Typical Healing Surge Usage

[cignus_pfaccari]

Our group does a few things to mitigate this issue:

1) We rotate our PCs around.

I'm a bit leery of doing this. Lower surges often go hand-in hand with lower defenses, so that seems to be a good way of getting more total damage done on the party.

This probably does work reasonably well at lower levels while the defenses aren't terribly different. Once you start getting auto-hits on poor defenses, though, it's time for the tissue-paper-PCs to stay in the back. That's also the point where the monster hits that hardly scratch the high-Con warden leave the wizard with a gaping wound where his hip used to be.

2) Another thing that I do with my PC is that I often don't heal him up all of the way during a short rest if that will waste hit points.

Indeed. I figure that once you're over halfway to the surge, it's a good idea to spend one, but you can go for a while with some hp damage. It is a touch risky, though; I've gotten very wary of the new high-damage monsters getting lucky and sending someone to the mat fast.

Now, though, a couple of hp down, no problem. That's why you also make sure and have someone carry around a Battle Standard of Healing; even without cheesing it out (which is, well, cheesy), it's good for sopping up those extra HP and getting just a little bit more endurance out of the party.

3) Another thing that we do in our game is focus fire.

Oh, if only I could count the number of times our party has been tanked. Not even all of us, usually one or two guys are easily distracted.

I can't really throw stones, as I'm horribly guilty of not being terribly tactically-minded. I've been tanked before. I've also passed up the optimal target for my sorcerer in favor of the cluster of monsters that I can action point nova into mass wads of damage...but that cluster was going to move, and I do so love mushroom clouds...

Anywho, moving right along.

4) One other thing that the players can do is to not heal a heavily wounded PC, especially one with ranged attacks. If the PC goes unconscious at -10 hit points and is subsequently healed for 20 hit points, the PC has effectively gotten 30 points of healing for a 20 hit point heal. This only works if the Leader's turn occurs after the attacking foe hits and before the downed PC's turn comes up.

With today's modern monsters that can bloody a non-defender in a single hit, this is very risky. When playing my cleric, I really preferred to keep my party above bloodied if at all possible, just to make sure that they didn't get splattered into Raise Dead ritual components.

Last year's upping of monster damage by WotC did lower the number of encounters that our groups can do from about 8 max per day to about 5 to 6 max per day. On the other hand, our group has been trying to get more efficient at group tactics and at power/feat selection.

Mostly related yet somewhat tangential, but I mean, DAMN, what were they smoking? I understand a lot of monsters had really pathetic damage, and that's fine to fix. But, it seems to me that they heavily overcorrected.

In our new Dark Sun game, the thri-kreen monk goes up and down several times a session. I'm seriously considering recommending that he and the dragonborn warlock turn into dwarf fighters. (That's kind of my thinking for Dark Sun..."Can your concept work as a dwarf? If so, do it. If not, step on it a few more times.")

Brad

 

[Riastlin]

Mostly related yet somewhat tangential, but I mean, DAMN, what were they smoking? I understand a lot of monsters had really pathetic damage, and that's fine to fix. But, it seems to me that they heavily overcorrected.

In our new Dark Sun game, the thri-kreen monk goes up and down several times a session. I'm seriously considering recommending that he and the dragonborn warlock turn into dwarf fighters. (That's kind of my thinking for Dark Sun..."Can your concept work as a dwarf? If so, do it. If not, step on it a few more times.")

Brad

Honestly, so far I'm finding the new damage to be pretty good. This coming from both sides of the screen. As a player I have admittedly only made it to 4th level so far, but we are going through Reavers of Harkenwold at the moment which I assume uses the new math pretty much exclusively. Our party consists of a runepriest and a paladin (with not a lot of healing) as the only sources of healing. Obviously this is not a super heal party though it is obviously better than a party without a paladin and just a runepriest. We rarely run out of surges, though we can get thwacked pretty good.

On the DM side of the screen, I'm certainly noticing a big increase in damage. Of course this is being mitigated by lower encounter levels which makes the hits come less often and the monsters easier to hit. What the new math has done is forced the players to be a little more tactical, and has made some of the defensive options (both tactics-wise and feat/power choice wise) more appealing. In the recent beholder encounter I ran for instance, it was absolutely a swingy fight, and one that proved somewhat difficult for the party. However, they adapted early on and started to realize that they couldn't simply stand there and pound at the beholder. Doing so would surely have resulted in at least one or two PCs going down and possibly dying. Even with that, once the sentinel became un-stoned, the fight really turned around and the party made fairly quick work of the beholder. With the old math, it would have been boring as hell. Even if it was slightly less dangerous it would not have been nearly as fun I think.