Despite Thyrwyn's claim, all previous editions of D&D were not as liberal as 4ed. Healing surges, second winds, and a full heal in 6 hours show a far, far, far more generous and liberal application of what hit points are, and make them nonsensical. I've already had to come up with a house rule to explain away healing surges as something else(yet the same mechanic) in order for it to make sense.
Despite Maxperson's implication, hitpoints have always been nonsensical. 4E's more liberal application of them has more to do with their division across all classes than their defintion.
"Stabbed in the head" has never be equatable to losing 99% of your hps. Show me someone who is "stabbed in the head" that still has complete motor control to fight, swim, climb, travel, etc. as if they were not "stabbed in the head".
I will agree that calling healing surges "healing surges" does break suspension more than a better term would when they don't necessarily relate to healing.
3) Change how surges and healing comes about. I've already decided that full healing for a nights rest is gone from my game. Character's will heal at 3ed rates and recover "surges" as normal. Surges, though, have been redefined by me. In order for both surges AND hit points to make sense in my 4ed game, I've pretty much decided that surges are not a part of any character. Instead, they come from some sort of rare object(yet to be determined) that links with the life force of its owner to cause healing. The stronger the life force, the more he heals and he heals more often. The objects will attune themselves to the lifeforce of the first individual to use them while they are blank. If someone who has one dies, his object blanks out. This will allow hit points to inflict some physical damage as combat wears on and make more sense, like they did in previous editions.
So basically you'd make surges magical healing in nature via an object? I think that's an interesting way to rectify your opinion with the mechanics. Innovative.
Yep. In 4ed, characters a characters are 100% invulnerable until they get to their last hit point. A character with 200 hit point can take absolutely no damage other than maybe a scrape or bruise until he reaches 1. At that point, suddenly that last ONE hit point represents the totality of his physical fitness and he will be down and dying if an ant bites him. It's absolutely ludicrous, and we have healing surges and full rest in 6 hours to blame for it.
My choices with 4ed are these.
1) Don't play it and keep using 3ed.
2) Get rid of surges and full healing in 6 hours. Of course, this means I have to rewrite combat, character classes, AND every creature.
3) Change how surges and healing comes about. I've already decided that full healing for a nights rest is gone from my game. Character's will heal at 3ed rates and recover "surges" as normal. Surges, though, have been redefined by me. In order for both surges AND hit points to make sense in my 4ed game, I've pretty much decided that surges are not a part of any character. Instead, they come from some sort of rare object(yet to be determined) that links with the life force of its owner to cause healing. The stronger the life force, the more he heals and he heals more often. The objects will attune themselves to the lifeforce of the first individual to use them while they are blank. If someone who has one dies, his object blanks out. This will allow hit points to inflict some physical damage as combat wears on and make more sense, like they did in previous editions.
Now I'm going to sit back and wait for the NEXT person to come by and accuse me of saying that hit points are all physical due to their inability to read what I say.
Why do you think that hit points are all physical when they clearly are not? Gosh! Idiot!
Seriously though, hit points didn't make any more sense in previous editions. How come if you had two characters of the same class and level, both reduced to 0HP, the one with the higher CON score took longer to heal? 4e is finally creating healing mechanics that recognize that hit points are an abstraction instead of attempting to model real world healing with rules that actually made hit points less realistic.
Now that doesn't mean I don't think they couldn't have done better, but it's still a step forward from previous editions, IMO of course.
Owner and Proprietor of the House of Trolls. God of ownership and possession.
I will agree that calling healing surges "healing surges" does break suspension more than a better term would when they don't necessarily relate to healing.
So basically you'd make surges magical healing in nature via an object? I think that's an interesting way to rectify your opinion with the mechanics. Innovative.
Yeah. I really don't have a problem with many, or even most hit points being bumps, bruises, and close calls, but I just can't reconcile going from fully healthy at 1 hit point to dead and dying at 0/-1. There has to be a good portion of physical damage prior to that. That damage wouldn't heal from surges/6 hour rest as currently listed. Making them magical in nature remedies that issue for me.
Why do you think that hit points are all physical when they clearly are not? Gosh! Idiot!
Seriously though, hit points didn't make any more sense in previous editions. How come if you had two characters of the same class and level, both reduced to 0HP, the one with the higher CON score took longer to heal? 4e is finally creating healing mechanics that recognize that hit points are an abstraction instead of attempting to model real world healing with rules that actually made hit points less realistic.
Now that doesn't mean I don't think they couldn't have done better, but it's still a step forward from previous editions, IMO of course.
Note, I didn't say they were completely realistic or made total sense, just that they made MORE sense than 4ed. That leaves a lot of room. :::grin:::
To me, the fact that they required a significant amount of rest to heal, gave them more realism and sense than 4ed does.
Okay.. the healing in 4e is not realistic.. it's not meant to be. We're talking about fantasy superheroes here. Even at first level a character is a hero in classical and mythical terms.
You want to know what the definition of a hero is in realistic terms? A hero is someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later.
All this arguing about D&D not being gritty enough and such.. really. I hate to say this, but there are hundreds of game systems out there. Some do better in different settings. D&D is not about realism, and if you want a realistic sword and sorcery system 4e is NOT for you. However, there may be a system that is perfect for what you are looking for.
I'm not saying don't play D&D, but just try to accept it for what it is. Maybe it's not what you want, but like I said there are, I'm sure, a hundred different rpg rulesets, and one will be a better fit for what you are looking for. Why not give them a try? You may just like it. D&D is just a name. If you are playing something besides D&D there's really no stigma to it.
3) Change how surges and healing comes about. I've already decided that full healing for a nights rest is gone from my game. Character's will heal at 3ed rates and recover "surges" as normal. Surges, though, have been redefined by me. In order for both surges AND hit points to make sense in my 4ed game, I've pretty much decided that surges are not a part of any character. Instead, they come from some sort of rare object(yet to be determined) that links with the life force of its owner to cause healing. The stronger the life force, the more he heals and he heals more often. The objects will attune themselves to the lifeforce of the first individual to use them while they are blank. If someone who has one dies, his object blanks out. This will allow hit points to inflict some physical damage as combat wears on and make more sense, like they did in previous editions.
Personally, I'd go with a parasite. Why? Parasites are cool, mostly. Besides, then the players won't even have to know about it. I know that knocks out the whole "stolen" idea (though they could still be suppressed) but it also means that you could still explain a warlord's ability to heal (assuming warlords/clerics can still heal the players when they lose their objects.)
But mostly it's because parasites are always fun. Maybe the players could even find out they have parasites, try to get rid of them, and suddenly find themselves screwed out of healing. That would be darn funny, particularly the scene where they're trying to shove the parasite back into wherever they took it out of
Okay.. the healing in 4e is not realistic.. it's not meant to be. We're talking about fantasy superheroes here. Even at first level a character is a hero in classical and mythical terms
And classical heroes got hurt badly all the time. What's your point?
You want to know what the definition of a hero is in realistic terms? A hero is someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later
They also got themselves killed fairly often as well.
All this arguing about D&D not being gritty enough and such.. really. I hate to say this, but there are hundreds of game systems out there. Some do better in different settings. D&D is not about realism, and if you want a realistic sword and sorcery system 4e is NOT for you. However, there may be a system that is perfect for what you are looking for.
D&D is about realism. All fantasy games are about realism. That's why they have gravity, and characters can't move 100 miles in a second on foot. They add fantasy elements into the mix, but realism is a HUGE part of every fantasy game, including D&D.
I'm not saying don't play D&D, but just try to accept it for what it is. Maybe it's not what you want, but like I said there are, I'm sure, a hundred different rpg rulesets, and one will be a better fit for what you are looking for. Why not give them a try? You may just like it. D&D is just a name. If you are playing something besides D&D there's really no stigma to it.
I will never accept ANY edition of D&D(or any other RPG) for what it is. All RPG are flawed, and they always will be. Whenever I come across a flaw, I'm going to fix it.
Meh, don't mind the system since mechanically it is sound. Also in-game it works out quite well in my head.
HP = Your fighting capacity, and ability to be physically able to fight and survive a conflict. Thus why there is bloodied mechanics to show when ability to fight has grown limited and finally when you become incapacitated and when in this state of near death, the prospect of death is more real, because this final major incapacitation can potentially cause life-threatening injuries.
Healing Surges = Your actual health, this represents how well your body, mind and the level of physical capabilities you are able to endure and press onward with. The more healing surges you use, showcases you placing extra stress on your body to push on and work at fuller capacities, as well as make minor injuries patched up.
As you use up your Healing Surges it means it is harder too reach your full fighting potential because your injuries and sheer stress on your body has begun to build up. When all your Healing Surges are gone, this is when you have reached the end of the line and your body is suffering too much to continue working at full capacity.
And that is why PCs and NPCs operate under different mechanics.
You are making the assumption that all NPCs are unimportant to the storyline when in fact, in many scenarios they are vital to the story line. Typically stories follow three paradigms: man vs nature (we'll assume in fantasy genre that gelatinous cubes and wights fall under "nature"), man vs. self, and man vs. man.
In a story where other characters are not central to the plot or even part of it, then keeping track of wounds is not necessary. In a story where specific NPCs with real names are central-front in the plot and are featured as the primary antagonists, then keeping track of wounds recieved between battles becomes a good idea.
In general, if an NPC survives the fight, he should be considered completely "healed".
I see holes in this explaination.
I'll give an example: i'm chasing an evil mage through the forest. I catch up to him and hit him with a couple of arrows reducing him to almost zero, with a third arrow, I could kill him. He casts invisibility and flee's the scene. Now, I have to track him again and find him. I start tracking him and by the time I catch up, he's healed all his wounds because the DM assumed he's completely healed between encounters.
I hit him with two more arrows. He casts invis, and I have to track him again.
I catch up to him again, hit him with two more arrows. he casts invis and now i have to track him again.
I catch up with him again, i hit him with another arrow, he casts invis and now I have to track him again.
If that goes on, I'll have run out of arrows before he ran out of HP because they've all been shot into his body totaling up more hit points than a small dragon would have had. He now has an infinite supply of HP in a day but can only use a small amount of them at any given encounter before he dies. I however, probably don't have an infinite supply of arrows.
If not, it doesn't matter anyway. On the balance of probability, the NPC won't survive the fight, since the whole game system is deliberately skewed in favour of the PCs.
Assuming his survival or death isn't crucial to story development and additionally labors under the assumption that the fight was ever really in the favor of the PCs as sometimes players deliberately bite off way more than they can chew, but that's not really important to the discussion at hand.
The real skill is skewing it by the correct amount, you don't want fair fights (or fewer than 10% of campaigns will make it past 4 encounters), but you don't want walkovers either.
I define fair fight as both parties playing by the same rules.
Which I admit, not all fights in 4e are going to be "fair" but I'm willing to make allowances for players using Action Points. That only makes sense to me in a kind of karmic fashion: after all, if something bad is going to happen to somebody in game in a random small town or forest or in the middle of the desert its probably going to happen to a player. So things have to go their way sometime right?
All in all, a person could make the argument that in a good game, nothing that happens to the players in the grand scheme is really fair. To that end, my popular recurring NPCs follow the same rules; granted, I don't exactly keep track of their bank accounts, but I quarter inch their HP totals in and out of combat because I know the players are doing the same thing.
Most GMs are either partial towards the players or partial towards their NPCs. Granted the second kind are alot worse than the first, but why the heck should players want the DM to do them favors when it doesn't make logical sense or fit into the storyline? Because too many players are conditioned to accept handouts from DMs. I've taken some of the worst cheating, monty haul players and turned them into
Relying on DM fiat or Deus Ex Machina to get past a problem is just like typing in a cheat code on a game. It's lame and it's a short cut. Getting XP awards for something you needed help from the DM to accomplish is like getting a medal of valor for an act of god.
The only time I ever go out of my way to help the players in a game is when I, as DM, have made a big mistake like an absent minded math mistake during a battle that gives a monster or NPC a huge advantage they shouldn't have had (everybody makes mistakes).
You are making the assumption that all NPCs are unimportant to the storyline when in fact, in many scenarios they are vital to the story line. Typically stories follow three paradigms: man vs nature (we'll assume in fantasy genre that gelatinous cubes and wights fall under "nature"), man vs. self, and man vs. man.
In a story where other characters are not central to the plot or even part of it, then keeping track of wounds is not necessary. In a story where specific NPCs with real names are central-front in the plot and are featured as the primary antagonists, then keeping track of wounds recieved between battles becomes a good idea.
I see holes in this explaination.
I'll give an example: i'm chasing an evil mage through the forest. I catch up to him and hit him with a couple of arrows reducing him to almost zero, with a third arrow, I could kill him. He casts invisibility and flee's the scene. Now, I have to track him again and find him. I start tracking him and by the time I catch up, he's healed all his wounds because the DM assumed he's completely healed between encounters.
I hit him with two more arrows. He casts invis, and I have to track him again.
I catch up to him again, hit him with two more arrows. he casts invis and now i have to track him again.
I catch up with him again, i hit him with another arrow, he casts invis and now I have to track him again.
If that goes on, I'll have run out of arrows before he ran out of HP because they've all been shot into his body totaling up more hit points than a small dragon would have had. He now has an infinite supply of HP in a day but can only use a small amount of them at any given encounter before he dies. I however, probably don't have an infinite supply of arrows.
Assuming his survival or death isn't crucial to story development and additionally labors under the assumption that the fight was ever really in the favor of the PCs as sometimes players deliberately bite off way more than they can chew, but that's not really important to the discussion at hand.
I define fair fight as both parties playing by the same rules.
Which I admit, not all fights in 4e are going to be "fair" but I'm willing to make allowances for players using Action Points. That only makes sense to me in a kind of karmic fashion: after all, if something bad is going to happen to somebody in game in a random small town or forest or in the middle of the desert its probably going to happen to a player. So things have to go their way sometime right?
All in all, a person could make the argument that in a good game, nothing that happens to the players in the grand scheme is really fair. To that end, my popular recurring NPCs follow the same rules; granted, I don't exactly keep track of their bank accounts, but I quarter inch their HP totals in and out of combat because I know the players are doing the same thing.
Most GMs are either partial towards the players or partial towards their NPCs. Granted the second kind are alot worse than the first, but why the heck should players want the DM to do them favors when it doesn't make logical sense or fit into the storyline? Because too many players are conditioned to accept handouts from DMs. I've taken some of the worst cheating, monty haul players and turned them into
Relying on DM fiat or Deus Ex Machina to get past a problem is just like typing in a cheat code on a game. It's lame and it's a short cut. Getting XP awards for something you needed help from the DM to accomplish is like getting a medal of valor for an act of god.
The only time I ever go out of my way to help the players in a game is when I, as DM, have made a big mistake like an absent minded math mistake during a battle that gives a monster or NPC a huge advantage they shouldn't have had (everybody makes mistakes).
There is NOTHING in 4e that keeps you from playing this way. They won't even come to your house and take your books.
