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

[Blackwarder]

How are they divorced exactly? Now they have a base of 100%+HD instead of 100%+SW[mitigated by HS]

because you can't use it in combat, it's not like HS where everything was dependant on HSs from CLW to slapping a bandage.

Warder

 

[Tovec]

What part you dislike?

I see nothing that I can't easily houserule.

I dislike HD to heal damage non-magically. I dislike the treatment of HP I have seen thus far, in general by 5e blog posts and specifically by this one.

I understand that 5e needs to bridge 4e and non-4e. But you must understand I am not going to buy in (again) to 4e.

I hoped that they would recognize that 4e isn't the only system, give a base system I would enjoy or at least one I could build up to, while giving people who liked 4e a base system they could enjoy or at least build up to. This does not do that. It gives 4e a 4e base system without any discussion about allowing me to make a system I'll enjoy.

Yes I COULD houserule things. But as I've said before, many times, it is VERY HARD to houserule OUT aspects of a game you do not enjoy. It is ALWAYS better to houserule those things in.

If you want specific comments from this article I'll have to re-examine it and post quotes later, just let me know. However, from what sticks in my mind, after reading the article, this thread and making my two previous posts, the thing that sticks out most is the probably the base assumptions.

We don't want DnD to Need a cleric or healer to function.
-- I can get behind this to an extent. But I would say the same thing about not needing a rogue to find traps, or a fighter to stand on the front lines and attack the enemy. I don't NEED these classes but I'm not going to completely remove the necessity of having them. I WANT non-magical healing to exist. If the party doesn't have a cleric I want them to court a relationship with a temple to get access to healing. I want them to buy copious amounts of healing potions, herbs or whatever is passed off for supernatural healing. I want non-magical healing to be painfully slow and unreliable. That way if they don't have a cleric that is fine, they can get by without one but not as easily as this blog post seems to allow them.
I don't want my party healing every 10 minutes after a fight, just because they can. I see no reason for it.

For me, it is just a slap in the face. They took the mechanic of second wind (which I have always hated even before 4e) and healing surges, examined them for what was essential, then rebranded them onto a new system while trying to convince me it was different. The essential qualities of HS were that they would limit healing, so you can't heal 1200% of your max HP all day every day, assuming you had a wand of CLW. But that was never a problem. Even if my party had a CLW wand they never got as much bang for the buck as people (around here) seem to say they did. It wasn't a matter of healing even 200% of their damage in a day, it simply didn't happen.

The other aspect of course is second wind, which allowed them to use non-healing, a concept which I dislike, to instantly heal themselves by themselves whenever they wanted. Other actions allowed them to do this differently, more often or with frills and bonuses. That only compounded the problem.

It seems to me that what they tried to fix was completely missed by a lack of understanding of what people disliked about HS in the first place. It wasn't the limiting factor, it was the (perceived) healing factor.

Now ask me again, what do I dislike that I can't houserule? Once again, if you have any specific questions I'll be happy to answer those. For now just take it for granted I don't like what WotC is peddling but I will give the playtest a try.

 

[fuindordm]

I'm pretty happy with these ideas.

I didn't like healing surges mainly because the player reserve was so large, their actual HP total was nearly irrelevant. Most monsters would do at least a surge's worth of damage anyway. Playing 4E was like playing with 9 HP at all levels, except that most hits do 1 HP damage and you can only have 4 HP at a time. My HP went up and down so much, they lost all meaning.

However, I can see this system working really well. For one thing, your reserve is not fully predictable, which is nice for an atmosphere of risk and danger. For another, your reserve is significantly less than your maximum, so your base HP still have a lot of meaning. The reserve gives you back a trickle of healing, not a huge chunk all at once. Overall, the Hit Die mechanic feels a lot more natural.

It would be pretty cool for a gritty game if any hit while bloodied didn't just remove HP, but also took away one HD. Taking a wound doesn't get you into a death spiral, but the wound is harder to heal. This would be very good motivation for players to approach combats with more tactics, favor ambushes, fight defensively where appropriate, and so on.

Ben

 

[nnms]

Reactions to this article seem to be a tell-tale sign between those who care about compromise and those that want their thing and their thing only, come hell or high water.

I think this may be a pretty solid insight. And the tendency for people to fight about D&D so passionately might lead into a problem with the playtest where vocal complaints cause polarizing changes to the game text/rules.

I'm not sure that it's the best way to handle it, but will be rather amusing, from a historical perspective, if the "hit die" cap out at "name level."

I just don't want to see the illusion of leveling. Like in 4E where you gain 10% more HP, but monster damage mysteriously goes up by the exact same amount. Where you gain +1 to your skills every second level, but DCs mysteriously go up the exact same amount. +1 to attack rolls? Monster defenses go up the same. Leveling in 4E was pretty much about fooling people into thinking their numbers were getting better and allowing them to add on more option in terms of more encounter, utility and daily powers.

L&L for D&DN: Physical capacity for punishment, which is measured through a combination of size, bulk, and durability. An elephant or a hill giant has plenty of hit points due to raw physical endurance and bulk. Big creatures can take a lot of punishment.​

This makes me very happy. It's much, much better than:

4E's general approach: Hit points of a normal monster should be roughly four times what a non-striker does on an average damage roll, regardless of the characteristics of the monster in question.​

Night and day.

But I do still see the positives of having a "Design ultra balanced monsters and encounters like 4E" rules module for those who want it.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Sounds like a decent core to build 2-3 pages of variants around in the DMG.

Add Con stat?

Roll hp?

Average HD healing?

No HD healing or tracking - magic only, or 1 hp recovered/day?

No HD tracking, heal to full between encounters unless bloodied?

Etc.

 

[TerraDave]

It doesn't address any of those.

- In character creation you can still get X number of HP. All this does is HEAL that HP total. Not manage it.
- It doesn't mention combat healing at all. In fact it is a method to not need a healer. Imagine what happens if you DO have one.
- Once again, it doesn't touch how HP are lost, only how they are recovered. The article was about HP RECOVERY not about loss. The scorpion will still deal 3 damage either way.
- How is it consistent that 3 HP on round one is a barely noticeable scratch but the same 3 HP damage in round two is "looking like you got into a fight"?

You know I used "seem". In italics. I didn't say does or would.

Now why would it seem like that?

HP bloat: We don't know how many HD a charecter gets...but surges are a contributor to this in a substantial way, along with max HP. The way it was written, with commentary on how long it would take to heal, made it seem like less hp could be restored this way.

Combat healing: Exactly, it doesn't mention it. The examples are all out of combat. I am glad we agree.

Risk: Was the article about recovery? Thanks. With having to roll for the HP restored, it increases risk. You can't be sure you will just heal right back up.

Consistency: I was referring to something else.

 

[nnms]

I understand that 5e needs to bridge 4e and non-4e. But you must understand I am not going to buy in (again) to 4e.

Me neither. Both 3.x and 4E caused me to stop playing in frustration/tedium before their product cycle was done. I went back to BECMI and other non-D&D rpgs while I'm waiting for 5E.

Yes I COULD houserule things. But as I've said before, many times, it is VERY HARD to houserule OUT aspects of a game you do not enjoy. It is ALWAYS better to houserule those things in.

I gutted 4E to give me the kind of play I wanted and while it worked, it rendered so many of the things players liked about 4E non-existent or useless (like the character builder).

I don't want my party healing every 10 minutes after a fight, just because they can. I see no reason for it.

Please bear in mind that healing a bit after a fight is not a 4Eism. It's present in older versions of the game as well.

For me, it is just a slap in the face. They took the mechanic of second wind (which I have always hated even before 4e) and healing surges, examined them for what was essential, then rebranded them onto a new system while trying to convince me it was different.

So what part of the article led you to believe that you could do this healing inside of combat? That is what the second wind is.

The essential qualities of HS were that they would limit healing, so you can't heal 1200% of your max HP all day every day, assuming you had a wand of CLW. But that was never a problem. Even if my party had a CLW wand they never got as much bang for the buck as people (around here) seem to say they did. It wasn't a matter of healing even 200% of their damage in a day, it simply didn't happen.

And with the separation of magic and non-magical healing, this won't be an issue in 5E either. This is one area where the HP system is more like 3.x than 4E.

It seems to me that what they tried to fix was completely missed by a lack of understanding of what people disliked about HS in the first place. It wasn't the limiting factor, it was the (perceived) healing factor.

And comparitively, this is a much, much slower rate of healing than 4E had. As I mentioned earlier, 4E had full healing after a night's sleep (both HP & HS) and full healing after each encounter (HP). This does not.

 

[sheadunne]

I'm always grumpy about healing. I like my healing limited to a cleric. However, there are games where I would like a natural healing mechanic. This one seems fine as long as the rate of HD return is far less than the total number of HD available (perhaps 1/day) and that the healing does not make the Cleric simply a combat healer.

Natural Healing
Level/day for 1 HD.

Rate of HD Return
??/day

A potential issue I see is the creation of mechanics that effect HD. It's hard to resist the desire to tweak mechanics and if natural healing is a mechanic, I can see feats, monster abilities, magic items that impact this natural healing mechanic. This isn't necessarily bad, but it has the potential to be fiddled with too much.

It bugs me a little that they're looking at it being part of the core mechanic rather than a module.

 

[Szatany]

Unconsciousness served as a nice intermediate stage. A PC reduced to zero was still out of the fight, and would be a while recovering (in 2E you couldn't just drop a couple cure spells on the mostly-dead, they were out for days at a minimum), but wasn't gone for good. To make things a little edgier, they added ongoing hit point loss and the need for stabilization.

For something that wasn't so much designed as evolved, it's a pretty good system. Once you're unconscious, there's no reason for the monsters to keep pounding you unless the DM is feeling exceptionally spiteful, so your main worry is stabilizing before you bleed out or fail your third death save. As long as your fellow party members are on the ball, they can save you. I think 3E and 4E made it too simple to get an unconscious PC back up, but that's mostly a matter of taste.

Fiction-wise, I agree that it's kind of weird you always end up unconscious before you die. But it's a useful cheat.

To me, its a weak argument. Weak, because everything that is being accomplished by having characters at negative hp unconscious can albo be achieved by having them conscious. How? Simple: characters at negative hp are down, can do very little (maybe crawl? certainly not attack or cast spells). Worst case scenario, they can always pretend that they are unconscious to avoid enemy attention.
The more I think about it, the more I come to a conclusion that the rule was poorly thought out from the very beginning.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think this may be a pretty solid insight. And the tendency for people to fight about D&D so passionately might lead into a problem with the playtest where vocal complaints cause polarizing changes to the game text/rules.



I just don't want to see the illusion of leveling. Like in 4E where you gain 10% more HP, but monster damage mysteriously goes up by the exact same amount. Where you gain +1 to your skills every second level, but DCs mysteriously go up the exact same amount. +1 to attack rolls? Monster defenses go up the same. Leveling in 4E was pretty much about fooling people into thinking their numbers were getting better and allowing them to add on more option in terms of more encounter, utility and daily powers.

L&L for D&DN: Physical capacity for punishment, which is measured through a combination of size, bulk, and durability. An elephant or a hill giant has plenty of hit points due to raw physical endurance and bulk. Big creatures can take a lot of punishment.​

This makes me very happy. It's much, much better than:

4E's general approach: Hit points of a normal monster should be roughly four times what a non-striker does on an average damage roll, regardless of the characteristics of the monster in question.​

Night and day.

But I do still see the positives of having a "Design ultra balanced monsters and encounters like 4E" rules module for those who want it.

The part, that bulk and mass equals hp was something lost in 4e. A creature beeing a solo, just because it is the only enemy right now makes no sense.

A dragon, designed as a solo monster. Yes, everyday. But a goblin? In the game, I find it difficult to estimate the power of something in 4e. You have no clue, which level something is... when you don´t take into account, that you are expected to encounter similar level foes in general.

I really like the idea, that something has that AC, because of its hide, and this HP, because of its mass. And this way, dragon screams: solo monster. Without an arbitrary classification.

Even if this concept in 4e works well, it adds to the "rules are more important than enviroment" problem.

One thing I encountered yesterday: "You are squeezed... so -2 to attack rolls" No matter what weapon I use. I fully expect a crossbow to work better than a twohanded sword when I have no place to swing...