D&D 5E Hit Point Recovery Too Generous

[Umbran]

But, neither of us can really go for that argument, since the alternative means both death spirals, and undue limitations on what can do damage and what can restore hps.

I mentioned it because it seems to me an argument of some merit, even if I myself wouldn't make it. It is a valid thing for someone to say.

I presented the second argument, as it is more akin to what I actually believe. No one game does everything well. So long as we can accept that, failing to do a thing well is not necessarily a failing in the game. My hammer doesn't drive screws well, but it is still an excellent hammer. Sometimes, if I really want something, I must choose the right tool for the job, and D&D is not always the right too. I love D&D, and I'm still okay with that

FATE's 'consequences' are intriguing and cinematic. The group I'm playing Dresden Files with - including the GM - are really having trouble wrapping our heads around the mechanics of it though. We puzzle it out each time someone gets hurt, but it doesn't stick.

I can take a stab at explaining them (they might be elucidating for the thread, in general), if you think it might help.

Maybe I'm just used to the advancement in Hero and Storyteller, but a gentler slope on that long road of character power gain doesn't seem to hurt.

Well, that's a playstyle thing. Some folks like that sort of thing, other don't. Plus, at least with Storyteller, I've found that advancement is variable depending on player choice - if a player focuses on their core competency (or even just on the supernatural abilities available to their type), then advancement can be pretty quick. If, however, you spread out a lot among the supernatural powers, stats, and skills, advancement can be pretty slow.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I can take a stab at explaining them (they might be elucidating for the thread, in general), if you think it might help.

Yes, FATE 'complications' (is it complications or consequences? ) are one of the more intriguing ways of modeling cinematic injury/jeopardy that I've seen in an RPG, and I'd love to hear more detail from someone who has a better grasp of and more experience with them. (much as I sometimes harp on how little D&D has progressed over the decades, that's an area (hps) where it's been hard to improve upon while still being playable)

As open as 5e officially is to DM tinkering, maybe there's even something that can be lifted from the idea.

 

[Jester David]

Does anyone else think hit point recovery through rests is way too generous in this edition?

Yes. Very much so.
That's why I use the alternate rules.

 

[Erik42]

Everyone, thank you for all of the replies. I haven't had time to read them all yet, but will do so later tonight.

Thanks

 

[SirAntoine]

I'm also implementing a "week in town" long rest...

But "a week in town" is the long rest for everybody. It's not like the adventure continues while you're sleeping in the normal rules. You go back to town, the DM says "you rest for a week," and you get all your stuff back. What's the problem?

Yes. That is the whole point of the "week in town" rest, in my opinion. Whatever the party was doing (e.g., clearing a dungeon) before the rest is probably irrelevant after the rest. In other words, you go back to town when you've given up on whatever you were doing. In other other words, if you want/need to get something done, you'd better do it all in one expedition. This is essentially a pacing mechanism that forces each adventure to be only one "day"'s worth of resources, and nerfs five-minute workdays.

What? Why?

Getting spells back is fun, I suppose.

 

[Erik42]

I don't think many would change it. Full hit points means very little in 5E. You can die almost every combat. Hit points is not a status level of your wounds. It is numerical way to simulate a combination of skill, physical resilience, physical endurance, and other factors in combat. Recovering them all doesn't mean you can't die the very next battle to an enemy. I would bet the vast majority find slow hit point recovery cumbersome and lacking. It doesn't do a very good job of simulating fantasy heroes that seem to fight every day and suffer very little from doing so.

This is going off on a tangent, but I also feel like it's too hard to die in 5E. Today I was in 7 player party in an Adventurer's League game, HOTDQ. We were in a fight with a Black Dragon. Since I've been playing the adventure I haven't read it, so I don't know its age or size or stats, but I think a group of 5th level characters should not be able to kill any but the youngest, smallest of dragons. Not only did we kill it, but there were no deaths. A lot of characters got knocked out - after taking ridiculous damage. 50, 60, 70 points from an acid bath? No problem, I'm a mighty 5th level warlock with 36 hp. I don't like dying and I don't like killing characters, but there should at least be enough of a fear of death to...I don't know, sounds like my problem. I came up with dragons being something that only a high level character would consider tackling - I guess I need to re-calibrate the way I gauge things in 5E.

So that's my tangential rant. Thanks for listening

 

[bmcdaniel]

I made the point obliquely up-thread, but since nobody seems to be discussing it, I'd like to make it more forcefully...

From a game balance perspective, it doesn't matter at all, whether long/short rests happen every hour/night/week/month, so long as the number of encounters (and general resource use) remains constant per long/short rest.

Changing the timing is really all about the narrative. In particular, whether you want travel time/encounters to be relevant or not. If all the action is in at on-site locations, you can have 5-8 encounters per day and allow an overnight long rest (resources re-set overnight). If you want wilderness exploration and encounters to have significance, then they need to be part of the 5-8 encounters per long rest, and a long rest should take a week (and perhaps back in civilization). If you are playing a long-scale seafaring campaign, you might have 5-8 encounters per voyage, and only allow a long rest every few months when the players return to homeport.

It all depends on what kind of campaign you want to run.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

From a game balance perspective, it doesn't matter at all, whether long/short rests happen every hour/night/week/month, so long as the number of encounters (and general resource use) remains constant per long/short rest.

This isn't strictly the case. There are still non-encounter reasons why you might want to spend a long-rest resource. There are spells which you might want to cast, which last a number of hours, which are effectively all-day if you're on a 24-hour cycle, but are effectively one-encounter if you're on a week-cycle.

There are also some resources which aren't tied to the rest cycle. The obvious one, off the top of my head, is Divine Intervention.

 

[S'mon]

1. HP can go negative,
2. No hp recovery on rest while hp negative. Can still spend hit dice.

That seems to me to be enough to deal with the silliness of the current system - 'heal from 0' was only a small problem in cinematic 4e, but if running 5e with a more traditional ethos it becomes a big source of disassociation/immersion-breaking.

 

[Psikerlord#]

This is going off on a tangent, but I also feel like it's too hard to die in 5E. Today I was in 7 player party in an Adventurer's League game, HOTDQ. We were in a fight with a Black Dragon. Since I've been playing the adventure I haven't read it, so I don't know its age or size or stats, but I think a group of 5th level characters should not be able to kill any but the youngest, smallest of dragons. Not only did we kill it, but there were no deaths. A lot of characters got knocked out - after taking ridiculous damage. 50, 60, 70 points from an acid bath? No problem, I'm a mighty 5th level warlock with 36 hp. I don't like dying and I don't like killing characters, but there should at least be enough of a fear of death to...I don't know, sounds like my problem. I came up with dragons being something that only a high level character would consider tackling - I guess I need to re-calibrate the way I gauge things in 5E.

So that's my tangential rant. Thanks for listening

Yep take a look at the DMG injury rules (I suggest fleshing the table out more), along with maybe the massive damage rule.