Yeah, that’s definitely another way to go. I’ll have to remember that as an example of Second Wind.

Yeah, we did speed through the last couple adventures a bit, in particular the giants’ fortress, but it did go surprisingly fast.

That said, we also (at the time) played almost weekly, for 6-8 hours each session. That probably helped.

Karzoug was walloping the group pretty hard for us, too, but Holy Aura and a well-placed Wall of Force helped out immensely. The only reason he didn’t do better was some convenient criticals, and some creative thinking.

Uri K.
DNDkids

Ah, but then you hit one false assumption: that hit point loss, and the subsequent regaining, means physical damage and blood.

Since at least AD&D 1e, stated in the books themselves, hit points have been an abstraction to represent endurance, ability, luck, and, yes, damage. This is the same thing in 4e.

A common assumption among the 4e community, for those who want to apply realistic-ish logic to a situation, is that the attack that bloodies you is the first serious attack that lands.

When you sit down between fights and recouperate, however, it’s not necessarily the physical damage that’s being restored. It’s the endurance, skill, and luck portions of the hit point abstraction, too.

In any case, yes, it’s an abstraction that makes it easier to play. I’ll never argue that.

My main point was really just that a hit point system that doesn’t let you recover some of that abstract endurance, skill, and luck during a rest is no more realistic, and I’d even say is less realistic, than one that does.

Good discussion, regardless.

Let’s take a more realistic view of combat and damage.
You get in a knife fight and take damage.
The damage you would incur in such a fight is the type that would require stitches (for confirmation on that point, just ask any emergency room health care professional).
OK – so you’ve just gotten stitched up.
Now for round 2 of that knife fight.
Sorry but you are *not* as good as you were before you needed to be sewn back together like a piece of cloth.
And if you are not careful, you will rip your stitches and be *worse off* than before.

The problem with the abstract aspects of 4e (or any RPG) is someone will make false analogies like the above ‘doing exercise is like getting hurt in combat’ to try and justify what is, from a realistic point of view, unjustifiable.
Exercise is not combat; taking damage is not like a workout at the gym.

The game plays faster and simpler if you let players quickly heal between fights and fully heal after a single night’s rest.
But making record keeping easier for the player’s and the GM is exactly that and nothing more – certainly that has nothing to do with how actual human beings incur damage and recovered from that damage.

DonMoody

2) Tiny minutia magic items that make huge differences in a fight – one of the reasons I’ll never go back to 3.X.

3) The party was melee-heavy, and was starting to get frustrated at this floating bastard.

4) They had an idea that was cool and fun, so I would have let it succeed regardless of remembering the ring. Despite wanting this to be a by-the-book example of true high-level 3.X combat, cool and fun still trumps in my mind, and flying barbarian tackles are just that.

5) This post is over a year old.

Fail.