designed to in some way mimic or emulate life in some way (or a specific concept of life), but whenever abstraction is used, it is always done to turn something that is purely a game mechanic into something we should "believe" approximates something we can consider "yep, that's possible". So if we abstract away AC and we are told "That's not just hits, that's glances and misses as well because your moving", then we can see some core of realism or understanding that allows us to maintain the suspension of disbelief.
I think HP just doesn't fit this possibility... there are too many disjointed concepts that have been lumped together and called "HP". For my own personal taste, I think it is too far from something I can conceive of being realistic that it breaks my ability to believe it is meant to relate to anything other than a game mechanic.
But I could wrap my head around it and accept it for what it is.. a game mechanic in a board game... But when they introduced martial healing, where an average lay person with absolutely no magical ability at all was now able to "heal" someone, that was just going too far. Now it was blatantly obvious it was a game mechanic, and all credibility of it being an abstraction covering life and will power and life force just went out the window.
They didn't add martial healing because it made sense, they added it to fill in a game mechanic hole, and I think they overstretched. Yes its needed, but to an extent... if you go too far, then this just becomes a board game and loses the realism that made it great, and I think getting into martial healing is going too far down the path of being a board game. It was the BAD pat about 4E
If it weren't for guys like AbdulAlhazred so many topics would go with out any collaboration at all. This community survives because of people like him.