D&D 5E Those who come from earlier editions, why are you okay with 5E healing (or are you)?

[Azzy]

It is A game?

Not since 3e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

OK. Lets look at it this way:

A PC faces a foe that does lay them out for a day or more.
How is the gameplay experience of the player improved by this?

1) I would assume realism would be one way.
2) Perhaps having to sit out the next couple of sessions of play increases the drama for the player, in that they want to avoid having to miss more sessions if they can help it? The unpleasantness of the experience heightens the enjoyment of when they aren't forced to sit out a session?
- That doesn't really work so well because (assuming the DM is doing their job) there is still drama and risk of loss in the normal rules. (Admittedly the risk is loss of character rather than playing time, which may or may not be viewed as worse.)

What else have we got?

Well there could be a narrative where nobody loses playing with their own character but some kind of narrative stress happens. This falls into the realm of play to see what happens.
Or the tension could be between a story consequence and a mechanical one (waiting to heal vs pushing on). Obviously the basic 5e rules only support that during an adventure day. Having slower healing or 'wounds' of some sort allows for a wider variety of scenarios.
If I ran 5e, I would have a way to do this, but I don't need to have it be strictly just a dice mediated thing. I would have it be a choice that the GM or player can invoke.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I must admit that you're starting to lose me. Could you explain what you are speaking about in greater detail?

The success of a game isn't necessarily measured by its market share. It can be measured in whether or not the people who play it are having fun. If you look at a smaller game, like Magical Fury, then you can consider it to be very successful as long as people use it to have fun while role-playing in the world that its rules describe; even if it might not make a ton of money, and most people have never heard of it.

There are a lot of games out there that I would consider to be very successful, because they accomplish what they set out to do, even if they never make much money. Most RPGs aren't created with the goal of making money.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Additionally, if you think HP prevents you from making a narrative as a "Traditional RPG would" then I have to point out that DnD is the most traditional RPG you can get. It was literally one of the first ones ever created, and it has always used HP to my knowledge.

And yet, despite being burdened with HP, we have been able to create meaningful narratives for decades.

Which is the reason that this thread exists: to address the vast disparity between 5E and older editions. The rules of 5E agree with the lies told about older editions, and no longer agree with the reality described by older editions.

Because D&D has always used HP, and people had been using those HP to create meaningful narratives for decades. And then suddenly 4E came along, and you see a huge backlash from people who can't use it to create meaningful narratives anymore; because the rules suddenly agreed with the propaganda that a "hit" is actually "abstract whatever"; rather than the rules saying that a "hit" is actually a "hit" in spite of the propaganda, as they had for decades. And then 5E came along, and copied that aspect from 4E, in spite of every traditional player who hated it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It IS a game.

No, it's a role-playing game, which demands higher standards of integrity than something like Monopoly.

Games don't have to make internal sense as a narrative. Role-playing games do.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Don't like the default? There are plenty of optional rules that modify that.

I think the problem is that they made the default position into such an extreme of fast healing, that no amount of optional rules can bring it back. Literally, if you adopt the strictest options in the book, you can still go from 1hp to full over an eight hour short rest (by spending all of your Hit Dice). That places a hard limit on how badly someone can get hurt, as long as the possibility exists to heal it completely overnight.

And because the default is so extreme, it makes the old default appear extreme to anyone used to the new method. You would need to have a pre-existing group of old players in order successfully sell them on 3E-style healing, because it would seem so Draconian to a mixed group of newer players.

 

[Azzy]

No, it's a role-playing game, which demands higher standards of integrity than something like Monopoly.

What's that word? "Game"? Yeah, it's a game.

Games don't have to make internal sense as a narrative. Role-playing games do.

RPGs don't have to be simulationist, if that's what you're trying to go for there.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This has me scratching my head. In what movie about heroes do the heroes heal all of their wounds overnight without the aid of technology or magic? My experience reading and watching about heroes is that they must at some point suffer through adversity or pain (that which cannot be resolved automatically overnight) in order to prove that they are heroes within the story. What you are describing to me sounds more like superheroes when they are fighting normal criminals. And even superheroes, when faced with a real threat, suffer issues such as losing their powers, acquiring vulnerabilities that can be exploited, etc.

So, the explanation that automatic nightly regeneration of HP is because they're heroes doesn't adequately explain this for me.

The superhero part of this had me thinking about an example of what we mean.

Batman comic opens up with Batman taking down a series of goons, one gets a lucky shot and shoots the Bat. Next scene is in the Batcave, with Batman bandaging his wound.

Then the plot starts, and Batman is likely jumping and fighting and reacting in ways that are unrealistic with a recent gunshot wound. Unless the wound is the point of the plot. And, likely the villain might punch him in that spot a few times, but that is usually not the first blow the villain lands, but a 3rd act crisis in the fight scene. Oh no, that wound from before has entered play because it wasn't relevant before.

This is what we mean by "Action Movie" style wounds. Yes, the hero is wounded, yes, they don't "recover" by the end of the day. But, it doesn't seem to bother them. They shake it off, and keep going as though they weren't wounded. Because the wounds are no longer plot relevant.

It is definetly not realistic, and it often gets panned and mocked in media, but it still happens. Because getting wounded is dramatic, but recovering is slow, and the movie/comic/ect needs to be fast-paced

Edit: Huh, you say pretty much exactly this on the next page.

I agree it's not that stark visually, even in my mind. Bruises, cuts and bandages aren't the pain and suffering I'm referring to, though. Visual imagery quibbles aside, my point is that no injury lasts longer than 24 hours that is significant enough to cause the hero to adjust their plans. No PC will ever face a foe that lays them out for a day or more. While D&D can be enjoyed playing this way, I think there is a sense of drama that is lost -- a missed opportunity.

And yes, again I'll say that I'm not personally looking for solutions to something I see as an intractable problem I need help with. It's more my observation of the change in tone of D&D in modern times, and this rule change as a sign of that.

I can see that as a missed opportunity, but I think it is a case of a small sacrifice for a greater good. Yes, it is much harder to give a player an injury that will lay up their characters and prevent them from adventuring for a week or more.

It is also much harder for an unplanned for event or miscalculated monster to throw the entire plot out of whack because the players are all hiding in town trying to recover instead of finishing the adventure.

Yes, players no longer die from poison instantly (I think that was an AD&D thing? It was in the floopy disc games I played) but, players are no longer going to arbitrarily die to a single bad roll from a single weak monster (Giant Centipedes were the worst in those games. I would face dozens of them, and a single bad luck roll could kill even my high level characters. And I had no connection to them compared to a character at the table).

And so on. Yes, we lose out on scenes like from the Dark Knight, where Batman is in the pit recovering as Bane rules the city and drives Gotham to chaos. But considering this is a team game, it is a minor loss in my book. And one I can add back in with various houserules.

 

[Oofta]

I think the problem is that they made the default position into such an extreme of fast healing, that no amount of optional rules can bring it back. Literally, if you adopt the strictest options in the book, you can still go from 1hp to full over an eight hour short rest (by spending all of your Hit Dice). That places a hard limit on how badly someone can get hurt, as long as the possibility exists to heal it completely overnight.

And because the default is so extreme, it makes the old default appear extreme to anyone used to the new method. You would need to have a pre-existing group of old players in order successfully sell them on 3E-style healing, because it would seem so Draconian to a mixed group of newer players.

I've always used the default rest rules (overnight short rest, long rest a week or more). Neither old nor new players have a problem with it. If you have a healer of any sort available, it really isn't much different than pre 4E, except instead of the rest/cast healing spells cycle it's just rest and don't bother with casting spells. Besides, if the choice is play an older version of the game or 5E with some minor tweaks ... well I'd say you're throwing the baby out with the bath water if this is the only reason to not play 5E.

It's simple to house rule that you can't heal with hit die, that you only recover N number of hit points per day of rest. I think people would be more accepting than you would expect of such a change.

Or just play older versions of the game. Up to you.