Unicorn's Touch: Free Hit Points Every 5 Minutes?

[tiornys]

OK. So then, the net result is ... that people go longer without extended rests, maybe? This won't help in-combat healing, where healing surges are still king; It will only help when the party has quite a bit of time between battles to lick their wounds.

Yup, this is precisely what the power does. It's certainly arguable whether that's a good or bad thing, but it's definitely against 4E's initial design principles.

Like I said, I'm unconvinced that this is a real problem outside of theory-space. I am trying to figure out how this would impair my group's enjoyment of the game, and coming up rather blank.

It could make things too easy for the group, and it could be frustrating for the DM. If neither of those is likely to impair your group's enjoyment, then you probably don't need to worry. My point is simply that if you're worried in general about surge-free healing, but not worried about this power because it's weak, you should be still worried because it can be made strong.

t~

 

[James McMurray]

OK. So then, the net result is ... that people go longer without extended rests, maybe? This won't help in-combat healing, where healing surges are still king; It will only help when the party has quite a bit of time between battles to lick their wounds.

It also doesn't help if the amount of time you have is enough to give you an extended rest, since you'll be doing that anyway unless you've been stockpiling Action Points for some reason.

 

[Obryn]

It also doesn't help if the amount of time you have is enough to give you an extended rest, since you'll be doing that anyway unless you've been stockpiling Action Points for some reason.

Yep, and AFAIC if you can rest for 3-4 hours, you might as well rest for 8 hours.

-O

 

[tiornys]

Yep, and AFAIC if you can rest for 3-4 hours, you might as well rest for 8 hours.

-O

How many surges does a party spend, on average, after a battle? In my experience, it's somewhere around 1-2 per character (although rarely in an even spread). Unicorn's Touch, optimized, saves those surges in less than an hour of resting. Healing the entire party from 0 should take less than two hours (for a 5 person party). 20min-2 hours is significantly less than 3-4 hours.

t~

 

[James McMurray]

Before getting concerned about an optimized Unicorn's Touch, check out the amount of between combat healing a Shaman can dish out. The one in our paragon game routinely heals the entire party in one short rest using just one or two healing surges (from anyone who can spare them).

 

[KarinsDad]

I really don't like them. They make no sense. How do you, for instance, "spend" a healing surge on something, like the healing sash? Theres no parallel for this in any fantasy movie I've ever seen, or in reality.

Ditto. It's purely a game mechanic that does not truly represent any element from any fantasy books or films I've ever encountered.

I find it to be an oxymoron that it is called healing, but hit points are not really considered damage, even though the book calls it "skill, luck, resolve, and damage". There is no damage component in the game mechanics because a player can mysteriously heal this "damage" with a short rest.

Two words on Healing Surges: Bruce Willis

Okay...that actually needs three more words: Die Hard series.

That's the way I think of it too.

I understand this POV, it just does not work for me.


John McClean got the snot kicked out of him. He was physically damaged. Limping, bloody, etc.

A PC that goes to zero hit points can get it all back with a short rest. He's not damaged at all.

John McClean still has the snot beat out of him, regardless of how many rests he takes.

Different strokes for different folks. I've implemented a wound point house rule that allows for damage that is not mystically washed away with a wave of the PCs hand and it works great. Even though a single PC has not yet once taken enough wound points for it to mechanically matter at all in our game, the players still dread taking wound points. They make some decisions based on which PCs are the most wounded. It's scary and fun and tense and the players are not laxidasical like they are with the almost never ending font of hit points. That way, I can consider hit points to be luck, inner strength, exhaustion, scraps, and bruises, etc. and not consider them significant life threatening damage.

Mentally, this works better for me. It bugs me that a PC that goes unconscious is either dead or totally fine a few moments later without magic, just based on the whims of the dice. The schroeder's cat of DND. In our game, a PC takes a wound point for going unconscious (due to hit points, i.e. damaged enough to get knocked out), for missing the D20 roll while unconscious (i.e. bleeding to death), and for getting hit with a critical (i.e. taking a serious shot that does do real damage). Even if he survives going unconscious, he's actually damaged and it takes a while to heal up.

Wound points = real damage
Hit points = skill, luck, resolve, and minor scrapes

Granted, earlier editions of DND did not need this level of segregation, but then again, earlier editions of DND did not have hit points totally restored after a short rest. No fantasy media I have ever encountered does that except for DND and computer games. One does not really see this in fantasy books or film without using magic. So, it kind of bugs me that the premiere RPG for fantasy has yanked this nonsense in. IMO. YMWOV.

 

[eriktheguy]

If you are running a game where the players are constantly on the run, this power is not a problem, since they will not take constant 5-minute rests. If you are running an adventure where time is not an object, then they can just take extended rests and be done with it.
If on the other hand, your campaign is like many others, where there is enough time to break for an hour, but not 6, your swordmage can easily heal the entire group without surges. I agree with you, this is not right. A very simple house rule would be that any power (at-will or encounter) that heals without using surges, grants temporary hit points instead.
It seems wrong that the swordmage can leave the other healing classes in the dust at times, why should the defender be better at healing than the cleric? Temporary hit points seem more in the fashion of fighters than healing. If the player feel that using temporary hitpoints nerfs his power too much, you can make them last until the next extended rest. The whole point is that they do not stack multiple times on the same character between encounters.

 

[Garthanos]

Wound points = real damage
Hit points = skill, luck, resolve, and minor scrapes

Granted, earlier editions of DND did not need this level of segregation,

BS they didn't !!! Everybody who wanted a simulational emphasis.. fussed up and down the block that a quick touch by a cleric would fully heal a next to dead wizard and it would take tons of high level healing power to heal a high level warrior who was barely scratched.... How often was that portrayed in fantasy or fiction? "You are too skilled my heal major wound wont fix that scratch."

Yeah I am almost dead... second level wizard.. how long to heal by time four days... versus
Yeah I am almost dead... seventeenth level wizard ... how long to heal by time.. oh a month or so.

That made a lot of sense.

The favorite rule I seen from out of Unearthed Arcana was the Wounds and Vitality rule and the Second was a way for wizards to reuse there spells...called spell points, do those sound familiar?

And if you want the other complaints they included the ridiculousness of hitpoints advancing so you could advance to 100x what you started at.

I think people put blinders on... and rose shaded lenses on top of that...

Claiming 4e is less realistic than earlier versions in this regards is silly ... 4e should have called healing... inspiring and/or invigorating and let the legacy word drop... wow... problem fixed they arent wounds, you are now spending energy and "hero points" to prevent getting a wound, one of my favorite house rules is now becoming this one.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/240891-wound-system.html#post4649572

it needs some touch ups, but it embraces wounds in a very 4e sort of way.

 

[KarinsDad]

Claiming 4e is less realistic than earlier versions in this regards is silly ...

I didn't claim it was less realistic. I claimed there was no longer a damage component to hit points which I personally find problematic. If one has to assign a phrase to that, I would not say "less realistic", I would say "less plausible". It just feels totally gamist without a damage component.

And I agree with you. Changing healing to a percentage heal should have been done 3 releases ago. That is a good feature of 4E.

 

[Regicide]

Claiming 4e is less realistic than earlier versions in this regards is silly ... 4e should have called healing... inspiring and/or invigorating and let the legacy word drop... wow... problem fixed they arent wounds, you are now spending energy and "hero points" to prevent getting a wound, one of my favorite house rules is now becoming this one.

And you'd have to rename "bloodied", and you'd have to rename "unconcious" and you'd have to rename "dying" and you'd have to rename "wound" and you'd have to figure out how falling off a cliff can be "invigorated" better.

The only parallel to this is, as Karinsdad said, in video games, and the reason for that is simple, it's boring for people to sit there staring at their screen while there character spends an hour to recover wounds. It's nonsensical in videogames but people accept it because they know damn well why it's in there and it makes the game playable. In an RPG however, it makes no sense, it's addressing a problem that doesn't exist in RPGs and making 4E worse for it. It's one of the pile of reasons people compare 4E to WoW.