Disappointed in 4e

[Raven Crowking]

I suppose you mean long-term rest here?

(Since we're being picky about terminology and precise definitions).

A long enough rest to actually heal the wound, yes.

 

[Phaezen]

I think RC means something longer term than that. Otherwise his point makes no sense. (And I don't think his point makes no sense).

Fair enough.

I can see where some people like the concept of characters resting for long period between adventures. But that should be part of the story. And, too be fair, besides from possibly 1st Ed no edition of D&D has had rules for needing long term rest to recover from wounds. A short search on the boards will find numerous houserule suggestions for adding long term injury effects into the game. One of the first thierd party products includes a fairly decent system for ling term injuries.

Yes, these are not part of the core system, but I seriously doubt anyone can claim they have never houserulled any edition of D&D to suit thier playing style, especially if they wanted long term wound effects in the game.

Edit:
It has further occured to me that any wound of sufficient realism to put a character out of action for the long term would most likely have to include some kind of lingering after effect after it has healed up as well. If you consider a top flight sportsman getting injured, they often require 3 to 9 months to recover, with modern medical care and physiotherapy. You are also most likely looking at another month or so to get back to optimal fitness, recover skills that have gotten rusty and so forth. There are also a large number of injuries which you cannot recover fully from and will affect you for the rest of your life. And if you want to say that magic can heal this kind of injuries, then magic can get a severely hurt fighter up off the ground and fighting fit in minutes, so don't even go there. If you want long term injuries, then magic cannot cure them and there should be long term effects.

Phaezen

 

[Raven Crowking]

But you're ignoring that fact that Rob also just lost a healing surge, and possibly lost a death save. If he's not giving either of those a second thought then he's in for a rude suprise. Once he has no more of those left no amount of "talking" will get him back on his feet. He be dead.

OK, granted that I was being a smidgeon glib, but please tell me for the record how long Rob must rest to remove those last traces of a deadly injury, assuming no recourse to magical healing?

Next morning, right as rain?

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I can see where some people like the concept of characters resting for long period between adventures. But that should be part of the story.

I am absolutely against the DM telling the players what their characters do. Therefore, the game system must provide reasonable incentive for rest.

And, too be fair, besides from possibly 1st Ed no edition of D&D has had rules for needing long term rest to recover from wounds.

Assume a 3rd level character with an average Con and 20 hit points. A blow knocks you to 0 hit points.

In order to regain your full health, without magic, how long must you rest

A) in 1e?

B) in 2e?

C) in 3e? 3 hp per day, 6 hp per day with bed rest, 12 hp per day with bed rest and extended care by a healer. A minimum of 2 days, an average of 4 days, and a maximum of 7 days.

D) in 4e?

Do you notice any dramatic changes in these numbers?


RC


EDIT: Hypertext SRD: What Hit Points Represent

Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.

 

[Phaezen]

I am absolutely against the DM telling the players what their characters do. Therefore, the game system must provide reasonable incentive for rest.

Who said anything about the DM telling the players what thier characters are doing? An adventure ends, they return to thier home town for a month or so to recuperate from thier adventures, possibly get some training, do some research, start a guild, what the characters get up to in the down time is up to the players really.

Assume a 3rd level character with an average Con and 20 hit points. A blow knocks you to 0 hit points.

In order to regain your full health, how long must you rest

A) in 1e?

B) in 2e?

C) in 3e?

D) in 4e?

Do you notice any dramatic changes in these numbers?

RC

In all cases is depends on acess to a cleric really.
Never played 1e, for 2e as I recall (this was 8 years ago) with no cleric 1 hp a day, so 20 days.
In 3e noticable faster (6 or 7 days or as little as 4 with bedrest and long term care assuming no cleric) 4e - an extended rest.
In all, except possibly 1st Ed, assuming access to a cleric of 3rd level, over night and you will be as right as rain the following day. So I would say a point both ways really.

Phaezen

 

[Raven Crowking]

Who said anything about the DM telling the players what thier characters are doing? An adventure ends, they return to thier home town for a month or so to recuperate from thier adventures, possibly get some training, do some research, start a guild, what the characters get up to in the down time is up to the players really.

Who decides "they return to thier home town for a month or so to recuperate from thier adventures"? Why do they not just plunder the next tomb?

In all cases is depends on acess to a cleric really.

A meant through mundane (non-magical) means, and have editited the question to reflect that.


RC

 

[Scribble]

OK, granted that I was being a smidgeon glib, but please tell me for the record how long Rob must rest to remove those last traces of a deadly injury, assuming no recourse to magical healing?

Next morning, right as rain?

RC

Cool, so you've sucessfully convinced me that you dislike how quickly people heal in 4e?

There's no problem with how the system works, you just dislike how fast it does it.

That's fine- as I've said before, who am I to tell you what to like? But the speed at which someone heals has nothing to do with the system forcing you to imagine injuries stitching back up because of someone talking to you, or injuries being "retconned" or ignored in an absurd montey python style way.

In fact I think the system is a great one because it's so open to being messed with, and added onto.

Dislike how quickly people heal physical injury? Add a rule saying HS come back more slowly.

Want an injury to be persistant? take away a healing surge... You can even stack a disease like effect on top of it.

Man you could easily do the frodo gets stabbed scene and then make it part of the campaign.

Frodo gets stabbed, and the stab gives him a "disease" that slowly saps away his healing surges, knockes him unconcious, and slowly takes out his HP to boot. (ouch!)

Player is out but still gets to roll dice. Rolling dice is fun!

Then when he's back int he game give him a penalty... Hell you could even make the stab wound kind of like an intelligent item/ artifact for soem real fun...

Isn't all this creative energy you've been spending trying to convince everyone the system is broken (without even using it) better spent creating new ideas and new fun things?

 

[Lacyon]

A long enough rest to actually heal the wound, yes.

Once, not so very long ago, I would have agreed with you. I still do actually agree with you if you remove the "to heal the wound" part. I like the idea of some rules encouragement for the PCs to periodically take breaks from long adventuring (if only to slow level advancement relative to game-world time). Particularly for sandbox play.

I prefer, however, that the rules not make it wound-related. Such things tend to be a bad fit for D&D in general - even in AD&D you never needed more than two nights rest unless someone had dropped below zero hp (assuming sufficient clerical output) - and 4E in particular (cleric can use healing words twice every five minutes, so we only have trouble when there are no clerics). If, for some reason, the PCs can't find any magic to assist them in healing their injuries, and there's no other reason for them to take some time off, I don't see it as particularly valuable to add a "so you have to wait another week before you go back into the dungeon" clause at any particular point, just to deal with the odd case.

A better answer, IMO, is to make preparation for the next expedition meaningful and, to some extent, time-consuming. Enchanting magic items, creating scrolls and potions, and the like are ways that 4E encourages some of this (and I find that players aren't likely to complain if you extend the amount of time these things take, so long as they don't feel like they're being punished). Then the wounds heal themselves over the natural downtime (possibly leaving nasty scars), and the game moves on.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

It has further occured to me that any wound of sufficient realism to put a character out of action for the long term would most likely have to include some kind of lingering after effect after it has healed up as well. If you consider a top flight sportsman getting injured, they often require 3 to 9 months to recover, with modern medical care and physiotherapy. You are also most likely looking at another month or so to get back to optimal fitness, recover skills that have gotten rusty and so forth. There are also a large number of injuries which you cannot recover fully from and will affect you for the rest of your life.

And here we are coming at this thing from the other side. I, and many of us, have been handwaving the realities of injury and recovery since I first picked up the Basic set. There's realism, and then there's Sim Chirurgeon.

And if you want to say that magic can heal this kind of injuries, then magic can get a severely hurt fighter up off the ground and fighting fit in minutes, so don't even go there. If you want long term injuries, then magic cannot cure them and there should be long term effects.

Right. We can either ignore the realities of human physiology, or we can hang a lampshade on them. Take your pick.

But we've always been doing this to a greater or lesser extent. Back in Basic, you had X HP and if you had >0 HP you were alive and if you had 0 HP you were dead. No injuries to speak of, and you healed up between adventures by saying "you rest for a while until your HP come back wounds heal." In 3e, it's the same thing with the addition of the 0 to -10 range. For a while there in AD&D there were some rules for getting maimed, but they were mostly gone by 3rd ed. Realism interacts poorly with playability, and so there's always been a pendulum swinging between two ends of the scale: accurate depiction of realistic injury vs. treating hit points as points so you can get on with it.

One's favourite position on this gradient will probably determine which era they like their rules to come from, but I do remember that we started with an extremely abstract system, went somewhere in the direction of injury simulation, and we're now coming back to abstractions.

Now, I do like a bit of injury in my abstract representation of injury, which is why I wrote the would point system linked in my sig. But I designed it specifically to matter a lot at low levels, where I like characters to be a bit gritty, and less at high levels, where I like characters to be heroic. 4e is more heroic than my ideal, and I'm planning to have a nice long glance at Ari's injury system in Advanced Player's Guide when I get a chance, to see if I like it.

 

[Phaezen]

Who decides "they return to thier home town for a month or so to recuperate from thier adventures"? Why do they not just plunder the next tomb?

RC

The players mostly, makes for some nice roleplaying and character development opportunities.

Why should the system force you to take down time of you are not so inclined, especialy if it because the dice rolled against you? Is that not just as bad as the DM railroading you?

What if one character ends up needing extended down time to recover while the party is on a time critical quest? Being forced by the system to sit on the sidelines and watching everyone else having fun is not fun.

Phaezen