I don't get the dislike of healing surges
- Thread starter Mercurius
- Start date
What you are actually doing is not "cheating" (nor do I believe is it putting story over setting, quite the reverse), you are giving the player a slight bit of narrative control over the setting. You can (and probably should) ask players if they are comfortable with such control (minor as it is) before giving it and I would be a bit surprised if many disliked it.
I think this is a great topic for a new thread actually.
Oryan77
Adventurer
You quoted me but you have the wrong name in the quote.
I wasn't complaining about avoiding a 15 minute adventuring day.
My point behind my statement is that 4e players seem to complain about what the healing wand did (allowed PCs to avoid 15 minute adventuring days).
Then 4e players turn around and praise Healing Surges because they do the exact same thing, only better!
I'm not sure why someone can use wands as a negative but then use Healing Surges as a positive. Is it because they find wands make the game easier? If not, then what is the complaint about groups that use wands like that? Cause to me, Healing Surges seem to make the game even easier than a wand does.
tomBitonti
Hero
Wait ... healing wands and healing surges are not quite the same.
Healing wands don't innately recharge; one must purchase new wands. Nor are they usable by all.
Not putting myself on either side (I rather don't like 4E), but I gather that those folks who dislike healing wands and like healing surges do so because of how they work, not because of what they achieve.
Even though I dislike 4E, the regular stocking up on Cure Light wands and healing up after fights does get mundane, after only a short while. I'd say, any mechanic that becomes assumed, and that does not add to the play value of the game, should be edited out of a game.
(Incidentally, that's why I dislike the automatically scaling bonuses in 4E. The game really seems to be about a characters relative level, rather than their absolute. What matters about an opponent is if they are +2 level, say, as opposed to -2. That's built into the attack bonus and defenses to the point that actual level is largely irrelevant. By my prestated design principle, actual level should be removed, and relative level put in its place.)
TomB
JamesonCourage
Adventurer
That's what I was pointing out. Our social contract is for this to not happen when we play a fantasy RPG (we're a little more open with M&M 2e). They don't want it, and so they feel like I'm cheating for them. It's similar to fudging in their favor, in their eyes (and in mine). It's not a feature of the game, whereas it is to us with M&M 2e.
But, that doesn't mean it should be that way for everyone. I understand it's not cheating as a blanket rule. I understand some groups like it, and have every right to. They're not wrong for playing that way. It's not right for us, but more power to you if you play differently. As always, play what you like
Oryan77
Adventurer
I just mean that their end result and purpose of existing in the game is the same.
That makes sense. So heal wands made the game easy, but not easy enough! Healing Surges were implemented only to make the game even easier and take away the challenge of needing to worry about getting your next heal.
That's a perfectly valid reason for liking them for people that like to do that to their game. It's just not my thing. I actually like the challenge of trying to get my heals. It's not tedious to me at all. It makes the game more realistic and fun for me.
tomBitonti
Hero
That does highlight an issue, which is, how much state to retain between fights or sessions?
On one hand, an evening can be managed as a sequence of skirmishes, with a near total reset between each skirmish.
Or, one can have effects linger not only between fights, but between sessions, or even longer for games that include more severe damage.
Perhaps the problem with healing surges is that they take away a lot of the control over which mode is used. Narrative concerns aside, use of healing surges "out of the box" takes away a lot of control: Play as a sequence of skirmishes with frequent state resets is the imposed mode.
That works for some, but not for others. Some dislike the imposed mode. Some are irked as well that the choice between modes was removed.
TomB
Hussar
Legend
You quoted me but you have the wrong name in the quote.
I wasn't complaining about avoiding a 15 minute adventuring day.
My point behind my statement is that 4e players seem to complain about what the healing wand did (allowed PCs to avoid 15 minute adventuring days).
Then 4e players turn around and praise Healing Surges because they do the exact same thing, only better!
I'm not sure why someone can use wands as a negative but then use Healing Surges as a positive. Is it because they find wands make the game easier? If not, then what is the complaint about groups that use wands like that? Cause to me, Healing Surges seem to make the game even easier than a wand does.
The people who complain about healing wands are not those who favor healing surges. The people who complain about healing wands are those who claim that there is no need for them in the game at all. I have no problems with healing wands honestly. I see them as part and parcel to 3e play. They are the solution to the problems caused by having monsters who can kill PC's in a single round of combat and the need for healing magic.
You've got your crowds mixed up. Most people who favor healing surges point to 3e healing wands and say that, at the end of the day, both games wind up in the same place. It's the people who claim that they never used healing surges, never had any clerics in the party and yet were still capable of having half a dozen encounters between rest periods that are questioning healing wands.
Y'know, I've still never really heard a decent explaination as to how they managed to achieve that when virtually no one else was - not the RPGA, not playtesters for Dungeon, no one. But, hey, apparently they could.
Orius
Unrepentant DM Supremacist
Huh? I don't remember posting in this thread.
Perhaps this is a topic for another thread, but I think your intuition here is off. Good contemporary narrative design makes the game reasonably railroad-proof - the players build their PCs (which include the thematic hooks for the GM), the GM builds encounters/situations that engage those hooks, then everyone presses "play" and we see what happens! The whole promise of this school of game design is that it will produce satisfactory stories although no one at the table is responsible for doing so. The promise is of story emerging out of the players doing their job (ie building PCs with hooks for the GM), and the GM doing his/hers (ie building encounters that bite on those hooks).
This sort of game can fizzle for any number of reasons, including if the players don't build decent PCs (eg they turtle) or if the GM builds boring situations. But railroading shouldn't be one of them.
To bring this back a little bit on topic: one of the techniques that 4e offers for supporting this sort of play is the interaction between the particular powers that players get to choose for their PCs, and the general action economy of the game. This is intended to mean that if the players just do their job - do their best to use their PCs' powers to win combats in cooperation with their fellows - and the GM just does his/her job - builds encouners with an interesting mix of NPCs/monsters and terrain (as per the guidelines in the various manuals) - then dynamic, engaging combats will result. In my experience, the design realises this intention most of the time. Furthermore, in my experience it's fairly easy to build both PCs and monsters/NPCs/encounter settings that have sufficient thematic "oomph" to their mechanical elements that the mechanically dynamic combat will also produce a reasonably thematically dynamic combat.
Healing surges, and the various steps that must be taken to gain access to them, are a key part of these mechanical and thematic dynamics.
That said, I think it is probably fairly easy in 4e to build boring PCs who don't contribute that much to the thematic dynamics, in part because they kill off the mechanical dynamics - archer rangers tend in this direction, in my view, and I would find it easy to believe that pacifist clerics do also. Luckily, there is an easy solution: build more interesting PCs!
As has often been noted, these same aspects of 4e's design - the centrality of powers, of encounter terrain, etc - can create some challenges in relation to fictional positioning. Some think that the game tends to collapse into nothing but dice rolls and moving miniatures around on a battlemat. On the other hand, in my game I haven't had much trouble keeping fictional positioning central. I think the focus on thematic as well as mechanical dynamics helps with that - fictional stakes that the players care about will go a long way to making fictional positioning matter - but there are other techniques that I use as well.
I can see the force of your point. My own view is that the scaling, in combination with the default monsters from the various published sources, produces a game that, very roughly, tells "the story of D&D" ie the PCs begin by confronting kobolds, and end by confronting Orcus.
I know that others also see the scaling as corresponding more-or-less directly to ingame toughness of characters and monsters, but I personally don't make that assumption. When I'm desigining encounters, I do think just in terms of relative levels, as you describe.
In my own case, it would be because I find that wands of divine juice on tap are kind of lame, whereas heroically turning the tide by drawing on your own reserves of heroism - perhaps when spurred on by a valiant leader - is kind of exciting and evocative of LotR, Arthurian romance, etc. But then I never played very much 3E, and so may be an outlier here.
