Monte Cook Back to Work

[shadzar]

the sack of CLW is a metaphor for anything that would offer more HPs, and there is NOTHING stopping a DM or players alike, form adding something like a sack of CLW to 4th. nothing stopped them from buying potions of healing in 1nd, 1st, etc from games that allowed/included Ye Olde Magick Shoppe.

So because something existed in previous editions, and thus players used them, nothing stops DMs from homebrewing and causing the same problem in a different system?

Do you even listen to yourself? Sure the DM can homebrew in something that completely breaks the healing surge paradigm.

it isnt just the surges.. it is the concept of healing and HP to begin with is the problem for some people. that is where the 15 minute workday came from. not the wizard being without spells, but the cleric being without healing as the wizard wasnt as forced to have a specific spell list as the cleric was to cast certain spells.

what really do you think healing surges fix? they offer a way to get more HPs without resting part or in whole for the party. the fact those HPs come from ANY character as opposed to just the cleric, really doesnt solve anything as there will ALWAYS be a limit to HP any character has so long as HP are a part of the game.

some people just dont like having a health-bar or life-meter in the game.

take someone who prefers 4th over TSR editions or 3.x because it is more heroic.

one part of that heroic cinematic play, is the lack of in-game downtime for the characters, as being laid up in bed resting isnt heroic. well unless you are on some sort of timed quest that you dont have time to rest (which is a dick DM thing to use other than once in a real world year), then the characters dont really notice the time passing, and what is heroic for them and the world is up for EVERYONE to decide, rather than the players deciding what is heroic.

sadly some players cant see that heroic is anything other than a senzu bean healing everything save for disease right away.

[PoliteNewb]

Nah...the 1E MM didn't have pictures for Wind Walkers, Invisible Stalkers, Aerial Servants, Shadows, and probably other stuff (including most normal animals).

I'm pretty sure there was some sort of picture accompanying the Aerial Servant entry in the MM.

Nope, I'm looking at it (it being the 1E Monster Manual). That page has "Aerial Servant" (with no graphic) and "Ankheg" (with a graphic).

You're probably thinking of the 2E Monstrous Compendium or Monstrous Manual. Which, now that I think of it, is the one where they actually put an empty picture box there for Invisible Stalker (as a joke).

[Ice9]

I think healing surges work ok for what they're trying to do - put a fairly hard limit on daily adventuring while keeping people at near-full capacity for each battle up to that point. They don't incentivize the 1-encounter workday* (because there's almost no way to use them up that fast) but also avoid the 100 encounter workday. Of course, other factors in 4E do favor the 1-encounter day, but if you fixed those, and tightened up the flaws of surges, then you would legitimately get a 4-encounter day without cajoling players into it.

That said, the sudden drop from "perfectly fine" to "not healable" is too abrupt for my tastes. It's a bit lame when you're just outside the door rescue the _____, and you have to stop and rest because a front-line type is out of surges, and there's nothing the rest of the party can do to compensate. The Tension idea mentioned above might be a better incentive, as you can at least try to fight through it without guaranteed death.

*15 minute workday is a stupid term, for several reasons.

[Swordslinger]

@Lago: Your revision to surges definitely seems like a step in the right direction. It's also a bit of a nerf to combat healing, which is probably a good thing overall.

I'm not so sure on your tension mechanic though, because that seems like it would favor ranged characters over melee. The rest looks good though.

[RobbyPants]

You're probably thinking of the 2E Monstrous Compendium or Monstrous Manual. Which, now that I think of it, is the one where they actually put an empty picture box there for Invisible Stalker (as a joke).

Not only did they have a blank box for the Invisible Stalker, in the beginning of the book, they credited two people as the illustrator.

[Ice9]

I'm not so sure on your tension mechanic though, because that seems like it would favor ranged characters over melee. The rest looks good though.

It only benefits ranged characters to the extent that they get hit less - which is admittedly, often the case.
If you had classes that were "supposed" to get hit more, then the equivalent to giving them more daily surges would be to make their tension build slower.

[Seerow]

it isnt just the surges.. it is the concept of healing and HP to begin with is the problem for some people. that is where the 15 minute workday came from. not the wizard being without spells, but the cleric being without healing as the wizard wasnt as forced to have a specific spell list as the cleric was to cast certain spells.

But if healing surges are designed such that they aren't going to run out after one encounter, then you don't get the 15 minute work day, this isn't really too hard a concept.

The original 15 minute workday may have come about because of people needing to stop to recover health, since they only had limited magical healing, and natural healing was slow. In 3.5, it went to the other extreme, and made healing freely available, and instead limitations came based on the Wizards spells, which just gave us a different 15 minute work day where HP was irrelevent completely because hp in an encounter was too high to be likely to drop you with it rather than with a status, and hp over a day was effectively infinite.

Healing surges represent a middle ground found, placing a limit for total hp that is far higher than anyone should ever use inside a short period of time, while leaving actual HP numbers low enough that you can be dropped relatively easily via HP damage. This makes both HP damage and Healing a viable in combat role, and places a natural limit on when PCs will try to rest which is going to be longer than one or two encounters.

The system isn't perfect, but conceptually I think it is good enough to keep and expand upon, rather than trashing completely, and going back to the way things were, which was just as bad or worse. I've already mentioned a few potential modifications to consider: Lower base HP, higher percentage surge values, and VP/WP where surges only heal VP (so WP is a more long term effect and may actually cause a character to have to be laid up for a while, without this effect happening with every time he gets hit)

[shadzar]

*15 minute workday is a stupid term, for several reasons.

A round is approximately one minute long. Ten combat rounds equal a turn (or, put another way, a turn equals 10 minutes of game time).

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

it pretty much means a full combat encounter give or take a few rounds, or two if they are fast and short, or one with a few minutes left of doing other stuff.

however you look at it, 15 minutes is based on the length of a turn.

[shadzar]

it isnt just the surges.. it is the concept of healing and HP to begin with is the problem for some people. that is where the 15 minute workday came from. not the wizard being without spells, but the cleric being without healing as the wizard wasnt as forced to have a specific spell list as the cleric was to cast certain spells.

But if healing surges are designed such that they aren't going to run out after one encounter, then you don't get the 15 minute work day, this isn't really too hard a concept.

but healing surges are a part of a larger mechanic still and not the entire healing system. that is why i say you have to look at surges from the point of HP. sure they gave more HP to start out, but why not just give the HP front-loaded?

because surges add an ungodly amount. the 15 minute workday still exists because the cleric is still limited on ability to heal, right? he doesnt have infinite healing spells. if he did then it might as well be a sack of CLWs. since he doesnt then the extended rest offers full healing form EVERYTHING, so you have to worry less about HP.

it doesnt solve the problem of the amount of HP, just hides it in a some sort of homeopathic remedy.

the problem people have that need the surges, is that HP exist, and at some point they run low/out and you have to stop the action... your cinematic game has gone to commercial while you heal.


with the higher HP and the surges another problem was creted which is the slogfest of combat in 4th...until you half the monster HP or some such to reduce the slogfest down. which you could have done to monsters in the past without adding in the surges.

Bob: i thought my car was leaking oil, but you fixed it without buying any parts?
Fred: yeah i replaced the oil ine with the gasline, so you wont have any more problems with oil leaks.
Bob:

[Seerow]

Huh, I missed Lago's post on the last page.


1) I could see surges working as an encounter based phenomenon but only with the tension mechanic described, or something similar. Switching it to encounter based without it just goes back to unlimited healing for the day, but limited for the encounter.

2) Here you say you don't want it to be class or role dependent, but give examples of it being class dependent. It seems like what you wanted is for surges to not be attribute dependent. I'm fine with separating it from attributes, but you should be able to invest something to get higher surge values and more surges. Like a viable Knight power should be "Use this and increase your surge value by 5 for the rest of the encounter" or something along those lines.

3) Personally, rather than lowering defense and raising offense, I'd either straight up just lower defense, no offense bonus in return, or rather than lowering defenses, lowers the value of future surges. I just guess I don't see the point of spending a healing surge and getting more attack.




Also, as an alternative to encounter based limitations, I did like the earlier suggestion made of regaining healing surges after a milestone. Or if you don't like 4e milestones, then after every encounter. But say you start with 8 healing surges for the day, but every milestone you get say 2 more, and you may be able to get an extra 1-2 per milestone via class features. Or every encounter you get 1-2. This gives you the ability to keep going, but chances are you're using more than you're gaining, so you will eventually run dry, but it takes longer, and if you do good enough at mitigating incoming damage, you could last a very long time. Thus keeping in play that minigame of wanting damage to go to the defender because he can heal more efficiently than anyone else.

[Seerow]

but healing surges are a part of a larger mechanic still and not the entire healing system. that is why i say you have to look at surges from the point of HP. sure they gave more HP to start out, but why not just give the HP front-loaded?

I explained that. If you give all that HP up front, then players never actually drop. With healing surges and lower HP, you can drop a player, but the player can get back up afterwards and be all right. (That said I don't like the 4e rule where any healing at all first restores you to 1hp then heals you. I think if a player actually drops, then he should stay down for the encounter. Another example of good idea, bad execution).

[shadzar]

but healing surges are a part of a larger mechanic still and not the entire healing system. that is why i say you have to look at surges from the point of HP. sure they gave more HP to start out, but why not just give the HP front-loaded?

I explained that. If you give all that HP up front, then players never actually drop.

by drop i assume you mean die. but since loss of HP CAN result in death you are left with the same problem no mater using surges, frontloaded hoards of HP, etc...that at some point they WILL drop or run VERY low on HP, too low to carry on.

at that time you have reached the 15-minute workday.

or if they enver drop and kep going (like what can happen with surges), then you have the SoD removed for some where it just doesnt feel right sicne there is never a risk for playing. the rewards end up hollow...

it is about picking the lesser of the two evils, and when picking HP as the lesser; you will always have the same problem no matter what healing mechanic is used.

so again, surges really offer nothing except prolonging the appearance of the 15-minute workday. now it is like a 2-hour workday or something.

as long as the play revolves around HP, and HP offer a possibility of threat to lose them, you will have a limited workday.

[Winnah]

Dead is dead, but I can think of many examples where it would be thematic for a dropped character to get back up again. Most of the times I have been knocked out or incapacitated, it has only been for a few seconds at a time, and I'm not especially tough or fit.

Making it a feat for DMF's would be an unnecessary Tax.

[Seerow]

by drop i assume you mean die. but since loss of HP CAN result in death you are left with the same problem no mater using surges, frontloaded hoards of HP, etc...that at some point they WILL drop or run VERY low on HP, too low to carry on.

You make a huge assumption, then carry on with that assumption to try to say you're right. Drop means just that, drop. They could be dead, could be just unconcious. In fact, given in the post you quoted specifically mentioned shortly after where you cut off that they could get back up again afterwards, it was heavily implied I meant unconcious.


With the huge front loaded HP like you specify, it would be nearly impossible to drop a PC on any given encounter. In a game where you have less HP at any given time, but the same HP over the course of a day, it means you can be taken out of a fight, but not be out of the game going forward.


Also with the front loaded HP you seem to be saying is the exact same thing, the cleric wouldn't be able to heal. Because we're talking about a system where the healing is that extra HP. So now, healing is no longer an option, and players take forever to drop with HP damage, so HP damage is never really a real threat until after several encounters. This is nothing at all like healing surges, so why you keep trying to say they are functionally identical I don't know. Probably the same reason I keep trying to talk any sort of sense into you despite having lurked/posted here for some time now.

[fectin]

So, if you made a feat, "Greater Destiny" (or whatever), with the effect that any time this character is not incapacitated and would die, he instead becomes incapacitated, then gave that feat to every PC at first level like it was a door prize, does that solve the problem?

Obviously there's a few edge cases to file off; assume that it was worded so the RAW matched the RAI.

[Seerow]

So, if you made a feat, "Greater Destiny" (or whatever), with the effect that any time this character is not incapacitated and would die, he instead becomes incapacitated, then gave that feat to every PC at first level like it was a door prize, does that solve the problem?

Obviously there's a few edge cases to file off; assume that it was worded so the RAW matched the RAI.

Not sure if you're talking to me or Shadazar at this point, but I'd basically not make it a feat at all. Just make it when you drop to 0 hit points or below, you fall unconscious rather than start dying, if you have any healing surges left. While unconscious anybody can coup de gras you, but assuming nobody does, you live and wake up after 5 minutes, at which point you can heal normally. If you drop without any healing surges remaining, you die.


(Alternatively with VP/WP you can make whether you're unconcious or dead based on if you have any WP left)

[shadzar]

Dead is dead

subdual damage was always silly, because you become prone, which means dead if chosen by the non-prone.

yes it bypasses the HP for the most part in concept, granted there is no rule saying it MUST do damage as even when introduced it said do half damage, no wait you can do quarter damage....

but death is still a function of the HP system...therefore resource management, including HP cant be removed, because life and death is a MAJOR resource; even if you remove HP.

it really all depends on what you are looking for out of the game, but the game cant be made to provide a life/death system for everyone.

also unlike many video games where these concepts such as surges come from, and the more cinematic approach, they have made up time or really NO time, or you play them only for parts of the day.

MGS you were doing missions and between them you rested while traveling to the next one, but that is overlooked in the more cinematic and heroic approach. MGS was both heroic and cinematic in play and still allowed for resting to recover "life".

with most fiction of that sort along the lines of cinematic, it isnt all contained within the space of a single day where there is no time for rest, but D&D as a game continues throughout the entire day, and the next, and the next, and the next; as long as you continue to play the same characters and/or in the same world.

[shadzar]

So, if you made a feat, "Greater Destiny" (or whatever), with the effect that any time this character is not incapacitated and would die, he instead becomes incapacitated, then gave that feat to every PC at first level like it was a door prize, does that solve the problem?

Obviously there's a few edge cases to file off; assume that it was worded so the RAW matched the RAI.

Not sure if you're talking to me or Shadzar

had to be you, because feats are an abomination that shouldnt exist as far as i am concerned. they are as dumb as skills.

[fectin]

But then your last healing surge is a tax, and you resign yourself to only ever spending n-1 surges. That is a great mechanic if a surge is something which it is worth risking death to use, but as I understand it, that is not the case.

It could just be a rule, but that's a significant flavor change, which forces players to actually think about whether they should kill their opponents. That makes people feel bad either way, so probably isn't great for all games.

Besides, having it as a feat means that you can give it to villains, and then they can also survive half-mile falls off the Cliffs of Inanity.

[Seerow]

But then your last healing surge is a tax, and you resign yourself to only ever spending n-1 surges. That is a great mechanic if a surge is something which it is worth risking death to use, but as I understand it, that is not the case.

It could just be a rule, but that's a significant flavor change, which forces players to actually think about whether they should kill their opponents. That makes people feel bad either way, so probably isn't great for all games.

Besides, having it as a feat means that you can give it to villains, and then they can also survive half-mile falls off the Cliffs of Inanity.

1) A surge is used to prevent death. If you sit at 1 healing surge remaining, and get knocked unconcious, and 5 minutes later you either stay unconcious or you have to spend that last healing surge to get your health back and get back up. Yes, now you're risking death in your next encounter, but you'd also be walking into that encounter at half hp or less, which is a bad idea anyway. When you get to that point, you want to stop and rest for the day.

2) Enemies typically don't have healing surges, and enemies who go down are typically just assumed dead unless the player declares otherwise. Of course that isn't to say you couldn't give an important NPC some healing surges.

[K]

Dead is dead, but I can think of many examples where it would be thematic for a dropped character to get back up again. Most of the times I have been knocked out or incapacitated, it has only been for a few seconds at a time, and I'm not especially tough or fit.

Making it a feat for DMF's would be an unnecessary Tax.

If you get hit and you're out for more than a few seconds, you should go get an MRI. It basically takes a serious brain injury to "knock out" people.

[Winnah]

I tell people I stopped participating in amateur competitions because I received too many flash knock-outs. Fact of the matter is, I just was not very skilled in comparison to the people I was facing off against.

Serious incapactitation in a game like D&D should be a serious event. I would support a system where 'death' is instead replaced by some kind of negative status stacking that can only be removed by long term care or magic. Status effects can range from ugly scars to more severe trauma such as limb loss. Something magic can easily remedy.

Most takedowns should not be that serious though. I imagine it would be very easy to rattle someone in full metal armour. Actually killing them would be much more difficult. The character is groggy, bleeding a little, but can return to the fight or move to the next scene suffering only cosmetic damage.

Probably not a good system for a grittier game, but if you're stacking the RNG so that the PC's always win, then you may as well include that extra layer of protection.

[Lago PARANOIA]

2) Here you say you don't want it to be class or role dependent, but give examples of it being class dependent. It seems like what you wanted is for surges to not be attribute dependent. I'm fine with separating it from attributes, but you should be able to invest something to get higher surge values and more surges. Like a viable Knight power should be "Use this and increase your surge value by 5 for the rest of the encounter" or something along those lines.

I meant to say that I don't want healing surges to be class/role independent. Seriously, those are the only things that should cause healing surges to diverge between characters. Otherwise you end up with that feat fax crap like in 4E D&D.

3) Personally, rather than lowering defense and raising offense, I'd either straight up just lower defense, no offense bonus in return, or rather than lowering defenses, lowers the value of future surges. I just guess I don't see the point of spending a healing surge and getting more attack.

Because if you don't give players a reason to continue the workday they'll bail out to be more overall effective. On the other hand people (for some reason) like heroes to show the effects of attrition, hence why I recommended the tradeoff. You're still showing the effects of repeated battle but you don't really get anything out of bailing out so you may as well continue. I recommend putting a hard cap at '3 or 4' encounters because any adventure that has that many challenging discrete encounters is either a plotless dungeon hack or stupid.

[hogarth]

Nah...the 1E MM didn't have pictures for Wind Walkers, Invisible Stalkers, Aerial Servants, Shadows, and probably other stuff (including most normal animals).

I'm pretty sure there was some sort of picture accompanying the Aerial Servant entry in the MM.

Nope, I'm looking at it (it being the 1E Monster Manual). That page has "Aerial Servant" (with no graphic) and "Ankheg" (with a graphic).

Hm, I must be making it up unless there's a picture in the PHB under Aerial Servant.

You're probably thinking of the 2E Monstrous Compendium or Monstrous Manual. Which, now that I think of it, is the one where they actually put an empty picture box there for Invisible Stalker (as a joke).

I never had any 2E monster books.

[shadzar]

not every monster had a pic in 1st edition, but almost every PAGE had one....

2nd and the MCs started a pic per monster, and that continued to the MM, when they just copied them over to it.