cignus_pfaccari
First Post
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O-kay. So, if the players get their asses handed to them, and can barely go on, stopping to rest up "deflates immersion?" Really?
Brad
Healing Surge Damage
- Thread starter Falstaff
- Start date
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O-kay. So, if the players get their asses handed to them, and can barely go on, stopping to rest up "deflates immersion?" Really?
Brad
wlmartin
Explorer
Firstly... if a group is in adventure and they burn through their Healing Surges it is most likely because the DM hasn't plan the encounters correctly. In that situation he would be forced to come up with a solution.
Next... if a group is suffering and needs a refresher, there are other options.
There is a ritual that allows you to pool Healing Surges to use between members.. next there is the concept of a Moderate Rest which refreshes SOME but not all Healing Surges but no Dailies.
An extended rest is not designed to be a booster to the players, something where they can recharge and when players realize this they will use their surges more tactically (ie not using them as much in combat and waiting till outside Combat where the Healer can buff their surges... not using them when they only need to heal for a small amount and they waste half the surge doing so) as well as using their Daily tactically and not at the first encounter of the day.
There are far too many people who want to play D&D like a game of WoW where they expect more from the game. You need to cast yourself back to 2nd edition... You had spell levels that meant you had to wait 2 levels before you could get new spells. You had magic item rewards that were ultra rare compared to todays gameplay.
Players nowadays are spoilt, the devs have designed a reward system that panders to the instant gratification of the players and fair enough as it is sometimes a lot to expect in an adventure that you battle for months of real time for and only get a +1 longsword out of it.
The point is that if your group NEEDS to use an extended rest and hasn't explored other options such as moderate rests, Healing Surge pooling through rituals, considering their healing surges more tactically then the problem is not with you, its the DM and he needs to lighten up on the encounters...
If the choice is MASSIVE encounters that knock the wind out of you or weaker encounters that are more balanced, the DM needs to choose the later as it is the proper way to play it, not the TPK attempt each encounter.
If a DM follows the tried and true guides to build fair and balanced encounters, the group should NEVER need to worry about running into an Extended Rest.
If however on the flip side, the group has 60% of its Healing Surges and just wants an excuse to get their dailies back, that is weak, unfair and IMO cheating... a DM that allows that may as well allow people to take mulligans on the first roll of the encounter!
keterys
First Post
That's a nifty idea - only triggers after you run out of surges, but then you know 3 more hits and you die... nifty.
And it presents another option for those who don't like the surge loss mechanic in the first place (though no healing is still cool): when you get hit, make a death save. So it _likely_ takes more than 3 hits, but you'd still want to be very careful of taking 5 or more
wlmartin
Explorer
I would like to see death saves gone. I love the idea of you are put to -HP and are dying, if you hit -10 you are dead... its that simple. It always worked but the whole Death Saves idea means that since it is rare for a group to go through 2 encounters where death saves are being rolled (ie someone will force an extended rest screaming at the DM that it is needed) it is more likely that someone will get 1 failed death save and that is it. The risk of dying isnt what it used to be... and that is sad.
I'm not aware of the moderate rest rule. On what page number and in which book can it be found?
I do agree with this.
This from the guy who wrote:
You tell your players how many encounters they are going to have before they can take an extended rest ahead of time?
You then went on to write that if they insisted on an extended rest, you would either leave the group or TPK them?
You started this line of conversation saying how it was your way or the highway.
That's wrong dude.
There are 6 players at the table, not 1.
The DM is not god, he is the crafter of the adventure and the referee. By not being impartial and forcing your players to do it your way, you are not being a referee.
I do agree that as a general rule, players should not just use an extended rest to get back Dailies when they have a ton of healing surges left over, but that's not how this conversation started. It started with the premise of a tough encounter, the players deciding to leave and take an extended rest, and you deciding that them doing that was either over-eagerness or disrespect.
Players don't ever have to try to find the ritual to redistribute healing surges. The DM should supply that ritual if HE has a problem with too many extended rests. But the players make the rest decisions for their PCs, not the DM (shy of the scenario not allowing rests).
cignus_pfaccari
First Post
Because dice never, ever go south for the winter. EVER. Nor do monsters eat healing surges. Because, you know, the entire thread was started about what happens to a character who has all of their healing surges eaten by surge-draining undead.
Page and reference? No? Ah, so a house rule, okay.
[deleted attacks on strawmen players who expect everything to be like an MMO]
Okay. Here's the thing.
Nobody's saying that the DM should be throwing a pack of tembos at a first-level party on the first encounter. Nor do I think anyone's really saying that the players are a bunch of wilting flowers who, at the first use of a healing surge or daily attack, demand to rest for eight hours.
Obviously, both of those would be bad.
But saying the concept of "you just had your asses kicked so hard that you don't think you can take another full fight, so you pull back and rest" is invalid, because the DM should make it so that never happens (which, when taken to its logical extent, means that no matter what the players do, they can't fail)...that's just plain silly.
I'm honestly still not sure how that breaks immersion. I know if I got my ass handed to me, if there weren't time pressure*, then I'd probably pull back and regroup before going on.
* - And there shouldn't always be time pressure. Not every adventure needs to be about the heroes saving the city/world/multiverse.
Brad
wlmartin
Explorer
It is a custom houserule I picked up online. You have a moderate rest which is 1 hour long and allows players to regen 50% healing surges, AP resets to 1 and they do not regain dailies. It is useful to give players a break if things are getting too tough but should only be used in extreme circumstances
I really didn't. My opinion is just that, an opinion. The RAW is on my side and an Extended Rest should really only be taken once per day. I do think that players take the game and their DM for granted. The DM has specific creative control over the game, he designs the dungeons , monsters and campaign world. If he wants to make it so that players get just 1 rest per day or 100, its upto him. The players play in that world. They have a certain element of creative control over what they do but within reason. Just like in a computer game you are limited by what your key presses can accomplish and attempting to do more than the parameters of the game is unrealistic. If a DM says it is one Extended Rest per day, thats what it is. The Player has a say in this since it is their game as well but only to a point and the DMs rules go. If they dont like it then they need to take it up with the DM out of game or leave the game. I am not saying here that DMs are gods but the amount of time and effort that goes into crafting the game allows the DM a wide sphere of control over what happens. It is safe to say that anything that contravenes RAW should be something the DM has final say over, so in this case Extended Rests more than once per day is a DM call, not a player one. The DM in my example is not going around changing the laws of physics to allow his monsters to win each encounter. He is not rolling 1s and informing he has Crits each turn. What he is doing is crafting the adventure, designing the boundaries of the game and enforcing the rules. If a player turns around and says "I summon a magical thought beast that kills everything in the room and the DM says Where do you get that power? and the player says I invented it, come on its my game and I can do what I want as well then by the rational of everyone that goes along with such things would allow this. The DM decides in some cases what rules to bend, sometimes some rules to break but his say is final. If a group wants to break the game and force a way to get extended rests outside of the way they are designed, the DM is within his rights to call b***hit on that and reign them in. He is also within his rights to say No, you can't Extended Rest here because it is too dangerous if he wants to. If I seem a bit hotheaded regarding this issue it is because people are arguing the player is always right when the issue at hand is a direct opposition to the core rules and to allow players to circumvent this just because they can do what they want is foolish. To those types of players I would give them the DM screen and invite them to run the adventure... DMs put a lot of effort into the game and in a lot of cases construct an entire world around certain key concepts and ideals. In our current game it is finely rooted in FR and my DM pointed out that I had equipped my Avenger with a Holy Symbol of Onatar which wasnt even a FR god let alone the god I worship and told me to swap it out. Which I did. This is because I respected that it is his game. There are many other DMs that would create a campaign world and not care about these little things and that is fine as well but IMHO the second a player decides that the campaign world that the DM has spent hours and sometimes even days preparing and working on ... the second he decides it is as much his as it is the DMs and he can start calling the shots in how specific things work, he is dreaming and needs to sit back in his player chair. The DMs have a lot of power in D&D and there is a reason for it. They put time and effort into crafting the adventure and campaign world and if a player wants to act like an idiot and try to make out he is spiderman and can crawl upside down on walls, he has the power to say Um, nope... my campaign world doesnt have this, stop it There is a definite fine line between playing the game and running the game.. that line is separated by a DM Screen and there can be only one DM per game so if you dont like the DM deciding things, respect him enough to accept it for the game and then either challenge him in private or quit... but at least respect the screen and the position of DM as I g'tee all the time you spend coming up with fancy builds does not compete with the weeks on end DMs will spend crafting campaign worlds, building dungeon sets and buying minis and equipment for the game. So in conclusion, I guess I am more on the side of DMs = God.. regardless it doesnt change the fact that Extended Rests are once per day as per core rules. If a player wants to break this rule or to force the issue by camping an area waiting to get sleepy and this is something the DM disagrees with, the DM has full rights to demand the players continue with the adventure. Just because you can do something, doesnt mean you should You can have your character drop trowel and urinate over the dead bodies... I would hope you choose not to as I would hope you choose not to ruin the concept of rests being once per day but if you want to screw with the game and your DM that is fine. This is all moot if the DM believes that extended rests should be more frequent and house rules it but if he does so I think he is pandering too much to the desires of his players.
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wlmartin
Explorer
I think it comes down to how badly the group is at the point they want to take an Extended Rest. This is where DM discretion kicks in. If the group is down to 0 healing surges, no dailies and they have 6 more encounters left in the adventure then the DM really needs to figure out a way for an extended rest to work in that situation. FYI : It should never get to that point... if it does the DM has designed the adventure very poorly The situation I am talking about is where people are using Extended Rests like boosters. An extended rest in the situation discussed above is obviously a must... however one should only be taken when the entire party is down to little or no healing surges. There are people out there that take 2 encounters and then run an extended rest. IMHO the extended rest should be used as close to daily as possible... In an example where a group comes 1 or 2 encounters in and is out of healing surges, I would be asking myself Ack, if we continue, will we die? If I was in an MMO I would be thinking I had made a mistake and find a quest a few levels lower... and a group who is running in an adventure that requires an extended rest every 2 encounters is basically playing in encounters far too powerful for them and this is more down to DM bad planning then anything else. Bottom line - it should be a DM discretion thing and should only be used when it is warranted (end of the day) or in a dire situation where the encounter cleaned the party out... however the people discussing this in this thread are saying Well, if the group decide they want to take an Extended Rest at any point, its their game and they should be allowed - this is poor gaming pure and simple.
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Er, what? I don't get where you take the LFR thing here -- most LFR adventures are "Erest and you lose" mods, and I've never seen one where you could rest whenever you wanted to.
Sorry, but you are mistaken. DM discretion has nothing to do with it. The DM does not decide when the PCs want to rest, the players do. We are not talking about the players popping all of their Dailies in the first encounter and then going off and doing an extended rest. We are not talking about breaking the rules and allowing for more than one extended rest per day.
We are talking about WHO makes the decision on the PC's actions, including rest.
And the reasons why the players make their decisions are irrelevant. If one PC has 13 healing surges left, but another has 3 healing surges left and the group decides to go back to town, so be it. Maybe a player has a bad feeling about what's coming up next in the dungeon, so he wants his PC to be full up. Maybe a player is roleplaying his PC that if he gets badly hurt, the PC takes a break. Who knows? Who cares? Resting is not the DM's decision, it's the players'. The DM makes zero PC decisions. He influences PC decisions, but he doesn't make them.
And he especially doesn't make the PC rest decision for a game mechanics reason like "but the party still has a lot of healing surges remaining". Talk about meta-gaming.
The DM does control the rest of the game world and if it makes sense for the dungeon to have changed since the PCs rested, so be it. There are sometimes consequences to PC actions.
You're the one who claimed that the players are being spoiled and disrespectful if they decide after a tough encounter to leave the dungeon and go take an extended rest, and that the DM should either leave the group or TPK the party.
TPK the party? As punishment?
You cannot imagine how controlling that sounds.
If a DM told me "no, the PCs cannot leave the dungeon and go back to town to take an extended rest" for a game mechanics reason (you still have a ton of healing surges remaining) and without a good in scenario reason for it (like the PCs are in the Shadowfell and currently have no way to get back to town), I'd laugh in his face. Such a railroading DM doesn't deserve my respect. And yes, I have (once) walked out on a very controlling DM. Fortunately, I haven't run into many of those.
As a general rule, players tend to follow the DM's lead most of the time anyway. Any DM who overreacts to players once in a while not following his lead, and going off to rest after a tough encounter by leaving the group or TPKing the party shouldn't be a DM, or at least wouldn't be a DM long in our group.
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