April 3rd, Rule of 3

[Guest 85555]

As far as "plenty of people" go, I'm not going to play that game. I don't try to speak for the masses anymore because I have absolutely no idea what "plenty of people" do in their games. It's disingenuous to pretend that you do. You prefer a 1 week healing time. That's groovy. As I say, it's a relatively easy thing to resolve. I don't prefer that. I prefer a faster healing time because I find down time to be a somewhat rare experience and IMO, forces groups to have someone fall on the cleric grenade to have a healbot in the group.

?

That is a fair point, but you appear happy to play at game in your posts after this one (you talk about "most groups" on th passage of time discussion).

On the second part, yes play how you want. I wont tell you you are wrong for liking faster eaing (that is one reason i dont some of the efforts ere to argue i am wrong for holding the opposite position). It isn't realistic enough for e, but i can see how another person finds it realistic enough or possibly more realistic. What i dont want is your style of healing as the default. I think baseline D&D healing should be the traditional approach. But they should certainly give scaling options for other preferences.

 

[Steely_Dan]

That's how I judge any restaurant I've never been to - I read the menu, and if all the food is listed as having gype in it I don't like e.g. garlic

Lan-"putting garlic on game books does nothing to improve the flavour"-efan

Wait, wait, wait...editions aside, you don't like garlic?

 

[Steely_Dan]

I totally, completely, and utterly disagree with a few days not making a difference in the grand scheme of things. Especially not if they add up over time. I think that alone might highlight just how different our playstyles in this respect are.

Exactly, 6 hours of sleep and I'm bouncing (no, please,m can also add some length to the campaign); makes me think of the scene in Conan the Barbarian.

I also do not want a 5th Ed character to go from a cook to a god in 10 months of game-time.

 

[pemerton]

I've called 4e various things but 'gonzo' has never been one of them; in that to me gonzo means a style of outside-the-box rules-be-damned let's-just-do-it-for-the-laughs gaming that rules-light systems can handle far better than rules-heavy. I've yet to hear anybody accuse 4e of being rules-light.

By "gonzo" I mean a fantasy setting that mixes Tolkien (humanoids) with Lovecraft (Far Realm) with the classics (mortals vs gods) with all the other accretions that D&D fantasy has taken on over the years. And with the PCs starting as reasonably normal people but ending up as demigod/superhero types.

Most versions of D&D have hints, at least, of this - especially in the setting - and I think 4e is the most thorough going about it, because it brings PC building and action resolution fully into line.

Rolemaster also has very strong hints of this, but its action resolution mechanics aren't quite up to the job, and it also doesn't do demigods quite as well.

Runequest, by way of contrast, is much less gonzo (in this sense), even despite some of its wacky chaos monsters (and its ducks). It has much more emphasis on realistic world building, and on gritty and long-term action resolution that goes with it.

4e Clerics don't get Regeneration or Heal? That makes no sense...

If Wizards can heal along with everything else they can do then no wonder people are saying they're overpowered.

Heal only restores hit points, so (in the context of my game, as described upthread) won't do the job.

There is no regeneration spell or ritual as far as I know. And because the cleric in my game is a hybrid ranger-cleric, he doesn't get automatic access to Ritual Casting (and hasn't taken it as a feat). Hence the MU's status as the best literal[/] healer. Given the lack of the capacity of the combat rules to deliver wounds short of death, this healing ability doesn't come into play all that often. But he has cured a lycanthrope of his curse, cured an acolyte of her Gibbering Mouther-induced madness, restored the sight (if I'm recalling correctly) to a blinded dwarf, and probably done one or two other heals that I'm forgetting.

Whereas the cleric restores the moral of his comrades in combat (Healing Word, plus a couple of encounter powers that restore hit points and/or permit surge expenditure). But doesn't regenerate limbs, restore sight to the blind, or lift curses.

If we then turn to the best Healing skill in the party, it is actually that of the dwarf fighter, who is the only PC trained in the skill, and has equal second-highest WIS (together with the paladin).

 

[pemerton]

I also do not want a 5th Ed character to go from a cook to a god in 10 months of game-time.

3E's natural healing rates, in combination with 3E's ease of access to magical healing, are not going to put much of a dent in this. I mean, adding an extra couple of months, or even doubling the time to 20 months, isn't really goint to change the overall absurdity of the time in question. (And 10 months lost to natural healings assumes one or two zero-to-full natural heals per level, an amount which I would be very surprised to learn has ever happened in a 3E campaign that also involved the PCs passing 6th level or so.)

EDIT: The real way to signficantly increase levelling time is to make the events in the game unfold more slowly. The trouble with this is, in a system that treats time as a signficant resource (which all editions of D&D prior to 4e do), it is likely to favour those classes - typically, in D&D, the magic-using ones - who can best make use of that time.

 

[SkidAce]

Obviously not for fatal damage - but given that fatal damage is identified only when certain extreme conditions are reached (three failed saves OR negative bloodied) the prelude has itself to be narrated in a fairly flexible way. Fatal damage, for PCs, is therefore not going to be disembowelling or severing of limbs - because that can't be narrated in the right way. It's going to be a bruise to the abdomen that (as it turns out) ruptured an internal organ, or a blow to the head that (as it turns out) was more than just glancing.

There are other corner cases too. In my last session, for example, a PC got shot by an assassin with poisoned bolts. The PC - a very tough dwarf - is heavily armoured. I was happy to narrate this as the bolts passing through chinks in the armour, delivering the poison, though not severing any tendons, ligaments or vessels.

There are odd cases for NPCs also. For example, in a couple of fights over the past year the PCs have fought NPC wizards with hundreds of hp (an elite and a solo). In these fights, even many "hits" are narrated as causing the wizard to have to parry a blow, or deflect a magical attack, with his/her staff. I certainly don't narrate it black knight style!, as if the NPC were still standing after taking blow after blow. (Contrast the fight against the dragon having hundred of hit points, where it did in fact withstand hard blow after hard blow. Contrast again the fight against the hobgoblin phalanx (a huge swarm), in which the effects of successful attacks were narrated as sending one or more of the hobgoblin soldiers flying.)

Of guidelines for narrating "damage" in this sort of system, the best I know (and the ones that have influenced me the most) are those in the original HeroWars book (HeroQuest revised uses a different mechanic for resolving extended contests, and so while on the whole a clearer set of guidelines, doesn't give advice for this particular issue).

I agree with this method, and we have been doing this since day one of 1st edition and Basic. Well said.

 

[Cadfan]

I just dont buy te other part of the argument where you incrementally try tp equate a week OR MORE to one day or a moment. A week is beoievable enough for me, but just barely. Also it depends on the damage, someimes you heal in less time.

I believe that you feel this way. But I suspect that you feel this way because you've been grown accustomed to 3e levels of natural healing, not because there's any qualitative difference.

In a weird way, 3e had a lot of rules that were very important to people even when the very people to whom they were important didn't actually use them. Like recovering fired arrows, counting them, and keeping track of quiver capacity. The fact that these rules were in the game made people feel like it was believable. But the fact that these rules were awful meant that people found workarounds, usually involving magic items or spells that eliminated the need to use the mundane rules. If you questioned them on this, they'd insist they used these rules... because back at level 2, they counted arrows for a bit, before learning the more advanced Rapid Fire feats and buying a bottomless magical quiver so they didn't keep exhausting their arrows three rounds into combat. But on a day to day basis, these rules were honored in their absence: they were the catalyst that justified the use of magic to avoid their actual text.

The problem I have is that this process, the process by which terrible rules that work counter to the overall goals of the game ruin your ability to actually play the game until you figure out the super secret workarounds that let you avoid actually using the badly written (but believable!) rules causes, for me, a game context that is itself not believable. I don't like stocking up on potions. I don't like stocking up on healing wands. I don't like identical magical quivers being standard issue for an entire character class. I don't like any of that.

Difficult non magical healing screws with my ability to run a low magic game because if I want to do very simple things that the game purports to handle (like run your typical published module that includes more than one meaningfully dangerous fight in a single week), I have to use tons of magic from ye olde magic shoppe, or else I need a character designed to fix the problem for me by use of magic. I don't want those things. I don't mind slow non magical healing, but I hate all the things that come with it. And I don't see any solutions forthcoming.

 

[Hussar]

Easy - it gives the plot a chance to move forward while the PCs lick their wounds.

If a party can wade through a particular adventure or dungeon all in one go without having to stop for any great period of time to rest, that dungeon is going to be pretty static except for immediate defensive moves by the occupants. This makes the DM's job easier but I'm not sure it's enough of a trade-off benefit. (4e's Keep on the Shadowfell pretty much expects this as written, that you'll plow through the whole dungeon with maybe only one (or two if you're unlucky) extended rests and get to Kalarel right away.)

But if a party is forced to take some significant (bold mine - H) time off and rest* the whole adventure can change on the fly. Reinforcements can arrive, or everyone can leave, or the enemy can proactively come after the party, or whatever - in any case, things become much less static; or at least the DM has the opportunity to make it so.

* - or train, or go back to town for supplies, or whatever.

Lan-"extended rest sounds good to me right now"-efan

That bolded word, right there, is the sticking point for me. What is "significant"? Three days? Seven days? One day? The example given was the movement of armies. An army generally moves 5-10 miles per day, 20 if they're REALLY in a hurry, and certainly not for any extended periods of time.

There's a reason wars can take 100 years.

Reinforcements suffer the same issue. Ok, sure, reinforcements arrive. Now, how did they know to come? Presumably, messengers had to travel out and make contact. We're limited to about a 15 mile/day movement for any ground unit not on a road. Sure, the first batch of reinforcements might come in a day or two. But after that? Where are they coming from? If the baddies have that deep of reinforcements that close, why in heck are they not wiping out the locals?

So on and so forth.

When the difference between 1 day healing and 1 week healing is so insignificant, I'm really not buying the whole "the campaign evolves". Mostly because 1 week of healing actually occurs so rarely.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The problem I have is that this process, the process by which terrible rules that work counter to the overall goals of the game ruin your ability to actually play the game until you figure out the super secret workarounds that let you avoid actually using the badly written (but believable!) rules causes, for me, a game context that is itself not believable. I don't like stocking up on potions. I don't like stocking up on healing wands. I don't like identical magical quivers being standard issue for an entire character class. I don't like any of that.

Difficult non magical healing screws with my ability to run a low magic game because if I want to do very simple things that the game purports to handle (like run your typical published module that includes more than one meaningfully dangerous fight in a single week), I have to use tons of magic from ye olde magic shoppe, or else I need a character designed to fix the problem for me by use of magic. I don't want those things. I don't mind slow non magical healing, but I hate all the things that come with it. And I don't see any solutions forthcoming.

I'll repeat myself from a thread several weeks ago to state that I think the way out of this is to adapt something like the Burning Wheel resource cycle to D&D. It wouldn't be an exact match, not only because of mechanics, but because of the things you include/exclude in the cycle. But basically, BW ties several otherwise unrelated things (practice times, spell research, extended travel, gaining of relativley permanent wealth, social and station expenses, etc.) to a single cycle. The group can agree to set the frequency of the cycle however they want, but to play within the rules, all of that stuff moves together.

Time should matter or it shouldn't or somewhere in between. To the degree it matters, it should actually matter. I agree with you that illusionism in mechanics is next to useless. You might as well have a flavor blurb in a sidebar, if that's all the mechanical support you need. Meanwhile, those of us who occasionally like some mechanical support for a slower pace of play are left with something that has to be rewritten. I'd rather start from nothing than lousy, as at least "nothing" is not embedded into the existing system.

 

[Hussar]

What i dont want is your style of healing as the default. I think baseline D&D healing should be the traditional approach. But they should certainly give scaling options for other preferences.

I'd prefer that there is no "default". If they do set a default, then you wind up with people claiming that the default is better than anything else, simply because it's the default. I'd much prefer that you have several options, and get to pick the one that applies to your taste.

Isn't that what modular means?