A Name for This Phenomenon

[hymer]

Someone goes down to 0 hp, and then gets healed with as little as possible, just to get them back on their feet. Soon they'll be down again, only to again be healed as little as possible. And so on, until the fight ends.

Don't we have a name for this?

[Unoriginal]

Someone goes down to 0 hp, and then gets healed with as little as possible, just to get them back on their feet. Soon they'll be down again, only to again be healed as little as possible. And so on, until the fight ends.

Don't we have a name for this?

D&D combat.

[DarkKnightJin]

Yeah. Meatball surgery.

[hymer]

Yeah. Meatball surgery.

I hadn't heard that one applied to this before, but it's good.

[Regitnui]

Poor combat planning?

[Ninja_Prawn]

Never heard meatball surgery before. Is it a reference to something?

Alternatives: Near Death Yo-yo? Discount resurrection? At death's revolving door? Can't keep a meatshield down?

[JackPhoenix]

Wasting spell slots?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Meta-gaming (specifically, using the knowledge that it's a game to inform in-character decisions)?

As in, it's completely alien to how real people (or characters that don't know they're in a game) act. The characters don't know about HP, death saves (and the resetting of such), etc. I don't see this behavior from any table I run, even though I take no steps to counter it. They're healing and taking defensive measures well before 0 HP because that's good role playing.

[Unoriginal]

Meta-gaming (specifically, using the knowledge that it's a game to inform in-character decisions)?

As in, it's completely alien to how real people (or characters that don't know they're in a game) act. The characters don't know about HP, death saves (and the resetting of such), etc. I don't see this behavior from any table I run, even though I take no steps to counter it. They're healing and taking defensive measures well before 0 HP because that's good role playing.

Just to be clear, are you saying it's not logical to heal the downed person when you can afford it?

[hymer]

Never heard meatball surgery before. Is it a reference to something?

M*A*S*H. Meatball surgery is what the surgeons call their particular specialty of just doing the absolutely necessarry to stabilize a patient. Because of the torrent of casualties they'd get, speed was critical in saving as many lives as possible.


Near Death Yo-yo?

That's a good one too.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just to be clear, are you saying it's not logical to heal the downed person when you can afford it?

No. I'm saying it's not logical to wait to heal someone until they're unconscious if you can afford to do it earlier.

[JackPhoenix]

No. I'm saying it's not logical to wait to heal someone until they're unconscious if you can afford to do it earlier.

You mean until they get actually hit and injured, as everything up to that point were just scratches, light bruises, exhaustion and luck/plot armor running out?

[Gryndle]

yo-yoing is what we call it my table. In our case it isn't a desired result/metagame construct. it just happens when one of the PCs gets dropped unexpectedly and their support is too spread out or bogged down by the enemy.

Usually my PCs throw enough healing at one another to last a few good hits, but sometimes the resources just aren't available to do much more than stave off death saves for the moment.

[Alatar]

No. I'm saying it's not logical to wait to heal someone until they're unconscious if you can afford to do it earlier.

Ah, but it's the proviso you mention that has PCs seemingly popping to their feet round after round. In a deadly encounter, the opportunity cost of defensive actions is often higher than that of offensive actions. Once your companion hits the turf, that equation may change. It usually does. But not always. When you are in survival mode, you do what you have to do to survive.

This is by design. Healers normally cannot keep up with the attrition rate. This promotes a sense of urgency. Get it done or get out or get killed. Popup PCs are an aesthetically unfortunate side effect of outcomes that are balanced on the edge of a knife.

It can also be the result of a poorly designed and/or poorly played PC. Some PCs seem to never go down at all, and the phenomenon doesn't appear to be class specific.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You mean until they get actually hit and injured, as everything up to that point were just scratches, light bruises, exhaustion and luck/plot armor running out?

I've always played with the assumption that below 50% you're actually injured. And that's the impression my (new-to-the-game) players have as well. They take being hurt seriously.



Ah, but it's the proviso you mention that has PCs seemingly popping to their feet round after round. In a deadly encounter, the opportunity cost of defensive actions is often higher than that of offensive actions. Once your companion hits the turf, that equation may change. It usually does. But not always. When you are in survival mode, you do what you have to do to survive.

This is by design. Healers normally cannot keep up with the attrition rate. This promotes a sense of urgency. Get it done or get out or get killed. Popup PCs are an aesthetically unfortunate side effect of outcomes that are balanced on the edge of a knife.

It can also be the result of a poorly designed and/or poorly played PC. Some PCs seem to never go down at all, and the phenomenon doesn't appear to be class specific.

This is a consequence of doing few, very deadly fights. When you have a lot more, less difficult ones (hard and medium), you don't have people going to 0 all the time but you maintain the tension. It's just spread out over several fights ("can we take another? or should we retreat") as opposed to every fight being max-output or die. I have only rare fights that last more than 5 rounds, and attrition over time is the lethal part.

[Kane0]

I’ve seen it most commonly referred to as Yo-yoing. I’ve also seen HP merry-go-round and the miraculous Pop and Drop PC.

[erok0809]

We called it Whack-A-Mole, since every time they pop up they get smacked down again, but they just keep coming back.

[Kane0]

Oh yeah whack a mole is pretty popular too.

[Alatar]

This is a consequence of doing few, very deadly fights. When you have a lot more, less difficult ones (hard and medium), you don't have people going to 0 all the time but you maintain the tension. It's just spread out over several fights ("can we take another? or should we retreat") as opposed to every fight being max-output or die. I have only rare fights that last more than 5 rounds, and attrition over time is the lethal part.

Yes to all of that. Yes please. It can be a challenge to maintain that balance, though.

We play once a week. Each each session lasts about 4 hours, maybe 4 and a half, and we have seven players at the table, not counting the DM. You can squeeze in three, maybe four combat encounters in that time, but only of you are doing just about nothing else, and that's not how games typically play. Sometimes it's only one encounter in a session. More often it's two. So our DM is faced with the prospect of stretching a single day over two or more weeks, which strains both the resource tracking skills and attention spans of the players, some of whom are simply not up to the challenge. It's that or making do with one, maybe two, very occasionally three combats in a day on those days that have combats.

So how do you make that interesting? You design deadly encounters. We see a lot of those, not exclusively, but frequently. And balancing a combat encounter is an art. Sometimes encounters designed to be deadly turn out to be worse than that. We see less of those. Had one last Wednesday. It was a hoot.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yes to all of that. Yes please. It can be a challenge to maintain that balance, though.

We play once a week. Each each session lasts about 4 hours, maybe 4 and a half, and we have seven players at the table, not counting the DM. You can squeeze in three, maybe four combat encounters in that time, but only of you are doing just about nothing else, and that's not how games typically play. Sometimes it's only one encounter in a session. More often it's two. So our DM is faced with the prospect of stretching a single day over two or more weeks, which strains both the resource tracking skills and attention spans of the players, some of whom are simply not up to the challenge. It's that or making do with one, maybe two, very occasionally three combats in a day on those days that have combats. So how do you make that interesting? You design deadly encounters. We see a lot of those, not exclusively, but frequently. And balancing a combat encounter is an art. Sometimes encounters designed to be deadly turn out to be worse than that. We see less of those. Had one last Wednesday. It was a hoot.

Seven players is a challenge in and of itself. I have 4 (but two of them are new parents, so child care takes a significant amount of the attention). We stretch adventuring days over several sessions (but not individual combats). :shrug: seems to work for us. Helps that they take even a threat of losing a character very seriously--they consider trivial fights (from my perspective) to be challenging and it's rare for one to be knocked to 0. They do spend a lot of resources doing so. Also helps that my dice love the players...they stun-locked (monk) a beholder to death without it taking an action because I was rolling lower than 8 on my saving throws. I roll crap for monsters (offense or defense), and decent for NPC offenses (against monsters).

One party learned their lesson the very first session--I intentionally (as part of an introductory "here's how death saves work") threw a wyvern at them. At level 1. One that could throw poisoned spikes like a manticore. All carefully calibrated to drop the beefiest person (playing a dwarven fighter with the express desire to be a tank) to 0 without killing them. It did, then flew away. The fighter rolled his first death save--a 6. The cleric, up next, knew that the fighter had 2 more saves, so he spent a turn haranguing the wizard for something or other. The fighter rolled his next death save. A 1. Oops. Due to other circumstances, we ret-conned that last turn as a vision from the cleric's god and he went and saved the fighter, but they were very good about not letting people drop from then on, often healing once someone was under 50% (I use 4e's "bloodied" terminology).

[opaopajr]

We called it Whack-A-Mole, since every time they pop up they get smacked down again, but they just keep coming back.

Yeah, we call it Whack-a-Mole, too, as per the carnival game. There's been notice of it since 5e came out, from the first season of AL, and some made houserules to mitigate it. I liked the "Drop to zero, gain 1 Exhaustion level," version.

Annoying, but there it is. Makes Sleep stronger, though, so a low level caster makes a fun support minion.

[dejarnjc]

We call it Pop up PCs.

[Dimers]

At my 'table' it's [weapon] Pong -- sword pong, claw pong, arrow pong, fire pong ... though usually only when the felling blow is monosyllabic. Now I'm going to go with meatball surgery, though. :smallsmile:

[Theodoxus]

When I play, I almost always end up the healer (really, doesn't matter what game; WoW, Fortnite, D&D, Obsidian... I'm the healer). I'd probably be an ER doc IRL, if human lives had serial reincarnation, like video games... but I digress...

For me, waiting to heal is about resource attrition. A 60' Healing Word (typically from a Life Cleric, because I'm a healer, damn it) is far better mechanically than a touch Cure Wounds. I don't have to be 5' from the tank, potentially getting into the fray and being the casualty myself. But likewise, the heal on HW is too little to mitigate non-critical damage in the middle of combat.

If I had 3 or 4 times the slots, I might consider non-critical combat healing. When I got one cleric to 8th level in an OotA game, I did tend to heal every combat (but then, we had a wizard who thought flying around dropping fireballs on demonlords was a good thing - so I was constantly healing that guy...) But in general, using HW to bring a partymember back conscious is more efficient than anything else.

We typically use Bloodied and On the Ropes to describe both our, and our enemies states. But mechanically, there's no difference between full health and On the Ropes - we just know who to concentrate fire on. If someone eventually comes up with a system of HP attrition, such that being bloodied (50% health remaining) made you less effective, and On the Ropes (25% health remaining) even less so, then sure, we'd probably heal when folks were beginning to rack up serious consequences... but as of yet, since we don't, and as far as I know, nothing like that exists for 5E, healing only when someone goes down is just plain better for the caster's spell slots.

YMMV of course (and if someone has a system of attrition like I described above, be a dear and let us know :smallbiggrin:)

[hymer]

yo-yoing is what we call it my table.
Apt image.


I’ve seen it most commonly referred to as Yo-yoing. I’ve also seen HP merry-go-round and the miraculous Pop and Drop PC.
Another yo-yo, there.


We called it Whack-A-Mole, since every time they pop up they get smacked down again, but they just keep coming back.
Makes sense.


Yeah, we call it Whack-a-Mole, too, as per the carnival game.
Another voice for the mole.


We call it Pop up PCs.
Sounds about right.


At my 'table' it's [weapon] Pong -- sword pong, claw pong, arrow pong, fire pong ... though usually only when the felling blow is monosyllabic. Now I'm going to go with meatball surgery, though. :smallsmile:
The pong makes room for a little creativity, but I agree that meatball surgery is pretty good.

[DarkKnightJin]

I kinda said 'meatball surgery' as a joke, but I might use the term for when I need to HW someone now..

It's only happened once in the game where I'm playing a Cleric.. But I am totally going to call it that whenever I need to pop em to their feet.

[Caelic]

Someone goes down to 0 hp, and then gets healed with as little as possible, just to get them back on their feet. Soon they'll be down again, only to again be healed as little as possible. And so on, until the fight ends.

Don't we have a name for this?


We call it Weeble Syndrome, or just "weebling."

[Fredaintdead]

I've always referred to it as "Ping Pong".

[Lombra]

Around here it's often referred to yo-yo-ing. All you need is a paladin laying hands for 1 HP, it's sad really, and I try to metagame it out when I play my characters.

[The1exile]

We call it the Chumbawumba (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hDkVQvhZx04) method at my table :smallbiggrin:

[Tanarii]

Meta-gaming (specifically, using the knowledge that it's a game to inform in-character decisions)?Its not metagaming. It healing a critically wounded character that has gone down.

Also, healing spells don't exist IRL, so we have no clue how someone would "really" act with them.



So how do you make that interesting?Speed up combat.

1 hour combat is ridiculously slow for 5e combat, even with 7 players at the table. Even if the DM takes as long as any three players combined, for a total of 5 minutes per round of combat, it'd still take a six round combat to reach even 30 minutes. 4 hours should be enough time to fit in six Medium combats of four rounds each and still have half the session available for exploration and social. (And I'd still consider those slow combats if you're talking Tier 1.)

[Unoriginal]

Could call it the Healer Deadpool Effect.

[WrittenInBlood]

Do you just ask for name for it or looking for a solution? Rolling first death save immediately on going down to 0 HP, and resetting death saves score after a long rest seems to be a common suggestion for it.

[hymer]

Do you just ask for name for it or looking for a solution?

Just the name.

[Laserlight]

Just the name.

Yoyo. It doesn't happen at our table, as most people drop back and heal up when they're getting close to zero. We use "hit zero, get Exhaustion"; we also use "pass a Concentration check and you don't go unconscious", although you keep taking Death Saves as usual.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

I call it the most intelligent use of Healing Word possible!

Think of it as a Bard playing the system.

It wastes excess damage the bad guy does.

Time right it gets your downed and soon to be downed again ally an attack every round.

All it costs you is a bonus action.

Seems very Bardic appropriate to me lol. It fits in with the "I'm not a cleric but look what I can do" attitude.

[furby076]

Around here it's often referred to yo-yo-ing. All you need is a paladin laying hands for 1 HP, it's sad really, and I try to metagame it out when I play my characters.

I disagree with that. The entire nature of casting spells requires metagaming. Do i cast fireball at min level or upcast it? How do i know if i have the spell points left, and how many of them? How do i know to use min cure wounds, or to upcast it? A bloodied lvl 1 character looks as bad as a bloodied lvl 15 character, so do i use my most powerful cure wounds on the lvl 1, or my weakest on the level 15? Its meta gaming for sure, and to punish one type of pc over another is unfair. In the end, this is a game, and there is no real way to avoid metagaming some things. Thats OK.

I play a paladin, and save my LOH for when i am down massive HP. Using 5hp of LOH is absolutely a waste of my action. My 3 hits, plus smite is what my group needs me to do. The light cleric should help heal the paladin. But, i do keep 2 to 3 points on reserve for emergency...cause who is gonna bail out the cleric?

[Xetheral]

1 hour combat is ridiculously slow for 5e combat, even with 7 players at the table. Even if the DM takes as long as any three players combined, for a total of 5 minutes per round of combat, it'd still take a six round combat to reach even 30 minutes. 4 hours should be enough time to fit in six Medium combats of four rounds each and still have half the session available for exploration and social. (And I'd still consider those slow combats if you're talking Tier 1.)

Do you use a grid? I usually do, and I wonder if that contributes to why my combats take so much longer than yours. (Note that I am not complaining that combat takes too long--I could shorten my encounters if I wanted to.) 30-45 minutes is common for me, with big battles taking an hour (or even two). Sketching the terrain on the grid adds at least a few minutes for every battle, more if one side or the other takes the battle outside the grid and it needs to be redrawn. Also, do you count player pre-battle planning as part of the combat? Or does your clock only start when initiative is rolled?

A few other points where our experiences differ:

Personally, I'd consider myself lucky if my turns as the DM take less time than three player turns: the foes usually outnumber the PCs, and, unlike the players, I can't plan the opponents' turns while the players act, since I'm involved in every turn taking reactions, answering questions, making rulings, and recording results. Sure, I can make decisions faster than the players, but I have so many more decisions to make.

Also, short of a rout where the PCs elect not to pursue, or a surrender, I rarely see combats over in less than four rounds. Usual for me is 6 to 12, with an average probably at 8-9. The shorter end is limited to short-range combat against mindless enemies in a confined space where every character can take the attack action every round and there isn't much dodging or cover. I've had fights go well over 12 rounds when the losing side is fighting to survive and there is either abundant cover or plenty of room to flee. (Finishing off the last goblin archers in a tall tower where they had staircases to flee up and obstruct with flaming oil barrels took forever, but it felt suitably epic in return.)

Lastly, I'd consider a session with 50% of the time spent on combat to be a very combat-heavy session. Would you?

[Alatar]

Speed up combat.

1 hour combat is ridiculously slow for 5e combat, even with 7 players at the table. Even if the DM takes as long as any three players combined, for a total of 5 minutes per round of combat, it'd still take a six round combat to reach even 30 minutes. 4 hours should be enough time to fit in six Medium combats of four rounds each and still have half the session available for exploration and social. (And I'd still consider those slow combats if you're talking Tier 1.)

Ha, ha. Well, I guess we're just doing it wrong. We seem to be having fun, though.

[MaxWilson]

We typically use Bloodied and On the Ropes to describe both our, and our enemies states. But mechanically, there's no difference between full health and On the Ropes - we just know who to concentrate fire on. If someone eventually comes up with a system of HP attrition, such that being bloodied (50% health remaining) made you less effective, and On the Ropes (25% health remaining) even less so, then sure, we'd probably heal when folks were beginning to rack up serious consequences... but as of yet, since we don't, and as far as I know, nothing like that exists for 5E, healing only when someone goes down is just plain better for the caster's spell slots.

Hmmm. -1 to your proficiency bonus at 25-50% HP, halve your proficiency bonus at 0-25% HP?

[Tanarii]

Do you use a grid?Not for Easy, or tactically simple Medium, combats. And yes, that makes it much faster. Adding a grid usually adds (guessing) 10-20% more time to a combat? It's hard to tell exactly how much comes from a grid, because we're already talking about a more complicated combat. But IMX it definitely slows players down a bit. They're more likely to take longer deciding what to do when their turn begins, you need to step on that if you care about it.


Personally, I'd consider myself lucky if my turns as the DM take less time than three player turns: the foes usually outnumber the PCs, and, unlike the players, I can't plan the opponents' turns while the players act, since I'm involved in every turn taking reactions, answering questions, making rulings, and recording results. Sure, I can make decisions faster than the players, but I have so many more decisions to make.Seems like I take about 1/2 as much time as the typical player, per creature. But remember, oveerether course of a combat I'm losing creatures, and the players are not.


Also, short of a rout where the PCs elect not to pursue, or a surrender, I rarely see combats over in less than four rounds. Yknow, I used to argue against exactly that when I first started playing, but it turned out it was just the AL group I played with. After running my own campaign for some time, outside of a hit& run scenario, the average seems to be somewhere around 2-3 for Easy, 3-4 for Medium, 4-5 for Hard, and 5-6 for Deadly.

But sure if you have more rounds per combat, you have more rounds. If you have 5 minutes per round for, let's call it 6 players + DM, then a 12 round combat taking an hour is just about right.


Lastly, I'd consider a session with 50% of the time spent on combat to be a very combat-heavy session. Would you?Nope. Fairly low for my current campaign, but that's not relevant to how long combats take. No judgement on how combat heavy or light a session or campaign is as long as everyone is enjoying it. In fact ...


Ha, ha. Well, I guess we're just doing it wrong. We seem to be having fun, though.
No judgement on you guys if you're enjoying it. In that case, you're not doing it wrong.

My suggestion was entirely predicated on "how do you make that more interesting?" If you're having fun and don't care it is, by my standards, slow combat rounds, you should totally ignore my suggestion to speed it up. :smallbiggrin:

[Xetheral]

Not for Easy, or tactically simple Medium, combats. And yes, that makes it much faster. Adding a grid usually adds (guessing) 10-20% more time to a combat? It's hard to tell exactly how much comes from a grid, because we're already talking about a more complicated combat. But IMX it definitely slows players down a bit. They're more likely to take longer deciding what to do when their turn begins, you need to step on that if you care about it.

Seems like I take about 1/2 as much time as the typical player, per creature. But remember, oveerether course of a combat I'm losing creatures, and the players are not.

Yknow, I used to argue against exactly that when I first started playing, but it turned out it was just the AL group I played with. After running my own campaign for some time, outside of a hit& run scenario, the average seems to be somewhere around 2-3 for Easy, 3-4 for Medium, 4-5 for Hard, and 5-6 for Deadly.

But sure if you have more rounds per combat, you have more rounds. If you have 5 minutes per round for, let's call it 6 players + DM, then a 12 round combat taking an hour is just about right.

Nope. Fairly low for my current campaign, but that's not relevant to how long combats take. No judgement on how combat heavy or light a session or campaign is as long as everyone is enjoying it. In fact ...


Thanks for the reply. Your point about DM turns taking less time as the combat progresses is a good one. It's also interesting to see how combat length for you depends so directly on difficulty. That's probably true at my table as well, at least in part, but I don't use the encounter design guidelines, so I'm not sure how much combat length scales to the listed encounter difficulties at my table. Terrain and encounter distance might correlate more strongly to length than difficulty does at my table.

[The Shadowdove]

Kickstand Healing.

[Razade]

Someone goes down to 0 hp, and then gets healed with as little as possible, just to get them back on their feet. Soon they'll be down again, only to again be healed as little as possible. And so on, until the fight ends.

Don't we have a name for this?

Yeah, it's called Whack-A-Mole combat.

[Mortis_Elrod]

Slapstick Surgery.


we have a very light-hearted comedic approach at my table.

[Garresh]

We call it whack-a-mole as well.

[Easy_Lee]

Here's another vote for yo-yoing. Three factors contribute:

Heals are weak compared to attacks
Actions are limited
Any damage that doesn't kill a player only reduces him to zero hit points.

Cure Wounds cast at your maximum spell level may not overcome a single enemy attack. But Healing Word when someone drops is always enough to give him an extra round and delay death while allowing you to do something else.

It's obvious to wait until the last moment to heal. A healer doing this is about as close to metagaming as a barbarian who takes GWM.

[Regitnui]

It's obvious to wait until the last moment to heal. A healer doing this is about as close to metagaming as a barbarian who takes GWM.

Minor but acceptable, in other words.

Don't we have doctors or army medics around here? They've got the most experience with the nearest real world equivalent of this.

[Willie the Duck]

Whack-a-mole, or yo-yo-ing, or Jack-in-the-box (which is actually a very poor analogy, we know, it just stuck).

[Temperjoke]

http://www.brianchristyburke.com/wp-content/gallery/world-of-warcraft/viciouscycle.jpg

Mechanically, it's just the result of healing being weaker during a battle than damaging, especially at lower levels. After all, if you can't give enough healing beyond the damage capability of an enemy's hit, there's no point in wasting an action like that, especially if you do damage instead you can potentially kill the enemy and stop all the damage. Likewise, why dump more than the minimum healing on a person if you can't heal beyond a regular hit from the enemy. This creates a pattern at low levels which isn't true at higher levels as you gain more potent healing and more HP.

I like the idea of an exhaustion penalty from being healed after being reduced to 0, however this might be more lethal for the group as a whole. I mean, if they're having enough of an issue that players are dropping from the damage, adding another penalty on top of that is just further handicapping them. It might be better to just let it go, since messing with it might be more frustrating for everyone all around.

My group called it yo-yoing too.

[Willie the Duck]

I like the idea of an exhaustion penalty from being healed after being reduced to 0, however this might be more lethal for the group as a whole. I mean, if they're having enough of an issue that players are dropping from the damage, adding another penalty on top of that is just further handicapping them. It might be better to just let it go, since messing with it might be more frustrating for everyone all around.

I'm pretty sure that, excluding a trial-and-error adjustment period (for both players and DMs), the game will work perfectly fine with an exhaustion penalty (or removing the bonus action healing abilities, or heck just saying "if you drop below 1 hp, you are out of the fight"). People will have to change how they play. Encounter difficulty will have to be recalculated. But it'll work.

[Requilac]

I believe someone stated this already, but my AL table always called it “walking death’s revolving door”. Another table I was at called it “fooling with the defibrillator”. I am totally going to start calling it Meaball surgery from now on.

@Regitnui
I am not exactly a doctor or soldier of any variety, but I am fairly certain that meatball surgery is a term that is actually used in the military. I have heard several people I know from the naval academy refer to meatball surgery, although even then that is not the exact same thing as D&D’s yo-yoing. That is about the closest you are going to get to a real world equivalency though, because the way D&D healing works requires is an act of serious suspension of disbelief.

[Easy_Lee]

You could also compare this sort of healing to that in Guild Wars 2, for what that's worth. Players go down but don't die immediately, and can be brought back up by heals or another player taking time to stabilize them.

Some people expect different things out of D&D, and that's fine. But there's no sense in getting annoyed at players for taking advantage of the designers' "mistake." Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I put mistake in quote because, as the GW2 example shows, it's debatable whether this is actually a mistake or qualifies as poor game design.

[Willie the Duck]

Some people expect different things out of D&D, and that's fine. But there's no sense in getting annoyed at players for taking advantage of the designers' "mistake." Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I put mistake in quote because, as the GW2 example shows, it's debatable whether this is actually a mistake or qualifies as poor game design.

I doubt very much that it is either. I think it was deliberate, and that it is makes for a perfectly functional game with a set of incentivized behaviors some people dislike. That makes it only a 'mistake' in that WotC might have misjudged whether people would like it or not (and even that--let's be honest, we are not representative of the average D&D gamer that WotC is catering to).

[Pazerniusz]

Black Knight Syndrome
and in my table there is house rule for rolling lasting injure for everytime when player go down.

[Zene]

Mostly heard whack-a-mole, though I like a lot of the other terms put forth here. And I learned something from "meatball surgery" --thanks!

I don't understand the "metagaming" complaint at all. Even from a purely in-game perspective: I, the healer, see the bad guy smash my fighter right across the face. Blood's gushing all over, but the fighter is still holding his own. The bad guy is winding up for another hit that could easily break the fighter's neck or shatter his pelvis. Do I use one of my very limited spell slots on fixing that face wound, where I know if I wait a few seconds, no matter how debilitating that next hit is, I can use that same spell slot to get the fighter back up to fight some more?

I mean, sure, L1 healer in his first combat may not know that. But any character that's been using healing magic in battles for a while is going to know that whack-a-mole works like 95% of the time. That's not metagaming; in fact I'd question why any experienced healing character hadn't figured that out, unless maybe they had a very low int/wis score.

That's like saying it's metagaming if a wizard picks his spells to prepare with the understanding that you can only run one concentration-based spell at a time; or that some spells work better against agile enemies vs. tough enemies (con vs. dex saves). It's how the world they live in works; anyone in that field (spellcasting) has gotta be smart enough to figure those things out pretty quick.

[damascoplay]

Someone goes down to 0 hp, and then gets healed with as little as possible, just to get them back on their feet. Soon they'll be down again, only to again be healed as little as possible. And so on, until the fight ends.

Don't we have a name for this?

Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive.

[XmonkTad]

Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive.
Fair enough.

I've always heard it called "the dead cat bounce" but I can't remember where I heard it and reading this thread it seems like no one actually calls it that. I still like it, but black knight syndrome and meatball surgery seem excellent too.

[thereaper]

Meta-gaming (specifically, using the knowledge that it's a game to inform in-character decisions)?

As in, it's completely alien to how real people (or characters that don't know they're in a game) act. The characters don't know about HP, death saves (and the resetting of such), etc. I don't see this behavior from any table I run, even though I take no steps to counter it. They're healing and taking defensive measures well before 0 HP because that's good role playing.

In a game based on real life combat, would it be metagaming to utilize cover and dominate combat as a result? Or would that simply be roleplaying a competent soldier?

The simple fact is, for an adventurer who isn't level 1 to be utilizing tactics that aren't close to optimal is metagaming, because in real life, warriors either learn how to fight well, or die to those who do.

The Healing Word strategy (as I refer to it) is simply better in most circumstances than trying to keep people's HP up. So, employing that is really just roleplaying a healer who knows how to do their job.

Of course, in a game where the optimal tactics don't mesh with the setting as the group understands it, a certain amount of metagaming may be necessary (otherwise, you run into questions like "why hasn't anyone gotten a simulacrum chain going yet?" or "why doesn't the bad guy always prepare Teleport to escape?").

[Theodoxus]

Why don't Star Trek characters have serial immortality? Sure, you lose your memories of whatever happened between beaming down to the planet, and dying - but isn't that a load better than losing a good officer (or a decent red shirt) or a radioactive Spock?

Because it's not conducive to tension.

I think that's the underlying problem some folk have with long rests completely healing; abundance of curative magics and even relatively cheap resurrection magic in Revivify. If there's no real chance of dying, there's no tension, no story, no verisimilitude...

But then again, I don't think anyone really likes losing a character either. So it's a fine wire most DMs walk - creating the illusion of tension but not purposefully killing characters - no one is a red shirt... but most of us figure if a player does something stupid - and it's worthy of getting killed for, we'll let them hang out to dry. Especially if there's sufficient warning: "Johnny, I don't think your character would think that dashing across the busy freeway at rush hour is a good thing. But I won't stop you from trying - but if you die, that's on you - not me."

OTOH, I don't think that a bit of metaknowledge in a game is a bad thing either. Especially something like healing. If you have a newer player, who decides to play a cleric, but doesn't read up on strategies to employ, and perhaps they've come from a healing intensive MMO - they'll probably blow all their slots trying to keep their party members maxed out on Hit Points. After a couple encounters, and they're completely tapped out, they'll probably tell the party to attempt a short rest and burn hit dice to heal up. Eventually, after a couple sessions, at worst I'd hazard, they'll naturally gravitate to more logical style for the way the game plays. Knowing that players function the same with 100 hit points or 1, all hit points are temporary hit points, except the last one - that's the all important one. It's not the player's fault the game is built that way - but not playing the game with that very important fact, results in very inefficient healing.

Look at how many threads and houserules there are regarding HPs, Healing, Yo-yo-ing, etc. It's the meta that mess people up, because they seem to want it to be realistic... in a game with wizards and unicorns and dragons, they want real life representation of wounds... It doesn't fit the zeitgeist of the game itself. The meta knowledge is part of it. It's intrinsic. Like my current DM not letting me know how many hit points the players currently have - hampering my ability to heal - it's annoying, because he's trying to curtail the meta. Yes, my character, in the game world, wouldn't know. But there's nothing in the rules that state that I, as a player, wouldn't - it's tied up into what I need to function as a healer.

It'd be akin to playing Monopoly, and only the banker knowing who has houses and hotels on which property. That the player, who bought the buildings, wouldn't actually know how many or where they are - just some nebulous "I buy a hotel, banker, you figure out where it is." It makes the game nigh unplayable. But that metagaming is intrinsic to Monopoly, just like knowing that Healing Word is best used on a character with zero hit points.

[Waffle_Iron]

We call it the Chumbawumba (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hDkVQvhZx04) method at my table :smallbiggrin:

This is what we call it, too. Haha

[lperkins2]

Whack-a-mole is the term we most often use, but Jack-in-the-Box is sometimes thrown out when the sudden popping up is unexpected.

That said, it's never been a problem at my table. The solution is simple: kill downed PCs. When a PC goes down, an attack from within 5' has advantage, and auto crits. Even when you get high enough level that the auto crit is unlikely to overdamage them, it counts as two automatic failures on their death saves (and destabilizes them if they somehow were stable). A second attack is automatic death, as is failing a single death save if their turn comes up before the cleric. Now, it is generally considered bad etiquette to focus fire, but that is generally just the DM metagaming in favour of the PCs. There are four categories of adversary, and it is important to keep track of which one you are running.

The first is the sapient. These will generally not coup de grâce downed opponents at the start of the fight. They may be interested in taking prisoners, they may consider it dishonourable to finish off an unresisting foe, and they probably will focus on the immediate threats. If, however, they are trying to sneak in somewhere, undetected, they are unlikely to leave downed characters alive after the fight is over. Also, if it becomes clear that their enemies have magical healing, they are likely to finish off downed enemies and focus on killing the healers. This is just as true if it is someone using potions to revive downed PCs, the usual phrase is "they're drinking our loot".

The second group are comprised of mindless things. Gelatinous cubes are the go-to example. They won't intentionally finish off a character while under attack, but they are fairly likely to 'walk' over one, picking them up and killing them via automatic damage. After a fight, they are similarly likely to finish off anyone strewn out on the floor, for the same reason.

Then there are animals, and similar things, defending something. Generally, they aren't really interested in fighting you, they may flee early, if they don't think they can win. They're likely to ignore anyone not being aggressive toward them, which includes downed PCs. If they win the fight, they may drag off and eat downed PCs, but are unlikely to specifically try to kill them during the fight.

The final group are like the third, low intelligence beings, but with a drive to kill. This could be a rabid dog, a pack of starving wolves, your classic zombie horde, or a group of controlled skeletons ordered to behead all intruders. Depending on the nature of the group, they will behave differently, but all of them will happily finish off a downed PC, potentially even squabbling over who gets to munch on them and who has to seek the still struggling prey.

Having your zombie horde kill and eat a downed PC does more than anything else I've found to convince players to use smart tactics and not let anyone get knocked out.

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, I think the balance of tension versus enjoyment is the true crux of this arguement.

My biggest current challenge as a DM is that my group has decided to go and kill a Great Old One (Dagon specifically). Now, I've made it clear this is a bad plan. I've referred to him as "the god-eater" and talked him up pretty well. So, I'd be perfectly legitimate in after they find him saying "he blasts you all out of existence, TPK, thanks for the game guys"

But that isn't the story and the final session they want. And it would pretty well ruin two years of a great campaign.

So, I need him to be powerful, overwhelming powerful, but still capable of being defeated by this group of non-optimized characters with a terrible sense of tactics and strategy. Cause, while I want them to win, if victory is too easy and it doesn't feel like they earned it, that will also leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

It's a really difficult balance, and I'd "meatball ssurgery" or "yo-yoing" is only a problem if the players are bored with a fight because of it. It's a measure of the feel at the table. Never seen a group where it ruined the tension for us yet because we recognize it is a patch job. A chance to prevent out right death by stray spells, or give you one last chance to turn the tide before we are all wrecked. Even when we leaned heavy into the metagame of it, it simply highlighted how tough and engaging the fight was, because we had to plan on and fire every trick we had to pull it out in the end.

But, every table is different