I don't understand Healing during a short rest

[Stryyke]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating. Doesn't that steal the thunder from magical items that deal with healing and regenerating? If all I need to do is rest for 1 hour to heal up to full, or close, why bother with using resources on healing at all?

[Kuulvheysoon]

HP isn't strictly meat damage. It can be the spirit to fight on, your optimism, your will to do Right in the world.

Like the Fighter's Second Wind isn't (necessarily) a surge of regenerative magic - it can be as simple as a rallying cry to let you fight with new life.

So the time spent Resting during that hour long break could be smoking a pipe, rereading your sacred texts, meditating or simply stretching your limbs. It doesn't have to be healing meat damage.

[diplomancer]

Hit points are abstract. Yes, the different damage types complicate that equation, but just assume they are also abstract exactly in proportion to the fact that they are linked to the abstract hit points.

[Stryyke]

HP isn't strictly meat damage. It can be the spirit to fight on, your optimism, your will to do Right in the world.

Like the Fighter's Second Wind isn't (necessarily) a surge of regenerative magic - it can be as simple as a rallying cry to let you fight with new life.

So the time spent Resting during that hour long break could be smoking a pipe, rereading your sacred texts, meditating or simply stretching your limbs. It doesn't have to be healing meat damage.

Hmmmm. So you can die without ever taking meat damage? I'm not sure I'm on board with that, but it does make me look at it a bit differently.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Hmmmm. So you can die without ever taking meat damage? I'm not sure I'm on board with that, but it does make me look at it a bit differently.

I mean, what would you describe when you die and you've only taken psychic or radiant damage? It's an abstraction - just because it can be meat damage, doesn't mean that it has to be. When I DM, I tend to assume that nothing actually does meat damage unless that attack makes the PC hit 0 HP (unless the players describe otherwise).

[MaxWilson]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating. Doesn't that steal the thunder from magical items that deal with healing and regenerating? If all I need to do is rest for 1 hour to heal up to full, or close, why bother with using resources on healing at all?

Are you asking as a player or a DM? If as a DM, feel free to eliminate short rest healing from the game as a rule variant. I did, for reasons similar to what you're criticizing here.

[Stryyke]

I mean, what would you describe when you die and you've only taken psychic or radiant damage? It's an abstraction - just because it can be meat damage, doesn't mean that it has to be. When I DM, I tend to assume that nothing actually does meat damage unless that attack makes the PC hit 0 HP (unless the players describe otherwise).

Yes, but when hit with a sword, you can't really get around the fact that actual meat damage has been done. A cut is a cut, and doesn't heal just by willpower alone. But your point is also true. I guess I just always assumed psychic damage made your brain bleed, but I guess that's never said anywhere.

[OvisCaedo]

HP and healing will never really make any sense, and generally just can't do so. Any interpretation of them inevitably runs into SOME absurd consequence or other. Cure wounds can heal a low level character or NPC back from a grievous injury that had them on death's door, but only restores a small portion of a high level adventurer's abstract pool. A high level character can fall several hundred feet out of the air and slam into the ground, then stand back up and walk away. That 70 HP is pretty difficult to abstract as a 'near miss' or anything. Plenty of attacks, like poisonous bites, can have additional rider effects that pretty clearly indicate they MUST have actually connected.

I find it best to just accept that adventurers are at least somewhat superhumanly durable, and not think too much about the details since it's just a necessary game mechanic.

[Stryyke]

Are you asking as a player or a DM? If as a DM, feel free to eliminate short rest healing from the game as a rule variant. I did, for reasons similar to what you're criticizing here.

Not as a DM, but not necessarily as a player, either. More of a reflection on the rule, in order to better understand it. Long term, I am setting up a long form campaign, so I'm critiquing lots of different ways of doing things to find my favorite.

[JNAProductions]

Not as a DM, but not necessarily as a player, either. More of a reflection on the rule, in order to better understand it. Long term, I am setting up a long form campaign, so I'm critiquing lots of different ways of doing things to find my favorite.

I'd recommend trying the game as close to normal as possible before you go around tinkering with it in significant ways.

[Stryyke]

I'd recommend trying the game as close to normal as possible before you go around tinkering with it in significant ways.

I've been playing D&D, in it's various iterations, for 36 years. I think it's safe to say I've played as intended.

[JNAProductions]

I've been playing D&D, in it's various iterations, for 36 years. I think it's safe to say I've played as intended.

I mean... 5E ain't 3.X ain't 4E ain't AD&D...

Ultimately, so long as you and your players have fun, that's what matters, but if you lack experience with 5E specifically I'd give it a whirl normally before tinkering with it too much.

[MaxWilson]

Not as a DM, but not necessarily as a player, either. More of a reflection on the rule, in order to better understand it. Long term, I am setting up a long form campaign, so I'm critiquing lots of different ways of doing things to find my favorite.

So, maybe you're asking as a game designer?

From a design perspective, healing during a short rest is something inherited from D&D 4th edition, apparently with the intention of making party composition more flexible, so that PCs don't necessarily need to have a healer in the party. It allows an Adventurer's League table of four random strangers to meet up and play through a 5E adventure together even if they all turn out to be playing Champion Fighters.

Well, sort of. If they're all playing Champions, they've got no AoE in the party, so a large group of low-CR monsters (a dozen Shadows at level 5) will have a good chance of TPKing the party through sheer numbers. But the intent was clearly about "you don't need a healer in the party," not "you don't need artillery in the party."

Anyway, if you don't care about ensuring that ad hoc parties won't suffer for lacking a bard/cleric/druid/paladin/ranger/artillerist or other healer, you can afford to ditch that design goal and therefore to ditch short rest healing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I actually run (or conceptualize in-universe) HP as being effectively meat, by saying that HP represents energy available to a soul to rapidly heal injuries. There are deeper reserves that take time to bring into ready-reserve (ie HD), and given uninterrupted sleep, you can restore your entire ready-reserve pool (HP) and part of your long-term reserve. Once you hit 0 HP (nothing left), your body is in emergency mode. Sometimes it can cannibalize resources from elsewhere to fix the thing that took you out (stabilizing), other times it can't. Either way, in general (in-fiction), once you hit 0 HP you've likely got a lingering injury that can't be fixed with just HP healing (the bone was broken and healed crooked, the cannibalization pulled from your bones, leaving them weak, etc).

Healing is literally an injection of processed energy. Temporary hit points are a soul-level extra pool.

This concept of "soul energy" also explains spell slots, limited-use abilities, and why martials (who focus more on the body) have higher hit dice than casters (who have dedicated part of their reserves into producing spell slots. It also explains attunement and where magic items get their energy from and why they recharge.

As a game concession, I don't impose Lingering Injuries on players. They do happen for NPCs that survive after having death saves (named NPCs all get death saves in my games) or those who the party wants to save despite having "killed" them with ranged attacks/lethal damage. There's one in particular who took a crossbow bolt to the back and is now paralyzed from the waist down..


I mean... 5E ain't 3.X ain't 4E ain't AD&D...

Ultimately, so long as you and your players have fun, that's what matters, but if you lack experience with 5E specifically I'd give it a whirl normally before tinkering with it too much.

Agreed. One of the worst things I've seen happened because a DM was playing 3.X in 5e's clothing.

[Man_Over_Game]

Agreed. One of the worst things I've seen happened because a DM was playing 3.X in 5e's clothing.

What's funny is that 5e is basically a mashup of ADND and 4e (Hit Dice are a copy of a 4e mechanic). It carried over nothing from 3.5 (which was kinda dumb, thinking about it), so its players are probably the ones struggling most with it.

Thinking about it, back when 5e first came out, RPG Stack Exchange was flooded with 3.5 folks struggling with 5e.

Yeah, probably safe to go with a fresh run. Balance-wise, it's also kind of a big deal. There's a feat that encourages a few unique builds utilizing Hit Dice, and HD are one of the few benefits a Barbarian gets, not to mention an entire suite of Bard features and the Catnap spell.

Now, if you're looking to slow down healing, there's more than one option.

For instance, I like to implement long-rest healing using Hit Dice. That is, instead of healing to full, they recover half of their Hit Dice and roll them all. They spend as many as they need to in order to heal to full and keep the rest (up to their level in dice as normal).

That way, cumulative damage DOES impact your players and how aggressive they should be. Even if they do decide to heal in the middle of the day, it won't be as dramatic as being able to heal half of their HP during a lunch each day.

[OldTrees1]

Yes, but when hit with a sword, you can't really get around the fact that actual meat damage has been done. A cut is a cut, and doesn't heal just by willpower alone. But your point is also true. I guess I just always assumed psychic damage made your brain bleed, but I guess that's never said anywhere.

1) If someone hits with a sword, how much of that "hit" is a cut?
2) If someone cuts with a sword, how much of that "cut" is an actual wound?

5E D&D abstracts the difference between my first hit causing you to misstep and tweak your ankle, vs my second hit that buried a dagger in your armpit. Since the game does not know what type of damage you took, it is okay abstracting what kind of healing will solve it.

Now in 3E there was a variant that split it into Fatigue Points and Wounds. You could even allow a short rest to regenerate 1 wound (because humans do have regeneration, just not super regen).


What's funny is that 5e is basically a mashup of ADND and 4e (Hit Dice are a copy of a 4e mechanic). It carried over nothing from 3.5 (which was kinda dumb, thinking about it), so its players are probably the ones struggling most with it.

Odd, I see a lot of 3E in 5E. However that is neither here nor there.

[Dark.Revenant]

If you're hit with a sword, you might have been nicked by it, you might have been gashed by it, maybe it sliced your ear, maybe you ducked just far enough away that it only cut off a lock of hair, maybe it hit but the alignment was off and it didn't do that much damage, etc...

What it doesn't do is disembowel you, or lop an arm off, or decapitate you, or sever your spine, etc. The hits leading up to 0 HP are all non-fatal blows; the hit that brings you to 0 HP is the fatal blow. This isn't a flavor thing; this is the mechanical effect of taking damage. If you have 100 HP, taking 99 damage means you were injured, but not felled. It's not a mortal blow—at least, not yet. Maybe when you lose that last HP, you succumb to that prior injury, which worsens as you fall unconscious. But until 0 HP, it's survivable.

Taking some time to recuperate and shake off the effects of battle is realistic. In battle, you can shake off a lot of stuff that would normally cause you to be incapacitated... but once the immediate threat is gone, everything hits and you collapse. But that wouldn't be helpful for a dungeon crawling game, so instead that "crash and recovery" is roughly translated to a short rest. Would it take an hour in real life? Probably not. But this is a game of fireballs and dragons.

[Man_Over_Game]

1
Odd, I see a lot of 3E in 5E. However that is neither here nor there.

Interesting, now I'm curious. The biggest similarity I saw was in how skills function, but skills are probably the thing I dislike the most about 5e.

I'm interested in hearing about what similarities you've noticed, if you wouldn't mind.

[Devils_Advocate]

I'm not sure what you mean about short rest healing "not using resources". Hit Dice are limited. A long rest restores half of them, but it also fully restores hit points, which seems like the bigger deal, since rolling half of your Hit Dice only restores roughly half of your hit points on average if I've got my math right. Long rests are really where it's at so far as regeneration is concerned.

Did you mean non-renewable resources?

You're right that healing magic items, and more generally any particular form of healing, are less valuable the more healing that the game includes. The thing to look at there is whether you want healing to be precious, and more generally how long-term you want the consequences of an encounter to be. Maybe you like PCs getting worn down over the course of the day, but also like them being able to start fresh at the start of each day. In that case, taking away short rest healing could make sense.

Outside of obscure variant rules, D&D has never attempted to model injury realistically. Losing hit points is like injury in that enough of it can result in someone dying, and in that it can be recovered from, but that's pretty much it.

[MaxWilson]

If you're hit with a sword, you might have been nicked by it, you might have been gashed by it, maybe it sliced your ear, maybe you ducked just far enough away that it only cut off a lock of hair, maybe it hit but the alignment was off and it didn't do that much damage, etc...

What it doesn't do is disembowel you, or lop an arm off, or decapitate you, or sever your spine, etc. The hits leading up to 0 HP are all non-fatal blows; the hit that brings you to 0 HP is the fatal blow. This isn't a flavor thing; this is the mechanical effect of taking damage. If you have 100 HP, taking 99 damage means you were injured, but not felled. It's not a mortal blow—at least, not yet. Maybe when you lose that last HP, you succumb to that prior injury, which worsens as you fall unconscious. But until 0 HP, it's survivable.

... and yet, 1-4 hours later, you are back in the same state as before you took that "fatal blow." Or even a few seconds later, if somebody has the Healer feat or healing spells.

The view that the last HP is the only serious wound isn't consistent with the observed facts. Rather, it looks very much as if all wounds are equally disemboweling/stabby/etc., but you can tolerate only so many of them before collapsing.

[Man_Over_Game]

... and yet, 1-4 hours later, you are back in the same state as before you took that "fatal blow." Or even a few seconds later, if somebody has the Healer feat or healing spells.

The view that the last HP is the only serious wound isn't consistent with the observed facts. Rather, it looks very much as if all wounds are equally disemboweling/stabby/etc., but you can tolerate only so many of them before collapsing.

I've always pictured it as your "luck" running out.

Doesn't matter if you're a Wizard, or a Barbarian. They all die the same way: Their luck runs out after surviving things they shouldn't.

[OldTrees1]

Interesting, now I'm curious. The biggest similarity I saw was in how skills function, but skills are probably the thing I dislike the most about 5e.

I'm interested in hearing about what similarities you've noticed, if you wouldn't mind.

I feel it would be off topic for this thread. So I will be brief, incomplete, and not elaborate further.

5E Ability Scores use the 3E model but with a cap at 20 (No Str 18/00).
There are several PC race options from 3E.
The multiclassing system uses 3E's improvement on AD&D's model.
Spell level progression uses the 3E model.
The feat system and the ASI system in 3E (which 4E inherited) was merged in 5E.
Yes, what remains of the skill system uses 3E's adjustment to AD&D's model.
If memory serves, AD&D and 4E have few class features (assuming we count powers and spells as a separate category).

3E innovated on AD&D. 4E innovated on 3E but branched a bit further than expected. 5E innovated on AD&D, 3E, and 4E.

[MaxWilson]

The multiclassing system uses 3E's improvement on AD&D's model.

"Improvement"?

5E multiclassing is more closely related to the 2nd edition DMG's custom class construction rules than to AD&D multiclassing. Like the custom class construction rules, the resulting "build" isn't necessarily thematically coherent, and the rules are highly abusable by powergamers while at the range time being error-prone for casual players. Paladin X/Hexblade 2/Divine Soul 3, Wizard X/Forge Cleric 1, etc. = very strong, played by powergamers. Eldritch Knight 4/Arcane Trickster 4 = very weak, played by newbies. In fact that's the first multiclassed 5E character I ever saw, back in 2014...

I like AD&D multiclassing better but allow both kinds.

[KorvinStarmast]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating.

Yes you are. HD are a limited resource. If you have 6 encounters per day, and you need to heal up a couple of times, you can surely run out of HD. We did in our first campaign. And in a few others.

Then you long rest and get .. half of those HD back, so the next day if you have a similar grind you are behind in healing RESOURCES called HD.

I came from an AD&D intensive (Mostly 1e) background to 5e and it took me a while to get the hang of using HD for healing.

My suggestion is as follows: Don't overthink it.

[neonchameleon]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating. Doesn't that steal the thunder from magical items that deal with healing and regenerating? If all I need to do is rest for 1 hour to heal up to full, or close, why bother with using resources on healing at all?

Watch a boxing match sometime. The boxers normally go into their corner of the ring exhausted and sometimes swaying. After spending just three minutes between rounds they come out fresher, more energetic, and able to take more of a pounding. Are the boxers somehow regenerating over the course of three minutes? Are the cuts and bruises gone? No. But they are fresher and more able to block hits and take them; in D&D terms they have more accessible hit points at the start of one round than they did the previous one.

And yes you do use resources to heal; hit dice are resources that represent your stamina.

[Unoriginal]

Yes, but when hit with a sword, you can't really get around the fact that actual meat damage has been done.

Actually, you can.

See Darth Vader's and Luke's duel in Star Wars's episode V:


https://youtu.be/YRcUdD5nthc

Luke doesn't get cut a thousand times, but it's unambiguous that he's absolutely getting his donkey kicked despite his valiant resistance. He gets tired physically and mentally, his morale is hammered at, etc.

A DM could say this is what happens when someone attack a PC and hit.

In fact some people narrate that the only true "cutting" blow is the one that put the enemy to 0 HPs. Before that it's just scratches and combat tiredness and losing your confidence etc.

[Kuulvheysoon]

...

A DM could say this is what happens when someone attack a PC and hit.

In fact some people narrate that the only true "cutting" blow is the one that put the enemy to 0 HPs. Before that it's just scratches and combat tiredness and losing your confidence etc.

Waves hand.

[Sigreid]

Really, the way it works is the last few hitpoints would be the meat. The rest is basically physical and mental fatigue setting in as the fighting continues. You could look at the large HP loss from a fireball or some such as the amount of physical and mental strain you subjected yourself to in order to not be turned into a smore. The Hitdice represent you resting, recharging and re-centering for the next go around. The dice depleting represents the day wearing on you more an more, your reserves getting used up. Only half the HD replenishing over a long rest represents the time it takes to fully replenish those reserves. You could even few the largest effect of healing spells being divine energy being pored back into that well of determination and energy. So a 10th level fighter who has lost 25% of his health really isn't injured at all, but his stamina and determination is noticeably dented. That kobold who hit the 10th level fighter for 8 damage with his spear? Didn't get past the fighter's armor at all but did force the fighter to expend energy to avoid getting injured.

Edit: At least that's my read on how it works.

[Anymage]

Even if you go in with the assumption that all weapon hits actually connect to some degree, there's an optional rule in the DMG that says that you can only spend HD to heal if someone has the time and bandages to bandage you up during your short rest. You aren't running at full steam (represented by the lost hit dice), but with a bit of time to center yourself and to bind your wounds your heroic self can be as effective as if you were unwounded. Picturing it less as totally unwounded and more as an action hero being bandaged up between scenes might help you picture it better.

From a pure verisimilitude standpoint it does feel weird that someone can take nasty wounds today only to wake up tomorrow with full HP and HD. Games that relied on a healer to top people off at the end of the day means someone has to suck it up and play the healer, and then save their spell slots to top people off instead of doing something cool with them. Topping people off at the end of the day is a fair change to help ensure that people play what they want. If it's just that the speed of recovery seems too fast for you, and if you're willing to slow down the rate of encounters to match, gritty realism can change your timescales while keeping all the underlying game pacing where it's meant to be.

[RSP]

I go with damage taken is “meat” damage, proportional to total HPs. So taking 7 damage when you have 8 total HPs is a significant wound, while it’s only a scratch if you have 100 HPs.

As for SRs (and LRs), I just accept healing works differently in 5e worlds. I don’t really see another way around it.

[Stryyke]

Watch a boxing match sometime. The boxers normally go into their corner of the ring exhausted and sometimes swaying. After spending just three minutes between rounds they come out fresher, more energetic, and able to take more of a pounding. Are the boxers somehow regenerating over the course of three minutes? Are the cuts and bruises gone? No. But they are fresher and more able to block hits and take them; in D&D terms they have more accessible hit points at the start of one round than they did the previous one.

And yes you do use resources to heal; hit dice are resources that represent your stamina.

Hmmm. A good analogy. I'll consider this more.

[Stryyke]

From a pure verisimilitude standpoint it does feel weird that someone can take nasty wounds today only to wake up tomorrow with full HP and HD. Games that relied on a healer to top people off at the end of the day means someone has to suck it up and play the healer, and then save their spell slots to top people off instead of doing something cool with them. Topping people off at the end of the day is a fair change to help ensure that people play what they want. If it's just that the speed of recovery seems too fast for you, and if you're willing to slow down the rate of encounters to match, gritty realism can change your timescales while keeping all the underlying game pacing where it's meant to be.

I actually find myself disagreeing with this. Being the guy that tops people off IS part of the character, and integrating healing, to the degree D&D 5e has, takes that away. It's actually limiting build types, not expanding them.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Playing my Redemption Paladin has been a great study into exactly what hit points mean at our table. A majority of the damage my Paladin takes is often not from strikes to him, it's damage taken through Aura of the Guardian. He's also focused heavily around short rest healing. He's the ultimate devoted martyr for the party, the stereotypical anime punching bag who grits his teeth and takes as much pain as possible. Give him an hour and he'll be fresh enough to take it again.

He's never been close to mortally wounded in this campaign, but he's covered in countless scars beneath his armor and frequently ends the day bruised and bloody.

It's worth noting though that Short Rest healing can run out. It's fairly generous, but you only regain half of your spent hit die after a long rest. If you push yourself through with grit you're eventually going to run out. I liken Short Rest healing to be a very morale/attrition focused type of healing, my Paladin has a high pain tolerance and a formidable constitution so it's pretty easy for him to move through the pain of even a potentially serious injury.

At our table, also, we don't typically narrate excessive force from blows that aren't near or actually lethal. Taking a serious blow usually causes some superficial permanent physical damage (scars, or as an example, our Dragonborn Sorcerer lost half his horn after being bludgeoned within 1 death save of dying by a Yochlol) or a long lasting phobia (our Monk, despite now being completely immune to poison, prefers to avoid large poisonous spiders after being rendered comatose for an extended period of time.)

The main complaints for Short Rest healing tend to lie directly in the hit point abstraction meta-system. With my take on it said though, I don't think anyone is explicitly wrong with not also preferring to view it like that, because it does absolutely come attached with the idea that people are being cut up on a constant basis and ignoring it Black Knight style.

[quinron]

Honestly, I think the "gritty realism" variant feels decently realistic for how I tend to view damage - the first half-ish of your HP is just morale and stamina damage, where, e.g., the enemy hitting you with a sword isn't stabbing you, they're just hitting your armor hard enough to knock the wind out of you and maybe leave some bruises; the second half is minor injuries building up until a major injury takes you out of commission. With gritty realism, you get a good night's rest and some patching to recover enough from that to keep going for another day or two, but if you keep getting hurt, you'll eventually have to convalesce for a week if you want to stay alive.

Really, I don't think the issue here is short rests nearly as much as long rests - if we're modeling HP as a combination of morale/energy depletion and physical injury, then it's more realistic that you could spend an hour bandaging, resting, and smellingsalt-ing yourself back onto your feet for a few more hours than that you could go from being knocked unconscious to being the picture of health by doing those things and also getting a night's rest.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

One of the possibility of healing in short rest is bandaging yourself and your friends.

[Contrast]

I actually find myself disagreeing with this. Being the guy that tops people off IS part of the character, and integrating healing, to the degree D&D 5e has, takes that away. It's actually limiting build types, not expanding them.

The person you were responding to wasn't making any comment about total number of possible builds. They were observing that when having a dedicated healer was beneficial, often someone felt obligated/was pressured into playing a healer even if they didn't want to.

That's obviously fine if you want to play the healer but sucks if you don't want to play the healer.

[MaxWilson]

The person you were responding to wasn't making any comment about total number of possible builds. They were observing that when having a dedicated healer was beneficial, often someone felt obligated/was pressured into playing a healer even if they didn't want to.

That's obviously fine if you want to play the healer but sucks if you don't want to play the healer.

Why not just have a bard NPC in that case? If nobody wants to play them, nobody has to play them, but they'll still be there.

3 PCs + NPC is a perfectly fine party.

[Tanarii]

Yes, but when hit with a sword, you can't really get around the fact that actual meat damage has been done. A cut is a cut, and doesn't heal just by willpower alone. But your point is also true. I guess I just always assumed psychic damage made your brain bleed, but I guess that's never said anywhere.
The PHB disagrees that a hit with a sword is always does actual meat damage or causes a cut.

DESCRIBING THE EFFECTS OF DAMAGE
Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more ofyour hit point maximum, you typically show no signs ofinjury. When you drop below halfyour hit point maximum, you show signs ofwear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious.

PHB 197

You don't usually start taking meat damage until you've lost at least half your hit points.

[Valmark]

I would note that comparing d&d to reality is extremely unlikely to work- when you have characters that can swin naked for hours in a frozen over lake and the only who will catch a sneeze is the npc that is covered in pelts by the fire every solution makes sense.

"It's only a flesh wound" never rang truer.


Interesting, now I'm curious. The biggest similarity I saw was in how skills function, but skills are probably the thing I dislike the most about 5e.

I'm interested in hearing about what similarities you've noticed, if you wouldn't mind.
Ironically, I wouldn't say that 3.5 and 5e skill systems are similar in the slightest, beyond different classes getting different amounts of skill "points". But I don't recall (or know) how they were handled it in other editions so maybe they're the least different.

I feel it would be off topic for this thread. So I will be brief, incomplete, and not elaborate further.

5E Ability Scores use the 3E model but with a cap at 20 (No Str 18/00).
There are several PC race options from 3E.
The multiclassing system uses 3E's improvement on AD&D's model.
Spell level progression uses the 3E model.
The feat system and the ASI system in 3E (which 4E inherited) was merged in 5E.
Yes, what remains of the skill system uses 3E's adjustment to AD&D's model.
If memory serves, AD&D and 4E have few class features (assuming we count powers and spells as a separate category).

3E innovated on AD&D. 4E innovated on 3E but branched a bit further than expected. 5E innovated on AD&D, 3E, and 4E.

Pretty much this. Whenever I need to compare systems I usually gloss over 4e because of how profoundly different most things are (to my memory at least).

[Contrast]

Why not just have a bard NPC in that case? If nobody wants to play them, nobody has to play them, but they'll still be there.

3 PCs + NPC is a perfectly fine party.

I think I'd make two comments there.

1) That's a choice the DM makes, not the players.

2) You could def do that. Its far less necessary in 5E to do that.


To take an example of the most recent Critical Role campaign, one of the players was playing a cleric and many jokes were made about the fact that she rarely prepared/used healing spells. They were all in good humour but there were many instances of jokes where the punchline was basically 'lol our cleric isn't a healer'. There were a number of instances where the player clearly felt frustrated/guilty about using spell slots because of the expectation that they should be saving them for healing.

Simple solution, this player just doesn't play a healer if they don't enjoy it then right? Except they didn't really, nothing about the character was presented as being a 'healer' - they just happened to be playing a cleric which the table perceives as a healer class.

When another player had a PC die they came back with a cleric who focused on being a healer. My entirely unfounded suspicion is that at least part of this decision was to alleviate the pressure on the other player to provide healing and let them play how they wanted.

[neonchameleon]

Pretty much this. Whenever I need to compare systems I usually gloss over 4e because of how profoundly different most things are (to my memory at least).

I consider 4e the closest to 5e of any edition or, more accurately, 5e to be 4e lite with a coat of paint. The skill system is very close, the classes are mostly 4e classes with the subclasses coming almost straight out of 4e, the monsters are messed up 4e monsters and even the spells, which you'd think wouldn't be 4e influenced, have the concentration mechanic being far closer to 4e's sustain than to anything seen before that. The main difference is that 4e left its walls unpainted in a way 5e really doesn't.

[Valmark]

I consider 4e the closest to 5e of any edition or, more accurately, 5e to be 4e lite with a coat of paint. The skill system is very close, the classes are mostly 4e classes with the subclasses coming almost straight out of 4e, the monsters are messed up 4e monsters and even the spells, which you'd think wouldn't be 4e influenced, have the concentration mechanic being far closer to 4e's sustain than to anything seen before that. The main difference is that 4e left its walls unpainted in a way 5e really doesn't.

Agreed on the skills, though I'm not sure I agree on the rest. Classes are structured much more like 3.5 and... I'm fairly sure, but not 100% since I stopped keeping up with 4e after a point (I started with it but switched over to 3.5 which I found more enjoyable), that most if not all of 4e classes were present in 3.5 too.
Unsure of the monsters- I know there are 3.5 monsters in 5e that aren't in 4e, monsters in 4e that are in 3.5 but not in 5e but I don't know of monsters that are in 4e, in 5e but not in 3.5.
Or of monsters that are in 4e but not in 3.5, likely just ignorance on my part.

Strongly disagreed on the spells thing- Concentrating on a spell works pretty much exactly like in 3.5. The only difference I can recall is that Concentration spells stopped you from casting any other spell which was dropped in 5e.
Note: I'm talking about spells that had Concentration as a duration.

[EggKookoo]

I explain it to my players like this. HP damage may or may not be physical injury. It's up to them to visualize. While I tend to describe damage done to NPCs as injury, those guys are one-and-done in the narrative so we don't have to worry about recovery.

The thing is, HP loss only matters in the short term. If you're stabbed IRL, the actual injury could be pretty minor. I mean in terms of the size of the cut. But a bunch of physiological things happen in the next few seconds. Depending on where you're injured, you can go briefly into shock. Or your blood pressure could dip severely. A common trope in stories is someone gets cut or stabbed and drops instantly. That's not realistic (typically) in the sense that the person just died, but the shock and bp drop can make you briefly "gray out" and your legs falter. You're back up a few moments later, and assuming you're not hemorrhaging internally, you're mostly okay.

Watch some MMA cage matches. Once a guy gets a solid hit to the head, he's struggling. The damage in a structural sense is minimal, but he lost a ton of HP. He just suddenly got much closer to one of the next blows finishing him off -- to tapping out or unconsciousness in the case of the cage fight, but it would be to death in something like D&D.

So I explain HP loss as mostly about how you're doing over the next few seconds or minutes. "Damage" is the system shock (and related stuff) that comes as a result of the injury, but the injury is not the whole of the damage. In the case of D&D for the purposes of balance, you're saddled with that systemic stuff until you settle yourself down and recover, so it's tied to the resting mechanic.

I'm not trying to sell it as totally realistic. I'm just saying it's perhaps not as unrealistic as is sometimes claimed.

[Stryyke]

The PHB disagrees that a hit with a sword is always does actual meat damage or causes a cut.

DESCRIBING THE EFFECTS OF DAMAGE
Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more ofyour hit point maximum, you typically show no signs ofinjury. When you drop below halfyour hit point maximum, you show signs ofwear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious.

PHB 197

You don't usually start taking meat damage until you've lost at least half your hit points.

I wasn't really saying that all sword strikes are cuts, but there are so many situations where they must, necessarily be meat cuts. For instance, the bare-chested barbarian tanking hits has to be meat damage. He has no armor to blunt or deflect blows. And he isn't the type to be so technically proficient that you could realistically say he's deflecting blows with his hands, so they just leave cuts and bruises. So I'm not suggesting that all hits have to be meat damage, only that healing meat damage with a short rest is problematic for me.

[Warder]

I wasn't really saying that all sword strikes are cuts, but there are so many situations where they must, necessarily be meat cuts. For instance, the bare-chested barbarian tanking hits has to be meat damage. He has no armor to blunt or deflect blows. And he isn't the type to be so technically proficient that you could realistically say he's deflecting blows with his hands, so they just leave cuts and bruises. So I'm not suggesting that all hits have to be meat damage, only that healing meat damage with a short rest is problematic for me.

I really don't think so. A hit doesn't have to be an actual hit - when it comes to arrows and crossbolt bolts, I often describe hits on PCs as near-misses (deflects off the helm, swishes past their ear, nicks their thigh) - something that leaves them shaken and flagging, but not with a projectile or two stuck in their shoulder. There's no reason you can't do the same with sword strikes etc. Though for a barbarian, I'd think that it'd be more fulfilling to the player to describe it as the ferocity and relentlessness of the barbarian's rage making it difficult for the enemy to find enough leverage for a full force swing, so cuts will be minor for that reason, etc.

[Unoriginal]

I wasn't really saying that all sword strikes are cuts, but there are so many situations where they must, necessarily be meat cuts. For instance, the bare-chested barbarian tanking hits has to be meat damage.

No, it does not have to.

A bare-chested Barbarian literally uses both their agility and their physical resilience to handle hits. A Raging Barbarian literally diminishes all physical damage made to them.

You can say that a bare-chested Barbarian bobs and weaves around upcoming attacks, or that swords straight up bounces off their muscles leaving not even scratches, until the Barbarian is too tired to repeat the feat.

Or you can say whatever else you want.


He has no armor to blunt or deflect blows.

CON and Rage blunt and deflect.



And he isn't the type to be so technically proficient that you could realistically say he's deflecting blows with his hands,

A Barbarian adds their DEX to AC still, and they are notably very good at sensing upcoming danger in order to get out of the way, so I dunno what makes you say that.

Also, there is nothing realistic about someone who can do what a Barbarian can do.



so they just leave cuts and bruises. So I'm not suggesting that all hits have to be meat damage, only that healing meat damage with a short rest is problematic for me.

I mean no offense, Stryyke, but to me it seems that you are creating barriers in your mind based on what you think should be the limitations, rather than what the limitations are.

5e combat is an abstraction, and so is healing. There is very little "it has to be X", and IMO it's pretty freeing.

[KorvinStarmast]

Really, the way it works is the last few hitpoints would be the meat. The rest is basically physical and mental fatigue setting in as the fighting continues. Which is nearly how E.G.G. described hit points in the AD&D 1e DMG.

You don't usually start taking meat damage until you've lost at least half your hit points. +1 for citing the rule book. :smallbiggrin:

"It's only a flesh wound" never rang truer. Yeah.

So I'm not suggesting that all hits have to be meat damage, only that healing meat damage with a short rest is problematic for me. Besides my recommendation above on "don't over think it" I offer you this
For your reading pleasure. (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/108501/22566)
What E.G.G. had to say about HP in AD&D 1e; the big difference there was how many "long rests" one needed to recover to full without supplemental healing. But that was also before WoTC hit point inflation struck.
Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 Constitution. This character would have an average of 5.5 hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points. Is this the source of your disappointment with HD healing on a short rest? (The recovery period?)

[Hytheter]

I've always pictured it as your "luck" running out.

Personally, I find this to be the worst of the proposed abstractions I have seen. It's just as nonsensical as other models if not worse but it's also insulting, implying that your character just so happens to survive everything thrown at them by coincidence rather than through any power of their own.

[KorvinStarmast]

Insulting? Luck? We have a lucky feat, we have the lucky trait for halflings.

You've got me curious: why is the 'luck' element insulting? :smallconfused:

your character just so happens to survive everything thrown at them by coincidence rather than through any power of their own. The d20 system is swingy by nature.
FWIW, in the pseudo-culture that D&D relates to (that vague middle ages thing) 'luck' was believed to be a characteristic of people, just as being blessed was believed to be a personal characteristic. (As an example, Lief the Lucky, Viking leader/explorer Lief Ericson).
Mercenaries tended to hire on with a 'lucky captain' if a merc company leader had a reputation for being lucky.

[Hytheter]

Insulting? Luck? We have a lucky feat, we have the lucky trait for halflings.

Sure, such features exist for those who want luck to be a defining feature of their character and their ability to survive. So why insist that HP - shared by all creatures - universally models that same thing?



You've got me curious: why is the 'luck' element insulting? :smallconfused:


Imagine you spend years of your life mastering the blade and pushing your body to the limit to become stronger and more resilient. One day, having reached the peak of human physique and capability, you go off and defeat a dragon in single combat. When you get back and recount your tale, the listener retorts thus: "Pfft, you probably just got lucky."

Are you insulted? I would be.

[Valmark]

Sure, such features exist for those who want luck to be a defining feature of their character and their ability to survive. So why insist that HP - shared by all creatures - universally models that same thing?



Imagine you spend years of your life mastering the blade and pushing your body to the limit to become stronger and more resilient. One day, having reached the peak of human physique and capability, you go off and defeat a dragon in single combat. When you get back and recount your tale, the listener retorts thus: "Pfft, you probably just got lucky."

Are you insulted? I would be.

I mean, that's something that one could say anyway- and on a meta level it is luck, because we're rolling dice to determine what happens, unless you're so overwhelmingly powerful that defeating a dragon isn't actually a noteworthy feat.

[KorvinStarmast]

Imagine you spend years of your life mastering the blade and pushing your body to the limit to become stronger and more resilient. One day, having reached the peak of human physique and capability, you go off and defeat a dragon in single combat. When you get back and recount your tale, the listener retorts thus: "Pfft, you probably just got lucky."

Are you insulted? I would be. You are importing some unnecessary assumptions to that transaction. My only response is "Uh, not how I see it" and that's all I have. :smallconfused:

[Willie the Duck]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating. Doesn't that steal the thunder from magical items that deal with healing and regenerating? If all I need to do is rest for 1 hour to heal up to full, or close, why bother with using resources on healing at all?

Regenerating (especially the D&D and comic book interpretations of the concept) is healing, so on some level, yes it is, but so is natural healing in other editions. 5e allows for rapid healing (both SR HD expenditures, and the LR full heal) for a number of reasons, not least of which the aforementioned not needing a cleric, but also because lots of groups never found much use for the hanging around 1, 2, or 30+ days to heal up with the old natural healing rules.


Yes, but when hit with a sword, you can't really get around the fact that actual meat damage has been done. A cut is a cut, and doesn't heal just by willpower alone.

Hit points, meat points, luck points, it's all an endless quagmire and always has been. I tend to thing of at least most hits with a bladed weapon to at least draw blood. However, it can be just nicks and scratches and lots of contusions along the way until our hero finally falls to the one actual blade to the belly. That certainly hews close to the genre fiction that inspired the game (and makes more sense than a perfectly unmagical high-level fighter being able to take massively multiple swords through the torso or the like.


Which is nearly how E.G.G. described hit points in the AD&D 1e DMG.
+1 for citing the rule book. :smallbiggrin:
Yeah.
Besides my recommendation above on "don't over think it" I offer you this
For your reading pleasure. (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/108501/22566)
What E.G.G. had to say about HP in AD&D 1e; the big difference there was how many "long rests" one needed to recover to full without supplemental healing. But that was also before WoTC hit point inflation struck.
Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 Constitution. This character would have an average of 5.5 hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points. Is this the source of your disappointment with HD healing on a short rest? (The recovery period?)
Ah yes, that's where it came from! Regardless, even that is apparently after-the-fact justification. Back during the playtest era, according to Mornard*, 'all of this stuff about luck points or nicks and bruises or even 'pacing mechanisms' (whatever that means) was never mentioned. Hit points were hit points and they represented hit points. Everything else came after the fact once people decided that this game couldn't be, y'know, a game' Which kind of makes sense given how they (and variable weapon damage) showed up, post-Chainmail. Give some randomness to the health side and some randomness to the damage side and give people the chance to roll more dice:smalltongue:.
*Inexact quote


What's funny is that 5e is basically a mashup of ADND and 4e (Hit Dice are a copy of a 4e mechanic). It carried over nothing from 3.5 (which was kinda dumb, thinking about it), so its players are probably the ones struggling most with it.

Thinking about it, back when 5e first came out, RPG Stack Exchange was flooded with 3.5 folks struggling with 5e.
It's fascinating how everyone wants to ascribe one or another of the previous editions as the clear and obvious main inspirations for 5e. Can't it just be a spiritual successor to them all, with bits and bobs from each as appropriate? I mean, I can see a lot of places where BX/BECMI has influence rather than AD&D, but that doesn't mean it is clearly one or the other.

Regardless, it doesn't necessarily follow that the 3.5 folks on RPG Stack Exchange struggled because it was so dissimilar. It could also be that they struggled because it was very close to, but not the same as, 3.5. That too would create those results.


I actually find myself disagreeing with this. Being the guy that tops people off IS part of the character, and integrating healing, to the degree D&D 5e has, takes that away. It's actually limiting build types, not expanding them.
I mean, you are right. It is eliminating some value to the role of 'the healer.' If you happened to be the kind of player who really liked that role, it is a demotion (healing is still a role in 5e, just not as big a role as previous editions). The issue, I believe, was that there simply aren't that many people who want that role, so it was harder to justify rules which made having one a semi-necessity (especially as the number of basic classes has grown. When Cleric was 1/3 of the classes available, it was a lot more reasonable to assume there would be one in the party).

[Tanarii]

So I'm not suggesting that all hits have to be meat damage, only that healing meat damage with a short rest is problematic for me.
Fair enough. I just treat it as a game mechanic representing when your character is not in a dying state, and leave it at that. Many game mechanics are problematic when you try to tie them too closely to what's going on in-universe.

Even leaving them just as "0 is dying, not-0 is not dying" as the tie in is problematic enough at times. :smallamused:

[KorvinStarmast]

Ah yes, that's where it came from! Regardless, even that is apparently after-the-fact justification. Back during the playtest era, according to Mornard*, 'all of this stuff about luck points or nicks and bruises or even 'pacing mechanisms' (whatever that means) was never mentioned. Hit points were hit points and they represented hit points. Everything else came after the fact once people decided that this game couldn't be, y'know, a game' Which kind of makes sense given how they (and variable weapon damage) showed up, post-Chainmail. Give some randomness to the health side and some randomness to the damage side and give people the chance to roll more dice:smalltongue:.
*Inexact quote Hard agree, it wasn't spelled out until some fans/players began asking about it. When we started, it was a thing that showed if you were alive or dead. :smallsmile:

It's fascinating how everyone wants to ascribe one or another of the previous editions as the clear and obvious main inspirations for 5e. Can't it just be a spiritual successor to them all, with bits and bobs from each as appropriate? It is my understanding that this was their intention. :smallsmile:

[Sorinth]

Not sure why short rests would be singled out, shouldn't you have the same problems with long rests because it's not like 8hrs of sleep is going to make a difference if you were stabbed through the gut with a sword.

And it also doesn't make sense that mid/high level people can get hacked and slashed, set on fire and just shrug it off without issue. Really only the very last HP needs to be something physical, everything else is some abstraction.

They probably should just bite the bullet and call them Hero Points.

[Stryyke]

Not sure why short rests would be singled out, shouldn't you have the same problems with long rests because it's not like 8hrs of sleep is going to make a difference if you were stabbed through the gut with a sword.

And it also doesn't make sense that mid/high level people can get hacked and slashed, set on fire and just shrug it off without issue. Really only the very last HP needs to be something physical, everything else is some abstraction.

They probably should just bite the bullet and call them Hero Points.

LOL That's fair. Hero Points. I like it!

I guess, in my mind, a night's sleep can heal small wounds . . . at least enough that they won't break open and become problematic again. But no one ever sat down to eat a mid-day snack, and stood up with all their scratches and bruises healed. Sure you might have some additional inner strength to push on despite the pain, but mostly those cuts and bruises don't heal in 1 hour. Also, I sort of always pictured sleeping as turning off part of your body, so healing can be increased. Sort of like turning off 20%, and reallocating that 20% to healing the body. While awake and doing things, you are still using your consciousness to do things, so no special re-allocation of resources can happen.

[Sigreid]

Alternately, I've created a campaign where the PC's and major NPCs are essentially demigods on par with the likes of Hercules and they really can just flat out take that much damage and recover that quickly. It also goes well with there being essentially not meaningful disease in the game by default that I've seen.

[EggKookoo]

But no one ever sat down to eat a mid-day snack, and stood up with all their scratches and bruises healed. Sure you might have some additional inner strength to push on despite the pain, but mostly those cuts and bruises don't heal in 1 hour.

That's why I don't tend to describe it as actual healing, as in there's no more injury (unless there's magic involved). You get banged up. You rest. The cuts and bruises are still there after an hour but they no longer represent an obstacle to surviving combat. Bleeding has stopped, your various endocrine systems have settled down. You got some nutrition into you perhaps, so you blood sugar and other levels have had a chance to stabilize. The cut is still there, but your body is dealing with it. It still hurts, but it's no longer a new hurt, so it doesn't distract you as much as it did when you first got it and weren't sure how severe it was.

Sure, if you get stabbed again right into that same wound, there could be issues. But how likely is that? And if it happens, maybe that's justification for a crit or a really, really good damage roll made by your enemy. Or maybe that's the hit that pushes you to 0 HP, or even "explains" why your first two death saves were failures.

Hit points are a measure of "how likely am I to survive the next hit from my enemy?" Not literally a catalog of all the injuries you're currently sporting.

[JackPhoenix]

Why not just have a bard NPC in that case? If nobody wants to play them, nobody has to play them, but they'll still be there.

3 PCs + NPC is a perfectly fine party.

Because that just forces the GM to play the dedicated healer instead, not solving the problem and adding work to someone who already has more stuff to keep track off?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Because that just forces the GM to play the dedicated healer instead, not solving the problem and adding work to someone who already has more stuff to keep track off?

Yeah. One of the best things about 5e is that it breaks away from the mandated party composition. You don't need a wizard (or specific magic items) to solve XYZ problem. Or a rogue to find traps. Or a cleric to remove conditions/heal people. Etc. You can do an all barbarian party just fine. Or an all wizard one. Or one with a wizard and a druid. Etc.

[Ogun]

I am not a warrior, but my ability to shrug off work injuries has improved over 25 years as an construction worker.
The very fact that I can get a cut and not freak out has kept me from falling off ladders or dropping heavy objects on others.

That being said, hit points are ablative plot armor, nothing more.
Heroes get more , mooks get less, big bads get whatever the plot dictates.

If you don't like them, maybe try a game like GURPs Fantasy where any mook with a crossbow might kill any hero.
Its closer to real life, but is that what we want?
Watch game of thrones, especially the fate of the barbarian king,and tell me you really want realism form combat injuries.
You might,but expect to have bold PCs and old PCs, but not any old,bold PCs.

Alternatively, try a Mutants and Masterminds model, where you might get one shotted, but almost any hit might impair you.
It's very cinematic, and has interesting combat implications.
I like it, but it is complex, and favors bruisers over the more dexterous types.

Both of these alternatives suffer most from complexity.
Hit points are simple and heroic.
They are not realistic.
Reducing the ability to self heal is not a big deal, as long as you take that into account as the DM.

[Ionathus]

Yes, but when hit with a sword, you can't really get around the fact that actual meat damage has been done. A cut is a cut, and doesn't heal just by willpower alone. But your point is also true. I guess I just always assumed psychic damage made your brain bleed, but I guess that's never said anywhere.

My general approach is to borrow the "bloodied" condition (or parts of it) from 4e and use that narratively.

So up until a creature is reduced to 1/2 health, all of your attacks are narratively causing "scratch damage": bruises, scrapes, sprains, pulled muscles, dents in their armor, twisted ankles, etc. -- things that might be a problem long-term but can be shrugged off under the effects of adrenaline. You're essentially chipping away at their veneer and composure, not scoring any huge hits but still wearing them down.

Then, when you get that first attack that pushes them below 1/2 health, they have received a significant wound. A gash in the head, a stab to the shoulder or leg. Something serious and noticeable. This also helps me to signal to the players an extremely rough hit point total for the enemies, while keeping myself at least somewhat honest about how far they still have to go.

Does that still mess up short rests, if they can heal a huge leg wound (or even falling unconscious) with a really good expenditure of hit dice? Well, yes. But I do feel like it makes things slightly more believable, and as others have said, heroes are meant to be heroic. They don't have to heal like Wolverine, but healing like Captain America might be reasonable. Especially if every hit they take isn't a stab through the gut or a greataxe to the ribs.

[Hytheter]

Because that just forces the GM to play the dedicated healer instead, not solving the problem and adding work to someone who already has more stuff to keep track off?

Easy fix, just let the players dictate the NPC's mechanical actions and record their resources, and only take control for RP stuff or if the party starts taking it too far.

[MaxWilson]

Because that just forces the GM to play the dedicated healer instead, not solving the problem and adding work to someone who already has more stuff to keep track off?

But the objection is "playing the heal-bot is boring", which implies that the cognitive load is light.

And during combat, the party can run the healer collectively while the DM runs the monsters.


Yeah. One of the best things about 5e is that it breaks away from the mandated party composition. You don't need a wizard (or specific magic items) to solve XYZ problem. Or a rogue to find traps. Or a cleric to remove conditions/heal people. Etc. You can do an all barbarian party just fine. Or an all wizard one. Or one with a wizard and a druid. Etc.

It only breaks away w/rt rogues and HP healing. That all-barbarian party is going to have problems dealing with a mob of low-CR monsters like shadows or even hobgoblins, because they have minimal-to-no AoEs, and without a healer in the party they're going to be stymied as soon as someone gets eaten by a Roc or petrified by a Medusa or perma-stunned by an intellect devourer, etc.

Don't get me wrong, an all-barbarian party sounds like a ton of fun, but they will pay an effectiveness tax relative to a pay with spellcasters, which is largely why it would be fun (more challenging).

[KorvinStarmast]

That being said, hit points are ablative plot armor, nothing more.
Heroes get more , mooks get less, big bads get whatever the plot dictates. Nice thought. :smallsmile: I may steal that. Also, HP and HD are both kind of meta game elements, as is every dice or die roll.

Easy fix, just let the players dictate the NPC's mechanical actions and record their resources, and only take control for RP stuff or if the party starts taking it too far. We've done that at every table I've played at, or DM'd, for 5e when an NPC has joined the party.
As it turned out, my Champion (a half orc) recruited an orc who then played along and kept getting XP (the other players did not object). Yeah, he dropped to 0 numerous times, but my half orc kept Healing pots in his back pack and bought some healing kits for our cleric to use. (Healer feat on the cleric). Ended up being my first chance to play a Volo's orc PC. :smallbiggrin: Good fun.

[MaxWilson]

Nice thought. :smallsmile: I may steal that. Also, HP and HD are both kind of meta game elements, as is every dice or die roll.


But like most die rolls, they do represent something real and observable in the game world.

In the game world it's a known fact that a warhorse can't usually run through a Wall of Fire and survive, but a dire wolf usually can.

[EggKookoo]

In the game world it's a known fact that a warhorse can't usually run through a Wall of Fire and survive, but a dire wolf usually can.

As Everyone Knows™, walls of fire are fickle creations that twist and churn in unpredictable ways. The dire wolf is unusually nimble and can often find an opening with only minor singes of fur.

[Ogun]

Healbot?
As a happy "healbot", I actually like the short rest healing mechanism, because my slots can be dedicated to in combat healing.
I find nothing more satisfying than literally save a teammates life, and I can do it with a bonus action.
Now that is a wolverine level of regeneration, and I hand it out like candy.
Sure, my main action might not do much damage, but putting a teammate back in the fight means the I've enabled to the DPR they are producing.
All that and handing out Blessings as well.
The best thing is, these things are reliable.
I may wiff with a cantrip or a weapon but Bless and Healing Word give me 4 more possible chances per round to make a difference in the fight.

Mind you summoning can give minions that multiply your effectiveness in a similar way, but what does that leave for your teammates to do?

[MaxWilson]

As Everyone Knows™, walls of fire are fickle creations that twist and churn in unpredictable ways. The dire wolf is unusually nimble and can often find an opening with only minor singes of fur.

...unless it's already run through a wall of fire once recently.

[EggKookoo]

...unless it's already run through a wall of fire once recently.

But, yeah, ow, those burn spots are still tender...

[Willie the Duck]

I guess, in my mind, a night's sleep can heal small wounds . . . at least enough that they won't break open and become problematic again. But no one ever sat down to eat a mid-day snack, and stood up with all their scratches and bruises healed. Sure you might have some additional inner strength to push on despite the pain, but mostly those cuts and bruises don't heal in 1 hour. Also, I sort of always pictured sleeping as turning off part of your body, so healing can be increased. Sort of like turning off 20%, and reallocating that 20% to healing the body. While awake and doing things, you are still using your consciousness to do things, so no special re-allocation of resources can happen.

Perhaps picture it this way -- you (the PC) really have about twice as many hit points as your HP total indicates, but you can only access about half of them at a time. If a dedicated opponent can take you down to half strength quickly, they can take you down for the count. If not, you can crawl away and tap into that still-existing reserve (which was part of your total vitality the whole time) with a chance to catch your breath and re-center yourself.


It only breaks away w/rt rogues and HP healing. That all-barbarian party is going to have problems dealing with a mob of low-CR monsters like shadows or even hobgoblins, because they have minimal-to-no AoEs, and without a healer in the party they're going to be stymied as soon as someone gets eaten by a Roc or petrified by a Medusa or perma-stunned by an intellect devourer, etc.
I think 5e really missed the mark with respect to Ritual spells. If restoration/raising/uncursing spells and a few others (planar travel, for campaigns that focused on that) were part of the package one could pick up with the Ritual Caster feat, it would have gone a long way towards making the no-class-mandatory setup more rigorous.

[Warder]

But like most die rolls, they do represent something real and observable in the game world.

In the game world it's a known fact that a warhorse can't usually run through a Wall of Fire and survive, but a dire wolf usually can.

Is that really true? Game mechanics and stat blocks certainly come into play when a PC is nearby, but do they govern the world outside of the spotlight? If a Wall of Fire is cast in the woods, does it deal 5d8 fire damage?

I am not being facetious by the way, I think it's an interesting question. Do people play the game as if game mechanics apply on a narrative level as well as in actual gameplay?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Is that really true? Game mechanics and stat blocks certainly come into play when a PC is nearby, but do they govern the world outside of the spotlight? If a Wall of Fire is cast in the woods, does it deal 5d8 fire damage?

I am not being facetious by the way, I think it's an interesting question. Do people play the game as if game mechanics apply on a narrative level as well as in actual gameplay?

Yes, no, and maybe. All at once.

For HP/HD, that's actually a thing in my setting--there are people who have quantified how much energy you can extract from a given soul (because blood sacrifice for power is a thing). Of course their notions are fuzzy and somewhat wrong, but...

For damage, not really. There are too many imponderable imponderables confusing things.

For levels--one faction has determined a way of detecting soul potential (roughly, but not exactly, HD). So they can tell you're a "B-class" adventurer. But that would be true even for NPCs who don't have levels, because levels (per se), don't exist. They're merely a discretization of something that does exist, soul potential.

Etc.

[MaxWilson]

Is that really true? Game mechanics and stat blocks certainly come into play when a PC is nearby, but do they govern the world outside of the spotlight? If a Wall of Fire is cast in the woods, does it deal 5d8 fire damage?

I am not being facetious by the way, I think it's an interesting question. Do people play the game as if game mechanics apply on a narrative level as well as in actual gameplay?

Yes, people do play the game that way. (Not necessarily all people.)

[EggKookoo]

If a Wall of Fire is cast in the woods, does it deal 5d8 fire damage?

Not in my games. It does [narrative] damage, basically.

Hit points don't exist in the fiction. Something does that we imperfectly model with HP at the table level.

Like, let's say in the fiction, the characters have fruit. Fruit that has different flavors, textures, levels of ripeness, availability in certain regions. Some people are allergic to certain fruit. Fruit is healthy, but some people need those health benefits more than others due to basic biology. So on and so forth.

At the table, we players just use FP.

[RSP]

Here’s an issue with “plot armor” or “hero points”: why would anyone ever waste a spell slot curing someone’s wounds, if there are no wounds? The in-game idea of “they’re down HPs” isn’t a thing that’s represented in “worn away plot armor” so would anyone bandage them with a use of a Healers Kit, or cast Cure Wounds on them, take a potion of healing, etc. So you’re basically just meta gaming HPs for the sake of not wanting to have people take damage.

[Willie the Duck]

Here’s an issue with “plot armor” or “hero points”: why would anyone ever waste a spell slot curing someone’s wounds, if there are no wounds? The in-game idea of “they’re down HPs” isn’t a thing that’s represented in “worn away plot armor” so would anyone bandage them with a use of a Healers Kit, or cast Cure Wounds on them, take a potion of healing, etc. So you’re basically just meta gaming HPs for the sake of not wanting to have people take damage.

Because in that context the cures are also plot armor (er, plot armor patching kit?). Hit Points, Temporary Hit Points, and Armor Class are all ways of indicating 'this guy can endure more combat before dropping' so the narrative distinction between Cure Wounds, Aid, and Shield of Faith are going to overlap greatly. Look, it's squishy all the way down and people that get bent out of shape over metagaming just aren't going to be happy. Hit points* are a gamist conceit that exist because they make game-mechanics relatively easy, that's it.
*D&D style hit points. Plenty of other games have purer examples that work fine as meat points or not, but one thing D&D never is is purely anything. It's the mongreliest mongrel of them all.

[quinron]

Here’s an issue with “plot armor” or “hero points”: why would anyone ever waste a spell slot curing someone’s wounds, if there are no wounds? The in-game idea of “they’re down HPs” isn’t a thing that’s represented in “worn away plot armor” so would anyone bandage them with a use of a Healers Kit, or cast Cure Wounds on them, take a potion of healing, etc. So you’re basically just meta gaming HPs for the sake of not wanting to have people take damage.

You can always just decide, as others have here, that damage above a certain point is minor injuries like scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Magically healing scrapes and cuts to avoid infection or using bandages to bind sprains and swelling make perfect sense in that case.

If yoy decide that hit points reflect stamina as well as injury, then a healer's kit can include stimulants and relaxants to help you keep going or convalesce more quickly, and healing magic can work a la The Wheel of Time, where lesser magic doesn't actually heal you but lets you ignore your fatigue to a certain point.

[RSP]

Because in that context the cures are also plot armor (er, plot armor patching kit?). Hit Points, Temporary Hit Points, and Armor Class are all ways of indicating 'this guy can endure more combat before dropping' so the narrative distinction between Cure Wounds, Aid, and Shield of Faith are going to overlap greatly. Look, it's squishy all the way down and people that get bent out of shape over metagaming just aren't going to be happy. Hit points* are a gamist conceit that exist because they make game-mechanics relatively easy, that's it.
*D&D style hit points. Plenty of other games have purer examples that work fine as meat points or not, but one thing D&D never is is purely anything. It's the mongreliest mongrel of them all.

At some point, though, you are healing bodily damage, assuming it’s not just “your plot armor failed” when you drop to 0 HPs. So those healing affects can repair body damage and, again, brings us back to why waste the magic that can get someone from “almost dead” to “healed (minus plot armor)”, on “this person who isn’t injured”?

Further, you’re now taking AC, curative magic, any spell that’s buffing HP or AC or giving tHPs and changing how those work, just to try and make resting reflect how we rest.

Again, I find it easier just to accept that healing in the game world is different than it is for us. That way AC, spells and curative effects all make in-game sense as well.

Obviously, you and others feel different (and I’m not arguing against that), but I’ve yet to hear an argument for plot armor that makes sense with healing effects (particularly magic ones).


You can always just decide, as others have here, that damage above a certain point is minor injuries like scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Magically healing scrapes and cuts to avoid infection or using bandages to bind sprains and swelling make perfect sense in that case.

If yoy decide that hit points reflect stamina as well as injury, then a healer's kit can include stimulants and relaxants to help you keep going or convalesce more quickly, and healing magic can work a la The Wheel of Time, where lesser magic doesn't actually heal you but lets you ignore your fatigue to a certain point.

As I’ve stated, I’m fine with HPs=bodily damage. It’s having them equal both bodily damage and plot armor that runs into issues. At some point you are healing bodily damage (assuming that at some point in the campaign a PC drops to 0 HPs). So why then waste the magic that can repair that sword to the gut wound, on someone who has no injuries?

[neonchameleon]

Agreed on the skills, though I'm not sure I agree on the rest. Classes are structured much more like 3.5 and... I'm fairly sure, but not 100% since I stopped keeping up with 4e after a point (I started with it but switched over to 3.5 which I found more enjoyable), that most if not all of 4e classes were present in 3.5 too.
Unsure of the monsters- I know there are 3.5 monsters in 5e that aren't in 4e, monsters in 4e that are in 3.5 but not in 5e but I don't know of monsters that are in 4e, in 5e but not in 3.5.
Or of monsters that are in 4e but not in 3.5, likely just ignorance on my part.

Strongly disagreed on the spells thing- Concentrating on a spell works pretty much exactly like in 3.5. The only difference I can recall is that Concentration spells stopped you from casting any other spell which was dropped in 5e.
Note: I'm talking about spells that had Concentration as a duration.

Classes have a 3.5 gloss, but a huge change 4e made that 5e continued with was the subclasses that mostly start at first level (one weirdness of 4e being that 4e first level is roughly equivalent to third in any other edition). If you were to translate the 3.X rogue to 5e you wouldn't have either the subclass or cunning action - although the sneak attack progression is the way it was in 3.X. Meanwhile cunning action is a pretty good distillation of a lot of 4e powers. The barbarian's another good case; the 3.5 barbarian would in 5e be a subclass of fighter. It was 4e that focused on it enough to turn it into a worthwhile class by working out that rages could be other things than just hitty; the Totem Warrior is pure 4e fluff and the storm herald is even more 4e. Even where pre-4e had subclasses the 5e approach is a lot more 4e; whereas 3.X and earlier specialist wizards got more spells in their school as their main benefit the 4e specialists were better at casting spells in their school and produced additional effects off the same spell. Far more interesting. The only parts of classes that I see as definitively 3.X and not either using things either present in 2e or added in 4e are sorcerer metamagic (the 5e sorcerer fluff being almost pure 4e despite it being entirely new as a class in 3.0) and the rogue's sneak attack.

I was however wrong about something. Concentration to not lose a spell and to maintain a spell was added in 3.0 as a mechanic (or technically in Player's Option: Spells and Magic which is why I remember it as a 2e thing) although the sustain not taking your entire action but still limiting you to normally one at a time was a 4e thing.

The point about the monsters is that AD&D monsters were pretty simplistic other than spells. 3.0 and 3.5 ones had things like feats and spell like abilities that you often needed to look up. 4e monsters have e.g. unique abilities by type - and 5e by giving orcs things like aggressive, goblins things like nimble escape, and monsters like the succubus custom-written powers like charm and draining kiss rather than a collection of six spell-like abilities is following mostly in 4e's footsteps with a little AD&D thrown in for how to handle monsters.

Essentially I see lots of 2e in 5e and lots of 4e (including the engine) - but very little that was unique to or even introduced in 3.0 or 3.5

[Zalabim]

My gamist explanation of hit points is a pool of points that you spend when you would be hit to say, "But not really." The deadlier the thing that hit, the more it costs to negate it.


So, maybe you're asking as a game designer?

From a design perspective, healing during a short rest is something inherited from D&D 4th edition, apparently with the intention of making party composition more flexible, so that PCs don't necessarily need to have a healer in the party. It allows an Adventurer's League table of four random strangers to meet up and play through a 5E adventure together even if they all turn out to be playing Champion Fighters.

Well, sort of. If they're all playing Champions, they've got no AoE in the party, so a large group of low-CR monsters (a dozen Shadows at level 5) will have a good chance of TPKing the party through sheer numbers. But the intent was clearly about "you don't need a healer in the party," not "you don't need artillery in the party."

Anyway, if you don't care about ensuring that ad hoc parties won't suffer for lacking a bard/cleric/druid/paladin/ranger/artillerist or other healer, you can afford to ditch that design goal and therefore to ditch short rest healing.
It also impacts how much someone playing a healer has to devote resources to healing instead of other activities.

... and yet, 1-4 hours later, you are back in the same state as before you took that "fatal blow." Or even a few seconds later, if somebody has the Healer feat or healing spells.

The view that the last HP is the only serious wound isn't consistent with the observed facts. Rather, it looks very much as if all wounds are equally disemboweling/stabby/etc., but you can tolerate only so many of them before collapsing.
A hit that does not knock you to zero HP does not kill you. A hit that does knock you to zero HP, assuming you're a hero, can kill you and does knock you down. If you aren't a hero that just kills you right out. Even for heroes, a hit while you're already down at zero HP almost always kills. I don't see a reason to describe a hit that might kill in the same way as a hit that definitely won't kill.

[Hytheter]

Because in that context the cures are also plot armor (er, plot armor patching kit?)]

I would be willing to bet that no one has ever said in character "Don't worry, ally! I will restore your plot armour with my plot armour restoring magic!"

[diplomancer]

I would be willing to bet that no one has ever said in character "Don't worry, ally! I will restore your plot armour with my plot armour restoring magic!"

How about:
- "you know, that fight really took the steam off me, I'm done for today"
-"may the powers of Bahamut inspire you to fight evil again".

In the game, a player may prefer to declare "I'm low on hit points" but there's no reason to assume that this is what the character has said; still, it's quite possible to imagine that the character said something that conveyed the game information "low on hit points"

So that's the answer to "why heal if there are no visible wounds": people can talk to each other and tell how they are feeling. That's even where medicine usually starts in real life; a person coming to the healer and describing symptoms.

[RSP]

How about:
- "you know, that fight really took the steam off me, I'm done for today"
-"may the powers of Bahamut inspire you to fight evil again".

In the game, a player may prefer to declare "I'm low on hit points" but there's no reason to assume that this is what the character has said; still, it's quite possible to imagine that the character said something that conveyed the game information "low on hit points"

So that's the answer to "why heal if there are no visible wounds": people can talk to each other and tell how they are feeling. That's even where medicine usually starts in real life; a person coming to the healer and describing symptoms.

No, it’s not. You’re not curing anything. Does the “Power of Bahamut” convince them to continue fighting evil rather than cure them? Would a Rogue with Expertise in Persuasion not be a better in-game way to convince someone to continue on who isn’t hurt?

There’s still nothing to heal.

[diplomancer]

No, it’s not. You’re not curing anything. Does the “Power of Bahamut” convince them to continue fighting evil rather than cure them? Would a Rogue with Expertise in Persuasion not be a better in-game way to convince someone to continue on who isn’t hurt?

There’s still nothing to heal.

"You're not curing anything". Are you sure? ;)

This goes back to the skill system, and even tothe martial/caster divide. Could a DM allow a very high Persuasion DC to restore hit points? I'd say yes, and if the skill system was further developed it might include it explicitly. But some might say instead that, while Persuasion cannot bring a fighting spirit back (though there's a feat for that; Inspiring Leader is, literally, this), the power of Bahamut can. Whether you describe it as curing wounds or restoring morale it's irrelevant to the game effect, I.e, restoring hit points.

[RSP]

"You're not curing anything". Are you sure? ;)

This goes back to the skill system, and even tothe martial/caster divide. Could a DM allow a very high Persuasion DC to restore hit points? I'd say yes, and if the skill system was further developed it might include it explicitly. But some might say instead that, while Persuasion cannot bring a fighting spirit back (though there's a feat for that; Inspiring Leader is, literally, this), the power of Bahamut can. Whether you describe it as curing wounds or restoring morale it's irrelevant to the game effect, I.e, restoring hit points.

It’s not irrelevant if it changes how the in-game world works, at least in my opinion. Does the Rogue need an Action to talk to the Fighter and give him the HP? A BA as part of Cunning Action? Do they get it for free as obviously talking during ones turn doesn’t usually require any Action?

You’ve essentially turned the Level 1 Rogue ability into its mechanical effect plus the Healer Feat and/or Inspiring Leader. Making Persuasion now a must (not to mention other Feats like Skill Expert now equaling 3 Feats) if given that choice.

You’ve also now homebrewed Persuasion to be a healing effect, to try and justify why healing in the game world needs to work the same as our world (which is a weird concept as it still doesn’t because magic).

And you still haven’t gotten past the fact that a “body damaging blow” that brings a PC to 0, is still healed in an hour (SR) or 8 (LR).

Again, if it works for your table, cool. But that’s a huge change in my book, and I’ve always just found it easier to accept that the people in this in-game world just heal really fast.

[Unoriginal]

Again, if it works for your table, cool. But that’s a huge change in my book, and I’ve always just found it easier to accept that the people in this in-game world just heal really fast.

How do you rule things like Inspiring Leader, where a pep talk literally makes the PCs harder to kill?

[noob]

How do you rule things like Inspiring Leader, where a pep talk literally makes the PCs harder to kill?

It actually works in real life.
Motivated to live people die less than people losing the will to struggle for life.
It does not heals anything on its own(just like temporary hit points)

[RSP]

How do you rule things like Inspiring Leader, where a pep talk literally makes the PCs harder to kill?


It actually works in real life.
Motivated to live people die less than people losing the will to struggle for life.
It does not heals anything on its own(just like temporary hit points)

Noob answered this in a manner I agree with. tHPs aren’t HPs and, therefore, are different. You can’t up someone from 0 HPs with IL, because that’s not what a rousing speech can do to someone who’s critically injured.

[DwarfFighter]

Should there be an opposite to temporary hit points, i.e. temporary damage, that represents demotivation and loss of spirit?

Say, a separate pool of negative hit points that won't kill the character, but will need to be countered with healing before actual hit points are restored?

-DF

[RSP]

Should there be an opposite to temporary hit points, i.e. temporary damage, that represents demotivation and loss of spirit?

Say, a separate pool of negative hit points that won't kill the character, but will need to be countered with healing before actual hit points are restored?

-DF

I think that needlessly complicates the system.

I wish tHPs worked like Arcane Ward, in that the game recognized they weren’t damaging to the character when they’re lost, but, alas, they decided not to go that route. It would be the easier fix though, in my opinion, rather than creating “temp damage”.

[Unoriginal]

Noob answered this in a manner I agree with. tHPs aren’t HPs and, therefore, are different. You can’t up someone from 0 HPs with IL, because that’s not what a rousing speech can do to someone who’s critically injured.

But you can survive being shoved off a cliff thanks to a rousing speech. Or being shoved into lava.

[Theodoxus]

After my first read of 5E and the rest mechanics, I came to the conclusion that the world was simply infused with healing magic. It takes about 8 hours for it to fully saturate a resting body, but with a bit of gumption and "burning" of personal resources (HD), it can be consolidated during a short rest. That solves the meat vs luck points that HP represents.

[RSP]

But you can survive being shoved off a cliff thanks to a rousing speech. Or being shoved into lava.


IMO both HPs and THPs are abstractions, and trying to give them a concrete explanation is kinda missing the point.

To me, tHPs are the exceptions that creates the problem. As you point out: tHPs can absorb falling damage. How does that factor in with “plot armor”? Are you not damaged by a fall in the plot armor world?

The bigger ones are rider effects: how do you get poisoned by an injection poison on a sword that doesn’t hit you?

Seeing tHPs as different from HPs can help this, if you remember and/or care to, separate the two.

But I’d much rather have to deal with very limited instances of when this matters with tHPs, rather than in every instance with “plot armor.”

Again, YMMV, and if it works for you, great. I just see plot armor as very jarring to the in-game world.

[Xihirli]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating. Doesn't that steal the thunder from magical items that deal with healing and regenerating? If all I need to do is rest for 1 hour to heal up to full, or close, why bother with using resources on healing at all?

During a short rest, people bandage up their wounds, take arrows out of their bodies, and eat some lunch. Just because there's no magical healing doesn't mean there's no healing.

[Xihirli]

To me, tHPs are the exceptions that creates the problem. As you point out: tHPs can absorb falling damage. How does that factor in with “plot armor”? Are you not damaged by a fall in the plot armor world?


That is one of the most famous and most common forms of plot armor, yes.


http://gospelaccordingtosuperheroes.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/8/4/128476745/screen-shot-2019-10-25-at-9-41-08-pm_orig.png
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/bakerstreet/images/e/ee/Fina-01.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130129062740
https://64.media.tumblr.com/934ad313eb0eadfcdd21a21626267cae/tumblr_oxypklmhua1w4t7wqo1_1280.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZE8HuCVAamg/hqdefault.jpg
And who could forget the patented "punch the ground to negate falling damage" https://i.pinimg.com/originals/51/fe/af/51feaf7403478024815a026bed3a492c.jpg

[Theodoxus]

Should there be an opposite to temporary hit points, i.e. temporary damage, that represents demotivation and loss of spirit?

Say, a separate pool of negative hit points that won't kill the character, but will need to be countered with healing before actual hit points are restored?

-DF

Other editions had "subdual damage", so yeah. 5E over simplified it with their "final blow from a melee weapon can knock out but not kill" rule. Sleep is the only spell I recall off the top of my head that does the same thing.


I wish tHPs worked like Arcane Ward, in that the game recognized they weren’t damaging to the character when they’re lost, but, alas, they decided not to go that route. It would be the easier fix though, in my opinion, rather than creating “temp damage”.

Speaking of needlessly complicating a mechanic... I've always seen THP as ablative plot armor far more than standard HP. A layer of "fake" protection on top of the real that gets blown through first... Why would a rousing speech allow someone to survive a fall down a cliff they might not otherwise? Maybe it gave them the inspiration to fall like a cat instead of a lump of flesh and they get by with just a shattered femur that the magic rejuvenating air of Faerun heals up in 8 hours...

Not to say I don't like the idea of THP working like Arcane Ward... but then if an abjurer gets THP, are they somehow sitting on top of the ward like a weird meaty coating of lipids floating 3" from the wizard's face? (Depending on source (say Twilight Cleric vs False Life), I'd rather the THP get hit before my arcane ward!)

[RSP]

Not to say I don't like the idea of THP working like Arcane Ward... but then if an abjurer gets THP, are they somehow sitting on top of the ward like a weird meaty coating of lipids floating 3" from the wizard's face? (Depending on source (say Twilight Cleric vs False Life), I'd rather the THP get hit before my arcane ward!)

tHPs are already in a weird space. IL is a different “how do these work?” then AoA. In each case, they kind of need to be dealt with differently.

The wraith issue is another tHP problem: you take double damage from “life draining” affects if you have tHP. That is, RAW, you take the, let’s say, 5 damage to your tHP, then take 5 more to your normal HPs as your max lowers by 5.

Again, if I’m the DM, I’m dealing with those issues on a case by case basis. I’m the case of the Wraith, I’m just not having it damage the tHPs if the life drain occurs.

[KorvinStarmast]

So that's the answer to "why heal if there are no visible wounds": So is "internal wounds" and "Shock" and "knocked the wind out of me" - not visible wounds, per se, but things that require recovery from.

After my first read of 5E and the rest mechanics, I came to the conclusion that the world was simply infused with healing magic. It takes about 8 hours for it to fully saturate a resting body, but with a bit of gumption and "burning" of personal resources (HD), it can be consolidated during a short rest. That solves the meat vs luck points that HP represents. *There's magic in the air* (Isn't that a song, somewhere?)

But why not? It is a magical world. I can cast a fire bolt every six seconds which will set something on fire. I can cast a cantrip every six seconds that makes food tasted better (Prestidigitation) or light a candle. I can make a noise 30 feet from me or an image (Minor Illusion). And so on.

Embrace the magical nature of the whole stinking world: yeah, why not? + many :smallsmile:

[sandmote]

No, it’s not. You’re not curing anything. Does the “Power of Bahamut” convince them to continue fighting evil rather than cure them? Would a Rogue with Expertise in Persuasion not be a better in-game way to convince someone to continue on who isn’t hurt?

There’s still nothing to heal. I'm pretty sure the "power of Bahamut" in this case was an abstraction of casting Cure Wounds.

The issue though is that living creatures have a lot of space between having a "peak performance" and "I have a grievous bodily wound." If that Cure Wounds spell doesn't find a gash to heal up, it just goes for smaller stuff. Swelling goes down, exhaustion (not the mechanic) and cramps go away, shock and panic subside, and so on. And now this stuff is going to have to come back before the Paladin is worn down enough to risk grievous injury.


Just because there's no magical healing doesn't mean there's no healing. I honestly think the reverse is the problem people are having, where they're assuming that if there's no blood there's no injury and if there's no injury there's nothing to heal.

[RSP]

I'm pretty sure the "power of Bahamut" in this case was an abstraction of casting Cure Wounds.

The issue though is that living creatures have a lot of space between having a "peak performance" and "I have a grievous bodily wound." If that Cure Wounds spell doesn't find a gash to heal up, it just goes for smaller stuff. Swelling goes down, exhaustion (not the mechanic) and cramps go away, shock and panic subside, and so on. And now this stuff is going to have to come back before the Paladin is worn down enough to risk grievous injury.

And so, again, why, in-game, would a Cleric cast Cure Wounds on someone not wounded? Because the next battle might risk “grievous injury”? Don’t all battles risk that from the character’s perspective?

“Hey, can you cure me now, because in the future I might get hurt,” doesn’t really make much sense.

[Veldrenor]

And so, again, why, in-game, would a Cleric cast Cure Wounds on someone not wounded? Because the next battle might risk “grievous injury”? Don’t all battles risk that from the character’s perspective?

“Hey, can you cure me now, because in the future I might get hurt,” doesn’t really make much sense.

If HP aren't purely meat then Cure Wounds doesn't just fix wounds - it alleviates fatigue and restores morale. Those are important because people are worse at fighting when they're tired and disheartened than when they're rested and hopeful. Sure, you could save the Cure Wounds and let your buddy fight tired until they actually get hurt. Or you could use it now to cure their fatigue and mend their spirits so that they don't get hurt in the first place.

[Tanarii]

How often does a cleric cast Cure Wounds when an ally is above 50% health anyway?

[Kane0]

My HP is
10% luck
20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5% fate
50% meat

Which can lead to situations where you take a few dozen or hundred HP worth of meat damage, but D&D is pretty pulpy to me and people taking a hefty beating is part of the appeal.

[Dork_Forge]

My HP is
10% luck
20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5% fate
50% meat

Which can lead to situations where you take a few dozen or hundred HP worth of meat damage, but D&D is pretty pulpy to me and people taking a hefty beating is part of the appeal.

I think meat damage can include things like a dead arm or bit of soreness etc. too, which helps

[sandmote]

And so, again, why, in-game, would a Cleric cast Cure Wounds on someone not wounded? Because the next battle might risk “grievous injury”? Don’t all battles risk that from the character’s perspective? And so, again, you appear to be taking an definition of "not wounded," that doesn't appear to factually describe any living creature I'm aware of. The paladin I described is wounded. He's worn out, injured, bruised, damaged, harmed, impaired, hurt, marred, and whatever other synonym you want.

Again:


Swelling goes down, exhaustion (not the mechanic) and cramps go away, shock and panic subside, and so on. And now this stuff is going to have to come back before the Paladin is worn down
Just because these aren't "a six inch gash on his left shoulder," doesn't mean they aren't wounds/injuries/bruises/harm/impairment/painful/whatever other synonym you want. They're still going to have to be dealt with before the character is back up to full fighting strength.

“Hey, can you cure me now, because in the future I might get hurt,” doesn’t really make much sense. Its more "Hey, I'm hurt, can you cure me now while we aren't in the middle of another fight we're trying to survive." Cause even magical healing takes an action, and during combat an action is a big thing to give up. Especially on healing you could have done earlier.

This is also why Clerics are loath to spend their spell slots on Cure Wounds if they think the party can get a short rest in; hit dice are harder to spend mid-combat than spell slots are. So if there's an emergency you didn't expect, better to have the spell slots than the hit dice.

[braveheart]

HP is abstract, and taking damage is a combination of minor cuts, fatigue, and bruises until someone slips up enough to recieve a fatal blow. When my players take a hit, it usually is impacting their armor enough to cause bruising, or just barely piercing it. Other damage types similarly do superficial damage. An hour break is enough to stretch out and ease the pain from minor hits and fatigue, giving them more room to keep going before a fatal mistake.

Tldr hits are superficial and tiring, a short rest helps you recover from that well enough.

[Hytheter]

My HP is
10% luck
20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5% fate
50% meat

100% reason to remember, uh, it's neat?

[Theodoxus]

If you take the premise that meat damage doesn't happen until you're bloodied - as exemplified with the Life Cleric's CD which can't heal above the 50% mark. You could either alter healing spells to only heal meat - thus only when under and only up to half HP. Which would be pretty nifty. And then either create new spells to restore fighting spirit (grit?) (probably larger dice...) that doesn't do any healing if you're below half (which is kinda meh all told... maybe it only provides THP if you're below half - I don't really think there's any desire to create a third type of HP just to deal with the meat/grit divide).

Healer's Kits might have an assortment of both bandages for meat trauma and smelling salts or dragon vapors or a gnomish device that plays soothing ocean sounds... I don't know - for restoring grit.

I mean, how much resolution does an abstract concept like HP actually need?

[Kane0]

100% reason to remember, uh, it's neat?

100% reason to remember to eat*, but I can see you're a man/lady of taste and class.

*on account of exhaustion halving your HP

[MaxWilson]

How often does a cleric cast Cure Wounds when an ally is above 50% health anyway?

IME with savvy players, 80%+ of all healing is done above that mark, with the intention of bringing PCs back up to full health.

Maybe it's because I track damage into the negative HP territory instead of capping damage at zero HP. Maybe it would happen anyway without that just because I run deadly combats.

[RSP]

If HP aren't purely meat then Cure Wounds doesn't just fix wounds - it alleviates fatigue and restores morale. Those are important because people are worse at fighting when they're tired and disheartened than when they're rested and hopeful. Sure, you could save the Cure Wounds and let your buddy fight tired until they actually get hurt. Or you could use it now to cure their fatigue and mend their spirits so that they don't get hurt in the first place.

Cure Wounds doesn’t fix Exhaustion. And “fatigue” is not a thing in 5e in terms of game effects. So you’d need to add in a new game mechanic, Fatigue, to show a worsening of combat prowess throughout the day. Or dont, but then the character doesn’t have “fatigue”.

And if they’re “disheartened”, again, wouldn’t a pep talk from a Rogue with Expertise in Persuasion be an effective way to counter that? Would that then not be a way to “heal” and regain HPs?

Pre-casting Cure Wounds before someone is injured just doesn’t make sense.


And so, again, you appear to be taking an definition of "not wounded," that doesn't appear to factually describe any living creature I'm aware of. The paladin I described is wounded. He's worn out, injured, bruised, damaged, harmed, impaired, hurt, marred, and whatever other synonym you want.

Again:


Just because these aren't "a six inch gash on his left shoulder," doesn't mean they aren't wounds/injuries/bruises/harm/impairment/painful/whatever other synonym you want.

“Not wounded” means just that: without wounds. I’m not sure why you think every creature living is in a stare of being wounded, but I’d disagree with you on that, for certain.

So in your example, did the PC suffer injuries from the fight? Taking a sword to an armored portion of their chest might not leave a cut, but a bruise. That’s still taking bodily, or “meat”, damage, from an attack. But you seem to think injured and worn out mean the same thing, but they don’t.

“Worn out” is not wounded. Nor can it be mechanically defined (outside of Exhaustion) in game terms without adding in a new mechanic. Being “worn out” or “tired” has a negative impact on performance, if that’s what you’re trying to incorporate, which the game doesn’t model: you could go though 10 combats, doing the exact same actions at full HPs or at 1 HP. Without creating a new “tired” mechanic, there isn’t a way to reflect “worn out”.

“That last attack missed me, but made me really tired,” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (leaving combat as a whole could be draining as adrenaline dumps out of the body, but that’s true whether or not you lost any HPs, and again, the game doesn’t reflect this).

There’s a difference between “I’m injured” and “my plot armor is low”. If you’re arguing for casting Cure Wounds on the former, then I’d agree with you. It’s the latter that doesn’t make sense.

[Kane0]

“Worn out” is not wounded. Nor can it be mechanically defined (outside of Exhaustion) in game terms without adding in a new mechanic. Without creating a new “tired” mechanic, there isn’t a way to reflect “worn out”.
Best I can come up with is spent hit dice, except for the aforementioned exhaustion. It doesnt impact how you perform but it does impact how you recover and some of your decisionmaking.

[Valmark]

My HP is
10% luck
20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5% fate
50% meat

Which can lead to situations where you take a few dozen or hundred HP worth of meat damage, but D&D is pretty pulpy to me and people taking a hefty beating is part of the appeal.


100% reason to remember, uh, it's neat?


100% reason to remember to eat*, but I can see you're a man/lady of taste and class.

*on account of exhaustion halving your HP

How I wish we could put likes to posts.

[Tanarii]

Maybe it's because I track damage into the negative HP territory instead of capping damage at zero HP. Maybe it would happen anyway without that just because I run deadly combats.
It surprises me that they have more than one extremely dangerous combat without a Short Rest in between. And survive at all. That seems like a recipe for everyone having healing and spell slots and blowing most on healing. Or spending all their gold on potions of healing.

My first instinct was it was the negative hit points thing. But even 5e Deadly combats "expect" a SR in between them. If they're not getting that between 4xDeadly (or whatever your standard is) I don't see how they're staying alive.

[sandmote]

@Rsp29a I'm starting to feel like there's a scientist standing behind you having you perform a Turing test, which you appear to be passing with flying colors.

However, there are three different states (plus having THP and/or a reduction to max hit points, but I'm trying to keep it simple). You seem to have some problem with people giving them names, so I'm just going to call them states and assign each a number.

State 1: At max hit points.
State 2: What you accept counts as "injured," or "wounded."
State 3: Between states 1 and 2, where you are already defined as "missing hit points," but aren't bleeding/with a gash/with a bruise/whatever else you'll accept as "injured" or "wounded."

Note the boundary between State 2 and State 3 is a bit unclear: I'm laying them out in response to how you're discussing the subject. I consider a creature in State 3 "injured" and "wounded" where you clearly don't. I often see "bloodied" as a common marker to say a creature is in State 2 rather than State 3, if that helps.


Cure Wounds doesn’t fix Exhaustion. And “fatigue” is not a thing in 5e in terms of game effects. So you’d need to add in a new game mechanic, Fatigue, to show a worsening of combat prowess throughout the day. Or dont, but then the character doesn’t have “fatigue”. "Fatigue" is a qualitative term for a Character in State 3. Because they still have missing hit points due to physical changes, even as you insist they're "without wounds."


And if they’re “disheartened”, again, wouldn’t a pep talk from a Rogue with Expertise in Persuasion be an effective way to counter that? Would that then not be a way to “heal” and regain HPs? Possibly, sure. The main reason this is relegated to THP, is that it doesn't affect a person who can't hear you, and would wreck the game balance.


Pre-casting Cure Wounds before someone is injured just doesn’t make sense. No one is suggesting that Cure Wounds be Pre-cast on someone in State 1. They're suggesting that Cure wounds still has a physical effect on someone in State 3.


“Not wounded” means just that: without wounds. Does pointing this out change anything? Now I'm just arguing that the physical changes from being "worn out" preclude being "without wounds."


I’m not sure why you think every creature living is in a stare of being wounded, but I’d disagree with you on that, for certain. I think every living creature has a State between State 1 (or "peak performance," if that helps) and State 2 (ie. what you'll agree is "injured" or "wounded"). This is why I referenced the Turing test above: I have no idea how the existence of State 3 is confusing to a living create. If you're well rested, you're more able to fight than if you've gotten several uppercuts, even if none of them are causing you to bleed or whatever qualifies as State 2.


So in your example, did the PC suffer injuries from the fight? Taking a sword to an armored portion of their chest might not leave a cut, but a bruise. That’s still taking bodily, or “meat”, damage, from an attack. But you seem to think injured and worn out mean the same thing, but they don’t. In d&d, they both mean you've lost hit points. Particular given that IRL, "worn out" includes a bunch of physicals differences compared to someone "not worn out."


“Worn out” is not wounded. Nor can it be mechanically defined (outside of Exhaustion) in game terms without adding in a new mechanic. Being “worn out” or “tired” has a negative impact on performance, if that’s what you’re trying to incorporate, which the game doesn’t model: you could go though 10 combats, doing the exact same actions at full HPs or at 1 HP. Without creating a new “tired” mechanic, there isn’t a way to reflect “worn out”. Again, it is already mechanically defined as "below max hit points." Because, again, there are physical changes in someone "worn out." Yes, I'm aware it isn't a perfect reflection of the subject. But it isn't mean to be be.


There’s a difference between “I’m injured” and “my plot armor is low”. If you’re arguing for casting Cure Wounds on the former, then I’d agree with you. It’s the latter that doesn’t make sense. I feel like "a magic spell that keeps you alive longer," is a bad example of something that can't mend plot armor. But maybe you mean the PCs wouldn't know to use "a magic spell that keeps you alive longer," if all they've lost is plot armor. In which case... why not? Why wouldn't losing plot armor put you discernably into State 3? I regularly see plot armor keeping a person from being winded after an action sequence, so if someone is winded, they're clearly low on plot armor.

[Veldrenor]

Cure Wounds doesn’t fix Exhaustion.


Because the Exhaustion mechanic is an abstraction of a different set of real-life requirements. Exhaustion isn't just "oh I'm tired," it's "I haven't eaten or slept in the past 24 hours, and it's freezing/burning here." In real life if you're fatigued you can relax or meditate or pound a cup of coffee or find a task to focus on and cease to be fatigued, but that doesn't work forever - eventually you have to sleep. In the "HP is more than meat" paradigm Cure Wounds is caffeine, not sleep.

Now sure, the exhaustion mechanic can be just "I'm tired" if we're talking about a forced march but hey, that's the sort of weirdness you get when you try to roll multiple disparate elements into a single mechanic. In reality, going without sleep =/= going without food =/= going without water =/= walking for more than 8 hours during the 16 hours that you're awake. They all have different effects on the body and should be tracked differently if D&D were a simulation rather than a game.

Thinking about it further, the exhaustion mechanic supports the "HP is more than meat" paradigm because at 4 levels of exhaustion your HP max gets cut in half. Getting tired costs you half of your HP. Those 4 levels could be 4 days without sleep, or 7+con mod days without food, or really unlucky rolls on a 12-hour march. In the "HP is only meat" paradigm, a 12-hour march causes half your body mass to melt away.


And “fatigue” is not a thing in 5e in terms of game effects. So you’d need to add in a new game mechanic, Fatigue, to show a worsening of combat prowess throughout the day. Or dont, but then the character doesn’t have “fatigue”.


In the "HP isn't just meat" paradigm "fatigue" is a thing in 5e in terms of game effects. It's part of your HP. It already shows a worsening of your combat prowess throughout the day in your decreasing ability to take damage. If you have 50HP at the start of the day, you can take a 10 damage attack and keep on fighting. It would take a 50+ damage attack to drop you because you're at your peak for the day. But at the end of the day when several fights have worn you down to 9HP, that 10 damage attack is going to drop you. You don't have the energy to avoid it like you did at the start of the day.



And if they’re “disheartened”, again, wouldn’t a pep talk from a Rogue with Expertise in Persuasion be an effective way to counter that? Would that then not be a way to “heal” and regain HPs?


In the "HP isn't just meat" paradigm that already happens in 5e - it's called a short rest. You're not sitting around in sullen silence for an hour. You're resting to get your breath back, you're bandaging up any wounds you might have actually sustained, you're eating to get your blood sugar back up, and you're talking with your fellow adventurers to restore morale. The benefit of a healing spell like Cure Wounds is that it can provide some degree of that benefit in just 6 seconds.

The reason the rogue can't do that with a skill check at-will is because resource-less healing would disrupt the balance of the game. At the end of the day D&D is a game, it's not a completely accurate combat simulation. It has to abstract a lot of stuff in order to keep a single fight with goblins from being a multi-session slog.

[RSP]

[B]@
…I think every living creature has a State between State 1 (or "peak performance," if that helps) and State 2 (ie. what you'll agree is "injured" or "wounded"). This is why I referenced the Turing test above: I have no idea how the existence of State 3 is confusing to a living create. If you're well rested, you're more able to fight than if you've gotten several uppercuts, even if none of them are causing you to bleed or whatever qualifies as State 2…

5e doesn’t degrade ability with hit points though. There is no mechanic to represent this, so you either need to add one, or accept that PCs are just as effective at 100% HPs, or 1% HPs. In this sense, there is no state that represents real world fatigue or being worn out.

Also, if you think taking “several uppercuts” means you’re uninjured, then we do not agree on what “uninjured” means.



I regularly see plot armor keeping a person from being winded after an action sequence, so if someone is winded, they're clearly low on plot armor.

Again, “winded” isn’t a mechanical state. Nor does what you’re describing relate to any real-world state. If I’m winded in real life, resting for a minute fixes this. An hour (SR) isn’t needed to recover from being winded; nor do I require anything involving healing magic (obviously), or medical attention.

So you’ve gone ahead and created a new state of being, “winded”, for 5e to depict “low on plot armor”, which already is not an in-game thing.

Again, if creating these new states of being works for you in order to explain to players “the attack hits, so you see the sword come close to you, but just barely missed you, doing 10 HPs of damage, but you’re not damaged (but still take the 10 HPs away), you’re winded from the miss”, great.

I just find it better to consider hits as the characters got hit and took some amount of bodily damage in proportion to the HP loss compared to their total HPs. And that the world the characters live in just has the inhabitants heal very quickly. That’s an easier explanation of in-game happenings rather than creating all these weird explanations of plot armor.

[RSP]

In the "HP isn't just meat" paradigm that already happens in 5e - it's called a short rest. You're not sitting around in sullen silence for an hour. You're resting to get your breath back, you're bandaging up any wounds you might have actually sustained, you're eating to get your blood sugar back up, and you're talking with your fellow adventurers to restore morale. The benefit of a healing spell like Cure Wounds is that it can provide some degree of that benefit in just 6 seconds.

Except that isn’t the case. You can, in fact, sit in silence and heal. You can also have all the L’Oréal’s boosting chit chat you want over a SR and still regain 0 HP if you choose (or cannot) use any Hit Die. You’ve decided (either as a houserule or erroneously thinking that’s how the RAW works) that those things are necessary.

So either a morale boosting chit chat increases hit points or it doesn’t. But it doesn’t increase HPs unless you add in a whole of stuff that just doesn’t make sense to me.

So again, I find it easier just to accept the in-game characters just heal differently than we do (which, again, still happens in your in-game world as well as the character brought to 0 HPs with a critical injury, is still back to 100% after a LR and maybe a SR).

[Dork_Forge]

Except that isn’t the case. You can, in fact, sit in silence and heal. You can also have all the L’Oréal’s boosting chit chat you want over a SR and still regain 0 HP if you choose (or cannot) use any Hit Die. You’ve decided (either as a houserule or erroneously thinking that’s how the RAW works) that those things are necessary.


By sitting there at all and not doing strenuous activity you are resting, catching your breath, allowing your muscles to relax. You don't have to describe these things, it's the effect of just not doing something. If you're out of hit dice, then that is meant to represent that you're too worn down to really recover from such a break in the action and require proper rest.

This thread is incredibly long so pardon my ignorance, but if you're picking at RAW so much then why do you refute the RAW explanation of hit points? You're ignoring RAW because it doesn't make sense to you and at that point, if you're the DM then just house rule you don't get to just heal to full on a long rest.


For the thread in general I created a version of a short rest for when I used Gritty Realism:

Long Rest is a week off, short rest is a 8 hour period of rest, but during the day you can take a 'breather' during which you can spend a single hit die. You're not overcoming massive amounts of damage with a single hit die, but it is a meaningful recovery of hit points and fits well with the premise of catching your breath etc.

[JackPhoenix]

5e doesn’t degrade ability with hit points though. There is no mechanic to represent this, so you either need to add one, or accept that PCs are just as effective at 100% HPs, or 1% HPs. In this sense, there is no state that represents real world fatigue or being worn out.

That's patently false. The less HP you have, the lower your ability to not be knocked unconscious or killed in one hit.

[RSP]

By sitting there at all and not doing strenuous activity you are resting, catching your breath, allowing your muscles to relax. You don't have to describe these things, it's the effect of just not doing something. If you're out of hit dice, then that is meant to represent that you're too worn down to really recover from such a break in the action and require proper rest.

This thread is incredibly long so pardon my ignorance, but if you're picking at RAW so much then why do you refute the RAW explanation of hit points? You're ignoring RAW because it doesn't make sense to you and at that point, if you're the DM then just house rule you don't get to just heal to full on a long rest.

I don’t understand why you think I need to houserule anything about LRs.

I’ve never said my preference is RAW, it’s just my preference; though I think it’s fair to say my view on healing is RAW. If you’re “bloodied” at half HPs and taking bodily damage at that point (which is RAW), and then rest an hour, use HD to heal up, after that one hour rest, you’re no longer bloodied, your wounds have healed (again, RAW). That’s not possible unless you accept that healing in the 5e in-game world is different than it is for us in the real world, as one hour of rest does not heal our wounds as such.

Now, again, my view of “all HP loss is bodily damage” is just my preference and not RAW, I just find it makes a lot more sense than plot armor; particularly since plot armor still needs to accept the not-real-world healing anyway. It just seems like a lot of jumping through hoops to needlessly describe some damage a certain way.

Edit: Also, it should be pointed out that RAW, HPs don’t start being “meat” at 50%, that’s just when the damage is obviously noticeable to others. For the damage (“cuts and bruises” per RAW) to be noticeable at 50%, it makes sense that the damage was taken prior to that, it just wasn’t obviously noticeable.

So something like:
100%=you’re fine, healthy, undamaged.
99-51%=taken damage but not noticeable
50-1%=“cuts and bruises” noticeable
0=bleeding injury or other trauma, knocked unconscious (this suggests a serious brain injury)

Yet, even if “bleeding injury or other trauma” occurs to a character, a SR or LR can get them right back to 100% in an hour or 8.

[RSP]

That's patently false. The less HP you have, the lower your ability to not be knocked unconscious or killed in one hit.

Not necessarily, you could be killed in one hit at full hit points.

Either way, effectiveness is still unaffected, which is what I was discussing. At 100% HP OT at 1%, the character is just as effective at doing stuff. Not sure why you believe that to be “patently false”.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Edge case scenario: the power word line of spells does actually take into account how "weakened" or "weak" you are.

[greenstone]

Yes, but when hit with a sword, you can't really get around the fact that actual meat damage has been done. A cut is a cut, and doesn't heal just by willpower alone.

Think of a movie. The lead character (Jason Statham in Parker, for example, which I watched over the weekend) has multiple fights throughout the movie, all of which involve stabbings and shootings and beatings. However, after only a short time resting while his girlfriend patches him up, he's able to get up and fight the next scene.

PCs work the same way.

[Pex]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating. Doesn't that steal the thunder from magical items that deal with healing and regenerating? If all I need to do is rest for 1 hour to heal up to full, or close, why bother with using resources on healing at all?

It's not free. You have to spend HD, so you are limited per day. Officially you only get back half what you spend each long rest, so it's diminishing returns. It's very common, in my experience at least, for it to be ignored and you get back all HD spent if players and DMs even know the official rule.

It doesn't have to make sense. It's a play time facilitator. Letting players heal themselves a bit means no one has to play the Healer. The Healer role becomes a choice, not an obligation. It also encourages players to keep playing. Players don't like adventuring when their characters are near death. They can conserve their class features by choice. They can't conserve hit points because that's based on the bad guys. When they know they won't die on the next hit they keep playing. The squishies don't like being low on hit points, but it's more a problem for the warriors. They need their hit points. "Meat shield" is the joke, but it's their job. They're supposed to take the brunt of damage. If they're adventuring with less hit points than the squishies that's a problem.

[quinron]

It's not free. You have to spend HD, so you are limited per day. Officially you only get back half what you spend each long rest, so it's diminishing returns. It's very common, in my experience at least, for it to be ignored and you get back all HD spent if players and DMs even know the official rule.

Just as a sidebar: this was somewhat shocking to read. I already feel like going back to full HP overnight is stretching credibility; going back to full HP AND full hit dice on a long rest feels absurd to me. Might go some way toward explaining why folks online always seem to be budgeting their encounters a rank or two higher than I budget mine, though...

[Akkristor]

Yes, but when hit with a sword, you can't really get around the fact that actual meat damage has been done. A cut is a cut, and doesn't heal just by willpower alone. But your point is also true. I guess I just always assumed psychic damage made your brain bleed, but I guess that's never said anywhere.



The Orc Barbarian brings his greatsword down. You raise your shield and intercept the blade, but are unable to turn away the blow. The impact rings through your entire body, and you are nearly driven to a knee. You take 5 damage.

You look to your rogue partner. Another orc has charged her, swinging an axe. She bends to avoid the blow, contorting in an almost inhuman manner. Even stretching to her limit, she only narrowly avoids the slice. She takes 3 damage.




This is one of those cases that often relies on narrative. If every hit from a blade cuts and draws blood, then of course it's hard to explain how you can heal so quickly out of combat. But not every 'hit' has to do real damage. They wear you down. They drain your stamina and tire you out. Blocking blow after blow, dodging left and right; it all wears you out.

It's like in martial arts, where blow after blow is rained onto their opponents, wearing them down until a decisive strike can be made.

[MaxWilson]

It surprises me that they have more than one extremely dangerous combat without a Short Rest in between. And survive at all. That seems like a recipe for everyone having healing and spell slots and blowing most on healing. Or spending all their gold on potions of healing.

My first instinct was it was the negative hit points thing. But even 5e Deadly combats "expect" a SR in between them. If they're not getting that between 4xDeadly (or whatever your standard is) I don't see how they're staying alive.

Wait, I'm confused.

I said that 80% of healing IME is done to top players off, instead of waiting until they're almost dead. How do you get from there to assuming that there's multiple very deadly encounters without a short rest? I'm generally pretty liberal with short rests, especially if you've got Rope Trick or similar. (But I don't allow hit die healing on a short rest unless you've got a Bard with Song of Rest--it's too quasi-magical for my taste, same as what the OP says. This doesn't preclude healing via Healer feat or Inspiring Leader or Second Wind or whatnot.)

Savvy players IME don't actually get seriously injured very often even in tough fights. They treat HP as part of a defense in depth, but not the first line of that defense.

[Dork_Forge]

I don’t understand why you think I need to houserule anything about LRs.

I never said or intended you 'need' to do anything, I made a suggestion that's all. You can take it, leave it or anything inbetween, but please don't insert insistance that was never there.


I’ve never said my preference is RAW, it’s just my preference; though I think it’s fair to say my view on healing is RAW. If you’re “bloodied” at half HPs and taking bodily damage at that point (which is RAW), and then rest an hour, use HD to heal up, after that one hour rest, you’re no longer bloodied, your wounds have healed (again, RAW). That’s not possible unless you accept that healing in the 5e in-game world is different than it is for us in the real world, as one hour of rest does not heal our wounds as such.

Depends on the extent of wounds, but tbh I've never encountered a Dwarf, Dargonborn, Warforged etc. to trade notes on how they heal.

Here's something that may help, I doubt it but why not:

I cut my hand a week ago, it was aclean cut deep enough to bleed a lot. That cut has not fully healed, I can still see and feel the line, the discoloured skin is still sensitive compared to that around it. Apart from a mild pain that cut stopped bothering me after about half an hour, when it clotted under a bandaid. 'Healed' is a sliding scale.


Now, again, my view of “all HP loss is bodily damage” is just my preference and not RAW, I just find it makes a lot more sense than plot armor; particularly since plot armor still needs to accept the not-real-world healing anyway. It just seems like a lot of jumping through hoops to needlessly describe some damage a certain way.

Edit: Also, it should be pointed out that RAW, HPs don’t start being “meat” at 50%, that’s just when the damage is obviously noticeable to others. For the damage (“cuts and bruises” per RAW) to be noticeable at 50%, it makes sense that the damage was taken prior to that, it just wasn’t obviously noticeable.

So something like:
100%=you’re fine, healthy, undamaged.
99-51%=taken damage but not noticeable
50-1%=“cuts and bruises” noticeable
0=bleeding injury or other trauma, knocked unconscious (this suggests a serious brain injury)

Yet, even if “bleeding injury or other trauma” occurs to a character, a SR or LR can get them right back to 100% in an hour or 8.


You don't have to be at 100% to be at equivalent 100% functionality.

Personally I err on 20% HP is the other stuff, 80% is meat, and that's based entirely upon 'desciribing wounds feels cool for everyone' rather than any sense of realism.

The healing mechanics make the game easy by default, but it also makes it more accessibly fun, the 2e player in my group vocally opposed the old style of healing when it was brought up in conversation.

[RSP]

I never said or intended you 'need' to do anything, I made a suggestion that's all. You can take it, leave it or anything inbetween, but please don't insert insistance that was never there.

I mean, I don’t understand this line you write, or why I would need to houserule LRs as part of anything I had written:

“You're ignoring RAW because it doesn't make sense to you and at that point, if you're the DM then just house rule you don't get to just heal to full on a long rest.”

Nothing I’ve written is in opposition to LRs fulling healing, so I’m not sure why you think I need to make this houserule.



You don't have to be at 100% to be at equivalent 100% functionality.

Correct. In 5e, you maintain 100% functionality even at 1% HP.

[EggKookoo]

Not necessarily, you could be killed in one hit at full hit points.

Either way, effectiveness is still unaffected, which is what I was discussing. At 100% HP OT at 1%, the character is just as effective at doing stuff. Not sure why you believe that to be “patently false”.

Well, except your effectiveness at surviving the next hit is degraded. Which can be modeled in-fiction a number of ways -- you're slowing down, you're off-balance, you're distracted by pain or something similar.

I lean toward meat points myself, at least to a decent degree. Where I differ from most, I think, is in what it means to heal (in a nonmagical sense). Or more specifically, what it means to recover HP, in the sense that I no longer see it as literal healing.

[JackPhoenix]

Not necessarily, you could be killed in one hit at full hit points.

Sure, and if there was some arbitrary penalty to rolls when at less than full HP, you could still succeed anyway. What's your point?


Either way, effectiveness is still unaffected, which is what I was discussing. At 100% HP OT at 1%, the character is just as effective at doing stuff. Not sure why you believe that to be “patently false”.

Propably because it absolultely is. A character with 1 hp is much less effective fighter than a character with 100 hp. Or are you saying they both have the same chance to contribute to and even survive an entire fight?

[neonchameleon]

Propably because it absolultely is. A character with 1 hp is much less effective fighter than a character with 100 hp. Or are you saying they both have the same chance to contribute to and even survive an entire fight?

A character with 1hp is 100% as effective an acrobat or marathon runner as the same character with 100hp. They have the same expected DPR. They just can't take a hit.

[EggKookoo]

A character with 1hp is 100% as effective an acrobat or marathon runner as the same character with 100hp. They have the same expected DPR. They just can't take a hit.

You're leaving out a significant component to the concept of "effectiveness."

[Unoriginal]

A character with 1hp is 100% as effective an acrobat or marathon runner as the same character with 100hp. They have the same expected DPR. They just can't take a hit.

So a character with 1 HP cannot take the same risks as one with 100 HPs, if they don't want to risk getting KOed and possibly dying?

[neonchameleon]

You're leaving out a significant component to the concept of "effectiveness."

Mostly in the specific situation of combat - and stand up slugfest combat at that. Someone badly beaten up and fatigued you'd expect to struggle with the fine motor control of lockpicking or the large scale of acrobatics. Or for that matter pain dulling perception. But they don't.

[KorvinStarmast]

Which can lead to situations where you take a few dozen or hundred HP worth of meat damage, but D&D is pretty pulpy to me and people taking a hefty beating is part of the appeal.Yep. Diehard, the movie. :smallsmile:


If you take the premise that meat damage doesn't happen until you're bloodied - as exemplified with the Life Cleric's CD which can't heal above the 50% mark. Bard's song of rest acts as a healing agent during an SR. Is that Meat or 'that other stuff' that Kane0 mentioned.


By sitting there at all and not doing strenuous activity you are resting, catching your breath, allowing your muscles to relax.
See also: halftime at a professional sporting event.

Edge case scenario: the power word line of spells does actually take into account how "weakened" or "weak" you are. Fair point. :smallcool: Disintegrate does something similar.

[RSP]

Sure, and if there was some arbitrary penalty to rolls when at less than full HP, you could still succeed anyway. What's your point?

Um, well, my point was countering you saying I was wrong. The fact you’re now saying “sure” tells me you’re agreeing with me, and I was, in fact, not wrong.




Propably because it absolultely is. A character with 1 hp is much less effective fighter than a character with 100 hp. Or are you saying they both have the same chance to contribute to and even survive an entire fight?

The effectiveness of the character doing things is not impacted: attacks don’t take negative penalties, skill checks don’t have Disadvantage, etc.

Whether or not they can survive a fight is reliant on a lot of factors, including HP totals, but also involving a lot of other factors (number and type of enemy, resources at hand, etc.).

I’m also not sure what your point is: what, in your opinion, is the difference of going into a fight at 1 HP in a “plot armor” in-game world, vs. a “meat points” in-game world?

[Tanarii]

I said that 80% of healing IME is done to top players off, instead of waiting until they're almost dead. How do you get from there to assuming that there's multiple very deadly encounters without a short rest?
Hmmm. Okay looking back at the chain of the posts, I guess I got there because the overall context of the conversation is using HD in SRs to top off healing so that casters don't need to do it with spell slots. So I guess my assumption when making the "over 50% comment" must have been out of combat healing. And I continued that assumption when responding to your response. Bit that wasn't specified in my comment.

Your post makes a lot more sense if you're referring to in-combat top offs. :smallamused:

[EggKookoo]

Mostly in the specific situation of combat - and stand up slugfest combat at that. Someone badly beaten up and fatigued you'd expect to struggle with the fine motor control of lockpicking or the large scale of acrobatics. Or for that matter pain dulling perception. But they don't.

Right, I agree that HP loss doesn't have a comprehensive impact on performance. I'm just reacting to the idea that it has no impact at all. At the same time, risk evaluation is a factor in most things, including an Acrobatics or Athletics check. If you need to perform some stunt that calls for one of these checks, and if you fail the check you'll suffer some damage, the 1 HP creature is going to hesitate while the full-HP creature is going to be less cautious. I know this isn't what you're talking about when you say "effective." You're saying (I think) that the skill check numbers don't change. But it's effectiveness nonetheless. The player of the 1 HP PC is going to consider the task differently than the full-HP player. Maybe look for alternatives, or even recommend that another party member try the task even if that other PC has a lower bonus for the roll.

D&D and 5e in particular really leans on player interpretation of very abstract rules. I mean, this is a game where you can have an "armor class" despite not wearing armor, and an attack on you can miss even though if you are wearing armor it's likely the attack physically struck you, just not hard enough to do damage (and "damage" is handled by a different stat entirely).

[Morty]

D&D would do very well to split hit points into a "soft" layer that represents fatigue, luck and minor injuries and "hard" layer that represents actual wounds. Many systems do it and it works well. But it won't, of course, because a single pool of HP that goes up with every level is just How Things Are Done. Short rest healing and long rest healing at least mean the entire party doesn't operate on the cleric's schedule, which was the case before 4E. Or rather, before people figured out that wands of Cure Light Wounds can do the job.

[KorvinStarmast]

But it won't, of course, because a single pool of HP that goes up with every level is just How Things Are Done.
And because it's simpler, less complicated.

We used to track both HP and 'non lethal' HP in some of the games I played.
If the players are engaged and get into it, it's very doable.
At the macro level, it's one more bit of bookkeeping that casual, or newer players, might find unappealing.

I've also noticed that Temp HP is frequently forgotten by some players; and it's a similar thing. A separate HP pool to keep track of.

[Damon_Tor]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating. Doesn't that steal the thunder from magical items that deal with healing and regenerating? If all I need to do is rest for 1 hour to heal up to full, or close, why bother with using resources on healing at all?

Your "meat" is the sum total of all your hitpoints PLUS your hit dice. Think of "hitpoints" as your pain tolerance, and HP+HD as the actual limit of your body to handle damage and still function. That wound isn't GONE when you recover HP during a short rest, its just taken care of to the point where it doesn't hurt enough to debilitate you anymore.

Here you might ask "so why can being at zero HP kill me if I still have HD remaining?" to which I answer "shock".

[Gryndle]

I mean I get it balance-wise, but doesn't that imply regenerative properties? You don't use resources to heal, so you are basically regenerating. Doesn't that steal the thunder from magical items that deal with healing and regenerating? If all I need to do is rest for 1 hour to heal up to full, or close, why bother with using resources on healing at all?

echoing some others-HP isn't all meat and blood. Combat is the most physically, mentally and emotionally draining activity you can do. Spending Hit Dice during a short rest isn't about healing your wounds a la Wolverine. Its about catching your breath, getting your energy back, shaking off the immediate psychic/emotional drain, and getting out of that violently charged headspace.

[Tvtyrant]

You know in Anime or fantasy books where the battle wounded character is smudged three panels/pages later instead of bleeding? It is a heroic trope, not wolverine healing but Captain America.

[EggKookoo]

And because it's simpler, less complicated.

I played years of the WoD system, where you had a small number of health levels (5? 7? I forget, probably varied). When you were successfully hit, you lost one or more health levels, depending on the severity. As your health levels dropped, you incurred penalties to rolls. Also, for most PCs -- which were typically supernatural creatures -- you had two types of damage: regular and aggravated. Most creatures had a way of quickly healing back health levels lost to regular damage but aggravated damage was more lasting. Keeping track of all that stuff was a nightmare. When I jumped over to a D&D campaign some time later (back in the 90s, this was 2e), just having a bunch of plain old HP was like a breath of fresh air.

[Doug Lampert]

I played years of the WoD system, where you had a small number of health levels (5? 7? I forget, probably varied). When you were successfully hit, you lost one or more health levels, depending on the severity. As your health levels dropped, you incurred penalties to rolls. Also, for most PCs -- which were typically supernatural creatures -- you had two types of damage: regular and aggravated. Most creatures had a way of quickly healing back health levels lost to regular damage but aggravated damage was more lasting. Keeping track of all that stuff was a nightmare. When I jumped over to a D&D campaign some time later (back in the 90s, this was 2e), just having a bunch of plain old HP was like a breath of fresh air.

No argument.

Additionally: The Department of Defense did a number of studies once, looking for how impaired wounded soldiers are. The basic conclusion can be summarized, "If the soldier is still fighting at all, he is not significantly impaired".

Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. Realistically, you should stiffen up once the adrenaline wears off, and then you can be impaired as much as you like, but wound penalties in the combat where you take the wound should basically be "you are in shock or otherwise completely disabled and not fighting" or "you are still fighting at close enough to 100% to make no difference."

Wound penalties are one of those "realism" rules that makes the game less realistic. Just say no. Since splitting wounds into "Wounds" and "Fatigue" is largely irrelevant unless you have some sort of wound penalty for one type but not the other, or want to have multiple different healing mechanisms for being attacked with a sword, saying no to wound penalties also means saying no to most multiple damage tracking systems. Too complicated for too little gain if it only feeds into healing.

[CapnWildefyr]

Maybe look at this from an entirely different angle, instead of getting tied up over meat-vs-metaphysical wounds.

Would you expect a 10th-level combatant to be easier to kill than a 1st-level combatant? harder to kill? about the same? Note, this applies both to someone squishier like a wizard and to a fighter clad in steel. I think most of us look at it like the 10th level combatant should be harder to kill. We can even be talking about the same character at different points in a career, so the way to get killed doesn't change much -- same arteries, same muscle, same skull.

So whatever makes you 10th level, then, is what's getting worn down. Maybe your skill means less as you get tired. Maybe you're forced to keep feinting on an injured foot. Whatever. Hit points are just an abstraction to make it so that higher-level characters (and big tough characters) are harder to kill than smaller, squishier, and less experienced characters.

In the end, the question for me becomes: Does it reasonably allow us to get tougher as time goes on, reflecting that as the character gains more skills and experience, he or she is harder to kill? I think the answer is yes. So what if it's an abstraction? It doesn't have to represent anything, HP can just be a mechanical measure of your continued ability to fight/keep going. In the end, the 1st-level and the 10th-level fighter can be killed by being run through the chest with a long sword, it's just that -- as expected -- it takes longer to do it to a higher-level character.

When you look at it like this, an amount of SR healing makes sense -- we recover a lot from a short break, a drink of water, etc., not to mention binding cuts and gashes, and putting ointment or whatever on fireball burns. Like the boxers and other athletes mentioned above, you can recover quite a bit.

Now, having said all that, I do want magical healing to be needed. Personally, I houserule: a LR doesn't provide 100% healing, you just get to roll 1/2 your HD. I believe this is similar to some other posts above, maybe it was MaxWilson's rule, or MoG's, sorry I didn't look it up before my reply. The reason: you get to keep playing, but you need to think before rushing into combat. Not every party has a healer, and not everyone wants their PC existence to be "I cast cure wounds 14 times."

[Tanarii]

Additionally: The Department of Defense did a number of studies once, looking for how impaired wounded soldiers are. The basic conclusion can be summarized, "If the soldier is still fighting at all, he is not significantly impaired".
Thats with modern firearms. Not ancient weapons. Or even blackpowder ones.

[Doug Lampert]

Thats with modern firearms. Not ancient weapons. Or even blackpowder ones.

And with shrapnel, and with blast damage, and with vehicle crash wounds. Modern soldiers take any number of different types of wounds in combat.

You have some reason to think that stabbed is fundamentally different from every single one of the above?

[ff7hero]

And with shrapnel, and with blast damage, and with vehicle crash wounds. Modern soldiers take any number of different types of wounds in combat.

You have some reason to think that stabbed is fundamentally different from every single one of the above?

Not to put words in someone else's mouth, but I think they're saying modern weapons make it easier to fight while wounded than ancient/blackpowder ones.

[Tanarii]

And with shrapnel, and with blast damage, and with vehicle crash wounds. Modern soldiers take any number of different types of wounds in combat.

You have some reason to think that stabbed is fundamentally different from every single one of the above?


Not to put words in someone else's mouth, but I think they're saying modern weapons make it easier to fight while wounded than ancient/blackpowder ones.
Yes exactly. I'm not talking about the wounds taken, but how relatively easy it is to point and shoot.

[Doug Lampert]

Yes exactly. I'm not talking about the wounds taken, but how relatively easy it is to point and shoot.

Modern soldiers are moving carrying a 50lb pack plus body armor. This is not light work. It also shows no significant impairment prior to collapse from shock. If your legs work fine with a serious leg wound (and they do given adrenaline), I see no reason to think the arms suddenly fail.

Do you have ANY evidence of wound impairment at the time of the wound and short of collapse from shock? Because it's all "common sense says" with zero evidence as far as I can tell.

[Dork_Forge]

Modern soldiers are moving carrying a 50lb pack plus body armor. This is not light work. It also shows no significant impairment prior to collapse from shock. If your legs work fine with a serious leg wound (and they do given adrenaline), I see no reason to think the arms suddenly fail.

Do you have ANY evidence of wound impairment at the time of the wound and short of collapse from shock? Because it's all "common sense says" with zero evidence as far as I can tell.

Adrenaline is a heck of a thing, but medieval era weaponry is far more likely to suffer from mechnical impairment than modern weapons. It doesn't matter so much if you're overall speed is reduced to a quick limp when you're firing a gun, likely from cover, but that matters substantially more when you have distance to cover and need to swing a a heavy piece of metal effectively.

Overcoming pain =/= overcoming mechanical impairment, if your tendon is severed it doesn't matter how in the zone you are you're incapable of making the movement.

[greenstone]

…hit points are ablative plot armor, nothing more.
Heroes get more , mooks get less, big bads get whatever the plot dictates.
That is a perfect way of describing them.

[MaxWilson]

Adrenaline is a heck of a thing, but medieval era weaponry is far more likely to suffer from mechnical impairment than modern weapons. It doesn't matter so much if you're overall speed is reduced to a quick limp when you're firing a gun, likely from cover, but that matters substantially more when you have distance to cover and need to swing a a heavy piece of metal effectively.

Overcoming pain =/= overcoming mechanical impairment, if your tendon is severed it doesn't matter how in the zone you are you're incapable of making the movement.

Agreed. There's a big difference between muscle-powered weaponry and gunpowder-powered weaponry.

[EggKookoo]

When you look at it like this, an amount of SR healing makes sense -- we recover a lot from a short break, a drink of water, etc., not to mention binding cuts and gashes, and putting ointment or whatever on fireball burns. Like the boxers and other athletes mentioned above, you can recover quite a bit.

And at the risk of getting all record-brokey, you don't even really need to heal up to recover. A creature that takes a couple of stab wounds with a combined total of 15 HP of damage, that then takes a short rest, rolls some HD, and recovers those 15 HP, doesn't necessarily see those stab wounds heal up like Wolverine. They're still there, and honestly pretty tender, thank you very much. It's just that they no longer significantly impair the creature in a fight any more. The HP are restored, but the wounds are still there.

[Hytheter]

D&D would do very well to split hit points into a "soft" layer that represents fatigue, luck and minor injuries and "hard" layer that represents actual wounds.

I believe the Star Ward D20 game worked like this.

[CapnWildefyr]

D&D would do very well to split hit points into a "soft" layer that represents fatigue, luck and minor injuries and "hard" layer that represents actual wounds. Many systems do it and it works well. But it won't, of course, because a single pool of HP that goes up with every level is just How Things Are Done.

If it is important to you, just consider every HD you roll after 1st level to be your personal pool of "permanent" temporary hp, where these hp can be restored. Personally I don't see the need, it ends up with the same game result anyway. I think that somewhere in 1E or 2E they sorta said that, I just haven't spent the time to track down the quote, and besides, not 5e.

[Tanarii]

The problem with dividing things into Hit Points and SDC, or Vitality Points and Wound Points, or Wounds and Critical Effects ... eventually some splat writer (or even a core writer) introduces a way to bypass the not-really-damage score and do damage directly to the really-damage score.

[KorvinStarmast]

If it is important to you, just consider every HD you roll after 1st level to be your personal pool of "permanent" temporary hp, where these hp can be restored. Personally I don't see the need, it ends up with the same game result anyway. I think that somewhere in 1E or 2E they sorta said that, I just haven't spent the time to track down the quote, and besides, not 5e. AD&D 1e, DMG, which I cited here in the spoiler block (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25116765&postcount=47)
HP are like GP: they are game tokens that make the game easier to play. :smallbiggrin: That's a way to look at it.

The problem with dividing things into Hit Points and SDC, or Vitality Points and Wound Points, or Wounds and Critical Effects ... eventually some splat writer (or even a core writer) introduces a way to bypass the not-really-damage score and do damage directly to the really-damage score. This, a hundred times this! :smallsmile:

[Morty]

The problem with dividing things into Hit Points and SDC, or Vitality Points and Wound Points, or Wounds and Critical Effects ... eventually some splat writer (or even a core writer) introduces a way to bypass the not-really-damage score and do damage directly to the really-damage score.

I would argue this already happened in past editions, where you could bypass the HP system entirely with instant death effects. 5E has no instant death effects I can think of, but effects that let you disable someone without touching their HP still exist. I'm also not sure what's wrong with dangerous effects dealing "true damage" directly; if anything this could help with the common complaint of 5E not feeling risky enough.

[KorvinStarmast]

I would argue this already happened in past editions, where you could bypass the HP system entirely with instant death effects.
5E has no instant death effects I can think of, but effects that let you disable someone without touching their HP still exist. I'm also not sure what's wrong with dangerous effects dealing "true damage" directly; if anything this could help with the common complaint of 5E not feeling risky enough.
Disintegrate? I remember that in original D&D, the Evil High priest (a chaotic cleric, usually an NPC) had Finger of Death as a spell that was a save of die instant death effect. One of my thieves died to that. Is that the kind of instant death effect that you are referring to?

[Kuulvheysoon]

I mean, 9th level, but power word kill is just a straight HP check. <100 HP and you're dead, no questions asked.

In 5E, the action economy has a much higher impact than in earlier editions, so early level spells like banishment might as well be instant death. If you can take the "boss" out of the fight for even two or three rounds, then the action economy will tilt heavily in the PCs favor and they're subsequently ground into paste.

[EggKookoo]

On the other hand, a pure meatpoint perspective causes other weirdness, like what happens if you sneak up on a guard and put your knife to his throat. Does the guard fear for his life, since one slice can have him bleeding out and choking on his own blood? Or does he somehow sense that it would take X attacks on average to get his HP down low enough to worry?

Speaking of which, I have a "throat slice" mechanic I should probably run by people here for at least a sniff test. But anyway...

If you view HP only or mainly in the realm of a combat-effectiveness mechanic, and not some kind of general structural-integrity metric, then you can still see how it's feasible to cause grievous injury outside of a fight. The way I run a campaign, a 20th level human fighter with ~200 HP jumps into a boiling volcano, he's dead. At most he can do one thing before succumbing, like yell out something or maybe get some kind of action off. The heat alone would render him unconscious almost immediately, and no amount of HP is going to prevent him from igniting seconds later. Likewise, the guard would be worried about his life suddenly ending with the swipe of his assailant's wrist, regardless of the game mechanics.

[CapnWildefyr]

AD&D 1e, DMG, which I cited here in the spoiler block (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25116765&postcount=47)


Thanks! It was driving me crazy but I didn't have time to track it down... and missed it earlier...

[JackPhoenix]

If you view HP only or mainly in the realm of a combat-effectiveness mechanic, and not some kind of general structural-integrity metric, then you can still see how it's feasible to cause grievous injury outside of a fight. The way I run a campaign, a 20th level human fighter with ~200 HP jumps into a boiling volcano, he's dead. At most he can do one thing before succumbing, like yell out something or maybe get some kind of action off. The heat alone would render him unconscious almost immediately, and no amount of HP is going to prevent him from igniting seconds later. Likewise, the guard would be worried about his life suddenly ending with the swipe of his assailant's wrist, regardless of the game mechanics.

Ah, I see you're familiar with Fire and Brimstone (http://www.scratchfactory.com/Resources/LavaBanners/LavaRules.pdf). While the rules were originally made for 3.x, they are very easy to convert to 5e.

[Theodoxus]

Bard's song of rest acts as a healing agent during an SR. Is that Meat or 'that other stuff' that Kane0 mentioned.

I'd say both meat and 'other stuff'. Whatever the particular character is healing when they spend HD would be the same as the Song of Rest is boosting... From my perspective, SoR is just enhancing the expenditure of HD, making them more efficient. Perfectly within the purview of a Bard.


D&D would do very well to split hit points into a "soft" layer that represents fatigue, luck and minor injuries and "hard" layer that represents actual wounds. Many systems do it and it works well. But it won't, of course, because a single pool of HP that goes up with every level is just How Things Are Done. Short rest healing and long rest healing at least mean the entire party doesn't operate on the cleric's schedule, which was the case before 4E. Or rather, before people figured out that wands of Cure Light Wounds can do the job.

I'd advocate this "for some games". I just checked the DMG, I'm actually a little shocked the Wounds and Vitality option wasn't part of the Healing optional rules. They brought back Healing Surges using HD in combat (and allowed for said HD to be restored at 100% every long rest...) But anyway, as an optional rule, especially for tables where the meat/other divide is an actual issue, W/V would be a great compromise. Whether it's Con/everything else or HD/everything else or Bloodied/not Bloodied should also be part of the optional rules for it.


The problem with dividing things into Hit Points and SDC, or Vitality Points and Wound Points, or Wounds and Critical Effects ... eventually some splat writer (or even a core writer) introduces a way to bypass the not-really-damage score and do damage directly to the really-damage score.

Yes. So, this optional rule should be steadfast, solid and absolutely optional. No splat writer has touched other optional rules. AFAIK, none have even offered up something as Gritty Realism or a modification of such as an official mod to their module. And heaven knows, Out of the Abyss runs quite a bit smoother when traveling under GR time frames... So, as long as W/V or HP/SDC are never 'mainstream' I think/hope/pray that your fear won't come to pass. Because yes, bypassing Vitality to go straight to Wounds sucked. Hard.


On the other hand, a pure meatpoint perspective causes other weirdness, like what happens if you sneak up on a guard and put your knife to his throat. Does the guard fear for his life, since one slice can have him bleeding out and choking on his own blood? Or does he somehow sense that it would take X attacks on average to get his HP down low enough to worry?

Speaking of which, I have a "throat slice" mechanic I should probably run by people here for at least a sniff test. But anyway...

If you view HP only or mainly in the realm of a combat-effectiveness mechanic, and not some kind of general structural-integrity metric, then you can still see how it's feasible to cause grievous injury outside of a fight. The way I run a campaign, a 20th level human fighter with ~200 HP jumps into a boiling volcano, he's dead. At most he can do one thing before succumbing, like yell out something or maybe get some kind of action off. The heat alone would render him unconscious almost immediately, and no amount of HP is going to prevent him from igniting seconds later. Likewise, the guard would be worried about his life suddenly ending with the swipe of his assailant's wrist, regardless of the game mechanics.

HP bloat is a buggaboo of mine and I have yet to find a reasonable way around it. I've seen some systems where there is 'plot damage' for situations like this. If the guard has 100 HP normally for hand to hand combat, that dagger to the throat will instead deal 3d6x10. He might survive, but it's unlikely. Other systems just handwave the damage completely. "You sneak up on the guard and silently slit his throat, killing him outright." Narratively, it kinda runs into problems with why not slit the throats of everything... but then, you're playing Thief or Metal Gear Solid or something and video game blah blah blah... I still haven't found a good solution. Curious what your throat slice mechanic is.

[RSP]

On the other hand, a pure meatpoint perspective causes other weirdness, like what happens if you sneak up on a guard and put your knife to his throat.

Why isn’t this a problem for “plot armor”? Does the knife cut wipe out the 100 HP guard if describing HP loss that way?

[EggKookoo]

HP bloat is a buggaboo of mine and I have yet to find a reasonable way around it. I've seen some systems where there is 'plot damage' for situations like this. If the guard has 100 HP normally for hand to hand combat, that dagger to the throat will instead deal 3d6x10. He might survive, but it's unlikely. Other systems just handwave the damage completely. "You sneak up on the guard and silently slit his throat, killing him outright." Narratively, it kinda runs into problems with why not slit the throats of everything... but then, you're playing Thief or Metal Gear Solid or something and video game blah blah blah... I still haven't found a good solution. Curious what your throat slice mechanic is.

My tentative approach (haven't tried it in game yet) is to just throw a load of conditionals onto it, and then provide a result that outwardly works with the concept even if it doesn't necessarily allow you to kill someone with a single hit. So, making it very specifically a "sneak up on the unsuspecting guy and drop him with a throat (or other vulnerable spot) hit."

I'm thinking of making this a feature of a homebrew rogue subclass, which becomes available at 9th level. I'd like to make it earlier but rogue subclasses don't get stuff between 3rd and 9th. C'est la vie...


Target must be humanoid.
You need to be hidden from the target.
Target CR must be no more than 1/3 your rogue level.
If the target is awake, you need a Sleight of Hand check to get your weapon in close (you already did the Stealth check to become hidden). Opposed by Perception. If the target is asleep, you can skip the check and assume you hit.
If you succeed/win with the opposed check (or the target is asleep), you deal damage with the weapon as normal. Apply SA.
If you deal more than 1/2 of the target's maximum HP with this attack, the target will become stunned at the end of its next turn. I'm doing the "end of turn" thing to give the target a fighting chance. Obviously if you drop the target to 0 HP, it's incapacitated and dying immediately.
The target will need to make a DC 10 Con save at the end of each of its turns unless it receives healing or a successful Medicine check to stop the bleeding. If it fails, its HP drops to 0 and it must start making death saves.


I haven't playtested it yet.


Why isn’t this a problem for “plot armor”? Does the knife cut wipe out the 100 HP guard if describing HP loss that way?

If those extra HP are something aside from literal physical toughness, then it's easier to justify bypassing them because of particular circumstance.

[RSP]

If those extra HP are something aside from literal physical toughness, then it's easier to justify bypassing them because of particular circumstance.

Not sure I agree. It’s just as easy for the DM to say they’re dead either way. HPs equaling bodily damage doesn’t mean there aren’t circumstances where the narrative can overcome the mechanics.

Edit: or for that matter, not kill them. It really depends on if the guard matters. Do they need to live and be a challenge? Then the knife nicks them as they get their hand up to block a life threatening cut on their neck.

On the other hand, if they don’t, then there’s no reason to Elease time playing it out. Just let the Sneaky Rogue off them and move on to more interesting encounters.

I’m still not sure why “plot armor” doesn’t have the same question. It’s still just deciding whether or not the DM cares about the guard.

[Theodoxus]

It would matter to me, as a DM. What the players can do, the NPCs should be as well... handwavium kinda sucks when you're a player on the receiving end. If only players get to bypass plot armor, then that breaks verisimilitude for me, as the DM.

It's definitely something that would need to be explicit in the rules for that game/campaign. But I tend to make it very clear in session 0 if there are expectations that humanoid NPCs can and will act like characters or not. Sometimes you want a "PCs are demigods among men" game. Other times you want a "dark noir anyone can die at any time, so take care" game.

[Anymage]

I would argue this already happened in past editions, where you could bypass the HP system entirely with instant death effects. 5E has no instant death effects I can think of, but effects that let you disable someone without touching their HP still exist. I'm also not sure what's wrong with dangerous effects dealing "true damage" directly; if anything this could help with the common complaint of 5E not feeling risky enough.

Allowing people to have different avenues of attack does a few things. First, it leads to people looking for the most optimum avenue to attack for each enemy. (E.G: elder 3.5 dragons have oodles of hit points, but only 10 points of dex before they're helpless.) Second, it means that different avenues of attack don't interact with each other. The fighter doing HP damage and the wizard doing dex damage don't contribute to the other's success in any meaningful way. Third, in practice, melee have always been about AC and HP while casters have been able to play with everything else. Since there's a good chance that AC/HP are not the fastest way to take down any given monster, that gives spellcasters an edge.

We've been through all this before. Having everybody play the same game of reducing its HP to zero really does wind up being the best option.


On the other hand, a pure meatpoint perspective causes other weirdness, like what happens if you sneak up on a guard and put your knife to his throat. Does the guard fear for his life, since one slice can have him bleeding out and choking on his own blood? Or does he somehow sense that it would take X attacks on average to get his HP down low enough to worry?

If they have 100 HP, they're likely pretty dang heroic themselves. Action heroes on that tier should have some sort of sixth sense for danger and shouldn't be incapacitated easily.

Again, 3.5 and various "it just makes sense" systems have allowed for NPCs to be dispatched outside of the normal flow of HP combat. PCs are unsurprisingly quick to look for ways to use these easy dispatches because they're that much more effective against enemies. At that point either you let it happen and give PCs a huge edge, or have the NPCs follow suit and quickly devolve into rocket tag. (Which, because there are so many more NPCs than PCs and NPCs consequently make many more rolls, means it's only a matter of time until a PC rolls a fatal 1.) Yes, it makes a lot more sense that slitting your throat while you're paralyzed should kill you outside of mechanics. As long as the Hold Person spell exists, that does nasty things to game balance and we'll have to have something unsatisfying somewhere in the game system. Whether that something is mechanically unsatisfying or narratively unsatisfying is up to the developers, but something will have to give.

[Morty]

HP bloat is a buggaboo of mine and I have yet to find a reasonable way around it. I've seen some systems where there is 'plot damage' for situations like this. If the guard has 100 HP normally for hand to hand combat, that dagger to the throat will instead deal 3d6x10. He might survive, but it's unlikely. Other systems just handwave the damage completely. "You sneak up on the guard and silently slit his throat, killing him outright." Narratively, it kinda runs into problems with why not slit the throats of everything... but then, you're playing Thief or Metal Gear Solid or something and video game blah blah blah... I still haven't found a good solution. Curious what your throat slice mechanic is.

The throat-slitting scenario is something I haven't seen a system deal with very well beyond simply saying "if you have a knife to the throat of a minor NPC, you can just kill them". Instant-kill scenarios are really tricky to deal with in a system where they could be used on a PC or important NPC.

As far as HP bloat is concerned, it's possible to just... not have it. D&D just happens to decide to go with it time and again, then heroically deal with the problems it introduced this way. Though even in D&D, it wasn't always the case, because I believe in older editions, HP gain slowed down considerably past a certain point.

Though, once again, having two health tracks does help - it means that some sources of damage can go right to the "meat" of things and be threatening even to characters who have a lot of "plot armor" health or other defences.

[EggKookoo]

It would matter to me, as a DM. What the players can do, the NPCs should be as well... handwavium kinda sucks when you're a player on the receiving end. If only players get to bypass plot armor, then that breaks verisimilitude for me, as the DM.

Agreed. It's also why I don't use hit charts. If the PCs can target a limb and potentially chop it off, they won't like it when the NPCs do it back to them. IME the best way to handle something like this if a player wants it in the game is to wrap it in a special class feature or something similar, so it's easy to explain why every NPC they come across can't just do it too.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Feel like throwing a wrench here. There's also the fact that wound severity doesn't automatically translate to response from the injured.

Fun story, two fighters were doing a Rapier demo. Live blades. During the fight there was a slip and instead of the blade passing a fighter stabbed their opponent. The tip of the blade went less than half an inch below the knee cap.

The fight IMMEDIATELY stopped as the injured person screamed and fell, unable to keep fighting.

They examined this fighter and found he was perfectly fine. The wound did no real damage and barely needed a bandaid.

They then discovered the other fighter had taken a cut on the inner thigh and been bleeding badly for about 30 seconds. Life would have been in danger, but never even noticed.

How does something like that translate to HP? :)

[Dork_Forge]

Feel like throwing a wrench here. There's also the fact that wound severity doesn't automatically translate to response from the injured.

Fun story, two fighters were doing a Rapier demo. Live blades. During the fight there was a slip and instead of the blade passing a fighter stabbed their opponent. The tip of the blade went less than half an inch below the knee cap.

The fight IMMEDIATELY stopped as the injured person screamed and fell, unable to keep fighting.

They examined this fighter and found he was perfectly fine. The wound did no real damage and barely needed a bandaid.

They then discovered the other fighter had taken a cut on the inner thigh and been bleeding badly for about 30 seconds. Life would have been in danger, but never even noticed.

How does something like that translate to HP? :)

Testament to the sharpness of a blade, a very sharp blade can cut you deeply and cleanly with you feeling very little (like a scalpel), combine that with a bit of adrenaline...

Meanwhile a shallow stab can generate a lot of pain response for relatively little damage.

[Anymage]

...How does something like that translate to HP? :)

The guy who tapped out is relatively simple. PCs are action heroes, they might grimace but won't let pain stop them. Guy with a serious cut and blood loss is something HPs are hard pressed to represent, because barring a specific effect D&D characters suffer no further effects after the initial wound.

I think it's widely acknowledged that HP have always been an imperfect reflection of reality, for many reasons. Game rules in general will often have a very significant divergence from our reality. Exactly how unrealistically heroic, from "you'll have a black eye and some bandages but not be impaired in any meaningful way" all the way to "you have a literal superhero healing factor", is what people really seem to be picking at here.

[MaxWilson]

Feel like throwing a wrench here. There's also the fact that wound severity doesn't automatically translate to response from the injured.

Fun story, two fighters were doing a Rapier demo. Live blades. During the fight there was a slip and instead of the blade passing a fighter stabbed their opponent. The tip of the blade went less than half an inch below the knee cap.

The fight IMMEDIATELY stopped as the injured person screamed and fell, unable to keep fighting.

They examined this fighter and found he was perfectly fine. The wound did no real damage and barely needed a bandaid.

They then discovered the other fighter had taken a cut on the inner thigh and been bleeding badly for about 30 seconds. Life would have been in danger, but never even noticed.

That's hilarious. Like seeing a little kid fall down and get up again, totally unfazed... until he sees the blood on his knees and then he starts screaming his head off.

[Sherlockpwns]

I always felt the most elegant tabletop HP rules were done by Star Wars 3.5 (I think? that's what my memory tells me but it was like 20 years ago).

HP simply represents "close calls" - So if you took "10 points of damage" you didn't get HIT by the blaster, the blaster bolt almost hit you or grazed you or hit your armor and deflected off. Maybe it put a hole in your cloak. When you hit zero, THAT is when the blaster hits you.

I run D&D the same way. Every time your HP goes down you get closer to the 'deathblow' that will slip past your armor. Because that's how life kinda works. I kinda hate the DM I have right now who describe MULTIPLE arrows sticking out of someone as if they're just some human pin-cushion. You have an arrow sticking out of you, you're probably done for the day. Or the week. Or forever. I mean, the DM is fine, I just dislike that particular aspect of his combat descriptions.

And yes, I am sure there are lots of examples of people fighting on with a bullet wound, arrow wound, or severed limb... but there's also plenty of sublcass/race options that let you drop to zero and keep fighting, so... that's where that description would live.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Testament to the sharpness of a blade, a very sharp blade can cut you deeply and cleanly with you feeling very little (like a scalpel), combine that with a bit of adrenaline...

Meanwhile a shallow stab can generate a lot of pain response for relatively little damage.

Also type of wound. The more serious injury was an inner thigh cut, not terribly deep but right across an artery.

The fight stopping injury pierced into the person. Human beings tend to respond very sharply to that type of impact.

I agree with everyone's comments. Was mostly helping push that "HP doesn't equal pure damage" statement. :)

[EggKookoo]

HP simply represents "close calls" - So if you took "10 points of damage" you didn't get HIT by the blaster, the blaster bolt almost hit you or grazed you or hit your armor and deflected off. Maybe it put a hole in your cloak. When you hit zero, THAT is when the blaster hits you.

Which conjures up amusing images when your PC is losing HP by being crushed by a trapper.

DM: Okay, so you take 12 points from it crushing you.
PC: Whew, that was close!

I kid, but at the same time...

[Theodoxus]

I always felt the most elegant tabletop HP rules were done by Star Wars 3.5 (I think? that's what my memory tells me but it was like 20 years ago).

HP simply represents "close calls" - So if you took "10 points of damage" you didn't get HIT by the blaster, the blaster bolt almost hit you or grazed you or hit your armor and deflected off. Maybe it put a hole in your cloak. When you hit zero, THAT is when the blaster hits you.

I run D&D the same way. Every time your HP goes down you get closer to the 'deathblow' that will slip past your armor. Because that's how life kinda works. I kinda hate the DM I have right now who describe MULTIPLE arrows sticking out of someone as if they're just some human pin-cushion. You have an arrow sticking out of you, you're probably done for the day. Or the week. Or forever. I mean, the DM is fine, I just dislike that particular aspect of his combat descriptions.

And yes, I am sure there are lots of examples of people fighting on with a bullet wound, arrow wound, or severed limb... but there's also plenty of sublcass/race options that let you drop to zero and keep fighting, so... that's where that description would live.

When it's strictly weapon damage, this kind of imagery of the 'last shot' works. (but see below). There are plenty of examples and tropes from tv shows and movies where regular old humans take more of a beating than a "real life" human could. Heck, the new Miracle Workers season opened with Steve Buscemi's character falling face down in a saloon after coming in off the trail with a comical amount of bullets in his back, but one short rest (and a bottle of whiskey) later, he's good as new. Semi-realistic cartoons that have an in-universe healing factor abound. The "How to Train Your Dragon" franchise is famous for the characters falling 10's to 100's of feet out of the air, only to either hit the ground in a uncontrolled crash, or be caught by a dragon mid-air. Such acrobatics would generate contusions, lacerations and broken bones - but only the most plot relevant wounds are ever noted.

Trying to tie something like a game to a realistic system of combat damage is not only silly, it doesn't even come close to matching the genre the game was born from and spun out within popular culture. Is it 'badwrongfun'? I don't think so, but it definitely is a fool's errand for no measurable benefit. As a thought experiment, sure. As a game altering/defining mechanic? Please don't.


Which conjures up amusing images when your PC is losing HP by being crushed by a trapper.

DM: Okay, so you take 12 points from it crushing you.
PC: Whew, that was close!

I kid, but at the same time...

Environmental damage should not be equivalent to weapon/combat damage. Even more so than a knife to the throat, a crushing trap should just kill outright if it can't be overcome or avoided. Tomb of Horrors did that aspect correctly; even if I did give into my player's whining and allowed the wild shaped Druid to survive the steamrolling trap by getting knocked out of his form, and then slowly bringing the party back to life by Reincarnating the Cleric who resurrected the Wizard who used his last remaining Wish to restore the Paladin... Silly me.

[EggKookoo]

Environmental damage should not be equivalent to weapon/combat damage. Even more so than a knife to the throat, a crushing trap should just kill outright if it can't be overcome or avoided. Tomb of Horrors did that aspect correctly; even if I did give into my player's whining and allowed the wild shaped Druid to survive the steamrolling trap by getting knocked out of his form, and then slowly bringing the party back to life by Reincarnating the Cleric who resurrected the Wizard who used his last remaining Wish to restore the Paladin... Silly me.

I think the game wants to treat (almost) everything as a HP deduction to avoid the dreaded save-or-die situation. I mean, what's the point of all these HP if the DM is just going to bypass them?

[JellyPooga]

I think the game wants to treat (almost) everything as a HP deduction to avoid the dreaded save-or-die situation. I mean, what's the point of all these HP if the DM is just going to bypass them?

Indeed. If, as we suppose, HP represent a good deal of luck ornplot armour, then they should apply just as equally to environmemtal concerns as any trap or weapon attack.

Surviving a 200ft fall straight down might seem all but impossible, but perhaps if you hit every hidden branch, rocky outcrop and snow bank on the way down, you might yet be standing at the bottom.