Flavour First vs Game First - a comparison

[Scribble]

Though this begs the question why you cant you second wind after you are "dead". Using both gamist and narrativist thinking, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to and I dont think it is particularly a bad idea either.

Of course not being able to allows you to ratchet up the tension a bit (gamist perspective) so that deciding when to use it could be a critical tactical choice.

Depends. You can and you can't. From the game system's point of view, you're dead once you reach negative bloodied, or 3 failed death saves.

From the narrative point of view, you can "die" at any point therein.

I see it as sort of an improve theater thing... Narrative is the story we tell, the lines we come up with, the actions we take... The game system is the general outline we're given by the director.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Trust me. This sort of thing bothers me quite a bit at the table.

I could accuse of not having interesting enough stories or challenging enough combats to keep your players busy, but I think I'll prefer to trust you on that. There is a reason this continues to be discussed.

I think one "fix" for the healing surge approach would be to make it not "retroactive". Instead of using a surge to heal damage you have already taken, spend a surge to reduce damage you are in the progress of being taken. This way, you decide the moment you're hit how bad it is. I suppose I don't need to tell anyone reading my posts regularly that's this is how Torg does it?

Of course, the current approach to Surges and Healing doesn't work well with that approach. But maybe a clever rewording of rules and keywords could create such a system?

 

[GlaziusF]

No, death means pretty much what I think it means; in the 4e rules, death just doesn't mean the same thing. Much like....well, far too many things.

I lose track. Are you intentionally making my points for me?

I agree 4E has some vocabulary problems. But IIRC as was said about 3E some of the vocabulary choices are as a result of an attempt to maintain or reflect gaming culture. If they renamed hit points "concussion points" and healing surges "recovery surges" and called dead characters "beyond help", even though those names IMO contribute to a better mental model of the damage, the charge could be made that this was change for the sake of change, deliberately unfamiliar. And as far as it goes, that would be true. "Hit points", "healing", and "death" are part of a common vocabulary, however applicable or accurate their use is.

Yeah you might be able to convince your players of that, but I don't think I could get mine to go along with it. I prefer to use my imagination on the campaign at hand rather that trying to explain why death is only a simple ritual away.

Well, Raise Dead is the "ritual healing" I'm talking about. It works on any character with "dead" status.

It makes no practical distinction between these two characters:

- the fighter the fire giant boss killed by golfing him into an obsidian pillar -- he was aiming for the archway but lifted his head during the downswing -- who collapsed on the ground, tried to get himself up, and in the end just lay still. He is still breathing and his body may twitch reflexively but none of the healing powers the characters have work on him. He has "dead" status, and only Raise Dead can get him up and running again, though he'll have to shake the kinks out: he's at -1 to a lot of rolls until 3 milestones go by.

- the rogue the fire giant boss killed after she landed on his back to deliver a vicious stab between his shoulderblades. Before she could jump away he exploded in flames -- free action when first bloodied -- and she dropped like a stone into the lava. Did I mention the boss was standing in lava? He's a fire giant, they do that. Anyway, all the rest of the party could recover after the battle was a mostly melted boot, sole-up in a rough cone of obsidian they chipped away after the wizard dropped an ice tomb on the general area. They hope her ashes are somewhere inside. She also has "dead" status, and only Raise Dead can get HER up and running again, in a ritually reconstituted body she'll have to get used to: same penalty, same duration.

It does so more for metagame reasons: if it's more costly or risky or carries larger penalties to bring someone back to life from scattered remains than from a mostly intact body, that could present the uncomfortable choice between dying in a recoverable fashion and surviving -- or helping the party survive e.g. "GO! I'll hold them back!" -- but in a way that risks or even assures less recoverable death. The game is built to encourage risk-taking.

As I said previously, I prefer to pour my imaginative effort into DMing the campaign at hand rather than trying to find a "credible story" to explain a weird mechanic.

Well, then, give the players my handful of guidelines and tell them they're responsible for describing wounds to their own characters. I mean, it's their story too, right? You can describe the monsters as getting beaten up however you like since they generally don't have to worry about recovering.

What gets in the way far more often are "clunky" mechanics - mechanics that take long to resolve or cause the DM or the players headaches. Or "unfair" mechanics, that put one participant (NPC or PC) in extreme favor and make the contribution of the other meaningless. Or mechanics that limit how an adventure can unfold, or what kind of characters are "required" for effective play.

Lemme hit you with a little human information processing theory. Shannon and Weaver propose a unit of information called the "bit", which is equal to the negative log, base 2, of the probability of an occurrence. If there are four equally likely events, say, notification that one of them has happened contains 2 bits of information. Experimental research into reaction times and the like tends to show that the human brain, even from an exceptionally intelligent person, is about a 2 Hz processor (2 bits per second) with a working memory of perhaps 3 bytes -- 24 bits. It's frankly pathetic, but it's coupled with a crazy mad wonderful information storage and retrieval system, which is where most of the difference comes in.

Going freeform is slow because you've got to call up possibilities for what could happen next, and they take time to consider - unless you're working with mental scripts which tend to have the next step happen with a high probability, but if you go off-script things get slow again. A way to speed it up is to predetermine certain things, giving them a probability of 1 and effectively zero processing time. But that can become too predictable, so most systems with predetermined mechanics tend to incorporate random variety and lookup tables.

Systems that go too far down that road tend to hit not only processing gap but overload working storage - and Rolemaster is a great example of this. It's a way to basically experience page faults in real life. Some of my best times hacking and slashing, though, were in an online MUD with basically a Rolemaster engine - GemStone III and IV, if anyone's heard of those. The computer does the math and I absorb the results, and it worked out pretty well. Even the stuff that happened during special GM-intervention events was scripted to some degree - and I still remember 2 times when I think I actually dumped some severely unintended behavior into a script and "broke the game" by trying to introduce a narrative. If anybody's interested, I can spill.

I think a good middle ground is a system that gives you the guidelines to predetermine your own stuff ahead of time, like how you describe wounds or what the monsters look like and how they act. That way it doesn't have to overload processing and memory by trying to simulate all things to all people but still passes on an awful lot of processing savings to the end users.

And here's a special gift to Herremann: a Bugbear Legbreaker!

melee attack "Gentle Persuasion" (standard; recharge 56) +10 vs. AC, 1d12+4 damage and make a secondary attack: +10 vs. Fortitude, inflicts "Kneecapped".

Kneecapped - level 9 "disease", Endurance DC improve 19 worsen 14.

The character is cured
^
The character's speed is reduced by 1.
^ v
Initial State: The character is slowed.
^ v
The character loses 2 healing surges; these cannot be recovered until the character improves.
v
Final State: Whenever the character is first bloodied, he immediately falls prone. He cannot run or charge, and if he spends a move action to walk he falls prone again at the end of his turn (save ends)

 

[GlaziusF]

If you don't understand what I am getting at, I can think of no further way to describe it.

From what your posts have been thus far, I think this is what I see.

1) Damage can be either wounding or concussive.

2) Only Divine-sourced healing powers can remove wounds. (alternately, Martial-sourced healing powers cannot remove wounds.)

3) Therefore, damage can have been wounding only if Divine-sourced healing powers are used to remove it.

Is that about right? The real problem I have is that I don't know why step 2 is valid. Maybe it's a setting thing for you.

In which case, let me offer a slight modification that might help you resolve the Schroedinger's problem:

3a) The power source for all healing effects is the affected character's power source.

4a) Therefore, martial characters only take concussive damage (and at bloodied are breathing hard or favoring one side) while divine and arcane characters take wounds normally (and they close with divine/arcane energy).

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think one "fix" for the healing surge approach would be to make it not "retroactive". Instead of using a surge to heal damage you have already taken, spend a surge to reduce damage you are in the progress of being taken. This way, you decide the moment you're hit how bad it is. I suppose I don't need to tell anyone reading my posts regularly that's this is how Torg does it?

Of course, the current approach to Surges and Healing doesn't work well with that approach. But maybe a clever rewording of rules and keywords could create such a system?

That's a possible solution, but it would take some significant reworking of the rules, IMHO, because 4e really is pretty well crafted in terms of its gamist parts. If you change one, there will be other dominoes shifting (and perhaps falling) down the line.

Of course, some vocabulary/wording changes would also help (quite right, GlaziusF!), so that you don't end up killing folks you miss with your attack, for example.


RC

 

[Scribble]

Of course, some vocabulary/wording changes would also help (quite right, GlaziusF!), so that you don't end up killing folks you miss with your attack, for example.

Out of curriousity did you also house rule out people taking 1/2 damage from spells even though they made their save?

 

[GlaziusF]

Of course, some vocabulary/wording changes would also help (quite right, GlaziusF!), so that you don't end up killing folks you miss with your attack, for example.

Well, if you look at it as shorthand for "if you miss, this is what happens" it kinda makes sense but it shows up on every power, even the ones where if you miss, you, uh, miss.

Maybe just put a Graze: entry on those sorts of powers, and then you can reword evasion to say like "if you're grazed by a close or area attack, take no damage".

 

[Raven Crowking]

Out of curriousity did you also house rule out people taking 1/2 damage from spells even though they made their save?

No. You?

EDIT: You are aware, I hope, that we are talking here about the poor choice of wording, so that something is both described as a "miss" and deals damage (or other effect). It would have been simplicity in itself to say, for example, "Make an attack roll. In the event that your roll would normally miss, your attack instead...."

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, if you look at it as shorthand for "if you miss, this is what happens" it kinda makes sense but it shows up on every power, even the ones where if you miss, you, uh, miss.

Maybe just put a Graze: entry on those sorts of powers, and then you can reword evasion to say like "if you're grazed by a close or area attack, take no damage".

My apologies, btw. I wrote a nice reply to your previous post, but it got eaten by the EN World imps.

I'll try to get back to it later.

RC

 

[Scribble]

No. You?

Nope. (Unless they had some sort of power to do so.)