A bit tired of people knocking videogames...

[Dannager]

IMHO, and IME, full healing between all encounters was not common to any prior edition. An argument that relies upon the idea that it is fails for me on that basis.

That's a shame. I've played in a number of 2e and 3e/3.5 games, and we always made a habit of healing up to or as near to full health as we could without wasting resources, just like you typically do in 4e. In my experience it is madness to wander around a dungeon with significantly less than full health.

My understanding is that, in 3e, WbL guidelines are not rules, so, in this case, binding them more tightly to the ruleset does not help the DM follow the rules better. It takes something that was once a guideline, and turns it into a rule.

Wealth by Level guidelines are not rules. Neither is the parcel system. In fact, Essentials provided an entirely new set of guidelines by which a DM can distribute wealth/magic items to players. Calling these things "rules" places them into the same category as things like "When you reach negative bloodied, you die."

 

[Dannager]

A lot like the way people use the word, "videogamey."

Exactly. People do not mean the same thing when they use the word "videogamey". In fact, they mean so many wildly different things (and wildly inaccurate things, to boot) that the term itself has gone from meaning to meaningless to confusing and distracting.

Y'know, if you're going to make an argument, you need to spell this out in the first place, rather than making people draw it out of you, because then we can discuss if your premises make sense or not.

That should actually sound familiar to you.

This is an adorable attempt to make me look guilty of the very thing I criticize others of. Thunderfoot knew exactly what he was getting into. He just had a terrible argument.

And your premises are wrong; wands and spells of cure x wounds provide a variable amount of healing per the rules through 3.x, so it's not guaranteed that a character can "heal to full between combats."

Yes, it is. The minimum healing a wand of cure light wounds provides per charge is 2. A fully charged wand, therefore, contains at least 100 hit points worth of healing and, on average, 275 hit points worth of healing. As long as you keep enough wands on hand, of course you'll be able to heal up to full between combats. You can't seriously be telling me that the fact that you have to roll to determine how many hit points you get out of your nigh-unlimited font of hit points is what makes wands/spells special.

By the way, since you're so high on this random element thing, healing between encounters involves rolling for hit points, too, as intelligent parties will make use of their leader's encounter healing abilities in order to boost the efficiency of their healing. So, even if rolling for hit points mattered (it doesn't), all the games involve rolling for hit points.

My character spent most of our game-day adventure with a crossbow and one hit point because we were low on magic.

Gosh, sounds like fun.

I'm one of those referees who didn't make wands of clw available, either, so I can understand where Thunderfoot's coming from. Potions and scrolls, yes, but wands felt wrong to me.Except, of course, that's not necessarily true, not for clerics, druids, staves, and bards and not even for healing surges, which are also a finite resource that can be expended before an adventurer is done for the day.

All of these are finite resources that can be expended before an adventurer is done for the day: wands, potions, cleric spell slots, druid spell slots, bard spell slots, paladin spell slots, staffs, healing surges.

You don't have an argument here. You really don't.

 

[Dannager]

Nah. I am not arguing that there is no group Y who is confused; I am arguing that Dannager is dead wrong when he presupposes that, because he is in group Y, that there is not also some group X who is not confused by what they are saying.

It's entirely possible that there are a couple people who know exactly what the other means when the word "videogamey" is tossed about. It's also an inarguable fact that there are plenty of people who have no idea what you're talking about, and that you'd be much better served by not obfuscating your opinions behind made-up words that a large chunk of your audience doesn't understand because they can't read your mind.

What is so tough about grasping this?

[cue counter-argument that ends in "What is so tough about grasping this?"]

 

[Dannager]

This is the entire reason why your argument is kind of BS. You're so set on proving everyone wrong rather than looking in and considering the fact that maybe you are not entirely right. You think that because you don't understand the term, then the rest of us are morons for using the term. If you think it is a stupid term, that's fine. But just because you think it is stupid doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense to people.

Oryan, we know that a fair number of the people who think it makes sense to them are actually thinking of something entirely different. Using a word to describe something that has wildly different meanings depending on who you're talking to is an awful way to communicate. It is an easily fixable problem, and happily the fix also involves getting straight to the point. It's a win-win, and it's ridiculous to argue that continuing to cloud the discussion for a number of people with words that have no accepted meaning (even among people who do think it has an accepted meaning) is somehow the moral high ground.

 

[ggroy]

Logic is something akin to caviar, it is an acquired taste and most people must be trained to use it, which is what intellectual elitists fail to understand and forget.

It's not just intellectual elitists who think this way. I use to think this way when I was younger.

When I was a teenager, I use to naively think that most people (adults) think logically. It took me many years to accept the fact that most people think more emotionally than logically.

What really changed my mind on this, is that over the years I've met many individuals who do very logical stuff for their day job. These particular individuals conducted their own personal off-the-job lives in a very illogical and emotional manner.

 

[Diamond Cross]

I take it you are not aware that Operation Repo is completely 100% fake? It's a scripted show man. It got it's start on a Mexican station in southern California before it got on network tv.

I'd like to see some real evidence of this "fakery" other than claims. For example, I'd like to see the actual scripting of the show.

It's far too easy to make claims of something being fake so I take a very objective approach to those claims.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Originally Posted by Raven Crowking
IMHO, and IME, full healing between all encounters was not common to any prior edition. An argument that relies upon the idea that it is fails for me on that basis.

That's a shame. I've played in a number of 2e and 3e/3.5 games, and we always made a habit of healing up to or as near to full health as we could without wasting resources, just like you typically do in 4e. In my experience it is madness to wander around a dungeon with significantly less than full health.

Wait, what?

You're touting full healing between all encounters as ideal gameplay, insofar as to say it's "a shame" for that to not be commonplace?


Part of the drama of a dungeoncrawl is running low, and out, of resources. It's part of the challenge, and "easy" fights become much harder when tough choices about resource management must be made.

Healing up to full with minimal resource loss between every encounter seems kinda videogamey. By that I mean, it seems like a total reset to max, rather than (poor as they are) hit points being low forcing differences in game play (e.g. do we take on that kobold troupe? We could waste them normally.) It's the sort of thing that you don't read or see in good stories or good drama...The hero was beaten down, but then everything reset, then he was beaten down again, and everything reset. You may see the hero find something extra when he really needs it, but heros generally do get worn down.

 

[Fifth Element]

Everything doesn't reset, of course. Healing surges are part of a character's health in 4E, not just hit points.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That's a shame. I've played in a number of 2e and 3e/3.5 games, and we always made a habit of healing up to or as near to full health as we could without wasting resources, just like you typically do in 4e. In my experience it is madness to wander around a dungeon with significantly less than full health.

It isn't a shame; it is a preference.

Of course, I know that you love the Delve format, too, so there's no accounting for taste.

Calling these things "rules" places them into the same category as things like "When you reach negative bloodied, you die."

So you misspoke.

It's entirely possible that there are a couple people who know exactly what the other means when the word "videogamey" is tossed about.

It's entirely possible that this is the vast majority.

It's also an inarguable fact that there are plenty of people who have no idea what you're talking about

Not proven. And I doubt it is a fact, much less an "inarguable" one.

If I am offended that you think "videogamey" is a made-up nonsense word, there is no way that you can express that thought without my being offended. It is my belief that, in this case, and in many other similar cases of similar EN World threads, it is the thought expressed that is actually deemed offensive. This was, IMHO, true for Pokemount. It was true for my objection to the term "fluff". It is true for videogamey.

I am also not convinced at all that "I don't understand" is the case, or is the case anymoreso than any other term used in gaming parlance. I am convinced that some people, who are offended by the idea the term encapsulates, would like us to believe that "I don't understand" is the case so that we will stop talking about that idea.

But, then, I haven't yet read anything that explains why it should be deemed so (more than any other term, as LostSoul points out) that isn't either too Jabberwocky, or that doesn't rely on some rather Carrollian logic.



RC

 

[Dannager]

Wait, what?

You're touting full healing between all encounters as ideal gameplay, insofar as to say it's "a shame" for that to not be commonplace?

Part of the drama of a dungeoncrawl is running low, and out, of resources. It's part of the challenge, and "easy" fights become much harder when tough choices about resource management must be made.

Those tough choices still get made. In fact, they are made much more often in 4e than in previous editions, because you can't simply pack "pocket Clerics" in 4e. In previous editions, running out of hit points over the course of an adventuring day wasn't really a concern; Clerics had a bajillion potential hit points worth of healing past early levels, and wands/potions can easily cover for them in the event they do run out. In 4e, once you're out of healing surges, you're out. Your body and mind have taken all the punishment they can withstand, and pushing on past that limit will be extremely costly.