I don't get the dislike of healing surges

Imaro · Oct 5, 2011

Darwinism said:
If you're viewing them as another pile of HP to plow through you're viewing them from the perspective of a DM that wants to kill or incapacitate the party and sees that as the only way to give them a sense of threat. That's a sign of being not so great of a DM. I've found that simply making players expend more resources than they thought they would is a better tactic for that sense of urgency; not saying, "Oh no, I have more trouble asserting my dominance," but, "Yep, now they have to make greater risks if they want things to go their way because they spent more resources than they thought."

This is the same in 2E and 3E; it's just smoother. Saying, "And then the party spent eighteen hours fully healing," isn't conductive to the type of storytelling that D&D has been since 2E AD&D. It's not fantasy Vietnam anymore, where the slightest flesh wound leaves you incapacitated for days. It's heroic adventuring in the manner of the greats in mythology with one huge exception in that there's not one big bad ultrahero; it's a party of heroes. That's why 4E has done what it's done. It's about the entire group getting to feel like heroes, not just some of them and not just all of them if it's agreed to not choose the horribly imbalanced caster options present in 2E and 3E.

If you want fantasy Vietnam, which is attractive in some cases, just play OD&D. If you want high fantasy, play 4E.

You do realize that for some the combat of 4e resembles fantasy grindfest as opposed to fantasy vietnam or a high fantasy battle out of literaure and movies... there's a ton of threads about it on here as well as various other gaming forums. Just saying.

Also, what does the imbalance of casters have to do with this discussion?

Hassassin · Oct 5, 2011

Sorry for skipping about half the thread so I may be repeating someone else.

If healing surges worked like adrenaline I think I would be fine with them. However, the only general use of them that approximates that is the second wind. The main use is often after combat, when you should be coming down from the adrenaline "high" and if anything *losing* HP.

So if we really had "adrenaline surges" those should grant temporary HP.

GSHamster · Oct 5, 2011

NewJeffCT said:
ok, it seems like a lot of people dislike healing surges because you get your hit points back instantly? You've never had in-combat healing in your games when playing 1E, 2E, 3E, 3.5E or Pathfinder? Players just sucked it up until they beat the bad guys or dropped below 0? And, your only choice after a combat where you were knocked down to near 0 hit points was to rest & recover naturally at 1 hit point/night, d3 hit points/night or 1hp/level per night? There was no magical healing right after a combat?

I think the general feeling is that *magic* healing is okay, because magic gets to break the rules, and pretty much do whatever it wants.

Healing surges are non-magical (especially via Second Wind or the warlord class), and thus have to obey the rules, or make some sort of narrative sense.

In some respects, it's a variant on the high-level fighter vs wizard argument. 4E introduced non-magical healing that worked exactly like magical healing. Some people are able to stretch the abstractness of hit points to cover the new case. Other people relied on the fact that previous healing was magical to handwave how people recovered from significant wounds.

Crazy Jerome · Oct 5, 2011

The Shaman said:
There are more, but I think you get the idea.

Yes. In this case, I'm happy to have remembered it wrong. Your correct cite is a bigger supporter of my point than my vague, incorrect allusion was.

The scene at the end of Robin and Marion is very similar in its D&D application, though not nearly as dynamic. Two old guys at the end of their careers, in a field, wearing heavy armor, smacking each other with big swords, isn't going to match dashing around a castle. But the pacing is certainly the same.

Crazy Jerome · Oct 5, 2011

Hassassin said:
So if we really had "adrenaline surges" those should grant temporary HP.

If you didn't mind complicating things a bit more, and liked the extra, critical decision it interjected, and wanted that kind of distinction: Then making all non-magical surge grants into temporary hit points wouldn't be a bad way to house rule.

Now, taking that second wind in combat is not something you would ever do routinely. If you can stagger through to the end of the fight, you can make that surge count for more across the scope of the day. But if you don't take it now, you might not make it through the fight.

If you want all that, but you still want some surge spending during down time to keep the party moving, then tie the temporary/permanent hit points from surges to heal checks. Fail the check, the surge is only temporary hit points. The heal skill is a bit weak anyway. This would make it very important.

The Shaman · Oct 5, 2011

Crazy Jerome said:
In this case, I'm happy to have remembered it wrong. Your correct cite is a bigger supporter of my point than my vague, incorrect allusion was.

Glad I could help.

Hassassin said:
So if we really had "adrenaline surges" those should grant temporary HP.

That's a really interesting notion, actually.

Combat drug in original, "classic" Traveller increases your character Strength and Endurance each by two; these are also used as the character's hit points, along with Dexterity. Once the drug wears off, however, the extra points are lost AND the character takes 1D6 wounds.

So you could have a rule where a character's physical attributes and/or hit points increase with adrenaline, and if the character loses more points than the base score in combat, then the character collapses when the adrenaline rush wears off.

Pentius · Oct 6, 2011

Imaro said:
Are you trying to show people the "error" of their preferences? Trying to prove something... or what? I'm genuinely curious about this.

I took some time and thought about this, too, but I got a different answer than DEFCON1. I don't care about people seeing the error of their preferences. A preference simply is. You like it, or you don't. But I do want people to realize that it is just a preference. It isn't that surges are any less realistic than the healing that came before, or that they're any less fantasy genre appropriate or more wahoo. They don't make the game less of an rpg and more of a video game. It isn't that they drag combat out any longer than previous editions' in-combat healing. It's a preference.

Finally, let me flip that question(which I think is fair, given that I answered it first): Do you who dislike surges think that your posts on the subject will make we who like them see the error of our own preferences?

Imaro · Oct 6, 2011

Pentius said:
Finally, let me flip that question(which I think is fair, given that I answered it first): Do you who dislike surges think that your posts on the subject will make we who like them see the error of our own preferences?

Uhm... no. We didn't start a thread called "Hey, I don't understand why you guys like healing surges..."

I'm not making any pretense about trying to understand why you guys like them, I can accept that you do for your own reasons (the logic of which makes no difference to me)...but that's as far as it goes. What I don't get is why people who like them come rushing into a thread asking why others don't, to defend and try to get them to see the error of their ways.... I thought the purpose was to get the reasons and try to understand them. Instead we get people even resorting to old edition war arguments about casters and fighters that have nothing to do with the topic as they try to defend 4e.

NewJeffCT · Oct 6, 2011

GSHamster said:
I think the general feeling is that *magic* healing is okay, because magic gets to break the rules, and pretty much do whatever it wants.

Healing surges are non-magical (especially via Second Wind or the warlord class), and thus have to obey the rules, or make some sort of narrative sense.

In some respects, it's a variant on the high-level fighter vs wizard argument. 4E introduced non-magical healing that worked exactly like magical healing. Some people are able to stretch the abstractness of hit points to cover the new case. Other people relied on the fact that previous healing was magical to handwave how people recovered from significant wounds.

ah, so invoking a mythical deity to heal your allies can be handwaved, but summoning a spirit of nature like a shaman, using your mind to heal somebody like an ardent, or arcane magic like a bard, or a martial power like a warlord cannot? (the definition says they are not magic in the traditional sense, but some martial powers stand well beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals, which sounds like magic anyhow.)

If 3E introduced sorcerers and charisma based arcane magic instead of book learned arcane magic, I don't see it as that big of a jump to have other classes that can heal as effectively as a cleric. Remember, bards, psions, druids, rangers and paladins (and others, I'm sure) could heal in previous editions as well - my 3.5E campaign had several psionic revivifies (an in combat Raise Dead if cast within a round of death...)

Bedrockgames · Oct 6, 2011

NewJeffCT said:
ah, so invoking a mythical deity to heal your allies can be handwaved, but summoning a spirit of nature like a shaman, using your mind to heal somebody like an ardent, or arcane magic like a bard, or a martial power like a warlord cannot? (the definition says they are not magic in the traditional sense, but some martial powers stand well beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals, which sounds like magic anyhow.)

If 3E introduced sorcerers and charisma based arcane magic instead of book learned arcane magic, I don't see it as that big of a jump to have other classes that can heal as effectively as a cleric. Remember, bards, psions, druids, rangers and paladins (and others, I'm sure) could heal in previous editions as well - my 3.5E campaign had several psionic revivifies (an in combat Raise Dead if cast within a round of death...)

I think it is a magic versus mundane concern. If the source of healing is at all supernatural it makes sense in a way. If it is mundane but really seems more like magic that is where tge disconnect arises. Healing surges are described as mundane but don't seem mundane to me. And i think if you extend that kind of self heal power to all classes the flavor turns (at least for me) to something more like anime. This is just how it comes off to me; i can see how others would feel the same.

I don't get the dislike of healing surges

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