D&D 5E Slow Natural Healing in actual play

iserith · Jan 19, 2018

Notably, under the normal healing rules, you still only get half your hit dice back. If the PCs are having solid, action-packed adventuring days, there is a decent amount of resource attrition. Where this falls down in my experience is that nobody seems to follow this rule (hit dice are restored completely after long rest) and there tends to be significant downtime between adventuring days such that it doesn't come up.

alienux · Jan 19, 2018

So far, it sounds like the result has been that it just slows things down unnecessarily. If I were to try this, I would only try the Slow Natural Healing rule that removes full HP recovery from a long rest so that HD have to be spent to recover HP (outside of magic healing and potions, of course). I don't think I'd be interested in expanding short and long rest times in addition to this specific optional DMG rule. And I'd go into the game at the beginning with the idea that I might change it if it became a problem that was sapping fun out of the game.

edit: in response to the idea of recovering all HD after a long rest; we always play that half of your max HD are recovered as the rules state, so we'd stick to that, too.

Flexor the Mighty! · Jan 19, 2018

Warmaster Horus said:
I don't mind slow healing as long as there is a magical fast healing alternative that is generally available. You know what's not fun? A 'gritty' setting with slow natural healing and limited magical healing. Parties camping for 5 days to heal up after every moderate-difficulty encounter gets old fast.

I know people who love Harmaster though. I'm somewhere in the middle. Playing a Harnmater adventure really makes you change your style to something more "real" where you aren't getting into a fight to the death to relieve boredom since you are most likely going to be laid up for a long while if you take any real hits.

The Crimson Binome · Jan 19, 2018

Warmaster Horus said:
I don't mind slow healing as long as there is a magical fast healing alternative that is generally available. You know what's not fun? A 'gritty' setting with slow natural healing and limited magical healing. Parties camping for 5 days to heal up after every moderate-difficulty encounter gets old fast.

A moderate-difficulty encounter should use up less than 1/6 of the party HP. You should literally be able to have a moderate-difficulty encounter every day for a week before you would really need to take a few days off to recover.

Or you could spread those six encounters out over a longer period, with two on the way to the dungeon, three while you're there, and one on the way back from the dungeon. The only difference between the grittier model and the standard model is in the narrative, whether you want those encounters over a longer period or a shorted period... as long as you don't de-couple spellcasting from the rest system.

Warmaster Horus · Jan 19, 2018

Saelorn said:
A moderate-difficulty encounter should use up less than 1/6 of the party HP. You should literally be able to have a moderate-difficulty encounter every day for a week before you would really need to take a few days off to recover.

Or you could spread those six encounters out over a longer period, with two on the way to the dungeon, three while you're there, and one on the way back from the dungeon. The only difference between the grittier model and the standard model is in the narrative, whether you want those encounters over a longer period or a shorted period... as long as you don't de-couple spellcasting from the rest system.

"Should" and what players really do are often miles apart. I remember running d20 Conan and how much time was spent camping and not exploring/fighting because of 'natural' healing.

iserith · Jan 19, 2018

Warmaster Horus said:
"Should" and what players really do are often miles apart. I remember running d20 Conan and how much time was spent camping and not exploring/fighting because of 'natural' healing.

Yeah. I'm not really sure what problem the Slow Healing variant is meant to solve. I think it fails on the goal of making players more cautious or plan more (outside of planning how to get around slow healing). Maybe it makes some folks feel like recovery is more "realistic," but I think this is greatly outweighed by the impact to the play experience as described by the posters in this thread.

The question still remains, what is the goal that is trying to be achieved and what variant rule or house rule could be used to make that happen?

cmad1977 · Jan 19, 2018

If I used slower healing I’d make much greater use of the downtime rules(which I’ve found to be quite fun anyways)

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The Crimson Binome · Jan 19, 2018

Warmaster Horus said:
"Should" and what players really do are often miles apart. I remember running d20 Conan and how much time was spent camping and not exploring/fighting because of 'natural' healing.

While I would normally expect that, one of the odd things about the grittier healing rules is that you get nothing out of camping overnight (HP-wise) unless you have Hit Dice to spend. If you establish that you can only take a long rest in town, then a journey through the wilderness has to proceed quickly by necessity. (Unless you very specifically have a Cleric with the Life domain, who can slowly get people up to half by spending Channel Divinity; or everyone in the party is a Fighter.)

Charlaquin · Jan 19, 2018

alienux said:
So far, it sounds like the result has been that it just slows things down unnecessarily. If I were to try this, I would only try the Slow Natural Healing rule that removes full HP recovery from a long rest so that HD have to be spent to recover HP (outside of magic healing and potions, of course). I don't think I'd be interested in expanding short and long rest times in addition to this specific optional DMG rule. And I'd go into the game at the beginning with the idea that I might change it if it became a problem that was sapping fun out of the game.

edit: in response to the idea of recovering all HD after a long rest; we always play that half of your max HD are recovered as the rules state, so we'd stick to that, too.

I play in a game where we use this healing variant (1 hour short rest allows you to spend hit dice, 8 hour long rest allows you to spend hit dice and recover half your hit dice but no HP) My experience has been that it does not significantly slow down play, but we do end up using most of our Hit Dice on our long rests to get our HP within 1 hit die of full, and rarely spend hit dice to recover on short rests. Effectively, it ends up being very similar to if we had full HP recovery on long rests and no other means of natural healing. Though we do occasionally have a couple hit dice to spend on a short rest now and then, particularly after having two or more consecutive days of downtime to take back-to-back long rests and get up to full Hit Dice. Our Life Cleric does end up using the majority of his spell slots on healing spells as a result, and healing potions are a very valuable resource to us. Hope that helps.

i_dont_meta · Jan 19, 2018

I'm currently running a group of 4-5 PC's thru the Sunless Citadel right now from TftYP. Let them roll for Stats so they're all a bit OP. In light of that, we decided to slightly alter healing, mixing ideas from the DMG and our own twisted heads. So now you have to have a Healer's Kit to use HD. Standard Short Rest rules apply but after a Long Rest youre no longer completely healed. You still have to use HD but you now get Max HP out of your HD. No rolling necessary. Standard HD recovery stays the same. I don't think we'll ever go back. It's finally made HD management a strategic venture and since the group lacks a dedicated Healerbot I've noticed a significant uptick in strategic/tactical thinking at the table. We're heading into the "Final Act" as it were and all but one in the group has had to make at least one Death Saving Throw so far. I don't particularly get any thrill out of killing my PC's but the tension at the table now i wouldn't trade for anything! Hope somewhere in my rambling you find a nugget of help...

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D&D 5E Slow Natural Healing in actual play

iserith

Magic Wordsmith

alienux

Explorer

Flexor the Mighty!

18/100 Strength!

The Crimson Binome

Hero

Warmaster Horus

Explorer

iserith

Magic Wordsmith

cmad1977

Hero

The Crimson Binome

Hero

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)

i_dont_meta

Explorer

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