D&D (2024) How to buff healing, make it reliable and discourage whack-a-mole?

[Vikingkingq]

I am kinda happy the way UA Playtest 8 does it.

It surprised me. But.

Beefing up the healing reduces pressure on the healer player to heal, and reduces wack-a-mole by granting more staying power.

It changes the math assumption, yet nothing seems to be broken. It seems the new math is better.

The beefier healing is a brave and wise design.

Yeah, I agree. We could do all kinds of complex changes, or we could just double the dice and see whether that's enough of a fix.

 

[Vikingkingq]

Something 4e did that 5e can do too, is convert all healings into hit dice.

So the Fighter heals via d10 hit die (or 6 hp per die). The Wizard heals d6 (or 4 hp). Etcetera.

This proportional healing makes more sense, and benefits the character concepts that are in the middle of melee combat and soaking up the most damage.

I like that. Makes Fighters and Barbs tankier without hurting everyone else - as long as the math works out the same.

 

[CleverNickName]

I like @mellored's suggestion to make healing to be temporary hit points.

At my table, we're focused more on healing potions than spells, though.

One thing I've done in my campaign: healing potions always heal the maximum amount possible, but they cost 50% more. It's just a little thing--more reliable potions--but it makes a big difference on the battlefield. And it makes those higher-end potions a lot more appealing.

We're testing another house rule at the moment, too. If you drink a potion as a Bonus Action, it heals the minimum amount possible. The theory being that in your haste to open and consume the potion, you end up spilling most of it. But if you spend your full Action, you drink the whole thing dregs and all.

 

[Charlaquin]

why bother with healing if they do not regain consciousness?

Well, you would want to heal them before they fall unconscious, to prevent your side from losing their turn worth of action economy. If they do fall unconscious, there would be no point healing them until after the fight. That’s kind of the point, it forces healing to be proactive to be useful.

 

[Charlaquin]

I like @mellored's suggestion to make healing to be temporary hit points.

At my table, we're focused more on potions than spells, though.

One thing I've done in my campaign: healing potions always heal the maximum amount possible, but they cost 50% more. It's just a little thing--more reliable potions--but it makes a big difference on the battlefield.

We're testing another house rule at the moment, too. If you drink a potion as a Bonus Action, it heals the minimum amount possible. The theory being that in your haste to open and consume the potion, you end up spilling most of it.

I’ve seen similar house rules before, and while I’ve long been critical of bonus action potion drinking, I think BG3 has finally convinced me to give it a try. I’d probably do maximum value with an action, rolled value with a bonus action.

 

[Yaarel]

why bother with healing if they do not regain consciousness?

Because unconscious with hit points is better than dead without hit points.

Meanwhile, there is a strong disincentive to be downed, since unconsciousness sucks during combat.

 

[CleverNickName]

We also require a Wisdom (Medicine) check to administer a healing potion to an unconscious creature. It just makes sense to me: an unconscious creature can't swallow, after all, and you are literally administering a medicine to a patient. We're using DC 15 right now for this check, but I might back it off to 12 or 13 after a few more gaming sessions. It comes up so rarely that we haven't had a chance to test it much.

 

[CleverNickName]

I’d probably do maximum value with an action, rolled value with a bonus action.

Isn't that the way that Mercer does it? or was Mulligan? I could have sworn I've seen that on an Actual Play episode somewhere, but I can't remember where/who.

 

[tetrasodium]

wackamole healing exists because of an issue that playtest 5 tried to fix

Spoiler: with this

DEATH SAVING THROWS
On your third successful death save, you regain 1
Hit Point, but you are Unconscious and start a
Short Rest. You remain Unconscious until you
regain more Hit Points or until another creature
uses an action to administer first aid to you,
which requires a successful DC 10 Wisdom
(Medicine) check.
This playtest rule removes the notion of being
stable at 0 Hit Points, and it removes the
“Stabilizing a Creature” rule on page 197 of the
Player’s Handbook.

till playtest 6 reverted away from it and went back to this looks like 197 where players can go down to zero & then have all of the damage beyond that simply erased by as little as a single point of healing. I don't think they can fix wackamole/yoyo healing until wotc is willing to make death saves the variant option & go back to requiring all damage beyond zero to be healed away point for point.

Death by massive damage & instant death are risks that really only factor in after the first few levels as a plausible risk outside of an extreme edge case like monsters with an unusually high damage attack that crits and rolls max or near max damage.

Since it's topical & he put it out a couple days ago I'm going to link up the video on healing treantmonk did since it differentiates between in combat healing & out of combat healing

 

[Charlaquin]

Isn't that the way that Mercer does it? or was Mulligan? I could have sworn I've seen that on an Actual Play episode somewhere, but I can't remember where/who.

I think it’s a pretty popular house rule, not sure who popularized it.