The Healing Paradox

I enjoy combat. I just think that if you emphasize it too much it becomes the solution to every problem. And if there is no reward for avoiding it, then it becomes the only real way to advance in the game.

I think that avoiding combat when you're at full HP is just as valid as avoiding it when you're at 1 HP. The main issue is that most adventures (home brew or published) give the players few options outside of killing monsters and taking their stuff. If you're low on resources/hp, tough... you still have to fight the BBEG or save the princess and potentially "die".

I like hit points as a "per encounter" resource, and healing surges or hit dice as daily recovery resource, but would like to add some kind of wound system.

When you are reduced to 0 hit points or less, you take a wound. Choose from a list or roll some dice. The wound is first just a note that doesn't do anything directly. Wounds recover slowly. YOu may have a maximum number of wounds before you end up in some real trouble (say, can no longer recover hit points beyond half).
When you become bloodied by an attack, one of your wounds "activate" and the associated penalties apply. And this happens every time you are bloodied (or dropped to 0 hit points?). So in a long battle with a lot of hit point yo-yoing, you'll look really battered and feel terrible with lots of penalties.

Problem is that such a system is not necessarily simple, since you need several wound types. That's something I don't like. But maybe one can boil it down to something simple.

Maybe a somewhat less complex version is possible.

Every time you are reduced to 0 hit points, you take an injury. There are the following injury steps:

• Uninjured
• Lightly Injured
  • Activation: You take disadvantage on your next attack or ability check.
  • Critical Hit: You take disadvantage on your next attack or ability check.
• Moderate Injured
  • Activation: You are knocked prone. You also take a -10 ft penalty while bloodied.
  • Critical Hit: You are knocked prone.
• Seriously Injured
  • Activation: You lose your next action. You also take a -10 ft penalty while bloodied (for a total of -20 ft from the moderate injury).
  • Critical Hit: You lose your next action.
• Critically Injured
  • Activation: You cannot recover hit points above half your hit points.
  • Critical Hit: If you still have hit points after the attack is resolved, your hit points are reduced to 0 but you are stable. You take no additional injury if this effect is applied (but you take an injury if the triggering attack already reduced you to 0 hit points or less, as normal.)
• Deadly Injured
  • Activation: You cannot recover any hit points (but you can still be stabilized from any healing you receive).

Gaining Injury: Whenever you are reduced to 0 hit points or less, your injury state worsens by one step.
Activating Injuries: Whenever you are bloodied by an attack, each wound becomes active and remains active until you are no longer bloodied.

Recovery: It takes 3 days of long rest to recover one injury level.
Some magical healing and rituals can speed up this process.

• Cure XXX spells and potions improve your injury condition by one step if the XXX is at least equal of your injury level. (So you need a Cure Light Wound spell to remove a light injury, and a Cure Serious spells would lessen a serious injuryto a moderate injury).
• The Heal Ritual (xhours casting time, y gold piece per injury level and character level) removes all injuries.

Note: This system is somewhat different than the original one I mentioned at the beginning of the post -w ith injury levels instead of specific injuries (say, broken arm or serious burn), it didnd't seem to make sense to have only one wound "active" and I simply made all conditions apply. Even in this form, it's still fairly complex and looks more like a module than a core rule. What I like is that there are some obvious dials - you can speed up or slow down natural healing, you can impose further or lesser limits on spells, and you can adjust the price of the healing ritual - down to a level where it becomes trivial or up to a level where it's almost impossible to do.
At the same time, the conditions are not _that_ nasty, until you get in the serious low areas of injuries. As long as you got some way to cure light wounds, you are not that likely to stack up much injuries, and if you stack them up, bloodied becomes a little more special and criticals a little nastier - but not overwhelmingly so, I think, at least until you are criticallly injured.

Lalato said:

Have you worked through the math? A penalty to hit is pretty severe and will likely result in enemies getting an extra round or two. Which means more opportunities for those enemies to cause damage. Which means your players will likely end up resting sooner. Which means you get no benefit out of it whatsoever... except longer combats, that are potentially more deadly. And players forced to rest because they really can't go on.

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Ok, so a -1 penalty to hit is going to have different effects depending on how likely you were to hit to begin with. If you hit 10% of the time then you'll increase the number of combat rounds by 50% on average. More realistically, if you hit 50% of the time you increase the number of combat rounds by 10%, or say you hit 25% of the time, that's a 20% increase. If combat lasts ten rounds (which is unlikely) then that might be 1 or 2 more chances for the enemies to attack you - this isn't a large increase in damage output.

Players love bonuses to hit because then they can attempt trickier things - bigger spells and attacks. Penalties to hit usually result in them doing mundane attacks and avoiding the chance of losing something big. So, it will affect their playstyle based on what sort of combat actions they have available - a Wizard might wait to gain advantage before blasting off an acid arrow with a -1 penalty.

This is a very interesting Thread.

Please ... keep it up, folks.

Roland55 said:

This is a very interesting Thread.

Please ... keep it up, folks.

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Sure...it's all very interesting as long as WotC understands that there are many many players who have stopped talking because there are only so many ways you can say you like things as they are. Not tha it matters that much to me. If 5e comes with rules that require 3+ days to heal, I'll happily ignore them...

I actually hate the idea of "rests" being required to heal...I've been exhausted, battered and bruised in my life...I didn't have to lie in bed to get better. I don't like a mechanic that overly encourages the PCs to hide under a rock for more than a few hours...If I was designing the game, I'd go with something like this:

HP are recovered at a rate of (level + Con Mod)(minimum 1) per time period X of no strenuous activity (fighting, forced march, carrying heavy loads, etc). You can travel, explore, interact with towns folk, etc and still recover hp and HD.

HD are recovered at a rate of one fourth max HD (round up) per time X of no strenuous activity. These HD can be converted immediately into hp if desired.

A period of at least 8 hours of complete rest in a day will allow you to double the healing for a single time period. Hiding in a dungeon or camping out in the wild DOES NOT COUNT.

If you are reduced to 0 hp, you cannot begin to regain hp/HD until you have passed an endurance check at the end of a time period. This check can be aided by someone trained in healing (to give you advantage). Complete rest gives advantage. Being knocked below 0 hp multiple times gives disadvantage.

I'd go with a time period of 6 hours. So a 5th level fighter with 14 Con and a max of 44 hp (and 5d12 HD) is reduced to 2 hp and 0 HD...

After 6 hours of light travel, dungeon exploration, camping, etc he is at (average) 22 hp, 0HD...
12 hours: 42 hp 0HD
18 hours: 44 hp 2d12 HD
24 hours 44 hp 4d12 HD
36 hours 44 hp 5d12 HD....

A 7th level wizard with 8 Con, 22 hp and 7d4 HD that is reduced to 2 hp and 0 HD:
1 X period: 13 hp, 0HD
2 X period: 19 hp, 2d4 HD
3 X period: 22 hp, 4d4 HD
4 X period: 22 hp, 6d4 HD
5 X period: 22 hp, 7d4 HD...or about 36 hours for fully recovering(if time=6 hours), a little quicker if you get a full rest.

What do I base this on?

To me, D&D is an heroic action adventure game...my expectations is a game that feels like an action adventure movie. The perfect example is a James Bond or Indiana Jones movie...(Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a perfect example of an iconic D&D adventure). The heroes are frequently beaten within an inch of their lives...there is a feeling they are very much on death's door. The scene ends, the next scene there is some RP style interactions (talking to the village shaman about the stolen sacred stones and the kidnapped children) and then we're right back into fights, traps, puzzles...the heroes never seem like they are functioning at anything less than full hp from one scene to the next.

Call it H&S if you like (as opposed to "real RPGs").

I understand others want something a bit more grim. The rules should support that too. WotC is talking about dials...I look forward to seeing what they are...

Tony Vargas said:

It's a campaign/story pacing ....

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... Are specifically it's an adventure pacing issue. If their is no story consequence to the players sitting around, ok, there's no consequence. If there is a pacing issue, like temple of elemental, or red hand, or any " ended event" in the story arch, then there is a dramatic shift... Less dramatic shifts are the caravan the heroes are guarding has to get to town for best prices,or their shares are worthless ..( perfect storm)... Or the dragon eats the princess, the bad guys make away with the gold, or sleeping beauty never wakes...

But, dms should not punish the heroes just because they don't push on, and the core rules can be written because the players will complain about not having full resources every time they want to take on a challenge...

A sensible rule, hit dice pool plus a penalty for falling under 0, creates a baseline of bad injuries suck longer than a single long rest.... Modules then step up healing-> no penalty-> full hits per dice -> full hits plus dice.... Or the other way, -> pool after 0 hits is recoverd 1 dice per day, or you regain only 1 hip point per dice until healed ..... Etc

I'm curious... what kind of story can't be told with the overnight rest mechanic?

Why not just have the Medicine skill, or skill equivalent, heal Hit Points? It's been a part of Fantasy Craft and it works very well.

I really think the writers should peruse the many other d20 games out there.

Lalato said:

I'm curious... what kind of story can't be told with the overnight rest mechanic?

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Maybe one in which a given group of individuals gets into more than (say) 5 fights in the same day?

Lalato said:

I'm curious... what kind of story can't be told with the overnight rest mechanic?

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I think a better question might be: based on the type of story you want to see the mechanics naturally support, which HP style best helps achieve that goal?

The answer, to me, is longer HP recovery. It provides the story option to press on even after many encounters (in the event that the players roll very well and do not take much HP damage or use many resources), as well as needing to rest after one encounter (and having days or more pass because of longer recovery time).

With that method, the recovery mechanics of the game have solid support for both extremes of the narrative paths: pushing through many encounters, or only getting through one. Long recovery gives me story options without me being heavy-handed about it, which is my preference as a more sandbox-y GM. For example, if the PCs rest because they're low on HP, and it takes a few days, then the princess might get executed (see pemerton's Star Wars comparison), or the ally who's been tracking them (with very valuable aid or information) might catch up.

Now, if I'm more heavy-handed, I can say that either of these happen, anyways. "You arrive too late, she's been executed" or "in the night, near daybreak, an ally appears." Both can still happen. But, it's in a style I don't like as much. I like saying "this world event will happen in 13 days", and seeing how the players handle that when travel takes 10 days, and being jumped might set them back even more. It helps with the tension, and it gives me a solid view of what's going on in the world: if they arrive on day 12, the event will happen the next day, and preparations are possibly well underway; depending on the event, though, arriving on day 10 may mean that they beat somebody there, and can set up an ambush, gain support, look for information, or whatever.

The mechanics of long HP recovery let the story unfold in more ways, in my opinion. Can all the same stories unfold? I don't know (I'm not sure if you can have a party be delayed by licking its wounds for days when you have complete overnight healing). Regardless of that, is there a big difference to the in-game pacing that will result of such a change? To this sandbox-GM, yes. There's a big difference. As always, play what you like