Can you get too much healing?

[LittleFuzzy]

Zapp, I do take issue with your constant refrain that players will surely always choose to stop if doing so is possible. That's just not true. Plenty of gamist players like to see how long and hard they can push, and many narrativist players will not choose to stop because the characters would not choose to stop, because the characters know they're engaging in potentially life-threatening tasks and have accepted that risk to do whatever it is they're trying to do. By your statements your group plainly doesn't act that way, but others do. There is a problem with the way your group works with the game system, not with the game system alone. And you may well consider 4E is not the best suited system. No edition of D&D has been particularly gritty, in my experience, and that sounds like the sort of play you and your group prefer.

If you do want to stay with 4E, you'll want to tailor it to the type of game you want. You reacted favorably to the idea of reducing total surges and making them reset on short rests. Another effective method is just to reduce the number of triggers they have available. You don't HAVE to let them have something just because it's in one of the books, you're trying to create a specific type of experience and so you're going to want to limit their options in some ways (and possibly create new options, new items, feats, and powers) to better fit what you're trying to do.

 

[Skallgrim]

Basically, I haven't seen anything that makes me think I am unjust when I conclude the surge mechanic in 4E relies heavily on self-deception. Things simply don't get as exciting as they should when you see through the math, realizing that any peril is mostly illusory.

This is the part that burns me. While you are very polite, what you seem to be saying is that either everyone who disagrees with you on this is either:

much less intelligent than you are (and can't see through the illusion)

or

is deceiving themselves and actively lying to you, and others about it.

While you may be very polite about it, telling the rest of us that we are stupid or liars is not actually polite.

While you may dislike the game (and be completely reasonable about it), some of us (who I don't think are stupid or lying) see excitement AND peril in a system which gives you a finite amount of resources (healing surges and daily spells) and an unpredictable number of encounters to use them in.

I understand that you want to see a game where the PCs are in danger of losing in each fight, and I understand that you feel that this is exciting and dramatic. I have run GURPS myself quite a lot, and that is one of the things I really like about GURPS. Barring massively uneven fights, every fight has the potential to kill characters. It may be very unlikely, but a goblin can make a critical hit to a vital area, or nail you in the eye with an arrow, and you GO DOWN. It does make for a very fun game, though in a different way than 4e does.

On the other hand, I CANNOT see any self-deception in the gamers who like a series of encounters. Now, if they KNOW that their DM will always, invariably, give them an automatic "out" if they run out of surges, and it will have no negative consequences, then OK, they are deceiving themselves. But MANY DMs run a game where you have an objective to accomplish, and a series of encounters through which you have to accomplish it (by no small coincidence, since the game design overtly tells you that). We, and our groups, understand that part of the drama is in each individual fight, and part of it is in "husbanding" our resources, and fighting intelligently in each fight, to preserve those resources for future encounters.

Saying this is not dramatic, except through self deception, is like saying that WWII was not dramatic, because the Allies could have won any given battle if they had used every single soldier, tank, and bomb in that battle.

I am not begrudging you your desire for a different type of game experience, but I DO strongly think that you are being unjust (at the least) in insisting the surge mechanic relies on self-deception. It may, for some groups, especially if they adopt a playstyle which emphasizes that each encounter should drain all of the party resources. However, to claim that it does for all players and DMs is, again, to call us fools or liars.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

I guess the major flaw I see in CapnZapp's argument is that it's only running out of surges that can endanger or kill a player. In the game I play, we've come very close to losing players on a couple occasions, but it was never because of low surges. The lowest we've ever gone was with me, the Fighter, when I was down to 2 surges (out of 12!) and we had just finished a series of 4 encounters that were pretty tough and left everyone else a little drained as well.

The main issue in terms of danger of dying is a lack of triggers. Or rather, a lack of usable triggers. If you have a party member on the other side of the enemy line, it doesn't matter how many healing potions you have or how good your heal skill is, because you can't get to him.

Now, in CapnZapp's group I understand that everyone MC'd Cleric in order to get more healing triggers, but those are severely limited. They're DAILY powers, which means that if you're forced to fall back on them that's your only use for the day. So with longer adventuring days one of two things will happen.

1) PC's will save their Daily triggers for "emergencies" only, the same way they do their other Daily powers. I'm not going to burn Villain's Menace on a level-1 Brute, so why I would burn a Daily heal to help out someone who's not even bloodied? I'm going to save it for when the Cleric is out of heals and the guy has two strikes on his death saves.

2) There won't be enough "emergencies" to justify the feat cost, and PC's will train out of it. I think this is the most likely scenario, since there's ALWAYS something more interesting to me than MCing Cleric or Warlord. I'd just rather have stuff like Toughness, Enlarged Dragon Breath, Grit, Dragonborn Frenzy, etc...

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I must admit that I have many of the same observations as CpnZapp, though perhaps I don't think it is as big of a problem as he does.

I run a campaign with a group of 5 players - a cleric, a warlord, a palladin, a TWF ranger and a wizard. We've played from level 1 and they will be hitting level 4 next session.

At level 1 we had a couple of characters go down (TWF against some wolves, wizard versus some goblin archers), but they were easily put back up via the leaders' healing triggers. Since then, due to higher hit points and better team work, not a single player has gone down. Indeed, I'm finding I need to run n+4 encounters to even go through the leaders' healing triggers - which is fine, but does mean certain characters (namely the ranger and the wizard) blow through all their surges in just a few encounters.

About half way through this thread, someone said that it isn't running out of surges that causes excitement, rather it is the tension points within an encounter that cause the game to be enjoyable. While I agree completely, I don't think that such refutes CpnZapp's complaints. Simply put, readily available healing reduces such tension points as one doesn't really need to worry about not having that healing trigger to keep the defender on his feet, or (in most cases) worrying about getting to an injured team mate in time to heal him. Leaders reduce risk, and thus can potentially reduce excitement. For me it does seem a bit strange to criticize leaders for fulfilling one of their main purposes - reducing risk to the party by giving it healing triggers when and where the PCs need them - but one must be cognisant of the effect that has on the game. I suppose as a player one wants enough risk to be exciting and challenging, but not too much. That said, to the extent that leaders do reduce the extent of the excitement, a GM either has to accept that decrease, consistently generate encounters that are exciting for some reason other than having characters suffer damage, or up the challenge of encounters to make them more difficult and thus more exciting - note, these 3 responses are not mutually exclusive.

If one goes the latter route (upping the challenge), that in turn results in shorter adventuring days, as the party will need to (and be able to, due to having moe healing triggers) go through their surges more quickly. And as a note to some of the comments in this thread - they aren't wasting their surges - given that many leader healing triggers give more HP than using healing surges, a leader heavy party is actually more efficient in surge use than one with no or few leaders. Instead, they are simply using them because they need to.

Now, where I do part ways with CpnZapp is thinking this is somehow a major flaw in the system - I don't think it is. Rather, one has to realise that an increased number of healing triggers in a party will lead to shorter adventuring days if one wishes to maintain the same level of challenge for the players. However, this is only a shorter adventuring day in terms of # of encounters - most likely, a leader heavy party will actually be able to face a greater XP worth of encounters in a day (due to more efficient healing and higher XP per encounter) and gaming time will likely be longer (due to bigger, more complicated fights).


So, I suppose it boils down to whether having fewer encounters in a day is an issue. For me it isn't really a problem - in my campaign, each "day" tends to include 3 or 4 encounters, which is likely a bit short but works for both my narrative and the character's resources. Each of those encounters is almost always a n+3 or a n+4 - anything less isn't really a challenge and given that we just play for a few hours every 2 weeks, fewer, more challenging encounters makes the best use of our limited play time.

For CpnZapp this does seem to be an issue - which is fair enough, different GMs have different expectations and values about how they want their campaign to run.

I would suggest a major portion of the complaint is that, while 4th ed. has greatly minimized the "resources per day" mechanism that existed previously, it has still maintained it. The problem with any such system where resources are limited in such manner is that a party can expend their resources quickly (aka "nova") and then want to skip to the next adventuring day so as to regain those resources. 4th ed. has reduced this problem in regards to dailies (they are cool abilities rather than essential ones) but has intensified it in regards to healing - though, IMHO, it would be extremely likely for a player to "nova" through his/her character's healing surges in only one encounter.

So, I think CpnZapp is struggling with the fact that 4th has maintained the "resources per day" design choice. And I do believe it is a choice, not a flaw. Part of that design choice is that one cannot fully avoid the "nova-ing problem". Personally, having run games both with (D&D) and without (Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, Albedo, various Palladium games) I like this design choice - it allows powers to be much more varied and interesting than they would otherwise, IMHO.

However, if the design choice is a particular sticking point for CapnZapp, he either needs to a) choose a new game without a "resources per day" mechanism; or b) make what would be (IMHO) fairly drastic modifications to 4th ed. to remove or minimize that mechanism.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

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

Don't have time in terms of getting through a session of D&D and wrapping everything up in one go, or don't have the patience to do it?

It seems to me that the simple answer is that's exactly what you need to do to challenge the party - write longer adventures with more happening between each rest. After, gaining more healing powers just means that the party can last longer in a given encounter - they've still got the same number of healing surges and as such, they can still use them between encounters. Nothing changes there.

However, if you've already made the decision not to run longer adventures, then you're pretty much stuck with your problem, IMO.

 

[Cadfan]

For what its worth, if you want a fight which "challenges the party," you believe that a fight is only challenging if there is a real chance of PC death, and you don't count fights where the PCs aren't likely to die because they're going to intelligently use their abilities to heal and protect themselves and achieve success through tactical acumen, then you don't REALLY want a "challenging" fight. You just want a numbers game.

Some people might feel that fights which are mathematically swingy are exciting and challenging. But I'd warn you that not everyone feels that way. For some people (people like myself) that's... fake difficulty. What's being tested isn't your ability to use yours powers well and achieve tactical success (remember, we defined fights where tactical acumen leads to success as not being challenging because, if we know we have tactical acumen, the likelihood of failure is negligible), its your ability to roll favorable numbers.

I'd prefer a fight where I can look at the table and know that I can win because I know that I can outthink the challenge and possess the tools to execute my plans, instead of a fight where I look at the table and know that it doesn't matter if I outthink the challenge, the random factor is likely to randomly screw me over. I don't consider that second option challenging. Its the opposite of challenging, its mechanistic and removed from my control.

 

[Nail]

I'd prefer a fight where I can look at the table and know that I can win because I know that I can outthink the challenge and possess the tools to execute my plans, instead of a fight where I look at the table and know that it doesn't matter if I outthink the challenge, the random factor is likely to randomly screw me over. I don't consider that second option challenging. Its the opposite of challenging, its mechanistic and removed from my control.

XP for you, Cadfan. Well put. If you're clever and execute well, you should win.

 

[KarinsDad]

XP for you, Cadfan. Well put. If you're clever and execute well, you should win.

The problem with this is that all fights can be swingy.

Our group has taken out dragons in modules that I've read on the boards are tough and party killers. On the other hand, we have also been slaughtered (not killed, but forced to pull out dailies and such) in simple fights with same level foes.

On any given day, the Dice Gods can be against the players and when that happens, no amount of tactical acuity will necessarily help enough.

I've handled this in our game with some special action point house rules and by ensuring that the players have single charge "go to the well" items (we have magical "Power Scrolls" for any spell or prayer in the game system that more or less work like 3E scrolls). But, the core game is SOL when this happens.

 

[Nail]

On the other hand, we have also been slaughtered (not killed, but forced to pull out dailies and such) in simple fights with same level foes.

I'd make a distinction here: being forced to use your Dalies (etc) isn't "not winning".

We all know that the best-laid plans work perfectly....until you meet the enemy and start combat. Sh*t happens, and I'm cool with that.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'd make a distinction here: being forced to use your Dalies (etc) isn't "not winning".

We all know that the best-laid plans work perfectly....until you meet the enemy and start combat. Sh*t happens, and I'm cool with that.

I have no real problem with that either.

But, tell that to the player of the PC Wizard who had to pull out his Flaming Sphere since nobody could hit the mooks and then didn't have it for the tougher fights later on.