Flat Healing Without Using a Surge--Infinite Daily HP?

[Sylrae]

Fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing, though you would think they would be opposites.

Flammable and Inflammable meant he same thing, though you would think they would be opposites (in fact, the word flammable was invented because some people thought inflammable meant "cannot be set on fire so safe to have around open fires" which led to...problems in real life).

Oh, and from an Archie movie, based on the comic: "I saw a sign that said "Fine for Parking"...so I parked there." Yes it was Moose.

Exactly, just like that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Why does sunburst heal damage at all? Most radiant damage powers just do damage. Sunburst has never healed before: just fried undead and blinded everyone else.

 

[Makaze]

This is what I was saying is stupid. they whould be designing the powers to try not to have them be exploitable, and the credible threat rule whould just be dropped. seriously.

Much easier said than done (though they certainly could have done a better job). I guess my feelings on the subject are that I'd rather have a wider array of more interesting powers that require a sliver of (rule based) DM adjudication than a more locked down set of powers that are closer to exploit proof.

Not everyone plays good PCs...

Not sure what this has to do with anything. A credible threat is not anything the PCs "feel" threatened by but rather something that has the potential to do significant damage or resource drain in the given situation. That standard doesn't take alignment into account. But even if it did playing an evil aligned party is a non-standard campaign choice and some rules modifications are only to be expected.

 

[silentounce]

Why does sunburst heal damage at all? Most radiant damage powers just do damage. Sunburst has never healed before: just fried undead and blinded everyone else.

Come to think of it, why doesn't the Sleep spell heal those that fail the save? And shouldn't it damage Undead?

Also, if you oversleep do you end up like 3.x characters that spend too long in the Positive Energy Plane?

DM: Eldarin, you come out of your trance and see a bright flash of light followed by a large BOOM!
Eldarin: Do I need to roll initiative?
DM: No.
Eldarin: I wake up the rest of the party.
DM: You don't see them anywhere.
Eldarin: What do you mean?
Dwarf: Huh... what?
Human: Is he dreaming?
DM: You forgot to wake them up.
blank looks
DM: They overslept. At first I gave them temporary HP above their normal total but after an extra hour they exploded in a riot of energy.
Human: I TOLD you we should have bought a water clock.
DM: Sorry, they're not in the equipment list.
Dwarf(picking up 4d6): What are the ability modifiers for Eldarin?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#positiveDominant

 

[Rystil Arden]

Hmm--is Eldarin the new Rouge? I should make a thread for that. And link.

 

[BASHMAN]

This should sort that situation out. The following excerpt from the DMG specifically disallows this (if you need such permissions from banning such things from your games).

When a power has an effect that occurs upon hitting a
target—or reducing a target to 0 hit points—the power
functions only when the target in question is a meaningful
threat. Characters can gain no benefit from
carrying a sack of rats in hopes of healing their allies
by hitting the rats.

This is from page 40 DMG.

I would extend this to say that such use of a power is rampant META-GAMING, and is also specifically disallowed by the rules.

And honestly, this is a PALADIN power we are talking about. Do you really imagine that a patron god is going to be happy with this sort of behaviour?

I have a better idea; why don't we encourage everyone to play to the spririt of the rules instead of just obeying the letter but trying to "break" them!

Or even better, lets have healing powers that work without killing an orc! If your god lets you heal in combat, he suddenly won't once the last orc dies? "NO FRIENDS. SLAY NOT THAT ORC YET, so I CANST HEAL YON ALLY!" = Cheese

 

[Toras]

Now this might take things on a different tangent, with such powers. I can understand that a prisoner or a contrived situation. I could see how that would easily be adjucated.

For those powers that require credible threat, would another PC serve as a credible threat. They are roughly as powerful as you, and they certainly could do you ill. Is the best way for a cleric to save a character who's out of surges and bleeding to get in a bare knuckle brawl with the fighter every 5 minutes or so?

Maybe bringing things in further, can I be a credible threat to myself? If I am will to myself harm to aid others, is that a valid use of the action?

 

[Sylrae]

Toras has clearly illustrated more issues with this power.

I like it. brawl the fighter to heal the rest of the party, or use the power on yourself. youre hurting yourself so thats a threat.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Certainly a character can be a credible threat to the other characters. As soon as he is, he becomes an NPC under my control. The person who used to control that character will have a discussion with me after the game to see whether or not he'll still be in the group.

This is going from borderline concern to outright silliness.

 

[charcoalninja]

I think the reason posts like this exist is because people are annoyed that the rules need a DM who can say "that rule is stupid, we're not using it." or "that's because the writers at wizards wrote the power badly. I'm not letting it work that way."

If it's stupid it shouldn't be in the book.

If I have to make houserules to avoid exploits, the game designers did a sub-par job in that area.

There were definitely issues like this in 3e/3.5, but there didnt seem to be nearly as many. (at least in the core 3 books)

There is no indication at all that this is an exploit and it's definately an annoying trend today that so many people have the gall to label such things as such. The rule is stupid is a subjective claim first and foremost. Here's an example:

Thought 1)Free healing via sunburst is an exploit of game mechanics and a poorly designed ability, the designers clearly messed up and this should be fixed. I think all healing should be limited by the healing surge mechanics, therefore this rule is stupid.

Thought 2) since the ability is an encounter power, and encounter powers can by used every 5 minutes, and it does not say in its description that it requires hostile beings to function, we must therefore conclude that it is working as intended. If we remove this power from functioning outside of combat we now have to stumble around with its functionality in combat. If the cleric cannot use the power to heal without an enemy in the AOE, an above poster's scenario of using it to try to find a lurker would not restore healing, which is blatently against he intent of the power. However if we KEEP the power functioning outside of combat, a 27th level cleric, a bastion of divine power capable of standing against the demonlord Yeenogu himself instead is able to take 5 minutes to restore vitality and health to those around him on a whim. Without powers like this, such story actions would not be possible. This rule empowers a lot of RP and story elements that would otherwise not exist and is therefore a really good rule. (especially since standard monsters and NPCs do not possess healing surges IIRC I could be wrong)

These combos may seem cheesy, but look at them from a story standpoint and see what you can do with it. In a long chase scene similar to LotR where aragorn and co. chase the orcs that took the hobbits, you could have your Paladins/clerics skirmishing continually heroically running themselves to the limit in order to doggedly pursue their foes. Through using the powers in such a fashion it empowers the characters to do something heroic, stunning and most importantly fun. They are able to, in some specific circumstances, be more durable and dogged than normal. While they wittle away at the orc forces they spend in combat surges and daily powers, but because they can heal outside of combat without resting they are able to have a dogged chase scene that could lead to a dramatic rescue with the party nearly maxed out. That seems fine to me.

It seems to me that these sort of things are working as intended.

I honestly wish that people wouldn't make so many assumptions about how the rules appear and would just accept them for what they are and play the game. The designers spent a long time working on this thing. Where you see exploit and broken, maybe they see working as intended. Who knows, it is an incredible act of conciet to assume that we do.