I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Jon_Dahl]

I just don't like anything that adds micromanagent.

"Hmmm, how many healing surges does this merc NPC there in the corner has?"

No way. Less to remember for DM = Right way to go.

 

[Nagol]

I just don't like anything that adds micromanagent.

"Hmmm, how many healing surges does this merc NPC there in the corner has?"

No way. Less to remember for DM = Right way to go.

That's part of the "one set of rules for the PCs and anothr for the rest of the world" in 4e. There are very few creatures with healing surges.

 

[Dice4Hire]

That's part of the "one set of rules for the PCs and anothr for the rest of the world" in 4e.

One of the best parts of 4E design, for sure.

 

[JamesonCourage]

One of the best parts of 4E design, for sure.

This would be an interesting thing to fork to a new thread. It's definitely not my preferred method, but I see the advantages.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's part of the "one set of rules for the PCs and anothr for the rest of the world" in 4e. There are very few creatures with healing surges.

IME, how many are in 4Ed doesn't matter- how many are being used in a given series of encounters or a campaign does. If the featured creature has 'em- or has or benefits from a power or item that mimics them- it's a problem...for the DM to track and for the PCs to face.

 

[Oryan77]

I've actually used the phrase "Its not D&D"- with the other phrase "to me"

4e is still D&D. You just gotta think about it abstractly.

Sorry, that word has been used in this thread so many times, I had to say it.

 

[Gaerek]

As far as I can tell, HP is very abstract with the 3.5 interpretation, in that all you know is that you got hit, and that you tried to make it not as bad as it could have been. It's always hitting meat in 3.5, but maybe not very badly.

Well, this isn't a problem of 3.5's, actually (though it does have problems). How can that happen? Well, the 15th level Fighter is legendary at turning blows into less serious blows. That gash that takes does the level 1 Commoner? The 15th level Fighter is fast enough to make it a mere graze on his forehead; it broke his skin, but didn't slow him down.

Sure, I agree with you. I think we may be talking about the same thing here. A 15th level fighter has more HP than a 0 level commoner, not because he can somehow physically receive more damage than the commoner. It's because he's more skilled at doing something to prevent it. I threw luck in there because Gygax specifically mentioned it in his description of HP in the 1e rules. I think a better word than luck would be intuition. I'm an amateur photographer as my other hobby and a lot of times I'll say I got lucky with a shot I made. In reality, my experience behind the lens has lended me a certain amount of intuition and "gut feeling" about things that helps me to make that shot. But, in the narrative, I like to talk about how players got lucky with that one, even though it's more than likely intuition. Keeping in mind, in heroic stories, a very common trope is being "lucky."

Navy SEAL = nowhere near level 15 Fighter. Also, a coup de grace is a coup de grace... with bullet damage, you're likely both dead. It's more like, put both you and a Navy SEAL in a combat situation, and see who lasts longer under the same conditions. He wins most of the time.

Yeah, I think we're on the same page then. Something you said earlier had me thinking differently, but we agree here.

Oh yeah, I'm sure they servers would be pretty empty, with those few players
who made it to higher level just ganking all the little guys for laughs. It'd be terrible. I'm not saying it's good for the public at large, I'm just commenting on my play style in general.

Understood. As a side not, I beta tested an MMO that had perm death, oh, 10 years ago. I got frustrated within a couple hours. In my final bug report, I just wrote, "Resurrection not working, fix with next build." That game came out of beta, but failed within months. Speculation was the perm death mechanic.

It really depends on the party that my players are playing as. In the past, they've been all about combat, killing demons left and right. This time, they're taking their time, being cautious, and trying to expand their territory as warlords.

Been there, done both. I enjoy both styles, and will play both. I've found that most of the people I've played with, however, prefer combat heavy.

Yeah, that'd strike me as really wrong or immersion breaking. If someone is out of healing surges, why can't you magically heal them? If they're currently bloodied, why can they use a standard to heal wounds permanently? I can see the "Diehard" thing, maybe, with the bloodied incident, but it's still turning a potentially serious wound into a less serious wound via retconning, to many groups (you'd have to have a GM that's careful not to make any bloodied wound too serious to avoid it). And that would hurt my immersion.

It's all in how you work the narrative. My typical narrative involves essentially no real physical wounds being traded until the point where you go from positive to negative HP. This reflects the style of combat more realistically than taking real, physical wounds from the beginning. I commented on this earlier. In a sword fight, you either live from it, or die from it. Any wound you receive thats more than just a cut or scrape will likely be fatal. In this case, non-magical healing (again, I don't consider it actual healing of actual wounds) makes sense. In addition, the idea of not being able to heal, even magically when you're out of surges can start to make sense narratively. There also are ways of magically healing without surges, and those will still work, both narratively and mechanically. Of course, there are issues with this way of doing things as well. But in 95% of the circumstanses, there's no recursive narrative, and it flows quite well.

In addition, I don't like describing serious wounds to PCs. 4e isn't as deadly as other systems, and the chances of dying are pretty low. I've only killed a couple players in 3 years, and had one TPK running through ToH. In addition, I have been apt to "capture" characters instead of killing them outright when the situation makes sense. This makes my way of narrating combat work even better since the bad guys can tie up and revive the dead players. Then we get a nice little story break to try to rescue the characters. I used this for the Irontooth encounter in KotS. Two characters got captured, the others ran away. We spent the next session rescuing the player, with the group being filled out by swords for hire, played by the captured characters players. It was a lot of fun.

However, if healing simply doesn't work anymore for some reason, that'd strike me as wrong. No matter how many healers we bring it, we can only heal him if we have the correct encounter power that heals "X" without using a surge? What do the other healing spells represent, then?

Again, all healing doesn't stop working. Certain types will, and narratively, this makes sense in most cases. Clerics (and other healers) can heal without burning a characters healing surges. A paladin, for example, can burn his own HS to heal someone else. So if the fighter is out of HS and the paladin is not, the paladin can still lay on hands. If the cleric has taken cure light/serious/etc., they can heal without HS as well. If you can think of HP as more than just physical wounds, the system actually make a lot more sense than people make it out to be. HP and HS together represent physical wounds, endurance, mental/physical exhaustion, will power, etc.

I will freely admit that there are times, narratively, that HS don't make sense, however, I would have to argue that those times are fewer than if your abstract of HP (in any edition) revolves solely around physical wounds. There's a lot of narrative weirdness you must contend with if HP are purely physical wounds.

It was very informative, thank you. Please don't think I'm challenging you. The questions above were rhetorical, to inform you of my objections based on the very useful information you provided me. Thanks for taking the time to help me understand this issue a little more clearly.

No problem.

Yes, D&D has always had the characters been a cut above most people. Most people are level 0's, or level 1 Commoners, or the like. So, I'm not saying that my game would work for D&D, and I don't want D&D to look like my game. However, I want D&D to support the amount of narrative range my game has available. Anything less, and I'll just play my game, where more stories can be told.

I can respect that. Since D&D is about as mainstream as a geeky pasttime can be, I have a feeling that that will never be the case. If you'd prefer your game, there's nothing wrong with that at all. As you say, play what you like.

Well, my game excels at combat if everyone invests in combat. My game excels at a diplomatic, court-focused game, if people invest in diplomatic, court-focused skills. My game excels at craftsmanship if people invest in craftsmanship. The only real thing you need total acceptance on if you want a very focused game is for player buy-in. If you want a combat-focused game, make sure everyone heavily invests in combat. Otherwise, you get a battlemage, a pyromancer, a sword and board two-weapon fighter, a dirty-fighting and backstabbing thief, a hulking barbarian with a massive axe, and a scholar. And in your game, since it's combat focused, the scholar will die. Mind you, he'll be really good at his duties, but he'll die in a combat-focused game.

That makes sense. I remember the old D6 Star Wars game (never played anything after that) that had both Bounty Hunters and Diplomats as character classes. In toe-to-toe combat, the diplomat wouldn't stand a chance against the BH. But you'd also never send your BH to negotiate a treaty between the Republic and a newly discovered world. I played some games where people were bored entire sessions (or more) because their choice of character simply couldn't survive in the current aspect of the game.

Now, I know I say "my game excels at" but that's just taste. It doesn't support minis as well (though you could easily use them), nor does it support forced movement as well (though you could build a character that does so). So, 4e probably is better at what you want than my game would be.

4e took the foundation of tactical combat that was really first printed in the 2e Players Option: Combat and Tactics book, and refined it into a completely tactical system, so much so that nearly every option a player has in character design is build around being tactically viable in combat alone. Basically, toss everything out that doesn't actually need to be explained by rules (you want to be a blacksmith? Write down blacksmith on your character sheet, no need to dump skill points into it), and keep everything else that you need to make the game function. This works for some, doens't work for others. I personally love the bare bones approach. I love that the force RP aspects of other editions (alignment, class/race restrictions, etc) have been removed. It frees players up to RP their character how they want to, not based on what alignment they thought fit their character the best.

However, my game was built for player options and a wide narrative range. Teleporting long distances permanently drains resources. Don't want it? Houserule: now it doesn't. It's quick, it's simple, it eliminates the problem. Your world just opened up to fit your narrative. I'd rather have built-in restrictions that are easy to lift off than no restrictions but a smaller narrative range.

Now, if there's restrictions, how can it support more narratives? Well, when teleporting long distances becomes commonplace for a party, then you wind up losing any sort of story where overt build-up is possible. You can't hear of the orcs to the far north building up an army without the PCs teleporting in and stopping it early. And, if the PCs aren't high enough levels, why not the NPCs? However, if you remove that option, then the game supports more narratives, in my opinion. And, you can choose to always strip away the restriction if on teleporting if you want to, or plane-hopping, or permanently enchanting people or items, or whatever.

Again, that makes sense. But as you said, your system required player buy-in. Not saying that's a bad thing, just soemthing to think about.

Just my philosophy on it. I'd rather have to learn one system that supports a wide narrative range than learn a bunch of systems that allow different stories. But, that's preference, and I understand when people disagree. And I'm cool with that. I hope 5e focuses on narrative range, and if they follow the "dials" approach, maybe they will. I don't know if I like the idea of dials, but I don't know the implementation yet, so I can't say. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with.


Definitely the journey for us. Although you can definitely get a cinematic feel, if you want it. You can have a player take out 10 guys in 10 seconds in my game. You just need a big enough level gap, and a character pretty focused on fighting. Same thing with taking wounds and still going, or casting spells when you shouldn't be able to. Or getting mortally wounded and giving advice to the party on where to go to save the life of the character with a skull fracture, even though you're bleeding out and most people would be unconscious (happened in my game).

In the end, it's all down to preference.

Hopefully. I'd like to see the wheels turn from week to week, similar to what we got with Mearls. It's very interesting, even if I don't like the end goal (not that I mind this one). I once watched a bunch of videos on youtube by a guy named John Wick. Really grates on my style of game, but his thought process was interesting.

You can tell that Cook doesn't buy in to 4e. That's why I thought it was an interesting move to hire him. Why would you hire someone who isn't going to champion your livelyhood? It's because you want him to work on the next version.

We did have fun, thanks. Same goes to you! As always, play what you like

Always!

 

[JamesonCourage]

Sure, I agree with you. I think we may be talking about the same thing here. A 15th level fighter has more HP than a 0 level commoner, not because he can somehow physically receive more damage than the commoner. It's because he's more skilled at doing something to prevent it. I threw luck in there because Gygax specifically mentioned it in his description of HP in the 1e rules. I think a better word than luck would be intuition. I'm an amateur photographer as my other hobby and a lot of times I'll say I got lucky with a shot I made. In reality, my experience behind the lens has lended me a certain amount of intuition and "gut feeling" about things that helps me to make that shot. But, in the narrative, I like to talk about how players got lucky with that one, even though it's more than likely intuition. Keeping in mind, in heroic stories, a very common trope is being "lucky."

Yep. Although, I'd say that a 15th level warrior can usually take more damage than a 1st level commoner, just because of his line of work, getting used to taking a beating, etc. But, most of the HP is usually making wounds not quite as bad, I agree.

Yeah, I think we're on the same page then. Something you said earlier had me thinking differently, but we agree here.

I love agreeing!

Understood. As a side not, I beta tested an MMO that had perm death, oh, 10 years ago. I got frustrated within a couple hours. In my final bug report, I just wrote, "Resurrection not working, fix with next build." That game came out of beta, but failed within months. Speculation was the perm death mechanic.

It probably was. That's why I wanted it on one or two servers. One PvP, one non-PvP. I would want to be able to build up normal characters after my mid-level character died because of lag. I wouldn't want a game with it as the only option.

Been there, done both. I enjoy both styles, and will play both. I've found that most of the people I've played with, however, prefer combat heavy.

Yeah, that seems to be D&D's roots, so I'm definitely in favor of D&D recognizing those roots. I just don't want it to stop there.

It's all in how you work the narrative. My typical narrative involves essentially no real physical wounds being traded until the point where you go from positive to negative HP. This reflects the style of combat more realistically than taking real, physical wounds from the beginning. I commented on this earlier. In a sword fight, you either live from it, or die from it. Any wound you receive thats more than just a cut or scrape will likely be fatal. In this case, non-magical healing (again, I don't consider it actual healing of actual wounds) makes sense. In addition, the idea of not being able to heal, even magically when you're out of surges can start to make sense narratively. There also are ways of magically healing without surges, and those will still work, both narratively and mechanically. Of course, there are issues with this way of doing things as well. But in 95% of the circumstanses, there's no recursive narrative, and it flows quite well.

In addition, I don't like describing serious wounds to PCs. 4e isn't as deadly as other systems, and the chances of dying are pretty low. I've only killed a couple players in 3 years, and had one TPK running through ToH. In addition, I have been apt to "capture" characters instead of killing them outright when the situation makes sense. This makes my way of narrating combat work even better since the bad guys can tie up and revive the dead players. Then we get a nice little story break to try to rescue the characters. I used this for the Irontooth encounter in KotS. Two characters got captured, the others ran away. We spent the next session rescuing the player, with the group being filled out by swords for hire, played by the captured characters players. It was a lot of fun.

That sounds like fun, and I liked the way you handled it.

Again, all healing doesn't stop working. Certain types will, and narratively, this makes sense in most cases. Clerics (and other healers) can heal without burning a characters healing surges. A paladin, for example, can burn his own HS to heal someone else. So if the fighter is out of HS and the paladin is not, the paladin can still lay on hands. If the cleric has taken cure light/serious/etc., they can heal without HS as well. If you can think of HP as more than just physical wounds, the system actually make a lot more sense than people make it out to be. HP and HS together represent physical wounds, endurance, mental/physical exhaustion, will power, etc.

I will freely admit that there are times, narratively, that HS don't make sense, however, I would have to argue that those times are fewer than if your abstract of HP (in any edition) revolves solely around physical wounds. There's a lot of narrative weirdness you must contend with if HP are purely physical wounds.

I like the Lay on Hands mechanic. And as far as holes in the HP system, I know there will be some with healing surges, but there definitely are even if you think of HP as luck/skill/fate/damage/etc. Again, it's why I'm in favor of two HP pools. It's barely more complicated, but it's made a world of difference in my game.

I can respect that. Since D&D is about as mainstream as a geeky pasttime can be, I have a feeling that that will never be the case. If you'd prefer your game, there's nothing wrong with that at all. As you say, play what you like.

Yeah. Preferably, like I said, I'd just like a wide range of narrative room. Maybe start the dial on "high" for PC heroicness, with options to dial it down.

That makes sense. I remember the old D6 Star Wars game (never played anything after that) that had both Bounty Hunters and Diplomats as character classes. In toe-to-toe combat, the diplomat wouldn't stand a chance against the BH. But you'd also never send your BH to negotiate a treaty between the Republic and a newly discovered world. I played some games where people were bored entire sessions (or more) because their choice of character simply couldn't survive in the current aspect of the game.

Yeah, that can happen, so you have to be careful to get player buy-in for the group. If people are okay sitting out a lot while the other players do a lot of stuff, there's no problem. They should be aware and willing to do so, though, if they're going to break the party mold.

4e took the foundation of tactical combat that was really first printed in the 2e Players Option: Combat and Tactics book, and refined it into a completely tactical system, so much so that nearly every option a player has in character design is build around being tactically viable in combat alone. Basically, toss everything out that doesn't actually need to be explained by rules (you want to be a blacksmith? Write down blacksmith on your character sheet, no need to dump skill points into it), and keep everything else that you need to make the game function. This works for some, doens't work for others. I personally love the bare bones approach. I love that the force RP aspects of other editions (alignment, class/race restrictions, etc) have been removed. It frees players up to RP their character how they want to, not based on what alignment they thought fit their character the best.

Well, I got rid of alignment and classes, and all restrictions are built. You can get Complications, which are self-enforced personality traits (gambler, code of honor, coward, etc.), though you get bonuses when they hurt / help you. Alternatively, if you buy any special ability, you can limit it to an RP mechanic that you make up (limiting it saves you points), such as buying spell slots limited to as long as you don't break your code of conduct. Either way, the choice is yours, and you can always completely ignore the mechanics entirely.

However, I don't want to just "blacksmith" and be done with it. I have a PC in this warlord party (who's probably the least evil of the bunch) who's exceptionally focused on crafting things. To give some context, there are five levels of quality in my game: poor (-1), normal (+0), masterwork (+1), masterpiece (+2), and mastercraft (+3). He's so focused, he can make mastercraft quality items in the time it would take to create normal items, and for the same cost (instead of about four times the cost). He's not just a blacksmith, he's amazing at his craftsmanship. There's literally no upside to him making normal, masterwork, or masterpiece quality work anymore (since he also bought the DC increase down).

If someone wants to invest in something, I'd like to explore that issue. And, all told, I've got about 250 pages of rules in a 350 page book (I have an Example Setting and a "Running a Game" section that are about 50 pages each), and I think the game is incredibly flexible in character builds, monster builds, narrative range, etc. So, D&D will have to at least keep my narrative range for me to be interested (I expect it to keep classes, alignment, etc.).

Again, that makes sense. But as you said, your system required player buy-in. Not saying that's a bad thing, just soemthing to think about.

Well, any system requires player buy-in. I meant that any particular campaign, in any system, should have player buy-in on the party dynamic, goals, etc. Even in D&D, everyone should be aware and okay with a dungeon delving party, or a warlord party, or whatever.

You can tell that Cook doesn't buy in to 4e. That's why I thought it was an interesting move to hire him. Why would you hire someone who isn't going to champion your livelyhood? It's because you want him to work on the next version.

Probably. Then again, for all I know, he plays it weekly. Having an ideas guy is good to have around even if he doesn't like the mechanics, since you can translate ideas into mechanics. I do this with a friend who I used to play with but no longer do. He played D&D with me, but doesn't know my system, so he helps me come up with ideas, and I make them work mechanically.

Then again, I suspect Monte wouldn't want to work on that. 5e... now that's an interesting project for him to tackle. I do suspect that's the goal for him, even if he hasn't started on it yet. It's probably something they want him for.

As always, play what you like

 

[NewJeffCT]

Its kind of like how some people only like Van Halen with David Lee Roth AND Michael Anthony, some prefer Sammy Hagar, 1 guy in 1 million prefers Gary Cherone lead work, and some like the lineup with Michael Anthony replaced by Wolfgang Van Halen.

...and some just like Van Halen. Or hate the band in any lineup.

And in case you don't get it, the fact that I don't think 4ED feels like D&D to me is in no way a reflection upon your experience interacting with the game.

Dude - the only true version of Van Halen is the original lineup that appeared on their first several albums - David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen. Anything else just pales in comparison and is not the true VH.

 

[Oryan77]

Dude - the only true version of Van Halen is the original lineup that appeared on their first several albums - David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen. Anything else just pales in comparison and is not the true VH.

What's a Van Halen? Is that the new Monte Cook creation that lets a bard spend a healing surge to heal the entire party to full hitpoints? That rocks!