D&D General 4e Healing was the best D&D healing

[ZeshinX]

Detested Healing Surges, though not it's basic concept...at least the basic concept I interpreted in that it was a way to depict a heroic resurgence in general stamina, endurance and, to quote the John Wick films, sheer bleeping will (much like one sees in most action movies where the protagonist takes a beating but digs deep down and manages to get back on their feet and keep going....sometimes done well, others not so much).

Healing Surges kinda/sorta rob that moment of taking a beating by immediately having a battery of healing to draw on. Some enjoy that, which is cool, others don't, which is also cool. Myself I fall into the latter, since I find healing surges remove a sense of mortality/danger in the moment more than they offer that heroic pool of willpower...and have a tendency to create a 'one-person army' mentality (only in part, 4e still promotes a party/team dynamic in lots of other ways).

I find 5e fits nicely with how I view the abstract of HP. It still offers a way to draw on that heroic resolve in the spending of HD during short rests, but leaves intact the possibility of getting whalloped, so mortality is ever-present. It's not perfect of course, since sometimes it's pretty durn nice to have the "cinematic" option DURING a fight to find that heroic spirit (which the Fighter's Second Wind does in a flavourful way), but it fit's my take on it.

It was one way to remove the view of and reliance on the Cleric being the group's first aid kit, I just found it to be a significant over-correction. Plus I'm a bit more old school in how I view healing overall....plenty of healing options are good, but mortality should always be sitting on your shoulder. I also find no quick and easy way to heal promotes creative strategies by players during combat or other dangerous situations.

Just the way I view things and how I like it. Not wrong, not right...just my (and my groups') preference.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm curious as to why, would you like to elaborate?

Obviously this comes from personal preference rather than any type of claim I'm trying to make objectively about 4e. My favorite edition is 1e, so that's where I'm coming from. My preference is towards a lower healing style of play. So frequent healing just doesn't fit my preferences. I'm also a fan of niche protection, so having every class do healing is another thing that doesn't fit my preference.

For the record, this isn't just a 4e thing. The biggest issue I have with 5e RAW is healing back to max after a long rest, followed by frequent hit dice healing options.

 

[Undrave]

Obviously this comes from personal preference rather than any type of claim I'm trying to make objectively about 4e. My favorite edition is 1e, so that's where I'm coming from. My preference is towards a lower healing style of play. So frequent healing just doesn't fit my preferences. I'm also a fan of niche protection, so having every class do healing is another thing that doesn't fit my preference.

For the record, this isn't just a 4e thing. The biggest issue I have with 5e RAW is healing back to max after a long rest, followed by frequent hit dice healing options.

I can see why you don't like it.

As for niche protection, only the Leader class had easy access to efficient Healing (though Defenders often had Self-Healing options). Everybody DID have a Second Wind, but unless you were a dwarf it took a standard action.

 

[jmartkdr2]

snip (much like one sees in most action movies where the protagonist takes a beating but digs deep down and manages to get back on their feet and keep going....sometimes done well, others not so much). snip

I'm not trying to change you mind overall, but I find this odd - those scenes where the hero digs don't take an hour or (in older editions) 8 hours - they take a moment where the protagonist thinks about why s/he's doing this and gets a serious look on their face before getting back up. That's what the Healing Surge action is supposed to be.

 

[Fanaelialae]

As the thread title say. I think the concept of the Healing Surges and how healing worked was way better than what we have had before and since.

HP was turned from a single daily block into an encounter based ressources, with Healing Surge replacing the daily resource aspect. You could, theoretically have a very low HP character for whom all fights are dangerous, but they can do more of those fights in a day simply by having more Healing Surges.

Furthermore, healing spells and healing potions scaled much better (we didn't need multiple Potion of Healing types) and did not result in 'free HP' (I know spells have slot costs, but potions basically let you turn gold into free HP out of nowhere!) since you always tapped into Healing Surges. A 5e Healing Word heals a much greater % of a Wizard's HP than a Barbarian, even on the same dice roll and I think it's wasteful. It also led to interesting mechanics that allowed to share Healing Surges from one party member to the other.

Healing Surges were also used to denote the effect of environmental hazards as well as cost for certain rituals.

All in all, I think the current Hit Dice system and healing style is pretty subpar and its scaling is just more fiddly than Healing Surges.

Agree or disagree?

I don't think that 5e healing is subpar. I think it's an improvement over most editions, and they managed to address a lot of legacy issues while retaining much of the traditional feel.

However, I do agree that 4e healing was a much better design. I really liked healing surges. I would have preferred 5e retaining 4e healing wholesale, but I don't think that was ever going to happen.

 

[ZeshinX]

I'm not trying to change you mind overall, but I find this odd - those scenes where the hero digs don't take an hour or (in older editions) 8 hours - they take a moment where the protagonist thinks about why s/he's doing this and gets a serious look on their face before getting back up. That's what the Healing Surge action is supposed to be.

Yep, which is why I note later saying the 5e approach isn't perfect for pretty much that very reason.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I just want a healing system with sufficient intricacy that I can master it with my Asperger-based powers of geekiness, but that will remain incomprehensibly opaque to all these damned kids calling themselves gamers today.

Is that too much to ask?

 

[the Jester]

I'll go a step further: 4e was the best tabletop experience of D&D.
Balanced; creative; so many departures from the problematic parts of gameplay ("linear fighters, quadratic wizards"); interesting mechanics; essential teamwork and party builds; clear, concise, predictable rules; minions; solo monsters that worked; magic items that scaled appropriately.
But it failed because it wasn't the game that best captured what D&D had been traditionally.

You're overlooking one thing, and I say this as a lover of much of how 4e played- combat was slooooow. You were lucky to get more than 3 encounters in per session, and there were basically never any trivial encounters. Compared to 5e, where I sometimes have had 12+ encounters per session, 4e really dragged.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Let's say you have 100 HP (and no access to quick healing) and you get into a combat with an enemy that does 10 dmg a turn to you and you can knock them out in three turns... You're okay for at least two-three fights without worrying about healing. But if instead your maximum HP is 30, but you can grab from a pool of 70 HP after each encounter, each one becomes much more dangerous and you have to consider what you're doing.

I don't think the current system works that well for that. Hit Dice don't feel like a real resource that interplays with the rest of the system, it's just there as an inferior alternative in case you don't have a Caster to heal you. I'm just not a fan of this reliance on magical healing that then promotes caster superiority.

You could easily turn healing surges into a resource that takes much longer to recover and thus be an 'adventure' resource.

So, if I understand you, PCs had fewer max HP, but a pool to draw on to replenish you back to the (lower than 5E?) maximum hp? That seems to me what your example is implying.

 

[the Jester]

I understand why you do it, but it hurts front line fighter/barbarian types much more than other PCs. I'd want to tie something in to the PC's total HP; a fighter that is hit with a crit for 20 points of damage is taking significantly less damage overall than a wizard hit for the same 20 points.

This is a key element of my "colorful critical hit" system- kind of. I tie critical severity to the damage dealt by the crit vs. current hit points- otherwise, high level characters never suffer from grievous wounds.