Rogue Agent
First Post
I'm not sure you entirely understand what the word "guideline" means.
I don't get the dislike of healing surges
- Thread starter Mercurius
- Start date
I'm not sure you entirely understand what the word "guideline" means.
G
Guest 85555
Guest
Well CR was a tool, a guideline, not a core assumption of play IMO. I do not believe it was ever stated that a given item had to be present simply because GP limit, nor did the have to assume tge existence of magic shops. My players all had magic items and were generally on par with character wealth. They never had 7 wands of healing.
In terms of number of encounters the whole premise in 3e was to build them around character resources. Which is exactly what I did. It is sll about presenting a fair but adequate challenge to the players. That can be achieved in a variety of ways.
In terms of number of encounters the whole premise in 3e was to build them around character resources. Which is exactly what I did. It is sll about presenting a fair but adequate challenge to the players. That can be achieved in a variety of ways.
Exactly- just because something is commonly available in the world does not mean it is in stock today.
I have never told players they couldn't buy magic items. In fact, I treated them just like mundane ones. In fact, this is basically the way every DM in our group runs them. That means that sometimes, demand outstripped supply...or vice versa. That also means sometimes that you needed to go to more than one store...or that the item in question simply wasn't available in that town (due to local rarity, population size, or even certain laws). Because we all run it the same way, we all understand this.
And as stated in numerous other threads, as yet, nobody has made a crafter caster.
I have never told players they couldn't buy magic items. In fact, I treated them just like mundane ones. In fact, this is basically the way every DM in our group runs them. That means that sometimes, demand outstripped supply...or vice versa. That also means sometimes that you needed to go to more than one store...or that the item in question simply wasn't available in that town (due to local rarity, population size, or even certain laws). Because we all run it the same way, we all understand this.
And as stated in numerous other threads, as yet, nobody has made a crafter caster.
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LostSoul
Adventurer
Here's what it says:
DMG, page 137:
GENERATING TOWNS
When the PCs come into a town and you need to generate the facts about that town quickly, you can use the following material. To randomly determine the size of a community, roll on Table 5-2 below:
[table cut]
Community Wealth and Population
Every community has a gold piece limit based on its size and population. The gold piece limit (see Table 5-2) is an indicator of the price of the most expensive item available in that community. Nothing that costs more than a community's gp limit is available for purchase in that community. Anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical. While exceptions are certainly possible (a boomtown near a newly discovered mine, a farming community impoverished after a prolonged drought), these exceptions are temporary; all communities will conform to the norm over time.
To determine the amount of ready cash in a community, or the total value of any given item of equipment for sale at any give time, multiply half the gp limit by 1/10 of the community's population. [cutting example] The coins are not all bright, shiny gold pieces. They should include a large number of battered and well-worn silver pieces and copper pieces as well, especially in a small or poor community.
If those same adventurers hope to buy longswords (price 15 gp each) for their mercenary hirelings, they'll discover that the hamlet can offer only 30 such swords for sale, because the same 450 gp limit applies whether you're buying or selling in a given community.
When the PCs come into a town and you need to generate the facts about that town quickly, you can use the following material. To randomly determine the size of a community, roll on Table 5-2 below:
[table cut]
Community Wealth and Population
Every community has a gold piece limit based on its size and population. The gold piece limit (see Table 5-2) is an indicator of the price of the most expensive item available in that community. Nothing that costs more than a community's gp limit is available for purchase in that community. Anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical. While exceptions are certainly possible (a boomtown near a newly discovered mine, a farming community impoverished after a prolonged drought), these exceptions are temporary; all communities will conform to the norm over time.
To determine the amount of ready cash in a community, or the total value of any given item of equipment for sale at any give time, multiply half the gp limit by 1/10 of the community's population. [cutting example] The coins are not all bright, shiny gold pieces. They should include a large number of battered and well-worn silver pieces and copper pieces as well, especially in a small or poor community.
If those same adventurers hope to buy longswords (price 15 gp each) for their mercenary hirelings, they'll discover that the hamlet can offer only 30 such swords for sale, because the same 450 gp limit applies whether you're buying or selling in a given community.
That's what the DMG says. I think it's a decent set of rules; not great, but usable.
I think it's helpful for the players to have a consistent base upon which to make decisions. If you have no idea how big a town needs to be to have a scroll of Stone to Flesh available, for example, what do you do when someone gets petrified?
Guidelines or rules? I can see it either way. I don't think anyone's going to say that a DM can't change things for his game, though given a generic D&D setting without some kind of house rule, I think it would be poor DMing not to conform to these standards.
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A party that uses wands of Cure Light Wounds for healing is more effective than a party that doesn't. That should be pretty obvious.
Not everyone who plays D&D cares if their party is effective or not. If you do care about being effective, then you'll want to use wands of Cure Light Wounds; if you don't care, then you don't care about getting them.
Here though is whre you have changed the meaning of HP/Surges from what is and has been presented. Knocking someone below 0 has not been a "mortal wound" since characters started going to -10. Below 0 has simply been a "knockout punch". Once you're out you may bleed out, be stepped on, hit as collateral damage or whatever but below 0 you're just "out" just like fighters can get knocked down/out but aren't dead. And "out" isn't necessarily out-of-touch with what's happening, it's just you're in a helpless state in the progression of active-dazed-stunned-helpless.
Surges are triggered in different ways, either by magic or adrenalin and the mind is powerful.
Cinematically an example is in Silverado where Scott Glenn's character is beaten and down in the cave where Danny Glover stashed him but when he's told his nephew has been kidnapped the adrenalin rush takes over and Danny Glover's words are what triggers it.
In real life deer get hit by vehicles and the adrenalin gets them up and running away from the scene, sometimes for miles, and at the end they either stop and rest (or even die).
If you have ever been part of competitive athletics you also know there are ebbs and flows of energy at different times triggered by different stimulii. In football if I was tackled particularly hard it may hurt, but if I got teh first down or the touchdown I was also bolstered. A big play by a teammate could also pick up my performance in a hard-fought game.
And resting means you're back to functional full strength, not that all hurts are gone. I may have been still bruised and the cut merely stitched shut or the ankle taped by the next game but I was out there performing just the same if I wanted to keep my job.
The body has pools and reserves of energy that can be tapped in many different ways. Healing surges are actually the most accurate way of representing that. It just does so in a cinematic way and simplified way instead of devoting volumes of rule books to kinetics, physiology and psychology.
Hussar
Legend
Well, a guideline would become less accurate the further you depart from baseline assumptions, wouldn't it? That would make the guideline less and less accurate.
Now, I totally agree, you certainly CAN depart from these guidelines. Too true. But, the recognition has to be there that that is precisely what you did. You've departed from the guidelines, and the further you move from those guidelines, the further your game departs from the baseline assumptions of the game itself.
This should be pretty obvious I would think. What part of "guideline" am I failing to understand.
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DannyA said:
See, but this is what I could never, ever understand in your games DannyA. You claim that you regularly had six or more encounters between rest sessions, never used any healing magic items and had no cleric. All while playing Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.
How in the hell were you not dying left, right and center? There's something in this equation that just doesn't add up at all. That is a meat grinder adventure with tons of very, very difficult encounters which can easily mow down PC's.
So, I do totally believe you when you say you did that. But, there's more to that story, there has to be. Either you were playing with huge groups that were very high powered, or your DM was fudging nearly every encounter. I can't think of how else you got that result.
There are too many encounters for you to be able to do that over the long run. The odds are too high.
[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], I've not played much 3E, and own but have not read all of, let alone played, RtToEE. So I've got no basis on which to question your judgement of the module. And, in fact, your judgement fits with the general impression I have of the module from reading posts about it over the years.
But I can say that experiences with a system can be very varied. So, for example, I've seen it said that 4e combats are deadly without a dedicated leader in the party. But for the first 8 or so levels of my 4e game there was no dedicated leader - there was a paladin, and a couple of PCs with multiclass cleric, bard or warlord, plus the fighter had a couple of self-healing fighter powers. And the only time we've had a TPK in the game - which is, also, only the second time there has been a PC death at all - a dedicated healer wouldn't have made a difference, because the PC's died from action denial (a spectre with a daze aura, I think, plus some other lockdown stuff) - so healing almost certainly wouldn't have helped.
Even now, the party has only the paladin, the fighter (a dwarf fighter with cloak of the walking wounded, but nevertheless not a leader) and a hybrid archer-cleric. The other two PCs - a wizard and a sorcerer - have no healing, and the party does not use very many potions (maybe 1 every 5 encounters or so). And they routinely take on and win encounters +3 or more above party level (and this is using the MM3/MV maths).
Why is our experience so different from what I read about as the deadly 4e norm? I don't know. I don't fudge as a GM, but I'm not a tactical genius. And I do play the NPCs and monsters as having character and personality, even at the cost of tactical acumen on occasion. Some of my players are very tactically strong as wargamers/PBMers and the like, but they player their PCs as characters as well as as units in a tactical game.
I don't know what the explanation is, I just know what my experience is. I don't know what's going at other table such that they find 4e such a deadly game. But any way, maybe [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION]'s table plays 3E in the same way that my table plays 4e, whatever exactly that way is.
But I can say that experiences with a system can be very varied. So, for example, I've seen it said that 4e combats are deadly without a dedicated leader in the party. But for the first 8 or so levels of my 4e game there was no dedicated leader - there was a paladin, and a couple of PCs with multiclass cleric, bard or warlord, plus the fighter had a couple of self-healing fighter powers. And the only time we've had a TPK in the game - which is, also, only the second time there has been a PC death at all - a dedicated healer wouldn't have made a difference, because the PC's died from action denial (a spectre with a daze aura, I think, plus some other lockdown stuff) - so healing almost certainly wouldn't have helped.
Even now, the party has only the paladin, the fighter (a dwarf fighter with cloak of the walking wounded, but nevertheless not a leader) and a hybrid archer-cleric. The other two PCs - a wizard and a sorcerer - have no healing, and the party does not use very many potions (maybe 1 every 5 encounters or so). And they routinely take on and win encounters +3 or more above party level (and this is using the MM3/MV maths).
Why is our experience so different from what I read about as the deadly 4e norm? I don't know. I don't fudge as a GM, but I'm not a tactical genius. And I do play the NPCs and monsters as having character and personality, even at the cost of tactical acumen on occasion. Some of my players are very tactically strong as wargamers/PBMers and the like, but they player their PCs as characters as well as as units in a tactical game.
I don't know what the explanation is, I just know what my experience is. I don't know what's going at other table such that they find 4e such a deadly game. But any way, maybe [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION]'s table plays 3E in the same way that my table plays 4e, whatever exactly that way is.
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Whoa!
Never claimed not to have Clerics in the party, just no pure Clerics. Those we have had have all been multiclassed, usually with some other base class, like Fighter, or in my case, Sorcerer. The only pure full divine casters we've had in the group were a Favored Soul and a Druid, each at a different point in the campaign, and only for a couple months of play (@6-10 sessions). Without them, we relied on the healing power of multiclassed divine casters who were not really devoted to healing- a Ftr/Clc and Brb/Druid, as I recall, were the best we had...and after 10th level, that simply wasn't going to cut it.
My Clc/Sorc/MT/Geomancer in question was made because the players of the FS and the Druid left the group. I retired my Whip & pick dual-wielding Ftr/Rgr/Diviner/Spellsword at 10th level in favor of the new PC. He does the bulk of his healing via CompDiv's Sacred Healing feat, in which he burns a Turn Undead to give the equivalent of Fast Healing 3 for 5 rounds to all creatures within a 30' radius.
Not usable in combat, but before or afterwards, its pretty powerful. Burn 3 of my otherwise useless Turn Undeads and everyone in the party- and anyone we've saved- is back up 45HP. Done before combat, ongoing wounds auto-close, fallen comrades auto-stabilize.
So far, I've only cast a handful of actual healing spells.
You will also note that I never said we didn't have healing items. We did: each PC carries 1-2 Healing Potions. We just don't buy wands. I think we've found perhaps 1 CLW wand. And that was ages ago...as in, pre-10th level. Its long since used up. But like I DID say, we don't go buying them because its easier for us to acquire potions AND anyone can use one.
(We haven't used any potions since my Geomancer joined the fun.)
As for our playstyle?
Well, the artillery stops shelling when the situation is well in hand. "Going Nova" is simply not going to happen until we meet the BBEG, and sometimes not even then. The Wiz uses his spells to soften up foes or impede the nastier foes, then uses his dagger to Coup de Grace the fallen while the rest mop up. This means he almost always has something nasty in reserve. And no, its not like he's a team player: early on in the campaign, I suggested once that we could double our low-level spell power by copying spells from each others' spellbooks (his Wiz's, my Diviner's). He didn't go for it, so my guy only had a single Orb spell at his disposal for offense for some time.
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You have the healing a leader brings, just spread out throughout the party. The dwarf fighter has a built-in two-surge heal that's as much or more as a leader would grant himself, which as he's the primary focus of many heals works out well. The Hybrid Cleric also has Clerical healing powers, just one less Healing Word. With the Dwarf that makes essentially a fuill leader worth of healing, just without the buffs. Add in the Paladin with emergency Lay On Hands and the party has built in a buffer that offers as much, or more, healing than a standard leader.
[MENTION=78357]Herschel[/MENTION], what you say is probably right.
Putting the dwarf to one side, I would say it's on the lighter side - the cleric has the 1x/enc healing word, and one other minor action healing utility, and the paladin has 3x/day lay on hands, which - given the flexibility with which it can be deployed - is probably equivalent to another 1 per enc.
But you are right that the dwarf's self heal brings a lot of resilience to that character, especially with the cloak.
Maybe those who find 4e deadly, even with a dedicated leader, just aren't playing with non-leader PCs who have any built-in healing. Whereas I'd always assumed that they were somehow taking more damage from the NPCs/monsters.
Putting the dwarf to one side, I would say it's on the lighter side - the cleric has the 1x/enc healing word, and one other minor action healing utility, and the paladin has 3x/day lay on hands, which - given the flexibility with which it can be deployed - is probably equivalent to another 1 per enc.
But you are right that the dwarf's self heal brings a lot of resilience to that character, especially with the cloak.
Maybe those who find 4e deadly, even with a dedicated leader, just aren't playing with non-leader PCs who have any built-in healing. Whereas I'd always assumed that they were somehow taking more damage from the NPCs/monsters.
