Proposed Damage / Healing System

[KarinsDad]

I don't know I agree about the same Pandora's Box that you see, since 4e healing is based on exactly what Gary Gygax always said hit points were about -- they're not all just about your physical wounds.

Not to get heavily into this discussion, which has been repeatedly hashed on many other threads, but 4E hit points are not about physical wounds at all until a PC dies. It's all luck, stamina, etc.

A 4E PC can go from full hit points to a low number of them, heal himself up in a short rest without any magic, and he can do this over and over again until he runs out of healing surges. He can then take an extended rest and regain any remaining used hit points and regain the healing surges. He's not really wounded at all. He's merely exhausted. He never actually got hit for physical damage, he just got tired (or unlucky, or whatever).

He falls off a 200 foot cliff, and he's just fatigued.

The only time the PC is actually physically wounded is when he dies. He might die if he falls unconscious, but the game is set up so that this rarely happens (due to there being other PCs in a party). Even negative hit points are not a guarantee of any physical wounds.

Gary's hit points did not limit hit points to physical wounds, but physical wounds were part of his system. Hit points required magic or a lengthy rest to recover.

4E removed physical wounds from hit points completely. Hit points in 4E are some type of stamina point or stun point. They no longer represent physical damage at all unless the PC dies. That's the Pandora's Box. This is a factor that does bother many players of earlier editions and in order to get players of earlier editions and players of 4E comfortable, some type of middle ground needs to be found where physical damage does become part of the system again.

I suspect that if the 5E designers go back to hit points as they were run in earlier editions, that will bother many of the current 4E players. Since the idea of 5E is to bring players of many different versions of the game back together, a compromise is probably required.

 

[DEFCON 1]

KarinsDad explains it quite well. In the current 4E hit point paradigm... all it takes is a single 6 hour rest to remove ALL effects of being hurt. No matter how you interpret hit points, or healing surges or death saves... 6 hours of rest and a 4E PC is perfectly fine. No need for magic, no need for Heal checks, no need for long-term bedrest, no need for anything which might imply the PC suffered anything more than just fatigue and exhaustion (except for that 3rd failed death save).

Obviously, this paradigm will have people who are completely fine with it, and others who will hate it with a passion.

So the real question going forward comes down to this:

Which side of the paradigm gets to be "base" and which side then has to be the "module"? I really think it'll end up having to be one or the other, because I suspect any attempt to design a whole new set of rules which put both sides together into a combined "base" will only bother people more than picking one side over the other.

KarinsDad's rule works rather well I think. And in any other situation or 3rd party ruleset, it would be a good change. I just think that there will be more pushback by everybody on a compromised healing mechanic, instead of one side getting their base and the other side just having to accept their preferred style as an add-on module.

 

[Nebulous]

I would too, but I don't think it is going to happen. Now that they have opened Pandora's Box in 4E of non-traditional healing, I think that only a compromise will be possible of getting most people on board. The compromise I proposed here will probably not be it, but 4E is so far from traditional healing that I don't see how the original type healing will live in our post-4E world and pull in many of those players.

Granted, they could pull in some elements (like healing 25%), but self healing is tough.

He's right. I mostly like the OP's proposal, it could be tweaked some, but 4e introduced so many changes to healing, i can't see them going back to old way. Not completely. I imagine it will be some kind of hybrid with more hybrid modules.

OR...an old school module for straight up hp.

 

[JohnSnow]

Why not just steal an idea from Dragon Age? That system uses health (similar to hit points) and looks like it would work reasonably well.

Using that system as a base, here's my first crack at a D&D version:

Starting hit points:
Magic-User: 20 + Con bonus + 1d6.
Cleric/Rogue: 25 + Con bonus + 1d6.
Fighter: 30 + Con bonus + 1d6

As characters advance in level, they gain 1d6 + Con bonus hit points.

Healing in combat: Standard Action.
Characters can receive first aid for their injuries. First aid requires a successful heal check (DC 15) and restores a number of hit points to a target equal to 1d6 + your Wis bonus. A character may not receive first aid more than once for the same injuries.

Healing out of combat:
A character may be given first aid, subject to the usual restrictions. In addition, after combat, a PC may "take a breather." Taking a breather restores hit points = 5 + con bonus + level. You can only take one breather after an encounter. A PC who was reduced to 0 hp at the end of a combat may not take a breather.

Additionally, getting some sleep (6 hours of uninterrupted rest) restores hit points equal to 10 + con bonus + level. A character may only recover hp this way once in a 24 hour period.

Death & Dying
A PC who is reduced to 0 hp in a combat is dying. He must receive healing or first aid in 2 + con bonus rounds or he dies.

Magical Healing:
Heal: This spell restores hit points equal to 1d8 per spell level + the spellcasting ability bonus of the caster. A wounded character who has received first aid can still benefit from magical healing.


This system captures the idea embodied in the surge mechanic (the out of combat "breather") without using surges. It circumvents the martial healing problem by simply making non-magical healing more effective than it was in older editions.

Obviously, you could parse the heal spell as a 1st level "cure light wounds," a 3rd level "cure serious wounds," et cetera. As daily spells, they should probably be much more effective.

I'm less interested in people's thoughts about the specifics (d6 vs. d8, random hit points vs. a set number) and more in the general concepts of 1) making non-magical healing more effective, and 2) allowing characters to "take a breather" between combats.

Thoughts?

 

[KarinsDad]

This system captures the idea embodied in the surge mechanic (the out of combat "breather") without using surges. It circumvents the martial healing problem by simply making non-magical healing more effective than it was in older editions.

...

Thoughts?

There is a basic problem with this type of system (which is similar to the 4E issues). The Breather doesn't just heal stun type damage, it also heals real damage (since they are combined in this type of system).

If you have a 6th level Fighter in the front taking damage every single encounter and you have no magic in the group, that Fighter will get beat up over and over again until he goes unconscious (as an example).

That Fighter has a CON bonus of 3 and the first aid PC has a WIS bonus of 3, so he has 6.5 * 6 +30 = 69 hit points. He goes unconscious, so he wakes up after the encounter with a first aid D6+3 = 6.5 and a breather 5+3+6 = 14 or about 21 total hit points. He's about 70% damaged.

The 6th level Mage with the same CON has 59 hit points. The Mage also goes unconscious, but the Mage gains the same 21 hit points back. He's about 65% damaged. Since he is a Mage, he hides in the back shooting his magic and never takes any more damage the rest of the entire day. Every encounter, he takes a Breather afterwards for 14. In 3 more encounters, he's fully healed, just by taking Breathers.

Without Breathers, this system would work (somewhat). The PC would be able to heal up with First Aid (once) and would never heal up all of the way (assuming one could not First Aid for more points in an encounter than the total of damage taken in that encounter).

The Fighter in this example presumably takes at least a third of his hit points every encounter and ends up unconscious every encounter and back up to 21 hit points after each encounter. After 4 plus encounters, he's at the end of the day pretty darn close to 21 hit points (give or take a handful or so).


So, this system tends to break down in multiple ways.

Original D&D hit points had no First Aid (which also has some minor problems) or Breathers. Hence, it did not have these types of issues. It was magic or nothing, so magic (or long rest) was required.

4E has Breathers out the ying yang, so it doesn't have the problem of a group without magic having PCs 2/3rds damaged going into encounters. As long as the group has healing surges, every PC can be at max or near max hit points at the start of every encounter.


In the system I proposed above, hit points always goes back up to full, regardless of how much damage one takes. The Mage does not have an advantage over the Fighter except that the Fighter might eventually get real low on wound points and would want to rest. But, wound points stay lowered until really healed one way or another. A Heal (i.e. first aid) check in combat or after combat doesn't heal any wound points (although it could be added in as part of an extended rest to slightly increase how many wound points get healed during an extended rest, 1 wound point without first aid, 2 wound points with first aid makes sense, wounds shouldn't heal too quickly).


One thing that WotC didn't do a real good job of in 4E is analyzing the math really carefully. I hope they do that in 5E. Your example illustrates how a system can appear fine on the surface, but can have underlying issues under certain circumstances (in your example, a party that has no magic) because a more typical situation (a party with magic) would obscure some hidden issues.

That's also why a LOT of playtesting is required to shake out more of the more common design flaws. There are just too many variables in any RPG to figure out most of the potential issues just by reading the rules. Some flaws can be discovered that way, but not most of them.


Note: Even my system above has at least one minor flaw. If wound points = CON and PCs heal 1 wound point per extended rest (2 with first aid), than a PC with 10 CON having taken 9 damage needs 9 days to recover whereas a PC with 18 CON having taken 17 damage needs 17 days (or about twice as long) to recover. Course, the 18 CON PC took 17 wound points. The 10 CON PC doing this would have died at 10 wound points, so pros and cons. The point is, though, most any system has at least some minor issues with it. No system is really perfect.

 

[JohnSnow]

Just as an aside, unless he gets treated in combat, the character can't get the benefits of recovering hit points from both first aid and a breather. That's specifically disallowed. So it's either 1d6 + 3, or breather.

I see your point, although it's only an issue if the character goes down in every combat - which he shouldn't. But I digress. The discrepancy is of course why 4e gives the fighter access to more "breathers" (in the form of healing surges) than the wizard gets.

I cribbed the math straight from Dragon Age, so there might be a version that's better balanced for D&D. But personally, I think the solution is just to not have non-magical "healing" capable of restoring a character from "dying" in the middle of a combat. If "non-magical healing" can only treat serious injuries when the healer has the time to apply bandages and the patient has some time to rest and recover, it's far less unsettling.

That system does leave the problem of the full hit point PC who is still, technically speaking, "injured." That doesn't bother me, since I tend to think full hit points means "totally combat effective," like Indiana Jones or John McClane, not necessarily "unblemished."

 

[Hassassin]

Has anyone tried the Damage Conversion option from UA in their 3.5 game?

TL;DR: Armor that grants a +X bonus to AC also converts the first X damage of each hit to non-lethal damage.

This lets characters restore a part of their lost hit points quickly, while a part still takes long (or magic) to heal. Kind of a THP/HP split.

 

[Meophist]

I think a bit of a problem with "breathers" is that it's basically "healing for entering combat". As written, it seems like if a Fighter, for example, wants to recover some hit points, they can find a random rat and whack it. This will allow the Fighter to take another breather and recover.

 

[JohnSnow]

I think a bit of a problem with "breathers" is that it's basically "healing for entering combat". As written, it seems like if a Fighter, for example, wants to recover some hit points, they can find a random rat and whack it. This will allow the Fighter to take another breather and recover.

Interesting point.

The problem seems to be that squaring the needs of a good game (real risk in every combat) with suspension of disbelief require some kind of artificial kludge (like ubiquitous magical healing or formerly life-threatening wounds that just "go away") in order to work.

I have no answer - it's just an observation.

As an aside, if the non-magical healing didn't restore hit points mid-combat, would people still object to characters who could regain all their hit points between combats without resorting to magic?

This whole discussion puts me to mind of the "gypsy balm" that D'Artagnan has (by way of his mother) in The Three Musketeers. What if D&D's non-magical healing was something like that (a poultice, ointment, or healing herb) which, although not instant, could restore lost hit points in a few minutes. Such a thing would be basically no use in combat, but between combats...

 

[Meophist]

So thinking about it, I've got a system:

Your character have wounds equal to your Constitution modifier(CON - 10) plus your character's level divided by a certain number(which I don't know yet), although always a minimum of 1. Your character lose a wound whenever a single hit does more than half your maximum hit points in damage. Your character lose an additional wound and become disabled whenever you reach 0 hit points, and an additional wound for being hit while in that state. Your character dies when reaching a certain negative level(probably 5 or 10).

When in the negatives, your wounds become a modifier to all of your checks. Alternatively, whenever your character loses wounds into their negatives, they can get a random "wound card" from a set, which provides a specific penalty. Your character can deliberately lose a wound to gain a certain effect:

• Recover half their hit points as a standard action.
• Regain the use of a per-encounter power(if they still exist) as a free action.
• Something else. (Plus X to a single check?)

This represents the character going above and beyond their normal limits and they suffer accordingly.

Characters recover hit points equal to their maximum wounds every minute out of combat, and a single wound every day. A character who reaches zero hit points don't go into negatives, but become disabled and need to make a Constitution check each turn. If they roll a 1, they lose an additional wound. If they succeed on the roll, they remain conscious. If they succeed by 5, they become conscious(if they were unconscious). If they roll a 20, they're back on their feet. Something like that anyways, there could be alternative rules or something, not entirely sure on this point.