D&D 5E Hit Point Recovery Too Generous

[SirAntoine]

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.

I don't think I would ever use such rules. They are worse than the challenge ratings in how they are a bit too arbitrary. Game balance is also hurt by these rules, in that healing is less important. Their services are much less valuable under this system.

 

[Raith5]

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

I note you say you are in 7 player party. Could this be a key part of the issue in this case? 7 players, especially in mid+ levels, is a pretty big advantage in the survivability stakes in most editions of D&D.

My 5e experiences have been with 5 players and I think they have the balance right with this, death is more threatening than in 4e but not as bad as 1e. I also think the standard recovery rules give a good balance between heroism and grittiness (though I do miss the cinema of 4e's second wind).

In terms of the broader tangent of this thread, I cant help but feel that if you are concerned about realism and grittiness, alternative death saves rules are needed more so than hp recovery. Failing 3 death saves seems to me to extremely unlikely and very generous to a fault (even by my pretty gamist standards)

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

These just require a bit more glad-handing. 7 days on Divine Intervention = 7 long rests = 7 weeks IMC. NBD. A spell might occasionally get rounded up or down in duration to last until EONLR or EONSR depending. A few more DM judgement calls than it was in 4e, but not a horrible amount (especially because 5e doesn't sweat the microbalance, so it's fine if a particular spell is a little more powerful or weaker than it otherwise would be). I try to divine the intent of the mechanic, if possible, and reflect that intent at a new pacing level.

 

[Ristamar]

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.

I agree. Unless we're only talking about hit point recovery, it's not even close to strictly. As I mentioned earlier, stretching the time scale between short and long rests favors classes that have bonuses and abilities that are potentially always available or tied to a short rest.

Per standard rules, characters typically have an opportunity for a long rest once every 24 hours since they have to sleep or meditate. A standard party will take one or two short rests between each long rest. Changing a short rest to 8 hours of down time and a long rest to a week will likely result in far more short rests between long rests, assuming the party doesn't consistently hurry back to a safe haven for a week of downtime after adventuring a few days.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Per standard rules, characters typically have an opportunity for a long rest once every 24 hours since they have to sleep or meditate. A standard party will take one or two short rests between each long rest. Changing a short rest to 8 hours of down time and a long rest to a week will likely result in far more short rests between long rests (probably closer to six or seven for each long rest).

Hence why my "adventuring day" adventures change with each rest, and why you might fail an adventure if you take more "rests" than its challenge would indicate. They've got an expiration date.

"If you want to recover your Warlock slots, you can take another rest, but you've been at this for three days already, and word is spreading, and goblins are escaping, and the MacGuffin might not be there in the morning."

Challenges don't just sit there and wait for you to complete them at your leisure. Even ancient airless tombs get new undead and have traps reset and get discovered by others and such.

 

[Ristamar]

Hence why my "adventuring day" adventures change with each rest, and why you might fail an adventure if you take more "rests" than its challenge would indicate. They've got an expiration date.

"If you want to recover your Warlock slots, you can take another rest, but you've been at this for three days already, and word is spreading, and goblins are escaping, and the MacGuffin might not be there in the morning."

Challenges don't just sit there and wait for you to complete them at your leisure. Even ancient airless tombs get new undead and have traps reset and get discovered by others and such.

True, that certainly works if the standard allotted time to complete an adventure stays relatively short (a few days).

 

[jodyjohnson]

There is something to be said for playing the game by the book.

It is definitely an option that some groups might try.

 

[HorusZA]

I have given up trying to rationalize what exactly HP's represent in real-life. I just view them as a resource that needs to be managed by the players and balanced against risk and reward.

One of the underlying assumptions behind the HP economy is that a typical group as something like like 4-6 encounters per day. This doesn't really happen in my games which means the HP recovery mechanics are indeed overly generous.

My group also feels that the RAW regarding dropping to zero HP's lack in danger and excitement. Again, because we have far fewer encounters per day than is assumed by the rules, the characters are usually pretty well stocked with healing spells which means going down is often more of a nuisance than a genuine "oh crap" moment.

Thusly, we have come up with some house-rules:

1.) Slow Healing: You don't recover any HP's after a long rest, just half your HD's.
2.) Negative HP's: A character can go to negative HP's. When a dying character is stabilized he stays at his current negative HP's.
3.) When a character hits negative HP's the usual rules for stabilization apply plus he has to roll on the following table:

Death's Door Effect Table

Roll    Effect
1-3    "Glanced into the Abyss / Dazed and Confused
Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.
Recovery: Back to Full HP's or Lesser Restoration"
4-6    "Out Cold
Character is knocked out for 1d100 minutes regardless of HP status. 
Recover: Lesser Restoration or a DC15 Medicine Check"
7-8    "Blood Everywhere
Character takes 1d4 points of damage per round until stablized. 
Death Saves and Medicine Checks are at Disadvantage. 
Recovery: Stabilized"
9-10    "Internal Injury
All HP recovery from Healing Effects is halved until this condition is removed. Medicine checks are at Disadvantage.
Recovery: Lesser Restoration or once back to full HP's"
11-12    "Broken & Torn
Lose 1 point from a random Physical Characteristic (STR, DEX, CON)
Recovery: Greater Restoration"
13    "Scarred
Lose 1 point of CHA. If this takes your CHA below 10, you gain Advantage on Intimidation checks.
Recovery: Greater Restoration"
14    "Disfigured
Lose 2 points of CHA. If this takes your CHA below 10, you gain Advantage on Intimidation checks.
Recovery: Greater Restoration"
15    "A Mind in Tatters
Lose 1 point from a random Mental Characteristic (INT or WIS)
Recovery: Greater Restoration"
16    "An Eye for....
You lose one of your eyes. You gain disadvantage on Wisdom (perception) checks that rely on sight and ranged attack rolls.  
Recovery: Regenerate"
17    "Lingering Wound
Roll one of your HD and reduce you Maximum HP's by that amount permanently.
Recovery: Greater Restoration"
18    "Limp
Speed is halved until the condition is removed.
Recovery: Lesser Restoration "
19    "Festering Wound
Every day at dawn, make a CON Save (DC 20) or gain a level of Exhaustion. A successful daily Medicine check (DC 15) means this roll is at Advantage. 
Recovery: Once you have passed 3 CON saves, this condition is removed at a rate of one level of Exhaustion per day. Or: Greater Restoration"
20    "Complications
Roll Twice"

 

[TreChriron]

Some really awesome injury options in this thread!

 

[Umbran]

I don't think I would ever use such rules. They are worse than the challenge ratings in how they are a bit too arbitrary. Game balance is also hurt by these rules, in that healing is less important. Their services are much less valuable under this system.

No, they aren't. That's kind of the point. The value of healing is relative to the rate at which you are going to take damage, which is dependent on the rate of encounters. So long as *all* the ways you can regain hit points are scaled to the same time increments, their relative value remains the same.