D&D 5E Running a 5th edition game where magical healing is rare.

[Corpsetaker]

In my homebrew world I am toying with the idea of getting rid of magical healing by mortals. In my world clerics do not exist and no other classes have actual healing magic. There are some creatures who are able to heal but most healing is done by resting or using potions. There are a few places in the world where one can heal all their wounds in a matter of hours but those places are rare, sacred, and heavily guarded. I have an idea how I want to handle this so I will share it with you. I am thinking about after a five minute rest, the PC’s will heal only up to half their total HP while the rest would require a potion or rest. The only thing I am wondering is how this will work during an encounter. I would still use the standard rules for using an action to take out a potion and drink it so I wonder if this would work. I would make potions easy enough to find if the person has the right funds available. I would probably have different levels of potions. My theory here is that the land itself holds a lot of magic and the right ingredients can create a potion that will heal most wounds. Example: 1d8 = 25gp 2d8 = 50gp 3d8 = 75gp Etc…. Anyone else done something similar?

 

[Corpsetaker]

I've tried breaking this post up in paragraphs but for some reason I can't.

 

[Kreinas]

No magical healing isn't "easy" in the traditional sense of; We brought a healer, looks like we won't be going down!

A couple options;
Healer feat w/ healing kits. If they want to be healed, someone will grab it (maybe everyone?)
Pre-emptive damage reduction
High AC focus
Battle-planning and strategy (whoa, that's a new one!)

There are plenty of ways to play a campaign without healing. If you have made your party aware of this ahead of time, and they are experienced players with a bit of knowledge on optimization, the campaign wouldn't even really need adjustments.

 

[Psikerlord#]

In my homebrew world I am toying with the idea of getting rid of magical healing by mortals. In my world clerics do not exist and no other classes have actual healing magic. There are some creatures who are able to heal but most healing is done by resting or using potions. There are a few places in the world where one can heal all their wounds in a matter of hours but those places are rare, sacred, and heavily guarded. I have an idea how I want to handle this so I will share it with you. I am thinking about after a five minute rest, the PC’s will heal only up to half their total HP while the rest would require a potion or rest. The only thing I am wondering is how this will work during an encounter. I would still use the standard rules for using an action to take out a potion and drink it so I wonder if this would work. I would make potions easy enough to find if the person has the right funds available. I would probably have different levels of potions. My theory here is that the land itself holds a lot of magic and the right ingredients can create a potion that will heal most wounds. Example: 1d8 = 25gp 2d8 = 50gp 3d8 = 75gp Etc…. Anyone else done something similar?

I think you could go with the rest option alone, and don't worry about potions at all, or keep potions as healing 1d8+3 hp or whatever amount you like. As long as the party has opportunities for quick rests, and restoring half their HP, they will be able to push on to the next encounter. I think this could work well.

My only suggestion would be to consider whether you want a sliding scale for rest healing. Does it get worse over time/the more times it is done per day, or is it always half hp? I am using a rest variant at the moment where PCs can always short rest to restore HP back to bloodied (to use a 4th edition term - half max hp, but they don't heal over half way without magic or potions or other abilities).

 

[Curmudjinn]

A big problem with this method of play is the "Let's camp!" issue that comes about, similar to when characters routinely stop between encounters or moving forward to recharge their short/long rest abilities.

Forcing a more realistic healing alters the spirit of the combat rules as well, as Kreinas makes notes above of ways to balance out the change. If characters are constantly hurt, they aren't going to go adventuring as often. And if they aren't adventuring, you're not gaming. Then it becomes snack and cellphone hour at the GM's house.

If healing becomes far harder to receive, make damage harder to receive as well. Maybe Con saves to avoid or lessen damage, or damage is temporary per encounter and you must make some sort of roll to see how much damage is permanent, etc etc.

A wacky WoD-esque method could be to roll a d6 for each point of damage taken at the end of the encounter. Any die roll over your Con modifier is a point of damage taken, and equal to or below is bruising or armor/item degradation that you can shrug or rest off without issue.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In my homebrew world I am toying with the idea of getting rid of magical healing by mortals. In my world clerics do not exist and no other classes have actual healing magic. There are some creatures who are able to heal but most healing is done by resting or using potions. There are a few places in the world where one can heal all their wounds in a matter of hours but those places are rare, sacred, and heavily guarded.

The problem I'm seeing is that magical healing is kind of lame in 5E, just by default. Normal fire and swords and whatnot will only produce the sorts of "injuries" that can recover with a night of sleep (or an hour with a med-kit), which means magical healing (of damage) isn't that big of a deal as a setting element. There's no point in guarding the sacred grove of healing, because anyone can always heal anywhere overnight. If you don't address that issue, by drastically reducing the rate of natural healing, then nobody in-game will care the slightest about the rare sources of magical healing that exist within the world.

If you're just concerned about possible complications associated with getting rid of healing in combat, then don't worry about it. Nobody needs in-combat healing in 5E. The worst that will happen is that a PC might catch a bad critical hit and go down early, and then one player sits around kibitzing for twenty minutes while everyone else finishes things. Combats will be very slightly more difficult, overall, but not generally to a meaningful degree. Seriously, don't worry about it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What's the idea behind 'no magical healing?' What are you trying to get at in terms of tone or campaign-definition? Why remove healing spells, but not potions, for instance?


HD provide a fair amount of short-rest healing, and everyone heals fully with a long rest. Neither of those things are magical, so there's a fair amount of non-magical healing, right there.

Loss of magical healing primarily impacts in-combat healing. About all you have is the Fighter using Second Wind, and that doesn't work if he's dropped.

But, if potions are abundant (and even scaling), then in-combat healing is covered, the only sticking point being who expends their actions on it.
The main impact would be that the classes that you don't ban, but that do have healing spells removed from their list, will have more slots left available to use for other spells.

 

[Uchawi]

Good luck. But if magic is rare you remove the majority of 5E classes from being viable. In theory they are all hedge classes, that appear once in a blue moon. For example, a couple magic classes per town. Otherwise, why is healing rare in comparison to any magic. At that point, I guess you would restrict divine classes.

 

[DeathMutant]

I am running a Primeval Thule game with no "Surgeless-Healing" (to borrow a term from 4e) and it is working-out quite well. All restoration of hit points requires the expenditure of Hit Dice with one exception: Goodberries. A creature can benefit from only 1 Goodberry per day, however, so it is not like 3e's over-powered "Wand of Cure Light Wounds" for easy down-time healing. Magical healing will still restore 1 hit point if the "patient" has no remaining hit dice. Creatures do not restore any lost hit points after a long rest but recover ALL hit dice. Named creatures, like the PCs, can use an action to expend hit dice and restore lost hit points during combat but only once per short rest. This is like Second Wind from 4e and Fighters can also use their Second Wind class feature which does *not* expend hit dice.

There are more rules/options too, including Healing Kits and modified spells, but I am not going to post them here; PM me for details if you are interested.

 

[Illithidbix]

I have done a campaign where magical healing is rare, but I did it from the opposite way round. I made it rare in setting but didn't change players access to it.
Magic was very rare in setting and the player characters have an astonishingly high level of it, even at level 1 simply by virtue of having two daily spell slots.

Even Magical healing the players had was likewise unreliable on ordinary people (those without class levels), it might partially heal them, but they remain crippled, comatose and with long term injuries that I can't be bothered inflicting upon PCs.
Players and some NPCS are exceptional (the "Unfettered") by dint of being outright superhuman resilient and magical healing reliably working on them regardless of injury.

As for your idea.
I think it would work, proving your players are all happier with a different feel and pace to the game than standard D&D. It will make every encounter more costly.

I am trying to work out the cost to Bards, Druids, Paladins and Rangers for not having access to healing magic, but I think they'll be fine. More spell slots for blasting things instead.
Specifically are you keeping Paladins and "Lay on Hands"?