April 3rd, Rule of 3

[JamesonCourage]

I'm not having any trouble identifying the relevant quotes. I'm having trouble identifying the relevant criterion of "realistic".

If by "realistic" we mean "a certain sort of handwaved action-heroic flavour" - in which deep cuts never impair performance, and heal over a week or so - then that's fine. But if that's what "realism" means, then I find it more irritiating to put up with the repeated comments that 4e is unrealistic, because in 4e lesser injuries can be pushed through on the battlefield, and cease to be a burden on the PC after an overnight rest.

There are different aesthetic preferences in play here, undoubtedly. But I'm not seeing the difference of realism.

Then I'd posit that you're missing his point, and I doubt further clarification will easily remedy it.

I didn't make an argument. I made an observation.

I do think the observation is relevant, however, because I think the number of innovations in D&Dnext, as far as gritty healing is concerned, are likely to be few. Its mechanical innovations, in my view, are likely to be aimed at enabling it to support (to some extent, at least) multiple existing D&D options, rather than supporting new ones.

That's probably (and hopefully) true for the majority of its innovations. If they can offer a tactical combat module, however, I'd hope they can offer a "gritty" module, as well. As always, play what you like

 

[BryonD]

There are different aesthetic preferences in play here, undoubtedly. But I'm not seeing the difference of realism.

I'll just throw in for my own personal preference surges remove the requirement of cause and effect for removal of damage. That isn't to say they remove the possibility.

And overnight rest simply doesn't pass a reasonable smell test for recovery time capable of mending any wound that might possibly be received. Characters in fiction forced to go recover do so REALLY crazy fast. But even in movies and TV the standard of several days is one of those understood tropes that is agreed upon. A sort of unspoken author / audience contract for what is acceptable. (And I won't dispute that you can dig up some corner case exception, but the two days in hospital, threes days bedrest, whatever cliche is ubiquitous.)

Surges make wounds vanish in a split second. "Pushing through" is bogus because the wound is gone. In both 3E and 4E (and earlier editions as well) a character with 1 HP can push through just as well. A 4E character with 1 HP can push through. He can surge or he can not surge and it makes no difference to his ability to do anything. It just makes the wound go away. And the wound remains forever gone once a surge is applied.

As a contrast, if surges provided temporary HP that went away in 2 minutes, I'd be cool with that. They would add in the ability to take another blow or two and keep going, as surges provide, but they wouldn't undermine the cause and effect of eventually needing to HEAL the damage that has happened.

 

[Sunseeker]

Not one of the dozen or so people that play in my various groups have bothered playing. We read the books and previews and that was enought.

Color me unsurprised. To be fair, I will from this point on have a hard time taking any critique of 4e from you seriously. Playing a game is vastly different than reading the books or looking at previews.

I would personally turn down a game if it was a system I don't like. I can almost always find a game, or run one. As such, playing a system I don't find fun isn't worth it. Heck, we've turned down systems we like, because the campaign wasn't fun. Why would I play a system I don't find fun to begin with?

I see my friends in other capacities, no need to flounder through a RIFTS game (as an example) just to hang out.

I can argue that you can't find a system fun until you play it. Besides, my other point was that systems rarely determine the "fun factor" of a game. Can influence, sure, but don't determine. That sort of thing is usually done by the DM and the players. In any case, you haven't actually played 4e, I recommend you do if for no other reason than to get an actual feel for the system. I don't think it's intellectually honest to critique a system(beyond some basic conceptual elements) you've never actually participated in.

 

[Sunseeker]

*holds up hand* I've never, ever played 4e. Not due to being unwilling to give it a go I might add. I simply don't know anyone playing it. I'm at Embry-Riddle right now, an engineering university, long a bastion of the hardcore geek set. And at the school I know of at least 2 3.X games, several of the various 40k universe games and a Battlelords game for crying out loud, but no one that I'm aware of is playing 4e and I am a member of the gamers guild there.

I don't presume to count people who don't have access. As I said, the choice of what you get to play is not always in your hands. Sometimes your buddy has the books for X game, and your friends want to play that game, so you just go along and play it.

The problem with healing in 4e is the FLUFF. 4e incorporates the somewhat odd notion that all 'power sources' need equal access to and effectiveness in all roles. And therefore we have the Warlord who can yell you back on your feet after you somehow survive swimming a river of lava with -2 hp.

If that healing was fluffed as magic spells, divine grace, healing herbs, alchemical potions or the tears of unicorns then no one would have a problem with it.

However we are all pretty certain that a pep-talk does not outweigh 3rd degree burns. And if you swam a river of lava and got reduced from 145 to -2 hp it was not luck, it was not morale, you got roasted alive and are a hideous husk of burnt flesh clinging to life by sheer determination.

Yes, in reality healing from that would take months in the intensive care unit, and your odds would not be good. But a month of bed rest is less offensive to that violation of veracity than a quick atta-boy and a good nights sleep.

And magical healing? Why wouldn't it work? It's magic after all.

I think your example is a little excessive, though to be honest I've never actually seen anyone play a Warlord at any of my 4e games...though we did have a guy fall in lava....he died.

I agree that the majority of healing should be magic, even if it's a more hippy "magic" of "if I put these plants and muds on your wound you'll get better!" because the magic is actually in the goop and they just know how to use it. In any case, when I think of magic healing and serious wounds/injuries/conditions, I'm reminded of way back when in the MTG books where they were trying to save Hanna from the Phyrexian plague. Even the magic they had which could literally alter reality(and that was how it healed you), was reliant on you having the willpower to want to survive. So the chance for failure to magical healing should exist in some fashion, though I'm not sure on specifics.

Magic shouldn't be perfect, that's the basic idea that leads to magic-over-mundane superiority and makes games much less fun.

 

[Andor]

Magic shouldn't be perfect, that's the basic idea that leads to magic-over-mundane superiority and makes games much less fun.

Mmmm.. I suppose it depends on what you mean by perfection. I agree magic should not always be the best tool for the job. For example if the thief has grabbed the gadget of whosniz and is running for the door the wizard can dig into his spell pouch, extract a bit of spiderweb, check the alignment of the sunlight streaming in through the windows and pronounce the words of binding that will freeze the thief in his tracks, or the fighter can punch hin in the face and knock him down. Guess which one is quicker?

There shoud be things magic cannot do. In D&D arcane magic usually does not heal. In many fictional depictions of magic it cannot effect iron, or create or defeat true love, or alter a bargin struck with a devil.

There should be times when magic can accomplish the task but it's not the fastest, or easiest, or simplest way to do things. Like a knock spell vs using the key, or using a sending ritual vs hiring a messenger boy.

And there should be times when magic is the best way, or even only way to do things.

 

[pemerton]

I don't want full blown realism

<snip>

For me two to three weeks to recover from a heavy wound is realistic enough

because the realism issue only arises if you envision hp as significant physical damage. Once you describe hp loss as things like getting cut by a sword, the 4e approach runs up egregiously against soft expectations of realism. It is striking that characters heal that fast. A week or more to heal it may be a bit hand waved but is real enough that it doesn't create a believability issue for me.

From my point of view, I don't see the difference between "less than full blown realism" or "soft expectations of realism", on the one hand, and "not very realistic" on the other.

That's probably why I was one of those who left AD&D for more gritty systems, and who came back to D&D for a system that fully implemented the "mojo" model of hit points, which is the only version that is verisimilitudinous enough for my taste.

Then I'd posit that you're missing his point

I don't think I'm missing the point at all. I'm taking the opportunity to contest the received opinion that 4e is unrealistic compared to 3E, by explaining why, from my point of view, the reverse is the case: 4e posits heroic pushing through of superficial wounds, bruises and scrapes, whereas 3E appears to posit superheroic recovery from deep wounds (and perhaps ruptured lungs) in a week or two.

 

[Guest 85555]

From my point of view, I don't see the difference between "less than full blown realism" or "soft expectations of realism", on the one hand, and "not very realistic" on the other.
.

I think your position is a bit binary then (things are realistic or not realistic). I think there is a spectrum. Soft expectations of realism is paying some lip service to healing time (one to three weeks to heal massive Hp loss for example). It isn't perfect but it gets at the idea that big wounds take time to heal. Thats is completely evaded in 4e. Natural healing can occur in the course of a day (even in mere moments). There is no lengthy natural heal time. This I would characterize as very unrealistic. You can pick apart the three week heal time and find cases here or there where it may make less sense than inreality, but as I have said it is realistic enough to supply the feel of natural healing. If you disagree,then you disagree. No really a big deal for people to have different opinions on these things.

 

[Hussar]

Hang on, two or three weeks of natural healing? So, we're not talking about d20 anymore either? Because 3e certainly doesn't take that long to fully heal. You get 1hp/level/day without any help at all. It's pretty unlikely that any character will ever need more than a week to fully recover his HP.

Even AD&D, unless you went into negative hp, didn't require more than about a week to recover your HP.

Now, once you've allowed natural healing to already be pretty softly realistic, how is it such a bad thing to make it more soft? Or, to put it another way, why does 1 week satisfy you but 1 day doesn't?

I'm trying to drill down to the core of what you want. You don't want gritty realism. Ok, fine, neither do I. So, what do you gain by slowing HP recovery?

See, to me, all that happens if you slow down natural healing is that you simply emphasize magical healing. I can't think of a single time I saw a character fully heal through natural means. It certainly never happened twice in any campaign I ever played in. What did happen was that you got your X hp at the beginning of the day, which saved the cleric from hitting you with that extra Cure Light Wounds spell.

What am I missing? Why is it better to make magical healing the only realistic way that groups will heal damage in game?

 

[Kynn]

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.

Out of combat, you do have full control over your own surges. You can spend as many as you want during a short rest without requiring any healer whatsoever.

It's only in-combat healing that you're restricted to Second Wind as your own self-heal.

 

[Lanefan]

In my view neither is remotely feasible - no one heals from a broken limb, a torn tendon or ligament, a ruptured lung, etc - in either a day or a week.

Which is why I say that no hp loss from which a PC recovers, or can recover, naturally (in any edition of D&D) amounts to a wound like that.

And this (in any edition of D&D) is a bug, not a feature.

Magical curing gets around the recovery time - given enough spells, wounds close, tendons heal, etc. Going from memory, I think in 1e you naturally rest back something like 1 h.p. a week, slightly more if you're in a comfy bed in town.

The answer, which works fine in other systems but for some reason never makes it into D&D, is some sort of vitality (fatigue)/wound (body) point system for hit points. Fatigue points are the nicks, scratches, fatigue, luck etc. that are relatively easy to patch up via various means. Body points are real physical damage, harder to cure and very hard to rest back naturally.

Well I'm not such a person. 4e has dramatically different pacing rules for both incombat and out-of-combat healing.

Very true, and this is one of the things that wrecks it for me as a system I would want to play. From all I can tell I suspect I am not alone in this view.

Lan-"the game needs some natural h.p. recovery, but not that much"-efan