As a long time hater of 4e, I think I've just come up with a game concept that it fits fantastically well

As a long time hater of 4e, I think I've just come up with a game concept that it fits fantastically well.

All the people like myself have long compared the game (derisively) to a tabletop mmorpg.

Well, is it just me, or would it actually be perfect for doing a "trapped in an mmo" campaign?

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As someone who has actually run one, I can confirm that it suits the style. It was one of the most fun 4e campaigns I ran. Mind you, my group never genuinely disliked 4e, but the narrative conceit of it being "all in a game" really meshed with the actual gameplay.

>All the people like myself have long compared the game (derisively) to a tabletop mmorpg.

And you're still as wrong now as you were every other time you bring it up.

okay, well if you enjoy the game, have fun. my 2e campaign is just as happy without fighters who somehow run out of physical stunts and heal themselves with the power of thought.

>fighters who somehow run out of physical stunts and heal themselves with the power of thought.

Not even involved in this argument, but thank you for that image. Genuinely made my day.

>hp is actual health
>you don't treat hp as an abstract of fighting resilience

yeah thats one way to do it, but then landing hits doesn't FEEL like anything. "oh you hammered his shield real hard... he looks kind of like he doesn't want to be here" doesn't have the same fun for my group.

plus if its fighting resilience then shouldn't wisdom, will scores, and charisma partially be factored into calculating hp?

hp being actual physical health isnt so silly in systems where it isnt loaded on in heaps. 1d8 strict per level makes each hit you can physically sustain way more important than getting like 15 hp to start and flat amounts of at least 4 per level.

>fighters who somehow run out of physical stunts and heal themselves with the power of thought.

>I have no creativity
>It's the system's fault
>I see nothing wrong with this line of logic.

>hp being actual physical health isnt so silly in systems where it isnt loaded on in heaps.

You actually don't get all that much HP in 4e. It's just that it's frontloaded so you have more health at level 1 than other systems, but gain it slower and have less by the end as a result.

if swinging a swor real hard a certain way lets you do something incredible and different from a normal swing, there is no in universe reason that you shouldnt be able to do the same thing a second time.

the only way to make it make sense is that its some sort of in universe supernatural power, but then we just have wizards with swords, or worse, naruto ninjas.

>everyone complained about the classes being "unbalanced" because LAST edition the designers gave the wizard babies everything they wanted and it made magic users crazy fucked from lv 1
>lthey overcorrect by just making every class play very the same with powers all working the same way even if it makes no sense
>im the one with no creativity

man, you're so generous to have donated so much of your brain to victims of car accidents. don't ever let anyone judge you because you drool on your own shoes man.

>All classes expend resources with the same refresh rates
>Therefor all classes play exactly the same

can you lay out the hp gain rules? I never bothered learning 4e because noone I know had any interest in it- it was either stick with 3.5/pf which they already knew and liked, or move onto entirely new systems.

>if swinging a swor real hard a certain way lets you do something incredible and different from a normal swing, there is no in universe reason that you shouldnt be able to do the same thing a second time.


>I used this sword maneuver that takes some set-up, but hits them from a tricky angle to accomplish this effect. They saw me do it, and they won't fall for the same trick twice, so no point even trying again.

>I jumped 50 feet into the air and smacked him in the face, but that pulled a muscle in my leg. I can run around fine, but I might injure myself if I do it again without giving it a rest, so I won't.

>I used my sword to golf swing a rock at someone, the broken pebble bits getting into their eyes and blinding them. Sadly, that was the only rock that would have worked for this trick in the area, so I can't do that again.

>POCKET SAND, YOU'RE BLIND. And now I'm out of pocket sand.

Apply even a little bit of thought into it and it's not too difficult.

1st level HP is [Fixed Number] + Con Score
Per level gains are [smaller fixed number] + Con Mod.

instead of going insane defending 4e, why don't you, as a 4e player, explain to him the strengths of 4e and any changes he'd have to make to the formula to make it work for what he wants? Surely someone playing 4e, if it's good, would be the answer to them hating on 4e, yes? So surely helping him figure out how to run it for what he wants should be your goal?

You can keep arguing for all I care, but I feel like this thread is just going insanely off the rails of the topic.

you haven't addressed that you can run out of swinging a sword. running out of magic makes sense because in universe the magic system works that way. there is no explicable reason to not be able to do pure martial encounter powers all the time.

See
Alternatively, read *any* 4e book that contains Martial powers. The explanations can be found within.

>pulled a muscle in my leg
>can run around doing all other combat powers just fine

man i know this hobby breads a sedentary lifestyle, but have you ever stood up in your life?

>golf swinging a rock at someone with my sword is a thing i do every encounter

so 4e works great for a comedy anime game. nice to know.

I see it as a great system for a XCOM game.

This is easy and even better after explaining. It is the player power to influence in the narrative of the game. See the power not as a repeatable maneuver, but as a couple of events joining for the breach that led to that.

So does anyone else like the show?

In 4e, HP at level 1 is your CON score(not modifier, the whole score) plus a base amount depending on your class. 15 for Barbarians and Fighters, 10 for Wizards, 12 for Clerics, etc.

Every level after that, you gain an amount based on your class. Clerics gain 5 every level after, Fighters and Barbs get 6 Wizards get 4.

So a level 12 Barbarian with 20 CON would have (15+20)=35+(11x6=)66= 101 HP.
A level 6 Wizard with 10 CON would have 20+(5x4=)20 for 40 HP.

And so on and so forth. Your CON only affects your starting HP, it never gets factored in after that.

the explanations given by the books and the fans of the edition are fucking stupid.

that's interesting, but unless the fixed numbers are very small, I still see that very easily being higher than 3.5 health. Playing a fighter with 20 con in 3.5 I'd end up with 10.5*20=202 health, so based on what you said earlier if the first level hp of a fighter in 4e is 15, that'd make first level hp 35, 35+19*5=125, so the per level hp only has to be 77/19=4.02 so if it's 4 it'll be about the same, if it's five it'll be significantly higher than average, and if it's 6 it'll be ridiculous.

Well yeah,I could do that, but I can already tell he's never read a 4e book, so I don't see him starting now.

Plus he's just baiting and shitposting, so no point in arguing with him further anyways.

binge watching it today. loving it quite a bit. a few too many loli character designs for my taste, but way better than most death game, transported to another world, and trapped in a video game anime.

CON only gets factored into starting hit points. Every level after that is just a fixed number based on your class.

oh okay, other dude said to include con modifiers, that's what made it come out so much higher when I did the math in I guess that makes sense, but I'm not a fan of how... solid everything is. I really do like the randomness, it makes things feel more organic to me, I dunno.

except when 4e came out, my dm got given the core books as a birthday present. not wanting the gift to be a waste, we tried. by god did we try.

game does not flex well to accommodate creative thinking from the players. (remember kids, the skill challenges actively punish you for thinking outside the script.)

the fluff for martial powers doesn't gel at all. ive read those core books cover to cover several times and sunk too many fucking hours into trying to have fun playing it.

for fucks sake all i wanted was to talk about a game concept that i thought it was PERFECT for but there cant be one mention critical of any edition of any game on this board without people reflexively shitting into their own hands to have ammunition for the fight they always hope will happen.

It works well either way.

4e's more frontloaded with HP so that early levels aren't comically lethal, and then fixed HP afterwards so you always get a consistent amount of HP.

Honestly, would be pretty easy to add rolling for HP into 4e by doing it 3.5 style without gaining CON mod per level as well. Like, roll a d10 for Barb/Fighter HP, d8 for Cleric, and d6/d4 for Wizard. I think 4e does it the way it does because rolling a 1 for your HP roll always sucks.

he posted looking for ideas regarding a campaign idea. Why don't you try dicussing that instead of getting in a fucking edition war. There's two options- either you're shitting up a thread someone started to discuss using 4e for a specific campaign idea, or you're biting the fucking bait. So are you stupid or just an asshole?

convert per-day and per-encounter powers into a set cooldown. It'll help model the higher level play of an MMO better and make immersion work better too. It'll take some thought to get those cooldowns right, but I'm willing to bet it'll work better than per encounter for the type of campaign you're looking at.

sure, but rolling a ten is fucking awesome. That's what makes rolling great- sometimes you get bad results, sometimes you get great ones, and when it comes to HP, it'll end up balancing out eventually anyways.

Anyways, I'd say, looking at the math you provided, I do have one problem- this actually ends up making wizards and such who have low con get way more HP than they would otherwise, while stiffing the fighters. That doesn't seem great.

might look at using the level of the abilities to create guidelines for number of rounds cooldown. might also factor in the level of the player, so as a power gets less useful the cooldown reduces a bit.

also, maybe thats the hook of the mmo that got people big into it; no mana resources, just cooldowns.

>he posted looking for ideas regarding a campaign idea.

>as a long-time hater of 4e
>compared the game to a tabletop MMO

No you weren't.

well A), it wasn't me, dipshit, but B)
>Well, is it just me, or would it actually be perfect for doing a "trapped in an mmo" campaign?

maybe get your 4e boner out of your ear for a minute and you'll be able to actual participate in conversation.

except i was just identifying myself as someone who hated the system. not "its objectively shit".

i also even specified that the copmparison came form people like me who didnt like it.

i didnt say "is an mmo ripoff" i said "i and others like me think its a shit mmo".

then people came in flinging shit. why do people devote such energy to being mad and pissed off? like, this is devoting energy to maintaining a state of mind that is physically unhealthy to be in.

I'd be more than a little tempted to add mana in, actually, I'm just not sure what scale you'd want to add it in at. You could add it at an MMO scale, or at an actually usable scale, but either way, I think it's important to have mana because, to be frank, MMO players are kind of in a rut. I don't think they'd jump on a game without mana.

Anyways, are you looking at this deathgame style or more like the image from OP? If the first, remember to remove resurrection items/abilities, if the latter, make them way cheaper and available way earlier.

id probably go with something closer to log horizon. as a gm i think it would force me to be more creative with problems and stakes. also death game mmo just gives me ptsd flashbacks to... that one series. so...

>heal themselves with the power of thought.
As opposed to carrying around a 6-pack of Wand of Cure Light Wounds?

I don't understand why it was so difficult to understand that the healing surge mechanic exists only to limit healing between rests and to use as an out-of-combat way to track damage. Did nobody actually play with GMs where failing Endurance or Athletics tests would just sap you of surges instead of dealing effectively combat damage?

And the MMO comparison for 4e never made any sense either, because it wasn't unique to 4e, it's just everybody being on the vancian spell casting model instead of only the spellcaster master race. If the reason that 4e is an MMO is because it has per-day and per-encounter abilities, you might as well say that 3.5 is an MMO except the martial classes get no abilities.

Was it that different classes had comparable attacks? That's true if you look only at the attacks, but each class is centered around their class feature, which makes any resulting ability used by them quite different.

So, really, I question the entire intent of this endeavor, but it doesn't sound like you're going to be convinced, so just go ahead and do whatever.

Look, man, it was generic as SAO was, you have nothing to get your ptsd panties in a twist about unless you were molested by your cousin. Or your best friend. Or your Dad's yes-man employee.

>I don't understand why it was so difficult to understand that the healing surge mechanic exists only to limit healing between rests and to use as an out-of-combat way to track damage.

To me this sounds like you're arguing FOR the "people somehow trapped in an MMO anime" thing.

look man maybe someone strapped him down and made him watch it, hannibal lecter style.

actually that's a good point. Healing surges don't really work in an MMO context. Anyone have any idea on how to make them suit an MMO?

i dont have a problem with healing surges, really. conceivably theres only so many times you can knit the same muscles back together with magic in a day before you just start falling the fuck apart.

my problem is that fighters can regain hitpoints by getting in a good hit. not "you dont feel the effects of wounds" either; you literally get rid of damage permanently by being in a certain state of mind. and getting into that state of mind is a once per day thing apparently.

i was just joking about it because i really really didnt like the show. i mean, the original author admits its total shit.

PS: funnily enough i WAS molested by a cousin. no big deal. just, what a coincidence.

Then you don't understand damage.

>you don't agree with my definition of damage that isn't in any way supported mechanically and is only given lipservice by the fluff, so therefore you don't understand it

well i went and read the bit on how healing works. just because the system has a retarded deliberately vague as fuck definition of hit points doesnt explain why i can only land that daily power once a day.

also if it represents "will to fight" then congratulations, you champion a system that tells me what my character is feeling after every sword swing. ill pick when my character gives up thanks.

Wounds, hit points, and damage are all heavily mechanical abstractions. 4e has four states of health: Feeling fine (HP/2+1 to max), Bloodied (1 to HP/2), Unconscious (0 to -HP/2), Stone Dead (less than -HP/2).

Since two of those are the character not doing anything, and the other two make very little difference, there's basically only two states: unconscious and conscious. Any amount of damage does not translate into actual physical effects. Any character can hit just as hard at 1 HP as they can at 30 HP, and their defenses don't differ.

The closest thing to "wounds" that you would "feel the effect" of would be save-end effects like being slowed or blind etc.

Hit points in D&D have NEVER EVER EVER IN ANY EDITION translated into physical damage. Why is this such a meme?

Because hit points aren't meat, and that's doubly true in 4e.

But if it makes you feel better, think of it this way. Rather than having a single pool of hit points like in 3.5, a 4e character has a lot of that health wrapped up in healing surges. Say they have 50 health and then another 100 wrapped up in healing surges. If they get clobbered by a giant for 50 damage, they'll get knocked out. However, it is was smaller hits, they have more time to rest and regain their footing between them

The alternative is 3.5, where you just have 150 flat health and the giant can't knock you out in one shot. Over the course of the day you'll take as much damage, but it won't take as much time and stamina to draw on.

The 4e approach makes it so every fight is life threatening, rather than simply being there to wear down the group's massive HP pool. If the enemies can kill the 50 health players in a few rounds, that's dangerous. If the players have 150 health all the time, they won't feel as threatened and won't need to stop and rest.

In many ways, 4e has a more realistic approach in that regard, as you actually need to take a break instead of just taking 30 axes to the face and fighting endlessly.

On that note, if you actually want to do 4e "MMO MODE" then consider expanding the "bloodied" mechanic into different boss phases. Some (most?) of the Solo-type enemies have special things that activate only when they get bloodied, so you can expand that to different levels of HP.

(Some PCs can do this too, but it's very minor.)

if its just an abstraction of "willingness to fight" then why the fuck cant i just give an anime speech and get it all back? if i get super fucking pissed, or yell believe it, my fucking muscles and bones dont snap back into position.

also then surely someone should be able to deal damage by just shit talking really hard. i mean, it stole that guys resolve and demoralizing him.

also note that being made magically fatigued doesn't drain hit points from you. being cursed to be unlucky doesn't take hit points either.

so this abstraction of luck, ability to reduce a blow into a minor wound, and resolve to fight is completely unaffected by things that fuck with your ability to turn aside blows, destroy your resolve to fight, and make you unlucky.

>why the fuck cant i just give an anime speech and get it all back?
Bards and Warlords do exactly that, as does any character who uses their second wind.

Because D&D is pure skub.

>then why the fuck cant i just give an anime speech and get it all back?
That's what Warlords do.
>someone should be able to deal damage by just shit talking really hard.
And that's what Bards do.

but they can run out. they can run out of inspiring talking. you can run out of doing yoga trances and remembering who you fight for.

YOU CAN RUN OUT OF A MENTAL STATE.

Trying to will your way through pain/fatigue is only going to work for so long.

so then why does magical healing use healing surges too? If healing surges existed as healing non-clerics could do, that'd be one thing, but why is "I HIT THAT DUDE! WOO!" mechanically identical to "By the power of god, I am healed!"

dude I don't even know 4e and I knew bards and warlords healed and dealt damage through raising and lowering morale. what were you thinking?

>YOU CAN RUN OUT OF A MENTAL STATE.
You've very clearly never worked in retail, friend.

It's not - Clerics actually have several surgeless heals. That's one of their gimmicks as a leader.

Inspiring Word is twice per encounter. 4 times if they take the right feats. And that ignores all the other ways a warlord has to Rally someone.

They can keep up the inspiration all day, but at a certain point in a fight or a day the same speech or pep talk isn't going to ring as true.

i laughed.

also also, sure, HP isn't exclusively meatpoints, but if you hit half health, you're bloodied, but at low levels it'd be very easy to just burn two determination surges and be full healed, meaning that despite the fact that by mechanical definition you're injured, you just reached full health... and are no longer injured?

oh okay, that's neat.

I still don't like abstracting health away from being your actual physical health like that, but atleast it's self-consistent.

>if its just an abstraction of "willingness to fight"
No, it's a measure of "are you conscious or not." Where are you getting "willingness to fight" from? I didn't write that.

>my fucking muscles and bones dont snap back into position
At what point do they snap out of position? If a character's leg was broken I would probably give them the "slowed (until next extended rest)" condition or even "immobilized." Broken arm would be something like "cannot hold anything in arm (until next extended rest)" or whatever.

>being made magically fatigued
>being cursed to be unlucky
I'm confused as to what exactly you're talking about. I'm sure there's some sort of ability that can be magical that can be fluffed to steal luck or to make you fatigued.

If you're talking about fatigued, the Sleep spell would make someone Unconscious (Save Ends) with "Unconscious" imposing a ton of penalties like Helpless. So... being asleep in combat does make you easier to hit?

Is it really that hard to imagine that after being beaten to near-unconsciousness four times in a day someone might be at a loss for inspiring words?

>so then why does magical healing use healing surges too?

The same reason potions do. They let you draw on those natural reserves sooner and more easily The benefit is that the magic will enhance it and make it more efficient. That is, of course, ignoring all the smaller heals that don't use surges.

so it still comes down to a game system telling me when i give up. no matter my story, no matter whats on the line, the game tells me when i give up.

this also doesn't explain why only certain classes can give speeches that mean anything to anyone.

...

>I still don't like abstracting health away from being your actual physical health like that,
Well why the fuck are you playing D&D then? HP has always been a major abstraction.

That's why it's a roleplaying game? Some games tell you "your character is insane" or "your character simply cannot deal with the horrors they just witnessed."

Classes represent significant training. If you want to be able to give rousing speeches, spend a feat to multiclass to Warlord or Bard or something. It's that easy!

>I still don't like abstracting health away from being your actual physical health like that
One of the biggest reasons I don't like playing D&D anymore. The other reason is the loads of rules boy howdy.

i got he willingness to fight, ability to turn aside blows, and luck from the definition of healing from the 4e phb.

if its "are you conscious or not" then congratulations you agree with me that hp represents physical wellness. so we're back to fighters knitting cuts back together and refilling on blood through sheer determination.

>being beaten near unconscious 4 times in a day

which also means you've come back from the brink 4 times. at that point, you're there for a reason. at that point you've already gone through worse. at that point id be closer to thinking i was fucking invincible.

>I still don't like abstracting health away from being your actual physical health like that
D&D health has always been like that.

The thing is, in say 3.5, that hit points were supposed to be abstract, adaptable, and more then just meat points to explain how your 4 foot Dwarven Fighter took a hit from something the size of a small mountain and survived, or how you survived a Fireball that flash-melts gold.

The problem was all types of healing were explicitly magical wound-sealing healing. So hit points were always really loosely defined, but healing was specifically one thing, so people started assuming hit points were also that one thing.

4e's just the first time both sides of health(damage and healing) were equally loose.

>It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).
All 3E and 4E did was wrap morale into it on top of that because there were no longer rules for morale checks.

No, that's the part where HP as meat comes in. You've gotten through all the reserves you can muster at the moment, the warlord is out of inspiring things to say, you're all worn down and on the back foot. This is the point where things get dark and the heroes lose, because they were either fighting something far too strong, or they weren't able to overcome their foes.

Again, HP isn't entirely meat, it it also isn't entirely will. Getting hit with an axe doesn't lop off an arm, but it also doesn't just hurt your feelings.

Why is it so strange for the game to determine how much raw willpower you have? Or how long you can fight without getting totally exhausted?

agreed. 2e is better becasuse it has morale rules if you need them, and people cant stand around all day taking axe blows to the face without dying.

Thanks for explaining that, I finally understand why this is such a difficult concept for some people.

>f i get super fucking pissed, or yell believe it, my fucking muscles and bones dont snap back into position.

The problem is that you're taking an abstract, intentionally loosely defined system and trying to force it to be one specific thing.

Of course if you refuse to define a hit as anything less than getting your neck sliced open with blood comically spraying everywhere, you're going to have trouble when the rest of the abstractness of the system doesn't mesh well with it.

yes, it's an abstraction, but a different kind of abstraction.

That'd be like someone saying "I don't like advantage in 5e, it feels like too much of an artificial abstraction" and you saying "well then why do you play TTRPGs, rolling dice is an abstraction"

Something can be an abstraction that adds to the game, instead of an abstraction that takes away from it.

so how would you go about adding mana? if its an actual resource the player have to manage then we have to have ways to get it back, and create costs for everything with 30 different levels of powers.

fireballs do not flash-melt gold. Where the fuck did you get that from? They are not like 1500 degrees Celsius, what the fuck man.

also, I don't know if you've actually read any western fantasy, the stuff D&D is based on, but it's fucking FULL of dudes surviving shit they reasonably shouldn't. IT happens all the time, because these people have superhuman constitution. Just because one part of fluff once mentions in passing that HP might not be just health, doesn't mean everyone has to play it that way, and the people who dislike 4e because they dislike being FORCED to play it that way are entirely justified in that dislike. Stop getting upset that other people like things you don't.

yeah that's the issue. It feels like something that you need, but it'd take a ton of work. There might be a way to create a generic cost algorithm based on the same attributes you use for determining cooldowns, but that would also mean any ability with the same cooldown would probably have the same cost and... well, that gets frustrating. It'd be nice to have, but might not be worth the effort.

>dislike 4e because they dislike being FORCED to play it
All the arguments I've ever heard over the last eight years about why 4e is so bad come from people who haven't played it because they very obviously don't have even a working grasp of the game mechanics. Nobody's forcing anybody, chill down.

>fireballs do not flash-melt gold. Where the fuck did you get that from?

d20srd.org/srd/spells/fireball.htm
>The fireball sets fire to combustibles and damages objects in the area. It can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze.
>melt metals
>such as...gold

>Where the fuck did you get that from?

Old editions, where fireball specifically said it would flash melt gold, meaning lobbing it blindly into a room might fuse together that pile of gold coins into a really heavy and hard to move lump.

holy shit thats crazy. someone needs to put a stop to wizards. thats the casters, not the company. i mean them too...

wow, how bad at understanding words are you? jesus christ. I said "they disilike being forced to play it that way" meaning people don't like being forced to play HP as more luck and attitude than physical health, and that's why they don't like it. Christ you're dense.

Holy shit actually? I've never bothered reading the description on fireball I guess, but... damn, that's crazy.

Though it kinda supports the "unkillable supermen" side more than the "generic luck" side, because you wouldn't be able to be in the same hundred foot sphere as a fireball and not end up getting badly singed, and being within twenty feet would flash fry you. How exactly does luck and a good attitude help you survive that?

No?

1st level HP = [fixed number] + Con Score
Per level after 1st = [smaller fixed number]

Constitution doesn't change your HP gained per-level, but increasing your con score does still increase your total HP because it changes the 1st level value. That said, your con mod does increase your number of healing surges, and that's important

Sorry, I knew I confused where the con mod was involved after I hit post.

As someone who's tried both ways, I'd generally say the negative feeling of rolling a 1 is greater than the positive feeling of rolling a 10

Because D&D has never been realistic. This is why talking about the laws of physics in them is dumb.

depends on the player and room, but at that point I'm wondering why you're interested in rolling dice at all? I mean, surely the "negative feeling" of rolling a crit fail is worse than the "positive feeling" of rolling a crit success?

My side was never about realism though, it's about what feels better. I don't want 90% of my attacks to not do anything except make the enemy more discouraged, and I don't want my damage to be a bruised ego. If you're taking realism entirely off the table, it doesn't change my stance, and takes away the only reason that the moral/luck side of things was implemented in the first place.

>I don't want 90% of my attacks to not do anything except make the enemy more discouraged, and I don't want my damage to be a bruised ego.

I think you're taking the wrong thing from this argument.

It was never "hit points is always this way, not always that way."

It's "hit points are abstract and are whatever they need to be to make sense at the time."

Flavoring all hit point damage as severed limbs and anime-style fountain blood sprays is just as silly as every sword swing and spell cast just hurting people's feelings and egos.

No, I only really feel that way when rolling for stats or HP, you know, when a single dice roll decides what my character's going to look like (mechanically) for the rest of the game.

Skill checks, attack and damage rolls, all the little rolls you make during a game, they're fine

>I don't want 90% of my attacks to not do anything except make the enemy more discouraged

Except the majority of enemies don't have healing surges like players do. Most have one, at best, bit generally the NPCs are going down in actual sword slashes,
because they aren't the heroes.

>and I don't want my damage to be a bruised ego

It's a combination of factors, but if you really want your HP to be meat and nothing else, you can start with 10 HP and never increase. How else do you live through a direct hit from a longsword if not barely?

>4e works great for a comedy anime game

Isn't that what this thread is about?

Monsters don't heal easily in 4e, it's an anti-frustration measure, so the general suggestion of how to fluff HP during combat is that monsters get nicked and cut by glancing blows for most attacks, and then actually get wounded when they become "bloodied"

The same is somewhat true for player characters, except a player character can forcibly ignore those wounds via nonmagical healing. They'll still need to heal up over the course of the day and following night (recovering healing surges), but they can fight as if they were fully healthy

>How else do you live through a direct hit from a longsword if not barely?

By being a fucking hero?

sort of

like I've said several time, by being super-human. Just like litterally everything else in the game. How hard is that concept to understand?

and that explanation is bullshit and I don't like it. Go cut yourself on a knife and come back to me when it's fully healed. Now imagine a four inch wide one inch deep cut on your thigh. That's not closing up any time soon... unless you have magic. Even a minor wound incurred in combat will take a long time to heal.

And that's what 4e is specifically designed to model. Being a fucking hero, rather than a slab of meat.

a fucking hero takes a sword slash and says may I have another. He doesn't go "nya nya you missed" because he used his special technique to make him feel good and undid all the damage because he's just so EXCITED.