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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4478208" data-attributes="member: 710">To figure out if something should be "build in", in the example of healing it is simple:- If the party survives, what will stop them from using their Cure Light Wound Wands and Cleric spells to heal themselves up to full hit points? The answer is usually very little.- If the party is in combat, what stops them from using their Cure Light Wound Wands and Cleric spells to heal all damage taken during the found? The answer is usually a lot. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Automatic full regeneration during combat is hard (or impossible) to pull off. After combat - not really.So, keep the part that is apparently challenging (the part where you don't regenerate), but remove the part that isn't. That's the "gamist" approach - keep the part that are challenging, remove the parts that are automatic/boring (and often enough, simple system mastery) A similar thing happened to "pre-combat" buffing. In 3E, it was standard operating procedures to stack up buff spells of various sorts, ensuring things like +4 enhancement bonus to all relevant statistics, Greater Magic Weapons/Magic Vestments running on armors, Barkskins distributed among the front-liners, immunity to Fear and Poison from Heroes Feat, Overland Flight for the caster. Once you got to the point where you have figured out that this is a smart thing to do, there is no longer any challenge. It's just performing a "Buff Macro". So, that's gone in 4E, too. Pre-Combat buffs are basically non-existent. If you want to buff, do it in the middle of combat. Going back to our flavor first vs game first - I don't know if people wanted the flavor of pre-buffing in their games. If it is something that made them feel like in a "believable" world, or a world to immerse themselves in. But from a gamist point of view, the rules leading there were irrelevant. They didn't provide any challenges, and just made the game more complicated, because you suddenly had to stack different modifiers and effects, and if you'd ever be hit by a Dispel Magic, you end up re-doing your character stats. From a gamist point, a "debuff" that causes you to take a -4 penalty to attacks and defenses could achieve the same. Of course, if you no longer describe this effect as a "dispel" (because there is nothing to be dispelled), you need to come up with a different flavor. Maybe it is the Warlocks "Curse of Albon" spell, or the Wizards "Bigby's Disrupting Hand" spell. Or the Fighters "Painful Strike" exploit.</blockquote>

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