Slow Recovery - (Forked from D&D without healing surges)

[AbdulAlhazred]

Forked from: D&D without healing surges

I've taken the opposite approach to this. In my game, you don't recover healing surges from an extended rest. The heroes can rest all they want, but their healing surge budget is for the whole adventure. It removes any incentive or advantage from taking extra rests, and let's me budget out the whole adventure to be a challenge.

I thought this idea was worth exploring in a bit more detail. It seems like a potentially elegant solution to 15 minute adventuring day and healing nova behavior exhibited by many parties.

First of all it is totally Paul's idea, I'm just wanting to explore it a bit further. So thanks for the idea Paul!

I think all 4e DMs are fairly familiar with the 15 minute, 1 encounter, extended rest adventuring day phenomenon. And yes, before you post all the usual solutions, there are various ways to discourage it. Lets not recapitulate them all here, please! The long and short of it is deadlines and gauntlets work but get old fast. Various other tweaks to surges, milestones, rests, etc may also work, they may even work better than Paul's solution, but that's what I would like to find out.

There is another issue, maybe more or less of one depending on your viewpoint and play style, which is the healing nova. 4e appears to have been designed to basically drip out healing over 3-4 combat encounters. The rules pretty much seem to presume that a party can access somewhere around 1/3 of its surges, maybe a bit less during combat. Interestingly this relies heavily on players using a typical mix of characters. What happens if a party has 3 leaders? What happens if all the members of a party MC to a leader class and gain an extra healing power? What happens if every member of a party does his utmost to get healing items? It turns out a party can pretty easily be built that can do a "healing nova" and access a VERY high fraction of its HS in one encounter. This can really encourage the 15 minute day syndrome (at least in the opinions of some of us).

Garthanos suggested just doing away with healing surges. That certainly does away with the problem, but is there another way?

Paul's idea is to simply do away with healing surge RECOVERY. At first glance that sounds like going in the wrong direction, but is it? If taking an extended rest won't get your surges back, then you might as well soldier on. Obviously characters MUST eventually heal and a party drained of all its surges isn't going to survive for too much longer. But if as Paul suggests we budget out a sequence of encounters, punctuated by "vacations" (the old style extended rest), then the best resource managing parties will reap a big reward.

How is this different from existing short rest, extended rest? If this new type of break, which I will call Long Rest, is say 1 week long, then it is long enough that its NARRATIVE significance and plot significance are unequivocal. The bad guy might or might not escape if the party camps for the night to recover, but if they have to camp for a week, that makes it clear that the bad guy is long gone.

It also introduces a certain degree of grittiness back into the game and brings damage recovery a bit closer to the realm of realism. I contend that has positive narrative implications as well. It no longer requires the DM to suspend the ordinary rules of healing in order to present a wounded foe or ally for instance. It may make it possible to introduce effects that more gradually degrade a character's health as well. And finally it creates a bigger distinction between normal healing and something like a healing fountain or location that restores healing surges.

The main question I have is does this kind of mechanism increase the percieved cost of actions which consume a healing surge so much that it reduces their utility below the threshold of viability? Does it actually have that effect at all? If so is it a major problem and what else would have to be tweaked in order to make it right?

 

[keterys]

Well, does an extended rest in this situation still restore you to full hp? Because if so, extended rest over short rest is a way to avoid spending surges, so it would encourage that...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, does an extended rest in this situation still restore you to full hp? Because if so, extended rest over short rest is a way to avoid spending surges, so it would encourage that...

One way to adjust things would be to limit extended rest to giving you some limited number of surges back. In that case there isn't a need for a 3rd category of rest. You rest for 6 hours, you get 1,2,3, whatever number of HS, just less than all of them. As a rough average healing your existing hit points to full is going to be worth about 2 surges, although if you give limited surges + full hit points it does encourage a bit of gaming of the system (ie always try to end your day with the least hit points you can).

So my first response would be, just give surges. If the character has enough already that they don't need to gain all they are entitled to, then automatically convert the rest to actually HP healing at the normal rate.

Personally I think that would be the best overall. A party that can manage to burn less than N surges per day would be in great shape, they'd never go into a day low. A party that doesn't will eventually 'wear out' and need to camp for a few extra days or go back to base. It increases the party's need to manage resources, but doesn't FORCE them to retire from the field.

 

[Garthanos]

How is this different from existing short rest, extended rest? If this new type of break, which I will call Long Rest, is say 1 week long, then it is long enough that its NARRATIVE significance and plot significance are unequivocal. The bad guy might or might not escape if the party camps for the night to recover, but if they have to camp for a week, that makes it clear that the bad guy is long gone.

Interestingly ... the narrative AND mechanical connection is perhaps the part which, makes this work best form me.. it does seem like it might ease up on the urgency some have for introducing a bit more grit in their gloss.
but for me...
I dont mind poets, preists and politicians cheering people on to new heights and depths when it is well obvious this is morale and accessing deeper reserves... when it is seen as stitching up wounds nyeh... my grit.. needs to come at zero hitpoints, and involve ritual class healing I think

The main question I have is does this kind of mechanism increase the percieved cost of actions which consume a healing surge so much that it reduces their utility below the threshold of viability? Does it actually have that effect at all? If so is it a major problem and what else would have to be tweaked in order to make it right?

Are there any obvious answers... the leader classes might well be too limited, can I give clerics more access to rituals for after battle healing, can the the Warlords inspire soldiers and the priest a mob to fight along side the party ie give them that minion umph they have in fiction ... sure you can't make your heros in to supermen as much as before... but here is some alternate candy for you.

 

[Garthanos]

So my first response would be, just give surges. If the character has enough already that they don't need to gain all they are entitled to, then automatically convert the rest to actually HP healing at the normal rate.

If you allow the healers to use their gifts ,,, just before the rest isn't the effect the same? (I think you were the one who mentioned that in context of end of encounter and short rest period afterward).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I'm REALLY wondering about the balance issue. Is there one? I mean a healing power still delivers the same healing as ever, and for the same cost in surges. You get surges back more slowly, but the healing is equally valuable at the moment it is performed. Heals would decline in value IF parties were forced to routinely press on with no remaining surges of course, or would they? Heals typically provide a fairly significantly greater point gain vs just burning surges in a short rest or second wind. Given less available surges then the difference is more valuable since each surge becomes 'precious'. So I THINK heals gain in value, as long as parties don't press on when drained. I don't think THAT is a real problem. Parties practically always retreat at that point anyway.

It seems obvious surges are more precious this way, so it also DOES seem pretty clear that other 'surge cost' actions lose value relatively. Heal potions in particular, especially near the topout levels for each type of potion where they fall behind a plain old surge. But potions are still SOMEWHAT valuable tactically, and at low low levels and low paragon are only slightly behind healing word.

Other potions are whole other question. Most of the AV potions don't really do all that much for you and are already mostly kind of marginal. I get the impression they have an HS cost simply to limit players from brewing masses of them and guzzling them left and right. I guess a 'one potion per encounter' limiter could be put on them and drop the HS cost. I hate adding book keeping.

I haven't gone through all the other HS cost items. I suspect most of them would suffer the same issue as potions do. A few might still be useful in very specific situations.

Still at the risk of book keeping I suppose one could say "healing surges expended for purposes other than gaining hit points are recovered after an extended rest". Still hate book keeping...

 

[Garthanos]

One way to adjust things would be to limit extended rest to giving you some limited number of surges back. In that case there isn't a need for a 3rd category of rest. You rest for 6 hours, you get 1,2,3, whatever number of HS, just less than all of them.

Yes not needing a vacation rest period... (yet sort of having it anyway seems better to me). We are really talking about reducing the mechanical strategic attractiveness of the extended rest.

Oh I think I just got what you meant earlier an Extended rest current gives both full hit points and full healing surges, even just changing that, could have an impact (and it kind of makes sense)

 

[Garthanos]

I get the impression they have an HS cost simply to limit players from brewing masses of them and guzzling them left and right. I guess a 'one potion per encounter' limiter could be put on them and drop the HS cost. I hate adding book keeping.

Well aside from an alchemist going to special effort so their potions don't have bad repercussions when mixed... it might be cool to allow you to be under the influence of one potion at a time, then have a cost if they do more.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes not needing a vacation rest period... (yet sort of having it anyway seems better to me). We are really talking about reducing the mechanical strategic attractiveness of the extended rest.

Oh I think I just got what you meant earlier an Extended rest current gives both full hit points and full healing surges, even just changing that, could have an impact (and it kind of makes sense)

Yeah, the difference between the "vacation", aka long rest, and having just limited surges and no hit points gain per extended rest isn't a LOT. The only real difference I can think of is the vacation is fixed to a time, say a week, where the other way you can do 2 extended rests over 2 days and basically have "half a vacation". I think it would kind of rot for a party to be 3 days into their vacation and get interrupted, lol. It isn't a big deal with a 6 hour break, but it could be pretty hard to GET a week off! (I know it is hard for me...).

And yeah, there isn't really any significant difference between getting HS and hit points if you are down on both, aside the corner case of "boy I really wanted to spend an HS on blah and instead I got these lousy hit points."