The Crimson Binome
Hero
It depends on the nature of the dungeon, but it's more-or-less genre appropriate. It happens in stories.Holing up for in a dungeon room for days on end doesn't make your eyes roll?
It depends on the nature of the dungeon, but it's more-or-less genre appropriate. It happens in stories.Holing up for in a dungeon room for days on end doesn't make your eyes roll?
It's meant to be adaptable to different styles, too.The point is that 5e is different.
It's combats are geared towards speed, mainly. That can mean everyone makes it through without getting dropped, and it can mean that healing actions can be 'wasted' compared to moar offense - but it can also mean a PC gets dropped early, and the loss of that combat contribution puts the party behind the monsters and it spirals from there.Its combat is geared toward heroes' hit points being enough to last through the current combat.
Yeah, no.It's meant to be adaptable to different styles, too.
It's combats are geared towards speed, mainly. That can mean everyone makes it through without getting dropped, and it can mean that healing actions can be 'wasted' compared to moar offense - but it can also mean a PC gets dropped early, and the loss of that combat contribution puts the party behind the monsters and it spirals from there.
In-combat healing is as much a necessity in 5e as in any prior edition, but mainly as a sort of safety-valve to enable that tuning for fast combat. The presence of a bonus action healing word, and the relative weakness of healing spells compared to the damage potentials you're likely to face point to that - and also, incidentally and presumably unintentionally, lead to whack-a-mole.
Or CoDzilla that stomped everything before it could be hurt. Or a bunch of wands that converted gp to hp...Yeah, no.
In 3e the system pretty much mandated a cleric (that healed).
There is a lot of overlap in spell lists, certainly, so any odd combination of casters might cover for the traditional Cleric & Wizard.wizards, there is absolutely no assumption of any particular classes present in a 5e party, which is a huge relief.
My first experience with 5E was as a player in a group with no healers, and yeah, it worked, especially with the 8 hour heal and short rests. But I still think it requires an adjustment on the DM's part. You just can't throw as much at a party without someone capable of healing, especially in combat.
It still requires an adjustment on the DM's part. And the players' part.
The DM has a responsibility to give the players a game in which they feel the danger of failure or death, but don't actually reach it.
The players have a responsibility to make decisions that don't lead inexorably to failure or death.
5e, with the long rest rule, seems to be a nod in the Thor Ragnarok direction, in which the main character(s) over the course of the adventure hits zero HP once, makes his death save, and then has full HP when he wakes up the next day.
If you go tweaking the rest rules, I just point out what should be obvious: the game's difficulty is balanced around players healing to full with each long rest. This is particularly noticeable with both low levels (where the game is SUPER lethal), and the higher levels, where most monsters can literally do a player's health in one round if it decides to focus fire. Giving the players back less health per long rest is fine, but you then need to factor in encounter balances. The monsters should realistically not all be at full health/power when they fight the players, as they are part of the same world. Changing rests effects NPC'S just as much. Alternatively, you will need to reduce the fights they have per day, or the difficulty of said fights, or both.
Or CoDzilla that stomped everything before it could be hurt. Or a bunch of wands that converted gp to hp...
... but, yes, ultimately healing was necessary in every edition. 5e included. 4e & 5e just shared out some of the 'burden' among the party, in the form of surges & HD, but 5e is more dependent on slots for in-combat healing, since HD can't be spent in a fight, and only the fighter has token 'Second Wind.