I think you've misunderstood - I don't know the actual figures, but let's say the fighter had 40 hp, so a surge value of 10. But the healers were healing him when he was down (say) 8 hp, for an amount of healing equal to a surge plus (say) 1d6+3, or (on average) 16.5 hp. So a lot of healing potential was being squandered.
D&D 5E 2/18/13 L&L column
- Thread starter Blackwarder
- Start date
Manbearcat
Legend
Beyond the other issues outlined, a 4e game with more than 5 PCs starts to get extremely unwieldy. I consider 5 PCs to be the upper limit; unless the 6th is a striker...and able to resolve his/her actions quickly. This is for multiple reasons and each interacting with the prior issue to compound the problems:
1) Time/round goes up.
2) The potential for time/actor goes up (more players equals higher probability that one of them is math deficient or paralysis through analysis driven).
3) Encounter budget goes up which in almost all situations (except for an anomalous minion extravaganza) means considerably more total HPs to ablate...especially with multiple Brutes and/or Soldiers.
All told, if you do not have (i) a considerable number of strikers making up those 6-10 slots, (ii) considerable action economy buffing leader/striker synergy (warlords granting barbarians MBAs), and (iii) a highly functional group with advanced tactical acumen and quick turn resolution then you will be starring down the gun barrel of a grueling experience. I often wonder if these nightmare scenarios (6-10 PCs, tons of enemy HPs to ablate, horrible synergy and multiple, pure defenders and leaders, poor tactical acumen, long individual turn resolution) are what causes people to say that 4e combat is a "grind". Our combats are fierce and quick; 30 seconds/PC turn (including immediate actions, if any), perhaps 1 minute for my own as GM, 4-5 rounds on average (6 - 8 on L + 5 boss fights). With 3 PCs that is 10 -12 minutes per combat. Hardly a "grind".
The bottom line is, in the above scenario, it is highly likely that average rounds of combat would jump from 4-5 rounds to possibly as many as 10. There will be a much larger number of enemies for the Defender to be controlling than during a standard combat with 4-5 PCs (which may be 2-3 typically). If a Defender is controlling 5-6 enemies for most of those 10 rounds and getting hit twice a round for his surge value (and being healed for roughly the same value and expending a surge/heal)...a low level Defender will run out of surges by round 6 or so.
Point being, there is a point where the game breaks. My guess is that @KaiiLurker may have found it.
1) Time/round goes up.
2) The potential for time/actor goes up (more players equals higher probability that one of them is math deficient or paralysis through analysis driven).
3) Encounter budget goes up which in almost all situations (except for an anomalous minion extravaganza) means considerably more total HPs to ablate...especially with multiple Brutes and/or Soldiers.
All told, if you do not have (i) a considerable number of strikers making up those 6-10 slots, (ii) considerable action economy buffing leader/striker synergy (warlords granting barbarians MBAs), and (iii) a highly functional group with advanced tactical acumen and quick turn resolution then you will be starring down the gun barrel of a grueling experience. I often wonder if these nightmare scenarios (6-10 PCs, tons of enemy HPs to ablate, horrible synergy and multiple, pure defenders and leaders, poor tactical acumen, long individual turn resolution) are what causes people to say that 4e combat is a "grind". Our combats are fierce and quick; 30 seconds/PC turn (including immediate actions, if any), perhaps 1 minute for my own as GM, 4-5 rounds on average (6 - 8 on L + 5 boss fights). With 3 PCs that is 10 -12 minutes per combat. Hardly a "grind".
The bottom line is, in the above scenario, it is highly likely that average rounds of combat would jump from 4-5 rounds to possibly as many as 10. There will be a much larger number of enemies for the Defender to be controlling than during a standard combat with 4-5 PCs (which may be 2-3 typically). If a Defender is controlling 5-6 enemies for most of those 10 rounds and getting hit twice a round for his surge value (and being healed for roughly the same value and expending a surge/heal)...a low level Defender will run out of surges by round 6 or so.
Point being, there is a point where the game breaks. My guess is that @KaiiLurker may have found it.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Thumbs up for both... common healing in combat was never genre appropriate. Atleast in 4e any of that could be visualized as inspirational healing.
Rituals and such yup much more appropo.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
pemerton said:
I'm curious about the choice of phrase, here. IMXP, part of the problem with "dedicated healers" in pre-4e games was that they had to be ACTIVELY healing -- their action was dedicated to giving someone HP back, and that was it. A bit of passivity (a la the Skald's aura in 4e or even just the fact that the X Word powers are minor actions instead of standard actions, something you can do as an add-on to your turn rather than something you dedicate your turn toward) would have probably gone a long way toward helping alleviate the feeling that all you ever do with your actions is heal others.
I'd definitely say it was reactive, in that you healed after damage happened, but anything that gives you HP back probably falls into that camp (as opposed to things like negating attacks, which would be proactive). "Passive" isn't the word that comes to mind for me, though.
By "passive" I mean acting primarily upon other PCs, rather than directly upon the antagonists.
I know that in both cases all that's changing (in one sense) is numbers on a sheet of paper - but in terms of viscerality of experience I think there is a difference between hacking down the enemy, and keeping your allies home fires burning. "Active" and "passive" is just an attempt to capture that difference.
(It's interesting to look at how a system like Marvel Heroic Roleplaying handles support actions: they are rolled against the GM's opposition, so have an element of mechanical resolution as dynamic as anything else going on at the table; and they produce effects bigger than just a +2 for one action. "Aid another" is one respect in which 4e doesn't go far enough to make augments and the like effective and meaningful parts of play.)
I know that in both cases all that's changing (in one sense) is numbers on a sheet of paper - but in terms of viscerality of experience I think there is a difference between hacking down the enemy, and keeping your allies home fires burning. "Active" and "passive" is just an attempt to capture that difference.
(It's interesting to look at how a system like Marvel Heroic Roleplaying handles support actions: they are rolled against the GM's opposition, so have an element of mechanical resolution as dynamic as anything else going on at the table; and they produce effects bigger than just a +2 for one action. "Aid another" is one respect in which 4e doesn't go far enough to make augments and the like effective and meaningful parts of play.)
Chris_Nightwing
First Post
I don't really like magical healing in combat - it makes it much too throw-away, and harms the verisimilitude of the world setting if it becomes trivial to fix injury/whateverHPare. I don't need things to be gritty, but I say embrace the undefinedness of HP and let characters recover by themselves, perhaps even in combat. Heck, if they only offered a choice between clerics-heal-nobody-else-can and healing surges, I'd vote for healing surges - my only problem with them was that magical healing became tied into natural healing instead of something special.
Balesir
Adventurer
Actually, my experience indicates differently. I run a game for seven player characters (2 fighters, 1 paladin, 1 ranger, 1 rogue, 1 wizard, 1 warlock) and 4e is the first game since OD&D/Basic D&D where I've been able to do so without generating a thumping headache. Does play slow down? Sure - but with a modicum of patience and runs that are weekend rather than evening affairs that really isn't a big deal. We get at least as much done in a weekend as we did with a 4-5 player party in 3.x (although that was a different DM; how much effect that had I really can't tell).
Edit: to say something on-topic
The big issue I see with the indecision on what HP mean and how healing works is that it has a huge impact on what the party can tackle in terms of an adventure. Especially if in-combat healing is either in or out, everything from encounters to adventuring days to speed of campaign time will have to be differently figured. That seems to me to put the promise of "guidelines for the DM as good as those in 4e" out to dry. Even well-conceived "monster mark" systems are doomed if the rules for healing they have to cope with are mutable.
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Ratskinner
Adventurer
I don't think "groups have coped" and "there hasn't been a problem" are equivalent. I think its more along the lines of this not being that big of a deal, in spite of what folks who constantly prowl message-boards about D&D might think. I mean, the game did trudge along pretty well for a few decades with nobody but the cleric doing healing (among other issues.) So saying that most groups "coped" with this issue seems to be obviously true, AFAICT.
Balesir
Adventurer
Right - I could probably "cope" if I lost a leg, but that doesn't mean it "wouldn't be a problem"!
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