Forked Thread: Healing Surges: Let's see them in Action!

[Herremann the Wise]

Who says that a guy who's up and fighting at full HPs is completely unwounded?

I understand where you are coming from here with the whole Die Hard thing but... he will be able to perform as if unwounded. Shouldn't being wounded mean that you're impaired in some way? Full hit points and scars? Yes. Faded bruises? Yes. Wounded? I'd say no.
I know that effectively that's what healing surges are for and can represent, but this muddies the water a little too far for me if I think about it too hard. It may work for describing PCs but not their opponents (who have between 1 and 3 healing surges but with no way of spending them).

As Jeff Wilder points out, if you describe someone as wounded or beat up, then that should mean that the opponents are not at tippy-top condition, mechanically speaking.

This ground seems too well trodden though. I'm not finding many people who seem to be able to see it from both perspectives.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Herremann the Wise]

In game event: Fytor is hit with a critical and takes 15 damage. He currently only has 10 hit points, so he goes down.

Narration: The orc's spear rams through your leg. As the orc pulls out the spear, Fytor goes down in a welter of blood.

In game event: Fytor's player rolls his death save and gets back up.

Narration: Fytor shakes his head and the bleeding slows. Obviously nothing truly serious was hit. Fytor brings the fight back to the orc.

... I fail my perception check to see the bloody problem.

Hmmm... Welter of blood? Pulls out spear? I'm thinking big time arterial strike. Considering the guy has all his healing surges when this happens, I think you have "oversold the attack" on this one. YMMV.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Until of course the death checks keep happening when all the enemies are down or not fighting. Unless of course all death checks are automaticly successful when no longer in combat.

Which is what the rules state, in the Dying section of the PHB. It has:

"Lower than 10: You slip one step closer to death. If you get this result three times before you take a rest, you die."

So thus, after an encounter if you take a rest. Which is a fair assumption considering it means the person won't die. You recover. Now, obviously if a new encounter happens before this can occur the death checks continue, but then it goes back to my original answer.

 

[Kraydak]

Hussar: your examples show that you simply do not understand some of the narrative problems people have with healing surges.

For example: getting run through with a sword and then walking over to the lades. One of the big problems with healing surges is that they do not allow for convalescence. You can (easily) argue that prior editions had inaccurate convalescence times, but they had them. Any narration that does not include an adequate time span for the question of convalescence to arise... doesn't address this problem at all. Having a story where someone gets run through but stays active doesn't trigger this narrative difficulty, and hence isn't a useful example either way.

Healing surges also mean that you can't get incapacitated. If the story has someone getting severely injured, people yelling at him not to leave them while he is getting carried away on a stretcher, followed by him opening his eyes and weakly holding one of their hands... is not a situation which can be narrated with healing surges. Healing surges would have him at 1/4 hp, and in good enough shape to dance a jig (or take a hit).

Healing surges (especially w/o clerical or paladinny healing) make wounds very hard to narrate. Imagine (to take an extreme example in the hopes that you will actually try to understand the issue) having a CN-Two-Face Warlord as your healer (recruiting sucked). Now the DM has to narrate (or, more likely, will simple stop narrating wounds altogether) wounds that *could* easily kill you (about 50% of the time, when the Warlord decides not the heal you), but could be recovered from by a guy yelling at you. Not easy. Further, you might track the events and note that in the party with a cleric, people regularly get stabbed, while in the warlord party all wounds are light blows to the head, and go "whats up with that?!" This is the problem of Schroedinger's Wounding, where wound narration depends (for many, too obviously) on party resources and the likely-hood of them getting spent.

So, Hussar, three narrative problems:
1) no convalescence
2) no medium-term incapacitation
3) Schroedinger's wounding.
How would you solve those problems? Do you have examples that deal with them?

 

[Betote]

Yes, in almost every fiction, there comes a moment where the hero "shakes off" his wounds and kicks ass. But...

a) Almost always, immediately after kicking ass, those wounds come up again.
b) The hero gets to do that 1-2 times per movie/novel/comic. Not 6-8 times per day. And it's almost always in special circumstances.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

1) Well, if one truly felt that a person should be resting in bed on weeks at hand. Then simply rest in bed for weeks at a time. If not, and you want to keep going, state that the wound is there but no longer is at the point of being critical to your capabilities to continue to act/fight. Since really that is the main showcase of HP how much longer can you continue to do stuff.

Or heck if you really wanted too, don't have an Extended Rest, the lack of Healing Surges can actually be a good representation of a more serious wound. Given that without Healing Surges your less able to up your HP thus the time spent being able to fight/act is lessened, which can showcase being hampered by a wound.

2) That would be a person who has got a 20 on a Death Check but no longer has Healing Surges left, he is stable but is prone till he can be healed.

3) This all depends on the group really and their feelings on healing magic as well. Would you consider it odd if in a low-magic game they had less serious wounds dealt to the party (though that being said, more serious wounds can be dealt and simply illustrated by lack of Healing Surges and such, till an Extended Rest when it no longer inhibits the PC). Having a Cleric naturally concludes that yes a party could potentially be able to fair against more serious wounds.

 

[Kraydak]

1) Well, if one truly felt that a person should be resting in bed on weeks at hand. Then simply rest in bed for weeks at a time. If not, and you want to keep going, state that the wound is there but no longer is at the point of being critical to your capabilities to continue to act/fight. Since really that is the main showcase of HP how much longer can you continue to do stuff.

Or heck if you really wanted too, don't have an Extended Rest, the lack of Healing Surges can actually be a good representation of a more serious wound. Given that without Healing Surges your less able to up your HP thus the time spent being able to fight/act is lessened, which can showcase being hampered by a wound.

So you agree: healing surges can't model convalescence but previous editions could. Excellent.

2) That would be a person who has got a 20 on a Death Check but no longer has Healing Surges left, he is stable but is prone till he can be healed.

4e doesn't allow for people being incapacitated but conscious (beyond save-ends effects). Part of the whole healing surge thingy.

3) This all depends on the group really and their feelings on healing magic as well. Would you consider it odd if in a low-magic game they had less serious wounds dealt to the party (though that being said, more serious wounds can be dealt and simply illustrated by lack of Healing Surges and such, till an Extended Rest when it no longer inhibits the PC). Having a Cleric naturally concludes that yes a party could potentially be able to fair against more serious wounds.

I consider it weird if the nature of the injuries a character receives depends on whether or not the cleric's player shows up for the game. I consider it obnoxious that a DM who wants to narrate injury would have to take it into consideration. I consider it unfortunate that the range of injuries that a character can take, narration-wise, w/o a cleric of paladin, is so minor that effectively characters that adventure with such a lack never get injured! Note that under the narration strategies suggested, Warlords do not heal anyone! Instead, no one gets injured. And if the Warlord's player decides not to drop the heal that the DM expected him to, narration can become all kinds of problematic (unless you restrict yourself to all-head-wounds-all-the-time, which has its own problems).

 

[Zustiur]

Yes, in almost every fiction, there comes a moment where the hero "shakes off" his wounds and kicks ass. But...

a) Almost always, immediately after kicking ass, those wounds come up again.
b) The hero gets to do that 1-2 times per movie/novel/comic. Not 6-8 times per day. And it's almost always in special circumstances.

This is a very good point. Perhaps if healing surges were 1/day and they counted as temporary hit points, instead of healing... we'd have less arguments.

1) Well, if one truly felt that a person should be resting in bed on weeks at hand. Then simply rest in bed for weeks at a time. If not, and you want to keep going, state that the wound is there but no longer is at the point of being critical to your capabilities to continue to act/fight. Since really that is the main showcase of HP how much longer can you continue to do stuff.

Sadly the mechanics don't support this. You can do that in any edition, it makes no difference. You can say it takes 100 days to recover from a sword wound if you want to, but that's not supported by the rules. 4E supports this less than older editions, and that is seen by many as a flaw.
Yes 3E and earlier editions modeled wounds poor, but at least they tried. 4E didn't try, and this is irksome. To those of us on the 4E-sucks side of the fence, taking a poor mechanic out of the game completely isn't an improvement. It's more of a cop-out. "We can't figure out how to make it better, so we'll pretend it doesn't exist".

 

[ExploderWizard]

Who says that a guy who's up and fighting at full HPs is completely unwounded?

If HP are the only mechanic in the game to represent resilience/fighting effectiveness then I do.

All being at full HP means is, "You will have to do a lot to me to take me down." It doesn't mean "I am perfectly okay and completely unwounded." All it means is, mechanically, he's largely unaffected by his wounds... It doesn't mean the wounds are not there.

Unwounded and completely materially unaffected by wounds are the same thing. To say that you are banged up and limping but otherwise ok means nothing unless there is some connection to your actual state of being. If you are limping with full HP is your move/ability to run reduced?

In an adventuring party without a paladin or cleric, does anyone who doesn't die get hit with a nasty wound ever, or does the lack of magical healing turn all hits into shots from nerf weapons. If real wounds do still occur in these situations then they are cured by the coach saying "walk it off son" or we have the PC's as trolls issue.
If we describe the action as not resulting in actual serious wounds then no threat is that serious and everyone is just playfighting.

Either way its less satisfying to logic and common sense. If fluff and narration carry so much weight then just keep fighting after reaching 0 HP. Sure mechanically you are down but thats no reason not to suck it up and keep going. That should be ok right?

 

[Nebulous]

Eh, i'll have to agree that narrative-wise, healing wounds don't make a lick of sense. Are they fun and useful in the heat (and post heat) of battle? Yeah, and i guess that's where 4e stopped thinking about them.

I don't mind them really, i think of 4e as much like a video game anyway, but i see how it could be annoying to many gamers without even the explanation of "magic" to heal grievous wounds.

Now, if 3rd party designers were allowed to choke 4e and squeeze some alternate rules out of healing surges, i would so love to see what they come up with.