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

[pemerton]

Healing surges just seemed like an artificial way of getting PCs to full hitpoints before every encounter.

I don't understand your use of the word "artificial". The whole game is an artifice!

To put it another way, a whole slew of late-70s and 80s RPGs (RQ, RM and GURPS are probably the best known) are devoted to those who find hit points an "artificial way" of preventing PCs from dying. That criticism doesn't make sense either. You may or may not like hit points as a mechanic, but "artificial" doesn't seem to capture any interesting property of them.

healing surges were this weird cap on magical healing; there was no reason catching your breath between a fight should make the cleric unable to heal you.

I think you've reversed the proper sequence of explanation. From the fact that a cleric's healing word requires you to spend a surge, we can work out that it is inspirational healing, just as a warlord's is.

 

[Campbell]

My general preference is to abstract short rests and long rests as narrative resources rather than time based resources. I don't tend to keep track of time in all but the barest of scopes and I don't like to be pressured to include a number of fights during a day for game play reasons. In the last 4e game I ran we ruled that extended rests required extended downtime in a safe place. I also used inherent bonuses and distributed treasure mostly through alternate rewards (grand master training, divine boons). Basically, resources got renewed at the end of an adventure (roughly every 4-6 4 hour sessions) and sometimes only had about 3 actual combat encounters during that time with little pressure to overtly seek out treasure for its own sake. The Scion game I'm a player in runs at about the same pace.

Much of our game sessions revolve around securing alliances, gaining intel, and character exploration. I like healing surges, extended rests and short rests because they are easier to turn into more narrative resources than rules elements which are explicitly called out and explained through time in the game's fiction. I'm a bit of an odd canard - 4e was the first mainstream fantasy RPG I could get to really sing for the type of game I enjoy. To be fair I did later have a bit of luck with Mongoose RuneQuest and Legend of the 5 Rings with some friends who are more traditional gamers, but that's mostly a case of the time based factors in that game lining up with the sort of stories I like to game through. During the 3e era we had multiple D&D games peter out because of a lack of resource equivalence. Generally we always just went back to Exalted, Werewolf: The Forsaken, or Vampire: The Requiem.

 

[Jester David]

I don't understand your use of the word "artificial". The whole game is an artifice!

To put it another way, a whole slew of late-70s and 80s RPGs (RQ, RM and GURPS are probably the best known) are devoted to those who find hit points an "artificial way" of preventing PCs from dying. That criticism doesn't make sense either. You may or may not like hit points as a mechanic, but "artificial" doesn't seem to capture any interesting property of them.

The whole game may be artificial, but it's a representation of fiction, film, and reality. The rules exist to let people tell stories, to facilitate the narrative.

Healing surges were a purely mechanical invention serving a gamist purpose: being at full health at the start of any given encounter. Because the game was balanced and designed around individual encounters, each encounter had to be roughly the same challenge independant of the prior encounter, and each encounter should significantly damage PCs so they had a chance of failure or death. Healing surges were a way of propping up people's health, with the PCs using 1-3 after every fight.
So, they served no narrative purpose, but instead a mechanical one for the design and tone of the Game. They could have been replaced entirely by a rule that just let players heal to full after every rest (instead of just long rests) and the game would have played almost identically.
Healing surges had no effect on the narrative, they didn't change the types of stories people told as the number of combats in each encounter day were similar. Hence, artificial.

I think you've reversed the proper sequence of explanation. From the fact that a cleric's healing word requires you to spend a surge, we can work out that it is inspirational healing, just as a warlord's is.

So your argument that warlord and clerical healing is different is that they were actually the same and clerics, very likely with a Cha dump stat, relied on inspirational healing?
What about all their other spells and abilities that let people spend a surge? Did the cleric have any magical healing at all?

Ugh... my brain rebels at that. It really emphasises how 4e made hitpoints entirely non-health (not how I view hitpoints).

This just reminds me of all the other problems I have with inspirational healings. Like the warlord (and now the cleric) and inspire only twice a fight and then, suddenly, run out of cheery things to say. Or how they can't inspire everyone who hears: is half the party plugging their ears and refusing to hear about "the Gipper?"
Or the oddity of clerics and warlords not healing everyone between fights, adding that extra 1d6 to all heals including out-of-combat.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

This just reminds me of all the other problems I have with inspirational healings. Like the warlord (and now the cleric) and inspire only twice a fight and then, suddenly, run out of cheery things to say. Or how they can't inspire everyone who hears: is half the party plugging their ears and refusing to hear about "the Gipper?" .

Or maybe after the first few times the attempts at inspiration just start sounding hollow and they're not quite as inspiring anymore?

Seriously, you seem to be purposely making healing sound as ridiculous in 4e as possible.

 

[Jester David]

Or maybe after the first few times the attempts at inspiration just start sounding hollow and they're not quite as inspiring anymore?

It seems hollow, despite none of the rest of the party apparently hearing it? And somehow it will seem less hollow in six minutes?

Seriously, you seem to be purposely making healing sound as ridiculous in 4e as possible.

4e healing follows Game Logic, and Game Logic is always pretty nonsensical and ridiculous.
"I step on a snake and fall down?" "The infantry becomes royalty when they reach the enemy's base camp?!"
It works fine and plays fine, but the narrative becomes silly. Which is problematic in a game predicated on the narrative.

 

[Balesir]

The whole game may be artificial, but it's a representation of fiction, film, and reality.

Aside from the fact that I think the only thing D&D rules are a "representation" of any more is D&D, I'll grant the "fiction, film" bit. But "reality"??? Gimme a break...

The rules exist to let people tell stories, to facilitate the narrative.

That might be one interpretation of their function, but it's not the only one.

Healing surges were a purely mechanical invention serving a gamist purpose: being at full health at the start of any given encounter. Because the game was balanced and designed around individual encounters, each encounter had to be roughly the same challenge independant of the prior encounter, and each encounter should significantly damage PCs so they had a chance of failure or death. Healing surges were a way of propping up people's health, with the PCs using 1-3 after every fight.
So, they served no narrative purpose, but instead a mechanical one for the design and tone of the Game. They could have been replaced entirely by a rule that just let players heal to full after every rest (instead of just long rests) and the game would have played almost identically.
Healing surges had no effect on the narrative, they didn't change the types of stories people told as the number of combats in each encounter day were similar. Hence, artificial.

*Shrug* That's not my interpretation in the slightest, but if I was determined to hold a purely negative view of 4E I suppose I might be able to persuade myself that the evil overlords of WotC had hatched this plot in order to drive all creativity out of roleplayers. Luckily, my experience tells me that they failed.

So your argument that warlord and clerical healing is different is that they were actually the same and clerics, very likely with a Cha dump stat, relied on inspirational healing?

Yeah, because the clerics transmit inspiration that is based on their deity, not on their own charm. You are not inspired by the words of the cleric - you are inspired by the word of the god. How is that not understandable?

What about all their other spells and abilities that let people spend a surge? Did the cleric have any magical healing at all?

Yes, 4E clerics do "magical healing". Check out the Daily power "Cure Light Wounds" - it gives back hit points as if you had spent a healing surge. In other words, you do not actually have to spend the surge, but you still get the healing. This is something that clerics get to a far greater degree than any other class (and Warlords, IIRC, don't get any at all).

Ugh... my brain rebels at that. It really emphasises how 4e made hitpoints entirely non-health (not how I view hitpoints).

Hit points have always been "non-health", because having "health" grow bigger as you go up levels gives many people problems with verisimilitude, apparently. Including Gary Gygax, which is why he described them as not-entirely-physical.

This just reminds me of all the other problems I have with inspirational healings. Like the warlord (and now the cleric) and inspire only twice a fight and then, suddenly, run out of cheery things to say. Or how they can't inspire everyone who hears: is half the party plugging their ears and refusing to hear about "the Gipper?"
Or the oddity of clerics and warlords not healing everyone between fights, adding that extra 1d6 to all heals including out-of-combat.

What about why all characters have a thing called a "class" or that adventurers come up with all this gold but inflation never happens or that magic users can apparently only remember "so many" spells at a time or that they inexplicably "forget" them once they cast them or that hordes of monsters live in an underground labyrinth with no visible food supply or that the "mayor" of the town is a 4th level commoner and yet power hungry adventurers haven't walked in and taken the place over or that dragons can only breathe three times a day for some inexplicable reason or that the merchant who your character could kill without raising a sweat refuses to sell a magic item he's holding for any price but insists you do a favour for him before he'll give it to you...

Did those inexplicably cause you no trouble at all?

 

[EnglishLanguage]

4e healing follows Game Logic, and Game Logic is always pretty nonsensical and ridiculous.
"I step on a snake and fall down?" "The infantry becomes royalty when they reach the enemy's base camp?!"
It works fine and plays fine, but the narrative becomes silly. Which is problematic in a game predicated on the narrative.

Wow, a game using game logic!? What a completely original and unique idea only to 4e...oh wait.

And I'll take 4e's more grounded "game logic" over whatever gamey world 3.P lives in, where I can jump from orbit and faceplant on the ground, poke myself with a glowing stick a few times that somehow makes me no longer hurt from jumping from orbit, and instantly be right as rain for my next orbit jump.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Healing surges just seemed like an artificial way of getting PCs to full hitpoints before every encounter. It made martial and magical healing rather samey, so there was virtually no difference between a warlord and a cleric.

You know what is a 100% completely and entirely artificial mechanic? Hit Points! Once you've accepted hit points (which behave like nothing ever as the consequences are just weird) you're into pure game territory.

Hit points backed by healing surges are less game-logic than Hit Points where you automatically have full access to your entire reserve and aren't slowed by damage until you drop. You want to see healing surges being spent? Watch a boxing match. Boxers spend them between rounds.

In terms of actual healing, there wasn't much difference. Surge+1d6. That was the healing class feature that all clerics and warlords got, that was the assumed mechanic.
So warlords could heal just as well as a cleric. They had to. For BALANCE!

Warlords can not and have never been able to heal as well as clerics who are trying to.

Yes. You *could* take a whole lot of powers that changed the feel of the character and made a cleric or warlord play differently. Or not.
That's a little like saying the 3e sorcerer and wizard play completely different if they choose different spells. It's true, but it doesn't make the base classes less samey.

And this is a false analogy. It's like saying the 3e Wizard and the 3e Cleric play completely differently. There is only one power that's alike and a recharge. Beyond that every single power is different as is every single spell. But they have some overlap and recharge in the same way (as wizard and cleric do in 3E). Their spells are almost all different. But the way they cast them is simmilar. So they are samey?

4e healing follows Game Logic, and Game Logic is always pretty nonsensical and ridiculous.

Hit points follow game logic, pure and simple. You can take as much of a pounding as you like and aren't even slightly slowed - and then one final attack will make you drop. It's nothing more than unadulterated game logic. Healing surges tie them back to the real world and make hit points less ridiculous and more real.

 

[Grydan]

Healing surges were a purely mechanical invention serving a gamist purpose: being at full health at the start of any given encounter.

This is neither the function not the purpose of healing surges.

This is the function and purpose of the short rest mechanic. Short rests allow characters to restore their own HP and encounter-based abilities without expending powers or non-renewable resources (potions, etc.). By actually being short, they are indeed capable of being taken (and intended to be taken) after every encounter (whether that is a combat encounter or not) which expends the sorts of resources which you can use it to recover.

The short rest mechanic is not contingent on the existence of healing surges, nor are healing surges contingent on the existence of short rests.

Each of the facets of the 4E system of healing could (and in some cases, in other systems does) exist independent of the others. Conflating the various aspects does not aid fruitful discussion.

The primary function of the healing surge mechanic is to place a cap on the amount of HP a given character can recover in between extended rests. This prevents parties from stocking up on cheap healing resources (potions, the previously ubiquitous Wands of Cure Light Wounds) and extending the adventuring day indefinitely, as well as introducing a resource management aspect to all classes.

There are ways within the system to augment (Healing Word and its ilk, feats, items, racial bonuses) the amount gained when using the surges, for those who seek to be more efficient in managing those resources.

There are also ways to bypass the limit, ways that tend to be subject to strict limits themselves (certain Cleric daily attack and daily utility spells), with most exceptions that slipped through having been erased in errata and updates.

The secondary (and largely incidental and unnecessary) function of healing surges is to be a convenient shorthand for a chunk of hitpoints. Without the goal of the daily limit/resource management aspect, there'd be no real need for this aside from the space saved by making '25% of maximum hit points, plus appropriate modifiers' into a less wordy term of art.

Proportional healing doesn't require the existence of healing surges, nor did healing surges necessarily need to be proportional. They could just as easily have been Next's class-based hit dice, or a standard hit die for all characters, or a universal constant (10 HP, for instance).

 

[Jester David]

*Shrug* That's not my interpretation in the slightest, but if I was determined to hold a purely negative view of 4E I suppose I might be able to persuade myself that the evil overlords of WotC had hatched this plot in order to drive all creativity out of roleplayers. Luckily, my experience tells me that they failed.

So because I am not a fan of 4th Edition I must *only* have negative views, and believe conspiracies regarding WotC? And because of that, my views can be automatically dismissed out of hand?

Okay then, I guess this conversation is over. Nice almost talkin' to ya.