Healing Potions seem woeful

[Blackeagle]

That doesn't say much. Throwing a bunch of PCs at an encounter five levels above their own will surely result in deaths when playing any edition of D&D rules. Does the fact that two five-headed hydras or a chain devil can kick the crap out of a first level 3.5e party say anything worthwhile about the lethality/danger of that system? We should be talking about facing equal level encounters, what PCs should normally be facing day to day.

I suspect that for standard level encounters, 4e will be about as lethal as 3e, which is to say, not very. However, I think the way lethality manifests itself is going to be different. In 3e, once you got beyond the die in one hit levels, the most likely way to die against an equal level encounter was to try to take on too many in a day. In 4e, because healing is limited per-encounter in addition to per-day, it's considerably more likely for characters to die in the first equal level encounter of the day.

 

[cylerist]

Which seems like a great house rule til you realise your PCs can buy a hundred of them and use a minor action every round to heal.

Seriously, I like that a healing potion costs a healing surge - it prevents consumable abuse.

This was never aproblem in 3.5. There were consaquences and risks in drinking a potion in combat.
oh but wait 4e got rid of the balancing feature, so I guess it could be a problem now

 

[keterys]

Many people would consider wands of cure light wounds, lesser vigor, healing belts, etc a problem in 3e.

Certainly 5 minutes after every combat, everyone was back to full health, in every game I was in.

 

[KarinsDad]

What do you mean now? It's always been this way. There's a whole paragraph in the 1e DMG where Gary Gygax explains that of course it's ridiculous that a fighter could take all these sword thrusts and how hit points represent more than the physical ability to endure punishment.

Yes, there was. But that is not the only thing that paragraph and other 1E paragraphs state. It also states that a portion of damage is real damage.

So if you are going to pull it out, be sure to represent both sides of it.

4E changed the model completely. It was both aspects for 30+ years, now it is one.

 

[Steveyd]

Why? Doesn't make it any less viable.

And some of us got the books on the 6th, and are still figuring it all out, you know? I don't tend to run games without having a full understanding and overview of the rules first. That's one of my jobs as the GM: Understand the rules enough to make moderated decisions about gameplay.

Luckily, the section on healing, healing surges, and damage were pretty much on 2 pages. Very easy to understand, it seems.

Still figuring out the specifics on combat moves. Lot of options there.

I think it goes back to Ari's point earlier in the thread that a lot of things people have problems with at first read through just actually work a lot better seeing it in action. I think on the read through it's easier to imagine a number of scenarios where X mechanic doesn't work or make sense but in play at the tabletop it works out nice and smooth. That said, the actual provided example whether from play or just made up on the spot is just as viable. Would anyone have known differently if he'd said he would have played it out?

 

[hong]

We should be talking about facing equal level encounters, what PCs should normally be facing day to day.

What?

 

[Nytmare]

I can buy this up to the point the character drops. Once they are down and a few bad saves away from death, i don't visualize them as just tired with a few scratches anymore. And I do not want to visualize them that way.

You don't have to visualize them that way. You can run through the worst fight of your life, get dropped 20 times, get healed up to your maximum hitpoints and still pretend like you're broken and limping and looking like you've been dragged 5 miles by a team of horses.

HP do not directly equate to how shiny and scarless your character is. They tell you when you can handle a big fight, when you've expended about half your resources, when you might die, and when you're dead.

Forget about scratches and forget about scabs. You're a few bad saves away from death and you get a bandaid and a couple of minutes to rest up? Regardless of how many hitpoints you have, regardless of the surges you've spent, and the surges you have left, you look like a guy who barely made it out alive.

 

[pemerton]

Not changing due to situation amounts to railroading. I guess 4e comes with railroading built in.

I don't understand this. If the GM changes the adventure elements to make it harder/easier/more suitable for the PCs, then how does that avoid railroading? It looks like the GM's choices, not the players' choices, are determining the gameworld.

Someone please tell me I'm not the only one that runs campaigns this way.

You're not; I'm the other one.

Yeah, that way when they win, they know they've actually achieved something. They'll thank you for it.

It depends on the players' preferences, surely. Some players are happy to venture the much-developed PCs on the somewhat random fields of dice-determined battle. Others like the rules to be structured in such a way that the players have more say than the dice over which combat will be trivial and which a "blaze of glory" moment. 4e seems to run in the direction of increased player control, especially when compared to AD&D. This is not objectively good in an RPG; nor is it objectively bad. But it is unsurprising. As far as I have a sense of these things, it is consistent with general trends in RPG design over the past 10 to 20 years.

And as for your last paragraph (it's not in the quote, but in your original post), how do you know that 4e is any better in this regard? I'm not saying it isn't, but there are very few of us that have played it enough to be able to answer that question.

I'm pretty sure the poster you are replying to was a playtester.

 

[silentounce]

I don't understand this. If the GM changes the adventure elements to make it harder/easier/more suitable for the PCs, then how does that avoid railroading? It looks like the GM's choices, not the players' choices, are determining the gameworld.

Either I wasn't clear enough, or you misread what I said.

My point was exactly that. If the DM does not adapt/change the situation based on the players' choices, that's railroading. Not allowing the players a chance to follow the path that they have chosen for themselves. Railroading is forcing the PCs to follow a set predetermined path, that has nothing to do with how easy or hard said path is.