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A gamist defense of limited in-combat healing
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5902961" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Are you basing your analysis on play experience, or theory?</p><p></p><p>The pacing of combat that RangeWicket describes in the OP is exactly the one I've seen again and again in 4e combats. I have quite a strong dislike of traditional D&D "victory by attrition", and one of the reasons I stopped GMing Rolemaster in favour of GMing 4e was precisely because it had robust mechanics to make combat something other than attrition. And incombat healing, as described in the OP, is one of them.</p><p></p><p>There is no doubt that players, through clever analysis of the ingame situaion, can work out how to optimise their healing. Just as, through clever analysis, they can work out how to optimise their attacks. This is part of the attraction of playing a mechanically crunchy, rules-based tactical game. But it doesn't make the game unexciting. For these players (and, frankly, if you're not one of these players, why are you wasting your time on 4e?), <em>it is a source of excitement</em>.</p><p></p><p>Just like it's exciting to see impossibly many enemies, and work out that if the mage just telports the fighter here, and the fighter then attacks and marks this many foes, and the paladin goes and holds this other bottleneck, then it might just work out provided that the PC sorcerer taking up position on the roof isn't spotted by any scouts that the bad guys might have . . .</p><p></p><p>It's a dimension of tactical gameplay, and a source of excitement, that 4e reliably delivers. I would go so far as to say that it is the most striking feature of 4e combat - it's only competitor in that respect is the importance of movement and position.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes to both of these. 4e has integrated incombat healing into its action economy, its movement and positioning rules, etc. I don't know if I would call the integration "elegant" (there are a lot of moving parts, and sometimes they're not imperceptibly smooth in their movement), but I think it pretty reliably produces a good gaming experience.</p><p></p><p>In the context of a game - which is iteslf an artefact - this distinction is artificial (or, if you prefer, manufactured).</p><p></p><p>The question is - is it more exciting to know that, unless you roll 96+ op your attack roll (and therefore go open-ended), your PC will die? Or to know that, unless the player of the cleric PC can come up with some clever plan to keep your PC alive, s/he will die? I've played both games. Both can be exciting. I think 4e is more reliably exciting, because it produces the need for the hard tactical choices more often.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5902961, member: 42582"] Are you basing your analysis on play experience, or theory? The pacing of combat that RangeWicket describes in the OP is exactly the one I've seen again and again in 4e combats. I have quite a strong dislike of traditional D&D "victory by attrition", and one of the reasons I stopped GMing Rolemaster in favour of GMing 4e was precisely because it had robust mechanics to make combat something other than attrition. And incombat healing, as described in the OP, is one of them. There is no doubt that players, through clever analysis of the ingame situaion, can work out how to optimise their healing. Just as, through clever analysis, they can work out how to optimise their attacks. This is part of the attraction of playing a mechanically crunchy, rules-based tactical game. But it doesn't make the game unexciting. For these players (and, frankly, if you're not one of these players, why are you wasting your time on 4e?), [I]it is a source of excitement[/I]. Just like it's exciting to see impossibly many enemies, and work out that if the mage just telports the fighter here, and the fighter then attacks and marks this many foes, and the paladin goes and holds this other bottleneck, then it might just work out provided that the PC sorcerer taking up position on the roof isn't spotted by any scouts that the bad guys might have . . . It's a dimension of tactical gameplay, and a source of excitement, that 4e reliably delivers. I would go so far as to say that it is the most striking feature of 4e combat - it's only competitor in that respect is the importance of movement and position. Yes to both of these. 4e has integrated incombat healing into its action economy, its movement and positioning rules, etc. I don't know if I would call the integration "elegant" (there are a lot of moving parts, and sometimes they're not imperceptibly smooth in their movement), but I think it pretty reliably produces a good gaming experience. In the context of a game - which is iteslf an artefact - this distinction is artificial (or, if you prefer, manufactured). The question is - is it more exciting to know that, unless you roll 96+ op your attack roll (and therefore go open-ended), your PC will die? Or to know that, unless the player of the cleric PC can come up with some clever plan to keep your PC alive, s/he will die? I've played both games. Both can be exciting. I think 4e is more reliably exciting, because it produces the need for the hard tactical choices more often. [/QUOTE]
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A gamist defense of limited in-combat healing
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