D&D without healing surges

[CapnZapp]

What would happen if you simply remove healing surges from the game?

That is, every character can still use Second Wind to heal 1/4 their hp. And if they bring along a Cleric, he can still use two Healing Words per encounter. But you would simply scrap the surges themselves.

(If you're curious why I'm considering such a change from the 4E rules, have a look at this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-rules/253362-can-you-get-too-much-healing.html)

Possible consequences:
1) The game's theme of resource depletion would be gone. It would no longer make any sense to have a fight who's sole purpose would be to suck a few surges out of the party. Instead, you'd only have the fights that are interesting, motivated by story or actually dangerous.

2) You'd get rid of the artificial limits on the adventuring day. Yes, you'd still run out of Dailies, but here I actually think WotC's design worked as intended. My experiences are that the lack of dailies aren't such that players absolutely must stop for the day; or put otherwise, forcing them to continue isn't taken to be a punishment, only heightened tension.
(The main exception is dailies related to healing: if you give the players healing powers, don't be surprised if they resent being forced to continue fighting even when these have run out. What this tells me is that daily healing powers aren't good for the game)

Okay, so far so good. But what about short rests? D&D isn't a grim and gritty game where players are to be expected to enter combat at less than full hit points.

The simplest solution? Allow a short rest to reset a PC's hp to its full total, every time.

The excitement of the fight is not reduced by the PC starting at full hit points*.
*) Feel free to add a "gritty" sub-mechanic, such as one that gives a longish-term penalty for falling to zero hp. However, let's discuss that in another thread. In fact, let's discuss it here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...s/252481-grittier-d-d-wounds.html#post4731987!

At least, not if compared to the loss of excitement that occurs when the PC has access to so much healing the threat of the monsters actually downing the character is zero or close to zero.

In other words, a fight where the characters can't lose and where the outcome is only about how many healing surges they use up, is not exciting and not fun.

So, by doing away with between-encounters healing, and restricting in-fight healing, it seems you would solve several of the chief things that make me wrestle with the fun factor of my campaign.



What do you say? Any pitfalls I haven't seem that I'm about to step in?

 

[CapnZapp]

One more thing that would be an important part of the puzzle:

There would have to be some restrictions on how much healing any given character should be able to receive, all in the interests of keeping fights exciting, and not have the hp totals of characters simply bounce back all the time.

There are three major sources of healing, and let's discuss them separately:

Second Wind. By the RAW, this one is limited to once per encounter only. However, it is the source with the highest cost (in how you must sacrifice your standard action that round), so in one way, I'm surprised this cap exists.

(Perhaps the designers found that characters that are attacked by several foes tend to get stuck in taking the Second Wind action repeatedly? That it was a better option for the group to just shut this character (presumably a Defender with good defenses) down, while the rest of the party shoots and kills the attackers. If this is so, I can certainly understand them, as this might be an effective tactic but sure isn't fun for the player in question...)

Healing Word (and Majestic Word, etc). I'm wondering if it wouldn't be good for the game to restrict each character to only benefiting from one Word per encounter. This makes an all-Leader party less interesting, as well as lowering the synergy from having everyone in the party taking the Cleric or Warlord multiclass feat.

(Note that in your regular game this reasoning simply does not apply. But just because your party only have two or four Word powers available in any given encounter does not mean the problem does not exist for parties where healing powers are maximized.)

Probably the most reasonable limit is that each character should only benefit from one healer, meaning the limitation has to be two Words per encounter. This isn't as elegant, of course.

Healing Potions. In one sense, I can argue for limiting these too (so you can't drink more than one per encounter). However, while the cost in actions isn't huge, their benefit isn't huge either. Monsters can certainly dish out the hurt faster than you can drink these, so that would probably be overkill.

In the end, keeping the current limitations on in-game healing (that is, one Second Wind but unlimited Healing Words and Potions) seems to be okay, provided you make sure your group doesn't contain more than two healers.

 

[Paul Strack]

The only issue I see is "realism". Removing surges and letting a short rest recover all HP means fights are always consequence-free. If you survive, you are unhurt. However, balance-wise, I don't see any real issues with it.

I've taken the opposite approach to this. In my game, you don't recover healing surges from an extended rest. The heroes can rest all they want, but their healing surge budget is for the whole adventure. It removes any incentive or advantage from taking extra rests, and let's me budget out the whole adventure to be a challenge.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've taken the opposite approach to this. In my game, you don't recover healing surges from an extended rest. The heroes can rest all they want, but their healing surge budget is for the whole adventure. It removes any incentive or advantage from taking extra rests, and let's me budget out the whole adventure to be a challenge.

Now, I kind of like that sort of thinking. It could have some problems with cost/benefit of various healing surge cost actions, but it doesn't seem insurmountable. It surely cures the "super healing party" syndrome. And at the same time it also cures the 15 minute adventuring day. Now you can add a "Long Rest", which lasts say a week in which the PCs really recuperate fully and get back their HS. It feels a bit more realistic than the "go to bed at night and wake up all fine and dandy" extended rest. Plus it really clearly puts the party out of the action for a significant amount of game time. One might risk camping overnight in dangerous country, but probably not for a week.

And of course in the inevitable, rare, case where the party really does need to be all better again and can't afford a week's rest, you can THEN either fiat in a one-time refresh, or make the PCs do a little side quest to find the font of healing or whatever (all the while low on resources, so even some normally wimpy encounters get interesting)!

I like these kinds of "turn the problem around backwards" kind of solutions. Very clever.

 

[Garthanos]

Now, I kind of like that sort of thinking. It could have some problems with cost/benefit of various healing surge cost actions, but it doesn't seem insurmountable. It surely cures the "super healing party" syndrome. And at the same time it also cures the 15 minute adventuring day. Now you can add a "Long Rest", which lasts say a week in which the PCs really recuperate fully and get back their HS. It feels a bit more realistic than the "go to bed at night and wake up all fine and dandy" extended rest. Plus it really clearly puts the party out of the action for a significant amount of game time. One might risk camping overnight in dangerous country, but probably not for a week.

And of course in the inevitable, rare, case where the party really does need to be all better again and can't afford a week's rest, you can THEN either fiat in a one-time refresh, or make the PCs do a little side quest to find the font of healing or whatever (all the while low on resources, so even some normally wimpy encounters get interesting)!

I like these kinds of "turn the problem around backwards" kind of solutions. Very clever.

I kind of like the week long rest concept kind of implies the power of healing surges....In other words you don't get back those deep energy reserves over night you might need a bit of a vacation or a break from the intense action.

 

[Garthanos]

Now, I kind of like that sort of thinking. It could have some problems with cost/benefit of various healing surge cost actions, but it doesn't seem insurmountable.

Things fueled by a surge would need to be ... very 'significant' don't they

The healing model in 4e it is inspiration, motivation and morale recovery.
And the re-energizing by self hypnosis or burst of spirit that brings the second wind.

I just don't know, having them not recover... seems heavy, protracting
the recovery over the course of a week? One recovered per night perhaps. It leaves a connection between rest...and energy.

 

[keterys]

You should probably limit potions, all the same - one per encounter, say.

At higher levels, the lower level healing potions are effectively free, so just as well not deal with that.

Probably the biggest downside is that there's no cost at all to 'showboat' combats... that is, ones where the PCs are pretty much guaranteed to win, you get to see how cool they are when they do it, and see how few resources they use doing it... for those healing surges are the primary resource used.

Not every combat should have serious risk of party loss, after all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Things fueled by a surge would need to be ... very 'significant' don't they

The healing model in 4e it is inspiration, motivation and morale recovery.
And the re-energizing by self hypnosis or burst of spirit that brings the second wind.

I just don't know, having them not recover... seems heavy, protracting
the recovery over the course of a week? One recovered per night perhaps. It leaves a connection between rest...and energy.

Yeah, it is a really opposite concept to the no healing surges at all one you proposed, and I don't want to hijack your thread by delving into all the ramifications here because it would warrant a good bit of thinking on.

I think it would be interesting to analyze both options in more depth and get a feel for which one might work out better because it seems to be a pretty common theme with us 4e DMs that the 15 minute day syndrome is alive and well in 4e. It can be thwarted somewhat, but it would be nice to have an elegant general solution.

 

[Paul Strack]

I think it would be interesting to analyze both options in more depth and get a feel for which one might work out better because it seems to be a pretty common theme with us 4e DMs that the 15 minute day syndrome is alive and well in 4e. It can be thwarted somewhat, but it would be nice to have an elegant general solution.

I don't think this *entirely* hijacks the original thread because both options address the same issue. I think the way to eliminate the 15 minute day is to remove mechanical incentives for resting. This thread has (so far) put two basic options on the table:

1) There is no point in resting because you effectively have infinite healing surges.

2) There is no point in resting because a 6-hour Long Rest recovers no healing surges. Healing surges come back after a long time (a week, between adventures, whatever).

Option #1 is a heavily paraphrased version of the OP's suggestion, and option #2 is my suggestion. There are all kinds of gradations you could choose, such as regaining one surge per day (a lighter version of #2) or two surges per encounter (a lighter version of #1). And you can add in wrinkles addressing Daily Powers and Magic Items and so forth.

I choose option #2 because I run an urban game and have adventures lasting many days with very few encounters. If I were running a more traditional game with dungeon crawls having a dozen encounters and adventures lasting a single day, a variation on option #1 would probably be better.

 

[Sadrik]

I personally have not given much thought to surges, but I can see a parallel with my issues with dailies.

I particularly like the "week-long-rest" to recover them.

We run an urban game with a lot of traveling. Our encounters are usually once a day at best. So the players could rest in between to get their healing surges back in many instances, but not in all of them.