April 3rd, Rule of 3

[YRUSirius]

To this end, I would like to see a massive reduction on healing surges. Perhaps only say, 4 of them, for anyone, healing for say, 10% of your health.

One of the (more reasonable) d&d next playtest leaks has something like that. 4 short rests that allow healing; 2 'minor' short rests that heal like 1 hp per level and 2 'major' short rests that heal 25% of the total hitpoint. Personally I'd like to see it simplified even more (4-5 short rests per day that heal 25% of total hps or 1 hitdice per level for something feeling more old school), but this mechanic would practically emulate a simplified healing surge mechanic without calling it so. Pretty sure that we'll see that "work day" rest mechanic in the first official draft. Correct, playtesters?

-YRUSirius

 

[Andor]

Mechanics that actually model the effects of wounds are described by the words "Death Spiral."

This is because each wound make you less and less effective until you spiral down to defeat like a hair clog circling a drain. Some people like this, many don't.

D&D has never been a death spiral system. You are fine or nearly dead, or dead. There is no attempt by the system to capture the granularity of physical impairment.

And that's fine because people and wounds are highly unpredictable. A bullet wound from the same gun to the same location to to similarly sized people can cause one to drop dead of shock and the other to get mad. It might do either to the same guy on different days. No system can accurately capture all the variable short of a molecule by molecule sim, and no one wants to roll that many dice.

D&D assumes cinematic wounding. It doesn't matter how hospitalized John McClane should be, he keeps fighting without impairment because it's an action film. All D&D characters are that tough. Similarly even though he has had the crap kicked out of him for three movies John still does not have PTSD or arthritis or dementia pugilistica. Likewise your hero gets over being skewered without long-term impairment. Why not? It's fantasy.

That does not mean wounds are morale, or luck, or any other such crap. If they were how would you even know you needed healing? "Better patch me up Durkon I'm feeling unlucky." "Really? 'cause V only has half a torso left." "Nope, I need healing more."

Rider effects like poison or disease call for saving throws. Why on god's green earth do I need to save against typhus because someone missed me with a dirty blade?

The argument presented against magical healing being better than morale based healing seems to be as follows:

"It's absurd that steve could have survived falling off a 300' cliff and being knocked to -1 hp. Since he did, he must not actually have been hurt at all because he hit that mysterious pile of pillows. Therefore he is only lying there unconcious due to malingering and it's makes just as much sense for him to be revived by a shouted pep-talk as for his life to be saved by the same holy power that can raise the dead or open a gate to hell."

And by extension all damage must be purely morale. Even if it was caused by 30 thrown daggers each of which also inflicted poison.

Oddly the same people demanding that wounds must be morale damage because actually getting cut by Orcs with axes would be unrealistic seem to be the same people who thinks it's perfectly reasonably for a Fighter to shove a 10 ton dragon around, or regenerate, or leap 60 feet once, but only once, because that's what his powers do.

Every game system has different granularity, and different areas of focus. The details of wounds, impairment and healing have never been D&Ds focus. That doesn't mean they don't happen, it means it wasn't a focus. Like watching an old movie if they kiss and fade to grey they just had sex, just because it wasn't shown didn't mean it didn't happen.

In 4e, at 1/2 hp you are bloodied. Clearly, at this stage you are hurt. But there is no default rider to this effect is there? No -2 to hit from pain, no reduced initiative because you are moving slowly now. It is no more realistic than earlier editions.

"Mundane healing is just as good as magical healing" is a solution in search of a problem.

The problem is that no one wants to be stuck playing a heal-bot. There are a thousand ways to solve that problem, non of which require that getting stabbed with a sword not actually draw blood, as if D&D were a disney movie.

 

[Guest 85555]

No one recovers from the sorts of wounds you're talking about in one week. (No

I have suffered comparatively minor physical injuries - sprains, torn soft tissue, very minor breaks. They do not recover in one to two weeks. No one recovers from being (literally) skewered by a medieval weapon in one to two weeks.

The healing times in 3E don't add to any verismilitude or make room for physical injury. The difference between getting my mojo back overnight, and taking a week, is nothing more than a matter of taste. (And desired pacing.)

so the solution is to be even less realistic and hand wave mundane healing? I dont need 100% realism or a healing and damage simulator but I do want a modicum of believability and for HP to represent actual physical damage. If that isnt what your after by all mean play 4e, but I find its approach doesn't work for me.

 

[Sunseeker]

One of the (more reasonable) d&d next playtest leaks has something like that. 4 short rests that allow healing; 2 'minor' short rests that heal like 1 hp per level and 2 'major' short rests that heal 25% of the total hitpoint. Personally I'd like to see it simplified even more (4-5 short rests per day that heal 25% of total hps or 1 hitdice per level for something feeling more old school), but this mechanic would practically emulate a simplified healing surge mechanic without calling it so. Pretty sure that we'll see that "work day" rest mechanic in the first official draft. Correct, playtesters?

-YRUSirius

I don't really care for using "short rests" to heal, and that's part of the problem. It makes the game feel stuttered to squeeze in too many "breaks" in order to "buff up".

 

[Gadget]

Hit points have always been, nothing more or less than, ablative script immunity. However you choose to rationalise that, as wounds, fatigue, moral, skill or luck is up to you. But to say any significant portion of it was physical wounds has never made sense. You've always been able to run a marathon, swim a raging river or wrestle a bear at your full capacity when at 1 hp. Heaven help you if you take any more 'damage' than that, but the fact remains you're at full capacity until than. The fact that the game uses terms like 'damage', 'hit', 'healing' to be more evocative and simplify terminology notwithstanding.

I've always thought a grittier add on module somewhat like 4e's disease track would be useful to model wounds for those who want such things; say once you dropped below 0 h.p. & where brought back through non-divine means you would have a 'would' with some debilitating effects. But this is kind of beside whole issue of hit points.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I never liked healing surges, it always felt as being too much of an awkward rule and abstraction about describing the limits a body can take from constant stress and recovery.

But I'm fine with Second Wind and various mundane healing. Second Wind could just be heal 1d4 per every 2 levels damage, and healing from a "warlord" could just be allies get fast healing 3+ for 3 rounds, though that might be harder to track than just 2d4 or whatever right away.

Though for magic, I'm quite used to clerics having "channel energy" in Pathfinder as it gets far more use than turning undead ever did.

D&D is also one of those systems where herbal poultices and first aid for some reason have never healed hp. And I think it's about time that it starts in some edition. In a previous thread most seem to be in support of a heal skill recovering HP out of combat.

 

[pemerton]

I dont need 100% realism or a healing and damage simulator but I do want a modicum of believability and for HP to represent actual physical damage.

The question is - what sort of physical damage are you talking about? Bruises, cuts and scrapes? Or being punctured through the lung by a lance?

so the solution is to be even less realistic and hand wave mundane healing?

It's not an issue of more or less realism. No edition of D&D (not even first-ed AD&D, although it has the strictest rules for recovery from negative hp, and for natural healing) requires mundane healing to take anything like a realistic amount of time, nor impose anything like a reaslistic amount of impairment, if that natural healing meant natural recovery from massive physical injury like being impaled through the lung by a spear.

It therefore follows that no edition of D&D has had mechanics that result in PCs suffering such injuries in combat (some magic swords being an exception).

It therefore follows that natural healing has always been recovering one's stamina/mojo, plus recovering from bruises, minor blood loss, grazes, and rather modest cuts and scrapes.

How long should that sort of recovery take? In my view that's mere taste and adventure pacing. (4e says "overnight". BW says mulitple hours, up to a day. 3E says a week or so. Rolemaster generally says a day or two. In BW and RM good CON reduces the time. In 3E it increases it - because you'll have more hp/level with a good CON. In 4e CON is irrelevant.)

A modular set of rules (as D&Dnext apparently aspires to be) will set a dial and explain what are some of the factors that one might have regard to in setting it.

There was a damage treshold for massive damage in 3.x.

In 2nd ed AD&D also, I believe.

A lance that does 20 damage does not impale the 10th level fighter. The 1st level one is dead. If you have some massive damage rule that says: a lance from a charging knight against a charging knight reduces the massive damage treshold to 20 will usually never occur. But those people wanting "realism" in their game are happy.
You could also rule that both knights are coup de cracing each other.

But what does a "massive damage episode" or "coup de grace" represent in the fiction?

If the PC dies, it is clear enough - the PC was skewered, decapitated, throttled, whatever.

But if the PC survives, then it must be the case that the blow missed, or grazed, or merely stunned, or something of that sort. That is, the in-game intepreration of the hp damage can't be settled without knowing the result of the saving throw against massive damage, or without knowing how many hp the PC has left after the damage is applied.

It will still be the case that no PC who is not dead has ever been skewered by a lance.

I believe there is a middle ground, that leaves both grogna4rds happy/unhappy.

Whereas I am more doubtful about this, because at least some of the "grognards" in this thread want it to be the case that both (i) some hit point loss represents massive wounding and yet (ii) that same hit point loss neither kills nor impairs. Which is to say, they want a game that has all the lack of verisimilitude that drove many RPGers in the 80s to games like RQ, RM, HERO, etc that don't have any such issue.

D&D assumes cinematic wounding. It doesn't matter how hospitalized John McClane should be, he keeps fighting without impairment because it's an action film. All D&D characters are that tough.

It's a while since I've seen Diehard, but I don't think JMcC gets impaled through the lung with a steel rod.

I have recently reread a number of Conan stories. Conan gets in many fights, but he is never run through. He suffers cuts, abrasions, bruises etc. Not impales or severings or disembowellings.

That does not mean wounds are morale, or luck, or any other such crap.

I don't think anyone in this thread is saying that "wounds are morale". That doesn't even really make sense.

Some people (including me) are saying that a lot of hit point recovery is morale - that is, drawing on one's mojo so as to push one despite the bruises, cuts, minor blood loss etc.

TL;DR: There are two ways of explaining the absence of a death spiral. One is that when PC's lose hit points, they are not taking severe wounds until they die - until then, they are pushing on despite superficial/modest injuries.

The other is that they are being run through, disembowelled, maimed and the like, yet nevertheless suffer no impairment in their performance, and are able to recover from these wounds in a few weeks at most.

Being a fan of verisimilitude in my RPGs, I go for the first approach when I play D&D. And when I want a game with real wounds, I play one. The idea that a person might be disembowelled and yet fight on without impairment, and then walk back home and recover in a week of bedrest, strikes me as too silly for words. And I can't believe that this sort of bizarrely comic theory of hit point loss as being put forward under the banner of "more realistic".

 

[Lanefan]

"Mundane healing is just as good as magical healing" is a solution in search of a problem.

The problem is that no one wants to be stuck playing a heal-bot.

I don't mind playing the party healer now and then...I can usually find other ways to help out both in and out of combat; and I know darn well the rest of the party are going to try to keep me alive because I can patch them up. Win-win, really.

Here's a thought exercise for all:

1. Think about the party/parties you are currently DMing and-or playing in.
2. Ask yourself who is the most valuable character in each party. (equating to MVP on a sports team; whose absence would have the greatest negative impact on the party)
3. Ask yourself why.

Chances are your MVC will be the Cleric* far more often than random chance would dictate. And I don't see this as a bad thing.

* - yes, even in editions whose numbers do not start with 3.

Example: in the three parties I'm involved in right now, the MVCs would probably be:

A Thief (I DM this group)
A Druid (I play in this one, Druids are excellent healers in our system)
Either of two Clerics (I DM this group; the non-Clerics all seem to think 'Wisdom' is a 4-letter word)

Were it put to player vote the outcome would probably be different in all cases above, as I'm only looking at raw value-to-party and usefulness while ignoring entertainment value, amusement, etc. - the players would likely vote an Illusionist, a Fighter, and a Thief respectively.

Lanefan

 

[Argyle King]

While I don't disagree with Lanefan's general premise, I would say I'd choose having a warlord over a cleric in 4E in just about every situation. (personal preference)


Even in 4E, leader is (imo) the toughest role to go without.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think nonmagical / martial healing is fine, in general. Poultices, medicines, painkillers, herbs, binding, whatever. All of these work and would be fine for a "nonmagical" source of healing.

Part of what I think narms me about the surges is how it is very other-dependent. I have this bucket of resources sitting off to the side that I can't access unless someone else lets me do it. I'd much rather have control over my own resources. The pacing hits me in the wrong spot, too, how quickly tension evaporates and how much the psychology goes from "Oh no!" to "Oh well."

Fixing any of this doesn't mean that healing can't be nonmagical. Second winds are fine from this perspective, as are uses of the Heal skill. And the surge value is a nice mechanic, even if I am not a fan of when and how you apply that to your HP.