I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Hussar]

My point was that many people talk dismissively about how laughable it was that in AD&D, a 1st level wizard could be taken out by a cat.

Here, not only did a (admittedly largish) cat nearly kill a knife-wielding man- he would have died 30 years ago- it also survived its own knife wounds long enough so that they had to euthanize it. IOW, the game was not all that far off from reality...at least, not at that data point.

I would point out here though, this isn't a housecat, nor is it an average member of its kind.

The existence of exceptions do not really speak to anything other than the existence of an exception. Unless you're arguing that every average house cat could do the same thing.

 

[pemerton]

I do not like the mechanic, not because it is 'unrealistic' but because it is boring. It makes for boring combats in boring encounters that make up boring adventures.

Which just goes to show something about different tastes and all that. I find the dynamics and the pacing of 4e combat - which turn, in part, on the ability of the group to ensure that hit points are recovered by the PC who needs them in the right amount at the right time - contributes signifcantly to the interest of play.

I stopped playing AD&D for Rolemaster many years ago in part because I found Rolemaster combat much more engaging than AD&D hit point attrition. I find that 4e provides a version of combat that is recognisably D&D, but likewise (via its conditions, and its in combat healing mechanics) offers an alternative to the classic attrition model.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I would point out here though, this isn't a housecat, nor is it an average member of its kind.

A direkitty?

Musta had spike ridges and bone plates . . . Cuz that is how it has to be.

 

[pemerton]

I'll you're right in pointing out that there's a problem, but I don't think that it's "badly wrong." I think it's a problem so small that it's easy to overlook without breaking the suspension of disbelief in the game. Healing surges, on the other hand, are too prominent to overlook, and utterly shatter my suspension of disbelief.

(And to head things off at the pass; no I don't think that magical healing in earlier editions of D&D is less prominent than healing surges are in 4E. I'm saying the problem of low-level healing magic being less effective as characters gain levels is a problem that's easy enough to overlook - unlike the problem of characters having at-will, non-magical bursts of regeneration.)

I think "easiness to overlook" is probably in the eye of the beholder. I find the reconciliation of AD&D/3E healing with the standard model of AD&D/3E hitpoints hard. Whereas I find healing surges easy - and, in particular, I don't find them to be burst of regeneration.

In actually swordfighting... especially between highly armored individuals, you usually don't see actual real injury occur until one of them manages a killing blow. Instead, you see two guys getting bruised, getting tired, getting their bells rung, slowing down, perhaps get some small cuts across the face or arm... until finally someone manages to get their weapon past their opponent's defenses and cuts off a limb, or guts the other guy in the stomach or face. But once that happens, the fight is over.

<snip>

if we assume that hit point loss is actual physical injury... you have a guy with 100 HPs taking anywhere from 3 to 15 physically damaging blows (attacks which cause hit point loss) over the course of an entire fight. To me, that seems patently ridiculous. Especially when at the end of a fight when a guy only has 5 HPs left, the only way he can regain those hit points is through magical healing potions or the blessed cures of a man of the cloth?

What kind of attacks were these things? Somehow deadly enough that they require magical healing to remove... but not deadly enough that the fighter could take 3 to 15 of them during the fight? Doesn't make sense. Sure, you might occasionally see a guy take a massive gouge to a non-critical part of the body (say, the thigh or something) that would ordinarily require surgery (or magical healing)... but that would only account for one of those 15 injurous attacks.

I dunno about anyone else... but if I see a swordfighter getting hit by a sword 15 times and is still fighting at full strength... those aren't causing actual physical injury (save for maybe one or two, plus the actual killing blow.) They just aren't. They're just bruising. They're just fatigue. They're just superficial loss of energy that you can get past by getting a Second Wind or a having a friend to tell you to Rub Some Dirt Into It.

I agree with this. And it is a good explanation of why the disparity, in AD&D and 3E, between the hit point model and the healing model, is not easy for me to overlook.

I'm at full health, but I'm down half my surges....exactly what kind of condition am I in? How do I make sense of that in the narrative of the game? It's not something 4eD&D provides a lot of guidance for.

I'm not sure it's as bad as that. When I'm at full hit points but down half my surges, I've recovered from the immediate drain, stress and fatigue of combat, but my ability to carry on without rest is seriously impeded. I can probably only make one or two more big efforts like that and I'll be too tired to parry, and won't be able to get my reserves back just by taking a breather.

Which is fine, until the guy who had his limb cut off jumps back to his feet and announces it was just a flesh wound and he's had worse.

Any time there isn't a source of magical healing in the party and someone is reduced to zero or less, the issue arises. You can spend any number of healing surges after a short rest; so, 5 minutes after you were dealt a "mortal wound," you're back on your feet and ready to roll.

And that's why you can only narrate in after the fact.

Or you can narrate it as something other than limbs being cut off, as something that heroic grit can overcome:

And that's why I never narrate a guy getting his limbs cut off, unless it was the monster taking the final attack that kills him.

So you never narrate a guy being seriously injured, unless he goes from positive hit points to negative bloodied in one shot? Because that's the only attack you can know to be fatal at the time of narration. If the attack just takes the guy into negative hit points, it's possible--even likely--that he'll be up and about again when combat's over, apparently no worse for wear. Unless of course he bleeds out and dies, in which case he'll be dead.

Not against the PCs, no I don't.

Now when a PC strikes a killing blow on a monster, then sure... all those narrative techniques are fine. Because I know the monster is dead. He isn't healing himself back up.

I agree with everything that DEFCON 1 says here. Don't narrate the PCs into injuries that the mechanics don't support.

So if a guy gets reduced to negative hit points (but not negative bloodied)... how do you narrate that? He's down; he might be up and fighting again in a couple of rounds, or he might be dead in a couple of rounds.

The fighter gets a deep gash on his leg. The Warlord shouts at him and allows him to spend a healing surge. We don't want to retcon but there's nothing saying that that deep gash just looked worse than it really was. Lots of blood came out, but, it really wasn't that deep. It's not that the deep gash goes away, it's just described in more detail.

What Hussar said.

Or, even, this: the wound was deep but the fighter, being heroic, got to his feet nevertheless. On a different day (in mechanical terms, if the death saves had come up differently, or the warlord had not been there), the fighter's heroism might have failed him and he would have failed to get to his feet, instead lying there and bleeding out as his soul is carried off by the Valkyries.

Does this mean that once combat is over and a "wound" is described, no later surge may remove that damage?

Yes. Of course, the heroes being heroes, said "damage" doesn't impede their performance.

As [MENTION=2198]Spatula[/MENTION] pointed out upthread, there are many facets to 4e's healing mechanics that are tending to be run together in this thread. The fact that all healing surges are recovered after a single extended rest is one distinct facet. It is obviously intended by the designers as an adventure pacing device. It makes next-to-no difference to the mechanical balance of the game to change this rule so that healing surges are recovered more slowly (say 1 per day for a 3E feel, or 1 per week for an AD&D feel). All this would do is change the adventure pacing, making it closer to the pacing of a 3E or AD&D in which natural healing is the only means of recovery.

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.

Again, I think this may differ from person to person and table to table. I have no trouble roleplaying in a game with healing surges. And it does no damage to my suspension of disbelief. The idea that a hero can disregard an injury that might impede a lesser mortal is one that I think fits very easily into the heroic fantasy genre.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I would point out here though, this isn't a housecat, nor is it an average member of its kind.

As I pointed out, it could be as much as 40% smaller than certain members of certain breeds of housecat- make no mistake, a pissed off cat of that size is dangerous, whether feral or domesticated. The size of it's claws and fangs, the sheer mass and the mechanics behind its skeletal structure- all combine to make a nasty piece of work.

Remember, this is a feral cat, a decendent of countless Muffins and Mr. Fuzzwinkles gone bad, not something like a lynx or bobcat (which would be worse).

 

[Summer-Knight925]

I liked the story about the cat....just thought I'd say something about that.
But are we really arguing over this?

Healing surges are not realistic, but honestly...neither is any of D&D, isn't that why we play it? to escape the real world into that kickass world where we slay dragons and save princesses?

I don't know about you, but I don't care how realistic something is, my dwarven fighter is heroic.

But does that make 4e better?
IMO no, but not for the 'unrealistic' argument, but the 'un-challenging' aspect. I don't feel they make the game scary anymore, I liked the eeriness of hoping and praying nothing attacks us that rest period.
So I dislike them because it takes part of the challenge away.

But again, that story with the cat was funny

 

[prosfilaes]

Healing surges are not realistic, but honestly...neither is any of D&D, isn't that why we play it?

I thought this had been well-covered above. Like all fiction, D&D depends on a certain level of underlying reality. In virtually no fiction, and certainly not the fiction that inspires D&D, can normal humans walk around after someone cuts off their head; this is actually important, because the reader, watcher, or player knows when someone gets their head cut off and just stands up and ignores it, that the creature is not a normal human. That, and a thousand smaller things, make up the basis that keeps the fantastic fantastic and lets the reader/watcher/player make sense of the setting.

Does the percieved unrealism of healing surges matter in the warp and weave of D&D's unreality? I think it's completely obvious that for some people the answer is yes. They've explained how it matters to them at great length; but the fact that it does, and that detracts from the game for some people.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

Or, even, this: the wound was deep but the fighter, being heroic, got to his feet nevertheless. On a different day (in mechanical terms, if the death saves had come up differently, or the warlord had not been there), the fighter's heroism might have failed him and he would have failed to get to his feet, instead lying there and bleeding out as his soul is carried off by the Valkyries.


<snip>

Like I said, narration after the fact. You cannot provide any narration of injury until the encounter is resolved and the state becomes known. After all, how deep can the wound be if it is fully healed from a 5 minute rest and the fighter is as fresh as a daisy the next morning? It was but a scratch! Unless it killed him of course then it was a mortal blow that would fell the strongest of men.

 

[BryonD]

Yes. Of course, the heroes being heroes, said "damage" doesn't impede their performance.

As [MENTION=2198]Spatula[/MENTION] pointed out upthread, there are many facets to 4e's healing mechanics that are tending to be run together in this thread. The fact that all healing surges are recovered after a single extended rest is one distinct facet. It is obviously intended by the designers as an adventure pacing device. It makes next-to-no difference to the mechanical balance of the game to change this rule so that healing surges are recovered more slowly (say 1 per day for a 3E feel, or 1 per week for an AD&D feel). All this would do is change the adventure pacing, making it closer to the pacing of a 3E or AD&D in which natural healing is the only means of recovery.

I agree that it makes no mechanical balance difference. Hell, I readily agree that 4E is better at being a mechanically balanced game. The math works.

But if I was reading a novel in which the characters each suddenly made their own wounds disappear once a day, I'd find that stupid and stop reading the book. (Unless, of course, the book was built on a premise of a world in which people actually regenerated.)

I agree the balance works great. Pacing is of no difference to me.
But the narrative quality is a total deal breaker.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Coming late to the party...

I've only played 4e a few times - most recently just this weekend. The way I "rationalize" healing surges is the same way that Jack Bauer can get the crap beaten out of him, look like he's out of the fight, then suddenly be returning the beating on the bad guys.

One adjustment I would make to Healing Surges, if I really wanted to make the game a little more "realistic" would be to not allow Second Wind to be used after a PC is bloodied. Once you hit that point, it would require a Cleric to use a power to heal your character. It just seemed odd to me this weekend when we had a PC that became bloodied, then wasn't bloodied through a healing surge, was again a moment later, and then wasn't (this time from the cleric using a power) by his next turn.