D&D 5E The "everyone at full fighting ability at 1 hp" conundrum

[Tony Vargas]

If you follow the guidelines for encounters per adventuring day, and the guidelines for building easy, moderate, difficult, and deadly encounters, and follow also the guidelines for how often each of those types of encounters should occur, my point is simple: 5E is not deadly once you reach a certain point.

Well, sure.
I mean, the idea is to have a campaign that can easily go to level 11 or so (fully experience that 'sweet spot' of early-mid levels), APs often to 15th. Each day with half a dozen or more encounters and - though only a couple days worth of encounters between levels may seem weird/fast - over a dozen between levels, if each, or even a non-trivial proportion of encounters were potentially deadly (as often happens, intended or not, with 1st level encounters), characters would never survive to finish a campaign.

One of the biggest complaints is it is too easy. Of course, the DM can adjust whatever they want to make it more challenging, but the base design presented in the core books is such that the players should win. Healing is too frequent, too accessible, and general recovery of hp to quick (again, following the suggested two short rests per long rest, etc.).

I think it's interesting that "too easy" complaints seem to focus on hp/healing, rather than on spell resources/DPR.

Well, I can't speak for others, but my objection to overnight recovery is it takes a lot of the risk out of the game.

Really?

Because it's /just/ a pacing mechanic. If the party faces one deadly encounter per week, sure, overnight recharges makes it pretty easy on them. If they face 2 deadly encounter per hour, overnight healing isn't going to help them at all.

The DMG has a 'gritty' option where short rests are overnight and long rests take a week. You can peg rests to anything in between (or longer if you need to), to match the pacing of your campaign so the party has a couple of non-trivial encounters between each short rest, and a good half-dozen or so between long rests.

Now, more to your point, not having overnight recovery makes a more gritty and realistic game if you think of HP as a lot of physical injury (even an accumulation of minor wounds).

There's a more problems than just overnight long rests with that, but, I think we may be getting at a closely-related issue.

Is the problem full healing /overnight/ (if it were, the gritty variant would have solved your problem and we wouldn't be having the conversation, I suspect), or is it that it takes the same long rest to recover all your hit points /as to recover all your spell slots/.
That is, do you want the former to take longer than the latter?

Because that is how it was back in the day.
IMX, back then, it meant that when the party retired from the dungeon to recover, it took several days or at least sleep-memorize cycles (if you were using the DMG rules for how many hours rest it took before you could re-memorize spells, at low level, you could fit several into a day). You'd rest to get a full slate of Cure..Wound spells, cast 'em all, and rest some more, maybe do a few other things 'in town,' and do it again, until everyone was full hp, then one last rest to get a full slate of spells again, and off you go.
That's just some in-world time spent resting and systematically casting spells. But, mostly, it's just significantly more bookkeeping and eats a little table time, for the same net result.

Overnight healing could thus be seen as little more than a play-procedure simplification.

 

[snickersnax]

What is never modeled well in D&D are thermal (or other forms of energy) injuries. The reaction to an accidental brushing of your hand against a hot stove is immediate. The reaction of most people (not on drugs) to being covered in flaming accelerants is a "GOT TO GET THIS OFF AND PUT MYSELF OUT RIGHT FING NOW!!!" yet most players have their PCs shrug off the 5 points of damage from flaming oil as if it were nothing. Lanterns burn at around 1200 degrees F. A campfire maxes out around 2000. Dragonfire is likely over 3000 degrees F since iron melts around 2750.

PCs of sufficiently high level also shrug off dragon fire.

I just want to play a game that can model a decent potholder.

DM: There is a hot cast iron pan cooking over the fire.
Player: OK I want to take the pan off the fire.
DM: It's hot.
Player: I'll use the sleeve of my padded armor.
DM: padded armor doesn't give you resistance to fire damage... you take 4 points of damage.
Player: Oh wait, I'm wearing a ring of fire resistence
DM: Well in that case you take 2 points of damage.

Is there no way to cook food in this game without getting burned???!!!

 

[5ekyu]

So? I'd write "no disrespect" but that seems to be a trigger word.

The guidelines are just a starting point and probably about right for a group of 4 newbies with no feats or magic items. Given the vast number of alternatives for group dynamics I don't see how any set of guidelines could work for every group.

Personally I used them as a starting point, threw out the numbers multiplier, multiply my budget by X depending on the group and level. It works pretty well for me.

Yeah... I mean, if I take a recipe that "serves four" and cook it " by the revipe" and serve it to a group of eight, I d9nt then claim "thecrecipe isnt right, it's not enough food for a meal."

It seemed obvious to me that the CR section and CR etc were *not * telling you what to throw at your party, just giving you some basic guidelines to serve as a measurement basis.

The printed DMG ftom years does not know:
How casual is your gtoup? Is it optimized? Is it tactical and strategic? Etc.
How much prep and knowledge etc is available for them to plan, do they plan, are their plans any good?

Now all that ssid, it foes seem obvious to me that the assumption for using hard, deadly etc was "a party of goyr relative newbies without a strong tactical grasp of the mechanics and options."

In other words, if a new GM out of the box grabs this fir new players not assumed to come from experienced tactical play, it likely plays out much that way producing relatively low chances of dead PCs out of the gate.

That seems a decent enough choice on where to set your "intro dial" - kind of like how some CRPGs and MMOs have thr badic default setting "nitmsl" or " novice" out of the box so that brand new first time tries dont just get the joy of getting killed over and over while they try and learn to play.

For an experienced GM, following the original baseline with an ecperienced group was not prescribed.

Its neither good nor bad its just a baseline.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

IRL, a successful sword hit would take down just about any one, regardless of experience in battle, etc.

Sorry for quoting an old post, but I just saw this now, and I don't think this has been mentioned yet:

IRL, one successful sword hit will kill many people who aren't wearing armor, with little regard for combat experience. Against someone wearing armor, a solid impact from a sword will cause a significant amount of bruising.

If you have to choose between "every hit is a solid impact" and "the first solid impact is probably fatal"; then the former is much more realistic than the latter, given the sorts of characters we're trying to model - characters wearing armor, and characters who use magic. It only really fails when you take it outside of its assumed context.

 

[Oofta]

Sorry for quoting an old post, but I just saw this now, and I don't think this has been mentioned yet:

IRL, one successful sword hit will kill many people who aren't wearing armor, with little regard for combat experience. Against someone wearing armor, a solid impact from a sword will cause a significant amount of bruising.

If you have to choose between "every hit is a solid impact" and "only the last hit is a solid impact"; then the former is much more realistic than the latter, given the sorts of characters we're trying to model - characters wearing armor, and characters who use magic. It only really fails when you take it outside of its assumed context.

I agree. Not every hit is going to be "solid". Some are going to be glancing blows or blows you nimbly dodge or catch on your shield but that use up a little more of your stamina. Even getting back up from unconscious is just modeling action movies.

The way I look at it: let's say I wanted a really easy and simple way of modeling a boxing match where matches only end with a KO. I'd use something like HP and blocking capability similar to AC. The boxers are still getting punched over and over, but it's only the last punch that pushes the loser over the edge. Even with that, sometimes the guy that just got knocked down gets up before they are counted out.

I'd agree that my model wouldn't accurately describe the long term impact of having your brain sloshing around on a regular basis, but it's just a game.

 

[Lanefan]

The CON 17 vs 7 is a good point, but for two characters with such different CONs to both have about 30 hp, they would have to be much different levels most likely. The CON 17 would be 3rd or 4th maybe and the CON 7 would be 6th or 7th. With that much more experience, skill, etc. the CON 7 person would refresh those HP much faster.

Actually they could simply be different classes within the same party; and-or have rolled well/poorly for hit points during their careers.

Finally, I don't think everyone's bodies are more or less the same. Differences in size, frame, conditioning, age, and general health all has a big impact on the amount of physical trauma the body can take. Right now, our "wound" system uses 5 + CON mod as the meat portion because we found the full CON score was too high for our house-rules. Since medium creatures use a d8 for HP, going with 5 works well on the concept of size of the character. Small characters are penalized in that respect, using only a d6 and having 4 + CON mod but we are okay with that. Your CON 7 would have only 3 WP (wound points), but the CON 17 would have 8 WP and could literally take over twice the physical punishment as far as meat body is concerned.

This is why I suggested it be variable - instead of [5 + Con mod] body points, make it 2d4 + Con mod (and if results of 2 and 8 are too extreme, rule that any such rolls become 5 instead) - to account for different bodies having the same Con score.

You could then also vary it by race: spindly Elves and little Hobbits might only be 2d2 + Con mod, for example.

 

[Lanefan]

I think I have heard some argue they want advancing hit points to actually reflect someone able to take horrible wounds and resist dying with supernatural will force and keep on kicking so there is that... I just wonder why anyone would want that and object to overnight recovery.

Simple - heroically resisting death now in the heat of the moment is all very well and good, but believability demands there be a price to pay afterwards, called convalescense.

Put another way, the problem doesn't lie with someone taking "horrible wounds and resist dying with supernatural will force and keep on kicking" (to use your words), it lies with the concept of someone being able to do this one day then wake up the next morning fully refreshed and ready to do it again.

 

[snickersnax]

Sorry for quoting an old post, but I just saw this now, and I don't think this has been mentioned yet:

IRL, one successful sword hit will kill many people who aren't wearing armor, with little regard for combat experience. Against someone wearing armor, a solid impact from a sword will cause a significant amount of bruising.

Maybe if you had one successful critical hit against an unarmored person I'd agree. The damage that I've seen people take and survive doesn't match up with what you're suggesting. If they are wearing plate armor they can take hits all day. Chainmail: maybe they'd get some bruises I wouldn't call it significant.

 

[Lanefan]

It fits the tropes though you could make that Wis(Discipline) or Cha(Strong Spirit).= For the Will to Live angle not being entirely about the physical too.

Slightly tangentially, I've been giving some thought to making Cha the key stat for revival from death rather than Con, for just the 'Spiritual Strength' reason.

 

[Garthanos]

Simple - heroically resisting death now in the heat of the moment is all very well and good, but believability demands there be a price to pay afterwards, called convalescense.

That never happens because magic.