I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[NewJeffCT]

Except one is magic and one is not.

I just consider them different forms of magic - i.e., nature's spiritual healing for a shaman, etc.

And, there was psionic healing in prior editions, which was done via the mind. I'm sure I could come up with other examples from previous editions as well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I just consider them different forms of magic - i.e., nature's spiritual healing for a shaman, etc.

Good for you...but for those of us who found 4Ed's "every class has magic!" unpalatable, this just makes HSes even more disagreeable.

Prior editions had all kinds of magical healing, to be sure, but not every class had it at their fingertips. And some of us liked it that way.

(FWIW, I drive to work in Dallas each day braving hordes of dino-riding phantom ninja demon pirates- uphill through the snow- and I like it that way too.)

 

[LostSoul]

Actually, no.

I think it's exactly the same as before. The only difference is now that it is called "healing surges" instead of "Cure Light Wounds" or "Cure Serious Wounds" and is easier to access for other classes than it was prior to 4E.

I don't see that big a difference between a PC in any edition getting whomped for 40 points of damage and being dropped to a few hit points left, and then the party cleric casting Cure Critical Wounds on him and healing 20 points of damage (pre 4E), or the party leader (in 4E) using an ability to let the PC spend a healing surge and heal 20 points of damage.

I think one variable here is how different people use - and want to use - HP and damage. As far as I can tell, BryonD uses HP to help him build a narrative that makes him feel as though he's part of a novel. In my case, I used HP simply to determine if someone could act or not. There's a big difference between what we wanted out of those mechanics, and I think that difference leads to my acceptance of Healing Surges and his dislike of them.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I think one variable here is how different people use - and want to use - HP and damage. As far as I can tell, BryonD uses HP to help him build a narrative that makes him feel as though he's part of a novel. In my case, I used HP simply to determine if someone could act or not. There's a big difference between what we wanted out of those mechanics, and I think that difference leads to my acceptance of Healing Surges and his dislike of them.

That's fine, but I don't see how the narrative changes based on my example, which could have been used in 1E, 2E, 3E, 3.5E, PF or 4E. The only difference is that a cleric casts Cure Critical to heal 20 points in earlier editions, instead of having a leader use a power to heal 20 points in 4E.

 

[Nagol]

That's fine, but I don't see how the narrative changes based on my example, which could have been used in 1E, 2E, 3E, 3.5E, PF or 4E. The only difference is that a cleric casts Cure Critical to heal 20 points in earlier editions, instead of having a leader use a power to heal 20 points in 4E.

The difference occurs when the Thief doesn't have a healer character handy -- and still manages to heal 15 of that 20 points during the combat and the rest 5 minutes after.

 

[Hussar]

Let me try and put this in my own words: Pre-4E HP allow a much greater narrative range than 4E's Healing Surges, which create absurd narratives if you describe them as actual wounds; this means that there's more scope for how you decide to narrate wounds and healing using pre-4E HP.

Sound good?

And therein lies the problem. That "greater narrative range" never really existed. Outside of some fairly corner case examples (the 1hp fighter running marathons - more on that later) being at 1 hp or being at full hit points made no mechanical difference.

Again, and outside of concussions, name me a potentially lethal wound that I can completely recover from in a week of bedrest. As soon as you start actually narrating wounds in D&D, you have departed from what the mechanics actually represent.

If I take a heavily bleeding leg wound, for example, I could possibly die. But, since I can heal from this in a week of bedrest, it is impossible that that wound did any ligament damage, broke any bones or did any serious injury. And, even a deep cut will take a heck of a lot longer than a week to get better.

Now, when you cloud the issue with genre conventions, I'd point out that by and large, genre books don't allow the hero to recover from potentially lethal wounds in a matter of days without magical intervention because to do so breaks the believability of the narrative. When Conan gets nailed to a cross, he takes months to heal. How long does Frodo take to recover in Rivendell, even with magical healing?

Now, on the point about running a marathon. We're comparing apples to oranges. In 3e, running a marathon uses the hit point mechanic. Do really strenuous stuff and you lose temporary hit points which come back faster than regular hit points. It's bolting on a sort of variant hit point mechanic onto the base mechanics. And it works fairly well.

4e doesn't do this though. There are no separate hit point pools in 4e. In 4e, running a marathon is modeled by your Endurance skill. If you fail your Endurance check, then you cannot make another Athletics check until you've had an Extended rest.

Since DC's in 4e are very much subject to DM interpretation (not that they aren't in 3e, I'm not saying that, but, 4e DC's are very explicitly the purview of the DM in 4e) a character with 1 hp and no healing surges would likely have a pretty high Endurance DC in order to run a marathon, and, it would likely be a DC that would continue to increase with each check.

IOW, 4e would model this action differently than 3e would. Using this example to say how HP work differently between editions isn't really fair since 4e wouldn't use the 3e system at all.

 

[Nagol]

A second difference (and one I find more problematic) is what happens when a character is knocked unconscious.

Without magical aid:

In 1e, there was a week+ recovery as a base and possibly months of bed rest. Narration was simple if someone checked on the character -- the character was in obvious dire straits. There was physical damage that could be described even if it was simple blood loss.

In 2e, there was weeks of bed rest. Narration was simple if someone checked on the character -- the character was in obvious dire straits. There was physical damage that could be described even if it was simple blood loss.

In 3e there was days of bed rest. Narration was simple if someone checked on the character -- the character was in obvious dire straits. There was simple physical damage like blood loss.

In 4e there is at least a 5 minute rest and maybe as much as a night's rest. Narration is more complex if someone checked on the character -- the character is dying, but there may not be any physical damage since a 5 minute rest offers complete repair.

 

[JamesonCourage]

And therein lies the problem. That "greater narrative range" never really existed. Outside of some fairly corner case examples (the 1hp fighter running marathons - more on that later) being at 1 hp or being at full hit points made no mechanical difference.

Again, and outside of concussions, name me a potentially lethal wound that I can completely recover from in a week of bedrest. As soon as you start actually narrating wounds in D&D, you have departed from what the mechanics actually represent.

If I take a heavily bleeding leg wound, for example, I could possibly die. But, since I can heal from this in a week of bedrest, it is impossible that that wound did any ligament damage, broke any bones or did any serious injury. And, even a deep cut will take a heck of a lot longer than a week to get better.

I feel like the fantasy genre is being applied sometimes but not others in this conversation.

"It's fantasy, and you're a hero, so your character can use a second wind to push himself when others would falter."

"No, you can't model long term wounds without significant impairment and permanent injuries, because that's not realistic."

Okay, I get the first one. The second one baffles me. Why not have it, "it's fantasy, and you're a hero, so your character can push himself when others would falter after a wound heals"? I mean, if 5e kept PC stats separate from NPC stats like 4e does, it's not like all NPCs would have to heal that quickly -you just say they don't!

I just don't get why the fantasy genre is suddenly overrun by a realism simulation as soon as the want of long term wounds is asked for. You can have a mechanic that handles long term wounds without crippling the characters or bogging the game down in conditions. HP can do that well enough. You're a hero, so you're getting out of bed after a week instead of the normal month it'd take other people. This happens in fantasy. Having no wounds that take a long time to heal happens in some fantasy, I'm guessing, but it's certainly going to be only a portion of fantasy. Wounds have been used as a plot point for years.

Now, when you cloud the issue with genre conventions, I'd point out that by and large, genre books don't allow the hero to recover from potentially lethal wounds in a matter of days without magical intervention because to do so breaks the believability of the narrative. When Conan gets nailed to a cross, he takes months to heal. How long does Frodo take to recover in Rivendell, even with magical healing?

And, with sufficient mechanics, you could have an option of long recoveries or short recoveries -it'd just be left to the dice. For example, take Tony Vargas' suggestion to me in this thread: a character who "dies" can be permanently crippled instead.

If you had a system that made "dying" a little easier than 4e, but had a roll to change the outcome of death, that could be really interesting. When you would "die" due to failing death saves, you can make a check or save. If successful, you live for now, but the wound is bad: it takes a long time to heal (say, 1d6 weeks). You keep making saves against death, and if you would "die", make another save or check, with success indicating that you live for now, but now you're permanently crippled. That is, that bad gash on your leg has apparently permanently damaged you -you have a limp. Now, you keep making checks to see if you bleed out. If you "die" again, you can save yourself with another successful check, meaning the leg is now worthless. You keep making saves, and no saves or checks can prevent death, now; you bled out.

Now, I'm sure you can clean this up, and have an easy way to determine what's disabled. It allows for the narrative where your character recovers quickly (he never "died" to death saves), recovers slowly but presses on sooner than others (he "died" once but made his save), is permanently crippled (he "died" twice but made both saves), or permanently loses a limb (he "died" three times but made three saves), or, of course, just bleeds out (he "died" once and failed a "bad wound" save, or he "died" seven times [too many in my opinion!]).

This opens up narrative options, and that's a good thing to me. I'd still separate physical HP and "other" HP, as I think that'd be necessary for the narratives to be coherent without retconning.

Personally, I'm fine with just deciding how bad the wound is when you're hit, even if that leads to bleeding out with 100 hit points left. I'm okay with that, but I know most people don't want that in their D&D. Having a system in place (even if it's a more complex "dial" that's included in the core books) that allows for long term wounds isn't a bad thing, in my opinion. As always, play what you like

 

[Hussar]

A second difference (and one I find more problematic) is what happens when a character is knocked unconscious.

Without magical aid:

In 1e, there was a week+ recovery as a base and possibly months of bed rest. Narration was simple if someone checked on the character -- the character was in obvious dire straits. There was physical damage that could be described even if it was simple blood loss.

In 2e, there was weeks of bed rest. Narration was simple if someone checked on the character -- the character was in obvious dire straits. There was physical damage that could be described even if it was simple blood loss.

In 3e there was days of bed rest. Narration was simple if someone checked on the character -- the character was in obvious dire straits. There was simple physical damage like blood loss.

In 4e there is at least a 5 minute rest and maybe as much as a night's rest. Narration is more complex if someone checked on the character -- the character is dying, but there may not be any physical damage since a 5 minute rest offers complete repair.

In 3e it's not that simple though. 3e, as you say, gives you "days of bed rest". Again, name me a potentially lethal wound that I can narrate that I can recover from in a matter of days.

1e I'll totally give you. That was certainly believable. But 3e?

Never minding the fact that in no edition could I ever do any actually debilitating injury since even after a few weeks of bedrest (I cannot remember exactly how long 1e and 2e forced bedrest after going negative, and as I recall, 2e didn't enforce it at all) I should not be recovered from any realistically narrated wound.

 

[LostSoul]

And therein lies the problem. That "greater narrative range" never really existed. Outside of some fairly corner case examples (the 1hp fighter running marathons - more on that later) being at 1 hp or being at full hit points made no mechanical difference.

A strange thing about RPGs - as compared to other games, like board games or chess - is that different people can get different things out of the same mechanics. I always found HP problematic when I wanted to narrate wounds; back in the 2E/3E days I used a VP/WP system to try and make more sense of things. But that's me. Other people obviously didn't find HP problematic.

If someone says that they find a greater narrative range using pre-4E HP than they do with 4E's Healing Surges, then there must be a greater narrative range. It might not exist for everyone, but it can still exist for some people.

I'd also say that being a 1 HP or full HP does make a mechanical difference in every iteration of D&D; whenever you spend character resources that's going to change how you view your choices, and that's a big deal. Different numbers of HP might not affect character effectiveness and other character resources (except in corner cases, such as the Power Word spells), but I don't think that means that losing character resources does not have a mechanical effect.​

I think the key to this discussion isn't focusing on whether or not descriptions of the events in the game world make sense, or if they're genre appropriate or realistic, or what you can narrate and what you can't. I think you need to look at individual desires for play - what people want to get out of play - and how different people view the choices that pre-4E HP and 4E's Healing Surges present.

Another way to say that: do the mechanics support changes in the choices you have to make in the way that you want them to, or not? (Keeping in mind that "what I can narrate about what's going on in the game world in a way that I like" is a choice.)