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View Full Version : [4e House Rule] Fatigue



Human Paragon 3
2008-05-23, 10:47 PM
Quoted from the 4e: Rest thread:


Hey, I just got a great idea for a 4e house rule to simulate fatigue over long stretches. A healing surge tax.

Let's say you spend the day being pummeled and brought to negative hit points. The next day you start with one fewer healing surge.

If you spend the next day getting pummled and brought to negative hit points, you start with another missing healing surge.

Eventually you'll have no healing surges left, stretched to the brink of your endurance. The endurance skill could play into this somehow, too.

A day of rest (or not being pumled into the negatives or stretching yourself to the brink on a forced march) restores one healing surge.

Seems a good, if cruel, way to track fatigue, and something I might use if I want to run a gritty campaign or session. The fact that you start each day with full HP is useful here, because encounters will get harder and harder as you begin to run low on surges.


I know the system isn't even out yet, but...

Thoughts on this house rule?

arkanis
2008-05-25, 02:50 PM
Hard to respond to this. Not everyone is even aware of what a healing surge is. Is it just the ability to spontaneously regain HP like a Monk's Wholeness of Body? People are just guessing. Best off getting the rules before really delving into these questions. I think there is a prerelease out now with a bunch of samples material from 4E but I don't know where you'd get it.

Roderick_BR
2008-05-25, 03:53 PM
Yeah, I think people should try to play it first, and only after that start to houserule.

Gralamin
2008-05-25, 04:20 PM
Hard to respond to this. Not everyone is even aware of what a healing surge is. Is it just the ability to spontaneously regain HP like a Monk's Wholeness of Body? People are just guessing. Best off getting the rules before really delving into these questions. I think there is a prerelease out now with a bunch of samples material from 4E but I don't know where you'd get it.

There are a few ways of using a healing surge:

Once per encounter you may use Second Wind as a standard action, giving you the usual healing surge benefit (regain 1/4 your hp), and gain +2 to all defenses until the start of your next turn.
Certain abilities may cause you to use a healing surge, such as a Paladin's Lay on Hands.

You have a number of healing surges per day depending on your class.

The Necroswanso
2008-05-25, 04:56 PM
How do you start making house rules to a game that's not even out yet? You haven't yet played the game to see if such a rule needs to be changed or implimented.

Yakk
2008-05-25, 06:39 PM
Neat. It does impact published adventures to a certain extent, making it harder to use them.

(And the OP is talking about the seeming lack of damage/disability carrying over from one day to the next. You can see this in 3.5e, but in theory in 3.5e it could take 2 days (presuming a healer) to bring the party up to full (barring level 1 or 2)).

Draz74
2008-05-25, 07:14 PM
I'm tired of reflex reactions that say "you can't possibly know enough about this game to be discussing _____!!!" When, really, if you've been following 4e spoilers closely, we do know a TON about the game. The role of healing surges is pretty darn clear.

And while some of the subtleties of the rules might have to be played to be experienced, others are pretty obvious -- like the way the party could, hypothetically, go to bed with 1-5 HP left each ... and wake up with no more damage than if they'd all gone to bed at 85% health. How often something like that will actually happen is something we don't know until we've played the game. But if it even happens occasionally, that's enough for some people to know that it's going to bother them. Why shouldn't they start brainstorming ideas for house rules?

(Not to mention, some people actually have played the game by now.)