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

[Lanliss]

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.

However, it is an objective statement of fact. "Whack-a-mole healing" is a problem for the OP. They have a houserule that could help fix it, and put it up so others who view it the same way might find it helpful. The OP did not at all say that everyone has the problem, and needs to use X to fix it, just they have a problem, and this is how they are fixing/fixed it.

 

[Kalshane]

However, it is an objective statement of fact. "Whack-a-mole healing" is a problem for the OP. They have a houserule that could help fix it, and put it up so others who view it the same way might find it helpful. The OP did not at all say that everyone has the problem, and needs to use X to fix it, just they have a problem, and this is how they are fixing/fixed it.

I think part of it comes from player experiences. I would imagine a vast majority of players have encountered a situation sometime in their gaming career where an ill-advised house rule by a GM lead to unpleasant experience at the table (or someone as a GM implemented a house rule only to have it cause other problems they weren't expecting.) Explaining why RAW works the way it does, or relaying their own experiences with the RAW or house rules they've encountered gives anyone who does want to house rule the way something works more data to work from.

Ultimately, we're in fairly niche hobby, and in general most gamers want their fellow gamers to have a good experience at the table. Which is why, even if someone's house rule won't actually affect them personally, they feel the need to put their two cents in.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Has anyone else noticed that a lot of people on here (The 5E forum in general) tend to shut down any house rule ideas?

Yes.

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."

Which is a tad nonsensical, really. The homebrew forum was folded into this one, so they're legit threads to begin with. And, 5e isn't written in a less-ambiguous, technical-manual style like 4e, nor with the lavish rewards for system mastery that drove RAW-obsession in 3.x, so there shouldn't be the defensiveness there was towards the rules of the modern editions. Like the classic game, 5e's rule thrive on rulings and variants.

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

They seem to me to miss or paper-over the actual problem, even though the OP stated it quite clearly:

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.

The genesis of the problem is clearly in the rules, themselves:

1) Heal from 0.

2) Effectiveness of in-combat healing.


Changing the former would remove the major source of temptation to wait until a PC actually drops to heal him. Just count negative hps and heal from the negative total. Support casters should, at that point, stop intentionally waiting for allies to drop before healing them. A simple fix. But, it does make healing weaker in the grand scheme of things.

Changing the latter would mean making healing more powerful somehow - increasing the die sizes or granting bonuses or allowing HD to be rolled & added, I think, have been suggested. Of course, making anything 'more powerful' is suspicious.

Combining the two, though, might balance out and neatly eliminate the whack-a-mole issue.

 

[Lanliss]

Yes.
Which is a tad nonsensical, really. The homebrew forum was folded into this one, so they're legit threads to begin with. And, 5e isn't written in a less-ambiguous, technical-manual style like 4e, nor with the lavish rewards for system mastery that drove RAW-obsession in 3.x, so there shouldn't be the defensiveness there was towards the rules of the modern editions. Like the classic game, 5e's rule thrive on rulings and variants.

They seem to me to miss or paper-over the actual problem, even though the OP stated it quite clearly:



The genesis of the problem is clearly in the rules, themselves:

1) Heal from 0.

2) Effectiveness of in-combat healing.


Changing the former would remove the major source of temptation to wait until a PC actually drops to heal him. Just count negative hps and heal from the negative total. Support casters should, at that point, stop intentionally waiting for allies to drop before healing them. A simple fix. But, it does make healing weaker in the grand scheme of things.

Changing the latter would mean making healing more powerful somehow - increasing the die sizes or granting bonuses or allowing HD to be rolled & added, I think, have been suggested. Of course, making anything 'more powerful' is suspicious.

Combining the two, though, might balance out and neatly eliminate the whack-a-mole issue.

Actually, I think the OP solution does fix the problem.

Problem 1: Healers wait until a PC goes down to heal them.

Result/Problem 2: PC who was healed from 0 has low health, and goes down again quickly.

Solutions: Resistance to healing, which will make healing from 0 much less appealing.
Downed PC must make a save to wake up before the fight ends, giving more incentive to keep them from falling in the first place.

So, the OP could probably just implement the second solution, as I think that gives plenty of reason to not let someone go down. The first solution is debatable in its usefulness. Some will like it, because it makes the healing less efficient, which provides a second reason to not let people go down. Some will not like it, because it looks like a way to just drain the party resources more.

Results (From what I can see):
Healing characters will spend a lot more slots on healing, attempting to keep up with the damage output of enemies, and/or You would see more careful play, as the players know it is much more painful to go down.

The first result reads like a bit of a new problem, because you don't want someone dedicated solely to healing against their will. I just finally managed to break my players of the mind set that they have to have a healer in the party, rather than what they actually want to play. However, if it follows the second result, it should play much smoother I think.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Actually, I think the OP solution does fix the problem.

Problem 1: Healers wait until a PC goes down to heal them.

Result/Problem 2: PC who was healed from 0 has low health, and goes down again quickly.

Solutions: Resistance to healing, which will make healing from 0 much less appealing.

So would counting negative hps, and it's a simpler (or at least more familiar) way of doing it.

Downed PC must make a save to wake up before the fight ends, giving more incentive to keep them from falling in the first place.

Doesn't address the second problem, though. In fact, both resistance to healing and heal-from-negatives make it worse, because the subject's hp total is going to be that much lower when he stands back up.

While the save to wake up just results in a player sitting out more of the combat. Indeed, you could end up with a reverse problem, as healers just let dropped allies stay down until after the fight.

Healing characters will spend a lot more slots on healing, attempting to keep up with the damage output of enemies, and/or You would see more careful play, as the players know it is much more painful to go down.

The first result reads like a bit of a new problem, because you don't want someone dedicated solely to healing against their will.

Using healing to keep allies up proactively does require more resources than healing them after they drop under the up-from-0 rule, both because sometimes you heal someone who doesn't get hit again, and because of the 'extra damage lost' beyond 0. That makes healing numerically less effective. In turn, that could be ameliorated by making healing a little more powerful..

I just finally managed to break my players of the mind set that they have to have a healer in the party, rather than what they actually want to play. However, if it follows the second result, it should play much smoother I think.

The second result could actually be pretty awful, or highly desireable, depending on the tone of the campaign. If you want anything akin to genre heroism and risk-taking, you need mechanics that counter that risk, so D&D has healing and even resurrection pretty available. Making risks greater and healing effectively weaker, would push the campaign towards less heroic means of overcoming challenges. OTOH, if you want a more shades-of-grey, pragmatic tone to your campaign, that could be just the thing.

 

[guachi]

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.

I suggested this very thing to my players a few weeks ago. Astonishingly, they agreed. It's very hard to kill PCs (at least in my game) but they drop to zero all the time because my fights are really hard. By giving some meaningful downside to dropping to zero I can make my fights less difficult but still provide tense excitement.

It's a win-win so far.

 

[GameOgre]

Don't have this issue.
A dropped pc often means a dead pc in my game.

Now when they do come up in the middle of a fight they sometimes are dismayed to discover than they let go of whatever they were holding when they went unconscious! More than once has a character looked around in dismay to discover their sword kicked way off to the side or a shield being stood on my a enemy.

Once a fighter woke up after being range healed to discover that he had slid off the battlefield and was dangling off the edge of a cliff, hanging by his backpack.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm also struck by some of the solutions following a pattern:

1) Notice whack-a-mole healing is happening.
2) 'punish' the healer's behavior by heaping horrid consequences on his allies.

Whack-a-mole happens in 5e because of heal-from-0 and fast-combat tuning.
Heal-from-0 simply makes it more efficient to let an ally drop, then heal him, because you're negating more of the enemy's damage.
Fast combat means every action counts because there just aren't going to be that many before one side or the other is dead, and every action better go towards assuring you aren't that side, if you spend a turn healing, even if you also get to bop something because you used healing word, it might not speed the party to victory as fast as a better offensive or buffing use of that same spell slot.

So, you resort to healing only when allies drop (and just enough to let them take their next turn, because it's unlikey the combat'll go a whole lot more turns), otherwise, make the best possible use of your turn.
Yeah, you're risking your ally's life and possibly costing him some movement for standing up, and an object interaction for picking up anything he may have dropped - but that's weighed against your actions and your spell slots, and, let's face it, new allies aren't hard to come by, in AL, they'll just be raised by their faction, anyway.

Don't want slightly tougher combats to degenerate into whack-a-mole, change heal-from-0 (simply make it heal-from-negatives, for instance), and mess with the expectation of fast combat.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Whack-a-mole happens in 5e because of heal-from-0 and fast-combat tuning.

I think that heal from 0 doesn't really make much of a difference. The simple fact is that in-combat healing is a poor proposition (ie - it's limited, small, takes up valuable actions, typically can only be done by one or two PCs), and it's very difficult to say that pro-active healing is going to be worthwhile (the foe may hit someone else, they may miss, your ally might take defensive measures), as opposed to doing something with a higher chance of reducing incoming damage while also progressing the combat.

I think that changing to heal-from-negatives is not going to change things much: in-combat healing will still be bad, so you will still avoid it until someone is down... only now healing that person might not even get them up, so you'll go for the stabilize option.

So you'll change the reasoning behind the problem (ie - people won't deliberately say "it's more effective to heal people for a minimal amount once they go down, so I'll hold of on healing now"), but I think the problem will remain (ie - people won't heal now if they weren't doing it before - there's almost always something better to do).

I think your second point is probably a better thing to target: switch up the fast-combat tuning. If foes die in 3 rounds, then spending 1 round healing is a waste of time unless your ally dropped during the first round... in which case you don't have time to pre-emptively heal. If foes take 10 rounds to kill, then it's far more reasonable to spend 2 of those rounds healing to keep allies up.

So... smaller foes, more of them, trickled into fights to pace them? But still avoiding the feeling of sloggy combat somehow.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think that heal from 0 doesn't really make much of a difference.

Its not a big difference, but it's a clear numerical difference, and a consistent one - in a community that thinks a half point of average weapon damage matters. It's just too easy to reason that healing only dropped allies maximizes the enemy damage negated by your healing, and then stick to that strategy dogmatically.

I think your second point is probably a better thing to target: switch up the fast-combat tuning. If foes die in 3 rounds, then spending 1 round healing is a waste of time unless your ally dropped during the first round... in which case you don't have time to pre-emptively heal. If foes take 10 rounds to kill, then it's far more reasonable to spend 2 of those rounds healing to keep allies up.

So... smaller foes, more of them, trickled into fights to pace them? But still avoiding the feeling of sloggy combat somehow.

Fast combat was a major 5e goal and it's delivered - but not without consequences. Re-tuning 5e would be an undertaking, but tricks like your suggestion could lessen the expectation of all combats being short, and proactive healing suboptimal...