D&D 5E Is it worth taking damage in order to do your stuff?

[The Crimson Binome]

If a centaur guts you with his lance for 30 points of damage, and then you fall off a 30' bridge for another 10 points of damage, a night's rest may give you back all your HP, but it's perfectly fair and consistent with RAW to say that your gut still hurts a few days later. And it might leave a scar.

Like I said, it's hard to really figure out what's going on, based on the information at hand. I'm mostly inclined to say that, if you heal all of your HP overnight, then the centaur probably didn't gut you with his lance - being gutted with a lance isn't something that you can recover from overnight. There's no way of looking at it which is really more consistent than any other, because every way of looking at it is just loaded with obvious contradictions.

If I do give up on this edition - which is seeming more and more likely, of late - then this sort of thing is probably going to be the reason why. Trying to figure out the in-game reality that HP represent is bringing back memories of trying to figure out the in-game reality that a minion represented in 4E.

 

[PnPgamer]

Climbing a sheer cave wall surface was not possible I reckon. Why do you guys think the rogue was spider man?

 

[Uchawi]

Like I said, it's hard to really figure out what's going on, based on the information at hand. I'm mostly inclined to say that, if you heal all of your HP overnight, then the centaur probably didn't gut you with his lance - being gutted with a lance isn't something that you can recover from overnight. There's no way of looking at it which is really more consistent than any other, because every way of looking at it is just loaded with obvious contradictions.

If I do give up on this edition - which is seeming more and more likely, of late - then this sort of thing is probably going to be the reason why. Trying to figure out the in-game reality that HP represent is bringing back memories of trying to figure out the in-game reality that a minion represented in 4E.

Lingering wounds after zero hit points is the way to go to address permanent, or long term damage.

 

[Tony Vargas]

if you heal all of your HP overnight... being gutted with a lance isn't something that you can recover from overnight. There's no way of looking at it which is really more consistent than any other. If I do give up on this edition - which is seeming more and more likely, of late - then this sort of thing is probably going to be the reason why.

That seems like an over-reaction. Why not just use some of the DMG healing variants? At the outside, tweak or ban the odd class feature or feat (already explicitly optional) that compounds the issue?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That seems like an over-reaction. Why not just use some of the DMG healing variants?

Most of the healing options in the DMG are concerned with the rate of recovering Hit Dice and the conditions surrounding their expenditure, but none of them prevent someone from recovering zero to full over the span of a short rest. You wouldn't be able to pull that trick on consecutive weeks, and you would need some mundane medical assistance during your overnight short rest, but it's still zero-to-full overnight - which means you probably weren't actually injured when that spear hit you for 30 damage.

Lingering Injuries would allow for the narrative construct of getting hurt, but it requires a strong de-coupling of HP from injury in order to do so. You could have an internal injury while you're at full HP, or you could have nothing wrong with you while you're at 1/42 HP. And if physical injury isn't represented through HP loss, then it raises the question of what in-game reality HP actually do represent, and how characters are aware of it when they need healing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Most of the healing options in the DMG are concerned with the rate of recovering Hit Dice and the conditions surrounding their expenditure, but none of them prevent someone from recovering zero to full over the span of a short rest.

You can't just toss HD entirely?

You wouldn't be able to pull that trick on consecutive weeks, and you would need some mundane medical assistance during your overnight short rest, but it's still zero-to-full overnight - which means you probably weren't actually injured when that spear hit you for 30 damage.

Sounds like some sort of more proportional limit might be in order. You wouldn't want a 30 hp character recovering 30 hp in a relatively short time, but wouldn't it be OK for a 120hp character, for instance?

That is, assuming just using hps to model injury, alternately...

Lingering Injuries would allow for the narrative construct of getting hurt, but it requires a strong de-coupling of HP from injury in order to do so.

It's not like there's a super-strong coupling, to begin with, so that's not a tough bar to clear. Hps, for instance, could primarily represent /avoiding/ injury, when you're out of hps, you suffer injuries - if they don't kill you, they linger/impair....

You could have an internal injury while you're at full HP, or you could have nothing wrong with you while you're at 1/42 HP.

You could, but you'd be suffering some sort of lingering-injury penalty, so it's not like there's a narrative disconnect, there.

...All the above, hypothetically, of course, depending on what variants you instituted.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You can't just toss HD entirely?

I could house rule, but I shouldn't need to. The whole point of including the various healing options in the DMG is that there should be something in there that can work for everybody, but they didn't really put sufficient effort into making sure it actually worked out that way.

Currently, I've solved the issue with setting lore that the PCs are explicitly magical creatures, and the rapid healing is part of the magic. It's a one-time gimmick to see if this edition can hold up over twenty levels with the default settings. I don't really want to run that gimmick again, though.

It's not like there's a super-strong coupling, to begin with, so that's not a tough bar to clear. Hps, for instance, could primarily represent /avoiding/ injury, when you're out of hps, you suffer injuries - if they don't kill you, they linger/impair....

As I said, this creates issue with HP awareness on the part of the characters. Characters need to be able to see when someone is down on HP, if they are to make any reasonable decisions about when to cast spells or drink potions.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I could house rule, but I shouldn't need to. The whole point of including the various healing options in the DMG is that there should be something in there that can work for everybody.

Well, within limits, I guess, there's a lot of stuff I'd want as a player that hasn't found it's way to 5e yet. ;P

But, there's no appreciable difference between using a variant out of the DMG and declining to use a rule in the PH. If varying the number of HD recovered over time isn't enough, reducing max HD or eliminating them is pretty trivial.

I can see how dreaming up your own wound-tracking system over and above hps might be a bit of a design burden, though.

Currently, I've solved the issue with setting lore that the PCs are explicitly magical creatures, and the rapid healing is part of the magic. It's a one-time gimmick to see if this edition can hold up over twenty levels with the default settings. I don't really want to run that gimmick again, though.

It does seem a little extreme a resort.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Treating healing like any previous edition should be an option on the table. The basic terminology hasn't changed. I can understand why the didn't reprint those options in the DMG.

With HD recovery and overnight healing, I find that players cue off crits and when characters are reduced to 0. They do not in general use resources to recover Hit Points when a short rest will do.

I imagine they can also gauge Hit Points levels in a similar way that a coach may pull players from the game before they get hurt/fatigued rather than only sending in a replacement after an injury. Recognizing near misses, punishing blows, and narrow escapes.

 

[Shasarak]

The willingness of 5E characters to shrug off grievous injuries because HP heal every day bugs me. I've considered keeping track of pain and scars even after HP is healed. E.g. "you can tell from his scars that this guy has taken well over 2000 HP of damage over the course of his life." Similarly, I could say that taking HP damage causes pain for at least a week, even if the HP damage goes away and is no longer life-threatening after a night's rest. This results in NPCs who act in ways that are more familiar to us from real life (will surrender when mugged rather than fighting the guy with a knife), rather than just treating wounds as absolutely trivial.

This makes me tempted to write up some kind of "Achievement" list