Healing Surges innate Blessed band aids

[Henry]

As someone said on the 4e april fools thread get over a thousand posts then talk to me f&#*&$g blind 4e fanboy.

qstor, let's not go there, please. KK has already backed up a bit, so let's not start anything more.

 

[Ranmyaku]

Actually, with mild hyperbole, that _is_ how hit points are described locally. You get hurt, and you shrug it off.

But here's what I'd like to know. See, in Legend of the Five Rings, getting hit in a fight is more than likely the end of you - if you aren't rendered helpless by crippling wound penalties, you're just dead. This is even more the case as characters proceed into higher ranks, where techniques to increase damage are abundant while those that decrease or mitigate it are held by no more than half a dozen schools.

In Warhammer Fantasy, the above still applies - but now, with the wonderfully gory critical hit tables, even if you do survive you're going to do so without a hand, or a leg, or an eye, or something else you liked. Experience means access to armour and a few defensive skills - but none of that will help you when a peasant with a woodsman's axe has taken off your arm.

As a heroic mortal in Exalted, you stand head and shoulders above characters from L5R and Warhammer, but it's even more imperative you don't get hit. Experience here means that you can perform five impossible tasks before breakfast, and might even have access to esoteric, supernatural martial arts, but once again, it doesn't matter who you are - if you don't die from the lovingly-detailed blood loss rules, you're laid up in bed while you die in agony over the course of several weeks from infected wounds.

Now, all three of these systems are excellent. I use them myself! But there is no way, no way they can do the sort of exuberant, action-movie type adventures D&D does. Similarly, D&D can't do chanbara, gritty low fantasy, or epics nearly as well as L5R, Warhammer, or Exalted.

So, it sounds to me like the people advocating for fewer hit points with no chance to regain them outside of days of bedrest are taking that aspect from other games, but they want to retain the sword-and-sorcery feel of the rest of D&D. Is that the case?

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

Hit points and Healing surges

Hit points and healing in D&D have never been realistic. I like the concept of healing surges, and I do think it's appropriate for some percentage of hit points to represent bruises, getting the wind knocked out of you, whatever.

The problem is that in 4E, this is all that can happen to you. You _still_ can't get an arm broken or a spear in your gut. You can only lose hit points. And they explicitly come back now without even the aid of magic, quickly.

I think I would like 4E better if damage taken past a threshhold was harder to heal. Basically, if there were both vitality points and wound points.

I never liked the VP/WP systems I saw for 3E, because they didn't mesh well with the rest of the rules. But I regard the fact that we still don't have a VP/WP distinction in 4E, even though the system was redesigned from scratch, as a missed opportunity.

As a bandaid, I am thinking about implementing a 'bad things happen' chart that people have to roll on when their hit points go negative. I might even extend the death threshhold a bit, making it even harder to die, but not harder to have a leg broken, or get an eye put out. It would of course require long term care (for broken bones) or powerful ritual magic (for regenerating missing eyes) to fix this kind of stuff.

Ken

 

[ruleslawyer]

This has been discussed extensively on other topics, but I think the right way to go would just to give someone the choice of an injury and a healing surge, or dropping and having to roll stabilization checks. That way, you get either a long-term impairment or debilitation with some hp to compensate, or you're out of the fight altogether. Another option might be to force a check for injury with each "strike" that a PC accumulates on the "three strikes and you're dead" scale.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hold on, isn't that limiting my narrative control?

No. This has little to do with narrative control.

Narrative Control is (among many other things) something like this:
Firing two arrows at once and hitting two targets his very hard to do. The odds of getting this situation are very slim. Narrative Control given to you playing a Ranger with the "Split the Tree" power allows you (as the player, not the character) to decide that _now_ is the situation where the odds come true.

 

[med stud]

As in, my character fell down the stairs, was 'hit' by three arrows, poisoned, in the middle of a fireball, and mauled by a bear over the course of the day. I could describe that character as bleeding out his eyes, holding his guts in with one hand, and barely able to stand. But, since I used my healing surges to get back up to full, none of those wounds have any effect on my character.

But, that kind of 'narrative control' is better?

Yes, IMO. If you want to use that kind of descriptions, even if you know that your character is mechanically able to function, then it's your narrative choice. It reminds me of John McLane from Die Hard, Marve from Sin City or William Wallace in Braveheart (the scene where he runs around with two arrows in his chest).

You can describe your injuries anyway you chose. The alternative is that your DM describes all that and you play along. "How the *bleep* I still be standing with all that going on? Well, I suppose I had some inner strength I wasn't aware of before" (if you like to play in first person). After the action is over, you come up with some explanation how he pushed the intestines back inside and sewed himself up.

The arrows are represented in game by, maybe, 3d8+12 damage in total +20 poison damage. The fireball, maybe 3d6+6. The bear, let's say 3d6+15. Mechanically, your character lost a total of 6d6+3d8+53 damage, he was down, but got again with a healing surge. That's it. How you chose to describe it is up to you.

 

[Knightlord]

Y'know, eventually, if used enough, the words "John Maclane" in 4e forums the world over will start causing epileptic seizures in people who don't like the 4e healing surges.

I started looking at it, and remembered all my balking at how horribly unrealistic 3E healing was. Without so much as a stitch of magic, not even a single cantrip, mind you, a character taking a full day's bed rest under a competent healing receives FOUR TIMES HIS CHARACTER LEVEL IN HIT POINTS EACH DAY.

Let me repeat this: Four times his character level in hit points each day.

The 10th level Barbarian with an 18 CON and 130 hit points (well above average, I note), will regain 40 hit points per day of good care. In three days, he's almost completely healed. He could have fallen off a cliff, been chewed on by a demon, and had an Owlbear of Legend hug him to pieces, and he's almost brand-new in three days.

Heck, a 1st level barbarian with 16 hit points will be brand-new in four days. Wizards and rogues? they'll be healthy in one-third that time. That 10th level wizard with a 14 CON and 46 hit points is back to snuff in a single day of being mangled.

healing surges aren't realistic, but they're not that much different from the insanity of everything after Original D&D.

Here here! D&D is fantasy. No man could recover from many of the above instances within a few days. How do they do it? They are heroes, beyond the norm and built from the stuff of legends, even if some of them perhaps don't know it.

 

[WayneLigon]

I have to admit in all fairness I've never played Savage Worlds, Rolemaster, M&M or Hero 5e. Its as a friend mentioned D&D 4e is more cinematic now than 2e or 3e with hero points and healing surges.

If you do play those - and a number of others - you'll see that D&D is playing catch-up to a concept that's been around for some time. D&D has spent most of it's life as a cinematic game shackled by a weird amalgamation of wargame rules.

 

[med stud]

Here here! D&D is fantasy. No man could recover from many of the above instances within a few days. How do they do it? They are heroes, beyond the norm and built from the stuff of legends, even if some of them perhaps don't know it.

It's also about how fun it is to play. During my education I have been at surgical, orthopedic and neurological clinics, I have also studied the physiology behind injuries and their healing. A game based on that would suck. So, you barbarian got hit in the head by a hill giant? Well, now he has to spend three months learning how to chew again. The arm that got broken? With a cast and physiotherapy, he will be able to use that arm again in two months! Stabbed in the gut? Well, no luck for you, mr barbarian. Without modern healthcare or magical healing, you will die, and soon.

I much rather have PCs heal in one day than even trying to have realistic healing times. Instead of hospitals, all PCs will be far too reliant on magical healing if they ever get hurt. If they don't have magical healing, roll up new PCs after one knife to the gut. Not "heroic" in my sense of the word.

 

[Knightlord]

It's also about how fun it is to play. During my education I have been at surgical, orthopedic and neurological clinics, I have also studied the physiology behind injuries and their healing. A game based on that would suck. So, you barbarian got hit in the head by a hill giant? Well, now he has to spend three months learning how to chew again. The arm that got broken? With a cast and physiotherapy, he will be able to use that arm again in two months! Stabbed in the gut? Well, no luck for you, mr barbarian. Without modern healthcare or magical healing, you will die, and soon.

I much rather have PCs heal in one day than even trying to have realistic healing times. Instead of hospitals, all PCs will be far too reliant on magical healing if they ever get hurt. If they don't have magical healing, roll up new PCs after one knife to the gut. Not "heroic" in my sense of the word.

Seconded.