D&D 4E Nonobvious coolness in 4e healing system

[ryryguy]

I know that there are some who really dislike the way you can spend unlimited surges after a short rest, to heal up to maximum before every encounter. For the most part, this distaste may stem from the feeling that is unrealistic, too "gamey" or "cartoony".

I'm not going to address that particular issue.

But, if you leave that aside and just embrace the "gameyness"... there is something really cool in how power resource management, healing resource management, and encounters interact. This was not obvious to me until after I had played a few sessions. (Maybe it was immediately obvious to others.)

In short, the PCs should almost always start every encounter with a minimum baseline of resources and capacity. This makes encounter balance/difficulty a lot more solid.

To elaborate a bit, you have encounter powers plus hit points in one resource "bucket", and daily powers plus healing surges in another. At the end of the adventuring day, with daily powers and healing surges exhausted, you can still face the next encounter with a full encounter resource bucket.

(So yeah, if your surges are exhausted and you don't have any to spend to heal up between encounters, this is not strictly true... but when you get to that point it's a pretty strong clue to stop for the day, and in practice players almost certainly will do so... My point is that you could use up your final healing surges between encounters but still have a full encounter bucket.)

The nice, nonobvious (to me) aspect of this is that you can try to balance an average, level-equivalent encounter against the encounter resource bucket alone. In theory, the party should have a good chance to handle that encounter with just those encounter resources alone. Not all the time - we are rolling dice, after all, and lacking any additional surges and/or dailies to fall back on, the party will be much closer to the edge. Most times it would be a wise choice for the party not to take that risk and to rest up instead.

But, as a DM/designer, that provides a very helpful benchmark. You generally don't have to worry that a trap or an artillery monster is going to one-hit a poor PC at the start of the encounter because he isn't fully healed up coming through the door. You don't have to try to take only 1/4 or 1/6th of the party hit points (plus available healing hit points) in each of the 4 or 6 encounters for the day. You can go ahead and try to take nearly all of the party hit points in each and every encounter. As a result the encounters seem more tense and dramatic; PC's drop (temporarily) a lot more often.

Anyway, as I said maybe this is not news to many people. But to me, it was like a light bulb went on when I grasped this.

 

[FireLance]

Yes. This is why several people (including myself) say that 4e is primarily balanced around the encounter while 3e and previous editions were primarily balanced around the day.

 

[Magus Coeruleus]

In many (most) cases this was the same (for hp that is) in 3.x, just that it was enabled by the ubiquitous wand of cure light wounds. Either money became the limiting factor or, more often, casters running out of spells since they were all dailies.

 

[Doomhawk]

It is indeed nice that every encounter feels challenging, rather than just the last couple fights of the day. On the other hand, the system strongly penalizes the players if they enter a new encounter (by choice or by circumstance) without a 5-minute rest.

 

[Oompa]

It is indeed nice that every encounter feels challenging, rather than just the last couple fights of the day. On the other hand, the system strongly penalizes the players if they enter a new encounter (by choice or by circumstance) without a 5-minute rest.

The system doesnt penalize the players, the players do that to themself.. If they are going to stand in the middle of an dungeon and wait and heal.. something is going there to kill them when they are weak..

 

[LowSpine]

I like all the healing stuff in 4E. What I would like, that isn't in it, is if you drop to 0 HP or below, you incure a penalty.

This would be a permanent injury. It can be healed eventually, but not with a short or extended rest.

The permanent injury would be treated like a disease. It could get worse or better. The worst bit of the injury - if untreated - would be something along the line of Gangreen(?). You must cut off the arm or die.

Or you loose the eye - now you have -2 to -4 penalty to all perception checks.

This should make the PCs desperate to not fall to a dying state and if they are careless and do they will want to take care of the injury.

Of course higher healing will take care of allot of these things - but that should taken care of in the system - it needs to be a risk even at higher levels. Perhaps these things can only be healed (magically) with a complex ritual.

 

[Stogoe]

I like all the healing stuff in 4E. What I would like, that isn't in it, is if you drop to 0 HP or below, you incure a penalty.

The thing is, not everyone likes the death spiral. Not enough to make it standard, anyways. I think it's a great spot for homebrew, though.

 

[Boarstorm]

I like all the healing stuff in 4E. What I would like, that isn't in it, is if you drop to 0 HP or below, you incure a penalty.

This would be a permanent injury. It can be healed eventually, but not with a short or extended rest.

Hrm. The defender in my game would have racked up between 12 and 14 of these permanent injuries, and they're only 5 sessions in.

I think combat in 4E is sufficiently bloody that that would be a bad idea. I'm not against it in theory, I just don't think its suited for this ruleset.

 

[balard]

And that, my friend, is the great beauty of 4th Edition.

 

[tuffnoogies]

I know that there are some who really dislike the way you can spend unlimited surges after a short rest, to heal up to maximum before every encounter. For the most part, this distaste may stem from the feeling that is unrealistic, too "gamey" or "cartoony".

Uh. No. Surges are a daily resource. You don't have unlimited surges in between encounters.