Flavour First vs Game First - a comparison

[Fenes]

I think your experiences were uncommon, to say the least, especially at higher-level play.

Of course they are uncommon. I doubt anyone else plays like I do. But my playstyle suits me just fine, even if it means - which some people do not get at all - that most of 4E doesn't suit me, being too focused on elemnts I dislike, and not providing the flavor and mechanics I want.

 

[Scribble]

Now, unless you want to tell me you know better than I do how my game plays like, and how my group acts, I suggest you stop trying to second-guess me, and stop trying to calim I intentionally myke something not work when I can see things that bother me.

Here I'll post the rest of what I wrote:

As I said to RC if ultimately you dislike a game, who am I (or anyone else on this board) to say that you're wrong. But if you're posting on a message board about an issue you're having with the game, that we are not having, then obviously we'll offer our opinion on what we think you're missing. We're not saying we're right and you're wrong. We're just trying to offer advice to other gamers.

Once again, and for the last time: You have no issues with this description you just did; I do. I also have issues with the warlock's powers, as an aside. And please stop trying to feed me your views.

You're posting on a message board thats been long viewed as the number one place to goto online for advice and ideas about D&D. I'm trying to offer advice, and yes, using a way that it works for me.

If you're just looking for someone to say "yeah man that sucks!" that's your perogative, but I'd appreciate you not attacking me for offering up an idea. Thats what this board is for as far as I'm aware.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That is true (well as consistently as REH wants to be).

But i think the issue is the "fighting on" vs the "not injured"

The IM moment does not depict no injury it depicts "fighting on"

I think the second wind is a gamist device which allows the players to determine how they want the narrative to explain the mechanical effect which is why this uncoupling issue arises.

It gives more power to the player (or narrator) at the expense of less in-game world consistency.

I just answered Mustrum_Ridcully in another thread, and I think that answer is valid here:

Indeed, sandbox play requires reasons for reasonable delay in order to maintain any form of verisimilitude. Decoupling encounter hit points from total hit points is nice; decoupling encounter hit points from any meaning within the context of the world is damaging.

Or, if you look at the thread I forked from: Outside of sandbox play, the DM can easily impose arbitrary limits that mimic actual healing, even in 4e. Inigo's wounds can reopen, and the DM can simply handwave, declaring that the next adventure starts a week (or month, or year) later. If each adventure is "discrete", like episodes of a television series, or films in a franchise, this can make sense.

Within the context of a sandbox, though, players will wonder why, if there is no game reason not to, they can't simply press on. A sandbox requires the players' willingness to allow time to elapse, and the rules must support them in that willingness. That willingness must feed into the "win conditions" of the game.​

RC

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Once again, and for the last time: You have no issues with this description you just did; I do. I also have issues with the warlock's powers, as an aside. And please stop trying to feed me your views.

This might be obvious to you, but I'll say it anyway
As long as you keep the discussion alive, you will get suggestion, advice, berating, and what-else. You have to stop answering or changing the topic.

BTW, the topic was originally not related directly to healing surges. I don't believe we will get back to the original stuff, but I think we have discussed healing and hit points long enough to shy away everyone else.

 

[GlaziusF]

In Tarzan the Untamed, Tarzan is dying of hunger and thirst while crossing a desert. He uses what might be described as a "second wind" to kill Ska (the vulture) for food. It is not permanant:

And there he slept, after eating of what remained of Ska, until the morning sun awakened him with a new sense of strength and well-being.

[The above is the second sleep after killing Ska; Tarzan does not recover overnight. He emerges from the desert, still hurting from his ordeal; rain and food have allowed for some "real" healing, but he is far from recovered.]

Three days the ape-man spent in resting and recuperating, eating fruits and nuts and the smaller animals that were most easily bagged, and upon the fourth he set out to explore the valley and search for the great apes.​

...so Tarzan passed his "survive through the desert" skill challenge by making Endurance and Nature checks, with a combat in the middle of it.

The DMG in fact explicitly calls out wilderness survival as a prolonged skill challenge, where failing some checks need not fail the challenge but will cause you to lose healing surges, which need not be recovered until the challenge is over, much as you can't just take a nap to restore healing surges in the middle of a fight. It also explicitly says that if a combat breaks into the "wilderness survival" skill challenge it can start with the PCs down a representative number of hit points instead of down healing surges.

If you want to model grievous wounds that deal lasting damage you can use the same repurposed disease track mechanism I used earlier in the thread. Characters will recover from those wounds in a method consistent with the narrative of spending multiple days laid up.

 

[gizmo33]

Sure you did. In this case, the cut on the arm affected him by giving him 4 points of damage. They tracked, 1-to-1. If the hit points were restored (rest, magic), the wound was healed.


RC

I did? No, I think it's not as clear, but as I meant to say before, I think a person can rationalize anything after 20 years of getting used to it so maybe 4E needs that kind of thought. The hits didn't track 1-1 in the case of lycanthropy IIRC. Also, a cut on your arm never affected your chance to hit anything. Bunches of little cuts strained credulity anyway IMO. Basically, I'm surprised anyone views hitpoints in earlier editions as anything simulationist.

So why not say they're injured when they take 4 hp damage in 4E? Then they use a healing surge later, but they still have that cut on their arm even though they're at full hitpoints. Frankly, since it never affected your combat ability in any version of the game, then it always was just a "how close am I to getting killed" measurement. NONE of the physical effects of being wounded are ever simulated on the character - you just lose "hitpoints" and the only thing about hitpoints is that when you have none left you're dead. Hitpoints IMO never provided a realistic simulation of being wounded so why this is a problem suddendly in 4E I just don't see.

So how about this - say a PC has 32 hitpoints and 10 healing surges. Treat him like a 1E character with 112 hitpoints. On top of that, if the healing rate is bothersome, just say you recover 1 healing surge per day (as someone already suggested I think). I think that situation then maps 1-1 to the earlier edition situation and you should be able to use all of the same reasoning/descriptions.

 

[LostSoul]

In point of fact, this sort of thing is explicitly too gonzo for either Conan or Tarzan. There are no instances where, given a major wound, those wounds simply vanish. None. Nada. Zip. REH, in particular, was a careful writer with this sort of thing. Conversely, there are times when REH specifically has Conan (or other characters) incapacitated by their wounds and forced to rest before being fully healed.

These sorts of things are not too gonzo for comic books, granted. But, frankly, I don't want my game to play like The Flash or Spiderman. YMMV.

Oh well. I suggest a Skill Challenge to deal with this if it's important to you. Healing up at night. Failures mean you lose Healing Surges, total failure means you don't refresh any Healing Surges. If you don't have any left to spend and you should lose one, I guess you die. Gritty.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh well. I suggest a Skill Challenge to deal with this if it's important to you.

I suggest a different game system. There are too many of these "quantum" things (healing surges being just one) in 4e for my tastes.

GlaziusF, I picked that example because I am currently rereading Tarzan the Untamed. I would have modelled killing the vulture as a Survival check rather than a combat, though. I could quite easily have grabbed an REH book and found a combat example where long-term healing is explicitly required. My point was simply that Conan, Tarzan, etc., aren't gonzo like high-level 3e (or any-level 4e) are. Even being able to kill a lion with a knife with a loincloth for armour doesn't make you regenerate like Wolverine.

Comic book heroes? Yes. But even Conan has to recuperate from major injuries, unlike Bob the 1st level 4e fighter.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I did? No, I think it's not as clear, but as I meant to say before, I think a person can rationalize anything after 20 years of getting used to it so maybe 4E needs that kind of thought.

Funny how I understood hit points so easily, from no wargaming or rpg experience, right out of the box. The Holmes Blue Box, that is. Funny how I never met anyone who had trouble visualizing them IRL, even if they happen to be 9 years old and it's their first time playing.

Equally funny how the problems with 4e healing surges come up with almost anyone I talk to about them.

I guess it's like some of 3e's problems; few people want to admit they exist while the system is "hot". Again, wait until 5e.



RC

 

[GlaziusF]

So:

PL1: "Mechanic A causes problems. It can be viewed in-world as X or Y. If X, it causes problem Z. If Y, it causes problem B."

PL2: "Well, if you view it as Y it won't cause problem Z."

PL1: "I know. It causes problem B."

PL2: "Then view it as X."

PL1: "That causes problem Z."

(This exchange is repeated over and over again, with variations on wording)

And then:

for instance...

Sammy is hit for 49 of his 50 points of damage. The options are:

1. He was not actually hit for any appreciable damage but the next hit will be fatal. In this case second wind is neither mystic nor retconning but hp damage is not mapped to physical damage (hp now just represent your characters narrative staying power..how long he can remain an active participant in the story)

2. He does not use his second wind and was hit for real damage and is on his on his last bit of blood.

3. He uses his second wind and the character's wound was not really a damaging blow just visually bloody.

This choice of narrative explanation is not made until the second wind power is invoked.

So up until that happens the injury is either unresolved or the situation is retconned (you thought it was really injurious but really was just a surface wound). This means that the narration that was initially done (it was a dangerous wound) is either a lie or is retconned.

Maybe i am missing an option though.

And then I invented time travel and went back to say:

Maybe anyone can't, but, uh.

A character with 5 hp out of 80 is exhausted. Not status-effect exhausted, exhausted if you want to pose his mood. He has been warding off or absorbing blows for some time and doesn't know if he's up for another burst of that effort. He has taken one bloody wound, maybe a medium-deep graze on his arm or maybe his chainmail got shoved into his chest and he'd rather leave it there for the time being. If something actually connects solidly he's going to crumple, unless it couldn't back off a puppy to begin with or fate is feeling very kind.

But he is not "slowed", he is not "weakened", he is not "dazed". (At least not inherently. He may have been tagged with one of these effects until the end of the encounter.) He can still move around the battlefield and deliver full-force swings, maybe pausing briefly to muster up the effort but either adrenaline or will or both is keeping him going. Just as long as he doesn't have to stop.

If he can catch his breath for a moment (has his second wind available and a healing surge to burn) he'll feel a little less put through the wringer, maybe able to stave off a couple more shots, but not up to worrying about the wound (the healing surge won't get him above bloodied). If he's been holding back any desperation moves (only usable when bloodied) then now is the time. And everyone can see or sense that he's wounded, so anything that affects bloodied characters differently affects him.

If he receives another healing effect that takes him up above bloodied then he tends to his wound - bandages his graze or closes it through sheer force of flex, or finally essays to pull the chainmail out and winces for a moment, but it's not biting into his skin anymore. This also happens if he has time to take a short rest and has healing surges to spend.

If he's still at 5/80 after his short rest, then he just doesn't have anything left in reserve today. He doesn't get any worse while he rests, but he doesn't get any better either.

I suppose you could house-rule that anybody who was bloodied could clear that condition during a short rest but it would return as soon as they took damage.

I am not sure how my model fits into any of the three stated options. Salient features of my model are, to wit:

All damage represents concussion or strain.

At bloodied you are obviously wounded but the wound is not impairing. If you heal over bloodied you tend to the wound so it is not obvious any more. The wound can be from the strike that bloodied you or from an earlier one that you aggravated.

At 0 you pass out.

At -bloodied you have taken an apparently fatal wound and need extraordinary measures to come back.

I am not saying that this is a universal damage model that everyone playing 4E must adhere to.

I am saying this is an example damage model consistent with both a desire for minimal cinematic effect and the mechanics as written. It is up to the players and DM to decide which damage model to use and who has responsibility for describing wounds in a fashion consistent with the damage model.

The mechanic is also consistent with this damage model: a wizard is surrounded by a glow of arcane power that resembles the runes he writes in his spellbooks. All damage is described as repulsed or averted by the runes. At bloodied the glow becomes less uniform as runes begin to wink out. At 0 the runes largely wink out and the wizard collapses, the occasional stray one still drifting around him.

Question for all here: have any of you ever come up with a functional rule or system whereby "dying words" scenes *can* be supported by the D+D game (any edition)? I know there's been many a time where I've wanted to use a dying-words scene as an adventure hook, or an adventure climax, but couldn't; the party Cleric would just start casting cures and render the scene - if not entirely meaningless - a lot less dramatic.

Without such a system this is one instance where mechanics (ability to cure pretty much anything with spells) trumps flavour (in terms of in-game drama) in a very annoying way.

Lanefan

Modify the description of "unconscious" to read "You cannot take standard, move, or minor actions. You may still take some types of free actions." This lets "unconscious" characters speak for cinematic effect. Since "dead" is just a rider on "unconscious" this also means characters and monsters who are technically beyond the reach of most healing powers may still be able to speak if the DM allows it.