Can you get too much healing?

[Nail]

So, you're contending that:
1) Go forward without rest or there will be an extra creature in the next fight
2) Go forward without rest or the next fight will have unfavorable terrain for you
3) Go forward without rest or you will receive 3 magic items instead of 4

are not valid choices? It sure seems to me like there's a real tactical consideration to each of those, and especially for the first two the rest may overwhelmingly make up the deficit.

We're talking past each other, I think.

"Go forward without rest or _____" might be a real choice. 4e does a pretty good job supporting that choice. ...But I'm seeing more of the "go forward or else" suggestions here. Plot device masquerading as a PC choice.

Put another way: There are many suggestions here on how to take away the party's choice to rest.

 

[Regicide]

"How Healthy You Are" is not determined by current hp totals. It's determined by current Healing Surge totals.

You don't start rolling death saves when you run out of healing surges. There are limits on how many healing surges you can spend during combat, the number of surges you have is only one of them. A party with 2 surges left who can only spend 2 surges in a combat enters that combat exactly as "healthy" as the party with 20000 healing surges.

If it comes down to the only fight mattering is the one where the party has 0 or 1 surges, then as a DM I'd either a) fix things, or b) tell them they only have 1 surge left because they killed 5 encounters already, here is encounter 6 and BTW here is the XP you got for the first 5 encounters you were going to zombie through, no point wasting time rolling dice when we already know the result.

 

[Dan'L]

As an aside:

It's true that "rushing the party" can be cool. I get it. But if you (the DM) do this, don't delude youself into thinking you are giving the players "a choice".

You aren't. This is the choice of no choice.

Which is why "rushing the party" was only one of a list of possible consequences that I offered. The point was to help the party see that there could/would be negative consequences for choosing to take an extended rest and extend the adventuring period in-game. If the OP's problem boils down to the players valuing little more than regaining full muster, then they need some incentives that make pushing on without an extended rest more worthwhile than stopping for the day.

It's not about taking away player choices, it's about letting them know that their choices have consequences beyond the merely system mechanical. It's about letting the game mechanics support the story, instead of the story breaking to support the mechanics.

-Dan'L

 

[KidSnide]

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.

In my experience, this is highly dependent on the campaign. I play in one game in which the PCs are running through the WotC modules (near the end of P3 right now) in largely the way we think they were meant to be run. In that type of game, where the PCs are clearing out dungeons looking for treasure, you are absolutely right -- the party controls the timing and the only reason we don't extended rest after nearly every fight is because we like a challenge and it would feel lame to nova on each fight. Sometimes we have a meta challenge to see how many encounters we can take before we have to rest.

For a GM to control rest mechanics in a dungeon type game, he needs to divide up a dungeon into zones where the monsters within a zone will take action (including - presumably - searching for invaders) if their area is attacked and they have enough time to rally a defense. If this dynamic is well communicated to the PCs, then there is intentionality about when to rest - particularly if you give the PCs decent information about the sizes of zones. (In my opinion, most dungeons should start with an opportunity to steal a map and interrogate a prisoner so the PCs have a sense of what is in which direction. That way, exploration is a series of meaningful decisions and not a brainless exercise in choosing left door vs. right door.)

However, in a plot/event-driven game (as opposed to an exploration-driven game), the GM almost always controls the number of encounters. If you attack the enemy tower in a plot game, you usually have to do the whole tower in one go. If you stop to rest, the enemy is going to flee/counter-attack/kill the hostage or do whatever you're trying to stop.

The original Freeport games are good examples of these. There are one or two exploration points in which the PCs can decide how fast to explore, but mostly they are event-driven games where the PCs are reacting to a game world in which they can rest at any point, but risk forfeiting that section of plot when they do so. I don't consider that rail-roading the the PCs -- that's just writing a good event-driven game, and extended rests are well suited to that framework.

-KS

 

[keterys]

We're talking past each other, I think.

"Go forward without rest or _____" might be a real choice. 4e does a pretty good job supporting that choice. ...But I'm seeing more of the "go forward or else" suggestions here. Plot device masquerading as a PC choice.

Put another way: There are many suggestions here on how to take away the party's choice to rest.

Ah, hmm. I guess I'd still want to know what the 'else' is...

Really, if it's not 'Ritual finishes, world dies, campaign over' type stuff... the only other thing that would probably be a problem is being attacked while resting. Usually that's a function of a location - like my guys just tried to do an extended rest in a watchtower they'd killed the inhabitants from. After an hour, someone came to check on the tower... they drove that person off, and someone suggested they just go back to resting. And if they had, the person they drove off would have brought reinforcements and it would have been sad.

On the other hand, as soon as they went somewhere actually safe (or at least less dangerous), they got their extended rest no problem

DM: 'You have to go forward, or else.'
PC: 'Or else what?'
DM: 'Or else the ritual will finish and they'll sacrifice the princess on the altar below. You can hear the chanting, and you think there's only an hour left.
PC: 'Hmm, Arcana 28... Religion... 25... what do I think the ritual is for?'
DM: 'She's being sacrificed to grant power to someone else. Probably some demonic ability.'
PC: 'Oh well, guess the princess dies and this guy will be tougher when we do face him. Hmm, guess we'll see if we can raise her or if we'll at least get a partial reward for her body, but damned if we're going in there with the wizard out of surges and all our dailies blown.'

 

[Danceofmasks]

'It's time for plan C'
'What's plan C?'
'We obviously can't save her, so let's do the next best thing. We rush in, kill her, and leg it. At least then the ritual won't be finished.'

 

[Solodan]

Milestones/Extended Rests:

Get a few characters a meliorating armor. Now, given the choice to rest or lost your +2/+3 bonus. That character is gonna be really mad at the rogue who just wasted his surges. Create weapons that are like meliorating armor (+ to damage, not hit) and suddenly the party has a tougher choice.

Diseases: These are the tools DM's have to punish extended rests. Use the old DC's since the new ones totally made diseases more like colds.

MacGuffins: The party has to chase something that rewards THEM (Rather than, yo've got to save te princess before she's hanged at noon type things, they can get old fairly quickly if every adventure has a time frame.) If they can get a chance to acquire the magic item before the bad guy is able to sell it to pirates, maybe gold/magic is a suitable motivator

Make the game too easy: Have quick fights in which the party is a bunch of heroes and nobody gets bloodied. Minions are great for this, use enough monsters that it looks like it should be threat but somehow isn't (Level -1 elite brutes are good for this) . Over time, the players who never use their extra healing will want to retrain it out since they are never using it. Additionally, the players may learn that it is OK to keep going when down to 1-2 healing surges, some combats don't need it.

 

[keterys]

Even with the old DCs, take 10 on a Heal check always made sure a disease never progressed in games I've played. Now, I think it's actually healing diseases entirely which is... really not a threat.

 

[CapnZapp]

You (and your palyers) might be stuck in a "3e-ism".

"How Healthy You Are" is not determined by current hp totals. It's determined by current Healing Surge totals. From the DM's perspective, that means "challenging the party" doesn't mean running them down to 0 hps, it means running them down to 0 healing surges (and 0 daily powers).

So it's entirely possible to challenge your player's PCs - even as they keep their hps at 100%. Challenge the party by doing what the word challenge means: give them tasks to accomplish that require skill, effort, and luck -- and don't worry about their hps. Don't obsess about hps.

Hmmmm.....

Is it possible that "an exciting fight" means something other than "reduce the PCs to 0 hps"?

This is interesting.

Yes, I feel that for a fight to be really exciting, there needs to be risks involved.

Okay, so this risk might not be running out of hit points.

You're saying the risk can instead be running out of healing surges.

But 4E isn't designed for any single given encounter to run you out of healing surges.

Just as a fight where the monsters can only expect to scratch your surface by hoping to do perhaps a dozen points of damage is dull, a fight where the monsters can only expect to make you use up one or two surges is dull.

My problem is that I have neither the time nor the patience to prefix every interesting combat with a string of easy fights whose sole purpose is to lower an abstract number like "8" to perhaps "3" before the real deal starts.

At least in 3E, going low on resources meant your options changed and were reduced. Having fewer surges don't mean a thing in 4E, only running out of them does.

And thus I'm thinking I might start every fight at effectively 3 healing surges (one second wind, one healing potion and one Healing/Inspired Word).

Not only will this mean I'm getting to the beef early, I'm getting there every time. And not only this - but I've solved the 15 minute adventuring day too (because your three heals replenish after each fight).

The only remaining issue is what to replace as an attrition mechanic. Of course, there needs to be a rule that explains how you can't go on forever.

It is in this light I came to think of disabling powers for being downed. (Not only would this be more reminiscent of 3E and its spell slots; but it sure beats trying to get worked up over having "only" a 3 on your sheet where you previously had an 8)

(Now I'm collecting my thoughts from all over, from several different threads. I'll probably summarize and post something up later)

 

[CapnZapp]

You don't start rolling death saves when you run out of healing surges. There are limits on how many healing surges you can spend during combat, the number of surges you have is only one of them. A party with 2 surges left who can only spend 2 surges in a combat enters that combat exactly as "healthy" as the party with 20000 healing surges.

If it comes down to the only fight mattering is the one where the party has 0 or 1 surges, then as a DM I'd either a) fix things, or b) tell them they only have 1 surge left because they killed 5 encounters already, here is encounter 6 and BTW here is the XP you got for the first 5 encounters you were going to zombie through, no point wasting time rolling dice when we already know the result.

A great rant!