The Healing Paradox

[hayek]

If you go the serious wound route every time you get to zero, don't you just run away every time you get close and heal back up?won't that lead to more 15 minute days?

Agreed, but I think the issue is that -1 to all attacks/checks is too severe a penalty for a wound. Players will always go out of their way to rest if possible with that penalty. How about this:

every time you drop below 0 you get a wound.

if you have a wound, every time you make an attack/check, roll a d12 along with the d20. if you roll a 1 on the d12 you get -1 to your d20 roll... if you have 2 wounds, and you roll a 2 on the d12 you get -2 to the d20 roll, and so on...

this gives the benefits of:
1. there's some flavor to the wound and you know it's there because you're always rolling that d12, but it's not a severe enough penalty to make you want to rest immediately whenever you get one - a -1 every now and then isn't really going to effect things, but it occassionally will allow for a memorable moment when that wound made you pull up your sword arm just a little too soon and miss...

2. opens up cool mechanics to interact with it - Grizzled Veteran feat = +1 to all d12 wound rolls. Barbarian Rage = while raging, you don't have to make any wound rolls. etc...

 

[samursus]

Of all the interesting ideas I have read, the one that appeals to me the most is using a Ritual-based healing magic only. Seems simplest to implement, and while not being a traditional D&D trope, easily fits in most literature-based fantasy settings IMO.

It would be a big change from Clerics popping CLW's all the time, but it could further separate the Cleric from the "healbot by default" role. Sure, Clerics would be best at said rituals, but their actual spell slots could be used independently of their healing abilities.

Perhaps they could still maintain some battlefield heals at higher levels?

 

[Meeki]

Except that you move healing from in-combat to lots of time spent out of combat healing via rituals. Rituals don't fix the "issues", merely move healing to out of combat. Players will still horde components to cast the ritual.

Wound systems are way too much bookwork but if you like that sort of thing it could work. I doubt 5e would have it in, it's not very D&D.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't know maybe something like, each time you drop below 0 (or if you want it more often, each time you suffer a critical hit and/or massive damage) you get ability damage. Traditionally, ability damage needs higher level magic than HP to be healed, and since it affects checks and saves, it feels quite like a wound system.

Agreed, but I think the issue is that -1 to all attacks/checks is too severe a penalty for a wound. Players will always go out of their way to rest if possible with that penalty.

A random ability score, single point of damage to the score, option is not a bad way to handle it, since that turns the -1 penalty to everything into a -1 penalty to some things, every other point of damgae to a given score. Keep it rare enough, and that might work.

However, to really make that work, you need that division I discussed earlier, where curing the ability score damage is possible and reasonable using limited resources (spell slots, rituals with gold, etc.) for awhile, so that a party can continue to roll along with little to no effective penalties for awhile. Then when resources run out, it starts to hurt more and more, slowly.

So the question becomes, can "cure light wounds" be turned into a real "cure light wounds" that has nothing to do with hit points, and thus is a more strategic use of a 1st level spell? Or alternately, can you make the effect of that name more robust to make it really sing on the hit point front, while providing other options for the ability score damage?

Also, I think there has to be ways to take said "wound" damage besides getting to zero hit points, unless hit points are radically scaled down (though that is not necessarily a bad route, either).

 

[Derren]

Here's the issue. If players are not at, or close to, full hitpoints, they will use every renewable healing resource available to them (and sometimes non-renewable resources such as potions too). If characters do not heal fully overnight, then the next morning will be spent spending hitdice, and even worse, using up the cleric's spells as soon as possible - perhaps even forcing another rest.

Now, I don't want to see full healing overnight. I also don't want to see Clerics forced to burn everything into healing, because it's an easy source of renewable HP. I further don't want to see multiple rests taken in a row, unless the current storyline allows for this.

Easy solution, create living dungeons and worlds. When you do then the PCs, while still being able to take multiple rests, don't have time to do so in most cases as time still goes on and events are moving.

Many people are expecting the system to prevent 15 minute days when in fact its the DM who allows them to happen.

 

[Li Shenron]

A random ability score, single point of damage to the score, option is not a bad way to handle it, since that turns the -1 penalty to everything into a -1 penalty to some things, every other point of damgae to a given score. Keep it rare enough, and that might work.

I was thinking 1d6 damage to one ability score if used when dropping to 0 (1 single damage point makes more sense if used with critical hits, but the it means almost every day you'll get some of this damage, too often for my tastes). Note that it has to be generally higher than 1 if the healing rate is 1/day as in 3ed, otherwise again it woudn't last after the first night!

This assumes that we're talking about a gaming group that wants wounds to carry over to the next day(s), right?

So the rarity in this case (the one where you get ability damaged only when dropping to or below 0) is related exactly to how often you drop to 0, which can be generally quite low, maybe once every few sessions.

 

[Wexter]

"Push on or rest up?" - That's the question every party and player will be facing and what I believe is the crux of the problem. The main issue is that there's no compelling gameplay reason to push on. There's often *story* reasons, but I believe there should be gameplay reasons as well.

Resting up: In essence this means recovering resources. Usually encompasses healing, spells, ammunition, surges, or any per-day ability. As the party runs low on resources, it's perfectly natural to want to recover them. No matter how brutal the recovery process is (1 hp per day), one can simply announce 'resting until healed' and there we are back at 100% be it in a night or month.

Pushing on: There really is no benefit to pushing on in any edition I've ever seen except 4e. Here we have action points every 2 encounters. "Well, we're low on dailies, but we've got action points... Should we push on?" Not exactly a balanced set of options but at least there's something on the other end of the scale for once.

I'm not saying D&D needs action points. But I will say D&D needs a reward system to balance the resource systems. There's quite a few different ways of doing it aside from action points. Key to this being that the reward expires on rest (or in less than a day.)
Potions: If they spoil/expire in a day (or less), but last through the day, you can hand out some nice rewards for finding them.
Class/theme/feats: Get some features in that reward success. Such as: (Barbarian) Whenever you land a killing blow, you're envigorated for the rest of the day (+1 damage - stacks up to x times). Rogue: Whenever you land a critical hit, your sneak attack damage increases by 1d6 for the rest of the day.
Morale: After a successful encounter, the party's morale raises (roll a charisma check). Everyone hi-fives and regains a daily resource.

Ok, not the greatest set of ideas. But the point that players ought to be rewarded for pushing on, I think frames the healing question in a whole new light.

Fighter: "I'm low on HP, but I've built up a nice bonus to AC."
Cleric: "Almost out of spells, but have +3 glory of Pelor."
Rogue: "I've got 4 stacks of Murder! All out of tricks."
Wizard: "I ate all my rations. Should we keep going?"

Now the party isn't simply weaker for being low on HP/Healing. Riskier? Sure. But not necessarily weaker.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

This assumes that we're talking about a gaming group that wants wounds to carry over to the next day(s), right?

We are probably talking somewhat at cross purposes, but I'd say that's only half of it. I also assume that the gaming group wants wounds to carry over for some time, but without immediately and severly putting pressure on the players to hole up and rest, or retreat. The idea is to press on through the wounds for some time, until the pressure gets to be too much. You need a finer control for that, since every group has their own set of limits--and these will also vary by the situation at hand.

So the rarity in this case (the one where you get ability damaged only when dropping to or below 0) is related exactly to how often you drop to 0, which can be generally quite low, maybe once every few sessions.

If it doesn't happen very much, and when it does happen it is so severe as to immediately prompt dealing with it--it isn't really much of a threat. Thus, I'd put such a system more in the realm of that illusionism that I mentioned early--atmosphere, not reality. If the players are walking around with this feeling that, "what we are doing is risky, because we could get knocked down to zero and then take 1d6 to a key stat," but in practice it doesn't mean they spend much time adventuring with an actual penalty, then it seems to me like a lot of mechanical hoop jumping for mere atmosphere. But then, I'm not one that generally appreciates such mechanics--more dreaded in theory than practice.

That's a lot like an AD&D wizard spellbook that never gets stolen because the DM doesn't have the heart to mess with the wizard player that way. One of the keys to making such mechanics hurt is to make them not hurt so much that people will go to great lengths to avoid them.

 

[LostSoul]

Easy solution, create living dungeons and worlds. When you do then the PCs, while still being able to take multiple rests, don't have time to do so in most cases as time still goes on and events are moving.

Many people are expecting the system to prevent 15 minute days when in fact its the DM who allows them to happen.

While I agree with you, I think that if you have something as vital to the game as resource recovery, you should provide the DM with some help via the system as to when or how to assign costs to recovery.

This makes me think of a blog post from Zak S. a while ago - about thinking of the system as another player at the table. The DM can assign costs to recovery, the players can choose when to rest & recover; what about that other guy? He could at least provide some input!

Here's the post: Playing D&D With Porn Stars: The Game Is A Player

 

[Stalker0]

The basic issue isn't around healing. It's the simple fact that mechanically there is no downside to resting. Now DMs can create reasons, but at the core Players are encouraged to be at max hps.

The fix is mechanical penalties for resting. If you take for example the 4e action point idea but made it so you started with 5 at the start of the adventure and lost one with each extended rest. It's one simple example you could use a variety of ideas. The key is that resting has a penalty so it becomes an actual choice