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For what it's worth, in 3rd, 3.5, and 4th, HP as legitimate physical damage really never made actual sense (despite the fact that my group always did lol). During the first couple of levels it works, but when a level 10 fighter could take like 10 critical hits from a longsword and still be alive..... that just cannot be fluffed as being impaled 10 times, because no human could EVER survive that, period.

As long as HP goes up with level, (more than say 1, maaaaaybe 2 per level), HP cannot be thought of as all physical damage. Whether you want to allow martial healing at your table or not is totally up to the DM - they can disallow anything they want - but there really isn't any discussion about what HP is in the form it has been.

Oct 4, 2012 -- 4:52PM, lokiare wrote:

Actually the suggestions I added about the Warlord ordering the target to bandage themselves, not working below 0 hit points and requiring the expenditure of hit dice means it could work in a pure physical play style. So the only thing we are arguing is whether the all physical crowd can come to a compromise.

I do appreciate the attempt at compromise, but this doesn't work.  Looking back, I don't know if anyone actually addressed why it doesn't work, though, so I'll at least give my thoughts.

It is established elsewhere within the 5E rules that bandaging yourself up in order to spend hit dice requires ~5 minutes or so.  The warlord issuing a battlefield command, even if it takes up the standard action of the warlord and the reaction action of the recipient, shifts that whole time scale by at least an order of magnitude, probably closer to two.  If a character otherwise had the option to spend an action and heal themselves, then it would be borderline reasonable that the warlord could use her expertise to guide the patient and get things done more quickly (that is to say, it wouldn't be that much more ludicrous in comparison, going from six seconds to half a second).  I could buy something like a combat medic (class feature? feat within the healer specialty?) that might let you bandage someone up and allow hit dice expenditure during combat, if you were adjacent to that target and spend your action, but even that is really pushing it. 

Also if some at least some part of hit points are not physical as is RAW in every edition except 2E, then Warlord martial healing should work to some degree. Maybe the limit is half the amount of damage taken or something like that. So If their max is 20 and they have taken 10 points of damage the Warlord can heal up to 5 damage or something like that.

That works if there are some number of hit points that are physical and some that are not, but I'm not seeing this as the case.  The way that I see it, consistent with RAW and other sources, is that a level 20 character has 20 times as many HP because each of those HP is only 5% physical and 95% not physical.  No matter how much a warlord's inspiration would allow you to restore the skill/fatigue/luck/etc component, the inspiration can never restore that small amount of living flesh.  The meat is the critical reagent, and since it's impossible to hit only the luck/skill/whatever factor without also injuring the 5% meat component, it is impossible to restore any number of HP without actually fixing the meat component.

But it could.

It could be whatever we want it to be if we use a temp hp variant for an in combat situation and a combat medic idea for the out of combat situation in our module.

A side note. Anyone remembers if we have a stabilizing option in next so far? Like the heal check option for when the healer is down? Did I miss it?

Thank you for your last posts folks, they are way more constructive.

That would defy the unconscious condition as we have it in the playtest. And its a bit more complicated than what I would like it to be tbh for a single refluffing module, defying the whole no impairmentt as long as you have hps idea.

But if someone even untrained with heal check in previous editions could stabilize someone with a standard action (are we gonna have something similar in next? I hope so), I would like the warlord to do something more than that.

Like a class feature (no resource drain) returning his adjacent team players to 1hp and concsiousness. After that, back on your feet private!

Or the healing kit/hd healing mentioned.

To clarify further, I dislike the idea of connecting the warlord healing to HDs. It seems too limiting to me, now that we wont have the healing surges big numbers to balance it. Like 1st level characters have one heal each and then back to sleep? After one heal, the fighter is done for and stays behind the wizard for the rest of the day?

Even in higher levels, front line characters will be drained with in and out of combat healing/HD much too quickly I fear.

Lastly, I really think 1d6 is too low. He needs bigger numbers if the inspiring word ability wont work on unconcsious.

Just some random ideas.  

Oct 4, 2012 -- 10:30PM, Avric_Tholomyes wrote:

If a single hit point at 20th level represents 5% of a single first level "physical" hit points, and 95% of these non-physical hit points, one could see it as every 20 HP being 1 first level physical hit points and 19 non-physical hit points.

I think you got the idea, but it can get a little confusing whenever we talk about percentages.  A single HP of a level 20 character is comprised of 5% meat and 95% etc, so while it is true that 20 HP on a level 20 character are comprised of 1 meat HP and 19 etc HP, you can only take damage in increments of solid 1-HP chunks - each of which is comprised of 5% meat and 95% etc.  If a level 20 character takes 20 damage, then she's actually lost twenty (1/20 of a meat HP) and twenty (19/20 of an etc HP).

There's no such thing as a whole etc HP that can be healed.  You can only heal whole HP, which are comprised of a little bit of meat and a bunch of etc.

So a Warlord's "healing" is not telling the character to bandage up 20 points of damage, or fight on in spite of 20 points of damage, but to do so in spite of one point of "real" damage.

The problem is that you can't fight on if all of your physical HP are gone.

Let's say that you have 8 real physical meat HP, from level 1.  If you're level 20, with 160 total HP, and you suffer 20 damage, then you have suffered the equivalent of 1 real physical meat damage.  If you suffer 140 damage, then that's the equivalent of 7 (of 8) real physical meat damage.  Then, the warlord inspires you to fight on in spite of having taken 7 real damage.  Let's say that the inspiration restores 60 total HP, but no meat HP.  If you then take another 40 damage, you will have taken another 2 real physical meat damage, so regardless of how many etc HP were restored through inspiration it, you have taken 9 real physical meat damage (which is not something you can fight on through).

Oct 4, 2012 -- 10:59PM, lokiare wrote:

So would the all physical crowd go for temporary hit points?

Yes.  Well, I know that I would, anyway.  I think I've heard others agree on this compromise.

The major difference is that temporary hit points, themselves, cannot be healed by any means.  I have no issue with describing temporary hit points as exceptional focus allowing you to deflect a blow at the last moment, or (in the case of a spell) a glowing aura that absorbs incoming (kinetic/heat/etc) energy.  Temporary hit points are less like a physical measurement (as HP are a basic character stat that is your ability to not die) and more like a generic status condition that can be granted by any number of effects (as blindness could be caused equally by a magic spell, sand in the eyes, and so on).

For the sake of expedient gameplay, I would even grant that they could work on someone who is unconscious, allowing that character to act normally for as long as those temporary hit points remain.  I mean, when you're inspired to do something, then it can be really hard to stop you.  (Also recall that, under the physical HP model, crossing the zero threshold does not represent the point of taking a real physical wound that would hinder you, since you're taking real physical wounds all throughout and the system merely chooses to not model the debilitating effects of those physical wounds.)

Of course, it would probably be easiest to say that the specific rules for temporary HP vary based on the source.  If a cleric casts a spell that grants temporary HP in the form of a glowing aura, then those probably wouldn't be able to make you wake up.  Maybe the ability to affect an unconscious target could be something that a warlord picks up at level 5, either whenever they use the ability or by reducing the amount of the temporary HP effect by one die.  The only universal truths for temporary HP would be that multiple sets of temporary HP from the same source don't stack (but someone could be both inspired and magicked, unless you want to say no on the grounds of simplicity), and that they're lost before any regular HP are lost.