I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[AdmundfortGeographer]

No, the people who are arguing that this is a an absolutely huge change and that it removes solid mechanical support for "terrible wounds" (something that was never mechanically supported to begin with) are barmy.

in other words, "they're holding it wrong".

 

[KidSnide]

This thread definitely clarified my thinking about healing surges, albeit not enough to justify the time I spent reading (or skimming) it. My two cents:

- I really like how healing surges make healing proportionate to the toughness of a character. Now, curing a light wound actually cures a light wound as opposed to the sucking chest wound / paper cut problem. Also, as a tactical matter, characters with more hit points can survive longer in combat even in an environment where healing dominates starting hit points. I think this significant mechanical improvement was a little lost in the massive discussion of narrative implications.

- I also like how healing became something accessible through heroic (in additional to magical) means. As a general matter, I think it opens D&D to a wider range of party types as well as low-magic (or just low-divine magic) settings. But...

- I don't like how healing surges work once the character is reduced to zero hit points. Healing characters once they go down is important (after all - combats get more exciting once characters go down), and I get why "healing starts from 0" instead of the current negative value. However, I agree with the narrative issue: if a character is making death saves, I really want to narrate that character as having a life-threatening wound and the ready availability of non-magical healing white washes the wound a little too much for my taste.

Personally, I'd prefer some sort of optional wound/condition track that acknowledges that going to zero, going to negative surge value and/or failing death saves involves some sort of more permanent injury. (A disease-track style solution was discussed above. I'd be fine with that, but am not wedded to it.) I don't mind if characters can "pull through" their injury with few mechanical penalties, but I really wish there was support for games where PCs have a higher incentive to pull back and heal after members get really smacked around.

But I do think this should be optional. There is also plenty of room for games where the heroes keep pressing on, and the wounds they've received are nothing but make up...

-KS

 

[Roland55]

I do:

Flee now! Save yourselves while there's still time! It's too late for us!

The Auld Grump

Too late!!

I'm afraid I, too, don't care for the surges.

Why? Entirely personal ... for me, it removes some of the fun of the game. Since I game FOR fun, surges don't work for me.

QED.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I don't really regard a system as supporting a cinematic narrative if it is capable of delivering a very different narrative (gritty "modern fantasy") at the whim of the dice.

What 4e offers, that 3E and AD&D don't, is reliable support for the cinematic alternative.

But, contrary to your claim, 3.X doesn't substantially narrow narratives that 4e has (in regards to healing damage), as it's not impossible (as you said it was) for a character in 3.X to heal overnight (it's very much possible). 4e has less narratives than 3.X allows (in regards to healing damage).

I didn't use the 4e rules in my game, nor did I let 3.X survive unmodified, but I would certainly rather have a system that allows for both narratives, rather than limits them.

Yes, 4e supports your preference better in terms of cinematic feel, but it narrows down possible narratives (to a more cinematic feel). Sometimes in a fantasy movie, you get a slow motion moment where the Good Guy kills the Bad Guy, or the Good Guy summons all of his strength and pulls himself off the floor when lesser men wouldn't be able to. However, sometimes in fantasy movies you get a slow motion moment where the Good Guy gets mortally wounded, incapacitated, permanently crippled, or the like. I'd like those narratives available, even in a cinematic game, personally.

Yes, you're right that 4e offers a lot more reliable support for a type of game play, or a type of narrative. I was speaking to the breadth of narrative available, not the depth. I like depth, too, of course, but I want the possibility of different opportunities coming up, and the paths that they might lead to.

For example, last night, in my game, three PCs (all warlords of an area) got ambushed by bandits who wanted the players dead (the players had hired adventurers to rid the forest of these bandits, effectively betraying the bandits). It was five bandits versus the three players and an NPC wife of one of the players. The bandits hit the NPC wife, taking her down to -7 (in my game, while in the negatives you lose 1 hit point her round, dying at -10, though you have a 10% chance each round to stabilize without aid). Two rounds later, the PC ran to his wife, and assessed her wounds (catching that she was seconds from bleeding out), and that he couldn't save her in time. There was a lot of tension at the table, because the player knew that his character would take the death very hard (he is a warlord, chancellor, and interrogator, with most of his positive emotions being channeled into his friends and his wife), so everyone was getting ready for his character to take a dramatic shift in his personality (another player almost used character points to buy a spell that might save her, which would dramatically change his character, and potentially cause a low level of madness; he decided against it when the player with the dying wife said he thought it would be interesting to see how things turn out). Well, what do you know, but I roll a natural 10 on my d10, and she stabilizes on her own (I always roll every roll in the open, and the player had used a skill to get her hit point total at -9, so everyone knew that this wasn't me fudging at all). The expected narrative shifted dramatically based on that one die roll, and the build-up of tension is something I've come to love in my gaming experience.

Now, this could happen in 3.X or in 4e, probably, so I'm not saying this is impossible in those systems. What I am trying to say is that I want the narrative to be dramatically alterable based on the luck of the dice, and by what the rules inherently support. In this regard, both 4e and 3.X falls short (or I'd still be playing it now), at least for my wants in a fantasy-based game.

This isn't to say that your like of high action, gonzo, or cinematic (or whatever you find most appropriate) feel in a game is bad or wrong. I'm just expressing that I feel that the healing surge rules tend to damper potential narratives more than open them, from what I've read about in this thread and other places. I love the "getting to your feet" feel. That's a narrative that I like (and my game supports). I don't like feeling shackled by a rule, especially if it eliminates what I'm expecting out of the game.

To me, D&D is within the fantasy genre, and that's what I want it to support. You love that it supports the more cinematic aspect of the fantasy genre, and you find the narratives it offers compelling, suspenseful, and interesting. That's great, and I'd never say that's not how it plays to you. I'm just saying I'm looking for more options, and I feel the healing surge rules hurt more than they help, from what I've observed of them. It's just my opinion, and I put it forward because someone asked (in the original post).

I'm not making value judgments, I'm trying to state my preference, and give clear and precise reasoning on why I see it this way. I definitely support people playing 4e (or any edition) in any way that they like, and I think people can have tons of fun with any of them. As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

'Well, he asked, if that's the case, then how do you know if a 'hit' is real or 'psuedo hit' like that? I replied: If you really want to know, make a poison save.

Because that's something saving vs a poisoned blade could represent: Did the 'hit' actually deliver the poison, or did it just bruise you a bit through your mail or even not touch you at all, just use up a little of your luck.

Yes!

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has been pointing out upthread that 4e is distinctive, among editions of D&D, in using fortune-in-the-middle techniques - ie you can't narrate until the dice are rolled and the mechanical sequence of action resolved.

But AD&D had at least one element of FitM way back when, in it saving throws. (And Gygax even spells it out on the relevant page of the DMG, although he doesn't use the modern design terminology.)

 

[pemerton]

I really like how healing surges make healing proportionate to the toughness of a character. Now, curing a light wound actually cures a light wound as opposed to the sucking chest wound / paper cut problem. Also, as a tactical matter, characters with more hit points can survive longer in combat even in an environment where healing dominates starting hit points. I think this significant mechanical improvement was a little lost in the massive discussion of narrative implications.

Good point.

I also like how healing became something accessible through heroic (in additional to magical) means. As a general matter, I think it opens D&D to a wider range of party types as well as low-magic (or just low-divine magic) settings.

Another good point. This is one thing that 4e does that 3E (and earlier editions) don't.

But, contrary to your claim, 3.X doesn't substantially narrow narratives that 4e has

<snip>

4e supports your preference better in terms of cinematic feel, but it narrows down possible narratives (to a more cinematic feel).

<snip>

This isn't to say that your like of high action, gonzo, or cinematic (or whatever you find most appropriate) feel in a game is bad or wrong. I'm just expressing that I feel that the healing surge rules tend to damper potential narratives more than open them

<snip>

To me, D&D is within the fantasy genre, and that's what I want it to support. You love that it supports the more cinematic aspect of the fantasy genre, and you find the narratives it offers compelling, suspenseful, and interesting. That's great, and I'd never say that's not how it plays to you. I'm just saying I'm looking for more options, and I feel the healing surge rules hurt more than they help, from what I've observed of them.

I don't know if I agree with this or not.

I agree that 4e provides better support for cinematic, gonzo play than does 3E (which in turn supports it more than does RQ or RM). Is 4e therefore more narrow than 3E? I think it's more focused. I think it more reliably delivers a particular play experience.

If I wanted a different play experience - including the experience of cinematic vs gritty healing depending on the dice and the presence of a cleric in the party - then I'd play 3E. I don't think this shows that 3E is less narrow, however, because I don't really have any metric on which to compare the limitations to narratives.

three PCs (all warlords of an area) got ambushed by bandits who wanted the players dead (the players had hired adventurers to rid the forest of these bandits, effectively betraying the bandits). It was five bandits versus the three players and an NPC wife of one of the players. The bandits hit the NPC wife, taking her down to -7 (in my game, while in the negatives you lose 1 hit point her round, dying at -10, though you have a 10% chance each round to stabilize without aid). Two rounds later, the PC ran to his wife, and assessed her wounds (catching that she was seconds from bleeding out), and that he couldn't save her in time. There was a lot of tension at the table, because the player knew that his character would take the death very hard (he is a warlord, chancellor, and interrogator, with most of his positive emotions being channeled into his friends and his wife), so everyone was getting ready for his character to take a dramatic shift in his personality (another player almost used character points to buy a spell that might save her, which would dramatically change his character, and potentially cause a low level of madness; he decided against it when the player with the dying wife said he thought it would be interesting to see how things turn out). Well, what do you know, but I roll a natural 10 on my d10, and she stabilizes on her own (I always roll every roll in the open, and the player had used a skill to get her hit point total at -9, so everyone knew that this wasn't me fudging at all). The expected narrative shifted dramatically based on that one die roll, and the build-up of tension is something I've come to love in my gaming experience.

Now, this could happen in 3.X or in 4e, probably, so I'm not saying this is impossible in those systems. What I am trying to say is that I want the narrative to be dramatically alterable based on the luck of the dice, and by what the rules inherently support.

This strikes me as completely orthogonal to the healing surge issue. I also "want the narrative to be dramatically alterable based on the luck of the dice". This is one reason I play 4e - it is a mechanically tight game in which the dice do their job of coming out when drama is in the offing, and delivering that drama via their results. Because of this, GMing advice for games that are more upfront about the relationship between dice and narrative - Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling - is in my view very applicable to GMing 4e.

And my comment upthread about not wanting cinematic vs gritty to turn on the luck of the dice doesn't contradict the previous paragraph at all. I want the dice to help shape the plot. I don't want the dice to help shape the genre - which is settled when the game is chosen - or the themes, which are injected by the players and the GM.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I don't know if I agree with this or not.

I agree that 4e provides better support for cinematic, gonzo play than does 3E (which in turn supports it more than does RQ or RM). Is 4e therefore more narrow than 3E? I think it's more focused. I think it more reliably delivers a particular play experience.

Well, first of all, some context of my statement has been excised from when you quoted me. I was speaking in very specific terms: 4e narrows down narrative possibilities in regards to healing damage. I just underline it since it seems to have been missed, so I want it clear. I think certain restrictions in a system (or focus, separately) can really open up narrative opportunities. I've found that limiting long range teleportation (and plane shifting, without tight restrictions) really opens up narrative options in the game, not restricts them (so, in this respect, 3.X was terrible for my wants).

If I wanted a different play experience - including the experience of cinematic vs gritty healing depending on the dice and the presence of a cleric in the party - then I'd play 3E. I don't think this shows that 3E is less narrow, however, because I don't really have any metric on which to compare the limitations to narratives.

I like that the game could support those options. You could have an all melee party, or a non-healing party, or an all-healer party, or the like, and the narrative changed dramatically based on the party make-up. With sufficient player and GM buy-in, a non-healing party (only healed naturally) will meet challenges as appropriate (so, less challenging encounters while recovering). This isn't optimal for me, but the system can easily support the different narratives out of the box, which I desire in a system. This option is eliminated with the addition of the healing surge and extended rest mechanics, which is suboptimal for my wants. My concern for healing surges isn't that they're bad at what they're trying to do, it's that they're doing something that I don't want done.

This strikes me as completely orthogonal to the healing surge issue. I also "want the narrative to be dramatically alterable based on the luck of the dice". This is one reason I play 4e - it is a mechanically tight game in which the dice do their job of coming out when drama is in the offing, and delivering that drama via their results. Because of this, GMing advice for games that are more upfront about the relationship between dice and narrative - Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling - is in my view very applicable to GMing 4e.

And my comment upthread about not wanting cinematic vs gritty to turn on the luck of the dice doesn't contradict the previous paragraph at all. I want the dice to help shape the plot. I don't want the dice to help shape the genre - which is settled when the game is chosen - or the themes, which are injected by the players and the GM.

As I said, this can be done in 4e as well. However, I really don't agree with you about shaping the genre. Subgenre, maybe. That might sound particularly semantic, but it's not to me. In a fantasy game, I want the option of playing gritty swords and sorcery or cinematic high fantasy to be options within the rules. Personally, I want the system to support both, and my preferred method is to separate it by level. That is, if I want high fantasy, I just scale up the level base, and if I want gritty, I embrace lower levels (that, and my game has rules to adjust it to be less gritty).

Yes, I understand that the game can dramatically turn on a single die roll, which is why I said that 4e includes this option. However, I want the rules to inherently support drastic narrative changes that stem from the entire genre, not just a popular subgenre. Low magic and similar settings have been popular as long as D&D has; there's no reason to neglect it.

Again, just my reasons. I don't think the cinematic high fantasy subgenere should be neglected. In fact, I think it should be well supported. However, I want the rules to support gritty, low magic settings, and the like as well. And healing surges, as currently implemented, don't fulfill the narratives there as I'd like to see them fulfilled. But, as always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

I don't think the cinematic high fantasy subgenere should be neglected. In fact, I think it should be well supported. However, I want the rules to support gritty, low magic settings, and the like as well.

My own view is that it is very hard, if not impossible, to do both these things with a single set of mechanics.

The "level" solution, for example, seems to imply that cinematic PCs will never fight goblins or other low level monsters.

I regard 3E as a bit of a poster child for this sort of genre confusion - heroic hit points, semi-gritty natural healing that is completely obviated by gonzo magic, gritty skill points but non-gritty weapon proficiencies, etc.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yes, 4e supports your preference better in terms of cinematic feel, but it narrows down possible narratives (to a more cinematic feel). Sometimes in a fantasy movie, you get a slow motion moment where the Good Guy kills the Bad Guy, or the Good Guy summons all of his strength and pulls himself off the floor when lesser men wouldn't be able to. However, sometimes in fantasy movies you get a slow motion moment where the Good Guy gets mortally wounded, incapacitated, permanently crippled, or the like. I'd like those narratives available, even in a cinematic game, personally.

Mortally wounded means the character dies. Characters /can/ die in 4e. I've seen it happen. Now, you can't know, when a character gets dropped by a big attack, if he's doing to die, but then, no matter how dramatic the slow-motion-death-scene, you can't be 100% sure the character is really truely dead until it's actually established. So that's not a bad thing, really. (as an aside, is the problem that there's no normal-combat wound that can be healed by magic, but not by preternatural healing like that of the warlord? Because that's about the only difference 'knowing' a wound is 'mortal' when it's inflicted, rather than when the character dies of it would make - this guy has a punctured spleen, an encouraging speech isn't gong to save him, bring on the divine band-aids or he dies. Is that the distinction you're missing?)

Being dropped to 0 is incapacitated, so that's also possibe. So, really, what you're noting is the lack of rules to cover permanently crippling (or the like) a PC?

I think that lack is understandable. A PC can be brought back from death. It would be a little wierd if there were wounds that couldn't be cured, when death /can/ be cured. Of course, it'd be easy enough to add such wounds as narrative. A character who 'dies' could be ruled by the DM to be permanently crippled, instead. He's not playable until his greivous injuries are somehow repaired (about on par with raise dead).

(Yeah, I just suggested re-skinning death.)

Ironically, 3.x doesn't have general rules for crippling wounds, either - but it does have a spell to cure them. :shrug: AD&D had a few specific rules for attacks that could lop off limbs - and as spell to re-grow them.

So, if you're looking for the drama of a 'good guy' being killed or crippled permanently, you're not going to find it in any version of D&D, these things could always be cured, somehow - if only by the expedient of a Wish or some other extreme agency.

 

[JamesonCourage]

My own view is that it is very hard, if not impossible, to do both these things with a single set of mechanics.

The "level" solution, for example, seems to imply that cinematic PCs will never fight goblins or other low level monsters.

I disagree here, based on experience. In a cinematic game, it'd probably be higher level PCs against a lot of lower level goblins or other monsters (they'd be the equivalent of minions), while fighting the real threat (or just owning lower level goblins).

I regard 3E as a bit of a poster child for this sort of genre confusion - heroic hit points, semi-gritty natural healing that is completely obviated by gonzo magic, gritty skill points but non-gritty weapon proficiencies, etc.

3.X certainly had problems. I think they can be fixed (and I tried to, at least to my satisfaction).

Mortally wounded means the character dies. Characters /can/ die in 4e. I've seen it happen. Now, you can't know, when a character gets dropped by a big attack, if he's doing to die, but then, no matter how dramatic the slow-motion-death-scene, you can't be 100% sure the character is really truely dead until it's actually established. So that's not a bad thing, really. (as an aside, is the problem that there's no normal-combat wound that can be healed by magic, but not by preternatural healing like that of the warlord? Because that's about the only difference 'knowing' a wound is 'mortal' when it's inflicted, rather than when the character dies of it would make - this guy has a punctured spleen, an encouraging speech isn't gong to save him, bring on the divine band-aids or he dies. Is that the distinction you're missing?)

Let's take this example: a PC is fighting, and gets dropped into the negatives, and has to start making saves or he dies. Another PC, and trained healer, asks how the injured PC looks, even going out of his way to move to the injured PC to inspect him. If the character is dying, the trained healer will stop -mid combat- to aid the PC. However, if he's just down, and can shrug it off (Warlord's "get up!" ability), the trained healer PC will say a quick encouraging word (for no mechanical benefit) and rejoin the fray.

My current understanding is that the mechanics get in the way of letting the player gain any concrete information -the PC might be fine with no aid, in which case the wound wasn't that bad (he will be fully healed on an extended rest). However, if the PC dies, then obviously the wound was much worse. This makes it hard to narrate as a GM when a player engages with an important portion of the game (PC mortality).

This is directly relevant to my last session, when a PC's wife was dropped into the negatives, and the PC let his allies mop up the enemies while he checked on his wife. She eventually stabilized on her own, so in 4e, this means she wouldn't have been that badly injured (she lived, will recover on an extended rest). However, when the PC checked, nobody has any idea if the PC's wife will stabilize or not, so an accurate description is basically impossible to give. The PC in my game stopped to give medical attention to his wife (he had minor training in healing) rather than continue. With the healing surge situation (and the Warlord in particular), I couldn't have given relevant information to the player. I could have said, "she's bloody but you don't know how bad" but that's pretty unsatisfactory when the player gets a high or very high result on the Heal check.

Being dropped to 0 is incapacitated, so that's also possibe. So, really, what you're noting is the lack of rules to cover permanently crippling (or the like) a PC?

Incapacitated includes the long term, so no, not just limited to permanently crippling someone. You know, a wound that takes someone out for a couple days, or a week, or two weeks, or something. They'll make a full recovery, but it''ll take a while as the wound heals.

I think that lack is understandable. A PC can be brought back from death. It would be a little wierd if there were wounds that couldn't be cured, when death /can/ be cured. Of course, it'd be easy enough to add such wounds as narrative. A character who 'dies' could be ruled by the DM to be permanently crippled, instead. He's not playable until his greivous injuries are somehow repaired (about on par with raise dead).

(Yeah, I just suggested re-skinning death.)

If the rules supported this as a mechanical alternative to death, I think that could be very interesting. I do want it in the rules, but as long as it's possible within the narrative via the base rules (or complexity dials, if Mr. Mearls wants it to be like that), I'd be pretty satisfied with it.

Ironically, 3.x doesn't have general rules for crippling wounds, either - but it does have a spell to cure them. :shrug: AD&D had a few specific rules for attacks that could lop off limbs - and as spell to re-grow them.

I think it would be to heal them if they were lost out of combat, just like 4e; that is, if you lost an arm willingly, or you were held down while your tongue was removed, or the like. I'd like to see permanent injury possible within combat (as I find it much more likely to happen there), and 3.X certainly failed here for me.

So, if you're looking for the drama of a 'good guy' being killed or crippled permanently, you're not going to find it in any version of D&D, these things could always be cured, somehow - if only by the expedient of a Wish or some other extreme agency.

It's not permanent even against magic. In fact, I think permanent unless there's magical aid fits both cinematic high fantasy and gritty swords and sorcery very well. I'm saying mundanely permanent.