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5 months ago ::
Jan 13, 2013 - 3:26PM
#101
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Date Joined:
Aug 16, 2007
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I don't think CDG is a viable tactic in any system (and I use system instead of world) where death is a large number (negative bloodied in 4e) and there is a heal from zero rule. The creatures don't know how low you are so there is a very good chance that you won't kill the target and he'll get back up any second anyway, so it's better to take advantage of the situation and work on his allies when there is a strong possiblity that your CDG will be a wasted action.
Well if you can't kill him with a CDG then you're probably screwed anyway and defeat is inevitable. There's really no point in banging on one of his buddies if you can't stop downed people from getting revived.
Not necissarily. Take them down faster than they can get up and you'll win. This leads more toward gunning for the healer than I would like though.
In a system that uses a low death threshold and heal from zero it is more of a viable option, but it also requires the monsters to know that person is just hurt/unconsious and not dead. Are they eliminating a threat that will get back up or hacking away at a dead corpse? I find it very difficult to beleive that many opponents out there are taking the time to closely observe everyone they cut down to ensure that they're dead before moving on. Are your opponenets that observant or are you inadvertantly using DM knowledge as monster knowledge?
Well honestly, if the PCs somehow know their allies are still alive, then I rule the monsters can know the same thing. Looking at it from a 4E connotation, you can recover from that wound with just a short rest and no magic, so the wound obviously isn't that fatal. It's not like the character got run through with a sword or something.
So I generally rule that the monsters see what the PCs can see. I think that's pretty reasonable, since the PC cleric obviously knows enough that the guy can be saved.
A very valid point. But I think it depends on the group. I ask my players not to reveal the HP amounts. I do allow them to use Green (>75%), Yellow (50%-75%), Orange (25%-50%), Red (<25%, and down. But they do still know alive or not of the other characters. But it works both ways too. If I have a leader type in my group of creatures I'll have them heal a down ally. It doesn't happen very often but it always throws the party for a loop when a creature pops back up. Just as it should with the creatures when the characters do it.
Saying that the obvious tactic is to CDG opponents that are down will either create an arms race between the DM and the players or push most players toward disposable stat sheets that they call characters. Most players I know, and myself, put some effort into their characters and would be quiet annoyed if their character were gang-banged every time they dropped.
Well nobody wants CDG to be a common tactic. The question is what to do about it. One camp says that the monsters can just be blissfully ignorant of the PCs constantly popping up, the other side wants monsters played intelligently and rules to make reviving PCs more difficult so that there isn't a need to drop a CDG.
Neither side is right, it's all about a middle ground in my oppinion. Most monsters should be unaware (unless they've studied the PC's in action) and surprised by it. But around the second time a character gets up the leader should be shouting at a few of the monsters to get the healer down. Obviously it would rarely be a dogpile on the healer. Realisticly ignoring everyone else to focus on one opponent is probably a very bad option. If they don't have a leader maybe on the third time they'll get the clue. Uninteligent foes will probably never pick up on why.
But I've always gone with this being the reason that most healers have had decent defenses. They have to be able to take a bit of extra attention every now and then.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 13, 2013 - 3:47PM
#102
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Date Joined:
Oct 25, 2010
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Not necissarily. Take them down faster than they can get up and you'll win. This leads more toward gunning for the healer than I would like though.
Well yeah, if there's one healer, then the tactic you can use is just to mad focus fire the cleric at all costs. If there's multiple healers though, you have to go with the CDG strategy.
Neither side is right, it's all about a middle ground in my oppinion.
Well it's not about right and wrong so much as a matter of preference. Some people really don't mind if their combats play out like Final Fantasy where foes only target standing PCs and really don't care if the battle consists of whack-a-mole where PCs are constantly reviving each other. Basically they're willing to accept silly looking combats at the benefit of having no PC sit out ever.
Other people want to play their monsters more tactically, and prefer that combats aren't quite as silly looking where PCs are constantly getting beat down and revived. The cost of this is that sometimes a PC has to sit some time out while they're unconscious.
Most monsters should be unaware (unless they've studied the PC's in action) and surprised by it.
Honestly I disagree on this point. Magical healing is low level magic and should be something intelligent monsters are familiar with. Hell anyone can seriously buy a healing potion for under 100 gp that will revive someone as well. The fact that intelligent monsters are surprised by healing magic seems very odd to me. Magic is a way of life in D&D, when a wizard tosses magic missiles, he's not some kind fo reality-bending god, he's just a wizard. Monsters are pretty used to that. Hell even goblins and kobolds have shamans and priests capable of magical healing. The thing is that we're not talking about earth shattering high level magic, we're talking about cantrips. Even the most basic cleric can do that. Hell with the feat even non-clerics can do it.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 13, 2013 - 3:57PM
#103
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Well, if you look at hit points as becoming exhausted, bruises, fatigue, etc. then there is no reason to think any creature with minimal intelligence wouldn't finish off a person. I mean, there are a thousand people (Gygax included) that always stated HP is really a combination of luck, fatigue, and other factors. It's not actual bloody damage, which is why it can be healed so quickly. This is especially true in 4e. Therefore, that creature staring at the downed opponent isn't necessarily staring at a guy bleeding to death. He is staring at someone keeled over, labored breathing, technically, trying to get up. So that creature would almost always go for the kill.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 14, 2013 - 4:59AM
#104
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Thanks dwarf and molecule. The part i hadn't seen was how _common_ healing is in DDN. In 4e, the healer started with 2/encounter and 1 daily, so very quickly would run out of healing. So, and intelligent monster might CDg or might not, since taking out another enemy would use one precious heal while reducing the number of combatants. But, if clerics have nigh infinite healing, that's not going to work.
It's one reason I like encounter based healing - on average, 8 dailies is the same as 2/encounter, but in play, they feel _very_ different.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 15, 2013 - 12:10AM
#105
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Thanks dwarf and molecule. The part i hadn't seen was how _common_ healing is in DDN. In 4e, the healer started with 2/encounter and 1 daily, so very quickly would run out of healing. So, and intelligent monster might CDg or might not, since taking out another enemy would use one precious heal while reducing the number of combatants. But, if clerics have nigh infinite healing, that's not going to work. It's one reason I like encounter based healing - on average, 8 dailies is the same as 2/encounter, but in play, they feel _very_ different.
They don't just *feel* different, they *are* different.
2/encounter is a straightforward "you can only use this twice per encounter". 8/day is more of "on an average of four fights a day you're best using this twice per encounter, but there might be fights where you don't have to use this, while there are other fights where you might have to use all of what's left."
8/day is much more flexible, and I'd actually argue that because you can use it more than 2/encounter, there would be situations where it could easily feel overpowered, and perhaps even encourage coup de grace, since it's possible to spam healing like crazy, making it more sensible to just kill either the healer or the healed outright, mechanically speaking.
At-will Cure Light Wounds is simply way too powerful, as it removes the daily restrictions of healing surges, the restrictions on healing in all editions -- and is much more closer to MMORPG-style healing, which does *not* have restrictions (save for mana perhaps, which makes this actually worse than MMORPG healing) -- and it is a return to a healing system that punishes the fighter for having higher maxHP than the rest of the group (which was what healing surges was supposed to fix in the first place).
[ Perhaps if this were a soloist's game I'd say CLW's pretty nifty since you're sacrificing your own turn to heal instead of attack, but I think the whole "must avoid 4E design" is going way too far. ]
A simple fix, without even having to redesign the power much, is to restrict its use to while the PCs are above half their HP, as going by spell name alone, grave wounds shouldn't be patched by the spell. Perhaps to keep it useful as an emergency heal, a line could be introduced, something like this: "Special: Grave wounds cannot be immediately patched up by this spell, although it could delay the recipient's demise. The target is automatically stabilized by this spell."
EDIT: I wouldn't mind the "averaged or rolled class hit dice (minimum CON mod)" method myself, as it fixes the scaling of the spell. There's got to be some way to make it all work, in spite of the apparent aversion to healing surges (when as far as I can tell most of the problems regarding healing surges weren't so much as the mechanic itself as to the stuff connected to the mechanic [number of surges, number of surge triggers per encounter and per day, and boosts to surge value]).
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5 months ago ::
Jan 15, 2013 - 12:40AM
#106
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Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2012
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Man.. I really don't like any of the ideas put forward here. I'm sure they work better in practise than they read on paper but all the same I just want the game to work with the on death's door that we've grown to know and love with healing spells. Not saying there's no other way, just that I haven't seen one I like yet.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 15, 2013 - 1:19AM
#107
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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Thanks dwarf and molecule. The part i hadn't seen was how _common_ healing is in DDN. In 4e, the healer started with 2/encounter and 1 daily, so very quickly would run out of healing. So, and intelligent monster might CDg or might not, since taking out another enemy would use one precious heal while reducing the number of combatants. But, if clerics have nigh infinite healing, that's not going to work.
It's one reason I like encounter based healing - on average, 8 dailies is the same as 2/encounter, but in play, they feel _very_ different.
There are a couple differences in addition to the encounter/daily switch that make CdG a better tactical choice in Next than it was in 4e:
- CdG is an instant kill on hit in Next, whereas in 4e monsters had to go through (often substantial) negative hit point reservoirs to actually kill someone. If a monster wasn't wielding a high-crit weapon, CdG in 4e was often actually a waste of an action because of the heal-to-zero rule.
- Fights last a shorter number of rounds for a typical party in Next than they did in 4e. Two heals per encounter would probably be less than the amount available in Next, but perhaps not by that much for practical purposes, since typical encounters last something like 3-4 rounds (at a rough guess).
<Ioun> they're apparently making a MolIsCool pp
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