D&D 5E Running a 5th edition game where magical healing is rare.

[Ancalagon]

You know, the lack of magical healing in 5e won't hurt you for HP that much - it's those cure poison, remove curse etc types of magic that will be very problematic...

 

[jodyjohnson]

We're halfway to finishing Out of the Abyss with a no magic healing party.

Barely miss it.

I just don't see a big difference between "We rest an hour" and "We rest a week" at the table. 4 syllables and the "rest" is done.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Currently running the same. In the beginning, I found that I had to lower the difficulty of a few encounters, but as they level up, they're getting tough enough that I don't need to do that as much.

I don't think you need to monkey around with the healing rules, even without clerical healing. Heck, a potion of healing is easy enough to buy, anyway. But yes, you'll find the group a little more slower-paced and more likely to take their short/long rests in between fights.

We're halfway to finishing Out of the Abyss with a no magic healing party.

 

[sunrisekid]

I am about to begin a Cleric-less, God-less campaign. Other classes are unmodified with respect to healing powers if it's in the spell list for that class. The players rarely play divine classes anyways, so I don't expect to see much difference from how we usually do things. Nor do I expect to hear a player arguing that someone "must" take, eg, Goodberry or whatever, due to a lack of clerics; the reason for this is purely anecdotal, in that our game has not seen any problems with a lack of dedicated healer so far.

OP, I imagine your game will not be much different than usual. The comment about increased camping may hold true, depending on your players. Personally, I have not seen that in my home game.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Good luck. But if magic is rare you remove the majority of 5E classes from being viable. In theory they are all hedge classes, that appear once in a blue moon. For example, a couple magic classes per town. Otherwise, why is healing rare in comparison to any magic. At that point, I guess you would restrict divine classes.

Who said anything about "magic" being rare? What I stated was the magical healing cast by mortals do not. Clerics in my games do not exist and any class that normally has healing spells now do not. There are two types of magic in my homebrew: arcane and nature. The reason I decided to give half HP back after a five minute rest is to simulate that not all damage is pure physical such as from a wound. A long rest in my game is about a week and this will restore HP to full, but the longer you rest outside of someplace safe, the more chances your rest will be interrupted. There are not always towns and villages nearby so just saying we go to the nearest town doesn't mean you automatically end up there.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Who said anything about "magic" being rare? What I stated was the magical healing cast by mortals do not. Clerics in my games do not exist and any class that normally has healing spells now do not. There are two types of magic in my homebrew: arcane and nature.

Are Druids' and Rangers' spells 'nature magic?' I take it healing potions are? So what's the rationale for Druids & Rangers not having the heals? Or are they divine/non-existent?

 

[Saeviomagy]

Removing healing spells isn't really much of an issue because in-combat healing spells are weak, and out of combat you have hit dice helping a lot.

In fact the only thing you have to consider is what to do about paladin lay on hands. If you take it away, you really need to recompense the paladin somehow. Or you could just leave it - it's fairly weak (although it still would leave paladins and bards kings of healing in a way).

Also I guess clerics of life are a silly character choice.

 

[MrHotter]

I have done a campaign where magical healing is rare, but I did it from the opposite way round. I made it rare in setting but didn't change players access to it.
Magic was very rare in setting and the player characters have an astonishingly high level of it, even at level 1 simply by virtue of having two daily spell slots.

Even Magical healing the players had was likewise unreliable on ordinary people (those without class levels), it might partially heal them, but they remain crippled, comatose and with long term injuries that I can't be bothered inflicting upon PCs.
Players and some NPCS are exceptional (the "Unfettered") by dint of being outright superhuman resilient and magical healing reliably working on them regardless of injury.

As for your idea.
I think it would work, proving your players are all happier with a different feel and pace to the game than standard D&D. It will make every encounter more costly.

I am trying to work out the cost to Bards, Druids, Paladins and Rangers for not having access to healing magic, but I think they'll be fine. More spell slots for blasting things instead.
Specifically are you keeping Paladins and "Lay on Hands"?

I do something similar to this. My world has no divine magic, but all other healing sources are the same. My players are considered to have 'Hero's Blood' that makes them able to heal by the standard rules.

I did not want a world where after a battle the medics just tell everyone to go to sleep for 8 hours and they'll be all better, so I don't let the standard healing rules apply to the 'mortal' folk. I also did not want the players to find someone who was injured and toss him a healing spell and let the guy run along on his merry way. A healing potion or heal spell on a mortal would stop bleeding and remove infections, but they may still be on bed rest for a week while they heal up.

The only other people in my campaign who can heal like the players would be boss types who could also have hero or villain's blood (or monsters who regenerate).