I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Aberzanzorax]

"You keep using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means."



I agree with much of the "after the fact" narration discussion, and that's the primary issue for me.

But the other issue is the name (or names). "Healing surges" don't actually "heal", particularly in the example of second wind. "Bloodied" doesn't actually mean one is bleeding. Heck a "hit" might not be narrated as the character actually having been hit.


If a game is to use terms such as these, and then expect players of the game to understand that the words don't mean healing, bloodied, and hit, then there needs to be some serious discussion in the rules books about what these things DO mean and how to narrate them well.

I'm not saying that this can't be done, but I'm saying I don't know how to do it. I'll readily admit there are those who can do it with some difficulty and those who can do it with ease. I suspect that the group of people who can do it with ease are those who find healing surges and the like the least problematic.

 

[avin]

One adjustment I would make to Healing Surges, if I really wanted to make the game a little more "realistic" would be to not allow Second Wind to be used after a PC is bloodied.

On the opposite hand, I'd only allow them to use it while bloodied, as a desperature measure...

 

[BryonD]

I'll readily admit there are those who can do it with some difficulty and those who can do it with ease. I suspect that the group of people who can do it with ease are those who find healing surges and the like the least problematic.

I'd say that your suspicion is far off base.

As has been described before, making crap up on the fly to retcon things is trivially easy.

But healing surges ask you to bend your story that way for benefit to the game parts of the system. There are other ways to handle it that doesn't ask the story to ne submissive to the mechanics. And if the story is far and away more important to you than mechanical expediency, then it only makes sense to prefer systems which put story first.

 

[BryonD]

The way I "rationalize" healing surges is the same way that Jack Bauer can get the crap beaten out of him, look like he's out of the fight, then suddenly be returning the beating on the bad guys.

Well, first of all, even people who LOVE high action stuff crack jokes about Bauer's "recoveries". And even Jack needs actual medical aid from time to time.

But I'm completely on board with a mechanic to model adrenaline surges to ignore wounds for a short period. But ignoring wounds during crisis is not healing and not only still requires actual healing later, it frequently requires MORE healing. Further, the coolness of ignoring wounds in a crisis is completely undermined when it becomes a 4X daily ability to be used when the mood strikes you.

In the end, 4E doesn't even present surges this way. They don't let you ignore wounds, they heal wounds. A surged away wound never ever requires any attention of any degree whatsoever.

 

[BryonD]

On the opposite hand, I'd only allow them to use it while bloodied, as a desperature measure...

Interesting thought.

You could just go a bit further and say that surges can never restore a characters HP to greater than 50%. It kinda becomes a quick and dirty W/V system.

 

[LostSoul]

But healing surges ask you to bend your story that way for benefit to the game parts of the system. There are other ways to handle it that doesn't ask the story to ne submissive to the mechanics. And if the story is far and away more important to you than mechanical expediency, then it only makes sense to prefer systems which put story first.

What do you mean by "story"?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

But then he healing surges *again* and what looked like a deep gash a few moments before now is absolutely completely gone.

No, it's still there (although probably clotted up and starting to scab over); he's just, with a further heroic effort, ignoring the pain, or has taken one of his ubiquitous 3E belts (he's a converted character) and tightened it down over the wound.

In short, you can pretty easily narrate yourself out of any box you (foolishly?) narrate yourself into, if you actually want to put the effort into it.

Of course, it's far, far easier to just not narrate yourself into that box to begin with, don't you think? I mean, I know in the 3.5E games I run, I don't describe my players' characters getting their arms and legs chopped off or suffering other terrible wounds when they get dropped below 0 HP or are otherwise damaged. Why would I do that in 4E? Why would I create a problem and then complain about its existence?

 

[Dark Mistress]

Like I said, narration after the fact. You cannot provide any narration of injury until the encounter is resolved and the state becomes known. After all, how deep can the wound be if it is fully healed from a 5 minute rest and the fighter is as fresh as a daisy the next morning? It was but a scratch! Unless it killed him of course then it was a mortal blow that would fell the strongest of men.

That is kinda the problem or part of it for me. In 4e characters seem to be in only 2 conditions. Dead or just had the wind knocked out of them. I mean after a single nights sleep they are perfectly fine means nothing was to serious or they died. All this with no magical help, just natural "healing". Honestly that bugs me.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

In 4e characters seem to be in only 2 conditions. Dead or just had the wind knocked out of them.

To be fair, this has been true throughout all of D&D's history (and is also true in quite a few of the wargames from which D&D came from).

The only thing 4E has changed is the fact that you don't need a Cleric to get back into the fight the next day.

In 3E, you needed a Cleric or a Cleric-on-a-stick (ubiquitous wand of CLW or lesser vigor).

In 2E and previous, you just needed an extra day or two.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

That is kinda the problem or part of it for me. In 4e characters seem to be in only 2 conditions. Dead or just had the wind knocked out of them. I mean after a single nights sleep they are perfectly fine means nothing was to serious or they died. All this with no magical help, just natural "healing". Honestly that bugs me.

Whereas for me, the three conditions are: "still in the fight", "temporarily out of the fight, but could get back in with help", or "out of the fight". Feel free to rename that middle one to something shorter, but I wanted it to be clear.

For me, this works great with the way I want to play cinematic, and it also happens to fit 4E pretty well. But I prefer most hit point systems (absent something like RuneQuest, where the points are clearly physical only and very limited) to play this way, because of the lack of any death spiral effect. Anyone not yet started down the spiral is fully "in the fight". Anyone dead, unconscious, routed, completely intimidated, etc. is "out of the fight". Everyone else is in that middle condition.

BTW, you could certainly modify 4E to give a bit of a different slant on that same idea, but in ways that might be more palatable to some folks. Namely, you could make entering that middle condition more feared by making it a lot harder to recover from in combat. In turn, this would have characters fighting tooth and nail to avoid it, but once in it, it would rarely be worth it for anyone to do more than stablize them and/or grab them during a retreat. Then, if someone did enter that third condition, whether "dead" or something else, give them problems that take days or weeks to recover. This would be a less cinematic version of what we have now, using essentially all the same mechanics. You'd need a few tweaks on the edges and change the fluff a lot, but the mechanics would be the same.

Edit: Make coming out of "blooded" very difficult and give major penalties to defend/attack while blooded, regards previous suggestions, and you'd get a very severe form of what I'm talking about here. Given the huge amount of hit points in 4E, for both characters and monsters, this would even give something like a 1E feel in the right hands. People between 0 and blooded would be bandaging wounds, trying to get away, etc.