D&D 4E The problem I've having with 4e.

[BryonD]

Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, 4e seems to have focused in on the "Game". If that's not your cup of tea, you may be disappointed. But there are other games out there that are better for "Making Sense", so you might be happier playing one of those.

Absolutely. And we will be.

 

[Dausuul]

Actually, yes it was directed primarily at you because of what you said in the OP. You have a problem IC (in character) answering questions about healing surges, etc.

And I have a problem with those questions being asked in character. It seems a bit metagamish to me and I am trying to understand where your coming from and why it is a problem for a character?

I think there's a miscommunication here.

Toras said: "But I have come to the conclusion that my greatest problem with 4e and one that might indeed be fixed when June comes round and I find myself thumbing through the new book... It is a problem of How and Why, from an IC perspective. What are Healing Surges and why do only I have them? How do they work?"

In other words, in character, what happens when the metagame-event of "healing surge" is triggered? What is going on? How does it work?

Out of character, metagame, the answer is that the PC recovers one-quarter of his hit points, which he can do X times per day. That's simple enough. But what's going on in character, from a game-world perspective, is not as clear. From the character's point of view, what just happened? Did his wounds magically close? Is he still wounded, but no longer affected by his injuries? Was he even wounded in the first place?

Unless I am very much mistaken (Toras, correct me if I'm wrong), these are the questions to which Toras was seeking answers.

 

[eleran]

But why can't they build their relationships and so on while sitting in a cave and healing their wounds? I can certainly imagine a party of explorers taking a day or two of resting time to talk about their aspirations, share stories of their homelands, and so on while recovering for the next big push through the dungeon.
It sounds to me more like you want a game that revolves around a group of heroes building a relationship while engaging in pulse-pounding action.

I think your confusing something. We like action, but not hack-n-slash. We like roleplaying and storybuilding, but not LARPing. Most of the PC RP interaction within the group is situational and revolves around the story, weaving in details and PC story points as needed and as they make sense. We almost never just sit around a room and have a chat or tell stories in character for the sake of chatting or telling stories. Now, it does happen every now and again, but if it happened every time we had to hole up in a cave and lick our wounds we would never get anything else accomplished. Actually most of our most rewarding Rp happens with NPC to PC interaction, sometimes story related sometimes not. And as a DM I encourage players to put secrets into their back story and then spend a good portion of the campaign trying to reveal those secrets to the rest of the group, which makes for some really fun RP situations.

I don't know any better way to explain it.

 

[billd91]

And, of course, *none* of them ever resulted in penalties to actions without on-the-spot DM rulings. The hit point system in 3e was inconsistent in its application and explanations. Hit points were sometimes physical injuries, sometimes the ability to avoid physical injury. However, they recovered at a rate that was too slow for the ability to avoid physical injury and too fast for actual physical injuries. Further, they clearly did not model actual physical injuries, which would result in penalties. The 4e system appears to be more consistent with a fantasy action model of hit points as the ability to avoid damage and some cosmetic injuries that fantasy heroes often complain of, but rarely result in significant hindrance to their kicking butt. 4e hit points and healing model fantasy action better than physical injuries, while the 3e system does a poor job of modeling either. That's not to say that the previous system didn't work in play if you largely handwaved the explanations and just played the game. But if you prefer to model more realistic injuries and wounds, I don't think any edition of D&D would survive casual scrutiny.

I really don't think there's any significant difference between 4e and any other edition's hit point, at least as far as what they really represent. They've always been quite abstract.
The difference with any editions has been in how those points are recovered. 4e pushes things farthest down the line of movie action with its healing surges that require no outside resources like potions or healing spells and overnight recovery. That's about all. Every previous edition was more dependent on having a helper (like Karate Kid's Mr. Miyagi) or prop (like bottle of Gatorade to chug).
One thing about 4e healing surges compared to action movies, through. Rocky might have been able to use healing surges to keep going in a match, McClane and Riggs may have been able to keep going in their movies, but they were pretty much not coming out of their encounters better than going in. And that can happen with 4e healing surges since they are based on a flat amount (25% of max hp? is that what I'm hearing?). While a bit more of a hassle to actually implement, a healing surge that heals a proportion of damage taken would probably do an even better job of reflecting iconic action cinema like Rocky, Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon.

 

[Derren]

I think your confusing something. We like action, but not hack-n-slash. We like roleplaying and storybuilding, but not LARPing.

Thats fine, but why should that be the only way to play D&D? Sadly it seems WotC thinks so and caters only this gamestyle with 4E while the rest of use has either have to change large amount of rules to make 4E work for us, stay at 3E (unsupported as it will be) or "switch to rolemaster".

No matter what one does it is obvious that "our gamestyle" is not wanted in 4E.

 

[Imp]

Yup... I'll probably explain it thus, "Your characters are the D&D version of every character Bruce Willis has ever played in an action movie."

Okay, to switch geek hats and go pop culture now, the problem with the stuff about Die Hard around here is that at the time it came out, Die Hard was actually a nominal move towards realism as compared to the Schwarzenegger/ Stallone model of '80's action hero – here was a hero who was an ordinary guy (Bruce Willis not being particularly esteemed as a tough-guy type at the time, his primary typecasting being as David Addison of Moonlighting – it was a bit like having Jerry Seinfeld or Zach Braff star in an action movie) who did get hurt by environmental effects such as broken glass and basically seemed somewhat mortal. On a superficial level, it is a nominal move towards realism after all, but that was the original movies' shtick. Not "unbelievable badass cleans house" but "ordinary guy has horrible day," but still in the action movie genre.

 

[Cadfan]

That's not to say that the previous system didn't work in play if you largely handwaved the explanations and just played the game.

That's the real elephant in the room right there. Everyone had a cleric, or enough wands of cure light wounds to get by. I can't categorically state that no D&D player, ever, in the entirety of 3e gameplay, ever even once healed significant hit point loss through bed rest and nonmagical medical care, but I do feel pretty confident that the number was close to zero.

 

[Toras]

Actually, yes it was directed primarily at you because of what you said in the OP. You have a problem IC (in character) answering questions about healing surges, etc.

And I have a problem with those questions being asked in character. It seems a bit metagamish to me and I am trying to understand where your coming from and why it is a problem for a character?.

If you had said you had the problem OoC I would have understood completely that you as a player have a hard time reconciling yourself to the rule changes or the fluff changes. That I can understand and appreciate.

Assume if you will that the character has no concept of the numbers behind his existence. He probably doesn't know what exactly a healing surge is nor does he likely know that he has daily powers. However, since we are assuming he is moderately intelligent he has begun to wonder why, as I would in his place. He has observed that if he attempts his horse cutter strike 3 times in one fight, it will fail once. But if he attempts it twice, it will succeed both times. These are things he can observe. He also knows that he can recover from a day of fighting with a 6 hour rest. Because he has done so before.

Should he have had a ring before 10th level, and attempted to use it he would not have been able to. But as he has grown in skill and experience from his travels, at some point he is able to use that ring. There is an observable change. In fact, since it is so, they may become a measure of personal power/status. That mage is only 1 ring at best, or did you hear about the two ringed warlord.

If they were purely metagame elements, like action points, which alter only that which can be determined as luck or chance that would be one thing. But they have an IC effect, and it is likely the character could notice the effect, leading to speculation about the cause. Having something for him to find or how he might discuss these common phemonia with others who share it hardly strike me as metagaming.

 

[Wolfwood2]

I think some folks may be mistaking the intent behind the limitations on magic rings. It is by no means to protect the game from DMs giving out powerful items too early. If that were the case, they would have done it for all magical items. As it is, there is nothing to prevent a DM from giving out a +5 sword or a carpet of flying to a 1st level character.

The magic rings are in fact a response to everything being so abstracted and metagamed. They exist to provide a concrete, in-game measure of power that your characters can understand and roleplay a response to. "Oh no, this dude is wearing two magic rings! He must be hardcore."

Practically speaking, it would be easy to treat magic rings the same as all other magic items and assign them a "appropriate for X level" indicator. Not doing so was a deliberate choice to try something different.

 

[eleran]

I think there's a miscommunication here.

Toras said: "But I have come to the conclusion that my greatest problem with 4e and one that might indeed be fixed when June comes round and I find myself thumbing through the new book... It is a problem of How and Why, from an IC perspective. What are Healing Surges and why do only I have them? How do they work?"

In other words, in character, what happens when the metagame-event of "healing surge" is triggered? What is going on? How does it work?

Out of character, metagame, the answer is that the PC recovers one-quarter of his hit points, which he can do X times per day. That's simple enough. But what's going on in character, from a game-world perspective, is not as clear. From the character's point of view, what just happened? Did his wounds magically close? Is he still wounded, but no longer affected by his injuries? Was he even wounded in the first place?

Unless I am very much mistaken (Toras, correct me if I'm wrong), these are the questions to which Toras was seeking answers.

I agree those are the questions he wants answered. My issue is that I don't see why his character is thinking in terms of healing surges? Does his character know what hit points are and why some things have more than others? Does he always refer to himself by his class title? Does he and the group he travels with make decisions based on Armor Class?

If you agree to the conceit that hit points are more of an abstraction that actual physical debilitating damage then you can easily explain healing surges in an IC reference. If you have to constantly nitpick over when the threshold between the abstraction and physical debilitating damage happens then you will likely not go for the healing surge.

To me, it basically boils down to the last few hit points before unconsciousness and dying are the actual physical damage. If forced to quantify it I would say that 1 HP per character level is real honest to gosh physical damage represented by gashing bleeding wounds and possible broken bones (which is another thing no one ever mentions, why is it not a big deal that no one ever seems to break an arm or leg in game?). A gashing wound of 5 HP at 5th level that takes the character unconscious after he has exhausted his stamina, luck, dodging mojo, etc can be stitched up prior to bedding down for the night. Or maybe those are taken care of by the clerics healing power, or that potion of healing. Either way, in 3e and other previous editions, these wounds were easily fixed in no more than a day or 2 thru unmagical rest at the hands of an unmagical healer, so why not just compress the time needed to heal into one simple overnight rest and be done with it?