Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!

[Gothmog]

What about the powers that don't actually use a healing surge up, but heal you "as if" you had used a healing surge?

Cheers

If they are arcane or divine in nature, then they can also heal 1d6 WP per healing surge that would have been spent. So CLW would either heal HP equal to a healing surge value, OR 1d6 WP. CSW would either heal HP equal to two healing surges, OR 2d6 WP (although its never come up yet, I guess CSW could also heal 1d6 WP, and if that healed all the PC's WP, it might also restore one healing surge worth of HP).

 

[Hussar]

As opposed to saying that the DM will say, "The poison dart goes right through your eye socket, take 2 points of damage." Is this less of an extreme or less of an implication that people with the contrary position are jerks?

To be honest, I'm ok with that sort of humor if its offered in good humor. It's ridiculous, it would probably never occur in a real campaign, but it does capture a certain amount of truth. I'm not happy with its apparant use to bash people who disagree, but it is funny.

If you take the idea of 'hit points are abstract representations of luck, skill, and destiny' to similar extremes, it gets similarly ridiculous.

One could read the advice in the 4e DMG and come to a different conclusion. Or, for that matter, all the talk of what was "unfun" during the design phase.


RC

And here we see where the meme that WOTC is all about bad mouthing playstyles comes from. People being pretty sensitive about what is obviously an off the cuff joke that would be easily reproducible at any game table and people reading what's written with a totally negative point of view and willing to find offense in whatever is said.

How often do you think wands of CLW (especially used abusively) were disregarded compared to disregarding healing surges and long rests? How dispensible do you think wands of CLW are compared to dispensing with healing surges and long rests?

I never had a problem with wands of CLW for several simple reasons:

1) I never DMed a cleric that could craft wands.
2) I didn't allow wands to be purchased.
3) Wands and there charges were thus rare, valuable, and conserved by my players.

And, after hearing about all the horror stories of CLW abuse, if I were running a 3rd edition campaign in the future, I'd simply elimenate all divine wands from the campaign.

So, you weren't really playing 3e. You deliberately changed the rules to conform to your playstyle and then complain that the new set of official rules don't conform to your playstyle. Then go further and claim that they are actually claiming that your playstyle is badwrongfun.

Wow. Why is 3e not claiming that you your playstyle is badwrongfun Celebrim? After all, 3e flat out states that wands can be purchased. You probably changed the rules to make constructing these wands difficult as well, although that may not be true. Is it?

You talk about the "abuse" of healing magic. Yet, when I look at Dungeon modules, there's TONS of healing magic scattered around. My group, after finishing There Is No Honor, had 18 cure light wounds potions. There is a CASE of Cure Moderate Wounds potions hidden in the next module.

Yes, YOUR homebrew variant campaign that flat out contradicts the 3.5 DMG is different from what is officially assumed. The question in my mind is, why would you think any different?

3.5 D&D assumes that you can buy and sell all magic items. That is directly in the rules. All official modules also assume the same. Why would you think that when designing 4e, they would suddenly assume anything different?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Do you need to know, though? An orc's axe takes down a PC. Describe it as bloodily as you like. Just don't assume that it's 100% physical. Or do.

AFAICT, we went through all of the permutations on the other thread, and I don't think that we need to rehash them here. 4e is simply not the game for me, although it is certainly the game for some others.

There are several ways to look at the hp/healing surge mechanism. It is just nice to know that my reading was validated (although, of course, YMMV as to how validated it was, what is suggested definitely falls into the SW reading of the hp/healing surge mechanism. IMHO at least! ).


RC

 

[gizmo33]

Sorry, but which is it?

Is there a difference, so that saying "you're describing 4E damage in 1E terms" has meaning?

Or is there no difference, so that saying "both systems use the same vagueness" has meaning?

Seriously - any two things can be both similar and different depending on the context. I'm barely able to see how to proceed here since most of your response to my other post was a series if irrelevant, although amusing, nitpicks about Conan.

A 1E character with 10 hitpoints who takes 5 points of damage subjects himself to a different set of descriptions than a 100 hitpoint character who takes 5 points of damage. So I could complain "hey, you said I was bleeding in the first case, but not in the second, so which is it?"

So you can't just transfer over the description you would use to a 3E character taking 5 damage to a 4E character taking 5 damage. That's what I meant - though I'm starting to think I'm wasting my time in assuming that understanding is what you are really trying to gain from this. It's the "good faith" thing I'm always talking about. So are we wasting our time?

 

[gizmo33]

Strike One: No orcs in Conan!

When you play baseball, do you throw pitches in the people at the stands that aren't playing and then call strike?

1e (and 2e) were scaled so that an adventurer could take on opponents even when wounded.

Is there a game system where this is not the case? There is *some* foe that a PC can fight (technically, all of them, he just might not live) no matter what his hp total is. In fact there is some foe that he can beat no matter what his hp total is. I don't see how this is limited to just 1E/2E.

AFAICT, the 1e Cimmerians wouldn't know about "the 15 minute adventuring day" because it didn't yet exist.

I ran a 1E adventure where a player got grouchy with me because his fighter took damage from an encounter outside of a castle/dungeon before he even entered. He knew the upcoming fight with the BBEGs would be tough and was unhappy that he (and the party) would be fighting the BBEGs without their full hps and spells. Leaving though, would have meant losing the element of surprise. If the "15 minute adventure day" problem didn't exist in 1E then AFAICT it didn't exist in any edition - which may be your point but IMO you should be more direct in that case.

It reminds me of the advice in the 1E PHB - "if the party becomes lost, the objctive must immediately be changed ot discovery of a way out". Why? - because AFAICT this is wilderness survival 101 - if your complete capabilities have been hampered by some incident, then you are taking an unecessary risk by continuing on at anything less than full capabilities. *Knowing where you are* is a capability. Actually the paragraph here gives more conventional definitions of low capability: wounds, dead members, etc. What is left to interpret is what is meant by "seriously weakened". It was the opinion of the people who proposed the "15 minute adventure problem" theory that any significant encounter would, almost by definition, cause "significant weakening" of the party and therefore PCs (Cimmerian or not) could be reasonably expected to follow Gygax's advice.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So you can't just transfer over the description you would use to a 3E character taking 5 damage to a 4E character taking 5 damage.

I very much doubt that there is anyone who doesn't understand that, so if that is what you are trying to demonstrate, then you probably are wasting your time.

However, the reason that you cannot just transfer the description is because they are not using the same vagueness. They are using different vaguenesses, and 4e is far more vague than 1e.

If understanding is what you are really trying to gain from this, then "good faith" requires recognizing existing differences.


RC

 

[gizmo33]

I very much doubt that there is anyone who doesn't understand that, so if that is what you are trying to demonstrate, then you probably are wasting your time.

Maybe. But there have been numerous statements on this thread where people have tried to point to some sort of "contradiction" that arises when a 4E DM tries to describe physical injury to a character. Now if that DM takes into account that the 4E PC has 40 hitpoints, and 8 healing surges, and that he gets those healing surges back in a day, then he can use that information to develop a reasonable description of injury. In the same way that a 1E DM, knowing that a PC has 4 hitpoints, and heals 1 hitpoint per day, would develop a reasonable description of injury in that case.

Certain kinds of injury (like a severed arm) would be beyond plausibility in either system. (Same...yet different...) Other kinds of injury (eg. a wound taking 4 days to heal) might be more plausible in one system than the other if you ignore *any other* approximation of injury (ie. no strength loss, movement rate loss, etc.). But what's the point of describing a 8 hp character with 4 hp left as having a leg injury since his movement rate is the same?

Now obviously there's something about this situation that is *not* understood in the same way by all persons on this thread. AFAICT there were a lot of people applying some sort of implicit description of injury to their 4E examples, and then coming up with some contradiction. I thought it was pretty obvious, from the examples, that the person wasn't changing their injury description strategy (as the 5 hp vs. 100 hp character example indicates) to account for the 4E rules/hp recovery rates.

And ultimately, saying 4E is more vague than 1E would be to suggest somehow that 1E is anything but vague. There are very few guidelines, at all, for when to assign physical injury. The sting of a scorpion can be fatal regardless of the hp total of the character. Lycanthropy is contracted at 50% hp, IIRC. A vampire "hits" me on every hit - I would presume from the level loss. The only time I seem to "bleed" in any substantial way is when I'm hit with a sword of wounding. When I do a summary of all of this in 1E, it really makes no more sense to me than 4E does - it's just that the numbers and strategies have swapped around. My feeling is that largely what has happened here is that long-time earlier edition DMs *think* they have a more concrete injury system than 4E because it's largely untested as a result of 1E healing magic.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Maybe. But there have been numerous statements on this thread where people have tried to point to some sort of "contradiction" that arises when a 4E DM tries to describe physical injury to a character.

Sure, and this was all parsed out in the previous thread on SW. There are some ways in which the contradiction can be avoided, but those methods have their own drawbacks. IMHO, those drawbacks are just as severe.

Again, this has been all parsed out pretty thoroughly.

Now if that DM takes into account that the 4E PC has 40 hitpoints, and 8 healing surges, and that he gets those healing surges back in a day, then he can use that information to develop a reasonable description of injury. In the same way that a 1E DM, knowing that a PC has 4 hitpoints, and heals 1 hitpoint per day, would develop a reasonable description of injury in that case.

This is true only in those cases where the means of healing is considered unimportant. For example, one parsed option is that PCs really are like Wolverine and simply regenerate the damage taken. So, it doesn't matter that the damage is from an axe wound, healed by a guy yelling "C'mon ya pansy! Get up and fight!"

It is also true, for example, in the parsed option that hp damage doesn't actually track to injury at all. Thus, your shoulder is still seperated, but a guy yelling "C'mon ya pansy! Get up and fight!" heals your hit points. The wound -- no matter what it is, no matter how severe -- simply has no game effect.

Another example where it was true is in the case that no hit point loss actually tracks to any kind of injury because the PCs simply never get injured unless they are killed.

Each of these has its own problems, but in none of these cases can damage be narrated the same way that it can in 3e or earlier editions, with anything approaching the same consistancy. When the designer's advice is, in effect, "know how it will be healed to know how to describe it", I would say that the case is fairly well closed here.

Certain kinds of injury (like a severed arm) would be beyond plausibility in either system. (Same...yet different...)

1e specifically allowed for a severed arm (Sword of Sharpness). It didn't tell the DM what the effects of that would be, specifically, however.

Other kinds of injury (eg. a wound taking 4 days to heal) might be more plausible in one system than the other if you ignore *any other* approximation of injury (ie. no strength loss, movement rate loss, etc.). But what's the point of describing a 8 hp character with 4 hp left as having a leg injury since his movement rate is the same?

I don't know about you, but when I was playing 1e, description was king. If the DM said your injury reduced your movement rate, your injury reduced your movement rate. He was allowed -- nay, encouraged -- to determine the effects situationally.

But even were this not the case, losing 4 hit points that remain lost for days is far more of a game effect than popping up after a short nap to have everything recovered.

Now obviously there's something about this situation that is *not* understood in the same way by all persons on this thread. AFAICT there were a lot of people applying some sort of implicit description of injury to their 4E examples, and then coming up with some contradiction. I thought it was pretty obvious, from the examples, that the person wasn't changing their injury description strategy (as the 5 hp vs. 100 hp character example indicates) to account for the 4E rules/hp recovery rates.

No, as parsed out to death in the previous thread, you can adjust all you want without eliminating the problem. If you attempt to use the "All Previous Editions" method in 4e, contradictions will occur.

And ultimately, saying 4E is more vague than 1E would be to suggest somehow that 1E is anything but vague.

No. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is more of a given colour, one shade of colour might be "5" on the red scale, and another "10". Saying that the sample which is 10 on the scale is more red does not in any way, shape, or form imply that the other is "anything but red".

There are very few guidelines, at all, for when to assign physical injury. The sting of a scorpion can be fatal regardless of the hp total of the character. Lycanthropy is contracted at 50% hp, IIRC. A vampire "hits" me on every hit - I would presume from the level loss. The only time I seem to "bleed" in any substantial way is when I'm hit with a sword of wounding.

The sting of a scorpion can be fatal regardless of the hp total of the character? Who woulda thunk it? I'd have imagined that an instrument delivering poison had to leave at least a 12-inch diameter hole to be effective......

Lycanthropy is contracted at 50% hp, IIRC? Yes, I can see how that would prevent you from describing injuries.

A vampire "hits" you on every hit? Well, imagine that! It almost seems as though the word "hit" means "hit". Huh. I can see why you think this makes no sense.

The only time you seem to "bleed" in any substantial way is when I'm hit with a sword of wounding? I think you should go back and read the 1e rules. Every combat in 1e assumes that 10 minutes are spent at a minimum, due to the need to bandage wounds. Not only that, but if you drop to 0, you continue to decline until attended to.

When I do a summary of all of this in 1E, it really makes no more sense to me than 4E does

My sympathies.

Well, my sympathies if that is really the case.


RC

 

[Hussar]

I love irony. I just happen to be reading ERB's A Princess of Mars for the first time right now. Got an Ipod Touch for Christmas and downloaded a free version. Been reading it in my spare time. Came across a section that I thought was very fitting for this discussion. Just to set the scene a bit, John Carter is battling a green Martian.

We rushed each other furiously time after time, 'til suddenly, feeling the sharp point of his sword at my breast in a thrust I could neither parry nor escape, I threw myself upon him with outstretched sword and with all the weight of my body, determined that I would not die alone if I could prevent it. I felt the steel tear into my chest, all went black before me, my head whirled in dizziness, and I felt my knees giving beneath me.

That ends chapter 14 A Duel to the Death. Sounds like a DM describing a death blow to me. Then we have the start of chapter 15:

When conciousness returned, and as I soon learned, I was down, but a moment. I sprang quickly to my feat searching for my sword, and ther I found it, buried to the hilt in the green breast of Zad, who lay stone dead upon the ochre moss of the ancient sea bottom. As I regained my full senses I found his weapon piercing my left breast, but only throug hthe flesh and muscles which cover my ribs, entering near the center of my chest and coming out below the shoulder. As I had lunged, I had turned so that his sword merely passed beneath the muscles, inflicting a painful, but not dangerous wound. Removing the blade from my body I also regained my own, and turning my back upon his ugly carcass, I moved, sick, sore and disgusted toward the chariots which bore my retinue and my belongings.

Well, there you have it folks. Schroedinger's wounding in action. The DM describes the baddie running our hero through the chest, the sword exploding out his back, and it then gets turned into a flesh wound. Such a minor wound that our hero can pull the sword out HIMSELF and then walk away unaided. Sure, he's sore, but, that's about it.

But wait, it gets better. That was the Second Wind mechanic described rather well IMO. Now how about burning some Healing Surges?

Bleeding and weak I reached my women, who, accustomed to such happenings, dressed my wounds, applying the wonderful healing and remedial agents which make only the most instantaneous of death blows fatal. ... They soon had me patched up so that except for weakness from loss of blood and a little soreness around the wound, I suffered no great distress...

So, he walks over to the healer, they patch him up and he's good to go. No magic. No incantations. Although, perhaps a bit of alchemy.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Personally speaking, I like healing surges. My beef with 4E is that there's no way to be actually injured ... at least beyond six hours. There's simply no denying that changing "three days" -- the average time for natural healing in 3E -- to "six hours" -- the maximum time for healing in 4E is a significant change.

HP loss does not always equal physical damage.

Therefore, hp recover does not equal physical recovery.

For example - in a fight, you are frightened half to death by a dragon & it claws you, causing you to lose hp. In 4e, after 6 hours rest you are back at full hp. You can, however, still narrate the scars on your side & the damage to your armour if you so wish. It just won't have a mechanical effect.

So I'm not sure what you mean when you say there is no way to be actually injured.