How Do you Feel About Healing Surges? (Read First!)

[fenriswolf456]

Overall, I like the healing surge concept. Recovery rates are a separate issue. As is the term they are called by (I still find it strange to hate a concept based on what it's called, though I suppose I can see how the name can generate misconceptions).

I like Surges as they helped move away from the necessity of having a healer. Rather than the party relying on the healer and their number of healing spells, the party now has to take stock of their entire group.

I also prefer that they are proportional to a character's HP, to make healing more even.

healing surges could be done better, however, I feel as though they will subtract from the feel. I do feel they are useful, however they make it seem like a board game, as most preset everything does.

Perhaps a healing spell that heals X amount of HP based on level.

For instance, it heals 1/X of health, X is the level.

So at 1st level it heals you fully, while at 20th level it doesn 1/20th of your health.

That's the most preset I would want, I like rolling the dice.

HS are already proportional to HP. I do prefer your 1/X over a straight basic roll, as it at least solves the 1d8 per cure light wounds issue. Though a proportional spell like that means less dice rolling, I'm afraid

Still, I'd prefer that powerful, high level healers to just cast powerful heals, rather than a dozen 1st level ones

See post #8

So rather than the day being decided because your healer is out of heals, it's now decided on the fact that one (or more) of your party members is too battered and beat-up to continue on without rest?

I fail to see how this is not at least the same, if not a better reason.

Now a likely argument will be that then why can't the healer just use their heals on them? But it's just a shift on where the limits of adventuring are. Rather than it being based on one character (the healer and limited number of spells), it's now based on the party (based on who's the most beat up, which can and does change almost every adventuring day).

Total agreement!

In my mind healing surges look like this:

Fighter, bleeding, and tired growls and flexes...... all better.

It just kills it for me. Very video-game-ish.

Because you describe it like a video game, which is why it's video-gamey.

How about:

Fighter, bleeding, tiredly growls and straightens ... and despite the bleeding head wounds, stalks forward with grim determination to see the job done.

Perhaps this is where the hate for the term comes, as I see a lot of posts state that a healing surge heals your character completely, which is in fact not what it does. It merely restores HP, nothing says that wounds seal closed or anything.

And in campaigns with often just one combat encounter on a given day (like mine), they are pretty much totally unnecessary.

Certainly, if you're having just one combat a day, then a lot of concepts don't matter. The idea of daily use abilities is completely unnecessary too, and Action Point encounter usage. The party can just unleash with everthing they have.

I don't see how this is a problem with healing surges. If you're not pressing the limit on character's surge totals, it's no different than not pushing the cleric with their total number of heals. The surge value should still be useful for the actual combat.

 

[Herschel]

Lets take the blinders off for a second...

Too Metagamey - What are Hit points other than metagame wounds?

Badly Named - Frankly, its a less metagame term than Hit POINT.

Very Video Game - Like potions and wands were not? These make hit points less important than gold. If you have the gold you have the hit points.

15 minute workday enforcer - Nope, it's still daily powers, that cause it, usually people have enough surges -- Exception, if your GM decides to use nothing but surge draining creatures in battles (usually because he doesn't like healing surges).

Endless Pools of hit points - You haven't played have you? Most (non-healing focused) characters have 1 (ONE) surge they can access in battle. And excluding dwarves, they do not attack that round when the use it... What does that mean, you spend a round not killing the guy in front of you who will then likely hit you again taking a good portion of that healing away again. -- And yet the same people complain about...

Healing limited by Target - These are people, not golems. You can't fuel magic into them all day and expect them to keep going. There should be that point where its going to be obviously unsafe to continue.

Great part of healing surges.. You can have fighters, and rogues, and non-magical people, without requiring a cleric/wizard to power them.

Spreadin' the word 'cause I gots ta be spreadin' the XP.

 

[fenriswolf456]

I played a shielding swordmage (coronal guard) from levels 1-15 and I give the designers credit they really made so a defender can do his job. my swordmage took some royal beatings and chewed through his surges at an astonishing rate not a bad thing imho after all his job was to take the hits away from others but it usually didn't take long for opponents to figure out that my mark was their problem and come calling. So what happens when your defender runs out of surges... game over.

I'd have liked to be a fly on the wall because even a moderately well-built Shielding Swordmage is not easy to hit or get through its surges if people are playing at all smart. You can only nerf one attack/round and only mark one enemy at a time prior to Paragon, which you can them mark 2 if they're close enough together. You'll definitely be taking more hits than other characters but it should not be exraordinarily out-of-ratio to other characters.

I'd like to see too. I play a swordmage, though you don't have to wait until Paragon to mark more. Swordmage's Decree lets you aegis mark all enemies in burst 3 (daily), plus they have a few abilities that give non-aegis marks. And the blocking of damage, even once/round, can really make a DM grind their teeth

Even so, a swordmage should have a goodly number of HS, but should still get through 3 encounters even if being the focus of enemy attacks.

 

[CleverNickName]

Healing surges, second wind, etc., are great for a cinematic style of gameplay, where characters are like action movie heroes. Take Die Hard, for example: Mclane takes a beating, gets shot, and is both barefoot and riddled with broken glass...yet he still somehow manages to muster the will to get back up and keep on fighting. "Yippy-kie-yay, m_______r!" he growls, as explosions light the sky.

And that is why I don't like them.

 

[Shadeydm]

I'd like to see too. I play a swordmage, though you don't have to wait until Paragon to mark more. Swordmage's Decree lets you aegis mark all enemies in burst 3 (daily), plus they have a few abilities that give non-aegis marks. And the blocking of damage, even once/round, can really make a DM grind their teeth

Even so, a swordmage should have a goodly number of HS, but should still get through 3 encounters even if being the focus of enemy attacks.

My favorite part was when my teammates would deliberatly provoke OA's from enemies knowing that I would negate 19 points of the hit and gain 19 temp HP! Great fun, I love that class. I'm currently playing a level 10 fighter and often find myself see all kinds of great swordmage move tactics I can't execute lol.

 

[gweinel]

I never liked healing surges and it was one of the things that tried to change in 4e. But alas, it was hardcoded. If you changed healing, by removing healing surges you had to change encounter/daily powers. If you had to change enc/daily powers then you threw through the widow half of the mechanics of 4e. It was probably the thing that turn off of many players from my gaming group.

Its funny. After playing 4 years 4e edition we decided that we would prefer a more grittier game. More gritty that the 3e was. It's probably due to the reaction of healing surges...

 

[The Red King]

As long as the tank is able to reduce plenty of damage (either through DR or misses), otherwise the tank might decide the best route is not to tank.

So the big tough fighter cant go fight because he might get a boo boo?

Arent these supposed to be tough, epic, heroes?

Healing should be secondary to glory, treasure, vanquishing evil.....

A tank that doesnt tank is just a slow moving coward.

 

[Gargoyle]

I voted "dislike" but I do want to point out that I like Second Wind.

I agree. Gamma World does a good job with second wind IMO. You gain back half your hit points as a minor action. No healing surges.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

I thought it was a standard action. Not sure.

I liked that too -- although I think it was necessary in such a randomized game -- there's no way to be sure if the party would have any sort of healing.

The GW rules were great for a very casual, short-lived game. So long as you survived any encounter you got your HP back, and you always had that second wind power once per encounter -- so you could pretty much play all day long and never need to rest.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I liked them in Earthdawn and still like them in 4E D&D, so I answered like. But the more descriptive answer I would give is like, but do not feel they are necessary in D&D. I'm more than willing to lose Healing Surges in a good version of D&D.