Healing in Combat

[Li Shenron]

But there should be no implicit or inferred requirement that the party has a Cleric.

Not a hard requirement, in fact I would like the game to still be playable no matter which archetypal character is missing. But for me it's totally acceptable that the DM is called for adventure selection or adjustment. The case of a Rogue-less party and using traps in an adventure is the easiest to think about, but something similar is true for other classes. So if a Cleric in the party has the main effect of allowing more encounters per day or less risky combats in general, then the DM should just be required to make adjustments to the adventure e.g. spread the encounter over a couple of more days, add one day of rest etc.

To a more extreme case, I'd also be glad if the game still worked for a party of all wizards or all fighters and so on... but clearly I will expect that the DM has to seriously alter a published adventure (which has to more or less be designed for an archetypical party) or write her own.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Let's please avoid that again! The ease of potion creation in the playtest has me a little wary already.

If I am not mistaken, the potion costs 25 gp to create in a system where we don't have any expected wealth by level or wealth gains from encounters. It may prove rather cost-prohibitively, or it may turn out very cheap. In 3E, a Wand of Cure Light Wound gave 1d8+1 healing for 15 gp, in a system where you're supposed to have 9,000 gp (IIRC) for a starting 5th level character with probably less than 45 hp. So a full heal would cost about 135 and be affordable more than 60 times with that money - But he'd only need 13 average encounters to advance to the next level, where he's yet to gain another few thousand of gp. (And a part of the gp you gain from leveling were expected to be spent on consumable sof course, but if, they probably thought about the cost of Potions, not the cost of Wands charges.)

Let's consider some numbers? I'd like to work it out. If a hit from an enemy deals 12.5% of your HP, then a heal will allow you to take two more hits, and assuming we're in a long grinding combat, deal damage twice more. As a leader you also get to deal damage yourself after that heal. If you take a striker instead, you need to deal enough extra damage that you prevent those two extra hits occuring in the first place. So, either the combat lasts N rounds, and HP/N damage is dealt each round, or combat lasts N+2 rounds and HP/(N+2) damage is dealt each round. In my theoretical party of 2, the defender and leader will deal the same damage, so they each deal HP/2(N+2) per round. In the other party of defender and striker, to get HP/N damage each round the striker will deal HP(N+4)/2N(N+2) damage, which is (N+4)/N times more than the defender. In a 6 round combat, that's 160% of the defender's damage, in a 4 round combat that's twice defender damage.

I don't know offhand what the real margins are, and obviously there are other considerations, but for each round a character stays standing because they were healed, the striker needs to deal that additional damage output in the rounds that went by before they were healed. I feel terrible for thinking about a combat this way

It's horribly complicated, especially since it's not just about encounter balance - dailies and healing surges are for "long-term" balancing, and in this scenario, you'll lose a lot of healing surges. But I tend to think with all the bonuses that go onto the healing surge when a healer uses it, it may be too strong. But there is also to consider that not every healer has that, and a healer has only 2 (3 at high levels) such heals guaranteed, and the others must come from power choices which may have different opportunity cost (e.g. you don't get to deal damage.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not a hard requirement, in fact I would like the game to still be playable no matter which archetypal character is missing. But for me it's totally acceptable that the DM is called for adventure selection or adjustment. The case of a Rogue-less party and using traps in an adventure is the easiest to think about, but something similar is true for other classes. So if a Cleric in the party has the main effect of allowing more encounters per day or less risky combats in general, then the DM should just be required to make adjustments to the adventure e.g. spread the encounter over a couple of more days, add one day of rest etc.

To a more extreme case, I'd also be glad if the game still worked for a party of all wizards or all fighters and so on... but clearly I will expect that the DM has to seriously alter a published adventure (which has to more or less be designed for an archetypical party) or write her own.

My problem here would be: There is a decent storytelling reason why you'd need a Rogue/Thief to handle trap and locks. It's something founded in the theme and the narrative.

But why do Clerics mean you get to have more and/or harder combat encounters? Is there a similar clear narrative link, or is this really just a mechanically thing. Should the Cleric's story really imply: "If you want to fight many or hard battles, you need a religious person"?

Does Bruce Willis or only make it through Die Hard alive or Chev Chelios through Crank because they're so deeply spiritual people, or deeply spiritual people are keeping them alive?

These two requirements for adventures are not the same.
I can accept that a Cleric should be needed when it comes to dealing with the gods or even just spirits and undeads. Or that a Wizard is needed when you want to explore a different plane or meet supernatural beings.

 

[Li Shenron]

My problem here would be: There is a decent storytelling reason why you'd need a Rogue/Thief to handle trap and locks. It's something founded in the theme and the narrative.

But why do Clerics mean you get to have more and/or harder combat encounters? Is there a similar clear narrative link, or is this really just a mechanically thing. Should the Cleric's story really imply: "If you want to fight many or hard battles, you need a religious person"?

Well, probably if you want to fight many or hard battles you need a fighter (or more) in the party. That would be more than decent from storytelling/narrative POV.

But, the decent storytelling reason why you'd need a Cleric should be because he will protect you from harm (not just with healing but also with blessings) thanks to his connection with the gods.

Blessing and healing doesn't only work against battles, but against dangers, hazards and harmful things in general. But then you're right that most parties in practice will use this just to engage in more fights...

 

[delericho]

Not a hard requirement, in fact I would like the game to still be playable no matter which archetypal character is missing. But for me it's totally acceptable that the DM is called for adventure selection or adjustment.

Yep, I'd have no problem with that.

To a more extreme case, I'd also be glad if the game still worked for a party of all wizards or all fighters and so on... but clearly I will expect that the DM has to seriously alter a published adventure (which has to more or less be designed for an archetypical party) or write her own.

Certainly, the game should work with an all-X party (for any X). But published adventures need not stick to that requirement - IMO, it would be acceptable (in the extreme cases) for it to be harder to adapt a given published adventure to a specific party than to write an all-new adventure.

(Though I don't think we disagree on that point. )

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't think you need to create a death spiral. Just the attitude that if you go down, you're probably not getting back up unless the rest of the group can survive the encounter and give you some out-of-combat healing. Staying up becomes the challenge of a combat as much as defeating the opponents.

The problem I see here is that the actual effect that a lot of people seem to want is mostly readily provided by means that these same people seem to reject. To wit, if you want the attitude that going down is bad, then if nothing else, a character going down is part of a "party death spiral". Moreover, it's most noticable in smaller groups. (One of the reasons that I get away with so much grit in an otherwise epic game is that I run routinely for 6+ players, where losing a character temporarily is not nearly as big a hit as a standard party.)

So what people really want is a death spiral that can be put off for some time, so that the threat is always there, but not readily felt in most fights. If we were looking at some crude measurement like penalties to attacks and saves (from wounds or whatever), then instead of a straight -1, -2, -3, etc. from damage or wounds, you want something more like -0, -0, -0, -1, -1, -1, -2, -2, -3, -4, -5, etc. Maybe the first time you hit zero hit points, you pick up a minor wound on the track, and this puts you at -0 for rolls, but that much closer to getting a real penalty.

Functionally, that is way too crude and counter-intuitive. Moreover, it is too deterministic for a lot of play--you can't get the balance right to make it a real threat for some people without making it too strong for other people. Thus the obvious answer of "hero points" or such to replace the -0 penalty portion of the chart--or in other cases, DM fudging to essentially do the same thing. This time, even though you got knocked out, you don't take the -1 of the real penalty. The advantages of both fudge and "hero points" is that they can be gained, lost, and recovered on a completely different schedule than hit points.

Hit points are a pacing mechanism. If you want to square the circle of real threat in the instance with heroic or gritty struggle against threat in the long-term, then there must be at least one additional pacing mechanism besides hit points. That second pacing mechanism may not be sufficient, but it is necessary.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'll also point out that surges are a method to limit healing by character over a timeframe, but not the only way to put caps on healing.

You could, for example, say that healing doesn't stack. You roll a 4 on a CLW spell. You record that you've been healed for 4 and gain that many hit points. Later, get healed again for 7. You adjust your heal max up to 7 and gain the difference, 3 in this case. Fairly rapidly, CLW doesn't do anything for you.

Naturally such a system has to have healing that scales a bit more than traditional, with upper level cures and/or rituals being fairly impressive to do anything at all. Instead of per day flat limits, you have a per day decrease in your healing max limit. This means that characters that are really beat up can be healed by to full with very impressive magic, but not by a string of lesser cures. Moreover, even when such a character is healed by impressive magic, their hit points are back, but their capacity for subsequent healing is put off that much longer. Healing is a short term fix for emergencies (like being in a dungeon) or a life-saving measure (when dying), but eventually you must rest.

The problem with such a system is handling time in game. I've explained it as above for clarity (I hope ), but it would need to be somewhat streamlined and compromised in practice to make it easy to manage.

Presumably, for a feel more congruent with D&D traditions, you'd leave the basic healing magic fairly wide open. You can readily get CLW wands or at least potions, because they can only do so much. Then you get really strict with the more powerful spells and rituals which heal much more, or in some cases even lower your limit. Something like a heal spell might pull you back to almost full and reset your limit.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

There's an underlying premise here that playing a class who's actions and resources are dedicated to healing and support is a less fun experience than playing a class that does damage. Several times I've heard about players being stuck playing the healer.

I simply don't understand this. Playing a support role is a perfectly valid, fun, and satisfying way to play.

I think altering the cleric is the wrong way to think about it. If a support character is effective, it will make a party more powerful. That's the point. The way you make this optional is to give the DM tools to account for the presence of absence of a cleric. That way, if there's nobody in the party who enjoys the support role, the DM can simply build adventures where one isn't needed.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

There's an underlying premise here that playing a class who's actions and resources are dedicated to healing and support is a less fun experience than playing a class that does damage. Several times I've heard about players being stuck playing the healer.

I simply don't understand this. Playing a support role is a perfectly valid, fun, and satisfying way to play.

There are two competing forces at work here. Essentially "all or nothing" healing, as with early D&D clerics or lack thereof, means that it is more difficult to find the mix you want, unless you like playing "the healer". If this is what you are doing, then you want to actually be playing the healer. OTOH, if you are doing something else too, then that means "all or nothing" healing doesn't really fit the model of the game.

Given support by the DM and the rest of the group, you can finesse these issues at a particular table, with early D&D. If your cleric is allowed to mix healing and other magic along with some real melee smacking, then a lot of people can find a mix that they like. Trouble is, that is the group doing that by social contract, not the system helping you out much.

The problem is not that doing support isn't fun. It is. The problem is that "support" is being defined as this thing that you do or you don't--and if you do, whatever else you do is also prescribed. I've played in a lot of groups that would have been quite happy, for example, with the simple tweak of dividing the healing responsibility between the cleric and wizard, with the cleric being the "melee caster" and the wizard as the "artillery caster". Among other things, set up right, it would give the low-level wizard more to do when his arcane spells were running low or didn't have good targets.

 

[Grydan]

There's an underlying premise here that playing a class who's actions and resources are dedicated to healing and support is a less fun experience than playing a class that does damage. Several times I've heard about players being stuck playing the healer.

I simply don't understand this. Playing a support role is a perfectly valid, fun, and satisfying way to play.

Playing a support role is a perfectly valid, fun, and satisfying way to play for people who enjoy playing support roles.

It seems quite evident that not all players are such people.

I think altering the cleric is the wrong way to think about it. If a support character is effective, it will make a party more powerful. That's the point. The way you make this optional is to give the DM tools to account for the presence of absence of a cleric. That way, if there's nobody in the party who enjoys the support role, the DM can simply build adventures where one isn't needed.

I don't think any single class should be able to hold the DM's adventure hostage.

If the cleric's presence or absence alters the very structure of possible adventures, what happens to campaigns when the cleric dies?