To Heal or Not to Heal

[Endur]

I don't want a party to be forced to have a cleric (or a member of any other class). I don't want clerics (or other magical healers) to be forced to use up their cool spell slots on healing spells.

While I'm ok with the party without a cleric having a harder time fighting undead, I don't want that party to have a harder time with all combats.

I like being able to handwave after a day of rest and say the party is fully healed up. (which you can't actually say in OD&D without magical healing).

But for some reason, the whole healing surge, second wind mechanic doesn't feel right to me.

I want self-healing to either be magical, or to require time and rest.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't want required classes (or "roles") either.

It seems to me that if you want characters to face several difficult combats in a row, you either have to acknowledge consequences (and have damage and loss of resources make the battles consecutively harder) or handwave them (have encounter powers and healing surges). People get annoyed either way, because this is a stylistic consideration; in some styles of fiction, heroes get hurt and in some they don't. Thus the need for rules options.

I think there's a lot of room to expand the role of the Heal skill, and to make in-combat magical healing more difficult, requiring the cleric to really focus on healing to be good at it and making the default assumption that you fight through combat with whatever you have.

I think a lot of the conceptual problems about healing disappear if you acknowledge the split in hit points by using some kind of vp/wp concept. If you can "heal" subdual/vitality/etc. damage with a second wind, that allows meaningful in-combat healing without breaking immersion, and allows for serious wounds to be treated in interesting and varied ways ways (again, based on style). It also makes quick out-of-combat healing more plausible, and allows for more options on that front as well.

 

[Sunseeker]

The defensive bonus of heavy-armor types, the damage output of striker-types, the avoidance features of sneaky-types should IMO, be able to balance out the lack of a fixed healer.

I don't want D&D to go the route of WoW where you need the "Holy trinity" in order to accomplish anything cool. I don't want people who can heal to feel that they must heal in order to play in a game.

There should be some minor, mundane routes to accomplish healing, but moreover, those classes that lack healing should be able to not even need it if they play to their strengths. Mundane healing should come in a once-or-twice a day "second wind" style recuperation.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I can see healing being tied to having meals. Food is interesting and can be described, having a meal is a social event, and last but not least it's okay to have an effect after you actually do something (eating or casting spells) than to just shrug off ill effects.
Hey, It worked in Gauntlet.

 

[RangerWickett]

I want D&D to settle this issue in a way that makes sense, and is good for gameplay. My proposal.

Hit Points
As long as you have at least 1 Hit Point, you can keep fighting. Attacks that hit you cause minor scrapes and bruises, and you fatigue yourself and strain your muscles dodging the worst of the blow. When damage reduces you to 0 HP or below, however, you can no longer resist the strike. Each additional damage causes 1 Wound Point.

When you take any Wound Point damage, make a Constitution save (DC = the amount of WP damage you have). If you fail, you fall unconscious. When your Wound Points equal or exceed your Constitution score, you must make a Constitution save each of your turns. If you fail, you die. Medical care and magical healing can stabilize you so you no longer need to make saves.

Healing
About half of your HP is just stamina. The other half is resilience to pain and minor injuries. Short rests recover stamina, but you can only benefit from two short rests per day. Long rests heal minor injuries, and you can only take one long rest per day.

When you take a short rest of at least five minutes (but no more than twice per day), you can catch your breath and recover one-quarter of your max hit points.

When you take a long rest of at least six hours (but no more than once per day), you can treat your minor injuries and heal one-half your max hit points.

Between these two types of resting, if you get a full day off from adventuring, you can easily heal to full HP. In the course of a typical adventure, though, you might take some damage in a fight, have a short rest, get injured again by a trap, take another short rest, have a major battle, then set up camp and take a long rest. Afterward you might not be at full HP, but if your quest is time-sensitive you won't have time to keep resting.

Wounds
Wound Point damage represents actual broken bones, slashed and punctured flesh, burns, and even brain hemorrhages from psychic attacks. While it is possible to keep fighting after suffering a wound, it's easy for a single additional attack to be fatal, so often you're better-served by heading to safety to treat your wounds, or simply feigning death.

Healing WP damage takes much longer than mere HP damage. You can take an extended rest by spending a whole day in a safe location, during which you cannot exert yourself. Doing so removes 1 Wound Point.

The Heal skill can help recover from WP damage faster, as can magical healing. For instance, the cure light wounds spell removes 1d4 WP. Cure serious wounds lets a character benefit from a short rest and removes 1d6+3 WP. Cure critical wounds lets a character benefit from a long rest and removes 1d8+8 WP.

The rests granted by these spells still count against the normal limit per day. If a character has died in the past five minutes, a cure spell restores them to life and stabilizes them, though they will likely need a very long time to recuperate.

 

[Minigiant]

Overall I want 5E to enhance and support all of D&D's defensive strategies.

That way healing is neither required nor placed in arguable places.

Healing Hit points Strategy: Recovering HP lost

• Divine Magic
• Druidic/Primal Magic
• Rest
• First Aid
• Healing Potions

Damage Avoidance: Not taking any HP damage for an attack

• Armor and Shield based AC
• High Ability score based AC
• Evasion
• AC boosting spells

Damage Reduction and Resistances: Lowering the damage taken to reduce HP emergencies

• Class Based DR
• Resist Spells
• Resist Potions

Temporary Hit Points: Using buff to avoid actually HP loss

• Morale based class abilities
• Protection spells
• Protection Potions

This way you never have to use the "fight and heal" defense. You can drop the cleric and bring a bard or warlord to use morale buffs to double everyone's HP. Or bring a lout of heavies and rarely take damage in the first place.

 

[Libramarian]

This word "force" you are using...doesn't mean anything.

Of course a party should be worse off without a cleric, just as they should be worse off without any class.

At what point is a party "forced" to bring a cleric? I don't know. When the game is literally unplayable without one I guess. But that would never happen.

I suspect what you mean is you don't want to "feel" forced to have a cleric. But different people have different sensitivities to that.

Personally, I don't mind making difficult choices sometimes. Like...do I want a damage spell or do I want a healing spell that lessens the chance one of my allies will unexpectedly die. Do I trade that risk, and the associated social reproach for more damage and the associated social showing off.

I don't think that this choice is so bad. Yes it involves other people making judgements on your play, but that's kind of the point of games in general.

It's not an objectively good thing to make clerics less useful, because it works both ways -- it allows people who don't really like clerics in the first place to have more fun, but it lessens the fun of people who actually like to play a class that contributes largely by helping others.

Sacrificing one's own opportunity to be flashy and do a lot of damage in order to help one's allies is the "cleric feel". That's what the class should be about -- altruism.

Of course the class should be balanced so that it is actually better for the group as a whole that the cleric focuses on helping allies rather than hurting enemies. But it doesn't need to be wildly tipped in that direction. Evil damage-oriented clerics should be viable. And remember that part of the cleric benefit is managing HP attrition to spread out risk. Like diversifying your portfolio. The cleric makes it less likely that any individual party member will unexpectedly die. That's a useful benefit that doesn't show up if you're just looking at the effect of a cleric on overall party vs. party HP attrition.

 

[howandwhy99]

I don't want a party to be forced to have a cleric (or a member of any other class). I don't want clerics (or other magical healers) to be forced to use up their cool spell slots on healing spells.

I think there are ways around this. For rules that make it very explicit, what do you think about no healing in combat? Make it a Turn long casting time or a Ritual.

Or remove magical healing altogether. Perhaps a night's rest gives full HPs back in your game? Perhaps long, out-of-combat-only healing can be done medically after a fight to boost up HP? These could require resources like cloth, cut rope, and splints. Perhaps that Thief can "pick" arrowheads out of people?

House rules are possible. Think of what you like and we can help.

 

[Endur]

I think there are ways around this. For rules that make it very explicit, what do you think about no healing in combat? Make it a Turn long casting time or a Ritual.

I think that is where I'm leaning. I would like a system that did not have in-combat healing.

 

[SteveC]

I think a non-clerical healing alternative is a must to not make the game cleric dependent. It's one of the things that 4E (in my opinion) fixed with the warlord and arcane bard. Given how much grumbling that created, I would not expect it to be core in the new edition. That's too bad, in my estimation: I think the warlord was the best thing that 4E innovated with.