Schroedinger's Wounding (Forked Thread: Disappointed in 4e)

[SteveC]

And you know this because..........?

See, you are attempting to argue by authority, but I am not at all certain how your saying "but that isn't really how the game is played. Seriously. You can play a D20 game with little or no healing at all, but we're talking about D&D" has any evidenciary value whatsoever.

Would you like to point out how you "know" this? Is it, for example, revealed knowledge that just popped in your brain one day? Is it the result of an InterWeb poll? Is it just how you and your friends play, that you are assuming is widespread?

If you want to argue by authority, you have to be willing to divulge the source of that authority, or accept that your argument will not be taken seriously.



RC

I don't have to prove that playing D&D by the default rules is the default. You're the one making an assertion: that one of the default roles for the game is not, a default. The game assumes access to healing and access to clerics. If you don't use them or have never seen them, more power to you. If you can honestly say "oh, man, what is this guy saying? Healing in D&D? Why would you need that..." I just don't have the words.

I do, however, see that we're pretty much done here. We have absolutely no common ground to discuss things on, so the only way I won't get in trouble with the mods is to bow out of this discussion.

Sorry for any disruption on the thread.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Not sure I understand quite what you mean... There's no "true" way to play the game above all others... It's kind of (in my opinion at least) one of the things thats makes RPGs great...

That's exactly what I was saying. It is just by saying the "rules say this" and that "dungeon magazine says that", I didn't want it to sound like some official statement of how to play the game. RC does not play the game like that, and I've played in games not like that, and as you say it is part of the beauty of rpgs that there is no "official" way of playing things.

In essence, I thought RC's position was valid, but that I agreed with your point.

But what I can say is: The game needs to make some assumptions about how people are playing in order for things like "balance" and "encounter building" to work. (Or at least to give advice about said things in the books.)

Very true. There are lots of explicit, implicit and "metagame" assumptions in any D&D ruleset. By saying "metagame", I'm actually talking about metagame in a Magic: the Gathering competition sense.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[GlaziusF]

Cracking one's head... drowning... not real injuries?

Yep. Keep in mind by "crack" I don't mean "your skull splits open" I mean "hit your head sharply". Your brain's rattled so much it jumps the rails but the body's intact. Drowning similarly. You just run out of air and consciousness cuts off, and you can "be revived" if someone clears your lungs.

I trust I don't need to go into hypothermia or heat exhaustion, both of which can surely kill, or the possibility for a psychic to trap you in your own mind, as many coma patients are completely aware of their surroundings but unable to make the body move or communicate with the outside world.

It's also important to note that death doesn't have to be clinical death, it's just a state where you're not responsive to conventional healing and you need a ritual to get back up.

I think if a character has died to a bunch of kobolds and a goblin with a big weapon, they've taken an injury. While I appreciate once more your imaginiation, I think its best to keep things within the context of a game that's modelling armed heroic characters and monsters fighting each other. If you die, it's extremely likely that it's a "real injury" that's going to have done it.

Except that if a warlord shouts "GET UP YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE MAN" when you're 6 seconds away from "death", you get up like the horrible little man you are. This suggests that most "death" is just unconsciousness from shock that leads to a coma, which is different from having your spleen taken as a trophy.

If you go down to -bloodied, that's fair to describe as a fundamental wound because you're beyond help. But while someone can still shout you back to consciousness you can't have been hurt in a way that might prevent that.

Yes, this means death on the battlefield is often cheap and empty in 4E, barring environmental effects like pools of lava. But I have no problem with that.

 

[SteveC]

I didn't get that at all from his statement. I think it's just a statement of fact, not the best way to play the game.

I think that asserting that most 3.x D&D groups didn't/don't regularly use magical healing from clerics, wands, and potions is rather indefensible. I'd start a poll - but sadly, ENWorld is not a representative sample of all gamers.

-O

That was pretty much my point. I in no way want to tell anyone about the "best" way to play the game aside from saying "the best game is the one where you and your players have the most fun." My own game differs significantly from the baseline assumptions for D&D, but I'm okay with that. More importantly, it's okay with my players who are the whole reason I run it.

People do play low-healing games, just like they play low-magic or low-combat games. Those games can be fun (they're the type I run), but they're not the assumptions that D&D draws on for it's rules. We can all disagree on different points about "what is D&D:" that's what makes this board interesting and something I can learn from, but if we don't have some common ground to start from, frankly, we get threads that end up getting moderated and closed down.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Yep. Keep in mind by "crack" I don't mean "your skull splits open" I mean "hit your head sharply". Your brain's rattled so much it jumps the rails but the body's intact. Drowning similarly. You just run out of air and consciousness cuts off, and you can "be revived" if someone clears your lungs.

The first is a bruising of the brain, the second a lack of oxygen to the brain, both of which are/or cause damage and thus what I consider to be injuries. YMMV.

It's also important to note that death doesn't have to be clinical death, it's just a state where you're not responsive to conventional healing and you need a ritual to get back up.

Our group does not go with this interpretation. To us dead id dead, as in "bury me before I start to smell funny" dead. Resurrection magic is not commonplace in our campaigns. I appreciate where you're coming from with this (as I did on the previous thread, and the thread before that), but we just don't play that way.

Except that if a warlord shouts "GET UP YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE MAN" when you're 6 seconds away from "death", you get up like the horrible little man you are. This suggests that most "death" is just unconsciousness from shock that leads to a coma, which is different from having your spleen taken as a trophy.

I play a warlord in our group's 4E campaign and we ruled as a group that Inspiring Word does not work if the target is unconscious (even though there is nothing in the rules that specifically states whether it should or shouldn't). It's just something that doesn't seem right to us. As such, your arguments that are a consequence of this do not work for our group either, thus for us, dead is spleen as trophy unfortunately.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Raven Crowking]

I don't have to prove that playing D&D by the default rules is the default. You're the one making an assertion: that one of the default roles for the game is not, a default.

No; the assertion that I am making is that your assertion is not evidence.

IME, few of the D&D players I know go to conventions. Few of them are reliant on WotC or Paizo for their fun. Few of them are on EN World.

You made the assertation that the "crux" of my problem with Schroedinger's Wounding is that I tend to run lower-magic (and hence, lower-healing) games. It is not. It is that what is called "mundane" healing is, by any sane measure, so far beyond the threshold of our world that it seems like magic to me.

As mentioned upthread, RCFG uses a "shrugging it off" mechanic. I have no problem with access to healing. I don't shaft players for choosing to play clerics. I don't make clw wands appear in treasure hoards, though.

There is a real difference between questioning your assertation that using CLW wands is "how the game is played" and saying "Healing in D&D? Why would you need that..."

Pretending they are the same thing? I just don't have the words.

My own game differs significantly from the baseline assumptions for D&D, but I'm okay with that. More importantly, it's okay with my players who are the whole reason I run it.

IME, games that differ signifiantly from the baseline assumptions for D&D are not at all uncommon.

"No CLW Wands" differs from the baseline assumptions of D&D no more, IMHO, than a game with no ravids. Just because something is possible, it doesn't follow that the majority use it.

(Especially given the number of folks who have complained in the past about how CLW wands break the encounter balance guidelines, and have been advised to ban them by other DMs who have done the same, here and elsewhere, in the past.)


RC

 

[Delta]

I don't have to prove that playing D&D by the default rules is the default. You're the one making an assertion: that one of the default roles for the game is not, a default. The game assumes access to healing and access to clerics. If you don't use them or have never seen them, more power to you. If you can honestly say "oh, man, what is this guy saying? Healing in D&D? Why would you need that..." I just don't have the words.

You know, honestly, I played in a 3E game for 5+ years, every week. I played the cleric. And we never had a wand of CLW.

Here's the reason: No cleric took the Craft Wands feat. We weren't allowed to buy arbitrary magic items -- we had to find a specific NPC with the right feats to craft it. We didn't use the "Variant: New Magic Items" which might have short-circuited to another feat requirement. And none of our clerics (including the one I played) took Craft Wands, because the only thing we would have used it for was CLW.

Hey, I wanted a Wand of CLW! I certainly see the value. But we always got by with plain rest-and-day-of-curing, and had better things to spend our feats on.

 

[Hussar]

You know, honestly, I played in a 3E game for 5+ years, every week. I played the cleric. And we never had a wand of CLW.

Here's the reason: No cleric took the Craft Wands feat. We weren't allowed to buy arbitrary magic items -- we had to find a specific NPC with the right feats to craft it. We didn't use the "Variant: New Magic Items" which might have short-circuited to another feat requirement. And none of our clerics (including the one I played) took Craft Wands, because the only thing we would have used it for was CLW.

Hey, I wanted a Wand of CLW! I certainly see the value. But we always got by with plain rest-and-day-of-curing, and had better things to spend our feats on.

So, you had no cure light wounds because the DM made getting them virtually impossible. You cannot buy them, so the only way to get them is to make them. And no one spent the feat.

Note, I find it very difficult to believe that NO ONE in your group took craft wand. Note, you don't have to cast the spell to make the wand. A wizard with a cleric's help can craft a wand of Cure Light.

But, that's fine, no one's saying that you absolutlely MUST have a wand of Cure Light to play the game. What's being said is that a very large number of groups did, in fact, have these wands, and that many game designers, like Paizo and WOTC assumed that you would have these healing sticks available.

Then again, I just finished running Paizo's There is No Honor and I'm about 1/2 way into the Bullywug Gambit (1st two modules of the Savage Tide AP) and the party has gathered well over 20 healing potions (18 cure light and 3 cure moderate) just from treasure. So, someone's assuming lots of free healing.

 

[Psion]

I completely, 100% agree. I'd add on...

3. Have found a Wand of Cure Light Wounds to be an inexpensive, but invaluable, source of healing during a campaign.

And I find it to be a stop gap in the case there is no cleric, but otherwise, just throwing money down the drain in the face of renewable resources.

 

[Psion]

So, you had no cure light wounds because the DM made getting them virtually impossible. You cannot buy them, so the only way to get them is to make them. And no one spent the feat.

Not automatic != virtually impossible.

FWIW, I don't make it automatic, either. Nothing about the DMG states that magic items are automatically available. Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Note, I find it very difficult to believe that NO ONE in your group took craft wand.

(shrug) My players rarely take craft feats. Some players are a bit "old school" in that they rely on the DM to provide magic items.

It would appear, like SteveC, your experience is less than universal.