Schroedinger's Wounding (Forked Thread: Disappointed in 4e)

[Raven Crowking]

Any game can be broken; just because it's possible doesn't mean it's advisable, or 'smart'.

One of the most disatisfying parts of 3e is how smart play requires a degree of optimization that damages satisfying play. It came up repeatedly on these boards and others.

This is the same, in fact, as the dissatisfaction some feel about needing to have a cleric in TSR D&D.....what is smart play isn't necessarily satisfying play.

Even so, there is a difference between corner cases leading to dichotomies between smart and satisfying play, and the end results of every combat or series of combats doing the same.

From your responses in this thread, though, I perceive that you haven't read what I wrote......You don't apparently know what I am talking about when I say "smart play", for instance.

So, despite Dr. Awkward's feelings to the contrary, it seems to me like you are not actually interested in the POV I am elaborating (on request), but are rather interested in somehow "winning" by a process of eroding the desire of anyone to continue posting a viewpoint you don't endorse.

Your earlier dismissive posts certainly point to this conclusion.

IMHO, you can only "win" if, at the end of a discussion, you're viewpoint has grown beyond what it was at the start. For example, over the course of this discussion I learned that the problem I see with sandbox play isn't necessarily a problem with episodic play. Staying where you are, though, isn't "winning" and isn't particularly worthwhile.

IMHO.

YMMV.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Raven, I still don't understand what the issue with the healing surge representing overall health is?

So it doesn't say thats the case in the book... 4e like all D&D versions leaves a lot open to interpretation.

I don't like "You're causing this problem by ignoring the rules" when I am not at all convinced that your interpretation is the rules, or what the designers intended.

OTOH, I think it is probably the best single "fix" in terms of cost for benefit ratio that I have seen, and if I didn't have other problems with 4e's design philosophy, I would very, very probably adopt it, and then slow down healing surge recovery as you suggest.

I'd still admit you'd have trouble with it in your sandbox though because of the speed of their recovery.

Thank you.

And I'll admit you can completely avoid that problem in episodic play without even trying.


RC

 

[Hypersmurf]

Even so, there is a difference between corner cases leading to dichotomies between smart and satisfying play, and the end results of every combat or series of combats doing the same.

But it only requires the decision to be made once, after the first series of combats - that despite the mechanical advantage to pressing on despite injury in 4E Sandbox play, the party will assume the rest-when-wounded to be advantageous - and you've solved the problem.

You don't need to cover the same ground after every combat... just like the player of the high-level cleric in 3E doesn't need to select fifty spells to prepare every time the party rests. Unless circumstances have changed, the player can assume that the cleric will prepare the same fifty spells he prepares for any ordinary adventuring day.

Once you've made a decision to assume that rest-after-injury improves the play experience once, you don't need to revisit that decision except under exceptional circumstances... and so the 'smart'-vs-satisfying dichotomy becomes a corner case.

-Hyp.

 

[pemerton]

Shroedingers Death saves.

Fact is, the PC is about to die and that was a result of HP loss.
In turn that means that at least some part of the HP loss must have been a physical, potentially mortal, wound.

I don't see how this differs in any fundamental way from stabilisation rolls in 4e, or even from 1st ed AD&D, where (with minor medical attention) a wound that otherwise would have been fatal can be recovered from in a week or so. D&D has never had mechanics for implementing your notion of a mortal wound (if it did, the Regeneration spell might have actually seen play).

You don't die from a lack of will.

In the world of D&D you can - consider Lancelot in the 1981 version of Excalibur, for example, or Aragorn in Peter Jackson's version of The Two Towers, or Kull diving into the taboo lake and fighting all sorts of beasts underwater and not drowning only because of the strength of his will (I think the story is Delcarde's Cat).

I think both these matters are best viewed as a genre thing. If you don't like the genre, then 4e is not for you - but I'm personally baffled as to how any earlier edition of D&D (except perhaps Moldvay basic or low-level OD&D, which combine a certain grittiness with no death's door rules) was.

Linking together "hit point damage" and "physical injury" as an automatic assumption is something that I can understand. It's fairly obvious and consistent with D&D throughout the editions.

However, linking together "regaining hit points" and "injuries disappearing" is an assumption that D&D players in this thread are making - it is not something that is in the rules. It doesn't matter if this assumption is referred to over and over again - it is not in the RAW, nor the RAI.

Therefore - when a Warlord uses Inspiring Word, all they are doing is the mechanical "regaining hit points" effect, not the "making injuries disappear" effect that is being added on. And as such, when a Warlord uses Inspiring Word they are helping a character continue with the fight, not fixing physical injuries.

As such, Schrodinger's Wounding disappears in a puff of logic.

Agreed. I've been saying the same thing (as have LostSoul, Hypersmurf and others) for many months in many threads.

Leaving a worse problem in its wake........The characters are at full power the next day, and never need worry about wounds that now exist (narratively) and do not exist (mechanically).

In a sandbox game, if you completely disjoin hit points from physical injury, as you suggest, and everyone is always in perfect (game mechanics) health the next day, the problem is worse, not better.

I think I already posted that the healing surge/short rest/dying mechanics (roughly, the bundle of mechanics that are said to yield "Schroedinger's Wounding") are quite distinct from the extended rest mechanics, which are what you seem to be complaining about above.

One solution to the extended rest problem, if you can't embrace the underying genre assumption (that also serves a useful game mechanical function for at least some values of "useful"), is (as others have said) to slow down the rate of recovery. Ari Marmell's APG has rules for this based on the disease track. One surge per day might also do the job, making natural healing actually slower than it is in 3E, I think.

Another is my oft-repeated suggestion of simply narrating the passage of time. I know you think that this is at odds with sandbox play, but I don't really see why, provided the players are doing the narrating. (I think there are other features of 4e that don't fit especially well with sandbox - such as the quest rules and the emphasis on highly metagamed encounter design.)

If it grates for the sandbox players, they can choose stop and rest - it's their sandbox!

If it grates for the sandbox DM, he can narrate less-severe injuries next time.

I've been saying this for a billion pages on the "Dissapointed in 4e" thread. But for some reason I don't really get it's not a solution.

If there are mechanical advantages to pressing on*, and none for resting, players will be grated by the idea of giving up a mechanical advantage for the sole purpose of avoiding grating.

But in a sandbox game, as opposed to in a railroad or at the culmination of a dramatic episode, I'm hard-pressed to see what those advantages might be.

(1) In a sandbox, there is always more to do than can ever be done. The world is larger than the characters. Players can only be offered meaningful choices between X and Y if, in some sense, choosing X excludes Y. In a sandbox, the most precious commodity is time.

<snip>

Smart play includes pressing on, because the most precious commodity in the sandbox is time.

It's obvious that this claim about ingame time is crucial to the argument. But like Hypersmurf I don't see it. Are the players really worried that their PCs will die of old age before reaching a level high enough to use magic that renders old age irrelevant if they narrate some down time? Certainly, in a sandbox, the world will still be there to be explored in the future.

Sure. But.....

(1) The world continues to move while you recover.

(2) In the best sandboxes, there are other player groups, and those groups may also be moving on the same goal. Heck, there might even be NPCs that the players are aware of, moving on the same goal.

(3) A well-run sandbox contains a tension between the desire to move and the desire to wait until you are at your best. This makes the decision to rest or go meaningful.

(4) Remember all of those threads about the 15-minute adventuring day, and the reasons why players might not want to just rest whenever they get low on resources? They still apply.

My feeling about (1), (2) and (4) is that these really signal the existence of ongoing episodes, in which case the teeth-gritting solution can be used until the episode comes to an end. Where (1) is not about an episode, but just a generic worry that time is passing, then in a sandbox game surely the answer is that the sandbox is temporal as well as spatial.

Number (3) above is a bit different. But in my long experience GMing more-or-less sandbox Rolemaster, penalties from injury are one of the least satisfactory ways of generating the tension you refer to, as opposed to (for example) trading of striking now versus negotiating an alliance first. The second choice is dramatic and meaningful. The first simply makes the players resent their lack of a decent healer.

I don't like "You're causing this problem by ignoring the rules" when I am not at all convinced that your interpretation is the rules, or what the designers intended.

Given the games that have obviously influenced the desing of 4e, including it's conflict resolution mechanics, not to mention some of what Chris Sims posted on a pre-release hit point thread, I think the better-warranted view is that some version of a flexible-narration approach to hit points and damage is exactly what was intended.

 

[LostSoul]

Thanks RC, that was interesting.

Just one question:

It cannot be emphasized too much: The biggest draw of a sandbox setting – for players and DM alike – is the ability to immerse in the setting. This is a function both of the richness of the setting itself, and how the rules interact with the players.

What does immersion in the setting mean? Is it seeing the world through the eyes of the character (and feeling what he feels, reacting to things as he does), or is it more about exploring all the nooks and crannies in the world without really feeling like you're the character in the world?

Or have I got it wrong?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hmm, I think I am getting RC explanation.

Smart Play means using rule mechanics and game-world elements to succeed at a task, preferably with the least resources expended.

Satisfying Play depends on your desires from a game. Playing smart might be one, but there can be others - playing the character you envision (I'd like to play a charismatic Fighter), or being immersed in the game world (the world is going on everywhere, so I must choose where to affect the world and when. The world feels "real").

Smart Play and Satisfying Play can be at odds. For example, in 3E, playing a charismatic Fighter grants you no real benefits, and if you're using a (stingy) point buy character creation method, it's not smart play to spend a lot of points on Charisma.

---

Satisfying play in operational or sandbox play usually means that you want to affect the sandbox as continuously and often as possible. The PCs want to avoid the passage of time where they can't affect anything going on the world. The typical thing that avoids the PCs affecting the world at all is resting to recover injuries or lost resources.
So, handling resources well is satisfying play. Avoid resource expenditure, gather a lot of resources. And all of this over a long play. It is satisfying in a a sandbox to ensure that you expend little resources and manage them well so you can affect the sandbox continuously, and don't spend long time to recover resources.

A game where instant healing is provided after 6 hours of rest, there are no long-term resources to be handled. This means the effect of smart play are not visible on the sandbox scale, because the party is ready every day to go on their adventuring trip.

In essence this means smart play and satisfying play are not the same. It doesn't matter how smart you play, you can't affect your goals. In a way you might say: "Great, so you can act all the time. That's great, right, that's what you wanted!" But the thing is - you wanted to work for this. It was supposed to be a challenge to ensure that you got to act in the sandbox. And now, it's just handed to you. In a combat/encounter focused game, it is as if success was guaranteed, and all your opponents fall over dead if you choose to engage them. There is no threat, no challenge, and the entire game is meaningless.

---

For experimental game design purposes only, here's my gamist sandbox mod for 4E (draft version):
Every character has 4 sandbox points. You can spend an extended rest and one sandbox point to recover all your healing surges, hit points and all your daily powers, and reset all action points to 1. If you don't spend a sandbox point during your rest, you regain only enough hit points to get you to your bloodied hit point value.
Each extended rest you don't spend a sandbox point, you regain one sandbox point.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

And is replaced by Shroedingers Death saves.

Fact is, the PC is about to die and that was a result of HP loss.
In turn that means that at least some part of the HP loss must have been a physical, potentially mortal, wound.

Yes, potentially mortal. But then nearly all wounds are potentially mortal. But the manner is which the wound was narrated (either by DM, PC, or both) is entirely down to the choice of the people at the table. It has nothing to do with anything written in the rules.

But somehow the character is able to stand up again and be rather fine off without outside help, or after a warlord shouts at him (Are you unconscious at negative HP?). And despite that those things can't heal any physical injury which would lead to this persons death, they do.

Why are you so tied up with regaining hp = healing physical wounds. We're all in agreement that in 4e hp are not exclusively tied to physical, observable, quantifiable damage. So why should the game mechanic of regaining hp be tied to the removal of damage, when instead you can make a choice at the table to narrate it in a different way?

So you at least have a Schroedingers Death Save effect where you can't say for certain if a PC sustained a mortal wound or not. That can only be determined after the PC self heals/is shouted back up or after he dies or is healed by magic.

And as such death saves are caused by wounds we are right back at Schroedingers Wounding

Death saves are not caused by "wounds", if by wounds you mean physical injury. They are caused by hit point loss, which, as stated in the rules, covers a bunch of different things.

Death saves are also inherently and completely random - they're a d20 roll! Of course they're uncertain until they're resolved, that's the whole point of them!

If someone is dealt psychic damage, goes to negative hp, and receives a Cure Light Wounds, is the damage to their brain repaired, physically? Or is it more the case that this abstract system of hp works, as a game mechanic, because it's simple and effective to do so. Could we instead choose to say that Cure Light Wounds, in this case, refers to a feeling of divine power washing through the character to such an extent that they feel capable of continuing to fight, although they may not stand for long?

I say again - there is nothing in the rules that specifies that losing hp = taking physical wounds, nor that regaining hp = healing physical wounds. Hp is an abstract game mechanic, that can be narrated it an infinite number of different ways. Some narrations lead to Quantum Wounding - some do not.

Therefore, I conclude that the problem with Quantum Wounding is a choice of narration, not a function of the rules.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Therefore, I conclude that the problem with Quantum Wounding is a choice of narration, not a function of the rules.

I understand where both sides of the argument are coming from here, the frame of reference of each such that seen through one lens the other argument is false/wrong/illogical/unfun/not RAW etc.

Now you make the obvious point here that narratively, the abstract definition of hit points opens up a plethora of suitable, interesting and imaginative interpretations. However, how many of these narrative interpretations could conceivably kill a heroic character? Is it not easier to work on the premise that in most cases in combat, that if a character is dropped into unconsciousness and is forced to start making death saves that it was a physical injury that caused it?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Raven Crowking - you and I obviously make some very different assumptions about playing D&D. These assumptions are what's driving the discussion between us, but we're never going to close the gap and agree. So I'm going to stop posting in response to your posts, because I don't want to go round in circles, agreeing that we disagree over and over again.

However, I do still disagree with you in regards to these assumptions, particuarly in regards to sandbox play and Quantum Wounding.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Now you make the obvious point here that narratively, the abstract definition of hit points opens up a plethora of suitable, interesting and imaginative interpretations. However, how many of these narrative interpretations could conceivably kill a heroic character? Is it not easier to work on the premise that in most cases in combat, that if a character is dropped into unconsciousness and is forced to start making death saves that it was a physical injury that caused it?

It may or may not be easier to work on that premise, but I've been arguing about it because it was suggested (and no, I can't find a quote to support that directly) that 4e was causing this problem by something in the rules.

I maintain that there is nothing in the rules about "hp loss = physical damage" or "regaining hp = curing of physical damage", and therefore Quantum Wounding is a non-issue.

It MAY be physical damage that causes your PC to go to negative hp. It may be a lack of will to carry on. It may be a sense of crushing despair. It may be any number of things, and the hp & healing mechanics are non-specific on the issue. Therefore any Quantum Wounding problems are happening because the players & DM are choosing to have them at the table, not because of the rules.

That's all I've ever wanted to get across. I don't deny that the problem CAN exist, nor do I wish to tell people how to play their game. I do, however, object to the idea that it's something in the 4e rules that is causing this problem.