D&D (2024) Just DMed my 1st session of 5.5. Healer's Kit!?!?!

[Micah Sweet]

1. The move is a non-factor. 30 feet is easy to move while pulling out your healer's kit. That is about 2-3 seconds of a mild jog.
2. All the healer's kit does is stabilize you. Which means you're not actively dying.
3. A character doing nothing actively can stabilize by just make 3 saving throws.
4. A character can be stabilized by someone else making a medicine check (1 action).
5. Clearly, becoming stable is not a big deal from a physical sense.
6. If you can become stable by just lying there unconscious or someone making a medicine, it doesn't seem like a stretch someone can spend 2-3 seconds with a kit and make you stable.

IMO a Medicine check should take longer than 6 seconds. I can't think of an example from fiction or real life where a person stabilized a dying person in 6 seconds, start to finish, and if I could, such a person would have some degree of medical training, which the kit does not require.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Healer's Kit -
A whole bunch of fancy-looking bandages, dressings, and herbal poultices that are all just for show.

And one tiny bottle of fantasy laudanum to control pain and sedate the usual howling battlefield mania that arises when an adventurer gets a splinter or takes a tiny scratch through their many layers of armor or magical protection.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Let people decide for themselves if they care. Most people don't really think about it too much one way or another in large part because they've gotten used to things like video games where you apply a health pack and you're better. In my games I could come up with some lore like the bandages are infused with fibers of a plant that have low level inherent magical healing properties along with a mild stimulant effect. In yours it could be something completely different or have no explanation at all.

Everything is magical.
Everything.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Healer's Kit -
A whole bunch of fancy-looking bandages, dressings, and herbal poultices that are all just for show.

And one tiny bottle of fantasy laudanum to control pain and sedate the usual howling battlefield mania that arises when an adventurer gets a splinter or takes a tiny scratch through their many layers of armor or magical protection.

That does seem to be the actual description.

 

[AlViking]

D&D has an implied setting. It's not just a box of mechanics with evocative names. I want something called a healer's kit to model a healer's kit, and I don't think that opinion is so out there. If you're going to base your mechanics on video game models as you suggest, that would be an amazing thing to be honest about up front.

DnD has a virtually unlimited number of implied settings that varies and includes forgotten realms, Eberron, Planescape and how many other numerous home games are out there. They have some common features but how we envision the world the characters exist in is up to the people at the table. In my opinion of course.

 

[Micah Sweet]

DnD has a virtually unlimited number of implied settings that varies and includes forgotten realms, Eberron, Planescape and how many other numerous home games are out there. They have some common features but how we envision the world the characters exist in is up to the people at the table. In my opinion of course.

None of those settings describe healing kits as the magical video game med packs the rules make them out to be.

 

[AlViking]

None of those settings describe healing kits as the magical video game med packs the rules make them out to be.

Yet mine does and it's as valid a setting as any other. Most settings just don't address it because it's such a minor thing.

 

[dave2008]

IMO a Medicine check should take longer than 6 seconds. I can't think of an example from fiction or real life where a person stabilized a dying person in 6 seconds, start to finish, and if I could, such a person would have some degree of medical training, which the kit does not require.

That is your preconceived notion of what it means to "stabilize" or be stable. In 5e you can just lie there and become stable. It is clearly not that big of a deal. So if I can do something by lying down and being unconscious for 18 seconds, it doesn't seem like such a big deal to try and do the same thing actively in 3 second. It really depends on how you perceive Hit Points and what it means to be "stable."

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is your preconceived notion of what it means to "stabilize" or be stable. In 5e you can just lie there and become stable. It is clearly not that big of a deal. So if I can do something by lying down and being unconscious for 18 seconds, it doesn't seem like such a big deal to try and do the same thing actively in 3 second. It really depends on how you perceive Hit Points and what it means to be "stable."

That is supporting a deliberately gamist philosophy of play and design that I strongly disagree with.

Nothing wrong with that in a general sense, and you are of course welcome to it, but I want no part of that.

 

[dave2008]

That is supporting a deliberately gamist philosophy of play and design that I strongly disagree with.

Nothing wrong with that in a general sense, and you are of course welcome to it, but I want no part of that.

Maybe, I don't really care much. We have our own much more simulationist rules for HP and healing than D&D has ever had.