D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[tetrasodium]

The thing is (building off your statement, not reacting to it), it's exciting for reasons unrelated to death.

Are the Indiana Jones movies not exciting? I would say most people think they are. Yet I doubt anyone genuinely believes that Indiana Jones stories can only be exciting if there's always a 10% chance that Indy just straight up dies to a stray Nazi bullet.

I see Indiana Jones, and James Bond, and Doc Savage...and yes, Conan the Barbarian...as great examples of the kind of excitement I want from roleplaying.

For that sort of excitement, death is like throwing wet sand on a perfectly ordinary campfire. It's dead, and no amount of adding new logs is going to bring the fire back.

If Conan died midway through the first story to a random spear as a way to show that ~AnYoNe CaN dIe~, all that would have meant is nobody would even know about Conan today.

You're seeing the story of a legend coming to life, except it's your legend! That is so incredibly awesome! But nobody tells the story of a would-be legend who went out like a chump to a kobold spear after one successful sewer-rat hunt. Because that just isn't an interesting story to tell.

Not one bit of what I just said implies or requires that players get everything they want. Far from it! When you aren't constantly pulling back from engagement because your very ability to engage could be ripped away from you permanently, suddenly all sorts of moves that might have been totally unacceptable BS are now perfectly fine. Having to retrieve your own soul from the Ten Kings of Yomi? Awesome. Having to storm the Demon Lord's Palace to break the infernal contract keeping your friend bound to hell for their second death? HELL YES. Doing an under-the-table deal with a deity who needs plausible deniability when you need a quickie resurrection? Inject it into my veins. These are the stories that raise up and transform characters, and I have NO idea where it will eventually end up. That is absolutely the most amazing feeling.

James Bond is never going to die on camera. That would be a complete waste of a great franchise. Instead, the stakes are never "Will Bond survive?!" They are "What will Bond have to risk to succeed? What price will he pay?"

And its not like he's never paid prices. His wife was killed off dead. That changed him, altered his course, and gave us a multi-actor-spanning character development arc.

Or consider Doctor Who. They can "die" without truly dying. It's still a sacrifice, because (certain shenanigans aside), once an incarnation is dead, they're dead, but the Doctor marches on. Total death isn't on the table, but loss and hardship still are.

That's what the stakes are. That's what the joy is. To find out what horrors and joys and triumphs and sorrows you'll face, and how they'll change you, and how you'll change them and others.

What can change the nature of a man?

Every single one of those characters that you mention behave as if they expect being injured or killed to be a real possibility, that requires a real & plausible chance of death or meaningful injury☆ because most players are not paid actors putting on a for profit production made for passive viewer consumption like critical roll.

The difference between the actions choices & behavior of a player who knows their PC could plausibly die & a player who is certain that death is implausible or flat out impossible is perfectly demonstrated by Invincible & Omni Man vrs the Flaxans in the spoiler'd clip below.

Spoiler

Invincible is in blue & yellow
Omniman is in grey & red.

Since you are also trying to shift it from playing games to being about it about telling stories, that difference also impacts the stories that can be told.. there's even a term for the result of stories about characters who behave & act as if they have plot armor. The key difference between playing a game & telling a story is how changing that verb dramatically changes the results, you can't simply pretend that the two are interchangeable by ignoring the fact that doing so drafts other players to stand in for the role of the would be story teller's word processor.

Things like the extreme & excessive healing power creep/risk mitigation in 5e are very much in support of misusing those two not at all interchangeable verbs.

☆ some systems have other elements to fear before death(ie fate's consequence slots), d&d just has death now but hit point loss level drain & attribute damage were once things of concern in past editions too

 

[Crimson Longinus]

James Bond is never going to die on camera.

 

[Staffan]

So what? With a hour of rest I can only replenish 80% of my HP. Boohoo! That's insane amount of healing, and all you need to do to replenish them all is to sleep for a night.

Remember that hit points are mostly a variety of factors that can be summed up as "fighting spirit". There's a bit of "meat" in there, but that's a small part. When a fighter with 80 hp is down to 5 hp because they've taken ten hits from arrows being shot at them, it's not like they've taken those ten arrows to the chest and head. They're scratches, near-misses due to last-minute dodges, and so on. Taking another arrow when in that state might result in serious injury (0 hp), but once you're out of combat and get a moment to catch your breath and bandage your scratches and stuff, you're good to go again.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Remember that hit points are mostly a variety of factors that can be summed up as "fighting spirit". There's a bit of "meat" in there, but that's a small part. When a fighter with 80 hp is down to 5 hp because they've taken ten hits from arrows being shot at them, it's not like they've taken those ten arrows to the chest and head. They're scratches, near-misses due to last-minute dodges, and so on. Taking another arrow when in that state might result in serious injury (0 hp), but once you're out of combat and get a moment to catch your breath and bandage your scratches and stuff, you're good to go again.

Yet you can literally be lying on the ground dying due the lack of this "fighting spirit," but if you manage to pull trough, you're perfectly fine tomorrow!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yet you can literally be lying on the ground dying due the lack of this "fighting spirit," but if you manage to pull trough, you're perfectly fine tomorrow!

So. Just like real issues with shock, where if you can pull through the disruption you have a good chance of survival and potentially even returning to normalcy relatively soon, but if the disruption taxes you too much too quickly, you're just dead?

Because that's literally how shock works. More than 90% of otherwise healthy people can survive hypovolemic or neurogenic shock, so long as they get short term treatment for it, and guess what? Yes, shouting at someone (and other similar things) in the right way, for the right reason, really can delay or inhibit the symptoms of shock long enough for proper medical care. It's all about preventing the loss of circulatory homeostasis, and the psychological element is absolutely a factor in avoiding the damage caused by the loss of homeostasis. E.g. keeping someone focused and calm can restrict the inflammation response and cause vasoconstriction in non-essential tissues (e.g. the legs) so that blood can flow to the torso and brain where it is critically needed.

Even in shock caused by infections has a relatively high survival rate (depending on the exact cause and expression), and again a psychological element can help reduce loss of homeostasis long enough for the actual antibiotic treatment to address the problem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Every single one of those characters that you mention behave as if they expect being injured or killed to be a real possibility, that requires a real & plausible chance of death or meaningful injury☆ because most players are not paid actors putting on a for profit production made for passive viewer consumption like critical roll.

The difference between the actions choices & behavior of a player who knows their PC could plausibly die & a player who is certain that death is implausible or flat out impossible is perfectly demonstrated by Invincible & Omni Man vrs the Flaxans in the spoiler'd clip below.

Spoiler

Invincible is in blue & yellow
Omniman is in grey & red.

Since you are also trying to shift it from playing games to being about it about telling stories, that difference also impacts the stories that can be told.. there's even a term for the result of stories about characters who behave & act as if they have plot armor. The key difference between playing a game & telling a story is how changing that verb dramatically changes the results, you can't simply pretend that the two are interchangeable by ignoring the fact that doing so drafts other players to stand in for the role of the would be story teller's word processor.

Things like the extreme & excessive healing power creep/risk mitigation in 5e are very much in support of misusing those two not at all interchangeable verbs.

☆ some systems have other elements to fear before death(ie fate's consequence slots), d&d just has death now but hit point loss level drain & attribute damage were once things of concern in past editions too

To roleplay, you must be thinking of story. Do you disagree with this notion?

I do not mean plots. I mean the process of talking about fictional events as if they were real. We are all storytellers when we give voice to our characters and consider their choices as distinct from our own choices.

Pawn stance minimizes the story element to its absolute bare bones. But even the pawn stance player thinks at least somewhat about what the character thinks and chooses. To roleplay is to play the role of a person. And "role" here is literally taken from storytelling.

I flatly reject this idea that telling a story means in any way that the teller "drafts" the other players. That is simply not how group storytelling works. Instead, when we look at real group storytelling in any of its various forms, each participant accepts that the others will have some influence over the fictional space, but that there are rules, principles, or procedures for how that influence is shared and transmitted amongst the group. Improv is the obvious example here, but many group creative writing exercises or, you guessed it, role play (as in the psychological/psychiatric tool) are also examples. The group navigates a shared fictional space, and illegitimate modification of that space is frowned upon or even outright rejected in extreme cases.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So. Just like real issues with shock, where if you can pull through the disruption you have a good chance of survival and potentially even returning to normalcy relatively soon, but if the disruption taxes you too much too quickly, you're just dead?

Soon as next day? I don't think so. If you had life threatening injuries, you're not gonna be fine for a good while.

 

[pemerton]

To roleplay, you must be thinking of story. Do you disagree with this notion?

I do not mean plots. I mean the process of talking about fictional events as if they were real. We are all storytellers when we give voice to our characters and consider their choices as distinct from our own choices.

Pawn stance minimizes the story element to its absolute bare bones. But even the pawn stance player thinks at least somewhat about what the character thinks and chooses. To roleplay is to play the role of a person. And "role" here is literally taken from storytelling.

I don't agree with your notion.

In pawn stance RPGing, of course there is a shared fiction that matters to resolution - eg "I open the chest" is a very typical action declaration in pawn stance dungeon crawl play, and it is not resolved via any sort of mechanic or algorithm, but rather by everyone collectively imagining the character in question putting their hands on the lid of the chest and lifting it open.

But there is no need in pawn stance play to think about the character as a character. They are purely a game piece (hence pawn stance). The last time I played a session like this was a few years ago, when I GMed a session of White Plume Mountain using AD&D rules. It's not my personally favourite form of RPGing, but it is quite viable and fun enough.

And it is roleplaying, in the sense that the players each adopt a role - defined, in AD&D, by race, class and alignment - which is the "vehicle" whereby they engage with the fiction and pursue the goal of gaining treasure by defeating or outwitting its guardians.

I flatly reject this idea that telling a story means in any way that the teller "drafts" the other players. That is simply not how group storytelling works. Instead, when we look at real group storytelling in any of its various forms, each participant accepts that the others will have some influence over the fictional space, but that there are rules, principles, or procedures for how that influence is shared and transmitted amongst the group.

<snip>

The group navigates a shared fictional space, and illegitimate modification of that space is frowned upon or even outright rejected in extreme cases.

Given that a person can't literally navigate a fictional space, I think it's clearer to drop the metaphor and just describe what is going on: the participants in a RPG construct a shared fiction - they imagine stuff together.

And of course - as you say - there are rules, procedures, principles, practices etc that govern how they do this. In this respect, it's no different from any other social activity, and no different from any other sort of game-playing where the typical/conventional norms of sociality are supplemented and to some degree even replaced by a set of "artificial" norms - that is, the deliberately adopted rules, expectations etc that constitute the game that is being played.

This involves a "drafting" of others only in the banal sense that when I make a move that changes the shared fiction in accordance with the agreed rules, procedures etc then other participants are expected to accept the new fiction as the shared fiction. The same is true of me when they make their moves. If the game is well-designed, then it should be reasonably clear at each point who is entitled to "go" next, so that we don't get collisions of expectations.

Historically, a lot of RPGs rely on a bit of brute force and GM-as-conductor to handle a good chunk of that sort of coordination of "who goes next?" and avoiding colliding expectations. The main exception to this has tended to be combat resolution, which historically has followed wargame conventions which - being designed for competitive play -tend to be quite good at establishing clear expectations around who gets to go when, and what the results of their moves are.

But contemporary RPG design has come up with much more reliable ways to manage expectations and coordinate game play without just relying on the GM to brute force it! Anyone who is still thinking in terms of GM brute force, or even players brute-forcing one another ("drafting" the other participants) is a bit behind the times, in my view.

 

[PHATsakk43]

So. Just like real issues with shock, where if you can pull through the disruption you have a good chance of survival and potentially even returning to normalcy relatively soon, but if the disruption taxes you too much too quickly, you're just dead?

Because that's literally how shock works. More than 90% of otherwise healthy people can survive hypovolemic or neurogenic shock, so long as they get short term treatment for it, and guess what? Yes, shouting at someone (and other similar things) in the right way, for the right reason, really can delay or inhibit the symptoms of shock long enough for proper medical care. It's all about preventing the loss of circulatory homeostasis, and the psychological element is absolutely a factor in avoiding the damage caused by the loss of homeostasis. E.g. keeping someone focused and calm can restrict the inflammation response and cause vasoconstriction in non-essential tissues (e.g. the legs) so that blood can flow to the torso and brain where it is critically needed.

Even in shock caused by infections has a relatively high survival rate (depending on the exact cause and expression), and again a psychological element can help reduce loss of homeostasis long enough for the actual antibiotic treatment to address the problem.

This post makes me imagine a fantasy Gen. Patton slapping PCs back to positive HP.

 

[Lanefan]

To roleplay, you must be thinking of story. Do you disagree with this notion?

Yes, I disagree.

To roleplay, I posit you must be thinking of (your) character. Do this, roleplay the result, and the story will - or should - take care of itself.

Pawn stance minimizes the story element to its absolute bare bones. But even the pawn stance player thinks at least somewhat about what the character thinks and chooses. To roleplay is to play the role of a person. And "role" here is literally taken from storytelling.

And here you seem to agree with me: thinking of character is what matters.