Healing in Combat

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I
Remember this is concerning editions that do not feature ubiquitous healing wands, potions, and scrolls. While a party may have some non-spell slot healing resources, they are precious and not replaceable at the general store.

I didn't forget, just highlighting the difference - cheap healing magic just means that the spellcasters want to call it home early, expensive healing magic means that everyone wants to call it home early.

The consequence of this is not to "go nova" but to give more thought about going into combat (making sure its worth it), and fighting smarter when combat does take place.

I disagree. Novaing when you can is playing smart. A smart plan is trying to minimize your risks and maximize your chance of success. If there is of course a big risk that you can't go home, then you've got a problem. But you must also provide scenarios where "smart play" is even possible,e .g. provide ways for the party to split the opposition (without extensive use of spells), turn them against each other or use the environment against the enemy.

Which, by the way, the "sports combat" of 4E did pretty well with several characters usually being able to control the enemies movement and this being used to split enemies from their targets, force them to suffer area effects or into dangerous or at least hindering environmental features. It may just not have been the scale some have in mind when it comes to such smart play. There is a difference whether you shove someone in an adjacent square containing a fire, or whether you force the enemies to cross a narrow hallway or force your enemy to split becausethey need to cover more ground to find you.

 

[Kraydak]

I didn't forget, just highlighting the difference - cheap healing magic just means that the spellcasters want to call it home early, expensive healing magic means that everyone wants to call it home early.


I disagree. Novaing when you can is playing smart. A smart plan is trying to minimize your risks and maximize your chance of success. If there is of course a big risk that you can't go home, then you've got a problem. But you must also provide scenarios where "smart play" is even possible,e .g. provide ways for the party to split the opposition (without extensive use of spells), turn them against each other or use the environment against the enemy.

Except it doesn't actually play out that way if the novaeing resources are limited enough. Players just plain don't want to call the expedition after every encounter with 3 orcs. Of course, this means that there have to be plenty of non-extreme encounters, and "boss" fights can't assume that the party is topped off unless they get advanced warning and the opportunity to rest. The 15 minute work day first showed up in 3e, which took a *much* more plentiful approach to PC resources. This is natural: more resources means encounters need to be scarier which means that players need to be topped off for each encounter. Drastically scale back the PC resources, scale back the encounters and PCs go longer on a single tank. Of course, it helps if the PCs have a *few* Potions of Extra Healing in the bags, just in case they accidentally trip a scary encounter when they are a bit depleted. But only as an emergency stash.

It is counter-intuitive, but if you want to avoid the 15 minute work day, or heal-bot clerics, the correct approach is fewer, rather than more, resources. And those resources should come with opportunity cost (no Heal+Other action abilities). It lets everyone step *back* from the PC-DM escalation cliff, and means that not every encounter needs to be a set-piece battle to be worth running (if the PCs start every encounter at full resources, then there is very little room between boring and boss).

Accordingly, I am strongly in favor of nixing the Herbalist theme!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm always amazed at the amount of discussion about hit points and healing that flat out ignores the role of both in pacing, over the course of combat and an adventure. It is as if all discussion of pacing doesn't register, though the concept is critical to both game play and the progression of the story. I say ignored, but perhaps in a lot of cases there is a defacto pacing assumed--some of the suggestions in this topic seem to be of that nature.

I've reached the point where if someone is unwilling to explicitly explain to me their expected pacing, and how all the hit point and healing rules support that--I'm unwilling to take their proposals seriously as thoughtful design. The proposals may be interesting on other grounds, of course.

 

[Aenghus]

How much healing in combat is a necessity, useful feature or dispensable luxury depends on how the system functions as a whole. Frequency of combats, difficulty of combats, average damage per encounter, swinginess of combat, and loads of other factors come together to determine how often PCs are badly wounded or knocked unconscious.

The quicker each combat encounter takes the less needed in-combat healing is. However, quick combat is less likely to be tactically interesting.

And desired pacing is a definite feature that needs to be tweakable by the referee to suit his or her game. A low level gritty trap-strewn dungeon crawl will call for a different pacing to a high fantasy romp through a short series of setpiece encounters to save the princess or a pseudo-noir urban adventure with lots of intrigue and the occasional one-sided ambush.

And I think it's better to have a variety of healing models that can be chosen to suit the desired game type, rather than using a single healing model as a hammer to force everyone into a single game style that will suit some games well, some others with some adjustment, and others not at all.

 

[aco175]

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.

This is mostly what I was thinking. On one hand you want the game to be fun and enjoyable but you also want it exciting and threatening.

I do not want to old ways of having to choose a cleric to be able to heal since that is what is needed. How many times was the cleric the last class to be chosen when all the players were picking the party makeup. I like 4e where you can heal and do something else, although the lack of minor actions would make it tied to your standard action, thus just combining them. They did seem to give too much though.

I would like to see something similar to 4e but less powerful. Maybe once a fight they can heal someone one hit die, or 3x level, or tie it to Wisdom. There can also be a few powers that give healing of a few points. I would like to play a cleric that can still do other cool things, but be able to assist it keeping the party alive. I give up the big damage like a fighter, or the sneak attacks like a thief, but I'm the only one that can heal you.

I would also think that between fights, the cleric can add Wisdon, or 1/2 Wisdom to characters spending their Hit Die healing, just because they travel with a cleric.