D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[Emerikol]

How do you assign ASIs on level up?

Or all of the other non diegetic things that come up because we're playing a game and that's how playing a game works?

I know, something something actor stance vs horse stance vs tough on grime stance or whatever, but sometimes a game has to be a game.

Sure. When I get up to go to the bathroom, the game freezes. But when I return we go back into the game and assume actor stance again.

The key here is
Characters make decisions they could really make. Artificial game mechanics especially things with charges that can't be explained with an in world reason are plot coupons. These are rampant in some editions of the game (4e was king but by no means alone). Plot coupons to me make the game seem less real. I don't want to play monopoly if I did I would. That is a pawn stance game. I want something only D&D can provide. Immersion.

Players can interact with Players about things outside the game and that is no big deal. Pass me the chips. Creating the character before the session starts is an outside the game set of decisions. Even in theory asking a rules clarification is not in game. It's player to player (even if the player is the DM).

 

[Vaalingrade]

Wait... that's what you think plot coupons are?

That's like an actual term used for items or checkpoints characters in a story need to collect to complete the plot. It has negative amounts to do with metagame elements.

Anyway, this stance-stance thing makes zero sense because most games are a mix of what those empty terms are referring to.

There are diegetic parts of the game and non-diegetic parts. Characters aren't aware of their HP for example: HP is an element that's there for the players to tick off attacks until they 'lose' the encounters. Nor are characters actually aware of their class. Like people don't know that the little guy with a knife is doing the kind of damage a knife to the kidneys should do instead of a d4 because he went to Rogue school with a major in Thief.

Much like Healing surges, these are things that exist for use the players to make sense of elements that aren't present in other fiction because it's normally controlled by author fiat.

Characters don't die because they get hit too much in a story, they die because the writer wants them to and probably because they misunderstood something Steven King wrote long ago.

Characters in a story aren't good at shooting a bow because they were born a Ranger; the author chose and then decided what they're capable of.

In short, the metagame parts of the game are filling in gaps for the fiction we're collaboratively creating as part of the game. This is a not a separate and alien concept that is opposing roleplaying, it's a part of the game that works harmoniously with it to let the game work.

The problem is that decades of arguments and talks and dissection of the game have created all these categorizations without actually thinking or being concerned with how it works in making a working fantasy game and instead tricking people into thinking the goal is some sort of gaming 'purity' they try to achieve by just deleting whole swathes of how the game works, be that the metagame or character-based skill, or what have you.

We've become Theory Brained.

 

[Emerikol]

Wait... that's what you think plot coupons are?

That's like an actual term used for items or checkpoints characters in a story need to collect to complete the plot. It has negative amounts to do with metagame elements.

Actually it must have a double meaning. The meaning I used it for is an accepted meaning or that term. It seems a less argumentative term than "dissociative mechanics".

There are diegetic parts of the game and non-diegetic parts. Characters aren't aware of their HP for example: HP is an element that's there for the players to tick off attacks until they 'lose' the encounters. Nor are characters actually aware of their class. Like people don't know that the little guy with a knife is doing the kind of damage a knife to the kidneys should do instead of a d4 because he went to Rogue school with a major in Thief.

I would disagree on hit points. They don't know a number as the number is an abstraction that the player can understand what the character knows. But the information is in game.

I would kind of agree on class but in a broader sense I wouldn't. A wizard or cleric know they are wizards and cleric. A rogue is probably self identified as a thief, assassin, vagabond, whatever. A fighter is broad too but the concept is there. But I agree that what comprises the exact game definition of a class is not known fully by a character. Wizards though do know about spells. If a power is available to a class, the character knows about that power.

Much like Healing surges, these are things that exist for use the players to make sense of elements that aren't present in other fiction because it's normally controlled by author fiat.

Characters don't die because they get hit too much in a story, they die because the writer wants them to and probably because they misunderstood something Steven King wrote long ago.

Characters in a story aren't good at shooting a bow because they were born a Ranger; the author chose and then decided what they're capable of.

In short, the metagame parts of the game are filling in gaps for the fiction we're collaboratively creating as part of the game. This is a not a separate and alien concept that is opposing roleplaying, it's a part of the game that works harmoniously with it to let the game work.

The problem is that decades of arguments and talks and dissection of the game have created all these categorizations without actually thinking or being concerned with how it works in making a working fantasy game and instead tricking people into thinking the goal is some sort of gaming 'purity' they try to achieve by just deleting whole swathes of how the game works, be that the metagame or character-based skill, or what have you.

We've become Theory Brained.

Yes and no. Language for example is how we communicate meaning. Language is metagame in some sense. It is the way we communicate what we are thinking to another human being though imperfectly.

Some constructs are there to communicate things the character is aware of to the player because the player can't feel the blood oozing out of his gut. I wouldn't call those things metagame but if you insisted then I'd make up a new subcategory of metagame which are things the character should not know about but does for purposes of the game. It goes beyond just communicating facts back and forth between the character and player.

One objection is players should not make decisions for characters that their characters cannot rightly even comprehend as decisions. Examples would be a daily martial power. A luck point. So if someone said, I have this new class of powers and they are activated by burning hit points. That could make sense as the character would see it as suffering injury in some manner to get the magic to work.

Surges never fit a paradigm where the character knew what was going on, at least for me.

My healing spells heal based on the targets max hit point level that I suggested on another thread would work better.

I agree wholeheartedly that what bothers people varies. I do think what bothers me is a real thing and a real way of looking at the game. I understand not everyone is bothered by things I am bothered by.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How do you assign ASIs on level up?

Or all of the other non diegetic things that come up because we're playing a game and that's how playing a game works?

I know, something something actor stance vs horse stance vs tough on grime stance or whatever, but sometimes a game has to be a game.

How much of a focus there is on the game being a game, however, is up to the designers, and then on the participants.

 

[Retros_x]

A good established character has certain independent existence. They cannot do whatever and remain in-character.

That was not the point of my comment, but I will disagree with you anyway. Of course they can. You just need to find a good reason. You as a player. Because you are the one making decisions. Not the character. Humans and well-written characters are contradictory and inconsistent. A character who does always as expected feels like a robot.

 

[Retros_x]

I simply don't see it that way, and in fact feel that seeing it like that is off-putting. When I decide what I'm going to do with my day in real life, I don't think about my story. Why would my PC be any different?

Geez, I really wonder what is the difference between my real life and my PC, what could it be...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That was not the point of my comment, but I will disagree with you anyway. Of course they can. You just need to find a good reason. You as a player. Because you are the one making decisions. Not the character. Humans and well-written characters are contradictory and inconsistent. A character who does always as expected feels like a robot.

Character doesn't need to always do what is expected, but they also cannot do just anything and remain in-character. How you write this also seems to assume sort of detached author perspective rather than immersed perspective where playing the character is more intuitive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Geez, I really wonder what is the difference between my real life and my PC, what could it be...

I'd love to hear the end of that sentence, particularly if you can avoid being snarky about it.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'd love to hear the end of that sentence, particularly if you can avoid being snarky about it.

The ability to get a bad result then take it up with the GM like this green screen'd bald firefighter/paramedic how you wouldn't have made xyz choice had you known pz &q like your character should have known with the expectation that it will make the change happen back when you would have.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It is generally amusing to see a bunch of people discussing a "problem" with healing in the game, when I am also aware of how few of those who "have" this problem actually play with the 2024 rules.

Is the new healing in 2024 too much? Short answer: No.

Longer answer?

I just recently finished the halfway point of a campaign where I was playing a 2024 Trickery Cleric from the playtest. That meant that from level 3 I could project a perfect illusion (which absorbed many attacks) and I was using the new healing spells. In most of the fights we were in, despite the DM feeling like we had no chance of losing, I had usually spent most turns barely keeping one or more characters alive and in the fight. Our final fight ended with my character dead (revived with a plot item) after every single party member but one making multiple death saves, AFTER we used the Stronghold powers to have even more abilities (and I had even more healing) AND we had gotten more magical gear.

And, while it might shock you to consider, despite being players of the newest version of DnD, our group did not rip open our armor, beat our chests while screaming the name of The Great Leroy Jenkins, and charge with butter knives bared at the enemy. In fact, one of our missions went so well in terms of the tactics that not only did we win with no injuries (maybe one if I'm misremembering) but we had also manuevered in such a way that the DM declared the freed prisoners backed with us would overwhelm the completely unprepared fort we had infiltrated and take them out with minimal issues. And that was not the only stealth mission we engaged in.

So, the next thing that will get leveled against point declaration that, no, there isn't a problem here, would be that the DM MUST have done something untoward, because if he had followed the rules in the books then this would have never happened. Except, I asked him. He rarely homebrewed. He did use some 3PP materials, but I have the same materials, and I use those same materials, and they really aren't much more dangerous than the 2014 rules. Oh right. And the 2024 monsters have not been fully revealed, even as we do know from the DMG that the XP budgets are significantly bigger than they used to be.

Now, yes, if you want 5e24 to play exactly like 2e, using game mechanics and tones that haven't been in the game for 25 years or more... it doesn't do that. But that isn't a problem, any more than Dr. Pepper not tasting like Orange Fanta is a problem. And if you feel like you as the DM have to put in a little bit of work, to get the effect YOU desire (because, I do notice that I've never seen a single person get on these boards and say "as a player I feel like the game is to easy when my DM runs it, so the rules should be changed") then.... yeah. Maybe you do. But I'm not really incentivized to remove a great change to the game to appease a group of people who have no interest in actually playing the game unless it was designed to be exactly like the game they are already running, so they don't have to do any work.