April 3rd, Rule of 3

[Lanefan]

Personally, I'd just throw a Condition at it.

Well, what are you waiting for? Roll to hit!

Lan-"what happens if you fumble with a thrown Condition?"-efan

 

[Guest 85555]

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.

?

i was talking about all pre 4 games in general. Even in 3e it depends on the character's total hp and level. A week was quite common but a fifth level barbarian with max hp will take longer than a week. AD&D could easily take longer as well (which is why we said up to 1-3 weeks).

And yes, my problem with 1 day or less is it is not long enough to satisfy any level of realism for me. A week or more at least gives me the feel of a more real natural healing. Taking a few moments to heal naturally is even worse IMO. i find moments to a day highly disruptive to disbelief (i went to bed hacked up but am fine in the morning). A week or more seems much more reasonable (even if it isn't 100% realistic--it at least rests in a mid zone that is far less disruptive to me). I really don't think this is a very difficult position to appreciate even if one doesn't accept it (just as i can appreciate pemertons point of view though i dont share his conclusion---and i dont need ask questions in order to deconstruct his stance).

I would like to point put, this discussion has happened so much i find it hard to believe anyone is genuinely mystified by this position (i am certainly not mystified by the 4e position).

 

[JamesonCourage]

I don't think I'm missing the point at all.

Okay. As always, play what you like

 

[Guest 85555]

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?

this is simply a matter of preference. Some people enjoy a style of play where the prime consideration is the flow of the game itself and inconvenient issues related to realism are removed or greatly reduced. Of this works for you, i am fine with that. For me there is a serious believability issue with natural healing being instantaneous or nearly so. But magic doesn't present such an issue because the nature of magic is to alter reality. So there is the first issue.

You raise an interesting point that heaing usually ends up falling on magic at a some point anyways. But for me that still ties in to the first point. I dont care if people are ultimately going to resort to magical heaing, what is important is that for instant to one day healing, magic be required because the disruption of disbelief for me is too great to handwave. So for me, the end result is actually not as important as how you get there (though that has serious implications for the end result). Even if most people resort to magical heaping that has built in limits as well and there will be times when your magical healers are killed or knocked ou and unable to heal the party. There will also be parties without magical healers in them ( i have seen this several times).

And this ties into other issues I have with the 4e system, like mundane dailies and encounter powers.

If you disagree that is fine. Play what you like. If someone else finds 4e more realistic than 3e or 2e or 1e, that is great. I can see how pemerton may feel that way given his interpretation of HP. For me that just isn't how I see the game and it isn't my experience of it. But it shouldn't be hard for us to understand where the other side is coming from at this stage. Both are coming from reasonable positions, and unless the intent is to keepnasking questions in order to win thw argument in socratic fashion, I don't really see the purpose of hairsplitting here (when my guess is most of us have already asked and answered these questions multiple times in the past).

 

[Hussar]

I would like to point put, this discussion has happened so much i find it hard to believe anyone is genuinely mystified by this position (i am certainly not mystified by the 4e position).

Ok, perhaps mystified is the wrong word.

I just find it such a bizarre point of view that I'm really having trouble wrapping my head around it. You have no problems with the 10th level character regaining 20 hp/day (with help from a healer) but, any faster than that breaks your SOD?

Let me turn the question around then. What does the game gain by slowing down healing? How is the game enhanced by forcing down time?

See, I look at the idea that HP are part of the resource management game and I get that. Ok, fine. But, as it's part of the resource management game, players will take steps to make sure that their resources are maximized. I've never, ever, seen D&D played without any sort of healer, let alone seen it multiple times.

How does that work? You get into a single fight and you're down for several days. Seems like the pacing would be glacially slow in that case. Unless, of course, you're playing a high RP game with very little combat. But, then, if you're using D&D for that, you are pretty close to freeforming with a veneer of D&D tropes laid over top. How can you play D&D without any healing at all?

So, again, what is gained by having slower healing? Sure, it appeals to a certain sense of verisimilitude, but, again, it's mind boggling to me that you have no problems with a character regaining a hundred hp in a week, but regaining it in a day blows your mind. Really? What difference could it possibly make? Neither is remotely realistic. What is it about reducing the time to one day that makes it so much harder to believe?

Additionally, and this, to me, is the most important question, how is the game made more interesting by slower healing times?

 

[pemerton]

I think your position is a bit binary then (things are realistic or not realistic).

That may well be so.

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.

I think we disagree on this - because in my view, in 4e, PCs who aren't dead suffer no serious injuries which might require extended natural healing. They generally suffer comparatively minor, REH-Conan style injuries from which they can push on after a bit of rest.

If you treat hp loss in 4e as serious physical damage then the game makes no sense, I agree. But given that, in 4e, you can take hp loss from seeing a scary wight (Horrific Visage deals psychic damage) I think the game already makes it clear that hp loss is, on the whole, not serious physical damage. (It can be different for NPCs and monsters. They generally have no access to healing, and when it comes to them I cheerfully narrate decapitations, disembowellings, whatever the situation seems to require.)

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.

From memory it's 1 hp per day plus CON mod per week, and full recovery in a month regardless. I can't remember how much benefit, if any, a comfy bed gives.

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.

AD&D took a bit longer than a week once you got above 1st or 2nd level, but I think in 3E only fighter types will take more than a week (because with their CON mods they're likely to average more than 7 hp per level; this might not be true once even non-fighter types start getting CON-boosting items, but at that point who is using natural healing?).

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?

I agree with the rhetorical force of these questions. That's why, upthread, I see the issue as one about taste and pacing, rather than about realism/verisimilitude.

 

[Guest 85555]

Hussar, i have already attempted to answer your question and given my point of view. You can either accept it or not. But like I said, you have already had all these questions answered multiple times when this quesiton has arisen on previous threads. It just appears to me that the socatic line of questioning is doesn't arise from any real lack of understanding but from an effort to "win" the argument. I could easily ask the same kinds of questions of you or pemerton....ask "why?" enough and every position breaks down under scrutiny. You are free to reject my point of view if you want. But I think it has been fully explained.

If you dont see a difference or distinction between one day and a week or more, then we just have different core assumptions here. Me i think the difference is clear. One day is completely realistic, a week or more is realistic enough for the game and longer than that is approaching gritty realism. There is no reason why I should be okay with one day just becuase I am okay with a week or more.

 

[Guest 85555]

That may well be so.

I think we disagree on this - because in my view, in 4e, PCs who aren't dead suffer no serious injuries which might require extended natural healing. They generally suffer comparatively minor, REH-Conan style injuries from which they can push on after a bit of rest.

If you treat hp loss in 4e as serious physical damage then the game makes no sense, I agree. But given that, in 4e, you can take hp loss from seeing a scary wight (Horrific Visage deals psychic damage) I think the game already makes it clear that hp loss is, on the whole, not serious physical damage. (It can be different for NPCs and monsters. They generally have no access to healing, and when it comes to them I cheerfully narrate decapitations, disembowellings, whatever the situation seems to require.)

I understand, but i find that definition of HP loss highly unsatisfactory. Like I said, we disagree on enough core assumptions that we aren't going to agree on conclusions. You see Hp loss as bruises and mojo, whereas I dont. That may well have been their intent with the edition, It just doesn't make much sense for my understanding of the game (and it forces me to break from how I have been playing it for twen years).

 

[Janaxstrus]

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 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.

You can argue I can't determine how good a system is before playing. I disagree. I'm perfectly capable of reading a book and making a decision on whether or not I will find it fun. If I wanted to play tactical minis, they used to have a game for that until 4e came out and killed it (DDM). I loved that game, because I played it for what it was, a tactical minis game that I was pretty good at.

I couldn't find a 4e game around here if I wanted, regardless. The local store got a DM and scheduled games, and 1 person showed up to play. 3.5 and PF is king here. I've seen it (4e) played a a local convention, and that was enough.

Intellectually dishonest? Can I critque a book if I'm not an author? Can I critque food if I only tasted, but didn't make it? Can a movie critic take shots an an actor if he's never appeared in a movie? I've read through the first core book, I've seen it played. It did nothing for me. That is enough for me.

The system CERTAINLY impacts the "fun factor". I don't enjoy going to bars anymore, if my friends are going, I bow out. Sure, I like my friends, but it's just not something I find fun in my old age. Same with going to certain movies. If I don't enjoy the activity or topic, just because my friends are there doesn't make it fun. If the only chance I had to see them was over a 4e game, it would be one thing. I'd force myself to go through it, but I have the option of doing other things with them that are fun. So, in my opinion, the system not only impacts, but is the primary determinant of whether or not I would play.

 

[Andor]

Additionally, and this, to me, is the most important question, how is the game made more interesting by slower healing times?

As I said before, fluff.

You're right. The slowness of non-magical healing almost never comes up (pre-4e) in play. And that's just fine, that's not the purpose of the rules. You are perfectly correct that a heavily wounded high-level character with no access to magical healing is a rarely seen corner case.

What it does do is inform the background. It tells me why the peasant militia with no built in healers and 1 1st level cleric back in town is reluctant to face off with the orcs. It tells me that swords hurt and hurt for days. It tells me that if I'm going to go somewhere where people will be trying to poke me with pointy objects I want to bring someone with healing mojo and not a cheerleader.