D&D 4E 4e Healing - Is This Right?

[FadedC]

Recovery of healing surges is part of being fully healed. You can be at full HP after five minutes, but probably not fully healed.

One of the better suggestions I've seen for long-term injury, in fact, is the gradual reduction of healing surges. (Something like losing one healing surge per crit, or Bloodying, or both. And it would only return with time or some form of magical healing.)

You could argue that somebody at full hp but down on surges isn't full healed and I could see the healing surge rule, although given that magical healing can be done pretty an unlimited times in a day it might not be worth the trouble of keeping track of.

But either way I'd say 5 minutes vs. 6 hours is more about gameplay then realism. Getting all your surges back in 5 minutes would have a tremendous impact on gameplay.

 

[mach1.9pants]

"You challenge the orc. Your check is more successful. His action points are depleted."

Truly, the stuff of which epics are made.

LOL, if you think the DM using any in game term (such as hit points) during his narrative is epic then you play a different style to me.
DM 'The orc takes a mightly swing at you, with a rapid movement of your shield arm you deflect the blow over your head leaving a large gash in your shield and removing the crest from your helm'
P 'Damn that was the feathers of the rare golden eagle! They will have to get even rarer now!''
DM 'You are down to 3 'phewthatwasacloseshave' points mate'
P 'Kay'

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Just out of curiosity, for those who keep saying (or buying) that HP are not and have never represented actual injury, do y'all really not describe (or have described to you), "the crunch of his nose breaking under your spiked gauntlet," or "the spray of blood as the orc's blade bites into your shoulder," or "the audible snap as your mace cracks the beetle's carapace"?

If you do, how do you justify it?

If you don't, you're missing out. It's not something you want to do with every swing, obviously, but a few times a fight, injury descriptions are some of the most easily-visualized and exciting parts of the game. (Probably because, due to slasher and horror movies, everybody at the table knows what you're talking about when you say, "the spurt of arterial blood.")

 

[pawsplay]

LOL, if you think the DM using any in game term (such as hit points) during his narrative is epic then you play a different style to me.

I'm a big fan of the terms "hit," "miss," "injury," "alive," and "dead."

 

[Jeff Wilder]

But either way I'd say 5 minutes vs. 6 hours is more about gameplay then realism. Getting all your surges back in 5 minutes would have a tremendous impact on gameplay.

Really? What impact would it have?

 

[AllisterH]

Just out of curiosity, for those who keep saying (or buying) that HP are not and have never represented actual injury, do y'all really not describe (or have described to you), "the crunch of his nose breaking under your spiked gauntlet," or "the spray of blood as the orc's blade bites into your shoulder," or "the audible snap as your mace cracks the beetle's carapace"?

If you do, how do you justify it?

If you don't, you're missing out. It's not something you want to do with every swing, obviously, but a few times a fight, injury descriptions are some of the most easily-visualized and exciting parts of the game. (Probably because, due to slasher and horror movies, everybody at the table knows what you're talking about when you say, "the spurt of arterial blood.")

Only with systems that have "Spirals of Death" like Alternity and Shadowrun.

Describing a sword swing that cuts into your shoulder but yet doesnt make that arm useless in battle one bit has always been more of a deal-breaker to my sense of "realism" than 3.x "I can heal to full in two days".

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Your definition of injury hinges on hit points, which is itself an abstraction.

Yes. And there's only so far you can abstract something before it stops representing what it was originally intended to represent. 4E has reached that point. Every other D&D, very abstract as they have been, had not.

I define a "long term injury" as one that impairs your ability.

So do I. Having fewer HP impairs your ability to fight. It doesn't give you attack or defense penalties, but it sure makes you die more quickly.

While your other arguments are valid and sometimes merely a difference in opinion, this one is plainly wrong. Serious, debilitating injury has never been modeled.

That's because you invented it. I didn't say "debilitating" (by which I'm assuming you mean "imposing combat-math penalties.") I said "injuries that take time or magic to heal." This has been modeled in every D&D until 4E.

It's an equal stretch. There's very little difference.

So you'd be fine if, instead of six hours, characters completely healed in five minutes, right?

You're forming an artificial difference.

No, I'm observing a function of the game. In every edition of D&D prior to 4E, it took time or magic to heal fully from being down heavy HP. You were seriously injured.

A serious injury is not one that take a couple of days to heal

In D&D 3.5, that's exactly what it is.

a serious injury is one that is DANGEROUS to your ongoing health.

Which it is. If you're at 50 of 100 HP after three days of rest and healing, and you go back into the dungeon to face challenges that were appropriate when you were at 100 HP, your health is in danger. ("Grave danger?" "Is there any other kind?")

 

[mlund]

When I want to see a lingering wound that injures a character's body in a more realistic way I break out the Ability Score Damage - usually Con Damage, sometimes Strength or Dexterity if the injury impedes muscle strength or bodily motion. Go figure, Ability Score damage lowers your Saving Throws too - making you more vulnerable to diseases and poisons - kind of like what happens when you lose too much blood or suffer severe trauma in an accident or an attack.

Another problem with that "Hit Points really represent seriously wounds," line of thinking is that getting wounded with a Power Attack with a great sword for 25+ damage doesn't apparently cause enough blood loss to make you lose Constitution, but a Dire Weasel or other creature that has Blood Drain attached to its 5 HP attack somehow does.

Let's face it, Hit Points don't represent permanent physical damage to the body, Con damage does that. Hit Points just represent combat survivability from a lot of angles, with physical damage tolerance making up a small part of it for martial type characters (Con Modifier in 3rd Edition, Con as an HP base point for 4th Ed).

- Marty Lund

 

[FourthBear]

Just out of curiosity, for those who keep saying (or buying) that HP are not and have never represented actual injury, do y'all really not describe (or have described to you), "the crunch of his nose breaking under your spiked gauntlet," or "the spray of blood as the orc's blade bites into your shoulder," or "the audible snap as your mace cracks the beetle's carapace"?

I typically use several approaches:

1) Using aforementioned action movie/fantasy hero logic to how those injuries are possible to "tough out" and play through. Then basically ignoring those injuries.
2) Avoiding using such specific descriptions when they would clearly carry a penalty the rules would not support.

If you are fond of using specific injury descriptions and you believe that hit points best represent true injuries, how can you justify those injuries not giving significant (if not crippling) long term effects on character abilities. Descriptions of opponent and NPC injuries are almost never as significant as those to PCs, as only the PCs typically carry over to the next series of encounters. So, concentrating on the one PC injury description you give, would you give penalties to Climb, Acrobatics, attack rolls and the like due to the PC's shoulder injury you described from the orc's hit? If so, do PCs continually accumulate such penalties as your descriptions continue during encounters? If not, is this particularly representative of meaningful injury? If the PC can simply keep jumping, attacking, climbing and such after a shoulder injury, it is pretty much by definition a cosmetic injury. Or a depletion of abstract "mojo" hit points.

 

[Iron Sky]

Folks seem to be conflating my objection to the lack of any modeling of long-term healing with an objection to healing surges and second wind. Please don't. I like the healing surge mechanic. I've really got no problem with being at full HP for every single fight ... as long as there's some way in which -- mechanically -- a fight takes more out of you than a six-hour rest can completely cure.

I'd say the simplest way to resolve this issue is house-rule that after 6 hours of rest you get everything you normally get back(daily powers, surges), but recover no hp. That way you are still spending resources(healing surges) in a way that you have stated you are comfortable with and no magic hand-waving super-heal.

For those who have issue with healing-surges themselves, this resolves nothing, but if you are ok with healing surge hp recovery and NOT full-heal-overnight hp recovery, just do away with the latter.

Mechanically, it will mean players get an encounter or two less per day, but I'd say that's an easy payoff if it keeps the disbelief suspended to the degree you are comfortable with.