I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Plane Sailing]

The system gives you big boy pants, and you can describe it how you want. If you wet yourself because you cant think beyond spamming the Cure Light Wounds button and blame the system, oh well.

And if someone can't get past infantile insults aimed at other people, what then? Since it is your second go round in this thread today, you get to have a holiday from ENworld.

See you in a week. You can email me if you don't understand the problem.

 

[prosfilaes]

If I had been designing 4e, one of if not my single top priority would have been to dispose of hit points and introduce a system that really tracked health, injury, and sickness, and at least made some effort to reflect the fact that wounds hurt, wounds disable you, and wounds take time to heal.

Personally? Those are facts I don't think I want reflected in D&D. They slow down the game and don't reflect the heroic aesthetic. Also implicit in those statements is the death spiral; as you get hurt, you get weaker and thus easier to hurt and less able to damage your opponents which makes you get hurt more and become more powerless. It can get pretty unfun, and it doesn't seem well represented in the genres that D&D emulates.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Personally? Those are facts I don't think I want reflected in D&D. They slow down the game and don't reflect the heroic aesthetic. Also implicit in those statements is the death spiral; as you get hurt, you get weaker and thus easier to hurt and less able to damage your opponents which makes you get hurt more and become more powerless. It can get pretty unfun, and it doesn't seem well represented in the genres that D&D emulates.

While I agree that it can be done badly, it can also be done well.

RQ2 had pretty much fixed hp (and hp per location), hp were always associated with real damage, injuries would impact your ability and yet there were no death spirals as such, and plenty of heroic combats. In fact when I started with RQ2 everyone noticed how much MORE heroic the combat seemed at every point.

A game that was designed in the late 70's, which was fast, furious and fun while also having more of a nod towards realism in combat. I think it is funny that in 40 years since then so many RPGs have struggled to meet the bar it set.

Cheers

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you dislike healing surges, why? And what would your solution be?

I don't have particularly strong feelings about them one way or the other, but there is something that they dramatically affect: adventure pacing.

The mechanic of "restore to full HP using surges after an encounter" changes what effect HPs have on gameplay. HPs become not about how long you can endure a dungeon crawl (which is what they were about before), but about how tough of an encounter you can take. The shift is instant and dramatic, and focuses intensely on the encounter, rather than the adventure/dungeon itself. The encounter is what will kill you. The encounter is what will drain you. The encounter is what challenges you. A dungeon or an adventure is just a backdrop for a series of encounters that drain your HPs, spaced out by places where you can spend your surges.

I think this shift to the encounter is overall a negative shift in D&D. Healing Surges are not the whole bag, but they're a big part of it.

There's a disconnect with earlier editions where "full HP" meant that you were at full strength, and now, it might not mean that -- it just means you're able to take One Encounter before healing again (using surges). It's dissonant for newbies, too: I'm at full health, but I'm down half my surges....exactly what kind of condition am I in? How do I make sense of that in the narrative of the game? It's not something 4eD&D provides a lot of guidance for.

I think you could easily have mechanics that let PCs heal themselves without using surges. Potions work if you make them mostly "mundane," or you could do a Heal check restoring HP, or the Second Wind, or even going "Full Defense" for a round (and having that recover a bit of HP, as you are bandaging and tending to your wounds). Surges aren't necessary to have characters heal themselves.

I think I'd keep surges around, if I were doing a game. The first thing I would do with them is describe them better in story terms: this is your endurance, your grit, your determination, your willpower, your ability to power through. You HP's are only a snapshot of your overall health, your Surges define how beat up or healthy you are. I would also expand their definition so its not just HP that they recover. They might recover HP, or they might give you back a spell, or they might be used to activate a ritual. They'd be spent pro-actively as well as re-actively, giving the resource management aspect of D&D more prominence. I think that would help the party to focus more on when they need to take extended rests. Then I'd link Bad Things Happening to each extended rest.

 

[prosfilaes]

Or, of course, magic to heal. Which is where the problem comes in with this particular model. As, of course, high level characters require a large amount of healing magic for those "minor wounds" to heal, but low level characters can be brought back from the brink of death with a lot less effort.

That's because cure spells are like magical opiates. First you start out with one or two cure lights, and then that doesn't have the effect it used to, so you go up to cure moderates, then cure serious, or critical or even heal spells to get that same effect. But don't worry; you can quit anytime you want to. Sure.

 

[TheUltramark]

I got it! instead of healing surges, or my first suggesstion "hit-point-getter-backers" they should be called vitality reserves.

Also - I dont get the whole "lack of realism" when the preferred method would be a small stick shooting out a ray of magical energy or a guy calling down divine power from the heavens or some bottle of hitpoints to be uncorked....i dont see much difference in calling on an inner reserve, but thats probably just me.

Everyone stay happy and stay gaming ! ! ! (I'm on my way tonight to the weekly game ! ! ! ! yay me ! ! !

 

[JRRNeiklot]

In previous editions, I hated playing a cleric (it was better in 3e, but not by much). My choices in combat were heal the injured, or brain the bad guy with my mace.

Wow, I'd hate playing a cleric too, if that were my options. Her's my current spells prepared in our 1e game. I'm 8th level and have been blessed with an 18 wisdom:

1st level: Cure light wounds x3, command x2

2nd level: Hold person x2, resist fire, silence 15' radius, augury

3rd level: Speak with dead, Locate Object, Dispel Magic, Prayer

4th level: Cure seriuous wounds, divination, sticks to snakes


I have a few cures for emergencies, but mostly combat or utility spells. My options are to heal the injured, attack with my mace or sling, cast offensive magic, of which I have some of the best in the game, gather information about the upcoming dungeon, so that less people NEED to be healed. I have the best ac in the game, and I'm the second best fighter. In a pinch, I can serve as the trap finder, as well. And should we get our asses handed to us, I can spend a day and have the party ready to go tomorrow. Healbot, indeed.

 

[prosfilaes]

Also - I dont get the whole "lack of realism" when the preferred method would be a small stick shooting out a ray of magical energy or a guy calling down divine power from the heavens or some bottle of hitpoints to be uncorked....i dont see much difference in calling on an inner reserve, but thats probably just me.

Because in D&D magic is real. It is a concrete real fact that a cleric can channel divine healing power from the heavens or store it in wands or potions for later. If you were defining this as divine power, there'd be no criticizing it on realism grounds; the complaints would be that fighters (at least most fighters) shouldn't channels of divine power.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Personally? Those are facts I don't think I want reflected in D&D. They slow down the game and don't reflect the heroic aesthetic. Also implicit in those statements is the death spiral; as you get hurt, you get weaker and thus easier to hurt and less able to damage your opponents which makes you get hurt more and become more powerless. It can get pretty unfun, and it doesn't seem well represented in the genres that D&D emulates.

That of course depends on what you mean by "heroic aesthetic" (I'd say the ability of a hero to feel pain and get injured is a prerequisite for heroism) and what genre you want D&D to emulate (I'd say LotR and GoT, but there are plenty of other answers). I enjoy fiction that makes a strong effort at verisimilitude. For example, an early Battlestar Galactica episode has the best pilot sit out the biggest space battle of the season because she hurt her knee several episodes earlier. Boromir is trapped in a "death spiral" as he is overwhelmed and killed by orcs, failing to protect his party. The Wire has a major character shot in the back and killed by a kid with a grudge while buying groceries at a convenience store. I don't think these sorts of moments would be "unfun" if they happened in a D&D game.

That said, you're not wrong, you're talking about a stylistic issue on which there are many different viewpoints. I think that a modern D&D should be able to do in-depth verisimilitude and escapist adventure for those who want it, since it is the standard-bearer for rpgs.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

To be honest, I actually like Palladium's health system better than D&D's, but I don't really like healing surges

actually I hate them

and it is not so much that they are video-gamey as much as they remove the point of such classes as...you know...the cleric?

Some people hate being the heal bot, but honestly, I like it, everyone wants to keep me alive, I get to turn undead, I get to heal, I get to do things no one else can do. (If you take the right feats, you can pretty much do what fireball does [whirlwind attack anyone?]) and yet healing surges said EVERYONE'S A CLERIC! granted you cant heal others
unless you're a paladin

I also feel like there were far to many each day, or that it could bring you to full health
half health would be okay
quarter health would be even better

while it makes sense 'scientifically' to have adrenaline and that stuff play into it, we must also remember the symptoms of shock, if anything HP make sense, but if you continue to lose blood it makes more sense, like an actual wound, and use say...you constitution score to determine how much blood you lose (or don't lose) and for how long you remain in adrenaline mode...but again, if you can, look at the Paladium health system, I actually like it, call me weird, but I like it.