Can you get too much healing?

[UngeheuerLich]

disclaimer: i also didn´t read all pages...

maaybe the best solution would not be a tougher encounter at the beginning, which makes your characters feel like they always need their full potential, but easier encounters at the beginning.

With that much fokus on healing it will cost the some surges. Maybe a daily activation of healing powers.

Maybe they will become a bit more confident and will go on...

The good thing will be, that in their last fight of the day, they will still have enough potential to trigger all their healing surges.

So: less deadly fights with many minions will wear them down, not more deadly fights with too tough monters...
i also would not go on when i have to go nova just to survive.

 

[CapnZapp]

CappnZapp- Resource management still includes daily powers.

I guess I don't know how else to answer you other than to point out that obviously we both know that using up daily spells like fireballs is still part of the game, that in fact every single class has a bit of that now, and that daily resource management is much bigger than the way to describe it. Maybe you have a problem with the way its implemented, but you glossed over that issue by ignoring it.

This thread grows faster than I can respond... so it's possible.

But let me reassure you the fireball part of resource management is what I like.

What do I like about it? How you aren't completely hosed when you run out of dailies.

It is this specific trait I would like to transplant into the healing game, the surge-related part of the resource management game.

regards,
Zapp

 

[CapnZapp]

In my experience, there's increased excitement and paranoia as the number of surges decreases. When it hits 0, there's an inherent scrambling effect if the party is unable to immediately get shelter.

Once you get the shelter and can take the extended rest, there's an effective sigh of relief and exhultation of beating it out.

That said, far too often the risk of running out of surges is absurdly low - it seems to only happen under rare circumstances or when using certain creatures.

I agree completely.

But first, I have realized we need to keep two thing separated:

* using up all your healing surge triggers for a specific encounter
This is good because it adds a real threat, generating excitement. It is also good because fights don't have to go on forever. Better to have both PCs and monsters with fewer hp allowing you to have more fights in any play session.

* using up all your healing surges for the day
As written, this is intended to happen mid-fight, adding tension and excitement. However, my experience is that this is far too easy to avoid. The power to rest up is placed squarely in the hands of the players, and with the draconic repercussions of running out of surges, you can hardly blame the players for not wanting to play that game. Even to the extent of ignoring plot - if the princess wasn't saved before surges are exhausted, bad luck. We failed. No point in going into that final fight where we risk actual death.

By moving the limitations from the per-day basis to the per-encounter basis, you essentially remove surges as the primary basis for when players decide to rest.

Instead, their decision can be based on things like whether they have run out of daily powers. Which is a much more interesting decision, because there is a real choice. Pressing on even without dailies might not be preferable, but it certainly is possible.




Back to your post, keterys. In my experience, this is how the 4E designers envision the healing surge mechanic to play out.

But in my experience, players quickly see through the mechanics, resolving to not put themselves into that position in the first place. There is no excitement or paranoia if players simply decide that game isn't something they want to play, instead opting to rest for the day, when running low on surges.

It is precisely this, the power to decide to cut away the "end game", which is destroying excitement in 4E. To me, it is a fundamental flaw of the game to assume the players would willingly expose their characters to real threat when the game allows them not to.

In its stead, I want this end game to be possible in just about every encounter, and not just the last one (which never happens, if the players get to choose).

If the number of surges you can use per encounter is limited, we attain this goal.

If the number of surges you can use per day is unlimited, or at least the penalties for running out are mitigated, we solve the other problem, the 15-minute adventuring day too (by making pressing on a real choice, a hard choice).

 

[CapnZapp]

<<snip>>
All healing surges are intended to do is give PCs a way to endure several encounters without having 100's of hit points at a low level. On top of that they provide a hook for healing powers to operate, which is really a tactical concept that just adds more variety and regulates the rate of "healing".

The simplest way to change things IMHO would be to give 2-3 healing surges per short rest and that is all you have, just those few. It is really all 99% of characters need in a given fight anyhow. I've seen characters burn through 5-6 surges in a battle, but that's really about the limit of what you can trigger per-encounter anyway usually.

Basically surges stop being managed, though there would be some penalty for a character ending a battle at really low hit points. They might be forced to enter the next one with only 1 or 2 surges.

At least you have SOME resource management, and it is a small enough resource that managing it WITHIN an encounter can be fairly important. Outside encounters you're just going to have to rely on dailies as the resource challenge.

Or you can just ditch the whole resource management concept, make HS unlimited and dailies into encounter powers. It is a different game, but if it is more fun for your players then it is the right game for them.

And for "standard" parties with perhaps one Cleric and no MC feats, this works pretty okay I guess.

The healing trigger game for this party is significantly different from a party with more Leaders, more MC feats, and perhaps everyone wearing Dwarven Armor and taking every power possible that allows surges to be used.

The first party have essentially only encounter-based healing triggers, and most of them are either costly to use (Second Wind) or have reduced power (Healing Potions).

Whether they have 10 healing surges or 100 couldn't matter less, because during the encounter, any single character could only benefit from three, and then be relegated to drinking potions.

In this case (the "expected" party) I can run a pretty standard encounter, and there is some tension if the party can't prevent the monsters from focusing their fire on a single party member, especially if this party member is vulnerable to the attacks (physically attacking a low-AC wizard; stunning and dazing the low-Will Fighter; etc).

The problem arises because 4E does not even seem to anticipate the "too much healing" scenario. The players does not even need to roll up new Leader characters for this to happen. Add one item and one MC feat to each party member, and suddenly you're looking at 10 daily surge triggers.

This is extremely disruptive to gameplay:
1) no longer can monsters seriously threaten the party, because any given party member can now be injected with all his remaining surges during a single encounter
2) this can cause one PC to run out of surges quickly, and as we all agree, you simply don't press on for the day as soon as one character becomes unhealable. This can drastically shorten the adventure day.

But most significantly
3) you have suddenly broken the nice feature of 4E where running out of dailies is an inconvenience but not a disaster (i.e the solution to 3E nova spellcasting). Because now your most important daily powers aren't your class powers any longer. Now your most important dailies are the healing surge triggers that may spell the difference between life and death for yourself our one of your allies.

Suddenly asking the party to press on when low on dailies becomes a very unreasonable thing to do. Yes, they won't have something the regular party will have. But by resting they as a group regain the wondrous ability to always bounce back they had before they run out.

Personally I tend to agree with people about encounter design. I still think weaker encounters should be in the mix. You say they have no 'beef', but to me they add tension, provide variety, drain resources, and serve story functions.

And I can envy you for it.

You and your players are clearly capable of something I am not; working up tension for ticking down a number from its '9' position to its '8' position.

The reason I can't do it is because 4E math is fairly transparent. After playing a while you recognize when things won't be dangerous (at all) and you simply lose interest.

My goal is to reintroduce enough unpredictability into the game so this happens less often.

Not by adding wilder damage swings or any direct "unpredictability" like that. But by reducing a party from getting too much healing (triggers)...

In my view, 4E tension hinges too much on the assumption players won't select too much healing by their own volition. And I'm saying that because I have had the misfortune to be given players who relatively quickly saw how more healing triggers would give their PCs a cushioned existence, where the only drawback is a need to rest more often.

 

[CapnZapp]

A general post:

Apologies in advance to all of you who I don't reply to.

Several of you are arguing my main problem is that I am not stringing out encounters like I am supposed to do. Part of my answer is yes, you are right; and so please don't suggest I should do that when I am specifically looking for alternatives that does not involve so many fights.

But part of my answer is that this overlooks pretty significant chunks of the original question. During the thread's evolution I have become more and more convinced the designers have simply forgot to playtest parties that are heavily "triggered out", and this is something few of you have responded to. I realize you won't see the issue in a standard party (the "expected" party), but perhaps you could have a think about it and then discuss what you feel about it.

 

[CapnZapp]

The simplest way to change things IMHO would be to give 2-3 healing surges per short rest and that is all you have, just those few. It is really all 99% of characters need in a given fight anyhow. I've seen characters burn through 5-6 surges in a battle, but that's really about the limit of what you can trigger per-encounter anyway usually.

Basically surges stop being managed, though there would be some penalty for a character ending a battle at really low hit points. They might be forced to enter the next one with only 1 or 2 surges.

Thank you for this very interesting suggestion!

Yes, I think this would go a long way in mitigating the power of some parties to focus 10 triggers on the same PC in an encounter.

Instead of beginning each day with 6-9 (or more) healing surges, you begin each day with perhaps 3 surges. Then you get 3 more during each short rest. or something like that.

This would mean every encounter could become significant. And without having to change a lot of different things (like the cost of MC feats or whatever). Removing a party's ability to "focus trigger" a specific PC is after all what is needed to remove the feeling of invincibility that destroys tension and excitement. It would also give a pretty neat incentive to keep adventuring...

Yes, I'll have a think about this. (And what role Constitution should play). Even better, I'll (later) post a new thread in the house rules forum, so you all can give your input!

 

[msherman]

I really think the big problem has been missed by a lot of posters here. The game is not, at it's core, stable; it's only meta-stable. If everyone's working together (DM and players) to keep things balanced and fun, it hums along pretty well. But if people don't keep that goal in mind, there's a lot of corner cases that can spiral out of control, and ruin the game.

In this case, one too many PCs took a leader feat, so there was too much healing in the game, so the DM had to ramp up the threat to make things fun again, which meant that more players took leader feats. End result, everyone can heal pretty much at will, but no-one's got big offensive powers any more, so the fights get long and grindy making them even more boring.

The easy solution? Just talk to your players! Explain that the games gotten grindy because of their feat selection, and how if some of them drop the leader MCs for, say, a striker MC instead, the game would start to stabilize again in the sweet spot, where it's more fun and exciting for everyone. I had a similar situation in my game; we've got two leaders already (cleric and bard), and the fighter player was considering MC cleric (so he could take Warpriest); I suggested he look at MC barbarian instead, and he seems quite happy with that.

 

[keterys]

But in my experience, players quickly see through the mechanics, resolving to not put themselves into that position in the first place. There is no excitement or paranoia if players simply decide that game isn't something they want to play, instead opting to rest for the day, when running low on surges.

It's been my personal experience that players either choose not to do this, because or pride or convenience (my guys tend to extended rest between sessions rather than during them), or due to plot constraints.

For example, almost all LFR modules are one day adventures - there's _some_ reason not to sleep. In a non-LFR game, we've had two adventures - in one we assaulted a goblin lair and smashed through the initial fights but were running a bit lower on resources before the final fight... if we'd taken an extended rest, why would our characters assume it would be the same fight it was? I mean, either the goblins should flee if they're scared or track us down if they're not, or take some other action. The next adventure there was a ritual to stop and we'd already seen one town basically destroyed by it.

In its stead, I want this end game to be possible in just about every encounter, and not just the last one (which never happens, if the players get to choose).

Only if there's no repercussion to excessive resting, which we did cover earlier in fair detail.

If the number of surges you can use per encounter is limited, we attain this goal. If the number of surges you can use per day is unlimited, or at least the penalties for running out are mitigated

Fair - let us know how that works out!

 

[KarinsDad]

There is no excitement or paranoia if players simply decide that game isn't something they want to play, instead opting to rest for the day, when running low on surges.

It is precisely this, the power to decide to cut away the "end game", which is destroying excitement in 4E. To me, it is a fundamental flaw of the game to assume the players would willingly expose their characters to real threat when the game allows them not to.

In its stead, I want this end game to be possible in just about every encounter, and not just the last one (which never happens, if the players get to choose).

I think you have this off a little.

Because you make every encounter tough, by definition you are limiting the number of encounters until the endgame.

Because you make every encounter tough, an even tougher encounter at the end might be too tough, or at least in the eyes of your players low on surges.

The concept of making every encounter tough in order to challenge players and avoid the easy grind is a flawed concept. It is just as much a grind to face tough encounter, tough encounter, tough encounter as it is to face: n, n, n+1, and n+3.

Both are grinds. You are just finding out one of the consequences of grinding your way.

There is nothing wrong with narrowing the bandwidth. Many n+1 and n+2 encounters instead of a wide diversity. There is a problem with going in either direction, mostly n encounters, or mostly n+3 encounters (or even mostly n+2 encounters before an n+3 encounter). The game was not really designed for those and either one will be both grindy and will expose other flaws in the game system as you are finding.

The multiple n encounters are grindy by being repetitive and boring and not a challenge. The multiple n+2/n+3 encounters are grindy because they force lengthy many round encounters and a single mistake on the part of the players can be extremely costly, especially in resources such as healing surges or daily heals.

You've avoided the former one and walked straight into the latter one.

And other people are not experiencing your issue because they have not done what you have done, or at least to the degree that you appear to have done it.


And finally, your world appears to be set in stone. If the players take an extended rest, the BBEG is still there waiting for them just as he was. As DM, you should have him attack in the middle of the extended rest, or set up a bunch of traps, or call for reinforcements, or kill the hostages, or attack the town, or simply move on.

If the PCs do not press forward, the BBEG should change the scenario, making it unlikely that the PCs succeed as strongly as they would have. The BBEG paid another tribe part of the treasure that the PCs would have gotten in order to get reinforcements. The BBEG simply left the area and took those magical items with him.

The way to incentivize players is not to necessarily change the rules. It's to supply them with information that gives them a choice. Rest and lose out, or don't rest and press on and possibly be heroes.

Your healing surges per encounter solution is actually removing the choice from the players. It really sounds like you are a bit of a controlling DM here. The players are not playing the game the way you want it to be played.

That's because you as DM are forcing the issue by throwing so many tough encounters at them. Of course they are going to react as they are reacting. You want to do the tough encounters AND have them react in an atypical fashion.

 

[Regicide]

If the number of surges you can use per day is unlimited, or at least the penalties for running out are mitigated, we solve the other problem, the 15-minute adventuring day too (by making pressing on a real choice, a hard choice).

Yes, I've been saying this since day 1 really. Putting your characters in a situation where they have to go on, but they can't possibly win is, quite literally, a text book example of bad game design. This is why you see in every video game the player either regenerates, can return to town, gains health when they die and respawn or can gain health in fights or some other mechanic that doesn't leave them in a situation where they're high and dry.

Healing surges are a very poorly made mechanic that promotes this situation. DMs of course can get around it, but it requires hoops or immersion breaking or inconsistency, none of which are desirable.

Fixing surges are your best bet. Unlimited works. If you don't like unlimited then stop healing potions from using/requiring a surge, they already require both gold and actions to use, they don't need to be "balanced" 3-ways. It's also generally pretty easy as a DM to add potions to loot if your players need healing without it breaking immersion or seeming out of place.