Sorry that I haven't dealt with this yet. Got sidetracked by work

No argument from me on that Raz ... but then I have always felt the players should make the choices for their characters <weg>

Neptune, it's cool, you're the GM, we're supposed to wait for you - just didn't want anything held back on my account...

Neither players nor DM should ever need to wait too long. But life does happen and I'm risking the wrath of my wife by posting rather than get ready to go to the beach. Yes, my wife is the one person that I know that can be late going to the beach

Granite and HP. Coming into the battle he hadn't taken any, as we healed up. So with the drake hitting him for 18, the only hit I noted, though I may have missed one, it makes the total 1 down after the heal. Did I miss one?

didn't want to clutter the game thread ...

So I understand this. A short rest gets us what?

An extended rest gets us everything back including daily powers?

A Short Rest is what we've been doing - just gets us time to recover encounter powers and use Healing Surges and related Abilities, etc. We gain one Action Point for every other encounter we go with just these and not...

An Extended Rest - 5-6 hours worth. Allows us the same as the above plus we can recover Daily powers and resets our daily Healing Surges as well. Action Points reset to 1.

But basically,

- there's no in-between category - it's either a Short Rest or an Extended Rest

- anytime we stop to do more than wipe the blood off our weapons, we're considered to be taking a short rest, so if we search a room, that's a short rest by default.

So really, if we stop to look for loot and/or check out our surroundings at all, we might as well declare we're at Short Rest while we're at it and heal as we may.

Neptune/Ghoul, feel free to correct as necessary.

Just some house cleaning, I want to keep our in-game thread somewhat clean so here are a bunch of posts dealing with the healing before entering encounter 4 that were moved from the IC game thread:


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MikeD
[[ could we get a recap of where everyone is on damage? ]]
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Neptune
OOC: Having LOADS of fun at GenCon. My first level PC survived the first two adventures he was on in the RPGA games. I've learned a lot - mostly about how much more there is to learn! What are you doing?
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MikeD
[[ Damn, I knew I should have made sure I got to dm your table so I could do unto you <weg> ]]
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Razorlip B.S.D
IF TerrorBull Games has an exhibit I highly recommend all board/card gamers give them a look - WAR ON TERROR and CRUNCH are very popular in my gaming groups...
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Neptune
OOC: Are you advancing, resting or doing something else? By default I'll move you all to the next room tonight
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Razorlip B.S.D
[OOC: AIEE! I'm going to vote for a rest and heals (that we really should have been able to do while you were at GenCon blush ).
Anathaxis needs one Healing Word, no dice roll - perks of being the ranged attacker...]
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MikeD
[[ could we get a recap of where everyone is on damage? ]]
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Nivek
[ooc: Would use my daily. Heals 5HP, +5 for wisdom to everyone within 3 of me. Then for the rest of the encounter, I get a +5 to all healing.]
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Neptune

ooc: we (I) really need to tally up the surges used. I'm sure we'll disagree on the counts but I think we should review carefully. Here's what I have for surges used:

Granite: 3
Hawtz: 4
Torgan: 1
Carlton: 0
Anathaxis: 2
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MikeD
[[ Carlton also has one use of his inspiring word left which will give a d6 bonus to 1 surge use. That is why I wanted to know 'points' down ... to see who needs just a bit more than 1 surge. ]]
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Nivek
I definitely could be wrong, but I'm not sure Torgan has used one of his own yet. I did at one point, but then we decided that the ball didn't hit him so he didn't take the damage, so he didn't need the healing. But he
I'll use one soon I imagine.

But if you know of another or just think you're right. I'm only down one at most and we won't opt for a full rest because of Torgan.
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Pandemonium
Granite's total of surges used looks right to me. By my count he is also only down 1 HP at the moment.
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Razorlip B.S.D
[OOC: IF that tally includes the one I'm using right now, then we're on the same page - I believe I've only needed one thus far, so this one right now would indeed be 2. ]
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Exeter
[OOC: 4 or 5 healing surges would probably be right for Hawzs.]
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MikeD
[[ well then, if carlton use the inspiring word (surge +4) and torgan using a healing word ... does that save you a surge Ex? ]]
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Exeter
[OOC: I have no idea. smile ]
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MikeD
[[ So what is your surge value? And what is torgan's add for a healing word? If those add up to be greater than or equal to your surge value ... or ... the 'remainder' after the last full surge, then we save you a surge by using our 'encounter powers' to augment your surges. The only 'down side' is that we take an extra 'short rest' to recover those encounter powers. ]]
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Exeter
[I think his healing surge value is 9. His character sheet says Healing Surge = one quarter of HPs and his HP total is 39.]
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MikeD
[[ Yup, 9 is the number. And with a bonus of 4 from Carlton, a healing word should save at least one surge. ]]

Neptune Moderator Online content
Moderator
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Neptune
OK. I completed a long and dizzying review of the healing and damage up until the end of the encounter. I've concluded that I handled it very poorly but that's OK because it's all about the learning right now. Learning is not just the rules but how to manage things.

In some cases it wasn't clear if a surge was used or not and on whom. Shame on me for not nailing it down. In any case, the party is very close to fully healed now:

Anathaxis: -9
Granite: -9
Hawzs: 0
Carlton: -2
Torgan: -2

The surge count seems correct to me as:
Granite: 3
Hawtz: 4
Torgan: 1 (The inspiring word uses one)
Carlton: 0
Anathaxis: 2

So, to get things rolling again, if you want to use some surges, do so now based on the numbers just posted. Then we'll continue using these as baseline numbers.

In the future, in DM posts, I'll clearly restate what surges were used and how much healing was doled out.
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MikeD
It seems as though Anathaxix and Granite might want to spend a surge each. At this level, being down 9 is a pretty big deal <wink>
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Pandemonium
Yes if we are going to continue without a rest, Granite will use another surge for 7, which would have him down -2, and 4 surges used.
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Razorlip B.S.D

[OOC: Okay, I did kind of say specifically in my first post on this here:

Originally Posted By: Razorlip B.S.D

Anathaxis needs one Healing Word, no dice roll - perks of being the ranged attacker...]


Sooo...y'know.

If Carlton uses his healing on one of us and Torgan the other, it's like about a melee's worth of time, plus we already stopped to search, so we're technically already "at rest" - no reason not to take full advantage, though the others shouldn't spend a surge just to recover 2 points each.]
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Neptune
[ooc: I see no reason why you cannot take your time here. I won't tolerate an "extended" rest without being tempted to send a contingent of life-sucking undead after you, but a couple of back-to-back short rests will just build the tension and anticipation in the next room where your hosts are waiting breathlessly to greet you.]
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MikeD
[[ Nope. We are talking about at most 2 short rests ... i.e. about 10 minutes max ... to use the inspiring word and healing words.

IIRC, Carlton cast 1 inspiring word during the combat, so could cast one more without needing the second extended rest. But I am not sure where Torgan stands with Healing Words. He would have gotten up to 2 uses in the encounter, but I don't know how many he used (if any). If he has at least one he has not used, then we can get by with a single short rest ... 5 minutes. If he had used both, one of us would need to wait the first 5 min to recover the use of our power, use the power and then wait another 5 min (10 minutes total) to recover them again. ]]

First, let's try and keep most of the OOC discussion here. I'm not going to go crazy about it, but when we see a conversation's going to take a number of responses....

Second, I tally only one Healing Word for Torgan.

So we should be able to get everyone up to within a point or two of full in one short rest.

I agree. If that's what's we're going to do, then let's do it as an IC post and I'll update the general party status and move us to the next encount... errr, room.

So we need an IC post stating that we rest and search the room, then prepare for the next battle?

I'm really looking for a completion of all moves before we trudge along. It's OK to spend time trying to decide what healing to do, ect. But at some point I need the debate to stop and a declaration be made. MikeD's post is a good start.

To boil it all down, I need to know if Torgan uses his healing word on Anathaxis and then we can proceed.

Oh, tomorrow night is poker night so hopefully I get that post soon

It feels a lot to me like we keep getting stuck on the same error as far as healing uses during rests:

Again, there's no 'in-between' on Rests - a Rest is either Short or Extended, and if it's not Extended, it's Short.

Therefore, unless we're talking about trying to use a really really huge number of Healing/Inspiring Words, any Rests are Short unless we declare otherwise.

To be clear: we can spend the time to use as many as 3 dozen Healing/Inspiring Words (or any other Encounter ability), and it would still count as 1 Short Rest.

So really, there's no reason not to stop and use as many Healings or Surges as we need/want.

To put it another way it's just not possible for us to need to use enough Surges or Healings to require an Extended Rest just for those purposes - we only need to declare an Extended Rest when we

1) want/need to recover Surges
2) want/need to recover Daily abilities
3) want/need to cast a Ritual

So afaik, there honestly isn't and has never been any reason to hold back on using Healing abilities between combat - we can take all the time we need to cast as many as we could possibly need and it'll still be 1 simple Short Rest.

While it would count as 1 short rest, it would still take at least 5 minutes for each 'short rest' that is needed to reset our 'encounter powers' for Inspiring Word and Healing Word. So there could potentially be an adverse result if we took 10 minutes verses 5 because the bad guys =could= use those extra 5 minutes to implement something that we would not like.

I think as far as healing. If we take a rest, and you want healing say so. We'll use our enhanced healing and you'll spend the healing surge. If we can't or don't want to, then we'll tell you and you just use the surge normally. If you can't benefit from a full healing surge, you want to save it as there will be times when we can't stop. Running out of surges is a death sentence.

So if you want healing, say so and we'll keep track of our Healing Word and so on.

Raz,
What Mike said. It's about the resetting of the encounter powers in this case.

Ohhhh. We'd had a similar discussion earlier and that's the understanding I'd gotten. Okay.

Nivek, understood - I think here we just had a little breakdown on which healer would heal whom.

Guys, I said it in the main post already. This little module, which we're almost finished with, was run poorly by me. OK, granted, I was inexperienced with 4e. I should've tracked certain things better. Now I will. I'm not going to tell you that I'm a 4e pro, but I'm getting there fast now.

So, if you see that you still need healing, let me know and I'll cross off a healing surge for you and add in your surge value or bring you to zero, whichever makes sense.

I have to say that I don't think this was 'poorly run'. We =did= spend some time discussing rules, but that had been part of the setup, so I don't see that as a negative.

I have no complaints about the way it was run. <shrug> Now, some of the dice rolls. <groans>

In the new room, do we need to roll again for Initiative?

By "run poorly" I really mean administratively. What worked in prior editions was not enough.

Rule discussions were, and continue to be, very welcome. Rules lawyers rejoice!

Yes. Roll for initiative!

Yeah, it hasn't been so bad - we had a lot of rules differences to hash out, which we knew, and we still got pretty close to 1 round a day, which seems pretty good to me, and we have a pretty solid sense of where things were going wrong - I'm with Exeter on the dice rolls, though.

Thanks for the support. I agree that the pace has been good and will get much better as we get more into the flow.

To answer Razorlip's question in the main thread, I back-tracked for MikeD/Carlton so it's not coming and I cannot provide direction.

Also, I want to apologize to all of you in advance. Laws of physics and mechanics do not apply to this room. I cannot see how it is possible for things to happen the way they are laid but there may be an engineer out there that can accomplish what happens in this chamber. I doubt, howerver, that the kobolds figured out how to make this happen. So, this will be an exercise in pure fantasy. Intentionally or not, there is magic at play that even the DM can't explain, so don't ask and please don't complain.

If you haven't rolled initiative, please do so now.

edited my last post for my init roll ... assuming I survive the log :-/