In our last session, I had two NPCs that both dropped to 0 hit points, so they had to start making death saving throws. In the end, they both succeeded and became stable, so they remained unconscious. I rolled a 1d4 to see how long it would be until they gained 1 hit point, and that result was 3 hours. After the three hour mark, the party decided to secure their position and were able to take a long rest...so, does that mean since the long rest took place, the NPCs were able to regain all their lost hit points? They were knocking on death's door and after a good night's sleep they are back in action at full strength? Is this correct?
Pretty much, unless you use the advanced rules for rest in the DMG, I forget what they are called, its something like Hardcore or Hard more or something. Basically normal D&D rules 20 years ago.
Found them; Slow Natural Healing and Gritty Realism. That is more suitable and a bit more believable. Thanks!
Your HP should not be thought of as actual damage to your character but instead fatigue and metal exhaustion. After a night's rest you can recover from that.
1) "Hit points" isn't really a measure of how alive you are or how much blood is left in your body or anything like that but rather how much fight you have left in your body. Just because you are "hit" for "X hit points" doesn't mean you lose a certain amount of blood or or have your bones broken. It could just as easily be minor wounds, having the wind knocked out of you or you just thinking "screw this, it's not worth dying for" and losing the will to fight.
2) Imagine how boring Die Hard would have been if John McClane had actually died all the time he realistically should have? Instead, we get a cool adventure where he's just able to take a few (very) short rests and perhaps a use of Second Wind before he, down to his last few hit points, finally defeats the BBEG. Player characters are supposed to be heroic adventurers in an actionfilled adventure which makes it make sense that they are fit for fight after just a few hours of rest. That doesn't mean that they are completely "healed" after a long rest, just that they are back to their full fighting ability. John Wick is a good example of how this work. All of the movies takes place over a very short time frame but he is able to rest up (full HP) every once in a while even though he hasnät healed all of his actual injuries.
I played D&D back in the AD&D days and we had similar thoughts about level 5 characters in general. How could a PC be five times more resistant to damage just because he was adventuring for six months? It just didn't really make sense.
I ran across an explanation in one of the source books, probably the DMG of the day, the one with enormous red demon on the cover. Anyway, the explanation for high HP was that most of your HP do not represent actual damage you take, but rather the refinement of your instincts to avoid taking damage. So a level 1 character that is hit for 6 points of slashing damage has lost about half of his health. But a level 2 character that takes 6 points of slashing damage loses only 1/3 to 1/4 of his health, because he had the instinct to shift his weight properly to reduce the effective damage he received.
Now that doesn't explain the whole "Take a night's rest and you'll be fine in the morning" bit in 5e, but it does help you understand that you're not recovering 50 HP by taking a good night's rest, it is more like 20 HP and your mental faculties are back up to par to all your instincts to allow you to react to the other 30 HP.
5e is written this way to just make it more fun so the party doesn't have to carry gallons of healing potions -or- everyone waits a week in camp while the barbarian who got wrecked in the last fight heals himself. Some things don't pass the "smell test" but just roll with it and have fun.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I think the problem is that "hit points" lead to both unconsciousness and death. The only way to fix this would be to completely re-do damage in D&D so that there are two damage types, like in Champions... KO damage, and lethal damage. Then most weapon would primarily do KO damage, with a little lethal damage mixed in. KO damage comes back on a rest (even a short rest), lethal damage takes days.
But you wouldn't be playing D&D at that point -- you'd be playing Champions.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
5E is the streamlined, simple yet effective, edition of D&D. It's not that hard to homebrew in a few extra mechanics here and there, for instance for damage and/or healing. Might be hard or impossible to implement on DDB though.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
8 hours can fix entirely too many things, but when the alternative is stopping for weeks on end to heal mundane wounds...
There's certainly some campaigns where that would work great! For for most people, convenience beats out realism here.
Very much this. Playing d20 Modern was illustrative for me. Taking days and days to recover from the slightest injury makes for a very different game. Without magical healing or some expeditious way to replenish health, combat becomes the very last resort that one engages in only with great reluctance. Every fight is a harrowing thrill-ride and it was, in my limited experience, a lot like being a level one or two D&D character where death is a single critical hit away, but at all levels. While not a problem in and off itself, as the sort of game that these mechanics promote can be very rewarding and entertaining, it is not generally what people come to the D&D system expecting due to its baked in magical healing and fantasy hero sensibility.
I think the problem is that "hit points" lead to both unconsciousness and death. The only way to fix this would be to completely re-do damage in D&D so that there are two damage types, like in Champions... KO damage, and lethal damage. Then most weapon would primarily do KO damage, with a little lethal damage mixed in. KO damage comes back on a rest (even a short rest), lethal damage takes days.
But you wouldn't be playing D&D at that point -- you'd be playing Champions.
That sounds like a weird system. The problem is that (at least if we use the real world as a basis) there really is no difference between damage that can be lethal and damage that can be "just" KO. Even a soft blow to the head, if it happens to hit the wrong spot, can kill you. At the same time even a very hard blow that hits the "right" spot can do pretty much nothing at all. There are examples of people who has wakled for miles and miles with broken feet, simply by tying their boots really tight and, presumably, swearing a lot. Some people have survived being submerged in icey water for very long periods of time (IIRC, we're talking an hour, fi not more) but you can also drown in a shallow puddle of water. There really is no simple way of coveringthe entire spectrum.
As an advice for those who don't like the idea of a long rest "curing" every wound and broken bone, use that in the narrative storytelling. If an enemy crits they cause an old wound to tear open. If the rogue fails their ability check and falls down a building it's because they accidentally brushed their bruised rib, the paint causing them to lose their grip. An artificer trying to open a lock might get blurred vision and screw up from the blow to the head last week. The Warlock trying to fasttalk their way past some guards might fail because of the huge bruise and bandaged face. Just take it and run.
It is kinda crazy, but the idea is to move away from the belief that Clerics are Healbots. In the past people used to think that Clerics were only allowed to use their spells for healing, and would expect them to stand out of the way in the back in safety, only coming forward to cast cure light / cure serious / cure critical wounds before disappearing back to the rear again. That kinda thinking meant a lot of people hated being a cleric and groups that played together regularly would take it in turns to play the cleric in different games. Making healing so simple has freed up the role, more people are playing clerics because they want to rather than because someone has to. They are also getting to cast some of the more interesting spells and get stuck in to combat.
That sounds like a weird system. The problem is that (at least if we use the real world as a basis) there really is no difference between damage that can be lethal and damage that can be "just" KO. Even a soft blow to the head, if it happens to hit the wrong spot, can kill you.
Not to get too off-track but in Champions, most attacks do both STUN and BODY damage... STUN knocks you out, BODY kills you. The attacks tend to do 3-4 times more STUN than BODY, although you generally have a lot less BODY than STUN. Damage is done by D6, and 1D6 of normal damage does the die roll in STUN, and does 1 BODY if you roll 2-5, 2 BODY if you roll 6, and 0 BODY if you roll a 1. A typical attack of ~ 10D6 normal damage would do about 35 STUN (vs KO'ing you) and 10 BODY (vs killing you). If you roll some extra body, you "hit in the wrong spot" and could kill the person. If you roll low on BODY (multiple 1s) you strike a glancing blow, and so forth.
Remember superheroes rarely die (especially, they rarely died in the late 70s/early 80s when Champions was being produced) so the goal of the system was to create battles that usually KO'ed people, and rarely killed them.
However, STUN damage was recovered in seconds to minutes... BODY damage was recovered at an average of about 1 BODY per day. So if you took enough body to be dying (0 BODY from the 10 or so you start with on average) it's going to take 1.5 weeks in a modern hospital with modern care, surgeons, and so forth, to recover -- unless someone has the "Healing" superpower (or you have Regeneration, like Wolverine).
Such a system allows for people to go down in a fight and be "back up and fine" in the next one, because most of the damage taken was "temporary" damage, not long term damage.
Again, I'm not advocating for D&D to switch to it - as I say, HP are so integral that it would no longer be D&D. However, something like that would make it less head-scratching to have someone on the brink of death, sleep 8 hours, and then perfectly fine as if nothing happened. I mean even in Champions, with modern hospitals, you couldn't go from dying to fine in 8 hours -- again, without supernatural help.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Again, I'm not advocating for D&D to switch to it - as I say, HP are so integral that it would no longer be D&D.
Third edition tracked lethal and non-lethal damage semi-separately, and non-lethal damage healed much faster. It's not really that outlandish for D&D.
As and aside, 5E mentions "non-lethal damage" in the PHB index and says to "see damage" there, but there's no mechanic for it other than being able to choose whether an opponent is dying and needs saves to stabilize or is merely unconscious and stable when reduced to zero HP. Maybe something more elaborate was considered at some point, but dropped from development.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Hitpoints are an abstract and incredibly unrealistic way of tracking damage to begin with. The idea that a good night's sleep fully restores all your HP makes just as much sense as someone being beaten down to 1 HP from a maximum of over 100 and yet still operating at peak condition.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Ideally, yes, there is this concept of HP being "more" than just measurement of how much blood you can lose. It's not perfect because it falls apart a bit when you have hits that deliver certain effects (poison, prone, forced movement, additional elemental damage) or how generally healing magic works.
I have found that for my table it's best to suspend disbelief in certain things - like Hit Points or Initiative.
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In our last session, I had two NPCs that both dropped to 0 hit points, so they had to start making death saving throws. In the end, they both succeeded and became stable, so they remained unconscious. I rolled a 1d4 to see how long it would be until they gained 1 hit point, and that result was 3 hours. After the three hour mark, the party decided to secure their position and were able to take a long rest...so, does that mean since the long rest took place, the NPCs were able to regain all their lost hit points? They were knocking on death's door and after a good night's sleep they are back in action at full strength? Is this correct?
Yup
Found them; Slow Natural Healing and Gritty Realism. That is more suitable and a bit more believable. Thanks!
I was shocked the first time I sat down to a 5e table with my Barbarian, got killed, made the Death Saves, took a LR and then was fine the next day.
"HUH? 8 hour's of sleep and I'm FINE?"
Your HP should not be thought of as actual damage to your character but instead fatigue and metal exhaustion. After a night's rest you can recover from that.
Well, there are two things to remember.
1) "Hit points" isn't really a measure of how alive you are or how much blood is left in your body or anything like that but rather how much fight you have left in your body. Just because you are "hit" for "X hit points" doesn't mean you lose a certain amount of blood or or have your bones broken. It could just as easily be minor wounds, having the wind knocked out of you or you just thinking "screw this, it's not worth dying for" and losing the will to fight.
2) Imagine how boring Die Hard would have been if John McClane had actually died all the time he realistically should have? Instead, we get a cool adventure where he's just able to take a few (very) short rests and perhaps a use of Second Wind before he, down to his last few hit points, finally defeats the BBEG. Player characters are supposed to be heroic adventurers in an actionfilled adventure which makes it make sense that they are fit for fight after just a few hours of rest. That doesn't mean that they are completely "healed" after a long rest, just that they are back to their full fighting ability. John Wick is a good example of how this work. All of the movies takes place over a very short time frame but he is able to rest up (full HP) every once in a while even though he hasnät healed all of his actual injuries.
I played D&D back in the AD&D days and we had similar thoughts about level 5 characters in general. How could a PC be five times more resistant to damage just because he was adventuring for six months? It just didn't really make sense.
I ran across an explanation in one of the source books, probably the DMG of the day, the one with enormous red demon on the cover. Anyway, the explanation for high HP was that most of your HP do not represent actual damage you take, but rather the refinement of your instincts to avoid taking damage. So a level 1 character that is hit for 6 points of slashing damage has lost about half of his health. But a level 2 character that takes 6 points of slashing damage loses only 1/3 to 1/4 of his health, because he had the instinct to shift his weight properly to reduce the effective damage he received.
Now that doesn't explain the whole "Take a night's rest and you'll be fine in the morning" bit in 5e, but it does help you understand that you're not recovering 50 HP by taking a good night's rest, it is more like 20 HP and your mental faculties are back up to par to all your instincts to allow you to react to the other 30 HP.
5e is written this way to just make it more fun so the party doesn't have to carry gallons of healing potions -or- everyone waits a week in camp while the barbarian who got wrecked in the last fight heals himself. Some things don't pass the "smell test" but just roll with it and have fun.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Me too. It took about a year of game play before I learn to accept it. And I started with AD&D like Musicscount
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
8 hours can fix entirely too many things, but when the alternative is stopping for weeks on end to heal mundane wounds...
There's certainly some campaigns where that would work great! For for most people, convenience beats out realism here.
I think the problem is that "hit points" lead to both unconsciousness and death. The only way to fix this would be to completely re-do damage in D&D so that there are two damage types, like in Champions... KO damage, and lethal damage. Then most weapon would primarily do KO damage, with a little lethal damage mixed in. KO damage comes back on a rest (even a short rest), lethal damage takes days.
But you wouldn't be playing D&D at that point -- you'd be playing Champions.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
5E is the streamlined, simple yet effective, edition of D&D. It's not that hard to homebrew in a few extra mechanics here and there, for instance for damage and/or healing. Might be hard or impossible to implement on DDB though.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Very much this. Playing d20 Modern was illustrative for me. Taking days and days to recover from the slightest injury makes for a very different game. Without magical healing or some expeditious way to replenish health, combat becomes the very last resort that one engages in only with great reluctance. Every fight is a harrowing thrill-ride and it was, in my limited experience, a lot like being a level one or two D&D character where death is a single critical hit away, but at all levels. While not a problem in and off itself, as the sort of game that these mechanics promote can be very rewarding and entertaining, it is not generally what people come to the D&D system expecting due to its baked in magical healing and fantasy hero sensibility.
That sounds like a weird system. The problem is that (at least if we use the real world as a basis) there really is no difference between damage that can be lethal and damage that can be "just" KO. Even a soft blow to the head, if it happens to hit the wrong spot, can kill you. At the same time even a very hard blow that hits the "right" spot can do pretty much nothing at all. There are examples of people who has wakled for miles and miles with broken feet, simply by tying their boots really tight and, presumably, swearing a lot. Some people have survived being submerged in icey water for very long periods of time (IIRC, we're talking an hour, fi not more) but you can also drown in a shallow puddle of water. There really is no simple way of coveringthe entire spectrum.
As an advice for those who don't like the idea of a long rest "curing" every wound and broken bone, use that in the narrative storytelling. If an enemy crits they cause an old wound to tear open. If the rogue fails their ability check and falls down a building it's because they accidentally brushed their bruised rib, the paint causing them to lose their grip. An artificer trying to open a lock might get blurred vision and screw up from the blow to the head last week. The Warlock trying to fasttalk their way past some guards might fail because of the huge bruise and bandaged face. Just take it and run.
It is kinda crazy, but the idea is to move away from the belief that Clerics are Healbots. In the past people used to think that Clerics were only allowed to use their spells for healing, and would expect them to stand out of the way in the back in safety, only coming forward to cast cure light / cure serious / cure critical wounds before disappearing back to the rear again. That kinda thinking meant a lot of people hated being a cleric and groups that played together regularly would take it in turns to play the cleric in different games. Making healing so simple has freed up the role, more people are playing clerics because they want to rather than because someone has to. They are also getting to cast some of the more interesting spells and get stuck in to combat.
Not to get too off-track but in Champions, most attacks do both STUN and BODY damage... STUN knocks you out, BODY kills you. The attacks tend to do 3-4 times more STUN than BODY, although you generally have a lot less BODY than STUN. Damage is done by D6, and 1D6 of normal damage does the die roll in STUN, and does 1 BODY if you roll 2-5, 2 BODY if you roll 6, and 0 BODY if you roll a 1. A typical attack of ~ 10D6 normal damage would do about 35 STUN (vs KO'ing you) and 10 BODY (vs killing you). If you roll some extra body, you "hit in the wrong spot" and could kill the person. If you roll low on BODY (multiple 1s) you strike a glancing blow, and so forth.
Remember superheroes rarely die (especially, they rarely died in the late 70s/early 80s when Champions was being produced) so the goal of the system was to create battles that usually KO'ed people, and rarely killed them.
However, STUN damage was recovered in seconds to minutes... BODY damage was recovered at an average of about 1 BODY per day. So if you took enough body to be dying (0 BODY from the 10 or so you start with on average) it's going to take 1.5 weeks in a modern hospital with modern care, surgeons, and so forth, to recover -- unless someone has the "Healing" superpower (or you have Regeneration, like Wolverine).
Such a system allows for people to go down in a fight and be "back up and fine" in the next one, because most of the damage taken was "temporary" damage, not long term damage.
Again, I'm not advocating for D&D to switch to it - as I say, HP are so integral that it would no longer be D&D. However, something like that would make it less head-scratching to have someone on the brink of death, sleep 8 hours, and then perfectly fine as if nothing happened. I mean even in Champions, with modern hospitals, you couldn't go from dying to fine in 8 hours -- again, without supernatural help.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Third edition tracked lethal and non-lethal damage semi-separately, and non-lethal damage healed much faster. It's not really that outlandish for D&D.
As and aside, 5E mentions "non-lethal damage" in the PHB index and says to "see damage" there, but there's no mechanic for it other than being able to choose whether an opponent is dying and needs saves to stabilize or is merely unconscious and stable when reduced to zero HP. Maybe something more elaborate was considered at some point, but dropped from development.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Hitpoints are an abstract and incredibly unrealistic way of tracking damage to begin with. The idea that a good night's sleep fully restores all your HP makes just as much sense as someone being beaten down to 1 HP from a maximum of over 100 and yet still operating at peak condition.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Ideally, yes, there is this concept of HP being "more" than just measurement of how much blood you can lose. It's not perfect because it falls apart a bit when you have hits that deliver certain effects (poison, prone, forced movement, additional elemental damage) or how generally healing magic works.
I have found that for my table it's best to suspend disbelief in certain things - like Hit Points or Initiative.