Can a warlord "heal" an unconscious character

[Kishin]

I've got purple flavor, if that'll work better.

They don't sell the purple Kool-Aid around here anymore.

This is disappointing, as it played a critical role as The Beverage of My Childhood.

 

[DracoSuave]

More importantly, anyone making an argument about 'realism' who has no experience or evidence regarding the medical effects of adrenaline upon the human body in times of combat is quite frankly, talking out of their ass.

You're playing superheroes, and shrugging off mortal wounds is superheroic.

If it can happen at Vimy Ridge, or at Normandy, it can god damn well happen in a fantasy heroic rpg.

 

[Nifft]

They don't sell the purple Kool-Aid around here anymore.

If they sell red and blue, could you mix them?

- - -

Anyway, IMHO "non-magical" healing makes exactly as much sense as hit points did in the first place, so there's no net loss of realism in 4e: things aren't very realistic at all, but they weren't before, so it's okay.

Cheers, -- N

 

[DracoSuave]

I don't WANT Grape Juice I want Grape DRINK!

 

[Regicide]

Think of it like boxing folks.. sometimes a fighter is 'knocked out' temporarily and laying on the canvas but the sound of the referee counting to eight or his corner yelling is enough for him to regain his focus, get up, and keep fighting.

Boxers aren't making death saves. When they are, it takes medics to get them back up, and the match is stopped because they probably won't be able to fight again for an extended amount of time, assuming they live, which, even with a trained team of medics, isn't certain.

A warlord snapping someone out of a moral break, sure, thats actually what commanders do, that would have been nice if they'd done that. Instantly snapping them out of a staggered or stunned position like your boxer is implausible but hey, this is fantasy, sure, go with it. But bringing someone back from the brink of death with some encouraging words? I think I've seen Monty Python sketches like that, i.e. it's silly.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Boxers aren't making death saves. When they are, it takes medics to get them back up, and the match is stopped because they probably won't be able to fight again for an extended amount of time, assuming they live, which, even with a trained team of medics, isn't certain.

Death saves aren't what you think they are. They are a narrative device, not a simulation one. It isn't saying "You are dying slowly and each one of these rolls you fail causes your bodies condition to get worse", it is instead saying "You are down on the ground. You might be hurt really badly and about to die or you might simply be knocked out for a couple of seconds. It is a dramatic moment in the story where the 'audience' doesn't know one way or another. From the angle the camera showed, you were hit really hard...maybe your neck is broken. There was certainly a loud noise when you were hit and you fell pretty hard. But then again, you are really tough and you've been through worse... Everyone sits around and watches in anticipation as we use some die rolls to figure out what happened to you."

Death saves are simply a name given to that narrativistic device. The moment of tension in the story where you don't know if the hero is dead or alive. In some stories, the medics rush in and find your neck snapped and you are dead. In other stories, you get back up by yourself after a tense moment or two and end up winning the fight.

To be perfectly clear about this: When you are making death saves, you are NOT dying. You may not even be hurt in any way.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Ultimately.

You can either go out of your way and find a way to make it work, or you can go out of your way to make it not work. The realism of the system has much more to the mindset people bring into it, and the perspective they take on it, than the system itself.

It is only a problem if you don't want to adjust your view to where it doesn't have to be a problem. If you want it to be a problem, you can find things to nitpick at and prove how horrible 4e is compared to 3e/3.5 that seemed to, as a design goal, cover every possible situation and scenario with a "this is what happens" explanation as to be a preemptive attempt to quiet nitpickers and rules lawyers.

4e has a more laissez faire attitude and doesn't tell you why it works, it lets you come up with your own explanations/flavor for how most of it works. If the flavor you choose to apply doesn't work in that situation, it's easier to blame the system than try to change it to something that does.

 

[Obryn]

Boxers aren't making death saves. When they are, it takes medics to get them back up, and the match is stopped because they probably won't be able to fight again for an extended amount of time, assuming they live, which, even with a trained team of medics, isn't certain.

...

But bringing someone back from the brink of death with some encouraging words? I think I've seen Monty Python sketches like that, i.e. it's silly.

Since you're repeating your arguments, I'll repeat mine.

Once again, you're asserting a very strict relationship between the mechanics and the narrative that just isn't there in 4e.

...

There's not a 1:1 correspondence of mechanics:narrative in 4e. This was, however, an apparent design goal of 3e.

I can understand if you don't like this separation of mechanics and narrative, but you're arguing the same points over and over again, and I can't believe you don't understand this crucial difference between 3e and 4e yet. The kind of arguments you're making are not persuasive if you're treating 4e as 4e; they're only sensible if you're looking at the 4e mechanics through the lens of 3e's assumptions.

-O

 

[Regicide]

Death saves aren't what you think they are. They are a narrative device, not a simulation one.

If it was narrative, there wouldn't be dice involved. There are RPGs intended to be narrative, 4E isn't one of them. It is a very rules heavy simulationist system. What it simulates though is a cartoon, not your typical idea of a fantasy world.

To be perfectly clear about this: When you are making death saves, you are NOT dying. You may not even be hurt in any way.

You should read pg 295 of the players handook entitled "death and dying" because that is exactly what the player's handbook says it is. "When your hit points drop to 0 or fewer, you fall unconcious and are dying." I can't be any more clear than that. Anything else people are bringing into this is their imagination and not 4E.

 

[Hypersmurf]

You should read pg 295 of the players handook entitled "death and dying" because that is exactly what the player's handbook says it is. "When your hit points drop to 0 or fewer, you fall unconcious and are dying." I can't be any more clear than that. Anything else people are bringing into this is their imagination and not 4E.

The PHB line is referencing the mechanical conditions, 'unconscious' and 'dying'.

Similar to 3.5, where Swarms could inflict the 'nauseated' condition - defined as 'experiencing stomach distress'... did we assume that the presence of a bunch of bees in your square made you feel queasy, or did we assume that the presence of a bunch of bees in your square restricted you to a move action, which was mechanically represented by the 'nauseated' condition despite no gastrointestinal issues being involved?

Majoru Oakheart's point is that - just as the 'nauseated' condition didn't necessarily mean you were nauseated in 3.5 - the 'unconscious' condition doesn't have to mean someone is unconscious (plenty of people have described flavouring someone with the 'unconscious' condition as lying on the floor, bewildered from the last blow, but not actually comatose, for example), and the 'dying' condition might not actually be leading to fatality.

Your hit points fall to zero, and you acquire the 'dying' condition. If you fail three death saves, you die, which means you were dying while you were 'dying'. If you roll your 20, you weren't dying while you were 'dying'.

-Hyp.