Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5716761" data-attributes="member: 22779">When I started this thread, I actually did have a goal in mind.  I was told that because of healing surges, the game has lost a large amount of narrative space.  That the "serious wound" was a very important element in narrating the game.Ok, fair enough.  But, I wanted specifics.  I wanted to see exactly what people meant.  So, I provided a fairly bog standard example and asked for specific examples of how a "serious wound" narration was possible.  I got quite a few less responses than I had hoped for.  So far, we've got one example of a narration that is demonstrably difficult to do with the healing surge mechanic.  There have been more than one example given, to be sure, but, often the examples are problematic - either they are too serious to be plausibly healed away in a relatively short period of time, or they required going beyond the mechanics and raised more issues than they solved.So, time passed.Then a new challenge got added.  The idea of the Heroic Comeback.  So, in the spirit of this thread, I provided a pretty concrete example of how the healing surge mechanics help with the heroic comeback.  The response I got was a big "so what".  Well, here's the so what in my mind.While people keep telling me that there is this huge narrative hole that cannot be filled by healing surges, there is a very decided lack of actual examples.  It's very easy to claim whatever you like, but, until I can see some actual evidence, I'm going to remain very skeptical and believe that the whole thing is more about a group of DM's insisting on a playstyle that actually isn't terribly well supported by the rules.On the other hand, I can easily provide examples from genre of the Heroic Comeback and how Healing Surges fill the narrative requirements.  In my opinion, we've lost a small puddle of narrative space and gained a lake full.  Here's one example that came to mind very quickly - Empire Strikes Back. - Fast forward to about 1:25 in the video.[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjDn3SWVqTY&t=1m53s]The Empire Strikes Back: Luke escapes the Wampa - YouTube[/ame]That scene cannot be done in 3e.  In 3e, once you've gone below zero hp, you're done.  It's been argued very eloquently that a character that drops below zero is most likely going to die, but, even if he stabilized, he still couldn't fight.  But, with healing surges, Luke rolls well on his death save and he's back in the game.[sblock]Unless people want to start arguing that the Wampus is doing subdual damage.  But, honestly, I think that's just ridiculous. [/sblock]</blockquote>

Verification