What are your problems with Healing/Dying mechanics in 4E

[FireLance]

I've never even had my PC's bother with Endurance checks. It's been immediately...Cure Disease! And once you get past about 14th level or so, RAW it's practially impossible to have any substantive failure on the roll.

How so? The level of the disease is subtracted from the result of the Heal check, so it should get relatively harder to cure an equal-level disease as the PCs get more experienced.

 

[keterys]

PCs generally won't have Heal bonuses higher than 12 + 5/8 * level. And you subtract 1 per level of the disease, so that means you go down by about 3/8 per level for even level diseases.

Now, there's high game variance on assisting on rituals, and assists are basically automatic at high level. So that's possibly another +8.

With assists, a roll of 1-9 (max hp) basically won't happen unless you run into a much higher level disease, the disease gives a penalty, or you aren't very good at Heal. Without assists, it's not that hard. You probably started with a +9 Heal instead of the +12 - if you're 14th level (+18 heal) going up against a 16th level disease, you're 1d20+2... 35% chance of max hp, 50% chance of 1/2 hp, 15% chance of 1/4 hp. Plus 150g for the attempt. The assists make that 45% chance of 1/2 hp, 50% chance of 1/4 hp, 5% chance of no damage. If the DM allows taking 10 and assists, that's consistently just one surge lost.

Interesting, never really looked at that before.

 

[Stalker0]

My take:

1) Players get too many healing surges for them to be considered a limit. In my games (which has always included one leader) the players don't run out of surges unless extraordinary measures are taken (such as a skill challenge where they lose surges on a failure).

2) Leader healing can get out of control at higher levels. I don't mind making a support class, and I don't mind they heal. The problem is 4e solved the scaling hp issue with surges being 1/4 of your health. So at 1st or at 20th, a surge means the same amount to the character.

However, they brought back the scaling issue with increasing healing. My party has to wait till a player is almost dead just to see a healing word, because else they will waste healing. It can literally bring someone back from near dead to full.

3) The Negative Bloodied Rule starts off as a good rule, but it scales to obscurity. At heroic to low paragon, I've had times where the players might make use of that rule (generally with monster auras and area attacks). Past that point, monsters never get close.

4) Monster damage doesn't scale. Considering how much more healing a party gets, as well as the fact that at epic levels death is expected...I don't know why monsters don't do more damage.


I will say that generally I like healing surges, I like the 3 strikes and your out rule, and I like minor action leader heals. As in many things, its a question of scaling. Too much and the mechanic becomes unwieldy.

 

[MerricB]

I don't like healing surges as implemented in 4e, but I do like the second wind rules from Star Wars Saga Edition. The idea of a hero being knocked around and then surging back into the fight is a good and dramatic one. But 4e terribly cheapens it by making it so easy to invoke and frequently used. SWSE limits it to once a day when at half max hp or fewer (in 4e terms, bloodied). I like that much better.

The Saga edition healing rules are some of the worst rules for a RPG, because they completely fail to keep the party going. One combat in Saga, and the party needs to hole up for a week to heal, unless they've managed to trick out a medical droid or something.

There are two basic paradigms for representing hit points/health in RPGs:

* Being hit is easy, healing is easy.
* Being hit is hard, healing is hard.

D&D follows the first idea - it always has, although in all editions but 4e it requires the group to have a cleric or other healer character. The breakthrough of 4e is to make the cleric nonessential, although a group's effectiveness is greatly increased by having a cleric around!

Games with story/action/fate points tend to follow the second idea: you have immunity points that prevent you from being damaged, which is just as well when healing is hard. (James Bond, the new Doctor Who RPG, etc.)

When you have being hit is easy and healing is hard, it only works in a game where combat is rare and should be avoided. Star Wars is not such a game.

I've seen PCs die from three death saves. I've seen plenty get to two death saves causing others in the group to have to rush to protect them.

My experience of 4e combat is that it is exceedingly easy for the frontline PCs in the group to be knocked into bloodied, whilst the ranged PCs will normally stay on near-full HP. There is a tipping point where a combat goes from "PCs in control" to "PCs near death".

 

[Keldryn]

#1: The dying mechanic is difficult to reconcile with non-magical healing. My character is reduced to zero hit points and falls down, bleeding out, mere seconds away from death; well and good. But then the warlord yells at him and he snaps out of it and jumps back up, carries on adventuring as if nothing had happened, and is fine the next day? This is the place where the hit point abstraction breaks down IMO. Even with magical healing, you'd think there would be some effect from being on the brink of death.

I don't have a problem reconciling this. It's up to the DM to put a narrative spin on it.

I wouldn't describe such a situation as the PC being "fine the next day" as if nothing had happened. He is very much beat up, covered in bruises and cuts, and possibly suffering from sprains or dislocations. However, during the course of the adventure, he's running on adrenaline and pushing himself to his limits to accomplish what he needs to. Nobody can carry on like that for long, and he's certainly going to be in a lot of pain once he actually stops to truly take a break. In game terms, spending a few healing surges or taking an extended rest gets him back to full capacity right away, but he's struggling through sheer force of will to put the pain and fatigue aside until he can afford to take a rest.

The DM can describe how the character is feeling, but I don't think it is necessary to apply in-game penalties unless this sort of thing is going on for several in-game days in a row. When the adventure is over and the next one is beginning, the DM can just tell the players that the characters needed a week or two (or a month, whatever) to recuperate and tend to their injuries before setting out again.

If a character is unconscious and near dying several times in the span of a couple of in-game days, I don't see a problem with the DM saying that the character will "recover" after an extended rest (in terms of being able to deal with an emergency should it arise), but that he needs to rest for a few days before setting out on another full-scale adventure. The game doesn't need hard-and-fast rules for this, in my opinion -- just a dose of common sense.

#3: There's no such thing as long-term injury. I don't want PCs to have to deal with lasting injuries all the time, or even most of the time, but I do want it to come up once in a while.

I don't think that most players would find it unfair if the DM applied a minor short-term penalty in exceptional circumstances. For example, if a character is very unlucky and takes a critical hit for a lot of damage, which bring him below 0 hp and into making death saves, on a couple of occasions in a single adventure, the DM could tell the player that his character needs two weeks of bed rest to allow his injured shoulder to heal; until he is able to do so, the character suffers a -2 penalty to his Strength (or directly to hit/damage/checks, etc).

I don't have a reference handy, but the DM could re-skin a disease with the appropriate effects and apply that to a character who has suffered grevious damage in combat and has been very close to death.

#4: Some powers inflict hit point damage that really should not do so, e.g., the bard's Vicious Mockery power. If it does hit point damage, that means it can kill. Vicious Mockery should not be able to kill. (Yeah, yeah, I know, it's magic Vicious Mockery... a wizard did it.)

If all of the damage came from a power like that, it would be pretty hard to describe convincingly. I think it would be more likely that at least some damage was physical, even if the Vicious Mockery was what pushed the character over the edge; he simply lost the will to keep hanging on at that point, or he realized that his previous injuries were far more serious than he originally thought.

For #6, make it much harder to impose the unconscious or helpless conditions; balance those conditions as if they were instant death effects. Then make the coup de grace vastly more lethal. Something like: "The victim is reduced to zero hit points and must immediately make three death saves."

I don't remember the exact wording of the rule, but you could make it so that the coup de grace only applies during combat. Once outside of the immediacy of combat, a helpless or unconscious character can simply be killed (or have to make a death save or three).

 

[Dausuul]

I don't have a problem reconciling this. It's up to the DM to put a narrative spin on it.

I wouldn't describe such a situation as the PC being "fine the next day" as if nothing had happened. He is very much beat up, covered in bruises and cuts, and possibly suffering from sprains or dislocations...

And BLEEDING TO DEATH.

I get the whole "handwave the injuries" business. But the PC is lying there literally dying. Artery slashed open. Bleeding out. Seconds to live. Then the warlord yells at him and he stops dying, gets up and jumps back in the fray. And he's fine from then on.

Now, there are ways to work this so it's sorta believable, mostly involving a "spiritual" definition of hit points, or a big ol' helping of meta-narrative wherein you retroactively decide whether the PC was dying or not based on whether the warlord got to him in time. I used to spend a lot of time on ENWorld propounding the spiritual hit point approach (the meta-narrative solution would absolutely kill immersion for me).

But the more I play 4E, the more trouble I have glossing it over. And the more annoyed I get that WotC makes up mechanics that require such mental contortions to justify - and then can't even be bothered to do the contorting themselves, leaving it up to us to figure out.

(...And as I think about it, my proposed solution earlier in the thread wouldn't actually help with this part. Warlords being able to stop people dying with an inspiring word just doesn't work for me no matter how I slice it.)

If all of the damage came from a power like that, it would be pretty hard to describe convincingly. I think it would be more likely that at least some damage was physical, even if the Vicious Mockery was what pushed the character over the edge; he simply lost the will to keep hanging on at that point, or he realized that his previous injuries were far more serious than he originally thought.

One word: Minions. I have watched a bard kill several minions in rapid succession by yelling insults at them. They had not been touched by any physical attack.

Once again, I could probably contort myself into a mental pretzel until I found a way to make it work. I don't think I should have to do that, though. I should not need a block and tackle to suspend my disbelief.

I don't remember the exact wording of the rule, but you could make it so that the coup de grace only applies during combat. Once outside of the immediacy of combat, a helpless or unconscious character can simply be killed (or have to make a death save or three).

If a character crouches down over an unconscious foe and spends six seconds sawing on that foe's unprotected throat with a dagger, I don't think it's too much to ask that the foe should die most of the time. Even in combat.

 

[keterys]

If a character crouches down over an unconscious foe and spends six seconds sawing on that foe's unprotected throat with a dagger, I don't think it's too much to ask that the foe should freakin' die most of the time. Even in combat.

Hmm, what if it's only a quick jab for one second? Cause a full round is six seconds, and that's not at all implied by a single standard action.

I had been pondering one house rule that was the equivalent of the target dies at the start of your next turn that could be prevented by a heal, forced movement, etc. The catch I was puzzling over was elites and solos - it's too easy to Knockout or Sleep something to make it Helpless.

 

[fuzzlewump]

And BLEEDING TO DEATH.

"Dying: When your hit points drop to 0 or fewer, you fall unconscious and are dying. Any additional damage you take continues to reduce your current hit point total until your character dies." p.295 4E PHB. Don't see anything there about bleeding to death. You are choosing to flavor it so that you are reducing your enjoyment of the game. If it's still a huge problem, disallow the warlord.

Once again, I could probably contort myself into a mental pretzel until I found a way to make it work. I don't think I should have to do that, though. I should not need a block and tackle to suspend my disbelief.

Arcane attack with arcane damage. If they come out with a martial bard, then we can talk.

 

[Hairfoot]

Healing surges are a classic disassociated mechanic (2).

Prior to release, I was quite excited about the bloodied status. I love the abstraction of hitpoints (I'm a Rolemaster refugee), but they get a bit cheesy when there are no ill effects until they hit zero. I hoped bloodied would be a simple death spiral mechanic, but instead it's a "you get even more powerful when you're smashed up" mechanic.

 

[billd91]

The Saga edition healing rules are some of the worst rules for a RPG, because they completely fail to keep the party going. One combat in Saga, and the party needs to hole up for a week to heal, unless they've managed to trick out a medical droid or something.

It is not that bad. But any group without a character competent with Treat Injury is looking for a battering. A few levels in, with a feat invested in surgery, and healing by skill use becomes fairly impressive.