D&D 5E Healing Surges, Hit Dice, Martial Healing, and Overnight recovery: Which ones do you like?

[EnglishLanguage]

Reading between the lines stops being useful when you ignore the lines themselves while looking for something between them that may or may not be there.

 

[pemerton]

Somehow it matters very much to me if there are signficantly different versions of visions in everyone's head. I'd worry that it sterilizes the story, that people would be walking on eggshells afraid that their vision would intrude on others, and that many people would not be imagining at all what was happening which leads to further blindspots in the fiction.

I had read this and was ready to reply, but read through the rest of the thread first.

Hence I came across [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s reply, and mine is bascially the same: "Come on in, the water's fine." Or as I was going to put it: in practice I haven't encountered the problem you describe. I think the reason for this is that, as the shared fiction becomes more salient for action resolution, the shared details become more and more precise as participants articulate them in the course of play.

Of course there can be confusions/conflicts, but I don't think these are any different from the confusions that arise in any RPGing from player misunderstanding of a GM's description ("I thought the archway was on the left, but now you're telling me it is on the right?").

 

[pemerton]

The narrative you describe is unrelated to "healing surges" and could be replicated with any healing in combat, be it proportional or not, static or random.

<snip>

healing surges, as currently presented, prevent attrition

<snip>

If surges were removed and replaced with, say dice, or a set number of hp (5/level) individual encounters would play almost identically.

I don't really have anything to add to [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] and [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s extended replies to this. In-combat healing is rationed in two ways: via limited usage of healing abilities (encounter powers, consumables etc), and via healing surges being a finite resource. Healing surges being proportional means that a common power suite can be more powerful when used by fighters, paladins etc than when used by thieves, wizards etc.

You yourself acknowledge the reality of healing surge attrition when you talk about tactics changing to cope with low-surge characters.

Healing surge attrition is a big factor in my 4e play experience - particularly for the invoker/wizard.

long-term resource management is only somewhat a "traditional aspect of D&D". It's there, but not for all classes/characters.

I disagree. All classes and characters have hit points, which is a long-term resource (healed either by daily spells in pre-4e, or by consumables, or by extended rests). Managing hit point loss and recovery is a big part of traditional D&D play. It remains part of 4e play, but mediated via the healing surge mechanics.

I agreed that in-combat healing was valid, but was independent from healing surges.

But healing surges as a finite pool of unlockable healing are one way to implement in-combat healing, to link it to overall damage taken (because you spend from the same pool to recover hit points after a combat), and to create a resource that can be drawn upon for other purposes (rituals, skill challenges etc).

This doesn't tend to make them either "artificial" or "gamist". To my eyes it makes them powerful and versatile.

there is only the one form of dramatic pacing rather than two. There can only be drama in individual encounters and what happened in prior encounters is largely irrelevant so long as the PCs survived.

In this edition, all fights are meant to have the risk of death. You could do that in other editions with fewer larger fights. But it works better in 4e. But it's a very different design than earlier editions where there were a number of fights that individually would pose no threat but would wear down a party. That style of attrition doesn't work as well in 4e as PCs just use encounter powers and thus expend almost no resources, and actually gain Action Points so you're more powerful after the numerous mook fights.

4e takes the two different types of narrative drama and reduces it to one more effective type of drama. Which is excellent if you like that type of drama where every fight is meant to be a dramatic set piece battle. Less so if you just want a long series of mook fights.

In this, healing surges are irrelevant save as a means of reliably healing PCs to full independent of magic between each set piece battle. It makes the set pieces easier to reliably balance but, because healing is so accessible, hitpoint attrition cannot take place

<snip>

It doesn't matter if the adventure included 2 fights that each really taxed the party and ended with them being spent or six fights that gradually wore down the party. The end result is the same, which makes healing surges artificial as they have no influence on how the party is at the start of the day or the end of the day. They only impact how healthy the party is at the start of each individual fight.

<snip>

The game itself is designed around encouraging one strong fight over two mook fights. Healing surges are just a part of that overall design. They exist for that reason and that reason alone. Anything else is just tangential or a side effect.

I'm not sure I really follow this.

You seem to be saying that the game would be no different if healing surges were replaced by two discrete mechanics: (a) some sort of rationed encounter-based healing; (b) every PC heals to full hp with a short rest.

That might be a fine game, but it would have no long-term management of PC resilience. It would therefore be quite different from 4e, which does have long-term management of PC resilience, because each PC has a finite number of healing surges between extended rests.

The fact that 4e has this additional feature - ie that it has both adventure-level and encounter-level management of character resilience and drama/pacing based around that - doesn't show that healing surges are artificial. It shows that they make the game different from, and more D&D-like, than the other hypothetical game that you describe. (I also don't understand the claim that what happened in prior encounters is irrelevant to later ones. Even were this true at a gross mechanical level - which it is not, given that healing surges and other daily resources can be depleted - it would not be true overall, assuming that the events of the prior encounter actually changed the state of the unfolding story in a significant way.)

As to whether 4e is intended to support "big" fights or "mook" fights - that is a matter of taste. The DMG doesn't express a strong view. The WotC modules I have seen tend to be full of pointless on-level fights. I personally tend to use above-level encounters, because I think they play out in a more interesting way; and I hate "filler" encounters, which contribute basically nothing to the narrative. (And I am puzzled that your defence of the importance of narrative and story-telling in RPGs includes a defence of the centrality of "filler" combats.)

But there are other 4e players and GMs on these boards who use lots of minion fights and other sorts of "mook" fights to use 4e to play adventures more like classic D&D in their overall dynamics. Not exactly my style, but good luck to them! They're certainly not contradicting anything in the published rulebooks that I'm aware of.

People don't say "Imma gonna write and adventure and it's going to have 6 level+1 encounters." They write and adventure and then work in the encounters that make sense.

Which people? When I run a game, and prepare for it, I certainly think hard about the likely adventure pacing. I make plans to account for that, and I take it into account when actually framing the encounters during the course of play.

If an encounter can be a narrative (which you claim above) then the series of connected events that is exploring a dungeon and looting its treasure is also a narrative.

You move from "can be" to "is". That inferential move is invalid. A mammal can be a cat. But it needn't be; it might be a dog.

So exploring a dungeon and looting its treasure can be a narrative; but it need not be. If you read accounts of tournament adventures like ToH or Against the Gianst you will see that those players were not telling stories. But they were playing a roleplaying game, because they were exploiting fictional positioning in action resolution.

the flavour text in 4th Edition has no impact at all

That's not true at all. For instance, if the GM narrates that there are bushes creating difficult terrain, and a player is able to use an ability to confer his/her PC with forest walk, then that PC can now ignore the difficult terrain. That's "flavour text" affecting action resolution.

Here's another example: the DMG notes that wooden or paper objects might take more damage from [fire] attacks than (say) thunder attacks. The obvious reason is because those materials are flammable. This is "flavour text" affecting action resolution.

Another example would be a player using Icy Terrain to help cross a stream or small pond. You can do that with a [cold] power but not an [acid] power because water can be frozen.

4e's tight keyword system strongly facilitates this sort of adjudication (as [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION] noted upthread).

It'd be easy to treat D&D like a combat simulator, a dungeon delve, where you move from one combat to the next. But that's not the case. If you do just want to move from one combat to the next, then the game ceases to be D&D and you're playing a miniature combat game.

<snip>

If you're not telling a story in D&D you're just playing a miniature combat game.

Classic D&D was not a storytelling game. It was (primarily) a dungeon exploration game, with support also for wilderness exploration - by "exploration" I mean the players, via the play of their PCs and the action resolution mechanics (eg searching, getting lost, etc), move through an imaginary area and learn what it looks like and what it is in it. There are also action resolution mechanics for determining whether creatures encountered are friendly or hostile, and if hostile for resolving fights with them.

Given that this was how roleplaying was invented, this must count as RPGing, although stories and characterisation are not any part of it. And it is obviously not primarily a miniature combat game (although miniatures combat can be pat of it).

I didn't say 4e is a tactical skirmish game and/or board game. It certainly leans more in that direction than other games, but it still has a couple mechanics that keep it in RPG territory. Like skill challenges and social skills.

4e is, at least in my own play of it, a very different game from classic D&D, because it has only limited support for exploration. But it has much more elaborate rules for encounter resolution. And also has much better mechanics for supporting storytelling, particularly in respect of pacing (both adventure-level and encounter-level pacing).

I was saying that, in its design, it leans more to Gamist logic and requires much, much more willing suspension of disbelief.

This is a biographical statement about you. It is certainly not true for me. 4e requires from me the same sort of suspension of disbelief as does reading LotR or REH, or watching an X-Men movie. But it doesn't require the absurdities of classic D&D, in which ostensibly mundane human beings can recover from near-fatal injuries in a week or two of resting.

If the game doesn't say something, any explanation is just a fan justification. Fan wanking really.
Arguing that there's no narrative disparity between warlord's inspiring word or clerical healing word because you can describe the latter as being the god's divine inspiration is not a valid excuse.

<snip>

Cool fan theory, but since the movie didn't show it, it's just speculation/ fan wanking.

This is a new thing for me. I've always regarded making up fiction as part of playing the game.

But in any event, the fact that Healing Word relies upon divine inspiration is not unguided, unconstrained invention. The power (prior to Essentials) has the divine keyword, which means that it "comes from the gods" (PHB p 54). And it restores hit points. And hit points "represent more than your physical endurance. They represent your character's skill, luck and resolve - all the factors that help you stay alive in a combat situation" (PHB p 293). In other words, Healing Word is quite naturally understood as a divine bestowal of luck and/or resolve.

The 10th level cleric utility power Word of Vigour is practically identical in effect to Healing Word (close burst 1, self and allies may send a surge and regain 2d6 additional hp). That power clearly restores vigour (it's in the name of the power). The cleric-ranger in my game uses that power and healing word as his two baseline healing effects. It's very natural to interpret them as being the same within the fiction. As I said, I've always regarded that sort of thing as playing the game rather than wanking.

 

[Zardnaar]

Voted no on the whole lot. Healing is to abundant and cheap and easy in D&DN.

 

[Lanefan]

Having just waded through all this (and voted 'no' to all in the poll), a few observations:

1. Hit points are, without doubt, a purely gamist construct...and a pretty good one when compared to what else is out there. That said, there's no need to make them any *more* gamist than they already are; and a few tiny shreds of realism can be injected by splitting hit points into body and fatigue points, making natural healing of any kind take time measured in days rather than minutes, and making magical healing...well, magical. You need a spell, or a potion, or a device (though 3e blew the device call with the wands...sigh...) and all of these are limited and - in the case of potions and devices - should be quite difficult and-or expensive to renew.

2. Having converted and run several 4e modules and read numerous others one thing stands out about the design: 4e really likes the dramatic set-piece battle. Probably does it better than any other system I've seen. Problem is, where most old-school adventures might try to have one or two of these the 4e adventures like to string them together one after another; and the design-level assumption seems to be the party will be in very good to perfect shape for each one, which in a 1e-style game just doesn't happen once the Clerics run out of spells (and they don't get many). This results in one of two things: either the adventure ends up being way deadlier than intended, or ends up taking way longer in game-time than intended. Or (in my own experience) both.

3. Hit points seem to work best when everybody has fewer of them. There's a bi-i-ig difference between a 1e 1st-level character with 8 h.p. and a 4e 1st-level character with 25, when each gets hit by a shortsword swing for 6. Weapon and spell damage hasn't scaled up much if any over the editions - a longsword has always done d8, a fireball d6/level, etc. - but hit point totals have both for PCs and their foes. To me that's a flaw; and very much contributes both to the h.p.-as-luck-not-meat line of thinking and to a sense of - if not immortality - a certain lack of fear of minor encounters. Any encounter, no matter how minor, should be cause for at least a bit of concern.

Lanefan

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

3. Hit points seem to work best when everybody has fewer of them. There's a bi-i-ig difference between a 1e 1st-level character with 8 h.p. and a 4e 1st-level character with 25, when each gets hit by a shortsword swing for 6. Weapon and spell damage hasn't scaled up much if any over the editions - a longsword has always done d8, a fireball d6/level, etc. - but hit point totals have both for PCs and their foes. To me that's a flaw; and very much contributes both to the h.p.-as-luck-not-meat line of thinking and to a sense of - if not immortality - a certain lack of fear of minor encounters. Any encounter, no matter how minor, should be cause for at least a bit of concern.

Lanefan

Base weapon damage hasn't scaled up and higher-level spell damage has actually scaled down. But melee damage soared under 3.X. Bonus damage from Strength blasted through the roof. Critical hits became core and multiplied the whole damage set. Power attack became a thing.

A dwarven axe may only be doing 1d10, but the 17th level dwarf Fighter/Dwarven Defender added +20 from strength (using it two-handed), +4 from magic weapon, +2 specialisation, and up to another +34 from power attack. 1d10 + 26 to 1d10 + 60 hp per hit. Striking 3 times a round unless magically enhanced. Achieving a critical hit 10% of the time [that multiplied the whole by 3] 1d10 x 3 + 78 - 180. Nothing in the older games comes close to that output (thankfully).

 

[Manbearcat]

3. Hit points seem to work best when everybody has fewer of them. There's a bi-i-ig difference between a 1e 1st-level character with 8 h.p. and a 4e 1st-level character with 25, when each gets hit by a shortsword swing for 6. Weapon and spell damage hasn't scaled up much if any over the editions - a longsword has always done d8, a fireball d6/level, etc. - but hit point totals have both for PCs and their foes. To me that's a flaw; and very much contributes both to the h.p.-as-luck-not-meat line of thinking and to a sense of - if not immortality - a certain lack of fear of minor encounters. Any encounter, no matter how minor, should be cause for at least a bit of concern.

Lanefan

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION], to your point, there has also been another change. While the To Hit AC math in 3.x can be extremely unbounded, the same math in 4e is tightly constrained. While 1st level HP have certainly inflated in 4e, the To Hit AC/NAD math has had a severe downward movement with respect to AD&D. Where it wasn't particularly difficult to achieve an AD&D Fighter that would only be hit 20 % of the time, that same 4e Fighter is being hit at almost twice that rate and for considerably more damage when hit (5 damage 4e mooks and mean damage of around 9 - 10 for 4e standards at 1st level). That mutes the impact of the HP gain.

What makes 4e PCs survivable are their suite of (limited use) activatable defenses (immediate actions, attack riders, and stances)/HS-unlocking abilities and the group synergy/force multiplication inherent to the system. In terms of only the sheer weight of the passive numbers on the comparitive survivability formula, AD&D Fighters are definitely the more survivable of the two (considering the enemies/threats they will be facing).

 

[Neonchameleon]

H. Hit points seem to work best when everybody has fewer of them. There's a bi-i-ig difference between a 1e 1st-level character with 8 h.p. and a 4e 1st-level character with 25, when each gets hit by a shortsword swing for 6. Weapon and spell damage hasn't scaled up much if any over the editions - a longsword has always done d8, a fireball d6/level, etc. - but hit point totals have both for PCs and their foes. To me that's a flaw; and very much contributes both to the h.p.-as-luck-not-meat line of thinking and to a sense of - if not immortality - a certain lack of fear of minor encounters. Any encounter, no matter how minor, should be cause for at least a bit of concern.

I'm going to disagree here - hit points work well at any value when the metaphor is seen through. To offer a very clear counterexample, C J Carella's All Flesh Must Be Eaten handed everyone a bucketload of hit points for a survival horror - but this means you can start whittling away at them in 1s and 2s for minor things that are a lot less dangerous than combat. Like tripping. Really added to the tension when you actually faced a monster. (This works quite surprisingly well in 4e as well - with the PCs getting absolutely desperate for a five minute rest - longer if you've hacked the rest mechanics but it doesn't need it).

 

[Dungeonman]

Hence I came across @Balesir 's reply, and mine is bascially the same: "Come on in, the water's fine." Or as I was going to put it: in practice I haven't encountered the problem you describe. I think the reason for this is that, as the shared fiction becomes more salient for action resolution, the shared details become more and more precise as participants articulate them in the course of play.

Of course there can be confusions/conflicts, but I don't think these are any different from the confusions that arise in any RPGing from player misunderstanding of a GM's description ("I thought the archway was on the left, but now you're telling me it is on the right?").

I gave it some honest thought, but that water is too cold/hot but not just right for me. I appreciate the alternative viewpoint but D&D Next is my best bet. I'm interested in what-if?/world-building, and this approach wouldn't lead to the kind of internal consistency (or the illusion of internal consistency) I appreciate. The archway being on the left or right is a different kind of confusion representing an acceptable or tolerable quality of detail, unless the DM was being incohesive ("I thought the archway on the left was made from old ruined stones, but now you're telling me it's made of hardened bubblegum carved with pink ponies?" to use an extreme example)

This is a new thing for me. I've always regarded making up fiction as part of playing the game.[

I didn't know it was an actual term, but apparently fan wanking has a specific meaning and can have a implied criticism. In this thread, "fan wanking" would seem to be a reference to making up fiction that feels artificially constrained and a person's suspension of disbelief fails, or to use Balesir's term, the "brain simply rebels" -- not because of simulationist mechanics that fail to feel simulationist (which is how Balesir used it) but in this case because the fiction that's filled in to color inbetween the lines has (subjectively) failed to satisfy and transcend the canon lines.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanWank

 

[Ratskinner]

I'm going to disagree here - hit points work well at any value when the metaphor is seen through. To offer a very clear counterexample, C J Carella's All Flesh Must Be Eaten handed everyone a bucketload of hit points for a survival horror - but this means you can start whittling away at them in 1s and 2s for minor things that are a lot less dangerous than combat. Like tripping. Really added to the tension when you actually faced a monster. (This works quite surprisingly well in 4e as well - with the PCs getting absolutely desperate for a five minute rest - longer if you've hacked the rest mechanics but it doesn't need it).

Lately I've been thinking that this (seeing through the metaphor) is at the heart of the Save or Suck problem, Tactical Maneuver systems, and possibly the "HP are (not) meat" arguments. That is, if HP really are suppose to represent all those quasi-tangibles of the target (perserverance, skill, endurance, etc.) that go into keeping the target in the fight, then an effect should not be able to sidestep those HP any more than an arrow or swordblow should be able to decapitate or KO the target in the middle of the fight. However, I also think that it becomes problematic to see through the metaphor when you have too many fiddly bits in the tactical combat rules. Things like tripping, minor positioning, off-balancing....all those things that 4e put into everyone's maneuvers should also interact with the HP system, as they lower the target's ability to fight. The difference between paralyzing an enemy with 20 HP or pushing him 2 squares is a matter of degree, not quality. But that leaves you with a pretty straight-up ToTM attrition game that isn't very exciting at table for tactically minded players (I would think).