I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[TheAuldGrump]

One of my players described 'Healing Surge' as 'Dropping another quarter in the slot'....

My reply was 'Sorry Mario, your princess is in another castle.'

[MENTION=11816]Dark Mistress[/MENTION], I kind of like your idea of 25%+Cleric Level for CLW, I may try it as a house rule, and see how it shakes. It might be over powered at higher levels but it is worth a try.

The Auld Grump, as for raising the bar, this thread has made me want to hit the bar....

 

[Wiseblood]

Healing surges are low hanging fruit. If HP are abstract then HS are abstract +1.

I for one believe they are far too abundant and they do not add to the game. As they are a resource that will almost never be exhausted they contribute to an already disconnected feeling the individual encounters have.

Just as some feel that calls for realism are unfounded in a discussion of fantasy. House rules should not be seen as an excuse for unfortunate rules.

 

[nightwyrm]

For me, I just tend to look at this HP/HS situation backwards. Your total hp is not the number beneath your hp box, it's your HP+HS. So a fighter with 30 HP and 10 HS really has 105 hp, but it's just that he can only take 30 pts worth of damage in a short time before becoming overwhelmed and going under. If the PC is at 5 HS and 0 HP, he just took a big blow to the head that knocked him momentarily unconscious. If the PC is at 0 HS and 0 HP, feel free to go wild on the gory description.

It's like asking me to do push-ups. If you give me a whole day, I can probably do 100+ fine. If you give me 2 mins, I'd be lucky to do 40 before collapsing.

As for combat descriptions, to each his own, but even in 3.x I'm not gonna paint myself into a corner by describing the monster lopping off the PC's head or arms just coz the PC reached -5 hp. There's always gonna be some dude in the party with a healing potion or a cleric with a readied heal.

 

[prosfilaes]

Same thing. Describe what happens when a "normal man" with 3 hp takes 8 hp of damage from a sword. Describe what happens when a 10th-level fighter with 80 hp takes 8 hp of damage from a sword.

It's an abstract system; it supports a wide range of descriptions.

Describe what happens when a 10th-level fighter who normally has 80 hp but has already taken 77 hp of damage (so that he has 3 hp left) takes 8 hp of damage from a sword. Is the type of physical damage he takes at this point different from the 8 hp of physical damage he took when he was at full hit points? If so, why?

Same answer. Ultimately, it's probably going to be narrated more dramatically because it's a time for drama.

He has to save because some unspecified portion of the damage is ALWAYS an actual physical wound. Luck, skill, divine providence may be involved, as well, but there is always an injury involved.

I see that as under contention. As one of the HP are physical damage side, I've never argued that x HP of damage to a 1st level character is the same as x HP of damage to a 10th level character. Skill is of course involved; depending on how you visualize it, luck and divine providence can be too. But if some part of the damage is always an actual physical wound, how can the PC heal HP without healing that damage? Especially how can a PC heal to full or near full by force of will if he's just been sliced up a dozen times by orc swords? He's still got a dozen cuts in him.

I am fully aware some groups regard HP as concrete. You are actively narrating against the rules, via any edition. The developers are NOT beholden to your against-the-rules-narration. DEAL WITH IT.

4E PHB p. 276: "If your roll is higher than or equal to the defense score, you hit. Otherwise, you miss. ... When you hit with an attack, you normally deal damage to your target, reducing the target's hit points."

So the Fourth Edition PHB says that when you make an attack roll, you "hit" and "deal damage". "Damage" is an English word meaning to "loss or harm resulting from injury to person, property, or reputation" (Merriam-Webster.com). In 4th Edition, the rules state that successful attack rolls cause damage, cause injury, and equate that to HP. Even in 4E, I'm narrating along with the part of the rules, against another part of the rules.

 

[prosfilaes]

First and foremost, in my mind, if you take a sword hit that does 50% of your physical damage, how are you now able to continue fighting at 100%?

Because you're a badass. I don't see how this is relevant; no matter how much damage you take in D&D, you continue fighting at 100%. No matter what HP measures, there is no way in D&D to take so much damage that you're no longer fighting at 100%. Presumably in 4E, there's a way to take 50% of your physical damage, no matter what that means in terms of HP and healing surges; you can still then fight at 100% or you're unconscious.

The idea that Hit Points represent the capacity to withstand physical damage is, quite frankly, erroneous. It just doesn't make sense--the curve in every edition is too great

You're misinterpreting what we claim, then. Personally, and I think many of us, aren't claiming that someone with 20 HP has twice as much capacity to take damage as someone with 10 HP. We interpret the HP track to reflect physical damage, and that each time you lose HP, you take physical damage. Thus when you heal, you need to heal physical damage. And as I point out above, the 4E PHB says that when you make your attack roll, you hit and do damage. So even in 4E, the rulebooks don't consistently give a clear explanation of what HP mean if they don't mean damage.

 

[Hussar]

The discussion of Healing Surges being this sort of Heisenburg construct misses the point.

4e is entirely built around the concept that nothing can be narrated until the action is resolved.

In pre-4e D&D, a character initiated an action and, by and large, that action would then be resolved and the narrative could be created at the same time. There might have been a few hiccups like Attacks of Opportunity or the like, but, by and large, if I state, "Thugdar climbs the wall", I roll the dice and I narrate as follows.

4e doesn't work like that. It's not linear. I, or anyone else at the table, at any point in time, can jump in and change the narrative. I state, "Thugdar climbs the wall" and roll. If I fail, someone might step in with a power that gives me a bonus, and now I succeed.

And it can get a whole lot more complicated than that. That's a pretty straight forward answer.

The problem people seem to be having isn't so much with realism, or concrete vs abstract, it's with the fact that 4e mechanics are not tied to linear time.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

I read through a bunch of posts and never really encountered anything similar to my experience with healing surges.

I approached 4E anxious to slaughter some sacred cows. Ultimately healing surges were the only thing I really truly disdained about 4E. This is what I noticed in my game
- As a DM or player I didn't feel like spending a healing surge used a limited resource. I can't recall ever running out of healing surges, but I feel like it may have happened once or twice when I played a wizard
- Due to the length of combat and my players schedules permitting five-hour games I seldom ran more than two combats per game.
- A few bad apples, typically the types that forget to bring their character sheets, also forget to keep track of how many surges they spent at the end of their last battle
- Smaller combats didn't feel like they had any consequence or point. I never gave my players the cure light wounds stick (I always controlled when they could heal) so when they took 3 damage from orcs in the past they had to decide if they wanted to spend one of the few potions they had.
- I missed downtime. The fifteen-minute adventuring day had its moments when characters were resting.
- When a monster could spend a healing surge I usually avoided doing it because it would prolong the combat encounter
- A lot of the non-magical healing powers felt forced and awkward in implementation. My best role-player (who preferred 4E) frequently struggled to justify how her warlord inspired people to get back up.
- I never thought about how realistic healing was in the past but healing surges started to feel gamey. Maybe I was just conditioned to HP from previous games, but it just felt right.

Lots of players are just unable to "get" 4E and lack the imagination to translate it into a non-gamist narrative. A few simply aren't trying out of spite for 4E but a lot of folks get caught up in game terms and break immersion for everyone else. For example the Druid will say "I use my Daily Power Nature's Soothing Wrath and attack the drow and heal our ranger". I'll ask them "Without using game terms what does that do?" and they look at me like a deer in the headlights. This didn't happen in past editions. I found the ability to control the narrative to be really empowering but some others just couldn't.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

It's like asking me to do push-ups. If you give me a whole day, I can probably do 100+ fine. If you give me 2 mins, I'd be lucky to do 40 before collapsing.

That's a good way to look at it. But if in the same day you were brought to the brink of death in an unconscious state by being:
- incinerated with a flamethrower
- assaulted by a maniac with a battle axe
- robbed of 3 gallons of blood by a 500 pound mosquito
- turned into a duck by a witch
would you be able to get up later that day and do 10 pushups?

That's how my 4E combats tended to go

 

[Spatula]

I'm not very familiar with 4e, but wouldn't this problem exist with the Second Wind mechanic that everyone is entitled to? I'm trying to piece it together based off of memory and context used within this threat.

Second wind uses a standard action. When you're unconscious, you have no actions.

(technically someone else can bandage you up with the Heal skill to trigger your second wind, but that's more about putting a limit on how many times you can heal yourself in an encounter)

If you roll a 20 on your stabilization check/death save, you can also spend a healing surge.

 

[Spatula]

Any time there isn't a source of magical healing in the party and someone is reduced to zero or less, the issue arises.

The only sources of non-magical healing when you're unconscious is from a warlord or some application of the Heal skill (which conceptually I don't think many people would have an issue with). Or rolling a 20 on a death save, which while possible is exceedingly rare - or at least, I've never seen it happen. In any case, ban the warlord and remove the '20 on death save' effect and you remove the issue.

5 minutes after you were dealt a "mortal wound," you're back on your feet and ready to roll.

Just like it's always been (healing resources permitting, of course).