How do you explain overnight Healing in your game?

[tfwoods3]

 

[Garthanos]

tough heros ... love those scars. Shinarin, rogue halfling cringes at the thought... lucky heros have to find there trophies else where. Falling unconconcious = feinting from fright because that last attack got too close.

 

[Agamon]

That is awesome. So if the PCs spent, say, 12 hours in a village in which four men were mauled by a bear, three children fell down a well, two guardsmen were ambushed by goblins, and a partridge tumbled out of a pear tree, all those injured folks will be fully healed, come the morrow. Definitely awesome.

Well, first of all, if the PCs are villagemen, children, guardsmen and partridges, I can maybe see your point. NPCs can heal as quickly or slowly as you wish. We're talking PCs, here.

Secondly, my point is that what is awesome is that I can explain what is happenening (whatever that might be) which ever way I choose rather than be confined by rules. Combat needs specific rules, what happens outside of it is story, I like that I can describe it however it might fit. Healing or otherwise.

 

[Lizard]

That's definitely right.

I don't really see a consistency problem with overnight healing, however.

Bye
Thanee

It's only a problem when it works for "PCs" and "NPCs who happen to be traveling with the PCs" but not for "anyone else" (including those same NPCs if they're injured "offstage"). THEN you run into consistency issues.

There was big argument along these lines before 4e came out, dealing with the idea of a high level (10+) NPC fighter or cleric being killed in a bar brawl or by falling from a horse. By the rules, that simply can't happen. The PCs, who, in character, "know how the world works", would be right to suspect Something Was Up, because you simply can't kill someone of that level with trivial damage. He was poisoned with a Con poison so his hit points were very low when he fell from the horse. A high level rogue, disguised as drunked traverngoer, did a 10d6 backstab and rolled really well. Etc.

Some people argued that the rules don't apply when the PCs aren't around -- if an NPC is stabbed in a bar fight and no PC is nearby, he has no hit points. Some people (me) argue that such an attitude creates a lot of confusion, as players can't apply their knowledge of the universe and draw conclusions from it. If "the rules" may or may not apply at any given moment, the players never know whether to use their rule knowledge to see if "something is up".

As I said, problems occur when PCs start to interfere with the background chatter. It's fine to say, "As you walk through the warcamp, your are assailed by the sobs of the wounded." Then the PCs say, "Poor fellows! Mass Cure Light Wounds!" (or whatever power/ability/etc they might have). Is everyone suddenly healed? If so, why hasn't the local Priest of Pelor/Knight Commander (Warlord)/Etc done anything about this? Esp. if you've established he has class levels...

I've had PCs, in character, yell at NPCs for allowing wounded to suffer. I've basically stopped including hospitals (3e game) as background fluff because they make no sense if there are even a handful of low-level clerics hanging around, and most towns have them. (In small towns, a first level cleric with a decent wisdom gets 3 cure lights a day; that's a lot of healing for a town of 100 or so.)

I'm not sure how I want to handle NPC healing; I am tempted to rule that "serious injuries" cannot be healed by spending surges, and it's an artifact of the game that PCs (and NPCs fighting with them) never have "serious injuries". It's the simplest solution. If anyone wants to magically heal "serious injuries", that's a ritual.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

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?

I remember that hit point loss =/= physical damage, and hit point gain =/= physical closing of wounds.

It's the John McClane school of thought, and it works fine for me.

 

[Lizard]

In a game where you have magic that can raise the dead, create things out of nothing, spontaneously regenerate any creature....

....there is a problem of suspension of disbelief that someone might -actually- use these things outside of battle, and that such a system could be explained as easily as 'You heal to full at the end of each extended rest.'

.

Well, first, low level parties DON'T have access to that magic, and there's a gih resource cost even for high level parties which DO.

Second, if you argue "The PCs have off-screen magic which heals them all.", then you ask, "Why doesn't anyone else?" "Can the PCs single-handedly heal an army?" "If it's something special about just the PCs, why do NPCs travelling with them also heal overnight?"

Further, the rules hold whether or not "magic" is being used, or not. A Warlord heals as well as a Cleric, and there's no such thing as an injury "only magic can cure".

Again, the issue doesn't start causing fun-ruining SOD issues when you're just adventuring. It causes issues when the PCs interact with the world outside the dungeon and you try to reconcile "how everything works for us" vs. "how everything works for everyone else".

If your players never interact with NPCs beyond, in effect, clicking the "Accept Quest" button, then, it's unlikely to ever bother you and you likely don't understand what all the fuss is about. If your players try to pretend they don't know who is a "PC" and who is an "NPC", and treat everyone equally, the difference in how the rules work quickly becomes glaring, and not just in terms of healing. The "shallowness" of NPCs who are supposed to only last one combat becomes very evident if they're long-time companions of the party.

 

[Bumbles]

There was big argument along these lines before 4e came out, dealing with the idea of a high level (10+) NPC fighter or cleric being killed in a bar brawl or by falling from a horse. By the rules, that simply can't happen. The PCs, who, in character, "know how the world works", would be right to suspect Something Was Up, because you simply can't kill someone of that level with trivial damage. He was poisoned with a Con poison so his hit points were very low when he fell from the horse. A high level rogue, disguised as drunked traverngoer, did a 10d6 backstab and rolled really well. Etc.

Wait, you think this was an argument when 4e came out? I hate to tell you this, but this was an argument when 1e was out. And 2e as well. For myself, I resolved it by pointing out to the players the difference between story-based events defined by the GM, and events that occur according to the rules. If any players had a problem recognizing the difference, then I told them we were playing a game that was not meant to be an accurate attempt at virtual reality, but a much simpler abstraction.

Some people (me) argue that such an attitude creates a lot of confusion, as players can't apply their knowledge of the universe and draw conclusions from it. If "the rules" may or may not apply at any given moment, the players never know whether to use their rule knowledge to see if "something is up".

They shouldn't. That's meta-gaming through exploitation of knowledge of the rule system. It's very close to cheating.

 

[Garthanos]

Lizard, "true healing" the kind which magically alleviates "serious wounds" (not the kind which restores luck and morale and invigorates) had almost vanished from my game world ..largely because of the incarnation of these issues back in 2e. I don't mind at all the 4e inspirational Poets, Priests and Politicians, invigorating and inspiring heros to fight on.

I do want them hospitals in my scenery the world is too fluffy with out them..when they complain about the priesthood not healing the masses...

1) Explain the ritual true healing is expensive from the normal joe point of view..

2) The invigorating/inspiring type healing does accelerate the serious wound recovery but that requires ongoing treatment ;-) so let the pc spend the same time the priests have been doing.

3) send the pcs out to find the herbs and various ritual ingrediants and confront them with a lot of fun adventuring.

Having an interesting wound house rule for pcs is alright too because I think it gives a little more empathy to the picture... but it doesnt have to go overboard or be that gritty.

 

[doppelganger]

Although debates like this happened in previous editions because HPs are an odd abstraction, they were nothing like what we get in 4E with the addition of the utterly bizarre healing surge mechanic which has no parallel in real life. The only answer is to accept that it has no parallel, stop trying to call it moral or make some other excuse for it being a simplification or abstraction for something because it's not.

The healing surge is not intended to have a parallel in real life. It is intended to have a parallel in heroic fantasy cinema and literature.

A clear example of a healing surge parallel (complete with +2 to defenses) can be seen in [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6m7NR6iYjg"]this movie clip [/ame]

This is an extreme example of what a healing surge is intended to model, obviously, but an example all the same.

 

[N0Man]

Nice example Doppleganger. I was actually typing out a list of cinematic examples last night myself, but then my internet went out and it didn't go through.

I remember wrestling matches as a kid, where Hulk Hogan would appear to be losing a match, and then suddenly he'd become focused, resilient, and start dishing it out again.

Likewise, I thought of the famous Karate Kid scene where the kid goes into his crane kick stance and takes out his opponent with a new found energy, despite his injuries.

Or the numerous boxing scenes where a fighter a fighter is seemingly down and out, gets off the mat and turns the fight around.

And many other scenes like the video you've shown where a seemingly defeated hero becomes inspired to fight after the villain triggers something (threatens or belittles a loved one, mocks their defeat, etc).

Being included in films doesn't necessarily mean that it's realistic. It shows more about what we wish was realistic, and what we find to be inspiring moments or stories that resonate in us.

In other words, sometimes it's not about what is reality, but what we wish was reality.