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

[Kraydak]

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There's nothing inherent in magical-or-long-term-healing that is more realistic than a quick recovery system.

Blink.
Blink blink.
Blink blink blink.

If you assume that your human character corresponds to, at least somewhat, a RL human, then you (probably, lucky you if not) know from personal experience that injuries take a while to heal. You also know that people don't just keel over and die (except due to exceptional bad health/old age) w/o injury. Therefore a character who is in danger of dieing should take a while to fully recover w/o magic (if it is possible at all, good luck "recovering" from old age w/o magic. actually, good luck to us all *hopes*).

...
Quite simply - how?

In what ways did - let's say - 1e support sprained ankles, severed arms, and cracked ribs better than 4e does? IMHO, it doesn't. HPs are too flimsy a mechanic to hold everything you want to hang on them.

1e: sprained ankles, severed arms, cracked ribs are all injuries. They decrease your ability to fight (lost hp, worse in the case of severed arms), and take a while (days, minimum, forever w/o magic in the case of severed arms) to heal.
4e: Either sprained ankles and cracked ribs (and gaping chest wounds or slashed throats) do not affect your character at all (you can be at full hp/surges with them) OR your character heals all physical wounds, naturally, within 6 hours.

Neither edition requires narration. One of the two editions can support narration w/o assuming either that your character is able to regenerate or that his body can be hacked to bits w/o consequence.

If you want to model long-term injuries, you need a system to support long-term injuries. Arguably, 3e's ability score damage can handle a lot of this heavy lifting. Arguably, 4e's disease track mechanisms can do similar. Regardless, it's not an out-of-the-box assumption of the game that a certain number of HPs mean anything other than ... well that number of HPs.


I think the crucial problem here is that it's senseless to argue about what HP's are. I think it's a lot more useful to debate what HP's do.

-O

And previous editions have a system to support long-term injuries. It is called the hp mechanic w/natural healing. We can argue about the accuracy of the time-scale they imply. Please don't pretend that the system isn't there.

 

[ExploderWizard]

How often did that happen in practice? My experience of 1e is that you rested until your cleric or druid recovered their spells.

In some games, almost never, in others it was happening a lot. Play experiences vary.

4e characters have most of their hit points stored up in their Healing Surges, which in my experience they blow through rather quickly. So characters are expending resources, which do matter, and funnily enough, which are restored after a night's sleep, just like in the previous editions.

Except for the little fact of not getting a guaranteed 100%( or even close in a lot of cases) of your HP back from a single rest.

Losing/using Healing Surges = getting hurt.

You can call it like that, but then there is no force in the multiverse that can damage a character beyond what a 6 hour nap can cure. If that counts as really getting hurt sure. If the worst that the world throws at you is fixed in 6 hours without any outside aid then either you are a troll, or you were not hurt much to begin with.

 

[Imaro]

What amuses me about this is neither does 3e. It was in 3e that made healing magics so inexpensive as to be a trivial resource expenditure for all but the lowest level parties. Therefore, no need for extended convalescence.

Sure, you could make cheap healing rare in your 3e campaign, but that's a conscious decision to ignore an obvious default assumption. An item that's cheap isn't meant to be rare (even 3e's economics aren't that wonky).

I bolded a key word for you. Please try to understand that that word is actually important to a lot of us. Please understand that we aren't asking for convalescence for the sake of sitting around doing nothing, but rather because otherwise we wonder where the wounds went (with a Warlord, say), and whether our characters actually need their livers intact for long-term survival.

I think this illustrates two types of thinking when it comes to rpg's. For some the fact that it's magic helps the narrative (and/or simulation) and that is their first priority and preference for playing rpg's

For others it's the mechanical effect or result that is important...not the means of describing said effect or even how said effect came about in a logical or consistent way through the narrative or simulation parts of the rpg. Their priority is an interesting set of mechanics to play with, and the narrative or simulation are secondary at best.

The thing is, imo, 3e caters to both camps, since ultimately it's quick healing... while 4e caters mainly to the second camp and makes almost no concession for the first camp, since it's fast healing but without the consideration of narrative or simulation..

 

[Scribble]

Ok Hp are not damage at all. What do people see when someone is on the ground making death checks? In a game without save or die effects but WITH dying there is bound to be a condition in between just fine and dying. This condition is usually referred to as damaged.

The point is that by the time someone is on the ground making death checks there is usually a cause. I can't envision a PC literally dying from a narrow miss, or from being demoralized.

Again I feel you're mapping what's happening to the HP as what's happening somehow physically to the character. This is not the case in my opinion.

Your character gets cut, he gets bashed, he gets burned, and chewed on.
Hit points are not a marker for how bad these things make your character look or feel. They measure a characters ability to not be killed by a killing shot. Not because he is tough enough to "take it" but by some other means. Luck, karma, moxie, force of will, fate, the shwartz... Whatever you want to call it. It's your characters ability to not let death claim him.

Thats why I said a 10hp arrow wound doesn't mean it physically damaged you. It might have- but it might not have.

I was watching eagle eye last night. Minor spoiler if you haven't seen it and care.






There's a scene where the beef jumps out a window, rolls down an awning and lands on some train tracks. There's a train comming! Oh noes!!! The Beef looks at it for a moment, then pushes himself up and away just in time to not get splattered...

here's how that would play out in my game-

You roll down the ledge landing on the tracks... Oh noes!!! A train is comming.

STR vrs Ref? hit! damage 100 damage!

Hah! 3 left!

You jump up just in time and narrowly avoid being hit full on... You feel the wind rush past your face as you press yourself as flat as possible against the tunnel wall. That was close!

No actual physical damage but the beef took HP damage.

Had it been enough to outright do him in?

You try to jump up and roll out of the way, but you're too slow. WHAM! The train hits you fll on splattering beef bits all over the walls of the tunnel. Need a character sheet or do you have one?

 

[Imaro]

Again I feel you're mapping what's happening to the HP as what's happening somehow physically to the character. This is not the case in my opinion.

Your character gets cut, he gets bashed, he gets burned, and chewed on.
Hit points are not a marker for how bad these things make your character look or feel. They measure a characters ability to not be killed by a killing shot. Not because he is tough enough to "take it" but by some other means. Luck, karma, moxie, force of will, fate, the shwartz... Whatever you want to call it. It's your characters ability to not let death claim him.

Thats why I said a 10hp arrow wound doesn't mean it physically damaged you. It might have- but it might not have.

I was watching eagle eye last night. Minor spoiler if you haven't seen it and care.






There's a scene where the beef jumps out a window, rolls down an awning and lands on some train tracks. There's a train comming! Oh noes!!! The Beef looks at it for a moment, then pushes himself up and away just in time to not get splattered...

here's how that would play out in my game-

You roll down the ledge landing on the tracks... Oh noes!!! A train is comming.

STR vrs Ref? hit! damage 100 damage!

Hah! 3 left!

You jump up just in time and narrowly avoid being hit full on... You feel the wind rush past your face as you press yourself as flat as possible against the tunnel wall. That was close!

No actual physical damage but the beef took HP damage.

Had it been enough to outright do him in?

You try to jump up and roll out of the way, but you're too slow. WHAM! The train hits you fll on splattering beef bits all over the walls of the tunnel. Need a character sheet or do you have one?

ok in 3.5 ... "Hit points mean two things in the game world: The ability to take physical punishment and keep going and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less seious one."

Both of these explanations imply a certain amount of physical damage.

With your example above...100 points of damge would have required a massive damage check, with a chance of outright dying from trauma. So I think hit points do map to a certain amount of physical damage, regardless of how you choose to look at it.

 

[Gentlegamer]

There's a scene where the beef jumps out a window, rolls down an awning and lands on some train tracks. There's a train comming! Oh noes!!! The Beef looks at it for a moment, then pushes himself up and away just in time to not get splattered...

here's how that would play out in my game-

You roll down the ledge landing on the tracks... Oh noes!!! A train is comming.

STR vrs Ref? hit! damage 100 damage!

Hah! 3 left!

You jump up just in time and narrowly avoid being hit full on... You feel the wind rush past your face as you press yourself as flat as possible against the tunnel wall. That was close!

No actual physical damage but the beef took HP damage.

Had it been enough to outright do him in?

You try to jump up and roll out of the way, but you're too slow. WHAM! The train hits you fll on splattering beef bits all over the walls of the tunnel. Need a character sheet or do you have one?

In my game, a speeding train wouldn''t deal HP damage. It deals "death," with a saving throw perhaps negating. This is also how I handle long falls, for example. There's no rolling a handful of dice for hp damage. It's "you're dead," perhaps with the chance to make a saving throw to take the handful of dice as damage.

 

[LostSoul]

In 1E if you were a fighter with 40 hp, with no access to magical healing and took 15 damage in a combat you had options. You could continue on if time was of the essence, or you could rest and recover. Just because you had been damaged didn't mean you HAD to lie in bed until you were back to full HP, it was your choice. The decision to press on with only 25 HP because the child from the village was still held captive somewhere in the lair was meaningful. It was a true hero and badass that went into danger wounded because it had to be done.

Yeah, I agree. Once the ability to safely have an Extended Rest was taken away from the players in my game, their choices became a lot tougher. A lot more interesting, too. I think it would have been better if they had left those kind of choices in the game (medium-term strategic ones, I guess you could call it).

Instead the focus is very strongly on the encounter.

The 4E model of healing supports the kind of player that we used to call goldbrickers. These are the types that had to have the best stats, AC, and number of HP and whined if they had to do anything at less than full capacity, the kind of player that lived for the 15 minute adventuring day.If the mechanics make you so badass that nothing that doesn't kill you will really even slow you down how heroic do you really need to be?

I agree. In 4E, the game revolves around tactical decisions made round-by-round. Once you get that extended rest, you're good to go. It seems rare by design to "threaten" the availability of extended rests. So like you say, you're pretty bad-ass all the time.

Which is, to me, pretty simulationist! I would have liked the game to support more gamist long- and medium-term strategic choices.

 

[Mallus]

In some games, almost never, in others it was happening a lot. Play experiences vary.

They do. Which do you suppose was more common?

Except for the little fact of not getting a guaranteed 100%( or even close in a lot of cases) of your HP back from a single rest.

Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that there's healing resource management going on inside the span of a day in 4e.

You can call it like that, but then there is no force in the multiverse that can damage a character beyond what a 6 hour nap can cure.

The point I was making is that 4e characters that Healing Surge loss is equivalent to straight hit point loss in prior editions.

 

[Obryn]

Blink.
Blink blink.
Blink blink blink.

If you assume that your human character corresponds to, at least somewhat, a RL human, then you (probably, lucky you if not) know from personal experience that injuries take a while to heal. You also know that people don't just keel over and die (except due to exceptional bad health/old age) w/o injury. Therefore a character who is in danger of dieing should take a while to fully recover w/o magic (if it is possible at all, good luck "recovering" from old age w/o magic. actually, good luck to us all *hopes*).

Again, you're very narrowly defining damage and recovery. Specifically, you're defining it in ways which aren't essential to realism, game-play, or immersion. You are asserting a specific correspondence of HP:Injury that has nothing to support it above other possible correpsondences, other than the style of game you wish to run.

1e: sprained ankles, severed arms, cracked ribs are all injuries. They decrease your ability to fight (lost hp, worse in the case of severed arms), and take a while (days, minimum, forever w/o magic in the case of severed arms) to heal.

So when did severed arms come about in combat? I mean, there's certain magical items that can do it - or a slicer beetle could do it in a pinch - but no character will have limbs lopped off over the course of simple combat or HP loss. Nor will they suffer a sprained ankle, broken bones, or cracked ribs from a 100' fall. At the very least, their movement rate will not change. They can still hold a weapon. They make the same attack rolls and damage rolls.

Unless, that is, you make a narrative decision to assert that a character is down 20 hps because of a cracked rib. In which case, bravo! You have to be conscious it's a decision, though, made to support your preferred definition of HPs - and that it is not required by the rules themselves.

And if you want to add additional rider effects, like reducing someone's movement rate for their sprained ankle, or combat penalties for their cracked rib? Go for it! Again, though, this is not something that HPs support - it's a separate subsystem.

4e: Either sprained ankles and cracked ribs (and gaping chest wounds or slashed throats) do not affect your character at all (you can be at full hp/surges with them) OR your character heals all physical wounds, naturally, within 6 hours.

Neither edition requires narration. One of the two editions can support narration w/o assuming either that your character is able to regenerate or that his body can be hacked to bits w/o consequence.

Again, there's a big gap between "does not affect" and "does not mechanically affect." I can completely understand if you don't like to make this distinction, but it's a distinction reasonable gamers can and do make. It doesn't make characters into superheroes, and it doesn't make them into trolls. It doesn't mean their injuries magically patch up or disappear without time and/or magic.

And previous editions have a system to support long-term injuries. It is called the hp mechanic w/natural healing. We can argue about the accuracy of the time-scale they imply. Please don't pretend that the system isn't there.

I'm not pretending whatsoever. I am arguing that an HP is nothing but an HP. It does not map directly to physical injury. It is an intentionally vague game mechanic that does nothing other than indicate how much "damage" someone or something can take before something bad happens.

A hit point is a purely functional game entity. Talking about what it is is useless. It's much better to talk about what it does, where we can have meaningful conversations about how it supports or doesn't support certain styles of play; or how it encourages or discourages character death.

-O

 

[Imaro]

You kep making these assertions about what hit points aren't...

Again, you're very narrowly defining damage and recovery. Specifically, you're defining it in ways which aren't essential to realism, game-play, or immersion. You are asserting a specific correspondence of HP:Injury that has nothing to support it above other possible correpsondences, other than the style of game you wish to run.

I'm not pretending whatsoever. I am arguing that an HP is nothing but an HP. It does not map directly to physical injury. It is an intentionally vague game mechanic that does nothing other than indicate how much "damage" someone or something can take before something bad happens.

A hit point is a purely functional game entity. Talking about what it is is useless. It's much better to talk about what it does, where we can have meaningful conversations about how it supports or doesn't support certain styles of play; or how it encourages or discourages character death.

-O

But...

ok in 3.5 ... "Hit points mean two things in the game world: The ability to take physical punishment and keep going and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less seious one."

Both of these explanations imply a certain amount of physical damage.

With your example above...100 points of damge would have required a massive damage check, with a chance of outright dying from trauma. So I think hit points do map to a certain amount of physical damage, regardless of how you choose to look at it.

So I think you are actually ignoring evidence that contradicts your assertion. Do hit points represent damage 1:1 nope... but that in no way means hit points don't represent physical damage at all.