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[Sowelu]

Yeah, I like either White Wolf's / Shadowrun's systems (everyone has seven damage boxes, and when you get hit with a stun/lethal weapon you fill them up in different ways; being deep into your damage track gives you penalties, and some big monsters or little kids have more or less boxes), or Deadlands' system (Your limbs have five wound points.  You don't want to get up to five.  When you take damage, you divide it by your size attribute and round down to see how many wounds you take).  And of course in all of those systems, getting heavily beaten up means you're going to be hurting for a very, very long time, like "better put a cast on that leg".  Which makes it very good that they all have supernatural healing powers, but very bad if you're an average joe civilian.

[Earthquake Damage]

How come higher level people need to spend more time/more healing spells to get to fighting shape?

An idea I once saw and rather like (though IIRC the implementation was poor) is to differentiate hit points from body points.  BP represent physical condition and don't increase much, if at all, with level.  They are slow to recover and you suffer penalties when wounded.  HP represent skill/luck/whatever.  They recover quickly and are used for most things.  The hard part is finding a relatively quick-and-painless way of managing both in a quasi-realistic manner (which is the point, right?), i.e. determining how much damage applies to which one and when.  Done well, it resolves all sorts of problems (e.g. a random peasant is restored to full health from near death with Cure Light Wounds whereas the same spell barely mends a scratch for a level 10 barbarian).  Done poorly, it merely adds complexity.

[Sergius]

That's not so uncommon. I think some D20 modern games used that (health / vitality), and that dreadful system Rifts uses hit points ("true" health) and structural damage whatever (cinematic health). In the latter at least, HP does go up with levels so whatever. Generally what they do is let you take damage on the "quick" hit points first, and on the "slow healing" points only after the first run out.

It makes more sense to have the "true" health fixed to some point, or equal to a health attribute that can only be slightly larger/smaller in different characters.

I'm more a fan of wound tracks tho.

[Heron TSG]

There is some reasoning for a variation in character hit points. Who'se going to handle a broadsword to the (armored, even) torso better? The huge muscly orc, or the skin-and-bones elf? The muscles (and fat) help spread the impact of the weapon more, and oftentimes larger people have thicker bones that are less prone to breaking. For extreme cases, such as gigantic dragons, it's necessary to raise their hit points because the scale works for human weapons. A broadsword is definitely not doing as much damage to a dragon as it does to a human, and thus the percentages work out.

[Sergius]

Found the AD&D page:

http://kuoi.com/~kamikaze/RPG/wrong_adnd.php#abstract_hit_points2

[Neonivek]

"How come higher level people need to spend more time/more healing spells to get to fighting shape?"

You can ALSO explain this away by saying that people at high levels are just so resiliant that in essence they are resisting the healing (or rather that healing is less potent because of how tough they became). In a similar way that putting up a wooden patch would be much more effective on a Gokart then it would a tank.

A long time ago I played a game, that was extremely broken, where exactly that happened. You could get magic resistance but healing worked against magic resistance, so someone nearly immune to magic is nearly immune to healing.

[Sergius]

"How come higher level people need to spend more time/more healing spells to get to fighting shape?"

You can ALSO explain this away by saying that people at high levels are just so resiliant that in essence they are resisting the healing (or rather that healing is less potent because of how tough they became). In a similar way that putting up a wooden patch would be much more effective on a Gokart then it would a tank.

A long time ago I played a game, that was extremely broken, where exactly that happened. You could get magic resistance but healing worked against magic resistance, so someone nearly immune to magic is nearly immune to healing.

Yes, but that ALSO implies that you are actually getting physically more resistent to wounds the higher level you are: your skin turns tougher, your flesh meatier. Maybe you just have more skin area to slash? Does a higher level cow give more meat than a lower level one?

THAT is exactly what RPG designers are trying to deny: that hit points mean just how many deadly stabs to the gut, heart and brain you can endure before it fazes you. They'll just say "well, you just get hurt less because you're more skilled" or whatever.

[Darvi]

Does a higher level cow give more meat than a lower level one?

Dunno, never made it to the cow level.

[Heron TSG]

Does a higher level cow give more meat than a lower level one?

Dunno, never made it to the cow level.

You've got it all wrong. There is no cow level.

[Darvi]

Does a higher level cow give more meat than a lower level one?

Dunno, never made it to the cow level.

You've got it all wrong. There is no cow level.

Exactly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unless you've played Diablo2, that is. Which I haven't that much.

Would make an awesome idea for a campaign though.

[Cthulhu]

"How come higher level people need to spend more time/more healing spells to get to fighting shape?"

You can ALSO explain this away by saying that people at high levels are just so resiliant that in essence they are resisting the healing (or rather that healing is less potent because of how tough they became). In a similar way that putting up a wooden patch would be much more effective on a Gokart then it would a tank.

A long time ago I played a game, that was extremely broken, where exactly that happened. You could get magic resistance but healing worked against magic resistance, so someone nearly immune to magic is nearly immune to healing.

Yes, but that ALSO implies that you are actually getting physically more resistent to wounds the higher level you are: your skin turns tougher, your flesh meatier. Maybe you just have more skin area to slash? Does a higher level cow give more meat than a lower level one?

THAT is exactly what RPG designers are trying to deny: that hit points mean just how many deadly stabs to the gut, heart and brain you can endure before it fazes you. They'll just say "well, you just get hurt less because you're more skilled" or whatever.

Well, at least in the newer editions of D&D, the PCs are considered superhuman.  They're the Gilgameshes and the Herculeses of the campaign setting.  They're touched by the gods, blows that would kill a normal man just wound them.

That's one of the problems with mages  in 3.5e.  Characters are so survivable that the old drawback to a wizard's power (He takes a long time to get there and probably won't live long enough) isn't a serious issue anymore.

[Sensei]

I remember somewhere in the 3.5 book, regarding what hitpoints were, it said something along the lines of "Villages seeing a high-level paladin survive a 40 hit-point fireball and keep fighting would likely assume that this is from some divine protection."

Also, that old question Sergius posted is pretty much answered by things like touch AC. I've always assumed this: If an attack roll is less than the touch AC of a target, it misses entirely. If it is greater than the touch AC but less than the total AC, then the blow glances or is otherwise mitigated (you could also use similar logic to say whether armor or natural armor or magic armor stopped the blow).

[Grakelin]

My problem right now is that I feel that the improvements that 4e made will be thrown away once the next edition comes out (Which will try to compete with pathfinder)

Which is a shame because some of them, such as adding half your level to skills or giving everyone moves or giving mages at will spells that do things, would make my experiences a lot smoother.

I fully expect Version 5 to be a cruddy "Lets compete with Pathfinder" return to 3.5 junk.

I want to backpedal a bit and say that Pathfinder and 4e are already competing. There seems to be this belief that 4e is, or is going to be, a commercial failure because of Pathfinder, when this isn't really the case.