Quote from: Benoist;543289Yes, a brain, and more than an ounce of objectivity.

So you actually won't explain it?

Quote from: Sommerjon;543297So you actually won't explain it?

I feel like I already did. I believe in encouraging people to reach beyond what they think is their ultimate potential. Maybe if you read it slowly enough, you will finally get it? Come on, now. Don't disappoint me. I believe in you.

Quote from: Benoist;543306I feel like I already did. I believe in encouraging people to reach beyond what they think is their ultimate potential. Maybe if you read it slowly enough, you will finally get it? Come on, now. Don't disappoint me. I believe in you.

What I get from your 'explanation' is you work around hp recovery by playing a rolodex stable of characters.

Quote from: Sommerjon;543308What I get from your 'explanation' is you work around hp recovery by playing a rolodex stable of characters.

Hm not quite there yet. But you're trying. That's great. Keep at it.

Quote from: Benoist;543306I feel like I already did. I believe in encouraging people to reach beyond what they think is their ultimate potential. Maybe if you read it slowly enough, you will finally get it? Come on, now. Don't disappoint me. I believe in you.

Ben I think one of the issues is that your defense relies on the idea that you don't only play 1 PC in a game you play multiple PCs in a campaign and switch between them.
That might be how D&D was played by some, a lot or all of the people in a certain place at a certain time but it doesn't affect the way the world works on an individual PC.
Just becuase I am now playing Dave the Elf doesn't mean that Jack the MU should now heal faster or slower.
I am an absolute beliver in The World in Motion but for that to work all elements need to be running at a similar pace. The NPCs concont their plans, the dwarves slowly dig their tunnels under the castle walls and A character should heal at a consistent rate.
I know it doesn't really matter if I can have fun with another PC (I don't actually like troupe play by the way never have but that is an aside) but in the same way it is hand waving. The Time Heals all Wounds position.

But the current stance doesn't come across as very reasonable.

Like I said either the rules are a physics engine or they are a game. All rules sit somewhere on that spectrum 4e was a GAME, Aftermath was far more like a Physics Engine.
Now Gygax clearly states that D&D is a GAME that was his intent. So in the context of a game for game reasons to do with how they wanted the world to work healing naturally took ages. Perhaps that was to force PCs to spend gold on healing, perhaps it was to promote the Cleric class, perhaps it was just a side effect of a rule designed for levels 1-3 that survived until PCs routinely reached 12th or 13th so suddenly a fighter could have 80 HP. Perhaps it was all those things and discussing those reasons why the heal mechnism worked that way might be less of a pain point for folks. I know that your go off and play your other PC was along those lines but its a little less pursuasive because its not the assumed style of play from the 1e books and its counter intuitive for the Roleplaying crowd for whom playing Dave the Elf was kind of the point of coming to the game session each week.
Sorry I am waffling a bit as its late. Does that make any sense?

Quote from: jibbajibba;543327Ben I think one of the issues is that your defense relies on the idea that you don't only play 1 PC in a game you play multiple PCs in a campaign and switch between them.

Actually, not necessarily, because the same reasoning goes for periods of downtime in actual play. The group retreats from the dungeon and takes a guy down with them. During downtime, said character is resting.

Next session, the group will pick up after said downtime (whether it is uneventful, or something interrupts their downtime like some event going on in town or whatnot is up for grabs, world in motion, and so on). The DM then just looks at the time spent until the game starts again for the characters. Less than a month? Calculate the actual recuperation of the wounded PC. More than a month? The wounded PC is back at full hit points. In either case, there is no dissociation.

Quote from: Benoist;543329Actually, not necessarily, because the same reasoning goes for periods of downtime in actual play. The group retreats from the dungeon and takes a guy down with them. During downtime, said character is resting.

Next session, the group will pick up after said downtime (whether it is uneventful, or something interrupts their downtime like some event going on in town or whatnot is up for grabs, world in motion, and so on). The DM then just looks at the time spent until the game starts again for the characters. Less than a month? Calculate the actual recuperation of the wounded PC. More than a month? The wounded PC is back at full hit points. In either case, there is no dissociation.

I can see a wavy hand logic to it.
Uncle Gary: Okay you train in town it takes um... 5 weeks and costs you 14 trillion gp. Okay what you doing then.
Dave the Elf: how many HP I am I on now
UG: um ... you're fully healed
Dte: Cool right back to it.

It's unnecessary though. You could just say heal 1hp per day and 2 for complete bed rest. The hand wavy bit is just a hand wavy bit that had no need to be codified anywhere.
I suspect in real Old School play it never ever happened. An Old school party would have a healer or go to the local church and pray they weren't going to wait that log to heal. It only makes a difference after about 10th level so they were so dragged down by magic was probably never a concern.

It only gets to be an issue if you want to create a coherent system that is internally logical both in play and in camera. If that is the aim then this rule doesn't work but as D&D is supposed to be a GAME and not a Phys Engine we can let it go. But it does then get harder to try to explain why another rule or a change in a rule that promotes the GAME can't happen because its dissassociative or not immersive. Like Per Encounter martial powers for example (to cross fertilize threads)

Whether the rule needs to be there or you like it or not is neither here nor there. The contension is that this bit here is actually not a dissociation in actual play, whereas the recuperation of all your HPs from negative in 24-36 hours in the 5e Public Playtest is.

Quote from: Benoist;543338Whether the rule needs to be there or you like it or not is neither here nor there. The contension is that this bit here is actually not a dissociation in actual play, whereas the recuperation of all your HPs from negative in 24-36 hours in the 5e Public Playtest is.

Depending on what HPs represent right?

I would agree with you by the way I think some of those HP need to be physical I would just carve them out more descretely so that it was obvious.

Quote from: jibbajibba;543342Depending on what HPs represent right?

Absolutely, and this is where you start wondering if HPs in 5e represent wounds at all. In either case, there's a problem, because if they do, then this recuperation scheme doesn't make any sense, and if they don't, then actual health is not simulated at all in this game, for one thing, and it represents such a change from the previous editions of the game in this regard, on the other, as to make 5e "not D&D" to me.

Quote from: Benoist;543344Absolutely, and this is where you start wondering if HPs in 5e represent wounds at all. In either case, there's a problem, because if they do, then this recuperation scheme doesn't make any sense, and if they don't, then actual health is not simulated at all in this game, for one thing, and it represents such a change from the previous editions of the game in this regard, on the other, as to make 5e "not D&D" to me.

Well not a big leap from 4e but point taken.

Your desire to keep the physical bit of HP and the luck/skill/stamina bit of HP jumbled together does that come from an ease of playability position or a 'its D&D' position. I am curious because leap to defend the traditional method but don;t really discuss your opinions on the other suggested options in any great detail.
Are Old school HP and heal rates just a deal breaker for you? Or would you consider the Level HP per day option from 3e as a workable compromise?

Quote from: jibbajibba;543347Your desire to keep the physical bit of HP and the luck/skill/stamina bit of HP jumbled together does that come from an ease of playability position or a 'its D&D' position.

I think both and more. It's both because I feel the abstraction works when all these concepts are indeed bundled together and that you can, on a case by case basis in actual play, describe this hit as exhausting, or this other one as actually wounding, according to specific circumstances in the game rather than theoretical concerns over the matter, and because there is a problem of what D&D feels like to me and the different moving parts it involves, one of them being resource management on the mid-long term, that you need to strategize to not die, to freeze that water around the medusa to see her reflection on the floor and not look at her eyes or die, that just going straight for the fight expecting to recuperate all your hit points in the next few hours should not always be the right answer to all tactical problems, and so on so forth. So the HP mechanics, save or die, all these things to me participate in the feel of the D&D game and the more you take them apart, the more you risk to end up with just an husk, a pastiche of a game that was once great, but got gimped for completely theoretical reasons bandied about by a bunch of douchebags who've actually never played the game or misremember the original material they've read decades ago as children, IF they actually read it.

That is an understandable position.

My dislike of pure HP stems from two things. Playing games with no magical healing, Lankhmar thief type games really, and Villains and Vigilantes.

The first because, as I posted previously, when you remove magical healing you expose some of the issues with HP. The second because V&V's Power mechanic was a much more grokable implmentation of hit points. You have a Power number made up from a mix of stats (if HP are skill and the ability to dogde and duck then why does only CON improve your HP?) and when you were hit you could absorb some of that damage from your Power. If the hit was light or your power high you could absorb all of it otherwise you got tagged.

To me that elegant and simple mechanic just made my 13 year old self go "Oh that makes sense".

I know that HP work because they are simple. I find it ironic that people that support HP due to less bookkeeping are often the same people that track encumberance, the number of sling stones used and spells that last x rounds rather than for the combat
I think that even within the context of simplicity Hit points can be improved to both reflect the Physics of the world and to improve Game play but I guess it's moot.

Quote from: 1989;542485We do not need a fucking 2d20 system 40 years later.

We do not need a fucking stamina/wound/bullshit system, either.

With "we" you mean "you" and...?

Quote from: CRKrueger;542424Pretty simple - Cut Hit Points in two and call half of them Stamina, call the rest Wounds.  Everytime you gain HPs, you put half into Stamina, half into Wounds, with the odd number going to Stamina.  So lets grab a guy from the Playtest Document, the Cleric of Moradin.

He has 17 HPs, so on his sheet you list.
Stamina: 9
Wounds: 8

He takes 6pts of damage, now it reads
Stamina: 3
Wounds: 8

He now takes 5pts of damage, now it reads
Stamina:0
Wounds:6

He takes a Short Rest.  Short Rest only heals Stamina, not Hit Points.  So he rolls a 1d8 for Short Rest and gets a 5.  Now it reads
Stamina:5
Wounds: 6 (note the actual Wounds section of the HPs hasn't been affected by the Short Rest).

He decides to cast Cure Light Wounds and rolls a 7, so now it reads
Stamina: 5
Wounds: 8 (note the stamina section was not raised by Curing the wounds)

So now

• I have an easily defined method to finally once and for all declare in D&D what is skill/luck/stamina and what is damage.
• I have a new stat (Stamina) I can use to power Fighter abilities (or other stuff) without resorting to AEDU
• I can have all kinds of "inspirational/leadership" abilities that can heal Stamina or even give temp Stamina.
• I can toss in optional rules that sneak attacks, critical hits, falling damage bypass Stamina if I want.
• I don't have D&D characters running around like superheros with no fear of death.

This is not what I'd call simple. Anytime you have to do division, and do rounding off, that's not simplicity.

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