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

[Hassassin]

Yeah, a rule that says you can't fight for 3 weeks, because you were in a fight, is an anti-combat rule. Just out of curiosity how many people that dislike healing surges played Wizards? Because really the old way was another screw the fighter rule. You stand in front and get hit, while I nuke, you need 3 weeks to heal, I'll be fine tomorrow (once I get my nuke back). Even if I do take damage, I'll be fine in a few days (fewer hit points, takes less healing). That's right, the guy who was trained at fighting, couldn't handle a fight.

This isn't at all productive.

I play martial characters about half the time, primary spellcasters maybe a quarter of the time, and others the final quarter.

Yet I want my fighter to sometimes get really hurt when he heroically defends an NPC or the frail wizard. If all it requires is a five minute breather to come back from it, I don't feel there is a real cost. And heroism is, to me, all about making sacrifices for a cause.

 

[CleverNickName]

I think they should move forward with what their doing, it wasn't perfect, but it worked very well. Instead of saying that since it was slightly off, we should default to something that made less sense, was less about the characters, and was actually an ANTI-combat rule.

A valid opinion...healing surges sound like an ideal way for you to handle combat and healing in your games. But apparently not everybody agrees that healing surges were a step forward, or that they worked "very well," or that they were an "ANTI-combat rule."

I don't want to see them scrapped, but I don't want to see them mandatory, either. Give us options, not restrictions. Let the gamers decide for themselves whether or not to include them at their table.

 

[Izumi]

You're telling me that a PC doesn't know when he's so exhausted that he can't rally himself anymore? This is ridiculous.

Depends on perspective. One could say hp already takes that into consideration. However, I understand the abstraction used to justify the mechanics now.

 

[KarinsDad]

OK, I get it. You are set in your ways.

And you are not set in your ways?

Just because someone thinks that a given game mechanic is lame doesn't mean that they are inflexible. It means that they think that the game mechanic is lame.

 

[KarinsDad]

You're telling me that a PC doesn't know when he's so exhausted that he can't rally himself anymore? This is ridiculous.

That's the thing. If someone is exhausted, it's very difficult and nearly impossible to rally yourself. Rallying is force of will, but even PCs with low will type stats (Wisdom or Will or whatever) are capable of doing it every single time.

What's the point of having hit points represent fatigue if the PC can just blow that off at will?

The mechanic doesn't follow a reasonable rationale, the rationales suggested are shoe horned into following the mechanic.

Narrative driven is always better than game mechanic driven. Sometimes, one cannot help but use the game mechanic, but if there is a better one than this one (which over half of the respondents here want to eliminate), then let's get to one where the mechanic follows the narrative and not the other way around.

 

[KarinsDad]

Nonsense. Go read some actual accounts of actual people fighting in actual fights. This is utterly preposterous. People get up, shake it off, and go on all the time.

Not when they get hit in the head three times with a sword (as per the balance of hit point mechanics in the game system, it usually takes 3 shots to knock someone unconscious).

You watch too many Die Hard movies. Our entire culture watches too many Die Hard movies. Go talk to a real soldier whose been shot, even in the arm or the leg. The body goes into shock the vast majority of the time. End of story. Even with training, the vast majority of people cannot overcome major wounds.

If the PC is unconscious because of a beat down and might die, he shouldn't just pop up at will like a marionette.

Sorry, but your opinion here is utterly preposterous as are the game mechanics that we are discussing. These rules are for player entitlement and nothing else. They come nowhere near plausibility. Yes, one can pretend that every PC knocked unconscious is just a bit exhausted, but it's just stupid that getting clawed and bitten by a Dragon means that your PC is merely tired and out of luck.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My character knows he has a potion. Drinking it decides what he does.

Your DM is super kind if he lets you know your hp total!

My character knows he's exhausted. I don't decide what he does, I give him a second wind and it triggers the healing surge.

No, you decide what he does. He stops, collects himself, goes on the defensive for a few seconds (could be anything from 5 to 30 seconds basically). Then when he's wiped the blood out of his eyes, taken a look around and figured out what he needs to do, maybe watched his opponent a bit to figure out what to do next, etc, then he goes back into the fray full force with new determination.

What, you don't think people stop, collect themselves, 'get it together' and then throw themselves back into it with renewed vigor? This is so basic and classic a thing to see in sports for instance. Heck, most sports have a rule that lets everyone pause and collect themselves every so often. Sports aren't as extreme as combat, we need not assume every football players takes an SW after every play, but you can practically point out the moment when it happens. I remember Joe Montana getting some monster hit and he's lying on the ground shaking his head, and then he just slowly stands up, shakes himself, trots back to the huddle and then throws a touchdown. What is that, clerical healing???!!!!

 

[Ratskinner]

What I was saying is how does a commoner who at max health has 5 hp but was damaged and down to 1 hp is fully healed by CLW. However, our hero who at max health has 30 hp and is down to 1 hp only gets a scratch healed by CLW?

If you don't take the mortal wound until a hit drops you to 0hp why does it take days and weeks (if you like to play old school) to recover hit points that don't represent physical injuries?

This kind of stuff always brings verisimilitude crashing down for me. You can have a Fighter who is up and down 20 points get a cure crit, but a retainer who was at -2 gets a cure Light? Presuming that characters don't actually run around with little colored numbers floating over their heads, how does the cleric figure out which spell to cast on what character?

I'm not saying healing surges are the answer. They feel kinda clunky to me. I would, however, welcome some way to differentiate actual wounds (which might also impair your performance) from "getting tired out".

Personally, if hp are the will and endurance needed to keep you from getting really hurt, then maybe the actual wound system should kick in when you hit 0 hp or take a crit. Otherwise, I'm in favor of just regaining all your hp after a fight. If they're just your "wind", why not? (Maybe you only go up to max/2 if you sustained an actual wound.)

 

[BryonD]

Again, Surges don't, innately, have to be restored every day.

The fact that everything is restored daily in 4e is a fact about 4e, not a fact about surges.

Surges can easily be implemented such that they take time to heal.

Ok, surges can be done LESS BADLY than they were done in 4E.

I'd be ok with:
You get ONE surge per day.
It recovers your Level in HP.
You may only use it IMMEDIATELY at the end of a 8 hour rest.
(IOW, relabel 3E healing a "surge")


Short of that it may be LESS BAD than a 4E surge, but it is still going to be worse compared to what I have now.

 

[Ratskinner]

Not when they get hit in the head three times with a sword (as per the balance of hit point mechanics in the game system, it usually takes 3 shots to knock someone unconscious).

Problem is, with abstract hit points and the description of them we are given....the badguy didn't get hit in the head three times. The first two times he blocked or dodged or just got lucky or lost some advantage in the swordplay or....whatever. The only time he actually got "hit" in such a way that has any consequences was the last hit.

For me, the problem isn't that PCs recover too quickly, its that they spend weeks recovering things they can't possibly know they've lost or they receive magical healing for "critical wounds" that had absolutely no impact on their performance.