House rule for overnight healing: opinions wanted

[Piratecat]

I'll likely move this into the House Rules forum once I actually have something concrete. In the mean time, a thought exercise...

I'm considering a house rule that says that you don't heal automatically and completely during a long rest. In fact, you don't heal at all. Instead, you get all of your Hit Dice back overnight (instead of half of them, as is normal.) The idea is that if you bed down when beaten up, use your remaining Hit Dice before resting, and use as many as you like the next morning to get to a level of healthiness that makes you happy. This drains your resources somewhat on the second adventuring day, emulating wear and tear on the characters as they stay out being big damn heroes.

What it solves: my annoyance of "I'm down to 1 hp out of 136 tonight, but I'm fully healed to tomorrow" unrealism.

The question is, where does this rule fall apart? How much more dangerous does it make adventuring? In your opinion, is it more trouble and/or bookkeeping than it's worth?

 

[Boarstorm]

My first thought is that it would likely lead to two-day rests when the party retreats to town.

I don't think that would be a bad thing.

As for resting out in the field... I think it could lead to interesting decisions. It would probably hurt (or at least slow down) styles of play that involve spending several days in a dungeon.

 

[Paraxis]

That is how I would handle a slow healing option if I wanted that for a campaign. You could reduce the amount of Hit Dice recovered back down to half if the resting conditions are not good.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I've been considering the same, although while leaving hit die recovery at half. I don't think there are any problems with it, so long as everyone is on board. HP recover still scales with level, but natural healing still takes a little time. It's a good rule if you want to slow the in game rate of adventuring.

 

[Astrosicebear]

Clerics would be in high demand to expend all healing prior to resting (as is usually the case anyways).

Like Boarstorm said, 2 day rests might become more common.

Consider a 10th lvl party. RAW they get 5 HD back per long rest and full heal. They have 5HD to use throughout the adventuring day. Lets say they take 3 short rests today and the character uses 3 HD, now he has 2. Ending the day after a medium battle puts the char at 50% health. He goes to sleep waking up with 7HD tomorrow and refreshed.

Consider your rules. Same party and situation. They rest the first night and have all 10HD available (assuming full HP as the other example). They adventure the same and use 3 short rests and 3 HD. They end the same, but now have 7HD to expend. The player is at 50% and on average must expend half his hit dice remaining to heal 50%. So he uses another 4 HD lets say bad rolls. Now he sleeps at 100% and 3HD. Tomorrow comes and he has all 10HD back to adventure with.

Your way actually seems to makes adventuring less risky.

 

[Piratecat]

Calling [MENTION=726]Sagiro[/MENTION], who is in my game and probably has interesting insight.

 

[W_K]

If you're bothered by the whole abstract hp notion, then I think that your idea is a pretty decent solution for a slow to moderate healing option. You will need to watch out for pacing issues, since the game will generally expect the players to start each day with a larger pool of healing resources, but other than that it looks like a pretty good idea.

 

[Henrix]

I'm more into just letting them get half their HD back overnight, with no other healing.
But I'm clearly into an even slower pace.

(I haven't implemented it yet, wanting to get a good feel for the game first. And, yes, my players will be absolutely fine with me changing the rules as we go along. They won't complain if their characters are 'gimped'.)

But changing how much they get back depending on how their accommodations are is a very good idea.

It makes all other forms of healing much more valuable, of course.

That extra dice for the bards restful song is worth a lot. As is the fighter's second wind.

You might want to look into how you want the healer feat to work.

Healers might well have to spend more slots to just healing - which is a bit boring for them.

One of my players has a Cleric/Warlock, for excellent roleplaying reasons. His ability to cast new healing spells after a short rest will be a boon.

All in all I like it.


It could become very dangerous in long actions where they're only allowed to sleep occasionally before entering the fray again.


The market forces will drive the prices for healing potions through the roof!

 

[Boarstorm]

Clerics would be in high demand to expend all healing prior to resting (as is usually the case anyways).

Like Boarstorm said, 2 day rests might become more common.

Consider a 10th lvl party. RAW they get 5 HD back per long rest and full heal. They have 5HD to use throughout the adventuring day. Lets say they take 3 short rests today and the character uses 3 HD, now he has 2. Ending the day after a medium battle puts the char at 50% health. He goes to sleep waking up with 7HD tomorrow and refreshed.

Consider your rules. Same party and situation. They rest the first night and have all 10HD available (assuming full HP as the other example). They adventure the same and use 3 short rests and 3 HD. They end the same, but now have 7HD to expend. The player is at 50% and on average must expend half his hit dice remaining to heal 50%. So he uses another 4 HD lets say bad rolls. Now he sleeps at 100% and 3HD. Tomorrow comes and he has all 10HD back to adventure with.

Your way actually seems to makes adventuring less risky.

I don't have time to crunch numbers at the moment, but 1HD per short rest seems... optimistic. 3-4 seems more realistic from my experience. How would that change things?

(I know my players, at least, aren't going to stop for a rest when they're only down 1 measly HD.)

 

[Astrosicebear]

I don't have time to crunch numbers at the moment, but 1HD per short rest seems... optimistic. 3-4 seems more realistic from my experience. How would that change things?

(I know my players, at least, aren't going to stop for a rest when they're only down 1 measly HD.)

Could be on the low side. But I was assuming a healer and class abilities to pickup the slack of 1 to 2 HD worth of healing per short rest.