L&L 5/21 - Hit Points, Our Old Friend

I do not like rolling HD. It does little more than allow random generation to gimp an otherwise good design. Where's the benefit to a fighter with 1 hp? Even with a good con thats oh...3, 4?

While I do feel that 4e started off characters too high, I feel that a random HD+con at lvl1 is far too low.

But! I can houserule this easily.

Rolling HD for mundane health recovery though, I like that. Though I certainly hope a person trained in heal or maybe nature would be able to roll more/allow the person they're healing to roll more dice.

Even if the game says "it takes weeks for a person to heal to full" realistically this is going to be hand-waived to a few minutes when the DM says "your party rests for a week until they are healed." Personally I prefer a much more fast-paced feeling to my games, so forcing my players to sit around for a week and twiddle their thumbs isn't going to last very long at the table.

I hope that HD healing becomes less effective the further down the Hp track you go. Maybe a lesser die at bloodied or lose some spendable HD, if you drop to 0.

It does seem a bit more complex to add in another resource to track. The benefit is a form of 'healing' that can keep a party rolling even without a healer class.

The specifics of 0 or lower HPs being a significant wound including profuse bleeding and broken bones, is an interesting design space. I wonder what will become of it. Not long now.

Interesting compromise between 4e style healing surges and those who don't like those. I'll have to see how this scales in actual play of course, but - thanks largely to a specific, non-jargon definition of what each 'stage' represents - I like it.
At this point however, the spectacle that is fan response to anything said about the next edition might just prove more entertaining.

We an optional rule for healing in 3.5e

Nights rest healed you for 10% of max HP(rnd down)

Whole days rest healed you for 20% of max HP

Heal check 15 doubled that amount, heal check 25 tripled it etc...


Also you can add that once per day you can get benefit from heal skill to regain HP equal to the bonus of the heal skill as a 5 min treatment.

Maybe you have an amount of surges equal to your number of hit dice. So, a level 1 fighter has enough experience and grit to shake off something that would fell a lesser man once per day; a level 10 fighter is so b.a. that he can do it 10 times. Your surge could be equal to the die you roll for HP as well (adding the Con mod as normal.) That way, while a level 2 wizard most certainly does have more experience than the level 1 fighter, the level 1 fighter with his d10 still stats up pretty well on the physical front compared to the level 2 wizard with his 2d4 or 2d6 (whichever the case may be.)

The cleric will just announce that he prepared several steel vials of cure " " wounds and equip each party member with a bandoleer of them.

So why not just allow the cleric to heal 1/4th the max hp + 1d8+wis mod during an encounter, or allow a party member to drink a healing potion as their standard action and be done with it. Also allow the cleric to mass heal the party during an extended rest because everyone will just use the potions until fully healed anyway.

High HP during character creation is important. Killing off several characters of a new player is a good way to get that player angry never to return and play again.

Also, if the party has a static number of HP during every level-up, it is a lot easier for GMs to design monsters and traps that are challenging yet not overly lethal.

am181d said:

I don't understand that kind of thinking. People wake up from being unconscious without bed rest all the time, both in real life and heroic fiction. (Particularly in heroic fiction.)

Why would you want a recovery system that is both unrealistic and undramatic?

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Given how 0 HP is explained in the article as being much more serious than just being down some HP the answer is kind of self explanatory. Being awake is one thing. Being back on your feet fighting again the next round is different.

Vyvyan Basterd said:

Do you mean without magical healing?

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Yes. Magical healing is special and should provide benefits that are unobtainable from mundane means.

I am trying to be really optimistic about the new edition. I like what they are doing with the themes and classes, for example, and the spellcasting mechanics look interesting. I can't wait to test it out with my group.

But man. This article really bummed me out.

There were many things that I liked about 4E, and many things that I didn't. But the one thing that really damaged my opinion of it was the way they changed hit points. I didn't like the way that healing surges worked, I didn't like the way the second wind ability worked, and I especially didn't like the way that they defined hit points. "Hit points represent damage. Except when they don't, in which case they represent fatigue. Unless you aren't tired, in which case they represent luck. Except..." Blah.

I had hoped they would have gone a different direction in the new edition. But, alas.

I'm still choosing to be optimistic, though. I will continue to hold out hope that non-magical healing will be very slow, and that magical healing will be the standard battlefield healing mechanic, and that combat will focus less on "how do I get healed?" and more on "not getting hurt in the first place." And who knows? Maybe the other mechanics are so awesome that they will somehow overshadow the hit point mechanics, and I'll still play it anyway. It's possible.

I'm just not looking forward to it as much as I was yesterday.

That said, I like the natural healing mechanic. I had houseruled this a long time ago into my 3.5E games: characters recover hit points at the rate of their Hit Dice + their Con mod per day (twice this amount if they are tended by a healer, or spend the whole day confined to bed.)

I could see getting all hit dice back each day... But not necessarily all your hit points.

So taking an extended rest, you'd get your hit dice back, and might end up spending half or more of them just to wake up in decent condition the next day.

As for magic healing, I could see the level of spell easily affecting the healing (without taking hit dice away from someones pool). 3rd level spell, heals 3 hit dice... prepare in a higher level slot, 8th level spell, heals 8 hit dice.

Minigiant said:

I don't think it is one approach or the other. Only fixing the bad or cleaning the good are both recipes for disaster.

The issue is which one has more focus and who chooses what is good and bad. It is what every good DM must do every game. Pleasing both groups with be a tough task for WotC. But for the most part, fixing the bad ks the better reason for a new edition.

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But the problem they face is they are trying to please both groups. A focused approach is unlikely to have the broad appeal needed to get as many into the fold as possible. So if they focus on fixing the bad, they must do so understanding that the things they are fixing were not problems for many people. Fixing them potentially removes things from the game these people like. I really think there is something to be said for the simplicity of the old HP mechanic. Adding HD as a recovery pool introduces another layer to the healing dynamic that may be just as offputting for some folk as healing surges. I do think whether this is or is not the case will come down to some ofthe specifics. But i guess I just dont see why they cant simply make it an optinal rule rather than a core assumption.