Realism vs. Believability and the Design of HPs, Powers and Other Things

BryonD said:

I have offered up that having surges give temporary HP (second wind) would be a HUGE progress. It is the fact that they now and forever heal wounds that is the big problem on a large scale.

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Why do you keep saying that spending healing surges heals wounds?

Spending healing surges can remove the burden of whatever wound may have been suffered. But who says it removes the wound? Maybe the PC just pushes on despite the wound.

pemerton said:

Why do you keep saying that spending healing surges heals wounds?

Spending healing surges can remove the burden of whatever wound may have been suffered. But who says it removes the wound? Maybe the PC just pushes on despite the wound.

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This is how I've always played and envisioned it. Spending healing surges in a short rest is the mechanical representation of actions including literally bandaging the PCs, ice to reduce swelling if you've got it (most likely with a mage), and numerous other minor cures. Bandaging a wound does not make it go away - but a bandaged wound is a lot less likely to drop a PC than an open one. Mysteriously, with a simple hit point mechanism there is no difference between a bandaged and an unbandaged wound - in 4e the bandaged wound still hurts. You're still less resilient than you were without the wound - but you can press on better than you could without it being bandaged.

You are wounded and battered if you've lost any healing surges. Healing surges lost are every bit as much a mark of being hurt as hit points. Hit points in 4e are simply what you can manage to take now.

And this makes only surgeless healing magic. Spending healing surges is simply shuffling resources around. Actual recovery of wounds involves either recovering healing surges or recovering hit points without spending surges.

BryonD said:

/snip

I won't claim that there is NO healing during combat. But I would say that No healing during combat is a lot closer to the reality of my play experience than every other round.

Honestly the answer to your question is: It varies wildly.
Sometimes the character dies.
Sometimes your claim of expected death in two rounds just isn't true.
Sometimes the party simply makes it a priority to move the damage away from the hurt guy or to move the hurt guy away from the damage.
Sometimes there is some select emergency healing.
I can't even claim that this is close to a complete answer.

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How is your experience any more of a truism than his though? Ok, you had very little healing during combat. And you start to give some answers. But, your answers are extremely situational and, quite honestly, not very helpful to anyone not at your table. Vague points about "moving the guy away from the damage" are great and all, but, how do you actually do that?

Most 3e monsters are considerably faster than PC's, so, running away doesn't work. A standard party only has 4 PC's, so, if there are more than one bad guy, putting the wounded guy in the back is problematic. Do you use numerous NPC's to fill out the group? How large are your PC groups?

And that's just focusing on one answer.

I'm not interested in vague assurances that it can be done. That's great and all. But, if I want to make things work better at my table, I have to be able to reproduce what you are doing.

It's no different than a 4e fan telling you that your problems simply don't exist. It's not very helpful. For NeonC, this problem exists. Instead of telling him that you feel bad for his incompetence, why not actually offer something helpful?

Neonchameleon said:

And this makes only surgeless healing magic. Spending healing surges is simply shuffling resources around. Actual recovery of wounds involves either recovering healing surges or recovering hit points without spending surges.

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I tend to the view that even surge recovery after an extended rest is just another mechanic for "pushing on" - for the reason that otherwise it's unrealistically quick healing.

If I was starting my game from scratch, though, I could see the attraction of the way I think you do it - surge recovery is recovering from wounds, and it can't just happen overnight.

pemerton said:

I tend to the view that even surge recovery after an extended rest is just another mechanic for "pushing on" - for the reason that otherwise it's unrealistically quick healing.

If I was starting my game from scratch, though, I could see the attraction of the way I think you do it - surge recovery is recovering from wounds, and it can't just happen overnight.

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That's one reason I play with extended rests being genuinely extended The other is that with a high cost to taking an extended rest, dailies become a lot more impressive and carefully thought about by the PCs (which also keeps post level 9 balance in check a lot better). Personally I think there's no version of D&D which isn't improved by this rule (although classic dungeoncrawling did have a don't rest in the dungeon mechanic).

KaiiLurker said:

My major problem with surges is they make dedicated healers moot, actually let me rephrase that: it makes imposible to create dedicated healers that focus on support.

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The pacifist cleric can be a /very/ dedicated healer. There are also builds where you can heal actively, and pass your standard actions on to your allies in the form of granted attacks.

BryonD said:

As I clearly explained, it being true to him personalyl does not remotely make it a truism that defacto happens whenever the game is played.

He portrayed it as such.

That is wrong.

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Actually, what I said was /if/ you depended on the melee character to beat down monsters, you'd have to heal him a lot, even every-other round, if not every round. But, it's a huge 'if,' because 3.x tended to slide quickly toward caster dominance. So, out of the lowest levels, you can depend on the casters to bring the monsters down, and the melee guy is just a blocker - he takes damage for a round or so, depending on initiative and the powergaming mojo of the players with casters, and gets healed up between combats with Wands of CLW. In that case, in-combat healing can be fairly rare, mainly because combats tend to be very short. Freed of in-combat healing, "CoDzilla" becomes free to focus on offense, such as pre-combat buffs or SoDs.

Some groups, I'm sure, left Clerics in the traditional band-aid role and never saw them get out of hand. 3.x spontaneous healing let them step in as needed to heal, and when that wasn't immediately necessary, actually do something else now and then. It was a step in the right direction, but 4e, with healing surges and minor-action heals went a lot further towards making the Cleric both consistently balanced, and a good deal more interesting to play, not to mention opening the door to a broader range of healing-capable classes, and at the same time, making the healing aspect of the leader role less central, and even to some degree dispensable. Doing without a healer in 4e is possible - not easy, and the DM should exercise some restraint here and there, but entirely possible.

pemerton said:

I tend to the view that even surge recovery after an extended rest is just another mechanic for "pushing on" - for the reason that otherwise it's unrealistically quick healing.

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Nod. I can see how that might be pushing it a bit, since there is no mechanic for dealing with 'real wounds' and 'real healing.' Well, non-surge healing might remove 'real wounds,' maybe, but even the warlord has some non-surge healing.

Rather than throwing out healing surges, which are an excellent mechanic, I think what's really needed is an optional mechanic to track wounds, their negative effects, and the time, difficulties and risks of recovery from wounds.

A good mechanic already exists to model wound recovery and the danger of re-opening wounds, infections, bleeding, etc: the "Disease Track."

All that's needed is a good system for determining when wounds happen, and a selection of nasty wound tracks.

As an optional mechanic, it would allow for a lot of 'grit' in those campaigns that call for it, without having to take away the more cinematic/heroic feel of those that don't. What's more, it could be /both/ gritty and heroic, as opposed to merely dismal.

Tony Vargas said:

Rather than throwing out healing surges, which are an excellent mechanic, I think what's really needed is an optional mechanic to track wounds, their negative effects, and the time, difficulties and risks of recovery from wounds.

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This is pretty much also the direction the discussion at a wotc blog post on resilient heroes is going in: Healing surges (or some other form of fast self-healing) are good, but they should accommodate a separate pool of "real wounds" in some fashion.

I like the idea of the disease track in that it's nicely optional. On the other hand, it sounds like something that would easily become way too complicated. The star wars Vitality/Wounds system for example has some of this problem. The idea is nice and clean, but the integration with critical hits & death&dying is quite complicated and probably too easy to abuse. I do like the SW d20 names, however: "hit points" isn't exactly an evocative term.

Still, something reminiscent of SW Vitality/Wounds but without the unnecessary bits (crits/the crazy dying system) sounds like a good base. Then you could add stuff like an optional wound-module using the disease track.

Extra bonus feature: vitality points can replace temporary hit points too; they essentially solve the same problem. Simply reconsider what would be THP granting powers as vitality healing and allow the current total to exceed the normal maximum (excess vitality is lost either at the end of an encounter or whenever additional healing is performed).

Tony Vargas said:

Rather than throwing out healing surges, which are an excellent mechanic, I think what's really needed is an optional mechanic to track wounds, their negative effects, and the time, difficulties and risks of recovery from wounds.

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What if I don't want either (and I don't. I've already explained why I don't agree with your first point)? I don't want to track added complexity in order to balance out the mechanical and fluff problems I have with surges. Fixing one system by adding another system on top is the opposite of what I want.

It's like saying, "You don't like taking calculus? Why not take differential equations, too? That should solve all your problems with calculus!" I just don't want to take either class. I'm perfectly happy with my basic algebra.