Forked Thread: Healing Surges: Let's see them in Action!

[Obryn]

I'm not disagreeing with all of them but, I mean if some of these arguments can be called healing surges (When they clearly have an outside cause, or could be interpreted in other ways) there really is no "standard for a healing surge and this whole discussion is pointless.

Pointless? Or the whole point?

I'm going with the latter.

-O

 

[Imaro]

Pointless? Or the whole point?

I'm going with the latter.

-O

Eh, I disagree. I can argue that a cat could be a dog... because it has four legs, is a mammal, has fur, etc. But in the end I'm still doing it by ignoring all the logical indicators that it's a cat. This type of discussion is pointless, unless the whole point is that by ignoring and selectively disregarding certain things... I can justify calling my cat a dog. I guess for some people this is what they want in their gaming, for me it just doesn't fly.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Note as well that getting beat up is subdual/non-lethal damage and different healing rates apply in 3E than they do for normal damage. So any time a hero gets beat up but does not have open wounds the damage and healing can't be compared to open wounds.

 

[billd91]

In nearly all of these cases (in which there is healing, it is internal, and it's not more along the lines of non-lethal damage), the same could be accomplished with a once/day second wind like in Star Wars rather than a once/5 minutes healing surge. I like the former, am not too keen on the latter.

I think there's good value in a character catching a second wind enabling himself to fight on. It fits in very well with cinematic fights. Fighter is getting nailed to the floor, sees his wife/rescued girlfriend/crippled brother join the crowd, and then rallies to win. It's a common enough construction in Stallone/Van Damme movies, but it loses a lot of cinematic impact and value when done in every fight or every 5 minutes of downtime.

 

[Obryn]

Eh, I disagree. I can argue that a cat could be a dog... because it has four legs, is a mammal, has fur, etc. But in the end I'm still doing it by ignoring all the logical indicators that it's a cat. This type of discussion is pointless, unless the whole point is that by ignoring and selectively disregarding certain things... I can justify calling my cat a dog. I guess for some people this is what they want in their gaming, for me it just doesn't fly.

That's not really what we're talking about, though. It's a poor analogy.

Nobody's ever seen a healing surge. Most everyone has seen cats and dogs.

It's a game mechanic that takes place in an imaginary space, not a real object. I don't know that there's a need for a mechanic to have the same narrative justification each time it occurs.

I mean, we've already talked to death about hit points, and how HP can mean different things at different times. We could talk about action points, and how they could be narratively justified in different ways - maybe a surge of adrenaline, maybe a critical opening, maybe perfect timing, and so on. We could talk about how a barbarian's rage could be him getting really angry like the Hulk, or just him going into a frenzy of battle. Or how some Fighters are militia men, others are knights, and others are mercenaries.

This isn't new, IMHO. There's no 1:1 correspondence between mechanics and narration, and there hasn't ever been that I can see.

-O

 

[roguerouge]

All fights in the Buffyverse.

In addition to the four Whedonverse examples I gave up thread, at the end shots of season two, Giles (torture victim, broken fingers), Willow (head trauma, in wheel chair), and Xander (broken arm) all remain severely wounded several hours after the big battles. Spike spends the latter half of season two in a wheelchair, although he's faking in the last few episodes.

Edit: More examples include Cordelia falling through the floor and being impaled on a rebar. She gets hospitalized and pops stitches the next episode when she gets pushed. Riley Finn also gets severely injured in season four, which keeps him wincing and out of at least one fight as "Buffy" says "I can't use you." before heading into the battle.

So there's clearly a mix of incidents that would and would not fit the healing surge mechanic.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

In addition to the four Whedonverse examples I gave up thread, at the end shots of season two, Giles (torture victim, broken fingers), Willow (head trauma, in wheel chair), and Xander (broken arm) all remain severely wounded several hours after the big battles. Spike spends the latter half of season two in a wheelchair, although he's faking in the last few episodes.

So there's clearly a mix of incidents that would and would not fit the healing surge mechanic.

Remember as well that Buffy is a Slayer and has some form of Fast Healing. It is a supernatural ability of slayers and is supposed to be different than normal.

 

[Hussar]

But, it doesn't happen every fight, or every 5 minutes of downtime because healing surges are limited per day.

You burn three healing surges in the 5 minute break, those are 3 less that you have the next time around.

For those quibbling with my examples, perhaps a better use of your time would be to find counter examples. After all, like I said, it's perfectly in keeping with 4e mechanics for Frodo to burn his healing surges and then turn around and claim it was his armor that saved him.

And, "piles o' hit points" doesn't really work either. Unless you going to start claiming double digit levels for these characters of course.

Subdual damage? Really? That's the counter argument?

Let's have some more examples then. So far I'm 10 to 2. Let's run up the lead a bit before I go to bed.

11. The protagonist in Desperado is shot in the arm, gets sewn up by Selma Hayak, sleeps it off and is right as rain the next day. No problems shooting anyway.

12. Reese in The Terminator, gets beaten the crap out of, and chucked in jail. They escape the Terminator and hide out in a hotel. Next morning, completely ok, no problems. Talk about the healing powers of nookie.

13. In Game of Death, Bruce Lee wades through a sea of mooks, gets pummeled very nicely by Kareem Abdul Jabbar, shakes it off and carries on. And of course, let's not forget Enter the Dragon with Chuck Norris. Does he even get to sleep that one off?

Look, I'm not saying you cannot do this in 3e. I'm totally not saying that. Of course you can. Being able to model it in 3e does not preclude being able to model it in 4e. My entire point is that people keep claiming that 4e's hit point recovery rules are impossible to narrate. Yet, I've shown 12 examples, and two more have been provided which show pretty decent ways to narrate 4e's hit points.

You think 3e does it better? Great. I've got no beef with that. My specific beef is the idea that you cannot narrate 4e mechanics. That the mechanics are so abstract that they defy narration.

 

[Imaro]

That's not really what we're talking about, though. It's a poor analogy.

Nobody's ever seen a healing surge. Most everyone has seen cats and dogs.

It's a game mechanic that takes place in an imaginary space, not a real object. I don't know that there's a need for a mechanic to have the same narrative justification each time it occurs.

I mean, we've already talked to death about hit points, and how HP can mean different things at different times. We could talk about action points, and how they could be narratively justified in different ways - maybe a surge of adrenaline, maybe a critical opening, maybe perfect timing, and so on. We could talk about how a barbarian's rage could be him getting really angry like the Hulk, or just him going into a frenzy of battle. Or how some Fighters are militia men, others are knights, and others are mercenaries.

This isn't new, IMHO. There's no 1:1 correspondence between mechanics and narration, and there hasn't ever been that I can see.

-O

You are correct to a point... in 3e what a HP is does not exist objectively until it is lost. At that point it can represent whatever the DM wants to describe it as, in the moment that a type of damage is taken. Now barring extreme, adn downright stupid, examples like Mike Mearls uses with the eye socket and 2 hp's, any Dm with a modicum of common sense can relay a narrative constructed around the damage a 3.x PC takes... As physical by making a simple judgment call on the percentage of hit points the wound takes away from the PC.

In 4e, unless you want your games to be as consistently absurd as Mearls example... not so. I can knock an opponent unconscious and have him fighting not to die, yet he is in tip top shape 5 minutes later... or he is able to awake from unconsciousness by being "yelled at" by another warrior. What types of wounds or narrative are these, and how can I describe them at the point the damage is taken so that I do not run into absurd situations? Or am I suppose to wait until they are healed and then describe them as the type of wounds that can be healed by whatever method is employed? I don't run into these problems with 3.5.

A better analogy, I can describe both 3e hp's and 4e hp's as a dog, cat, human, etc.... 3e won't do anything particularly noticeable to disuade this notion of what it is, once I describe it... while 4e at times, actively does things a dog, cat or human can't... but only after I've chosen which one it is. It's a purely gamist concept that at times destroys any type of coherent narrative or simulation out the window, unless one is willing to jump through major hoops. 3e just tends to get out of the way.

 

[Obryn]

In 4e, unless you want your games to be as consistently absurd as Mearls example... not so. I can knock an opponent unconscious and have him fighting not to die, yet he is in tip top shape 5 minutes later... or he is able to awake from unconsciousness by being "yelled at" by another warrior. What types of wounds or narrative are these, and how can I describe them at the point the damage is taken so that I do not run into absurd situations? Or am I suppose to wait until they are healed and then describe them as the type of wounds that can be healed by whatever method is employed? I don't run into these problems with 3.5.

It's silly, I know, but I haven't run into these issues with 4e either.

A better analogy, I can describe both 3e hp's and 4e hp's as a dog, cat, human, etc.... 3e won't do anything particularly noticeable to disuade this notion of what it is, once I describe it... while 4e at times, actively does things a dog, cat or human can't... but only after I've chosen which one it is. It's a purely gamist concept that at times destroys any type of coherent narrative or simulation out the window, unless one is willing to jump through major hoops. 3e just tends to get out of the way.

At this point, we're back in the last thread(s). I mean, I can make a longer reply if you think we're going to cover any new ground, but I don't know that it's worth the time and keypresses at this point to further beat the dead HP horse.

(unless it rolls a 20 on its death save.)

-O