I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Oryan77]

And this is way off topic, but....

Mercurius, why do you constantly create these 4e threads to discuss every single controversial thing about 4e?

It's like weekly, you gotta start one of these threads. I'm not complaining, cause it's entertaining to see people get all riled up over 4e. I was just wondering though, do you sit at home thinking about what kind of 4e thread you can start next?

 

[gamerprinter]

I've never needed to abstract on the idea of hit points and AC, for me they mean what they look like. You need to get past my AC to hit me, and you need to drop my hit points to zero to get me to stop fighting, and whether it's -10 or my Constitution score below zero to actually kill me. That works fine for me.

Healilng surges are like a cleric attached to my person, I press a button and healing occurs - that doesn't feel realistic. My fighter is not a caster, and cannot perform any kind of spell, which includes healing. I don't want my fighter to be able to heal himself - that's what a cleric is for.

Your argument that this way you don't need a cleric... well I guess if you don't need to kill any monsters then, you don't need fighters either, but then why play the game. If you want to be kept healed over the long haul, you're going to need potions of healing, or a Cure Wand, otherwise you have to have a cleric.

And due to the power clerics have in combat, I've never seen a group where somebody didn't want to play cleric. We've never seen a situation where a cleric was not desired by someone.

Basically, its keep your spells out of my martial characters skillset. I don't want my fighter to cast spells, and to me that's what healing surges are - healing spells. It ain't natural...

Not to be contrary, and not that there's anything wrong with it, but I don't get why you like healing surges, nor that you are concerned that I (we) don't?

Really, if healing surges equals more hit points in spurts beyond your HP score, then just give me the extra hit points hidden in the surges to my total HP - it would work the same wouldn't it. So why parse out my hit points in surges outside of my hit point score. It makes equal sense, so I don't need surges, just more hit points.

 

[Dausuul]

Except its always been like this. In 1st/2nd edition, your first level mage with 3 hit points stubs his toe and his leg almost falls off or is scratched by a house cat for 2 hit points of damage. Oh no! He's almost dead. He's gushing blood, barely clinging to life because the bad kitty got him. The high level fighter is barely concerned. Then you go to rest, and since you heal 1 hp a day, the low level mage is suddenly able to fully recuperate from dramatic trauma in 2 days, while it takes the fighter 2 days to fully recover from a small scratch?

Natural healing in pre-4E D&D was unrealistic, no doubt about it, and I've known a number of folks to complain about it. However, it didn't get in your face the way healing surges do. It only came up in the case that a) there was no magical healing on hand, and b) the party was out of combat for a period long enough for natural healing to take place, but not enough for everyone to fully recover.

I'm not going to address the rest of your post because I don't feel like getting threadbanned today. This is a pretty interesting discussion here, and it'd be a pity to take it down the road you seem to want to go.

 

[JamesonCourage]

If you dislike healing surges, why?

I, personally, dislike healing surges. I don't like that healing surges because they make hit points exactly as you describe them: a compilation of physical toughness, skill at reducing blows taken, luck, fate, and anything else you want to cram in there. I hate that idea in a fantasy genre game. Maybe in a superhero game, but in fantasy it just rubs me the wrong way. So, subjectively, that's what's wrong with them (to me, of course).

And what would your solution be?

I separated hit points into two categories: regular hit points (how tough you are, how much damage you can take, skill at turning blows into less serious blows, etc.), and temporary hit points (how quickly you regain your stamina, how skilled you are at completely sidestepping attacks, etc.). THP is consumed before HP is taken away (unless the effect bypasses THP, such as falling damage or being on fire).

Now, you have a straight separation of those two types of hit points. HP takes a long time to regenerate naturally, while THP completely recovers within a matter of rounds (the higher Con you have, the faster it comes back). You have your hit points that take a long time to heal naturally, and you hit points that come back quickly.

I have a feat that lets you take a move action to regain THP. That makes sense to me (taken a moment to stop and catch your breath). However, you shouldn't be healing actual, physical wounds like that, and that's where the Healing Surges failed to me. They forced hit points to represent everything but grievous wounds most of the time. You also run into hiccups where someone was "hit" on an attack roll, takes 3 damage (out of their 120 hit points), but is poisoned because the attack was "poison, injury". This force that is supposed to be fate, luck, skill at dodging, whatever is somehow always bad when someone uses poison. If anyone uses poison and is skilled enough to land a blow on you, Luck and Fate abandon you just as fast as your skill at dodging does. And that bugs me.

Thus with my solution, if the attack only does THP, it didn't hit. That poison does nothing. If it gets past your THP, it hit, and you take a physical wound (and are poisoned). This cuts your "pool" of HP abstractions into two separate, smaller areas, and adds a lot to my game. For others? No idea. Probably good for some, probably terrible to many others. That's fine, to me. I just really didn't like what healing surges forced hit points to represent, and the inconsistencies that came with it (injury poison, falling damage, etc.).

But that's just me. They're not a bad mechanic, and I allow something similar with my THP solution. I think a lot more people would be okay with it if the "pools of abstraction" were separated. It's another complication to the system, though, so I don't know how popular it'd be. However, I think a lot of people who had the same issues I did would be happier.

Anyways, sorry for rambling on. Hopefully that gives some perspective to my view on things (and that of my group). As always, play what you like

 

[Bluenose]

Deep down, I don't accept any model of HPs that doesn't treat each HP lost as some sort of physical wound. At higher levels, each HP is a pretty minor wound, approaching the minor scrapes and bruises level, but they're physical damage, and they take time to heal.

Or, of course, magic to heal. Which is where the problem comes in with this particular model. As, of course, high level characters require a large amount of healing magic for those "minor wounds" to heal, but low level characters can be brought back from the brink of death with a lot less effort.

 

[Dausuul]

Or, of course, magic to heal. Which is where the problem comes in with this particular model. As, of course, high level characters require a large amount of healing magic for those "minor wounds" to heal, but low level characters can be brought back from the brink of death with a lot less effort.

That's a separate concern, however. One could address that by keeping the part of the healing surge mechanic where it's a "unit of healing," and getting rid of the parts where you can trigger them at will and have a limited supply.

...In fact, now I think about it, that's probably the original purpose and the reason why they're called "healing surges." Viewed purely as a unit of healing, the name makes perfect sense. Ironic that a mechanic which, in its original conception, would have improved verisimilitude, instead ended up breaking it for so many people.

 

[Gaerek]

First of all, I've read most of the responses since I last posted, but not all. I apologize if I missed a point somewhere. Please correct me. I haven't been able to follow this thread because I have had actual work to do at work. Having said that, it appears to me that there are two main arguments against Healing Surges.

1) The realism argument - Many of you have been making it, though I don't think it was intended. Anytime you say, "It doesn't make sense." or anything like that, it's a realism argument. If you want your game to be realistic, there are a bunch of simulationist games out there that might be more to your tastes. As it is, however, D&D has ALWAYS been one of the most gamey feeling games out there.

Someone responded to a few of my "realism" arguments. Understand that I don't care if something is realistic or not. Taken to it's natural point, every one of those things can (operative word...can) be considering unrealistic. And to comment on the comment about AC being unrealistic, AC is not realistic. It also is an abstract about how hard it is to be hit. Only part of it reflects how well your actual armor protects you. Unless you're not adding your Dex bonus? But I digress again (sorry, one of my personal flaws).

Essentially, you can throw out any appeal to realism in this discussion, because:

a) D&D is not a realistic simulation
b) There are dozens, if not hundreds of abstract, gamist, non-realistic rules that are bundled with EVERY edition of D&D. If you're not ok with HS because they aren't realistic, then you're not ok with D&D in general.

2. The 0-HP, or Mortal Wound argument - I had never actually heard this one before, and never really thought much about it. Narratively, the idea of a healing surge (and really, only Second Wind, and the ability to burn HS between combat, specifically, any other use seems pretty reasonable) makes little sense. I can't argue against this one, because the truth is there. However, I have a couple directions I can go to show why I'm ok with it.

a) 0-HP, and neg-HP has always been a wonky area in D&D. It's been a while since I've playing anything but 3e and 4e, but wasn't there a rule in a previous edition that said 0hp was unconscious and neg HP was dead, and there were different rules for each? This means that the higher level you are, the smaller the "unconscious" target was and the larger the damage "arrow" is. In other words, as you got more powerful, your chances of going unconscious at any point decrease. This isn't really reason enough, but there has always been A LOT of suspension of disbelief in each and every edition when it came to death and dying. No one edition really nailed this area well. I will submit that 4e seems more out there than other editions, but this brings me to:

b) I hate rules that get in the way of fun. I especially hate rules that get in the way of fun for the sake of realism. 4e's healing surge system breaks down the narrative at 0 Hp and below. But, what's the option? In previous editions, I hated playing a cleric (it was better in 3e, but not by much). My choices in combat were heal the injured, or brain the bad guy with my mace. 3e allowed clerics to not have to memorize heals. BUT, this came with a caveat. Any spells you cast that's not a heal better have an affect that will likely eliminate the need for said heal. At least from my perspective, that eliminated about half the cleric's spell book. Cleric's have never been fun (until 4e). I've always hated the Wand of Cure Light. I thought it was at best, a bandaid in a broken system, or at worst a gaming of the rules to allow a party to do more than was intended.

From my perspective, and this is completely my opinion, and I totally understand why you disagree, even though they might be less realistic, or put the player in Schrodinger's Box (as has been mentioned), healing surges make the game more fun, and give players more options in character builds and party builds. If there was a way to do that without healing surges, I'd LOVE to see it. But I would never, ever, ever, want to go back to healbots and healsticks.

 

[wingsandsword]

Healing Surges are a very balanced, very sound game mechanic. . .but it makes for lousy roleplaying because of the suspension of disbelief it pushes beyond acceptable levels.

As people have said, in terms of players and the DM imagining the narrative of the game it strains suspension of disbelief far more than just HP alone. By "video gamey", we are saying that it reminds us like a video game: well balanced mechanics but lots of suspension of disbelief required for the mechanics.

Yeah, D&D isn't hyper-realistic, but the prior level of abstraction from edition prior to 4e was something that players had learned to deal with, but the addition of healing surges is even less realistic and pushes the abstraction too far for too many of us.

 

[gamerprinter]

But within the confines of the abstractness to the game - its realistic enough to me. However, I'm not searching for a realistic nor simulationist game -they've always been out there, and I've basically not played most of them (I have played some).

I prefer D&D, so I accept whatever abstractness or realism is in the game, I've grown comfortable with it.

Thus anything that counters what I feel comfortable with, ergo I feel uncomfortable. And healing surges are part of that uncomfort engendered in 4e - its part, not the only reason, but part of why I don't play 4e. Nothing wrong with the game - its just not my game.

Finally if I wanted reality, I would just live it, and not play any RPGs at all, so obviously realism has very little influence in what I play. However, magical healing created by non-magical characters not only seem unrealistic (to me), but counter to the way I prefer to play.

Its really just a preferential thing.

And as far as 'balance' goes, 3x/PF is balanced enough for my fun - in reality, I would despise a perfectly balanced game (probably). Balance isn't the end all or be all of RPGs, so its not something I especially seek.

 

[Nagol]

First of all, I've read most of the responses since I last posted, but not all. I apologize if I missed a point somewhere. Please correct me. I haven't been able to follow this thread because I have had actual work to do at work. Having said that, it appears to me that there are two main arguments against Healing Surges.

1) The realism argument - Many of you have been making it, though I don't think it was intended. Anytime you say, "It doesn't make sense." or anything like that, it's a realism argument. If you want your game to be realistic, there are a bunch of simulationist games out there that might be more to your tastes. As it is, however, D&D has ALWAYS been one of the most gamey feeling games out there.

Someone responded to a few of my "realism" arguments. Understand that I don't care if something is realistic or not. Taken to it's natural point, every one of those things can (operative word...can) be considering unrealistic. And to comment on the comment about AC being unrealistic, AC is not realistic. It also is an abstract about how hard it is to be hit. Only part of it reflects how well your actual armor protects you. Unless you're not adding your Dex bonus? But I digress again (sorry, one of my personal flaws).

Essentially, you can throw out any appeal to realism in this discussion, because:

a) D&D is not a realistic simulation
b) There are dozens, if not hundreds of abstract, gamist, non-realistic rules that are bundled with EVERY edition of D&D. If you're not ok with HS because they aren't realistic, then you're not ok with D&D in general.

2. The 0-HP, or Mortal Wound argument - I had never actually heard this one before, and never really thought much about it. Narratively, the idea of a healing surge (and really, only Second Wind, and the ability to burn HS between combat, specifically, any other use seems pretty reasonable) makes little sense. I can't argue against this one, because the truth is there. However, I have a couple directions I can go to show why I'm ok with it.

a) 0-HP, and neg-HP has always been a wonky area in D&D. It's been a while since I've playing anything but 3e and 4e, but wasn't there a rule in a previous edition that said 0hp was unconscious and neg HP was dead, and there were different rules for each? This means that the higher level you are, the smaller the "unconscious" target was and the larger the damage "arrow" is. In other words, as you got more powerful, your chances of going unconscious at any point decrease. This isn't really reason enough, but there has always been A LOT of suspension of disbelief in each and every edition when it came to death and dying. No one edition really nailed this area well. I will submit that 4e seems more out there than other editions, but this brings me to:

b) I hate rules that get in the way of fun. I especially hate rules that get in the way of fun for the sake of realism. 4e's healing surge system breaks down the narrative at 0 Hp and below. But, what's the option? In previous editions, I hated playing a cleric (it was better in 3e, but not by much). My choices in combat were heal the injured, or brain the bad guy with my mace. 3e allowed clerics to not have to memorize heals. BUT, this came with a caveat. Any spells you cast that's not a heal better have an affect that will likely eliminate the need for said heal. At least from my perspective, that eliminated about half the cleric's spell book. Cleric's have never been fun (until 4e). I've always hated the Wand of Cure Light. I thought it was at best, a bandaid in a broken system, or at worst a gaming of the rules to allow a party to do more than was intended.

From my perspective, and this is completely my opinion, and I totally understand why you disagree, even though they might be less realistic, or put the player in Schrodinger's Box (as has been mentioned), healing surges make the game more fun, and give players more options in character builds and party builds. If there was a way to do that without healing surges, I'd LOVE to see it. But I would never, ever, ever, want to go back to healbots and healsticks.

First, I've never experienced the whole healbot group dynamic -- I have no doubt it exists, but it just never developed in games I ran or played in. The healers healed to the best of their ability / whatever thet felt was appropriate.

As for better methods, it depends what you're trying to accomplish. For me, I want the game to have a consistent and understood state so that if a player walks in, I can describe the situation without game speak and where the situations flow naturally from one another. Pretty much any system beats healing surges in this regard especially in the not very rare edge cases around bloodied, unconsciousness, and death.

If you want to reduce the 'necessity' of magical healing while maintaining a resource management/ablative nature to exploration, the myriad of games that have wound-vitality / body-fatigue / body-stun-endurance splits where the true physical damage is marked (and healed) separately from a pool of stamina works quite well. Just adjust the recovery of the pools meet the genre expectations.