While each edition has brought changes to hit points and healing, Fourth edition's changes have been the most radical. Theses primarily involve: off-action healing, non-clerical healing, healing surges, and self-healing.
From the beginning through 3.5, healing has consumed the cleric's turn (ok, except for the book of 9 swords Crusader, but that's a direct precursor to 4e). You made a conscious choice to spend your turn casting a healing spell instead of doing something else (like attacking or casting another spell).
While paladins have had the ability to lay on hands, and bards gained access to healing spells in third edition, the cleric (and druid or specialty priests as sub-types of cleric or divine casters) have held a monopoly on healing. This is less true in third edition where anyone could take the use magical device to use a wand of cure light wounds (its like 50 healing potions for a pretty low price!). So some other classes had access to healing, everyone knew that a bard, druid, dragon shaman, or whatever just wasn't as great at it. So there is a reason that someone always had to play a cleric, and this is is. 4e finally made it explicitly clear with roles: warlords, bards, shamen, ardents, artificers, runepriests, warpriests, sentinel druids could all fill this role.
Healing surges were another major development in the realm of healing. Now your ability to heal yourself each day was limited, and your access to healing was also limited in combat. Healing surges represented a reserve of strength, but gave the game super-human qualities. You emerged from each combat with full health many times a day. When you ran out of surges, things got tense. I usually found that running out of surges was pretty rare, especially since you recovered all your surges each night.
Finally, the second wind let everyone control their destiny to a small extent (larger for dwarves since second wind is a minor action for them). Everyone had a little healing per combat, and then your cleric (or warlord or whomever) could grant a little more healing as needed.
I generally like the ideas, but the implementation leads to a style of superheroic game that loses some dramatic tension. Sure, I inadvertently rolled my Dark Sun party once or twice, but the math was so set and predictable that playing a game that deviated from the superheroic norm was difficult. It lead to little house rules like: when you're wandering in the desert, you only regain a number of healing surges equal to 1 + your constitution modifier per night. Or rituals that consumed multiple healing surges (multiple because Battleminds had a million of them!). Second wind was also a little anticlimactic. Anyone can take a second wind any fight: there was no drama there. There were no lingering wounds. In the end, Clerics couldn't drop everything and heal either, and martial healing had the same effects as magical healing.
These aren't insurmountable problems. In 4e, a cleric could have an option of sacrificing a daily or encounter power for additional healing, for example. But I'd like to see a couple options here.
First, maybe we can do without explicit healing surges. If we can reduce the number of things to track without losing the concepts, it'll make the game a little quicker.
Second, the rules can explicitly call out who might function as a party healer. This is important for older players who might think that warlords and bards (or whomever) can't fill this role. Maybe they do it differently, and the first-aid skill is more valuable in a party with a warlord or bard, but telling a group how to fill the healer role is more exiting than letting people believe they need a cleric.
Third, I miss a wound system. Maybe not as complex as the third edition Unearthed Arcana's wounds and vitality though, you're still tracking two numbers there. It could be something simple-ish, like rolling on a wound table the first time you're bloodied in a combat (or in a day? This might cause too many wounds) or when you hit 0 hp (and a damage roll that takes you into the negatives results in a harsher injury). Maybe critical hits also inflict an injury, which makes combat a little less predictable. Now you no longer can go for days without stopping, regardless of how hurt you become. The critical hit charts from second edition Combat and Tactics (and the spell versions from Spells and Magic) are the sort of injury idea I'm thinking of here. Severe injuries at the 0hp level could even result in death (serious or critical wounds), while the ones at the critical hit or bloodied level are more likely to just result in "light" or "moderate" wounds.
A wound system like this would also bring a first aid skill and martial healing into their own. Warlords or captains or bards might be able to inspire people to shake off fatigue (general HP) or shake off the pain and ignore a wound temporarily, but healing injuries themselves might be the domain of the magical healing or just plain time (or chronomancers?). First aid might take care of light wounds or reduce a wound to a lesser injury. And magical healing can be rarer, so Clerics might not be able to cure light wounds constantly. And maybe you're better off using all your first-aid skills before asking the Cleric (or bard, druid, mystic, shamen, whomever) to step in with magic. I think this is part of the 'video-gamey' complaint that 4e gets: healing is too easy.
Finally, I'd like to see some dramatic chance associated with the second wind. Maybe characters could roll to see when they get their second wind, particularly if things like bloodied allies, a warlord's inspiration, critical hits, defeating enemies, and morale victories (or failures?) provoked second wind rolls. Then gaining a quarter or half your hit points back is a real dramatic victory, like the critical hit. Things like charisma and constitution modifiers would add to these rolls, and feats or racial powers could let you make the roll more often (though still only once second wind per combat). Resting after combat could still give you some or all your hp back as well (maybe 50% for a short rest, 100% for longer rests?).
Maybe having extra second wind rolls is a bit much, so they could be tied to critical hits or saves or something as well (maybe when you roll a nat 20 you have an option to use your second wind in the combat?). D&D really lacks some mechanism for that dramatic scene where the hero gets back up and wails on the villain though.
I admit that these sorts of changes might not lead to a game that everyone would like. But I'd like to see them in play sometime.
From the beginning through 3.5, healing has consumed the cleric's turn (ok, except for the book of 9 swords Crusader, but that's a direct precursor to 4e). You made a conscious choice to spend your turn casting a healing spell instead of doing something else (like attacking or casting another spell).
While paladins have had the ability to lay on hands, and bards gained access to healing spells in third edition, the cleric (and druid or specialty priests as sub-types of cleric or divine casters) have held a monopoly on healing. This is less true in third edition where anyone could take the use magical device to use a wand of cure light wounds (its like 50 healing potions for a pretty low price!). So some other classes had access to healing, everyone knew that a bard, druid, dragon shaman, or whatever just wasn't as great at it. So there is a reason that someone always had to play a cleric, and this is is. 4e finally made it explicitly clear with roles: warlords, bards, shamen, ardents, artificers, runepriests, warpriests, sentinel druids could all fill this role.
Healing surges were another major development in the realm of healing. Now your ability to heal yourself each day was limited, and your access to healing was also limited in combat. Healing surges represented a reserve of strength, but gave the game super-human qualities. You emerged from each combat with full health many times a day. When you ran out of surges, things got tense. I usually found that running out of surges was pretty rare, especially since you recovered all your surges each night.
Finally, the second wind let everyone control their destiny to a small extent (larger for dwarves since second wind is a minor action for them). Everyone had a little healing per combat, and then your cleric (or warlord or whomever) could grant a little more healing as needed.
I generally like the ideas, but the implementation leads to a style of superheroic game that loses some dramatic tension. Sure, I inadvertently rolled my Dark Sun party once or twice, but the math was so set and predictable that playing a game that deviated from the superheroic norm was difficult. It lead to little house rules like: when you're wandering in the desert, you only regain a number of healing surges equal to 1 + your constitution modifier per night. Or rituals that consumed multiple healing surges (multiple because Battleminds had a million of them!). Second wind was also a little anticlimactic. Anyone can take a second wind any fight: there was no drama there. There were no lingering wounds. In the end, Clerics couldn't drop everything and heal either, and martial healing had the same effects as magical healing.
These aren't insurmountable problems. In 4e, a cleric could have an option of sacrificing a daily or encounter power for additional healing, for example. But I'd like to see a couple options here.
First, maybe we can do without explicit healing surges. If we can reduce the number of things to track without losing the concepts, it'll make the game a little quicker.
Second, the rules can explicitly call out who might function as a party healer. This is important for older players who might think that warlords and bards (or whomever) can't fill this role. Maybe they do it differently, and the first-aid skill is more valuable in a party with a warlord or bard, but telling a group how to fill the healer role is more exiting than letting people believe they need a cleric.
Third, I miss a wound system. Maybe not as complex as the third edition Unearthed Arcana's wounds and vitality though, you're still tracking two numbers there. It could be something simple-ish, like rolling on a wound table the first time you're bloodied in a combat (or in a day? This might cause too many wounds) or when you hit 0 hp (and a damage roll that takes you into the negatives results in a harsher injury). Maybe critical hits also inflict an injury, which makes combat a little less predictable. Now you no longer can go for days without stopping, regardless of how hurt you become. The critical hit charts from second edition Combat and Tactics (and the spell versions from Spells and Magic) are the sort of injury idea I'm thinking of here. Severe injuries at the 0hp level could even result in death (serious or critical wounds), while the ones at the critical hit or bloodied level are more likely to just result in "light" or "moderate" wounds.
A wound system like this would also bring a first aid skill and martial healing into their own. Warlords or captains or bards might be able to inspire people to shake off fatigue (general HP) or shake off the pain and ignore a wound temporarily, but healing injuries themselves might be the domain of the magical healing or just plain time (or chronomancers?). First aid might take care of light wounds or reduce a wound to a lesser injury. And magical healing can be rarer, so Clerics might not be able to cure light wounds constantly. And maybe you're better off using all your first-aid skills before asking the Cleric (or bard, druid, mystic, shamen, whomever) to step in with magic. I think this is part of the 'video-gamey' complaint that 4e gets: healing is too easy.
Finally, I'd like to see some dramatic chance associated with the second wind. Maybe characters could roll to see when they get their second wind, particularly if things like bloodied allies, a warlord's inspiration, critical hits, defeating enemies, and morale victories (or failures?) provoked second wind rolls. Then gaining a quarter or half your hit points back is a real dramatic victory, like the critical hit. Things like charisma and constitution modifiers would add to these rolls, and feats or racial powers could let you make the roll more often (though still only once second wind per combat). Resting after combat could still give you some or all your hp back as well (maybe 50% for a short rest, 100% for longer rests?).
Maybe having extra second wind rolls is a bit much, so they could be tied to critical hits or saves or something as well (maybe when you roll a nat 20 you have an option to use your second wind in the combat?). D&D really lacks some mechanism for that dramatic scene where the hero gets back up and wails on the villain though.
I admit that these sorts of changes might not lead to a game that everyone would like. But I'd like to see them in play sometime.
No comments:
Post a Comment