Healing in Combat

So, this week I have given some thought to the problem of healing in combat - of clerics, resources, fun and longevity. What I don't want to discuss here (I provoked that badger already) is long-term healing, or systems alternative to hitpoints. Assume in this discussion we will use HP to determine if you are concious or unconcious, with no wounds, penalties or otherwise to being between 0 and full HP.

In pre-3E editions, the cleric had to prepare healing spells in advance, and they consumed resources said cleric might otherwise put into setting things on fire, or hiding them from undead (classic spell). This was frustrating because, as a cleric, you didn't want to have to prepare healing spells, especially if your god loved setting things on fire, but you had to, because otherwise someone might go down in a fight and you would immediately lose party actions and long-term have to wait for them to heal up.

3E suggested that you might not have to prepare these spells - just use them when you had to instead of spells that set things on fire. This sounded like an elegant solution, but ultimately it made things slightly worse, because now you couldn't excuse yourself having at least one spell that set things on fire if the party took a serious beating - you had to heal them all.

4E said, ok, fine, healing people is something you do that doesn't consume your other resources, or even your main action! This also sounded elegant, especially as the second wind mechanic gave people a reason to play without a cleric. However, what this did instead was just give everyone a great big hitpoint buffer. Your HP in combat were really your HP + some quantity depending on how many leaders you had. Healing was more of an automatic, twice a fight I gotta make sure the fighter is still standing, kind of thing (and indeed, became bizarrely encouraged once leader abilities added riders to being healed).

Up to and including 3E the cleric was pretty essential, and treated by the party like teenagers treat their parents (though this could be a fun role to play). 4E made it less essential, but there is no denying the power to effectively increase your melee guy's HP by a significant quantity every combat.

What I'd like Next to avoid is, to be honest, both of these aspects. Clerics should not be essential, and they shouldn't have to choose between setting things on fire and healing. On the other hand, they shouldn't be able to heal as a matter of course, it just skews the party HP. I can see only two solutions, but I hope you have more (sticking to the criteria at the top of the post). Either you disallow in-combat healing, with clerics being able to heal as a matter of course outside of combat, or you allow anyone to heal with the ease of a cleric.

My ideal would be a combination of both of these. Inside combat, the only available healing is a second-wind type mechanic (use an action to regain some number of HP), and the ability to stabilise or trigger second wind in others with a heal skill (or wave of your hand if you are the relevant type of cleric, say). Outside of combat you have hit-dice spending, potentially enhanced (just a little) by the relevant cleric.

If you want to try this out, I suggest second-wind takes an action but gives you back max HD in HP, once per battle only. I suggest that healing word stabilises any dying character at a distance (range death ward). Finally, CLW adds the cleric's wisdom modifier to any HD spending in a short rest (not per HD, just once).

With the constraints you set, I think it is very difficult to accomplish what you are trying to. The non-inclusion of a cleric pushes the second wind thing which in turn pushes the abundance of available hit points.

I think part of the problem is the increasingly casual attitude players have (3.x and 4e particularly) to having their characters go into negatives. There is no fear of becoming unconscious; 4e practically assumes it as part of its massive safety net. My point is, if players were encouraged to be more conservative with their character's hit points (by creating a genuine fear of going into negatives rather than practically embracing it), there would be less hit points needed to be healed, and thus those times where hit points are restored become more crucial and thus dramatic. This promotes less need for in-combat healing.

And then, if you have a mundane healer able to adequately care for the group of PCs outside of combat, and encourage the attitude that you don't need to be at full capacity to adventure, you can most likely get close to the solution you are after.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I think a large problem in how healing is handled is the perception on the part of many players that they need to be at full strength or close to before starting combat. Often the solutions many DMs come up with to counter this through pejorative means like a time limit or racing against another team or the threat of wandering monsters etc. While there is nothing wrong with these solutions they don't always fit every scenario or playstyle. I think there could be a way to reward players for pushing on despite less than optimal health or resources.

Lets take a term from 4E bloodied. Suppose being bloodied still means your at half health. What if we had mechanics tied to this that would encourage PCs to push despite being bloodied in the next edition. Suppose fighters got a form or heroic/desperate DR that kicked in when starting a new battle while bloodied. Suppose rogues a bonus die of sneak attack damage in that some situatin or many the wizard gets an extra die if spell damage etc.

Perhaps this bloodied condition represented a division between hitpoints that can be recovered by a short rest or inspirational shouting and hitpoints that could only be recovered by long terms rest and care or magical means.

Herremann the Wise said:

I think part of the problem is the increasingly casual attitude players have (3.x and 4e particularly) to having their characters go into negatives. There is no fear of becoming unconscious; 4e practically assumes it as part of its massive safety net. My point is, if players were encouraged to be more conservative with their character's hit points (by creating a genuine fear of going into negatives rather than practically embracing it), there would be less hit points needed to be healed, and thus those times where hit points are restored become more crucial and thus dramatic. This promotes less need for in-combat healing.

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Interesting. I think, if anything, players would become even more dependent on healing if going into negatives meant something other than 'I'll be back at the end of the fight'. The moment you have less than the HP you need to survive one/two hits, you'd want to be healed. Alternatively, a death spiral rather than an absolute threshold would still leave players wanting to be at 100%.

Shadeydm said:

Lets take a term from 4E bloodied. Suppose being bloodied still means your at half health. What if we had mechanics tied to this that would encourage PCs to push despite being bloodied in the next edition. Suppose fighters got a form or heroic/desperate DR that kicked in when starting a new battle while bloodied. Suppose rogues a bonus die of sneak attack damage in that some situatin or many the wizard gets an extra die if spell damage etc.

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Whilst this looks good on paper, it falls foul of real players. Bonus stuff for being under half HP? Then I'll stay there thanks. Heal me every time I'm hit, but not too much!

Chris_Nightwing said:

Whilst this looks good on paper, it falls foul of real players. Bonus stuff for being under half HP? Then I'll stay there thanks. Heal me every time I'm hit, but not too much!

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Yes I quite agree that it both can't be too good just good enough to offset the worry that hey i'm not at full heath and there has to be a framework for it in place to prevent player abuse. I still think it could be done.

Shadeydm said:

Yes I quite agree that it both can't be too good just good enough to offset the worry that hey i'm not at full heath and there has to be a framework for it in place to prevent player abuse. I still think it could be done.

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I wonder how big a bucket of hitpoints you would have to give a character to produce the same psychology. If you know most monsters won't do more than 10 damage, does it take 20hp? 50? 100? before you feel like you can go through several combats without healing.

Chris_Nightwing said:

I wonder how big a bucket of hitpoints you would have to give a character to produce the same psychology. If you know most monsters won't do more than 10 damage, does it take 20hp? 50? 100? before you feel like you can go through several combats without healing.

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I think that might largely depend upon which edition/playstyle your trying to emulate since DDN claims it will support them all through kernel custimization.

I think both the hitpoint total and the the weight of the incentive would need adjustment because of the varied edition/playstyle support. In a lower total hitpoint game you might need the DR to be higher and vice versa for games that run with high totals like 3 and 4E emulation.

Healing is a funny thing.

Make it too rare or restrictive, player are encouraged to be scaredy cats too afraid to enter situations when the advantage is too stacked in their favor unless they are forced or don't mind acting foolish.

Make it too rare or easy, there is no sense of danger and player don't feel threatened unless they can't head forward with 90% resources unless they are forced or don't mind acting foolish.

Chris_Nightwing said:

My ideal would be a combination of both of these. Inside combat, the only available healing is a second-wind type mechanic (use an action to regain some number of HP), and the ability to stabilise or trigger second wind in others with a heal skill (or wave of your hand if you are the relevant type of cleric, say). Outside of combat you have hit-dice spending, potentially enhanced (just a little) by the relevant cleric.

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Yep, that's basically my preferred solution as well. I've come to regard in-combat healing as, frankly, an abomination that the game would be better without (except for the aforementioned Second Wind option). And I likewise believe every character should have some relatively easy access to 'real' healing outside of combat - the Cleric prays, the Wizard uses regenerative ritual magic, the Fighter performs 'surgery', or whatever. (Conveniently, these three options can all be modelled using a single ritual, reskinned for each power source, or equivalent.)

Unfortunately, I'm at least 99% sure that Clerical healing, including in-combat healing, is viewed as a sacred cow, and so won't be going anywhere. Maybe as a module?

delericho said:

Unfortunately, I'm at least 99% sure that Clerical healing, including in-combat healing, is viewed as a sacred cow, and so won't be going anywhere. Maybe as a module?

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Clerical healing is pretty sacred (ha!) - but it's changed in some way every edition. I think clerics can be 'better' healers than other characters without holding dominion over it as they always have done. In combat they could bind wounds and trigger second-wind with magic instead of a heal check. They could have some minor effect to spent HD or second-wind. They could affect overnight healing. Other themes or characters could do these things too, but a healing-related cleric (not all of them please) could do them inherently, with magic. I don't even mind if they have to use a spell slot for some of these examples - +wis to healing during a short rest for a 1st level spell slot? Sounds like a good trade-off if the party is mostly injured.