Forked Thread: Healing Surges: Let's see them in Action!

[Fallen Seraph]

One way to view the Death Checks is almost like the time allotted to that PC till a situation that brings upon death fully succeeds.

So a PC becomes exhausted and collapses. The Death Checks represent his chances of recovering from his exhaustion long enough to avoid the blow that may come from the Orcs still fighting for instance.

Demoraled could be that the PC has gotten to the point that he is literally a walking dead man. He simply cannot deal with what is happening around him and blacks out/zones out and this is when the arrow plunges through his throat.

To use a video-game analogy. It is sorta like in Brother's in Arms game. You don't have a normal health meter, what you have is a bar that decreases when exposed to enemy fire as it goes down your chance of getting hit and dying increases.

 

[Imaro]

Well, I cannot speak for anyone else, but, I did clearly state early on that I in no way meant this as an edition war. That earlier editions could model damage a certain way in no way changes things for me. I'm not talking about earlier editions.

The claim on the table, for me, is that I'm being told that there is no possible way to narrate 4e damage. That the damage is so abstract that all narration is impossible. Well, I've, and several other people, have shown that you can model all sorts of scenes using 4e mechanics and it makes pretty good sense.

That you can do it another way is immiterial in my opinion. Many games use many different hit point mechanics. This is the first time I've ever been told that the hit point mechanics cannot possibly be narrated.

Emphasis mine... how have you proven this? You've given a bunch of examples where the author has full plot knowledge and hasn't described or shown a protagonist going unconscious and nearly dying. The trick is you are selecting only examples that fit a narrow range of "healing surge in action". As a DM narrating it while not knowing how the PC will be healed or if they will survive is a totally different story.

Show me an example where a character is knocked unconscious & fighting death then at full fighting potential 5 minutes after this happens. Yeah you can narrate healing surges and damage in 4e as long as you only provide examples that don't push boundaries, otherwise it can break down from heroic to silly and absurd.

What I'm wondering is do people playing 4e describe their battles as round after round of misses? I'm seriously curious about this.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The claim on the table, for me, is that I'm being told that there is no possible way to narrate 4e damage. That the damage is so abstract that all narration is impossible.

I might have lost track of who was telling you this but it is possible to describe damage in 4E. Its very easy really. Its just when you start actually doing it you realize how much time could be saved by popping on an episode of He-Man.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

One way to view the Death Checks is almost like the time allotted to that PC till a situation that brings upon death fully succeeds.

So a PC becomes exhausted and collapses. The Death Checks represent his chances of recovering from his exhaustion long enough to avoid the blow that may come from the Orcs still fighting for instance.

Demoraled could be that the PC has gotten to the point that he is literally a walking dead man. He simply cannot deal with what is happening around him and blacks out/zones out and this is when the arrow plunges through his throat.

To use a video-game analogy. It is sorta like in Brother's in Arms game. You don't have a normal health meter, what you have is a bar that decreases when exposed to enemy fire as it goes down your chance of getting hit and dying increases.

Until of course the death checks keep happening when all the enemies are down or not fighting. Unless of course all death checks are automaticly successful when no longer in combat.

 

[Hussar]

Emphasis mine... how have you proven this? You've given a bunch of examples where the author has full plot knowledge and hasn't described or shown a protagonist going unconscious and nearly dying. The trick is you are selecting only examples that fit a narrow range of "healing surge in action". As a DM narrating it while not knowing how the PC will be healed or if they will survive is a totally different story.

Show me an example where a character is knocked unconscious & fighting death then at full fighting potential 5 minutes after this happens. Yeah you can narrate healing surges and damage in 4e as long as you only provide examples that don't push boundaries, otherwise it can break down from heroic to silly and absurd.

What I'm wondering is do people playing 4e describe their battles as round after round of misses? I'm seriously curious about this.

Well, the Rambo example above is a perfect example of what you are talking about. The character falls off a cliff, is pretty seriously hurt, and then is fine the next day. Bruce Lee movies same. John Carter get's stabbed through the chest and walks away.

If your narration is silly and absurd, that's your fault, not the fault of the mechanics. If someone falls off a cliff, get's stabbed in the chest, get's shot, get's slammed by a two ton troll, they die most of the time. Yet, the Tolkien example is a perfect one. Everyone who observes the action thinks he's dead. He's been stabbed in the chest and pinned to the wall by a troll. Not an unrealistic thing to think that he's dead. Yet, they roll him over, he coughs twice and is perfectly fine. No blunt force trauma, no internal injuries. Nothing.

Dead to fully functional without any problems whatsoever.

So, the DM describes the monster as slamming you to the ground where you lie there unmoving. On the player's turn, he spends his healing surge, gets up and says, "Wow, that took the wind out of me for a second." Done.

It gets back to the "A dart tears through your eye, take 2 damage". If you insist on ridiculous narration, then, yes, your narration will be ridiculous.

I might have lost track of who was telling you this but it is possible to describe damage in 4E. Its very easy really. Its just when you start actually doing it you realize how much time could be saved by popping on an episode of He-Man.

This one flies straight up my nostril. I've shown SEVERAL examples from all sorts of sources that you can narrate the action without resorting to comic books or ridiculous examples. Yet, they get completely ignored in favor of scoring points against 4e.

Yes, you don't like 4e. I get that. That's fine. But do you really need to resort to insulting, passive agressive examples to make your point? Do you really need to snidely take cheap shots that 4e is somehow "only for children" and "not a serious game"? What joy does that bring you? What benefit do you derive from that?

 

[Herremann the Wise]

What I'm wondering is do people playing 4e describe their battles as round after round of misses? I'm seriously curious about this.

OK, as you most probably know, I'm not the greatest fan of hit points and healing in 4E (or any version of D&D for that matter). However, as recommended by Mearls himself on that podcast, all you have to do is temper your horrific descriptions, not describe everything as round after round of misses. He suggests the only time when you can go to town with gory wounding is when the character is knocked into the negatives with zero surges left. A warlord cannot get this character up but divine healing can.

However, it does mean you can have a situation where you undersell the damage done, and have a character have their bell rung but in actual fact, the blow ends up killing them.

I'm just not a fan of this vagueness. Not in terms of the players, who should not know exact details, but in terms of the DM. The DM only has a vague idea of what has happened, although I suppose it's good enough to roll with most of the time - and perhaps that's the real crux of this debate across numerous threads. The people who play 4E have most likely not come across these issues in play, while those not playing 4E, these theoretical issues are terribly obvious. It becomes very easy then for both sides to be effectively right.

For what it's worth, I hope 5E comes up with a more concrete or semi-abstract system for handling health, damage and healing. For the moment, I'll keep enjoying the 3.5 and 4E campaigns I'm playing and DMing.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[ExploderWizard]

This one flies straight up my nostril. I've shown SEVERAL examples from all sorts of sources that you can narrate the action without resorting to comic books or ridiculous examples. Yet, they get completely ignored in favor of scoring points against 4e.

Yes, you don't like 4e. I get that. That's fine. But do you really need to resort to insulting, passive agressive examples to make your point? Do you really need to snidely take cheap shots that 4e is somehow "only for children" and "not a serious game"? What joy does that bring you? What benefit do you derive from that?

I am playing in a 4E game now. There is no edition of D&D that is "sewious business" The game does not need to be "realistic" to be enjoyable. It just needs to make sense to the players and the fictional characters in the world. Having a character stand up after making a death check because it looked worse than it was is an acceptable dramatic occurance........if it didn't happen every day. Its overusing a gimmick that works great in moderation but once it becomes standard the PC's are mere cartoons. Im sorry if this analysis hurts your feelings personally. Dramatic narration of common everyday events as narrow escapes from the hand of fate lose thier impact.

 

[Imaro]

.
If your narration is silly and absurd, that's your fault, not the fault of the mechanics. If someone falls off a cliff, get's stabbed in the chest, get's shot, get's slammed by a two ton troll, they die most of the time. Yet, the Tolkien example is a perfect one. Everyone who observes the action thinks he's dead. He's been stabbed in the chest and pinned to the wall by a troll. Not an unrealistic thing to think that he's dead. Yet, they roll him over, he coughs twice and is perfectly fine. No blunt force trauma, no internal injuries. Nothing.

However, it does mean you can have a situation where you undersell the damage done, and have a character have their bell rung but in actual fact, the blow ends up killing them.

You see this is one of those examples where you look silly, you've described no real death dealing wounds... yet the player dies. This is where D&D 4e disturbs the narrative, especially since as DM I am the eyes, ears, etc. of the players. In 3e I could describe the force of a blow as well as how bad the actual physical wound was by looking at the total hit points a PC had left and how much closer to dying they were after the blow, and as long as I used common sense it mapped pretty well. With 4e it doesn't since there are two abstract axis to track on... hit points and healing surges... it has in fact become more abstract and easier to give an absurd description that contradicts what eventually happens.

EDIT: You see even the knocked down but...SURPRISE! he's not really dead gets absurd after the 50th time it happens in a campaign.

 

[Obryn]

Show me an example where a character is knocked unconscious & fighting death then at full fighting potential 5 minutes after this happens. Yeah you can narrate healing surges and damage in 4e as long as you only provide examples that don't push boundaries, otherwise it can break down from heroic to silly and absurd.

What I'm wondering is do people playing 4e describe their battles as round after round of misses? I'm seriously curious about this.

Who says that a guy who's up and fighting at full HPs is completely unwounded?

All being at full HP means is, "You will have to do a lot to me to take me down." It doesn't mean "I am perfectly okay and completely unwounded." All it means is, mechanically, he's largely unaffected by his wounds... It doesn't mean the wounds are not there.

I expect after a long 4e adventure, all the characters are banged up pretty good. Bandages, barely-healed wounds, bruises, etc.

And no, of course I don't narrate combat as a series of misses. I also don't narrate it as a series of blood-spurting arterial wounds. I narrate it more or less as I always have. Critical hits hurt, knockout blows are kinda nasty... but nobody is beheaded or has their limbs chopped off, unless they're actually killed.

-O

 

[Hussar]

You see this is one of those examples where you look silly, you've described no real death dealing wounds... yet the player dies. This is where D&D 4e disturbs the narrative, especially since as DM I am the eyes, ears, etc. of the players. In 3e I could describe the force of a blow as well as how bad the actual physical wound was by looking at the total hit points a PC had left and how much closer to dying they were after the blow, and as long as I used common sense it mapped pretty well. With 4e it doesn't since there are two abstract axis to track on... hit points and healing surges... it has in fact become more abstract and easier to give an absurd description that contradicts what eventually happens.

EDIT: You see even the knocked down but...SURPRISE! he's not really dead gets absurd after the 50th time it happens in a campaign.

Why would you describe death dealing wounds, unless you were absolutely sure he was dead? So, the bad guy slams into you with his [insert weapon here] and you fall to the ground. Is he alive? Is he dead? Well, we don't know at this exact moment.

Is that terribly unbelievable? That you aren't sure exactly how hurt someone is in the instant they go down? I certainly don't think so. If he picks himself up the next round, then that wound wasn't particularly serious then was it? Why are you dictating the narration before you know the results?

In game event: Fytor is hit with a critical and takes 15 damage. He currently only has 10 hit points, so he goes down.

Narration: The orc's spear rams through your leg. As the orc pulls out the spear, Fytor goes down in a welter of blood.

In game event: Fytor's player rolls his death save and gets back up.

Narration: Fytor shakes his head and the bleeding slows. Obviously nothing truly serious was hit. Fytor brings the fight back to the orc.

In game event: Fytor wins the fight with the orc and pauses for 5 minutes. Burns enough healing surges to heal to full.

Narration: Fytor rips a strip from his cloak and binds the wound. Fortunately, nothing vital was hurt. He's limping a little, but, he appears to be fine.

In game event: Fytor rests for the night. The next morning, he has full hit points and full healing surges.

Narration: Fytor wakens the next day, the wound in his leg looks clean as he cleans the dressing. Other than some twinges, it will hold his weight.

There. Done. Serious wounding narrated. Not impossible. Not fantasy supers. Pretty much stock fantasy.

I fail my perception check to see the bloody problem.