D&D 4th Edition RulesAsk questions about 4th-Edition rules and the like in here. General discussion about 4E or any other game belongs in General RPG Discussion, above.
How do you explain overnight Healing in your game?
The characters are beaten to a pulp in the fight of their lives, they barely survive and all their heal surges are used up. They take an extended rest and boom! All health is back. If there was no access to a healing power, how do you add it to the story that they are fine and dandy 8 hours later?
I ascribe to the John McClane school of healing: your body is probably still battered after a big fight, but you have enough will power to get up and power through it. Sure, you're in pain, but your morale is high and you'll still stay in the fight.
Not perfect, but it satisfies my suspension of disbelief.
__________________ - Piratecat, EN World Admin
Currently editing the 4e War of the Burning Sky adventure path. Support EN Publishing, get excellent modules!
I ascribe to the John McClane school of healing: your body is probably still battered after a big fight, but you have enough will power to get up and power through it.
Yeah, this works for most character concepts. Or one character concept. I forget which.
Perfect healing without explanation -- or the alternative, "You were never really injured at all" -- is a serious weakness of 4E, as far as I'm concerned. In our 4E game, I just do my best to turn off the part of my brain that wonders about things like that. I'm not very good at it, but many people can do it without a problem.
But I like the HP/healing mechanics in general. I just wish they'd plugged this huge hole. (And yes, folks, I know it can be easily house-ruled.)
__________________ 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
I describe an attacks nature and its potential Effects and/or Aftereffects as well as hit point loss if any of course.
And ask the player to describe how this attack against their character is minimized by luck and energy and skill! The difference between the description for a failed defense (unless that hit reduces you below 0 hp) and a successful one … is pretty much how desperate or last second it normally seems and/or how much apparent energy/luck it takes to accomplish, even a successful defense could be described many ways... ranging from the bad guy doing really poorly, the character doing really well with the ability associated with defense, or the character getting weirdly lucky if that is the pc’s style. The lucky hero, the tough hero,
Note A magical hero can even describe his defensive actions and how they minimize his injuries in terms of his magic, just make it fit the theme of your character...
Hit points were described as primarily luck and energy and skill at minimizing damage all the way back in 2e of the game when wizards frequently had 1hp. How would explain luck and skill and a minutes worth of athletic dodging about not coming back fairly quickly.
Minions are fun tools for describing un-minimized attacks of heros.. and monsters because they don't have hit points. (well 1 doesnt hardly count)
HP could have been called Hero Points, but that doesn't really matter I am sort of treating them like a relatively normal power for the hero, which he can skin to his hearts content.
Last edited by Garthanos; 21st July 2009 at 06:46 AM..
I am also planning on using a house rule allowing a hero to take a wound (aka lasting minor effect which may be re-opened or aggravated on a bad roll) in place of losing the hit points. It gives the truly tough hero some coolness... a hero can then become a walking wounded if he likes... but that is more completely in the house rule camp.
A bloodied adversary I often describe as looking weary, shaken, sweating and nervous.... I made minions bloodiable in part so I could have this second stage. And to make the intimidate skill use against bloodied enemies more useful without somebody hyper optimizing just for it.
Wizards can use their spells in a minor way to do minor effects. For example, a wizard can use their Scorching Burst to light a campfire. This makes sense.
Fighters can use their great athletic prowess to build shelters quickly and painlessly. This makes sense.
Thusly, a Bard/Cleric/Shaman can use their magics to comfort and sooth and knit wounds faster than we can possibly imagine in our world. This makes sense.
A Warlord can do emergency surgery and has some knowledge of battlefield healing. He might not be able to knit the wound with magic, but he knows -exactly- what root to give you so that you don't -care-. Not all their effects need be from shouting.
Can they do this in battle? Naw. But can they do this over the span of eight hours? Hells ya.
I go along with the "John McClane" school of thought, for the most part, but the 1st Ed. DMG also had a valid way of looking at it. How can a 10 level fighter have more hit points than a war horse? Because the vast majority of them represent the luck that lets you avoid that deadly sword swing to the head, or the amount of endurance you have that allows you to fight on without getting tired.
You could think of first level hits as the REAL damage, then everything else as variations of the above. Personally I have a harder time reconciling how my character can crawl around in a sewer for 18 hours straight, then come up smelling like roses (fastidiousness ritual).
Perfect healing without explanation -- or the alternative, "You were never really injured at all" -- is a serious weakness of 4E, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, I'm really liking 4e on the whole, but this particular hole bugs the hell out of me.
Re: the John McClane approach- hmm, I'll have to try that.
John McClane had a lot of lingering damage that was not going away overnight, especially after running over the glass.
Yeah, but it didn't slow him down at the time, during the adventure, nor did it have any long term effect -- he was fine in time for the next movie, and never mentioned any lingering or extended issues. If the sequel had picked up the next day, with Hans' brother out for revenge right away, you can bet McClane would have somehow made it through. Ergo, it's the John McClane -- he's beat up, and when it doesn't matter, he's gingerly moving -- but he's still able to fight, jump, scramble, etc. He'll heal during the unspecified downtime.
(It's not that different from WWE, IMO; it looks dramatic, and heroic.)
__________________ - Bob Huss
[H]e's dead and poisoned and possibly insane on another plane. It's a very stylish death, but a definitive one. - Piratecat
Last edited by coyote6; 21st July 2009 at 05:42 PM..
I generally don't even worry about it, but when I choose to describe it, I mention how the party's clerics and paladins are working their ritual magics, the fighters are bandaging their wounds, the bard is casting spells of rejuvenation, and the warlord is brewing up some battlefield healing poultices made of dirt, twigs, and sharp glass.
I mean, I could say, "The cleric brings out his wand of cure light wounds, and goes around tapping the group with it," but that just seems unnecessary.
The characters are beaten to a pulp in the fight of their lives, they barely survive and all their heal surges are used up. They take an extended rest and boom! All health is back. If there was no access to a healing power, how do you add it to the story that they are fine and dandy 8 hours later?
Hit points and healing surges do not directly scale to any kind of visual cues of how beat up you are. Being at full hitpoints doesn't mean that you're not beaten, bruised, and limping, and being at 1 hp with no surges doesn't mean that you're holding your guts in with one hand.
Saying that they're fine and dandy is about as much of a DM flub as saying that the party is dry after they come in from the rain.
__________________ Life's a die and then you bitch.
I guess you could say that mine is the "John McClane" approach as well. They don't magically heal all their wounds. They just bandage, stitch themselves up, and do enough to keep them up and going.
Characters with full hit points aren't characters that have no injuries, they are characters who are fully capable to fight.
I have considered using Disease path mechanics to emulate wounds though, but I don't know if I'll bother.
__________________ Law's Game Style: Storyteller 83%, Tactician 75%, Specialist 67%, Method Actor 58%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 25%, Butt-Kicker 17%
Sure, but I've seen a bloodied enemy described as one who had _first blood_ drawn, with every damage before that not drawing any blood at all... and I've also seen a bloodied foe described as one that was near cripple, blood dripping from every orifice as it recklessly tries to take someone down before dying.
A PC who is 'Dying' is likely not all _that_ injured considering that a few moments brings them back to working order. In movies people get shot in bullet proof vests and fall unconscious for a scene, but aren't truly hurt. Apparently the same roughly applies to D&D.
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
