"He's beyond my healing ability..."

[Skyscraper]

Pemerton, I agree with your view which I believe is generally aligned with mine.

To clarify the cut-scene point: there are of course ways to avoid the cut-scene being a railroad; I was assuming here the scenario where the cut-scene is predetermined from the start according to the railroad approach, to show that even that can be attained in an interesting manner if the players help the DM to tell the story, instead of fighting him for the right to heal the dying NPC. Again, as long as you're OK with the predetermined outcome approach, of course.

 

[Skyscraper]

@ Quickleaf: good stuff there. The entire cliche thing is besides the point in this dicussion, really. The scene you describe does seem cliche, but your narration makes it look cool nonetheless.

I find it too bad that such a great RP moment would raise eyebrows from your players with regards to their incapacity at healing the NPC from a purely mechanical standpoint. This is a moment where they should dive into the scene IMHO.

And by the way: are they aware that NPCs don't necessarily have healing surges in 4E?

Also, doesn't it strike you as odd that you arbitrarily ruling that the Lord has been attacked and badly injured by the enemy is fine (you're not rolling each and every battle between NPCs that occurs in your game world, are you?) but you not rolling for his death saving throws is frowned upon? Why is that? Once the PCs enter a room, the rules for NPCs should change? But as soon as they go out for a breather, he can die without questions being asked?

This topic is related to the entire player vs DM approach that I fnd really weird. Some players claim that the DM is "fair" or "unfair" during a battle, apparently forgetting that he's the one that decides on the encounter design at the outset. DMs arbitrarily design and decide a whole lot of things that will influence the game in a tremenoudous manner, but when he decides that a dying NPC can't be healed or that he's failed his saving throws: oh no, that's totally unacceptable! Heh. That's somewhat beyond me.

I think this comes from the fact that the game provides the illusion that DM and players can interact in an "objective" environment defined in part by the combat rules. But really, that's an illusion. The DM decides on too much stuff for it to mean much. It means something, but I'm not looking to base my game on an alleged objective environment. I'm looking to cooperate with the players to reach a point where we can create something together.

And of course, I try to be fair within the confines of the battle rules - that's not the point I'm tryint to make here. The "objective" battle environment is fun to interact with, as long as it doesn't rule over the storytelling.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], I hadn't realised it was a 4e game. To my mind, that makes what you did all the more legitimate within the rules. Like I posted upthread, I've done exactly the same sort of thing - had the PCs rescue NPCs who are maimed, blinded etc from combat with hobgoblins, and who are therefore beyond the help of a healing word or similar spell (again, how can we tell that? because those spells only heal hit points, which recover after a night's rest, and therefore can't on their own represent anything all that debilitating).

As I said in my post just above yours, the only mechanics-related issue I can see here is one of jarring with the players' expectations if the nature of hit point loss and hit-point based healing hasn't been thought through - that is, if they haven't noticed that the action resolution mechanics used to handle combat don't encompass the full possible range of combat-related injuries that are possible in the fiction.

The GMing style issue seems to me to be this: as you describe the scene, you wanted the dying lord to be colour (and Crazy Jerome already diagnosed it this way quite a bit upthread), and you liked the colour of that better than you did him already being dead. The question for your players was - is this colour, or is this a challenge we can engage with? You've exerted some GM force to establish beyond doub that it's just colour. And you haven't been coy about it (ie you stated that you didn't roll the death save). There was no illusionism here, just upfront force.

Whether this is objectionable railroading, or just reasonably hard scene framing, is not something anyone else posting here can work out in the abstract. It's all about whether your players are into that sort of hard scene framing, or not.

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton, I agree with your view which I believe is generally aligned with mine.

Yep. From your reply to Quickleaf just above, I'm probably a bit more of a stickler than you for keeping to the action resolution mechanics once the players are enaging a scene and trying to shape/resolve it. But like Quickleaf, I'm happy to do some fairly hard scene framing from time to time, confident that my players will see the dramatic point, and will let me know if they think I'm stepping on their narrative toes (in which case, of course I'll pull back).

 

[prosfilaes]

Every injury that a PC adventurer ever suffers in D&D, as a result of garden variety hand-to-hand combat, is one that can be healed, completely, by bedrest.

In the real world, some injuries suffered in hand-to-hand combat - like pierced lungs or other organ damage, disembowelling, maimed or severed limbs, blinding, etc - cannot be healed by bedrest.

Therefore, one of two things follow: PCs in the D&D gameworld have regenerative biological capacities very different from their realworld counterparts; or, PCs in the D&D gameworld never suffer these sorts of injuries in the course of hand-to-hand combat.

Given that the rest of the game appears to presuppose that the first of these options is not the case, I guess that the second option must be the case.

Where does the rest of the game presuppose that the first of the options is not the case? Certainly I find the first option to be more in tune with fiction; Conan bounces back from crucifixion with just bedrest. The second theory is hard to believe when they're recovering from damage from crossbow bolts, acid splashes, and spiked pits.

 

[pemerton]

Where does the rest of the game presuppose that the first of the options is not the case?

Because it tells me that human beings are human beings, not strange aliens in human casigns.

Certainly I find the first option to be more in tune with fiction; Conan bounces back from crucifixion with just bedrest.

But it seems fairly clear that he has no broken bones (given he pulls out his own nails!). He has suffered exhaustion, and starvation, and thirst.

I don't find this very plausible, obviously, but the injuries are, at least in kind, the sort that bedrest can heal. Conan never gets a limb chopped off, or a major organ pierced, only to regenerate it via bedrest.

The second theory is hard to believe when they're recovering from damage from crossbow bolts, acid splashes, and spiked pits.

The bolts and spikes must only pass through flesh and never organ or bone. And the wound then remain uninfected. As for the acid splashes, maybe the burns weren't very severe!

I'm not saying I have a good working theory of pre-4e hit points here - I don't. I think the game sometimes presupposes that they're all meat but then, in a bid to address the obvious absurdiy of a human having more meat than a dragon or an elepehant, tells us that they're really something else.

4e gets away with more in relation to hit points, I think, because it more obviously embraces fortune-in-the-middle mechanics to resolve death and dying - thereby allowing the narrative of hit point lost to be told in a way that fits the subsequent upshot of that loss - and because it embraces the consequences of hit points not being all meat (eg Inspiring Word, using social skills to inflict hit point damage, etc).

But anyway, for me the bottom line is that no injury from which a person recovers without surgery, whether that recovery happens overnight or over a week or a month, can be serious damage to a limb or vital organ.

 

[prosfilaes]

Also, doesn't it strike you as odd that you arbitrarily ruling that the Lord has been attacked and badly injured by the enemy is fine (you're not rolling each and every battle between NPCs that occurs in your game world, are you?) but you not rolling for his death saving throws is frowned upon? Why is that? Once the PCs enter a room, the rules for NPCs should change?

No, the level of the simulation changes. When the players are interacting with something, the simulation is more fine-grained, more accurate, then after they leave.

My characters have a back-story that involves them fighting; is it bizarre that I didn't have to roll for those fights, but I do for those in play?

DMs arbitrarily design and decide a whole lot of things that will influence the game in a tremenoudous manner, but when he decides that a dying NPC can't be healed or that he's failed his saving throws: oh no, that's totally unacceptable! Heh. That's somewhat beyond me.

It's beyond you that someone can be given great freedom to do what needs to be done and yet still have limitations?

I'm looking to cooperate with the players to reach a point where we can create something together.

I'm not. I find it somewhat weird that you would pick D&D to do such a thing; it's a massive system with large simulationist elements that rewards and doesn't reward the wrong behaviors. There are a number of systems that reward creation of story, not killing of monsters.

 

[Quickleaf]

@ Quickleaf: good stuff there. The entire cliche thing is besides the point in this dicussion, really. The scene you describe does seem cliche, but your narration makes it look cool nonetheless.

So "good use of cliche?" Heh, I'll take it.

I find it too bad that such a great RP moment would raise eyebrows from your players with regards to their incapacity at healing the NPC from a purely mechanical standpoint. This is a moment where they should dive into the scene IMHO.

To their credit they really did. The only exception was the other very experienced ex-DM player of the bard. And despite him being annoyed and us having a 5 minute headbutt, he rolled with it well and even created a suitable sardonic epitaph for the NPC.

And by the way: are they aware that NPCs don't necessarily have healing surges in 4E?

Really? I thought the DMG made it clear that NPCs have 1 healing surge per tier. But that makes sense to me.

Also, doesn't it strike you as odd that you arbitrarily ruling that the Lord has been attacked and badly injured by the enemy is fine (you're not rolling each and every battle between NPCs that occurs in your game world, are you?) but you not rolling for his death saving throws is frowned upon? Why is that? Once the PCs enter a room, the rules for NPCs should change? But as soon as they go out for a breather, he can die without questions being asked?

Heh. That's my perspective too. But it's clear many players feel the opposite: that if the PCs are present then the rules should apply consistently and without exception (er...unless the rules themselves are the exception). I wonder if this became more prominent during 3e when PCs and NPCs/monsters had the same mechanics? That would explain some of the disconnect I had with the bard player...

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], I hadn't realised it was a 4e game. To my mind, that makes what you did all the more legitimate within the rules.

Really? How so?

Like I posted upthread, I've done exactly the same sort of thing - had the PCs rescue NPCs who are maimed, blinded etc from combat with hobgoblins, and who are therefore beyond the help of a healing word or similar spell (again, how can we tell that? because those spells only heal hit points, which recover after a night's rest, and therefore can't on their own represent anything all that debilitating).

You too with the hobgoblins inflicting incurable wounds, huh? Must be something they feed their babies.

As I said in my post just above yours, the only mechanics-related issue I can see here is one of jarring with the players' expectations if the nature of hit point loss and hit-point based healing hasn't been thought through - that is, if they haven't noticed that the action resolution mechanics used to handle combat don't encompass the full possible range of combat-related injuries that are possible in the fiction.

I know this debate has been around since D&D, but when I played 1e and 2e it was clear that attacks were only in part physical damage (can't remember if it was just a play style thing or if it was explicitly written in books). I don't know if that was the case so much in 3e since my experience was limited. In 4e it's clearly called out that hit points are an expression of more than just physical wounds.

The GMing style issue seems to me to be this: as you describe the scene, you wanted the dying lord to be colour (and Crazy Jerome already diagnosed it this way quite a bit upthread), and you liked the colour of that better than you did him already being dead. The question for your players was - is this colour, or is this a challenge we can engage with? You've exerted some GM force to establish beyond doub that it's just colour. And you haven't been coy about it (ie you stated that you didn't roll the death save). There was no illusionism here, just upfront force.

Yeah [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION] did a good job of explaining how "color or challenge?" can be problematic.

I've been interested in the advice about creative ways to interface with the rules and have an NPC be un-healable (e.g. the magic poison). To me that seems more illusionismary Is this magic poison a critical plot point? Or is it the DM's device so we just can't heal him...unless we figure a way around it? However, it appears there's plenty of folks who consider that a better way of handling this scenario than "Remember when you decided to go through that portal instead of to the keep? Yes I'm framing a scene here."

Whether this is objectionable railroading, or just reasonably hard scene framing, is not something anyone else posting here can work out in the abstract. It's all about whether your players are into that sort of hard scene framing, or not.

Every time I've introduced a truly open-ended situation with a plurality of options, they've drifted off, debated endlessly about what to do, caved in to the strongest voice, or began making knowledge skill checks with piercing looks my way.... What can I say? Hard scene framing works well with this group, and I've become comfortable (too comfortable maybe) being up front about it.

 

[prosfilaes]

Because it tells me that human beings are human beings, not strange aliens in human casigns.

They can turn into animals (druid, 4th level) and are immune to disease (monk, 5th level). Why should a little regeneration turn them into strange aliens?

But it seems fairly clear that he has no broken bones (given he pulls out his own nails!). He has suffered exhaustion, and starvation, and thirst.

I think you're assuming what you're trying to prove; even in real life, people can get far in extreme situations with broken bones, and Conan the Barbarian would have no problem with a few broken bones.

 

[Pentius]

I know this debate has been around since D&D, but when I played 1e and 2e it was clear that attacks were only in part physical damage (can't remember if it was just a play style thing or if it was explicitly written in books). I don't know if that was the case so much in 3e since my experience was limited. In 4e it's clearly called out that hit points are an expression of more than just physical wounds.

I know it's spelled out that way in the AD&D 1e books. I can't speak to 2e. For 3.5, a cursory search turned up that HP are supposed to be not entirely physical damage in that game, too. The books seem to be fairly consistent on it, in all the editions I can check for.