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Gen. Zhukov wrote:

All that's needed to accept this change is to assume PCs all have a watered-down version of Wolverine's healing factor. Perhaps it's a gift to metahumanity from the gods of Good, or part of the divine spark that manifests in the souls of heroes.

Yeah, so it's a tortured justification. And I really do hope the healing rules aren't the harbinger of a complete cartoonishness to follow.

Or we could go with the very old idea that HP is an abstraction, and not a direct representation regarding how many broken bones, hemorrhages, slashed arteries, and flesh wounds one receives during combat.

Ludanto wrote:

I look at it this way.  The party gets banged up, spends 6 hours resting and bandaging their wounds, and then they get up, still bandaged and bloody, still aching and sore, but mechanically ready to keep playing.  My suspension of disbelief can handle that without a problem.

That helps, but seeing how long a good knife wound puts people in the hospital in real life, without magical healing I just think that these things HAVE to slow you down at least SOME.

Personally, I don't really like the 6 hour rule. I know there are a lot of people who love the FF superhero style of being able to do what your heart desires and have few or no realistic consequences (i.e. still being hurt the next day after being hit in the head with a battle axe). But to ME, games are SO much more fun if they seem a little more physically realistic or at least be able to rationalize why something is the way it is (magic is a great rationalizer).

For example, I LOVE movies that the characters do cool things in, but don't push it over the completely unrealistic and physically impossible edge. Example of BAD movie: The good guy and the bad guy are driving motorcycles directly at each other (probably going around 30 mph each), leap off and collide in mid air (which would be like hitting a brick wall at about 60 mph), and fall to the ground to get up and start hitting each other. (Anyone guess the movie?) When I see that stuff I just groan, and my attention is lost because I am reminded that what is happening is completely fake and stupid. I just can’t lose myself in it.

Games are the same way. Funny as it may sound, I can rationalize being healed from a battle axe wound or a smash from a giant's club by a cleric's healing spell (or prayer), because at least there's a logical reason that fixes the wound. But it just makes me say "huh?" when all I have to do now is go to sleep for six hours, my interior will stop hemorrhaging, my skin will close up on it's own, and I'll be good as new before sunrise.

I get that HP is also supposed to be morale, will power, and all that, but when swords, axes, animal claws, and tearing bites take you down 30+ HP, I'm thinking that HAS to do some sort of physical damage that doesn't completely heal after a short rest and mental regathering of courage! What does a DM tell a player who gets hit by an huge axe for 20 damage? “Well, it really hurt, but it didn’t cut you. Mostly the sharp blade just, well… I guess the Minotaur happened to turn his axe sideways when it hit you so luckily you don’t have a gaping slash in your skin. You’ll be fine if you just take a rest for six hours.” After fifty or so encounters players will realize that their skin is made of stone, unless they finally happen to die (which sounds like it’s pretty hard to do now). Then that one time it must have been a real physical wound. Or an attack that hurt their feelings so much that they just couldn’t go on.

I always hated the aspect of games where you could just eat something or grab a med pack and BAM! Your wounds immediately heal! I really hoped D&D wouldn’t come so close to that. There just has to be another way to prolong the action fun but still preserve as much “reality” as possible.

Sorry for the massive post.

Medhia_Nox wrote:

What I "think" I would have prefered.. is a means which characters soak damage through armor or whatever. That way, the monsters would do less damage.. requiring less seemingly miraculous means of regenerating hit points.

I do understand, and follow, the idea that hit points are an abstraction.. but I do not think that has always been made extremely clear.

I wonder, previous editions often talked about how an encounter should spend the resources of the party.. and the difficulty of an encounter could be judged by the amount of "resources" used. With full health being restored.. and no need to rest with "at will" powers.. will that still be a model used? I liked the idea of my party trudging through a dungeon.. each battle wearing at them little by little.. thier food running our.. tired and sore.. until the great final battle. And the glorious heroes nearly clawed themselves from the dungeon.. victorious.. but with scars both mental and physical.

Furthermore.. obviously things like "bathroom" and often "rations" are ignored. Without the potential importance of sleep... will the day/night cycle in some worlds slowly get ignored.. as six level dungeons filled his hundreds of monsters.. are finished in one campaign day?

I imagine that now, a monster will be considered deadly based on how much of a threat it actually is to the party. Not on how much stuff they have to use to kill it.

It's fairly easy to bounce back from a single fight, but once you're in a fight and have committed to it, your abilities to bounce back from death are much more limited. Targets can still wear you down by pushing the fight and not allowing you to get rest.

It's just that there will be less of players spending an entire day resting because a single fight turned out to use up more resources than they thought, even though the creature themselves weren't that much of a threat.

Placing penalties on them for prolonged fighting so that they can undergo more for story purposes is a simple addition. Much easier to balance than having to take it out.