Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!

[Imaro]

High level 1E adventurers were very emotional insecure I guess. After all, I would think it would be the *guy with 8 hitpoints* that would be hiding under his bed, afraid to back into the dungeon. Not the guy with 300. In fact, that's how it would be in 1E, a low level adventurer with natural healing was at full hp and willing to return to adventuring much sooner than a higher level guy.

I'm talking 3e here, and you're looking at it wrong... The higher level adventurer can heal just as much as the lower and go squash the kind of opponents the lower adventurer is facing (one of the reasons I like sandbox games...because you might just be doing this), but to go back out and fight a demon lord, especially after it crushed any notions that your sword form was perfect is going to take alot more than to go fight an unskilled scrub of a goblin who got a lucky shot in, whether you're 1st level or 10th level.

There are virtually no physical symptoms of injury in any version of DnD. The only reason that people say there are injuries is because they describe them, it's not actually modeled by anything in the rules. I can say that 1E lets my PC have green hair, while 4E doesn't.

Eh, I like that 3.5 has the disabled/dying/dead distinction better than 4e's full/dying (but maybe you're not dying) distinction...though I would have liked to have seen maybe a wounded/disabled/dying/dead distinction with a simple condition track.

There is no long term damage. One of my points is that you're describing 4E damage in 1E terms. While both systems use the same vagueness, IMO you're describing 4E damage as a lasting effect with no good reason. Now I'll claim that a character in 4E with maximum hitpoints has an arrow sticking through is leg. Now he gets into a footrace with another one and wins. Now explain how 1E differs.

And yet the game since day one has been based on description. The DM, using the rules (whether gamist, simulationist, or narrativist) translates these rules and describes the world with their effect to the players. The players in turn rely on this information to make decisions and interact with the world. When the game's rules become convulted or even illogical to translate and describe... IMO, the game becomes much worse for it.

I'm describing 4e damage as in some part physical, because one can be knocked unconscious and or dying multiple times in one combat...seems like a good reason to me. I mean what is happening in these battles then, is the PC's confidence being shaken so badly it's knocking him unconscious? Or is it a bunch of scratches that are causing a hardened warrior to pass out and struggle against the grim reaper? Maybe the adventurer is just loosing his hope that he'll win and it causes him to faint and nearly die.

Because you've made the assumption that you know the nature of the physical wounds afflicting your character. You really don't, I suggest, in any edition of the game. Relax some of your need to spell out things that were always contradictory, and the loony tunes song might fade. In fact, if you've played 1E DnD and had a PC fall off of a 100 ft cliff and live, I would think that the Loony Tunes thing would be something you'd be used to. Two characters caught in the middle of a 40 ft fireball - one is completely incinerated, the other is down about 10% of his maximum hitpoints. How in the world did the "simulationists" out there last so long with DnD?

Uhm... 3.5 and I used the massive damage rules... so yeah for me the looney tunes music had receded a little bit, at least with 3.5. He dodged the fireball, seems simple enough. I don't have to retcon... and who said I was simulationist, I mean the hit points and healing surges aren't narativist either.

 

[Scribble]

I understand that most people haven't ever played D&D in a more sandbox, simulationist, fully emmersive style and probably wouldn't enjoy it if they did, but 4e basically came out and said, "If you were playing that way, and no one was, then you were playing it wrong. We decided that D&D was only fun played in our way, and well 3e wasn't very fun played in our way, so we made a game that was fun when played our way." Which is fine, and you have to respect the tight focus of the design and how everything integrates with everything else from a purely designer perspective, but I have no interest in running or playing the game.

I think you're painting an overly harsh statement about the design of the system...

I don't think they intended to call anyone's style of play wrong. I think they tried to create a system the majority of players would find easier to use.


I think they realized that people also wanted a game that was easy to tailor to personal prefference, so they did so. But instead of the burden of customization being put on the majority, they tried to put the burden of customization on the minority of players.

I guess it's up to debate whether or not they did so.

 

[roguerouge]

New problem: in 3E, massive damage rules that you can die from a hit that causes 50 HP of damage or more... no matter how many HP you have left. How does that alter the arguments about the "abstractness" of damage? Does it?

 

[Fifth Element]

Thanks to this thread, I'm going to make my character for Sunday's game a Warlord based on Dr. Cox from Scrubs. "Suck it up, princess" will be about the best they can hope for.

Can't wait.

That is an outstanding idea. Wish I could be there.

 

[Fifth Element]

I understand that most people haven't ever played D&D in a more sandbox, simulationist, fully emmersive style and probably wouldn't enjoy it if they did, but 4e basically came out and said, "If you were playing that way, and no one was, then you were playing it wrong. We decided that D&D was only fun played in our way, and well 3e wasn't very fun played in our way, so we made a game that was fun when played our way."

I think this is an extremely harsh and pessimistic interpretation of the intent and statements of the 4E designers. Designing a game that is intended to be played in a certain way is not the same thing as calling other styles of game bad.

 

[Obryn]

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 if I moved straight from 1e to 4e - or straight from using 3e rules for a 1e-style game, like many posters on ENW prefer - 4e would look like too drastic a change.

As it stands, 4e's healing models how my 3e games actually played out. By the end of the night, everyone was healed to full - the only question was, "How many spells/charges did it take?" It's a shortcut to me. I take the in-between stuff like healing spells, bandages, and the like to be a given.

So this isn't a change in anything but convenience for my game. I'd say I'm far from alone in this, too.

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.

Well, like I said, I don't think any game can be all things for all people. Past a certain point, it's too much effort to patch. I think it's interesting that, out of everything in 4e, healing and 1-2-1-2 counting are about the simplest things to change that I can imagine. If it's the power system itself, that's another matter entirely.

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

I agree with Maddman that 3e assumes that magic items are commodities. In a sense, 3e has 2 separate XP systems - one for your character abilities, and one for your character's gear. As written, mind you - this isn't to say that people couldn't or don't play otherwise. But, the most popular published 3e settings - Eberron, FR, 3e-ized Planescape, Ptolus, etc. - assume that there is some buying & selling of magical gear, and that PCs will have the means to do so. Given this assumption, a fantastically useful and inexpensive item like a CLW wand should be rather plentiful. And making it not-plentiful requires that the DM modify the game's default assumptions, IMO.

-O

 

[Harlekin]

Of course, you could always say, "Well that's not perfectly realistic." or "That's a pretty thin explanation.", and I agree fully. That brings us back to where we started at, the recognition that D&D has always been pretty far removed from 'realism', that 4e more fully embrassed that than any edition thus far, and that if anything that was fully the opposite of the problems I had with the system.

I understand that most people haven't ever played D&D in a more sandbox, simulationist, fully emmersive style and probably wouldn't enjoy it if they did, but 4e basically came out and said, "If you were playing that way, and no one was, then you were playing it wrong. We decided that D&D was only fun played in our way, and well 3e wasn't very fun played in our way, so we made a game that was fun when played our way." Which is fine, and you have to respect the tight focus of the design and how everything integrates with everything else from a purely designer perspective, but I have no interest in running or playing the game.

But D&D was never a good system for simulationist gaming. For such games GURPS, or even better Harnmaster are much more appropriate. D&D was always among the most gamist of the major RPG systems. So even if the new system has less realism than the old rule (which I don't think it does) all the designers told you was "You can't use this hammer for screwing in screws any more."

As a side note, a game does not have to be simulationist to be immersive. Those two qualities have nothing to do with each other.

 

[Obryn]

I understand that most people haven't ever played D&D in a more sandbox, simulationist, fully emmersive style and probably wouldn't enjoy it if they did, but 4e basically came out and said, "If you were playing that way, and no one was, then you were playing it wrong. We decided that D&D was only fun played in our way, and well 3e wasn't very fun played in our way, so we made a game that was fun when played our way." Which is fine, and you have to respect the tight focus of the design and how everything integrates with everything else from a purely designer perspective, but I have no interest in running or playing the game.

Wow, I think that's ... not really it, I guess.

I think that they saw that a large portion of 3e players were playing in a certain way, and made 4e to model this. Not that everyone was, or that everyone even should - just looking at a common way to play 3e, and focus the game more narrowly.

Thanks to this thread, I'm going to make my character for Sunday's game a Warlord based on Dr. Cox from Scrubs. "Suck it up, princess" will be about the best they can hope for.

Can't wait.

Now I'm looking forward to this even more.

-O

 

[D'karr]

I think most of the problem is terminology. Most of the argument comes because they are called Hit Points, Damage and Healing Surges.

In D&D combat there are only two states Combat Effective and Not-So. If you have "Hit Points" left you are combat effective. That swing from your sword can do damage to your opponent when you have 40 hit points or 1. However, when you drop to 0 you are no longer combat effective. You can't even swing the sword.

Damage is also "esoteric" in the sense that not every "hit" is really a hit. Some times you are losing "Hit Points" because you are winded, you got lucky and the"hit" was not solid, etc.

Long Term injuries (broken bones, torn ligaments, etc.) have never been a part of D&D. D&D has never had a "death spiral" mechanic either, where your combat effectiveness gets worse as you lose hit points. If you fell of a high cliff and only took half your hit points in "damage" you were still as combat effective as if you had not fallen down.

So the only sticking point about this is about "long term" recovery. 4e does not provide a mechanic for "long term injury" recovery without house ruling it. When I see some of the complaints, they seem to boil down to that point. However, the previous edition did not provide for that either. The default assumption of the game provided for magic to "heal" to be prevalent at almost any level. So if you wanted to model "long term injury" recovery you had to house rule it too.

Me, I'm having a great time playing and DMing and worrying about this particular aspect is handled the same way I did before. If I want long term injuries I house rule them.

 

[Celebrim]

But D&D was never a good system for simulationist gaming.

Which is why ultimately I left it, for GURPS. But GURPS also has problems, which brought me back to D&D when so many of the specific difficulties I'd had with D&D were addressed.

D&D was always among the most gamist of the major RPG systems. So even if the new system has less realism than the old rule (which I don't think it does) all the designers told you was "You can't use this hammer for screwing in screws any more."

Yes.

As a side note, a game does not have to be simulationist to be immersive. Those two qualities have nothing to do with each other.

I didn't say that they did. If one implied the other, I could have saved a word.