Healing Without Surges

[Zero Cochrane]

An idea for healing in 5th edition D&D:

In 4th edition D&D, I find the question about when a character should use his Daily abilities to be a bit problematic. I would rather that most abilities be At-Will or Encounter.
I wanted to come up with a way for a character to recover from damage without needing to use a daily resource, such as the Healing Surges of 4th edition D&D.
D&D Gamma World deals with the problem by simply giving a character full recovery of all hit points during a short rest. This is convenient, but rather too good, and makes the consequences of injury almost unimportant. Certainly traps that deal damage would be useless outside of combat.
The following rules can work with any D&D game, though with the importance of healing surges in 4th edition, perhaps it would be best considered for use in the upcoming 5th edition D&D.
These rules can also be made to work with OGL-based games, such as 3rd edition D&D. Note, however, that it increases the characters' healing rate quite a bit without use of magical healing, and effectively doubles the effects of magical healing. Therefore, you might want to make adjustments to compensate.

The rules:
Injury is tracked in two simple ways. A character has Hit Points, which start at his maximum (uninjured value), and Damage Points, which start at zero and are accumulated.
Whenever a character takes damage, it is added to his Damage Points.
If the character's Damage Points ever exceed his current hit points, then the character gains the dying condition and may expire if not helped.
When the character takes a short rest, he recovers some of his vigour -- half the Damage Points are subtracted from his Hit Points, and his Damage Points drop to zero.
If the character is healed a number of points, say with a spell or potion, then the healing is applied to both the Damage Points and the Hit Points -- Damage Points get reduced (minimum zero), and the same number is added to his current Hit Points (up to his normal maximum).
An alternative version of healing may be equivalent to a short rest, as described above.
Natural healing occurs after a short rest has occurred (when the character has zero Damage Points and less than maximum Hit Points). A character naturally heals 1 hit point per day for each character level.

For example, suppose a Fighter is uninjured and starts combat with his full 63 Hit Points and 0 Damage Points. After sustaining a couple hits, he has accumulated 16 Damage Points. He still has 63 Hit Points, however. After winning the fight, he takes a short rest. His Hit Points drop to 63-(16/2)=55, and his Damage Points drop to 0. As you can see, he has partially recovered from his injuries, but has been weakened to an extent. During a second combat encounter, if he is badly injured, and his Damage Points exceed his current 55 Hit Points, he may die. If he imbibes a healing potion that heals 5 points, then his Damage Points are reduced by 5 points and his Hit Points are increased by 5 points.
Thus, a character who needs healing badly gets more benefit than one who is at maximum Hit Points or has accumulated no Damage Points.
To maximize magical healing benefits, a character may choose to use magical healing after combat but before he begins his short rest.

This method allows a character to recover from injuries quickly, but not completely. Damage that occurs during combat is no more or less deadly when using these rules. However, injuries can still carry over from one combat to the next until a character has sufficient time (or magic) to fully recover. The only resources expended are those which accelerate healing (such as healing spells and potions), and a character never has to worry about running out of healing surges. With every new injury, he has the ability to recovery partially, but not completely.Thus healing still has its limits, yet effectively becomes an Encounter ability.

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[billd91]

That's very similar to what I'm experimenting with in my PF game. Characters regain half the damage sustained in the encounter if they take a short rest. Your method with the hit points and damage pools does have a certain elegance to it, particularly the way it allows me to get around the problem of exactly what to do when someone heals you during combat with a healing spell.

 

[BobTheNob]

Its not without its virtue...maybe a little fiddly for my tastes.

I dont think of HP and healing as needing to model the real world personally, I just think of them as mechanics for defining how much "how much you can take, and then how much the game flows afterwards". I dont like to get caught up in real world modelling too much.

That said, Im totally on board with the idea that some form of post combat healing for so many reasons (not the least of which is to stops clerics being a "healing battery"), so I do like that you came up with this idea. I just thought the whole "damage vs HP to be fiddly. It would work...but its not for me.

Personally, I thought Healing Surges were one of the better things 4e introduced to D&D, and whilst they dont have to come across exactly as 4e had them, I didnt like the idea that there was only certain amount characters could do before they genuinely had to hunker down and lick their wounds.

 

[Lwaxy]

I prefer to go with realistic times to heal injuries. A broken leg, a pierced arm, loss of blood don't fix themselves with short rests. Nor long rests. You either have magic to take care of it or you are out for a while.

 

[nightwalker450]

I'd rather have healing that allows my players to participate in the game. Things that are going to take days or weeks for a character to heal, I can make up on my own as things to fit the story. Such as player A is going on vacation for a couple weeks, that's a good time to say his character takes a severe injury and has to heal up.

But for, random goblin got a lucky crit, your character is going to spend the next few sessions cowering because that'll be weeks to heal NO THANK YOU!

 

[Dragonblade]

I'd like to keep it simple. Everyone divides their HP into two pools. So a fighter who might now have 50 HP at level 5 or whatever, now has 25 HP and 25 Wounds. HP represents all that abstract stuff (luck, stamina, dodging blows, etc) only. Wounds represent a mix of actual damage, but still some abstract elements.

When his HP are gone, he is Bloodied. When his Wounds are gone, he is dying and come up with some suitable death and dying mechanic.

After every battle, a short rest always restores all HP to full. But Wounds can only recover with magic and/or time. This also lets you have your Warlords who can heal HP, and your clerics who can heal Wounds.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'd like to keep it simple. Everyone divides their HP into two pools. So a fighter who might now have 50 HP at level 5 or whatever, now has 25 HP and 25 Wounds. HP represents all that abstract stuff (luck, stamina, dodging blows, etc) only. Wounds represent a mix of actual damage, but still some abstract elements.

When his HP are gone, he is Bloodied. When his Wounds are gone, he is dying and come up with some suitable death and dying mechanic.

After every battle, a short rest always restores all HP to full. But Wounds can only recover with magic and/or time. This also lets you have your Warlords who can heal HP, and your clerics who can heal Wounds.

A simple and effective vitality-wound idea, and one that I hope we see in some form. Simply making this division fixes a lot of issues regarding healing.

 

[Dragonblade]

I fleshed out my system here.

 

[Essenti]

What I have been working on lately is adding bloodied/wounded system to my game. I have two sub scores below hit points: bloodied and wounded, both begin at 1/2 your hit points at level 1, but your armor's defense bonus is added to your wounded score. The wounded score improves by 1 point two levels. (so it is effectively 1/2 starting hit points + armor + 1/2 level)

Basically, a character gains an actual wound any time they receive damage that meets or exceeds their wounded score. Any damage received that qualifies as a wound cannot be healed except through magical healing or bed rest. A wounded character is weakened, save ends.

I use bloodied for allowing different classes to unlock certain abilities, but the wound system was put in place so I could easily determine when damage actually hurts a character outright. Taking damage equal to the wounded score is a light wound, which is noted as a single wound mark. Taking twice the damage is a serious wound worth two marks, thrice the damage a critical wound worth three marks. Each mark reduces a characters max hit points by 4 points per wound until the wound is healed.

A cure light wounds spell can only remove a single wound per casting, cure serious wound removes two wounds, cure critical three wounds. The cure series spell also heals the lost hit points.

A heal check can reduce the number of wounds by one (bone is set, gash is stitched back up, burns are covered, etc), but it cannot reduce the wound marks to zero, nor does it recover any hit points, only rest or magical healing can do that.

I also have a second wind in the game, characters can use that once per fight to recover some hit points that did not qualify as a wound. And I have some classes with features that allow them to inspire their allies who can take a second wind that round even if they've already used theirs. But this type of abstract hit point recovery doesn't affect wounds.

Right now it's a bit too gritty at low levels, so I've got a bit of work to do on it as it's still riding the edge of a death spiral. I might add a constitution check to see if the damage becomes a wound or not... dunno.


Quick summary:

Hit points are abstract unless the damage exceeds the characters wounded score at which point they take a wound, they are weakened (save ends). A wound reduces a character's max hit points by 4 per wound. Wounds can only be healed through magical healing or bed rest.

 

[Mengu]

I'd rather keep things simpler. The default condition of PC's is "Adventuring". This means they have wounds, exhaustion, fatigue, whatever you want to call it. All their stats take this into account.

You could have a mechanic like, if PC's have not adventured for 1 week, they gain a bonus to attack and bonus hit points for their first fight. After that, they are back to their usual adventuring selves. A heroes feast or the like could have the same effect.

Is this complexity worth it for one fight *if* you didn't fight for a week? Maybe, maybe not. So you could ignore it and say PC's are never at full potential. Their stats represent that they've been adventuring. Done.

I don't want an adventuring group to have to have magic healing in order to eliminate wounds, fatigue, etc. Players should be able to play what they want. If no one wants to play a cleric, they should not be penalized by the system for that choice. And as DM, if I don't want to have healing potions/cure light wounds wands in my game, I shouldn't have to. You don't see Jack Bauer popping healing potions after every time he's shot. Press dirty rag to the wound, and you're good to go.

And I definitely don't want them to have to take a week off, when their town is under attack! Okay, your town is destroyed and burnt down by ravaging orc barbarians while you hide in your tree house and rest. You could go fight these 5 orcs over here, and take another week off, while they pillage another town. Not my cup of tea.

I'm happy with healers contributing to healing mainly *during* a fight, this still makes them desirable to play. But 5 minutes, or not even 5 minutes, a change of scene is all you should need to carry on the story and be ready for your next skirmish. Combat rules are just the method of conflict resolution, hit points are just an element in that resolution. I don't really want to worry too much about out of combat healing, it's not interesting to me. Grit your teeth, apply some dirty bandages, and keep trucking along.