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

pemerton · Apr 29, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
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.

I agree with all this, and would XP you if I could.

enigma5915 · Apr 29, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
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.

Good idea! the condition track is a great tool for this

Gorgoroth · Apr 29, 2012

Didn't they

already state that healing surges would NOT be in 5e anyway? So why are we re-hashing this? I played a warlord (a killswitch and another bard|warlord) in 4e and loved it. It was fun, and exciting, and tactical. It makes me feel silly for ever having played 4e in a group without a leader.

BUT...the problem with warlord healing is not that it's mundane (you can easily re-fluff it, one of the strokes of genius of 4e), it's that even without a warlord or someone doing a healcheck, any plain old fighter can recover to full HP after every battle. The ONLY time you are seriously close to death is when (usually the striker) is out of surges, while the rest of the party can still march on. So...yeah, healing to full mundanely kills my suspension of disbelief, much more so than a warlord casting Inspiring Word. We just pretend like it's magic and move on. Also, why can't warlord's mundane healing powers just have a range of touch or personal, rather than range? Then you can pretend like he really is bandaging you or pulling that arrow out of your knee.

OTOH : It's harder for me to pretend like a fighter healing himself to full after every battle without the aid of a cleric or a healing potion is possible, given our history of playing this game. Why do we need a cleric then? Oh wait, you don't. Try having no magical healing in earlier editions...you won't get far. This new "innovation" completely guts an entire class. Thanks, guys. I liked playing clerics in other editions. In 4e they seemed extremely lame to me, especially compared to warlords.

In our PF game we bought a wand of cure light wounds...as cheesy as that may seem, I'd much rather that as a solution to the 15 minute work day for melee types, than melee types not even needing magic at all to be able to run from room to room with only 5 minutes and it's like you are completely fresh. In playing 4e for three years, I've had Cure Light Wounds cast on my various characters a total of...hmm, scratches head : maybe three times? We even played without a warlord for the first year and a half. Sure it was slower and our war machine group was much less optimal in defeating battles, but we didn't die. Once.

Does that feel right, for D&D to any of you? A lot of my friends complained that 4e is too easy to stay alive, every class essentially has a multiclass in cleric for personal "cure spells". No, no, no, no. Please, no.

That's not right. Not to get all temper-tantrummy, but if surges exist in 5e or fighters can heal themselves to full without any assistance, I will probably think long and hard about passing on it. Also, take your surge count * your surge value = this is your REAL hp for the day. That number is WAAAAY too high for me.

You may forget that 25 HP at level 1 is a big boost from earlier editions, when you realize, wait, you actually have more like 100 HP total. At level 1. 'Nuff said.

Thankfully they've said surges are probably out.

== RIP, with a stake through their heart.

EDIT : Also, healing potions are completely worthless in 4e. Sad, sad, sad. I liked healing potions. Bring them back.

eamon · Apr 29, 2012

Mercutio01 said:
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.

What do you think of Vitality and Wound Points?

Mercutio01 · Apr 29, 2012

I think they're fiddly and more complex than I want for the average D&D game I want to run or play. They aren't bad, as such, but just not my cup of tea. And they are obviously part of the inspiration behind surge mechanics. They're different but not better. That said, I do like the mechanics better than surge mechanics because I still think that my ability to be healed being limited by my ability to be healed is a weird mechanic. And they're okay as optional rules for a specific game type, but I don't think they're better than straight HP as they were presented in all the previous editions of D&D.

Tony Vargas · Apr 29, 2012

Mercutio01 said:
I still think that my ability to be healed being limited by my ability to be healed is a weird mechanic.

Oddly enough, though, just that one aspect of it is kinda "realistic." Mind you, nothing else about it is particularly realistic, genre-faithful, but not realistic. The ability of others to heal you really is limited by your body's ability to recuperate, medicine just helps it along. While magic can just arbitrarily make wounds go by-by (non-surge magical healing in 4e, all magical healing in past eds), healing that simply accelerates or enhances your recuperative powers is pretty reasonable.

I don't think they're better than straight HP as they were presented in all the previous editions of D&D.

Obviously 'better' can be subjective. To look at it dispassionately, they're better at modeling different things. Hit Points & Healing Surges (and second wind and martial healing) are great for the action-movie style of heroic fantasy. Wound-tracking systems are great for adding a gritty feel. Hit Points & Clerical healing don't model any particular genre or feel too well - except of course for "that classic D&D feel."

Tony Vargas · Apr 29, 2012

Gorgoroth said:
I played a warlord in 4e and loved it. It was fun, and exciting, and tactical. It makes me feel silly for ever having played 4e in a group without a leader.

Enthusiastic agreement, here. The warlord was one of the best things 4e added to the game - best of a big lot, too.

BUT...the problem with warlord healing is not that it's mundane (you can easily re-fluff it, one of the strokes of genius of 4e), it's that even without a warlord or someone doing a healcheck, any plain old fighter can recover to full HP after every battle.

Clearly not a problem with the warlord, specifically.

Also not really a new problem. In 3.x, a Wand of Cure Light Wounds - or several, or baskets full of 'em or Bag's of Holding filled with potions as they became outrageously cheap - could handle between-combat healing. PC healing spells were only needed in combat. It's actually almost exactly the same dynamic, except that the limiting resource is a lot harder to cheese up.

Why do we need a cleric then? Oh wait, you don't. Try having no magical healing in earlier editions...you won't get far. This new "innovation" completely guts an entire class. Thanks, guys. I liked playing clerics in other editions. In 4e they seemed extremely lame to me, especially compared to warlords.

The 4e cleric was pretty awesome, too, though it's been mucked with so much at this point it's hard to tell. The WIS build had strong, flashy, secondary control powers, and the STR build had some pretty impressive tricks, too. They've since been powered-up, nerfed, and powered-up again, not to mention supplanted by Warpriests (not War Priests which are completely different).

I've had Cure Light Wounds cast on my various characters a total of...hmm, scratches head : maybe three times? We even played without a warlord for the first year and a half. Sure it was slower and our war machine group was much less optimal in defeating battles, but we didn't die. Once.

Does that feel right, for D&D to any of you?

It feels right for the heroic fantasy genre. Of course, if the only yardstick you rate a new edition by is the old editions, the new one will come up short.

Healing Potions are completely worthless in 4e. Sad, sad, sad. I liked healing potions. Bring them back.

Check out the "Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium." It has these "Potions of Cure Light Wounds" that work even if you're out of surges, and heal back 1d8+1 hps.

Wonder which of the many fantasy-genre sources inspired that one?

Mercutio01 · Apr 29, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
Oddly enough, though, just that one aspect of it is kinda "realistic." Mind you, nothing else about it is particularly realistic, genre-faithful, but not realistic. The ability of others to heal you really is limited by your body's ability to recuperate, medicine just helps it along. While magic can just arbitrarily make wounds go by-by (non-surge magical healing in 4e, all magical healing in past eds), healing that simply accelerates or enhances your recuperative powers is pretty reasonable.

No dispute, but in a world of magical healing with gods granting the ability to raise dead, it strikes me as completely out of character for such a world to have that healing limited by my body. I think it's mechanically weird and I don't really like the fluff of it either.

Obviously 'better' can be subjective.

That's why I made sure to phrase it the way I did. "I don't think they're better..."

To look at it dispassionately, they're better at modeling different things. Hit Points & Healing Surges (and second wind and martial healing) are great for the action-movie style of heroic fantasy. Wound-tracking systems are great for adding a gritty feel. Hit Points & Clerical healing don't model any particular genre or feel too well - except of course for "that classic D&D feel."

This is true. I don't want Jason Statham as Chev Chelios D&D characters, so I don't want surges. I think it's beyond "heroic fantasy" and treading dangerously close to superheroic fantasy, which is a distinct shift from other editions of D&D. And it is, if nothing else, absolutely a different mechanic and different fluff and different feel from previous editions. Some people like it. Some people don't. I'm of the latter, although I was absolutely one of the former for the first two years of 4E.

Wound-tracking is a nice feeling of danger, but it simply adds complexity that slows down play too much. I would absolutely love to see all three of those options (and maybe others!) presented as options within D&DNext. Hell, they could do away with "core" or "default" completely with all three as co-equal options, so long as the method I like (regular old HP as has been done for 36+ years) is presented in the basic PHB (or whatever they call it).

-- As an aside: I keep seeing all the references to the infinite wands or hundreds of potions in a bag of healing, and in 20+ years of gaming that has not been my experience. Not even once. Obviously experiences vary, but equally obviously my play experience has been with far more limited healing availability than 4E, and nowhere near the "bag of wands" that everyone else keeps referencing. I have to believe that I'm not alone in that.

Tony Vargas · Apr 29, 2012

Mercutio01 said:
No dispute, but in a world of magical healing with gods granting the ability to raise dead, it strikes me as completely out of character for such a world to have that healing limited by my body.

It's not a hard limit, as there are powers, particularly divine prayers, that break that limit (provide non-surge healing).

Wound-tracking is a nice feeling of danger, but it simply adds complexity that slows down play too much. I would absolutely love to see all three of those options (and maybe others!) presented as options within D&DNext.

Indeed. Really, a modular framework could allow quite a range of things, from an ultra-deadly low-fantasy approach where, say, a "hit" kills unless you make a 'death save,' in which case it only wounds you, to a growing number of 'hit points' that absorb hits before start making death saves, to heroic surges, and back to gritty again (but still heroic) with long-term wound tracking.

As an aside: I keep seeing all the references to the infinite wands or hundreds of potions in a bag of healing, and in 20+ years of gaming that has not been my experience. Not even once. Obviously experiences vary

Even one WoCLW is 50 charges, an average of 275 hps of very cheap, quite efficient between-combat healing. In 3.0, the WoCLW was possible, but I didn't see anyone take the idea too seriously - it's a tad ridiculous to go tapping someone with a wand over and over while you 'rest.' By the time 3.5 had been broadly accepted, it seemed like standard issue.

The last time I went to KublaCon, the Pathfinder Society had 'advice for new characters' just posted around their area. Among the obvious tips was: "You are responsible for your own healing, have a Wand of Cure Light Wounds or at least a few potions!"

I don't doubt that experiences vary, but the 3.x rules made it possible to create low-level wands quite cheaply, and there was no limit but wandering monsters (and other such exigencies) on the time you could spend using them on eachother between combats.

Mercutio01 · Apr 29, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
It's not a hard limit, as there are powers, particularly divine prayers, that break that limit (provide non-surge healing).

Yes, in addition to the surges, which makes death (again, my play experience for 4E) so rare as to be nonexistent (as in, no character in any game I played in 4E has ever died) and thus the game felt stale and boring as there was never a real threat except for those that were ridiculously over-budget.

there was no limit but wandering monsters (and other such exigencies) on the time you could spend using them on each other between combats.

That's what a DM is for. A lot of the complaining I see about healing wands goes hand-in-hand with the complaints about magic Walmarts, neither of which were present in my games (neither as player, nor DM, nor in 3.0, nor 3.5). It seems that the two go together. Magic Walmarts lead to everyone with a wand lead to characters that die as often or even less than 4E superheroes.