I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Pentius]

Two weeks ago, I posted this upthread in reply to JamesonCourage:



And now you say:

So I fully agree, but believe that I ninja-ed you by about 2 weeks!

(Great minds and all that ...)

Hahaha, consider my post an homage, then, my friend!

And props to my friend Jameson for continuing trying to explain his view in spite of my brickheadedness.

 

[pemerton]

I'll try to word it as simply as I can (I say "um" because I'm apparently not great at communication recently!): I like having many mechanical devices that allow for standard modern fantasy-genre fiction tropes to be realized in-game. I find that when it comes to natural healing, 4e has narrowed the window more than I find personally appealing (while it's widened it in other areas).

How was that?

I think I get it, but I still find the emphasis on "natural healing" a bit unclear - because it's not really the healing of wounds we're talking about, but the recovery of hit points, which seem to me to be more of a metagame resource.

That said, I can see how the common equation of hit point recovery with healing makes the timing issue take on an air of verisimilitude that it otherwise might lack!

So, unlike a character who receives help, the lost 3.5Ed fighter in this case will have his movement hampered, and may actually fall unconscious or start dying again. And he will remain hovering in this precarious state until he makes that 10% roll to start regaining HP normally.

And merely resting overnight gives no bonuses to that 10% roll to regain natural healing.

IOW, his movement is affected, his ability to fight is affected until he recovers his ability to heal naturally or he gets outside help. He is suffering long-term effects from his injuries.

AFAIK, nothing like this can happen in 4Ed.

OK, here you've caught me on my lack of familiarity with the details of 3E mechanics. This is why a few posts up I joined with Pentius in focusing only on hit point loss short of unconsciousness/death. And in my reply to you, when I excepted AD&D's death's door rules, I should have excepted 3E's death's door rules too!

Like I said upthread (post 640), 4e really does take a different approach to death's door. Personally I think this is pretty much independent of the surge rules - I think the WotC website had a 3E version of the 4e death's door rules at one stage - but it is certainly a change in approach from other editions.

I like it. I can easily see that others may not.

That is the main reason I don't like Healing Surges.

You might as well just get rid of any sort of real-world challenge and just make the game even easier and simpler by saying, "Everyone gets a Healing Burst after every single encounter. It heals you to max and now you can go to the next encounter without any worries. Have fun!"

At least you admit to what they are really for. The thing is, nobody else seems to want to admit that all Healing Surges are is a way to implement "cheat codes" so the game is easier and you have less to deal with.

I've been pretty upfront that I like the effect of healing surges on the dynamics of combat, and on the pacing of scenarios.

If you want to deride that as "cheat codes", that's your prerogative. Personally I don't GM a game aimed at providing the sort of challenge where the language of "cheat codes" even makes sense. The healing rules are part of the resources the players have ready to hand to engage the fiction via their PCs. Using them is not cheating; it's the game. It produces stories of near-defeat, dramatic recovery and (very occasional) tragedy.

If I wanted a different play experience, I'd GM a different game.

 

[Pentius]

That is the main reason I don't like Healing Surges.

You might as well just get rid of any sort of real-world challenge and just make the game even easier and simpler by saying, "Everyone gets a Healing Burst after every single encounter. It heals you to max and now you can go to the next encounter without any worries. Have fun!"

At least you admit to what they are really for. The thing is, nobody else seems to want to admit that all Healing Surges are is a way to implement "cheat codes" so the game is easier and you have less to deal with.

"Cheat Codes". To think I once responded as though we could have any real conversation on an issue regarding the game. I hang my head, now, in remembrance of the fool I have been. Consider yourself ignored.

 

[Samurai]

All this does is assume a hardline "HP=Wounds" stance, which, as I've described in detail, is far more damaging to my immersion than treating them as a narrative device.

And as I said before, I can sort of agree with HP = Vitality, up until the point you are unconscious and making death saves each round to not die. At that point, I simply have to believe that you've been wounded. And you can recover from that to full health in 5 minutes.

 

[pemerton]

And as I said before, I can sort of agree with HP = Vitality, up until the point you are unconscious and making death saves each round to not die. At that point, I simply have to believe that you've been wounded. And you can recover from that to full health in 5 minutes.

Well, it's clear that you are only wounded if you die. Otherwise you weren't.

So the death saves don't tell us whether or not you die from your wound. Rather, they tell us whether or not you suffered a serious wound at all.

Likewise a stabilisation check using Heal. If it fails, the healer can't tell whether or not you're dying. If it succeeds, then you weren't particularly badly wounded, and the healer confirms this to be so.

In 4e's "death door" rules, there is no such mechanically-induced state as "badly wounded but didn't end up dying". That is a difference from AD&D, and as [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] has pointed out recently, from 3E. It has nothing much to do with surges - you could introduce a similar rule into a surgeless game, I think.

Personally I like it - it introduces tension into the play of the game without needing to introduce wounds into the narrative of the game.

Others, of course, may dislike it. Perhaps because they want wounds. Or want wounds that don't result in death. Or don't want mechanics that leave the consequences of hit point loss to be determined by mechanical processes that happen later in time than that hit point loss. I know there are plenty of RPGers who fit one or more of these descriptions.

 

[Pentius]

And as I said before, I can sort of agree with HP = Vitality, up until the point you are unconscious and making death saves each round to not die. At that point, I simply have to believe that you've been wounded.

Which is fair enough. I make that assumption, too.

And you can recover from that to full health in 5 minutes.

And you know, I've been seriously wounded four times in my still young life. Three of which I still bear scars from. All of them I was still walking within 5 minutes of getting the wound. In all of them, recovery was an after the fact thing. Now, indeed, 4e does nothing to represent the crutches I had after getting burns over my whole right leg. Or the way I didn't have use of my right arm for awhile after it got covered in boiling oil. Or the way my sternum was cracked by that car hitting me. Admittedly, the brown recluse bite was cleared up quick by the anti-venom.

But, really, HP in any edition does absolutely jack to represent any of these wounds. 4e is no worse off there than 3e.

 

[Rogue Agent]

(I don't hold that pre-4e HP did this, either).

To put it another way, maybe the HP=wounds explanation of HP made sense to those who don't care about disassociated mechanics, and that's great. But it doesn't make any sense to me.

And this, right here, sums up the whole thread:

(1) If you prefer HP=verve then pre-4E and 4E equally serve your needs.

(2) If you prefer HP=wounds then pre-4E serves your needs, but 4E doesn't.

(3) If you are completely unable to understand the other person's POV (as you've admitted you are incapable of doing), you end up in threads that spin their wheels for 600+ posts.

Well, it's clear that you are only wounded if you die. Otherwise you weren't.

This is the Schrodinger's Wound I was talking about before. It makes it impossible to actually describe the game world except in a retcon after the fact.

And that, of course, is a huge impediment to actually roleplaying. How are you supposed to make choices as if you were your character (the definition of roleplaying) if the mechanics won't even let you see the game world?

It's not really meta-game knowledge if it is the character's reality. To them, in the game world, they are back up to full HP after a 5 minute short rest, and they know that. They also know they regain Encounter powers, etc. This is the reality of their world, they need never worry about broken bones, punctured lungs, and other lingering wounds because they, and every other PC, has Wolverine's healing factor in the game, and they know it.

This is the trap, actually. If you try to treat these as roleplaying mechanics you end up with a universe where people really CAN heal their wounds by shouting at them. (Or, alternatively, be poisoned by blades that never touch them.)

You have to accept that these mechanics are not associated with the game world and that while you're using them you're not roleplaying. (Although you may be roleplaying near them and around them.)

The only other option, as you say, is to embrace a gaming universe where the fourth wall is broken and the characters know that they're just characters in a game.

You might as well just get rid of any sort of real-world challenge and just make the game even easier and simpler by saying, "Everyone gets a Healing Burst after every single encounter. It heals you to max and now you can go to the next encounter without any worries. Have fun!"

Actually, I don't understand why 4E doesn't do this. The entire system is designed to emphasize tactical challenge-by-encounter instead of long-term strategic challenges. But then they put this essentially meaningless and arbitrary limit on the number of encounters you can face in a single day.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, D&D definitely is generic enough to emulate various genres. Not all, mind you. Not even all modern fantasy genres. However, whether or not you think that's true, my want is for the game to embrace different genre tropes. That's not speaking to the abstract/narrative/simulation style of the game, either.

Yeah, right. My point exactly. My question though, is why healing surges? Surely there are other factors of the game that pigeonhole 4e into the subgenre that it is that are at least as egregious as healing surges, if not more, at forcing the game into a specific subgenre? Healing surges are easily house-ruled to taste. The gonzo magic system, on the other hand, is much more difficult to work around if you want a grittier, more "realistic" type of fantasy.

I'm not saying, "I'm surprised 4e does this." I'm saying, "I dislike that 4e does this." I'm saying, "I don't like that it does this, because it doesn't fit my preference or desire out of the game." To that end, getting back, "but you shouldn't be surprised" doesn't really change anything for me. I'm not surprised. I'm disappointed.

As always, play what you like

I do, thanks. And I don't play 4e--although not because of healing surges, which I actually think are a pretty good idea. Out of curiousity, do you play 4e?

 

[Desdichado]

I'm really not sure why you (and most other dissenters) are stuck on this line of thought when addressing me specifically. I feel as I've more than adequately expressed my view that story paths are dying when every wound can be healed overnight. If it matters to you, ignore "without external healing" and focus on what I've been extremely clear (in my mind) on trying to express: that I prefer a system that allows for both long term wounds and short term wounds, because both open up interesting narratives. When you heal from every wound overnight, it works against many narrative paths I want available in the game.

But you do recognize, right, that it opens up many other narrative paths that you otherwise would not be able to traverse? Granted, they may not be narrative paths that you personally are interested in, but them's the trade-offs that designers make; they attempt to make the game that they believe the most players will enjoy the most, and recognize that they can't literally make everyone happy.

 

[Desdichado]

But in 4E the only explanation that makes any sense is the verve explanation. Irrelevant to you if you were always comfortable with the verve explanation. But a huge frickin' deal for me and anyone else for whom the verve explanation doesn't make sense.

But it doesn't need to be explained. It isn't in other media, and that's fine. In the martial arts or action movie, when the hero gets up after taking a beat-down and acts as if the blood all over his face is no big deal, is that ever explained? I mean heck, that guy was shot and bludgeoned in a way that any "real" person would have died five times over from, yet here he is at the end of the movie, a few minutes in "movie time" later, acting like nothing's wrong.

Again; healing surges are genre emulation. Trying to explain it is itself a red herring. It's never explained in movies or books either. Characters just keep on trucking, in spite of wounds, because that's what they do. Healing surges very accurately emulate that. If you want to say that it makes you unable to explain things from a realistic perspective, hey, OK, I can dig it. But can you explain it in the movies?