Surge and Healing

[Markn]

I tend to design fights so everyone feels a bit of pain. The defender shouldn't be always taking the pain, plus the fun part of the game is the players overcoming challenges so that their characters can fulfill the role they are designed for.

I really think either healing or healing surges is the weak point of 4e. Having said that, I really do like 4e, it just as certain weaknesses that difficult to work around.

I'm sure it will be a while before our group finds the right house rule for healing surges and damage.

 

[Saagael]

I'm sure this has been brought up, but what about increasing the damage that monsters deal. I don't know if there's a formula that will average things out, but I've been doing it during the last few combats and it seemed to shake the players up and make them realize that they aren't invincible even if there wasn't a real threat of death (this group has a lot of ways to heal). Has anyone else found this a viable solution to making things more challenging or intense?

 

[keterys]

I actually tend to reduce mob hp by about 20% and up their damage by a bit when I run lately.

Cause faster combats are good things.

 

[Markn]

We use half level bonus to damage for monsters. This works quite well for groups who are tactically good at 4e. Damage can be a bit swingy in the sense that if you roll high and add the half level it can be a hard hit, but mostly to the controller or low hp strikers though.

What we are going to try tonight is average damage for the monster and then add the half level bonus. So for example, if it does 2d6 plus 8 normally for a level 15 monster in the MM, then it will deal 15 plus half level bonus of 7 for 22 damage. This does 2 things, it hits harder but also keep some hits from getting too high and conversely there is no low damage rolls on the players. FWIW, monsters only have 75% normal hps to speed up the fight.

I can let you know how it works if you like.

 

[Saagael]

That'd be great. I've been looking at trimming the HP off of some monsters, but my players (most notably the fighter and ranger) can hit for 30+ with encounter powers, so I don't want to make most of the monsters 1 or 2 hit monsters. I'd like to know how the damage increase/averaging goes though.

 

[Markn]

So our session just ended.

We tried using average damage for both PCs and monsters. Average being the average of the dice plus their static bonuses and this seriously sped fights up a LOT. One fight was 20 mintues and we have NEVER seen an encounter that quick. The rest were closer to an hour.

Monsters were at 75% hp damage and added 1/2 level bonus to damage. To me this really felt like the right mix and if anything maybe bump monster hps up to 80%. We had 3 fights and I have 6 players. Fight 1 was against 2 dweomer eaters and 2 weretigers. That was a tougher fight and I managed to get behind the defenders and took down a ranger and the PCs were worried about losing good gear so they used backup weapons that had lower pluses to hit. The second fight was against 4 salamanders (2 different types), a genasi fireblade and a gorgon. It was interesting but the wizard blew some big stuff and brought the creatures down. Finally, they fought a bunch of slaads and this fight wound up being a cakewalk although I managed to effectively limit some players from attacking for a few rounds.

In the end, everything just felt right. I'd encourage you to try it.

My group, however, has disliked any changes we have tried with healing surges so we are back to normal rules for that. It really dissapoints me but theres not much I can do about that.

 

[eriktheguy]

Reduce the number of healing surges of all characters by 4*.
When a character takes a short rest, they are restored to full hp at no surge cost.

There are a few abilities you'd need to change as a result - most particularly the bard song of rest ability. Feats which affect amount you heal while resting can probably just be ignored.

* Adjust as desired, based on number of expected combats per day and such. If you do 6+, for example, controllers and certain strikers (like rogues) will be in a tough boat for in-combat healing. But that might be okay.

I haven't tested this, but it does some potentially interesting things, so what do people think? You could in theory mix it up by adding a surge back per milestone, if you want to encourage endless days even more.

This will really work to extend the adventuring day while forcing your leaders to dole out their healing abilities with care. The only problem I see is when people get healed in combat don't actually end up needing the HP, and they would have been healed at the end of the fight anyways. One option that could get difficult would be to allow characters who received healing but didn't really need it to have their surges back after the battle.

I think this rule works well seeing as you give characters some surges back after milestones.

I also like that your rules add some value to previously useless spells like cure light wounds (which take standard actions, but heal without surge use).

Bard song of rest: When you take a short rest after an encounter, all allies who can hear you and spent at least 2 surges during that encounter can regain one healing surge. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to your charisma modifier.