D&D 5E The Healing Spirit Nerf=Complete Overkill

[Ruin Explorer]

Oh, sure. But what’s the alternative for them? They may not want to take a short rest, but they also don’t want to keep fighting with low HP, and they certainly don’t want to take a long rest in a dangerous location. They could possibly retreat, but that may mean failing the adventure. These kinds of tough choices are the heart of the game, in my opinion.

I think the issue for me is, that was clearly the aim, but the number of times when it's actually any kind of interesting choice is, in reality, really low, in my experience. Usually it's either we could go on, and just the Warlock and the Fighter (or similar) are weeping - and it's crocodile tears for the Warlock because even without another short rest he's a badass, or we're so messed up we hard require a way to get HP back, and would prefer a long rest, but it seems dramatically inappropriate to walk to a safe area and catch some zees, and we're just doing it to spend HD. If we do get a random encounter encounter in that situation it just feels cheap, too - especially if it's anything less than 150% plausible.

And re: the ticking clock, I agree, but it's weird, because it's never spelled out in 5E book (or even really hinted at, I think), and it's antithetical to how a lot of D&D is played - including some official stuff!

Roll on 6E I guess!

 

[Dausuul]

The game is literally called Dungeons and Dragons. Its premise is '4-5 PCs of various specialties, descend into a dungeon, and clear out a series of monsters and traps'.

It ain't 1974 any more. The game has long been expected to accommodate a variety of playstyles well beyond the traditional dungeon crawl.

Oh good. So you're following the advice in the DMG to do exactly this then?

The advice to make up my own house rules to fix the designers' mistakes? (I am not using any of the variant resting rules in the DMG.)

 

[Helldritch]

I don't think it's either the assumption or even a suggestion. All they say is that a party will be able to handle that many encounters before being worn out. I seem to recall hearing Crawford saying (I don't remember where, was an interview of some sort, not going to scour hundreds of hours of interviews) that they intentionally did not give guidelines on what the 'right' amount of encounters was.

And that is pretty much the defining guideline of what an adventuring day should be. Doing anything less than the "suggested" number of encounters is not helping you to balance things out.
The adventuring day, as @Flamestrike is not a real world day. The adventuring day could well be a week, a month or even a year.

The more I think of it.. why not call rest a resource now?
It could go along this line.
1) Each character has 4 Power regenerations (aka rest) between story point. Some abilities require only one Power regeneration to recover others take two Power regenerations. Power regenarations are recovered when the DM's predermined story points are reached.

2) Power regeneration can only be taken when out of combat.

3) In order to spend two Power regeneration, a character must have a safe haven to actually meditate/study/pray for a period of 8 hours to regenerate "daily" powers (which should be changed in name, let's say high abilities?)...

4) Any casters can spend a night to sleep to change its prepared spells. But spell slots require two Power regenerations to recover.

Having rests outside of a time frame would allow for more play styles. Or at least, would make an easier narrative...

What do you think?

 

[Flamestrike]

It ain't 1974 any more. The game has long been expected to accommodate a variety of playstyles well beyond the traditional dungeon crawl.

And the DMG discusses exactly this, and gives a number of recommendations for achieving this (Gritty realism, Slow natural healing, Sanity, Firearms, RP heavy, Milestone levelling, etc etc etc etc)

Have you read the DMG?

The advice to make up my own house rules to fix the designers' mistakes?

It's not a 'mistake'. House rules to make the game your own is encouraged in the DMG! They tell you to implement house rules to make the game your own, and even give you hundreds of guidelines for how to do this!

 

[MichaelSomething]

So who's longing for the return of the five minute workday?

 

[clearstream]

The more I think of it.. why not call rest a resource now?
It could go along this line.
1) Each character has 4 Power regenerations (aka rest) between story point. Some abilities require only one Power regeneration to recover others take two Power regenerations. Power regenarations are recovered when the DM's predermined story points are reached.

2) Power regeneration can only be taken when out of combat.

3) In order to spend two Power regeneration, a character must have a safe haven to actually meditate/study/pray for a period of 8 hours to regenerate "daily" powers (which should be changed in name, let's say high abilities?)...

4) Any casters can spend a night to sleep to change its prepared spells. But spell slots require two Power regenerations to recover.

Having rests outside of a time frame would allow for more play styles. Or at least, would make an easier narrative...

What do you think?

If that were to be the direction taken, I would really wonder if it wouldn't be easier to connect ability refreshes with XP.

The DMG has guidelines for sessions per level, encounters per session, encounters per ability refresh (i.e. rest), and XP per encounter. Given these facts, we can estimate ranges for encounters per level and refreshes per level. It looks straightforward to go from such estimated ranges to a formal mechanic that gives characters refreshes on the basis of level advancement. Let's call that resource rest dice.

Upon gaining a level, a character would lose any unspent rest dice. They would then gain a number of rest dice based on the derived values for encounters and adventuring days. At level one, that might be 3x short-rest dice and 2x long-rest die. It's up to each character how they spend them. There might be a short in-world time cost to use them - e.g. 10 minutes to spend a short-rest die and 1 hour to spend a long-rest die. That would come out of play-testing. My intuition at this stage is simply that they should not be free+instant to use.

This system is quite "game-y" but on the other hand it hard-locks resource refreshes to expected rates of resource use based on the expected number encounters for a character to advance through levels. There would need to be a balancing mechanic to avoid degeneracy around dumping dice when you are about to level. Either the dice can be used for something else (e.g. traded in for inspiration?) or as I suggested it does take a little time to use them. Maybe both.

 

[auburn2]

IMO it may be more powerful than other healing spells but it is not op compared to other spells in general. Most healing spells are a waste to start with. The only healing spell people commonly take at my table is healing word. For in-combat healing it uses a bonus action, making it better than cure wounds. Healing spirit uses a BA too, but it takes concentration provides less hp immediately and is going to be difficult for more than one person to use.

The big problem with healing spirit is it in one location, meaning it is difficult to get to the people that need it. If you set it up as an aid station few players in combat are going to be able to use it. Fore example, the barbarian has to disengage walk over to where the healing spirit is get under it, get his 4 hit point boost and then go back in battle. Oh and he lost his rage too because he did not attack anyone for a turn. You can move it on top of one player and that player will get 4 points a turn, which is good but at the cost of concentration, and if you do that only one player will be using it every turn. For a 2nd level slot and your concentration is 4hp a round better than bless with four different members getting a 1d4 on every single attack and save? Probably not.

Instead of healing spirit, you could let loose with healing word and at 2nd level give that Barbarian an instant 10hp while also maintaining concentration on something else. That is 3 rounds or so worth of healing spirit.

Out of combat it is a complete waste of a spell, as you said there are other methods of healing that are generally better and don't cost a slot.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Ramblings as I am wondering about the duration of fights in a session and the expected values of XP accrued over an Adventuring Day.

If groups get the expected XP per Adventuring Day, they go from level 1 to 20 in 34 adventuring days. If they are expected to take a Long Rest after each adventuring day, that would first mean that they are expected to enjoy very few long rests over their whole carreer. I am surprised they decided to link "long rest" with a "day" when it seems strange that the PCs would spend so few days adventuring over their carreer. The variant rules exist to make these "adventuring days" occurr over longer period to accomodate different paces, but I am surprised that the "day" was kept as the standard nonetheless.

The second thing I notice is that the first 3 levels are quick (basically, you level at the end of each day), then there is a lull from level 4 to 10 where PCs are spending 2,23 days at each level, then leveling resumes at a brisker pace (1,58 day per level). So nearly half (156/333th) of the PC career will be spend between level 4 and 10. After this range, strangely, spellcasters for example are expected to spend less than 2 adventuring days at this level ; if you're throwing more XP than the expected, they might even not have a single long rest until they level up, so a wizard could expect not to refresh his spells before reaching the next level, and be quite certain he won't refresh them more than once. I am not sure it's the default assumption a player makes when considering his strategy, especially as at higher level, you need to increase the XP budget to make encounters challenging.

What strikes me with the idea that a session could conclude with a long rest is that PC would expect to level every other session at most. I am not sure it is, also, the behaviour observed when people are using story award XP, for example.

Finally, when I read that the idea was to have 10-minutes fight, so 6-8 encounters takes less than half of a 4h session... I am envious of the other players. It usually takes a few minutes to describe the scene of the fight, establish positions and get ready to run the fight... Based on a 3 round average, that's 2 minutes per round for 3-5 PCs and the DM running the monsters. As it often recommanded to avoid solo encounter because of the action economy, even as a prepared DM with a pre-planned strategy for monsters, I am not sure how can each action be resolved with a few seconds per character per round, especially when the fight is designed to encourage tactical thinking. Are combat supposed to be shorter (in rounds and descriptions) than what I usually run? I am not a critical role watcher, but I checked a fight on their show (the midnight chase) that starts with a fight going on... Their experience is more typical of what happens at my table.

From 8:50 to 10:50 they basically roll initiative.
From 10:50 to 12:25, two zombies move.
From 12:25 to 26:05, the PCs act.
From 26:05 to 36:50, that's the second round and consequences of the fight.
That's roughly half an hour where 6 level 2 PCs fight 2 zombies... Not exactly a high level fight and still, it's quite long to play. I'd worry that a 6 to 8 fights would take all the session...

 

[cbwjm]

I've no idea how long my fights are. Some probably take a good 20+ minutes (largely due to die rolls) while others are over ridiculously quickly because I underestimated my players, again. Last session there were a couple of long rests and no real combat, there was an encounter where they set an armies baggage train on fire and caused other chaos but we didn't go into initiative because it just didn't seem pertinent to the encounter.

One thing about my games is that the adventuring day often does not equate to when my players have a long rest. They've had no or single encounter days and other days where they've fully spent all of their resources and are desperate to get a rest in. It varies quite a bit. However, I do also give XP for great ideas and quest completion which makes up for low numbers of encounters.

 

[auburn2]

From 8:50 to 10:50 they basically roll initiative.
From 10:50 to 12:25, two zombies move.
From 12:25 to 26:05, the PCs act.
From 26:05 to 36:50, that's the second round and consequences of the fight.
That's roughly half an hour where 6 level 2 PCs fight 2 zombies... Not exactly a high level fight and still, it's quite long to play. I'd worry that a 6 to 8 fights would take all the session...

Ok maybe I am missing something here, but it takes your group 2 hours to roll initiative? If it is minutes, what are they doing for the first 8 minutes, 50 seconds.

two 2nd-leve PCs vs two zombies would probably take about 10 minutes on average on my table. It might take less than 3 minutes if the fighter wins initiative and gets lucky rolls.

Most of my games end at the end of a fight, rarely at the begining of a long rest.