D&D 4E What do you like about 4e healing?

[KarinsDad]

Henry - if you did that, wouldn't you have to reduce monster damage considerably as well? I mean, I look at the last combat that I ran, and the only reason that the ranger survived was because of several surges during combat. If PC's were limited to only one per combat, wouldn't that make combat very, very lethal to the PC's?

It might make PCs go unconscious, but it'd probably only be really lethal if the DM goes out of his way to Coup De Grace.


Interestingly enough, more PCs tend to go unconscious at lower levels than at higher levels for two reasons:

1) PCs are taken out in 2 to 3 successful hits at low level, but in 4 to 6 at high. (16+4x)/(8+x) through (26+7x)/(8+x) as x (level) gets higher, the numerator grows faster than the denominator.

2) PCs have more (and stronger) options as they get higher level. The monsters gain more options a lot slower than PCs do at higher levels.

A PC can get unlucky at low level and be knocked out even with an N level encounter. At higher levels, it usually takes a stronger encounter to knock a PC out.


So, Henry's rule change wouldn't necessitate decreasing monster damage, one just has to realize that when PCs do go unconscious, that PC action economy suffers a bit if that PC has already been healed. Plus, another PC will need to use the Heal skill to stabilize an unconscious PC that has already been healed, that PC cannot be healed from range with a spell (or at least a spell that uses a healing surge, Cure Light Wounds will come back in vogue).


One other thing that Henry's rule would do is to make players less reckless with their PCs. If your PC has already used up his healing surge for this encounter, it doesn't matter if he is the Defender or the Controller or whomever. S/he'd better hunker down a bit and let other PCs take the risks, or s/he might just end up unconscious. It adds an interesting tactical element to the game when there isn't that larger safety net behind each PC.


I once ran a Leader who wouldn't heal anyone unless they went unconscious. Amazingly enough, it forced the other players to use better tactics and there were a lot of encounters where my PC didn't use up all of his heals.

 

[keterys]

I don't see why (in-combat) healing cannot be both awesome and balanced in terms of how required it is. Healing spells basically cancel actions already taken by enemies, so can't they be evaluated like any other action removal abilities? Having a Wizard who stuns a monster or a Cleric who heals the damage it did could probably be balanced into viable alternatives.

Thats not a bad way to look at it, I guess... but spending your action to negate another's action sounds pretty not awesome to me. I guess it eventually works out but I'd much rather be proactive.

I'd like to see most healing happen post combat. No need to roll d8's, a percentage is fine. If in-combat healing is rare, it is more easily seen as a cool ability.

Sounds great.

I'm not sure if you only meant wands of vigor, or also the spell itself. Vigor is basically a ritual of healing already, so it could be easily fluffed as such. Wands are an issue with the magic item system in general, and I wouldn't want to see them common, much less required.

I meant wands of... it was my solution to speed up post combat healing in 3e. Heal 11 per charge, tell me how many charges.

Definitely on the bleh end of the pre-4e spectrum of healing.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'd actually prefer to see more damage mitigation than damage healing.


Have the Warlord hand out group temp hit points as he rallies the rest of the team.

Have the Wizard put his "Mage Armor" spell on the Fighter instead of on himself, giving the Fighter DR 5 instead of the DR 10 that the spell might give the Wizard (I realize that 4E doesn't have this spell anymore and it gave AC, not DR, but 5E could be this way).


Not that damage mitigation should occur too frequently, but it does allow for less in combat healing for the same overall result.

 

[Hassassin]

Thats not a bad way to look at it, I guess... but spending your action to negate another's action sounds pretty not awesome to me. I guess it eventually works out but I'd much rather be proactive.

I meant simply from a balance point of view: a cleric who stuns enemies and one who has in-combat healing should mechanically be balanceable in a party with no other healers. Out-of-combat healing is the reason at least 3e "requires" either a dedicated character or a stack of magic items.

("Requires" in the sense that a party without a healer can survive fewer threats than assumed from a party of that level. No reason it wouldn't work just fine in other ways.)

Whether it feels proactive or not depends entirely on the particulars of clerics' healing abilities.