The Healing Paradox

Jack99 said:

Sounds like a death spiral. Not very DND-like.

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Not if hit points were restored as usual but the wound penalty/conditions remained until healed. If you were severely enough injured, then you might cap hit points at half or something. To my mind while certainly for an advanced rule module, this is the best way of nullifying the majority of issues with hit points/damage/healing, preventing death spirals, maintaining the broadest range of definitions/uses for hit points while still "feeling" like D&D.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

LostSoul said:

1. Natural healing is slow and magical healing is rare. You can't easily buy or make healing potions and Clerics never have enough spells to heal the entire party.
2. Clerics have healing spells and other spells. The slots are separate.
3. You gain XP for something other than killing monsters. Wandering monsters are common and dangerous.

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This is a deal-breaker fo many players though. Many players want to "go gonzo" at times and your suggestion says "too bad, you play my way or not at all!" One of the DnD tropes is "Stop the invading forces" and your system is way too limiting to be able to handle, big, protracted battle groups.

Minigiant said:

I think the solution is 2 Maximum HP values.

Your Optimal HP is all of your HP with all your HD at the Maximum. It takes a week of rest with no adventuring to get to Maximum HP. You can't heal to it any other way except for maybe a Very High level spell of Heal skill check (or both).

Your Bloodied/Rolled Maximum HP is the Max HP with your HD rolled. Potions, spells healing kits, and rest of less than a week cannot bring you higher than Bloodied/Rolled Max HP.

So when the adventure starts, you are at Optimal. From then on, you cannot heal higher than Bloodied. You have get ALL THE WAY back to camp and rest for a week to get to Optimal HP.

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I can't XP you right now, but I like this idea quite a bit.

Yes, maxing out healing will halt players progress in wait for more healing. What if max was a floating concept? I remember an anectdote where a gamer said they used to roll hit points every day. They rationalized with comments like "I'm feeling exceptionally strong today" or "I might have come down with something as my hit points aren't all that great today".

So my suggestion is: Roll hit points every day. Subtract half your damage.

Example I: I have 5d8+5 HD. I also have 13 damage. I roll 34 hit points and subtract 6, (7 hp are healed in the process). This leaves me with 28 (max) hp until the next extended rest.

Example II: I have 2d4+2 hit points and no damage. I roll 4 hp. Obviously I'm feeling queasy all day. Better stay in the rear.

Example III: I have 3d10 hit points and 17 damage. I roll 6 hp and subtract 8. At -2 max hp I'm bedridden for the day and my guess is we'll be camping here.

Potion of Healing: heal 1d8 damage
Potion of Heroism: gain 1d4 hitpoints

See? A natural divide between wound closure and peppy talk.
Warlords in the morning and Clerics in the evening. If you roll bad you will like to hear encouraging words so your hit points go up. Before you go to bed you will want your wounds tended so your damage goes down. Untended wounds will tax you tomorrow.

Go back to camp and rest for a week....not sure how that is fun. If you go the serious wound route every time you get to zero, don't you just run away every time you get close and heal back up?won't that lead to more 15 minute days?

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Chris_Nightwing said:

The only way I can see to get rid of these three effects is, in fact, to limit the amount of healing that one can receive during a single day.

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IMO, directly limiting healing seems counter intuitive to what you want to achieve. Limiting the amount someone can be healed is going to promote multiple rests in a row to an extreme. If the story doesn't allow this, it will force the party to expend resources to find ways to heals; whether it be through expendables, if they exist, or figuring out ways to ensure additional rests. Essentially, turning part of the game into resource management, and that is no fun IMO.

I played in a 3.5 game that went from lvl 3 to lvl 29 over a few years. Our healing was limited and traditional resting was difficult, especially at higher levels. However, at higher levels, we spent so much out of game time sitting around looking for items, spells, allies, etc... to ensure we had a place to rest or expendables to heal. Again, turning multiple sessions into managing inventory. Not to say the DM didn't try to make it fun for us to do so, but it was rather boring for me as a rogue'ish type. On top of that it just prompted the DM to modify his encounters to make sure they were challenging and drained our resources appropriately; further escalating the issue.

While my example is anecdotal and based on previous editions it does show that a problem exists in simply limiting healing without taking into account how it influences the party.

IMO, what the real, underlying issue is, is how to make the game challenging and deadlier to the players without just throwing deadly encounters that assume the PC's are healed to full; all while keeping the game fun. This may be simplified, but it's what I think is the style of gaming to what you are alluding.

An idea that I would like to see is to have two hp tracks. The normal HP track, which can only be healed through natural rest, and a temporary HP track, upon which temps of one other source can stack. The temporary HP track could be diminished to something like 1/2 the max normal HP track, or con score or something like that. The point it that it's diminished.

Once the temp stack is gone, further damage goes to the normal HP stack, which is much more difficult to heal. Healing spells, burning hit dice, etc... all short term healing goes into the temp stack, which is capped at 1/2 the normal hp track max or whatever you want to use. Maybe have one other source of temp hp stack on the temp hp stack, but, like temp hp normally, does not allow healing beyond the max of the temp track. (sorry if I am confusing things)

I woud love to take the idea of ritual healing, done out of combat, to heal the normal hp track. Rituals in 4e are a great idea, IMO.

I think this suggestions solves most of the issues addressed by assuming and allowing the following:

• PC's start the day with a "total" amount of HP greater than usual
• Healing is naturally limited as the day goes on since after temps are gone the normal HP is eaten into
• Expendables can still be used, and clerics can be healing bots if they would like but no longer need to max out healing spells since the temp hp track is capped

One issue that still exists is the amount of healing that clerics need to do might not change much. Allowing expendables, though, could allieve some pressure on the cleric and other healing classes.

Also, I would love it if clerics could sack spell slots for healing spells, which are cast as free actions or something like that. Allowing the cleric to still do something else, as in 4e. That is one aspect of 4e I really like.

What do people think about this idea?

The reason this is such a tough issue is that there is no such thing as a "pretend death spiral."

If you accept the D&D conceit that the characters are (or on their way to becoming) these heroes that shrug off all kinds of damage every adventure, pick themselves up, and keep going--then you can't have a real death spiral. You can wear them out eventually, but "eventually" implies time to do so. Limited resources (gold, healing, etc.) are tools to make time matter in different ways.

Thus the "operational play" of early D&D which has explicitly accepted that D&D conceit--and thus gone to a great deal of trouble to make time matter.

OTOH, if you decide you want to wear them down without needing that time, but so that they can still keep going while hampered, then they have to be hampered in some way that is not tied to time. This implies an actual death spiral mechanic of some kind. You can't really get there with illusionism, unless you have a group that is the type to enjoy a scare from a ghost story -- e..g through atmosphere alone.

If operational play doesn't appeal, I'd look for other ways, tools, resources, etc. to make time matter, in a manner that does appeal. Alternately, you can accept that a death spiral is required, abandon a key D&D conceit, and thus therefore your change will be an option for a different style of play (with all that implies). On the plus side, Next is probably the first edition of D&D with the structure to support such an option without breaking the game for those who do like that conceit.

One possible death spiral structure which might be more acceptable in D&D is to basically divide damage effects and healing into two broad categories:

• Normal hit point damage is easy come, easy go. You take it all the time, and you get it back very easily and cheaply. Certain magic may work, but it is readily available and doesn't eat into other resources. Some of it may take time to use, but the scale is more tactical than strategic.
• Death spiral damage is relatively rare, but hard to fix. It takes magic or a lot of time to do it, and the magic is expensive--expensive enough that you might hesitate to use it.

In such a system, spells like "cure light wounds" are used to take away a bit of whatever the death spiral effect is. If you are getting cumulative -1 penalties to checks as you get wounds, the "cure light wounds" spell will take one of these off, at the expense of not having that spell, and probably some kind of gold cost too. Meanwhile, potions come in both versions--one that works a lot like CLW and costs a fortune, and some others that are almost as cheap as wine and bring back hit points.

The balancing act comes around the idea that healing magic and/or dedicated expensive resources is used to stave off the death spiral for a time and/or mititgate it. This is what allows you to keep going, and can gradually be worn down. Meanwhile, you can top off hit points easily, but it's possible for you to get into a tactical situation where you can't get back to full. For example, the cleric may have an "at-will" hit point restorer that does 1d4 per hour, or something like that.

Well, if we're going to have 2 different "HP pools", one healing slowly and one healing quickly, at such point I would prefer a wound system...

I don't know maybe something like, each time you drop below 0 (or if you want it more often, each time you suffer a critical hit and/or massive damage) you get ability damage. Traditionally, ability damage needs higher level magic than HP to be healed, and since it affects checks and saves, it feels quite like a wound system.

But right now my main idea for 5e is to just stick to the core rules, and try to space adventuring days using travel or waiting for events: if there are usually 3-4 days or more between days with encounters, then it doesn't actually matter if the PCs healed all at once or gradually. (And in those few cases when you really for some reason don't want them healed, you disturb their nightly rest).