D&D 5E 2/18/13 L&L column

[Ratskinner]

Didn't 4e show how to solve this particular problem, via surge-dependent healing?

That's one way to do it. Personally, I'd like to see Next treat injuries as more defined and deconflate "HP as luck/skill/evasion" and "HP as physical injury". That is, branch physical injury off into a triggered sub-system (like death in 4e), and everybody recover all HP on a regular basis:

• The recovery rate could be a "dial" for different lethality levels.
• Healing magic still has potency and in-game importance when somebody is truly injured.
• You could freely call in-combat HP recovery "revitalization" or "encouragement" or something, clerics, warlords,...heck why not a feat to let any charismatic character pull off the old "get up soldier!" routine?
• SoD effects could target HP, but have a special override or rider for the wound when its triggered. (Medusae and the like might have a special "trap" mechanic for when the party isn't forewarned of their presence.)

'course, I've never been a big fan of HP and all its attendant problems, so maybe I'm biased.

 

[Ratskinner]

Yea, math is way easier than writing class fluff. That's why the market is so soft for jobs in STEM fields, and the wages for English lit majors are so high.

Not sure how facetious you are being here.

I think the point is, that once you've developed a mechanism that people find acceptable, balancing the math isn't that hard.

...could be wrong, but that's how I understood them.

...'course they could be wrong, too, but balancing rpg math isn't rocket science, IMO.

 

[Ratskinner]

I think that basic needs to explicitly say..." In the basic game, all hit point damage is explicitly assumed to be wounds that require medial attention or healing.

Then I truly hope they write any healing spells to be level-dependent on the target rather than caster, to avoid some of the HP systems brain-benders.

 

[D'karr]

...'course they could be wrong, too, but balancing rpg math isn't rocket science, IMO.

It shouldn't be, but look at how long it took them to "get the math right" for skill challenges and monster attack/damage. You would think that by now they would have learned their lesson that you can't take that (getting it right) for granted.

 

[Ratskinner]

It shouldn't be, but look at how long it took them to "get the math right" for skill challenges and monster attack/damage. You would think that by now they would have learned their lesson that you can't take that (getting it right) for granted.

In that case, I think there were two contributing factors: a) they really wanted to get something they could call "conflict resolution" into the game, and b) they had that idea late in the development process (seems to me, anyway) with little idea how to do it. The first go-round of the skill challenges didn't just have different "math", it had a different (but similar) mechanical form. There's other things that I think that tells me about the designers in the lead up to 4e, but I don't want to be accused of edition-warring.

 

[FireLance]

How is "let groups decide if this is a problem for them" different from "build the game assuming a cleric?"

I'm genuinely asking, not trying to provoke.

I think I left out step 0, which is to design the game assuming that a cleric is not needed in the first place. Something along the lines of: Over the average adventuring day at level X, 99% of the time, the monsters will deal less than 50 hit points of damage to the fighter. Hence, if we give the fighter 50 hit points, he will not need a cleric 99% of the time.

To me, "build the game assuming a cleric" would be something along the lines of: Over the average adventuring day at level X, 99% of the time, the monsters will deal less than 50 hit points of damage to the fighter. The cleric is expected to heal 10 points of damage. Hence, if we give the fighter 40 hit points, he will survive to the end of the adventuring day 99% of the time.

EDIT: Some groups will still want someone to play a cleric for that 1% of the time he is needed. Others may decide it is not a problem, or have the DM give out more healing potions, or allow some self-healing ability to make it even less likely that a cleric is needed.

 

[Sage Genesis]

But that is precisely the point, 4e: two or more leaders have to coordinate very well in order not to heal too much and deplete party resources (basically a Zero sum), previously: two or more healers, their healing resources just stack (a non-zero sum).

I read your previous post about what exactly happened, and I have to say... and please don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you guys were playing whilst misunderstanding the rules to such a large degree that your experiences are completely a-typical of how 4e works.
1. Your healers weren't just noobs, they were complete morons, sorry to say. No person I've ever gamed with, including every noob, instantly knew not to heal when only a few hp were lost. Other RPGs, videogames, CCGs, and all the rest should have already prepared them for this.
2. You can't be healed against your wishes. If you're unwilling to use a surge, then it does not happen. I say again: your allies can't make you lose surges unless you let them.
3. If you spent 2 surges earlier and the healers ping-ponged another 6 between them, you lost 8. Since you're now "out of surges", apparently you were playing a Fighter with a Constitution score of 8, or a Paladin with a score of 6.

The statement I quoted above is further proof of this in my eyes, because it's incorrect. I will show why.

In 4e (virtually) all healing is capped per day through the use of healing surges. Whether you have one, two, ten, or no leaders at all, this cap is solidly in place.
But there's another, soft cap on healing per encounter. Typically a single leader can manage about two or three heals per encounter, maybe more at high levels. Having a second leader around doubles this per-encounter cap.

The encounter cap is what matters in a fight - the daily cap is just a pacing mechanic to make sure you don't endlessly take on fight after fight after fight. So having a second or third leader along is not "zero sum". It doubles or triples the healing you can use per encounter.

I know that for many people this can be hard to swallow, but please take it from me: your experiences were so unusual that they shouldn't be taken as evidence of any kind about how 4e plays.

 

[sheadunne]

I agree with Mike on this one. Non-magical healing should not be core. Let's not devalue the cleric. Those of us who love playing the party healer have slowly, over the last 10+ years, felt neglected. 3.x promoted spamming healing wands, 4.x promoted self-healing, could we please go back to actually needing a cleric and supporting those of us who love playing a cleric. I don't mind other classes that have healing or healing-like abilities if people don't want to play a cleric, but let's not reduce healing to a secondary roll in the party. I'd actually like to see healing given it's own tier next to Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction. Why not have Recovery as a tier? Why not make recovery as interesting as searching a room or fighting an ogre or talking to a barkeep?

Anyway, I like that the cleric may be essential again. Next up, getting rid of healing wands.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I agree with Mike on this one. Non-magical healing should not be core. Let's not devalue the cleric. Those of us who love playing the party healer have slowly, over the last 10+ years, felt neglected. 3.x promoted spamming healing wands, 4.x promoted self-healing, could we please go back to actually needing a cleric and supporting those of us who love playing a cleric. I don't mind other classes that have healing or healing-like abilities if people don't want to play a cleric, but let's not reduce healing to a secondary roll in the party. I'd actually like to see healing given it's own tier next to Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction. Why not have Recovery as a tier? Why not make recovery as interesting as searching a room or fighting an ogre or talking to a barkeep?

Anyway, I like that the cleric may be essential again. Next up, getting rid of healing wands.

Making the Cleric feel valued does not mean removing other forms of healing - whilst you are advocating fun times for those who want to play healers, you are also dooming one person in every group to have to play the healer, which is not necessarily fun times for them. If the core had non-magical healing, that does not stop the Cleric from having magical healing that is special and important. If the core had only magical healing, it makes the Cleric a necessity, and devalues their powers as we all search for a way to avoid having to play one if we don't want to - that's the real reason that wands and so on ended up existing.

 

[Klaus]

I agree with Mike on this one. Non-magical healing should not be core. Let's not devalue the cleric. Those of us who love playing the party healer have slowly, over the last 10+ years, felt neglected. 3.x promoted spamming healing wands, 4.x promoted self-healing, could we please go back to actually needing a cleric and supporting those of us who love playing a cleric. I

Remember why those changes were put into place? Why clerics got Spontaneous Healing in 3e, and why Healing Word was a minor action in 4e? Because no one wanted to play the medic! Over the course of the game's history, D&D has tried to facilitate cleric players having fun with their characters, attacking and smiting and casting spells beyond mere healing.