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

[Jack99]

The challenge is lessened. Some people like that. I find it dropping the standards of the game to the least common denominator.

The challenge is only lessened if the DM will so. 1st and 2nd edition were were no more deadly than 3e (unless you were playing an EGG module). It has always been up to the DM. Sure, there was less healing in 1e and in 2e, but that only made DM's hold back on the encounters or sending lower level monsters against the players. IMO, 3e is far more deadly, as more classes and monsters have acquired an insane damage output. Past the beginner game, 3e is about winning initiative, this was not the case in 1e and 2e...

I can challenge a group just as much when they start at full health/spells, as when they start at 25%. It might require a bit more work on my part, and might take a round or two more, but it easily done. I don't see how 4e will change that.

Cheers,

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I really don't think so. IMO the designers have displayed some remarkable contempt for the intellect of gamers, but I don't share it. (Always speaking generally.) People like me, who ask for token verisimilitude, will recognize that the problem exists, whether you call it "hit points" or "healing" or not. The problem isn't what you call it ... the problem is that in a game that focuses to a tremendous degree on combat, the designers have apparently chosen to excise even a nod toward actual injury, in favor of a system that has only "fully 100 percent functional" and "dead." It really doesn't matter if you call hit points "stamina" and healing surges "recoveries" ... the basic problem remains: there's no injury in 4E.

I wouldn't call it contempt, since that sounds very negative. I think it is more a question of what elements they prioritized. And in this case, their "holy grail" was playability and the fun from playing the game.

Is this just you ruminating?

Yes, mostly. My view is that it's okay if hit points represent also some wounds (the new "bloodied" state implies this). But since we can work without any direct penalties to attacks, skills or similer effects, I have no trouble accepting that _all_ hit points return after 6 hours of rest. Whatever wounds remain, they have no lasting effects on your hit points. (Until you're seriously hurt again, then feel free to "fluff" the damage with an old wound opening up again). Basically there is no strong connection between hit points and wounds. If you're wounded, it's possibly you don't have your full hit points. If you're not wounded, you can still have lost some hit points. The only relation is that wounding only occurs if you also lose hit points.

So, if this is too hard to swallow to me, I wouldn't be content with just saying "it takes a few days to heal off your wounds". I would wounds to have a lasting effect, a penalty.

Or you could trust the DM to understand when his PCs are suffering from persistent effects -- which shouldn't be too hard, since ultimately the DM is responsible for doling them out -- and adapt his game to it, right?

There trust is going even further then that - when the DM wants to dole it out, he will be able to come up with the conditional effects of it, too. Negatively said, they decided that they wouldn't want to bother their designer brains with it. But I assume they actually bothered their designer brains with it, and figured out whatever they do, it just doesn't help the gameplay.

Out of curiosity, do you think there will be rules for (non-supernatural) disease? Do you think there should be

Considering how little diseases are used and how annoying they are in play, I wouldn't mind and also not be surprised if there were no rules for it. But the simulationist in me would still cry (luckily, he does so very silently and my inner-gamist is laughing out in joy so loud I barely hear him. )

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I wouldn't call it contempt, since that sounds very negative.

Okay, fair enough. It sure feels like contempt to me when they say things like, "Counting diagonals is so confusing for gamers it makes the game un-fun."

I think it is more a question of what elements they prioritized. And in this case, their "holy grail" was playability and the fun from playing the game.

"Ease in playing the game," right, rather than "fun from playing the game"? After all, they "prioritized" the possibility of me having fun right out of the game.

 

[KarinsDad]

Past the beginner game, 3e is about winning initiative, this was not the case in 1e and 2e...

No it's not. If that were so, every party would be TPKed because sooner or later, they will lose initiative. And eventually, people would stop playing the game.

Initiative is vastly overrated in 3E. Surviving 3E is about tactics and abilities, not initiative.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Okay, fair enough. It sure feels like contempt to me when they say things like, "Counting diagonals is so confusing for gamers it makes the game un-fun."

I am not a fan of the 1-1-1 diagonals, and I suspect that's the same for some of the WotC designers. But they probably used all approaches (2-2-2, 1-2-1, 1-1-1) and figured out that despite all their intellect, 1-1-1 was always the faster approach, and it didn't affect the gameplay fun negatively and due to the speed, made it better.

"Ease in playing the game," right, rather than "fun from playing the game"? After all, they "prioritized" the possibility of me having fun right out of the game.

When you're thinking about healing surges or "instant wound recovery" in 4E, you are not playing the game. It can be very annoying to think too hard about the game and try to make sense of everything. But you're - unless your designing game elements - not supposed to think about the game, but to play it. During play, the explanation for recovery rates will barely matter, but the rate itself matters a lot. And a fast rate of healing means that the story of the game can unfold at the speed the group wants to.

 

[Jack99]

No it's not. If that were so, every party would be TPKed because sooner or later, they will lose initiative. And eventually, people would stop playing the game.

Initiative is vastly overrated in 3E. Surviving 3E is about tactics and abilities, not initiative.

You don't play much above say level 10 I take it?

Of course you don't automatically die just because you lose initiative, the point was that initiative was much more important in 3e than in any previous edition, especially at higher levels. Doesn't change the fact that you were wrong about 3e being more weak-sauce than 1e and 2e, just because there are more options for healing up, during and in between encounters, and a point buy stat system /boggle.

 

[D.Shaffer]

I really don't think so. IMO the designers have displayed some remarkable contempt for the intellect of gamers, but I don't share it.

Considering many of those designers actually post to this board, is it wise to assume things that lead down into argument? If they're designing things that 'show contempt for the intellect of gamers', what does that state about the people who like the direction the game is going? You've essentially just called us a bunch of idiots.

To get back to the subject at hand...the healing doesnt bother me at all, but that's apparently because I look at it with a more narrative frame of mind. If they're fine after a full night's of rest, then no, obviously they didnt take any significant injury. It was all superficial scratches. Unless there's a particular reason for them to be laid up for several weeks, I dont see the reason to inflict them on a player just because someone thinks it'd be more 'realistic'. Especially since most of that down time would usually amount to the DM either fast forwarding to whatever time period brings them back up to full, or the players using up their healing wand charges. Could you, as a DM, get around these problems? Sure, but the same solutions to that in 3rd also apply to 4th.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I can challenge a group just as much when they start at full health/spells, as when they start at 25%. It might require a bit more work on my part, and might take a round or two more, but it easily done. I don't see how 4e will change that.

Yeah, I agree. 4e is certainly NOT easier than previous editions. I managed to TPK one party running it already and the encounter wasn't THAT hard. I've dropped or nearly dropped one party member to unconscious and dying every battle I've fought.

Even when no one dropped, they felt the pressure to win quickly before it happened. They noted carefully when they had to spend a healing surge and realized it would cost them in future combats that day.

I actually found that 1e/2e were the easiest editions. Monsters only came in 2 varieties: Deadly and Easy. Generally the creature had an abilities you were really worried about(beholders, dragons, medusae, etc) or it was just a matter of hitting them until they died.

3e could be REALLY hard. It changed difficulty based on the power gaming of the players mostly. If the players knew how to make good enough characters, the DM would have to powergame the monsters or everything would become easy. If the players made bad characters then average monsters would kill them. It gave you the tools to make a balanced encounter but required you do a lot of work to get that balance. Plus it fell apart if you had 2 players who made underpowered characters in a group of powergamers.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Double Post, Ignore.

 

[KarinsDad]

"Ease in playing the game," right, rather than "fun from playing the game"? After all, they "prioritized" the possibility of me having fun right out of the game.

I think this is the cruz of the issue.

3E is not SO overwhelmly complex that they had to simplify it to the nth degree. Course, they simplified some areas and then complicated others.

Fun is not just simplification. Fun is also often consistency, what people are used to, and what people expect in a game.


The problem I see with 4E is that in their attempt to simplify, the designers are allowing a lot of "unrealistic" or inconsistent events to happen in a game. Players who value consistency or a bit of realism are jarred by this.

Allowing a low level Fighter to swing at 15 kobolds as they rush by in 6 seconds is unrealistic. It's TOO cinematic for some people at low level. Moving 70 feet diagonally when the character can only move 50 feet is inconsistent with vertical or horizontal movement. Completely healing overnight is unrealistic. Even Second Wind is a bit nonsensical and a mechanic designed solely to eliminate certain game elements, regardless of the "rational" explanations that attempt to support it. It's a mechanic in the game system introduced solely to minimize certain in combat behaviors, not because it really makes sense.

Some players enjoy a level of verisimilitude where fantastical events require magic or extremely high levels of skill to accomplish.

The mundane way in which 4E is treating fantastical game elements (like racial abilities to teleport all over the place) jars some people's sense of verisimilitude.

The counter position of rationalizing it does not change this. Anyone can rationalize any rule. That does not make the rule necessarily good or enjoyable.

And, that's the bottom line. Fun. What is fun for one group might not be fun for another. I see a lot of 4E house rules being introduced into my campaign, just because the game is sliding further and further from DND and closer and closer to video games, all for the sake of expediency and simplification.