D&D 5E Does Rope Trick Heal?

[Mistwell]

I suppose you stop getting them when the PC dies of old age, so they are limited I guess. It's just not a practical limit. You get 14,400 actions a day, possibly more if you belong to a class that gives you extra ones.

Max you only get actions when you're in round-based turn measurement, which is only triggered by combat or some other time-based encounter events. You don't actually get actions at all outside that combat - if there is no initiative, and no round-based time measurement, you're not actually spending any actions to do things. You're just doing them (and you get minutes, hours, or days to measure things). That is explicit in the PHB by the way. You only get that 6 second span of time to measure rounds when, "In combat and other fast-paced situations..."

For adventuring days, this translates roughly into an average of about 25-30 actions per adventuring day.

 

[Maxperson]

Max you only get actions when you're in round-based turn measurement, which is only triggered by combat or some other time-based encounter events. You don't actually get actions at all outside that combat - if there is no initiative, and no round-based time measurement, you're not actually spending any actions to do things. You're just doing them.

"2. The players describe what they want to do. Some times one player speaks for the whole party, saying, “We’ll take the east door,” for example. Other times, different adventurers do different things: one adventurer might search a treasure chest while a second examines an esoteric symbol engraved on a wall and a third keeps watch for monsters. The players don’t need to take turns, but the DM listens to every player and decides how to resolve those actions.

Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll o f a die to determine the results of an action."

Combat talks about some kinds of actions that are taken in combat, but it is not an exhaustive list, nor is combat the only place you are using actions.

Edit:

For adventuring days, this translates roughly into an average of about 25-30 actions per adventuring day.

Wow. It would suck if you ran out of those actions by mid-morning.

DM: Well, your PC woke-up(1 action), took a bath(2 actions), got dressed(3 actions), shaved(4 actions), opened the door(5 actions), walked downstairs to the common room(6 actions), ordered breakfast(7 actions), ate breakfast(8 actions), paid for breakfast(9 actions), and walked out of the inn(10 actions). That's a third of your daily allotment. I hope you don't plan on getting too much done today.

 

[Mistwell]

"2. The players describe what they want to do. Some times one player speaks for the whole party, saying, “We’ll take the east door,” for example. Other times, different adventurers do different things: one adventurer might search a treasure chest while a second examines an esoteric symbol engraved on a wall and a third keeps watch for monsters. The players don’t need to take turns, but the DM listens to every player and decides how to resolve those actions.

Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll o f a die to determine the results of an action."

Combat talks about some kinds of actions that are taken in combat, but it is not an exhaustive list, nor is combat the only place you are using actions.

That's the common every day use of the word "action" and not the defined "game rule" action measured in 6 second increments. I quoted the rule above from the PHB. You only get them when, "In combat and other fast-paced situations" Otherwise the rules default to different time measurements (from PHB):

"The DM might use a different time scale depending on the context of the situation at hand. In a dungeon environment, the adventurers' movement happens on a scale of minutes. It takes them about a minute to creep down a long hallway, another minute to check for traps on the door at the end of the hall, and a good ten minutes to search the chamber beyond for anything interesting or valuable.

In a city or wilderness, a scale of hours is often more appropriate. Adventurers eager to reach the lonely tower at the heart of the forest hurry across those fifteen miles in just under four hours' time.

For long journeys, a scale of days works best. Following the road from Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep, the adventurers spend four uneventful days before a goblin ambush interrupts their journey."


And for the rule making actions limited, "On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed and take one action. " That is a pretty explicit limit on actions, making it a resource which is limited.

 

[Maxperson]

That's the common every day use of the word "action" and not the defined "game rule" action measured in 6 second increments. I quoted the rule above from the PHB. You only get them when, "In combat and other fast-paced situations" Otherwise the rules default to different time measurements (from PHB):

Actions are not measured in 6 second increments. Rounds are. That's why you can do actions in less than 6 seconds, and sometimes get multiple actions in the same 6 seconds.

 

[Maxperson]

And for the rule making actions limited, "On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed and take one action. " That is a pretty explicit limit on actions, making it a resource which is limited.

14,400 times a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, until you die of old age. Not much of a limit. You are limited in the number you get per round, but you are not limited in the total number of actions you get, except by your lifespan or an outside force acting somehow to deprive you of your action.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'm surprised nobody's brought up Time Stop as a spell that can facilitate healing*. Cast it, chug a couple of healing potions, and you've restored hit points. Whether Time Stop "heals" or "is a (direct|indirect) healing spell" is not related to whether you have the potions to chug or are empty-handed.

It's a good analogy, but the practical difference is that powerful healing potions (the ones you would need to heal within the time allotted) are otherwise limited in availability, while healing surges often regenerate faster than they can be spent. If you don't cast Rope Trick, then you may well be forced to retreat and take a long rest, in which case your healing surges are wasted since you never had a chance to use them.

 

[Mistwell]

14,400 times a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, until you die of old age. Not much of a limit. You are limited in the number you get per round, but you are not limited in the total number of actions you get, except by your lifespan or an outside force acting somehow to deprive you of your action.

No Max I was quoting you the rule applicable to combat (it's directly from the combat chapter and directly about combat). Which I said, in the part of the quote you cut. The PHB is explicit you do NOT measure time like that outside of "combat and other fast-paced situations" (that's the direct quote). If you are fighting all day every day, sure. But...you're not. You are only going to get on average 25-30 of those rounds each adventuring day. That's it.

 

[Maxperson]

No Max I was quoting you the rule applicable to combat (it's directly from the combat chapter and directly about combat). Which I said, in the part of the quote you cut. The PHB is explicit you do NOT measure time like that outside of "combat and other fast-paced situations" (that's the direct quote). If you are fighting all day every day, sure. But...you're not. You are only going to get on average 25-30 of those rounds each adventuring day. That's it.

So what. You don't measure time in 6 second increments, but you can still only cast one cantrip every 6 seconds. And this is the important part, nothing you quoted states in any way, shape or form that you get no actions outside of combat. In fact, if what you say is true, then it also applies to bonus actions and reactions, making it literally impossible to cast any spell with a casting time of 1 action, bonus action, or reaction outside of combat.

It would really suck to fall off of a cliff outside of combat. No Featherfall for you! Want to test lightning bolt on an empty body of water to see how it reacts? Gotta wait until you're fighting something! Or else, you can understand that while you aren't measuring time outside of combat in 6 second intervals, those 6 second intervals are still occurring, as are your actions. When you are walking around outside of combat and measuring time in 10 minute intervals and fall off of a cliff, that Featherfall you just cast happened during the specific 6 second interval that occurred when you fell, and you used your out of combat reaction to save your life.

 

[FrogReaver]

But as he mentioned, then neither do Hit Dice. If you have 8 hours to spare between combats then you heal fully. All of this comes down to the context of combat (or at least the context of round-based time measurement). And in that context, actions are a limited resource. Often the most limited resource.

Hit dice are limited in the context of an adventuring day. Actions are unlimited in the context of an adventuring day. I get way more than I could ever use.

I don’t know why you suddenly became so focused on the context of combat when nothing else we have been discussing has been limited to the context of ckmbat

 

[Jester David]

typo: said pope trick, which is a very different spell...

Good for you I guess? I think from a rules design perspective, or as I mentioned earlier a sort of meta rules perspective, this is a healing spell. I'd expect people in-game to describe it like you describe it because it's sort of pulling back the curtain on the rules to talk about this spell in terms of it filling a healing niche, but I genuinely think it does just that. And that doesn't change if you or others view it different, does it?

From a meta rules design perspective, is it a "healing spell"? Again, I would say it's a flexible utility spell that can be used to heal. Or mitigate damage by removing a character from combat. But it can be used for a number of other purposes, such as hiding and spying.

As a legacy spell, rope trick was one of the first spells updated. It appears as early in the playtest as packet 2, the first with character creation rather than pregens. However, for most of the playtest it was unchanged, even after short rests went from 10 minutes to 1 hour in packet 6.
When the spell was designed for 5e, having to find a "safe place" to take a short rest was less needed as 10 minutes is a relatively short period of time. People felt comfortable doing that anywhere.

Pulling back the curtain, the spell existed in 1e and 2e (in the PHB) when there was no short duration healing. The "design" of the spell has nothing to do with short rests and everything to do with replicating the Indian rope trick illusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_rope_trick
You'd probably have to go back to the player at Gary's table in the '70s to ask if they designed that spell as a "healing spell" and a place to rest and recover, or if they just wanted to do the cool magic trick they had read about...
As rope trick was a wizard spell, it was potentially planned as a way to escape combat and avoid taking additional damage. Low level wizards were fragile. But the long duration (20 minutes/ rounds of combat per level) and given it's a 1e spell probably created by Gary's players for his various Greyhawk campaigns, mean ambush tactics were likely part of the original design. You cast rope trick, hid, waited for a guard to pass, and then snuck past for the treasure. Or dropped down and killed them before they could fight back. It was a spell to negate combat and bypass the danger and get to the treasure.