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5 years ago ::
Mar 08, 2008 - 6:07AM
#61
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Date Joined:
Aug 25, 2007
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Do we know if all clerical heal spells are going to work like the Healing Word ability? I find it kind of sad that the number of times a cleric can heal you depends on how often you could heal yourself. Sure you get some extra but still if my fighter blew through his surges after a few tough fights and the cleric is like "sorry but you got nothing left" I would wonder at his usefulness to me.
We do not know much of anything.
Given that the Dwaven Plate that provides a 'free' healing surge is a daily power and Paladin 'Lay on Hands' which transfers a healing surge to others is limited to X times daily; I suspect that any healing that exceeds a character's base amount of healing surges will be limited daily powers.
The clerice might have per encounter healing buffs combined with attacks and we know that the Paladin has a smite that causes limited healing to a target when used as a per encounter power.
Per will powers will likely be limited to giving pools of temporary hit points that are just a sponge to soak up some damage but provide no real healing relief.
My guess is the aim of the developers is to try and have some limit and selection of usage of abilities to avoid the opposite of the '5 minute' day which is the 'endless' day. They want players to not be like a MMORPG where they can simply stop after each fight and get back to full without ever having to worry or manage hit points on a total adventure.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 08, 2008 - 7:00AM
#62
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It sounds like you guys are just apologists. If it is an Adrelinne Surge - then WHY isn't it CALLED adrelinne surge. They have named it Healing Surge - and we know what Healing means. If they MEANT something else - they should have named it something else. Why purposely confuse us?[/quote]
I honestly can't understand how they managed to butcher the terminology in 4E as badly as they did, but that doesn't take anything away from the mechanical soundness of the system. The whole point is that players only need to concern themselves with how something works mechanically, and what it looks like from the characters' point of view is deliberately left open for interpretion -- divine guidance to one person is dumb luck to another, and neither of them necessarily knows what really happened.
You want hit points to measure a character's resilience to really taking a beating? Go ahead. It may stretch the believability of the world if someone can take a direct hit from an ogre's axe straight to the face without dropping dead, but the rules won't get in the way of doing just that.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 08, 2008 - 9:37AM
#63
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Date Joined:
Jan 23, 2004
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You want hit points to measure a character's resilience to really taking a beating? Go ahead. It may stretch the believability of the world if someone can take a direct hit from an ogre's axe straight to the face without dropping dead, but the rules won't get in the way of doing just that.
Actually it can be pretty funny to manage things that way, even if it means that one has to come up with another explanation for the "bloodied" condition 
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5 years ago ::
Mar 08, 2008 - 12:45PM
#64
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Date Joined:
May 12, 2007
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I like the healing surge idea, but I beg Wizards to change the name. It just seems more like Adreniline Rush then Healing Surge, because your not really healing your just sucking it in and fighting it on. Perhaps, making it more balanced, when you want to use a healing surge you must make a Constitution check, and if it gets past the required number you can perform the Healing Surge. Well, whatever, that's what my PCs are gonna be doin.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 08, 2008 - 8:22PM
#65
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Date Joined:
Aug 24, 2007
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Just wondering if anyone has thought about the whole 'bloodied' condition? Y'know, that thing that is roughly equal to about half your hit points. They way I see it, now of course I could be wrong but to me it makes sense, once you hit the 'bloodied' condition, that's when you've started taking the nasty wounds. Everything before that is going to be in the area of strained muscles, bumps, bruises, minor lacerations, etc. Anything past bloodied is going to the gushers, the gaping wounds and such.
Some of the others here have said it well, the healing surges, is catching your breath, putting some bandages on, or taking a swig of dwarven ale from your flask, whatever works for you, you block out the pain and continue on. Hell, humans do it all the time in real life. The human animal is a remarkable creature, we have the capability to do extraordinary things, usually in the most dire of circumstances. That's one of those things that make us special. And Dangerous.
Are you sure you're talking about real life and not "Die Hard" ?
I like your explanation for healing surges. But I will probably house-rule that you can only regain half of your total hit points (Bloodied threshold) for a 6-hour rest. If you have 40 hp - (Bloodied at 20 hp) and you're down to 15 hp, then after 6 hours of rest, you "heal" 20 hp... = 35 hp (the 5 remaining hp are from more grievous wounds. They can only be mended by spells or divine prayers or by taking another 6 hours rest).
Some of my most memorable adventures include moments of tension when most of the party was critically injured, caught in some dungeon or something and feeling seriously threatened for their lives... We couldn't simply "sleep off" our "gaping wounds" in a few hours and our DM ran a pretty low magic campaign (few potions and no healing wand). A bunch of beat up John McClanes trying to survive with only their wits and their few hp left.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 09, 2008 - 12:53AM
#66
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Date Joined:
Sep 26, 2005
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Yes, but in 4e, %50 of your hit points is considered bloodied. You are slowed down because of your injuries.... So, that sounds like physical damage.
Actually, as far as we know being bloodied doesn't slow you down at all and may in fact help you at times (though it may help foes as well!).
P.S. I am not found of the healing surge rules so far. As a DM, that means that I will have to do over %25 damage to thie PCs every encounter. Or more than %50 if I plan to let spare them 5 minutes between encounters...
I don't think you really understand 4th edition. The point is that characters take quite a bit of damage in each fight, but start each battle at full hit points. You have a limited number of healing surges per day; really, if you survive an encounter, you're good but you may be getting worn down piece by piece. Its like in Die Hard: he's getting more and more beat up over the course of the movie, and while he's still able to function, by the end of it he's pretty close to dropping - he's run out of healing surges. That's what a 4e adventure is like - by the end, you look like Bruce Willis at the end of that movie.
And this is before we know what a Cleric can do...
Clerics heal people basically by letting the people use their own healing surges; if a cleric heals you, you use one of your healing surges and heal an additional amount of damage. This is good because you can still use your second wind in addition to this healing.
Paladins, conversely, can give away their healing surges to other characters via Lay On Hands, but only a limited number of times per day.
I consider hits to be wounds, but not very serious ones unless they deal a lot of damage all at once; otherwise you're just getting cut up/pincushioned but not killed. Again, think Bruce Willis in Die Hard; he's all cut up from glass, being punched around, an explosion, ect. but he's still walking, though he is not too happy about it.
Its a fun system, and while perhaps not all that realistic, its interesting and dramatic and allows every combat to be challenging, rather than it being the first few combats you're in pretty good shape then suddenly you're in danger of actually dying due to a critical hit and you have to rest for the day. Now you have pretty constant danger of dying across encounters, and the actual difficulty of the individual encounter (rather than where it took place in the day) is the determining factor of whether or not a character is likely to die.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 09, 2008 - 8:03AM
#67
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Date Joined:
Jul 12, 2006
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Its a fun system
I think that may have been the goal, and I think some will find it to be so. My group has discussed it and so far we don't like the sound of it at all.
The horrible truth - "Their new marketing strategy (Evergreen Essentials) pretty much requires that anything new that sees print refer back almost exclusively to Essentials." Tony Vargas
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5 years ago ::
Mar 09, 2008 - 8:32AM
#68
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I think I'll wait until I have my grubby little hands on the book before I make any rash decisions as to whether this new element to the game has any major detrimental affect to my groups enjoyment of the game.
Wizards will probably not change the name of anything at this point (healing surge or anything else for that matter), with release only three months away. If people are not happy with this sort of thing then choose your own names for such game mechanics or simply ignore them. We all have free will and the rulebooks themselves cannot impose anything upon it. Guess I'm saying that there is no need to get worked up about trivialities that will only impact upon the game as much as DM's allow.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 09, 2008 - 9:01AM
#69
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2005
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As I recall in some of the 3e books it encouraged renaming various abilities to suit your character anyway, i.e. one monk might call it "flurry of blows" another might call it "falling star strike" or a sneak attack might be called a "cheap shot" writing it as such on your character sheet can sometimes help you capture the essence of your individual character more anyway. I don't see that that would've changed.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 09, 2008 - 4:50PM
#70
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Date Joined:
Oct 30, 2006
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I think that may have been the goal, and I think some will find it to be so. My group has discussed it and so far we don't like the sound of it at all.
Well, we'll all just have to play it and see. :D
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