My theory is in a low magic setting in regards to healing, you go without. This is how we did it in 2E, you just change the way you design the encounters/campaign.
Yeah, that broke the game to pieces, IMX, you ended up playing an entirely different game that you re-built from that wreckage from the ground up.
5e would require less work than 1e or 2e to adapt to such a setting, but still more work and more fundamental system-wide changes than simply adding back the Warlord class, which would not just enable intentionally low-/no- magic settings more easily, but would enable all-martial parties, again, as well.
I miss Come and Get It!
Note: That's not me asking for Come and Get It! in 5e. I accept they coudln't get enough of the D&D audience on board with that type of thing.
That's why it wasn't in the PH as a BM maneuver. That's no reason for it not to be an option /somewhere/, though.
I think that's a big part of the disconnect for players like me. I don't want my ability to do interesting things to be dependent on DM fiat. A game of "DM may I?" is super unsatisfying to me. I want to interact with the game mechanics in a tactical way. And I don't want to have to play a spellcaster to do it.
The issue isn't that you have to play "DM May I" in 5e (you kinda do, but there's lots of options with more defined, consistent game-mechanical effects you can lean on to minimize it), the problem is that your choice of character concept is dictated by your willingness to do so. You can't, as you note, choose not to play a spellcaster, and expect to have any "agency" (to spit out a distasteful Forge term). That limits players' exercise of creativity and imagination.
It's a damn shame WotC confiscated all the D&D 4e books and forbade us from ever playing that game again.
Yeah, we tried saying that about 3.5 books ("WotC Ninjas," remember?), and, even though 3.5 was open sourced, could be - and was - legally cloned and could be - and was - lavishly supported using that OGL, it wasn't enough to stop 3.5 fans from brutally edition-warring against 4e.
I wouldn't expect the same line to stop 5e fans who appreciated something in 4e from continuing to ask for a viable/worthy version of it in the game they now play.
1) In a low magic setting, it does not make sense for healing to be easily available from any source, and in-combat healing should be non existent.
Second Wind is in-combat healing and is not magical, at all, so certainly suitable for a low-magic setting. HD are easily available and fix you up in an hour, and are non-magical.
I think the real misnomer in these conversations is 'healing.' It conjures images of convalescing in a hospital bed to recover from severe injuries - like massive blood loss, sucking chest wounds, damaged organs, shattered bones and so forth.
That's never been what's going on with mere hp loss, all the way back to 1e, that's been made perfectly clear. But, while hp loss can't meaningfully or consistently map to critical injuries, a spell was labeled 'Cure Critical Wounds,' and that spell only restored hps, and, well, 40 years later, here we are, coping with the same fundamental mis-understanding that Gygax thought he'd cleared up in '79.
:shrug:
As in real life, any combat should be nasty and deadly, no-one should go into it with the expectation that no one will die, unless there is a vast difference in power.
Players are the ones with that reasonable expectation (they expect to pay a character from 1-20), the characters, OTOH, should be going into any but the most trivial fights with the understanding that their lives are on the line. Well, except the ones who are just maniacs. That's essentially an RP decision.
But, in the narrative of the world, a dagger (d4) wielded by a health, normal man (STR 10), can totally kill a normal person, because, y'know, stab wounds do that. So if you're charging into a battle with orcs bigger and meaner than normal men, wielding weapons bigger and nastier than daggers, the idea is you're facing some gruesomely deadly danger. You're a hero, so chances are excellent you get through it with nary a bump on the noggin and maybe some scuffed armor. The author of your story, or director of your movie, or DM and Player of your RPG all know that - but you don't. Or, rather, you're portrayed as if you don't, if everyone does a good job. Since, y'know, you don't exist.
The focus should be on the Medicine skill. Without it even minor wounds should frequently lead to infection and death.
We'd be talking medieval medicine, remember.
In which case healing usually comes from calling on inner reserves, rather than an external factor. I would suggest you give everyone an ability like "Second Wind" or "Dwarven Fortitude" rather than having a specialist healer.
That more re-writes (and would require re-balancing) the system. HD are already there as 'inner reserves,' all that's needed is a way to enhance them so they're adequate for D&D's combat dynamics, and trigger them in combat. It's very much what leaders, including the Warlord, did in 4e, it's just that in 5e they'll have to bring more enhancement, since HD represent less of hp pool than surges did relative to the expected hp loss in a 'day' (two days for HD).
4) There is no place for such a character in a medium/high magic setting.
Of course there is, though he'd need gambits that focused on leveraging the abilities of allied casters, as well.
