D&D 5E D&D Unboxing Starter Set Video is on Youtube

[I'm A Banana]

Only if you're really low level, where 3d10 (avg 10.5) + 3x level is enough to heal you up to full. In one hour, a 10th level Fighter (per the video) might instead spend 10d10 (avg 35) + 10x Con mod.

Sure, but what level does the Starter Set begin at? What level are we introducing new folks to D&D at? "It's only kind of a problem for your first real exposure to the game" kind of makes it a bigger problem to me!

DM Fiat.

This is a return to the kind of D&D that requires that a DM has a keen and critical eye around rules and group preferences for the adjudication of situations like that is being argued on the cleric thread. There is no right answer except what each individual DM gives after careful consideration for the tastes of the DM and the players.

As always: you could say the same thing about FATAL. It works, it's probably what most DMs will do, but it's a legit flub.

In terms of colour, you can narrate whatever makes sense for any given situation. It makes sense to me that fighters are better at picking themselves up and charging back into the fray than other classes are.

With this mechanic, they're also better at healing their own wounds than other classes are. That's the unintended effect that has some unfortunate ramifications.

Devs say its not meant to be used that way, but you can is you want to, it's up to the DM to use wandering monsters and time pressure to prevent it. Course wandering monsters dont work well outside of dungeons, and time pressures get artificial when you use them all the time. Plus .. Rope Trick? It's just dodgy, and the more fighters and MC fighters you have, the worse it is.... Otherwise devs suggest the wound module, and slower healing module, and fair enough, but have to wait for the DMG for those.

I mean, it's inevitable that 5e will have SOMETHING like this. And if it's a big enough deal, they'll errata it later. And it's probably not a game-breaker or anything. So I don't want to blow it out of proportion -- much like the "bag of rats," it's an abstract tactic that a lot of folks might not do regularly enough for it to be a severe issue.

It's just interesting to see where the first cracks appear in the new system. This is a crack. It seems to crack along lines of "encounter-by-encounter play" (ie, it's not something you notice if you just go encounter to encounter), and along lines of "low level testing" (it's not something you notice at higher levels) and along lines of "no devs go" (it's not something newbies would notice, and it's not something that "good play" would notice, and they don't playtest with "exploit all the rules!" in mind, I imagine). Which gives me a bit of a place to look for other cracks -- low level healing effects or effects that can be spammed outside of encounters (cantrips might be a good candidate to look at....). It indicates where there might be some systematic weaknesses. Some things DMs with cheesy friends might want to look out for.

It's also interesting to see the reaction. Some unnecessary hostility to those who play against their intent (Overall message: "If you WANT to play in a way that SUCKS, I GUESS you can!"), a few different optional patches for the issue ("Oh, there's a wandering monsters option and a future option to change healing and..."). Which makes some sense if they were feeling defensive and caught off-guard. It's not the most cogent or fair analysis of what's going on there, but it's a fair recommendation for a fix.

Again, I don't want to give the impression that this RUINS THE GAME or anything. I'm just pointing out that it's clearly a bit of a mistake. Perhaps an acceptable one, definitely not one that's going to break the game, but a mistake nonetheless. That makes it interesting to look at, to me. Examining how mistakes were made helps us learn our blind spots and our biases.

 

[Klaus]

Sure, but what level does the Starter Set begin at? What level are we introducing new folks to D&D at? "It's only kind of a problem for your first real exposure to the game" kind of makes it a bigger problem to me!

The first exposure to the game also (likely) includes guidelines on how to DM the included adventures, and that could also mean random encounters, where to rest (and for how long), etc.

So a 1st-level Fighter begins with 13 hp (for instance). If he's down to, say, 3, he can use Second Wind to regain 4 hp (3.5 + 1, round down). Another hour and he's up to 11. No biggie, it teaches that resting is necessary to regain your combat resilience (but everyone learns this, through the Hit Dice mechanic and the overnight rest).

Same fighter is now 2nd-level. He has 19 hp. If down to 3 again, he regains 5 hp per hour, but he needs more time to reach full (3 hours to reach 18 hp).

By the time he's 5th-level (when the Starter Set ends), the fighter has 37 hp, and regains 8 hp per hour of rest. If down to 3 hp (again!), he needs 4 hours to reach almost full health.

As you can see, there's a dimishing return to the effectiveness of using Second Wind out of combat, and the new player will end up realizing that. And all this is *if* the DM and the other players are okay with the characters taking their sweet time resting.

 

[DDNFan]

Sure, but what level does the Starter Set begin at? What level are we introducing new folks to D&D at? "It's only kind of a problem for your first real exposure to the game" kind of makes it a bigger problem to me!





As always: you could say the same thing about FATAL. It works, it's probably what most DMs will do, but it's a legit flub.



With this mechanic, they're also better at healing their own wounds than other classes are. That's the unintended effect that has some unfortunate ramifications.



I mean, it's inevitable that 5e will have SOMETHING like this. And if it's a big enough deal, they'll errata it later. And it's probably not a game-breaker or anything. So I don't want to blow it out of proportion -- much like the "bag of rats," it's an abstract tactic that a lot of folks might not do regularly enough for it to be a severe issue.

It's just interesting to see where the first cracks appear in the new system. This is a crack. It seems to crack along lines of "encounter-by-encounter play" (ie, it's not something you notice if you just go encounter to encounter), and along lines of "low level testing" (it's not something you notice at higher levels) and along lines of "no devs go" (it's not something newbies would notice, and it's not something that "good play" would notice, and they don't playtest with "exploit all the rules!" in mind, I imagine). Which gives me a bit of a place to look for other cracks -- low level healing effects or effects that can be spammed outside of encounters (cantrips might be a good candidate to look at....). It indicates where there might be some systematic weaknesses. Some things DMs with cheesy friends might want to look out for.

It's also interesting to see the reaction. Some unnecessary hostility to those who play against their intent (Overall message: "If you WANT to play in a way that SUCKS, I GUESS you can!"), a few different optional patches for the issue ("Oh, there's a wandering monsters option and a future option to change healing and..."). Which makes some sense if they were feeling defensive and caught off-guard. It's not the most cogent or fair analysis of what's going on there, but it's a fair recommendation for a fix.

Again, I don't want to give the impression that this RUINS THE GAME or anything. I'm just pointing out that it's clearly a bit of a mistake. Perhaps an acceptable one, definitely not one that's going to break the game, but a mistake nonetheless. That makes it interesting to look at, to me. Examining how mistakes were made helps us learn our blind spots and our biases.

Second Wind is just poorly thought out and designed from the start.

They bypassed the Hit Dice mechanic, which was specifically invented for this sort of thing (characters being able to restore their own HP), and therefore will require a special tweak to fix when we enable a wounds or vitality module. It also won't even scale up or down with different healing rates, like if you change the short rest to 5 minutes all of a sudden this problem gets MUCH worse, more pronounced and more severe, and therefore that's no longer even an option.

They were originally saying that you could tune the game by changing the time required for a short rest. Now that only makes Second Wind stick out even worse.

Bag of rats, definitely, but it's actually worse than that because it is cheesy to have a bag of rats (or golf club of weapons), it SHOULDN'T be cheesy for a character to spam their own abilities. If it is, you've failed as a game designer if your goal is to make the game not feel cheesy. I expect at my game we will be using slow healing, lingering wounds & vitality, but it would be nice to play the normal game and not realize that fighters have effectively unlimited hit dice / self healing in 5th edition, or have to hunt around for mechanics like this that don't fit elegantly within the rest of the game rules. Why should a fighter ignore hit dice or have an ability which makes it obsolete and undesirable to use? I can see lots of fighters never running out of their daily hit dice at a certain point. Just wait another hour. 30 seconds of battle for every two hours rest and fighters never need a cure wounds cast on them.

When you look at it that way, they goofed up big time. It looks amateurish and that's because it is. They can try to rationalize their mistake away by hiding behind (DMs won't allow this), but that's an old fallback to poor game design. The DM shouldn't have to fix the system right out the gate.

I hope this is errata #1. Don't leave known bugs in the game, dudes. And they shouldn't blame players for exploiting their broken fighter self-healing ability. It's there and it's meant to be used and it will be. In 4th edition, at least all self-healing was built on surges in a unified way, and surgeless healing was supposed to be special and the domain of clerics only. It's like, as 4th edition era designers, they completely misunderstood their own game design.

I bet it's going to either go back to Temp HP which is erased after 5 minutes, or it's going to get a hard cap per day, or it's going to use hit dice to fuel it. Even being able to spend your own hit dice during combat as a bonus action is still pretty good, and it's comparable to what a barbarian can do with his rage ability.

Wizards, don't blame players for your mistakes and oversights. That's the real cheesy thing going on here. I would never have the balls to release a product into the wild and then tell people they're using it wrong when they are actually using it well. Why should fighters not maximize their own self-healing? Second Wind giving a self-heal is cheesy, on its own, regardless of spamming it. Spamming it because you can because there is no hard limit on its uses per day is merely playing your fighter well. If that's cheesy, that's not the player's fault, that's the designer's.

 

[drjones]

He explicitly explained why this was not being nixed. They are intentionally not designing the game to stop people from abusing rules to make it not fun. I think they are right to take that approach since the vast majority of players and DMs are not rule following automatons, they are people sitting at a table who want to have a good time.

 

[thalmin]

I don't see it as a bug. The group can play it whichever way it wants. I generally play, and DM, with the attitude "Let's go. We're burning daylight!" So no problem for me. If someone gets their kicks out of maximizing the HP by resting most of the day away, I say let them. Using the Hit Dice is a lot quicker!

 

[MartyW]

When you look at it that way, they goofed up big time. It looks amateurish and that's because it is. They can try to rationalize their mistake away by hiding behind (DMs won't allow this), but that's an old fallback to poor game design. The DM shouldn't have to fix the system right out the gate.

Baloney. Pedantic rules-lawyer jerks will always, ALWAYS find holes in the system. You can't design for the edge case because that ruins the fun parts of the game for the rest of us.

Mearls is exactly correct. This is a table issue, not a rules issue. If your group wants to play with the silliness of taking several short rests in a row to spam second winds, then more power to ya. Have fun with that game. There is no need to prevent you from doing this through the rules if that's what you find fun.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will be playing the game for the fun of it rather than trying to abuse the rules to show how clever we think we are. If we were interested in that kind of game, we'd play Magic the Gathering instead.

 

[DDNFan]

I don't see it as a bug. The group can play it whichever way it wants. I generally play, and DM, with the attitude "Let's go. We're burning daylight!" So no problem for me. If someone gets their kicks out of maximizing the HP by resting most of the day away, I say let them. Using the Hit Dice is a lot quicker!

You don't see a problem with fighters not expending their hit dice to heal but every other class does?

Really? Like, you don't foresee party rhythm issues this causes because of the pressure to take more rests because it saves the fighter's hit dice pool, but doesn't save it for anyone else? It would be like one person in a group having ten surges per day and the others having four, but the guy with ten doesn't even need them most of the time because they have their own surgeless healing, to use 4e-isms.

It's really funny that a mechanic lifted straight out of 4th edition would be designed to not even use the new edition's equivalent of healing surges. Wow, just wow. It's dawning on me how bad this is, I totally agree with Kamikaze.

This is what you get for designing the game only by raw playtest feedback. People out there are not game designers, their feedback should be taken in consideration with that in mind. Design by committee often leads to problems like this.

 

[DDNFan]

Baloney. Pedantic rules-lawyer jerks will always, ALWAYS find holes in the system. You can't design for the edge case because that ruins the fun parts of the game for the rest of us.

Mearls is exactly correct. This is a table issue, not a rules issue. If your group wants to play with the silliness of taking several short rests in a row to spam second winds, then more power to ya. Have fun with that game. There is no need to prevent you from doing this through the rules if that's what you find fun.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will be playing the game for the fun of it rather than trying to abuse the rules to show how clever we think we are. If we were interested in that kind of game, we'd play Magic the Gathering instead.

You're just parrotting Mearls' hostility here. It's not the player's fault for playing their basic fighters effectively. It's the designers who built this ability's fault, entirely. Such a cop out to blame people for wanting to rest two hours instead of one. That will happen a lot, and it shouldn't be the DM's job to fix bugs in the basic D&D rules. They're aware of it and passing the buck.

It has never been a good answer to say "let the DM fix it". No, they should fix issues in their own game, that's their job. We pay them to do that. Players are clever, they learn to use their characters over time, this knowledge gets propagated. "Don't waste your hit dice, let's take another hour before continuing on instead" will be a refrain heard a lot.

Might as well just give fighters a regen ability. That's what Second Wind is, effectively.

This is not abstract for me. The game I'm playing, we have a halfling fighter. We have this system of way portals that we can use for short or long rests that are like teleport zones through a high magic world. Now, without a cleric, we can just jump in there, spend three or four hours instead of one each time, and our fighter never needs a Cure Wounds spell cast on him. Ever. This means no matter how you narrate HP loss, the fighter is like a troll whose wounds disappear quickly, while the rest of the group just sits there, bleeding and bandaged up. This means my ranger won't ever have to cast Cure Wounds on the fighter. That's stupid.

This is game breakingly bad for our campaign. Our fighter will now almost always be at max HP after rests, short or long, no matter what. Because Second Wind doesn't have a hard limit on it.

Terrible game design here. They built a limited healing system and bypassed it for fighters. Pure facepalm.

 

[MartyW]

This is not abstract for me. The game I'm playing, we have a halfling fighter. We have this system of way portals that we can use for short or long rests that are like teleport zones through a high magic world. Now, without a cleric, we can just jump in there, spend three or four hours instead of one each time, and our fighter never needs a Cure Wounds spell cast on him. Ever. This means no matter how you narrate HP loss, the fighter is like a troll whose wounds disappear quickly, while the rest of the group just sits there, bleeding and bandaged up. This means my ranger won't ever have to cast Cure Wounds

Ok... so you say you can spend 3 or 4 hours in these monster free zones. What is the difference in-game of spending a long rest in one of these zones? That way the whole party is healed up, not just the fighters. Now your Clerics never have to use any cure spells.

And you are complaining that second wind is broken?

 

[Remathilis]

You don't see a problem with fighters not expending their hit dice to heal but every other class does?.

No. Plenty of other classes do it. In fact, I think very few off them can't. Monks self heal, paladins lay on hands, rangers clerics, druids, bards and paladins all get access to Cure Wounds. so far, only the rogue, wizard, sorcerer, and barbarian lack a self heal, ands I wager that might not be our of the realm of impossible that they have one.