D&D 5E 2/25/2013 L&L: This Week in D&D

[Jeff Carlsen]

As a basic rule for healing, this works well enough. It's not perfect, but none of it's problems are significant and it creates a certain pace.

That said, I'll never likely use it as is. I'm looking for a healing system that has:

• Proportional healing.
• Roll dice for healing.
• A wounds mechanic.
• Slow natural healing.
• Some quick recovery based on stamina.
• Fast, but limited magical healing.
• Consequences for magical healing.
• Magical healing limited to divine magic.
• Magical healing not drawing form the same pool as natural healing.
• No multi-use magical healing items.

And I want it to remain simple, which is the difficult part. I'm not overly concerned with using healing as a pacing mechanism, but if I can get some pacing benefit without breaking suspension of disbelief, I'm take it.

Hit dice cover some of these, and with modifications could cover others. I'm perfectly okay with using modules to get what I want, but I'd like to see some time spent focusing on these modules.

 

[Obryn]

I still cannot understand why anyone gives a rat's ass about the Basic game's rules. None of us are going to be using it.

Core/Basic might be the only one I buy. I have a perfectly workable "complex" D&D so I'm kind of wondering what a WotC OSR game might be like. I could get behind something like an RC with cleaner design.

-O

 

[GX.Sigma]

Core/Basic might be the only one I buy. I have a perfectly workable "complex" D&D so I'm kind of wondering what a WotC OSR game might be like. I could get behind something like an RC with cleaner design.

-O

The "standard" rules are mostly player-side, and the "advanced" rules are mostly DM-side, so they'll probably be equivalent to the PHB and DMG. So if you want a simple game you can tinker with, you buy the Basic game and the DMG. (If your players want more complex options, they buy the PHB.) Pure speculation, of course, but that seems the most logical.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The "standard" rules are mostly player-side, and the "advanced" rules are mostly DM-side, so they'll probably be equivalent to the PHB and DMG. So if you want a simple game you can tinker with, you buy the Basic game and the DMG. (If your players want more complex options, they buy the PHB.) Pure speculation, of course, but that seems the most logical.

I doubt you'ill even need to buy that. I suspect it's going to be published two ways:

1) Player's Handbook. DMG. Monster Manual. Each of them include Basic, Standard and Advanced rules all together in the various chapters. The opening couple chapters of the Player's Handbook might have the core rule "Basic game", with every chapter subsequent to that being the "Standard" rules you can incorporate into it (and then like you say, maybe the Advanced rules will all be in the DMG). So if you buy the regular 3 books like we have in the past, you're getting all 3 versions together and can mix and match. And thus... if you don't like the healing model in the Basic game... the alternate methods for healing are a couple chapters further back in the book ready to be used.

2) Basic game by itself-- Core Four player's info, basic DM info and basic single monster info all in one package. Probably published in Red Box / Beginner's Box format with dice, maps & tokens and/or in Essentials-style small-sized paperback format without dice. So you probably wouldn't need to buy the full-sized DMG or MM at all.

So the questions then comes... what do people buy? Well... if you are a-okay with just Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard (and each with a single build), and are a-okay with Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling... then the Basic game by itself might be fine. But if you want any of those other races or classes, or backgrounds, or feats, or rituals, or additional class builds, or anything like that... you're gonna be buying the three hardcover books like you always have. And once you do that, you have any alternate healing rules at your fingertips, and thus the whole "What healing method should the Basic game use" argument becomes moot.

 

[sheadunne]

I think we might see

1) Core Rules Book with options (This books contains the rules of the game with options)
2) Players Book with options (this book contains classes, feats, skills, spells, equipment, etc, with options)
3) DM's Book with options (this book contains DM only information with options)
4) MM Book with options (this book contains monsters with options)

If the core rules are really modular, integrating the rules in with player info, dm info, and mm info seems like a bad idea. Core book is the unchanging part of the game that cannot be altered, only expanded upon by the optional parts. The DM book contains rules that players don't need to know about like dungeon design, trap design, encounter design, magic items, etc).

Then using all that they'll create a basic game that leaves out the "with options" parts and rolls everything into one book and may only include info for only a select number of levels.

But who really knows. I just don't want to see every rules entry with 6 different options. That's what Unearthed Arcana is for . . .

 

[Texicles]

Gah. Here's hoping the game comes with a healing system that does NOT allow full recovery overnight. I cannot stand that.

The suggested healing method in this week's article might actually serve your purposes then, with a little dial turning of course

I think that, for the basic rules, it's pretty spot on. A little con-scaling might be beneficial, but even that might add an unnecessary level of complexity to the simplest incarnation of 5e.

What struck me as the real strength of this method of overnight healing is the limitless adjustments that can be made. 1 HP/Hour/Level too much? Call it 1 HP/Hour/Level/2. Voila! Half the healing! Changing the coefficients of HP, time or levels is simple math that lets you make rest-healing be as effective or ineffective as you want.

Obviously, when it comes to the "Advanced" incarnation, give me all the things. I want to see healing modules for every campaign, from gritty to fun-filled-heroic-romp. Wounds and HDs or surges too. I want to see this game include the stuff that i don't like or even care about, because someone, somewhere will be glad it's there and have a better time for it.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Obviously, when it comes to the "Advanced" incarnation, give me all the things. I want to see healing modules for every campaign, from gritty to fun-filled-heroic-romp. Wounds and HDs or surges too. I want to see this game include the stuff that i don't like or even care about, because someone, somewhere will be glad it's there and have a better time for it.

This all-too-rare opinion is extremely encouraging to see. Next discussions are generally far too concerned with what should or (mostly) should not, be "allowed" in Next.

 

[Texicles]

...Next discussions are generally far too concerned with what should or (mostly) should not, be "allowed" in Next.

I hear ya, and I say nuts to that. The only way we're all going to get everything we want is to allow others to get what they want as well. A rising tide floats all boats and so forth. If you want a healing module that says only magical healing, except on the third Wednesday of the month, in your game, it can't possibly hurt my game.

Granted, that's probably not a module we'll see, but from a design perspective (especially with respect to the modularity goals put forth for 5e from day one), there's a lot of design space to go around here for the kinds of healing (et. al.) variants that disparate people want at their disposal.

 

[pemerton]

Which was always something that I found weird, given a combat system that didn't actually generate any such wounds. Its like, you go through a bunch of combats with no dismemberments, then when you fight trolls, limbs fall like autumn leaves.

I agree hat this has always been strange.

Time in the game world is explicitly made the resource of importance for healing (without magic) - and yet nowhere is the relevance or meaning of this "resource" explained. If game world time is actually a meaningful (i.e. limited) resource, then magical healing becomes eye-wateringly valuable. If it's not (i.e. the PCs can rest as long as they want) then the system described is essentially "100% recovery between encounters" with a fig-leaf of colour ("you are resting for a total of X hours") to make it sound semi-believable...

Yes!

On the "Will there be such a game as D&Dnext" thread, a poster is arguing that it's too early to form a view as to what D&Dnext will be like, or capable of. But looking at rules nuggets like this just makes me sad, and for multiple reasons.

First, we get the debate over what the coefficient of healing should be (level per hour, level per 2 hours, level per day, etc) - as if, in the absence of time as a resource, this is anything more than colour.

Second, we get the fanfare over the power of modularity - as if a 4e group couldn't change extended rests from "6 hours" to "6 days" at the stroke of a pen, if that's what they wanted.

Third, we get the continued failure of WotC designers to speak openly about the metagame features of these design decisions. They talk about it as if all the stakes are ingame ("How long will it take for my guy to get better?") whereas the design issue is almost entirely metagame.

Fourth, we have - as far as I can tell - no attention to the real design question, which is - as Balesir points out - will or won't ingame time be a resource? The classes are (at leat notionally) balanced on the assumption that it will be - eg wizards with their spike damage compared to fighter's with their smooth output are balanced across some stipulated "adventuring day". But as yet there is no hint of how the adventuring day will actually be made part of the mechanics of the game.

Given the obvious talent of these designers, this is a sorry state of affairs!

 

[Ratskinner]

I think that the answer to that is "pure genius", or "it didn't really matter." Since he had already "defined" HP in an abstract way there was nothing else to do. Obviously, this created many inconsistencies, but the simplicity of HP is undeniable - it just works. It's when you start trying to tie it down from it's abstractness into a more concrete model that the cracks appear. So in that sense the simplicity and functionality was pure genius.

Oh, wait, you're serious.

umm...you're wrong. While any individual HP is abstract, the system as a whole is much less abstract. In fact it is quite concrete enough for the system to have glaring internal inconsistencies. Frex, the healing spells simply don't make sense as written. It would have been trivially simple for him to write the original Cure X Wounds as dependent on the level of the target, and thus make them consistent with the model for HP that he presented. Note that this inconsistency is not even dependent on anything more concrete than his definition and the names of the spells, a far cry from "trying to tie it down from it's abstractness".

I remember reading in the early 80's (possibly 81) an article from Don Turnbull, the TSR UK guy from Fiend Folio fame. In the article he wondered pretty much the same thing about HP, as the rising HP of a higher level fighter could not obviously be accounted for with an increase in the character's physical constitution. He postulated that a "Hit" and a "Miss" were not always an actual physical hit or miss. HP were after all not physical, but a measure of "capacity to live", and the "wounds" was just a decrease in "capacity to live". The only reason hit points were called "Hit" Points was for simplicity. Instead of Capacity to Live Points. It was an interesting read, and it's funny today, and 30+ years later we are having the same discussions/arguments. Even with the arguments HP as an abstract concept still just works right out of the gate.

Still causing arguments 40 years later....hardly indicative of "genius" in mechanics.