I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[JamesonCourage]

Perhaps this is a topic for another thread, but I think your intuition here is off.

Not by what I was saying. I was saying that a story-first style game would be more likely to railroad the players. I did not mention narrative design or mechanics in the least. The reason for this is that railroads tend to be when you're forced into a specific story (or kept "on the rails"). In a story-first style of game, this would seem to be more likely. In a game that didn't rely on story, it wouldn't matter as much.

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 is definitely good design, and is definitely achievable. However, I hold to the statement that a game that cares about story is more likely to have someone that keeps the players to a "storyline" or the like.

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.

Just like with any style, it can be a problem. I think it's more likely to happen than other styles, not that it is likely to happen.

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 think you may have thought I was somehow attacking narrative play, when I wasn't speaking of it directly. You can have simulationist play that focuses takes a narrative-first style approach to the game. In my opinion, this hard focus on the "story" will be more likely to produce a railroad (the direct result of someone -usually the GM- focusing on the story). There's no way to prove it, and I'm not trying to. You've disagreed, and I see what you're saying, and it makes sense. There's nothing illogical in it. We just disagree, and that's fine by me. As always, play what you like

 

[Guest 85555]

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

I think you are mixing up a bunch of different statements made by posters here and turning them into absolute statements. Most of my parties had clerics, but not all. I've run all kinds of games, everything from a party of clerics to a party without any. In most games I've run or played in magic wands of healing were a rarity because we don't like the whole magic item emporium thing (magic shops are uncommon). When we did have combat heavy games we pressed on, because the world was in motion. We found the idea of fighting your way through a third of the dungeon, then sleeping so the cleric can get cure light wounds a little silly. If it was clear the party was in serious trouble we'd retreat, but because it is a world in motion that often made coming back to fight the big bady a near- impossible task.

 

[Guest 85555]

What's wrong with 3e? I LIKE 3e. I really, really do. I played it for ten years. Played the HELL out of it. However, liking a game does not preclude me for recognizing its short comings. 4e has all sorts of issues as well.

It just doesn't really have THIS issue.

I appologize if I implied you disliked an edition that you enjoy. The point really was you like 4E, and I don't, but at the end of the day that is totally fine. I live in Boston and some people here love greek style pizza, others prefer italian style. Both can state very good reasons for their preference, and even make compelling cases that one does something the other can't. In the end, it is just a pizza. There is no use getting riled up because someone's opinion about it differs from your own...and there is no need at all to feel threatened. If Hussar can play 4E without running into the consistency/believability issue I perceive there, that doesn't mean one of us is wrong or insane. Just trying to help lower the volume a bit.

 

[Hussar]

Huh? I don't remember posting in this thread.

LOL. I actually had to reread things two or three times to realize what I'd done. Wow. My bad. brain fart.

 

[Hussar]

I think you are mixing up a bunch of different statements made by posters here and turning them into absolute statements. Most of my parties had clerics, but not all. I've run all kinds of games, everything from a party of clerics to a party without any. In most games I've run or played in magic wands of healing were a rarity because we don't like the whole magic item emporium thing (magic shops are uncommon). When we did have combat heavy games we pressed on, because the world was in motion. We found the idea of fighting your way through a third of the dungeon, then sleeping so the cleric can get cure light wounds a little silly. If it was clear the party was in serious trouble we'd retreat, but because it is a world in motion that often made coming back to fight the big bady a near- impossible task.

And that's perfectly fine for your game. I would assume that the DM adjusts things to suit your taste. But, I don't play your game. 3e presumes that you can buy magic items and that those are pretty easily available. It presumes that healing magic is widely available.

I've still never really seen a satisfactory answer on how groups managed to achieve this when the game designers nor the tens of thousands of RPGA players couldn't.

 

[Guest 85555]

And that's perfectly fine for your game. I would assume that the DM adjusts things to suit your taste. But, I don't play your game. 3e presumes that you can buy magic items and that those are pretty easily available. It presumes that healing magic is widely available.

I've still never really seen a satisfactory answer on how groups managed to achieve this when the game designers nor the tens of thousands of RPGA players couldn't.

Most of my games had plenty of divine healing magic, but some didn't. We almost never had things like magic healing wands though and never ran into any issues. And we never found world in motion / pressing on to be much on an issue (except it led to more caution and occassional retreats or character death--something we were fine with). Games without vlerics are easy enough to run as well, you just need to know how to balance rncounters to the party. The simplest solution is fewer combats (which suits me since I hate when D&D turns into tactical mini games or constant dungeon crawls). The other option is weaker encounters. Seriously never had issues running interesting games in 3e (or 2e).

 

[Hussar]

Most of my games had plenty of divine healing magic, but some didn't. We almost never had things like magic healing wands though and never ran into any issues. And we never found world in motion / pressing on to be much on an issue (except it led to more caution and occassional retreats or character death--something we were fine with). Games without vlerics are easy enough to run as well, you just need to know how to balance rncounters to the party. The simplest solution is fewer combats (which suits me since I hate when D&D turns into tactical mini games or constant dungeon crawls). The other option is weaker encounters. Seriously never had issues running interesting games in 3e (or 2e).

Bold mine

Bingo, right there. That's the missing ingredient. To play without clerics, you need to depart from the play assumptions of the game. In other words, you need to change the game to suit your tastes.

But, that's the whole point isn't it? When you talk about not having healing wands, the game doesn't run no problem. You have to change the game in order to fit your tastes.

Which gets back to my point about me not playing your version of D&D. What I wonder is, why would you expect any version of D&D to suit your tastes when the one you're playing doesn't? If you get an interesting game in 3e (or 2e) by changing the play assumptions, then the baseline games don't actually suit your tastes.

So, when you talk about how healing surges don't fit into D&D, what you actuary mean is, they don't fit into the version of D&D you and your group play which is an idiosyncratic version that is limited to your table.

Hey, I get that. I totally agree. But, to talk about how healing wands interact in your game and how they aren't necessary, only tells half the story. Healing wands aren't necessary if you are willing to rework the game in order to take into account the reduced healing.

 

[Guest 85555]

Actually I don't think we altered play assumptions. A key assumption of 3e is tailoring encounters to the party. Even magic item avaability wasn't expected to be uniform. Just because an item was in the dmg it wasn't assumed the players would have easy total access to it. Another big assumption is different settings with different types of adventures. The thing is 1e, 2e, and 3e could accomodate a range of playstyles. It feels to me 4e was designed to reinforce one approach to the game.

What about my playstyle breaks the assumptions of 3e?

 

[Hussar]

Actually I don't think we altered play assumptions. A key assumption of 3e is tailoring encounters to the party. Even magic item avaability wasn't expected to be uniform. Just because an item was in the dmg it wasn't assumed the players would have easy total access to it. Another big assumption is different settings with different types of adventures. The thing is 1e, 2e, and 3e could accomodate a range of playstyles. It feels to me 4e was designed to reinforce one approach to the game.

What about my playstyle breaks the assumptions of 3e?

Actually it was assumed that magic items would be easily accessed. For one, every town should have a set GP buy limit and anything under that limit was presumed to be available and easily purchasable.

Secondly, the entire CR system is based in part, on character wealth. Change the wealth guidelines by not having magical items easily available and the CR/EL system becomes less and less accurate.

Thirdly, less difficult encounters and fewer encounter overall would play a role in things as well. With fewer and/or less difficult encounters, PC's would expend less resources and would be able to go longer than assumed.

So, right there, that's how your play assumptions change how the 3e mechanics work.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that. I played the World's Largest Dungeon which turns the whole game economy thing on its head. But, I also found as soon as we started playing with healing wands we suddenly went from 2-3 encounters between rest periods to 4-6 encounters between rest periods. The only thing that changed was healing wands, so, I conclude that healing wands have a huge effect on how the game is played.

Then again, I played almost exclusively modules, so, the encounters were designed pretty strongly with the 3e DMG in mind and not tailored to my particular group at all.

 

[Pentius]

Actually I don't think we altered play assumptions. A key assumption of 3e is tailoring encounters to the party. Even magic item avaability wasn't expected to be uniform. Just because an item was in the dmg it wasn't assumed the players would have easy total access to it. Another big assumption is different settings with different types of adventures. The thing is 1e, 2e, and 3e could accomodate a range of playstyles. It feels to me 4e was designed to reinforce one approach to the game.

What about my playstyle breaks the assumptions of 3e?

Like Hussar pointed out, a number of those things break base assumptions of 3e. Now, your games worked fine, I'm sure. With a bit of tweaking here and there to make sure of it. The 3e chassis can handle a number of different playstyles. So can 4e. I think it's easy to lose sight of that if you only have exposure to one or two groups of the system's players for too long. For example, going solely by what I read on these boards, your playstyle(not always clerics, not usually wands, low magic everywhere, few combats, etc) would seem to be the dominant style of 3e players. But that style is nothing like any group I've ever played 3e with was like, and isn't what any modules I've ever read for 3e seem geared toward. Those games worked out, too, though.

If you've a mind to, maybe read the 4e boards sometimes(I lurk the PF and Legacy boards a bit. Always puts things in perspective to see that we all discuss more or less the same things). You'll see a variety of playstyles put forth there. Just for example, you wanna do your style in 4e? Low magic, few combats, little magic healing? 4e can handle it.