I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[DEFCON 1]

I come into the threads that ask for my experience to provide it, not to debate the validity of that experience.

Well, then why do you continue to post here then?

You could have just read what others posted, then posted your own experience and then left the thread. You would have gotten what you wanted.

Doesn't the fact that you continue to post and further the conversation tell us that just posting your experience isn't enough? You want to make further points?

 

[DEFCON 1]

The "I hate healing surges, who is with me" thread souds like a much more appropriate platform for heated debate. If you disagree with the thread title you are going to want to put in your two cents. This thread is more "help me understand why you don't like healing surges" IMO.

Which is the exact opposite of how I see it, funnily enough.

If I'm at a party and I say 'Everyone here who's left-handed, come join me in the kitchen to talk about being left-handed!'... and then a bunch of the right-handed people show up to say why being right-handed is better... to me, that's them being dicks and showing up uninvited. NOT me opening up a conversation about which handedness is better.

 

[Nagol]

Well, then why do you continue to post here then?

You could have just read what others posted, then posted your own experience and then left the thread. You would have gotten what you wanted.

Doesn't the fact that you continue to post and further the conversation tell us that just posting your experience isn't enough? You want to make further points?

By and large, no.

If I were original poster, I prefer a brief explanation simply so collecting the rationales and seeing the types and level of response becomes simpler.

As a responder to the original post, I have some interest in other experiences so I continue to read the thread. As most conversations do, a thread can meander into new territory and elicit a new response from me.

Looking at my postings in this thread, my general tendency is to present and clarify my position, correct objective mistakes, and to answer new tangential questions like "Would X relieve the difficulty I've experienced?" or "Would I prefer a conversation that goes like Y?".

I try not to engage in debate surrounding how others play or perceive the game even when presented with statements that could be considered attempts to invalidate my experience. I say general tendency because I am not perfect and can get drawn into pointless asides and/or arguments about experiential validity despite my best intentions.

 

[Imaro]

Which is the exact opposite of how I see it, funnily enough.

If I'm at a party and I say 'Everyone here who's left-handed, come join me in the kitchen to talk about being left-handed!'... and then a bunch of the right-handed people show up to say why being right-handed is better... to me, that's them being dicks and showing up uninvited. NOT me opening up a conversation about which handedness is better.

You mean like if you were at a a party and someone who was right-handed said... "Hey left-handers (people who don't like HS's), I'm not understanding why you guys prefer being left-handed to right...can those of you who do prefer it explaion to me why... and then 2 secs later someone whose right-handed (likes healing surges) decides to tell you, and all the left-handers that were giving you reasons (even though it was never askked), why being right-handed is better?? You mean being that type of dick at a party that turns it into a pointless argument as opposed to the attempt at understanding a different PoV it was suppose to be? Yeah, I could see that...

 

[Bedrockgames]

I dont think we need to get hostile toward one another. I am debating defcon on some things but he does make good points about the conversation. I guess to clarify i have no problem with people debating but i think much of the focus has shifted from measurable things to kess measurable things. Like I said saying hs don't feal realistic enough or tgat they disrupt continuity for me is a statement of preference it isn't an objective statement about the rules. And i can see how for others hs are perfectly realistic.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Just a little thought exercise: Start with 3.5 (or 3E or PF or even Arcana Evolved, I'm not picky). Decide that you want to entirely remove "save or die", and almost entirely remove "save or suck". Decide what kind of pacing you want in combat, how intricate you want it to be, how long you want it to take. Take a good shot at it. Playtest it. Release it into the wild.

I practically guarantee that you'll miss either the pacing or the time targets, and probably both. And this will have almost nothing to do with how much or what kind of healing is availabe in or out of combat. If you radically overcompensate towards simple rules, fast combat, and don't care about the pacing, I might be wrong about healing--but you'll have other issues due to that radical shift.

Once it has been out awhile, adjust. You'll get pretty close to what you wanted. A lot of people that don't like your design goals will not like your healing paradigm, no matter what it is. The comparative lack of save and die/suck will be ignored due to its absense in your ruleset.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You mean being that type of dick at a party that turns it into a pointless argument as opposed to the attempt at understanding a different PoV it was suppose to be? Yeah, I could see that...

Actually... I don't feel this has been a pointless argument or thread at all. And I HAVE been attempting to understand all of your points of view all along, which is why I keep asking questions of all of you. In fact... I've re-thought a position of mine during the course of this thread that I hadn't really had before... so for my money, this thread has been a success because my mind has been changed in a minor way. Not my major points... I still feel those are valid... but a minor point where I said to myself "Okay, I see where they're coming from, that actually makes more sense."

But if you're getting pissy because we're having the conversation, then as I said to Nagol... just don't have the conversation. You don't have to address my posts. In fact, you can put my on Ignore and not even see them if it bothers you that much. Doesn't matter to me in the least. But as I said above... since I've been talking to folks in this thread longer than you have... you don't get to decide whether I'm allowed in.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

But what's wrong with debate? Debate is good. Debate allows you to make your points and then see the other side, perhaps even expanding your own vision on the subject.

...

If you didn't care to have the conversation, you wouldn't have taken Mercurius up on his question.

I mainly agree with you, but I think the hole in that argument is the difference between "debate" versus "conversation". The subject is a great conversation topic. It is a pretty lousy debate topic. That we have some debate in the conversation is natural and fine. That all of these topics tend to turn into lousy debates is often reflective of the topic itself. I suppose we really ought to branch the debates off into their own, better framed topics.

Suppose you ask me and people like me, "Why don't you like Dodge vehicles?" We can have a conversation about it, but we can't have a decent debate. A great deal of my dislike of Dodge vehicles is intuition, aesthetics, and even a bunch of stuff that has very little to do with the practical and logical requirements and uses of a vehicle. I'm sure a certain amount of it is irrational. But a certain amount that will seem irrational to other people has a stronger basis than that. Yet, I'll find it difficult to explain--because I don't like Dodge vehicles well enough to explore them more than I have.

A better debate topic would be something like, "How do you prefer to see healing handled in D&D, and why?" That puts all D&D players that care enough to participate on an equal footing, and then they bring whatever experiences and insights they have to that topic. IMHO.

Edit, Re: Defcon 1's response: Didn't mean to be nitpicky about word choices there. The word choices happened to spark the thought, is all.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I mainly agree with you, but I think the hole in that argument is the difference between "debate" versus "conversation". The subject is a great conversation topic. It is a pretty lousy debate topic.

True enough. Although truth be told I wasn't even thinking of the words that specifically when I used them as you mention here. Replace 'debate' and 'conversation' with 'message board discussion' to get closer to what I really meant.

But anyway... since we've gotten away from the topics at hand and we've now moved into message board discussion formatting and etiquette... I'm going to just take my own advice and end the conversation for myself.

 

[Imaro]

Actually... I don't feel this has been a pointless argument or thread at all. And I HAVE been attempting to understand all of your points of view all along, which is why I keep asking questions of all of you. In fact... I've re-thought a position of mine during the course of this thread that I hadn't really had before... so for my money, this thread has been a success because my mind has been changed in a minor way. Not my major points... I still feel those are valid... but a minor point where I said to myself "Okay, I see where they're coming from, that actually makes more sense."

But if you're getting pissy because we're having the conversation, then as I said to Nagol... just don't have the conversation. You don't have to address my posts. In fact, you can put my on Ignore and not even see them if it bothers you that much. Doesn't matter to me in the least. But as I said above... since I've been talking to folks in this thread longer than you have... you don't get to decide whether I'm allowed in.

Not pissy at all, just showing how your analogy could go both ways, even though you may not see it. I don't want to put you on ignore either, honestly you just came off to me as overly aggressive and sinking more into a 3.x vs. 4e mentality as opposed to a let's discuss healing surges mentality. Now granted you aren't/weren't the only one who was going there, but you were the one I felt that from. No offense was intended though.