Maybe I'll do the exhaustion thing if it becomes a problem. At the moment I like fast and furious combat, so don't mind the "pop up" healing. I have monsters hit downed targets because tactically it is intelligent to ensure targets stay out of the fight, at least for intelligent creatures that understand how healing magic affects a battle.
-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
D&D 5E Healing, range and action economy
- Thread starter CapnZapp
- Start date
The Crimson Binome
Hero
I never suggested that it did. I was suggesting that you change that and add double your spellcasting modifier, in order to differentiate the two and to make Cure Wounds actually heal more. As it stands, Healing Word gives you 90% of the performance, as a bonus action and at range.
No, it doesn't. They both scale by one die per spell level. The minimum healing that you can count on, for each spell, is the same. Cure Wounds will give you a higher average, but that doesn't become a reliable average until you're rolling five or six dice... at which point Heal makes the whole comparison moot.
Cure Wounds is moderately better for healing between fights, while you're at low levels, if you don't have time to rest, and if you're lucky.
"No negative hp" seems like just such a stupidly bad rule to me. 4e "Heal from Zero" is a bad rule for most sorts of D&D, but maybe is acceptable within a particular 4e paradigm where
participation in combat is the main thing.
"No negative hp/heal from zero" has such bad effects, I'm more and more glad I use
negative hp and no heal-from-zero. Among many other benefits it keeps healing word &
cure wounds reasonably balanced.
Jaelommiss
First Post
I've been using this since around October and it works perfectly at making 0 HP something to fear. My players are far more cautious because they know that a lucky crit can cripple them for the day. Someone healed in combat will often try to get to the back rather than staying in danger because getting knocked down again will effectively end the adventuring day for them. They also know that I'll have the enemies actively respond to their presence, so stopping halfway through the dungeon means that there will be an organized defense waiting for them next time, assuming that they don't get killed during the night.
On a somewhat similar topic, I recently told my players to roll their death saves privately. Until someone comes to check their body no one (myself included) knows if they are alive or not. It's too early to know if this is good for my table or not, though it has made the decision to heal/stabilize someone much more significant.
I agree wholeheartedly.
As a 1st Edition loving grodnard, I find 5E "tolerable" (meaning I prefer it to 3.PF/4E but still vastly prefer 1E) but there are three aspects of the game that I detest: spammable, scaling 0-level spells, no negative HP and heal back to full HP after a long rest. The last two make it seem as though the PCs are Faberge eggs that must be carefully ensconced in bubble wrap to ensure that nothing bad ever happens to them like, oh, say...dying. Not that dying is a big deal anymore since you only need a 5th level cleric with the Revivify spell to negate that pesky "death" condition.
Last edited:
Personally, I think the DM should roll death saving throws and keep them secret from all the players (including the dying PC) thus preventing the meta gaming that often takes place where clerics can forgo casting a Spare the Dying cantrip or healing spell because they "know" that the dying PC has made two death saving throws and not failed any yet.
This didn't bother me in 4e, because only PCs were built like PCs, but I have found it a problem in 5e where every Novice Priest NPC can spam infinite attack cantrips. It definitely harms world-building for lower magic settings. In general the PC classes have too many spells for all but the most exceptional NPCs, so I'm looking at building most NPCs very differently, with far more restricted casting and much less combat magic.
One thing about exhaustion is it is relatively hard to remove.
I suggest giving Cure Wounds a "Ritual" tag. When cast as a Ritual it removes 1 level of exhaustion/spell level plus normal healing. That might make the Barbarian very happy, but beyond that, it simply makes exhaustion more of an in-fight issue than a lingering issue. If you want exhaustion to linger a bit more, then perhaps casting time of Cure Wounds (Ritual) can be 1 hour/spell level. Pretty much makes it an "adventure over" fix.
::Shrug:: Some of us players have moved on from the paradigm that the way to have fun in a game of D&D is being clever and lucky enough to survive whatever stuff the DM throws out at them. Some of us see D&D and other RPGs as group storytelling devices, wherein dying can be a part of the story, but doesn't have to be and it isn't a big deal if it isn't. If my player's PCs do not die as we play out this story that we are creating because they have access to magic that resurrects them... we don't consider that a failure of the game.
As a '1E Grognard' as you identify yourself... sure, our desires and methods for the game are obviously in stark contrast to yours and you might not enjoy ours much at all. But I suspect the reason why 5E has been designed the way it has is because there are more gamers throughout the last 40 years that have moved alongside me towards this direction than have stayed where you are in your place. Nothing wrong with either place... but it just means each side has to make certain changes to the ruleset if they choose to use it for a manner it wasn't designed for. If I was to play 1E again, I probably would make several changes to the game because my appetites have moved on in certain places from where 1E sits... but so what? If I wish to play 1E that badly, then I do so. No biggie.
Last edited:
Similar Threads
