Healing Outside of Combat

[Tuft]

If you look at it that way it may sound silly. But there is another way to look at this. If the players are more wounded then a single short rest is not going to be sufficient to bring them to full health again. So from a narrative viewpoint you could say that heavily wounded players require multiple short rests (giving the cleric a chance to use healing word a few times).

Greetings,

But your are just optimizing the healing... the characters could just have spent their surges normally during the rest, as you can.

 

[jorrit]

But your are just optimizing the healing... the characters could just have spent their surges normally during the rest, as you can.

Yes, but I see no problem with the healing word power being used there. However, I do use a fixed average bonus (3+wisdom mod) and no dice roll. So the players can just add that fixed bonus to every healing surge they use while doing a rest.

Greetings,

 

[DracoSuave]

I don't see it as 'rests more than five minutes suck.' That's somewhat arbitrary and really isn't realistic. Or does it even have versimilitude.


Instead, I see it as a choice. Do you heal quickly (no powers used) so that you can hurry forth, or do you take your rest easier, so that while you don't heal as fast, you don't strain yourself as much (powers used=less surges used).

I mean, 15 minutes isn't an unreasonable rest time after mortal combat, even in high fantasy.

 

[CapnZapp]

The problem is, to use the feat, the cleric HAS to take 2 short rests in a row (minimum). Otherwise, he begins the next encounter with no healing powers, clearly not an acceptable situation if fighting is expected.

4E basically only gives healing powers for use in combat. Noncombat, short rest healing is assumed to handle things. Not very surprisingly, the designers have found that this is not how people play; they want to continue to use healing powers out of combat, like you did in all earlier editions. So the implement the option to do so.
...

[this feat] requires a series of short rests to work, which to me breaks one of the implied rules of 4E; you always take one (and only one) short rest between encounters.

Thank you for clearly expressing the problem.

I though short rests was to be the time between encounters. A time when you don't adventure, don't use up resources, don't track time on a round-by-round basis.

Essentially, short rests carried the promise of no book-keeping. Simply use up healing surges to get to full health and get on with the adventuring.

It looks like an increasingly more difficult job for me as the DM to keep it that way if even the designers have abandoned this great idea.

If you look at it that way it may sound silly. But there is another way to look at this. If the players are more wounded then a single short rest is not going to be sufficient to bring them to full health again.

If you are more wounded than what a short rest can give you, that means only one thing: you're out of healing surges.

But I know that isn't what you're thinking of. You're thinking a short rest provides a single maximized use out of a healing power, which then means you need another short rest before you can use that power again.

But you're thinking in terms of powers, rounds and encounters.

To me, short rests promised to do away with all of that.

The definition was simple: after one short rest, you will be as rested as you can be without taking an extended rest.

In other words, taking more than one short rest should not give any additional benefits whatsoever. This simple ideal would have been beautiful - shame the designers backed away, and so soon...

 

[CapnZapp]

In my post above, I'm laying out my arguments why I dislike the line of thought promoted by the designers when they give us feats like this PHB2 one.

But to remain constructive, we need an alternative solution. Which is a discussion best had in the House Rules forum...

So head on over to http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/253137-fixing-healing-outside-combat.html if you are interested in keeping the short rests sweet and simple

 

[DracoSuave]

I don't see the problem with it. Some player groups will want things short and simple, and other groups actually enjoy the number crunch of a more complicated rest.

If the former group doesn't want the complication, nothing changes with the PHBII, except that Song of Rest gives them another -simple- option to increase their healing.

If the latter group does, then they have an option that costs a character a feat that they can choose to take or not take.

4th edition is about -choice-. You -choose- the level of complexity you want. Groups that do not wish to be bothered won't be. Groups that don't mind will tweak it, save a healing surge here and there, and it doesn't take up a -ton- of time.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't see the problem with it. Some player groups will want things short and simple, and other groups actually enjoy the number crunch of a more complicated rest.

The problem is when you want things short and simple, but you can clearly see the game rewarding "complicated" with a better outcome.

In other words, I want rules that make short and simple as good as "complicated". I want rules that don't penalize short and simple with having to use up more healing surges, which turn "short and simple" into "getting closer to the end of the adventuring day".

Of course, that means "complicated" needs to become irrelevant and obsolete. So you can't really please both groups at the same time.

And that is the problem.

(I agree nothing changes by PHB2. This problem existed before that book. Only the feat in PHB2 convinces me the designers aren't going to keep short rests short and simple and thus I need to fix that myself)

But really, I must confess I would be much more interested to hear your crunch analysis of my house rule (see link above) than to continue this "is it a problem or not" discussion...

 

[Tuft]

The problem is when you want things short and simple, but you can clearly see the game rewarding "complicated" with a better outcome.

Well, the feat could be there to keep the "Systems Mastery" crowd happy; people feel clever discovering that this feat exists, and then "inventing" the multi-rest trick...

But really, I must confess I would be much more interested to hear your crunch analysis of my house rule (see link above) than to continue this "is it a problem or not" discussion...

Sorry...

 

[MarkB]

The problem is, to use the feat, the cleric HAS to take 2 short rests in a row (minimum). Otherwise, he begins the next encounter with no healing powers, clearly not an acceptable situation if fighting is expected.

4E basically only gives healing powers for use in combat. Noncombat, short rest healing is assumed to handle things. Not very surprisingly, the designers have found that this is not how people play; they want to continue to use healing powers out of combat, like you did in all earlier editions. So the implement the option to do so.

This simply isn't the case. Healing Word is the specific example power used in the PHB when discussing the use of encounter powers outside combat. It was always intended to be used in this way - the feat simply streamlines the process.

For the bard, this is the inherent +Cha on healing on a short rest. A good solution as it does not require more than one short rest to work. However, from level 6 onwards, it is still worse than actually taking multiple rests and using majestic word repeatedly.

For the cleric, this feat is the answer, and it requires a series of short rests to work, which to me breaks one of the implied rules of 4E; you always take one (and only one) short rest between encounters.

I don't recall any developer discussion to indicate that this was one of the implied rules of 4E. I understand that multiple short rests seems to be a hang-up for some people, but I'm just not sure why.

Use of an encounter power represents the expending of a certain degree of mental, physical, spiritual or magical focus. Whether you were in combat at the time is almost beside the point. Once you've lost that focus, it requires a period of relaxation or contemplation to regain it. There's no reason why you can't go through this process more than once between combats.

 

[Lauberfen]

With all due respect to CapnZapp et al, I fail to see the issue.

There's no question of counting rounds or powers, unless you're short of time, in which case the question is do you get a short rest at all?

Otherwise you simply end a fight, the wounded ask the cleric for healing (as has been the time honoured tradition these past decades), he rolls, and keeps on going until people feel they are sufficiently healed. Then you work out how many short rests have gone by (if relevant, which is almost never), by the simple function of dividing the number of healing words used by 2.

From a mechanical perspective it's easy, from a story perspective you simply continue to rest and be healed until you're ready to go again, unless there's a dire emergency.