I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[pemerton]

Like I said, narration after the fact. You cannot provide any narration of injury until the encounter is resolved and the state becomes known. After all, how deep can the wound be if it is fully healed from a 5 minute rest and the fighter is as fresh as a daisy the next morning? It was but a scratch! Unless it killed him of course then it was a mortal blow that would fell the strongest of men.

I disagree that you cannot provide any narration. You can provide some narration - but, as Hussar pointed out upthread, you can't provide complete narration. The analogy to the spear strike to Frodo in Moria, which has been made upthread, is apposite here. Some narration is given - the reader knows that Frodo has been knocked unconscious by a spear strike - but all the details are not known. They are revealed later. In the book, it is the author who keeps the reader in suspense. In a game, it is the mechanics that keep the players (including the player of the injured PC) in suspense.

As to the wound being fully healed from a 5 minute rest - why assume that that is the case? After a 5 minute rest the wound is no longer impeding the PC's performance. That is not the same as it being healed. And that is consistent with the general tenor of D&D for most of its history.

As to the wound being fully healed and the PC being fresh as a daisy the next morning - as I posted upthread, that is a discrete issue of design - completely separable from the other ways in which 4e healing works - which is obviously a decision taken to facilitate adventure pacing. The houseruling required to make the pacing more gritty - 1 surge per day, or 1 surge per week - is completely trivial. And there are alternative non-mechanical approaches available that likewise are trivial to implement - no houseruling of recovery, but an understanding among the group that much resting time - weeks, months, whatever - will pass between adventures, as the PCs sort out their ordinary lives and recover from the strain of their travails.

But if I was reading a novel in which the characters each suddenly made their own wounds disappear once a day, I'd find that stupid and stop reading the book.

As I posted upthread and have reiterated here, the houseruling or playstyle adjustment required to answer that objection is trivial.

To reiterate: The recovery of all surges after an extended rest is a discrete part of the 4e healing mechanics. It's soul function is to facilitate adventure pacing, by making recovery quick and by making sure that all PCs recover at the same rate. Changing it - either mechanically, by houseruling, or narratively, by the table agreeing to extensive downtime between adventures - is trivial and will have no other effect, that I can see, on the play of the game.

It is in the relationship between healing surge expenditure, hit point recovery and healing powers that 4e's healing rules demonstrate a mechanical intricacy, where damage to balance might be done by careless tinkering. The extend rest recovery rules are completely extraneous to this.

In 4e characters seem to be in only 2 conditions. Dead or just had the wind knocked out of them.

This is not true of all characters in 4e. Just PCs. That's more or less what "hit points as plot protection " means!

If a game is to use terms such as these, and then expect players of the game to understand that the words don't mean healing, bloodied, and hit, then there needs to be some serious discussion in the rules books about what these things DO mean and how to narrate them well.

I'm not saying that this can't be done, but I'm saying I don't know how to do it.

I've often posted that the 4e rulebooks could benefit from more clearly indicating how the designers think the game is to be played. I don't think that healing is a particularly egregious case - it's certainly caused no trouble at my table - but I wouldn't object to it being given a makeover.

 

[pemerton]

On the question of past editions - it is impossible, in any edition of D&D, playing according to the combat mechanics, for any PC to suffer a non-fatal wound that cannot be fully recovered from by (i) minor first aid on the battlefield, and then (ii) some period of bedrest.

4e narrows further the range of possible, non-fatal wounds. And (via the death save mechanic) it introduces a fortune-in-the-middle dimension into the narration of them. The second of these changes might be radical for some. The first strikes me as nothing more than a difference of degree.

 

[Dark Mistress]

This is not true of all characters in 4e. Just PCs. That's more or less what "hit points as plot protection " means!

When i say character I mean PC. Though the rules applying to PC's and NPC's differently is another thing that bugs me. But I won't get into that since that is not on topic.

 

[billd91]

Specifically, a kind of magic. Which is how it's easier to wrap your mind around it in pre-4e D&D: "It's MAGIC! It knits your arm right back on! It does that because it's MAGICAL!"

I mean, if 4e just decided to give everyone the ability to create X number of magical healing salves in a day, and each healing potion recovered 25% of your hit points, but you couldn't apply the healing salve without about 5 minutes to bandage yourself adequately and suchlike (though certain characters could spur you on to suddenly use a salve regardless), and described it as MAGIC, this wouldn't really be as much of an issue, I think.

It would depend. Is that healing salve only usable on themselves or can it transfer around? The internal resource nature of healing surges is one of my main criticisms.

And still, it seems that it might cause problems in pacing. Healing is effectively an encounter-based resource, but that doesn't jive with folks who want a less-mythic period of convalescence.

Indeed. Not my primary beef, but I can see it.

 

[JamesonCourage]

As to the wound being fully healed from a 5 minute rest - why assume that that is the case? After a 5 minute rest the wound is no longer impeding the PC's performance. That is not the same as it being healed. And that is consistent with the general tenor of D&D for most of its history.

I think the difference being pointed out is not in terms of narrative given, but in mechanics reflecting narrative given. For example, in 3.X, that narratively nasty wound is marked by a mechanical wound that will take days or potentially a couple weeks to naturally heal. With 4e healing recovering outside of combat on an extended rest, you have a wound that might narratively persist, but the mechanics no longer reflect this (nobody is missing hit points or healing surges).

I don't think it's a matter of "I have 1 hit point as I can act unimpeded" so much as "I have 1 hit point but my wounds mechancially disappear overnight, which might be jarring to the narrative given". But, that's my take on what BryonD is trying to say, and I might be off-base.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

As to the wound being fully healed from a 5 minute rest - why assume that that is the case? After a 5 minute rest the wound is no longer impeding the PC's performance. That is not the same as it being healed. And that is consistent with the general tenor of D&D for most of its history.

Because prior to the 5 minute rest, the PC was at death's door having failed 2 of the 3 required saving throws. If X is the quality of being wounded and the PC has none of X then the PC is effectively unwounded. If the PC was wounded and is not now wounded the PC healed. Alternatively, the universe works like the movie-universe The Last Action Hero where heroes only ever suffer flesh wounds or are killed.

<snip>

The houseruling required to make the pacing more gritty - 1 surge per day, or 1 surge per week - is completely trivial. And there are alternative non-mechanical approaches available that likewise are trivial to implement - no houseruling of recovery, but an understanding among the group that much resting time - weeks, months, whatever - will pass between adventures, as the PCs sort out their ordinary lives and recover from the strain of their travails.

As I posted upthread and have reiterated here, the houseruling or playstyle adjustment required to answer that objection is trivial.

To reiterate: The recovery of all surges after an extended rest is a discrete part of the 4e healing mechanics. It's soul function is to facilitate adventure pacing, by making recovery quick and by making sure that all PCs recover at the same rate. Changing it - either mechanically, by houseruling, or narratively, by the table agreeing to extensive downtime between adventures - is trivial and will have no other effect, that I can see, on the play of the game.

Sure it's fixable -- the easiest method of fixing it is to play a different game regardless of how trivial a change it may appear -- but the question wasn't whether or not I play 4e; it was what is my problem with healing surges.

Healing surges and the other decisions surrounding healing present a game design pretty far from what I would prefer to see and introduce a unknown state into encounters where a character is down and may be fine or may be dying -- only further actions at the table can resolve the superposition. The default is the character is likely to die unless someone intervenes, but once the intervention occurs the character will be fine before the next encounter. The difficulty with the superposition is it interferes with on the spot description requiring the substitution of vague statements as "he's down" or the use of game terms "he's dropped below 0 hp and is down".

Further, healing as it is presented in its entirety posits a reality where a character goes from death's door to winded (i.e. full hp but down a few healing surges) within 5 minutes to wholly refreshed and rested within a day -- all without any external agency other than someone administering minimal aid to wake the character from unconsciousness. This is a terrific model if I were aiming for a very cinematic game like BESM, Feng Shui, or Reel Adventures, but does not fit well with a game aiming for different tropes which is what I use different editions of D&D to emulate.

 

[Nagol]

On the question of past editions - it is impossible, in any edition of D&D, playing according to the combat mechanics, for any PC to suffer a non-fatal wound that cannot be fully recovered from by (i) minor first aid on the battlefield, and then (ii) some period of bedrest.

4e narrows further the range of possible, non-fatal wounds. And (via the death save mechanic) it introduces a fortune-in-the-middle dimension into the narration of them. The second of these changes might be radical for some. The first strikes me as nothing more than a difference of degree.

The sword of sharpness and staff of withering would disagree with your first point.

And as for the matter of degree, a sunburn and a burn are spearated by a matter of degree as well. A week of incapacity followed by a couple of months of bed rest on one hand and a 5 minute rest and continuing the adventure until there is a chance to completely sleep it off on the other.

Perhaps it is the degree of trivialisation that is affecting some people (in addition to the other issues like the narrative discontinuity, et al.)?

 

[Hussar]

Like I said, narration after the fact. You cannot provide any narration of injury until the encounter is resolved and the state becomes known. After all, how deep can the wound be if it is fully healed from a 5 minute rest and the fighter is as fresh as a daisy the next morning? It was but a scratch! Unless it killed him of course then it was a mortal blow that would fell the strongest of men.

I'd point out that it'd be really, really difficult to narrate before the fact.

Unless you have some seriously funky game mechanics.

 

[Nagol]

I'd point out that it'd be really, really difficult to narrate before the fact.

Unless you have some seriously funky game mechanics.

Certainly! Though I know of a few including the infamous "railroading" where the GM has laid the narration for the events and is trying to get the PCs to the same point...

What I respond to is a game where the state is knowable (note knowable not necessarily known) at all times inside the game world. The players may be on edge during a set of die rolls, but that is effectively instantaneous to the world. The players may be on edge because they don't know the state, but that state can and probably has been determined for them to discover as they may.

 

[Hussar]

Certainly! Though I know of a few including the infamous "railroading" where the GM has laid the narration for the events and is trying to get the PCs to the same point...

What I respond to is a game where the state is knowable (note knowable not necessarily known) at all times inside the game world. The players may be on edge during a set of die rolls, but that is effectively instantaneous to the world. The players may be on edge because they don't know the state, but that state can and probably has been determined for them to discover as they may.

Oh, and fair enough. Like I said, WAYYY back in this thread, the issue didn't really exist in earlier versions of D&D because D&D has always held the "Turn" (not the game term of 10 minutes, but, one person's period of actoins) as a distinct unit.

By and large, you couldn't do anything that would impact someone else's turn. Yes, there are exceptions to this (Attacks of Opportunity for one) but, generally, if it's not your turn, there's very little you can actively do.

In 4e, this isn't true. You have all sorts of things you can do on other people's turns, including effecting the attacks of enemies - turn a serious blow into a minor one a la a Warlord's healing powers. So, yes, there is a degree of uncertainty that wasn't present in previous editions.

This isn't a bug, it's a feature.

On the subject of healing sticks:

WOTC had the RPGA to draw upon when deciding on what consists of an outlier or not. And I'll be you dollars to donuts that healing wands were very, very commonly used in RPGA play. I've always said that 4e is the RPGA edition. That your particular group didn't use healing wands may be perfectly true. I can totally accept that. But, looking at things like the Adventure Paths, where that sort of thing IS presumed (and very frequently given as treasure), I'm going to go with any group that ignored the options was probably the outlier.

Certainly, even if it wasn't true, that was the presumption going into 4e.