D&D (2024) How to buff healing, make it reliable and discourage whack-a-mole?

[Stalker0]

As long as dealing damage creates a bigger swing in the damage race than healing does, healing will always be a less efficient use of resources and action economy than dealing damage, unless it brings someone back into the fight who had been taken out of it. There are therefore only two ways to prevent whack-a-mole healing: buff healing so much that it outpaces damage, or remove the rule that an unconscious character regains consciousness if they gain HP.

This is assuming that the attack action and heal spell action are “normal” in every scenario, which is not true.

For example if one kd these is true

1) I have disadvantage on my attacks.
2) I can’t reach the monster (cover, darkness, etc).
3) I got damage the monster (immunities).
4) the wounded player is particularly good at damaging the monster (buffed up, vulnerability)

In these scenarios the value of healing increases

 

[Pedantic]

Isn't that the way that Mercer does it? or was Mulligan? I could have sworn I've seen that on an Actual Play episode somewhere, but I can't remember where/who.

You might be thinking of Murphy off of NADDPod, he's been using that rule for their 3rd season.

 

[DarkCrisis]

having negative HPs should be a nice idea to explore again in next PT.

you can have negative HP equal to your Con score plus your level. more than that and you are dead.
this will address multiple thing:

1. reduce whack-a-mole effect with few HPs of healing being the best option for combat healing
2. reduce overhealing(if you use fixed healing value for spells) even at 1st level, 15 pts of healing at 1st level is almost always overheal, unless used on 16 Con barbarian.
3. Reduce the effect of overkill, as any damage beyond getting someone to "0" will be used against future healing.

however, if you finish Short rest with negative HPs, 1st you get healed to 1 HP and then you spend HDs(if you want or if you have them) for healing. That way, even if you are out of healing, you get to 1HP on every short rest.

or just remove HDs and use 4E healing surges.

Next time I DM D&D 5E I’m ejecting death saves and putting back in negative HP/bleeding.

I feel 5E makes healing/surviiving far to easy as is.

 

[Stalker0]

Next time I DM D&D 5E I’m ejecting death saves and putting back in negative HP/bleeding.

I feel 5E makes healing/surviiving far to easy as is.

An off the cuff idea I had.

You go to 0 as normal, but every failed death save is -10 HP. For every -10 your healing heals, you remove a death save, and if it gets you back to 0 than your up as normal.

That keeps the spirit of 5e death saves but also reintroduces a version of neg hitpoints that's quick and easy to track, and means healing someone unconscious isn't as optimal as it is in the base game.

 

[tetrasodium]

An off the cuff idea I had.

You go to 0 as normal, but every failed death save is -10 HP. For every -10 your healing heals, you remove a death save, and if it gets you back to 0 than your up as normal.

That keeps the spirit of 5e death saves but also reintroduces a version of neg hitpoints that's quick and easy to track, and means healing someone unconscious isn't as optimal as it is in the base game.

"The spirit" of death saves is the problem.it is not a thing that a fix for problems caused by death saves should be trying to preserve.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I am kinda happy the way UA Playtest 8 does it.

It surprised me. But.

Beefing up the healing reduces pressure on the healer player to heal, and reduces wack-a-mole by granting more staying power.

It changes the math assumption, yet nothing seems to be broken. It seems the new math is better.

The beefier healing is a brave and wise design.

I mean, "brave and wise" feels excessively generous to me.

It's definitely a move in the right direction. I don't think it really goes quite far enough to make pre-emptive/combat healing really make sense, though. The difference between getting back up with say, 9hp, as opposed to 7hp is not going to be a huge one. I'd have preferred to see a design where Cure Wounds and Healing Word also granted limited-duration THP equal to the amount they healed for (including the stat bonus). I think the difference between 7hp + 7thp is quite a lot more than that between 7hp and 9hp.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

An off the cuff idea I had.

You go to 0 as normal, but every failed death save is -10 HP. For every -10 your healing heals, you remove a death save, and if it gets you back to 0 than your up as normal.

That keeps the spirit of 5e death saves but also reintroduces a version of neg hitpoints that's quick and easy to track, and means healing someone unconscious isn't as optimal as it is in the base game.

I think you need a scaling number rather than a fixed one, which is why they use Death Saves. Fixed numbers when monster damage scales mean you just get insta-killed a ton after a certain point. Especially as hits on an incapacitated target auto-crit. I know it's off-the-cuff, just pointing out why they don't use fixed values.

 

[James Gasik]

Ok, here's a thought. Get rid of healing from zero and death saves. Track all damage taken after hitting 0 hit points.

At the start of each turn that you are "dying", you can spend a healing surge to regain hit points, to a maximum of 1 hit point, at which point you regain consciousness. However, if, on the fourth round of "dying", if you are still at 0 or less hit points, you die.

Outside healing has no limitation on how much you can be healed to.

So say for example, Dave the Fighter is hit by the giant rock of a giant ape who crits for 53 damage, bringing him to -27. At the start of his next turn, he rolls a d10+3 and gets 8. If he continues rolling like this, he will die at the start of round 4.

However, Betty the Cleric makes her way to him and heals him for 16 with a Cure Wounds. Now he's at -3. At the start of the following turn, no matter what he rolls, he's now at 1 hit point and regains consciousness.

 

[Horwath]

Ok, here's a thought. Get rid of healing from zero and death saves. Track all damage taken after hitting 0 hit points.

At the start of each turn that you are "dying", you can spend a healing surge to regain hit points, to a maximum of 1 hit point, at which point you regain consciousness. However, if, on the fourth round of "dying", if you are still at 0 or less hit points, you die.

Outside healing has no limitation on how much you can be healed to.

So say for example, Dave the Fighter is hit by the giant rock of a giant ape who crits for 53 damage, bringing him to -27. At the start of his next turn, he rolls a d10+3 and gets 8. If he continues rolling like this, he will die at the start of round 4.

However, Betty the Cleric makes her way to him and heals him for 16 with a Cure Wounds. Now he's at -3. At the start of the following turn, no matter what he rolls, he's now at 1 hit point and regains consciousness.

I like this.

but I would not limit it to 3 rounds, but the number of HDs.
I.E. if you start your turn with negative HP and no HD left, you die.
might make that HDs always heal for max amount.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ok, here's a thought. Get rid of healing from zero and death saves. Track all damage taken after hitting 0 hit points.

At the start of each turn that you are "dying", you can spend a healing surge to regain hit points, to a maximum of 1 hit point, at which point you regain consciousness. However, if, on the fourth round of "dying", if you are still at 0 or less hit points, you die.

Outside healing has no limitation on how much you can be healed to.

So say for example, Dave the Fighter is hit by the giant rock of a giant ape who crits for 53 damage, bringing him to -27. At the start of his next turn, he rolls a d10+3 and gets 8. If he continues rolling like this, he will die at the start of round 4.

However, Betty the Cleric makes her way to him and heals him for 16 with a Cure Wounds. Now he's at -3. At the start of the following turn, no matter what he rolls, he's now at 1 hit point and regains consciousness.

So like, there's a decent concept here, but it has two problems:

1) Hit Dice (which is what I presume you mean by Healing Surges) don't scale in value, they scale in total number. Whereas incoming damage scales in value. Thus the HD would make less and less and less of impact as levels went up, being almost entirely meaningless by the mid-levels. So you'd probably want to let people spend more than 1 HD per round at various levels - perhaps the same levels a Fighter gets extra attacks or a cantrip increases in damage? I.e. level 5 2 HD, level 11 3 HD, level 17 4 HD.

2) You could potentially get into some pretty upsetting/frustrating situations where a group just didn't have the HPR to save a PC, or almost did, but only if they rolled really well. At a certain point, people are also going to work out that trying to save people who've taken too much damage is "throwing good money after bad", because Revivify is a 3rd level spell, and so long as you win the fight, it's a lot better to just cast Revivify than pumping a ton of spell levels into a dude to try and get him back up (which would be wasting Actions or Bonus Actions, turn after turn). So that'll eliminate yoyoing for the most part, but replace it with "just let him eat the damage and die, we'll get to him later". At that point, someone attacking a downed PC is a good thing for the living characters, not a scary thing, which is a bit of a change.