D&D 5E Does Rope Trick Heal?

[billd91]

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.

The origin of the spell back in the 1e days isn't solely relevant considering the spell's evolution. Clearly with 1 hour/level starting in 3e, it becomes pretty effective for resting and healing for parties. While it has always had relevance for hiding from a passing threat, it's probably even more consistently useful for getting into a safe place to engage in some healing away from prying eyes.

 

[Mistwell]

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

But you don't look at adventuring day for actions because you get ZERO actions in an adventuring day but-for "combat and other fast-paced situations." Actions are only assigned to a PC (one per six second round, baring something like action surge) when it is "combat and other fast-paced situations" and otherwise they are not assigned and you just do things without needing to talk about using an action.

I didn't become focused on combat - that IS the rule man!

I seriously cannot believe D&D players on a rules forum are not able to agree that actions are a limited resource. It's the ultimate limited resource! Half of the crap we talk about is trying to decide how to use that limited resource! If you could just take as many actions as you wanted to when you wanted to, there were be little rules discussion. You can't though - they have a hard limit of one per round. We all know this - what are you even arguing about?

 

[Jester David]

The origin of the spell back in the 1e days isn't solely relevant considering the spell's evolution. Clearly with 1 hour/level starting in 3e, it becomes pretty effective for resting and healing for parties. While it has always had relevance for hiding from a passing threat, it's probably even more consistently useful for getting into a safe place to engage in some healing away from prying eyes.

Right, but the spell isn’t 1 hour/ level anymore. And you can’t even cast it at a higher level to make it last eight hours.
They didn’t seem interested in replicating its 3e uses.
The designers probably looked at how it worked in all editions and tried to emulate its most classic implementation.

Honestly, they were updating dozens of spells in a very short span of time. I doubt they gave secondary spells like that much attention, likely just doing a quick and dirty update, and instead focusing on previously problematic spells, game breaking spells, and the benchmark spells. We’ve probably given rope trick ten times the attention in this thread alone than the designers did during the buildup to 5.

 

[FrogReaver]

But you don't look at adventuring day for actions because you get ZERO actions in an adventuring day but-for "combat and other fast-paced situations." Actions are only assigned to a PC (one per six second round, baring something like action surge) when it is "combat and other fast-paced situations" and otherwise they are not assigned and you just do things without needing to talk about using an action.

I didn't become focused on combat - that IS the rule man!

I seriously cannot believe D&D players on a rules forum are not able to agree that actions are a limited resource. It's the ultimate limited resource! Half of the crap we talk about is trying to decide how to use that limited resource! If you could just take as many actions as you wanted to when you wanted to, there were be little rules discussion. You can't though - they have a hard limit of one per round. We all know this - what are you even arguing about?

It’s the scope. In combat they are limited. Out of combat they never run out.

Like has already been said. All spells require and action, reaction or bonus action to cast. IF you don’t get actions out of combat you can’t cast any spells out of combat. Is that really what you believe?

 

[Yunru]

Right, but the spell isn’t 1 hour/ level anymore. And you can’t even cast it at a higher level to make it last eight hours.
They didn’t seem interested in replicating its 3e uses.
The designers probably looked at how it worked in all editions and tried to emulate its most classic implementation.

Honestly, they were updating dozens of spells in a very short span of time. I doubt they gave secondary spells like that much attention, likely just doing a quick and dirty update, and instead focusing on previously problematic spells, game breaking spells, and the benchmark spells. We’ve probably given rope trick ten times the attention in this thread alone than the designers did during the buildup to 5.

Which is counter to it lasting 10 minutes in the early playtest (conincidentally, roughly the same time as short rests took), then being expanded to a hour by release (oh look, the time of a short rest now).

 

[Jester David]

Which is counter to it lasting 10 minutes in the early playtest (conincidentally, roughly the same time as short rests took), then being expanded to a hour by release (oh look, the time of a short rest now).

Which playtest was that? Because every version of the playtest I checked (and I checked seven, from the August 2012 packet when it first appeared to the September 2013 packet that ended the playtest) and it was an hour in each.
You may be misremembering the duration of rope trick...

 

[Yunru]

Which playtest was that? Because every version of the playtest I checked (and I checked seven, from the August 2012 packet when it first appeared to the September 2013 packet that ended the playtest) and it was an hour in each.
You may be misremembering the duration of rope trick...

Distinctly possible, it was a long time and two computers ago.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

Healing? It will damage you!

If you try to sit inside that extradimensional space for a full hour, would say it causes 6d6 bludgeoning damage for the 60 ft fall you take when it inevitably ends before your full hour for the short rest is up. If you and your friends then relax right on the spot where you fell, and stay there for somewhere close to a minute, then I'd rule that you took a short rest and you can take your hit dice.

I'm pretty strict when it comes to these kinds of tricks. You need 1 hour rest, and the spell is exactly 1 hour, but inside the spell's 1 hour duration, the rope climbs up, the space is created, and you and your friends must climb up and optionally pull up the rope. That leaves less than 1 hour for resting.

 

[Dausuul]

Healing? It will damage you!

If you try to sit inside that extradimensional space for a full hour, would say it causes 6d6 bludgeoning damage for the 60 ft fall you take when it inevitably ends before your full hour for the short rest is up. If you and your friends then relax right on the spot where you fell, and stay there for somewhere close to a minute, then I'd rule that you took a short rest and you can take your hit dice.

Great. The wizard casts the spell with a rope 9 feet, 11 inches long. The falling damage rules say you take 1d6 per 10 feet fallen; thus, if you do not fall 10 feet, you take no damage. Short rest accomplished, zero damage taken.

 

[FrogReaver]

Another curiosity. If rope trick allows you to safely rest but because of that rest the DM rolls a random encounter the party will face shortly after exiting the rope trick does that mean that rope trick caused an encounter? Does rope trick also get blamed for all the damage dealt to the party in such an encounter?