I was unconsious 20 minutes ago, but I'm ok now..

[Revinor]

Er, that's the point. You cast this Word of Protection thing on the monster's turn, ideally after it's rolled its attack but before it rolls damage. Or, if the DM is being a hardass, you cast after it declares its attack, but before the attack roll. Either way, it acts to prevent damage from being dealt, which is, if anything, better than healing afterwards.

Ok, then probably power description should be something like

Immediate Reaction
Trigger: Enemy is attacking (has hit) your ally within N squares of you.
Effect: Target gains resistance all 5 till end of the attack (or next turn?)

If you make it once per encounter, seems reasonably balanced. At-will is probably an overkill.

 

[hong]

It's a fine line between making the healer's schtick effective, and making it too good. I suspect that low-grade damage reduction at will is okay (since it only affects one guy, and multiple attacks will quickly overwhelm it). If the damage reduction is very high, or extends over multiple allies or multiple rounds, that would be a per-encounter thing.

 

[AllisterH]

I'm not entirely sure where people are getting the idea that healing surges are being introduced to the game primarily as a means to decrease lethality. From where I'm standing it looks like the intent behind healing surges is to

• Reduce medic dependency.
• Ensure that party staying power is not thrown out of whack when a party has multiple medics.
• Filter healing to the party members who will usually need it the most and ensure that rogues and wizards cannot rely on the party medic to mitigate the consequences of poor play to the degree that they previously could.

If they simply wanted to decrease the level of lethality in the game they could have simply made party medics better medics.

That's what I thought as well. Healing Surges are an ingenious solution to the points you raised.

Query: For those that want "longer down time", are you going to restrict magic then?

The reason why I ask this is because in 1e/2e, technically it could take a few weeks for a high level fighter to get back to full on his own.

But that's not actually what would happen. The cleric in the party next day would memorize all healing spells, use them as needed and then rest and the following day, everybody was good to go.

So even though the rule existed, no-one would use it since EVERYONE seemed to insist on having a cleric in the party.

That's what I'm wondering about. Even though we haven't seen it, I betcha there's a spell or ritual that restores a number of healing surges. The current rules don't seem to require a cleric but lenthening the down time into days/weeks, you're likely going to see cleric more of a necessity.

I'm kinda not seeing the upside to these house rules.

 

[Delta]

I think the following is a possible problem. Let's say there was no magical healing whatsoever in the game. Then you'd have this "weakest link" problem, in that whoever got beat down first would trigger the end of the adventuring day. Player A: (on death's door) "Man, we have to get out!". Players B-E (who are relatively fine) "Grumble, grumble, I guess so."

With 1E-3E clerics & curing items, healing is a party-wide resource. If one person takes some unlucky shots, they get more healing, and the party keeps going. It promotes teamwork & cohesiveness. Everyone's tracking that resource and helping the overall party to stay in fighting shape. Only when all the communal healing is gone does the party as a group retreat.

With 4E "healing surges" you're back in the first situation, where healing is siloed to each individual. One person will take more damage over a few encounters, and that will trigger a party retreat, even if everyone else is fine. There will be a bit of a disconnect because Players B-E will be feeling heroic and brave but they have to turn tail because one person burned up all their healing surges. Most people's healing surges will not get used in any adventuring day.

 

[hong]

I think the following is a possible problem. Let's say there was no magical healing whatsoever in the game. Then you'd have this "weakest link" problem, in that whoever got beat down first would trigger the end of the adventuring day. Player A: (on death's door) "Man, we have to get out!". Players B-E (who are relatively fine) "Grumble, grumble, I guess so."

With 1E-3E clerics & curing items, healing is a party-wide resource. If one person takes some unlucky shots, they get more healing, and the party keeps going. It promotes teamwork & cohesiveness. Everyone's tracking that resource and helping the overall party to stay in fighting shape. Only when all the communal healing is gone does the party as a group retreat.

With 4E "healing surges" you're back in the first situation, where healing is siloed to each individual. One person will take more damage over a few encounters, and that will trigger a party retreat, even if everyone else is fine. There will be a bit of a disconnect because Players B-E will be feeling heroic and brave but they have to turn tail because one person burned up all their healing surges. Most people's healing surges will not get used in any adventuring day.

Yes! This is another thing I was unsure about with the current setup.

 

[AllisterH]

I
With 4E "healing surges" you're back in the first situation, where healing is siloed to each individual. One person will take more damage over a few encounters, and that will trigger a party retreat, even if everyone else is fine. There will be a bit of a disconnect because Players B-E will be feeling heroic and brave but they have to turn tail because one person burned up all their healing surges. Most people's healing surges will not get used in any adventuring day.

Which I think is covered by two things.

1. Number of Healing surges are different for each of the character classes.
2. With the 1 PC = 1 NPC, chances are, if one person is getting regularly beat down, the whole party should be feeling it.

 

[hong]

Which I think is covered by two things.

1. Number of Healing surges are different for each of the character classes.

This works up to a certain point, but I don't think you can rely on it in general. If a bad guy gets past the fighter and works the wizard over, all those extra healing surges the fighter gets won't do much.

2. With the 1 PC = 1 NPC, chances are, if one person is getting regularly beat down, the whole party should be feeling it.

Eh. Focus fire works just as well for monsters as it does for PCs.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This works up to a certain point, but I don't think you can rely on it in general. If a bad guy gets past the fighter and works the wizard over, all those extra healing surges the fighter gets won't do much.

Maybe (just maybe) that's also "appropriate". If the party screwed up and let the wizard take too much heat, maybe that's in fact a point where they should retreat back.
It is "punishment" for bad tactics that doesn't lead to a TPK, but only to a TPR (Total Party Retreat)
But if it happens only once per day to this extend, Wizards might not run into actual problems - you get only a limited amount of Healing Surges per encounter, since most healing effects are encounter based (Second Wind, The Clerics Heal)

But for "equalizing" Healing Surges over the party: The Paladins Lay on Hands ability allows him to use his ow healing surges for someone else. Since I suspect that usually the Paladin will need his healing surges more then anyone else, this is probably not so important as "equalizer", but it might serve as a template for later powers, like "Transfer Wounds", which allows the Cleric to transfer damage or surges among characters. (But this is only an option for magical healing, I guess, which is an inherent weakness to the approach.)

 

[hong]

Maybe (just maybe) that's also "appropriate". If the party screwed up and let the wizard take too much heat, maybe that's in fact a point where they should retreat back.
It is "punishment" for bad tactics that doesn't lead to a TPK, but only to a TPR (Total Party Retreat)
But if it happens only once per day to this extend, Wizards might not run into actual problems - you get only a limited amount of Healing Surges per encounter, since most healing effects are encounter based (Second Wind, The Clerics Heal)

No, I don't think it's appropriate. The punishment for bad tactics is that the wizard gets almost killed, not that the party should retreat as a result. That just gets back to the 15-minute day.

 

[Delta]

2. With the 1 PC = 1 NPC, chances are, if one person is getting regularly beat down, the whole party should be feeling it.

Rules of probability actually work against that. Let's say you have 5 NPCs attacking 5 PCs, for 5 rounds, random target selection each time. Quick calculation, I'm getting 73% chance that someone gets hit 3 times or fewer, with a similar 71% chance that someone else gets hit 7 times or more. In short, a random spread of hits will probably not be evenly distributed.