Healing Potions seem woeful

[ryryguy]

They've tied healing potions to healing surges. They've made taking a 6 hour rest more powerful than magic. Maybe you like that sort of thing. Personally I think it's about as retarded as it can be.

Personally I think "6 hour rest" > "healing potion magic" is a trivial price to pay for a well-balanced, highly playable resource management system that helps to create great adventure pacing.

But it seems like that 6 hour rest -> full heal thing is the root of the problem for you? If so maybe you should just play that the extended rest restores your healing surges but not hit points. So a badly injured character can start the day at full hp but at the cost of 3 or 4 surges.

 

[Regicide]

Personally I think "6 hour rest" > "healing potion magic" is a trivial price to pay for a well-balanced, highly playable resource management system that helps to create great adventure pacing.

"Oh that battle was rough, if someone does a cleave in my general vicinity I'm going to fall over and die without assistance."

5 minutes later...

"Wow, I'm totally fine! Lets open that next door!"

Repeat.

Repeat.

"Another tough battle, that orc power attacked me 5 times, wow, that really hurt. Good thing I have this healing potion. I've never used a healing potion before, but... I know it will have absolutely no effect on me. Don't ask me HOW I know this. Time to take a nap, that'll do it."

If thats your idea of a great adventure and pacing, let me take a moment to puke. Is Uwe Boll credited anywhere in 4ED? I'm sure he had to be involved in this trainwreck.

 

[RefinedBean]

"Oh that battle was rough, if someone does a cleave in my general vicinity I'm going to fall over and die without assistance."

5 minutes later...

"Wow, I'm totally fine! Lets open that next door!"

Repeat.

Repeat.

See, during those five minutes, the heroes are talking to each other, raising morale, planning tactics, and getting back into the game. With HP as an ambiguous source for both physical health AND mental fortitude, this perfectly fits with any heroic game.

And if you don't like the fact that a six hour rest completely restores HP and healing surges, change it. Nobody's stopping you!

Frankly, I enjoy the idea of a group of adventurers blinking into the morning sunlight, checking their equipment, and steeling themselves for another day of being absolutely bad-ass.

I mean, they're HEROES, right? This is what heroes do.

 

[Blackeagle]

"Oh that battle was rough, if someone does a cleave in my general vicinity I'm going to fall over and die without assistance."

5 minutes later...

"Wow, I'm totally fine! Lets open that next door!"

Repeat.

Repeat.

"Another tough battle, that orc power attacked me 5 times, wow, that really hurt. Good thing I have this healing potion. I've never used a healing potion before, but... I know it will have absolutely no effect on me. Don't ask me HOW I know this. Time to take a nap, that'll do it."

"Oh that battle was rough, if someone does a cleave in my general vicinity there's no way I'm going to be able to duck in time."

5 minutes later...

"OK, I've got my breath back. Lets open that next door!"

Repeat.

Repeat.

"Another tough battle, that orc power attacked me 5 times, I don't think I've got the energy to block another axe strike. Even a bottle full of amphetamines isn't going to perk me up. Time for a good night's sleep, that'll do it."

If thats your idea of a great adventure and pacing, let me take a moment to puke.

Puke away. I'll be busy enjoying 4e!

 

[silentounce]

See, during those five minutes, the heroes are talking to each other, raising morale, planning tactics, and getting back into the game. With HP as an ambiguous source for both physical health AND mental fortitude, this perfectly fits with any heroic game.

And if you don't like the fact that a six hour rest completely restores HP and healing surges, change it. Nobody's stopping you!

Frankly, I enjoy the idea of a group of adventurers blinking into the morning sunlight, checking their equipment, and steeling themselves for another day of being absolutely bad-ass.

I mean, they're HEROES, right? This is what heroes do.

Well, if that's a perfect fit for a heroic game, then I guess I don't want to play a heroic game.

Also, Basic, 2ed, and 3.Xed (those are the systems that I've had quite a bit of exp playing) all seemed like heroic games to me without this feature.

EDIT: In response to the poster directly above. So, now we no longer get hurt, we just get warn out? That doesn't seem as heroic or exciting to me. If you use that conceit then a PC good go from level 1 to 30 hardly ever receiving more than a few decent wounds and some scratches. The rest of the time his morale was just low, or he was fatigued, maybe he stubbed his toe. I guess I'm more toward the realism side than the sword and sorcery side. But, it seems the core of this discussion on both sides is that "there's no accounting for taste". I'm glad you like the new system and are happy with it, but it can't be that way for everyone. There's nothing wrong with him puking about it either. His opinion is no more/less valid than yours.

 

[Blackeagle]

Also, Basic, 2ed, and 3.Xed (those are the systems that I've had quite a bit of exp playing) all seemed like heroic games to me without this feature.

EDIT: In response to the poster directly above. So, now we no longer get hurt, we just get warn out?

What do you mean now? It's always been this way. There's a whole paragraph in the 1e DMG where Gary Gygax explains that of course it's ridiculous that a fighter could take all these sword thrusts and how hit points represent more than the physical ability to endure punishment.

That doesn't seem as heroic or exciting to me. If you use that conceit then a PC good go from level 1 to 30 hardly ever receiving more than a few decent wounds and some scratches. The rest of the time his morale was just low, or he was fatigued, maybe he stubbed his toe.

I don't know what your definition of heroic is, but my experience is that in heroic fantasy fiction the heroes seldom take anything more than flesh wounds, if that. When they do it's a big dramatic moment. How many times was Aragorn seriously wounded in LotR? How often was Conan seriously hurt? Heck, I think I can count the number of serious wounds the heroes took in all of LotR on one hand!

I guess I'm more toward the realism side than the sword and sorcery side.

Hey, I love good, gritty fantasy. I'd go so far as saying I like The Black Company and A Song of Ice and Fire more than LotR. But I recognize that no edition of D&D is going to simulate those without some major house ruling. Oddly enough, I think the modular nature of 4e probably makes it more amenable to being adapted to those sort of settings than previous editions were (I'm already thinking along those lines), but I don't expect it to do gritty right out of the box.

 

[RefinedBean]

We can all agree that no game system will ever emulate our idea of "fantasy" exactly. WOTC has made a product where the heroes bounce back quickly to face the unspeakable things that oppose them.

It's up to US to change the fluff to make the rules work for us. If that doesn't work, we resort to changing the rules to reflect how we interact with our environs.

And if that's not enough, we switch systems!

Ahhh, simplicity.

 

[VannATLC]

Seriously, Regicide, you're trolling. That's it. That's all. You're not actually discussing, you're just spouting. And your spouting without thinking, too.


HP are flesh-wounds, HP are determination. HP are grit. HP are not, by raw, or by description, the ability for a character to widthstand serious injury. The first nasty cut you take is when you get bloodied. The only life-threatening injury is the one that drops you below 0. The only incapacatating injury is the one that kills you.

If you've ever really had to fight, you'd understand HP better.

The only reasonable objection to the current HP system is that you recover all your healing surges overnight, regardless of the events of the day.
That one is annoying, and I've houseruled it. I can understand that objection.
You get reduced to below 0, you lose a healing surge from your total. There's a ritual to restore them, or they come back at 1 a week.

Complaining about the actual hp and healing system, however, is indicative of your inability to look at it from a fresh start, as opposed to trying to make it fit your 3e-isms. It is internally consistent, and quite logical.

 

[silentounce]

What do you mean now? It's always been this way. There's a whole paragraph in the 1e DMG where Gary Gygax explains that of course it's ridiculous that a fighter could take all these sword thrusts and how hit points represent more than the physical ability to endure punishment.



I don't know what your definition of heroic is, but my experience is that in heroic fantasy fiction the heroes seldom take anything more than flesh wounds, if that. When they do it's a big dramatic moment. How many times was Aragorn seriously wounded in LotR? How often was Conan seriously hurt? Heck, I think I can count the number of serious wounds the heroes took in all of LotR on one hand!



Hey, I love good, gritty fantasy. I'd go so far as saying I like The Black Company and A Song of Ice and Fire more than LotR. But I recognize that no edition of D&D is going to simulate those without some major house ruling. Oddly enough, I think the modular nature of 4e probably makes it more amenable to being adapted to those sort of settings than previous editions were (I'm already thinking along those lines), but I don't expect it to do gritty right out of the box.

But when they did get wounded like that, did they take a nap and have everything be okay? I guess that's my biggest problem. It's not the abstraction of HP. It's the abstraction that no matter how badly wounded you are, as long as your not dead, six hours of rest makes you just like new. It just seems like previous editions of the game were more flexible out of the box. You could run those kinds of games without changing much of anything, at least not changing core mechanics, such as the way characters heal. And, yeah, you can try and house rule out of it. Like people have mentioned above. But the entire system balance, encounter balance, etc, is based around this. So, simply stating that you gain healing surges back through rest, but not healing has far reaching repercussions beyond just delaying healing. This system is built for that heroic fantasy feel, and people that aren't looking for that kind of game are going to have a harder time with this system than previous ones. D&D has always been heroic fantasy, but previously you could play a lot of different styles with hardly a change. I'll still give it a try, but it seems like this version of D&D is forcing you to play a certain way more so than others. *shrug*
There are a lot of cool things, and I appreciate the effort that went into it. But I guess I was hoping for something different.

 

[RefinedBean]

I'll still give it a try, but it seems like this version of D&D is forcing you to play a certain way more so than others. *shrug*
There are a lot of cool things, and I appreciate the effort that went into it. But I guess I was hoping for something different.

I understand, and I can empathize. This happens with any iteration of a favorite game.

Some of the things one can do to give it a more gritty feeling, and even make things a bit more tactical:

1. Increase the number of encounters per day. Eventually, people will start running out of Healing Surges, and nasty things result.
2. Add more elite monsters. Every combat will be harsher, and resource consumption will skyrocket.
3. Grant a certain amount of healing surges per day, and allow more through good RP, good skill use during Skill Challenges, etc.

Was 3.5 easier to insert a grittier feel? Maybe. Limiting the availability of magical items, access to downtime and rest, and strictly enforcing multiclassing rules certainly helped. But all this could be said for 4.0 as well.