D&D 5E Another healing poll: what other types of healing do you want (or not want) to see?

[ExploderWizard]

I'm on board with all of those things being available, but limited or rare. I subscribe to the philosophy that if everyone is special, no one is. Healing should be special. It should be something that some people have, and that they have at some times. Not a default expectation. Not a right.

The outcomes being that it should be fairly normal and okay for PCs to be at less than optimal health for extended periods of time, and that there should be a large difference in recovery rate between a party with a healer or a healing item and a party that does not have those things.

This x 100.

Perhaps the answer to the question of, how do we fight a CR+2 creature when we are wounded? should be, you don't.

Many of the really cool situations and creative solutions to problems experienced in old school play come about because the party can't just bulldoze through everything head-on and expect to survive.

Too much healing and all you end up with is a fight game. Best reason ever given for being a hammer and treating every obstacle as a nail- BECAUSE I CAN.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, 54 voters in and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the support magical herbs are getting, seeing as I don't think they're an official part of any edition other than a single Dragon article in the early '80s.

For my own part:

Clerics - I don't mind Clerics having quite a few spells to chuck around. Healing and support are (or should be, 3e wackiness notwithstanding) the prime focus of the class and thus they need the requisite tools.

Wands of CLW - I was never that impressed with how 3e handled wands in general. Far better are things like charged staves of healing, with quite limited charges and no way to recharge them. Potions are fine also, as long as they aren't common as dirt.

Magical herbs - we took that old Dragon article and expanded it greatly in our 1e game - Rangers and Nature Clerics (Druids) are best with these. They are rare, hard to find, and cannot be cultivated; but they sure come in handy when the other healing options are unavailable e.g. the Cleric is lying in a puddle of his own blood.

Devices - perhaps the best magic item I have ever seen was a Longsword +2 that could give out a Heal 1x/day. As long as things like this are kept very rare and veeerrry expensive, they're great to have in a game!

Lan-"I owned that sword of healing for a while, best friend a Fighter ever had"-efan

 

[Hussar]

It does, but that's the thing. To me, there should be as few of those (assumptions) as possible. Whether the DM wants to challenge players by subjecting them to threats when their resources are taxed is his decision. Whether the players want to focus on healing and rest at every chance or focus on other things and press forward even when they're not at 100% is their choice.

I don't think there should be any assumption one way or the other on these types of things.

I'd prefer if the assumptions are 100% transparent and stated up front. Then you present a series of a la carte options for changing those assumptions. If healing is rare, then how can I make it common and not break the game? If healing is common, how can I slow it down and not break the game.

What the game should never do is bury the assumptions with the hope that individual DM's can just "figure it out".

To give an example, in our 1e and 2e games, healing was always pretty common because we always had at least one cleric and often had two (fairly big groups). Which meant that we could bulldoze through most encounters. Between lots of healing and the fact that 1e and 2e PC's can be very, very powerful relative to the threats they normally would be facing, we blasted through all sorts of adventures. I remember as a DM and as a player, in multiple groups, taking on modules that were two or three levels higher than our group because we broke the game so badly.

But, because nothing was ever discussed in the DMG or other sources, we thought this was just normal.

 

[pemerton]

To be "functional", though, an RPG should be consistent in its general approaches to magical and "mundane" happenings.

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What I find works poorly, for me, is mixing subtle/realistic "mundane" with gonzo magic.

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Mid-period D&D - peaking with 3.x, I suppose - I found to push furthest towards the "subdued mundane/gonzo magic" model

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For DDN? Well, I hope it keeps the "level of gonzo" even between magic and non-magic - whatever general level it selects

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I want the "mundane" and magical healing to be either both gonzo or both subtle/"realistic". Having magical healing work instantaneously and "mundane" healing work glacially slowly does not fulfill my wishes at all.

I agree with all this. For me the alternative I've used to 4e's all gonzo all the time is RM's all "subdued" all the time.

 

[Sadrik]

I want potions to be common and I want wands to be rarer than that. Each "charge" of a potion should cost roughly the same as a charge of a wand, with the wand's advantage being that it can hold many and the potions that it can be quaffed by anyone but can only work on them. Healing herbs and I think the equivalency of a healing kit should also be common. People trained in binding wounds (heal skill) should be able to get back a small ratio of HP, perhaps 1/10 rounded up which would be easy to administer. A magic device such as a sword, I want that to be a rare thing.

 

[Sadrik]

Well, 54 voters in and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the support magical herbs are getting, seeing as I don't think they're an official part of any edition other than a single Dragon article in the early '80s.

Magical herbs - we took that old Dragon article and expanded it greatly in our 1e game - Rangers and Nature Clerics (Druids) are best with these. They are rare, hard to find, and cannot be cultivated; but they sure come in handy when the other healing options are unavailable e.g. the Cleric is lying in a puddle of his own blood.

So here is where the poll might be tripping people up, if the "magical herbs" are just a potion of healing by another name/form then I don't think anyone has an issue with that. Potions of healing do not all have to appear in a vial with a cork. If the herbs are more synonymous with a healing kit and are not magical in nature but have a more "scientific" basis then again I don't think anyone has a problem with that either.

To me it sounds like what you guys use is it is a single plant that you cannot grow but can find. I don't like that, personally, but if it works for you guys it is all good. How I would do it: an amalgamation of several rare things found in nature then put together in the right formula and you get essentially a potion of healing. Alchemy using nature/herbalism instead...