Can you get too much healing?

[CapnZapp]

I got thinking... It seems the game is worse off when the characters have access to "too much" healing.

Do you agree and if so, what can be done, short of making the players roll up new characters?

What I mean by "too much" healing is if everyone in the party takes a multiclass feat into a healing character. If this is a group of five, where one character already is a healer, you'd have five daily Healing Words plus two encounter Healing Words. Add to this a character in Dwarven Armor and perhaps two characters with powers like Comeback Strike, which adds three more daily healing surges.

And suddenly we're looking at a party with no less than 10 powers that return hit points, without including the less effective Second Wind and Healing Potions.

This makes it all but impossible for me to challenge the group in any given encounter, as healing will flow so freely (meaning that out of these 10 heals, 9 can be done in addition to making an attack. Only one works like Second Wind in that you'd have to give up your standard action to use it).

It also makes the group really sensitive to the 15-minute adventuring day syndrome. The difference between having most of those heals and not having them is huge in terms of being able to focus on damage output and not having to worry about running out of hp and the risk of death.

Basically, it makes the game revolve entirely around healing surges. Either they have them or they don't.

If they do: they're almost invulnerable to anything less than a level+4 encounter. Either I persist in throwing "appropriate" encounters at them, which are trivial in every way and really can be reduced to "how many surges do I need to use up?". Or I give them an exciting fight - but their capacity for healing means that this fight will both be the first and last for that day.

If they don't: they'll focus entirely on avoiding combat at all costs. I can't say I blame them. It's not fun to force combat upon characters that want nothing else than just to bed down (at ten in the morning) because they're acutely aware of their lack of healing.

It makes the players resent being forced to continue adventuring when they're out of healing surges and/or powers; and it makes me feel like a villain for forcing them.

Continuing without them is painful when they know they're so much more safe with them. They see absolutely no reason to ever volunteer to go on, if there is a choice at all.

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The problem isn't just that the game allows an all-Leader party. It's also the multiclassing feats. Getting a daily Healing Word to my players seem like a much better idea than some minuscule boost elsewhere.

It's almost like it's a feat tax, for them. They'll agree to all take the feat so nobody can just free-ride.

One daily Healing Word would be nice, but five of them...?

It seems the game is designed with the assumption there should be fewer good healing powers than PCs (per encounter), so Second Winds and Healing Potions actually get used, which adds tension to a combat because they don't let you eat the cake and having it too.

And so the DM doesn't have to always use very hard encounters for the players to even blink.

(Sorry, we don't have time to string out three or four initial boring-but-resource-depleting small fights before arriving atthe real meat of the scenario).

 

[keterys]

Eh, I think they're vastly overrating the use of a daily healing word, and you should make the adventuring day a reasonable length regardless. If you make it one combat then you're making the feat more valuable such that they feel obligated to take it.

If they know they're going to pretty much see four combats that day, regardless of what feats they have, the others will start looking better. Or, sure, they can have 3 healing words per combat (2 + 4 words / 4 combat)

If your games are setup so there is only one combat per day, then switch to using Jonathan Tweet's extended rest houserule: you only get the benefits of an extended rest (surges, dailies, etc) after you've passed at least two milestones.

Which lets him have, say, four combats over two weeks of game time without every fight being a nova fest.

 

[physicscarp]

If your games are setup so there is only one combat per day, then switch to using Jonathan Tweet's extended rest houserule: you only get the benefits of an extended rest (surges, dailies, etc) after you've passed at least two milestones.

I really like that houserule. I've been worried about how 4E would handle urban campaigns, where I'll often only have one fight for a given day. This is a really nice solution that works within the context of the rules.

Do you know where Jonathon Tweet described this houserule?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hmmmm, yeah, basically the players are sacrificing the long term durability of the party in order to be able to hit point nova. The reality is of course that the party is actually WEAKER overall than they would be if they used some of those feats to acquire ways to do more damage, etc. but by doing an extended rest after practically every encounter they are avoiding paying the price. It is the same problem, in essence, that any DM has with any party, if given a choice the players will always extended rest since it doesn't take any more table time to do that than a short rest.

The answer IS of course making sure they somehow pay for taking an extended rest. It is only a matter of how you do that, preferably without it appearing to be overly heavy handed. The direct way is just to make some really hard encounters that challenge the party despite all the healing they have, but the problem with that of course is the plain logic to them will be "Oh, encounters are so difficult we MUST rest all the time.", which will probably be true in that case...

Anything you do has to be something you can pull off again and again too, since they will surely revert back to the same strategy if it is a one-time thing. I guess the real question you have to ask yourself is "is there something the party is giving up any way to access by doing this?" That is the thing you want to make them miss. They need to be wondering if maybe they used that feat slot for something else or reserved more of their surges that life would be easier for them. Or they need to be wondering if they were able to extended rest less often if there would be some compensatory reward for having a tougher time beating each individual encounter.

One general approach would be to find some reason why they REALLY want to get milestones. That is the one thing they're missing out on. Unfortunately milestones give an ephemeral reward that may not actually be of any certain value to a party. At best a milestone is generally only as good as an extended rest. The ONLY rule that makes a milestone really valuable is the death penalty rule.

So... I don't, so far, see a real route out of this maze that seems satisfactory. Maybe "make the encounters harder" really is the only decent strategy overall. It WON'T stop the party from using this strategy of theirs, but it will challenge them. I mean it has been this mantra of 4e DMs that there is this holy grail of abolishing the 15 minute adventuring day, but so what? Is it really that much of a problem? Once in a while DO put them in a time-press type situation, or a gauntlet situation where they just cannot rest, and the rest of the time just give them a real big tough challenging fight that they can barely win despite their resilience.

Of course you can explain the whole dilemma to the players. Maybe they'll voluntarily modify their strategy, but that does seem supremely meta-gamey.

In essence what you have is a 4e design failure in action. The 4e designers forgot a cardinal mantra of RPG design, if you create a potentially abusable resource and try to limit the abuse by some kind of rationing, players WILL find a way to make an end run around the limits. In this case it seems in 4e that is all too easy!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, I think they're vastly overrating the use of a daily healing word, and you should make the adventuring day a reasonable length regardless. If you make it one combat then you're making the feat more valuable such that they feel obligated to take it.

If they know they're going to pretty much see four combats that day, regardless of what feats they have, the others will start looking better. Or, sure, they can have 3 healing words per combat (2 + 4 words / 4 combat)

If your games are setup so there is only one combat per day, then switch to using Jonathan Tweet's extended rest houserule: you only get the benefits of an extended rest (surges, dailies, etc) after you've passed at least two milestones.

Which lets him have, say, four combats over two weeks of game time without every fight being a nova fest.

Except how many combats a party has per day is ALWAYS going to be largely in the hands of the party. A DM surely can FORCE a 3-4 encounter day on players. Doing so constantly is a form of railroading. Once or twice and it is just an interesting and challenging twist, done in every single encounter sequence it quickly wears thin.

The problem I have with the extended rest houserule is twofold. First it is a totally meta-gamey houserule. There is not the faintest way to fluff it as anything else, so it simply feels hokey to the players. And secondly there are a lot of situations where a party simply cannot DO it. What happens when the party happens to face a brutally nasty encounter first thing in the day, or just plain gets unlucky and the first encounter drains them badly? Sorry guys, my anti extended rest houserule means you have to try to limp on and keep fighting because you can't get any benefit from an extended rest right now? I know my players would be challenging that as soon as it came up.

 

[Jack99]

Do you know where Jonathon Tweet described this houserule?

I do not know for sure, but 10-1 that it is in his blog.

Edit: I was right

 

[msherman]

One general approach would be to find some reason why they REALLY want to get milestones. That is the one thing they're missing out on. Unfortunately milestones give an ephemeral reward that may not actually be of any certain value to a party. At best a milestone is generally only as good as an extended rest. The ONLY rule that makes a milestone really valuable is the death penalty rule.

I've been using a houserule that allows multiple action points in a fight (but still one per round). So if you save up your action points for a few milestones, you can really go nova in that last fight of the day. It's definitely encouraged longer adventuring days in my game. In my last session, I actually had a day end with no healing surges left in the entire party (though they were under story-line pressure to push through the day, so that maybe doesn't count).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've been using a houserule that allows multiple action points in a fight (but still one per round). So if you save up your action points for a few milestones, you can really go nova in that last fight of the day. It's definitely encouraged longer adventuring days in my game. In my last session, I actually had a day end with no healing surges left in the entire party (though they were under story-line pressure to push through the day, so that maybe doesn't count).

Right. Now that I think is a perfectly acceptable rule, assuming it accomplishes the goal. It works for you, and it might work for me, and it might work for the Capn too, dunno. It might create some high epic tier silliness problems but probably isn't going to cause dire breakage at most levels of play. In any case you can always throw in something AP worthy in an earlier fight if you need to cut down the character's stock a bit.

 

[DragoonLance]

Give them a good reason to then, since milestones aren't exciting enough. Last night I had the party hunting for a missing family of nobles and trying to rescue them before some undead baddie could use them as components in an evil ritual. They had one day left by the time they actually located the crypt, so the sense of urgency was there, especially since the family were good friends of the lord the party was working for.

All you really need to do is give them a good reason to accomplish X before Y happens. Make sure the first fight or two are rather tame, then pull out all the stops at the end. I had two leaders in the party last night, and even still there were enough high damage hits from the enemy to nearly kill the defender.

Personally if my group was going to try abusing the multiclass rule the way yours seems to be IMO, I woudn't have any problems with a meta solution, since unless every one of them can justify it in their background (and the powergamers say "what's a backstory?") it's pretty obvious they are trying to metagame.

 

[Paul Strack]

The problem I have with the extended rest houserule is twofold. First it is a totally meta-gamey houserule. There is not the faintest way to fluff it as anything else, so it simply feels hokey to the players.

My variant on Tweet's house rule is that you only recover healing surge between adventures. This removes almost all incentives to take extra rests. The "fluff" is that healing surge loss represents serious damage that takes many days or even weeks to recover. I run mostly urban adventures where having more than one fight per day is unusual, and 2-3 fights for an entire adventure is typical. This rule works very well for my group.

And secondly there are a lot of situations where a party simply cannot DO it. What happens when the party happens to face a brutally nasty encounter first thing in the day, or just plain gets unlucky and the first encounter drains them badly? Sorry guys, my anti extended rest houserule means you have to try to limp on and keep fighting because you can't get any benefit from an extended rest right now? I know my players would be challenging that as soon as it came up.

If my party screws up and gets seriously hurt, their options are to give up and let the bad guys win or to carry on and put their lives at risk. They can't wave a wand and reset the adventure to cover their mistakes.