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

[Horwath]

So like, there's a decent concept here, but it has two problems:

1) Hit Dice (which is what I presume you mean by Healing Surges) don't scale in value, they scale in total number. Whereas incoming damage scales in value. Thus the HD would make less and less and less of impact as levels went up, being almost entirely meaningless by the mid-levels. So you'd probably want to let people spend more than 1 HD at various levels - perhaps the same levels a Fighter gets extra attacks or a cantrip increases in damage?

yeah, healing surges, or at least maxed HD is better option for this idea.
or you can spend HD every round you still have them.

2) You could potentially get into some pretty upsetting/frustrating situations where a group just didn't have the HPR to save a PC, or almost did, but only if they rolled really well. At a certain point, people are also going to work out that trying to save people who've taken too much damage is "throwing good money after bad", because Revivify is a 3rd level spell, and so long as you win the fight, it's a lot better to just cast Revivify than pumping a ton of spell levels into a dude to try and get him back up (which would be wasting Actions or Bonus Actions, turn after turn).

That is why I suggested that ALL healing is FIXED amount.

 

[James Gasik]

Oh yeah, right sorry, I was deep in a conversation about 4e healing, lol. I was thinking about not having a 3 turn limit, but I decided to model how quickly you can die currently in case someone was like "so you can just sit there and keep healing forever?!".

Ideally, this system would make people want to heal you long before you got to this point. Revivify ain't cheap, and is only available to Clerics and Paladins- if your party healers are other classes, they can't afford that luxury.

I'm not averse to increasing the amount of hit points healed by hit dice (proportional healing would be better) but at the same time, it makes things like the Durable Feat (which I've never seen taken) more valuable.

Either way, it's an off the cuff idea. Someone who wants to use it can refine it to taste. Pairing it with 2024's boosted healing spells would be the best move, I think.

 

[Horwath]

Oh yeah, right sorry, I was deep in a conversation about 4e healing, lol. I was thinking about not having a 3 turn limit, but I decided to model how quickly you can die currently in case someone was like "so you can just sit there and keep healing forever?!".

Ideally, this system would make people want to heal you long before you got to this point. Revivify ain't cheap, and is only available to Clerics and Paladins- if your party healers are other classes, they can't afford that luxury.

I'm not averse to increasing the amount of hit points healed by hit dice (proportional healing would be better) but at the same time, it makes things like the Durable Feat (which I've never seen taken) more valuable.

Either way, it's an off the cuff idea. Someone who wants to use it can refine it to taste. Pairing it with 2024's boosted healing spells would be the best move, I think.

I will try to implement healing surges in next 5E campaign and see how it goes.

25% of max HP
number of surges: 2×prof bonus + Con mod
Once per Short rest when you take Dodge action you can spend a healing surge.
And you can spend a healing surge with any magical healing you receive, including potions.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Revivify ain't cheap, and is only available to Clerics and Paladins- if your party healers are other classes, they can't afford that luxury.

Revivify is one 3rd-level spell. I doubt it will be limited to Clerics and Paladins in 2024, Tasha's already added it to Druids, and the Primal spell list had it, and I rather doubt WotC will make Bards the only people not able to cast it.

Working it through - not requiring you to respond here, to be clear, just thinking out loud:

Cure Light Wounds cast as a 3rd-level spell in 2024 is 6d8+4 (usually) HP. Average 31 HP. Thus if a PC was, say, 50 HP deep, it'd be risky as to whether a powered-up CLW would be worth it. A CLW is also a main Action and requires movement. At first people are going to try and save PCs, but give it a year or two, and even non-optimizers will do the math and if people have access to Revivify (i.e. L5 and up), unless the PC is very shallowly in negative HP it's just not going to be worth it in terms of spell slot and action cost.

It also means that unless you add some kind of qualifier that when combat ends, people can "free heal" back to 0 HP (i.e. by PCs bandaging them etc.), you'll have a lot of PCs who are too deep in negative HP to be healed out of, and where the party either has to just wait for them to die to Revivify them, or doesn't have Revivify, so just has to watch them die, where currently, if you don't die in combat, you will live.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but would be a fairly major change to tone.

number of surges: 2×prof bonus + Con mod

I'd suggest dropping the CON mod. CON is already factored in to the percentage value, so double-dipping on it will just create a situation where some people have crazy numbers of HSes to the point where they basically can't run out. Instead I might give Martial classes a flat +2 HS if they seem to be running out of juice too soon, though I don't think that'll be a problem.

 

[James Gasik]

Revivify is one 3rd-level spell. I doubt it will be limited to Clerics and Paladins in 2024, Tasha's already added it to Druids, and the Primal spell list had it, and I rather doubt WotC will make Bards the only people not able to cast it.

Working it through - not requiring you to respond here, to be clear, just thinking out loud:

Cure Light Wounds cast as a 3rd-level spell in 2024 is 6d8+4 (usually) HP. Average 31 HP. Thus if a PC was, say, 50 HP deep, it'd be risky as to whether a powered-up CLW would be worth it. A CLW is also a main Action and requires movement. At first people are going to try and save PCs, but give it a year or two, and even non-optimizers will do the math and if people have access to Revivify (i.e. L5 and up), unless the PC is very shallowly in negative HP it's just not going to be worth it in terms of spell slot and action cost.

It also means that unless you add some kind of qualifier that when combat ends, people can "free heal" back to 0 HP (i.e. by PCs bandaging them etc.), you'll have a lot of PCs who are too deep in negative HP to be healed out of, and where the party either has to just wait for them to die to Revivify them, or doesn't have Revivify, so just has to watch them die, where currently, if you don't die in combat, you will live.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but would be a fairly major change to tone.


I'd suggest dropping the CON mod. CON is already factored in to the percentage value, so double-dipping on it will just create a situation where some people have crazy numbers of HSes to the point where they basically can't run out. Instead I might give Martial classes a flat +2 HS if they seem to be running out of juice too soon, though I don't think that'll be a problem.

Well, I didn't account for stabilization through Medicine checks or Spare the Dying- you could rework that to extend the time frame for saving someone's life.

If Revivify becomes more common, then it could be something to watch over time, as the 300 xp cost becomes less onerous. But 2024 also might have other things to do with money, which would make using it less viable, it's hard to say at this point.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But 2024 also might have other things to do with money, which would make using it less viable, it's hard to say at this point.

It's possible, but I currently doubt it - the big place we expected to see money being used a lot was the castle-building rules ("Bastions") and bizarrely they went extremely hard on weird level restrictions and points costs instead (?!?!?). It was the most MMORPG-esque system I've seen in any edition of D&D, and not in a good way.

 

[aco175]

Seems the point of the thread is to make healing cooler if you are not below 0HP, and/or penalize waiting until one drops to heal them. We can heal more if you are not below 0HP. Just add your hit die to any healing you get, so if a cure wounds spell is cast on the fighter at 5HP, he gains (1d8+4)cure wounds + (1d10)fighter hit die. You only get the 1d8+4 if you are dying and cannot tap any of your resolve. Use the same idea with potions to make them more viable in combat.

Another idea to add to the last or replace it is to just make any healing spell being you to 1HP if you are dying. Then you need a second spell to boost you making the number of slots and action economy favor casting spell before one goes down. Get rid of spare the dying if you want.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Another idea to add to the last or replace it is to just make any healing spell being you to 1HP if you are dying.

At levels above about 3, there's almost no mechanical difference between coming up on 1 HP and coming up on 7 HP, which is what most PCs come up on, because they're brought up by Healing Word or similar. So that's a change which wouldn't make much difference.

We can heal more if you are not below 0HP. Just add your hit die to any healing you get, so if a cure wounds spell is cast on the fighter at 5HP, he gains (1d8+4)cure wounds + (1d10)fighter hit die. You only get the 1d8+4 if you are dying and cannot tap any of your resolve. Use the same idea with potions to make them more viable in combat.

That would be more helpful, though note it doesn't really address yoyoing, and doesn't scale well, because as I noted before, HD scale with number not value. You'd want to increase the number of HD rolled with higher-level spells if you wanted it to scale correctly.

 

[Staffan]

I will try to implement healing surges in next 5E campaign and see how it goes.

25% of max HP
number of surges: 2×prof bonus + Con mod
Once per Short rest when you take Dodge action you can spend a healing surge.
And you can spend a healing surge with any magical healing you receive, including potions.

I would not tie healing surges to proficiency bonus. They already scale in power as hp goes up. In 4e, your number of surges was determined by your class: mostly 6-7 plus Con bonus, with fighters and paladins (the defender classes) getting 9-10+Con bonus.

 

[tetrasodium]

Oh yeah, right sorry, I was deep in a conversation about 4e healing, lol. I was thinking about not having a 3 turn limit, but I decided to model how quickly you can die currently in case someone was like "so you can just sit there and keep healing forever?!".

Ideally, this system would make people want to heal you long before you got to this point. Revivify ain't cheap, and is only available to Clerics and Paladins- if your party healers are other classes, they can't afford that luxury.

I'm not averse to increasing the amount of hit points healed by hit dice (proportional healing would be better) but at the same time, it makes things like the Durable Feat (which I've never seen taken) more valuable.

Either way, it's an off the cuff idea. Someone who wants to use it can refine it to taste. Pairing it with 2024's boosted healing spells would be the best move, I think.

300 gp is pocket lint after enough levels. A fix needs to work even after PCs steps past tier1 and are moving through tier2 or tier3+