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

[The Crimson Binome]

To be fair, this isn't really an issue with waiting to heal people until after they've dropped. It's entirely an issue with 5e not providing proper healing spells that can outpace damage. Like, what's the point of running into melee and healing someone for a 3d8 boosted Cure Wounds when the enemy is probably doing at least that in damage each round?

That's an interesting theory, but it doesn't really get at the underlying problem, which is abundant out-of-combat healing.

This edition is (nominally) based around the theory of attrition, where you're supposed to get worn down over the course of six fights, so that not every fight needs to be a battle-to-the-death in order for it to matter. Except, due to the excessive availability of out-of-combat healing (hit dice and resting, in particular), that doesn't really hold up in practice. You never really go into a fight with low HP, even near the end of the day. And the response to that is for the party to conveniently face much tougher monsters, who are capable of eating through your overly-generous HP allotment in a single encounter, because any encounter that can't potentially kill someone has zero consequences.

If you get rid of hit dice, and you slow down natural healing to a reasonable rate, then you don't need to fight monsters that can deal damage faster than you can possibly heal it. You can go ahead and fight a monster that only does ~20 damage per round, even if you can Cure for ~30 with a single spell, because healing-per-round would no longer be the limiting factor in over-all survival.

 

[Lanliss]

Has anyone else noticed that a lot of people on here (The 5E forum in general) tend to shut down any house rule ideas? Seems like any thread that starts with "I had a problem, here is how I fixed it" gets responses along the lines of "No, it's fine. Just do it by RAW."

On topic, I like the resistance to healing thing, and the DC. I might pull this in on my game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Has anyone else noticed that a lot of people on here (The 5E forum in general) tend to shut down any house rule ideas? Seems like any thread that starts with "I had a problem, here is how I fixed it" gets responses along the lines of "No, it's fine. Just do it by RAW."

I have noticed more of that recently, but I still see more people who agree when there is a problem and disagree about how to fix it.

 

[Lanliss]

I have noticed more of that recently, but I still see more people who agree when there is a problem and disagree about how to fix it.

Disagreeing on how to fix a problem is great, it encourages different thought, rather than stagnation. The only time a disagreement is bad is when one side chooses to be a dick about it. Even the people saying to just follow RAW aren't being dicks, I just find it odd that some people seem to push against other peoples house rules, which will never in any way affect them. Sometimes it looks helpful, and seems like they are genuinely offering a better understanding than the OP, to help them understand what the RAI was, but so often they simply respond with "Your problem isn't a problem, don't change anything."

 

[Cyrinishad]

Disagreeing on how to fix a problem is great, it encourages different thought, rather than stagnation. The only time a disagreement is bad is when one side chooses to be a dick about it. Even the people saying to just follow RAW aren't being dicks, I just find it odd that some people seem to push against other peoples house rules, which will never in any way affect them. Sometimes it looks helpful, and seems like they are genuinely offering a better understanding than the OP, to help them understand what the RAI was, but so often they simply respond with "Your problem isn't a problem, don't change anything."

I tend to see people's suggestions against house-rules as attempting to help people realize that there are strategies or rules already built-in that address the issue that they may simply have missed or overlooked... That's all. On this topic, I am similarly of the perception that the perceived problem of "whack-a-mole" is non-issue. The PCs are penalized by Action & Movement economy if they drop to zero, as well as the "Kick 'em when they're down" strategy that every Kobold or Goblin child would have been thoroughly schooled in by their parents. Advice to all DMs: Make your Monsters monstrously merciless...

 

[Caliban]

Hasn't really been an issue for me in any games I've played in. We consider any PC who is down to be one round away from death (because rolling a 1 on a death save causes 2 failures, or monsters may attack downed PC's, causing automatic failures).

Thus we try to a) prevent people from going down and b) get them up as soon as possible.

 

[discosoc]

That's an interesting theory, but it doesn't really get at the underlying problem, which is abundant out-of-combat healing.

This edition is (nominally) based around the theory of attrition, where you're supposed to get worn down over the course of six fights, so that not every fight needs to be a battle-to-the-death in order for it to matter. Except, due to the excessive availability of out-of-combat healing (hit dice and resting, in particular), that doesn't really hold up in practice. You never really go into a fight with low HP, even near the end of the day. And the response to that is for the party to conveniently face much tougher monsters, who are capable of eating through your overly-generous HP allotment in a single encounter, because any encounter that can't potentially kill someone has zero consequences.

If you get rid of hit dice, and you slow down natural healing to a reasonable rate, then you don't need to fight monsters that can deal damage faster than you can possibly heal it. You can go ahead and fight a monster that only does ~20 damage per round, even if you can Cure for ~30 with a single spell, because healing-per-round would no longer be the limiting factor in over-all survival.

That makes a lot of sense, and you bring up a good point about the out of combat healing resulting in groups fighting bigger and badder monsters. Another thing that works towards that end is how not all groups even get through 6 encounters per long rest. Many games will have 1 or 2 fights and then some overland travel or something, so if the DM doesn't beef up his monsters, there's very little challenge anyway.

 

[cbwjm]

I tend to see people's suggestions against house-rules as attempting to help people realize that there are strategies or rules already built-in that address the issue that they may simply have missed or overlooked... That's all. On this topic, I am similarly of the perception that the perceived problem of "whack-a-mole" is non-issue. The PCs are penalized by Action & Movement economy if they drop to zero, as well as the "Kick 'em when they're down" strategy that every Kobold or Goblin child would have been thoroughly schooled in by their parents. Advice to all DMs: Make your Monsters monstrously merciless...

I was watching a Matt Colville video where he was telling viewers of a game run by his friend's brother. Matt's wizard went down and, thinking he'd be able to be saved later, he was surprised when the earth elemental stepped on his wizard's head. Things like this are the biggest incentive against dropping to 0 hit points. In our own games, a helmed horror attacked one of the player's when he was at 0 hit points. The downed PC failed his next death save and was properly dead. DM was new, he felt a little bad about that.

 

[nswanson27]

I tend to see people's suggestions against house-rules as attempting to help people realize that there are strategies or rules already built-in that address the issue that they may simply have missed or overlooked... That's all. On this topic, I am similarly of the perception that the perceived problem of "whack-a-mole" is non-issue. The PCs are penalized by Action & Movement economy if they drop to zero, as well as the "Kick 'em when they're down" strategy that every Kobold or Goblin child would have been thoroughly schooled in by their parents. Advice to all DMs: Make your Monsters monstrously merciless...

To be fair, I think some of the pushback is due to the implied objectiveness of the "problem" the OP of a thread brings up (not meaning to pick on this one, but it is an example). Namely, rather than saying "I don't like whack-a-mole healing, help me with a fix" vs. this thread's title. Again, not to try to pick on the OP, but people do pick up on when people assert their opinions as fact, and call that out.

 

[Inchoroi]

Here's what I do:

1. Death saves failures do not go away until a character takes a long rest.

2. A character does not regain their hit points after a long rest. Instead, they can spend any hit dice they have remaining to heal after they take a long rest, and then regain half their remaining hit dice back, minimum 1.

Makes for a very old-school feel to the game.