Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think it's a perfectly valid complaint, in that I can see how it would bother someone. Yes, it's just resource management from a metagame point of view, but at least a CLW wand was magic. From an in-world point of view, we've gone from needing magic to heal completely overnight, to anyone being able to do it just by getting some shut-eye.

Yes, I think that's the "delineation" mark indeed.

If I don't want magic, the game will play very differently. Believable, you say, limiting my play style options, I say. We're both right. (I and you figuratively and not referring to Fifth Element)

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I suppose the only way to make both groups happy is to throw hit points away entirely.

Maybe have something like Torg. (Yes, Torg again! ). People have wounds and shock points and succesful attacks would deal damage against them, but if you have your possibilities (we could also call them moxies) you can play them to reduce the damage.

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[sblock=Attempting to create a short-term consistent narration for hit points and dying in 4e]
How many people here are aware that the "failed death saves" when you go below 0 hit points do only go away after a short or an extended rest? Here is your "cue" to what "really" happens when you go to 0 hit points. Your combat skill failed you, and you were hit - hard enough to drop you. You might be able to stand up again, but probably (1:20 chance) not on your own. If you don't recover quickly enough, you might just die from the wound. But if someone gets you up again, you soldier up to the pain and since you mind is working again you also do something to stitch that wound - it won't last long, but if you later spend a few minutes with bandages, the worst is taken care of. Of course, you are still a little exhausted from it (all the healing surges spent.)

I suppose one might want to add more house rules at this point to "fix" things.
[/sblock]

 

[Raven Crowking]

This is where I always get hung up when people are comparing 3e vs. 4e healing.

Basically, the argument seems to be: Healing is slow in 3e if you disregard wands of cure light wounds.

I just don't know why the heck we should disregard them.

-O

Because, apparently, some of us have been doing it wrong?

Indeed, we prefer to do it wrong, and think that doing it wrong results in a better game?

(Just speculating here.)



RC

 

[billd91]

Two adventurers are down to 1 hp. One has 8 hp max, the other has 300 hp max. How do the details on page 82 give you a clear way of narrating this?

It's not that hard to imagine. The character who has lost 7 hit points has taken fewer blows to get there and has fewer aches and pains to get over to be up to snuff than the one who has lost 299.

 

[maddman75]

I think you'll note the word "realistic" was avoided. Verisimilitude was mentioned, not realism.

This is the trick. Conan never waved a magic wand or kept a healer in tow. He would suck it up and go stab things to death.

 

[billd91]

This is where I always get hung up when people are comparing 3e vs. 4e healing.

Basically, the argument seems to be: Healing is slow in 3e if you disregard wands of cure light wounds.

I just don't know why the heck we should disregard them.

-O

Because they aren't always available, and even when you have one it probably cost you some money. Not a heck of a lot, perhaps, but it'll add up over time.

 

[Raven Crowking]

This is the trick. Conan never waved a magic wand or kept a healer in tow. He would suck it up and go stab things to death.

Not in tow, no, but I am pretty sure that I can find examples of Conan either (1) using magic healing, or (2) having to rest more than six hours. I know that longer rests are part & parcel of several REH stories, if not Conan stories in particular.

ERB has John Carter use green martian salves which promote fast healing, because he wanted John Carter to heal quickly but didn't want it to seem as though he could just take a nap and be okay after multiple cuts & abrasions. I can find cases where ERB has Tarzan rest up to recover from injuries, too.

Certainly, both resting and "magical" help aids in healing in LotR, whether the salves & drink of the orcs, the drinks of the elves, and/or resting in Rivendell and Lothlorien. When Faramir is injured, or Eowyn, or Merry, they don't spring up six hours later fully recovered -- instead they end up in the Houses of Healing in Gondor.

I could, quite easily, go on. Gary Gygax didn't invent magical/extraordinary healing, he took it from various sources that were far, far older. Needing to rest up and heal from injuries is at least as old as The Odyssey.



RC

 

[roguerouge]

Like I said, I think it's a small difference that some folks find very important. I am not one of those folks, but I think this is something about which reasonable people can disagree. I think I'm right, you think you're right, and yet neither one of us is crazy.

True enough. An excellent point.

The thing that gets me is that this is an issue which seems (to me) to be almost insanely easy to patch if you otherwise like the game. Slowing down healing surge recovery seems pretty simple.

Alternately, you could just say that the party needs to perform an 8-hour magical ritual to recover completely, and that they recover more slowly if they don't. Heck; add a component cost, if you'd like, or else add other complications. -O

Actually, this 4E concept that the rules work differently for heroes than for commoners would work well with a "mutant gene" narrative explanation. The instant healing would be perfectly well explained and I wouldn't have too much problem with it. I'd still find the warlord to be a bit too silly for my taste, but limiting his ability to affecting healthy and bloodied characters only would not be too hard.

If I could count on WotC to consistently write good modules, I'd have less of a problem with 4E. Since I can't and since their shenanigans made for a difficult 3P time of it, it's going to be years if ever before I can commit to an edition change.

 

[Halivar]

This is the trick. Conan never waved a magic wand or kept a healer in tow. He would suck it up and go stab things to death.

Ah! Now I know what Conan has been missing this whole time! He needs a cleric in chainmail, following him around and shouting "Suck it up, princess!" at him intermittently.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Like I said, I think it's a small difference that some folks find very important.

But is it really that small?

Lemme ask: if 4E, instead of using healing surges at all, simply said, "At the end of an encounter, your PC is fully healed," would that bother you at all? If not, okay, but I suspect you'd be in the minority. If so, why?

The above is how 4E healing feels to me. Just ... "poof," you're healed. And not "poof" as in "the cleric gave you a cure critical wounds." In the grand scheme of things, of course it's an unimportant thing. But in the realm of game design and participation, it just doesn't seem like a "small difference" to me.

I think I'm right, you think you're right, and yet neither one of us is crazy.

Well, it's a matter of preference, so it's not that I think I'm "right," honestly. My roommate plays video games constantly. Me, with the sole exception of Rock Band, not so much. They just don't appeal to me. But that doesn't make me "right" in how I feel about video games, does it?

And I wouldn't rule out "crazy," on my part. I just suffered through the DirecTV installation from Hell. I think I have new ulcers.

The thing that gets me is that this is an issue which seems (to me) to be almost insanely easy to patch if you otherwise like the game.

Probably true. But I don't. Honestly, 4E lost me with non-Euclidean movement and area-of-effect. Compared to how that makes me twitch and throw up a little in my mouth, 4E's healing is absolutely groovy.

OTOH, [wands of cure light wounds] were common in my games.

Who wins?

All I said was "rarer than folks seem to think." Not "nonexistent."

 

[Scribble]

Lemme ask: if 4E, instead of using healing surges at all, simply said, "At the end of an encounter, your PC is fully healed," would that bother you at all? If not, okay, but I suspect you'd be in the minority. If so, why?

I think the answer again lies in what you're intending HPs to model.

Yeah if you want them to model all physical injury and the size of your missing HP chunk directly corresponds to the size of your missing body chunk, then yeah poof you're healed would be weird.

But if you divorce it from that and say this is an amount of your ability to say "screw off universe" then no it wouldn't bother me at all.

The thing again I like about 4e is hw easy it is to modify based on one's needs/tastes.

If you want longer lasting wounds, it's pretty easy to make HS come back slower.

The thing that always gets me in the more "simmulationist" style games, is that the designer is basically creating much more of a headache for me if I want to modify "his" view of how things in the world work.