D&D 5E House rule idea for healing to avoid "whack-a-mole"

[Inchoroi]

I actually go the other way!

I've changed it so HP doesn't regen at the end of a long rest; instead, you have to spend whatever hit dice you want at the beginning of a long rest, and then you get back half of what hit dice you have remaining, minimum 1. Playing whack-a-mole is a very dangerous proposition in my games.

 

[Uller]

I've seen someone here recently introduce the concept of a shorter than short rest called a breather. I think the whole of it was essentially "You can spend 5 minutes catching your breath. At the end of this breather, you can spend hit dice to heal."

So, you get the healing of a short rest, but none of the other benefits.

You could limit this to once between rests, or even once between long rests.

I've toyed with that in the past. Each PC gets a once per day "breather" to spend up to half their HD and recharge one short rest feature (half their ki or spells). Another was short rests start out 15 minutes and double in length for each one until you take a long rest. This way, the first two are easy (15 min and 30 min) then they get a bit tougher. Taking more than 4, you may as well long rest. In practice I've found each of these to be more cumbersome than they are worth. For us, a short rest is generally "a non-trivial passage of time"...If it's a dungeon with random encounter rolls, the its always enough to trigger at least one roll. Story based time pressure pretty much always prevents my players from taking too many short rests.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I actually go the other way!

I've changed it so HP doesn't regen at the end of a long rest; instead, you have to spend whatever hit dice you want at the beginning of a long rest, and then you get back half of what hit dice you have remaining, minimum 1. Playing whack-a-mole is a very dangerous proposition in my games.

Adventuring sounds dangerous. Not sure how that impacts whack-a-mole, which is attractive for it's hp-efficiency (because enemy attacks 'waste' damage over what it takes to drop your poor ally to 0). With hps a harder-to-regain resource, that efficiency would seem more attractive.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I spoke with my players about this phenomenon. We decided to eliminate the healing word line of spells that require only a bonus action to cast. Now that all healing requires a full Action or great allotment of time to use, it's no longer worthwhile to heal an ally for minimal HP, only to have him/her knocked out again before the cleric/druid/bard/paladin's next round.

It's worked well in my groups and it just about the simplest solution one can come up with. Maybe it's worth a try.

 

[Sunseeker]

It's Healing Surges...lite?

 

[CapnZapp]

A recent thread on how some groups (probably especially in low/mid level games) experience "whack-a-mole" where PCs go down, get healing from Healing Word or the like but then go back down very shortly because they received so little HP.

We don't experience a ton of whack-a-mole in my group but at the table recently (both in a 5th level game and a 12th level game), characters with healing spells have had to spend a lot of spell slots to get characters back up to an acceptable level of HP to move on because time pressure prevented them from taking a short rest. In both cases, the party had all its HD but the cleric (5th level) or Paladin (12th level) had to spend most of their slots just to keep the party going.

My players understand it is better to spend HD when possible but in both cases, taking a short rest was just not feasible (or my players believed it wasn't).

So to help encourage them to spend those HD rather than spells, I'm considering the following house rule:

When a character receives healing that character can spend 1 HD per die of healing (or per 5 hp for static healing like Lay On Hands).

So if you receive a 3rd level healing word you can also spend up to 3 HD if you have them. Yes, this hearkens back to the 4e healing paradigm that a lot of folks didn't like...my intent is to allow/encourage my players to spend HD more and use their spells for more interesting ways.

I think the argument against it is pretty obvious: If you make something more powerful, you'll get more of it. So I'm concerned it might have the opposite effect. Why cast an interesting 1st level spell to avoid some damage when you can just use it to heal?

So maybe make it only for out of combat? I dunno. Thoughts?

Actually, I would begin at the other end: the problem here as I see it is if the Cleric feels obligated to spend all her spell slots on healing her allies.

Could it be that you are running intensive dungeon bashes? Perhaps 5 minute short rests work better in that regard (you talk about 4E; perhaps you're still playing in that edition's pacing?)

I would argue your proposed solution only makes healing spell even better, which in turn only makes the party rely even more on the Cleric's spell slots.

If this isn't a problem, fine.

But in my experience 5e Clerics seldom have to spend much of their cool powers on healing others, so perhaps it's merely time to take a step back and reevaluate what kinds of adventures you're running?

Best regards,

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[CapnZapp]

As for the actual whack-a-mole issue; I would define the problem as cheap healing being too good.

That is not the same thing you're talking about, though others are, so I still feel it's relevant.

To me the problem is how you would never heal somebody while he is still standing, since you gain a lot of healing if you wait until he reaches zero. There all surplus damage is simply wasted, and a cheap Healing Word gets the PC going again.

Removing that spell sounds like an extreme solution.

Instead I suggest we track hp down to -10. This means you need to use slightly more power for your healing, or all you accomplish is to stabilize your fallen ally. While that is useful in itself, it severely diminishes the usefulness of the whack-a-mole healing strategy: since you can't get away with a Healing Word of the lowest level when you need to heal 11+ points, you can just as well start healing your injured allies already when they're still standing.

This (having -10 as the minimum) has solved the problem I call whack-a-mole at our table.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Blue]

I spoke with my players about this phenomenon. We decided to eliminate the healing word line of spells that require only a bonus action to cast. Now that all healing requires a full Action or great allotment of time to use, it's no longer worthwhile to heal an ally for minimal HP, only to have him/her knocked out again before the cleric/druid/bard/paladin's next round.

It's worked well in my groups and it just about the simplest solution one can come up with. Maybe it's worth a try.

I am only speaking for me, but this would completely turn me off playing a healer. I played over a decade of AD&D 2nd with this and clerics ended up having little to no agency - they just spent their actions on other characters. I didn't even play a cleric during all of 3.x. 4e having the ability to heal your allies and yet still have an action to be proactive was a paradigm shift.

I'm glad you found something that works with your table. Heck, it might even work at my table depending on the player. But for me it would stop any wish to play a healer.

 

[Blue]

As for the actual whack-a-mole issue; I would define the problem as cheap healing being too good.

That is not the same thing you're talking about, though others are, so I still feel it's relevant.

To me the problem is how you would never heal somebody while he is still standing, since you gain a lot of healing if you wait until he reaches zero. There all surplus damage is simply wasted, and a cheap Healing Word gets the PC going again.

Removing that spell sounds like an extreme solution.

Instead I suggest we track hp down to -10. This means you need to use slightly more power for your healing, or all you accomplish is to stabilize your fallen ally. While that is useful in itself, it severely diminishes the usefulness of the whack-a-mole healing strategy: since you can't get away with a Healing Word of the lowest level when you need to heal 11+ points, you can just as well start healing your injured allies already when they're still standing.

This (having -10 as the minimum) has solved the problem I call whack-a-mole at our table.

I liked [MENTION=413]Uller[/MENTION]'s original because it incentivized earlier healing by making it worthwhile - the slight heal-from-zero efficiency was less important because it healed more.

This is the opposite, it's removing the heal-from-zero efficiency and reinstating it later. But this issue that heal-from-zero addresses is players sitting bored. At lower levels, -10 is something that likely won't be cured by a Cure Wounds and can't be cured by a Healing Word. That means those are wasted actions for the healer and dis-incentivized them to try. Leaving the player unengaged from the game in combat, the activity that takes the most wall-time. Heck, if a 3rd level (16 Wis) upcasts Cure Wounds to 2nd level it still won't bring from -10 to 1 HP a third of the time. (2d8+3 is 11+ only 67% of the time.)

I'm sure this fits at many tables, a bit grittier and more consequences. Just if you make the change realize it's weakening a rule who's goal is to get *players* back in the action on things that take a good amount of real-life time.

 

[Uller]

It's Healing Surges...lite?

Yes.

The idea is to give players the opportunity to keep themselves or others in the game by spending finite resources. If healing surges were not your thing, I would not suggest you use such a rule (I quite liked healing surges). As it is, spending spell slots or even healing potions on a wounded character to prevent him or her from going down is not really worth while unless you are dumping in your highest level slots. To me...HD are part of the overall "durability" of the character. A 12th level PC with 10 hp and 9 HD is, to me, a lot healthier than one with 30 hp and 0 HD. The former just needs a way to tap some of that reserve...magic (potion or spell), inspiration, release of adrenaline, etc should let the former tap that internal reserve. The latter needs more...

Maybe...I'm not wedded to this concept. Just mulling it over.