Extra Iron in the System
As a Dungeon Master I tend to describe hit point loss as injuries rather than near misses or parries. In a recent D&D session, a mook NPC got dropped by an arrow. Full health to dead in a single shot. So there was an arrow sticking out from between the poor fool’s shoulder-blades. They were seconds from death, if not outright dead as most NPCs are when they reach 0. Then the healer rushed up and cast a cure wounds, bringing the fallen soldier back to life. I described the wound closing, slowly pushing the arrow out as the injury healed. But there was the question about what would happen if the arrow had gone straight through, or if it could have healed around the arrow. Which is a reasonable question. Magical healing should seal all kinds of foreign bodies into the skin: dirt, cloth, metal shards, bone fragments, etc. Like a tree growing around chain link fence.
Well, I’ve been playing since the 1st edition, and one major issue has always been about how healing works, especially if you evaluate things like blood loss in terms of HP instead of CON.
Also, it is considered normal to administer healing to a passed out PC via potions… but we spent many sessions arguing on wether an unconscious person can be cured trough something that must be ingested, or rather get killed by it because, you know, drowning…..