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I've had PCs, in character, yell at NPCs for allowing wounded to suffer. I've basically stopped including hospitals (3e game) as background fluff because they make no sense if there are even a handful of low-level clerics hanging around, and most towns have them. (In small towns, a first level cleric with a decent wisdom gets 3 cure lights a day; that's a lot of healing for a town of 100 or so.)
I'm not sure how I want to handle NPC healing; I am tempted to rule that "serious injuries" cannot be healed by spending surges, and it's an artifact of the game that PCs (and NPCs fighting with them) never have "serious injuries". It's the simplest solution. If anyone wants to magically heal "serious injuries", that's a ritual.
This seperation of PC's from NPC's is not wholly new, anyone who spent time with the world building guidelines in the 3.5e DMG knows that a town of 100 did not have a cleric, and probably did not have an adept.
Even *large* towns were lucky to have a very low level cleric.
In short, I don't think there has ever been enough 'civlian' healing to go around in D&D.
Not that this was the point of the thread. The point is, we are all in this game to have run, and different people define that differently. For most of us, it is not fun to suck. So, for most of us, not spending a lot of time hanging back while others play, because we have a 'wound' or are 'crippled' is not fun. Wizards has appealed to the largest common denominator and made that part of the system. As a bonus, you can now have more narrative control over the game.
If you do not like it, then change it. No law exists preventing you from houseruling that which you do not enjoy.
(Everyone, Heroes, Leaders, Whoever) have access to a healing ritual that requires 6 hours of rest to complete. Vital injuries become less pressing, bones begin to mend, and gives a feeling of well being that leads to heightened morale.
Possibility 1: Most of the "household remedies," like to make one up, 3 cloves of garlic crushed with goats milk, actually work, albeit slowly.
Possibility 2: "Doctors" exist that specialize in these rituals. Each "procedure" from modern times is instead a magical ritual, which probably works more reliably and better, depending on the type of world you are creating.
Possibility 3: Sleeping is just more effective in this alternate world, cells divide faster, perhaps feeding off the natural "mana" or whatever in the world.
Possibility 4: Unlimited wand of cure light wounds, only usable during an extended rest. The magic is too delicate and too time consuming to even be thought about usage in combat or during only a short rest. The wand doesn't use the energy from magic, but instead directs the energy stored in your body from food.
Perhaps healing increases your appetite greatly, as new cells must be created quickly and your body nourished to deal with the healing spells.
Also, Jeff Wilder, respectufully if you are still checking this thread, it seems that you do not want it to make sense in your head. Honestly, all of those possibilities and everything in this thread makes perfect sense to me, and doesn't require me to turn off anything in my brain. I certainly agree that if you say "your character is stabbed 7 times and is barely hanging on to life, 6 hours later, you're perfectly fine with no aid at all," sense cannot be made. But that's not the spirit of the game or the rules at all. That's why I say that perhaps you do not want to like the game.
It might be like, I don't know, playing Spirit of the Century (1920's pulp) and complaining about a gorilla piloting a WW1 style plane because it's unrealistic. It's just not in the spirit of the game.
I don't know if this has come up before, but I've considered modeling "serious injuries" as a disease by 4e rules, one with a DC high enough that it's unlikely a common person would recover quickly without aid.
Yeah, that implies that "serious injury" isn't something a PC risks when they get hit by a sword, but I think that's already covered by the HP abstraction.
Great idea for a house rule. Perhaps healing would give a bonus to the condition change roll, so that serious injuries can be healed but not instantly. I would probably reserve this for critical hits that roll high damage and bloody the character or put them under 0hp.
If you turned "reading threads about HPs" into a drinking game, you could do some serious damage.
[EDIT] I'm not sure how that damage would be expressed, but I'd guess it would be HPs.
heh I will bite...Lets see what word, phrase or action induces a drink response... somebody bringing up previous versions? there favorite house rule? wrestling? Die Hard? mentioning the disease rules? the word Healing Surge? ouch.
Also, Jeff Wilder, respectufully if you are still checking this thread, it seems that you do not want it to make sense in your head.
Respectfully, please don't speculate on my motives, especially given your lack of knowledge of my situation. As it happens, I'm in a 4E game because I do want to give the game a fair shake. (And it's not for lack of 3.5 games, as I know literally nobody who has converted locally. Actually, that's not quite true. I think our 4E DM doesn't run any 3E games.)
4E's healing dichotomy -- either you heal fully (as far as functionality is concerned) in six hours, or you were never really wounded at all -- isn't a matter of opinion, but rather a matter of fact. That some people are okay with one or the other of those choices is great; but that some people don't like either choice doesn't change the fact that they're all that's available, barring house rules.
__________________ Jeff Wilder, San Francisco Bay Area If your sig is longer than your posts, your sig is too
long. Nobody reads it, they just get annoyed by it. And if you bore me, you lose your soul to me. - Belly
Respectfully, please don't speculate on my motives, especially given your lack of knowledge of my situation. As it happens, I'm in a 4E game because I do want to give the game a fair shake. (And it's not for lack of 3.5 games, as I know literally nobody who has converted locally. Actually, that's not quite true. I think our 4E DM doesn't run any 3E games.)
Well, to be fair, I did know that much as I read your thread on that subject. What I was getting at was that a "fair shake" of the system would be to try to experience the 'spirit' of the game. An example, other than the one in my original post, would be bringing a high heroics, min-maxer-minded player to a horror game. He either has the worst time of his life trying to optimize his character and his actions only to die miserably, or the best time... dying miserably without the other stuff.
Then again, it's not the player's fault if he didn't know he was coming to a horror game. Did you know a fair bit about 4E before you tried it?
Quote:
4E's healing dichotomy -- either you heal fully (as far as functionality is concerned) in six hours, or you were never really wounded at all -- isn't a matter of opinion, but rather a matter of fact. That some people are okay with one or the other of those choices is great; but that some people don't like either choice doesn't change the fact that they're all that's available, barring house rules.
Certainly, and I agree that you can either accept that or not. No room for discussion there. But the designers of 4E didn't blindly design the system in that way, and to give the system a fair try might also include coming up with in-game reasons as to why the world works that way, just as others in this thread have. That is of course, just my opinion.
I don't know if this has come up before, but I've considered modeling "serious injuries" as a disease by 4e rules, one with a DC high enough that it's unlikely a common person would recover quickly without aid.
Yeah, that implies that "serious injury" isn't something a PC risks when they get hit by a sword, but I think that's already covered by the HP abstraction.
A few times, I considered making a custom long-term recovery system that would be modeled after the disease condition track mechanics. I was thinking it could be triggered either by a crit or being knocked unconscious from going to 0 hit points. It might temporarily reduce their number of max healing surges until they fully recovered.
However, upon further reflection, unless all the players wanted this I am not going to bother. It's been my experience that custom rules to make things more "realistic", tend to just be frustrating to players and reduce fun, and also tend to still be unrealistic, just in different ways.
However, someone else might feel differently than I.
__________________ Law's Game Style: Storyteller 83%, Tactician 75%, Specialist 67%, Method Actor 58%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 25%, Butt-Kicker 17%
4E's healing dichotomy -- either you heal fully (as far as functionality is concerned) in six hours, or you were never really wounded at all -- isn't a matter of opinion, but rather a matter of fact. That some people are okay with one or the other of those choices is great; but that some people don't like either choice doesn't change the fact that they're all that's available, barring house rules.
You see, I don't disagree with that. As far as "functionality" goes, it's true. The thing is, it's not required that the narrative doesn't require it to be (and for some of us, doesn't).
However, even taking a completely pure literal view of hit point loss and recovery, is it really any more absurd than regularly passing around the wand of cure light wounds at the end of the day?
Honestly, except when it applies to the story, I'm content to just say characters are patched up and ready to go again in the next morning (if their rest isn't interrupted) rather than slowing the story down for us to tediously go through heal after heal after heal from the wand and healing spells, and then decide to camp a 2nd time so the healer can get those heals back again.
Really the biggest difference is that the whole party doesn't have to wait an extra day or 2 for the healer to re-memorize spells. Maybe some players enjoy those scenes more than I do, but I just find them dull and tedious, and I just want to keep moving with the story and the adventuring. However
4E is fairly neutral for the "skin", and it's pretty obvious that this is intentional. If you dismiss the mechanic because you think the narrative doesn't make sense, then perhaps you should consider a change to the narrative.
__________________ Law's Game Style: Storyteller 83%, Tactician 75%, Specialist 67%, Method Actor 58%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 25%, Butt-Kicker 17%
If it is really necessary to explain it and no other option works: It is a adventurer feature. If you have one of the adventurer classes, you have a special ability to recover all damage with an extended rest. It is not something external like a Wand of Cure Light Wounds or a ritual. It's something inherent in the nature of an adventurer.
NPCs don't have this feature. Is almost the distinguishing feature between an heroic adventurer - a PC - and an NPC.
Of course, since no one really has a concept of what hit points specifically are in the game world, since they mix injuries, luck, fatigue, mental stability, morale and so on, nobody really can pin point what's so special about adventurers, except that they rarely get seriously injured and that they recover to full fighting force very fast. Maybe this is a gift they are born with and that turns them to a career of adventuring, maybe this is something you just learn when you seriously take on a career of adventuring. But many people enter similar risky situations, and they don't have this gift for recovery.
But regarding wounds and injuries - With the hit point system, there was never something to model something like a broken leg or arm. I always kinda assumed this was possible to have, but I wouldn't describe it in hit point damage. It would cause some other type of penalties. If you see wounded NPCs with broken legs, a Cure Light Wound Wand wouldn't help them. (Just like it wouldn't help them regenerating lost limbs).
If you wanted to create something like a cut off limb or a broken arm, you needed a special rule in the game system. I think the same is true for a king falling of his horse and dying. A special rule could "simulate" this. The special rule might have been a untraceable poison, but it might also just have been a rule to simulate falling. If a king dies falling of his horse, is there ever not a reason to worry about foul play? An investigation might be required, regardless of whether he has 1 hit point or 250 hit points. An investigation of course would reveal what happened inside the game world, not what rules were used to adjudicate it.
In 4E I tend to assume there is also no 1:1 correlation between wounds and hit points. The Die Hard method certainly works for me. At least it gives a good excuse for characters still having scars, even with common healing.
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"We're only playing to have fun and realism is not fun."
and
"Feel free to house rule it."
are all just different ways of saying "I don't have a good answer for your critisism. This game has some serious flaws but I refuse to see them."
__________________
------------------------------------------------------- Future Armada : miniature-scale starship deckplans Zero Hour : fantasy cartography
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"We're only playing to have fun and realism is not fun."
and
"Feel free to house rule it."
are all just different ways of saying "I don't have a good answer for your critisism. This game has some serious flaws but I refuse to see them."
So, my 4E's renewing my interest in D&D, giving me a new found passion for DM'ing, and making me feel freed of certain aspects of previous editions I've found frustrating is nothing but a product of self-deception?
If the point of the game is to be a simulation, then yes, it does have serious flaws, just like every other RPG I've ever played.
However, that's not the point of the game and so your argument has serious flaws.
To suggest that there's a considerable number of players who are being fooled into enjoying a seriously flawed game and just won't admit it to themselves is absurd beyond words.
4E isn't perfect, and it's not for everyone, however it certainly has merits to make it worthy of a following, even if it's not for you. Suggesting otherwise clearly indicates bias on your part, not self-deception on the part of those who are enjoying it.
__________________ Law's Game Style: Storyteller 83%, Tactician 75%, Specialist 67%, Method Actor 58%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 25%, Butt-Kicker 17%
Right. It's like the old-school D&D notion that most people in the game world can't ever gain levels. Only PC's and rare NPC's.
I like 4e's default assumption --they were only "flesh wounds" that heal up overnight-- a lot better than 3e's --magical healing is cheap and plentiful. Note that it was 3e that effectively removed longer-term injury from the game, thanks to way it priced healing.
__________________ "We're pimps and killers, but in a philanthropic way." -- Boyd, Dollhouse.
The game descriptions of what hit points were all the way back to 1...
meant that hit points loss included very little to no physical injury.... now the mechanics match that description relatively closely ... they didn't before.
It can be quite interesting that fixating on how an earlier version of the game did something can cause one to treat an improvement of self consistancy a flaw because it deprives them of easily ignoring the part they didnt like before... If you wanted hitpoints to be substantially real injury (and so describe things as definite wounds) you simply ignored the description saying they were mostly luck and morale and application of skill (causing fatigue) and similar things.
Now that description continued all the way from the very first version has mechanical backing because you are functionally better quickly.
I switched to 4E after much debate and research. The overnight healing issue was almost a show stopper. Not that I don't understand the "John Mclaine" theory, I do.
But different things break the barrier for different people. Having the PCs never get serious injuries...ok, they are special. Not being able to heal a commoner with a spell that I can use on myself, or the commoner not healing overnight was a little harder to deal with.
(As was not being able to heal someone with magic if they were out of surges...that was a big brain shift that took a while.)
So if it's easy for you to rationalize then good, but there are those of us who find it jarring from our sense of logic and cause and effect, and it is a valid concern.
"If you die first, we're splitting up your gear" - SkidAce
"Just because you don't like it, don't understand it, and can't explain it, doesn't mean that it doesn't work. "- Celebrim
If this were true why come up with the Bloodied Condition? It would have made more sense to come up with a different word. It seems that a lot of the confusion that comes from how the loss of "hit points" comes from "damage" and then reaching a "bloodied condition" is poor wording. Yes, this can be remedied but why continue with such official descriptions if it is a poor representation of what is actually happening in combat?
But different things break the barrier for different people. Having the PCs never get serious injuries...ok, they are special. Not being able to heal a commoner with a spell that I can use on myself, or the commoner not healing overnight was a little harder to deal with.
Your absolutely right that everyone has their own threshold of ridiculous. I've always found it jarring that, according to the rules, you can't break a bone in D&D. No matter how big a cliff you fall off of. Now matter how many times a titan hits you with his mattock. No broken bones, ever. There is no procedure for it.
Unless you bring in DM Fiat, of course. Which --in it's infinite power and frequently laughably limited wisdom-- also neatly solves the NPC healing problem.
__________________ "We're pimps and killers, but in a philanthropic way." -- Boyd, Dollhouse.
I switched to 4E after much debate and research. The overnight healing issue was almost a show stopper. Not that I don't understand the "John Mclaine" theory, I do.
But different things break the barrier for different people. Having the PCs never get serious injuries...ok, they are special. Not being able to heal a commoner with a spell that I can use on myself, or the commoner not healing overnight was a little harder to deal with.
(As was not being able to heal someone with magic if they were out of surges...that was a big brain shift that took a while.)
So if it's easy for you to rationalize then good, but there are those of us who find it jarring from our sense of logic and cause and effect, and it is a valid concern.
Actually, can't you still heal someone with powers like Healing Word and Cure Light Wounds even if a character doesn't have any healing surges left?
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