AaronOfBarbaria
Adventurer
For the record, I think the "healing surcharge" sort of rule so that the PCs heal from near to zero rather than always from zero is probably the most elegant and low-impact alteration suggested so far.
D&D 5E Tweak Instant Cure spells to fix whack-a-mole
jasper
Rotten DM
Depends on the adventure. If just a wandering monster or small goblin patrol I play them to kill the living before eating the juicy meat sack. However if the party has been hunting gabby's tribe or the villain is sending instructions to gabby's patrol then it would be Kill the down pcs then help your buddy.
Sadras
Legend
Again, in my actual play experience, adding the "count down to -10" replacement rule completely solves the issues the OP is having (and me too) in a simple and straight-forward manner
I'm not following you on this, perhaps I missed something earlier - I haven't read all the posts. Do the heroes at your table not rise from healing only to be whacked like moles back into the negatives (unconscious)? Or do the characters not fall into unconsciousness when in the negatives?
CapnZapp
Legend
Okay but I don't. So no, I haven't.
I like how a character that had 4 hp and took 5 damage drops to -1 and thus will be brought back to consciousness by even the smallest healing (such as a 1 hp Lay On Hands tap). That would be lost with your proposal.
Well, it works badly in newer ones: D&D is not a game designed to have the event "drop to zero" be uncommon.
Or rather, sure it can be made to work. But since you need to recalibrate the whole set of assumptions based on "all points of the hp pool are available for use" I would not say it is an easy way of solving the problem.
Sure the rule would be easy, but the consequences of such a rule (swinginess and on-bad-roll:iness) are rather hard to contain. There's a reason you don't die at zero anymore.
But you're welcome to try it out. Myself, I have a much easier time accepting the arbitrariness of a number such as -10 (and the quickness and simplicity of it) than those other alternatives.
CapnZapp
Legend
Since you didn't speak in your moderator color, allow me to interpret that as a regular post and clarify that I was calling out Saeviomagys eloquent defense of why whackamole isn't a problem and how it can easily be stopped, by contrasting all that energy with simply changing the rule, thus obviating the need to speak of the problem and how to fix it altogether.
Regards
CapnZapp
Legend
Sorry, I might be a tad inebriated but that's too many negatives for me to follow. Could I ask you to restate the question?
(No sarcasm, I honestly don't understand if you're asking me if my players' characters are whacked like moles, if my players' used to use the whackamole strategies, or if my rules change changed all that for the better, because if you do, the answer would be no, yes, and yes)
Tony Vargas
Legend
That triggered another random idea: what if you could only restore hps to a character who was already stable? If you try, you instead just stabilize him. So to heal a downed ally with magic 'efficiently,' it'd be Spare the Dying followed by Healing Word or Cure Wounds the next round? Even with heal-from-0, that'd get inefficient in terms of action economy, as the ally sits out at least one turn, and the caster uses at least one action + a bonus action. Of course, without spare the dying (healing word x2, frex) it's slot-inefficient, instead.
Of course, that's still balancing one problematic efficiency with other different inefficiencies - 'punishing' - rather than just eliminating the perverse incentive.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Allow me to address this, since the Capn seems to be temporarily incapacitated.
Under this system, a hero who is only barely dropped into the negatives (-1 or -2) can rise like a mole and immediately be whacked down again. Since the system keeps track down to -10, though, a heavy hit against a hero that is barely positive will send that character down to -10; once a hero is at -10, they cannot trivially rise again, because restoring more than 10hp to a fallen character is not a trivial act. If the healer throws out a Healing Word at rank 1 or 2, then the character is likely to go from -10 up to -3 or -1, so they will remain unconscious and thus lose a turn. Actually getting the hero back into the fight would require a fairly high-level spell slot for Healing Word, or require the healer's action to cast a real Cure Wounds spell.
CapnZapp
Legend
Ah. Thanks Saelorn.
Yes.
What all this means is: "problem solved".
And what that means is: the players used to try the Healing Word strategy (the fancy term for "let's whack a mole"). Now they don't.
Instead, they switched to "dotting" the fallen ally. (Ideally a 1 point Lay on Hands heal, but the Healing Word spell will do too)
That is, whether Joe's at -8 or -2, he gets a small (single-digit, ideally just 1) heal. This doesn't bring him back up to zero or positive hp, but it does mean he's considered stable, and no longer has to make death saves.
(Remember, we feel it's more immersive if the healer can't tell exactly the number of hit points of a patient. If the healer knows Joe is at -1 and not at -9, then it is of course quite okay to cast a Healing Word. That one time, as illustrated so ably by Saelorn above)
Of course, that's not the only strategy. The Heal spell still works nicely!
But the questionable feeling where you would not stay down is gone. And that's all that matters
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