Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Pyrate_Jib Nov 24, 2008 0:48:17	In reading through the 4E DMG I noticed a brief topic on the various type of D&D play. My group has always thrived on a game with a little more grit and realism. We often use real cultures or historical events to embellish the games. For example, in our 3.5 game that is wrapping up we have a mercenary group who behaves very similar to those companies that were active in the 30 years war. This is not to say that we don’t have fantasy elements (flying ships, dragons, teleportation arches) but the game does tend to be a little more of a “low magic” setting. What I wanted to do is find if any of you are like-minded and would like to share ideas on how to describe certain to keep a game founded in a world of dirt, blood, ash and uncertainty. Now if you are a DM or Player who believes that D&D and real-world/ history/ cultural elements have no business ever being brought together let me say that I respect your choices but suggest you move along to another post. This thread will only anger you and make you mad. However if you are a DM who likes color and enjoys history or a Player who considers yourself to be either an Actor, Explorer or Storyteller then this thread might be for you. If you do want to explore how a DM or Player might use such real world concepts in 4E please share! The goal is to help make our adventures, worlds, and campaigns more gritty and textured. HIT POINTS & HEALING SURGES: Love them, hate them, they are part of D&D. Many people like to think of them as wounds or levels of damage. Others attribute them to the talent in avoiding damage and minimizing injuries that would cripple or maim less heroic beings. I have heard the argument that like a boxer, after years of taking hits the character can just shrug off or soak up a beating. But with the healing surges in 4E a character could end a day badly wounded with 1 hit point remaining and awake refreshed and new without a blemish. Since characters out of combat can burn healing surges fast enough to eliminate damage without medical attention or divine magical healing they seem to have taken us into a fantastic world where Grit and Reality are impossible. Or have they...? How can we make Grit and Reality sense of Hit Points and Healing Surges?
#2 space_dragon Nov 24, 2008 1:04:52	Easy. Hit points represent your ability to turn potentially dangerous injuries into minor scratches. The sword thrust that would impale a more inexperienced fighter just grazes your side, the fireball that would have incinerated you just singes your hair (or maybe catches your cloak on fire, ie ongoing damage). Spending a healing surge can be an actual healing of wounds (if its a magical effect, like a cleric or paladin healing you). If its a nonmagical healing (like a warlord ability or second wind), then its more of getting your bearings, shaking off the pain, licking your scrapes, etc. The one problem with this idea is poison damage. Any ideas?
#3 sigil_beguiler Nov 24, 2008 1:14:41	Honestly the only real issue with making it gritty is the extended rest regaining health and healing surges. A easy way to do this I think would be to have only health and half your Healing Surges recharge till you have found a way to have a much longer rest. My personal view is to not look at Healing Surges as some non-existent physical thing. They do have a physical side, I think personally they better represent someone's actual health. HP represents how close someone is from collapsing and the potential to die from numerous minor wounds and such. But when a Healing Surge is used up it means that while the character is still able to fight he is suffering from a more severe wound which will lessen the time he can continue to fight in a encounter.
#4 DKase Nov 24, 2008 2:24:53	It's all a matter of what you really want to get out of the system really. Do you want the wounds to have a lasting impact through game mechanics? Or are you just trying to convey the fact that injuries don't disappear over night? If the case is the latter, than all you need is a party of good role players. For instance, I think that a person is actually still injured even after an extended rest, it's just that it doesn't effect their ability to be a hero in the long run (meat armor becomes replaced with plot armor/morale). So while my PC will still be in the thick of things doing what he does best, old wounds are opening back up (further attributing to hit point loss, with out really taking a hit from an enemy), and 'sure' hits are becoming misses (no mechanical penalties necessary, just roll low and act it out) due to the strain of keeping himself together. The healing surges to me just represent extra stores of vitality that can be drawn upon when the chips are down to give you that extra boost so that you can clench your teeth through the pain and strive forward. If you feel the need to enforce injury through mechanic, I think that you could probably write up something in the veins of the disease track to represent this. For example, when ever a person has become 'bloodied' during the day, after an extended rest they either do not recover all of their surges, or suffer a penalty that commensurates the type of damage they had sustained the previous day (weakened after fighting wraiths, reduced speed if cold damage taken, etc.). With a successful endurance check, they can negate the effect of the penalty for the day, or slide down to a more critical level at your discretion. Rather than being cured at the end though of the track, have a stipulation that the person must be treated properly and have a period of bed rest to be considered 'cured'. This would make a more difficult campaign, but it would certainly be gritty.
#5 werral Nov 24, 2008 5:41:01	Seperate Hit Points that represent avoiding damage from actual wounds. Wounds: Minor (-2 to all rolls) Major (-4 to all rolls) Critical (-6 to all rolls) Mortal (as 0 HP in standardrules) Wounds only recover with bed-rest or powerful magic. "Advantage Points" (HP in the abstract, avoiding damage sense) Recover from healing surges (now called "recoveries"), "second winds" and as a result of Leader abilities. "Ad Points" not only protects from Wounds, but also from things like trips and disarms (these are no-loner per-encounter abilities). Basically no effect (Wound, trip, disarm, grapple) can take place unless all Advantage Points are lost. Some things (like falling, lava etc...) cause wounds directly and ignore Ad Points. That's the bare bones of how I'd do it. Not sure about the actual numbers though (I don't have a deep enough understanding of 4E to do that)
#6 Johnathan_Vagabond Nov 24, 2008 10:49:41	I read another poster's idea a while back that resting restores only your Healing Surges, but not your hp to simulate being ground down through attrition. For a less dire version he suggested that only critical heats go unhealed and that non-critical damage was healed first. So you get hit for 3 then 5 and then crit'd for 10 you've reduced your hp by a total of 18. Before you can heal the 10 from the crit, you must heal the 8 from non-crits. I prefer the resting restores only healing surges. You're never more than 4 surges away from full health, but you still have to juggle that decision of 'heal now or heal later'? You could also base it of Healing Surges left at the end of the day. Someone with half their surges can recover half their hp by resting. You can still just surge the rest, but taking a bigger beating means living on a thinner line.
#7 batshido Nov 24, 2008 10:55:45	One suggestion I've seen (and I would never use this, but I'm not going for "gritty" most of the time anyway) is to make Bloodied a threshold of sorts. To cross that threshold, you've got to receive magical healing or professional-quality medical care. Like I said, I wouldn't use it. It does do a good job of using what's already there in 4E to simulate lasting injury, though. At least as well as HP really can (hint; they really can't).
#8 Thought Nov 24, 2008 11:43:31	If you want wounds, RP them. Hp and Healing surges can simply enough represent a character's fatigue and ability to avoid major wounds. If you want to have a character stabbed through the thigh, sure, go ahead and do that. But don't treat it the same as an HP loss. The wound would require medical attention and take time to heal. It might even reduce the number of healing surges that a character has. If you really want rules, look at how diseases are handled and adapt that to wounds. A heal check might make the wound better, but wounds can fester and grow worse too. And, unless I am forgetting something, resting and healing surges don't make diseases disappear; they wouldn't make wounds disappear either. And, of course, if a character actually should die, RP that as well. In general I'd say a character should never die unless it has been "earned" by the story.
#9 Cyber-Dave Nov 24, 2008 12:02:30	The 4e system actually has the potential to feel more "gritty" then the 3e system ever did. This is the house rule I use: An extended rest only regains a number of healing surges equal to 2 + your constitution modifier. This means that if a character spends too many healing surges in a day, he won't be able to heal them all back. Do this too many days in a row, and a character won't be able to heal during combat at all... not even from most magic.
#10 Pyrate_Jib Nov 24, 2008 22:54:18	One suggestion I've seen (and I would never use this, but I'm not going for "gritty" most of the time anyway) is to make Bloodied a threshold of sorts. To cross that threshold, you've got to receive magical healing or professional-quality medical care. Like I said, I wouldn't use it. It does do a good job of using what's already there in 4E to simulate lasting injury, though. At least as well as HP really can (hint; they really can't). This could work. And is easy to remember!:D
#11 Pyrate_Jib Nov 24, 2008 22:54:56	If you want wounds, RP them. Hp and Healing surges can simply enough represent a character's fatigue and ability to avoid major wounds. If you want to have a character stabbed through the thigh, sure, go ahead and do that. But don't treat it the same as an HP loss. The wound would require medical attention and take time to heal. It might even reduce the number of healing surges that a character has. If you really want rules, look at how diseases are handled and adapt that to wounds. A heal check might make the wound better, but wounds can fester and grow worse too. And, unless I am forgetting something, resting and healing surges don't make diseases disappear; they wouldn't make wounds disappear either. And, of course, if a character actually should die, RP that as well. In general I'd say a character should never die unless it has been "earned" by the story. Yes! I agree.
#12 Pyrate_Jib Nov 24, 2008 22:56:02	The 4e system actually has the potential to feel more "gritty" then the 3e system ever did. This is the house rule I use: An extended rest only regains a number of healing surges equal to 2 + your constitution modifier. This means that if a character spends too many healing surges in a day, he won't be able to heal them all back. Do this too many days in a row, and a character won't be able to heal during combat at all... not even from most magic. Another great house rule! Simple and easy to use!
#13 Pyrate_Jib Dec 06, 2008 0:02:44	Do you have your players describe the way they attack foes or describe how the blow land upon the PCs when they are attacked and you DM?
#14 Pyrate_Jib Dec 11, 2008 22:54:31	Perhaps if a reward was placed on being wounded players wouldn't mind a little PC downtime. But then again, grit and reality fans don't worry about what is best for the PC, they like the feel of the campaign and the story it tells.
#15 Thought Dec 12, 2008 8:50:42	Well that is a reward, then. Rewards take many forms and different people like different rewards. For grit and reality fans, telling a grit and reality story is reward (and I'd say reward enough). The problem comes when you are trying to get non-grit and reality fans to play such a campaign. Rewarding such players with an EXP bonus would be the traditional manner, but you might also have a few NPCs take pitty on an injured adventurer and provide rewards that way. This might be in the form of a grizzled soldier impressed by that dragon-bite on their left leg, and who then passes on quest information since he'd "trust someone who can take a blow like that." Or maybe a merchant's daughter becomes enamored and offers a discount at her father's store. Or maybe the priest gives them a small item to help them out in the future. etc
#16 garner_adam Aug 07, 2009 14:32:00	Perhaps if a reward was placed on being wounded players wouldn't mind a little PC downtime. But then again, grit and reality fans don't worry about what is best for the PC, they like the feel of the campaign and the story it tells. These campaign ideas deserve THREAD RESSURECTION! /necromancy You know what I've found to be the strangest thing about my 4th edition experience is how quickly the party throws in the towel if one of the party members is low on surges. Before in my 3rd edition games it wasn't uncommon that my players would press on despite being at half health and I really appreciated both their characters bravery and grit but also the player's tough decision to drive forward. Now it seems to me when a party member is low on surges and the party wants to turn back to rest it doesn't quite seem like they're making the decision because they're on the verge of annihilation.