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

[FadedC]

In practice the only difference will be that in 3e when the party rests after a tough day of fights, the cleric might have to use a few heals spells in the morning to get everyone to full. In 4e everyone will just be at full. I can understand the realism concerns, but not sure I'll miss those extra rolls in the morning.

And yeah there are a lot of things that can influence your saving throw, including magic items, race, feats, and monster abilities. There are also some effects that are harder to save against.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

D&D has never modeled long term injury- either you're fine or you're comatose/dead.

This is untrue. In every other edition of D&D, it took either time or magical healing ... or else you were "closer to being dead." I'm not sure why it's such a stretch to see that "closer to being dead" and "being wounded" are often the same thing.

This new system doesn't model long term injuries either

The new system does not. Every other D&D has.

A fighter who gets reduced to 1hp has absolutely no problem fighting at full capacity. Sure, he's tired out, nicked and bruised and a bit dizzy, but he can swing his sword as perfectly as he did at the beginning of the day. He has no broken bones, no internal bleeding, no wounds that are infection hazards. Why, then, is it so hard to imagine that a single night's rest is all he needs to recover his strength?

See, this is what I don't get. On the one hand, 4E healing apologists keep saying, "It's not that you're not injured, it's that you fight on at full capacity anyway." But then you can't imagine a 3.5 fighter being injured, but fighting on anyway, not at full capacity (he's down HP due to injury, after all), but with no attack or defense penalties? If anything, isn't the latter less of a stretch?

If you want to include serious injuries then hit points aren't going to be a significant part of that system.

Again, that's simply not true. A "serious injury" is one that takes either time or magical healing to recover from. Every edition of D&D modeled serious injuries ... until 4E, in which you're never injured until you're dead.

 

[keterys]

Heals with a night's sleep or charges from a wand of cure light wounds does not a serious injury make.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

There are precious few injuries that are serious enough to require several day's rest yet not serious enough to impact combat performance.

I agree with every one of your points but this one.

As a martial artist I have had many, MANY injuries that take weeks to months to heal but don't stop me from training, and don't stop me from going to work. (They just make it less comfortable to do so!)

Of course, I've also received a broken collar bone, which knocked me almost fully unconscious for about 36 hours (I needed help just to go to the bathroom), extremely weak for about a week, able to carefully train about a week after that, and nearly fully healed after a month. A few years later and I STILL can't sleep comfortably on that side, and I can feel changes in weather.

I expect I could have functionally fought for my life about 2 days after the injury (though at a seriously lower skill than otherwise, and I would have been pretty effectively "stunned" by any strike which came anywhere near that side of my body)

Fitz

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Which Die Hard movie was it in which John McClane was knocked unconscious (and 1 HP from death) and then in perfect fighting form six hours later? Why aren't people assuming that McClane starts at 80 HP and ends Die Hard with 1 HP? That still works, right?

No, it doesn't.

In the Die Hard movies, the protagonist gets in a lot of fights or other encounters that wind or almost wind him. Between each encounter, he appears to be back to full fighting effectiveness, despite obvious injuries.

I think an even better movie source to use when conceiving of D&D fights is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

 

[Propheous_D]

Again, that's simply not true. A "serious injury" is one that takes either time or magical healing to recover from. Every edition of D&D modeled serious injuries ... until 4E, in which you're never injured until you're dead.

Complete and Utter Hogwash. HP does not = injury and it never has.

Answer me this:

If I am level 1 and I take 90% of my hp in damage, so I Was injuried to with in 10% of my life, do I heal faster or as fast or slower then a 10th level fighter who has taken 90% of his damage and was with in 10% of his life?

This is were your argument and the whole suspension of disbelief dies. Why is it harder to heal at higher levels then it is at lower levels?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This is untrue. In every other edition of D&D, it took either time or magical healing ... or else you were "closer to being dead." I'm not sure why it's such a stretch to see that "closer to being dead" and "being wounded" are often the same thing.

Jeff, you've done such a good job at explaining how injury works in earlier editions, that you've convinced me that your vision for it works pretty well, that is:

The level of injury is shown by the difficulty of the recovery, and the difficulty in maintaining your defenses (IE staying alive) while injured.

You agree that the "fully functional" aspect (IE no minuses) of being at 1HP can realistically be explained as heat-of-battle adrenaline.

You've got me. I agree that this way of justifying the abstract style of earlier systems works.

What I don't understand is why you can't apply the same level of creativity to the 4e system? Is it just that you've done such a good job of this justification that you can't see that it could be done any other way?

The "bloodied" condition implies injury, albiet minor. The closer-to-death math of low HP is the same, and works in the same way. Is there no way you can reconcile the 6 hour rest making you "fully functional?"

If you can imagine 1HP with no minuses as injured but-ready-for-more, why can't you imagine full HP as the same state?

The only difference made by it is the 4e version doesn't require a long "audit" of healing magic or doing the math to see how many days the party needs to rest to get back in the fight.

Sure, technically you can survive longer in a fight at full HP than just a few, but you can still be killed, and the role-playing reasons can still be the same.

Fitz

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This is were your argument and the whole suspension of disbelief dies. Why is it harder to heal at higher levels then it is at lower levels?

This is true too. Do higher level characters take longer to heal the same injuries?

Of course, you could justify it with the explanation that higher level characters can truly take more wounds without dying than lower level ones, and therefore the higher level guy really does need more time to recover.

Fitz

 

[mach1.9pants]

Which Die Hard movie was it in which John McClane was knocked unconscious (and 1 HP from death) and then in perfect fighting form six hours later? Why aren't people assuming that McClane starts at 80 HP and ends Die Hard with 1 HP? That still works, right?

Well I seem to remember the long blond haired bad guy go hung up on a chain around his neck asd was left for dead, then he re-appeared stole a cops pistol and the McCleans buddy (cop) shot him!
Must be an NPC with PC class levels Anyhoo...

The new system does not. Every other D&D has.

I disagree, all previous E of DnD have modelled long term effects on Hit Points not the long term effect (i.e. it has some in game disadvantage/penalty) of injuries. Yes 4E does not model the long term effect of HP, unless you count 1day/6 hours rest as long term. Injuries beyond a bruise or slight cut (apart from unconciousness and actual death) have never been modelled in DnD. The smallest of real world injuries can seriously hamper performance, that never happened in RAW DnD. RAW DnD has only ever modelled how many more tiny insignificant injuries you can take before suddenly being dead/unconcious.
This has always broken my SoD, especially helpless foes & falling, so I can see where people get annoyed with 4E. Up until fairly recently I used hit locations, wound points, hit points and long term injury effects in my games.
Now I can't be bothered, I'd rather my PCs just get on and do the job!

 

[FadedC]

Again, that's simply not true. A "serious injury" is one that takes either time or magical healing to recover from. Every edition of D&D modeled serious injuries ... until 4E, in which you're never injured until you're dead.

3e didn't model serious injuries, it modeled injuries that took a few days of rest to recover from and which didn't effect your performance in any way. An actual SERIOUS injury would take months to heal from and you wouldn't be able to run around at full strength during that time. No previous edition of D&D came anywhere close to modeling that.

So yeah an injury that you heal from in a couple of days is hardly a long term injury.