D&D 5E On the healing options in the 5e DMG

[pemerton]

Your statement about inconsistency and the narrative really says to me that you aren't in touch with the system.

What do you mean "I'm not in touch with the system?"

When I play D&D, I add and subtract hit points from totals in accordance with the rules. And I narrate events as make sense in the fiction, relative to what the hit point events are telling me (eg who is winning, who is losing).

I am not the one who has asserted that the system is inconsistent - that was you! (In post 490, "The rules have been one big contradiction since the beginning".)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If you decide that hit point are meat, the range of your permitted narrations is narrower, but the options are still, for practical purpose, unlimited within either range.

It's unlimited, but within a specified range. Since we know that it's always a physical injury (or we know that it's always a mojo injury), we can be more detailed in how we treat it in terms of interaction with other things.

If we know that every HP contains a non-negligible meat component, then we know that healing must be consistent with physically repairing the body. If we know that every HP is entirely mojo, then we can heal everything with inspiration (or one night of rest) without fear of contradiction.

If you keep everything abstract the entire time, and we can't guarantee that any given hit was actually a hit or a miss, then we can't guarantee that it's appropriate for any given injury to be healed with inspiration (or overnight).

 

[Hussar]

Hang on. Who says it has to be one or the other all the time? Why can't it be both or either as needed?

I think that's what I find hard to follow in this. Even 4e didn't necessitate an absolute answer in either direction.

In AD&D, HP was defined as being mostly mojo, but, in play, it didn't really matter because virtually all healing was done by magic and, frankly, about the only way to deal damage was with stuff that physically hurt you. Ability damage was fairly rare and almost always permanent and most often the result of magic. Poisons didn't reduce your abilities, they typically outright killed you. 3e changed that. 3e uses Ability scores as a measure of health with all sorts of effects ignoring HP and dealing damage to ability scores. IOW, you effectively had two pools of health - HP and Ability scores. 4e went back to the AD&D model where almost all effects dealt HP damage. Where 4e changed things was they greatly expanded what could deal HP damage. So poison, which in AD&D would have flat out killed you, or in 3e would have dealt ability damage, now straight up deals HP damage. Rider effects were either very temporary, or dealt with using the disease track mechanics.

But, in none of the editions, are you forced to use a single strand of narration.

 

[pemerton]

It's unlimited, but within a specified range. Since we know that it's always a physical injury (or we know that it's always a mojo injury), we can be more detailed in how we treat it in terms of interaction with other things.

Can you provide an example of this sort of interactions? (Other than healing times?)

If we know that every HP contains a non-negligible meat component, then we know that healing must be consistent with physically repairing the body.

Which brings us back to the point that most people in the gameworld (including low-level PCs) never suffer injuries that are not potentially fatal yet take more than a few days to heal. Nor do they ever suffer injuries that are incapable of healing without medical or nursing care.

To me, that doesn't make for a consistent gameworld. Are these people, or mutants?

If we know that every HP is entirely mojo, then we can heal everything with inspiration (or one night of rest) without fear of contradiction.

If you keep everything abstract the entire time, and we can't guarantee that any given hit was actually a hit or a miss, then we can't guarantee that it's appropriate for any given injury to be healed with inspiration (or overnight).

You are missing the option that in fact I, and other posters on this thread, use. I pointed to it quite a way upthread, when I pointed out the distinction between healing in the sense of hit point recovery, and healing in the sense of physical restoration of the body.

Hit point loss, and hit point recovery, in my view correlate to losting or gaining the ability to fight on and win. Some events of hit point loss might correspond to (non-serious) physical injury (eg scratches, nicks, brusing, of the sort Gygax describes). But the restoration of those hit points doesn't mean that the injury is healed. It just means that the injury is no longer a burden on the PC's ability to fight and win.

In Gygax's AD&D, hit point loss that drops a character to 0 hp or below is different, in so far as it corresponds to an event of suffering a more serious injury (immediately fatal, if you drop to -4 or below, and potentially fatal if you drop to 0 to -3 and then bleed out to -10).

In 4e, hit point loss that drops you to -ve bloodied is different in the same way - it correlates to an event of suffering a fatal wound. Hit point loss that drops to zero or below, and that is then followed by 3 failed death saves, has the same character.

Even in these cases, though, recovering the lost hit points doesn't correlate to healing the serious injury. In AD&D that takes a week of rest or a Heal spell or equivalent, regardless of hit points restored (DMG p 82). In 4e, if a character is inspired or roused back into action, that tells us that the injury wasn't so serious after all.

In neither case is the hit point recovery is not correlated with physical restoration of an injury.

 

[Gimul]

I don't know if anyone pointed this out yet but the "gritty realism" option doesn't seem to say you can take a long rest once a week the same way the default rules say you can take a long rest once a day. I think what it says is that the long rest takes a week the way the default has it take 8 hours (4 if you're an elf). So unless you're also tweaking the rule that says you cannot engage in adventuring activities for more than an hour at a time and still get the benefit of a long rest, you aren't going to be facing too many encounters while you're regaining your hit dice.

By this I mean to say that I think "gritty realism" means that you regenerate hit dice in what we would call "down time," and I don't see how that necessitates any change in pacing. Once you deplete your hit dice you're due for some down time.

The rate at which time passes "in game" and the rate at things unfold at the table are completely different. My post refers to the ratio of encounters to rests; the execution of the rests themselves is immaterial (relative to my post).

 

[Hriston]

The rate at which time passes "in game" and the rate at things unfold at the table are completely different. My post refers to the ratio of encounters to rests; the execution of the rests themselves is immaterial (relative to my post).

Yes, I assumed we were both talking about game-time rather than real-time. And I agree with your original post that said that changing the lengths of rests maintains balance. What I was pointing out was based on the assertion that you and a number of others have made that the only way to maintain balance under gritty realism is to spread the 6-8 encounters out over an entire week of game-time. I disagree because the length of the long rest itself doesn't have much, if anything, to do with the time in-between long rests. I think it would be more correct to say that under gritty realism the normal day's worth of encounters should be spread out over three days because the rules assume two short rests per normal day.

 

[pemerton]

I agree with [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] re: 6-8 encounters per "day", with 2 short rests in that time, means if short rests are overnight sleeps and long rests are a week we're talking 6-8 encounters per 3 days, then a week or more of down time. I think this would suit non-epic, urban play particularl well - get in some hijinks that take a couple of days to resolve, then weeks/months/seasons pass before the next lot of hijinks comes along.

Does anyone have thoughts on what sort of rest strcuture would suit classic wilderness exploration? The 8 hours/1 week structure doesn't seem an especially good fit, because it tends to mean too many short rests (assuming that one or two encounters per day is the typical maximum) but not enough long rests (wilderness exploration doesn't normally involve a week or more of downtime).