OPINION: Every party needs a healer

[Miz_Liz]

I have recently come to the conclusion that any adventuring party in a game with combat needs someone capable of filling the healer/support role. Most of my experience admittedly is with D&D, but I feel like this could apply to most systems.

For context:
I am playing in a D&D5e game right now with a fighter, a barbarian, a sorc, a warlock, and me. Up until last week I had been playing a monk 3/bard 1 for story reasons. My two measly first level healing words were the difference between life and death for the fighter, and we swept through our healing pots in two sessions. After talking with the DM he allowed me to witch my character to monk 1/bard 3 (It won't affect rp hardly at all) because I realized this team was not going to make it far without any support casting whatsoever.

Thoughts/opinions/ why I'm totally wrong? I would love to hear this discussion.

[Kaptin Keen]

Every party needs a healer.

It's possible to have other solutions, but those solutions are just symptoms of doing it ever increasingly wrong. The only proper RP party is some variation of fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric.

[caden_varn]

As with all things, it depends on the group and DM, but I doubt you'll get much disagreement that having a heal-capable character is at the very least extremely useful. Fortunately this edition gives you a good choice - bard, cleric, druid & pally can all heal allies, and probably others I've forgotten. The secret is really a mix of capabilities - battlefield control, buffing, damage dealing & skirmishing are all good niches to fill. As a bard, you'll excel at control & buffing and provide enough healing to get by.

It was not always thus - back in the day, your healing came in the form of a cleric, and nothing else. The change to alolow different classes to cover the niche is far better IMO.

[ashmanonar]

Depending on the system. SWSE (Star Wars Saga Edition) doesn't really have a "healer", although Jedi have some healing powers and I think Noble has Medicine as a skill. The healing is handled by NPC's for the most part in SWSE (your party fights, you go get medical attention, etc).

Other more modern games, especially "realistic" ones, have at most somebody who can stabilize the dying then all healing is offtable (ie, doctors, surgery, etc). Spycraft, etc.

[icefractal]

I think there are three distinct capabilities you're talking about.

1) Healing from below zero to above zero, usable in combat. Not necessarily to anywhere near full, because the key part is going from "bleeding out, could easily be finished off, has to be carried" to "able to retreat under their own power". This is a big deal, and I'd say without this fights will be a lot more deadly and PC longevity is unlikely.

2) Healing between fights. To play most standard adventures, you need this. But if the PCs were rarely getting into more than one fight a day and could rest safely (detectives in the city watch, for example, or a 'static' dungeon populated by undead/constructs) then this isn't necessary.

3) Significant in-combat healing, enough to bring people from nearly dead to nearly full power. This is obviously a useful thing to have, but there are other strategies that can work just as well or better (depending on the edition and level).

I think when people say "in-combat healing is unnecessary", they mean #3. Or they mean both 1 and 3, in which case they're wrong. :P


Edit: Since the OP was about D&D, that's what my answer is regarding. But obviously this varies a lot by system. In Champions for instance, we seldom had any "healer" on the team, despite getting into plenty of fights.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to disagree.

There's no doubt that healing is very useful, but it isn't always a necessity. A lot of adventures take place in the wilderness, in dungeons, or in other remote locations, and in those sorts of situations a healer is pretty much required. However, not all adventures are like that. Any city-based adventure is certainly going to have alternative healing options available. Other situations in which the party maintains close or frequent contact with a group of NPCs will similarly fill the void of a healer. Even in the traditional dungeon environment, there are ways for a DM to give a party access to healing.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It wildly varies from system to system, depending on how damage and recovery mechanics work.

I've played a lot of Mutants and Masterminds 3e and have only seen one healer-type, and even then she was more useful when using her damaging powers-- characters recover to full between fights automatically, and have a certain amount of self-recovery ability within a fight, and the damage system is fairly gradual.
I've played a fair bit of Fate, and a dedicated healer isn't necessary or possible-- damage is either transitory or long-term, and there really aren't ways around that. You might need someone to make a medicine check if you took a serious consequence, but that happens pretty rarely.
I've played a bit of Exalted, and from what I can tell it's very important for someone to have at least the basic healing powers, otherwise you'll spend a month recovering from a minor fight.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, it varies a lot with system. As a general rule:

In-combat healing is not necessary, but the party should have a way to return to near-full before the next fight.


I've been in games where in-combat healing is useful, ones where it's almost required, and ones where we've made it without any. I once played a game of Unknown Armies, and we very quickly decided we didn't want a healer (partially because the system can be hilariously lethal once firearms come into play), but we did want an insanity healer, as without one you very quickly descend into insanity or detachment.

I've also played in games where in-combat healing is impossible. It's actually my favourite kind of game to run, especially if everybody tends towards glass cannons. Fast and furious combat where getting the first shot in can be the difference between winning and a TPK. Normally either out of combat healing is common and effective or correct play is meant to be taking opponents down fast before they can get more than a hit or two in. Although a lot of the time you'll find games in such systems tend towards one fight every few adventuring days.

I did once play a character who could heal in-combat, but a single pistol shot would make most fully healed characters in serious danger of passing out. The healing spells were still incredibly useful, as my presence at a plane crash allowed me to save the leader of a dwarf hold, giving the party a massive PR boost and stopping a treaty from falling through.

[Eldan]

That depends a lot on system and optimization. Even in D&D: In third edition, the ideal party doesn't need a healer, it just kills everything that coudl damage them before it could act. Or at higher optimization, is just immune to damage. But at those levels, they can also heal, because they can do anything.
Other systems just don't have healers. Some don't even really have a notion of "damage".

[Mastikator]

D&D is designed and balanced around having a healer around.
WoD isn't (AFAIK). Neither is Call of Cthulhu.

If you're getting into deadly combat a lot then it helps to have someone around who can patch you up.

[kyoryu]

I've also played in games where in-combat healing is impossible. It's actually my favourite kind of game to run, especially if everybody tends towards glass cannons.

Healing slows things down and reduces tension. It's an act that takes you further from resolution, rather than getting closer to resolution. Glass cannon or not, without healing, everything you do marches you closer to a resolution and increases tension.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Healing slows things down and reduces tension. It's an act that takes you further from resolution, rather than getting closer to resolution. Glass cannon or not, without healing, everything you do marches you closer to a resolution and increases tension.

But both are needed. Pacing is important for long races.

I like that 5e does not require a dedicated healer. Having someone with healing is nice, but that can be as simple as having a healing kit and the relevant feat. No "must have this composition to win" anymore.

[FreddyNoNose]

Or the DM runs it in a way that is mostly talking and little to no combat....

[kyoryu]

But both are needed. Pacing is important for long races.

I like that 5e does not require a dedicated healer. Having someone with healing is nice, but that can be as simple as having a healing kit and the relevant feat. No "must have this composition to win" anymore.

For long races, yes, but that's what between-"encounter" scenes and whatnot are for.

I don't know of any movies that really feature "in-combat" healing in their fight scenes. They seem pretty good at pacing.

[Pleh]

I have recently come to the conclusion that any adventuring party in a game with combat needs someone capable of filling the healer/support role. Most of my experience admittedly is with D&D, but I feel like this could apply to most systems.

For context:
I am playing in a D&D5e game right now with a fighter, a barbarian, a sorc, a warlock, and me. Up until last week I had been playing a monk 3/bard 1 for story reasons. My two measly first level healing words were the difference between life and death for the fighter, and we swept through our healing pots in two sessions. After talking with the DM he allowed me to witch my character to monk 1/bard 3 (It won't affect rp hardly at all) because I realized this team was not going to make it far without any support casting whatsoever.

Thoughts/opinions/ why I'm totally wrong? I would love to hear this discussion.

I disagree based on the following:

Even in D&D it is possible to totally replace a healer with healing items like potions and Spell Service vendors. All it requires is DM cooperation in making such resources reliably available and affordable based on encounter treasure rewards.

[Fable Wright]

I've played a bit of Exalted, and from what I can tell it's very important for someone to have at least the basic healing powers, otherwise you'll spend a month recovering from a minor fight.
[/LIST]

That is about the opposite of what most Solars experience, as most opponents have difficulty landing a Decisive strike against Solars, and even then, Solars recover one health level per day. Were you using mortal recovery rules? :smallconfused:

[Mr Beer]

Generally true in D&D and D&D-style games.

In modern/realistic settings, maybe not so much, I mean you likely want someone who can bandage a wound or splint a break but generally hospitals do a better job than one person out in the field.

[Mechalich]

A character who is significantly injured can't contribute effectively to party function. In most cases a character unable to walk about and talk freely can't accompany the party at all. Never mind combat, they can't participate in non-combat encounters. This is a problem because it means that character's player can't doing anything and is stuck wasting their time. So every campaign where there will be any combat at all has to have a solution to this.

Having a healer who can rapidly restore all party members to 'functional' - which need not be full power - is the most common solution. It is not the only solution. Some games allow players to have a rotating group of characters they utilize and if someone ends up in the hospital for a while that just takes them out of the rotation (this is the X-COM model). It is also possible to have the healing needs taken care of by an NPC, so long as they are found in a reliable safe zone and access is kept sacrosanct (games like Disgaea do this).

Generally having a healer in the party provides superior flexibility to some other method. They will always be there and they can't be taken away, so there's less logistical trouble to worry about. It is not especially difficult to design a healer type for a game so that they have other abilities that are used in addition to healing, whether that's the D&D cleric or anything else.

[Quertus]

Needs? No.

IME, every game that features removing health in discrete chunks, it is tactically advantageous to possess healing that can keep pace with damage.

Every system that has conditions, like stoned or on another plane, requires someone healing those conditions for optimal play experience.

Games that feature lengthy out of combat healing and fast pace between encounters demand healing for optimal play experience.

Having two or more healers is actually optimal, because, otherwise, no-one can heal the healer.

But, personally, I'm not a fan of exclusively playing optimally. Doing so lacks variety, and is therefore itself suboptimal.

So, every party that is not in an inappropriate (alpha-strike, rocket tag, SoD, non-combat, etc) scenario benefits from having a healer. But the game variety benefits from not every party having a healer.

[Pex]

Every party needs a means to get healed, but it's not necessary for one character to be solely responsible for it unless the player chooses the role. Healing can be divided up among party members, heal yourself, some items, and the game rules. This is one area 5E does right.

[tensai_oni]

No party should need anything. You could play a party of all rogues (or rogue types), all spellcasters or all non-combatant villagers - of course the type of adventures they'll get into will be different than a typical dungeoneering party of a fighter, rogue, magic user and cleric, but a good GM should always tailor the campaign to the party instead of punishing the players because they didn't bring a rogue along or whatever.


That is about the opposite of what most Solars experience, as most opponents have difficulty landing a Decisive strike against Solars, and even then, Solars recover one health level per day. Were you using mortal recovery rules? :smallconfused:

I'll assume Grod meant pre-3rd ed Exalted, where healing lethal or aggravated damage really did take that long.

[oxybe]

As Pex said, every party of adventurers needs a fallback plan on the chance that someone will get hurt, both superficial and major injuries. And in games where throwing yourself into danger is common, that should be one of your topmost plans.

Having a dedicated healbot is the "best" option, but there are alternatives depending on the game or system you're running. 3.5's portable cleric, the wand of cure light wounds, or a 5th ed bag of holding full of healing potions can work fine given some downtime between encounters. You may be lacking the spot-recovery and recoverable healing spell slots that a cleric or druid type would offer, but you're likely gaining something else for that tradeoff.

As long as you have a plan to get the party patched up should things get rough, you can get by without a dedicated healer.

In our Mass Effect game, there was no "healer" class, but we had access to stim pack type recovery that had diminishing returns if used frequently in succession. Why we thought sending the Salarian slicer on the front lines was a good idea, we'll never know (hint: our boss is a big angry krogan and we're bad at planning). I have a degree in Cryptosecurity, dangit! Though I have put some minimum time on the firing range, I am not some grunt, and I do not appreciate having my sensitive equipment being within proximity of fragmentation grenades and rifle fire! Sigh.

In our current homebrew'd Genesys game, we do have a Life mage in the party, but that's less "healing magic" in the D&D cure light wounds sense and more "speeds up natural recovery" sense at our level, so you still need to disinfect wounds & set broken limbs if you want them to heal properly, and expect to feel drained and have some scarring once it's done. We also have multiple different tasks to do and we can't expect the single life mage to be nearby at all times, so each character has to have some sort of plans in case something bad happens (we're reclaiming an abandoned settlement, which means lots of different jobs to do at once and each PC has a different specialty).

The life mage & earth mage are working together on cultivating not just food but also herbs for poultices and whatnot and a few of us have medical training & survival skills, or at least are playing it safe and planning on getting that training eventually if they don't have it currently.

different games and party setups will force you to think about these things, but to reiterate: a dedicated healer isn't needed, but you should have a plan on how you'll manage your wounds if your occupational hazards tend to be on the more dangerous sides.

[Mnemius]

I keep running with a pathfinder/starfinder GM that does not like the party coordinating character building whenever we start a new campaign. "Make whatever you want!" he says. I've ended up with a monk that took UMD just to use wand of cure light to top party off between fights.

D&D 3.5/Pathfinder both feel like having a healer is a core assumption that requires some shifting if the DM is to accomodate no healer. But that involves putting more work onto the GM because players didn't build a balanced party.

When I played Star Wars Edge of Empire (and other books) game, I was playing a doctor and healing was a slow thing. Then came the Jedi book and a GM wanting everyone to have force powers (as in, here's a story awarded force rating +1 to everyone). Force Healing trivialized out of combat healing with my doctor being able to add his medicine skill to the force healing. And if I was willing to dabble in the dark, well... I had a nasty punch.

[Knaight]

A character who is significantly injured can't contribute effectively to party function. In most cases a character unable to walk about and talk freely can't accompany the party at all. Never mind combat, they can't participate in non-combat encounters. This is a problem because it means that character's player can't doing anything and is stuck wasting their time. So every campaign where there will be any combat at all has to have a solution to this.

Having a healer who can rapidly restore all party members to 'functional' - which need not be full power - is the most common solution. It is not the only solution. Some games allow players to have a rotating group of characters they utilize and if someone ends up in the hospital for a while that just takes them out of the rotation (this is the X-COM model). It is also possible to have the healing needs taken care of by an NPC, so long as they are found in a reliable safe zone and access is kept sacrosanct (games like Disgaea do this).

Generally having a healer in the party provides superior flexibility to some other method. They will always be there and they can't be taken away, so there's less logistical trouble to worry about. It is not especially difficult to design a healer type for a game so that they have other abilities that are used in addition to healing, whether that's the D&D cleric or anything else.

There's also the matter of campaign pacing - sometimes the only healer you need is long enough time to slowly heal up, and some structures provide that. An example of this is the winter phase of Pendragon, where you might well get badly hurt questing but there's just one quest a year and you're guaranteed three months to rest up. Sure, you don't get to spend them as productively as you otherwise would, but once the action is back on you're back in fighting shape.

A bit of battlefield first aid is still helpful here, to at least avoid bleeding to death. Still, that basic level of first aid doesn't really make one a healer in any meaningful sense. Bandages, tourniquets (including knowing when not to use them), and CPR aren't remotely the same as medical training.

[Glorthindel]

All it requires is DM cooperation in making such resources reliably available and affordable based on encounter treasure rewards.


No party should need anything. You could play a party of all rogues (or rogue types), all spellcasters or all non-combatant villagers - of course the type of adventures they'll get into will be different than a typical dungeoneering party of a fighter, rogue, magic user and cleric, but a good GM should always tailor the campaign to the party instead of punishing the players because they didn't bring a rogue along or whatever.

I get what you guys are saying, but isn't this just railroading taken to its most opposite extreme (Is there a word for this? Streetsweeping? I dunno). Surely, as much as the DM should grant players their agency to create the characters and advance their story in whatever direction they desire, without forcing them to follow his desired path, surely the players should grant the DM agency to create encounters following any paradigm he desires, without being forced to obey strictures imposed by their choice of play.

I am fine with players overcoming the challenges placed before them in any matter they choose - but part of that is accepting that some solutions will and should be less optimal than others, and if the party have decided in a less optimal solution (entirely within their right to do so), then it is on them to deal with the consequences of such, not the DM's responsibility to remove the sharp edges that have resulted from the players own willing choice.

[Pleh]

I get what you guys are saying, but isn't this just railroading taken to its most opposite extreme (Is there a word for this? Streetsweeping? I dunno). Surely, as much as the DM should grant players their agency to create the characters and advance their story in whatever direction they desire, without forcing them to follow his desired path, surely the players should grant the DM agency to create encounters following any paradigm he desires, without being forced to obey strictures imposed by their choice of play.

I am fine with players overcoming the challenges placed before them in any matter they choose - but part of that is accepting that some solutions will and should be less optimal than others, and if the party have decided in a less optimal solution (entirely within their right to do so), then it is on them to deal with the consequences of such, not the DM's responsibility to remove the sharp edges that have resulted from the players own willing choice.

I think you have a point, BUT the thread is trying to make a General statement that ALL parties need a healer.

I'll remind you that Railroads + Participationism = Linear Adventure and is a valid form of play.

Therefore, "Streetsweeping" + Participationism also evaluates to a valid form of play.

It doesn't need to be a general case that refutes the idea that any particular party might need a healer.

Since the claim is every party needs a healer, all I need is a single valid counter example to refute the point.

No, not every party needs a healer. They need the DM to allow/provide an effective point of access for healing (or at least take a lack of such acccess into consideration when evaluating the challenge level).

I'll also remind you that a DM could theoretically ban healing classes from the game or just a soft ban by removing spontaneous cure/inflict features. But even without going so far, adventures in a persistent AMF can neutralize magic healing from a cleric and even more simply, the DM can string together enough encounters to deplete the healer's spell slots. Then your argument could just as easily defend that a DM has the right to institute such challenges.

Again, it all comes back to the fact that the functions of healers can be substituted through items or restful actions or the difficulty of combat can be adjusted to compensate for a lack of access.

The fact that this doesn't have to be the case is moot since all my point needed to do was refute a universal need for party healers.

[erikun]

No, every party does not need a healer. And this is coming from somebody who really likes playing healers, and is disappointed when that isn't a viable option.

How much a healer is required depends on the system, and the healing/damage mechanics in it. A number of systems work with the idea of characters getting injured and then needing to finish things with the damage they've taken. (Mutants & Masterminds, Fate) Several systems just don't have a healer role and so damage is balanced around being able to take hits and survive without healing. (World of Darkness) Some systems just give everybody self-healing, or the ability to heal others, and so there is no need for a specific "healer" role.

The biggest problem with creating a healer and sticking them into the above game systems is that it pretty much wreckes the combat dynamic already in place. Either healing turns out so terrible that it's never worth using (it preserves the combat dynamic, but makes a healer pointless) or it easily turns damage into a joke leaving hardly any threat to the party outside something which can instantly kill them. Even out-of-combat healing turns such games trivial, since and combat which isn't immediately threatening lethal results again turns into a joke that can be patched up shortly afterwards.

Healing works in D&D because D&D is designed with healing in mind. It's the intent of the game to allow a party to take damage and recover HP over time, and healing effectively distributes the HP over the whole party. (Since a healer could heal one character as well as another, the wizard taking damage is roughly the same as the fighter and so how well the party can survive isn't just determined by the wizard's lower HP total.) But that say dynamic can ruin another game system which isn't designed around large HP pools which gradually get chipped away at over several encounters, and a spellcaster with limited number of castings being used to restore that HP pool.

[Spore]

Even if you implement other mechanics to heal your character a healer ultimatively adds other ways to roleplay the healing of injuries. You cannot inflict broken bones and shattered spines on a party that is supposed to heal by "taking a breather" for 30 minutes. You can however on a target that is dying and likely to be healed.

[Pleh]

Even if you implement other mechanics to heal your character a healer ultimatively adds other ways to roleplay the healing of injuries. You cannot inflict broken bones and shattered spines on a party that is supposed to heal by "taking a breather" for 30 minutes. You can however on a target that is dying and likely to be healed.

Well, unless you are playing a superhuman aesthetic where all the heroes are like Thor or Wolverine and can push through just about any injury as long as they actually survive it, just popping bones back into place and moving on.

[Darth Ultron]

I think this is one of the Top Ten worst ideas ever. And it's is a Legacy of all the Video Gamers brought to TRPGs.

Video Games are all about the endless 'pew pew', and they want to keep you playing (and buy the next game). So they pointlessly do hit points and have foes and things hurt characters.....and they have TONS of ''healing potions'' or ''health kits'' or ''band aids'' Everywhere that the character can use to get health back.

And then the Video Game Folks demand that be put in the TRPG.

But it is very point less anyway.

Awesome all combat video game like TRPG----fight-->heal-->fight-->heal--->fight--->Oh no run out of healing, REST. And then Fight!(---->heal)

Traditional Classic Game: Mix of role playing, combat and other things. Might get into a fight, and if so will rest if needed. Healing is only needed for 'emergencies'

Ask the question: before 3E, a group doing a lot of combat would run out of healing in the first hour of the game....what would they do?

[Telonius]

Every party does need a healer. In 3.5, sometimes that healer just looks very much like a bag of Lesser Vigor wands that uses a Rogue with UMD as its divine focus.

In general, cleric magic (at least in 3.5) is more important for buffing/debuffing and status removal. (It does other things too, but just for things under the "healing" umbrella). Preventing damage from happening in the first place (through high AC, lowering enemies' attacks, or killing the bad guy before he can get to you) is always going to be a better strategy than mopping up after the fact, because the damage enemies can deal usually scales up faster than the amount of HP a single Cure spell can take care of. There are situations where in-combat healing is good and necessary, but those situations get harder to come by as you go up in level - precisely because damage scales up. It's less likely that your HP total is going to land somewhere between 0 and -9 when the monster is doing 45 points of damage a hit, than when it's only doing 6. You get into the situations where your characters are either "perfectly fine" or "dead."

[Mordaedil]

I think this is one of the Top Ten worst ideas ever. And it's is a Legacy of all the Video Gamers brought to TRPGs.

Video Games are all about the endless 'pew pew', and they want to keep you playing (and buy the next game). So they pointlessly do hit points and have foes and things hurt characters.....and they have TONS of ''healing potions'' or ''health kits'' or ''band aids'' Everywhere that the character can use to get health back.

And then the Video Game Folks demand that be put in the TRPG.

But it is very point less anyway.

Awesome all combat video game like TRPG----fight-->heal-->fight-->heal--->fight--->Oh no run out of healing, REST. And then Fight!(---->heal)

Traditional Classic Game: Mix of role playing, combat and other things. Might get into a fight, and if so will rest if needed. Healing is only needed for 'emergencies'

Ask the question: before 3E, a group doing a lot of combat would run out of healing in the first hour of the game....what would they do?
Did you forget that the cleric and paladin exists?

[oxybe]

Obviously you would just impale yourself on the nearest stick and roll up a new schlub.

[Quertus]

No party should need anything. You could play a party of all rogues (or rogue types), all spellcasters or all non-combatant villagers - of course the type of adventures they'll get into will be different than a typical dungeoneering party of a fighter, rogue, magic user and cleric, but a good GM should always tailor the campaign to the party instead of punishing the players because they didn't bring a rogue along or whatever.

A party in Ars Magica kinda needs a mage, right? A party in VtM kinda needs to be all vampires, right? But, in general, I agree that nothing should be absolutely required. One of my favorite minigames is "how do we make this random collection of characters functional?".

However, I hold the opposite stance: a good GM should never tailor the campaign to the party. That removes the meaning of the players picking those characters, at least in my book. Now, the players absolutely should tailor their party to the campaign, in terms of, "yes, we are communicating that we want to have no healing, no diplomacy, and no ability to just ignore overland travel by picking the party of all fighters".


D&D 3.5/Pathfinder both feel like having a healer is a core assumption that requires some shifting if the DM is to accomodate no healer. But that involves putting more work onto the GM because players didn't build a balanced party.

Personally, I put the onus on the players to make it work - and I all but demand that my GMs do the same. I believe that the GM should respect the party's choices by not tailoring the adventure to their characters, and letting them reap what they sow.


I get what you guys are saying, but isn't this just railroading taken to its most opposite extreme (Is there a word for this? Streetsweeping? I dunno). Surely, as much as the DM should grant players their agency to create the characters and advance their story in whatever direction they desire, without forcing them to follow his desired path, surely the players should grant the DM agency to create encounters following any paradigm he desires, without being forced to obey strictures imposed by their choice of play.

I am fine with players overcoming the challenges placed before them in any matter they choose - but part of that is accepting that some solutions will and should be less optimal than others, and if the party have decided in a less optimal solution (entirely within their right to do so), then it is on them to deal with the consequences of such, not the DM's responsibility to remove the sharp edges that have resulted from the players own willing choice.

I think I mostly agree with this, as I consider enforced "appropriate level of challenge" to be a form of railroading. However, as Pleh said, Participationism is a thing, and, if you signed on for that, it's not Badwrongfun.


No, not every party needs a healer. They need the DM to allow/provide an effective point of access for healing (or at least take a lack of such acccess into consideration when evaluating the challenge level).

They don't even need that, strictly speaking. Yes, it is highly advantageous, and, yes, if you stick to a standard play style, not having such would almost certainly result in death for most parties. But non-standard parties (which, in D&D, "no healer" already is), and non-standard play styles can accommodate no healer and no substitutes perfectly fine. And, further, no healer, no substitutes, otherwise standard party and play style may result in a lot of deaths, but that doesn't make it Badwrongfun. It's another perfectly valid way to play the game.


I'll also remind you that a DM could theoretically ban healing classes from the game or just a soft ban by removing spontaneous cure/inflict features. But even without going so far, adventures in a persistent AMF can neutralize magic healing from a cleric and even more simply, the DM can string together enough encounters to deplete the healer's spell slots. Then your argument could just as easily defend that a DM has the right to institute such challenges.

Are you trying to say that the GM doesn't have the right to build such variety of encounters?


Several systems just don't have a healer role and so damage is balanced around being able to take hits and survive without healing. (World of Darkness).

Life mages can heal, Vampires and Werewolves can regenerate... I think you'd have to be in a Mortals game for healing to be off the table (among the more popular lines, at least).

[GungHo]

D&D is designed and balanced around having a healer around.
WoD isn't (AFAIK). Neither is Call of Cthulhu.

If you're getting into deadly combat a lot then it helps to have someone around who can patch you up.
For WoD, Vampires and Werewolves have innate healing. Mages can generally take care of it too. Mortals have a problem, but they're supposed to be squishy. The game isn't really combat oriented, though. You're there to tell a story. That story may happen to have a fight in it. But, you're not really going from combat to combat in a dungeon like in D&D or even on a job like in Shadowrun... which is good, because the game really gets in its own way if you try to do that.


CoC is built around you going crazy and dying. You should be running from everything anyway. Yes, you just die tired, but all fighting means is that you die much earlier. You can't really beat anything you are put up against.

[exelsisxax]

In games with health/injury mechanics that are important for the game and in the fiction, healers are important. But that would be like saying that it's important for street fighter characters to be able to fight - trivially obvious. Some games have no need of a healer at all.

It's like saying that every party needs someone who can participate in combat. If the game is about a thing, then someone should be able to do that thing.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You've -almost- got it. Every party needs healing but that doesn't necessitate a dedicated character. Good ol' healing pot's are a staple of the fantasy genre. I'm not familiar with 5e but in 3e there are quite a number of alternatives to the dedicated healer character. Heck, if you fight conservatively, even natural healing can be enough, if less than ideal.

That's my 2cp anyway.

[Aliquid]

I’m deliberately running games without healers. Sure a PC might know first aid and be able to stabilize and patch a wound... but beyond that, if you are wounded you need to limp along until you can go see a professional.

More gritty, more consequences, more reason to be careful and strategic, more dramatic

[Gorum]

I have recently come to the conclusion that any adventuring party in a game with combat needs someone capable of filling the healer/support role. Most of my experience admittedly is with D&D, but I feel like this could apply to most systems.

For context:
I am playing in a D&D5e game right now with a fighter, a barbarian, a sorc, a warlock, and me. Up until last week I had been playing a monk 3/bard 1 for story reasons. My two measly first level healing words were the difference between life and death for the fighter, and we swept through our healing pots in two sessions. After talking with the DM he allowed me to witch my character to monk 1/bard 3 (It won't affect rp hardly at all) because I realized this team was not going to make it far without any support casting whatsoever.

Thoughts/opinions/ why I'm totally wrong? I would love to hear this discussion.

You're not wrong. DnD is based upon attrition. Here, healing is resource management. There's ways for characters to fend for themselves without it (5th edition has Hit dices, multiclass fighter and every short rest allows a minimum amount of healing, etc.) but it requires very specific builds.

IMHO, this is one of the reasons DnD is bad, and 5th Edition is an improvement.

Shticks (having ablities other don't so that you remain useful) are awesome. But the game being barely possible without one specific shtick being taken is a huuuge weakness.

[Gorum]

For WoD, Vampires and Werewolves have innate healing. Mages can generally take care of it too. Mortals have a problem, but they're supposed to be squishy. The game isn't really combat oriented, though. You're there to tell a story. That story may happen to have a fight in it. But, you're not really going from combat to combat in a dungeon like in D&D or even on a job like in Shadowrun... which is good, because the game really gets in its own way if you try to do that.


CoC is built around you going crazy and dying. You should be running from everything anyway. Yes, you just die tired, but all fighting means is that you die much earlier. You can't really beat anything you are put up against.

You, I like you. I was about to type EXACTLY your comment. Mages and Changelings can have healers, but it is an oddity and not meant to be used on a regular basis.

[FabulousFizban]

every sustainable party (in any format) requires three components: the anvil, the hammer, and the arm. Those translate into damage taker, damage dealer, and buff/debuff respectively. Healing is catergorized as a buff under this division.

These elements can be combined into a single character cabable of two or even all three components, though a mixed character will never be as effective as a dedicated character.

The best class for filling all roles simultaniously is the druid. Druid has been the most powerful class for awhile. If your party contains one of these, the other players can play ****all whatever they want and you'll be fine.

[Pleh]

However, I hold the opposite stance: a good GM should never tailor the campaign to the party. That removes the meaning of the players picking those characters, at least in my book. Now, the players absolutely should tailor their party to the campaign, in terms of, "yes, we are communicating that we want to have no healing, no diplomacy, and no ability to just ignore overland travel by picking the party of all fighters".

If the DM isn't tailoring the adventure, then what use is it to the players to make any kind of declarations about their characters? They would be able to say nothing at all and it wouldn't change their gameplay.

The idea of tailoring a party to a campaign rather requires the DM to be announcing campaign details to the players so they can tailor their characters to fit the campaign (note that there can be varying degrees of this, since a DM can disclose that a campaign will involve a lot of undead without saying that it's about overthrowing a Vampire Empire ruling over a Zombie peasant class), but that's not what you're describing here.

But I entirely disagree with you about the notion that tailoring an adventure to the party removes the significance of their choices. The philosophy of letting the dice fall where they may is only ONE valid way of pursuing that end.

In my games, it's rather more common that the Dice and the Rules can interfere with player choices, where RAW pulls some finicky nonsense that undermines their strategy in a nonsensical manner. Just as you want to protect players from DM interference in the accomplishments of their characters, I seek to protect them from the nonsense of RAW that can be difficult to predict during the encounter creation. Tailoring a session to the players is just my way of setting myself up a few steps ahead of the system glitches that can unfairly tip the scales in unreasonable ways.

I understand the idea of wanting to be able to hit the target without someone moving it into a more advantageous position, but *I* was the one who put up that target in the first place. Whether I made it impossible by malice, negligence, mistake, or a well-meaning attempt to put up a narrative barrier that doesn't play out quite right, it ultimately becomes moot in the face of the effect an impossible goal can have on gameplay. Far better to simulate the upcoming sessions by mentally playtesting my encounter with accurate knowledge of the approximate abilities of the characters so it has the intended variance of challenge with respect to tactical decisions. Plus, the more of these alternate choices I tailor, the more consistent context I have to interpret any choices they make that I didn't manage to anticipate.

They're just two different philosophies of gaming, neither intrinsically superior to the other (my above arguments are meant to represent the reasons for my preference and to explain how it works for me, not to demonstrate its superiority to your philosophy).


Personally, I put the onus on the players to make it work - and I all but demand that my GMs do the same. I believe that the GM should respect the party's choices by not tailoring the adventure to their characters, and letting them reap what they sow.

It speaks no respect if you are presenting encounters that you haven't verified as being beatable (to within some reasonable degree). Note that this doesn't really require that you go very deep in the verification process. If your players are at level 5 and you make a standard CR 5 encounter, that's probably sufficient "tailoring," but you have to remember that the MM itself states that some monsters might actually represent a greater challenge if the players are unable to exploit the weaknesses that are intended to be available (such as Ghosts or Hydra).

Tailoring an encounter shouldn't go so far as to guarantee that no matter what the player does, rolling 15 or higher wins. That's far too much micromanagment. However, after setting up an encounter, it's not a bad idea to look at some of the characters in the party and look to see exactly how high will they have to roll on their saving throws and how often are they likely to have to make them in combat rather than JUST relying on CR to be accurate. If you make sure they can succeed on a skill check with a roll of 15 or better, then you can let all the other skill checks wander between DCs of 12 and 25 pretty safely and know that you aren't setting the bar too high. If you WANT to set the bar higher, don't make them roll for 20s, just tell them they know their skill isn't high enough to make it.

When the monster comes out, if you planned a monster WAY over CR for party level, drop some hints like seeing the corpse of a hero they know to be stronger than themselves laying nearby, or have them make a knowledge check to identify the creature and possibly have an impression of its relative CR.

It's not invalidating their choices. It's honoring their choices by being actively aware of the choices so the choices aren't being randomly chucked under the bus of the random system malfunction.

You're absolutely right that too much micromanagement spoils the soup. But you'd be wrong if you thought that you can't have too much hands-off moderation. If you aren't preparing the adventure for this particular party, it should at least be for any particular party they might happen to be.

As a side note, it's fine to have something that isn't supposed to be beatable "right now" as a hint about coming back later after you've grown. That's just a totally different topic.


Are you trying to say that the GM doesn't have the right to build such variety of encounters?

Not in the slightest, just showing that the argument around, "a DM should have freedom in moderation" cuts both ways.

Just as a Railroad can be validated by Participationism, "Streetsweeping" can in the same way. Of course it's totally valid for DMs to build the described variety of encounters.

[Quertus]

@Pleh

So, I actually agree with you on most points. First and foremost, especially on the point that there are multiple valid play styles. Which, as poorly as I may have worded it, was my intended point.


If the DM isn't tailoring the adventure, then what use is it to the players to make any kind of declarations about their characters? They would be able to say nothing at all and it wouldn't change their gameplay.

Imagine running an adventure you've already ran for a new group of PCs. Without changing it. The adventure may well turn out differently. Things that the first group breezed through might be a struggle; things that they had trouble with might be a cakewalk. That difference is the most basic layer of respecting the players' choices in bringing these particular characters - at least, in the philosophy I'm discussing.

More later, maybe.

[Gorum]

If the DM isn't tailoring the adventure, then what use is it to the players to make any kind of declarations about their characters? They would be able to say nothing at all and it wouldn't change their gameplay.

Players choose which of my NPCs become recurring (both allies and foes). I use elements of their background every once in a while to tie them to the adventure*. This does not mean there's suddenly less bugbears in the abandoned watchtower because the barbarian was tired of his character and rolled himself a bard. Or because the party chose not to have an healer. Best they can hope for is a sudden rise in the popularity of potions / wands of healing.

* Like this one time, in Edge of the Empire, where the character had a life debt toward a human he lost track of AND a bounty on his head. Turns out the guy was amnesiac and turned a bounty hunter working for the BBEG :smallbiggrin: .

That said, some campaigns do have me follow my players lead. But those times are special. Like the time they rolled a Dwarf Paladin, a Dwarf Cleric, A Dwarven Avenger and a Dwarven w/e was the divine controller class. All following the teachings of Moradin. You just can't have them meet in a bar.



But I entirely disagree with (...) the notion that tailoring an adventure to the party removes the significance of their choices. The philosophy of letting the dice fall where they may is only ONE valid way of pursuing that end.

In my games, it's rather more common that the Dice and the Rules can interfere with player choices, where RAW pulls some finicky nonsense that undermines their strategy in a nonsensical manner. Just as you want to protect players from DM interference in the accomplishments of their characters, I seek to protect them from the nonsense of RAW that can be difficult to predict during the encounter creation. Tailoring a session to the players is just my way of setting myself up a few steps ahead of the system glitches that can unfairly tip the scales in unreasonable ways.

I understand the idea of wanting to be able to hit the target without someone moving it into a more advantageous position, but *I* was the one who put up that target in the first place. Whether I made it impossible by malice, negligence, mistake, or a well-meaning attempt to put up a narrative barrier that doesn't play out quite right, it ultimately becomes moot in the face of the effect an impossible goal can have on gameplay. Far better to simulate the upcoming sessions by mentally playtesting my encounter with accurate knowledge of the approximate abilities of the characters so it has the intended variance of challenge with respect to tactical decisions. Plus, the more of these alternate choices I tailor, the more consistent context I have to interpret any choices they make that I didn't manage to anticipate.

They're just two different philosophies of gaming, neither intrinsically superior to the other (my above arguments are meant to represent the reasons for my preference and to explain how it works for me, not to demonstrate its superiority to your philosophy).

I agree that the rules and the dices should serve the DM, and both the DM and players should serve the mutual enjoyment you all derive from the game. But tailoring the session to the players makes the experience feel artificial, and frankly, for the amount of time it consumes, is it worth it? Better have a good feel of what is happening in the world, stats block easily usable in a pinch, descriptions a bit more grandiose for certain NPCs/Monsters/Places they are likely to cross and otherwise wing it.



It speaks no respect if you are presenting encounters that you haven't verified as being beatable (to within some reasonable degree). Note that this doesn't really require that you go very deep in the verification process. If your players are at level 5 and you make a standard CR 5 encounter, that's probably sufficient "tailoring," but you have to remember that the MM itself states that some monsters might actually represent a greater challenge if the players are unable to exploit the weaknesses that are intended to be available (such as Ghosts or Hydra).

Tailoring an encounter shouldn't go so far as to guarantee that no matter what the player does, rolling 15 or higher wins. That's far too much micromanagment. However, after setting up an encounter, it's not a bad idea to look at some of the characters in the party and look to see exactly how high will they have to roll on their saving throws and how often are they likely to have to make them in combat rather than JUST relying on CR to be accurate. If you make sure they can succeed on a skill check with a roll of 15 or better, then you can let all the other skill checks wander between DCs of 12 and 25 pretty safely and know that you aren't setting the bar too high. If you WANT to set the bar higher, don't make them roll for 20s, just tell them they know their skill isn't high enough to make it.

Okay, first I want to say I 100% agree with the next sentence:


When the monster comes out, if you planned a monster WAY over CR for party level, drop some hints like seeing the corpse of a hero they know to be stronger than themselves laying nearby, or have them make a knowledge check to identify the creature and possibly have an impression of its relative CR.

I don't balance encounters, and neither should you. Doing so destroy the suspension of disbelief, and rob the players from accomplishing something truly grandiose or extremely dumb. Still, I often allow reactive knowledge / perception / sense motive checks if whatever they're facing is likely to TPK them, or if it would be a grave tactical mistake, or even a moral one. I take in consideration that the characters live in my universe and the players do not.

That said, players get the chance to balance them somewhat. They get to choose to fight kobolds or arch-demons through their choices and I make sure they get sufficient cues. But sometimes, your objective should be to thin your opponents' numbers, retreat, and come back again. Sometimes, it should be to push them to chase you, then ambush the search parties. And sometimes, it should be about one player trying to hold a door closed while the rest of the group dispatch the monsters that got in from another side.

Never should have cared for CR.



It's not invalidating their choices. It's honoring their choices by being actively aware of the choices so the choices aren't being randomly chucked under the bus of the random system malfunction.
I began using an alternate rule which technically works wonders, except that it completely messes the balance in games that use the d20. Therefore, I shall make my own system to use it. People may roll 3d6 or 1d20-2. If they choose the later, the action they took was reckless, and while the chances to succeed at a hard task (say, a peasant wounding Sauron in his battle regalia wearing the One Ring), rolling under 3 will lead to catastrophic results.

Otherwise, 3d6 has a bell curve that, when facing opponents of similar skill, makes every tactical advantage far more important (as the % of chances you hit a 10 instead of an 11 far surpass a measly 5%). And when facing overwhelming odds (peasant vs. Sauron), that extra +1 means less than a 1% shift either way.



You're absolutely right that too much micromanagement spoils the soup. But you'd be wrong if you thought that you can't have too much hands-off moderation. If you aren't preparing the adventure for this particular party, it should at least be for any particular party they might happen to be.

If the players want to charge an enemy fortress head-on in the open (instead of through the mines where they can attack isolated groups and free prisoners to cause chaos among the ranks), they should face a quarter of its garrisoned troops with the tactical advantage such a situation warrants, including reinforcements. I will not do an Assassin's Creed and have my monster engage a small group at a time. This allows them to set plans in motion that are truly glorious, or choose a safer way to do things, or act stupid and die.

On the other hand, the group of amateur gnoll cultists who sacrifice villagers to their demonic patrons are NOT summoning a Balor.

[Pleh]

I agree that the rules and the dices should serve the DM, and both the DM and players should serve the mutual enjoyment you all derive from the game. But tailoring the session to the players makes the experience feel artificial, and frankly, for the amount of time it consumes, is it worth it? Better have a good feel of what is happening in the world, stats block easily usable in a pinch, descriptions a bit more grandiose for certain NPCs/Monsters/Places they are likely to cross and otherwise wing it.

No, feeling artificial is a matter of mastering the style of DMing and has much less to do with how you prepare it. Tailoring a game doesn't make it "feel artificial" unless the players can see behind the curtain, which is equally true for untailored games if the stat blocks start to impose on the gameplay.

It is not a direct result of tailoring encounters. It's a direct result of losing connection with the "living game experience" of verisimilitude that can happen whether you're tailoring or not.

If you are tailoring correctly, it will increase verisimilitude, not decrease it. This is because verisimilitude is about suspension of disbelief, the art of making the curtain more appealing than looking past it. There's no reason players need to be able to feel a difference between a tailored game and an untailored game, if both games are run perfectly.

When tailored and untailored games start to throw glitches into the game experience, they present different symptoms, but there is nothing inherently flawed with tailored games.

There IS something flawed with tailoring a game for players that expect an untailored challenge. That steps from Participationism to Illusionism and can represent a betrayal of trust. The problem is that the expectation of untailored challenges is nowhere near as universal as you seem to believe.


I don't balance encounters, and neither should you. Doing so destroy the suspension of disbelief, and rob the players from accomplishing something truly grandiose or extremely dumb. Still, I often allow reactive knowledge / perception / sense motive checks if whatever they're facing is likely to TPK them, or if it would be a grave tactical mistake, or even a moral one. I take in consideration that the characters live in my universe and the players do not.

That said, players get the chance to balance them somewhat. They get to choose to fight kobolds or arch-demons through their choices and I make sure they get sufficient cues. But sometimes, your objective should be to thin your opponents' numbers, retreat, and come back again. Sometimes, it should be to push them to chase you, then ambush the search parties. And sometimes, it should be about one player trying to hold a door closed while the rest of the group dispatch the monsters that got in from another side.

Never should have cared for CR.

You state that I shouldn't balance encounters, but offer no REASON for your assertion, just the disclaimer that the process of not balancing encounters doesn't mean that the balance isn't allowed to be flexible in a live game scenario.

I see no respect for player choices if I am negligent to offer challenges of reasonable balance (note that this likewise is flexible to allow encounters that are balanced to be weighted against the players or in their favor, and in fact using a variety of intentionally harsh and easy difficulties can help increase verisimilitude). Especially in a mechanic, level based game such as D&D 3.5, I ought to use every tool at my disposal to make my games as enjoyable as possible. I should be using whatever metrics or analytics I have to attempt to predict problems of balance before they arise to minimize the number that come up in actual play. Trust me, as a person that operates out of this system, there's no way to perfectly plan for balance because it's almost guaranteed that the players will manage to pick the only options you didn't prepare for anyway.

I understand the idea that Dark Souls has no mercy and if it ever started holding our hand, it would cease to be Dark Souls. But I'd point out that Dark Souls is actually very heavily tailored. While you can theoretically walk more or less straight to the final boss and try to win by epic dodging and perfectly timed attacks, that doesn't negate the fact that every area of the game is very intentionally tailored to operate at a certain level of gameplay SO THAT players can choose to go back to an earlier area to grind for a bit before moving forward so they don't necessarily have to develop god-like skill at the game and can afford to take a few hits or deal substantially more damage per successful hit. And let's not forget the starting classes. Everyone knows playing the spellcaster is the Easy Mode in Dark Souls, due in no small part to the ability to reliably deal significant damage at such a range most monsters just don't get the opportunity to fight back before they're done. But even that has its challenges because the game makers realized the advantage of throwing magic at monsters and made sure to define the map and spawn areas such that there would be occasional challenges that forced the player to fight in a very small space with no opportunity to snipe the enemies before entering.

The game that epitomizes the idea of never relenting in its difficulty and forcing the player to simply kill or be killed is also one of the most masterfully tailored adventures in history. EDIT: And it's a useful reminder to the fact that just because you've tailored an encounter doesn't mean it shouldn't be able to run off the rails, just that the fact that games should be free to roam doesn't mean there shouldn't be any rails at all (more just that the rails should serve the players, not the players serve the rails).

But, a key difference between a video game and a TTRPG campaign is that player choices can force changes to the next session's content. Some games operate this way and saying that we should never do this even though some games NEED to do this seems tremendously short sighted.

[Faily]

https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/30835874.jpg

Jokes aside though, while you don't always *need* a healer, it does tend to make things easier for the group. In one D&D 3.5 group I was in, with 5 players, I was the only caster... and I was the Bard. So BFC, buffing, dispelling, *and* healing was all on me. Yay. At least it was slightly easier on the group in Strange Aeons when the only caster was a Witch. At least he had Hexes, and full-casting, compared to the 3.5 Bard.

I certainly prefer to have someone in the party who can do healing since it can be the difference between life and death sometimes. Doesn't have to be much. But not all D&D adventures allow for spending days to recover from a fight, or having a party stocked fully with healing potions and items. And in adventures like that, I really do like to have someone who can toss in some healing to keep things going.

[Quertus]

No, feeling artificial is a matter of mastering the style of DMing and has much less to do with how you prepare it. Tailoring a game doesn't make it "feel artificial" unless the players can see behind the curtain, which is equally true for untailored games if the stat blocks start to impose on the gameplay.

I've spotted and watched people spot the type of tailoring I'm taking about all the time, and it certainly makes the game feel artificial (barring buy-in and it's version of Participationism, of course - which IME I've rarely seen). I'm not, however, following what you mean about stat blocks making an untailored game feel artificial. Can you explain this?


It is not a direct result of tailoring encounters. It's a direct result of losing connection with the "living game experience" of verisimilitude that can happen whether you're tailoring or not.

No, it's a direct result of the "coincidences" being unbelievable, which are themselves a direct result of tailoring.


If you are tailoring correctly, it will increase verisimilitude, not decrease it. This is because verisimilitude is about suspension of disbelief, the art of making the curtain more appealing than looking past it. There's no reason players need to be able to feel a difference between a tailored game and an untailored game, if both games are run perfectly.

I see no way to make this make sense for the type of tailoring I'm discussing. "Gee, how fortuitous that this module has so many healing potions, and plenty of time to rest between fights, given that we didn't bring a healer... Wait a minute..."


When tailored and untailored games start to throw glitches into the game experience, they present different symptoms, but there is nothing inherently flawed with tailored games.

True...


There IS something flawed with tailoring a game for players that expect an untailored challenge. That steps from Participationism to Illusionism and can represent a betrayal of trust.

... And very true.


The problem is that the expectation of untailored challenges is nowhere near as universal as you seem to believe.

I was only trying to indicate that it existed. I certainly hope that it is at least that "universal". :smalltongue:

That having been said, it's darn near universal IME, owing to the fact that, every game I'm in, I'm in. :smalltongue:

[Pleh]

I've spotted and watched people spot the type of tailoring I'm taking about all the time, and it certainly makes the game feel artificial (barring buy-in and it's version of Participationism, of course - which IME I've rarely seen). I'm not, however, following what you mean about stat blocks making an untailored game feel artificial. Can you explain this?

Sure. When the mechanics bleed through and become easier to see than the fluff, it becomes clear you're fighting just a block of numbers rather than any monster they're meant to represent. Kind of like playing a video game, feeling like your attack should have hit only to learn your attack's hit detection is more limited than you believed. Suddenly, you're not in a sword fight anymore, but trying to gage the pixels to figure out where the hit box ACTUALLY is.

Very artificial. And very avoidable if you do some basic prep work to understand how players expect their characters to work and plan your games accordingly.


No, it's a direct result of the "coincidences" being unbelievable, which are themselves a direct result of tailoring.

But coincidences are not the only way that verisimilitude can be broken. An inexplicably (key word, there) off balance challenge can do it just as effectively


I see no way to make this make sense for the type of tailoring I'm discussing. "Gee, how fortuitous that this module has so many healing potions, and plenty of time to rest between fights, given that we didn't bring a healer... Wait a minute..."

Meh. If that's too much, the story can be set conveniently near a big city and use relatively short dungeons so they get plenty of opportunity to stock up and rest in a very realistic manner.


I was only trying to indicate that it existed. I certainly hope that it is at least that "universal". :smalltongue:

That having been said, it's darn near universal IME, owing to the fact that, every game I'm in, I'm in. :smalltongue:

I'm sorry I forgot about all those games I've played with you over the years, since clearly there hasn't been a TTRPG you haven't been part of at any point in history.

[Jormengand]

In a decently-designed game, no-one should be forced to specialise in a particular field. You should be able to get along fine without a trap-disabling specialist because there should be other ways of solving the problem; you should be able to get along without a healing specialist because there are ways of fighting that make you not have to rely on healing.

In many games, it's not only unneccessary but actually impossible to have a healing character. In some games, anyone can heal other characters well enough that there's no extreme need to specialise.

In D&D, the game made before there was any precedent for anyone to have a clue what they were doing and the repeated iterations on the same flawed precepts, sure you need some way of healing faster than you do naturally. But it's more exception than rule.

[Gorum]

Replying fast, battery dying.


No, feeling artificial is a matter of mastering the style of DMing and has much less to do with how you prepare it. Tailoring a game doesn't make it "feel artificial" unless the players can see behind the curtain, which is equally true for untailored games if the stat blocks start to impose on the gameplay.

(...)

There IS something flawed with tailoring a game for players that expect an untailored challenge. That steps from Participationism to Illusionism and can represent a betrayal of trust. The problem is that the expectation of untailored challenges is nowhere near as universal as you seem to believe.

So... it doesn't feel artificial to those who expect artificial. Got it.



You state that I shouldn't balance encounters, but offer no REASON for your assertion, just the disclaimer that the process of not balancing encounters doesn't mean that the balance isn't allowed to be flexible in a live game scenario.

I gave two. Verisimilitude and Cost-Efficiency. You spend a lot of time on stuff the players will either not even notice, or worse, avoid completely. When you balance encounters beforehand, you set your mind on running said encounters, and will have an unconscious bias to run them anyways.



I see no respect for player choices if I am negligent to offer challenges of reasonable balance (note that this likewise is flexible to allow encounters that are balanced to be weighted against the players or in their favor, and in fact using a variety of intentionally harsh and easy difficulties can help increase verisimilitude). Especially in a mechanic, level based game such as D&D 3.5, I ought to use every tool at my disposal to make my games as enjoyable as possible. I should be using whatever metrics or analytics I have to attempt to predict problems of balance before they arise to minimize the number that come up in actual play. Trust me, as a person that operates out of this system, there's no way to perfectly plan for balance because it's almost guaranteed that the players will manage to pick the only options you didn't prepare for anyway.

First, D&D 3.5 / PF is thrash. I strongly dislike 4th Ed but can still point out its superiority. Not only do the way skill works it's either that you're a god or completely useless (Sneak with no ranks, a full plate and a -2 Dex vs the rogue who rolls a 1 and still get over 15? Yeaaaahhhh, good luck), but those skill checks can be replaced with Silence + Invisibility.

So good luck tailoring anything for such a group without homebrewing a group skill check where the rogue rolls with the paladin's Armor Check penalty or something.


I understand the idea that Dark Souls (...)
Obvious strawman is obvious. Never talked about video games, so you even focusing on Dark Soul makes no sense unless you want to imply that's my position.


But, a key difference between a video game and a TTRPG campaign is that player choices can force changes to the next session's content. Some games operate this way and saying that we should never do this even though some games NEED to do this seems tremendously short sighted.

Well yeah. PCs choose their approaches to challenge. They choose which NPCs to approach. Heck, they choose their quest and might even start their own subquests. The idea is that the world lives and breathes and is not tailored to showcase their abilities or weaknesses. They must find creative ways to make themselves shine and avoid the pit traps of their weaknesses.

Yes, still 7% battery to go!

[Gorum]

Correction: I did mention Assassin's Creed in a degatory way. It was to mock tailored encounters which often depict a large group of enemies that seems reluctant to use their number advantage. The most common result of tailored encounters + metagaming players.

What such players deserve is swarms of opponents who flank, aid another, and grapple / stab them. Not doing so would be underplaying your opponent's strengths to the point the verisimilitude snaps.

[Gorum]

I've spotted and watched people spot the type of tailoring I'm taking about all the time, and it certainly makes the game feel artificial (barring buy-in and it's version of Participationism, of course - which IME I've rarely seen). I'm not, however, following what you mean about stat blocks making an untailored game feel artificial. Can you explain this?

I can. It's the infamous "We know it has more than 17 AC because X missed with a 17. But it has less than 20 because Y hit last turn.". When you treat monsters as stats blocks, (as I implied by keeping versatile tools), it can give an artificial feel.

I guess I'm just that good of a GM that it never came up!




No, it's a direct result of the "coincidences" being unbelievable, which are themselves a direct result of tailoring.

(...)

I see no way to make this make sense for the type of tailoring I'm discussing. "Gee, how fortuitous that this module has so many healing potions, and plenty of time to rest between fights, given that we didn't bring a healer... Wait a minute..."

You, sir, did a great job making my driving my point home.

I like you.

[Pleh]

So... it doesn't feel artificial to those who expect artificial. Got it.

Ah. Another person on the forum who just hears what they want to hear rather than trying to get what was actually being said. Funny you'll be criticizing me for strawmans later after this.


I gave two. Verisimilitude and Cost-Efficiency. You spend a lot of time on stuff the players will either not even notice, or worse, avoid completely. When you balance encounters beforehand, you set your mind on running said encounters, and will have an unconscious bias to run them anyways.

You claimed these things, but did not support them. Your evidence is anecdotes. My personal experience contradicts yours, so where does that leave us?

Talk more "why" and "how" and maybe we'll be getting somewhere. So far, all your points are subjective presented as objective.


First, D&D 3.5 / PF is thrash. I strongly dislike 4th Ed but can still point out its superiority. Not only do the way skill works it's either that you're a god or completely useless (Sneak with no ranks, a full plate and a -2 Dex vs the rogue who rolls a 1 and still get over 15? Yeaaaahhhh, good luck), but those skill checks can be replaced with Silence + Invisibility.

So good luck tailoring anything for such a group without homebrewing a group skill check where the rogue rolls with the paladin's Armor Check penalty

I prefer 5e, but my friends like 3.5 so it's what I tend to run. Maybe that's a source of our difference in perspective. I usually start campaigns with a few very standard encounters with iconic monsters and relatively neutral battle area specifically so I can get an idea what the individual characters struggle with/overpower and what the combined party struggles with/overwhelms and use the info to begin refining future encounters to include greater structural depth that doesn't throw balance right out the window.

It really isn't as big a problem as you imply it MUST be.


Obvious strawman is obvious. Never talked about video games, so you even focusing on Dark Soul makes no sense unless you want to imply that's my position.

No, I'm not even saying that you said anything about video games, even though you later admit that you referenced assassin's creed. While it's important to keep in mind where the transparency between videogames and TTRPGs happens to end, it's not absolutely zero, so video games are perfectly reasonable reference if we're careful to use the areas of valid transparency.

Planning specific encounters is usually pretty transparent between the two. It's more in the actual running of the game in live session where transparency breaks down because video games can't accept anywhere near the same diversity of input.


Well yeah. PCs choose their approaches to challenge. They choose which NPCs to approach. Heck, they choose their quest and might even start their own subquests. The idea is that the world lives and breathes and is not tailored to showcase their abilities or weaknesses. They must find creative ways to make themselves shine and avoid the pit traps of their weaknesses.

A very valid way to play, but doesn't preclude that other ways being equally valid.


Correction: I did mention Assassin's Creed in a degatory way. It was to mock tailored encounters which often depict a large group of enemies that seems reluctant to use their number advantage. The most common result of tailored encounters + metagaming players.

..."in [your] experience."


What such players deserve is swarms of opponents who flank, aid another, and grapple / stab them. Not doing so would be underplaying your opponent's strengths to the point the verisimilitude snaps.

Depends. If mindless Oozes suddenly start using expert combat tactics without some evidence that a thinking creature is controlling them (like a wizard), that can break verisimilitude as well. Oozes may happen to stumble into effective strategy, but they really should just be mindlessly moving toward and trying to attack the nearest creature.

You keep making absolute statements while ignoring pretty common exceptions. Your statements aren't wrong, but incomplete.


I can. It's the infamous "We know it has more than 17 AC because X missed with a 17. But it has less than 20 because Y hit last turn.". When you treat monsters as stats blocks, (as I implied by keeping versatile tools), it can give an artificial feel.

Exactly.


I guess I'm just that good of a GM that it never came up!

You and Darth Ultron could start a club!

[darkdragoon]

For 5E specifically:
You already had Bard, so that's more "you might need more than you previously thought." And the other classes have other paths that could lead to more defense and/or actual healing as well. So yes, you could have add more without necessarily replacing them with a Cleric.

Plus there's always the Healer feat.



On the rest:
Potions are literally spells in a can. (Also herbs considering 1e sources) At best you might quibble with them becoming relatively cheaper and much easier to acquire.
Hit points are from Chainmail which are an extension of how many hits one needed to take out a particular unit.

Dark Souls has basically an infinite potion (you can only stock so many uses at a given time, and you have to spend *gasp* resources to heal more betterer) as well as consumables and even healing spells. Plus the whole "you're not really dead at 0 HP" even though being hollow has its pros and cons.

[Gorum]

Ah. Another person on the forum who just hears what they want to hear rather than trying to get what was actually being said. Funny you'll be criticizing me for strawmans later after this.

You mean see what they want to see?



You claimed these things, but did not support them. Your evidence is anecdotes. My personal experience contradicts yours, so where does that leave us?

Talk more "why" and "how" and maybe we'll be getting somewhere. So far, all your points are subjective presented as objective.

Just to be clear: You want me to describe why or how, when you spend time thinking about something you like and preparing that something you like, that you end up wanting to do that thing even at the costs of your players' enjoyment, and you want me to describe why or how, when you prepare stuff that will not see the light of day, it ends up consuming more time without providing any enjoyment at the table?

If so, I won't answer the point directly. I strongly recommend you (and by you, I mean anyone interested in the debate) read The Lazy Dungeon Master (https://img.fireden.net/tg/image/1509/24/1509249898236.pdf), which basically taught me the concept. It's 57 pages of pure gold. Here's a quote (copy-pasta is quick).


"Of all the prep you do, maybe 10% will actually come into play."
-Mike Mearls, Head of Dungeons and Dragons Research and Design

We begin with a simple core concept, a simple statement to keep in mind while preparing our games. It is the concept around which the rest of this book revolves:

Prepare only what most benefits your game.

A simple statement yet difficult to follow. We all know the maxims “keep it simple” and “less is more”. Regardless, many of us live lives that are far from simple. Figuring out what truly benefits your game takes considerable thought. Every time you pull back the reins on your overactive imagination, your mind will buck and kick and spit as it tries to push forward, to fill in all the blanks, define every variable, and build out every detail before your game has even started. The success or failure of a game does not depend on the amount of time you spend preparing it. The story exists among a group of people at the table and is as good or bad as what those people bring to it.

Prepare only what most benefits your game.



I prefer 5e...

And so do I.


but my friends like 3.5 so it's what I tend to run. Maybe that's a source of our difference in perspective. I usually start campaigns with a few very standard encounters with iconic monsters and relatively neutral battle area specifically so I can get an idea what the individual characters struggle with/overpower and what the combined party struggles with/overwhelms and use the info to begin refining future encounters to include greater structural depth that doesn't throw balance right out the window.

It really isn't as big a problem as you imply it MUST be.

Well, "A beginning is a very delicate time". So much that the movie "Dune" (1984) found no better sentence to start the story. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H5jeLxUy-0) No matter how you do it, you can't shake the feeling it is a bit artificial, as characters are by then, little more than creatures thrown out of a clone vat. Of course, they've got backgrounds, but unless it's basically a previous character's rehash, there'll be some time before the players find their characters' sweet spot. Personally, I'm partial to the Trial by Fire approach, but from my experience, any start which gives you the momentum to go on is good.

Either way, if you're willing to run 3.5 solely because it is your players' favorite system, there's nothing I can do for you other than show you the pdf I linked before. We're speaking of a game whose mechanics are so bad that a derivative which solved a few of its flaws (https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Pathfinder_Roleplaying_Game) (Grappling much?) has been hated on, itself, for almost a decade.

Let that sink in.



No, I'm not even saying that you said anything about video games, even though you later admit that you referenced assassin's creed. While it's important to keep in mind where the transparency between videogames and TTRPGs happens to end, it's not absolutely zero, so video games are perfectly reasonable reference if we're careful to use the areas of valid transparency.

Planning specific encounters is usually pretty transparent between the two. It's more in the actual running of the game in live session where transparency breaks down because video games can't accept anywhere near the same diversity of input.

This analogy is a crutch. You're better than that, even I recognize it. I get it: You tailor your encounters, Dark Souls creators tailored their encounters, Dark Soul is a good game, so it should make your game good. Because both are games. Doesn't work that way.



A very valid way to play, but doesn't preclude that other ways being equally valid.
What do you mean by "valid"?


If it is "legally or officially acceptable", then yeah, of course they are. This is a binary thing. As long as you do not commit RL crimes, any way you play it will register as valid. Heck, even Erotic roleplay is "equally valid". And you know 3.5 has it. (https://www.scribd.com/doc/311337653/D-D-3-5-Book-Of-Erotic-Fantasy-pdf) :smallwink:
If it is "having a sound basis in logic or fact; reasonable or cogent.", well "legally" the Erotic RP in a regular game is "equally valid". But it's not in this context of "valid". And to various levels , so is every other playstyles. So other ways are not equally valid.
I'm not saying my way will always be the most valid one. I'm saying I've been in your shoes, found ways to improve and suggest you take a look.




..."in [your] experience."

Studies about metagaming in scenarios where players are overwhelmed and the DM is lenient are rare. I would love to argue about their details. Meanwhile, I'm forced to use my personal observations, which, I admit, may be tainted by confirmation bias and a too small sample size. But certainly we can agree that:


A tailored game rest slightly more upon metagame elements, like balance and scaling DCs to fit the players' abilities.
When there are more metagame elements, there are more opportunities for other people to use them to their advantages.
People tend to do what benefits them.






Depends. If mindless Oozes suddenly start using expert combat tactics without some evidence that a thinking creature is controlling them (like a wizard), that can break verisimilitude as well. Oozes may happen to stumble into effective strategy, but they really should just be mindlessly moving toward and trying to attack the nearest creature.

I made an argument about facing an army of humanoid creatures who collaborate to take down a powerful enemy, a PC. This was a really specific example. You made it about how mindless oozes using strategy breaks verisimilitude. Guess what, I agree, but that means jack **** for the original point.



You keep making absolute statements while ignoring pretty common exceptions. Your statements aren't wrong, but incomplete.
I'm the best at ignoring exceptions. It's true! That is even why my games are so good! When one comes up, I solve it on the fly (more often than not being generous to the player) and mention I'll be doing research on the matter and come up with either an official rule, or a rule I devised for said exception and the reasons I use to back it. Otherwise you get bogged down into details and no one has fun when it happens.

And since I'm obviously not wrong with the general direction, it simply doesn't matter.



You and Darth Ultron could start a club!
Even better: a school!

[Pleh]

Just to be clear: You want me to describe why or how, when you spend time thinking about something you like and preparing that something you like, that you end up wanting to do that thing even at the costs of your players' enjoyment, and you want me to describe why or how, when you prepare stuff that will not see the light of day, it ends up consuming more time without providing any enjoyment at the table?

Three points.

1. That is not necessarily what is happening in a tailored game. Having more content created than will be used can increase the enjoyment by providing a foundation of content that helps all the spontaneous, unplanned content *feel* like it was part of the plan (which can give players a feeling of validation that their ideas have a native place in the world).

2. Also, if I understand Quertus' ideas of a good game correctly, I wouldn't say that untailored games are necessarily LESS work than tailored games. All Tailored means is that the content is designed to fit the PCs. Untailored games can be just as or even far more detailed in their preplanned content. It's trivial to prove: a DM who has no knowledge of what characters the players are using prepares an intricate encounter with a custom designed monster, draws the map by hand over a grid in immaculate detail, ties the encounter into the primary plot, sets all the interactive element DCs to what it objectively should be (not knowing if the players will have an easy or impossible time attempting the checks), and for fun, adds a timer that will release a waterfall into the map after a certain number of rounds of combat, changing the layout totally over the remaining course of the combat.

No tailoring to the players, TONS of extra work. Your criticism against tailoring for the sake of minimalism isn't really so justified.

3. Your article about Lazy DMs precludes the notion that DMs should have fun CREATING their encounters. What benefit do we have creating content that will never see the light of day? The joy of creation itself. Just as Character Creation is only the first half of the game for the players, then playing the characters is the other half, so too for DMs is half the fun in creating the encounters and half in running the encounters.

This is part of why many DMs get stuck thinking that these two different ways of having fun are somehow the same. They get personally attached to their creation and want to protect the creation while running the game, when the plans should be sacrificed for the sake of the game. You should enjoy the act of creation when developing games to run, whether you tend to tailor them to characters or not. Then, when it comes time to put the encounter into play, you have to be as willing to let it get wrecked as the players are to let their characters die (actually more so, because the PCs are considered the heroes and are more or less SUPPOSED to win at most tables).

As a side note, this line of conversation calls to mind that perhaps the word, "tailored" is part of our problem, because you can tailor to PCs, or to some other criteria, or you can just roll random encounter tables, or use an online generator to do it all for you. The word, "tailored" might be a problem because we started by using it to describe DMing that plans with the PCs as the prime reference point, but it might be causing confusion with the idea of doing a lot of work around ANY reference point vs minimalist design.

Pretty sure Quertus likes very detailed games, just not ones that use his own character as the reference point for its construction.


Either way, if you're willing to run 3.5 solely because it is your players' favorite system, there's nothing I can do for you other than show you the pdf I linked before. We're speaking of a game whose mechanics are so bad that a derivative which solved a few of its flaws (https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Pathfinder_Roleplaying_Game) (Grappling much?) has been hated on, itself, for almost a decade.

Let that sink in.

I've been playing the system for over 10 years. I'm not exactly a novice. I've only gotten connected to the internet forum hivemind on the game in the last couple years, which was really helpful in identifying the system's common pitfalls: caster/mundane disparity, class tiers, etc.

A bad system doesn't mean the games can't be enjoyed. You can find reasons to hate any RPG system. That's just not a constructive line of thought. My players like the expanse of character options and don't have the funds to buy a whole bunch of books for another system. Further disparaging the choice is not constructive here.



This analogy is a crutch. You're better than that, even I recognize it. I get it: You tailor your encounters, Dark Souls creators tailored their encounters, Dark Soul is a good game, so it should make your game good. Because both are games. Doesn't work that way.

You totally misunderstand. Let me fix this for you:

You tailor your encounters, - This is true, but irrelevant to my point.
Dark Souls creators tailored their encounters - Check
Dark Soul is a good game - Check
so it should make your game good. Because both are games. - Rather, "so Tailoring games does not make them bad. Because Tailoring is just a tool that requires skill to use well, like any other tool."

If *my* games are good or bad, it's because of my skill or lack thereof. It has nothing to do with the tool I choose to use.


What do you mean by "valid"?

What I mean is that the differences are subjective, not objective. These methods of play cannot be evaluated as better or worse, only more or less preferable to different people.

I mean it is a matter of taste.

But so far I'm not sure you understand "my shoes" well enough to say you've been in them. The above mischaracterization of my point about Dark Souls rather clearly indicates that you haven't fully understood my point yet.


Studies about metagaming in scenarios where players are overwhelmed and the DM is lenient are rare. I would love to argue about their details. Meanwhile, I'm forced to use my personal observations, which, I admit, may be tainted by confirmation bias and a too small sample size.

Objection. I'm not convinced it is possible to metagame while in the act of CREATING an encounter. While in the act of RUNNING the encounter, absolutely, metagaming is a real thing. How are you supposed to ignore external knowledge of the system while creating the session's challenges? And how does that even make sense?


But certainly we can agree that:


A tailored game rest slightly more upon metagame elements, like balance and scaling DCs to fit the players' abilities.
When there are more metagame elements, there are more opportunities for other people to use them to their advantages.
People tend to do what benefits them.


You're right. I forgot about how I've never been able to control my actions as a player any time I was exposed to metagame information.

I'll remind you that, just like Railroading + Participationism = Linear Gameplay, so too does Metagaming + Participationism come out to another style of acceptable play. It's also not about better or worse, but subjective preferences to what kind of game you want to have.


I made an argument about facing an army of humanoid creatures who collaborate to take down a powerful enemy, a PC. This was a really specific example. You made it about how mindless oozes using strategy breaks verisimilitude. Guess what, I agree, but that means jack **** for the original point.

It means your original point has a lot of exceptional cases that make it untrue. You've made a general statement without declaring its exceptions, which gives it the false appearance of being absolute, which it demonstrably isn't.


I'm the best at ignoring exceptions. It's true! That is even why my games are so good! When one comes up, I solve it on the fly (more often than not being generous to the player) and mention I'll be doing research on the matter and come up with either an official rule, or a rule I devised for said exception and the reasons I use to back it. Otherwise you get bogged down into details and no one has fun when it happens.

I run my games this way, too. This is not a distinction between tailored and untailored. Tailored only really speaks to how games are CREATED. Not how they are RUN.


And since I'm obviously not wrong with the general direction, it simply doesn't matter.

I disagree (that it doesn't matter).

We lose more than we gain when we allow being "mostly right" to justify making over-generalizations that lead to misconceptions. It matters.

[Knaight]

I think this is one of the Top Ten worst ideas ever. And it's is a Legacy of all the Video Gamers brought to TRPGs.

Video Games are all about the endless 'pew pew', and they want to keep you playing (and buy the next game). So they pointlessly do hit points and have foes and things hurt characters.....and they have TONS of ''healing potions'' or ''health kits'' or ''band aids'' Everywhere that the character can use to get health back.

And then the Video Game Folks demand that be put in the TRPG.

But it is very point less anyway.

Have you ever actually played a video game? This description is an incredibly poor fit for a huge number of them, and the small subset this actually fits tend to have that behavior because of D&D's influence on videogames and not vice versa.

[Gorum]

1. That is not necessarily what is happening in a tailored game. Having more content created than will be used can increase the enjoyment by providing a foundation of content that helps all the spontaneous, unplanned content *feel* like it was part of the plan (which can give players a feeling of validation that their ideas have a native place in the world).


Create flexible content, achieve better results.


2. Also, if I understand Quertus' ideas of a good game correctly, I wouldn't say that untailored games are necessarily LESS work than tailored games. All Tailored means is that the content is designed to fit the PCs. Untailored games can be just as or even far more detailed in their preplanned content. It's trivial to prove: a DM who has no knowledge of what characters the players are using prepares an intricate encounter with a custom designed monster, draws the map by hand over a grid in immaculate detail, ties the encounter into the primary plot, sets all the interactive element DCs to what it objectively should be (not knowing if the players will have an easy or impossible time attempting the checks), and for fun, adds a timer that will release a waterfall into the map after a certain number of rounds of combat, changing the layout totally over the remaining course of the combat.

No tailoring to the players, TONS of extra work. Your criticism against tailoring for the sake of minimalism isn't really so justified.

I agree that not-tailored doesn't mean minimalist and flexible. Doesn't mean not-tailored, minimalist and flexible doesn't provide better result for less work.


3. Your article about Lazy DMs precludes the notion that DMs should have fun CREATING their encounters. What benefit do we have creating content that will never see the light of day? The joy of creation itself. Just as Character Creation is only the first half of the game for the players, then playing the characters is the other half, so too for DMs is half the fun in creating the encounters and half in running the encounters.

From that source:


“But I LIKE preparing my game!”

This will likely be the single biggest criticism of this book’s ideas. We like building our games. We like setting up detailed encounter areas and figuring out all the nuances of our story. We love building worlds and histories and political webs. We enjoy all of that work, and it makes our games better, right?

Maybe not.

What feels productive might not be. You might spend a good deal of time designing a monster or a scene or an encounter area only to have it fall apart when your players come to the table. Sometimes all the preparation in the world won’t result in a better game for your group. As an example, according to Michael Mallen, writer of the Id DM blog, the worst session he ever ran was the one for which he felt most prepared.

The book takes the fun of creation into account. Might be fun, but certainly not cost-effective and maybe detrimental.



This is part of why many DMs get stuck thinking that these two different ways of having fun are somehow the same. They get personally attached to their creation and want to protect the creation while running the game, when the plans should be sacrificed for the sake of the game. You should enjoy the act of creation when developing games to run, whether you tend to tailor them to characters or not. Then, when it comes time to put the encounter into play, you have to be as willing to let it get wrecked as the players are to let their characters die (actually more so, because the PCs are considered the heroes and are more or less SUPPOSED to win at most tables).

Exactly! And by tailoring stuff, you need to create it adapted to your players. Which means efforts. Which means attachment. Of course, some people (maybe even you) might be able to jettison parts of their creation that could be considered jewels for the sake of the game, but that still results in time spent on stuff even less useful than arguing over it on this forum!



As a side note, this line of conversation calls to mind that perhaps the word, "tailored" is part of our problem, because you can tailor to PCs, or to some other criteria, or you can just roll random encounter tables, or use an online generator to do it all for you. The word, "tailored" might be a problem because we started by using it to describe DMing that plans with the PCs as the prime reference point, but it might be causing confusion with the idea of doing a lot of work around ANY reference point vs minimalist design.

I'll leave Quertus out of this exchange, but yeah, Tailoring means planning. And my point is less planning is better, so leaving behind something whose prerequisite is planning is an improvement.




I've been playing the system for over 10 years. I'm not exactly a novice. I've only gotten connected to the internet forum hivemind on the game in the last couple years, which was really helpful in identifying the system's common pitfalls: caster/mundane disparity, class tiers, etc.

A bad system doesn't mean the games can't be enjoyed. You can find reasons to hate any RPG system. That's just not a constructive line of thought. My players like the expanse of character options and don't have the funds to buy a whole bunch of books for another system. Further disparaging the choice is not constructive here.

You totally misunderstand. Let me fix this for you:

You tailor your encounters, - This is true, but irrelevant to my point.
Dark Souls creators tailored their encounters - Check
Dark Soul is a good game - Check
so it should make your game good. Because both are games. - Rather, "so Tailoring games does not make them bad. Because Tailoring is just a tool that requires skill to use well, like any other tool."

If *my* games are good or bad, it's because of my skill or lack thereof. It has nothing to do with the tool I choose to use. [/QUOTE]

Of course, a great DM can turn a steaming pile of **** of a system and still cook a good game out of it. But why not save yourself some work and start with better ingredients? I mean, even 4th Edition would be better (and it is still crap), at least for game prep. Change a few keywords and that flame-blaster devil artillery becomes a radiant/cold fey of the same CR. And the skill progression is such that you don't need to set DC's according to the PC's very specific selection of skill ranks: They all follow, more or less, within' a range.



What I mean is that the differences are subjective, not objective. These methods of play cannot be evaluated as better or worse, only more or less preferable to different people.

I mean it is a matter of taste.

But so far I'm not sure you understand "my shoes" well enough to say you've been in them. The above mischaracterization of my point about Dark Souls rather clearly indicates that you haven't fully understood my point yet.

Hence the first part: "I'm not saying my way will always be the most valid one.". You're right, I can't tell you your experience. What I can tell you is that over-prep (and by now it means anything more than a flowchart with a few side-notes) leads to less fun games and waste precious hours of your limited time on this Earth.


Objection. I'm not convinced it is possible to metagame while in the act of CREATING an encounter.
In this case what I meant is that you let the odds of success play a role in the way the session is built. In other words, PCs can hint that something they want to do always have a decent chance to succeed because they've come to expect it, because it is tailored to them. In comparison, a non-tailored game will have PCs gauge the cues you give them and their own skill to make educated guesses that will keep them on the edge of their seats...

Have they bit more than they can chew?



While in the act of RUNNING the encounter, absolutely, metagaming is a real thing. How are you supposed to ignore external knowledge of the system while creating the session's challenges? And how does that even make sense?
In my case, it's a matter of "What would make sense" more than "Is it the right challenge rating". For example, one adventure I designed, back when I played Pathfinder, had a dwarven city built around a volcanic caldera. The volcano was actually the prison of a Magma Dragon made by dwarves of old in an ancient war with the elemental plane of chaos. That dragon had a son who found its way in, in order to release it, along with other creatures sympathetic to it.

As a result, at least until they'd have the time to take 20 on everything, doors that were still locked were little more than alcoves with a solid wall, and traps (which were triggered, left traces and re-activated automatically) became hazards the PCs could use to their advantage.




You're right. I forgot about how I've never been able to control my actions as a player any time I was exposed to metagame information.
And I'm sure you're not alone (although you seems suspiciously self-aware). All the more reasons not to put such incentives.



I'll remind you that, just like Railroading + Participationism = Linear Gameplay, so too does Metagaming + Participationism come out to another style of acceptable play. It's also not about better or worse, but subjective preferences to what kind of game you want to have.

Define Participationism. Best I've found is:


My understanding of Participationism is that this is what might be termed Illusionism by consent. It remains the case that the referee is going to run his story, and that it doesn't matter what the players do because the story is going to happen. They will go where they're supposed to go, even if they start out in the wrong direction; they will save the day in the end; they will feel like they were heroes. Along the way they will make decisions and announce actions which will provide color, but which will have absolutely no effect on the outcome. The sole difference between participationism and illusionism is the players know it. They have agreed up front, implicitly or explicitly, that nothing they do will matter.

If so, I can objectively claim (X + Participationism) is a worse kind of game. In facts, (X + Participationism) is little more than a form of masturbation.


It means your original point has a lot of exceptional cases that make it untrue. You've made a general statement without declaring its exceptions, which gives it the false appearance of being absolute, which it demonstrably isn't.

Wait. Intelligent well trained soldiers:

Players charge stupidly a large host of foes
Monsters use overwhelming numbers and the Aid Another action
As a result of the players action, the encounter is REALLY not a Cr-Appropriate combat.


BUT if Mindless Ooze swarm:

Players charge stupidly a large host of foes
Monsters swarms PCs to satisfy their feeding instincts, but not the Aid Another action
As a result of the players action, the encounter is REALLY not a Cr-Appropriate combat.


And this later example proves wrong my original point that Verisimilitude requires that stupid [or very clever] players' actions lead to unbalanced encounters?

You might want to proof read.





I run my games this way, too. This is not a distinction between tailored and untailored. Tailored only really speaks to how games are CREATED. Not how they are RUN.
So you agree that exceptions aren't important and that as long as you get the general direction right, it doesn't matter?




I disagree (that it doesn't matter).

We lose more than we gain when we allow being "mostly right" to justify making over-generalizations that lead to misconceptions. It matters.

Over-generalizations like an unsubstantiated "we lose more than we gain" claim?

[Pleh]

After consideration, this tangent is wandering too far off the topic. I'm gonna make a separate thread in case people want to pursue the tangent.

Let me conclude here by tying it back into the main topic:

Does a party need a healer? No, even in systems that "need" a healer by their design can compensate for the system's fragility by managing the healer's role by planting the necessary resources in the campaign. Even if not everyone is going to like this method, it's enough to prove that healers aren't essentially *necessary*.

[Guizonde]

Let me conclude here by tying it back into the main topic:

Does a party need a healer? No, even in systems that "need" a healer by their design can compensate for the system's fragility by managing the healer's role by planting the necessary resources in the campaign. Even if not everyone is going to like this method, it's enough to prove that healers aren't essentially *necessary*.

here's my two bits on the subject: my pf game was started by the dm on the assumption that all the characters praise cayden caillean. this effectively means that all the characters have a way of healing at least themselves (monk, bard, paladin, inquisitor, oracle, cleric). the cleric recently re-specced from the healing domain due to player inexperience and wanting to avoid playing a healbot. most of us have a few ranks in the first aid skill, but aside from a few potions of heroism, we don't use potions at all. first aid kits are mostly used post-battle to stabilize a fallen teammate until they can cast themselves back to reasonable hp levels.

no, it's not necessary to have a healer, of course not. but having the possibility of casting iirc 25 healing spells and sla's in combat is a benefit no matter which way you look at it. zombies? the cleric casts one sla and we're full health and no zombies survive. anything undead, really. succubus? we heal ability damage faster than we can suffer from it. giant monster of the week of the "bag of hp" variety? the paladin, monk, and inquisitor spend the fight with yo-yo hp (from full to negative and back again before their next turn). we don't play optimized, and we fall prey to a lot of ambushes. in-combat healing is not efficient, but it does help us stay alive. we like the redundancy of everyone being able to heal others both in and out of combat.

in my rogue trader game, we've got two members carrying medikits. those are used when inevitably one of the team falls unconscious and we need to evac them to the medbay onboard the ship. insta-healing would be awesome, but it's not available. the long downtime during warp voyages helps us heal back to full before the next mission. we don't have a medic, two characters know basic first aid. it's enough to get by. failing that, the two combat-oriented characters have more than enough strength to pick up fallen comrades and leg it out to safety.

i hope i provided two opposite examples that no you don't need a healer, but if you don't have one, you'd better have backup plans. it depends both on the system, and the group.

[Ogre Mage]

Every party needs healing, but that is not necessarily a healer. Parties without the luxury of a magical healer will have to get by on some other means, possibly healing items (potions, etc.). The game progression will likely be considerably more challenging.

If the group decides to run with no healing period ... well, that is foolish. I think they will soon be rolling up new characters.

[Gorum]

After consideration, this tangent is wandering too far off the topic. I'm gonna make a separate thread in case people want to pursue the tangent.
Nice High Ground Maneuver (http://blog.dilbert.com/2010/07/19/high-ground-maneuver/). Well played. I agree 100%.

*****
Back on topic:

In my opinion, a party doesn't need a dedicated healer per se, but if the game is built with the assumption there should be, expect the overall challenge of the campaign to be cranked up a few notches, and prepare for it.


PF / 3.5's UMD allows the use of a Wand of Cure light wound which is incredibly cheap compared to potions. Buy one A.S.A.P.
Learn to run from encounters that will be too taxing so you can either come back prepared or goad the opponent into attacking somewhere that is more to your advantage.
Try to make characters that either can't be harmed (E.G. Flying archers outside most spellcasters' reach), can sustain themselves (5th Edition Fighter with Second Wind, PF's alchemist) or min-max the schist out of save-or-suck spells.

[Pelle]

Every party may "need" a healer, but every game does not. I find it more fun to play when you have some weaknesses to overcome.

[Gorum]

If the group decides to run with no healing period ... well, that is foolish. I think they will soon be rolling up new characters.

Reminds me of a funny thing. Tried that once in Baldur's Gate 2. Evil protagonist (so no free healing) barbarian on the verge of death meant that, since the option "rest until fully healed was on, my party once rested more than 3 months at once.

[Jormengand]

Nice High Ground Maneuver (http://blog.dilbert.com/2010/07/19/high-ground-maneuver/).

It's less a "high ground manoeuvre" and more "acknowledgement that your conversation had wandered leagues away from the basic point that some games don't even have hit points, let alone need a healer". Which is a point which remains absolutely true and therefore the statement "every party needs a healer" remains absolutely false

[Aliquid]

Reminds me of a funny thing. Tried that once in Baldur's Gate 2. Evil protagonist (so no free healing) barbarian on the verge of death meant that, since the option "rest until fully healed was on, my party once rested more than 3 months at once.
I was going to say something similar. No magical healing is an option, there just needs to be more downtime between adventures. During combat can be much more tense, and retreat is a more tempting option.

[Starbuck_II]

@Pleh

So, I actually agree with you on most points. First and foremost, especially on the point that there are multiple valid play styles. Which, as poorly as I may have worded it, was my intended point.



Imagine running an adventure you've already ran for a new group of PCs. Without changing it. The adventure may well turn out differently. Things that the first group breezed through might be a struggle; things that they had trouble with might be a cakewalk. That difference is the most basic layer of respecting the players' choices in bringing these particular characters - at least, in the philosophy I'm discussing.

More later, maybe.

I noticed that when I ran Hell's vengeance twice.

The first party snuck by the guard dogs and win without too much trouble, the other bungled it and got into a big fight.

[Knaight]

It's less a "high ground manoeuvre" and more "acknowledgement that your conversation had wandered leagues away from the basic point that some games don't even have hit points, let alone need a healer". Which is a point which remains absolutely true and therefore the statement "every party needs a healer" remains absolutely false

While the basic point very much stands (that certain games are structured not to have healers in very deep ways), HP isn't really one of them. There's games which have non-HP wound systems, and have healers which work with said non HP wound systems.

[Jormengand]

While the basic point very much stands (that certain games are structured not to have healers in very deep ways), HP isn't really one of them. There's games which have non-HP wound systems, and have healers which work with said non HP wound systems.

By "hit points", I really mean anything that's at all analagous or even adjacent to a hit point in terms of a thing that marks how wounded your character is, or marks your character as wounded or otherwise, or some combination of the two or something of that calibre. So you're absolutely right that "hit points" is the wrong way of putting it.

Expanding on this, there are multiple reasons why you might not need a healer:

1: Characters cannot become damaged.
2: Characters can become damaged, but healing is impossible.
3: Characters can become damaged and healing is possible, but specialising in healing is impossible.
4: Any character can heal well enough that a specialist is only nice and not necessary.
5: Characters regain health automatically at regular enough intervals that healing is only nice and not necessary.
6: Healing is restricted in some way which makes it not worth using.
7: It's cheaper in terms of build resources or daily resources to prevent damage than to heal it, so healing is never actually worth it.
8: Characters can become damaged, but it's such a rare occurence that it's not worth specialising in healing.

Of course, some combination of these can be the case - for example, in the game which I'm currently making, there are three levels of physical damage: injuries, wounds and harm. Injuries will heal relatively quickly on their own (5) and most characters can pass the heal roll to make them heal faster if they work together (4). Harm takes a long time to heal, but characters usually don't get harmed regularly (8) and it's generally more advisable to increase your injury and wound capacities than focus on healing just in case you get harmed (7), particularly because most healing spells are either rituals which take ages or blood spells which deal damage to your immortal soul if you try (it heals, but over a longer time than physical damage would) (6). Despite all of this, healing is pretty nice (and pretty much the only reason anyone respects blood magi as well), but it's hardly necessary.

[Florian]

I have recently come to the conclusion that any adventuring party in a game with combat needs someone capable of filling the healer/support role. Most of my experience admittedly is with D&D, but I feel like this could apply to most systems.

D&D is very specific because it tracks resource attrition as part of the challenge. You have hp, which will go down, and spell slots and items, which makes them fill up again. Same with attribute damage, disease, poisons, so on.

Other systems do work differently.

Take, for example, the Warhammer/Dark Heresy line: Armor is not just the DC that an attacker must roll over to inflict damage. You have Dodge and Parry to overcome, then need to breach the armor to inflict actual damage. Or look at systems that deal with wound severity/death spiral as a concrete matter, like Shadowrun or L5R.

[LordCdrMilitant]

In Dark Heresy, there's no point in being a healer. Medical aid is limited in availability and just isn't effective. It also won't save you, what you really want is a lot of toughness, a lot of armor, and above all, solid cover. Also, the techpriest probably has enough intelligence to stop the blood loss long enough to get you to the ship's medicae ward after a predator tank vaporized your arm and half your body without being a dedicated healer, which I guess says something about the quality of medical aid you're receiving [and why my DH parties are full of cybernetics].

I don't actually think parties really need healers all that much. I ran for 2 D&D parties, one that was 3/6 healer, and one that was 0/8 healer. They both did just fine against the same enemies, and I don't think I ever gave out a healing potion in either.

[Guizonde]

In Dark Heresy, there's no point in being a healer. Medical aid is limited in availability and just isn't effective. It also won't save you, what you really want is a lot of toughness, a lot of armor, and above all, solid cover. Also, the techpriest probably has enough intelligence to stop the blood loss long enough to get you to the ship's medicae ward after a predator tank vaporized your arm and half your body without being a dedicated healer, which I guess says something about the quality of medical aid you're receiving [and why my DH parties are full of cybernetics].


allow me to politely disagree with a minor quibble. yes, dedicated medics are a bust in that system (and other ffg warhammer systems), but having at least one team member packing a medikit to stabilize a critically wounded operative long enough for evac is a boon, and it doesn't take much to pack either a medikit or the skills to use one, both in terms of ressources and xp. my rt group would have been wiped out several times over if not for medikits just by blood-loss alone. it allows you to fight another day once taken to a proper medical facility, but without evac, prepare to reroll often.

oh, the "medics" of our group are the arch-militant raymond, and the missionary jace. ray has 39 in int, and jace has 44 as of last upgrade. both have the medicae talent formed since the second session, for a whopping total of 100xp each. even a base medikit allows staving off death, so budgets can be respected quite easily.

(as of this post, seneschal dag, missionary jace, and voidmaster ross have all been reduced to bleeding out at least 4 times each. only jace has got cybernetics due to his lemming-like survival instinct, but not one of the group has yet to burn a fate point to stay alive thanks to medikits and very high weight limits to carry the injured in the group).

[LordCdrMilitant]

allow me to politely disagree with a minor quibble. yes, dedicated medics are a bust in that system (and other ffg warhammer systems), but having at least one team member packing a medikit to stabilize a critically wounded operative long enough for evac is a boon, and it doesn't take much to pack either a medikit or the skills to use one, both in terms of ressources and xp. my rt group would have been wiped out several times over if not for medikits just by blood-loss alone. it allows you to fight another day once taken to a proper medical facility, but without evac, prepare to reroll often.

oh, the "medics" of our group are the arch-militant raymond, and the missionary jace. ray has 39 in int, and jace has 44 as of last upgrade. both have the medicae talent formed since the second session, for a whopping total of 100xp each. even a base medikit allows staving off death, so budgets can be respected quite easily.

(as of this post, seneschal dag, missionary jace, and voidmaster ross have all been reduced to bleeding out at least 4 times each. only jace has got cybernetics due to his lemming-like survival instinct, but not one of the group has yet to burn a fate point to stay alive thanks to medikits and very high weight limits to carry the injured in the group).

As I said, that job typically falls to the Techpriest, since it doesn't cost him anything to be good at it. It does say something about what sort of "medical care" you're getting, though. Typically he uses medicae after the fact to upgrade his fellow acolytes with the gifts of the machine god after they lose their natural limbs and internal organs to pulse rifles and boltshells.

My party doesn't typically die from blood loss or get medical care from each other all that often, since they typically get blown up by the myriad of weapons the enemies of the Imperium use first. There are few weapons that won't kill an acolyte in a single hit.

[JoeJ]

I think part of the reason many people believe that every party needs a healer is that they've fallen into the roleplaying = D&D (or something very like D&D) fallacy. I don't recall ever being in a party that had a healer in any superhero RPG, whether it was Champions, Marvel Superhero, DC Heroes, or V&V. (Following the model of the comics, only super teams that have a healer ever seem to need one.) Likewise, there has usually been no team healer when I've played Traveller. Or Top Secret. Or Boot Hill.

Further, it only makes sense for healing during an adventure to be possible at all in genres that include magic and/or superscience. In a historical, modern, hard SF, or low magic fantasy setting, if you get hurt you just have to deal with not being at your best for the rest of the adventure.

[D+1]

Depends on the game rules, the setting, and then the PC's and how they are played by their players. Even in a game like 1E D&D which practically BEGS players with any experience to play at least one Healbot per party, you don't HAVE to play your PC's in such a way that they desperately need every point of healing spell they can beg, steal or borrow. Nor does the setting the PC's are in need to lean in a fightfightfight approach to the game.

Once upon a time it would have been the mark of good players to avoid the need for ANY healing whatever, rather than rely upon all they can get and cry for more, and the mark of a good GM to run a game that doesn't make players regret their choices of class for their PC's in NOT having any particular class, especially a healer.

[Quertus]

I think part of the reason many people believe that every party needs a healer is that they've fallen into the roleplaying = D&D (or something very like D&D) fallacy. I don't recall ever being in a party that had a healer in any superhero RPG, whether it was Champions, Marvel Superhero, DC Heroes, or V&V. (Following the model of the comics, only super teams that have a healer ever seem to need one.)

Funny thing - my group's experience was, healers in story hero games are totally OP.

[dps]

I don't know of any movies that really feature "in-combat" healing in their fight scenes. They seem pretty good at pacing.

Almost any movie about modern warfare will have someone crying "Medic!" at some point. I'd consider anything the medic might be able to do to be "in-combat" healing. Or at least an attempt at it.

Of course, you could argue that those movies don't necessarily "feature" in-combat healing, but there are a few movies that do actually focus on combat medics.

Anyway, while I'd say that in general, RPG parties probably should include a healer, there are enough exceptions that I wouldn't say that they always need a healer. Off the top of my head:

The campaign isn't combat-oriented; in fact, actual physical combat is rare--this type of campaign certainly isn't the norm, but they do exist.

There are plenty of other healing options, either mechanically (cheap, readily available potions, f.e.) or by nature of the setting (if the party member are part of a modern-day, "real-world" big city police force, they'll have ambulances and hospitals handy, even if the campaign features an extremely unrealistic amount of gun battles with the bad guys).

The PCs are either nigh-invulnerable or have some sort of intrinsic healing factor (common in the superhero genre).

The game rules allow NPC retainers, followers, minions, etc.; the healer role can be given to one or more of these NPCs (though I guess you could say they are members of the party even though they aren't PCs).

[Psyren]

Every party needs a healer, that's why they invited you,
Party heeeealer!
Party heeeealer!

Sorry couldn't resist.

On topic, whether a dedicated healer is necessary (or even useful in-combat) depends on the system, GM, and party in that order.

[kyoryu]

Almost any movie about modern warfare will have someone crying "Medic!" at some point. I'd consider anything the medic might be able to do to be "in-combat" healing. Or at least an attempt at it.

To stabilize a character, sure.

But nothing like "D&D healing" where you take someone back from the brink of death to full fighting condition in a matter of seconds.

[Squared]

Yeah, I think there are two very different meanings to the word 'healer' in this thread. When I hear that term I think of a dedicated healer and not just the guy who brought a medpack or a handful of healing potions.

In my current campaign the only one with any healing is myself and only because I am playing a paladin with healing hands. Our group just carries around a bunch of healing potion just in case.

By in large I don't think that healing is really necessary in 5e. That is what short rests are for.

As an aside my most memorable session of playing WoW was running the Sunken Temple instance without any healer. Instead we had two tanks that swapped back and forth sharing the tanking and using bandages to recover health.

^2

[Drascin]

Yeah, I tend to feel that if a game literally cannot work as advertised unless the players fall into a specific role spread, that's kind of a problem with the game, not the players, and that means it's houserule time.

Speaking more generally, if nobody in the party wants to play a healer, I as a GM should certainly not punish them for it. For one, at the most obvious level, given how immensely powerful healing can often be, if nobody ever actually wants to play Healer that generally means that the game has made being a dedicated healer unattractive and boring, and I'm not really in the business of asking my players to play things they don't want to just to keep "party balance" or whatever. I'll just write adventures that have less long-haul segments and more burst ones with downtime between them.

And for another, "well yes I let you choose these characters but your choice is WRONG" is among the dickiest things a GM can do. Either allow it and then tailor adventures appropriately, or don't allow it, end of.

[FabulousFizban]

just have someone take the healer feat and carry the kits and you should be fine. don't forget you can recover HP by burning HD during a short rest. You shouldn't be healing durin combat anyway. Healer feat+song of rest. If you are having trouble in combat, take heroism & upcast it on the party.