Increased Healing Surge value

[Oldtimer]

Skimming through the Gamma World rules, I noticed that they did away with Healing Surges and your Second Wind now heals your Bloodied value. That got me thinking...

What if a Healing Surge in 4E healed your Bloodied value instead of only half that? How would that shake up how the game plays? Would it be a good idea? What other changes should be done? Lowering the amount of Healing Surges per day? Fewer leader heals per encounter? Increase the effect of Healing Potions?

I was hoping to brain-storm a bit about it. Sort of a thought experiment?

 

[Alisair Longreach]

I think that the reason that Second Wind in Gamma World heals your bloodied value is that there are very few healing powers/items and no Leader class with Healing Word like there are in D&D.

Raising the Second Wind to your bloodied value in D&D will make the various healing powers and the Healing Word less valuable.

 

[Oldtimer]

Ah, but I was thinking along the line of raising the value of any Healing Surge to your Bloodied value, not just your Second Wind.

 

[the Jester]

I guess if you want combats to be super easy it might be okay, or if you significantly raise monster damage you could make it work with super swingy combats.

Personally, I think it's a bad idea, but that's based on the style of play I prefer.

 

[Oldtimer]

I guess if you want combats to be super easy it might be okay, or if you significantly raise monster damage you could make it work with super swingy combats.

So you don't think there's a sweet middle road between super easy and super swingy?

Personally, I think it's a bad idea, but that's based on the style of play I prefer.

It might be. I'm just trying to figure out exactly how the style of play would change.

 

[aco175]

I can see this in some games with low magic or no leader class in the party.

Another idea is to limit actual healing from cleric/warlord/ etc.. to one per encounter and more people would use their 2nd wind. Or, have powers that heal heal like normal now and 2nd wind only heals bloodied value. Or, have it be a full round action to heal that much. This way the player can decide to heal sure value and move, or heal double and do nothing.

I was also thinking of making the number of surges 1/2 of normal, but it would be just adding anotehr layer that would be rudundant. What if all healing from powers and potions heal 10 points per tier and you can use one super surge per encounter? Would it take away the 5 minute day by not having to keep track of surges? How would you handle between encounters where you would still need to heal before the next fight starts? How would you limit the number of potions you can take during encounters and between encounters, or would this answer my last question?

 

[the Jester]

So you don't think there's a sweet middle road between super easy and super swingy?

Well sure, but I think that 4e is already pretty well there. Given that "there" is a range and not a specific spot, you can get all around in that range by varying the monster mix- an all-MM3 encounter will be noticeably tougher than an all-MM1 encounter, for instance. But the thing about the value of a healing surge is that it's already 25% of your maximum hit points, and most of the basic leader healing powers add some d6s on top of that. So, at least as far as my personal preference goes, if you make a surge worth more, the amount of healing you receive when a surge triggers becomes so high that it sort of trivializes damage.

Until the MM3 revisions to monster damage, I thought that 4e was a little too easy. The power of a healing surge was a direct contributing factor in the formation of that opinion.

It might be. I'm just trying to figure out exactly how the style of play would change.

I think combats get easier or you have to increase the monster damage to compensate if you want to keep the relative balance of damage to hit points between monsters and pcs. Increasing the damage-at-a-whack means swingier combats because a pc is more likely to go down from any given attack, as does increasing the value of a surge (you go from unconscious to not even bloodied with a healing word, pretty much automatically if the value of the surge is half your hit points, which means the healer doesn't ever heal anyone until they are well and good bloodied because it's wasteful).

If you leave everything else alone, combats get much easier; and all those "burn two surges" powers that leaders get (cure serious wounds and so forth) become "almost dead to full hp" powers.

On the other hand, monsters that actually get to use their healing surges (MM1 orcs and vampires, for instance, or critters with "use a healing surge" magic items) will become significantly grindier without become much more exciting. This is because pretty much all of them are from early 4e, meaning that they don't do enough damage to be all that threatening; the newer monsters pretty much never burn surges.

 

[Oldtimer]

I think you're right about that. More effective healing surges (across the board) would just narrow the variations that exist in healing. Two surges would take you from dying to fully healed.

Maybe just changing Second Wind? Most players seem very reluctant to use it (unless they are dwarves), so that might make it more popular. Maybe remove that +2 to defenses and simply allow you to spend one or two surges.

 

[Blue]

Too much healing takes the edge off

Ah, but I was thinking along the line of raising the value of any Healing Surge to your Bloodied value, not just your Second Wind.

I play a character with a cloak of the walking wounded that allows me to spend two surges if I use my second wind when bloodied. It takes the character from "DANGER!" to "whatever". It works for that character, who's a defender, but if everyone could heal that much, and leader healing was around, I feel it would take too much tension out of combat.

There really wouldn't be much risk unless there would be a credible threat every encounter that PCs could go from unbloodied to unconscious in a single turn, before they could second wind or the leader heal them.

I don't feel combats are too swingy. I like tension and the feel that we have a real chance to loose, but even with DMs riding that edge hard I rarely see PCs fall, and it's maybe once a year of regular playing for them to be down multiple rounds. The only time I've seen a death was a TPK because the encounter was designed to be extremely deadly except for the clues so the PCs would stock up on fire resistance potions and items ... and the PCs missed all the clues. Oh, and we wouldn't retreat when things went south.