Blog: Resilient Heroes

[I'm A Banana]

All About Self-Healing

Discussed a little here over in the thread about warlords.

For me, self-healing is a good thing. I want everyone to be able to perform some sort of base-level self-recharge, at least a few times a day. Patching wounds, rubbing ointments, whatever, some ability to heal yourself is good. It prevents anyone from HAVING to play the healer, and that means more flexible character options.

Surges need to get kicked in the teeth, however. They are the main cause of the HP (and warlord healing) debates in 4e, I believe. Because they are blatantly an artificial kludge, they create situations where the blow that reduces you to 0 hp might actually be fatal if you're in the middle of combat, no matter how many surges you have left, but the moment initiative stops, it's suddenly not fatal and not really all that bad, in fact, because you're up fighting again in 5 minutes.

I wouldn't mind a middle ground mechanic. I like Second Wind, and think that maybe more uses of it would be a fine way to patch that. Something like: "Second Wind recovers 1/4 of your maximum HP. A character can use Second Wind four times per day as their action on their turn. Your class/race/theme/amajigg may give you additional uses of the ability."

Or perhaps make it a more powerful one-time-per-day effect, or something.

I don't think the problem is really self-healing. Self-healing good! I think it is the fact that surges force you to metagame your description of things happening in the world by virtue of being a resource that you have, but you can't always access. Surges not so good!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, "surges" are at least two different mechanical purposes combined into one, and I could make an argument that they are three different purposes. That noted and tabled for the rest of this post ...

I'd think I'd like to see a mixture of self-healing and other healing made on deliberately different parameters, and serving different purposes. For example, have some self-healing that is vaguely surge-like, works every day, and can get maybe 40% to 60% of your hit points back (that is, can restore hit points up to that point, not over it). Then set up the game so that running along at around 50% hit points is really tough, but possible (i.e. can survive a tough fight or two while in that state). The idea here is that you've got a limited ability to bounce back, that is not dependent on outside help.

Then on top of that, you have other healing options that are limited according to their own in-game or character logic, not the recipients (i.e. not surge-like at all). You can drink as many healing potions as you can find, buy, carry, etc. You can get healing from the cleric as long as she has some left. You can rest a week and top off after your surges run out.

So what that does, your self-healing doesn't do anything for you until you are already around half capacity. Then if you run out of other options, and need to keep going, you can, at this reduced capacity. Plus, if you are repeatedly getting beat up, day after day, you aren't popping potions or CLW charges like candy. Your heroic resilience is carrying some of the load.

Furthermore, that means that a "low magic" game is built on the assumption that people spend most of their time in this reduced capacity. You rest up, start fresh, and after a few scraps, you are down about half. Then you can keep going that way until you tangle with too much in one day--or are afraid you might not survive it.

Edit: The place for a warlord or temporary hit points or the like under such a system might be to extend the range of self-healing a bit--not to max, but say closer to 75% to 80%.

 

[billd91]

I really don't like the surges either, not the way they are implemented. I'd rather see a character regain half the hit points he lost in the previous encounter by just catching a breather afterwards. In the example given, Demascus can pull himself out of the rubble, and spend 5 or 10 minutes catching his breath, getting himself back in order, applying a bandage or two, and get a bunch of hit points back while still having to manage his longer term health.

I do notice that WotC_Bruce is mistaken about how many hit points a 3e character can heal, though. They can't just heal 4 hp/day with full rest and someone providing long term care, not unless they're just 1st level (which I strongly suspect Demascus is not). They heal 4 hp/level/day.

 

[Leatherhead]

I posted this idea over there:
Ditch healing surges.

Make All healing powers limited per encounter.

Give everyone Second Wind (Works fine without healing surges as an encounter power)

Tweak everyone's HP into several stages:
Full
Bloody (around 2/3)
Wounded (around 1/3)
Disabled (0 or less)

Any healing power takes you back up to the top of what stage you are in. If you have 9 hp max, and are currently at 5 hp, when you heal you will go up to 6 hp. That makes combat a pseudo-death-spiral, where you loom closer to death but aren't really effected by penalties so you can continue to be heroic.

Second Wind takes you back up to the next higher level, but you can only use it once per encounter.

After combat major healing is covered by rituals, the length of the rest determines how far up you can go, a short rest goes back up one level (as if you used second wind), an extended rest goes back up to full.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

The best way of achieving this (obviously in my opinion) is separating hit points into wound points (physical damage) and "hit points" (everything else: luck, combat capacity, skill at turning a blow, divine providence, inner strength, motivation, will to go on, vigor/toughness etc.)

Wounds are rarely gained and take a "believable" amount of time to heal. "Hit Points" are much more easily lost but are much more quickly replenished and more importantly are quickly replenished without assistance. A character can easily soldier on if they are down some wound points because they will still more than likely have a full layer of "hit points" protecting them. I think people would find this kind of toughness (soldiering on while mechanically wounded) more palatable if it mechanically still has some sort of effect (even if slightly muted).

Actual "Healing" as in divine healing does not need to be spammed to keep characters at capacity while naturally assisted healing can be ramped up a little and take on more significance and effect. A skilled mundane healer can be almost as effective as a divine one. Either way, characters are still effective enough to push on.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[GX.Sigma]

The best way of achieving this (obviously in my opinion) is separating hit points into wound points (physical damage) and "hit points" (everything else: luck, combat capacity, skill at turning a blow, divine providence, inner strength, motivation, will to go on, vigor/toughness etc.)

A lot of people posit this. Not many of them mention that it was included in 3.5's Unearthed Arcana. Did you ever try that variant? Was it popular?

 

[trancejeremy]

I was actually going to mention that.

I would really like to see the Vitality Point/Wound Point system used. Renamed, of course, with Vitality Points = Hit Points.

To my mind, it pretty much solves all the problems. Both healing without relying on clerics (except in an emergency) and the people who obsess over the "true" meaning of hit points - are they physical or luck, skill, etc)

 

[GX.Sigma]

I was actually going to mention that.

I would really like to see the Vitality Point/Wound Point system used. Renamed, of course, with Vitality Points = Hit Points.

To my mind, it pretty much solves all the problems. Both healing without relying on clerics (except in an emergency) and the people who obsess over the "true" meaning of hit points - are they physical or luck, skill, etc)

Did you ever try it?

 

[Herremann the Wise]

A lot of people posit this. Not many of them mention that it was included in 3.5's Unearthed Arcana. Did you ever try that variant? Was it popular?

The thing is you need to build the whole system around it rather than having it as an add-on that does not mesh with most of the game.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[GX.Sigma]

The thing is you need to build the whole system around it rather than having it as an add-on that does not mesh with most of the game.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

So you're saying you'd like the core D&DN rules to be built around something that was never core in any version of D&D.

Maybe D&D Next isn't the game for you.