D&D 5E We have a Legends and Lore this week

[jrowland]

I like it.

I think one needs to be more "schroedingers cat" about fatigue and meat vis a vis HP. If you never drop below 50%, its all fatigue. Easily healed by rest in a dungeon. If you drop below 50%, there's a bunch of meat missing. You can get your fatigue back in the dungeon (go up to 50% max), but the meat needs treatment, a refuge or back in town. Until its healed, you only have fatigue hp to work with.

Personally, I would add if you are ever dropped to 0hp, you suffer a "critical" in the sense of an extended injury (ubiquitous crit decks/lists/etc) that adds some condition (limp, useless arm, dazed) until healed by extensive rest or magic! GIve them a "crit rating" from 1-4 and stipulate only cure wounds of that level will suffice to remove the condition, or that many days/weeks of "bedrest".

 

[Ichneumon]

It's important to remember that the heal-to-50% proposal is a starting point for discussion, not the game's final destination. I like the intent of the proposal, and I hope we see something like it in the published game. However, I have a counter-proposal which I believe retains the spirit of Mike's suggestion, but makes more in-game sense.

Characters can be injured, a status effect that kicks in when a PC is reduced to or below a given hit-point threshold. By default, the threshold is 0, though this can be dialed up to 25% or 50% of max hitpoints for a more demanding game, or left out for an easier one. An injured PC has their max hp reduced to half its original value, and can only overcome this status by restful sleep typically found in civilized areas. Sleeping rough while injured cannot restore a PC above half hitpoints.

In the basic or standard game, being injured grants no other penalties, though the players may choose to roleplay how their character is hurt, e.g. by describing how they limp along and grimace with pain if they have to hustle. A lingering wounds module could enhance the injured status, adding rider effects or mentioning different ways to get injured (e.g. a critical hit from a monster 1 or more sizes larger).

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't like the idea of playing Farmville while I "rest up" for a few days in the city. It doesn't interest me. I work a 9-5 where I sit at a desk and deal with paperwork. I really don't have any idea to RP a slightly-injured character who sits at a desk and does paperwork while he's getting better. Not being able to heal fully while sleeping in a cave or a secured place in a dungeon is going to get hand-waived, because all it's going to do is shorten the adventuring day. When HP and healing runs low, people will stop. Nobody is realistically going to delve half-way though the "Depths of Destruction" only to say "oh wait, we're too beat up, time to head home" then wait a week or more to fully heal, and then head back, having to basically clear the dungeon all over again, and risking losing any possible hidden treasure if it abandoned by it's occupants.

 

[Li Shenron]

I do in fact have to admit that for completely new gamers... having a baseline default is probably a necessity.

You have to have some default, though. You can't just publish a game that says "here, design the game yourself."

It is NOT true for everything. It's just something that we say because we have become used to say that. Everybody says that, and we stopped thinking that it could be otherwise.

I am not saying that nothing should have a default.

I am only saying that some things don't need a default.

For example, you don't need a default campaign setting, you only need some generic elements (such as: "gods grant divine spells", "barbarians are people who can go berserk", "it is possible to learn how to teleport" etc.).

Healing is one of those few things that do NOT need a default.

Here's my train of thoughts:
- You NEED healing (otherwise you're never getting HP back).
- You NEED something else than a specific character (e.g. Cleric) to heal your HP, IF you don't want that character to become mandatory in the game (which I think is something most of us agree on)
- You DON'T NEED to pre-select a default method to get your HP back

You CAN have a game, that tells the DM "before starting your game, pick at least one of these":

- short-rest healing: with NN minutes of rest, each PC gets XX hit points back
- long-rest healing: with MM hours of rest, each PC gets YY hit points back
- healing equipment: with each unit costs RR gp and when consumed, each PC gets ZZ hit points back

Then what you CAN have, is default numbers for each of those, so that the beginner DM doesn't have to make up those numbers without a clue.

 

[GX.Sigma]

It affects pacing and difficulty. The baseline drives both, while designing an adventure. If frequent trips to town are necessary, if "pressing on" is either more or less deadly, etc.

So if the adventure assumes a certain amount of pacing and difficulty, changing the HP recovery rules will change the pacing and difficulty. Wouldn't that happen no matter what the baseline is?

Turning it around - you say you like it as the baseline. Why is it important that this is the baseline (instead of something else) and why is it better?

First of all, it greatly appeals to me because of how well it fits with classic D&D sensibilities, and I think that's reason enough to consider it the baseline. You may not agree, so here are some more concrete points:

I like this definition of hit points as the default for character options, since it's the narrowest definition that everyone can agree on. Everything debatable (warlord healing, etc.) falls outside this definition, and will need a little "this only works if you have a looser interpretation of hit points" disclaimer. That seems like a good way to handle it, rather than saying, "HP is a vague resource that you can restore in various ways, unless your DM is a dick and says you can't."

I like this definition of resting as the default for the system and adventure design, since it encourages designers to give players interesting and fun things to do during downtime. If you like slower recovery with lots of downtime, it's important to have this support. (If you like faster recovery, you can use this stuff if you want to too.) It also helps ease believability issues, like the "1 to 20 in 3 weeks" thing.

Healing is one of those few things that do NOT need a default.

Here's my train of thoughts:
- You NEED healing (otherwise you're never getting HP back).
- You NEED something else than a specific character (e.g. Cleric) to heal your HP, IF you don't want that character to become mandatory in the game (which I think is something most of us agree on)
- You DON'T NEED to pre-select a default method to get your HP back

You CAN have a game, that tells the DM "before starting your game, pick at least one of these":

- short-rest healing: with NN minutes of rest, each PC gets XX hit points back
- long-rest healing: with MM hours of rest, each PC gets YY hit points back
- healing equipment: with each unit costs RR gp and when consumed, each PC gets ZZ hit points back

Then what you CAN have, is default numbers for each of those, so that the beginner DM doesn't have to make up those numbers without a clue.

I think learning how to play is complicated enough without asking the group to choose some numbers that indirectly affect gameplay before they've even played enough to know what they want.

 

[Hussar]

Realistically, they're going to have to go with a default of some sort. There's no real choice. Too much else depends on it, particularly anything like adventure design. Never minding things like organized play as well. The default is going to have to be set somewhere

What I hope to see though, is that individual settings will be differentiated this way. Mearls does hint at that. The idea that grim and gritty Ravenloft style HP don't really fit in Forgotten Realms. Isn't FR supposed to be the baseline setting for Next? The way Greyhawk was for 3e?

If it is, then I would expect that the baseline would be set for "pretty heroic" where you get HP back quite quickly and the amount of downtime would be minimal. Since healing usually only really applies to PC's, we don't have to rewrite monsters to take this into account. Adventures set in one setting or the other, would use that settings defaults.

I wonder if we're not going to see a whole lot of "generic" adventures coming out. Modules would be geared for one setting or another and use those modules for that setting. Any "generic" adventure would be baselined on the Forgotten Realms set of rules modules.

Which, to be honest, is more or less how things have always been. There aren't that many differences between FR and Greyhawk that need mechanical differentiation.

 

[Li Shenron]

So if the adventure assumes a certain amount of pacing and difficulty, changing the HP recovery rules will change the pacing and difficulty. Wouldn't that happen no matter what the baseline is?

...

I think learning how to play is complicated enough without asking the group to choose some numbers that indirectly affect gameplay before they've even played enough to know what they want.

It is enough to say to a beginner's DM to just let all HP refresh to full until she's more comfortable.

Published adventures can be paced or not. If they are not paced (e.g. dungeon explorations) or are paced slow enough, no default is needed.

Only if they are fast-paced then they require fast healing, and this can simply spelled out clearly at the beginning of the adventure, but the DM can choose what methods for achieving fast healing (e.g. short rests, mundane healing kits, magic items).

The point is that even if some adventure requires fast healing, a specific method to achieve that is never required.

 

[Jack99]

Not sure I am completely sold on the proposition. IMO; healing should be in function of your hit points, so that no matter your level, it takes the same amount of time to heal up, baring magical help.

For example, you could do a dial that looks vaguely like the following:
Old school play: Regain 10% of max hit points (minimum 1 hit point) after a long rest, none after a short rest.

Tough love play: Regain 25% of max hit points (minimum 1 hit point) after a long rest, none after a short rest.

Standard play: Regain 50% of max hit points after a long rest (minimum 1 hit point), none after a short rest.

Easy-peasy play: Regain 75%, of max hit points after a long rest (minimum 1 hit point), 10% of max hit points (minimum 1 hit point) after a short rest.

Heroic play: Regain all hit points after a long rest, regain 25% (minimum 1 hit point) of max hit points after a short rest.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You CAN have a game, that tells the DM "before starting your game, pick at least one of these":

- short-rest healing: with NN minutes of rest, each PC gets XX hit points back
- long-rest healing: with MM hours of rest, each PC gets YY hit points back
- healing equipment: with each unit costs RR gp and when consumed, each PC gets ZZ hit points back

Then what you CAN have, is default numbers for each of those, so that the beginner DM doesn't have to make up those numbers without a clue.

Personally, I think you are giving many new DMs too much credit. Knowing what will work and be fun for a complex game system like damage and healing takes many campaigns for most players to figure out what is their preferred style. This kind of taste doesn't come automatically. So asking them to try and divine which of three or more different ways of running the hit point system for their new game is going to work is not the best use of the word count in the red box. Because that's another point we need to remember... every added paragraph of writing for one section means another section gets stuff pulled. So I think that adding an extra bit of confusion to the basic game by offering choices that the player reading it won't really understand the differences of (other than just at the reading comprehension level) and thus losing out on some other details that might get more use... is probably not the best use of space.

And again... anything listed in the game as a "default" is purely there for the basic game... because the expectation is that every single game system is open to be modularized by the experienced player. To them, "default" is a meaningless term. You're supposed to ignore defaults and choose and change every single facet of the game to your exact table's specifications.

The only place where having a "default" is meaningful? It's purely in the ego of the experience player, who gets to think smugly to himself "Yes! The way I play D&D is the 'right' and default way as determined by Wizards of the Coast! Everyone is learning to play the game the way I play it!"

Which is really kind of silly, if you ask me.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Not sure I am completely sold on the proposition. IMO; healing should be in function of your hit points, so that no matter your level, it takes the same amount of time to heal up, baring magical help.

Which is fine for what it is... but that methodology does remove the facet of rest healing where how comfortable you are has an impact on how you recover and how well. Which I do think has a place.

Just on a basic, "how the world works" point of view... it makes sense that getting hurt out in the wilderness does not allow for the same total recovery in the same amount of time that being in a bed back in a town with a doctor watching over you can grant. The default game is trying to emulate that. Getting hurt is important. It is meaningful to the game. If you get hurt out in the jungle, it has consequences. You aren't going to just go to sleep and the next morning get up as if nothing happened the day before.

Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to play that way. Which is why the game will offer up the option to do so.

But as a default... that playstyle is antithetical to a large enough percentage of other players that you can't default to it without truly alienating them. As I said above... a default in the middle that most players are going to move away from in either direction is a better choice than one that is at either extreme (making half the players ecstatic and half the players really bothered.)