D&D 5E Should 5E have Healing Surges?

[nightwalker450]

Healing surges were one of the best working things in 4e. They give a reservoir of endurance for the character. They in no way made it so you didn't need a cleric, healing surges were only freely available outside of combat. Inside combat, you had 1 available under normal means (hardly enough for any front liner).

They also put a believable limit to what a person could handle in a day. It wasn't until the wand/potion bag wore out. Your character eventually reached a point where it was clear he was pushing his luck if he went further.

 

[Herschel]

Well, since you asked, I'll try to explain. Bear in mind, though, that this is what I do in my campaign...it isn't going to work for everyone. But it makes sense to me.

Hit points represent the amount of physical damage your character can sustain. Burns, cuts, broken bones, that sort of thing. Without magic, it can take days or weeks to recover fully.

Non-physical types of damage (including but not limited to exhaustion, poisons, mental distress, hunger, disease, drowning, and thirst) are represented as ability damage. Depending on the circumstance, you can recover by taking a breather, applying first aid, or being bedridden for months.

So, if your character is "damaged" by poison, that is represented by a temporary penalty to its related ability score (Constitution for lethal toxins, Dexterity for paralysis, Strength for sleep, etc.) The body itself was not harmed beyond a tiny pinprick, but the potentially lethal poison inhibits the character's ability to perform the way it is supposed to.

Similarly:

Exhaustion --> Str penalty
Mental distress --> Wis penalty
Suffocation --> Con penalty
Hunger --> Con penalty
Thirst --> Con penalty
and so on.

In short: if something damages the physical body, it affects the hit points. If it just affects that body's ability to work effectively, then it is ability damage.

Again, I realize that this is not for everyone. But it is how my brain works when it comes to assessing damage. After all, you don't get exhausted or bummed out by dragon fire...you get burned.

So you house rule the damage system. It's pretty cool actually but more bookwork and minutia than I want to deal with.

 

[Naszir]

Well, since you asked, I'll try to explain. Bear in mind, though, that this is what I do in my campaign...it isn't going to work for everyone. But it makes sense to me.

Hit points represent the amount of physical damage your character can sustain. Burns, cuts, broken bones, that sort of thing. Without magic, it can take days or weeks to recover fully.

Non-physical types of damage (including but not limited to exhaustion, poisons, mental distress, hunger, disease, drowning, and thirst) are represented as ability damage. Depending on the circumstance, you can recover by taking a breather, applying first aid, or being bedridden for months.

So, if your character is "damaged" by poison, that is represented by a temporary penalty to its related ability score (Constitution for lethal toxins, Dexterity for paralysis, Strength for sleep, etc.) The body itself was not harmed beyond a tiny pinprick, but the potentially lethal poison inhibits the character's ability to perform the way it is supposed to.

Similarly:

Exhaustion --> Str penalty
Mental distress --> Wis penalty
Suffocation --> Con penalty
Hunger --> Con penalty
Thirst --> Con penalty
and so on.

In short: if something damages the physical body, it affects the hit points. If it just affects that body's ability to work effectively, then it is ability damage.

Again, I realize that this is not for everyone. But it is how my brain works when it comes to assessing damage. After all, you don't get exhausted or bummed out by dragon fire...you get burned.

Wow. Do you track changes to all the other things that the abilities affect as well? So every time a character gets a str penalty they are adjusting their attacks bonuses. Everytime they suffer a Con penalty they are readjusting their hps? What about how these affect saving throws?

Maybe you don't bother with that, which would make sense because that would be a lot of time consuming adjustment on the fly.

 

[SeRiAlExPeRiMeNtS]

The problem is, it make no sense. How can someone take a dragon breath and don't die? A dragon bite? HPs are a metagame construct, in any d&d edition.

Well, since you asked, I'll try to explain. Bear in mind, though, that this is what I do in my campaign...it isn't going to work for everyone. But it makes sense to me.

Hit points represent the amount of physical damage your character can sustain. Burns, cuts, broken bones, that sort of thing. Without magic, it can take days or weeks to recover fully.

Non-physical types of damage (including but not limited to exhaustion, poisons, mental distress, hunger, disease, drowning, and thirst) are represented as ability damage. Depending on the circumstance, you can recover by taking a breather, applying first aid, or being bedridden for months.

So, if your character is "damaged" by poison, that is represented by a temporary penalty to its related ability score (Constitution for lethal toxins, Dexterity for paralysis, Strength for sleep, etc.) The body itself was not harmed beyond a tiny pinprick, but the potentially lethal poison inhibits the character's ability to perform the way it is supposed to.

Similarly:

Exhaustion --> Str penalty
Mental distress --> Wis penalty
Suffocation --> Con penalty
Hunger --> Con penalty
Thirst --> Con penalty
and so on.

In short: if something damages the physical body, it affects the hit points. If it just affects that body's ability to work effectively, then it is ability damage.

Again, I realize that this is not for everyone. But it is how my brain works when it comes to assessing damage. After all, you don't get exhausted or bummed out by dragon fire...you get burned.

 

[Lordhawkins9]

It appears you really don't know how healing surges work by this post. You don't "heal yourself", as you put it. When you're in the thick of combat you don't have access to your surges unless you stop to catch your breath (second wind) which usually means getting clobbered without being able to retaliate. Outside of a very few adrenalin-pumping hits (powers that let you spend a surge) like a big hit in football OCs need a leader to heal them by triggering their surges, be it inspiration, divine intervention or whatever, and also the leaders make it more efficient because of their prowess.

It's not that I don't "know", it's that I have a different view on how things are working.

Take the 80's movie heros and Jack example from above. I don't see that as these guys using healing surges...I see it as having more hit points than you average person. After the bad guy is caught, they spend the next 3 months in a hospital.

Getting a "surge" in combat after taking a big hit, to me, is the rules telling me why I'm still fighting at 100% when I'm down to 1 hitpoint...or like the rule in 3E were you could be at 0 hitpoints and still take one more action before going down.

 

[CleverNickName]

So you house rule the damage system. It's pretty cool actually but more bookwork and minutia than I want to deal with.

Wow. Do you track changes to all the other things that the abilities affect as well? So every time a character gets a str penalty they are adjusting their attacks bonuses. Everytime they suffer a Con penalty they are readjusting their hps? What about how these affect saving throws?

Maybe you don't bother with that, which would make sense because that would be a lot of time consuming adjustment on the fly.

The problem is, it make no sense. How can someone take a dragon breath and don't die? A dragon bite? HPs are a metagame construct, in any d&d edition.

Wow, take it easy fellas. I prefaced and concluded my post with statements about how this rules system is not for everyone. Clearly, this is not something you guys want to ever use in your games, and that's Kool & The Proverbial Gang. I was just answering Naszir's question.

 

[Herschel]

John McClain is laying there, bleeding and all but out cold. Suddenly the mercenary shows up, starts shooting and he gets a burst of adrenalin and he's up and at 'em again yelling "yippy-kai-yay-mother%$#&#$^%!" and jumping through a window 140 stories up swinging from a fire hose to escape an explosion.

His feet are still bleeding, he still has a minor concussion, the cut on his arm is still bleeding, three ribs are cracked and he's battered and bruised from head to toe but he gets up and goes again because if he doesn't he's dead.

And shifting the goalposts still doesn't take in to account in 4E you'd darned well better have a healer in the group or you're toast. It doesn't take away from the cleric, clerics are more important because you don't have the bag-o-wands to use at-will.

 

[Herschel]

Wow, take it easy fellas. I prefaced and concluded my post with statements about how this rules system is not for everyone. Clearly, this is not something you guys want to ever use in your games, and that's Kool & The Proverbial Gang. I was just answering Naszir's question.

I was absolutely serious when I said it was pretty cool. It's just more minutia than I want to deal with personally. If you're going to make HP pure "physical damage" then that's the very best way I've seen to handle it, it just causes all sorts of issues I don't want to keep track of. If you do and can it's rather nifty. No snark intended, it's really pretty darned cool.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Yes. Five minutes to heal someone with magic? Sure, why not - it's magic. A five minute breather and some bandages to completely come back from a blow that sent you unconscious, bleeding, within an inch of death? Nope.

I don't reject it out of hand, I reject it because it wrecks my suspension of disbelief. I don't have a problem with characters being able to heal themselves, as long as they are able to use a plot device that makes sense according to the story. As problematic as potions, wands, and healing magic are, at least they offer a plausible explanation in this make-believe game. Binding one's wounds, catching one's breath, etc., are all fine and good for bar fights---but without the benefit of magic, how does one suddenly explain how the guy who was burned half-to-death by dragon fire ten minutes ago is able to calmly and painlessly press onward as if nothing had happened?

It is perfectly fine to say that the 4E damage and recovery mechanics don't make a lot of sense with regards to characters who were just kicked to the threshold of death's door. Honestly, they don't. Of course, they never have for any edition of D&D. But, I'd argue this is a problem of D&D's classically terrible death and dying rules, and not a problem with hit points and healing surges.

I mean, if you really look at it, mechanically speaking D&D characters are never really killed by injuries, because hit point damage never really models injuries very well. There is no point on the HP damage scale where characters suffer broken bones, get cut tendons, lose limbs, lose an eye, etc. Instead, HP works such that a character falls unconscious when HP reaches 0. It is fundamentally a form of tracking non-lethal damage (which is why subdual damage was conceptually redundant). If anything, it models the amount of pain a character is suffering from rather than the amount of injury they have suffered.

Really, the weird thing about D&D is that, rather than dying from an injury, characters seem to just spontaneously die of heart attacks due to excessive pain. Characters never suffer fatal injuries. They instead just suffer a bizarre form of pain-induced unconsciousness that directly leads to death. As a whole, their bodies never suffer the negative effects that would be associated with actual injury. Of course, this is a problem for all editions, not just 4E. This is why the idea that HP damage is equivalent to physical wounds has never, and will never, make sense.

Within the context of what hit points actually model (pain and fatigue, with the result of zero HP being unconsciousness), healing surges make tons of sense. They work great as a system of healing that form of damage. The fact that they don't model lethal injuries well is merely a symptom of the fact that HP damage doesn't model lethal injuries well, and not a problem of the healing surge system itself.

I'd much rather see 5E create a system that makes severe injury and death more realistic, interesting, and fun, rather than see healing surges be sacrificed on the altar of trying to turn HP damage into something it is not.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, since you asked, I'll try to explain. Bear in mind, though, that this is what I do in my campaign...it isn't going to work for everyone. But it makes sense to me.

Hit points represent the amount of physical damage your character can sustain. Burns, cuts, broken bones, that sort of thing. Without magic, it can take days or weeks to recover fully.

Non-physical types of damage (including but not limited to exhaustion, poisons, mental distress, hunger, disease, drowning, and thirst) are represented as ability damage. Depending on the circumstance, you can recover by taking a breather, applying first aid, or being bedridden for months.

So, if your character is "damaged" by poison, that is represented by a temporary penalty to its related ability score (Constitution for lethal toxins, Dexterity for paralysis, Strength for sleep, etc.) The body itself was not harmed beyond a tiny pinprick, but the potentially lethal poison inhibits the character's ability to perform the way it is supposed to.

Similarly:

Exhaustion --> Str penalty, 0 Str = collapse
Mental distress --> Wis penalty, 0 Wis = unconscious
Suffocation --> Con penalty, 0 Con = dead
Hunger --> Con penalty
Thirst --> Con penalty
and so on.

In short: if something damages the physical body, it affects the hit points. If it just affects that body's ability to work effectively, then it is ability damage.

Again, I realize that this is not for everyone. But it is how my brain works when it comes to assessing damage. After all, you don't get exhausted or bummed out by dragon fire...you get burned.

The key question is how is the 4e HP system any less realistic than say the 3.5 HP system? In 3.5 my 5th level fighter probably has at least 40 hit points or so (certainly no less than the high 20's and that would be pretty crappy). He can fall off a 100 foot cliff (10d6 damage) and his chance of being killed by that is well under 50/50. He can stand and take 8 average sword blows or longbow arrows hitting him. This is already so ludicrously unrealistic that comparing the two systems and talking about which is more realistic is like talking about if a pink elephant is more realistic than a loch ness monster or a flying saucer.