I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[DEFCON 1]

So, you never use things like Swords of Sharpness? Your loss.

Or going down in a pool of blood, being run through front to back, or having a large visible wound pumping blood, etc.

Not against the PCs, no I don't.

Now when a PC strikes a killing blow on a monster, then sure... all those narrative techniques are fine. Because I know the monster is dead. He isn't healing himself back up.

But narrating a PC getting a limb hacked off by an ogre? Not a chance. Even when I was playing 1-3E and had to use magical healing, I never did that. Because to somehow believe that these PCs would have their arms chopped off, then picked up and placed against the stump and then reattached and the wounds and muscles all magically sewn back together... and then have them continue their adventuring career as though nothing happened, sometimes even within the hour? To me, THAT'S stupid and narratively ridiculous. To have a body take that sort of traumatic shock almost every fight and not have it ever affect the person at the very least psychologically is a narrative dead end in my opinion.

 

[billd91]

[Regarding swords of sharpness] Not against the PCs, no I don't.

Oh, you are seriously missing out. Granted, most of them end up in the hands of the PCs (whatever hands remain) so you have to be willing to put up with that, but until then you get to hear them wail in terror. It's music to mine ears.

 

[Naszir]

Healing Surges within the context of 4e make sense for the most part. 4e hp are considered abstract and represent many different factors as has already been quoted.

The issue of dropping below 0hp might be able to be dealt with narratively if the only way to get a character back above 0hp is with some sort of magic induced healing surge. A warlord yelling at a mortally wounded fighter to "Shake it off", allowing the fighter to magically heal the deadly blow that took him below 0hp is a bit much.

Otherwise it does seem to be a narrative nightmare and for the most part glossed over in some way.

Personally, I could never get hp as being only physically representative. That would make no sense to me. But if someone finds other players who are fine with that and it works for them then roll/role with it.

In some ways you have to look at each individual hit point being representative of a combination of factors. Separating out hit points as "these hit points are physical" and "these hit points are luck" and "these hit points are skill" just makes a mess of things, IMO.

I see each individual hit point as a combination of the ability to take physical damage, the luck at which the attack missed something vital and the skill to avoid taking a truly serious blow.

I like the idea of Healing Surges but I do feel like something more can be done to make the game work more efficently. Combat should not take as long as it does in 4e.

 

[Dausuul]

To me, if a swordfighter sustains a narratively gross physical injury... it's removed him from a fight. He's down. He's out. He's not getting up. You don't narrate the fighter taking an arrow to the throat if the expectation is he's going to spend a couple healing surges to go back to full HP.

So if a guy gets reduced to negative hit points (but not negative bloodied)... how do you narrate that? He's down; he might be up and fighting again in a couple of rounds, or he might be dead in a couple of rounds. You don't know which it's going to be.

(I'm not saying that PCs should get limbs lopped off. I never narrated that particular type of injury for player characters either. But I did narrate pretty severe wounds for PCs who went below zero. I felt this was not just acceptable but more or less required; if they weren't grievously wounded, why would it be so urgent to rush over and stabilize them? With 4E... well, I've mostly stopped narrating 4E combat, though this is only one of the reasons.)

 

[billd91]

I think you don't really need to narrate a heck of lot of detail when a PC drops due to hit point loss. Chances are good that most other characters aren't in position to see much detail other than the hit landing. You can include more detail as another character approaches to do something about it.

I use comments like "The giant's sword hits hard, Laerin collapses in a heap and doesn't move."
Then when Gil the cleric heads over to offer some assistance, if she's deep in negatives I can say that blood is running everywhere. If not (perhaps still near 0), she's unconscious but the wounds aren't terrible. She will surely die if not given assistance.
But if she uses her own healing (somehow), she can pick herself back up, shrugging off the pain.

Critics are right that, to a certain degree, the wounds are more ambiguous since they heal themselves, non-magically, so fast... or don't... depending on whether or not the PC can burn a healing surge. I agree that can be a problem depending on your narrating style. I just think there are styles that can minimize the issue.

I'm starting to come around to the idea of having some hit points auto-restored at the end of a fight given breather time - through healing surges or not - because of their abstract nature. I'm thinking it might work if PCs could recover half the damage they sustained during a fight. Every attack then becomes half temporary, half persistent. Characters bounce back a little but are definitely wearing down. Healing item needs are reduced a bit. They should get this even without having to spend a healing surge (for 4e players). Additional bookkeeping would be required - at least keeping track of damage received in the current fight - but I don't think that would be hard.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So if a guy gets reduced to negative hit points (but not negative bloodied)... how do you narrate that? He's down; he might be up and fighting again in a couple of rounds, or he might be dead in a couple of rounds. You don't know which it's going to be.

Going into negatives is easy... he's just down. Maybe he's unconscious, maybe he's out of breath, maybe he's so stunned he just can't get to his knees and lift his weapon. In any event, he isn't capable taking any combat action. No big deal.

It is the 'third strike and you're dead' saving throw rule that is admittedly the one place where the 4E format breaks down and you have to make the illogical jump from 'he's out of breath' to 'his body went into shock and now he's dead!' And I fully expected someone to mention it, because you are absolutely correct... 4E combat isn't in any way simulationist across the board.

But to be honest... I genuinely don't worry about it. Having someone fail a third saving throw and 'die' happens so infrequently in comparison to people supposedly getting cut by greatswords or impaled by crossbow bolts or engulfed in fireballs that I usually just handwave it. When the PC fails that third save, either they went into shock and died, or more usually narratively a monster performed a 'killing blow' on them. And while yes, it's possible someone might ask of the situation 'wait, there was no monster adjacent to the PC when he died, how did they accomplish a killing blow?' or something like that... but usually the players themselves are so shocked that someone's been cacked that those questions of the leaps in logic don't usually rear their head.

 

[Dark Mistress]

I think healing surges have good a bad points about them. I personally don't like them as written but think the idea has merit. I will explain what I mean.

I utterly loath second wind, I also loath how healing surges is a internal source. When your out your out.

What I did like is the amount healed is based on your hp total, I never liked the idea of healing healed 1d8+x hp.

So IMHO interesting idea with a lot of merit that was very poorly implemented.

***note - I haven't played 4e in some time and never played it a ton, so going off a admittedly fuzzy memory.

 

[billd91]

What I did like is the amount healed is based on your hp total, I never liked the idea of healing healed 1d8+x hp.

I can empathize with this point, but I think the 1d8+x hp model for cure light wounds serves a pretty good purpose. If the healing spells recovered a fraction of the target's hp total, how do you quickly heal low-level characters? Cure light healing 1d8+x serves the purpose of healing a much larger proportion of a low-level character's hit points. That helps low-level character durability immensely.

What may serve both your preferences and the needs of the game with low-level characters is a mechanism where characters are healed xd8+x amount below a certain level of hp, and a proportion of hp for higher hp. Alternatively, you'd need to come up with an entirely different structure for healing spells - not based on light, moderate, serious, etc wounds.

 

[Naszir]

I think healing surges have good a bad points about them. I personally don't like them as written but think the idea has merit. I will explain what I mean.

I utterly loath second wind, I also loath how healing surges is a internal source. When your out your out.

What I did like is the amount healed is based on your hp total, I never liked the idea of healing healed 1d8+x hp.

So IMHO interesting idea with a lot of merit that was very poorly implemented.

***note - I haven't played 4e in some time and never played it a ton, so going off a admittedly fuzzy memory.

To clear up the fuzzy memory of yours, second wind more represents getting an adrenaline rush and finding the fortitude to recover. It's not that hard to visualize. You see it all the time when someone has been presented with a crisis. There are times where you just feel like you cannot give anymore but you somehow find a way to push yourself and you get a second wind. Runners find it, hikers find it, and people who play sports find a second wind.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Frankly, if it was an email conversation, I'd be happy to leave it at that. However, since this is a messageboard, others will also be reading what I write.

I do not dispute that you did not have fun with 4E, and I do not dispute that you think healing surges were a big part of that. However, I still think that the key issue was too much in-combat recovery of hit points rather than healing surges per se. This is not an assumption, by the way, it is my analysis based on what you have posted on grind and combat length.

The way I see it, the real culprits are the Second Wind action, minor action healing powers and other ways to spend a healing surge in combat. As mentioned, healing surges may contribute to the problem because the standard conversion rate in 4E is 1 healing surge = 25% maximum hit points, and that adds to the rate at which hit points are recovered in combat. Lowering the conversion rate to 1 healing surge = 10% maximum hit points might mitigate the problem. Removing ways to spend a healing surge in combat might eliminate it completely.

Once more into the breach....

Second Wind and like 'healing in combat' are merely the most objectionable of the uses of Healing Surge - it as a whole trivializes damage taken. Much of 4e seems built around trivializing what had been serious damage (example - petrification) further than the magic in previous editions.

I also don't like the use of Healing Surges after combat. But, and I want to be clear here, I understand why it was put into the game, and if it were a hell of a lot less available then I would likely not object much, if at all.

Even in combat, if Randy the Ranger can get free of the scrum for a couple of rounds then it would not bother me. Him being able to do it while Gary the Goblin is poking him with a pokey stick of poking does bother me. Heck, in the case of Bob the Barbarian it would not bother me if he could heal it in combat while using Rage. But having it happen too many times strained my patience.

Something to add - I do not mind Save or Die and/or Save or Suck effects. Failed a save vs. the hot glance the medusa gave you from across a room? Don't lose Dex bub, turn to stone. Disintegrate? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind....

And for the record, I have never had a combat in 3.X last as long with so few opponents as that 4e battle. This was before folks started routinely posting that hit points in 4e encounters should be halved.

I really wanted to avoid talking about why I hate 4e, it does not forward the conversation in a meaningful fashion, is not likely to change any opinions, and is likely to trigger a 'yeah, but'.... I hate yeah, buts.

The Auld Grump