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

[Gentlegamer]

So there is a mechanic in both games that slows the character down. So how is he "better" modeled in pre-4e HP?

I think the idea is that McClain had a diminishing resource of "health/stamina" that he had to be smart about expending in combat over the course of his "adventure." There are moments in the film where he rests briefly, though, so perhaps that can be explained as healing surges. I haven't played 4e; do healing surges require any rest at all or are they "healing on tap" for the character to replenish hp at will?

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think the idea is that McClain had a diminishing resource of "health/stamina" that he had to be smart about expending in combat over the course of his "adventure." There are moments in the film where he rests briefly, though, so perhaps that can be explained as healing surges. I haven't played 4e; do healing surges require any rest at all or are they "healing on tap" for the character to replenish hp at will?

Surges are limited on a per day basis. There are limited ways to use one in combat. Outside of combat during a short 5 min rest, you can spend as many as you have to spend "on tap" to heal. Once you have spent your daily allotment of surges, you may not recover any damage until you take an extended (6 hour) rest, which replentishes your daily surge total.

A character with 0 surges can chug healing potions all day and not heal 1 point, so the magical healing elixer isn't really that magical at all, it simply lets the character spend a surge during combat and adds a few points.

 

[Nebulous]

I haven't played 4e; do healing surges require any rest at all or are they "healing on tap" for the character to replenish hp at will?

Everyone gets a Second Wind during combat, where you can spend 1 healing surge. Some classes and powers enable another surge, but it's rare. In general, you "heal up" after a fight while you're resting, spending as many surges as you want or need to reach full hit points. Those healing surges remain gone until an extended 6 hour rest.

In my games, i've found it useful to track Healing Surges as their new hit points, as a party is not really in terrible danger until they're very low on surges with little or no chance for a long rest.

Potions of Healing, interestingly, still expend one of your surges, but you can use it in combat as a minor action, and sometimes get more HP back than you normally would. Potions are highly, highly useful, but if you are out of surges, it is useless.

 

[Nebulous]

A character with 0 surges can chug healing potions all day and not heal 1 point, so the magical healing elixer isn't really that magical at all, it simply lets the character spend a surge during combat and adds a few points.

If 4e doesn't have it yet, i'm sure a Potion of Extra Healing will make it in officially one of these days that heals you whether or not you have surges left.

 

[Desdichado]

They're pretty routine in most action movies. It's almost formulaic how the protagonist of an action movie is getting beat to a pulp, then suddenly inexplicably, he starts winning and then at the end, it's like he never even got hurt at all.

 

[LostSoul]

This has been covered many, many times. Let's just say I prefer a model in which when the DM says someone is "beat up and injured," it actually means something game mechanically, even if all it means is "less capable in a fight than he would be if he weren't beat up and injured."

I don't - because "being beat up and injured" in most action movies is just to show how bad-ass the protagonist is. Protagonists in action movies are often more effective when they are "beat up and injured". (Well, maybe not; I haven't done the research, but it seems that way to me.)

edit: Here is a simulationist game mechanic, for simulating action movies.

We'll call the game "Good vs. Evil".

[sblock]Relationships: Pick an NPC. The person is your Relationship NPC. Whenever you deal with this person or do something relating to them, the DM determines if it's Helpful or Harmful. He just makes ticks in each column.

Taking HP damage: Each time you take 1/4 of your HP damage, you gain a +2 bonus to your rolls. If you heal this, the bonus goes away.

When you hit 0 HP: The DM looks at the Helpful/Harmful list. If you have more Helpful than Harmful ticks, you're Good; you're the Protagonist. You don't die, and you get a +5 bonus to your rolls.

If you have more Harmful ticks, then you're Evil; you're the Antagonist, and you die.

If they are even, you don't die, but your character "walks off into the night" like a good anti-hero.

Pure sim.[/sblock]

 

[Obryn]

I understand where you are coming from here with the whole Die Hard thing but... he will be able to perform as if unwounded. Shouldn't being wounded mean that you're impaired in some way? Full hit points and scars? Yes. Faded bruises? Yes. Wounded? I'd say no.

Again, if you want to model long-term injury, I don't think hit points - healing surges or no - are the way to do it. They're vague and undefined, and can't perfectly map to physical damage.

I know that effectively that's what healing surges are for and can represent, but this muddies the water a little too far for me if I think about it too hard. It may work for describing PCs but not their opponents (who have between 1 and 3 healing surges but with no way of spending them).

As Jeff Wilder points out, if you describe someone as wounded or beat up, then that should mean that the opponents are not at tippy-top condition, mechanically speaking.

That's just it, though - I don't need to talk about NPCs in this way. 4e isn't symmetric, remember, with how it handles PCs and NPCs. If I describe an NPC as wounded, you can absolutely believe there will be game effects. If I say an owlbear is old and decrepit, it will be reflected in its game stats. It's all part of communicating important information to the players.

I don't need to use the same standard for NPCs as I do with PCs.

If HP are the only mechanic in the game to represent resilience/fighting effectiveness then I do.

I agree that it's the only mechanic we have. I disagree that this forces HPs to swing double or triple duty as something they're not.

Unwounded and completely materially unaffected by wounds are the same thing. To say that you are banged up and limping but otherwise ok means nothing unless there is some connection to your actual state of being. If you are limping with full HP is your move/ability to run reduced?

I don't see why it needs to? I'm fine with separating the narrative and mechanical levels. Let's say Our Hero has an arrow in the leg. Similar stuff has happened in novels and movies. Can he charge his foe? Sure! Will it hurt? Absolutely! Could his enemy smack him while wincing? Sure, if he succeeds on his attack roll!

In an adventuring party without a paladin or cleric, does anyone who doesn't die get hit with a nasty wound ever, or does the lack of magical healing turn all hits into shots from nerf weapons. If real wounds do still occur in these situations then they are cured by the coach saying "walk it off son" or we have the PC's as trolls issue.
If we describe the action as not resulting in actual serious wounds then no threat is that serious and everyone is just playfighting.

Sure, folks get hit with nasty wounds. After the fights, they bandage them up. Or grunt through the pain and continue on.

Either way its less satisfying to logic and common sense. If fluff and narration carry so much weight then just keep fighting after reaching 0 HP. Sure mechanically you are down but thats no reason not to suck it up and keep going. That should be ok right?

I think that's more or less the exact opposite of what I'm saying. I am absolutely not saying fluff and narration carry 'so much weight'.

I am saying narration should serve the game mechanics. If the game mechanics say someone's unconscious at 0 HP, the narration should support this. If the game mechanics say HP loss means nothing for fighting capability, then the narration should support this, as well.

-O

 

[ExploderWizard]

I am saying narration should serve the game mechanics. If the game mechanics say someone's unconscious at 0 HP, the narration should support this. If the game mechanics say HP loss means nothing for fighting capability, then the narration should support this, as well.

-O

Gotcha. This our largest divide. I say that the rules should serve the game I want, and you think the game should cater to the mechanics.
If we are split here then HP rules are small fry and we just agree to disagree and move on.

 

[LostSoul]

1) no convalescence
2) no medium-term incapacitation
3) Schroedinger's wounding.
How would you solve those problems? Do you have examples that deal with them?

I am going to ramble on for a bit. I think that there are very good reasons some people have for not liking 4E, but I don't think it's because you can't narrate things a certain way.

I think it's because 4E takes Immersion to the shed and shoots it in the face.

1:

What do you mean by no convalescence? A mechanical reason for a player to choose to have his PC sit in bed for an extended period of in-game time?

If so, then no, 4E doesn't do this.

That really has nothing to do with narration, though. I can narrate my guy being in bed with bad wounds. Mechanically, he's at full kick-ass power.

I can say, "After that last foray into the dungeon, my PC is tending to his wounds. His shoulder is separated and a few of his ribs are broken from the ogre's smash."

Then when the goblins bring the fight to the PCs, he picks up his sword and gets right in there. "He fights through the pain and dishes out some of it."

What a bad-ass.

There's nothing wrong with wanting a game to reward players who make the choice to have their PC recuperate for an extended period of in-game time. This is different from having required narration. What it does is to force a different set of choices; ie. I'm wounded, so I rest; the game makes this a choice that I want to make.

4E doesn't ask players to make that choice. It says, "You're wounded (the colour) but you can still fight; you don't have to stay in bed; if you keep going then you can keep getting treasure and XP."

I think that when you say "You can't narrate convalescence" you're wrong; obviously you can. "My guy is hurt and he stays in bed." What you don't have is any game mechanic rewarding you for making that choice (and, in effect, it "penalizes" that choice because while you're in bed you're not getting any XP). So there's no reason for the player to play the character as though he were wounded. Immersion is damaged.

(Then again, if you wanted to reward convalescence, you could always make a skill challenge... but I don't think that's what the way the game is set up.)


2:

If the story has someone getting severely injured, people yelling at him not to leave them while he is getting carried away on a stretcher, followed by him opening his eyes and weakly holding one of their hands...

PHB, pg 185:

Stabilize the Dying: Make a DC 15 Heal check to stabilize an adjacent dying character. if you succeed, the character can stop making death saving throws until he or she takes damage. The character's current hit point total doesn't change as a result of being stabilized.​

This situation happens when the PC is either out of Healing Surges and/or can't access a Healing Surge, and has to make Death Saves. Not very common, but it can still occur.

3:

Imagine (to take an extreme example in the hopes that you will actually try to understand the issue) having a CN-Two-Face Warlord as your healer (recruiting sucked). Now the DM has to narrate (or, more likely, will simple stop narrating wounds altogether) wounds that *could* easily kill you (about 50% of the time, when the Warlord decides not the heal you), but could be recovered from by a guy yelling at you. Not easy.

DM: "You get slashed by the sword. 18 damage."
Fighter: "Oh, I'm down."
DM: "Ah, it's a bad wound, a deep slash across your chest from your shoulder to your hip. Your collarbone breaks and your blood flows freely, seeping from underneath your armour, and you collapse."
Warlord: "I yell at him: Get the hell up, you sissy! This is no time to be taking a nap!"
Fighter: "Um... the wound closes up?"
DM: "No, no. The wound's still there. He just inspired you to get up and fight on. And guess what - you're tough enough to do it."
Fighter: "What a bad-ass I am."
Warlord: "You're even more bad-ass than that. First, I use Knight's Move to get you back on your feet."
Fighter: "Sweet, I get up."
Warlord: "'Good, good!' I say. 'Now let's show him what we're made of!' Hammer and Anvil. If I hit, you get to make a free basic attack. And - yep, it's a hit! Add +3, my Cha bonus, to your damage."
Fighter: "I flex my hand on my sword and raise it above my head - yes, even though my collarbone is broken, I raise it high and grit through the pain - and smash it down on him in grim revenge, driven mad by the inspiring presence of the Two-Face Warlord here!"

4E PCs are bad-asses.

My point is that you don't have to worry that much. You might have to accept the (action movie) trope that people can grit their teeth and dish out the pain even when the chips are down. If you don't like that, then you'd probably have to be careful with your narration.

 

[Obryn]

Gotcha. This our largest divide. I say that the rules should serve the game I want, and you think the game should cater to the mechanics.
If we are split here then HP rules are small fry and we just agree to disagree and move on.

Well, I want the rules to serve the game I want, too. I don't have just one single overriding preference.

To completely break the conversation in half, I should note that I use long recovery times in my 1e game. If you don't have a cleric, you're screwed or you're resting for a week or more. Magical healing items are rare and precious, and nobody can have a CLW wand because they simply didn't exist in 1e.

My only point is that there's nothing inherently broken or insane or unversilimitudinous (new word!) about 4e's HP system. It's better for certain play styles, but worse for others. And when you're talking about HPs, I think desired play-style is the only argument you can really make for one system over another.

-O