D&D 5E Rarity of Healing for the Common Man in the 5e Implied Setting

[delericho]

From PHB
Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify , is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components).

This would seem to make magical healing vanishingly rare for just about everyone in the setting - most people will be making enough to sustain themselves but won't have much left over after they've handled lifestyle expenses. Certainly, not many farmers will have that sort of money easily available for emergencies.

Access to magic, of any sort, would appear to be limited to the rich middle classes, those of the nobility who aren't impoverished, and royalty.

(Of course, the same logic should by rights have applied to 3e, but never did - it was assumed that every village of a certain size had at least one adept capable of casting the spell, and that people would therefore have easy access.)

 

[jadrax]

This would seem to make magical healing vanishingly rare for just about everyone in the setting - most people will be making enough to sustain themselves but won't have much left over after they've handled lifestyle expenses. Certainly, not many farmers will have that sort of money easily available for emergencies.

Well, looking at the Hireling rules, Lifestyle Expenses seem to take exactly half the minimum wage. So an Unskilled Labourer (laborers, porters, maids, and similar workers) with a Squalid Lifestyle makes 1 spare silver a day, or 1 spare gold a Tenday. A Skilled Labourer (mercenary, artisan, scribe, and so on) with a Modest lifestyle makes 1 spare gold a day, or 10 spare gold a Tenday. Obviously a lot of that will go on things your Lifestyle doesn't cover, (new Equipment, Animals, etc.) but if you are sensible, your easily going to have a 10 gold emergency fund even if unskilled.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Remember that the one working adult male in the family will have to pay the lifestyle expenses of his spouse and children, though. Undoubtedly those will be lower than the lifestyle expenses assumed for a strapping big adventurer, but still.

 

[delericho]

Well, looking at the Hireling rules, Lifestyle Expenses seem to take exactly half the minimum wage. So an Unskilled Labourer (laborers, porters, maids, and similar workers) with a Squalid Lifestyle makes 1 spare silver a day, or 1 spare gold a Tenday. A Skilled Labourer (mercenary, artisan, scribe, and so on) with a Modest lifestyle makes 1 spare gold a day, or 10 spare gold a Tenday. Obviously a lot of that will go on things your Lifestyle doesn't cover, (new Equipment, Animals, etc.) but if you are sensible, your easily going to have a 10 gold emergency fund even if unskilled.

Remember that the one working adult male in the family will have to pay the lifestyle expenses of his spouse and children, though. Undoubtedly those will be lower than the lifestyle expenses assumed for a strapping big adventurer, but still.

Yep, this. Plus, how many people do you know have three-to-four months wages sitting as an emergency fund? I know the recommendation is to have six, but there's not too many people get anywhere close to that.

 

[Pentegarn]

If 5e was anything like it's playtest, there's WAY too much healing. A problem that was introduced back in 4e and carried over to the playtest. Way too much hand-holding in D&D these days. Hell, it was practically impossible to die in 4e short of a series of very unlucky rolls at just the wrong time. That or a suicide from the boredom that comes with a complete lack of any sense of risk due to the troll-like natural healing and the XP economy encounter design. Not that 3e's CR is any less of a hand-holding issue, but at least healing rates were acceptable.

Without that sense of risk, what's the use? The DM might as well set each player down in turn and tell him/her how special he/she is and how he/she has won the game of D&D, while the player leans forward on the edge of his/her seat, doe-eyed, mouth hanging open in amazement, clapping his/her hands in and occasionally yelling, "YAAAAAY!"

 

[jadrax]

Yep, this. Plus, how many people do you know have three-to-four months wages sitting as an emergency fund? I know the recommendation is to have six, but there's not too many people get anywhere close to that.

True, but bizarrely we are way more cash strapped on average today than average peasants ever were. We do still have a much better life style because stuff is way cheaper (and in many cases, exists, peasants did not drink much Cherry Cola for example).

One of the issues is that history tends to focus on people living below the breadline, because human interest. But such people were far from typical. A recurring historical theme is nobles passing laws to stop peasants spending their excess cash on cloths, because when they did they were better dressed than most nobles. Another factor, is that due to gnoll and orc raids, the price of labour is probably quite high as you do not tend to have anywhere close to a useful oversupply of population.

Of course the downside is a lot of peasants probably get eaten by orcs, minotaurs and escaped Ankhegs that were being used to aerate the soil.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I guess the bottom line is this: PCs are exceptional, not mundane. Don't take what PCs can and can't do and what does and does not happen to them as a measuring stick for some sort of universal physics that applies to everyone in a setting.

Nope. Outside of class abilities PCs are people like everyone else. Don't want the world to be fine after a good night's sleep? Well then don't make fast healing the campaign default.

Monsters will heal overnight as well and they may spend HD to heal during short rests. That is just the way the implied setting works. If the PCs heal overnight just because, then what are the healing rates for regular people? It is much simpler to choose a standard and stick to it.

 

[Bryk]

If 5e was anything like it's playtest, there's WAY too much healing. A problem that was introduced back in 4e and carried over to the playtest. Way too much hand-holding in D&D these days. Hell, it was practically impossible to die in 4e short of a series of very unlucky rolls at just the wrong time. That or a suicide from the boredom that comes with a complete lack of any sense of risk due to the troll-like natural healing and the XP economy encounter design. Not that 3e's CR is any less of a hand-holding issue, but at least healing rates were acceptable.

Without that sense of risk, what's the use? The DM might as well set each player down in turn and tell him/her how special he/she is and how he/she has won the game of D&D, while the player leans forward on the edge of his/her seat, doe-eyed, mouth hanging open in amazement, clapping his/her hands in and occasionally yelling, "YAAAAAY!"

Oddly enough I started with D&D Next. I noticed that fairly early on as I could not very easily threaten the group that had a Mt Dwarf Life Cleric (they had +1 AC then), so with two basic magic items (armor and a shield), he was sitting at 23AC. He could heal anyone back to full, and had infinite spare the dying to 1 HP.

The other party, had to at least attempt strategy.

I had to scale up the difficulty so much I felt it wasn't making any sense.

5E came out, that Life Cleric has quit my campaign. He probably feels sore from the bat, however I felt his character was just too much. It was able to tank anything and heal the entire party. If he didn't go down the party would not go down.

I was very pleased as a DM to see the healing get hit as hard as it did with release.

My homebrew, which I tried to take what I felt was implied has temples with powerful healers in the major cities, but you aren't going to find that in villages and towns. My setting has cities where the youngest city is 1000 years old though, so take that into account. On top of that there has been a lingering war for the past 1000 years.

 

[WayneLigon]

It'll be interesting to see what the suggested demographics in the DMG will be like.

I'd prefer to look at magical healing as a fairly rare thing, as the Cleric writeup certainly implies that empowered clerics are rare things. I like rare magical healing because it ups the drama factor. Heck, even with a 1st level healer of some sort in your small village, wounds are still a bad thing - the cleric can only cast that spell maybe a couple times a day. And there are still a lot of non-wound-y things he cannot heal magically: diseases, poisons, things like smoke inhalation, etc. All it takes is someone getting a deep puncture wound or even just an infected blister, and they can die when it turns septic. That's a pretty powerful scene, the guy with literally the power of the gods at his hands and he's not good enough to save his best friend from something that, to us, is a minor wound barely worth notice.

I don't really like the whole 'charging for healing' thing so much for Good deities - it smacks too much of 'we need some more thing to soak up extra gold from players so they can never contemplate purchasing a magic item' from earlier times. Certainly the local druid doesn't charge local people who come to seek his help, but he might set them a task or just have them help him out in the forest. Likewise, the empowered city priest is likely kept busy using his healing powers on the poor and afflicted.

Keeping empowered clerics rare is another great story hook. Likely they must travel incognito, least they be mobbed by people needing their help. They are sought out for adventure-causing things, like investigating a plague, or to heal an important person. It leads to struggle: the non-powered high priest demands the empowered cleric heal this patron of the church, but on the way the empowered cleric sees a wagon run over two people, and they will die without his help, but it means the patron probably will die if he helps them.