D&D 4E Healing and combat tension between 4e and Next

ZombieRoboNinja · Oct 6, 2012

RangerWickett said:
I think hit dice actually work fine right now, since you only have a handful per day. I just want some way to use them without having to spend an action (standard action by 3e/PF/4e parlance).

Apparently some people are Very Upset by the idea of nonmagical healing, but this would still be a good idea for a feat that they can just ignore.

Survivor: As a reaction after taking damage, you may instantly expend one or more Hit Dice to heal as if you were using a healer's kit during a short rest. You do not use a healer's kit to restore hp this way.

Or maybe magical in-combat healing just needs to be strong; I spend 1 action and you spend your hit dice, and we undo 2 or 3 actions worth of monsters-dealing-damage. We get ahead in the action economy by using up a different resource.

I think this is what they're trying for: Cure Moderate Wounds with the Healer specialty heals - what - 36 hp? at level 5, which is a full heal for most level 5 characters. Meanwhile, a war-domain cleric can attack and heal with Channel Divinity for 2d8.

The trick is that this tradeoff between using a full action for a big heal versus using only part of your action so that you can attack and use a small heal in the same turn is pretty complex in the current playtest, because the Cure X Wounds spells come from a separate resource pool than the Channel Divinity heals.

So once again, I would recommend dropping the whole "channel divinity" thing, letting clerics have Cure spells auto-prepped like they do Turn Undead, and give them a few more spells/day to make up the difference. Simpler resource management and easier options all around. Of course, we're right back in the 3e model where clerics have to spend most of their daily resources on heals, but the current playtest works out that way anyhow.

pemerton · Oct 6, 2012

RangerWickett said:
4e expected you to have a lot of "HUGE EPIC FIGHTS" every day, or at least the adventure writers designed modules that way. And people get fed up with having "HUGE EPIC FIGHTS" as random encounters.

My solution is to drop random encounters.

UngeheuerLich said:
4e is very good in epic fights. But its strength is also its biggest weakness. Every fight on an evening shortens your progress in the actual story by a large amount.

My solution is to progress the story via combat!

RangerWickett · Oct 7, 2012

I kinda agree, but having played the Blingdenstone adventure, it was kinda fun to randomly stumble upon some enemies and defeat them with 5 or 10 minutes of play, then get back to business. It was a pleasant aesthetic.

Rhenny · Oct 7, 2012

After our 5th session with the playtest (Blingdenstone) our group is beginning to like the HD of healing out of combat (after 10 min rest).

Since we can't use the HD in combat, any tough combat encounter seems to have more tension for us, and the tension can develop more quickly than it did in 4e because the only way to heal in 5e combat is through magic. In 4e with "second wind" there was too much of a rollercoaster effect, and if a monster had a similar ability (to regain hit points) combats would go on far too long.

The trick in 5e really has been trying to make encounters tough enough, especially for level 3 and above. It definitely takes adding to attack bonus and adding to monster hit points to make them challenging enough to raise the tension level. As written, in many encounters against bugbear or other creatures that hit hard, often the creatures don't even hit any of the PCs (unless they target the Wizard or the Rogue specifically) before the party can gang up and eliminate the threat.

Another pleasant surprise we are finding with 5e and the HD of healing mechanic is that as the PCs gain in levels to 3rd and 4th, the HD of healing resevoir for PCs helps take the healing burden off of the cleric. In combat, often, it becomes more important to take out the opponents as quickly as possible, rather than holding back to save spells for healing in combat. In many of our games, the cleric player will use searing light or turn undead, rather than hold on to the spell slot in case a healing spell is needed. Having Radiant Lance also helps save the spell slots too.

Magil · Oct 7, 2012

Neechen said:
Since we can't use the HD in combat, any tough combat encounter seems to have more tension for us, and the tension can develop more quickly than it did in 4e because the only way to heal in 5e combat is through magic. In 4e with "second wind" there was too much of a rollercoaster effect, and if a monster had a similar ability (to regain hit points) combats would go on far too long.

I've found if you're fighting monsters that are threatening the party, they can probably deal enough damage that a second wind isn't really a great use of a standard action, because that's a turn that you're not attacking (which is why dwarves are so awesome). But I can see what you mean with the general tone of the post. Still, I generally think that second wind itself was too weak to really make a huge difference in the flow of combat, once MM3 monster math entered the game.

Blackwarder · Oct 7, 2012

RangerWickett said:
By late-era 4e, combats (at least in my group) tended to go like this:

Round 1. PCs and monsters engage. Each side gets chipped away a bit.

Round 2. Monsters bloody a PC.

Round 3. A PC nearly goes down, another PC is bloodied, and the party has only just bloodied one monster.

Things are looking bad for the party. But then the PCs start using their healing words and similar powers. Minor action healing lets them keep dealing damage while pulling the team back from the brink.

Round 4. Resurgent PCs take down two enemies. Enemies bloody another PC, keeping the pressure on.

Round 5. A PC who's gotten into a bad spot uses a daily power and mops up the enemies. The party is left beaten and bloodied, and feeling like they narrowly pulled out a win.

Now, I don't want every fight in 5e to feel like that. In fact, I rather enjoyed "Crap, 6 kobolds. Get 'em! . . . Oh, wait, they're already all dead? Hm, okay."

But for boss fights, Next doesn't have the "pull back from the brink" options 4e did. Should it?

In my group they usually start by poping a daily at the first or second round and then continue to glide through the fight, OTOH, my players build their characters to work perfectly together in a very gamist way...

Warder

UngeheuerLich · Oct 7, 2012

pemerton said:
My solution is to drop random encounters.

My solution is to progress the story via combat!

does not work for me... sry.

I do like quasi random encounters for several reasons. Do you know how refreshing it was, when my players hacked through 5 orcs in merley seconds? After preparing the surprise attack? That is how i want combat to play out.

On the other hand, the epic combat against the wight was a bit anticlimatic. But it had a lot to do with lucky and unlucky rolls...

Balesir · Oct 7, 2012

GameDoc said:
If magical healing is relegated to a ritual, then it expends no spell slots and has a component cost. The cleric is limited only by the amount of magical reagents they carry. It also puts more value on potions as the best option in combat so the cleric doesn't have to take himself out of the fight or become a sitting duck while he casts a healing ritual. This way, it's gold that dictates the party's healing resourcs.

If you equate the reagent cost of the ritual with the cost of a potion, it goes back to 4e's idea of making the cleric a class played because it was interesting to the player, not essential to the party. No cleric (or druid)? Stock up on potions at the same cost it would have taken to stock the healer up on reagents.

[MENTION=6684526]GreyICE[/MENTION] has already said that this is very similar to the CLW wand situation in 3.x; I think it relates to a general issue that crops up, in a different form, in 4e as well.

Gold is a fine in-game resource, but if it's set up to cover too many competing functions it gets to be a problem. In 4e it was used for buying/trading magic items and rituals and alchemy and consumable magic items and "stronghold" type "magic at home base" type stuff - which meant that it got used for the "most important" one of those and nothing else... Similarly, in 3.x, it was either a source of unlimited healing (if the DM made magic items hard to buy) or healing limited only by the desire to get magic items (if the DM made magic items easier to buy).

For healing, I really prefer a completely separate resource held by every character that covers total (standard) healing available, with gold only modifying the application of the healing resource. This means that a specific ration of healers to fighters isn't required - the healing resource sits with the healed character, not with the cleric, and the cleric/leader just acts as a "catalyst" that enables the resource to be used. This solves the "clerics using all their spells/resources to heal" problem, the "someone has to play the cleric" problem and the "if healing is unlimited it gets boring" problem all in one fell swoop - without lumping (yet another) resource issue into the "you buy it with gold" basket.

UngeheuerLich said:
I do like quasi random encounters for several reasons. Do you know how refreshing it was, when my players hacked through 5 orcs in merley seconds? After preparing the surprise attack? That is how i want combat to play out.

I like the odd "trivial" encounter, but I don't really like them to be random. I have had good results in 4e with skill challenges to set up combats; basically, a pre-combat skill challenge can, in (roughly) escalating order:

- Give information about the enemies to be faced and the (potential) battle terrain,

- Allow the PCs to pick their direction of attack/location of defence,

- Allow the party to avoid a combat entirely, if they don't want to fight and are willing to give up whatever winning the combat might facilitate,

- Give the party surprise, and

- Render the opposing monsters minions rather than standard monsters, as they are taken completely off-guard.

This way, the encounter remains a meaningful challenge overall, but success in the pre-combat preparation and planning can make the actual fight itself much more of a formality.

Rhenny · Oct 7, 2012

I like using random encounters too (although at times I don't roll for them randomly). Since combats with some creatures don't take too long, a random (or not so random/auxillary) encounter can help further the story and push the PCs along.

If I think that the PCs are lingering somewhere too long, or if I want to subtly suggest that they check out one area or move away from another area, I may have 2 or 3 Orcs, Skeletons, Zombies, etc. shamble down the hall or open up a door ahead of them. Since these combats will be short work, I don't hesitate to use them to enhance the game.