I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[DEFCON 1]

If you are a high level character I have no problem imagining him/her sustain an impressive amount of damage.

I can cite tons of fantasy characters from manga/comics/movies etc. that can sustain an absurd amount of damage. But none of them presents the Schrödinger issue.

Exactly. You're picking one completely absurd thing to accept as possible, and one other completely absurd thing as not possible.

I understand why... we all cling to absurdities every day while discounting other just as absurd things. But for my money, as someone who sees himself as a logical person... if I'm going accept absurdity and suspension of disbelief as part of playing a game... then I'll accept ALL the absurdity and suspend all my disbelief as just the requirement for making the rules of a game enjoyable to play. I'll have fun playing with the rules and just not worry about it.

 

[Imaro]

You are exactly right. You can model things that way. And it works. Why can he push through? Well, he's still got some hit points left. That's because hit points work on a linear time frame. If he's still moving, he's got hp left obviously.

4e just doesn't work that way. Not that it's a better way of doing it, but, rather, a different way of approaching the issue.

People keep trying to apply an approach that 4e just doesn't support and then complain that 4e doesn't do what they want. In 4e, a wound is never, ever a fixed narrative point until AFTER everything is complete. That's the whole point of it being abstract and a narrative based concept. Everyone at the table has the opportunity to add or subtract from the narrative at every point in time, up to and including ret-conning narratives.

The orc attacks you and does X damage. That's all that's known. Until the combat is over anyway, and THEN, and only then, can you pin down the narrative. Granted, most of the time, the narrative does follow in a fairly linear fashion, but, that's simply because none of the players have changed the narrative as its being played out.

Your character takes a butt load of damage. Combat ends and he spends his healing surges. Now he's back at full hit points minus those healing surges. What happened to his gaping wound?

It never happened. There was no gaping wound. Even when the character fell down and was possibly dying, there was no gaping wound. Why not? Because the Warlord yelled at him to get back up and it worked. If he had a sucking chest wound, no amount of yelling would have made him stand up. But it worked, therefore there was no sucking chest wound. That blow that looked so bad was just stopped by the Mithril Armor and the character had the wind knocked out of him.

However, had the warlord not yelled at the PC, and the PC then failed his three death saves, then that wound would obviously have been a sucking chest wound, because, well, no one dies of having the wind knocked out of them.

Now, I can totally see why people might not like this way of doing it. I get that. But, the argument about "realism" just doesn't wash. It's perfectly realistic, but, you just have to apply the narrative after the resolution of the event, not as it occurs.

Okay a couple points I want to make here...

First, I find this as a prime example of the "Doesn't feel like D&D to me" argument. You're outright saying the narrative for a combat in 4e is done totally different than any other previous edition and yet people don't understand why some express the idea that 4e feels like a totally different game. Go figure???

Second, where is the fact, that the narrative has to be constructed after the fight is over, expressed anywhere in the corebooks? How can you blame people for picking up an edition of D&D and expecting it to play out in a general sense like the editions before it? The fact that no mention or guidance on this is given in the corebooks is just the icing on the cake. To me this speaks to a failure of 4e's designers in considering and setting guidelines for the narrative surrounding it's mechanics, something many have expressed displeasure with.

Last, so does your group just state mechanics through the entire fight and then at the very end go back and describe everything that happened? I'm trying to wrap my mind around this because it just seems an odd, un-intuitive, and confusing way for the narrative to be constructed. I mean do you even remember everything that happened by the end? Or is only the narrative concerning healing surge use, damage, hitpoints, etc. held off till the end?

 

[Spatula]

Actaully, that's not true. Dropping unconscious in 1e took time to recover from -- starting with a coma that lasts about an hour and then a week of recovery. Not what I'd call a "bounce back"

Can't say I've ever seen that happen in a game - namely because a 1st-level spell completely removes any and all penalties from being on the brink of death. 5 minutes after the fight, the cleric has used some spells (and/or some wand charges) and everyone is back in tip-top shape. That's why I said, "healing resources permitting".

 

[Nagol]

Can't say I've ever seen that happen in a game - namely because a 1st-level spell completely removes any and all penalties from being on the brink of death. 5 minutes after the fight, the cleric has used some spells (and/or some wand charges) and everyone is back in tip-top shape. That's why I said, "healing resources permitting".

Cure spells don't remove the coma/recovery. You need a Heal or better to remedy it. You may be at full hp, but you can't fight, move quickly or do more than eat and sleep.

 

[wingsandsword]

People keep trying to apply an approach that 4e just doesn't support and then complain that 4e doesn't do what they want. In 4e, a wound is never, ever a fixed narrative point until AFTER everything is complete.

Maybe that's a part of why many people don't like 4e. This is like other places where 4e might be a fine game on its own, but it has such different assumptions in so many places about so many things that are required for the game to work properly that players who have played other editions don't feel they should have to completely re-learn not just the mechanics of the game, but even their narrative style and conventions just to play a new edition of D&D.

A whole new magic system, fighters with the power to force other characters to move, the elf/eladrin split, a new cosmology, and countless other changes to both rules and setting presumptions, but also changing the underlying narrative style a DM would use to describe actions during combat.

OD&D, Basic D&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e. . .in all those editions if an orc hit your 1st level PC with an axe and did 3 points of damage the DM could say as the dice were rolled and the results tallied that the orc hit your character with an axe, it was a serious, but not immediately fatal, cut, and he wasn't getting better without some significant rest or magical healing. In 4e you can't do that because a character might use a healing surge and that cut would just vanish, you just arbitrarily say the character took 3 HP, and after the fight maybe the DM can narrate things. Being unable to accurately narrate a combat in real-time because it's too abstract is yet another thing that detractors (myself among them) will point to and say it is like a video game.

 

[DEFCON 1]

No it's not... it's saying "Hey, just because I'm willing to accept some abstraction, doesn't mean you should keep adding to it, without consideration of the narrative, and expecting me to just wave it off...somehow...in someway."

Why not? If you are willing to accept some absurdity, why aren't you willing to accept all of it? Once you suspend your disbelief and accept somehow that the game mechanics of D&D combat have an analogous 'real-world' representation of combat... why pick and choose when to stop? And why should the game designers choose an arbitrary stopping point for no other reason than some players might just not be willing to go further with the abstraction? And more to the point HOW ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHERE THAT POINT IS?

 

[Imaro]

Why not? If you are willing to accept some absurdity, why aren't you willing to accept all of it? Once you suspend your disbelief and accept somehow that the game mechanics of D&D combat have an analogous 'real-world' representation of combat... why pick and choose when to stop? And why should the game designers choose an arbitrary stopping point for no other reason than some players might just not be willing to go further with the abstraction? And more to the point HOW ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHERE THAT POINT IS?

Because at a certain point in absurdity, instead of playing D&D... I'm playing Toon.

Oh, and to address the rest of your questions...

Stopping at just hit points wasn't an arbitrary stopping point... every edition had them and even then their abstracted nature caused some dissent... but yeah, the answer was throw some more abstracted mechanics without a clear connection to the narrative or gameworld on the base of hit points because if there was anything D&D players were clamoring for... that was exactly it... or maybe not.

The previous point, hit points (in abstractness), was already a sore spot... how did they not know adding even more abstractness to it would rub many people the wrong way? Personally I ignore them in my 4e games when I run it... don't even try to explain what is happening at that 5 min rest when everyone is suddenly in prime form... but it does irk me at times.

 

[Nagol]

Why not? If you are willing to accept some absurdity, why aren't you willing to accept all of it? Once you suspend your disbelief and accept somehow that the game mechanics of D&D combat have an analogous 'real-world' representation of combat... why pick and choose when to stop? And why should the game designers choose an arbitrary stopping point for no other reason than some players might just not be willing to go further with the abstraction? And more to the point HOW ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHERE THAT POINT IS?

Suspension of disbelief has a limit for members of the audience. Willing Suspension of Disbelief - Television Tropes & Idioms

As for the devs knowingwhere that limit is, they don't. They define the audience as those who are willing to go this far with them. If they stay close to the accepted, the audience stays large. If they go out REALLLY REALLY far, their audience shrinks to almost nothing. The devs pick the audience by choosing how far to go, not the other way around.

 

[Mallus]

Because at a certain point, instead of playing D&D... I'm playing Toon.

Given the way an AD&D character with enough levels can get smacked around by a giant, blown up, and dropped off a cliff and still get up and run around (possibly while making a hooting sound), ie, given they way they resemble Daffy Duck, you could say we've been playing Toon in fantasy-drag all along!

 

[tomBitonti]

The issues regarding hit points is somewhat of a distraction from healing surges: D&D has always been rather conflicted in regards to HP and damage; weapon attacks can cause bleeding damage. 1ed fireballs could melt lead; what kind of fall of over 20' would not inflict actual serious physical injury?

On the other hand, hit points are described as not just "damage" or "injury" but as an ablation of stamina, luck, and divine favor.

My own take on healing surge issues is that healing surges are defined at the meta-level, not at the narrative level. The player or GM is required to create the narration. Contrast the very concrete act of drinking a healing potion from the more abstract act of spending a healing surge. While ultimately, the act of drinking a healing potion still has a vagueness, that is hidden within the abstraction of hit points. The act of using a healing surge has no such concrete tie.

There are some hints built into the classes, but, by the 4E philosophy, any actual descriptions are just a "skin", and can be reflavored freely. A character could be flavored as being chemically driven. Using a healing surge could actually be "taking a sip of the go juice".

I think what this translates into is a desire for the game designer to provide the narrative ties. An RPG is not just an abstract framework that is built to provide a balanced set of numbers. (In my view) an RPG also provides a set of concrete ties which outline the game narration in a compelling way. In this view, the abstract framework is the easier part of the game design. The hard (and valuable) part is the narrative tie. That is what drives creative and interesting stories.

TomB