Excerpt: The Warlord

[ThirdWizard]

Umm...I think we need to discuss the happy medium here. Every round, it's annoying. By the same token, if the fight lasts 10-20 rounds with no real injuries to speak of, that's also pretty tedious.

Who ever said that was how 4e is?

The ideal situation (IMO, of course) would be for the characters to be slowly worn away at for a few rounds before being dropped. Then, if they come surging back once or twice in a fight, we have the makings of a dramatic and memorable combat. In other words, we get a combat that plays out more like the memorable fight scenes from action films, swashbucklers, or even sword & sorcery novels.

That's more like 4e (as it played for me).

No, getting a pile of extra hit points would be a bad patch on the real issue.

What's the issue again?

 

[Alkiera]

Agreed. It doesn't seem like precipitous hit point loss is really favoured, if the response is, 'I get them back next round!'.

In other words, if you are losing all those hit points, but getting them mostly back between or during encounters from healing - surges, magic, warlord yelling, etc. - then taking an extended rest to get them all back when you run out, what you really want is just a bunch more hit points. At that point, one may as well take a page from Toon, and state that losing all hit points means you are 'knocked out', and you are back to full for the next 'scene'.

In other words, getting large amounts of hit points back is a patch for the real issue: still not enough hit points.

Really, getting large amounts of hp back isn't the patch, it's the problem. The patch is encounters that do scads of damage each round to combat the fact that they just come back the next round until the cleric runs out of Heal spells. As the DM stated, he has to use those kinds of encounters in order to challenge the party. If they didn't all come back every round due to a 6th level spell, the DM could use more moderate damage enemies. Otherwise, to have any hope of endangering the PCs, enemies have to be able to do their entire hp in damage in one round; or outlast the cleric's number of Heal spells(~5 at lvl 17, plus a mass heal).

This is back to the 'attrition-based combat' model, where the monsters must either have enough hp/defenses that they can sit in the fight while the party completely Heals each person they get close to killing, or they must be able to kill a PC in a single round.

4E fixes this by limiting the in-combat healing that can be done. You get your second wind, +leader healing (2/encounter), and maybe a paladin heal or two... and all but second wind are party resources. The amount of in-combat healing at high levels may have gone down (from what we can currently see). Thus enemies will act similarly at all levels, being a threat to PCs, without being a 'ooh, good round, took out that PCs entire hp in one round' threat. Similarly, only luck will let a PC one-shot an appropriately challenging NPC, if it's not a minion.

 

[morbiczer]

My only objection to Warlord name is that it implies great power and expertise. It is as if wizard class was renamed Archmage. I think the class should have been called "Captain" or "Commander" with "Warlord" being saved for a paragon path.

I agree.

 

[Lacyon]

What's the issue again?

The issue, as far as I'm concerned, plays out as follows:

1) Encounters are more interesting when the PCs feel like they're getting somewhat close to defeat by the end. 'Close to defeat' in a combat encounter means getting low on HP.
2) PCs need the ability to take on more than one encounter per day, and subsequent encounters should not in general have to be made easier for them on the basis that they've already blown through a bunch of HP.

This leads to
3) PCs must have some way to recover HPs between encounters.

Combining that with
4) Traditionally, D&D has required either magical healing or extensive rest to recover HP, and extensive rest is a pretty severe restriction on encounter frequency.

yields
5) Traditionally, D&D has required someone to play a character capable of magical healing, or the DM has had provide/handwave that magic away, in order for the party to have combat encounters with any frequency and hope to survive.

Healing Surges as described remove 4) for us by allowing any PC to recover HPs on their own without extensive rest. The "problem"* of requiring a cleric to adventure is solved.

Simply adding a pile of HP in the beginning either violates 1) or leads to inflated encounter strength, leading us back to the same issue, just with bigger numbers.

*I use scare quotes here because obviously some people like that clerics are required. Heck, I like that its required for some of the games I run/play in, but not all of them. I'm not afraid to either stick with 3E for those games or mod 4E to add it back in when I feel it's appropriate.

 

[ThirdWizard]

or outlast the cleric's number of Heal spells(~5 at lvl 17, plus a mass heal).

Heh, you wish.

The cleric/warmage has his prepared heal spells plus about 10 on scrolls, the mystic theurge has his prepared heal spells plus about 10 on scrolls, and the party rogue has about 10 more heal scrolls which he cannot fail his Use Magic Device check for.

Try, just try to challenge that party without risking a TPK every combat.

Healing Surges as described remove 4) for us by allowing any PC to recover HPs on their own without extensive rest. The "problem"* of requiring a cleric to adventure is solved.

The big thing about healing surges that I absolutely love is that it gives the PCs lots of resources for healing throughout the day but says that they cannot burst it all in one encounter. (This relates to the per encounter ideal, of course.) So, you can challenge the PCs in one fight and bring them to the brink of death, and after that fight, you can do it again!

Under the traditional vancian resource allocation, this is extremely difficult. There's nothing saying the cleric can't cast heal five times in a combat (or in my case... um... a bajillion), so I have to design encounters expecting that they will, otherwise, they are under no danger.

I've been saying heal is the problem with 3e for years and years. It's why monsters do so much damage, it makes all other cure spells next to worthless, it takes over the entire high level game. I think if 3e hadn't had that one spell, it would have extended the sweet spot by at least five levels. I guess at this point we'll never know, though. A pity.

 

[Victim]

Try, just try to challenge that party without risking a TPK every combat.

Negative levels.

 

[Lacyon]

Negative levels.

Substitute 'Levels' for 'HP' and 'Restoration' for 'Heal'.

The fundamental problem remains the same.

 

[Sir Sebastian Hardin]

Sorry for this offtopic but...
Can someone copy/paste the text here please? I'm in a PC of my college and I can't enter wizards' web in this PC.

 

[DandD]

Negative levels.

That's just bothersome due to ham-fisted re-calculations. Slows down combat in a terrible way, as the one getting negative levels needs to recalculate everything again and so wastes time for everybody, and additionally grinds the game to a halt, where all excitement is killed.

 

[Victim]

Substitute 'Levels' for 'HP' and 'Restoration' for 'Heal'.

The fundamental problem remains the same.

No, because Restoration takes 3 rounds to cast.

Negative levels don't require much recalculation, since they basically apply to every d20 you roll. It's slower because you have to take an extra step per roll, but it's not like you have rewrite a bunch of numbers on the character sheet.