From: justinf@cco.caltech.edu (Justin Fang)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Healing
Followup-To: rec.games.frp.dnd
Date: 9 Jan 1993 12:47:02 GMT
Organization: none whatsoever
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: macintosh19.cco.caltech.edu

In article <1993Jan8.155910.20732@ncsu.edu>, malamb@eos.ncsu.edu (MARCUS
ALAN LAMB) wrote: 
> >If you look at the PHBs explanation of why a sword blow that kills a low
> >level character just annoys a high level (8 hitpoints off of 6 is damn
> >annoying, 8 from 100 is just mildly annoying). The explanation being that a
> >higher level character doesn't get run through like a low level, they step
> >aside at the last minute and it nicks them.
> >
> >Wouldn't it make sense that a high level character would heal his nicked ribs
> >faster than a low level would heal his sucking chest wound?
> 
> Hit points are not a measure of how a tough a character is.  They are a
> measure of the character's ability to keep from being damaged.  Imagine
> two fighters: one with 10 hp and one with 100 hp.  A 10 point damage
> sword attack would kill the low-level fighter but not the high-level
> fighter.  The low-level fighter did not have the battle experience to
> escape the blow unharmed, but the high-level fighter did and could do so
> 9 more times before dying.  This is the difference between the defensive
> fighting skills of the two characters.  If you let the high-level
> fighter heal faster than the low-level fighter, then you give him more
> skill than he deserves.  Imagine the fighter enters battle and escapes 3
> death blows for 30 points of damage.  That night he heals up.  The next
> day his skill is back to maximum and he can escape 99 hp worth of
> damage.  This makes him too powerful.  What if he only healed up 3
> points of damage?  The next day he could only escape from 72 points
> before getting the death blow.  This increases an over-worked or
> battle-starved fighter's chances of dying.  An experienced fighter who
> averages one battle per month would have more healing time (game terms)
> and would be less likely to get killed in battle (real terms).

But what about this counterexample? Your 100hp fighter takes 60 hp damage.
He'll have a bunch of nicks, woulds, and scrapes that would have been fatal
had he been less skilled at dodging. Then you have a 10hp fighter who's
taken 9 hp damage and is severly wounded. According to the PHB, PC's heal
3hp per day of complete rest. Thus the low level fighter will be back up in
3 days, while the high level one, who has more hp and is at a higher % of
his total hp, has to wait 20! (assuming no magic healing)

Wouldn't a sliding scale in this case make more sense? You could consider
your hp at 1st level to be "real" hp, i.e. physical capacity to take
wounds. All the rest represents the "ability to keep from being damaged."
As high level characters took damage, they would accumalate scrapes, etc
from near misses, get fatigued and be less able to dodge, etc. Thus, for
2nd lv+ characters, you could, say, let wounds up to 50% of total heal at
maybe 4x normal, wounds from 50% down to "base" (1st lv) hp heal at 2x, and
wounds beyond that heal at normal. Note that these rates would not apply to
magical healing. Also, you'd probably heal at the slowest rate first. As an
example, our wounded 100 hp fighter spends two days healing at double rate
to put him back up to 52, then 4 days at quadruple to put him up to 100.
Although the high level fighter doesn't get back up to full as fast as the
low level one, he no longer has to wait 20 days if he has no magic healing.
This system also means that magical healing would cure your most serious
wounds first, possibly allowing you to recover the rest at a higher rate,
which seems logical.

Justin Fang (justinf@cco.caltech.edu)

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