Healing surges and other such fail.

[Psychic Robot]

Re-post from WotC forums ("[X]e HP" refers to the system as a whole):

2. 4e HP solves the annoying problem of "we have to have a cleric!"

This was an extreme nuisance in D&D. First of all, I don't think that any party should have to have a specific class. That is stupid, though having a wider selection of tools to approach a problem isn't a bad thing. 4e allows one to have a party of all magic-less characters, which makes me happy.

Secondly, it's kind of...moronic, shall we say, that divine magic is the only way that characters could be healed magically. Unless you had a bard. Because bards have special arcane magic that allows them to use spells normally reserved for divine magic.

EDIT: As one poster notes, clerics technically aren't REQUIRED for D&D play. Instead of a cleric, you have the following options in 3e (at low levels):

1. A bard who heals 2 HP per day with his awesome cantrips.
2. A druid who wastes his spells memorizing CLW.
3. External research (DM fiat territory).
4. Extra Spell (DM fiat again, and a waste of a feat).
5. A week of recuperation after every fight.
6. An NPC healer.
7. Wands of CLW.

My personal solution would be as follows:

1. Expand the Heal skill.
2. Give healing options to other classes (bards having a healing song, rangers able to make poultices and stuff, etc.).
3. Make magical healing accessible to arcane casters.

However, 4e solves the problem in an alternative manner, one that I don't particularly like, but a simpler manner nonetheless.

3. 4e HP solves the low-level problem of damage input not matching damage output.

Look at a first-level orc in 3e. It has 5 HP. It also has the ability to do up to 12 points of damage on a normal hit, and it could do up to 24 points of damage on a crit (which it would threaten 15% of the time). That little CR 1/2 orc, the one that could barely take a single dagger cut? He can cleave the party fighter in two with ease, and the party wizard is going to make any Jodie Foster character look healthy once he's done fighting the orc.

4a. 4e HP solves the problem of one fighter getting 10 HP a level and another fighter getting 2 HP a level.

I'm pretty sure it's happened to everyone. The party wizard gets a 4 when rolling for HP while the party fighter gets a 1. Sucks, doesn't it? And while this should even out over the long run, you're still screwed at low levels because monsters will beat the fighter's face in while laughing at him for having 18 HP while the party wizard has 12.

4b. 4e HP solves the problem where the DM has to guess-and-check to see if an encounter is appropriate for the HP of his players.

4e HP narrows the gap between what HP is, what it ought to be, and what it could be. In 3e, your level 10 fighter is going to have something like 10 + 9d10 + (10 x your Con modifier) HP. Giving the level 10 fighter a Con modifier of +4, that means that he's going to have between 59 and 140 HP. Pretty big difference there. Again, while that should average out, it doesn't mean that it's going to. Give the fighter another five levels and he might roll nines or tens for his HP, bringing him back up to par, but that doesn't mean that he's not going to roll poorly, widening the gap between what he ought to have and what he does have.

5a. 4e HP does not solve the problem of "infinite magical healing."

EDIT: Personally, I do not think that "infinite magical healing" is a problem. However, I have seen many people gripe about it, so I'm including it in this post.

I hate CLW wands. I hate them so very, very much. 50d8+50 healing for 750 gp is annoying. Very, very annoying. Not only does it trivialize HP recovery overall [EDIT: not that high-level characters have much to worry about in this regard, mind you], it creates scenarios where the party stands there for five minutes while Billy the Cleric pokes everyone with his hand.

However, 4e HP doesn't solve this problem because everyone gets full HP at the end of the day anyhow. Give everyone a good night's sleep and they wake up at full power the next day. There's no real difference between the ends, only the means.

5b. 4e HP does solve the problem of, "Crap, we're wounded, so we'd better rest for three days in the middle of this swamp to get our HP back.

EDIT: Since people seem to have difficulty understanding what I'm saying, allow me to clarify: there are problems in the 3e system of HP recovery, and there are problems in the 4e system of HP recovery. As an individual who doesn't treat editions like most people treat political parties--where 3e craps sunshine and rainbows and 4e puts orphans into blenders--I am perfectly capable of critiquing the systems in an unbiased fashion. While I am against 4e overall, that does not automatically mean that I think that 3e is perfect. In fact, I think that 3e is pretty much broken outside of a huge rules overhaul.

Since you get all your HP back in one rest period, you don't have to rest for a day, have the cleric spend all his spell slots casting CLW, rest for another day, and repeat until everyone has full HP. (This is a good thing.)

6. 4e HP makes it impossible for adventurers to take any real wounds without dying.

Because of the method of HP recovery, there is no possible way that any adventurer can actually become severely injured in 4e. (Seriously, we have hundreds of pages on these forums arguing about it. The pro-4e response is pretty unanimous: no real wounds.) I think that's lame. You might disagree, but I think it's stupid that the most damaging wounds you have are going to be nicks and scratches.

EDIT: "Severely injured" in terms of flavor, not mechanics.

It has been repeatedly suggested by the pro-4e crowd that you can't determine the extent of an injury until after you make your death rolls or whatever they're called. So basically, you get knocked out, and you roll until you die or recover. If you recover, you actually only took a graze to the head that knocked you over; if you die, the troll's hammer shattered your skull, sending grey matter everywhere. (That would be a slight exaggeration, for those of you who are going to take that example literally.)

3e doesn't model this very well, either, but there's some realism in that a fighter with 200 HP getting dropped to -5 and recovering on his own is going to take many days of recuperation without magical healing.

So here's what I'm thinking:

4e HP is fail. Characters have Hollywood Healing. Healing surges make me roll my eyes. However, my question is: is the lameness of Hollywood Healing worth the "less downtime" aspect of healing (at low levels) in 3e? Or would it be better to go with the "more ways of healing up" for the sake of verisimilitude?

[Talisman]

That was...surprisingly thoughtful. Thank you.

I admire the intent behind healing surges, but overall I am unimpressed by 4e's healing/hp mechanics. 3.x is obviously borked, where you have to have a divine caster, a high-level bard, or a high-UMD character with a wand to adventure.

I am in favor of the "more ways to heal" option: expanding the Heal skill, et al. I also like the idea of a second wind mechanic, whereby a character can give themself a significant amount of mid-combat healing...say, as a swift action regain [d6/level? Con bonus x level?) in lost hp, but only 1/combat and no more than [1 + Con mod] per day.

Restricting healing to the spellcasters - even if we allow arcanists to heal, which we totally should - doesn't help the warrior/caster disparity. I'm okay with spells being quicker and easier, as they're a limited resource - but noncasters need a way to heal quickly.

[virgil]

Then here's a question; how long should a character have to wait if they're grievously injured? How many nicks does it take to become grievously injured? Should major wounds take multiple stages of healing?

[Caedrus]

I've never had a "we have to have a cleric!" problem in 3e. Had plenty of parties that worked just swell without one. Any shmo who could use wands would do.

[RandomCasualty2]

I like the 4E idea of a short rest. And in fact, I would make the short rest one of the only ways to really heal. Basically the concept is that once you rest, all your short term buffs go away and you heal to full. Now you can basically get rid of all the bullshit healing surges and stuff and just say that short rest = full hp. I'd also say that people at 0 or less hp shouldn't be able to heal this way. They need to rest longer once they're down that low, or get healing magic.

What healing magic should do is just bring back people from dying status to alive status.

But really I don't want to track most crap for minor HP trivialities whether that's 4E healing surges or 3E's charges of the CLW wand.

I mean 3E was basically Hollywood healing, only you had to hold a glow stick to someone for several rounds (and roll a bunch of pointless bullshit) to do it.

[Tequila Sunrise]

I think HP as a whole where always implemented in a much too Hollywoodesque fashion, no matter the edition. I do think your three solutions are great though, particularly giving heal spells to arcane casters. Because there's no good reason for healing to be restricted to priests, especially in a fantasy world full of magicians.

TS

[Elennsar]

I can think of reasons, but all of them would boil down to healing magic being something special and rare.

[ZER0]

That's why I wrote up the White Mage class. Duh.

[Cynic]

I've never had a "we have to have a cleric!" problem in 3e. Had plenty of parties that worked just swell without one. Any shmo who could use wands would do.

Well, this goes back to talisman's point.

You might not need a healbot but you still expend resources in healing. This is the D&D archetype though. Since 2nd ed, you have healers in the party. Well before that but it seems to have become more prevalent.f

the problem is most fiction that involves groups of heroes or bands of travelers often don't have a healbot. They either die, or are amazingly resilient.

D&D brings up the healbot role as necessary. Sure, it doesn't need to be a cleric but resources are still spent.

[Elennsar]

The problem is that they usually press on despite being injuried, unless they're so incapaciated that it takes them a period of time greater than an afternoon to heal.

D&D, unfortunately, fails to make "pressing on despite penalties" a good idea, because you know that the instant you get a -1 or lose a +1 you're risking being unable to be "level appropriate", which never seems to even occur to Drizzt or Aragorn or Conan or Kane or a lot of other adventuring heroes.

Naturally, we can just add this to the list of ways D&D fails to do justice to them, but this in particular is a failure for level based gaming...less than top form is too close to being less than "sufficiently able".

[virgil]

Aside from walking Cure spells as seen in D&D, all of the party healers that I've seen have also been the master of debuff removal and defensive magic (most of the abjuration school). While this is usually for D&D analogs in other mediums, such as various console RPGs, this is a form of 'cleric' that actually has use.

I've seen other healers in fiction, but they've been the person the protagonist wakes up seeing after a battle knocks them into unconsciousness, usually doing little else.

The best way I can see Hollywood Healing overcome is if you have damage be dealt in grades, so that healing one wound is easier than healing another.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well, realistic healing doesn't really belong in any Roleplaying Game which is not either A> set up to allow players to swap characters in and out* session to session nor B> intended to be in the genre of "ER" or "House". Nobody wants to play in a game about chances of infection from small scratches and being sidelined for months with one broken bone.

*fantasy football players, I'm looking at you. especially those of you with Tom Brady at the start of this season.

So with realism out, the question becomes would you rather simulate cinema healing (where it's only a flesh wound and one bandage heals anything by the next scene) or videogame healing (where you pop a medpack or two and you're fine) ?



***********************************


Surprised nobody has mentioned how 4e has ditched most of the legacy "wound" mechanics that were carried over from Gygaxian days right into 3.5.

Everything in 4e that is not damage, death, disease, petrification (or a couple rare charm effects) goes away either once you save and/or after a short rest. No more Cursed, Geased, Insanity-ed, Cursed Diseases, Dominated, Imprisoned, Binding-ed, Age-ed, swords of wounding, Vile Damage, and all the rest of that crap that "requires a cleric of higher level than you are when you fight the monster that causes this" is out the window.

I think this is a good thing myself, but it does limit a DM's options for attrition and resource depletion.

[Elennsar]

How about "as close to realism as we can represent?" instead of "as far from"?

Making injuries irrelevant makes a lot of heroic stuff about facing danger meaningless because unless it kills you outright, there is no consequence to being hurt. So much for there being anything special about being brave enough to grab the flag when it falls and so on.

I don't t think being sidelined for months is very fun, but having no room between "death" and "essentially fine" because everything heals up so quickly no conditions linger is unfun as well. You never have the sense of pressing on despite injury or fatigue or disease or anything that's a problem...in fact, in any sense that you can tell, your character never suffers any of those things. Ever.

Fine if you're playing Superbeings, but not so much so if you want to play Kane and Conan, or worse, anything even further than they are from the Heroes of Legend realm.

[Kazastankas]

I don't like the concept of healing surges that much, but it does highly simplify that particular question in 4e - and the intent of 4e, in most cases, is indeed to simplify these things while still allowing flexibility.

Looking at it from a plausibility view, I personally would have fixed it a bit by expanding the Heal skill to include Healing Kits (a la NWN). Unfortunately, skills are really easy to take to ridiculous levels, so instead of having different qualities apply a higher bonus, I'd instead have them cap at different maximum HP recovery per period of time (perhaps make an exception for short rests). Since healing kits are usually mundane in nature, they wouldn't be as ridiculous as stocking up on healing potions (cost-wise) or wands (which require UMD or a divine class). It would still mean, though, that dead characters have to go back to get raised, and that there would be more possibilities of downtime as opposed to not having a divine caster at all.

I'm in favor of giving short rest more power as far as healing goes - if not for the mechanics advantage of it alone in gameplay experience. To be honest, in the 3.x system it already is silly enough to think that as a 'level 3 PC' you can be stabbed in the gut 3 times as often as a 'level 1 PC' - why make is so that they also have to rest three times as long? Why not just scale such healing speeds to maxHP or hitdice instead?

[Cynic]

How about "as close to realism as we can represent?" instead of "as far from"?

It's not as close to or as far away from.

This has to be a question of what genre you are playing in.

What's the term that was everyone's favorite $5 rpg word for a while. It used to get thrown around like glitter by 14-year-old girls during their slumber parties*? Verisimilitude.

What's the genre of the game being played?

CoC -- you don't have healbots or hollywood healing.

D&D/champions/m&m - Hollywood healing is something that I can see existing but distinction of definition and implementation has to be made on a system-by-system basis

Obviously healbots already exist in D&D and other systems but is it a resource waste?

Healbots by my definition aren't just clerics but also high-level bards, archivists, UMD-users whatever. Is healing so damnably important to the system that it justifies the spending of resources on it. Sure a curator/white mage/healer class would have to do better than hollywood healing if both are present together but my question is if this healbot is necessary?

*The poster of this message has no idea what goes on during slumber parties or what 14-year-old girls do.

[Psychic Robot]

Josh: That's my dilemma. 3e's main "anti-fun" from healing was, for me, the whole, "Okay, we took some stat damage. We're going to rest for eight hours, have Bill the Cleric pray and prepare some lesser restoration spells, cast them, hope he rolls well, and then we're going to get going again."

On the other side, the entire notion of "derp derp that ogre can never actually hit you because our system would fall apart otherwise" makes me want to throw my cat at someone.

[Elennsar]

I'd say if you're using Hollywood healing you shouldn't have healbots. Maybe healing eats up resources, but it would be gold, which you never have enough of anyway (though curiously that's more of a reason to adventure than to stay away from it).

As for being realistic, I'm just against it being treated as antifun and impossible to do with people being heroic because people refuse to take actual risks with their characters.

Other than that, give me verismilitude. If you are writing rules for Star Wars, you need to have the potential for injuries that cause interesting consequences (losing hands), but not so much "battered and bleeding" because that doesn't seem to slow people down (partially due to bacta, admitedly, so you might want to figure out how much is natural healing).

[ckafrica]

I like the 7sea way of a flesh wound pool that automatically resets between encounters and when you've taken enough to get a serious wound.

[Cynic]

verisimilitude is not realism though. It's similar but it's not realism.

[Elennsar]

I believe that one can be fairly realistic about injury while still modeling heroism. However, most of the time, one is not trying, so as stated give me verisimilitude...something believable where I can imagine that it could be happening like this, even if it is not believable that "what we know of the our universe" would support it.

Star Wars, as stated, doesn't seem to have "battered and bloodied" as a state, so heroes don't have to worry about that as a condition. A fair amount of that might be artifical healing, but it might also be that heroes never recieve the injuries that would leave them in that state (severe injuries either being less bad than they looked or severe enough to require treatment, but without the in between step).

If heroes do get "hurt", that ought to be serious enough that it is at least short term worrisome. Obvious plot shields hurt suspension of disbelief.

And if it is worrisome, it should not be too easy (or hard) to get rid of it.

[Username17]

I would like people to have wounds that they carry for the entire adventure in addition to wounds that vanish between scenes. If we're going for Hollywood healing, we should do Hollywood healing. That means that a bullet wound becomes much less debilitating by the time it gets to the next action scene, but it's still there in the next combat.

Characters should end adventures like a Transporter movie: limping along as a connect-the-dots of cuts and bruises.

-Username17

[Caedrus]

I would like people to have wounds that they carry for the entire adventure in addition to wounds that vanish between scenes. If we're going for Hollywood healing, we should do Hollywood healing. That means that a bullet wound becomes much less debilitating by the time it gets to the next action scene, but it's still there in the next combat.

Characters should end adventures like a Transporter movie: limping along as a connect-the-dots of cuts and bruises.

-Username17

I am much of the same mind in this regard. You have lasting damage that's more difficult to heal, and a main reserve of vitality that just comes back whenever you get a moment's reprieve of the sort that would trigger Hollywood Healing. It just comes back. No spending time rolling dice out of combat or any of that time-wasting. If you're going to do hollywood healing, and indeed that seems rather appropriate for the "heroic fantasy" that D&D is supposed to embody, that seems like a good way to go.

It also makes genuine healing more special, rather than something mundane and constantly necessary. If someone can make the bullet wound go away, that's something miraculous, as opposed to something that just always happens, straight from level 1.

[RandomCasualty2]

It also makes genuine healing more special, rather than something mundane and constantly necessary. If someone can make the bullet wound go away, that's something miraculous, as opposed to something that just always happens, straight from level 1.

Yeah, I hate the idea that a level 1 cleric can heal any amount of damage with CLW, no matter how mortal the wound.

[Caedrus]

It also makes genuine healing more special, rather than something mundane and constantly necessary. If someone can make the bullet wound go away, that's something miraculous, as opposed to something that just always happens, straight from level 1.

Yeah, I hate the idea that a level 1 cleric can heal any amount of damage with CLW, no matter how mortal the wound.

Not only that, but I also dislike how higher level people are magically resistant to healing, so you need *moar powah* to heal the papercuts of higher level folks. Either that or you just completely abandon the idea of hp as an abstraction.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Not only that, but I also dislike how higher level people are magically resistant to healing, so you need *moar powah* to heal the papercuts of higher level folks. Either that or you just completely abandon the idea of hp as an abstraction.

There's a game called World Tree which does that. If you have a lot of hit points, then you really are capable of taking several battle-axe blows more than another guy before going down for the count.

One of the short fictions in the book is about the disturbingly prolonged and thorough execution of a much-experienced brigand.