Dire Human
First Post
You have to die easily, suffer and catch gangrene and lose limbs, like a good victim of Fantasy Vietnam where hit points are meat chunks being cut away with every stroke.
At what level do you get Dispel Agent Orange?
You have to die easily, suffer and catch gangrene and lose limbs, like a good victim of Fantasy Vietnam where hit points are meat chunks being cut away with every stroke.
Not quite. Setting aside the extreme (and IMO, rather unrealistic) case where there is not even natural healing, a game without healing simply means that the players ought to be more careful when deciding whether to press on or to retreat and rest.Not having healing is a deal breaker for me. It has to be balanced around healing if there is ever going to be healing because the basic damage output determines it. If you don't balance it round healing, you are going to get a game that has zero danger.
This is a fundamental assumption that I would like to question. Why should it be necessary for any character to have access to healing apart from natural healing? To me, the simple consequence is that any time the healing spells or heaing potions would be used, the character(s) simply retreat and rest instead.every character needs healing.
Isn't there an argument, though, that the projection is justified? I mean, expecting the sun to rise tomorrow (and induction more generally) can be analysed as a species of projection, but that's not to say it's irrational!it's the experienced players PROJECTING their feelings of playing an AD&D cleric onto these imaginary "newbie players" and thus demanding the Basic game should have options.
This is not how I read KM. I took him to be saying two things:But everything Kamikaze is saying hinges on the fact that all these random new players are being assigned the cleric to play, and unless the Basic includes more than just the magical Cure Wounds spells... then all these new players are going to be forced to do nothing but heal the other players. Apparently the idea that the new player who has the cleric might choose to use different spells doesn't count, because they're going to get browbeaten into only taking Cure Wounds. And thus, the only way to protect these poor mindless new D&D players who can't think for themselves and are going to be tricked into taking on this class and role that no one else wants to play, is to throw a whole bunch of alternate options into the Basic game... rather than just relying on the Standard game to present those rules for them.
To the best of my understanding (and given his comments upthread both that "adventuring without a cleric should be possible" and "tackling a vampire-hunt without a cleric should be harder"), [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] is working with a more general and abstract conception of "the adventure" than you are: if you have a cleric, your adventure will include the experience of turning undead, frequent magical healing; if you have a fighter instead, your adventure will inclue the experience of more swords being swung but also more running away from wights; if you have a thief instead then your adventure will have more sneaking and less fighting; etc.I am curious as to what you mean by "get around having a cleric".
In my ideal game, the specific composition of the party should not matter most of the time.
For example, if a party composed of a fighter, a rogue, a monk and a wizard and another party composed of a fighter, a rogue, a cleric and a wizard were to undertake the same generic adventure and fight the same generic encounters, they each ought to have to rest at approximately the same time.
For my part, I agree with the stuff after the first paragraph and find it (or most of it - still not much wizardly healing) in 4e. (Though it is all called "healing" - a technical counterpart to "damage", and both a bit misleading given their ordinary English meanings.) It's a pity that implementation plus other features meant you couldn't enjoy those benefits! - maybe D&Dnext will manage to have this sort of stuff in a way that suits you.I've had a lot of dislike for 4E for a variety of reasons, but even though I abhorred the actual implementation I thought that removing healing from being a clerical burden was a smart and LONG-needed change.
<snip>
Divorcing hit point recovery from clerics with all that that entails opens up FAR more dynamic and interesting possibilities for them as a class. Most importantly it eliminates unneeded and unwanted pressure that ONE player must play a particular class whether he wants to or not.
<snip>
It doesn't matter necessarily if the source of hit point recovery is magical or not. What IS important is that it not be so heavily burdensome to ONE CHARACTER in the party to be the all-important source of it. It ought to instead be spread around to as many potential sources as possible. Wizards should be able to cast arcane spells to repair bodies. Clerics could conduct daily rituals in which others could participate for the gods to lend them assistance. Fighters might have their own ability to simply come to grips with the pain or demonstrate that it just wasn't as bad a wound as it looked to be at first. Fantasy worlds should be full of all manner of herbs and minerals to heal this or that particular ill. Why not a freakin' rabbits foot or 4-leaf clover lucky charm that's good for x amount of hit points a day?
There are a dozen ways to "heal" physical damage. There are dozens more that can simply replenish hit points. Don't call it all HEALING. Call it what it once was - part luck, part divine favor, some skill, and of course fatigue.
This is a fundamental assumption that I would like to question. Why should it be necessary for any character to have access to healing apart from natural healing? To me, the simple consequence is that any time the healing spells or heaing potions would be used, the character(s) simply retreat and rest instead.
Would anyone care to weigh in?
Doesn't this depend a bit on how the combat system is balanced? - eg in 4e, if you can't unlock healing surges during combat you are pretty hosed, and will probably be cut down as you retreat.This is a fundamental assumption that I would like to question. Why should it be necessary for any character to have access to healing apart from natural healing? To me, the simple consequence is that any time the healing spells or heaing potions would be used, the character(s) simply retreat and rest instead.
Would anyone care to weigh in?
If that is indeed the case, there is no need to "get around having a cleric" because there is nothing to get around - it's just a matter of different experiences.To the best of my understanding (and given his comments upthread both that "adventuring without a cleric should be possible" and "tackling a vampire-hunt without a cleric should be harder"), [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] is working with a more general and abstract conception of "the adventure" than you are: if you have a cleric, your adventure will include the experience of turning undead, frequent magical healing; if you have a fighter instead, your adventure will inclue the experience of more swords being swung but also more running away from wights; if you have a thief instead then your adventure will have more sneaking and less fighting; etc.
On this picture, "encounters" aren't the constituent elements of an adventure; the adventure consists (perhaps) of a goal or endpoint (defeating Strahd, perhaps, or looting the dragon's horde), but it is expected that the path to this endpoint, resources consumed along the way, etc, will vary radically across group compositions.
I can see why you say that - but as best I follow it the concern with damage mitigation is that it will make the experiences too similar when they are meant to be different.I doubt it is the case, though, as the remark was made in the context of damage mitigation abilities as a substitute for clerical healing.