The Healing Paradox

[I'm A Banana]

Weekly, daily, per-5-minutes, etc.

Ah. Then yes, I don't believe healing powers need to pop back necessarily on the same cycle as all of your HPs. The necessary requirement for doing that is that you pay attention to how much your healing powers can heal the party. As of 5e's current playtest rules, it's pretty clear that if HP didn't all come back at the end of the day, that two clerics spending all of their magic might be able to heal one character up to full, meaning it could still take a few days to get the party up to full.

Not that I'd necessarily advocate for not changing the spells as they exist now, just that it shows how limited healing power can "speed up" the time taken to get to full hp without necessarily making it the same as healing everything overnight.

4e (at least prior to Essentials) doesn't make or need any assumptions about how many encounters can be dealt with in a given period between extended rests.

Page 104, 4e DMG.

It's not a hard-and-fast limit, but it is an expected average. It is the time frame in which the mechanics actually take place, at any rate: action points recharge after 2 encounters. This point is not arbitrary. It is based on expected rates of monster damage vs. PC HP and healing surges.

This was also taken into account in the Dungeon Delve book: 3 encounters per delve is not an arbitrary number.

4e characters ARE good survivors, and smart tactics and varying encounter vs. player types (especially throwing in risks that don't drain surges) and party member numbers are going to vary that rate, because that rate isn't stone-set, it's a guideline.

The PC's in your game seem like they should be gaining a level every day! Depending on how you use quest XP, at LUNCH! But in principle, the balance works for "days" of any length, as long as you know about how long your "day" is (and given math, you should).

Isn't this the Tomb of Horrors? Which many (not me, I'll admit) regard as the most classic of all D&D challenges.

It's a specific kind of D&D challenge featuring deathtraps, originally done in a convention setting. Using nigh-instant-death in your design and having a rotating player base meant that the goals of the design were different from your typical at-home D&D session: more like NetHack then like Xenoblade Chronicles.

For example, what story element explains how the lock got re-locked if the PCs go away and then come back tomorrow? Or if they spend the night camping in the room with the now-unlocked (but iron-spiked) door?

Well, in the first case, you could have whatever lives in the dungeon locks the door.

In the second case, it's a problem that they're camping for a week without consequence in the dungeon in the first place, but if for some reason they can, you can introduce some other challenge.

Don't think about "recharge" too literally. It doesn't dictate that this specific lock necessarily be available to unlock again, it just wants to manifest an equivalent obstacle, to keep the challenge between extended rests the same. So if they rest in this room with a now-unlocked door, you can introduce a locked door somewhere else in the dungeon. Or you can stick an extra goblin in the patrol. Or you can make the dwarf captive a little closer to death (requiring another Heal check to stabilize them). Or you can give the goblin chief a little more HP.

As long as you have a rough idea of how many dice rolls it takes to get the PC's from full to nearly-dead, you have a handy measure of how you can balance any differently-recharging resource.

 

[pemerton]

Page 104, 4e DMG.

It's not a hard-and-fast limit, but it is an expected average. It is the time frame in which the mechanics actually take place, at any rate: action points recharge after 2 encounters. This point is not arbitrary. It is based on expected rates of monster damage vs. PC HP and healing surges.

This was also taken into account in the Dungeon Delve book: 3 encounters per delve is not an arbitrary number.

I've just re-read p 104. It talks about the ratio of encounters to levels - which obviously is mathematically tight - but says nothing about the ratio of encounters to rests (other than that a hard encounter may precipitate a need for a rest - which is pretty obvious, given the definition of "hard encounter").

4e characters ARE good survivors, and smart tactics and varying encounter vs. player types (especially throwing in risks that don't drain surges) and party member numbers are going to vary that rate

I think it's pretty vital to the game that the rate be highly variable in response to PC builds, encounter design and play.

If tactical choices don't make a difference to how things unfold, they cease to be a viable vehicle for exercising meaningful choice.

But anyway, here's my quick calculation for 10th level: two-thirds chance to hit for 18 hp per hit (monsters vs PCs). So 12 hp per monster per round. Let's say 5+4+3+2+1 = 15 monster-rounds over the course of the combat. Which is 36 hp taken per PC (for a 5 PC party). Which is 2 surges worth.

I would think a party would have to be pretty shaky, pretty poor at control, or lacking defenders, to not be able to handle more than 3 of those, given that the typical defender will have 10+ surges.

The PC's in your game seem like they should be gaining a level every day! Depending on how you use quest XP, at LUNCH

15 levels gained in about two months of ingame time.

I find rapid advancement is a feature of any D&D-ish game using the XP rules as written in combination with the received approach to scenario design (ie many conflicts co-located in space and time).

A game like Runquest, Pendragon or Burning Wheel is interesting for the way it builds longer timelines into the mechanics.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

Why not have it spend when a caster prepares some spells, they can prepare some of them as per encounter/scene spells and others as per day spells? Then, if the Cleric chooses, her Cure Light Wounds spell can be a scene based spell, not just a daily spell.

Maybe this edition will have Feats that will turn daily spells into encounter, or even at will , spells. Sure, you have to choose the spell at the time of picking the feat, but why not.

They could also take the Channel Energy Mechanic from Pathfinder from the Cleric...that really helped, IMO, with the 15 minute adventuring day problem.

D&D is the only game I have ever played that has this 15 minute adventuring day problem, and part of it is because spells are a daily resource. It's also why I stopped playing the game. Even in the few 4e games I played, it continued in some groups...but it was because some people used their Daily Powers, and once they were used they wanted to rest. Totally Lame.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've just re-read p 104. It talks about the ratio of encounters to levels - which obviously is mathematically tight - but says nothing about the ratio of encounters to rests (other than that a hard encounter may precipitate a need for a rest - which is pretty obvious, given the definition of "hard encounter").

10 encounters per level divided into 3 on-level encounters at a time (+1 quest).

Again, it's not a hard number. It's what it might look like. Since players dictate when they actually rest, the DM doesn't directly control it, but the math helps achieve it anyway.

I think it's pretty vital to the game that the rate be highly variable in response to PC builds, encounter design and play.

If tactical choices don't make a difference to how things unfold, they cease to be a viable vehicle for exercising meaningful choice.

I don't think we really disagree on that, fundamentally (I'd say it's more vital that PC actions vary the rate, but whatevs). Smarter play should let you tackle more stuff at once. This remains true: having a guideline only means that there's a baseline to measure your success or struggle against. FWIW, it seems that 5e is going for quite a bit looser balance than 4e has, so that number is probably designed to swing a lot farther.

But anyway, here's my quick calculation for 10th level: two-thirds chance to hit for 18 hp per hit (monsters vs PCs). So 12 hp per monster per round. Let's say 5+4+3+2+1 = 15 monster-rounds over the course of the combat. Which is 36 hp taken per PC (for a 5 PC party). Which is 2 surges worth.

I would think a party would have to be pretty shaky, pretty poor at control, or lacking defenders, to not be able to handle more than 3 of those, given that the typical defender will have 10+ surges.

Keep in mind that that's a minimum. It assumes evenly distributed attacks, AC's, defenses, die rolls, etc. And two surges is perfectly in line with the 5-7 surges the low-surge characters get (e.g.: "We rest when one of us needs to."). A Defender is going to tend to get hit more often anyway, and the higher surge quantities are a way of ensuring that the Defender doesn't often need to rest before the party Wizard does (10 surges over 3 encounters makes sense if every combat has you spending 3 or 4 because you keep getting pummeled, taking hits meant for the squishier members of the party who remain full of surges).

2-3 combats very closely matches my experience with the game, and the RAW's assumption, so I am not entirely sure what makes your party so exceptionally wonderful at surviving, except for perhaps that you have players who are very good at combat strategy or exploiting synergies or certain rituals (like the one that lets you share healing surges across the whole party). But if you do, they probably SHOULD be able to get the reward of slicing through more encounters before they have to rest -- they're good at that! I mean, you did 13 encounters between extended rests. That means that your encounters weren't even threatening enough that the PC's had to spend a healing surge in many of them! You totally thwarted the 4e assumed pace of "First, the monsters kick our butt, then, we recover and ultimately triumph." With ~30 minute combats, you're looking at about 6-7 hours of play, no? All without an extended rest? That is either very good PC tactics, or very poor monster tactics!

But even your impressively mutant rate of advancement and encounter scything isn't a problem to balance for in the suggestion in the blog. All it means is that you slice through more "adventures" at once, or harder "adventures" that involve longer struggles. Just like how now you breeze through multiple "days" worth of encounters without breaking a sweat. The baseline isn't invalid just because your method is different. How much your game diverges from the baseline can tell you what you need to modify to keep the "balance" on par. I don't really know how you can do 13 on-level encounters in one day in 4e -- I'm not a big strategery kind of player or DM -- but however you do it, I'm sure 4e bends enough to accept it, even if it assumes a different rate of resting than you use. Your party is very good at plowing through encounters: they get more die rolls between full recharges.

 

[tomBitonti]

How many encounters, how many are straight up fights?

I think this eventually turns into a question of encounter management. There are two sides to this (at least):

1) How frequently does the DM throw fights at the players?

2) How hard do the players work to keep potential encounters from turning into straight up fights?

The question (2) seems to conflict with the current frequent mode of play, which is to "open door" and "roll initiative".

There is a whole different style which would be run more like:

GM: A network of corridors evidently extends from the central chamber that you found. A cursory glance seems to show no recent activity.

Players: Right. Lets setup a defensive spot, right here, with a palisade to each of the tunnels. Lets get a light down each of those tunnels, and send the spotters ahead to scout them out, but don't go out of sight! Get the ranger to do a careful scan for activity, and get the mage to see if there are any magical emanations.

GM: The left-most passage is clear for quite a while, then bends out of sight.

Players: Let's leave that alone for now.

GM: The middle passage looks like it has a cross branch that might join up with the right passage. There seems to be a very faint disturbance in the dust. Maybe there is an occasional wind that stirs it up.

GM: There is a definite aura about fifty feet down the right package. Unless you go down there and study it, you won't be able to tell what it is in more detail. There seem to be doorways just beyond the connecting passage in both the middle and right passages.

Players: We take the right passage. The scout moves carefully ahead, scanning for traps, and takes position at the T. The fighter puts up his shield and makes a defensive position while the mage studies the magical emanation.

All done very carefully, with a sense of a single slip-up possibly leading to a player death. Hit point loss, other than a trivial few, would represent a player already one mistake away from their death.

TomB

 

[pemerton]

D&D is the only game I have ever played that has this 15 minute adventuring day problem, and part of it is because spells are a daily resource.

Rolemaster has the same problem for the same reason.

 

[jadrax]

Rolemaster has the same problem for the same reason.

Only if you don't get a Spell Multiplier for some reason.

 

[pemerton]

And two surges is perfectly in line with the 5-7 surges the low-surge characters get (e.g.: "We rest when one of us needs to."). A Defender is going to tend to get hit more often anyway, and the higher surge quantities are a way of ensuring that the Defender doesn't often need to rest before the party Wizard does (10 surges over 3 encounters makes sense if every combat has you spending 3 or 4 because you keep getting pummeled, taking hits meant for the squishier members of the party who remain full of surges).

I find the surge distribution across PCs can be quite variable. If the players are in control, the defenders will take it all. If the GM is in control (due to numbers, surprise, mobility etc) then the squishies can find themselves sucking it up.

2-3 combats very closely matches my experience with the game, and the RAW's assumption, so I am not entirely sure what makes your party so exceptionally wonderful at surviving, except for perhaps that you have players who are very good at combat strategy or exploiting synergies or certain rituals (like the one that lets you share healing surges across the whole party).

The only surge shifting they have is 4x/day paladin lay on hands.

I mean, you did 13 encounters between extended rests. That means that your encounters weren't even threatening enough that the PC's had to spend a healing surge in many of them!

<snip>

I don't really know how you can do 13 on-level encounters in one day in 4e

<snip>

That is either very good PC tactics, or very poor monster tactics!

I make it 10 encounters within +/-1 of the PCs level.

And every one of them will have required surge expenditure, but not by every PC in the party. As you can read here and here, the last five encounters (four of which involved combat) took place with the PCs having only about 10 surges across the whole party. Rationing healing and surge use was a significant part of those encounters.

On tactics more generally, my players are fairly astute (historically my group has had a strong contingent of wargamers and M:tG champions, and even though composition has changed over the years the tactical tradition continues). But they are not psychopathic about it, and they are not crazy focus firers. But they are very good at control - a wizard (now invoker), a polearm fighter, a sorcerer with strong secondary control, and a CHA-paladin who has some secondary control/debuff also. (But no Expertise feats in my group.)

My monsters tactics are variable. Several of the indicated encounters involve waves of attackers. But I don't particularly hold back.

It seems that experiences of 4e are very varied. Some find it a TPK-machine. Some (eg [MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION]) find it a walkover. I think my group is in the middle.

You totally thwarted the 4e assumed pace of "First, the monsters kick our butt, then, we recover and ultimately triumph."

Not at all. There was a lot of pressure on the PCs, with the 4e pace. That's the one thing I find 4e reliably delivers. And when the party is facing Calastryx with 10 or so healing surges between them, that pressure is really on!

 

[pemerton]

Only if you don't get a Spell Multiplier for some reason.

That depends a bit on level. Once the PCs are casting spells above 10th level, they can work through even a x3 multiplier pretty quicky in my experience.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I think this is an important point. If one really has a problem with the overnight rest mechanic, it would logically follow that one would have a problem with overnight spell recovery. That is, if one likes grim and gritty. Some folks seem to be OK with quick magic recovery, but still have a problem with quick HP recovery... and this position makes much less sense to me.

I think that issue comes down to less "story" or "pacing" issues, and more "immersion" oriented issues. That is, those people (from my experience) tend to like HP recovering slowly (as they tend to see it as physical wounds), and magic can recover quickly just fine (since it's magic), which allows for the PCs to heal and push on (a pacing mechanic they prefer).

I think we're closer in agreement than you think. If your game has a significant resource recovery aspect to it, then all resources should have a dial that can be tuned from 1 to 11 (because all dials should go to 11... heh).

I think the default for D&D should probably be in the middle. A solid 5.5 on the dial. Unfortunately, I think people will argue incessantly about what that 5.5 should be. But I think there is probably some happy medium between super easy resource recovery and nightmare mode grim & gritty. For me, the 5.5 on healing includes a limit on the number of times a person can receive healing in a given day (like the healing surge mechanic from 4e), but leaves room for a good chunk of straight HP recovery from an overnight rest. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the 5.5 only gave you half your max HP for an overnight rest. If I wanted to make it full HP, I would just turn the dial down a little. If I wanted to make it one quarter max HP, I would turn the dial up a little. I would probably never play at 11, but that's just me.

The middle is better than either extreme, in my view, but I'd still rather the dial be presented (with explanations of the effects of choosing any notch on the dial), rather than preset. But that's just my preference.

As far as a cap on healing? Well, my RPG uses a cap, in a way. All damage healed with basic healing magic is converted to nonlethal. Any creature can only have 20 nonlethal on it, and then all nonlethal it would take is converted to lethal. So, if a creature has 25 damage on it, basic healing magic can only heal 20 damage (leaving 5 damage on it) until the creature recovers. The conceptual idea is that damage is being lessened (from lethal to nonlethal), but that a creature's body can only take so much nonlethal before it starts to become lethal (people beating someone to death, for example).

This worked for my players right away, and they're a very immersion-oriented group. I think a "cap" on healing can work (like in my game), especially if there are workarounds (specialized healing magic can cure damage without conversion, but the spell level is quite a bit higher).

At any rate, it'll be interesting to see what mechanic they give in their next released. I think they've stated that it'll be changed, so we'll see. As always, play what you like