Ruin Explorer
Legend
If you've got any hints/suggestions as to how to handle the issue, to add, I'd be interested to hear them, but one should always try to get a decent walk every day!
D&D 5E Should the Fighter's "Second Wind" ability grant temporary HP instead of regular HP?
- Thread starter The Black Ranger
- Start date
If you've got any hints/suggestions as to how to handle the issue, to add, I'd be interested to hear them, but one should always try to get a decent walk every day!
Thaumaturge
Wandering. Not lost. (He/they)
Oh, constitutionals are almost mandatory, for sure. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't been cooperating lately.
I don't know that I have anything to add to the SRW that will be inciteful or useful to the entrenched.
I am considering starting a new thread to discuss the design decision to not try and lockdown every possible loophole.
We've had two editions that appealed to rules lawyering and an exact reading of the rules. I like that this edition is accepting that different people will interpret rules differently and play with the same rules in different ways. That's pretty cool.
Economists say people are good at maximizing their own happiness. It's good to see and edition of D&D that allows individual tables to maximize their own enjoyment through rules modules and interpretations.
Thaumaturge.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Indeed. It's still a bit weird that this wasn't an issue with the playtest designs of similar abilities, and they always promised 5/10 minute short rests would be totally fine, but like you say, maybe a different thread for that discussion.
BryonD
Hero
I've no doubt the game is mechanically sound. But, for me, that isn't the concern.
ThirdWizard
First Post
So, I play World of Warcraft. The WoW devs are pretty open about development and player incentives and all that good stuff that comes part and parcel for MMOs. And, one of the things they note is that many players of their game will do things that they absolutely hate for even a slight advancement or increase in productivity. And we're talking hours of misery here. And, they will feel as if they are required to do these things, even if the advantage is fairly small, even if it is a 1% increase in productivity. The game has had to start playing nanny, putting limits on acquisition of advantage through boring gameplay, in order to protect the players from themselves.
Now, I'm going to surmise that there is quite some overlap in mentality from the MMO to some PnP RPG players. We're all nerds, after all, and the propensity to min/max started before the ability to do so in video games was a thing. What the takeaway here is that some people will play in a way that they dislike in order to pull out a small advantage. In other words, even if someone absolutely hates the idea of multiple short rests in a row, they may give up their preferred playstyle entirely and play a session that they hate because they see a mechanical advantage in doing so.
The Black Ranger
First Post
Temporary Hit Points
[...] Small reservoirs of stamina that insulate you from losing actual hit points.
Very obvious not that pemerton is quoting 4th edition rules as if they apply directly to Next, and hasn't actually played a D&D Next fighter or probably even seen one in action.
Otherwise he'd know that, in the October packet:
"If you take damage, these hit points are lost first, and they go away after 5 minutes"
Classes.pdf, page 26
The incentive to rest for two hours instead of one (same thing as twice for one hour each), is something they just added which wasn't a problem before. It never occurred to us to even think of taking two short rests before, because you could use as many hit dice as you wanted in a single hour.
Only in a highly contrived game is every short rest you take going to break into combat the second you heal up. I don't buy it for one minute that people won't be taking multiple short rests. If they look at you askance for following the rules that the folks at Wizards came up with after changing Second Wind TO temporary HP, then BACK, maybe people should lay the blame for a poorly thought out game at their feet, instead of gamers. It's anti-story to imagine that players would only ever rest for one hour at a time, and never explore a bit then rest again another hour. I don't want artificial contrivances to limit reasonable PC behavior as if it's remotely comparable to power gaming.
Was it "cheesy" power gaming in 1st edition through third to rest for two days to completely heal up then get back all the cleric's spells the day of departure? I've never seen a single party not do that.
They will be doing that in 5th edition but for short rests, mark my words. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Lalato
Adventurer
[MENTION=6776483]DDNFan[/MENTION]...
But aren't you assuming that everything gets restored on a short rest for every PC? It is my understanding that we're only talking about the Fighter's Second Wind... not every character's spells, abilities, resources, HP, etc, etc, etc... And if it is just the Fighter's Second Wind, the reaction seems to be a slight bit overblown at this point. Obviously, your mileage my vary as you've pretty much written volumes on the topic at this point.
But aren't you assuming that everything gets restored on a short rest for every PC? It is my understanding that we're only talking about the Fighter's Second Wind... not every character's spells, abilities, resources, HP, etc, etc, etc... And if it is just the Fighter's Second Wind, the reaction seems to be a slight bit overblown at this point. Obviously, your mileage my vary as you've pretty much written volumes on the topic at this point.
I know how temp hp work.
If you take damage, temp hp are no different from actual hp. They only "go away after 5 minutes" if you didn't lose them to hit point loss.
This means that 2nd wind as temp hp is silly for two reasons:
* You're better off using it before you get hit, to get a maximum buffer against being killed/knocked unconscious. That is not a second wind;
* The only time the final outcome ends up being different from actual healing is if you didn't need the extra hp (and hence misjudged your need to second wind). This is something of a corner case that it is not worth designing a system around, in my view.
* The only time the final outcome ends up being different from actual healing is if you didn't need the extra hp (and hence misjudged your need to second wind). This is something of a corner case that it is not worth designing a system around, in my view.
For those who don't want short rest chaining of this ability there are multiple ways to handle that without distorting the key features of the ability itself:
* The most severe is to make it like a barbarian's rage in 3E: the PC takes damage equal to the amount of their healing once the combat finishes;
* The ability can only be used during combat, or within a certain (small) time of having taken damage;
* Any rest of 1 hour or more but fewer than 8 hours counts as only a single short rest;
* Capping short rests per day;
* A table understanding not to chain short rests;
* Using the standard time management devices that Mearls et al mentioned (wandering monsters, ingame time pressure, etc).
* The ability can only be used during combat, or within a certain (small) time of having taken damage;
* Any rest of 1 hour or more but fewer than 8 hours counts as only a single short rest;
* Capping short rests per day;
* A table understanding not to chain short rests;
* Using the standard time management devices that Mearls et al mentioned (wandering monsters, ingame time pressure, etc).
D&Dnext was always going to need the GM to be very active in pacing management, because of its return to extremely assymetric suites of resources across classes. I think it's somewhat amusing that the first brushfire over this issue involves fighters rather than casters - that's a nice change - but the issue was always going to break out somewhere!
But anyway, resolving this issue seems to be about as difficult as extending the duration of extended rests in 4e to deal with the complaints of "overnight healing" ie utterly trivial.
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Tovec
Explorer
A 20th level barbarian is a form of specialization in 3.5. In my years of playing PF and 3.5, having run different campaigns with different groups at different levels. And having been in quite a few too. At one point I was in 8 games of 3.5 in a 6 day period every week. In all that time I've seen ONE 20th level barbarian - and that was when I created one as a joke and specifically DID NOT optimize him by taking something better. My point is that I have few problems with the verisimilitude of a highly specialized barbarian falling into lava at 20th level and surviving for a whole half a minute before completely turning into ash. The structure of the post was comparing this highly specialized barbarian's ability to break one's suspension of disbelief... equal to a first level dwarf's racial ability.
And for the record I still find it dumb that red dragons had fire immunity because if I wrote the rules they wouldn't and he would have been damaged from being in something hot enough to melt rock, but then again I prefer more realistic games than WotC does so I digress.
I don't think that pemerton has any problems reading the rules of how Temporary HP work. His objection seems to stem from the second part of that quote.
"If you take damage, these hit points are lost first, and they go away after 5 minutes"
Specifically to ask WHY would a second wind's HP be lost first? To this I agree with him and agree that temporary HP aren't the way to go. I think that something more like a barbarian's HP gain from CON is a better choice. I like the 'temporary' part of temp HP but not the mechanical resolution that temp HP have been saddled with.
See, told you
(@DDNFan) He does know.I think this is a little silly though.
Specify that the fighter can't use temporary HP to go above his normal maximum, then he won't use it on the first round or before he is hit. He might still use it earlier in a fight than as a last resort (because it ultimately hurts him in the end) but that is the problem with ANY version that isn't the HP lost one.
But your second point here is also my problem with second wind as regular HP, most of the time.
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Keeping it relatively short for once. Yay for me.
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