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Mar 10, 2012 -- 5:14PM, journeyman777 wrote:

Doctor, you seem to be on the very opposite end of the spectrum from me. I find healing surges very unrealistic. I find a full 8 hours of sleep for recovery very much so. I'm similarly willing to sacrifice verisimilitude for fun in the case of simulating physical fatigue, I'm just rather surprised that you don't mentally file surges under that same label.

I believe I've mentioned before that I recognize many fantasy works that use the "healing is draining on the recipient" theme, but those same works generally leave the recipient an invalid for hours or days following said healing. It isn't a model very applicable to combat healing. Many others have the healer himself take the damage or tire out, which I'm quite willing to accept since it still keeps his function dependant on his own limits rather than someone else's. D&D on the other hand, has always used healing as an effect essentially unlimited because the source of the power for healing (gods, nature, the soul, ect) was so powerful as to make limits on anything besides "per use" meaningless. I don't see any compelling reason to change this and as far as fluff/flavor go even 4e didn't try. Surges exist entirely outside the given flavor and without even an attempt at explanation.

I've sounded off on other's suggestions and made a few of my own on what might do the job better than surges or at least serve as an acceptable compromise or modular solution. Are you completely set on surges themselves or are you open to other ways to work healing and recovery on the per day/per encounter basis?

Yeah, I'm really not that concerned about the whole "what is the flavor of surges" thing. Surges are surges. It is pretty obvious what they represent. Maybe I'm just brought up on RPGs in a day and age when nobody expected much to be explained and felt lucky if the mechanics of any given RPG actually worked (most didn't, or at least we too badly explained to be sure what the mechanics were exactly). Gygax was kind enough to give an explanation for hit points, but frankly it wasn't something that was much pondered on back in the day.

Likewise all this hairsplitting about the precise technical definitions of where the magical energy to X, Y, or Z came from. Jeeze, its magic, or super heroic beyond human chutzpah, or whatever. I play RPGs to play them, not analyze the heck out of everything.

Mar 10, 2012 -- 1:50PM, ReaperTatt wrote:

Mar 10, 2012 -- 1:43PM, powerroleplayer wrote:

..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />But how special is that healing, really, when there are all sorts of ways for non-leaders to get encounter healing without spending a standard action?  Items, skill powers, attacks that heal when you hit (or even when you miss)...  I played a game where I did 300 points of damage to the fighter in a handful of rounds.  He received no healing from the leader.  He spent no standard actions to heal.  At the end of this period?  He was at full health.  How are you suppose to have a challenging encounter in under 4 hours if you have to kill everyone 4 times before they start actually taking damage?

Yes, I have seen this happen in games I DM and games I have played in. I can attest to the frustration that is felt with a system becoming so mechanical it supercedes roleplay.

Seems VERY corner-case to me at best.

Here's the thing, you CAN build a party with ridiculous amounts of healing if you want. The problem is healing is really a bit of a passive defense. It reduces the damage you take, but at the expense of not really DOING much because you're burning all sorts of your choices to make them into heals. You can stand there and take all kinds of punishment, but you don't really end up dishing out squat. Its a trade-off.

The interesting thing is there really is very much of a sweet-spot there with 4e. Too little healing and things get swingier because its hard for the PCs to access their surge pool during a fight. OTOH they can generally dish out a good bit more damage. For instance switching your leader for another striker will up damage output a good hunk overall. However it is harder to focus fire without the leader buffs/debuffs, and strikers are glass cannons. Likewise you can double up on controllers, in which case you're usually going to lay down a rather nasty amount of area damage in most cases and the extra control is nice, but again you're out of the sweet spot and things can get more swingy. An extra defender can do various things as each one is a bit different, but again swingier.

Really, the ideal is a pretty much where the game will usually be by default. You have a leader, which heals reasonably well, and maybe one or two other PCs might have a self-heal or maybe a side bit of leader like a paladin. That is pretty much ideal. If the party uses reasonable tactics they can keep a key guy standing through a rough spot MOST of the time, until things get too hot anyway. At the same time they'll have enough other options to dish out a good bit of damage. The result being you burn some surges but you also have flexibility WRT that or digging into daily resources a bit to push things faster.

You can of course deliberately build pathological parties, like you can build bad characters if you try. Given that the roles are spelled out though it isn't real easy to do, and a wide variety of setups will work. Most parties will work if the DM caters to that setup. 5 bow rangers for instance can be quite fun and works fine, they'll just have a rough time with some encounters.