D&D 5E Proposed Fix for Whack-a-Mole Healing

[Redbadge]

5e has great rules, but one legitimate concern I see often is the "Whack-a-Mole" issue. You've probably seen it as well: during a fight, rather than try to heal damage as it occurs to prevent a party member from dropping, they will wait to use healing word or a potion until after a PC has fallen. I can't fault it, because it makes strategic sense (assuming instant death from too much damage isn't likely); by waiting until after a PC goes down, the party effectively gains extra healing economy by ignoring all the extra damage past 0. Often the only risk that needs to be weighed is whether the dying PC would miss an action due to being down on their turn.

Unfortunately, this creates the aforementioned "whack-a-mole" phenomenon. Fighter goes down. Receives healing word for a few HP and pops back up. Because of the low remaining hp, the fighter immediately goes back down. Repeat until the party wins or runs out of healing. I don't mind a party member fighting on the edge of disaster the entire time while the healer tries to keep them up. It's specifically the fall down, dying, stand back up cycle that I'm having cognitive dissonance with and which the rules as written actually encourage.

Here are my proposed house rules, presented for comment:

1. Unconscious (or dying, if you prefer) creatures have Resistance to Healing (that is they receive half of any healing they would have received, rounded down); and

2. Whenever an unconscious (or dying, if you prefer) creature receives healing, they must make a DC 20 Constitution save in order to regain consciousness; otherwise they remain unconscious but stable. They gain a bonus to the saving throw attempt equal to the amount of healing actually received.

The bonus to the saving throw is encouraged in order for the healer to consider using more powerful healing on their unconscious ally, otherwise only the smallest heal possible would be incentivized due to the other half of the healing that is lost. Powerful enough healing would automatically awaken the target (i.e. heal).

If you use the rules for dying creatures only, then obviously the rules revert to the default RAW if the first saving throw is failed (i.e. subsequent healing will be at full power and automatically awaken the creature unless damage had reduced it to 0 again in the interim). I think I would prefer applying the house rules to both dying creatures and stabilized creatures.

To what extent do you think the proposed rules address the whack-a-mole issue?

 

[Satyrn]

Well, that Resistance to healing bit won't help - it'll just make it doubly hard to heal up the fighter so he can withstand a single hit after getting back up on his feet.


As an alternative to your mechanical fixes, It might help you to think of the situation differently. If you model the situation as something different than the character being knocked unconscious, and woken up by the healing, it might just look fine for you.

So, for example: What if you model the character dropped to 0 as knocked to the ground, hurt and struggling to recover (grasping his side, moaning in pain, clutching at the wall trying to regain his feet - absolutely anything remotely like that) instead. Each subsequent failed death save is him slipping closer to unconsciousness and death. At this point, the healing becomes more like a helping hand up, an extea force of will to press on, the character infused with the strength of the cleric's god to continue the fight will standing at Death's Door.

Or something like that.

 

[jimmytheccomic]

I've found a fairly simple solution- everytime a PC drops to 0, they gain a level of exhaustion when they wake back up. Under this houserule, all levels of exhaustion are removed on a long rest, for the sake of keeping my game pacing up, but mileage may vary there.

 

[Redbadge]

Well, that Resistance to healing bit won't help - it'll just make it doubly hard to heal up the fighter so he can withstand a single hit after getting back up on his feet.

Well, that part was to remove the healing economy incentive for sitting on the healing spell, since your healing would be much more effective if you used it before the fighter goes down. The effectiveness of this depends on whether healing before the final blow or after will leave the fighter at a higher hp total in the end, and the thought experiments I've conducted, especially at low levels, is that healing prior to going down will have better results strategically. It may take a while for a group to realize this, however, which will serve to exacerbate the situation as you mentioned, if they don't catch on.

As an alternative to your mechanical fixes, It might help you to think of the situation differently. If you model the situation as something different than the character being knocked unconscious, and woken up by the healing, it might just look fine for you.

So, for example: What if you model the character dropped to 0 as knocked to the ground, hurt and struggling to recover (grasping his side, moaning in pain, clutching at the wall trying to regain his feet - absolutely anything remotely like that) instead. Each subsequent failed death save is him slipping closer to unconsciousness and death. At this point, the healing becomes more like a helping hand up, an extea force of will to press on, the character infused with the strength of the cleric's god to continue the fight will standing at Death's Door.

Or something like that.

Well, it's not just my internal narrative, which can be resolved just as you described. It's also the cognitive dissonance as expressed by my players. I think the following example might illustrate the point:

Fighter: Cleric, my friend, this demon has done a number on me. Can you provide any healing?
Cleric: Not yet my friend, I must wait until he puts you closer to death's door, first. We must think strategically!
Fighter:??? <Confused as the demon beatings continue with no healing apparently forthcoming just yet.>

As you can see, even if I don't consider the fighter as unconscious in my internal narrative, the RAW are still incentivizing strategy that is counter-intuitive to what you might expect. Sorry if I've seemed to move the goalposts here. I do appreciate your solution to the whack-a-mole imagery specifically.

 

[iserith]

Rather than mess with the rules, you can just reward the behaviors you want to see. Such as:

Not On My Watch!
Each character receives an experience point bonus equal to the average party level x 100 if no character was dying during the session.

 

[jimmytheccomic]

Another thing to consider is, I've had two character deaths happen due to my creatures attacking while they are down- once my players realized that particular move wasn't a taboo, they tend to scramble to keep people up, or get them up quickly.

 

[Satyrn]

Sorry if I've seemed to move the goalposts here.

I never thought that for a second.
[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s on the better track for your issue, I think. Inspiration could sub for XP. Or some other mechanical boon, too.

 

[iserith]

I never thought that for a second.
[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s on the better track for your issue, I think. Inspiration could sub for XP. Or some other mechanical boon, too.

In my last campaign, The Delve, you got bonus XP if you were dying but lived to tell the tale. That was always a fun one during the end of session breakdown.

 

[ccs]

Well, it's not just my internal narrative, which can be resolved just as you described. It's also the cognitive dissonance as expressed by my players. I think the following example might illustrate the point:

Fighter: Cleric, my friend, this demon has done a number on me. Can you provide any healing?
Cleric: Not yet my friend, I must wait until he puts you closer to death's door, first. We must think strategically!
Fighter:??? <Confused as the demon beatings continue with no healing apparently forthcoming just yet.>

Hey, I've played with that cleric! His name is Brian, though that's not what the other players called him....

Brian's response to the healing request? "No, you'll just lose it again anyways." and he goes on with whatever spell he had been planning. Wich it turns out is NOT more effective than keeping the multi-attacking fighter up & swinging for another round.
So the fighter goes down. Two other foes are now freed up to step over his body & they proceed to drop another character.... and so on. A TPK occurred - with the DM intentionally saving the stupid cleric for last.

 

[Oofta]

Another thing to consider is, I've had two character deaths happen due to my creatures attacking while they are down- once my players realized that particular move wasn't a taboo, they tend to scramble to keep people up, or get them up quickly.

This has been my experience as well.

Of course, not all monsters are going to hit someone when they're down. Animals will drag the unconscious person off to be eaten in private.

Intelligent creatures sometimes have manacles (depending on their goals).

But if the goal of the bad guys is to kill the party? Double tap. Remember that hitting an unconscious person is automatically a crit, and crits count as two failed death saves.