I’ve always looked at Healing and Health in video games as abstractions.

Let’s look at Dungeons and Dragons. One of the first game systems to use hit points (its not the first, but it was the most prolific). If you have a decently leveled Fighter with 60hp that takes 30 damage. He has 30hp left. Is he half dead? No. He’s at full fighting capacity all the way from 60hp to 1hp.

At 0hp he is downed. At -1hp to -9hp he is dying. At -10hp he is dead.

A blow to that fighter that does 30 damage is a strong blow but one he can shrug off. He’s not even seriously injured. No broken bones, no fractures, no serious bleeding, no concussion, no hindering lacerations, just a few non-hindering contusions, scraps, or minor cuts.

If you had a slightly lower level Ranger at 40hp take that same 30 damage hit. He is likewise still on their feet and fighting trim. It hurt more. But it didn’t injure that ranger anymore than the above fighter.

What about a Magic-User with 25hp? 30 damage to them would not only knock them down, but seriously injure them enough to threaten their life and the injury caused them to slowly bleed out. But ironically, if they are patched up with a cure potion or spell to get them to 0hp they are no longer in danger of dying and are merely winded enough not to be able to take any meaningful actions until they have time to rest. If they go to 1hp they are fighting trim like a 60hp max hp fighter.

Well that covers health, but what about healing? If a 60hp Fighter loses 30hp and is in no danger of injury or death until they lose another 30hp, what does healing actually do?

Good question. If there is no difference between a 60hp Fighter at max health, and one at half health down to 30hp in injury and status apart from minor cuts, scraps, and contusions to show for it. What is the healing actually doing?

Well its never really been stated exactly what that is, but over the decades its sort of been described as an innate ‘toughness’ and ‘resolve’ of the individual. So in the example of the 60hp fighter taking a 30 damage hit doesn’t take an injury, but instead it takes a tole on the fighter’s ability to withstand an injury. Its an abstraction.

Think of an action movie where the hero and the villain are trading blows. They don’t seem to slow down at first. But over the fight they do. And eventually you see the blow that ends the fight and there is an injury or death that comes from it. Its effectively similar.

We’re playing a fantasy (and I don’t mean the fantasy genre here) where we play heroes and villains and we have these fights. Realistic fighting would entail us taking debilitating and life threatening injuries from any blow, and fighting things such as giants and monsters would be near impossible for our human characters.

So when we heal, our resolve is restored. These potions and these bandages aren’t healing life or limb threatening injuries. They’re making our characters feel good enough or restoring their energy a bit (kinda like a 5-hour energy or coffee), enough to give them the grit to keep going. Healing wraps sooth and make those little cuts and scrapes feel a bit better or numb the pain of them to make focusing on combat and adventuring easier. In a lore sense our characters will eventually have to rest up and sleep some of the more nastier effects of exhaustion off. This is obviously also handled abstractly since looking at a sleeping character is boring.

But at the end of the day, healing potion and healing wraps works in our heads from a player perspective of “oh yeah, I do this, and my character feels better.” Its just immersive enough to make sense, and not too far into fantasy that we’re like… wait… wut?

Other games have mushrooms, orbs, or hearts to handle healing damage in a gamey gimmicky fashion that works for them because immersion isn’t nearly as important. But for a game like Conan. We have to use lore, thematics, immersion, as well as fun gameplay to handle most of the mechanics.

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