If you insist upon setting your desire for what is essentially nostalgia in direct opposition to my desire for a high quality game, then I'm glad you don't feel that D&D is D&D anymore. There have been a TON of video games, tradeable card games, and miniature wargames invented over the past few years. Some of them undoubtedly got something, somewhere, right. Declaring use of those mechanical innovations to be verboten because the fact that someone else got there first makes it "not D&D" is about the fastest way to stab a stake right through the heart of this game. If what you want is nostalgia, play the game for which you're nostalgic.
Blog post on the feel of D&D (marmell, reynolds et all)
- Thread starter FabioMilitoPagliara
- Start date
D'karr
Adventurer
Just to be clear, I've read through most of the thread and I noticed a disconnect between the short rules that everyone is using and the way that the short "coffee break" was explained and actually played at DDXP.
In COMBAT the only way for a character to heal himself is to use his Second Wind ability to expend a healing surge. The leader role characters have specific abilities that allow other characters to heal even if they have already expended their Second Wind.
Outside of combat a character can use as many healing surges as he has left to heal himself by taking a short rest. In addition, during a short rest encounter powers are also regained.
That last sentence, I think is what is tripping everyone, because the way it was played and explained at DDXP was that encounter powers are reset at the beginning of the encounter. So any break between combats restores the encounter powers and it was up to the DM to determine when an encounter ended and another started.
IOW, if you ran into encounter 1 in room A and did not take any damage. Then you decided to immediately kick in the door to room B, without resting. If room B contained encounter 2 and encounter 2 was considered a different encounter, you started encounter 2 with all your encounter powers restored. However, if you took damage during encounter 1 and did not take a short rest to use healing surges to regain those hit points, then you started encounter 2 with damage but your encounter powers, including second wind, were still restored.
The only time that you would not regain encounter powers between encounters was if the encounters started to mix with each other. That is, you're fighting in encounter 1 and during that encounter the monsters from encounter 2 join in. For all purposes that is still considered the same encounter and your encounter powers are not refreshed when the new combatants join the fray.
The question even came up of what happened if an encounter started while you were taking your short rest? The answer was the same. Encounter powers are reset, healing depends on what you were able to do before combat began.
So a lack of information from the short rules is probably causing this confusion. BTW, this was the same at both tables I played in.
I'm not saying that this is how the Real Rules will handle it, as I have not seen them. But I can only tell you what was explained to us at DDXP by two different DMs which were both playtesters so they had seen a lot more of the rules than just the quick start rules.
In COMBAT the only way for a character to heal himself is to use his Second Wind ability to expend a healing surge. The leader role characters have specific abilities that allow other characters to heal even if they have already expended their Second Wind.
Outside of combat a character can use as many healing surges as he has left to heal himself by taking a short rest. In addition, during a short rest encounter powers are also regained.
That last sentence, I think is what is tripping everyone, because the way it was played and explained at DDXP was that encounter powers are reset at the beginning of the encounter. So any break between combats restores the encounter powers and it was up to the DM to determine when an encounter ended and another started.
IOW, if you ran into encounter 1 in room A and did not take any damage. Then you decided to immediately kick in the door to room B, without resting. If room B contained encounter 2 and encounter 2 was considered a different encounter, you started encounter 2 with all your encounter powers restored. However, if you took damage during encounter 1 and did not take a short rest to use healing surges to regain those hit points, then you started encounter 2 with damage but your encounter powers, including second wind, were still restored.
The only time that you would not regain encounter powers between encounters was if the encounters started to mix with each other. That is, you're fighting in encounter 1 and during that encounter the monsters from encounter 2 join in. For all purposes that is still considered the same encounter and your encounter powers are not refreshed when the new combatants join the fray.
The question even came up of what happened if an encounter started while you were taking your short rest? The answer was the same. Encounter powers are reset, healing depends on what you were able to do before combat began.
So a lack of information from the short rules is probably causing this confusion. BTW, this was the same at both tables I played in.
I'm not saying that this is how the Real Rules will handle it, as I have not seen them. But I can only tell you what was explained to us at DDXP by two different DMs which were both playtesters so they had seen a lot more of the rules than just the quick start rules.
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