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Drache64
2019-09-27, 04:47 PM
In almost every video game there are health packs and healing mechanics to make sure you're going into every encounter fully topped off on HP.

In most RPG systems they really limit healing, even resting and getting full hp back is a house rule, rules as written usually give you back only a few hit dice worth of health at most and in 5e especially they nerfed healing by a ton.

What's the concern that game systems are seeing? What's wrong with my party of adventures fighting everything at full health? Especially when they typically fight encounters ratings near their APL

HouseRules
2019-09-27, 04:50 PM
Most Video Games have timing issues.
If healing takes too long, it becomes boring.

Table Top Games could quickly move time forward faster than real time.
Video Game does have some options to do so, but it would impact the story in weird ways because stories are fixed.
Table Top Games have more flexible stories that would allow downtime to occur.

Keltest
2019-09-27, 04:55 PM
In a tabletop game, time is a resource, to be spent productively. Having to spend time patching up the barbarian after they charge through the hallway and trigger all the traps means people will stop and think a bit more about how they want to deal with them. But in real life, you decide on that all very quickly. In video games, time cant just be glossed over. If you want to spend 40 minutes waiting for your mana to recharge so you can heal a quarter of your health again, that's 40 minutes of real time the gamer has to sit through, waiting or otherwise not playing the game. That's a good way to get your game shelved forever. So waiting for your health or mana or whatever to come back becomes significantly quicker.

Luccan
2019-09-27, 04:57 PM
It's funny you say that 5e nerfed healing, since it's the only edition of D&D I've played that lets you heal quickly without magic (I haven't played 4e, but in previous edition serious healing without magic could take months in-game, if it was even possible to fully recover). But as to why HP recovery is limited: there seems to be the expectation by the designers and many players that not every fight will completely drain you of health. So you need to make healing harder for most fights, or rather the overall combination of fights in a day, to really threaten players at all. In older games this was less true, but many of those focused a lot on resource management which included HP and methods of healing.

False God
2019-09-27, 04:59 PM
Realism to punish martials.

Also "holy trinity" ideology.

I rarely have players getting into fights without full or nearly full resources anyway. Doesn't bother me, I tend to up-tune fights anyway since I expect my players to pull out every trick in the book anyway. Might as well give them a fight worthy of their efforts.

Drache64
2019-09-27, 05:02 PM
It's funny you say that 5e nerfed healing, since it's the only edition of D&D I've played that lets you heal quickly without magic (I haven't played 4e, but in previous edition serious healing without magic could take months in-game, if it was even possible to fully recover). But as to why HP recovery is limited: there seems to be the expectation by the designers and many players that not every fight will completely drain you of health. So you need to make healing harder for most fights, or rather the overall combination of fights in a day, to really threaten players at all. In older games this was less true, but many of those focused a lot on resource management which included HP and methods of healing.

I was thinking about making a life cleric in 5e vs Pathfinder or 3.5e

Anymage
2019-09-27, 05:06 PM
Healing in RPGs takes less time than natural healing in many video games. In video games I have to watch my life bar inch back up. In tabletop games, once we're at a safe place, we can just declare however much downtime is required to heal up.

D&D specifically did have a history of making mundane healing take a large amount of in-universe time, as do games that focus on "gritty" or "realistic" play. That's a pacing issue, although I'll note that I'd rather have internal resources (like hit dice) be available than expect one guy to be the cleric and reserve resources to top everybody up at the end of the day.

Luccan
2019-09-27, 05:13 PM
I was thinking about making a life cleric in 5e vs Pathfinder or 3.5e

Ah. Well, a life cleric is still one of the best single classed healers. But casters have (I think understandably) been nerfed in general. They're still magic and they certainly aren't worse than than the mundanes and martials, but any caster is going to be less comparetively powerful to their 3.5 counterparts.

Drache64
2019-09-27, 05:18 PM
It's funny you say that 5e nerfed healing, since it's the only edition of D&D I've played that lets you heal quickly without magic (I haven't played 4e, but in previous edition serious healing without magic could take months in-game, if it was even possible to fully recover). But as to why HP recovery is limited: there seems to be the expectation by the designers and many players that not every fight will completely drain you of health. So you need to make healing harder for most fights, or rather the overall combination of fights in a day, to really threaten players at all. In older games this was less true, but many of those focused a lot on resource management which included HP and methods of healing.


Ah. Well, a life cleric is still one of the best single classed healers. But casters have (I think understandably) been nerfed in general. They're still magic and they certainly aren't worse than than the mundanes and martials, but any caster is going to be less comparetively powerful to their 3.5 counterparts.

One of the best in the system but still pretty limited especially compared to 3.5

Mechalich
2019-09-27, 05:32 PM
What's the concern that game systems are seeing? What's wrong with my party of adventures fighting everything at full health? Especially when they typically fight encounters ratings near their APL

Tabletop gameplay is far slower paced than video game gameplay, especially in combat. Many video game RPGs feature dozens of combats between periods of resource restoration, with characters restoring themselves to full health between most battles. In such circumstances some other resource (usually SP) is the one whose depletion matters long-term. A tabletop game simply cannot do this, logistically, and if resource depletion is to matter it has to occur over a relatively small number of combats. Thus limits on healing.

Now, resource depletion doesn't have to matter, it's perfectly possible to have characters healed to full and all resources restored between every combat, and there are some video games that do this, notably many MMOs. The problem with that is, if all resources will be restored at the end of combat, any battle that doesn't severely threaten to TPK the party becomes a disposable 'trash' fight that has very little reason to even occur aside from providing spacing between boss fights. In video games where this represents only a modest time investment that's not a problem, but because of the pacing of tabletop, 'trash fights' really aren't a viable option most of the time (D&D-based video games, which can bypass this restriction, include tons of trash fights).

Thrawn4
2019-09-27, 05:37 PM
What's wrong with my party of adventures fighting everything at full health?
It is boring and flavourless as hell? The risk of combat and wounds is reduced, the sheer amount of fights deprives them of excitement, and instant recovery strains your suspension of disbelief. Give me a gritty System any day, and let the other people have fun playing some Diablo power fantasy. Which is good for them, I guess, butnot my cup of tea.

Luccan
2019-09-27, 05:48 PM
One of the best in the system but still pretty limited especially compared to 3.5

In what regard, specifically, does it bother you? For the most part you're still doing the same things and barring the absence of certain spells (those low level spells that bestow fast healing come to mind), you're still healing the party and they're gonna be up there in health if you use spells strategically. And except when someone was super focused on it, I actually can't think of that often in 3.5 when I went into every fight with full HP.

redwizard007
2019-09-27, 07:06 PM
One of the best in the system but still pretty limited especially compared to 3.5

In 3.5 the Cleric was (one of) the strongest class. Next to buffing, tanking, nuking undead, and wrecking enemy casters, healing was what the cleric was best at. Comparing that with 5e clerics is... not going to work. 5e designers spread healing across multiple mechanics and multiple classes. They also utilize unlimited cantrips so casters at low levels aren't boring as hell. It's a trade off that I'm thrilled they made.

If you want full HP for every encounter then you need a bard and druid to chip in with healing as well, use your HD during short tests, and take appropriate feats, etc. Its doable, but limits your resources in other areas. It's generally accepted that the best strategy is to kill all the bad guys quickly and heal after a fight. Healing in combat should be a bonus action Healing Words combined with something that harms the bad guys.

Max_Killjoy
2019-09-27, 11:54 PM
At least in theory, it's about risks, consequences, and pacing.

Knaight
2019-09-28, 01:43 AM
Even putting aside the resource management aspect, which is a focus not particularly widely shared - RPGs generally try to have some sort of fairly coherent fiction underlying them, far more than most video games do. This is especially true when looking at the combat heavy action games implied by the framing here, what with ubiquitous health kits and the like.

Presenting an equivalent has a tendency to look really dumb most of the time when working in the fiction layer, especially when the baseline is a more grounded genre. Sure, a videogame character can run over a health kit and be fine, but if I break my arm it's out of commission for weeks. This tends to make a description where a character gets seriously hurt and is less effective for a while come across a lot more believable than one where a character gets seriously hurt and is suddenly fine unless there are specific reasons for that.

Which there can be: Healing spells in a fantasy game are generally acceptable. A superhero having a healing factor is generally pretty in genre. Some super high tech game having some rapid healing tech solution is also generally fine. Still, that leaves a lot of interesting settings where that just wouldn't apply, and people want to play in them too.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-28, 01:44 AM
So many different answers .. but this:


At least in theory, it's about risks, consequences, and pacing.

pretty much sums it up.

Too much healing means every fight is won by the side that can kill the other side's healer first. Too little, and every combat is crippling, meaning extended bedrest and natural healing with is quite simply boring. With the right amount of healing, it become an emergency reaction to a PC being close to death - which builds tension, which is good.

Grod_The_Giant
2019-09-28, 07:13 AM
Because D&D is still nominally a game of resource management, and hit points are one of the key resources to manage. There are plenty of systems with different priorities, and consequently different health/healing paradigms. Fate is a game driven by the shape of the narrative; the plot armor part of your health bar regenerates between fights, but significant injuries stick around so they can be part of the story. Mutants and Masterminds is a superhero game built around big explosive action scenes; you enter every fight there at full health. Dread is a horror game, all about suspense, and (iirc) doesn't have health at all; instead of rolling dice you pull jenga blocks from the tower, and if you knock it down something horrible happens to you.

It all depends.

noob
2019-09-28, 11:05 AM
It is boring and flavourless as hell? The risk of combat and wounds is reduced, the sheer amount of fights deprives them of excitement, and instant recovery strains your suspension of disbelief. Give me a gritty System any day, and let the other people have fun playing some Diablo power fantasy. Which is good for them, I guess, butnot my cup of tea.

You know attrition is a very boring way to put danger.
It is much more fun to have danger because you fight things that can actually kill you fast.
Which is what many gritty systems do.
That or handicaps(ex: by getting wounded you become weaker and go in a death spiral)
those two are what makes fights a thing to avoid in gritty systems.(sometimes they put also resources that you lose and sometimes you can not recover those.)

Mastikator
2019-09-28, 11:43 AM
Most video games treat HP like a short term resource. Most table top RPGs treat HP like a long term resource.

Notable exceptions are Dark Souls and D&D. In Dark Souls HP doesn't just regenerate and healing items are sparse enough that you can run of healing items. Conversely in D&D healing permeates the game, health pots and spells are easy to come by.

If you want to have a light experience then go with as few long term resources as possible, if you want a heavy, gritty experience then pull out all the stops: food, water, item maintainece, health (tissue), health (disease), money. Of course the rest of the game has to be tuned to this ideology, you can't have heavy gritty for non-magicals while wizards can just magic up some food and shelter and expect everything to be fine. (which is part of why D&D 3.5 is very un-fine outside of its narrow domain)

Rhedyn
2019-09-28, 12:14 PM
You aren't supposed to go into every fight at full HP because most RPGs don't have robust wargame combat rules.

In general combat is going to such in RPGs, so anything the incentives players to avoid combat will add to most systems.

Martin Greywolf
2019-09-28, 03:52 PM
In almost every video game there are health packs and healing mechanics to make sure you're going into every encounter fully topped off on HP.

Definitely not the case. Dark Souls and games of similar difficulty level aside, Warframe, Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers, Doom 1, Doom 2, Doom 4 and many more don't have enough health lying around unless you're ridiculously skilled, provided you play on high enough difficulty. Most old FPS games don't, actually, and the only ones I can think of that routinely do are regenerating health games, like most cover shooters.



In most RPG systems they really limit healing, even resting and getting full hp back is a house rule, rules as written usually give you back only a few hit dice worth of health at most and in 5e especially they nerfed healing by a ton.

DnD specifically aside, there are plenty of systems that give you your HP-like resources back. FATE and many d6 systems have a portion of your HP that regens to full after every fight, FATE specifically gives most of it back and only lets stuff like bro



What's the concern that game systems are seeing? What's wrong with my party of adventures fighting everything at full health? Especially when they typically fight encounters ratings near their APL

First off, CR being equal to party level doesn't necessarily mean that that one critter is a challenge to a PC of equivalent level - DnD usually tries to do that, but many other systems have PCs and NPCs use almost entirely separate stat blocks.

As for what concern, consider this. It's incredibly trivial to houserule that everything regens after a fight, or only a portion does. But if you design your system around it, it is much harder to make it not regen all the time.

What componds that is that there are certain types of adventures that you can't run with full regen rules, like, for example, Naruto-style chuunin exams, where getting slowly tired and bled of resources is part of the point. Or something like Guns of Navarrone or Seven samurai.

runeghost
2019-09-28, 10:44 PM
In almost every video game there are health packs and healing mechanics to make sure you're going into every encounter fully topped off on HP.

In most RPG systems they really limit healing, even resting and getting full hp back is a house rule, rules as written usually give you back only a few hit dice worth of health at most and in 5e especially they nerfed healing by a ton.

What's the concern that game systems are seeing? What's wrong with my party of adventures fighting everything at full health? Especially when they typically fight encounters ratings near their APL

I've been playing D&D (in its many variants) since 1980. Here's my two silver bits on it:

In D&D way back in the day, a pretty big part of the game was resource management: time, light, encumbrance, hit points, spell slots, etc. The objective wasn't to kill monsters (xp for killing monsters was generally low), it was get the treasure and get out alive or complete the "quest" and get back alive (to collect the reward). Keltest and Rhedyn already touched on this in their posts earlier. Fights with monsters were something you generally wanted to avoid, unless they were required to get the really good loot, such as a dragon and its hoard. But even then, you wanted to reach the dragon with as many spells and hit points as possible. If healing is plentiful and inexpensive, a good chunk of this "resource management" portion of the game is removed, and the whole classic game breaks as a result.

If PCs can easily return to full hit points, then they no longer measure "endurance over the course of the adventure" but "can I survive this particular fight?" Similarly, if healing is near automagic, then another element of play is removed as less player choice is required in spell selection. (And note that healing spells which are overpowered compared to non-healing equivalents are also going to remove choice as they provide too much "bang for the buck" for tactically-minded players to pass them up.) The net result is that what was previously a single long incremental and connected "puzzle" (the dungeon) is replaced with a series of tactical combat exercises, or smaller stand-alone challenges. With limited healing, individual parts of the dungeon or other adventure can easily be non-lethal, but still add to the overall challenge - if the PCs do poorly on an encounter with clever kobolds or a run-in with a trap, their overall chances of success are decreased, but success is still potentially within their grasp. (And managing the changing calculus of risk vs. reward is another part of the game. A game where an encounter or two goes very badly and becomes a desperate quest for escape and survival an be quite fun, as long as its not every session.) If the party is easily restored to full power after every encounter, then every encounter becomes binary - either win (and soon return to full health) and lose and suffer death or defeat.

When I've played older D&D variants, the major use of healing is not to heal the party in the dungeon, or in combat (although there is usually a little of those), but to heal the party much faster between adventures. A couple mid-level clerics can get a good-sized party from near-death to full health in a week or so, avoiding huge downtimes as PCs rest and recuperate for a month or more after a difficult adventure. Note that in a way, this is actually what you're talking about in CRPGs - the party tackles each dungeon or quest at full health. It's just a question of the scale of the game.

ijon
2019-09-29, 01:06 AM
Definitely not the case. Dark Souls and games of similar difficulty level aside, Warframe, Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers, Doom 1, Doom 2, Doom 4 and many more don't have enough health lying around unless you're ridiculously skilled, provided you play on high enough difficulty. Most old FPS games don't, actually, and the only ones I can think of that routinely do are regenerating health games, like most cover shooters.
in helldivers, death is just an inconvenience as long as someone remembers to dial reinforce before getting splattered. not exactly an example I'd use for "health management matters".
and doom 4? you have a point with the original dooms (though unless you're playing on nightmare, only plutonia poses any challenge), but I struggle to see a game where every enemy is a source of health and maybe armor as one where health is limited.

as for the topic itself: it's already been said, but if health is something you can recover easily, then fights that don't threaten death/capture/some other form of incapacitation are foregone conclusions that players just basic-attack through, and most of the time aren't worth playing through. I'd rather have a larger dynamic range for combats, and I'd bet most system designers would agree.
besides, the GM can always just provide more healing and ramp things up to compensate. it's a bit harder to do it the other way around with a system that doesn't know how to handle attrition.

Pleh
2019-09-29, 07:16 AM
There is another important reason healing is more limited in TTRPGs than video games.

Enemies often use the same healing rules.

Special enemies may have regenerative powers beyond normal healing, but in general, if enemies drop packages of HP boosts, why aren't they using those for themselves?

Spore
2019-09-29, 09:15 AM
There is often the "mom player" or "care bear" of the group that wants to play a supporter. Improving on healing is catering to their goals. Also I have found most systems care for balancing player classes (esp. 1st level characters) against the "average joe". Why hire a bunch of adventurers with dubious morals when you can throw commoners/standard town guards at the problem if the commoners heal their health at the same pace because normal healing is so simple? How do you explain a farmer's broken leg if a single day of resting would mend that problem? How do you have blind seer people if there are plenty of clerics around (barring the usual "old age clause" that prevents clerics from mending any issue linked to age)?

I like it when RPGs are internally consistent. A town in Faerun with a 7th level cleric as their mayor simply has no issues with mortal diseases or injuries. But it could have a problem with invasive bandits, or a reclusive arch wizard unleashing her experiments onto the town. Similarly the next town over who is governed by a wizard could have a problem with a rampant disease and a cult of death god enthusiasts embracing said disease to spread it. But a summoner opening a rift towards the Abyss would never be a problem for that town.

Or you could have a town with a bard mayor that tries to seduce the group's elf. Regardless of gender and orientation.

Karl Aegis
2019-09-29, 11:30 AM
Either you can buy infinite healing from items for between combat use or you absolutely need to dedicate a limited player slot to healing. Neither of those are acceptable in a TTRPG. Healing is limited to encourage diversity in playstyles. Also: Preventing damage is better than healing damage.

Inchhighguy
2019-09-29, 11:45 AM
At least in theory, it's about risks, consequences, and pacing.

This is the best answer.

Or maybe time.

If your playing a video game, or a one shot type RPG adventure, then time does not matter. You will only be playing the game, and that character, for a small amout of time. Once the adventure is over, the character just goes into Limbo.

A lot of RPG are played out a campgains, were time does matter. As the same characters will be around and used in game play for years, of course time matters.

Quertus
2019-09-29, 01:46 PM
You know attrition is a very boring way to put danger.
It is much more fun to have danger because you fight things that can actually kill you fast.

I think you have that backwards. The fights in SAO where bang, dead? No tension. When they actually had to watch their health bars, there was tension.

When you play oldschool, "anything could be instantly fatal at any time", you get paranoia, but not the same sense of dread as when you've got 12 rounds of oxygen left, 10 rounds of rescues to make, and foes to fight, all with that same breath.


Or you could have a town with a bard mayor that tries to seduce the group's elf. Regardless of gender and orientation.

Elves have gender? Orientation? Heh. Next, you're gonna try and convince me that dwarves and Illithid have genders and orientations, too.

HouseRules
2019-09-29, 01:54 PM
Elves have gender? Orientation? Heh. Next, you're gonna try and convince me that dwarves and Illithid have genders and orientations, too.

Wait, you play in a game with only male dwarves?

kyoryu
2019-09-29, 02:33 PM
Going back to old D&D, hit points serve a different purpose than they do in most video games.

In old D&D, where a session was a single trek into the dungeon and back (at least, that's how it was played at Gygax's table, and that's what the rules evolved around), HP were there to provided a limited resource, to force you to go back to the surface at some point. No individual encounter was generally intended as a fail spot, rather each one would take some of your resources and put it to you how much you wanted to push your luck.

In video games, HP are mostly there to make each encounter challenging. Note that D&D 4e actually mostly pushed to this with HP, while leaving the number of healing surges as the "session" resource.

noob
2019-09-29, 02:54 PM
I think you have that backwards. The fights in SAO where bang, dead? No tension. When they actually had to watch their health bars, there was tension.

When you play oldschool, "anything could be instantly fatal at any time", you get paranoia, but not the same sense of dread as when you've got 12 rounds of oxygen left, 10 rounds of rescues to make, and foes to fight, all with that same breath.



Elves have gender? Orientation? Heh. Next, you're gonna try and convince me that dwarves and Illithid have genders and orientations, too.

I played doom 1 and 2 and essentially I got worried most when I was against things that could kill me fast such as a cyberdemon or groups of heavy weapon dudes.(you were mentioning a show so I might as well mention another thing completely unrelated to rpgs)
Trudging through masses of imps and zombiemen never stressed me near as much even if they actually did attrition.
Likewise in dnd I never got worried in fights where opponents dealt low damage or could simply not hit us but did cost resources to kill but in fights where opponents could kill us in a bunch of seconds I got way more worried (which is why 4 titans encounters and other similar deadly encounters are now more or less the norm).

Running out of hp creates tension mostly when you are at low enough hp for making enemies have damage that is high in relative to your new hp total and that basically means you needed to wait before having the full tension you could have obtained by simply having harder hitting opponents that could kill you fast from the start.

Quertus
2019-10-01, 10:02 AM
I played doom 1 and 2 and essentially I got worried most when I was against things that could kill me fast such as a cyberdemon or groups of heavy weapon dudes.(you were mentioning a show so I might as well mention another thing completely unrelated to rpgs)
Trudging through masses of imps and zombiemen never stressed me near as much even if they actually did attrition.
Likewise in dnd I never got worried in fights where opponents dealt low damage or could simply not hit us but did cost resources to kill but in fights where opponents could kill us in a bunch of seconds I got way more worried (which is why 4 titans encounters and other similar deadly encounters are now more or less the norm).

Running out of hp creates tension mostly when you are at low enough hp for making enemies have damage that is high in relative to your new hp total and that basically means you needed to wait before having the full tension you could have obtained by simply having harder hitting opponents that could kill you fast from the start.

I… I guess it's a mindset thing. I appreciate subtler tension, that grows over the course of the session (or longer, like over the course of the campaign). If you cannot feel that tension, then, well, of course you cannot appreciate it.

Doom absolutely had that attrition tension. Of course, I wasn't good enough at that style of game to win "fair", I had to use the game save. And I reloaded "Imp" / attrition battles far more often ( / far more times) than I did "boss fights".

kyoryu
2019-10-01, 10:11 AM
I… I guess it's a mindset thing. I appreciate subtler tension, that grows over the course of the session (or longer, like over the course of the campaign). If you cannot feel that tension, then, well, of course you cannot appreciate it.

Doom absolutely had that attrition tension. Of course, I wasn't good enough at that style of game to win "fair", I had to use the game save. And I reloaded "Imp" / attrition battles far more often ( / far more times) than I did "boss fights".

Both are valid types of tension - knowing that a mistake can kill you, and the tension from getting continually closer to the edge.

The only problem is that, frequently, with the second type the "system" (including GM) doesn't make good on the threat, and that type of threat is often easier to mitigate by retreating when low on resources.

Glorthindel
2019-10-01, 11:01 AM
I played doom 1 and 2 and essentially I got worried most when I was against things that could kill me fast such as a cyberdemon or groups of heavy weapon dudes.(you were mentioning a show so I might as well mention another thing completely unrelated to rpgs)
Trudging through masses of imps and zombiemen never stressed me near as much even if they actually did attrition.
Likewise in dnd I never got worried in fights where opponents dealt low damage or could simply not hit us but did cost resources to kill but in fights where opponents could kill us in a bunch of seconds I got way more worried (which is why 4 titans encounters and other similar deadly encounters are now more or less the norm).


One of the reasons other people might tend to prefer attrition over "bang, your dead" threats is one of permanence. I thoroughlly agree that things that can take you out fast is preferable in a video game where the reload button is just a click away (regardless of how much that gives you - I prefer my XCOM ironman after all), but when TPK's come fast and regularly, you might find your party disbanding rather than hunkering down.