I mean…hi. I’m the guy from the only group that apparently did these things.
D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep
- Thread starter Daztur
- Start date
I mean…hi. I’m the guy from the only group that apparently did these things.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
What about character retirement, character capture, character maiming to the point where it cannot continue, etc.?other groups however, choose to take character death off the table.
That, and IME taking death off the table would very quickly lead to some quite ridiculous play.
Vaalingrade
Legend
Also fun and exciting.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
We track character age fairly closely, mostly because we like making a big deal (in jest) when our birthdays roll around.
naw, we did too
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Not in my experience. But too many folks have said what you're saying for me to discount it.
rabindranath72
Adventurer
Interesting topic. In BECMI and AD&D healing was clearly a relevant aspect, but I always had players that enjoyed playing clerics, so with one in the group, it was never much of an issue. In 3.0, the first campaign I ran saw a wide abuse of CLW wands (and other magic items inflation due to liberal crafting), so from the 2nd campaign onward, I started to regularly use the DMG "low magic" and "power components" variants. That put the game on a level comparable to AD&D. I would never dream of running 3.0 without those.
PHATsakk43
Last Authlim of the True Lord of Tyranny
There is more to making resource management a part of the game than just ticking off boxes.
I mean, I don’t think anyone (well, given the amount of replies to the opposite, maybe I’m wrong) really enjoys Accounting & Actuaries.
I mean, I don’t think anyone (well, given the amount of replies to the opposite, maybe I’m wrong) really enjoys Accounting & Actuaries.
This so much. The only time I ever really saw groups that had trouble filling a healer in the party tended to be the ones loaded with players too caught up in "look at how awesome that my guy is" to work with support build focused PC's like healer and controller types. Even in 3.x I remember it being rare for the party to not have a partially charged wand or two that got broken out for emergencies or stored forgotten in a bag in case the party ever had a bad run of luck.
Those kinds of players aren't even tolerated in groups &raids on mmos where failing to work with the group like that tends to get them booted from the group and told to be a better human. Bizarrely though d&d has really just been endlessly trying to cater to that "My GuY iS tHe StAr! ThOsE gUyS aRe JuSt My SiDeKiCks" Mindset even as it makes choices undercutting the fun of playing those support builds.
Npc healers and wands of CLW existed so the GM could provide a pressure valve when responsible teammates were working together too, so the edge cases could still function. It wasn't until the gm got fed up with players abused NPC healers and wands of CLW in excess to circumvent teamwork & strategy that those things tended to dry up. That lack of availability for abusing them really took off after things like the magic item compendium gave the gm new ideas for availability limitations and additional options like blessed bandages or whatever.
Now I see tons of groups§ where nobody wants to put up with playing a sidekick while the system is designed so it's not really even a concern for most players if someone is completely disregarding support builds as valid players who deserve teamwork.
As a gm who saw it frustrating players who wanted &needed teamwork there wasn't really even much that I could do about it when players have been trained that a comment about fun or a catchy strawman like "Accounting & Actuaries" was all it took to trigger a reflexive bojak thoughts and prayers∆ type knee jerk set of nodding about control freak GM's or some other term normally reserved some of the GM's represented in places like /r/rpghorrorstories.
§ I ran AL twice a week for years
∆the name of bojak horsemen s4e5. They are planning a movie or something and an event keeps happening that forces them to scrap or hugely revise their plans but each time they simply move on after a reflexive catchphrase uttered with all the thought normally seen when someone responds to a sneeze with saying bless you to the sneezing person despite the seriousness of events.
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Of course, but there’s a whole slew of games that do make resource management important. D&D used to make it more of a thing and people did track that stuff (and possibly still do). It’s a style of play.
