Home » Ancient Posts » Initiative, Healing, and Fairness in Old School D&D    
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JB

This is so ridiculous (both the complaint and the reason) that I find it difficult to think of anything constructive/positive to say. The person making it must be a 4E player (where combat healing is an element of tactical game play in an edition where everything is geared towards fights).

Even in 3E, most acts of healing would provoke acts of opportunity, negating any advantage provided by individual initiative. Clerics (etc.) that might perform an act of healing in my old AD&D games was usually making a sacrifice to do so…when being bested by opponents it was always smarter to retreat and regroup rather than worry about getting a cure spell in the beginning of a fight.

Any person who really carries this as a gripe would br extremely uncomfortable in my B/X games.

Robert

Yes. This is one of the clearest differences I’ve noticed between old school games (both BITD and when playing old school games today) versus some of the newer games. And in any case, healing in the middle of combat, except in extreme circumstances, strikes me as really weird.

As a complaint against initiative, though, it makes no sense. Not liking that one side can act twice in a row, sure…but there’s nothing about in-combat healing over other actions that makes it significantly worse.

I have no beef with cyclical initiative, rolling each round, or no initiative. I can see having a preference, but I’m not convinced any one is superior.

Now, I do find group initiative better than individual initiative. I find it encourages the group to work together more, and it minimizes the need for hold or delay actions when the situation dictates an order that is different from individual initiative order. Yet even there I can see that the milage may vary between groups.

Michael D. Moore

I had never thought of this aspect of old school play, but now that you think of it, I recall that healing during battle was rare in the old days. When I played AD&D 1st edition, we used a rule we picked up from Judges Guild that allowed us to bind wounds if we needed to, which gave us back 1d4 hit points from a round of treatment. It was battlefield first aid. I don't recall players complaining then about the lack of availability of magical healing. You know, I started with group initiative until I noticed in AD&D 1st edition that high Dexterity gave bonuses to reaction, or initiative. I started implementing that. Even today, while I might give players individual initiative, I group monster initiative rolls together by type, etc. So, if I have 8 hobgoblins, a 3rd level rogue, and a 5th level wizard, all my hobgoblins roll a single initiative check, the rogue rolls a separate check, and the wizard another check. It is way too messy to run combat when all 8 hobgoblins have to make check. You know, in the old days, players never whined about fairness, but I hear a lot of player whining about what's fair, suspecting that their GMs are trying to screw them than I ever did 20-30 years ago. I get accusations of GMs being bad GMs because things didn't go the players' way, and players threatening to quit games. It never happened in the old days. Is it a matter of players' entitlement or what?

Charles A

I've frankly never been clear on why initiative is necessary or desirable at all. It just makes running combats confusing.

RipperX

That is some crazy whining there! "I don't like to lose initiative", well who does? I let my players handle the healing, it isn't my job, but I have noticed that if the players believe that they are going to get into some serious trouble, they will have the fighters up front, while the cleric hangs back to just keep the front healthy, but they've got to protect him when he's doing his touch spell.

TheShadowKnows

I am a longtime Old School DM, and I have rarely seen healing magic used during actual combat. The clerics are usually too busy fighting. I have sometimes seen clerics pause during combat to cast spells like bless or protection from evil, but very rarely cure spells.