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Eh, the whole "stand up infinitely" issue with Cure Light Wounds is only an issue at low levels. By Mid level, standing up with 1hp is a literal death sentence since the "chunky salsa rule" kicks in at -(CON+LVL)HP. If you have a level 10 PC, who has (for reasons unknown) 20 CON, then they are 31 HP from death after a Cure Light Wounds. Seeing as most monsters around that level have minimum damage values in the mid 20s I'm not sure the issue is with "healing is too easy".

Dec 26, 2012 -- 3:42PM, ShadeRaven wrote:

Agreed (on the need for a sense of challenge and threat to life).  I don't agree that 4E didn't offer it, though, as I never had a problem bringing players to the edge (or even beyond).  It sometimes just took a long time to get them there because combat could take so long.

There's a difference, though, between posing a threat and playing to win - at least in my book as a DM.  For me, it's creating that cinematic drama, the excitement and terror that comes in a life-and-death scene.  I tried to feed into the theatric nature of combat in D&D, not into the tactical boardgame that lies beneath it.  Therefore, I am not one of those DMs who believe it's necessary to alpha-strike the Wizard and Cleric because they're the weak links and vital to party success.  Not my style.  And while I acknowledge that I would do more irreparable harm to the group by coup-de-gracing on character, I still believe there's plenty of drama and danger involved when you put two on the ground rather than finishing off just one.  In fact, I'd agrue that the group, as a whole, comes away with greater memories of challenge and heroism when they walk away from a battle where three of them were dying at one point compared to the battle where one died permanently.

As for TPKs... my personal opinion is that they should only occur for a very few reasons.  It either was a fitting conclusion to the campaign, a necessary reflection of action and plot, or seemingly fate insisting that this heroic tale was at an end.  If the group dies because I tactically outplayed them or out powered them, then that's failure on my part. As a DM, I am always capable of winning any combat.

That's how I feel also. When I'm DMing, I refuse to exploit meta-knowledge about the player classes or tactical roles and hit the guy that the enemy would naturally hit, trying to dish out the damage evenly. I also prefer a theatrical element to combat in which the drama and exitement become paramount over strategies and grid-based gaming. The only reason I use a battlemat at all is that I'm terrible when it comes to remembering character placement and doing the whole 'theatre of the mind' thingy. However, I aim to try that out at some point. Much in accordance with what you said, my ideal encounter wears the characters down to the brink of desperation (what I meant by going for a battle of attrition) but trying not to get any of them permanently killed. I find it so satisfying when the players are all "Wow, we were all down for the count except Player X who barely managed to impale Creature Y. I thought we were goners for a second there" (not in every encounter of course, that would be too much of the same).

Referring to my comments about 4e. I'm glad people have managed to make their games lethal. I've never DMed a 4e game but I've been playing in one for three years and just when I think I'm about to be injured for real, I remember that even -10 doesn't mean death anymore. This has probably been said a bajillion times but I felt that the healing surges felt like the regenerative health of modern FPSs but that's just my impression of being a 4e player.

Gr3yZer0 has a good point about the healing being rather minimal. I think the best kind of field-healing in the midst of combat is the kind that just barely gets a player back into action (preferably enough to survive though) but doesn't give him/her too much confidence. I was reminded of what Bane said in TDKR, something along the lines of "giving people a sliver of hope increases their despair". It's that notion of keeping the players in dread but still giving them enough hope to think that they have a decent shot if they do their best. I'm probably ranting and going off on tangents but long story short, I hope to see this kind of subsistence field-healing be an integral part of D&D Next because it adds to the drama.

 

Jan 4, 2013 -- 1:56PM, mvincent wrote:

I still have to remind some players that they heal up from zero (rather than from their current negative HP value). Every session! That seems to confirm my opinion that the rule is not intuitive. And it's been happening in 5e now too.

That's because negative Hit Points is an inherently counter-intuitve expression because one cannot have less than 0 units of ability to keep fighting.

To put it in kindergarten terms, you have 10 HP and HP are apples so you have 10 apples - when Jimmy tells you to give him 12 apples, you can give him 10 and have 0 remaining... you cannot give him 12 and have -2 apples remaining.