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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
What do you like about 4e healing?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5799095" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>There are two things I like that I think are missing from your options.</p><p></p><p>I like the fact that the mechanics are based coherently around a "hp as morale/resolve" approach, rather than a "hp as meat" approach. This makes room in the game for things like fear attacks causing psychic damage, which I like a lot, and also for non-magical "healing", which I also like a lot. It reinforces, for me at least, the "gonzo rather than gritty" feel of D&D combat.</p><p></p><p>The other thing I like is that 4e healing separates, to a significant extent, hit point reserves from combat endurance. This is different from other versions of D&D. What I mean is that a PC can have very deep hit point reserves (lots of surges, for example, from class, CON, feats etc) but this on its own is not equivalent to combat endurance, because the PC needs to be able to access those surges in the course of resolving combat (via second wind, own powers, others' powers, etc). This creates an extra dynamic in combat which adds to both mechanical depth (PC build decisions), tactical death (the party's management of the action economy and individual players' decisions about how to deploy their PC's powers), and dramatic depth (as PCs who are on the ropes dig deep and find the capacity to keep on going).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5799095, member: 42582"] There are two things I like that I think are missing from your options. I like the fact that the mechanics are based coherently around a "hp as morale/resolve" approach, rather than a "hp as meat" approach. This makes room in the game for things like fear attacks causing psychic damage, which I like a lot, and also for non-magical "healing", which I also like a lot. It reinforces, for me at least, the "gonzo rather than gritty" feel of D&D combat. The other thing I like is that 4e healing separates, to a significant extent, hit point reserves from combat endurance. This is different from other versions of D&D. What I mean is that a PC can have very deep hit point reserves (lots of surges, for example, from class, CON, feats etc) but this on its own is not equivalent to combat endurance, because the PC needs to be able to access those surges in the course of resolving combat (via second wind, own powers, others' powers, etc). This creates an extra dynamic in combat which adds to both mechanical depth (PC build decisions), tactical death (the party's management of the action economy and individual players' decisions about how to deploy their PC's powers), and dramatic depth (as PCs who are on the ropes dig deep and find the capacity to keep on going). [/QUOTE]
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What do you like about 4e healing?
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