D&D 5E Homebrew Hit Point Recovery

[Blue]

I played entire campaigns without a cleric, back in 2E, so they definitely weren't mandatory. It did create a different style of play, though. You wanted to avoid taking damage, since it would add up so quickly.

It may seem like an extreme, but given how far things have swung in the other direction with 5E, I find it much preferable. I hate the idea that you need multiple combats every single day, before anyone starts to feel it. I hate the idea that you can take a few arrows and simply not care, because you were never close to death and you were going to heal up to full regardless.

But this solution is that most of the players still don't care, and one player has to care - and carry - everyone else.

Truthfully do you think that at an average table if there were characters with access to healing but not intending to use them the rest of the party would not pressure them to spend those resources (spell slots, whatever) to heal them up? You're making that a class that can be healer will be peer-pressured into must be the healer in the majority of groups.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Truthfully do you think that at an average table if there were characters with access to healing but not intending to use them the rest of the party would not pressure them to spend those resources (spell slots, whatever) to heal them up? You're making that a class that can be healer will be peer-pressured into must be the healer in the majority of groups.

HD are a chopped-down solution (surges) to that problem: give each PC healing resources, they can take care of themselves. In 5e, it's not adequate to get you through the day, and only useable in a not-always-practicable 1-hr 'short' rest, but it's not for nothing.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But this solution is that most of the players still don't care, and one player has to care - and carry - everyone else.

Truthfully do you think that at an average table if there were characters with access to healing but not intending to use them the rest of the party would not pressure them to spend those resources (spell slots, whatever) to heal them up? You're making that a class that can be healer will be peer-pressured into must be the healer in the majority of groups.

I'm having a little trouble with parsing your statement. The idea is that, when healing is actually limited, players will start caring about whether or not they get hit. I know that this works in practice, because I've played in these types of campaigns.

As for peer pressure, well... healing is why the class exists. You can choose to play a healer, if you want to heal, or else you can choose to play any other class. The game can still move forward if there is no healer, but it's a different type of game, which provides a different type of fun. If the other players rush forward and die, then hopefully their next characters will be less foolish.

Under the existing model, where everyone has free healing, the player who actually wants to play a healer is dragging everyone else down, because any spell slot that they spend on healing would be better spent dealing damage. The character that can heal is pressured into not healing. And if they aren't going to heal, then you might as well take that class out of the game.

 

[Lanefan]

I remember this back from AD&D 2nd. It forces at least one PC into a healing role, and requires them to use non-at-will resources on the rest of the party regularly. It's a very thankless, low-spotlight role.

Au contraire, mon ami - we often find quite the opposite: the Cleric becomes almost a de facto party leader, largely because they all realize after getting beat up a few times just how valuable that Cleric is.

I remember once having no cleric (they were dead?) and we holed up in a cave for weeks to get people up to a point where we through we could survive the trek through the surrounding wandering-monster-encounter-rich area to get to a town.

The game needs more of this sort of thing IMO.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm struggling to recall if 2e added Cure Moderate, or it was only in 3e that /every single spell level/ could be devoted to healing.

First time I saw Cure Moderate was 3e.

While the band-aid cleric (or any other class that got Cure..Wounds, for those who'll point out they once played in a game without a cleric), was a very real stereotype back in the day, in 1e, at least, the Cleric got a few spell levels at which there were no healing spells, so he was free to devote them to something else.

Has there ever been a Cure spell at 4th level? Cure Light was 1st, Cure Mod was 2nd, Cure Serious was 3rd, Cure Critical was 5th, Heal was 6th, and a bunch of spells starting with "Re..." were 7th.

OK, a lot of the time it was Slow/Neutralize Poison, or Cure Disease or Remove Curse or something - and others, maybe the Prayer/Chant combo (effective but still pretty passive).

You allowed Prayer and Chant to stack?

Generous of you...

 

[Tony Vargas]

You allowed Prayer and Chant to stack?
Generous of you...

Only trick to it, IIRC, was to cast Prayer first. Funny how things that seemed standard-issue in one group sound outre to another.

I'm having a little trouble with parsing your statement. The idea is that, when healing is actually limited, players will start caring about whether or not they get hit. ..
As for peer pressure, well... healing is why the class exists.

Peer pressure is why the class exists? I thought it was niche protection?
But, really, outside the Paladin, there's no 'healing class' in 5e (and, then, it's a melee badassclass with a side of healing), there's caster classes who can use their slots to heal, among a lotta other things.

Under the existing model, where everyone has free healing, the player who actually wants to play a healer is dragging everyone else down, because any spell slot that they spend on healing would be better spent dealing damage. The character that can heal is pressured into not healing. And if they aren't going to heal, then you might as well take that class out of the game.

Also an issue. The solution was to silo healing and non-healing resources. But 5e abandoned that and returned to more familiar, all-purpose slots. The greater flexibility is, ironically, even as it makes the classes in question more powerful (in the higher-class tier sense), a pressure that mitigates against any given character concept.

 

[Lanefan]

As for peer pressure, well... healing is why the class exists. You can choose to play a healer, if you want to heal, or else you can choose to play any other class. The game can still move forward if there is no healer, but it's a different type of game, which provides a different type of fun. If the other players rush forward and die, then hopefully their next characters will be less foolish.

Or, if nobody wants to play a healer but they still need one, they can always go to a local temple and (try to) recruit an adventuring NPC to be the party Cleric.

It truly amazes me how this option never seems to come up.

 

[Blue]

Au contraire, mon ami - we often find quite the opposite: the Cleric becomes almost a de facto party leader, largely because they all realize after getting beat up a few times just how valuable that Cleric is.

Just to understand, the NON-HEALING cleric becomes the party leader because of how valuable the cleric is?

Again, this was about peer pressure to heal if you didn't want to.

 

[NotAYakk]

As for peer pressure, well... healing is why the class exists. You can choose to play a healer, if you want to heal, or else you can choose to play any other class. The game can still move forward if there is no healer, but it's a different type of game, which provides a different type of fun. If the other players rush forward and die, then hopefully their next characters will be less foolish.

The Cleric class exists as a counter to Sir Fang the Vampire PC in an early D&D game.

Under the existing model, where everyone has free healing, the player who actually wants to play a healer is dragging everyone else down, because any spell slot that they spend on healing would be better spent dealing damage.

5e only has "free healing" on a 3+ day time scale (one day to take damage and heal; recovering all of your HD can take another 2 days), and on that time scale pretty much only on HP damage.

For non-HP damage or on shorter time scales, healing in 5e is not "free".

A low level cleric can bring people up from KO. At mid levels, they can patch of fragile characters. At high levels they can actually burn serious resources and keep up with damage for a short period.

 

[Lanefan]

Just to understand, the NON-HEALING cleric becomes the party leader because of how valuable the cleric is?

No, the healing Cleric.