D&D 5E Should 5E have Healing Surges?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd much rather see 5E create a system that makes severe injury and death more realistic, interesting, and fun, rather than see healing surges be sacrificed on the altar of trying to turn HP damage into something it is not.

The real problem with a realistic system is that damage is non-linear. The fact that you got a cut on your arm 5 minutes ago has little or nothing to do with the potential lethality of another cut you suffer on your other arm right now.

Imagine a scratch is 1hp of damage, and a bad cut is 5hp of damage, and a deadly blow is 10hp damage. Would 10 scratches be lethal? No, of course not, and probably 2 bad cuts wouldn't be either, nor would 5 scratches add up to a bad cut. 100 scratches might add up roughly to a bad cut, and 10 bad cuts might be cumulatively lethal, but realistically the whole thing is very non-linear.

This means 2 things, a simple tally like hit points can't ever be realistic, but also any system that is realistic has to admit to the possibility that you could suffer a lethal injury with no prelude. In real life you don't 'get into trouble' and then die, you mostly just die right off regardless of what came before. Clearly this makes both simple bookkeeping and playably gamist rules both entirely incompatible with realism, at least within the context of a system that uses something roughly like hit points.

I can imagine a system that might be both moderately realistic and also gamist enough that it might work, but there's no chance at all that it is going to be incorporated into D&D, not even as a module, because it would have to entirely redefine what damage IS (and various other things too).

 

[BryonD]

Really, the weird thing about D&D is that, rather than dying from an injury, characters seem to just spontaneously die of heart attacks due to excessive pain. Characters never suffer fatal injuries.

I'd be all for adding *non-fatal* injuries.

But if there is ANYONE out there that actually plays the way you describe here, then no mechanical system is going to be good enough to save them from themselves.

 

[Kingreaper]

It's not that I don't "know", it's that I have a different view on how things are working.

Take the 80's movie heros and Jack example from above. I don't see that as these guys using healing surges...I see it as having more hit points than you average person.

Except that that doesn't fit the fiction. If he hadn't had a chance to rest, another hit or two would have taken him down. After the rest he can take a whole lot more.

That means his HP has come back up. Somehow.

Surges+second wind explains the how.

After the bad guy is caught, they spend the next 3 months in a hospital.

Now, this bit I can understand.

But Surges don't have to come back every day. That isn't an innate part of surges, it's a part of 4e that nothing takes longer than a day to come back. If 5th doesn't have that conceit it could easily take a day per surge.

 

[Hassassin]

Except that that doesn't fit the fiction. If he hadn't had a chance to rest, another hit or two would have taken him down. After the rest he can take a whole lot more.

That means his HP has come back up. Somehow.

Surges+second wind explains the how.

Maybe he had taken some non-lethal damage somewhere, and that returned?

Anyway, a temp hp Second Wind (-type thingy) would work better than healing, IMO, if you want to model that particular example.

 

[BryonD]

John McClain is laying there, bleeding and all but out cold. Suddenly the mercenary shows up, starts shooting and he gets a burst of adrenalin and he's up and at 'em again yelling "yippy-kai-yay-mother%$#&#$^%!" and jumping through a window 140 stories up swinging from a fire hose to escape an explosion.

His feet are still bleeding, he still has a minor concussion, the cut on his arm is still bleeding, three ribs are cracked and he's battered and bruised from head to toe but he gets up and goes again because if he doesn't he's dead.

And shifting the goalposts still doesn't take in to account in 4E you'd darned well better have a healer in the group or you're toast. It doesn't take away from the cleric, clerics are more important because you don't have the bag-o-wands to use at-will.

And at the end of the movie he needs to go to the hospital.

If I do that in 3E he can be down to low HP and "burst" because as long as he is at positive HP he still works fine. Portraying him as hurt in the non-action scenes is in no way hindered here. And eventually he NEEDS medical care.

In 4E he can also spring up. But the difference is, when he springs up in 4E it isn't just an adrenaline burst in an otherwise wounded character. Effects and progress towards him no longer being able to sustain or avoid future damage actually go away. The mechanical system says that there is no reason for him to go to the hospital.

Yes, 3E and 4E both completely avoid negative impacts of injury. That is fair to complain about, but 4E has done nothing to improve that. What 4E has done is take the "at least you still need treatment" that 3E does have and tosses it to the curb.
The injury issue has been accepted for a long time and the trade offs are worthwhile. That offers no justification for taking a separate system that works fine (Damage requires treatment) and discarding it.

 

[Kingreaper]

And at the end of the movie he needs to go to the hospital.

If I do that in 3E he can be down to low HP and "burst" because as long as he is at positive HP he still works fine. Portraying him as hurt in the non-action scenes is in no way hindered here. And eventually he NEEDS medical care.

In 4E he can also spring up. But the difference is, when he springs up in 4E it isn't just an adrenaline burst in an otherwise wounded character. Effects and progress towards him no longer being able to sustain or avoid future damage actually go away. The mechanical system says that there is no reason for him to go to the hospital.

He's lost surges. That's significant.

All you really have to do is slow the regain rate of surges, and all of a sudden he DOES need to go to the hospital.

 

[BryonD]

He's lost surges. That's significant.

All you really have to do is slow the regain rate of surges, and all of a sudden he DOES need to go to the hospital.

How did he make ANY wounds disappear at all?

Plus he gets his surges back the next day, so he can just wait one night.

 

[Kingreaper]

How did he make ANY wounds disappear at all?

He didn't, he just overcame them temporarily. The surges are still gone, representing the fact he's actually slightly wounded.


If I shoot him twice in a row, he's a goner. If I shoot him, then he gets a chance to rest, then I shoot him again, he's not a goner.

Why? Because HP are, in this scenario, representing SHOCK. And shock is the thing that HP in D&D most accurately simulate.

Plus he gets his surges back the next day, so he can just wait one night.

So do all his hp!

It's an issue with 4e, not an issue with surges. It's in no way necessary to the concept of surges that they come back every night.

I mean, I said as much in the post you were replying to, not sure how you managed to miss it.

 

[Cybit]

Beyond that though I can't imagine anyone considering HS to be 'gamist' in this sort of environment. Nothing ever felt more gamist to me than healbots and their paraphernalia.

HS worked fine, really. I agree, it seems like players hate transparent mechanics, but that makes me sad because transparent mechanics on the DM-side are exactly the right way to go. I have no desire to RUN an obtuse system ever again.

Welcome to nailing what I personally believe is the biggest difference between 3E and 4E. It's why I'm often confused by my friends who love 3E, don't like 4E for its "mechanics", and then are often left just angry when I point out that 3E had the same thing, just hidden behind walls.

That said; there is something to be said about hiding these things just enough so it doesn't break immersion (which is I think the real reason there is a player base disconnect in many cases).

 

[TwinBahamut]

But if there is ANYONE out there that actually plays the way you describe here, then no mechanical system is going to be good enough to save them from themselves.

This really doesn't address what I was saying... I'm not saying that anyone plays that way with regard to how death and dying works. I'm just saying that that is what the system models. Actually, that is the central point. D&D's death and dying rules simply don't model death and dying the way everyone plays them. There is a fundamental disconnect between what the rules say happen and the way every DM or player wants them to happen. That is why it is a bad model.