Blog: Resilient Heroes

[Herremann the Wise]

So you're saying you'd like the core D&DN rules to be built around something that was never core in any version of D&D.

Maybe D&D Next isn't the game for you.

Or maybe my version and modules and your version and modules would be different and D&D Next gets to be for both of us; I think that's the idea isn't it?

The concept was first broached in White Dwarf 6. by Roger Musson (as much as Gary didn't like it) and since then has seen sporadic attention with the 3e Arcana Unearthed you mention, a slightly more involved treatment in Pathfinder as well as a couple of other instances. Fantasy Craft was built around the concept and if you ever get to playing that, I think it fair enough to say from my own experience that it works and works well.

However, what I wrote above has several interesting things going for it in terms of it "being" D&D:
- It not only preserves the identity and definition of hit points used in D&D, it allows the full exploration of the concept so that things like warlord hit point replenishing actually makes sense.
- It is a variant that has been talked about by a large group of D&D players and has already been officially supported as you identify.
- The previous two editions 3e and 4e have already had two trackable resources representing "health": lethal damage/non-lethal damage and hit points/healing surges. [Actually 3e has several as it includes negative levels as well.]

And if you squint when you look at 4e by increasing a character's number of healing surges, limit their rate of replenishment and call them wound points you are almost all the way there in matching the ideas in my original post. And so perhaps it is NOT quite as far-fetched as you imply and at the very least, I would expect a "module" to work along these lines.

And by the way, please don't feel the need to inform me that maybe D&D Next isn't the game for me based upon a single post and idea. I'm sure I'm more than capable of working such things out for myself when they release the playtest and I get to try it out with my group.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[avin]

Am I the only thinking that a Healing Surge article pops up just when Monte Cook left?

Saying again: I bought 4E, I DMed 4E, I liked a lot of things in 4E... but healing surges crossed the line of my disbelief suspension for a mile.

IMO this is a pretty simple question: Wotc, do you want to attract former players back? Yes? Then forget about Healing Surges.

 

[Shadeydm]

I hope healing surges aren't a default assumption of DDN. I think if certain aspects of 4E are ported over to DDN as defaults like healing surges, martial dalies etc this will be viewed by many as a signal that DDN = 4.5E (or 4.75E if you view essentials as 4.5E). I'm not sure that is going to achieve the stated design goal of a unifying edition. Make surges a module of the game to be added in.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I would like the Heal skill (or whatever form it exists in) to do a lot more.
After each battle, you should be able to perform First Aid once on each character, restoring a good number of hit points. Magical healing should be on top of this, for use in or out of combat. Second Wind is an excellent mechanic, but don't make someone give up an attack for it and limit the usage per day.

 

[Mattachine]

I think self-healing is a must, and I love Second Wind.
I run a 4e game, and like the system, but I don't think "healing surges" are presented very well. I like how the work mechanically, but dislike the fluff around them.

I have also run a game using the Reserve Point system presented in the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana. I liked it, but the players often made mistakes shuffling numbers between the two columns--minor errors, omissions, and so forth. I liked how the Reserve Point system is presented, but didn't like how it behaved in game.


I want some type of self-healing to remain in game, and I definitely want to keep Second Wind as a way to heal x% of your own hit points. After that, I could support just about any other system.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Spells being usable on an arbitrary, use-per-time basis is a somewhat dated D&D-ism, but not that bad. Anything else being used that way, especially something nonmagical, is just bad game design.

Healing (in its RL meaning) is of course something that a person fundamentally does for themself, although sometimes with medical help. However, it is also something that takes a long time. Anything that entails a more involved, more naturalistic take on the subject in D&D is a step forward. Anything that involves a more game-y, absurdist take on the subject is a step backward.

I could see in some kind of system that differentiates injuries from non-injuries (like a vp/wp), that an optional second-wind type mechanic for the non-injury damage might be acceptable. Anything remotely close to healing surges is out.

More ideally, your non-lethal/vitality/whatever simply heals fast outside of combat, and clerics can heal that really fast but healing real injuries with magic is hard, especially during combat.

As others have said, the philosophy behind the healing surge idea is completely unacceptable to a large segment of the D&D fan base, and any evidence that this philosophy is still in the game is going to be counterproductive to unifying that base.

 

[Ahnehnois]

A lot of people posit this. Not many of them mention that it was included in 3.5's Unearthed Arcana. Did you ever try that variant? Was it popular?

Yes, I've been using it for years.

The rules are incomplete and require some interpretations, and I have also made changes. The changes mostly revolve around magical healing and trying to make it more difficult, and dying and trying to make that more difficult, and trying to make the math work on crits.

My observation is that vp/wp is much, much more tactically interesting and gives a much better sense of verisimilitude than hit points do. I would never go back. I don't think that wound damage itself is detailed enough, but it's a huge step in the right direction. I've piloted a true injury system for non-D&D d20 games-very abstract but again a step in the right direction. But implementing it in the current D&D skeleton would be a lot of work for me (and a lot of thinking for my players) that I am unlikely to do. Now, if 5e could make this process easier, then it would have my attention...

How popular is it? No way to know. It gets brought up on these forums a lot (more frequently than any of the other hp variants from UA or elsewhere in my observation). UA has been a very popular book in general, and emphasizes the philosophy of "play your way". It's also one of the few noncore books in the SRD. It seems to be relatively popular, but I have no way of assessing what gets played in everyone's home games.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

So you're saying you'd like the core D&DN rules to be built around something that was never core in any version of D&D.

"Built around" and "default" are not the same thing, in a well-defined modular system. For example, they could decide that there are two concepts that the full, modular system should be able to support:

• "Hit points" - a rather large running total, that works like traditional D&D hit points, and might be, depending on the options used, reflavored as "fatigue", "luck", or any number of such things. The main idea is that until you lose all of them, it doesn't change much in how you can act.
• "Wounds" - a much smaller thing, which might be "points" but could also be discrete wounds, which are somewhat less likely to happen, harder to "heal", and can be flavored as any major impediment that you think should affect your ability to act--perhaps "extreme exhaustion" for some groups.

That's what the system is built around. For example, there's language in the weapon and/or combat sections that explains how a longsword or a battleaxe might inflict wounds.

However, the default is that "Wounds" are turned completely off. Sure, if each weapon or weapon type does something specific (not unlike the BECMI weapon mastery tables), then that information is still there. But if you are using wounds, then it doesn't apply--anymore than those weapon mastery tables applied if you weren't using weapon mastery.

"In but turned off by default" is the best core state for any widely popular (in raw numbers) but still minority taste.

As a happy accident of such design, people who want to do different things with hit points or wounds now have a more robust place to anchor their alternatives. Maybe your "wounds" system is "DM narrates some wound that you attach to your character until you achieve the means to get rid of it, which has an effect as detailed by the ad hoc judgment of the DM at the time." Perhaps, you are ignoring most of the specified system, but using the broad outlines of it as a rough guide for when wounds might happen.

I usually don't care for "wounds" systems, and would rarely use one in any D&D I run. That doesn't mean the system can't accommodate it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Hey something I can nickpick about:

3e allowed the healing of up to 4hp/day per level. So a wizard most likely is fully healed after 1 and a half day of rest.

I really believe 5e can have such genreous healing rates if you do take some rests now and then... The heal skill should play its role too. In 4e, you don´t have to work for having real rests. You regain HP whenever you like... and making things too easy is not good for immersion...
In 4e fighters have access to the heal skill... but there are not a lot of useful things you can do with it...

 

[hanez]

I think healing surges are tied with the power system for being the worst thing in D&D. Yep, worse then thaco.

Monte, come back!!!