How do you explain overnight Healing in your game?

[Klaus]

The characters are beaten to a pulp in the fight of their lives, they barely survive and all their heal surges are used up. They take an extended rest and boom! All health is back. If there was no access to a healing power, how do you add it to the story that they are fine and dandy 8 hours later?

The PCs got black eyes, scabs, dried blood all over, breathing hurts because of the cracked thrid rib and the knee still makes riding very uncomrtable.

Yet they can all fight as well as possible, if push comes to shove.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

FWIW, when WotC put up their videos of the group of WotC employees playing 4E, the game designer DM (was it Chris Perkins?) described actual wounds every single time.

Sure, maybe he doesn't know how 4E is "supposed" to work, but it's what he did.

So for those who don't have any problem with the 4E way of doing things ... does your DM just decide when PCs are "actually wounded," or do PCs just never get "actually wounded"? If the DM decides, are all the players okay with that? (I would be, but I know many perfectly reasonable players who definitely would not be.)

 

[Lizard]

It's pretty rare for a party to have no at least theoretically magical resources. Any non-Martial leader can claim that they perform some sort of off-screen healing magic which can't be done during a short rest. ("I have woven the charm of wound knitting, but you must do nothing for the next few hours so that it may work.") As for martial leaders... "A rangers hands are healing hands", or at least, a Warlord's are. You can claim he's used useful herbs, bound your wounds so that while you're still "injured", they don't actual affect you, and so on.

I personally find it more difficult that there's such a thing as "real" injury - you've got crippled and blinded NPCs all around - but nothing like this can ever happen to the PCs. Then again, no version of D&D ever had any "official" rules for crippling or long term injury.

The other factor is that hit points, as always, represent more than just physical injury, and healing surges represent a mix of luck, resolve, inner strength, adrenaline, and "spirit". (Thus undead drain healing surges, literally taking your will to live.) So someone at low hit points and out of surges might have no wounds other than shallow cuts, bruises, and so on, but he is at the end of his rope -- he can't fight on anymore, and his ability to dodge blows, parry weapons, and duck is very reduced (low hit points, so any attack is a serious one).

As brain-blasting as the 4e healing mechanic is, the fact is, it just formalizes the way 3.x games were, usually, played -- someone just breaks out the healsticks when the fights over. If you like, you can imagine this is how it is done in 4e, you just don't pretend to be tracking the charges.

 

[Cadfan]

I don't explain it, really. The cleric (or whoever) has tons of healing powers and the party has half a day to muck about with them. Eventually, everyone's fixed.

Its a lot like how I explained healing from zero hit points, dragging on the ground, your intestines hanging out, to completely healthy and a-ok in approximately three days during 3e. Or how you can be unconscious on the ground, bleeding out, and then suddenly able to do cartwheels and acrobatics and run marathons, all because someone slapped a bandage on you and you took an eight hour breather. The rules dictated that it happened, its completely ridiculous, but no one ever cared because the cleric got there first and magicked away the problem.

 

[Garthanos]

FWIW, when WotC put up their videos of the group of WotC employees playing 4E, the game designer DM (was it Chris Perkins?) described actual wounds every single time.

Sure, maybe he doesn't know how 4E is "supposed" to work, but it's what he did.

So for those who don't have any problem with the 4E way of doing things ... does your DM just decide when PCs are "actually wounded," or do PCs just never get "actually wounded"? If the DM decides, are all the players okay with that? (I would be, but I know many perfectly reasonable players who definitely would not be.)

Yup I the DM decided by putting that description in the players hands not only do they get to do something "out of turn" to help keep attention, but you can have a tough hero who takes nasty looking injuries but he just walks through them or a lucky one where weird happen-stance gets in the way and it is player choice.... (I still get some players who prefer I fill in those details but they are stylistic to me)

And argument by authority is always flawed... TWIW

 

[Obryn]

I often describe real injuries, too, but it never bothers me.

I'm in the same camp as Lizard - I just assume there's some behind-the-scenes healing going on that takes some time. If I bother caring at all.

-O

 

[Jeff Wilder]

And argument by authority is always flawed... TWIW

Uh ... no.

Argument from authority (or appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam) is a formal logical fallacy, but it's perfectly fine (often vital, in fact) in informal logic. Just FYI.

 

[BobTheNob]

I never bothered explaining this to the party. The one time I brought it up, I simply explained that this is a game...not a life simulation. We are willing to accept that elves throw fireballs at undead in a fantasy realm contained in a multiverse inhabited by gods and demons where reality itself is askew, but we cant accept that people can heal?

Dont stress it is my advice. Just play the game, play it well and forget the "realities" of the situation. My team leanred to let it go, and no kidding, we are having an absolute ball with our campaign.

Remember, stressing the small stuff does not make the game more fun, and that is what is important at the end of the day

 

[Garthanos]

Uh ... no.

Argument from authority (or appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam) is a formal logical fallacy, but it's perfectly fine (often vital, in fact) in informal logic. Just FYI.

"Flawed" does not mean "entirely worthless", it is however imperfect. So should I quote a dictionary ? or would that be an appeal to authority, which seems done often enough in establishing the common basis of communication.

I don't think it is "perfectly fine" to argue rules as intended can be perfectly gleaned from how those rules are used by any particular DM.... unless maybe that one DM is the sole author and he is making the claim himself, for instance I often write things with the intent that they be used in variable ways.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I don't think it is "perfectly fine" to argue rules as intended can be perfectly gleaned from how those rules are used by any particular DM

Is that what you feel I did. Because, if so, I'd recommend a re-read of what I said, since I actually qualified reliance on that DM's behavior not once, but twice.

If you're saying that you can never use a game-designer DM's behavior to judge the way rules are intended to work, we'll certainly have to disagree. (I don't think you're saying that, since you carefully inserted a "perfectly gleaned" into your very loose paraphrase of what I said, but just in case.)