D&D 5E Hit Dice and How To Get More From Them

[Flamestrike]

You're putting the cart before the horse here. The primary purpose of Healing Surges in 4E was to limit the amount of healing you could receive over the course of an adventuring day.

While also providing a mechanism to heal inside of combat, and removing the need to hole up for an hour or so just to get some HP back.

Why would you want to limit healing to a daily resource? It just encourages the 5MWD. I dont know about you, but I want to move away from the 5MWD.

It's why I loathe DMs who implement the 'level of exhaustion on 0 HP' rule. They're just pushing the PCs further into the 5MWD.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The problem with using HD (IMO) is the way it scales. At 1st level, a HD is worth 100% of your HP pool (very roughly speaking). By 20th level, it is only worth 5% of that pool. IOW, an individual HD becomes worth less as you go up in level. Unlike a HS which is a fixed percentage (25%) irrespective of level (barring feats and the like which might bump that by a small amount).

I think you would need to change a lot to implement it well.

For starters, I would probably remove the existing HD rules (gain 1 per level) and instead grant HS up front like 4e did. The really tricky part here is that, if we consider that a HS is 1/4 total HP, then every class should arguably get 4. Another option would be to grant more but use harder fights to compensate for the added longevity. Keep in mind that your HS don't necessarily have to be 25%. They could be 10% or whatever percentage works best for you.

It's not as much of an issue for certain effects. A healing spell that is balanced to allow you to spend 1 HD in addition to whatever the spell grants would remain balanced as you go up in level (not unlike Cure Wounds, which falls off in value as you level but remains reasonably balanced).

Something like exhaustion is far trickier, because the HD cost will decrease with level. 100% of your HP pool seems rather high for negating a level of exhaustion, but 5% seems way too low.

As for environmental effects, I don't see an issue with them damaging your HD. It's functionally very similar to dealing damage, just cutting out the potential need for a short rest.

If you use HS, then you can arguably balance for exhaustion, since you know that that HS will always be worth 25% of the total (or whatever percentage you decide to use). Then you just figure out how that compares to the cost of exhaustion.

 

[BrokenTwin]

While also providing a mechanism to heal inside of combat, and removing the need to hole up for an hour or so just to get some HP back.

Why would you want to limit healing to a daily resource? It just encourages the 5MWD. I dont know about you, but I want to move away from the 5MWD.

It's why I loathe DMs who implement the 'level of exhaustion on 0 HP' rule. They're just pushing the PCs further into the 5MWD.

There's a difference between having abilities that heal you in combat (which existed before 4E and continue to exist in 5E) and implementing a resource that limits healing. Healing surges by themselves in 4E didn't heal your character.
Because I like to discourage combat as a first resort, and making characters more fragile encourages that. Yes, there's a fine line to walk between that and the 5MWD, but honestly, the latter has never been a problem in my games, so it's not something I feel like I need to worry about for a house rule.
And exhaustion is a terrible mechanic that actively punishes players. There's no strategy for dealing with it beyond "welp, guess I'm gimped now". Being out of healing (which is something that happens normally) doesn't make it harder to take more dangerous options, just riskier.

 

[Fanaelialae]

While also providing a mechanism to heal inside of combat, and removing the need to hole up for an hour or so just to get some HP back.

Why would you want to limit healing to a daily resource? It just encourages the 5MWD. I dont know about you, but I want to move away from the 5MWD.

It's why I loathe DMs who implement the 'level of exhaustion on 0 HP' rule. They're just pushing the PCs further into the 5MWD.

HS were a deep enough well that they really didn't encourage the 5MWD. Whereas HD are roughly 100% of your total HP, HS totaled quite a bit higher. One bad encounter couldn't really use up all of your HS. They were designed to last through multiple encounters.

 

[Flamestrike]

There's a difference between having abilities that heal you in combat (which existed before 4E and continue to exist in 5E) and implementing a resource that limits healing. Healing surges by themselves in 4E didn't heal your character.

True; technically second winds did that.

Because I like to discourage combat as a first resort, and making characters more fragile encourages that.

No, it doesnt encourage that kind of behaviour. If healing is a limited daily resource, your players will simply fall back on the 5MWD once they're wounded and can no longer heal (even with magic). All you'll do is create a totally different problem elsewhere.

If you want to encourage combat as a last resort, award bonus XP for overcoming a challenge without resorting to combat (creature XP x 1.5 or whatever). That not only encourages non violent means of conflict resolution, it also does away with pushing the 5MWD on your players.

 

[Flamestrike]

HS were a deep enough well that they really didn't encourage the 5MWD. Whereas HD are roughly 100% of your total HP, HS totaled quite a bit higher. One bad encounter couldn't really use up all of your HS. They were designed to last through multiple encounters.

But surges accounted for all potential healing over an Adventuring day.

There is still a limit in 5E. You get your HD to spend during the day for natural healing, possibly a class feature or two to supplement this, and spell slots (for healing spells) and potions.

Of the above resources, only potions are technically infinite (but in practice, not really seeing as the DM has his hands on the dial for how many potions he allows the PCs to acquire). The rest (spell slots, HD, class features) are finite.

If you place some kind of limit like 'you can only heal X times per day' on your PC's, expect them to fall back and rest once that limit is met.

 

[BrokenTwin]

True; technically second winds did that.

No, it doesnt encourage that kind of behaviour. If healing is a limited daily resource, your players will simply fall back on the 5MWD once they're wounded and can no longer heal (even with magic). All you'll do is create a totally different problem elsewhere.

If you want to encourage combat as a last resort, award bonus XP for overcoming a challenge without resorting to combat (creature XP x 1.5 or whatever). That not only encourages non violent means of conflict resolution, it also does away with pushing the 5MWD on your players.

I already don't reward XP for combat. But defaulting to combat is easy, and most of the tools in the D&D player's toolbox are for killing things. I play and run plenty of systems where characters are significantly more fragile than in D&D 5E, and the 5MWD has never been a problem in any of them. When the risk of dying in combat is higher, the desire to avoid combat grows. You naysaying that doesn't make it untrue. Having resources to manage is not inherently bad game design.

 

[Fanaelialae]

But surges accounted for all potential healing over an Adventuring day.

There is still a limit in 5E. You get your HD to spend during the day for natural healing, possibly a class feature or two to supplement this, and spell slots (for healing spells) and potions.

Of the above resources, only potions are technically infinite (but in practice, not really seeing as the DM has his hands on the dial for how many potions he allows the PCs to acquire). The rest (spell slots, HD, class features) are finite.

If you place some kind of limit like 'you can only heal X times per day' on your PC's, expect them to fall back and rest once that limit is met.

Sure, but if that limit lasts for any realistic adventuring day, then the limitation is only hypothetical, not actual. If the PCs only run out of HS after the BBEG is dead (which is when you intended for them to rest anyway) the limit hasn't limited their adventures in the slightest (beyond preventing them from haring off immediately on another adventure).

 

[Garthanos]

A ritual that is in a sense better than surgeless healing converting cash into both offensive and defensive recovery in mid paragon...

 

[Krachek]

Spending hit dice for effects! hope you weren’t complaining about 5 minutes work day.