D&D 5E 2/18/13 L&L column

[FireLance]

If you want anything that at least resembles "natural" healing, then you'd need weeks or months to recover from a fight gone bad. Unless you set for a "after one night, all XPs are back" style a la 4E, which is what many people do not like, of course, but that's hardly realistic.

In all other cases you need some sort of "supernatural" healing, unless you want a really really gritty game or a completely different damage tracking system from HPs.

IMO, it only makes a difference to the narrative. At the table, it is simply a matter of the DM saying, "You rest a week/a month and recover all your hit points."

Similarly, in 4e, you could avoid "unrealistic" issues by defining an extended rest as a week's rest or a month's rest in a (reasonably) stress-free environment.

 

[I'm A Banana]

of course it can. D&D has had parry options at various points. I don't object to parry on its own but I would object to baking in parry mechanics that are explicitly designed to get around having a cleric.

This statement confuses me a bit. If you have a parry mechanic in the game, it automatically reduces the need for clerical healing. Anything that reduces damage against a character reduces the need for clerical healing, simply by its very existence.

If it is then just a matter of degrees (no parry mechanic should be as good as clerical healing in the basic game), I'd like to suss out at which point you feel like it's too much. I'd also still like to suss out why you feel that this must be a basic option as opposed to a standard or advanced -- I haven't heard much explanation about why this is good for people other than a narrow group of grogs.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You have to die easily, suffer and catch gangrene and lose limbs, like a good victim of Fantasy Vietnam where hit points are meat chunks being cut away with every stroke.ummmm sorry got carried away.

You know, I am perfectly capable of acceptiing that your position on the game is valid and a genuine reflection of what what you find fun, without getting the creation of a strawman. I would appreciate if you could give me the same courtesy. We all get a bit passionate about this issue, and I sometimes get irritable myself during these conversations, but we are all ultimately just describing what we like when we play D&D.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This statement confuses me a bit. If you have a parry mechanic in the game, it automatically reduces the need for clerical healing. Anything that reduces damage against a character reduces the need for clerical healing, simply by its very existence.

If it is then just a matter of degrees (no parry mechanic should be as good as clerical healing in the basic game), I'd like to suss out at which point you feel like it's too much. I'd also still like to suss out why you feel that this must be a basic option as opposed to a standard or advanced -- I haven't heard much explanation about why this is good for people other than a narrow group of grogs.

because kamikaze is talking about riggingnthe math so that all these features collectively eliinate the need for clerical heals. It goes beyond having a simple parry option that sightly increases the amount of damage you can talk. What he is suggesting is running the numbers and the probabilities so that if you know a cleric can restore say ffty HP to a party at fifth level, that the parry, dodge, etc all add up to fifty hp. It is a smart suggestion and I think a worthy optional rule, my opinion is simply that it shouldnt be the default option. My reasoning is the basic gameplay assumes things like a well rounded party. You can always play without a cleric, wizard, thief or fighter but that is going to change the flow and present challenges. To me this is an important feature of the game. Not having a cleric in party has always meant something rather specific, just like not having a thief does. Also when you add in something like this, you lengthen the grind, because a party with a cleric will last even longer. Personally I think the pacing of combat (so you can get four extra encounters or something in an adventuring day) doesnt need to be extended. Having to break and rest is an important aspect of the game. And I think if you basically eliminate the importance of clerical healing through mechanic like this, you take away part of what makes a cleric meaningful to the game.

 

[steeldragons]

I always enjoyed playing it so clearly "no one" isn't accurate. I never encountered the "forced to play cleric" phenominia that so many people talk about. The cleric has always been a fun and exciting class to play, at least since I started 30 years ago. It favors a certain type of gamer certainly, but doesn't every class?

This. I totally don't get the "cleric hate" expressed in this thread and all of these "problems that everyone had" and "everyone avoided playing them" just...completely outside my experience. The game's not FORCING you to play anything. The game's not making anything mandatory. Don't want a cleric in the party. Play smart. Play careful. (which I'd argue everyone should be playing anyway, regardless of classes). Invest in some potions. Maybe you don't need one. Wanna just hackn'slash everything in sight and barge your way through?...then yeah. You chose not to have healing? You might very well die. That's how you chose to play. Congrats! How this amounts to "Wah wah the bad game is being mean to me." I just dungeddit.

That said, I have no issue with there being a non-magical healing option simply because it makes simple common sense in the game world. There would be ways for people who don't have a cleric living next door (which I would envision to be most people in the game world) to help themselves "get better" when they're hurt or sick.

It can be done simple. It can be done without overriding the cleric (How're ya gonna heal that blindness, huh? Paralysis? Ability damage drain and you don't have two weeks for it to come back naturally? Down to 1 HP with a orc baring down on you? Lost an arm?). And, perhaps most obviously (and easily forgotten), it can be done regardless of what the "Basic rules" say. Want a rest mechanic? Put it in! Want a "second wind"? Put it in! Want a healer's kit? Put it in! What's all the hubbub?!

 

[Bedrockgames]

To the best of my understanding (and given his comments upthread both that "adventuring without a cleric should be possible" and "tackling a vampire-hunt without a cleric should be harder"), @Bedrockgames is working with a more general and abstract conception of "the adventure" than you are: if you have a cleric, your adventure will include the experience of turning undead, frequent magical healing; if you have a fighter instead, your adventure will inclue the experience of more swords being swung but also more running away from wights; if you have a thief instead then your adventure will have more sneaking and less fighting; etc.

On this picture, "encounters" aren't the constituent elements of an adventure; the adventure consists (perhaps) of a goal or endpoint (defeating Strahd, perhaps, or looting the dragon's horde), but it is expected that the path to this endpoint, resources consumed along the way, etc, will vary radically across group compositions.

Yes, this gets pretty close to what I was trying to say.

 

[TwoSix]

Play smart. Play careful. (which I'd argue everyone should be playing anyway, regardless of classes).

Smart, careful play is the antithesis of my goals for playing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

because kamikaze is talking about riggingnthe math so that all these features collectively eliinate the need for clerical heals. It goes beyond having a simple parry option that sightly increases the amount of damage you can talk. What he is suggesting is running the numbers and the probabilities so that if you know a cleric can restore say ffty HP to a party at fifth level, that the parry, dodge, etc all add up to fifty hp. It is a smart suggestion and I think a worthy optional rule, my opinion is simply that it shouldnt be the default option. My reasoning is the basic gameplay assumes things like a well rounded party. You can always play without a cleric, wizard, thief or fighter but that is going to change the flow and present challenges. To me this is an important feature of the game. Not having a cleric in party has always meant something rather specific, just like not having a thief does. Also when you add in something like this, you lengthen the grind, because a party with a cleric will last even longer. Personally I think the pacing of combat (so you can get four extra encounters or something in an adventuring day) doesnt need to be extended. Having to break and rest is an important aspect of the game. And I think if you basically eliminate the importance of clerical healing through mechanic like this, you take away part of what makes a cleric meaningful to the game.

A: I don't think a well-rounded party can be safely assumed in "basic" gameplay. If the basic-level is targeted at newbies, rounding out a party isn't going to be in their minds (that's at least a Standard-level tactic)

B: I don't quite comprehend the link you're making between "Clerical healing must be necessary, but you can also play just fine without one," because if clerical healing is necessary, than you can't really play just fine without one, and if you can play just fine without one, then it is not necessary.

 

[steeldragons]

Smart, careful play is the antithesis of my goals for playing.

That's great. That's totally valid. Then you know your character will get wounded and, when they are wounded "enough/too much", they might die.

Simple.

 

[Garthanos]

It can be done simple. It can be done without overriding the cleric (How're ya gonna heal that blindness, huh? Paralysis? Ability damage drain and you don't have two weeks for it to come back naturally? Down to 1 HP with a orc baring down on you? Lost an arm?). And, perhaps most obviously (and easily forgotten), it can be done regardless of what the "Basic rules" say. Want a rest mechanic? Put it in! Want a "second wind"? Put it in! Want a healer's kit? Put it in! What's all the hubbub?!

Think? so the HD mechanic made it look like it was damn hard to do anything reasonable at all. I hate the non-porportionate healing... care to write the nasty house rule it will take to give it back and find the dozens of locations that make other assumptions and over rule them individually in appropriate ways? I really dont expect anything pretty.