Quote from: Sacrosanct;675350I've already quoted the spell from the book.  Once again, for the intellectually impaired:

...heal all hit points of damage suffered due to wounds or injury,..

The point at which someone points out the you lied about what the rulebook said and you respond by providing a quote which demonstrates that you were lying about what the rulebook said...

Well, that's the point where the discussion is over.

QuoteSo welcome to my ignore list.

Your mendacity will not be missed.

Quote from: Benoist;675359It's pure, TOTAL wank bullshit. Useless fuckwitery for ignoramuses content to wallow in their own pedantic mediocrity.

I will say that this thread wins bonus points for being the first time that someone actually tried to claim that (some) of the cure spells can't actually heal hit point damage from certain non-explicit sources that are in no way identified in the rulebook.

That was a surprising new low from the people who can't understand how abstract mechanics work.

Quote from: CRKrueger;675293That's because there aren't any.  HPs are extremely abstracted, and the way in which they are described in the text does not match up with the ways in which you can gain and lose them.  Period.Full.Stop.

Some people can handwave it away and still immerse, some can't and go to a different game.

All the rest is people not willing to give an inch for fear of giving up the ground that will lead someone else to take a mile.  The Usual Suspects aren't the only people who give in to that tendency, unfortunately.

Well said. This was 4e vs Old D&D dissociated mechanic discussion, except in reverse - Hit Points being attacked same way those daily/encounter powers were, and defended in same way. And same thing was at stake - proof that 4e is just like old D&D. Edit: The problem being, that basically it was a rotten pitch to play on to begin with.

And frankly, the only reasonable answer in my overimportant opinion is that something is more than a sum of it's parts, but also "the amount of beer in wine", so to speak - at some point the combination of mechanics that are so heavily abstracted they are slowly dubious to imagine without heavy hand waving (whether or not HPs are that, it's hard for me to say, I'd say no but they aren't perfect...and then another 30 pages), that drags the "Immersion Meter" for some people too close to the surface, rather than one mechanic in particular.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;675374The point at which someone points out the you lied about what the rulebook said and you respond by providing a quote which demonstrates that you were lying about what the rulebook said...

Well, that's the point where the discussion is over.

Against my better judgement to continue this...

Please point out where I lied?  Look at what I said

all hit point loss from only physical wounds

 and what the book actually says:

heal all hit points of damage suffered due to wounds or
injury

Those mean essentially the same thing.  When you say the same thing, even if the actual words a not exactly the same, that's not a lie.  That's paraphrasing.

And you keep ignoring the various life transfer and draining spell and spell effects I've already mentioned that prove that hit point loss and restoration can be accomplished outside of physical wounds.  Want another one?  The hit point damage from a wraith's touch.  It's chilling life force damage.

And of course I couldn't help but notice that you never provided a quote anywhere in D&D that says that all hit point damage is due to a physical wound.  I don't expect you will.

The more you post, the more you show people what kind of character you have.  Needless to say you don't have any.  You don't hold yourself up to the same standard you have for others, you ignore anything that proves you incorrect, and you attack people when you can't attack the argument.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;674564"Hmm... I seem to have been poisoned by the arrow which missed me completely."

Try it this way. "Hm... goodness, I'm a bit lightheaded. Like I've been poisoned... Damn, is that a scratch on my arm? I thought that arrow just caught the sleeve of my coat."

I'll repeat myself.

As I've shown, in D&D, characters are ironclad fighting ships. On land. Armour class represents the strength of their protective iron plating. Hit points reflect the structural integrity of character-as-fighting ship, taking damage, losing beams, trusses and supports, taking on water, and finally sinking.

If you want a visual image that makes sense, you're not going to find one. The damage model was taken directly from a naval combat game.

Later on, you'll find Gygax giving a fairly lame post-hoc rationalisation for this. But that explanation makes little sense -- in reality it's purely an abstract mechanic. Again, according to Arneson: "People got tired of dying in one hit."

The way I always played, and the one that only really makes sense in the Word and World According to Gygax, is that each strike represents some kind of glancing wound, that is to say, D&D characters die from a thousand cuts. Thus hit point damage is distinct from coup-de-gras such as executing a Sleep'd creature, which can be done in one hit, bypassing hit points.

Of course this creates a problem with falling damage, which has always been  the sticking point for D&D. The answer to that is that making falling damage realistic is not something that anyone cared about doing.

This is the only interpretation that makes sense of spells like "Cure (x) Wounds". It is unsurpassingly ridiculous to argue that hit points are orthogonal to damage to the extent there could be categories of hit point loss not due to wounds that "Cure (x) Wounds" can't touch. Gygax never meant that. Nobody has ever played that.

I've located a copy of the 1st edition DMG, so let's deal with the text:

QuoteENCOUNTERS, COMBAT, AND INITIATIVE
It would be no great task to devise an elaborate set of rules for highly complex individual combats with rounds of but a few seconds length. It is not in the best interests of an adventure gome, however, to delve too deeply into cut and thrust, parry and riposte. The location of a hit or wound, the sort of damage done, sprains, breaks, and dislocations are not the stuff of heroic fantasy. The reasons for this are manifold. As has been detailed, hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures as well) are concerned.

This might give aid and comfort to the luck/mojoist interpretation, if it wasn't for the following.

QuoteThe system assumes much activity during the course of each round. Envision, if you will, a fencing, boxing, or karate match. During the course of one minute of such competition there are numerous attacks which are unsuccessful, feints, maneuvering, and so forth. [..]

Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially* physical - a mere nick or scratch until the lost handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurace, the luck, the magical protections. With respect to most monsters such damage is, in fact, more physically substantial although as with adjustments in armor class rating for speed and agility, there are also similar additions in hit points.

*Emphasis mine.

Let me break this down:
In AD&D, hit point loss is never treated as anything other than synonymous with "damage". That's why "cure wounds" spells work.

"Damage" scored to character or "certain" monsters is not substantially physical. This implies that "damage" always has some component of physical damage -- a mere "nick" or "scratch", a matter of "wearing down" "endurance, luck and magical protections."

Hit point gain, therefore, reflects improvements in "endurance, luck and magical protection." Every hit reflects a wound -- but it's a scratch, a nick, a bruise, not a killing blow. Killing blows bypass hit points and go right to the guts.

On the most reasonable interpretation, the OP is right -- Arnesian/Gygaxian hit points always reflect some kind of wound. The relevant discussion is on page 61 DMG, and it's worth reading the whole thing.

Quote from: The_Rooster;675345The problem isn't that it's not a solvable problem. The problem is that some people see it as a problem when it's not a problem at all.

It's a feature, not a flaw.

Yes, of course. That is what I mean: if you like it it's not a problem, and if you don't there is nothing that will convince you that is OK. Yeah, HPs don't represent how combat works in reality but that was never the goal of the designers so if that is something that really bothers you, arguing that the game is broken makes no sense. Play another game. There are many.

Quote from: Benoist;675359The only place where this rule creates "so much trouble" is on internet message boards with people whining about how D&D is "broken" and "bad" and "nonsensical", pushing that line of thought to open the door for their pet-theories about how the game must be "fixed" or "that game is so much more realistic" and bullshit. At an actual game table, it's never been a problem for me and, I'm guessing, a gazillion other gamers who played D&D for the last 40 years through 4 editions or so, and may be still playing the game today, as I am.

It's pure, TOTAL wank bullshit. Useless fuckwitery for ignoramuses content to wallow in their own pedantic mediocrity.

It is more than evident that for most gamers is not a problem when it comes to the actual table because it still is, by far, the most loved and played game out there. It ain't for me.

When I say that HPs are nonsensical I mean that they don't reflect accurately reality as we know it, even at lower levels, and it doesn't matter. It is part of the character of the game, you either like it or you hate it. But I concur: the game it's not broken, because quirks are not broken-ness.

Quote from: Imperator;675435When I say that HPs are nonsensical I mean that they don't reflect accurately reality as we know it, even at lower levels, and it doesn't matter. It is part of the character of the game, you either like it or you hate it. But I concur: the game it's not broken, because quirks are not broken-ness.

I think the problem is that some people will straight up rail against a game mechanic for "not mapping to reality" and then will turn around and say that the mechanics in THEIR game map to reality and will rationalize anything away that doesn't.

If people would stop railing against everything in games they might not personally enjoy as objectively terrible and RUINING THE GAME, then probably no one would bother trying to point out that you know, their reasons for hating a mechanic aren't objective and actually judging it as objective is straight up hypocrisy.

I'm sure Benoist wouldn't have called picking on Fighter Dailies from 4e as being dissociated as pedantic bullshit, because its not something he likes. But oh, no, pick on poor OD&D-AD&D and its pedantic bullshit that when you step back and look at it without your existing familiarity that characters behaving like naval warships for damage is absurdly odd.

Once again, having your likes and dislikes aren't even an issue. I like some things, I dislike other things. I don't even have concrete reasons for why I like or dislike some of them. Its the objective "this is dissociated, therefore it is automatically bad" "I don't find this bad, therefore it must not be dissociated" rather than you know, most of it being fuzzy feelings that I find ridiculous.

Quote from: Imperator;675435When I say that HPs are nonsensical I mean that they don't reflect accurately reality as we know it, even at lower levels, and it doesn't matter.

I disagree with that statement, and it doesn't matter.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;675437I think the problem is that some people will straight up rail against a game mechanic for "not mapping to reality" and then will turn around and say that the mechanics in THEIR game map to reality and will rationalize anything away that doesn't.

If people would stop railing against everything in games they might not personally enjoy as objectively terrible and RUINING THE GAME, then probably no one would bother trying to point out that you know, their reasons for hating a mechanic aren't objective and actually judging it as objective is straight up hypocrisy.

I for one am very conscious that whatever I say I like or don't like, what ruins or doesn't ruin the game for me, is a matter of subjectivity, not objectivity. Some people have a big problem with the meaning of these words, apparently. I'm not one of them, since I can articulate what I think from my own particular standpoint, i.e. subjectively, well enough.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;675437I'm sure Benoist wouldn't have called picking on Fighter Dailies from 4e as being dissociated as pedantic bullshit, because its not something he likes. But oh, no, pick on poor OD&D-AD&D and its pedantic bullshit that when you step back and look at it without your existing familiarity that characters behaving like naval warships for damage is absurdly odd.

Saying why I don't like Fighter Dailies wouldn't be pedantic bullshit if I was asked. Going on and on about it, still today, ranting about it and creating threads to piss over 4e 6+ years after the fact, would be dumb and a waste of my time. If I was doing that when sitting at a 4e table somewhere, that'd be rightfully called "being an asshole." I would not do that.

As for picking on OD&D-AD&D because someone on the internet expressed a subjective opinion that cannot be left to stand about 4e or "narrative games" or whatever else, someone who has to be retaliated against in some way because "Nah, back at you, bitch," that's just petty. We've all been caught in these kinds of interminable discussions before where all that matters is the size of one's dick, and I personally fall for that regularly enough (which I should really stop doing), but at the end of the day, that doesn't fucking matter, as far as your or my immediate game tables are concerned.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;675437Once again, having your likes and dislikes aren't even an issue. I like some things, I dislike other things. I don't even have concrete reasons for why I like or dislike some of them. Its the objective "this is dissociated, therefore it is automatically bad" "I don't find this bad, therefore it must not be dissociated" rather than you know, most of it being fuzzy feelings that I find ridiculous.

This is not what's going on. What's really the problem is that these are discussions between inflated egos talking past each other, taking offense for anything and everything, not reading each others' posts, and then ignoring whatever, however, to declare victory over "objective reality" like fucking assholes. Nobody's actually listening to one another.

That's the real problem with discussions like this.

For what it's worth, my understanding is the Hit Point cognitive divide has always been with us since Gygax and Arneson named the hit point recovery spell "Cure Wounds".  A certain proportion of gamers have always struggled with the abstract and escalating nature of Hit Points.

This is of course, one reason why games such as RuneQuest were created in the first place - for combat to more closely represent their experience of "real combat", coming from the SCA.

Thus, instead of the higher level character have more Hit Points, representing "skill, luck, the blessings of the Gods etc", they have active defences that also increase, becoming better at preventing themselves being hit - part of what hit points are meant to represent.  With this approach hit points can stay low and always represent actual physical damage.

Earthdawn gets around this by having all Adepts magical, and have a magical ability called Durability which, because its magic, can be an actual increase in the amount of physical damage a person can take before falling unconscious or dying.

I suspect that these games would not have been written without the ambiguously abstract nature of D&D Hit Points.

Quote from: valency;675418Let me break this down:
In AD&D, hit point loss is never treated as anything other than synonymous with "damage". That's why "cure wounds" spells work.

Except for the times when it's not.  See, you're using words like "never", which is not correct.  There have already been examples posted of when hit points are lost that aren't reflective of damage, let alone a wound.  And for the record, "damage to hit points" doesn't always mean a physical wound either.

Quote"Damage" scored to character or "certain" monsters is not substantially physical. This implies that "damage" always has some component of physical damage -- a mere "nick" or "scratch", a matter of "wearing down" "endurance, luck and magical protections."

Again with words like "always".  It's not true. life transfer doesn't have a physical wound.  Certain energy drain spells and/or attacks don't either.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;675493Except for the times when it's not.  See, you're using words like "never", which is not correct.  There have already been examples posted of when hit points are lost that aren't reflective of damage, let alone a wound.  And for the record, "damage to hit points" doesn't always mean a physical wound either.

Again with words like "always".  It's not true. life transfer doesn't have a physical wound.  Certain energy drain spells and/or attacks don't either.

I agree. The people who are playing the "it's ALWAYS like this" and "it NEVER does that" and "it's OBJECTIVELY like this and that" rhetorical game are not the ones Emperor Norton likes to point the finger at, here.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;675493Except for the times when it's not.  See, you're using words like "never", which is not correct.  There have already been examples posted of when hit points are lost that aren't reflective of damage, let alone a wound.  And for the record, "damage to hit points" doesn't always mean a physical wound either.

Again with words like "always".  It's not true. life transfer doesn't have a physical wound.  Certain energy drain spells and/or attacks don't either.

I have always imagined things like life transfer, energy drain, or whatnot as causing physical wounds when they deal hit point damage.  Do you not describe any physical symptoms of the victim?  Victom's skin loosing it's color, victim becoming more sluggish, victim's nose bleeds, or whatever makes sense?

Hit points are not (by the original design) a 'measure' of anything except probability of ending up dead after being subjected to a phenomenon the deadliness of which is rated in hit points.

It's a finer-grained and cumulative/ablative elaboration on the X hits in a round approach of the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement.