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

[The Crimson Binome]

Higher standards of Integrity? What is that even supposed to mean? Monopoly can lie to you more than DnD can?

The narrative generated by a game of Monopoly does not have to be believable. Nobody is going to complain about how it's unrealistic or implausible to earn money from real estate while simultaneously claiming that you can't afford to get out of jail.

RPGs are supposed to generate a believable narrative. If they don't, then someone will call it out.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Would people prefer the return of the five minute adventuring day and requiring healbots?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Would people prefer the return of the five minute adventuring day and requiring healbots?

I would vastly prefer a game where the healer was a valued member of the party, and where the allocation of healing was an important resource to be managed.

As has been stated many times, there was never any edition of the game where a healer was required. You always had the option of resorting to natural healing, and simply changing the pace of the adventure, if nobody wanted to play a healer.

 

[Lanefan]

There are plenty of other ways to do it. For example each use of magic could require specific materials, specific conditions, etc.
AD&D, by the book, HAS that. It works, but is obviously not very popular.

The bookkeeping it generates isn't very popular, but there's merit in the concept.

Our compromise is that spells whose material components don't have any significant cost are handwaved as being present provided you've got your components pouch (and you're somewhat knackered as a caster if you lose it or it gets destroyed), but any components with significant cost e.g. the 100+ g.p. pearl required for Identify have to be tracked and recorded.

But that still doesn't help when it comes to trying to force a limit by spell level, which slots do and spell points don't.

 

[Helldritch]

Would people prefer the return of the five minute adventuring day and requiring healbots?

Hell no!


Ok, a more articulate answer might be required here. The goal in a lower rate of healing such as I am doing (that is no hp recover unless you spend HD) is not to make the healer a heal bot. It is to force players to think, to plan, to be better adventurers. Having no healers in my game is a choice that has been made quite often and the players were all about not getting so hurt that they would've to spend all their HD. Healing kit, potions and salves were bought without a second thought. Skills like alchemy, herbalist and medicine becomes much more important all of a sudden.

Doing things the way I DM them, makes magical healing something special but not ultimately obligatory. The healer can do something other than healing in combat. A life cleric is nice, but so is a light cleric. "Wow! The cleric's fireball was right on spot guys!" Even the trickery cleric can add a lot of thing beside healing. And yet, when a player heals another one, the other players know that the cleric/healer has sacrificed something of his versatility for the group. The healer is there not only to heal, but to bring other skills and powers to the group.

If healing becomes as trivial as having a good night's sleep; magical healing is no longer impressive. Why bring a healer then? A healer has its place in a group. He should not be trapped in a healbot role that some previous editions were forcing him into. 5ed gives healing classes more options than ever to do something else. But magical healing should still be something marvelous, incredible and awe inspiring. Not something too trivial.

 

[Lanefan]

It sounds like you are thinking of the trauma and fatigue reflected in HP loss as somehow fully disappearing, with bruises fading away completely, cuts turning into scars, or no mark at all, and fatigue recovered perfectly.

Well, yes; as the presence of any of those conditions - cuts, bruises, fatigue - both implies and narrates that one is not at full h.p.

That is not how many of us who are talking about abstract HP view it.
After a long rest of sowing, bandaging, splinting and sleep, the character still has many of the physical injuries they sustained the day before.
However due to a combination of treating them, and the character being Just That Badass, the wounds are no longer bringing them closer to defeat (0 HP).
The character is suffering pain and adversity. However when they are called on to fight again, they prove that they are heroes by pushing through the pain, and not letting it slow them down.

The problem with this is it tries to narrate two very different situations as being mechanically the same:

A party all at full hit points, heading into the field fresh off two months of downtime and R&R; and
A party all at full hit points, waking up in the morning after being beat to dogcrap on each of the preceding three days and whose last downtime was two weeks ago.

One of these is not like the other; and to suggest that they are alike stretches believability far beyond the breaking point.

So far, I don't think that anyone has honestly argued that the long rest healing mechanic actually involves wounds closing up and fully healing overnight.

It has to, if you're at full h.p. in the morning; and that's just the problem with it.

You're either at full h.p., fresh and ready to go with no lingering effects; or you're still suffering from yesterday's fighting and are thus not at full h.p. (in my view there's no possible way you can be at full h.p. and still have a lingering wound, regardless how the RAW might handle it)

 

[Lanefan]

Am I half way between, then, when I say I prefer D&D to be "every person being their own, independent" individual while at the same time being "swords & sorcery, and gritty."?

I further explained that comment here-

"One that is very PC-centric, wherein every player is a hero individually, and there is an emphasis on the heroic journey and challenges are meant to be overcome ... Character generation (and advancement) is an involved process.

The other is more party-centric; the roles of the players are very much complementary, and the model is more "swords and sorcery" and gritty realism. ... and character generation is often a fast process, since you might have to do it quickly. "

Again, for my own part neither of these match my style.

On a small day-to-day scale I'd rather focus on the characters as individuals (whether they be heroes, villains, or something in between); while on the adventure-to-adventure scale I'd rather focus on the party because while individual characters may come and go the party soldiers on.

D&D was originally conceived to be a game that had numerous players (early modules would often call for parties of 6+, or even 8-10 players) and, as such, there was the idea that different classes would have certain roles that would be jealously guarded (as Tony Vargas refers to it- niche protection).

This is very different in conception from what we have now, when classes largely overlap; arguably, through multiclassing and feats, there is no idea of niche protection anymore. You can have a party wherein each player takes a character of a single "class" that embodies different ideas, and do just fine. Perhaps you don't even need that - because there is so much overlap. There is no need for any particular class, and skills are open to all.

Without niche protection there's really not much point in having classes at all.

 

[TheSword]

It’s easy enough to have a wounds and vitality system in 5e similar to how other companies have done it.

Hit points calculated as normal.

Wounds - are a subset of the hit points represent damage the body, and are calculated by 1/2 HD at first level + Con bonus (if any for each level) minimum.

E.g a Fighter 5, with Con 16 who takes the non randomized HD has 20 Wounds (1/2 Hp at first level + 3 Con mod x5) which are part of 35 normal hit points

Short rests regain 1 wound and normal HP.

Long Rests regain Con Mod in wounds and normal hp.

Healing spells regain 1 Wound per dice and normal hp.

Wounds are only removed when hp run out or when a crit is dealt (dealing 1 wound as part of normal damage)

Character falls unconscious when wounds run out, irrespective of HP

Regenerating creatures just have hp.

This allows a bit more gritty nature and can account for natural healing without over complicating things.

Probably needs refinement but would do the job. I’m about to DM WFRP 4e and not do they put players through the mill with damage!

 

[Lanefan]

I agree GMing style plays a large factor in this. I would not put the party in a situation where they choose "yeah let's leave Arziel behind because we just can't wait for them to heal." You're putting forward a hypothetical problem that just doesn't happen in my games.

It happens in mine often enough and I've no intention of changing anything.

Yes they've got sometimes-hard choices to make: do we spend a day or two getting Arziel back on her feet and maybe lose our strategic advantage, or do we press our advantage and in so doing put Arziel at rather significant risk of dying.

I want those choices.

Also, it's very rare that after a series of combats, only one PC is injured and needs to recover. What's more likely to happen once one of the PCs is injured is that the party does not rest at all, but rather this party member hangs back and does not participate in combat as much, and tries to stay safe, and eventually other PCs take some hits, and now enough people are injured (and out of healing) that they decide to rest as a group.

Much more common here is that they want to rest when the casters are running low on spells. Otherwise, this is just a variant on the second option I present above: press on and hope Arziel survives it.

In all the years I've been a DM (I started in 2nd Edition) I have neither played nor DMed a game where this happened. If this kind of thing is happening, the DM should figure out how to fix it; this sounds like a real clusterf***.

Fix it?

In a well-run situation where resource management matters, a death spiral - or the threat of one - means the DM is doing it right: forcing hard choices as to whether to find/create a way to knock off and recover resources or to carry on with what's left and hope for the best.

And it's not necessarily on the DM to give downtime, it's on the players/PCs to find a way to make it happen.

 

[Lanefan]

Look at it this way, faster recovery, and here I really like the HS/HD options of 4e/5e (4e more, but oh well) because they allow for an 'ebb and flow'. You can be REALLY HURT during a fight, even go down, but then hang on and win the day and then be in reasonable shape for the next fight (although you cannot simply keep foolishly doing that forever, you do have to be smart, eventually).

This is something that really struck me about 4e's* combat design: it invariably seemed to be set up such that the party would get hammered in the first round or two and then be able to fight back and win the day...and then do it all again.

Fine once in a while, but when every combat goes like this it gets far too predictable, and thus dull in a hurry.

* - other editions did this as well but whenever I've converted and run a 4e module it always seem to somehow be more blatant or noticeable, at least from the DM side.