I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Dannyalcatraz]

For the anti-healing surge crowd, would you accept healing surges with a Wound/Vitality system, if the healing surge could only heal Vitality?

Well, since I already said I'd be OK with a single Second Wind per encounter, and my favorite RPG system is HERO (which has Stun/Body)...

I'd have to say I'd probably be fine with that.

 

[Nagol]

Can you give me a 3E example?

Nope, since 3.X doesn't offer healing surges nor fast uncapped non-magical healing.

4e offers both though so to fix that problem requires change than just healing surges.

 

[JamesonCourage]

For the anti-healing surge crowd, would you accept healing surges with a Wound/Vitality system, if the healing surge could only heal Vitality?

A Wound / Vitality system specifically differentiates between serious physical wounds, and the surface cuts, exhaustion, luck etc. of Vitality. To follow Hussar's phrasing, the type of wound that was suffered is determined at the time the attack resolves, not retroactively in the future.

If healing surges can only heal Vitality, would that restore the viable suspension of disbelief?

In the RPG I created, I eventually divided hit points into two pools: one that represented physical wounds, and one that represented fatigue and avoiding attacks (though this could very easily extend to luck, fate, divine intervention, etc.). My players like it a lot, and I think healing surges would work great with it (even if I don't use them), as the new pool, THP, restores on a per round basis in my game.

I don't think the problem is with restoring hit points mid-encounter for most people (though it is for some, who think encounters are too long). I think the bigger problem is the dissociated narrative that occurs due to healing surges as they stand now (or as hit points stand in 3.X or previous editions when it comes to things like falling damage, being immersed in lava, etc.).

This would be a huge improvement over the 4E approach.

Though, honestly, I find HP and no surges the best option of the three.

Surges with W/V is perfectly acceptable however.

Exact same boat. I prefer no surges, but it'd work fine, and I'd be totally okay with it, as long as the game worked if you house-ruled them out (as in, most healing effects are not tied to them).

Just speaking for myself, it isn't about "suspension of disbelief". I have no problem with that. It is about quality of the narrative flow and the mechanics and a strong, consistent model.

Yeah. Hussar hit the nail on the head when he said they hurt a narrative timeline in combat. I really want to be able to describe something accurately, and healing surges in the 4e model would make that much more difficult. If you separate physical wounds from "other" wounds, it'd be much easier to describe the action as it happens, without needing to retcon stuff at a later time.

 

[BryonD]

Nope, since 3.X doesn't offer healing surges nor fast uncapped non-magical healing.

4e offers both though so to fix that problem requires change than just healing surges.

IMO "surges" are not the problem with 4E, they are simply one overall example of the results of the design philosophy of 4E. So it seems natural to me that there would be other related issues.

If I was a 4E fan who just didn't like surges, I can work around it I'm quite certain.

But it doesn't work that way. Surges fit right in to the collective thrust of 4E. That is why I'm not a 4E fan.

 

[Gaerek]

First off, I apologize for taking me so long to reply. It's been busy in Gaerek's world. Having said that, I'm enjoying our little conversation. I'm gaining a lot of insight here. I appreciate that.

Actually, in 3.5, here's what it says in the PHB:

It's clear to me, in the opening sentence, that what hit points represent isn't a variety of factors, like it had been explained in past editions. Personally, I think the reason for this change in 3.X was that hit points had never been treated differently than how 3.X describes them. That is, a "poison, injury" hits you no matter how much hit points you have, as long as I deal 1 damage. Why is that? Because the game treats HP as meat, and 3.X acknowledged it. 4e is closer to the roots of the game by switching back, but it's another direct change away from 3.X that a lot of people took subtle but important notice of, because the implications are large.

Please correct me if I have the wrong understanding, but I always took the second part of the sentance, the "...and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one." to fall under the perview of everything I mentioned. It's the idea that, "Man, that was going to be a hard hit, but I got lucky and sidestepped at the right time!" or "Good thing that sword only glanced off my armor, or I'd be in a world of hurt right now!" In essense, it covers the "...physical health, mental health, endurance, vitality, ability to mitigate damage, glancing blows, luck, etc." that I mentioned in my last post. I will agree that 4e went further than 3.x, but 3.x HP's were still very abstract and did not completely mean physical wounds.

Um, I'd argue that the more abstraction you have, the less it could potentially interfere with game play. That's why we have an increasing number of games go rules "lite" on us, really. It says, "here are some very basic, abstract rules. Now, we won't bog you down in the little stuff. Wing it, and enjoy the game instead of looking up rules." I don't like rules "lite" games too much, but I certainly see the appeal. And they rely heavily on abstraction.

Good point. I didn't think about it like that. I suppose that this is another issue of extremes.

That all makes sense to me. It doesn't reflect my group, but hey, tastes differ, and I'm okay with that. Tear stuff up with your group.

Again, to be clear, I just love playing. I haven't found a system I truly hate. And I certainly don't hate older version of D&D. I tend to DM for the group, so right now, we're more about killing and looting. I have no problem with the other side of the coin, and if my players wanted that, I would adapt the system, or even move over to PF or something else. But for us, right now, 4e is the perfect system, flaws and all.

This is where my view differs. If you have a basis in realism, with nods to realism all over your game, and then you seemingly knowingly abandon it for a mechanic for ease of use, our group gets pulled out of immersion pretty quickly. That pulls us out of the game, and out of the fun.

I totally understand. Difference of playstyle. Immersion is great, and for your group it's needed. Not so much for my group. And that's perfectly fine for either of us.

Well, to be fair, I've never seen an MMO that I could immerse in. So, it's not really they're goal. Immersion was key to my design goals when I was designing my game. And, it really shows in the rules, in my opinion. It's obviously not the case for MMOs. MMOs can be a lot of fun, as can CRPGs, but I don't play them, personally, to feel immersed. That is, however, what my group plays fantasy PnP RPGs for.

This is very true. But it's a bit more representitive of our playstyle. Just like permanent death in an MMO would kill off pretty much all the fun, excessive "realistic rules" would pretty much kill off the fun of our tabletop game. Again, difference of opinion and playstyle, and I can respect that.

And while I played 3.X for years, we had groups without healers of any kind, and we literally never used a wand of CLW. In fact, I think we used a wand maybe in three or four encounters total, in thousands of hours of game play. So, I probably don't agree on the nature of their necessity to the game.

Your DM is going to have a lot of say over what's "needed" in your group. In the "kick in the door" style play that has represented about 75% of the games I've ever played, wand of CLW have pretty much been a staple. We had even nick-named them crack sticks, because of how "addictive" they were.

But, my group is okay with avoiding or going without combat, too. We started a new campaign (new setting included), and we've played four real sessions so far. Each session lasts about ten hours. In those four sessions and 40 hours of play, there have been two combats. Both combats only involved one player, and they lasted one round (first combat), and four rounds (second combat). In the party of six players, two are completely built around combat, three are adept but built around other things (thief lord, amazing craftsmen, amazing negotiator), and one is just now getting decent at defending himself (chancellor / interrogator).

The point of our sessions is to immerse in the characters, see what story unfolds from the evolving setting, and experience interesting play, whether that's fighting a mercenary unit with other mercenaries you've hired, or if it's talking them into leaving you alone. The party has talked their way out of more fights, and purposefully avoided more fights, simply because they want a higher chance of success in the long term. I'm not sure that this would mesh well with your group, but it works for us. It's never been about killing stuff and taking their things (even though it's kind of what they want to do on the macro scale... they're warlords).

Sounds like fun, honestly. Just not like the type of game I'm running at the moment. I would enjoy it, my players, not as much.

Whereas I think that type of game is possible with two health pools. If his "other" pool is the only thing that gets injured, you have cinematic combat. If it hits your "physical" pool, you don't get that. It leaves options for both stories to be told. Now, that's not the case. It's all Diehard, all the time. Sometimes I want Conan the Barbarian. Yes, he was a badass in that movie. Yes, he did get beaten down by a bunch of fanatics at then "crucified on the Tree of Woe." Literally, a bunch of random snake cult fanatics just dogpiled on him and he was done. I'm cool enough with Conan to accept both that possibility, and the possibility that I'm about to kill 40 guys on horseback with just me and my thief friend. I want both possibilities in my game.

I can accept this. It's possible to have it both ways in the same system.

What I don't want to see in any edition of the game, which 4e did come closer to, was the "cinematic" feel at the very early levels. I don't want to see level 1's expect to be John McClane. You want to do cinematic stuff? I'm okay with that after the first few levels. Say, level 5-6. Then again, in my game, I place the average settled adult NPC at around hit die 4 (in a system that caps at 20). This is all just personal preference, though. If I say, "I don't want this" or "I want this" it doesn't mean I think it's what's best for the hobby. It means it's my preference.

And here I disagree with you. In my games, the PCs are always a cut above the rest. If my level 1 PC got into a fight with the town butcher (not that it should happen, but hypothetical), there would be no contest. I've always played this way. I want my PCs to feel like they are something special, that they were somehow, someway, set aside. If an average NPC is 4 HD, and is an actual threat to my 1st level PCs, there's a problem. Take your relatively typical 1st level "quest." We need the PCs to rid the town of the kobold threat. If the NPCs are 4HD, they can do it themselves. Why hire these PCs? I could see a town guard, or militia, or soldiers, or whatever being like this, but your average farmer (in my opinion, YMMV) or whatever, should be anywhere near the PC's in skill, health, etc. Like you said, this is all preference, and it's nice to see a different opinion here. It gives me a broader perspective and helps me see outside the box.

Well, LotR basically did something I touched on: how much story happened in the world between the time Frodo and Sam got separated, and the time they got captured by Faramir? Or, between the time they got released by him, and the time they reached the pit to throw the ring into? By having to walk everywhere, they're letting time pass, the setting evolve, and story is happening. Which is one of the things I touched on.

Certainly, the world moves along. I don't think I explained it right. Basically, in LotR, every single person in that setting, either directly, or indirectly, was affected by the actions of main characters. If Frodo had decided in Rivendell not to take the ring, Sauron would have ended up with the ring, and the world would be a much different place. If Strider hadn't decided to step up and become Aragorn, King of Gondor, the world would be a much different place. If Legolas and Gimli had decided to let their racial differences be an issue (instead of as a place to respect one another) there's a good chance the fellowship would have failed even sooner, and Strider's group would have been killed in one of their many fights. What I'm trying to say is, I present something the world is attempting to do. What happens to the world, is a direct result of the decisions my players make, either positive, or negative. If there's a problem I present, there's a way for them to deal with it. I know this might not be the best way to do things, it might not be everyone's preference, but it goes along with my feeling that heroes should be heroes. And the PC's are heroes. Not regular joes who carry a sword (or wand, or holy symbol, or whatever) and might get good enough to present a challenge to farmer in a fight in a little bit.

Well, let's look at LotR, since you brought that up. It's always one of two things for them: being in the action, or traveling to the action. I'm asking for a system that reflects that. It's really easy to skim over a one month travel time from defending the mountain pass against demons that eventually overrun you to the fortress protecting the source of immortality for the immortal races. In one month, though, a lot can happen elsewhere. You have the following:
(1) Action in the mountain pass!
(2) We're skimming over the one month travel in about 3-5 minutes, though this allows for the setting to evolve everywhere else in the world.
(3) Action at the fortress!

Ok, I can see this. I'm starting an Eberron campaign, and the world is full of faster travel options. But, almost each one presents an opportunity for "Action in the mountain pass!" as you put it. In previous games, I got over this in the Final Fantasy method of travel. You're low level, well, you have to walk everywhere. Oh, you've explored the continent? Well, here's a land vehicle you can use to get around this continent. Oh, action on the next continent! You're going to have to take a boat, but you can't bring your vehicle, you're hoofing it! Oh, you've explored two continents now? Awesome, here's an airship! Now you can fly around the whole world. Oh look, a new island has popped up. You fly there? Well, you're attacked, and now the airship has crashed. You're hoofing it again! Except in my games its more like, by the time they can instant travel in the world, they're planeshopping, so it makes it harder to instant travel. I try to organically prevent fast/instant travel, rather than saying, "Sorry, teleport spell doesn't exist!" That may be what you had in mind, but it didn't look like it.

Hopefully he's reading this and stealing it. If he is... hit me up, Mr. Cook!

Did you read his last L&L article? It's obvious he's getting ideas for 5e now, at least to me. I'm pretty excited to see what comes of this.

Yep, and I like most of what he's done. I really like the 3.X skill system, and think the 4e system is too binary and rigid (but like I said, I like narrow skills, not broad skills). I just didn't like the skill system presented recently.

I like the more general skills, but that's preference again, I suppose. This could be another discussion, for another thread, I think.

Great. Glad we can see eye to eye on so much, even if our preference differs in "gritty" versus "non-gritty" (I hesitate to say gonzo, as I don't know if that's your preference, and I won't say heroic, as my gritty games definitely have heroic characters). Thanks for the satisfying conversation. As always, play what you like

I like everything. I think the best term for my games is cinematic. That's just because it fits my group. People want gritty? I can do gritty. But I give my players what they want. Since I've been playing with the same players since 4e came out (prior to 4e, I didn't play at all since about 2003, due to my group moving away), it works well. I'm enjoying the conversation as well. Thanks for it.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm kindof surprised that there aren't more responses in the "mechanics" area. My quick response is that healing surges seem to interrupt the flow of mechanics to narration:

Orc swings at Bob. Ouch! That hurt!
(Bob spending a healing surge) Nawt, just a flesh wound (fights with renewed vigor.)

As opposed to:

orc swings at Bob. Watch out Bob, that looks like trouble!
(Bob spending a heroic surge). Hoohaw! (He makes an extra effort and steps aside from the blow.)

That is:

Attack/Damage/Surge Erases Damage

vs:

Attack/Incoming Potential Damage/Surge Prevents Damage

[Edit: This goes to the issue of the difference between numbers, which are abstract, and allow commutation, and the narrative flow, which tears apart if subject to the same operators. That is, from a mathy point of view, HP - D + S is a fine rearrangement of HP - (D - S); from a narrative point of view, the rearrangement fails. As a net, Healing Surges push the game too far into abstractions, hence the "gamist" criticism.]

TomB

I read the whole thread, and I'm kind of surprised that this wasn't picked up, since here we are many posts later, and it is still the only "mechanics" area criticism of surges that I saw.

Especially since hit points have always been primarily a narrative pacing convention. Hit point pacing has been compared to the last scene in Robin and Marion, where an older Robin Hood, played by Sean Connery, fights the Sherriff of Nottingham. He kills the Sherriff, then crawls off to die of his wounds--though the nuns "bleeding" him as a cure is ambiguous in the orginal source material, and deliberately played as such in the movie. At least one player in Gygax's original games has specifically cited that scene as the best explanation of hit points in film.

As near as I can tell, the other objections to surges have been in the same category as objections to hit points: They don't produce the kind of pacing that I want. Nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, if someone don't get the kind of pacing they want in combat, it is highly unlikely that they could like the results. But this is an objection to the design ethos of 4E, not the mechanics of surges. (And in fairness, many people have recognized that, both pro and con.)

Tom's objection above is outside that range, because while it accepts that narrative pacing is important, it is relating the effects of surges in particular to the "micro" pacing of combat, rather than the overall pacing of the fight.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Re: RuneQuest managing to have physical-only hit points, not scaling, with no death spiral. I don't buy it. If RQ doesn't have a death spiral, it is only because most significant hits in RQ equate to "immediately out of the fight". That is, there is no death spiral, because the character goes from "well" to "unable to fight" without having the spiral in the middle.

But there are substantial penalties to characters that are wounded, which is the classic death spiral problem. If a character is tough enough to somehow withstand a wound and stay in the fight, it is a classic death spiral situation.

 

[Naszir]

I guess what a lot of people are looking for is more consistency in the system. Don't give us hit points and say they are abstract and then give us a power or magic item that does bleeding damage (which clearly is not abstract).

Don't tell us that an attack "hits" only to allow us to retroactively say that it didn't really hit our character but they still suffer the rider effects as if the attack physically "hit" (i.e. poison).

The hard thing is how to reconcile the inconsistencies. And as people who like to think about these things we sometimes have a hard time wrapping our brains around this. So we search for new explanations or new ways to represent what we would like to see in the game.

For example:

What if, instead of healing surges, they were what I'd like to call "defensive surges"?

Defensive surges would turn opponent attacks into minimum damage attacks. So instead of retroactively affecting damage this would be something that would proactively affect damage. It would reflect the defensive ability of a character to roll with a blow or deflect it in some way so they only take the minimum damage from the attack.

Of course this wouldn't truly work with 4e because it would take a lot to rework all the powers that interact with healing surges. But maybe going forward this is something to think about.

Edit: Uh, I swear I didn't see tom's post until after I posted. Weird.

 

[Mallus]

Well numerous posters have addressed the "hp's do not all equal damage, only some are actual physical damage thing"... which kinda dismisses all of your arguments above concerning damage and Daffy.

My experience --obviously not universal, but still, in many groups over 26 years of play-- is that HP damage got described as real, tangible wounds, like JamesCourage's example of the claw going through a PC's back. The more (numerical) damage rolled, the gorier the description.

However, despite the graphic descriptions, these wounds never behaved much like actually wounds. They didn't impair, they didn't bleed, except in rare cases, like when struck by certain, powerful magical weapons. Leaving D&D combats resembling the classic Black Knight segment of Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- grievous maulings shrugged off as "just a flesh wound".

(because D&D's combat system can produce nothing but "flesh wounds", up until the point you're unconscious and dying/dead)

What I'm saying is don't notch the default absurdity level up to the point where the default is my character being flattened by a hammer and then picking himself up, blowing on his thumb until he's normal shape again and being all better in a few minutes.

Sure, in theory I agree with this, it's bad, or a least silly, form to describe a PC that's literally flattened, or limb-deprived, or burned to cinders and yet still alive, but it was also commonplace to do nearly that; describing fireballed PC's with 3rd degree burns who still, miraculously and thoroughly cartoon-like, still able to fight the good fight. And so on.

The system gave you roughly two choices when dealing with with PC's past a certain HP value: either describe the severity of wounds taken based on when they occur in the fight, and not by the numerical total of the damage dice (ie, the more severe wounds occur when the PC is near 0HP, regardless of the amount rolled), or describe PC's taking epic beatings of video-game proportions, which, conveniently don't break their stride (though they'll require powerful supernatural medical attention afterwards...).

Besides, Imaro, weren't you describing precisely the right way to narrate a 4e combat; the wounds aren't that bad until the PC is out of HP (and surges).

So instead we should keep the absurdity level down at the point where someone can stand in a room and get engulfed by six separate fireballs before finally falling unconscious from it. Because that level is easier to narratively explain away.

It's even better when you through old-school item saving throws into the mix. The PC can stand --relatively-- unscathed in the pool of molten steel and gold their armor and coin sack melted into (as happened to my PC more than once back in a game I played in college).

Like I've said before, 4e isn't less realistic then previous editions, it's unrealistic in a few new ways.

Honestly, I find aspects of the Healing Surge mechanics to be more realistic than previous editions. With surges, it's possible to model stunning/knocking a PC out though vanilla physical damage (they go below 0HP, but sill have surges). In older editions, they're either fighting at full strength or dying.

 

[The Shaman]

Hit point pacing has been compared to the last scene in Robin and Marion, where an older Robin Hood, played by Sean Connery, fights the Sherriff of Nottingham. He kills the Sherriff, then crawls off to die of his wounds--though the nuns "bleeding" him as a cure is ambiguous in the orginal source material, and deliberately played as such in the movie. At least one player in Gygax's original games has specifically cited that scene as the best explanation of hit points in film.

As I recall, the comparison was to the 1938 Errol Flynn movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood, specifically the duel between Mr Flynn and Basil Rathbone, not Robin and Marian.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L10fR31jC1w&feature=related]the duel between Mr Flynn and Basil Rathbone[/ame]


If you have a link citing a reference to the latter, that would be appreciated.