Essentials nostalgia - the death of martial healing

[Gradine]

(There are concepts i don´t like for what its worth:

blinding barrage with a crossbow, or come and get it are bad powers (although bud spencer does come and get it in many of his movies)

I however regard those kind of powers as an early design mistake...

A simple str vs will attack and a followup of str vs AC would easily fix come and get it for for me, and blinding barrage just needs crossbow erased)

edit: And don´t assume we are only playing the mechanics and not the imagination... you have never been at my table and i don´t want to imagine how much time your player characters spend in hospital...)

But, as has been pointed out, every player is given creative narrative control over how their powers work out. You yourself give an example of how Come and Get It actually works within a narrative structure. Should it allow the enemy a chance to save or require an attack roll against Will? Conceptually? Yeah. Balance-wise, maybe not so much.

I also knew one Rogue with a crossbow and Blinding Barrage who used to travel with an Artificer; he described the power as loading the bow with a special bolt that split into many smaller parts in midair, kind of like a Macross Missile. That kind of explanation isn't going to work for every rogue in every campaign, but it worked for us. I could also see a technique I'll affectionately refer to as the 40-Year-Old-Virgin, wherein you attach a small, punctured bag of sand to a bolt, having it spray sand in your foes' eyes as it lands. It might seem ludicrous to have enemies take damage from sand in the face, but we're already playing the "HP are completely abstract game", so why not? A creature drops? Well, that's the one the bolt hit. More than one drop? They were actually already knocked out from that last hit, they just were staggering around a second or two before finally falling down. It's better for the verisimilitude than saying "I load and fire 9 bolts in 6 seconds", and you're not limiting options to already fairly limited crossbow rogue.

4e is the kind of game where it works if the game says it works, then it works. And it works exactly how the player says it works. It's why Martial Healing works, it's why Second Wind works. It's why Come and Get It works. Hell, it's why Martial Dailies work. Any system that allows the player that much creative control is a good system. Period.

4e gets a lot flak for its supposed rigidity (I've been guilty of this as well), but it's dawning on me that it's not really deserved at all. It's simply way too easy to reskin or reflavor anything without too much hassle. There's actually a great deal of room for creativity. That many players and DMs have bought into that rigidity is tragic. It's likely what's behind the rejection of the idea that HP are abstract.

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

Sword swings really do serious damage in real life and in fantasy novels.

Let's work with that idea. But instead of straight-up fantasy, let's go Star Wars --'cause it is still fantasy-- and use Jedi and lightsabers.

Visually, a Jedi attacks a Sith with a lightsaber. The Sith blocks the glowy-blade of neon death, and they continue to fight. No visible wounds.

Mechanically (using Star Wars Saga Edition, close enough to D&D for government work), the Jedi DID hit the Sith, and do hit point damage. Just not enough to drop or really affect the Sith. 'Cause touch of lightsaber = end of fight.

But visually, the touch of the lightsaber only happens at dramatically appropriate moments. When the Sith is first bloodied perhaps your lightsaber has actually cut into a power junction instead of his flesh, throwing a wall of sparks into the Sith's face. Only a few blows are really, really deadly, the rest are visual misses, but mechancial hits.

Another example of this is the Fellowship's fight against the Cave Troll in The Fellowship of the Ring movie. In that, the Cave Troll swings his club at Gimli, and the dwarf dodges by falling flat on his back. Visually: no hit, but he's out of position, used up some addrenaline, slightly more exhausted than he was before, and less likely react properly to a future hit. Mechanically: he lost some hp.

Maybe the hit that drops the Sith to negatives is an actual lightsaber hit that cuts him across the chest, leaving him to die on the cold ground... but... if somehow he has an ability to trigger his second wind, then guess what? For non-magic/Force healing, there has to be a willingness to accept some loss (or gain) of narrative control.

When your character is beaten down to the ground and brough back up by non-magical means, you control the narrative and say, "That wound I got was not as bad as it looks. It rattled me and I needed a moment to get my head back in the game."

The Warlord is not 'screaming at you and your wounds close', he's helping to bandage your wounds in the short rest. He's putting steel into your will in the off time and helping you gritt your teeth and soldier on, even when you thought you couldn't.

He's not patching up 3rd degree burns with his voice, he's taking narrative control and saying, "That dragon breath didn't really hit you (although mechanically it did beat your Ref Defense and reduce you to -5 hp). You dodged it, but dodged it by hiding behind a rock and cowering in fear. I'm here to remind you your fight isn't over. (Mechically makes you spend a healing surge.) Now get your butt back on the line soldier!"

Of course, if you don't get martial healing, then yeah, the DM's narrative holds, and the dragon melted your face off.

 

[KarinsDad]

For me I like using the abstraction ... I let the player explicitly explain how his characters defenses and or the circumstance conspires to minimize an attack against his character.(some players prefer I do it).

This way one player can have a tough guy hero and another mr lucky and yet another be all about magic or the skilled hero that exhausts himself in last ditch defenses.

It really is amazing the number of people who talk about reskinning or reflavor or having the players explain how their powers work here on the boards. I almost never see it at the table. I really don't see it on the LEB PBP boards either.

If the power is written x, people at the table really don't put in an effort to reskin it as y. It just doesn't happen in games I'm associated with. I never hear "I throw a spectral bat at the Ogre". I hear "I'm casting Magic Missile at the Ogre". I never hear "the dagger goes spinning off of your arcane bubble". I hear "the dagger misses".

I wonder if there are groups of players of certain personality types that congregate and actually play the game this way, possibly because one strong personality player at the table talks them into it. And I wonder if a higher percentage of those types of people frequent these boards.

I was a bit taken back by Chris Perkin's (note: poor memory, it might not have been him) in the podcasts pantomiming every miss by a PC, every hit into a monster, etc. "the monster staggers back", "the claw screeches against your shield". I was like "take a valium dude". He wouldn't even sit down at all. It was like watching add in action.

A little bit of that occurs at our tables, especially on crits or just hits, but not every single attack roll. We did have one DM that did quite a bit more of that a few years back (this was the only real time I've encountered it), but people were actually kind of glad when his storyline came to an end. Most players that I've been associated with don't come to the table to play live action theater and were a bit uncomfortable with the DM often drilling additional flavor elements out of them.

 

[Scribble]

It's interesting to me that people often seem to forget that healing surges are still a part of the character.

So if a PC is down a number of healing surges, he's not at 100% health. He's possibly beat up and bruised, maybe even cut up... He's just found the will to push himself to keep going.

HPs in 4e just have two parts now...

If I really feel (as a DM) like something really look a lot out of the PCs I sometimes tell them the following day they are still down a number of Healing surges.




If a warlord is "healing" a PC he's not stitching wounds together with his words... He's just doing the same thing Mickey did to Rockey whenever Rockey looked down... "Get up Rockey!" Same thing any coach does when you get hurt. "Walk it off, come on walk it off..."

It opens the system up to the idea of wounds that look/feel more serious then they turn out to be.

I've had this happen to myself a number of times skiing... I go down in a spectacular looking fall... Parts of my body are hurting... I take a few breaths... the pain fades as I realize I'm ok, nothing serious... Get up... dust off the snow (and my shattered ego...) Get back on the skis and go!

We see it in Football a lot too... People take a huge hit... They go down... sit there for a bit... People rush over... crowd goes silent... After a moment the player stumbles back up... Crowd starts to cheer... Player waves and slow jogs back in line... Player resumes seemingly no worse for the wear.

It's kind of like expanding on the idea of the massive damage save and then adding neat options based on that expansion.

When people say the warlord healing cuts with words breaks "verisimilitude" it often reminds me of someone punching himself in the head then complaining that it hurts.

Why imagine something silly happening then complain about the silliness?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

@ Gradine:

I do perfectly know what this game is about, so i decided to put it in spoiler tags to prevent such a reply...

I just expressed my opinion.

It is ok that your rogue uses a bolt that splits, but would you be consistent and don´t use that power if there is no such a bolt at hand?

I have no problems per say witht those powers, but imagine getting cought by a no save power like come and get it with no chance of defending against... just a personal thing, i would no disallow a player to use it, but flavour has its right in such a game.


Actually i think reflavouring is dodgy in many ways. I had this argument before, but I will tell you the main reasons:

Reflavouring the power within its boundaries: Magic missiles are little daggers is ok. Using a different arrow which you can produce 1 per day is ok... but could break versimilitude... (why not save them up?)

Reflavouring magic missile as a little dagger that cuts a rope starts getting problematic.

Reflavouring a cold spell that slows as a fire spell, because all your feats improve fire... you get the point?

Reskinning monsters can be ok. No stats for a human archer -> use the skeleton minion.

But it can be problematic: No goblin archer -> use the skeleton archer. (lacks goblin tactics) Solution: just add it and maybe reduce a defense or two by one point.


The general rule for reflavouring is making it so that PCs and the DM can still guess what a power/monster is by watching. Counterintuitive things (like the goblin archer using fey step or a cold spell igniting something) should usually be left out of any game, even 4e.


@Karins Dad:
Yes, it seems like a symptom of 4e that combat becomes tactical instead of flavourful, but this symptom already showed up in 3.5.

 

[WalterKovacs]

It really is amazing the number of people who talk about reskinning or reflavor or having the players explain how their powers work here on the boards. I almost never see it at the table. I really don't see it on the LEB PBP boards either.

If the power is written x, people at the table really don't put in an effort to reskin it as y. It just doesn't happen in games I'm associated with. I never hear "I throw a spectral bat at the Ogre". I hear "I'm casting Magic Missile at the Ogre". I never hear "the dagger goes spinning off of your arcane bubble". I hear "the dagger misses".

I wonder if there are groups of players of certain personality types that congregate and actually play the game this way, possibly because one strong personality player at the table talks them into it. And I wonder if a higher percentage of those types of people frequent these boards.

I was a bit taken back by Chris Perkin's (note: poor memory, it might not have been him) in the podcasts pantomiming every miss by a PC, every hit into a monster, etc. "the monster staggers back", "the claw screeches against your shield". I was like "take a valium dude". He wouldn't even sit down at all. It was like watching add in action.

A little bit of that occurs at our tables, especially on crits or just hits, but not every single attack roll. We did have one DM that did quite a bit more of that a few years back (this was the only real time I've encountered it), but people were actually kind of glad when his storyline came to an end. Most players that I've been associated with don't come to the table to play live action theater and were a bit uncomfortable with the DM often drilling additional flavor elements out of them.

So, you are basically saying that most of the people you play with, including yourself, don't really care that much about adding extra flavor to combat, and just want to get on with the "game" portion of the battle ... but you still basically hate how martial healing hurts your ability to immerse? Really?

Also, we are still having this discussion? No one is going to change KarinsDad's opinion on this and he isn't going to change most of the other people's opinion on this considering that this discussion has been taking place since before 4e was even released. I'll take the Warlord over the quiver of curesticks from 3.5 anyday, but that's just because I don't let the idea of waking up to be outside the abilities of someone without magic.

While it's pointless, I'll still put it out there:

In D&D, as far as hit points are concerned, you are either:

(a) Perfectly fine
(b) Bloodied (which is basically perfectly fine, but triggers some conditions which could help or hinder)
(c) Unconcious (also known as dying. However, dying or stabilized or even just unconcious through an effect like sleep ... is all functionally equivalent. There is a save involved if you are dying, but that is only a RISK of dying, not a guarantee)
(d) Dead. Dead is dead.

If you aren't dead, how do you really define Dying? Yes, there is a condition called dying. But how do you know that someone who is beaten into unconciousness is DEFINITELY going to die? If they aren't dead, they MIGHT be in the process of dying, or they MIGHT just be rendered unconcious, or they MIGHT be playing possum, or they MIGHT be knocked for a loop. Ultimately, "dying" is like Shrodinger's Cat. If you die, you WERE dying. If you don't die, EITHER something saved you from dying OR you weren't really dying in the first place. That uncertainty is what makes martial healing not just possible but plausible.

And, admitedly, my games are much like yours it seems. We don't go into great creative flourishes about our combat. We say what attack we are using, how much damage, etc ... And so we aren't CREATING problems by having damage be described as horrifying wounds that would make martial healing seemed far fetched. Even then, in combat healing (or after combat healing) can take form of "Well, it looked like he shot me in the heart, but he actually hit me in the holy symbol! It didn't kill me, but BOY did it hurt."

And of course, someone still talking about how martial healing doesn't make sense calls out someone who is worried about Warlords being marginalized as being a pouter. How long has the "4e is a bunch of superheroes with martial magic" pout being going on?

 

[Eridanis]

I'm closing this thread; it's been going since last week and seems to be rehashing the same ground over and over, and getting more and more contentious to boot

Feel free to strat a new thread in a few days if there's anything else unsaid about this topic.