The encouragement of in-combat healing in 4e isn't "bizarre" within the logic of 4e's design - it's part of the overall pacing of 4e combat, which is (roughly) that the monsters/NPCs start strong and hit hard, but the PCs bounce back by drawing on the depth of their resources (powers, action points, healing surges).4E said, ok, fine, healing people is something you do that doesn't consume your other resources, or even your main action! This also sounded elegant, especially as the second wind mechanic gave people a reason to play without a cleric. However, what this did instead was just give everyone a great big hitpoint buffer. Your HP in combat were really your HP + some quantity depending on how many leaders you had. Healing was more of an automatic, twice a fight I gotta make sure the fighter is still standing, kind of thing (and indeed, became bizarrely encouraged once leader abilities added riders to being healed).
In-combat healing is one significant part of that dynamic.
Yes. Ablative hit points lost in only modest doses per combat make for boring play, unless those combats are quick and subordinate to some other focus of play.I thin kfor long combats to be tenseful and engaging, they need a threat of death. In a game with ablative hit points like D&D, that requires a lot of yo-yoing the health - which in turn means mid-combat healing. Otherwise you plink away hit points for so long and pressure is only felt at the very end
I think this is correct. And it raises the question, what is the point of "wearing down" combats? As in, in what way are they supposed to be fun?either accept that "wearing down" is a goal of some play or it isn't. If it is, then individual challenges need to be not so tough, because the point is not to be in real danger of getting killed, but losing a few hit points before the next fight.
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What you can't have with D&D healing is the pretense that "every fight is serious business" and at the same time the party goes into a big dungeon or wilderness trek where they may have fight after fight, but not "bounce back" healing. They "wear down" or they don't.
I think part of the problem is the increasingly casual attitude players have (3.x and 4e particularly) to having their characters go into negatives.
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if players were encouraged to be more conservative with their character's hit points (by creating a genuine fear of going into negatives rather than practically embracing it), there would be less hit points needed to be healed, and thus those times where hit points are restored become more crucial and thus dramatic. This promotes less need for in-combat healing.
I think there is a deep mechanical incoherence in a game where the PC build rules, the action resolution rules, the encounter designe rules, etc, all focus on combat as the principal site of conflict resolution - and the game then says (or tries to say) "By the way, if you get into combat you're doing it wrong."I think you need to ratchet down the challenge of an encounter though to reflect this core change in attitude regarding combat and diving into the negatives. This is due to the challenge being staying out of the negatives rather than just avoid death.
Or perhaps it would encourage solving problems without using the combat first approach.
The way to have less combat in an RPG is to make something else the mechanical focus of play.