I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Mort]

Again... how does this model fatigue? Fatigue usually has an impact on one's ability to perform tasks... In 3.5 "fatigued" is a condition that causes a character to take a -2 to Dex and Str...which has nothing to do with hit points, it affects a characters performance and requires 8 hours of rest to remove the condition... and if the character does anything else that would cause them to be fatigued they become exhausted instead.

Loosing a surge has no effect whatsoever on your immediate performance (you are just as good at doing everything as you were before loosing the healing surge) thus I am asking what part of this models being fatigued in any way?

You are correct, most representation of fatigue in games impose a negative penalty to doing future tasks - thereby leading to a higher chance of mistakes and fumbling tasks (in many games the penalties are cumulative thereby leading to the death spiral mentioned above). While this is one of those things that intuitively makes sense, it's not necessarily accurate. Google up some studies on death spiral effects and you'll notice they mostly show a fight goes like this: fine, fine, fine, down/dead.

Healing surges model this form the point that eventually you run out of reserves, your body can no longer support the healing necessary to keep you going - rest or fall down/die. The character is not impared from a bonus/penalty perspective but is certainly impared from an effectiveness perspective and the loss of effectiveness can be attributed to fatigue as easily as anything else. It forces the player to make hard choices on continuing in a diminished capacity without punishing the player further with the imposition of a death spiral (I dislike death spirals in adition to not being that accurate they are no fun at all).

What exactly is the downside to being fatigued in loosing a healing surge?

In losing healing surges you are incrementaly less effective, even if your HPs are the same with 9/10 Healing surges you are pretty close to normal, 5/10 your ok but have to consider resting in the future, 0/10 you may be functional but you are nearly walking dead, sure you don't have minuses but effectively every action you take has greater consequences because your reserves are so low and not resting risks serious injury or death.

You are still able to perform all actions as if in tip top shape.

Not really, you may not suffer minuses but since your actions have more drastic consequences (HP loss without likely healing for example) you are effectively impared.

 

[Imaro]

You are correct, most representation of fatigue in games impose a negative penalty to doing future tasks - thereby leading to a higher chance of mistakes and fumbling tasks (in many games the penalties are cumulative thereby leading to the death spiral mentioned above). While this is one of those things that intuitively makes sense, it's not necessarily accurate. Google up some studies on death spiral effects and you'll notice they mostly show a fight goes like this: fine, fine, fine, down/dead.

Wait a minute are we talking about modeling fatigue or death spirals in combat due to wounds? I don't believe they are the same thing. When one is fatigued in the real world science shows that it has an effect on one's ability and performance of tasks. Not sure what you telling me to google death spirals or even fights has to do with this since we are talking about fatigue. See the -2 to Str and Dex of 3.5 affects your ability to perform tasks inside and outside of combat... the loss of a healing surge does none of this. I'm just having a hard time understanding how you could feel the loss of healing surges models fatigue better than the condition in 3.5???

Healing surges model this form the point that eventually you run out of reserves, your body can no longer support the healing necessary to keep you going - rest or fall down/die. The character is not impared from a bonus/penalty perspective but is certainly impared from an effectiveness perspective and the loss of effectiveness can be attributed to fatigue as easily as anything else. It forces the player to make hard choices on continuing in a diminished capacity without punishing the player further with the imposition of a death spiral (I dislike death spirals in adition to not being that accurate they are no fun at all).

This is not how most studies on sleep deprivation/fatigue/etc. claim that it works. A programmer running on no sleep doesn't perform at optimal effeciency until all of a sudden he collapses and can do nothing... you will notice a decrease in performance the longer he goes without rest thus normal->fatigued->exhausted (which is basically the lowest point of your effectiveness).

It seems that one minute you're making the claim that it models fatigue the best of any edition but in the post above you're saying well yeah, you can just kinda say it's fatigue just like you could claim it's a bunch of other things that are causing you to loose healing surges... these two stances while not opposed to each other do not make a strong argument for your postion.

I am also still confused with your equating of the fatigued condition with a death spiral... which it doesn't create in 3.5 and is thus a moot point in this discussion.

In losing healing surges you are incrementaly less effective, even if your HPs are the same with 9/10 Healing surges you are pretty close to normal, 5/10 your ok but have to consider resting in the future, 0/10 you may be functional but you are nearly walking dead, sure you don't have minuses but effectively every action you take has greater consequences because your reserves are so low and not resting risks serious injury or death.

See the problem is that every action doesn't have greater consequences, only actions in which you risk hit point loss have greater consequences... anything else is just as easy as it was when you didn't have any surges fatigued away. So If you tried to lift and carry small boulders to clear a path, in 4e you suffer nothing even though you are supposed to be fatigued... in 3.5 lifting those boulders and carrying them is actuallyu harder because you are fatigued and you can only do it for so long before you become exhausted.

Not really, you may not suffer minuses but since your actions have more drastic consequences (HP loss without likely healing for example) you are effectively impared.

Again, all of your actions don't.

 

[Mort]

Wait a minute are we talking about modeling fatigue or death spirals in combat due to wounds? I don't believe they are the same thing. When one is fatigued in the real world science shows that it has an effect on one's ability and performance of tasks. Not sure what you telling me to google death spirals or even fights has to do with this since we are talking about fatigue. See the -2 to Str and Dex of 3.5 affects your ability to perform tasks inside and outside of combat... the loss of a healing surge does none of this. I'm just having a hard time understanding how you could feel the loss of healing surges models fatigue better than the condition in 3.5???.

I'm going to go ahead and admit I improperly applied "fatigued" (probably from the getgo). I was more thinking of it as a "your body getting closer and closer to hitting a wall where it can go no farther" which is where I equated it with the death spiral and less the "you're tired and not fully functioning so have issues with tasks you might otherwise not" which is the more proper/correct definition.

From this (more correct) perspective the 3.5 condition certainly models it decently and 4e suffers from its seeming allergy to conditions outside of combat (except again for disease/poison tracking a good mechanic which deserves a better core treatment).

I still think the healing surge mechanic is quite useful in the context presented (just take out my incorrectly used fatigue language). It is a great way to divest the system from purely divine/magical healing and to track the bodies need to just simply shut down at some point - magic or no.

 

[BryonD]

Not really, you may not suffer minuses but since your actions have more drastic consequences (HP loss without likely healing for example) you are effectively impared.

In poker terms, you seem to be mistaking "pot odds" for "hand strength".

 

[BryonD]

It is a great way to divest the system from purely divine/magical healing and to track the bodies need to just simply shut down at some point - magic or no.

I still very strongly disagree with this. *
Yes, it divests it from magical healing.

But the "shut down" claim is a stretch. But they still heal and and every wound in a manner that has no analog to fiction, far less any kind of reality. Yes, in fiction they ignore wounds during dramatic moments. Ignore wounds and making them vanish forever are a far cry apart. And even when you run out of surges, they come back REALLY easy. So I don't think they even do very well as an "I"m out of reserves" feel.

Frankly, just having a lot of hit points does that quite well. When characters are fresh they take more risks. when they start running low they start second guessing their choices, which seems to me to be exactly what you described. So we already have that, and without the no-story healing.

Way back at the top of the thread Morrus pointed out that you now count surges more than HP and that is a key change. He was right about that. But simply counting surges to know when you are getting into the danger zone is really no different than looking at a low HP total.

(I'm picturing Ultraman with a flashing light on his chest now)


* - to be clear, if it works for you, awesome. But that doesn't make the failure of it to work for other needs go away.

 

[Mort]

In poker terms, you seem to be mistaking "pot odds" for "hand strength".

See the dialing back of my earlier post on fatigue; BUT

to respond, as any good poker player knows pot odds and hand strength are significantly linked. Any poker player that does not learn this will either make a lot less than they should or more likely lose all their money quickly.

Originally Posted by Mort
It is a great way to divest the system from purely divine/magical healing and to track the bodies need to just simply shut down at some point - magic or no.

I still very strongly disagree with this. *
Yes, it divests it from magical healing.

But the "shut down" claim is a stretch. But they still heal and and every wound in a manner that has no analog to fiction, far less any kind of reality. Yes, in fiction they ignore wounds during dramatic moments. Ignore wounds and making them vanish forever are a far cry apart. And even when you run out of surges, they come back REALLY easy. So I don't think they even do very well as an "I"m out of reserves" feel.

Frankly, just having a lot of hit points does that quite well. When characters are fresh they take more risks. when they start running low they start second guessing their choices, which seems to me to be exactly what you described. So we already have that, and without the no-story healing.

Way back at the top of the thread Morrus pointed out that you now count surges more than HP and that is a key change. He was right about that. But simply counting surges to know when you are getting into the danger zone is really no different than looking at a low HP total.

(I'm picturing Ultraman with a flashing light on his chest now)

And I believe the healing surge mechanic divests from magical healing while still maintaining a decent D&D/cinematic vibe - clearly we disagree.

 

[Griego]

Under the rules of 3E a fighter alone in the wounds can survive a fight but be in need of healing that make take several days without finding aid.

In 4E a fighter alone in the woods who survives a fight can surge away any damage taken.

Not if s/he's out of healing surges...

 

[BryonD]

See the dialing back of my earlier post on fatigue; BUT

to respond, as any good poker player knows pot odds and hand strength are significantly linked. Any poker player that does not learn this will either make a lot less than they should or more likely lose all their money quickly.

I think you are missing the point.

Everything else being equal the odds of a given hand winning is in no way impacted by the pot. Just as a character's ability to do things is in no way impacted by how many HP or surges he has left.

The willingness to take the risk depends on the risk/reward for that hand. But that is a different point. The hand (and the character) is not one bit less or more effective for any variation of pot and bet (or surges or lack thereof)

And I believe the healing surge mechanic divests from magical healing while still maintaining a decent D&D/cinematic vibe - clearly we disagree.

Clearly we vastly disagree. And if it is good for you then that is all that matters. But this thread is about why would someone dislike them, so you having a different standard doesn't really have any relevance.

For me, I can't think of ANY cinematic example of a group of characters all incapable of receiving any wound that they could not simply ignore briefly but actually make truly and completely go away.

 

[BryonD]

Not if s/he's out of healing surges...

Yes he can, he just has to recover surges first.

Surges recover easily and ALL wounds are fully removable by surges.

The distinction of potentially needed to recharge surges does nothing to mitigate the fact that surges remain capable of removing any and every wound.

 

[pemerton]

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.

In 4e, the rules for this are fairly clear - to make that inspection takes a standard action, and triggers a Heal check. If the Heal check succeeds, then the inspection reveals that the fallen PC is not dying. If the Heal check fails, then the inspection reveals that the fallen PC may well be in mortal trouble (although the inspecting healer is not certain of that).

I may be misunderstanding your point here, but in 3.x/PF it remains feasible for even a high level PC to face goblins or other low level monsters since you can add NPC and PC classses to them in order to increase their CR.

Just adding to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s response - either the monsters are low level in which case the play is mechanically unsatisfying, or the monsters are levelled up or in sufficient numbers to pose a threat, in which case we won't get cinematic healing (which was the initial context in which JamesonCourage suggested using the level scale to move from gritty to cinematic). If the monsters pose a mechanicaly significant threat then we'll get real injuries with gritty healing times (assuming pre-4e natural healing).

In 4E you can describe the exact same wounds. But then you need to describe the fighter simply making them disappear.

Why? All you need to describe is the fighter going on in spite of them.