LostSoul
Adventurer
If someone prefers that idea, they should play free-form.
The "real" reason the game has changed.
- Thread starter Herschel
- Start date
If someone prefers that idea, they should play free-form.
RoboCop
Star Wars
Lord of the Rings
Rocky
The ones where mortals are the heroes rather than immortals or Marvel Super Heroes.
[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]
One movie comes directly to mind for me there... Last Action Hero.
[MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION]
Not sure i would call it "pop quiz", but it does seem more geared towards the mechanics being decided on to do things, then you fit a story to what mechanics were chosen, rather than deciding how you want to tell the story, and finding a mechanic, if needed, to tell that part of the story.
So to the thread itself, has the change been caused because less people care first about the story they are trying to tell and more about the mechanics to do things in the game; then they can flesh out the story later?
Interesting choices - but don't they mostly illustrate the opposite point?
Star Wars - almost all damage suffered is basically cosmetic and healed extremely quickly. Even Luke getting his hand chopped off is essentially cosmetic as he's good as new soon after (extended rest?)
Lord of The Rings - Again beaten up bruised battered, but cosmetic unless the character actually dies (or suffers from a disease/affliction such as when Frodo gets stabbed).
Rocky - Pretty much the embodiment of cinematic healing surges in action! Teeth lost? eye swolen shut? Rub some spit on it, cut it and move on!
Robocop - haven't actually seen this one (treasonous I know) but isn't the only scene where the hero gets beaten to near death (death?) essentially a cut scene used as an excuse to introduce the new form and therefore cinimatic license?
Cinematic does not imply immortal or superhero, and again properly used the 4e mechanic can be quite grim (the death save mechanic is quite nasty), though it would take a bit more to make it gritty (though again that may be more in the description, attitude and atmosphere than anything else).
If your concern is that the mechanics way too heavily on the story - every eddition of D&D has been extremely guilty of this; so not sure how to respond really.
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Overall it depends on how silly of an action movie you may way. Likewise for games.
Robocop he is dead, they insert some of his organs and mind into the robot body.
Star Wars...Vader (see RoboCop), but he is changed from the incident. Luke's hand wasnt just an overnight thing. Sure he could use it, but had to train again. For overnight they could have just grew him a clone and used spare parts for either of them now couldn't they? Also most people seen were high on midichlorians that were the life force bacteria of the universe so akin to magic to heal them faster.
Rocky, he was in a coma. I call that pretty much NOT overnight healing.
LotR, the reason they healed for the most part quickly was due to the use of magic, not just sleeping. Frodo woke up to find Sam and the others in Rivendell, and magic had been used to heal him. Denethor didnt wait a night for Faramir to get better, he was about to burn him alive, and Faramir didnt just jump back into action the next day.
Théoden was being controlled by magic and within minutes was cured by magic, but at Helms Deep he was quickly taken away after being injured in his token appearance in the fight as king and didn't just rush back to battle later, but had to heal after returning to Rohan, as well Théodred just up at died rather than sleep a night and get back up. Several arrows is all it took to take out Boromir.
Mostly LotR revolved a great deal around healing magic rather than being really injured out in the field away from plenty of healing magic. The only person really injured and not die was Frodo, because he was rushed to be healed by magic. The Hobbit had plenty dying or out of commission due to injury lasting longer than just a night's rest.
So again, it is the type of cinematic you are trying to present. Also how long do you want to see the hero laying in bed resting, even if he is in an action movie? Isnt it about the action rather than the time it takes for them to heal, so you skip past that rather than show the days of time it takes.
I could go with Hard to Kill, Bourne Identity, and Wolverine also, and Wolverine has supernatural healing, but even he carried more than just superficial damage from it.
There are MANY stories where the hero is out of commission for longer than a night. Even anime has the heroes down for longer than a single day with all the things they do.
Again that plays an important part int he stories some want to tell, so the game changed to move to a different type of story, which shuts out those others, or you have to explain somehow that it happened some other way than it played out, or just use magic healing.
Some mechanics just seem to prevent certain types of stories, based on them removing some elements from being there, such as healing. The story of a character overcoming his injury to get better is gone when the injury is pretty much ignored through "strange" healing.
I'm sorry, but I cannot for the life of me identify 3e healing mechanics with any sort of well told story.
"Ok, let's bust out the healing sticks and tap each other with them a bit. Ok! Time to move on!"
Besides, HP has always been an abstract. Always. Since the dawn of D&D it was an abstract. All through each edition it's been an abstract. 4e didn't suddenly make it an abstract.
"Ok, let's bust out the healing sticks and tap each other with them a bit. Ok! Time to move on!"
Besides, HP has always been an abstract. Always. Since the dawn of D&D it was an abstract. All through each edition it's been an abstract. 4e didn't suddenly make it an abstract.
Well, like the punchline to the old joke goes, "Stop doing that, then!"
Or better yet, don't start. As in all walks of life, just because an option exists, doesn't mean you have to choose it.
The only item-based healing you'd see in one of our 3.X campaigns- so far- has been from potions & scrolls. Purchased or obtained via adventuring, not made by PCs.
The sole exception to that was a "Staff of St. Cuthbert", with which you had to land a combat type strike on the PC to be healed (in a 1Ed campaign). This had 2 key consequences: it could never fully heal you, and since it's damage was done first, you couldn't use it to save the dying.
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MichaelSomething
Legend
Contractual Genre Blindness isn't for everyone Danny...
No agreements necessary; no metagaming involved.
Almost nobody in the group wants to play Crafter Casters, and as we've been doing forever, what magic shops there are are not stocked with everything in the books- they have a bit of this, a bit of that- just like RW stores.
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BryonD
Hero
Unless they happen to know of a system that adds value on top of the free form aspects.
BryonD
Hero
That is absolutely true. But there is a difference between working with the abstract system in an effort to make it as invisible as possible and throwing your hands in the air and giving up and just wallowing in the nonsense aspects of it.
The system can be in your face, or the system can do its best to stay out of your way.
And HPs are certainly a very good example of a perpetual weak point in the mechanics and the players at the table are expected to take up some slack there. I don't for a moment question that it is a point where improvement would be welcome.
But, 4E, for me, goes exactly the wrong direction. It says you are going to ignore this anyway, so we won't even bother to worry about it.
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