D&D General 4e Healing was the best D&D healing

doctorbadwolf · Jul 13, 2020

Xeviat said:
I concur. I never saw this, and I was big on the WotC boards and played more 4E than any other edition. Might go back to it for a bit.

Yep. At most people expected melee strikers to take some hits. If the wizard or an archer or warlock, etc, went a day without losing significant HP, that meant the team were all doing their jobs, and had a good day.

Other days the DM used lurkers very effectively to disrupt those characters.

Undrave · Jul 13, 2020

doctorbadwolf said:
Yep. At most people expected melee strikers to take some hits. If the wizard or an archer or warlock, etc, went a day without losing significant HP, that meant the team were all doing their jobs, and had a good day.

Other days the DM used lurkers very effectively to disrupt those characters.

Their surges were just so they weren't crippled for the rest of the day by one lurker.

Garthanos · Jul 13, 2020

dnd4vr said:
Actually, yes crits went directly to wounds, but had two effects:

1. You were fatigued. You had a -2 to attacks and saves IIRC (or something along those lines).
2. You had to make a Fort save DC equal to 5 plus the number of wounds or you were knocked unconscious.

I think SWSE expanded something with the fatigue idea into a cumulative penalty that maxed out at -5, but I am not certain.

sounds like an adaption of Mutants and Masterminds mechanics.

Garthanos · Jul 13, 2020

I liked Comrades Succor it made me think of the Blood bonding rituals you know pressing a cut palm or finger so your blood mingles... and raring up everyone with a minor cost of an owie in there. The idea of a Bard doing that with a party (and one of you gets a little too much) or a Warlord doing it with a allies support each other and are a TEAM with big letters speech (but always someone feels maybe they were letting the group down). Very vivid and emmersive to me.

Matchstick · Jul 13, 2020

RangerWickett said:
If I recall correctly, the D20 Star Wars let critical hits go to your Wound Points immediately, but wounds didn't actually do anything until you hit zero. It didn't quite fit for me.

I mean, if any game needs the ability to slice someone's hand off, it's Star Wars, but in the narrative you never saw someone get a hand sliced off and then keep fighting.

Can't have Star Wars without hands flying off!

Savage Worlds could make it happen. Fourth Wound is Incapacitation and a failure on the Incapacitation table (and the right roll) loses you an arm (or, for this example, a hand).

jmartkdr2 · Jul 13, 2020

dnd4vr said:
Actually, yes crits went directly to wounds, but had two effects:

1. You were fatigued. You had a -2 to attacks and saves IIRC (or something along those lines).
2. You had to make a Fort save DC equal to 5 plus the number of wounds or you were knocked unconscious.

I think SWSE expanded something with the fatigue idea into a cumulative penalty that maxed out at -5, but I am not certain.

Saga Edition had a whole condition track system: if you took X hp damage in one go (based on your fortitude defense) you went down a notch: -1, -2, -5, -10, unconscious.

Not a bad system, (I really liked the way big penalties forced you to different actions rather than just making you lose a turn) but at low levels you ran out of hp long before it kicked in, and at high levels you ran down the whole track before hp got below 50%, so in practice it was rarely about both (that and there were some broken feats based off the system, but that's not a core issue). It might have worked better if hp scaling was much less dramatic than 1dX+Con per level.

Oofta · Jul 13, 2020

RangerWickett said:
If I recall correctly, the D20 Star Wars let critical hits go to your Wound Points immediately, but wounds didn't actually do anything until you hit zero. It didn't quite fit for me.

I mean, if any game needs the ability to slice someone's hand off, it's Star Wars, but in the narrative you never saw someone get a hand sliced off and then keep fighting.

Tell that to Disney. For the most recent Star Wars game Jedi Fallen Order you can lop limbs off of the monsters and robots but not the people. Apparently this was a requirement from on high because mowing down Storm Troopers and other various opponents left and right was okay. But dismemberment? Too much!

Marandahir · Jul 13, 2020

Speaking to MoonSong's complaint, during most of 4e, 90% of the character class features revolved around combat. Utility powers are rare, and encounter or at-will daily utilities were nearly unheard of. The game was balanced around the combat encounter, which meant adding damage to Bards' spells where it didn't necessarily make sense, or requiring the bard to shoot an enemy with an arrow before they could buff or heal an ally outside of their limited Majestic Word usages.

More out-of-combat features did come eventually, especially with Essentials, but 4e as it was originally designed felt built for the miniatures game, and earned that description. The balance on healing was a big part of that, but so was language like hit or miss or damage. The philosophy of what HP means wasn't quite locked down, which meant that the game was designed by different folks at WotC inconsistently on this factor.

I love the healing surge idea. Honestly, I'd love to see a mechanic like healing/stamina mixture where you might draw upon these reserves to perform certain types of physical actions like bull rushes or grapples, and do away with HP=vitality entirely. Maybe even disentangle morale from stamina. The key take away should be that characters are not meat-bags to be sliced and diced over and over again before they die; a "hit" means your morale and/or stamina is weaker because of how hard it was to dodge that attack. But this doesn't play well with lasting effects, like charms, or illusions or ongoing fire damage. Am I on fire from the fireball? Shouldn't I be burning alive? Or is the fire ball overheating me but I managed to avoid it but now I'm more tired because of the heat?

5e still has some of these problems, and I feel strongly that D&D needs to hash out a solution to them.

Tallifer · Jul 13, 2020

Marandahir said:
Speaking to MoonSong's complaint, during most of 4e, 90% of the character class features revolved around combat. Utility powers are rare, and encounter or at-will daily utilities were nearly unheard of. The game was balanced around the combat encounter, which meant adding damage to Bards' spells where it didn't necessarily make sense, or requiring the bard to shoot an enemy with an arrow before they could buff or heal an ally outside of their limited Majestic Word usages.

In combat, combat Powers ruled.

Out of combat, 4E had a robust set of Rituals, Skills (and skill challenges), Martial Practices and Utility Powers. Most Classes, Races, Themes and Backgrounds had features which gave bonuses or extra tricks for non-combat situations.

(In combat, the Bard had combat Powers; during exploration, social interaction, puzzling and larking about out of combat he had many skills, rituals and features like song of rest and words of friendship, none of which required attacking an enemy.)

Coroc · Jul 13, 2020

RangerWickett said:
Here's my preferred healing system.

Hit Points Represent Fatigue and Scrapes
You have hit points. Getting 'hit' in combat means the attack made contact but didn't necessarily leave a lasting wound. It just wears you out. If you drop to 0 HP, you are helpless but conscious.

Whenever you rest 5 minutes, you get back up to half maximum. If you rest for an hour, you heal to full.

Wounds Impose Penalties
Whenever you suffer a critical hit, instead of taking double damage, you take normal damage and get a wound. There are six possible wounds, and the duration can vary based on how many HP you have left. You'd roll a d6 to determine which wound:

1. Head - Blinded for one round, then everyone has concealment against you as long as the wound lasts.

2,3. Arm - Drop what you're holding, then disadvantage with attacks or checks using that arm as long as the wound lasts.

4,5. Leg - You fall prone, and then are slowed as long as the wound lasts.

6. Chest - You suffer a level of exhaustion as long as the wound lasts.

Wound Severity
If after the critical hit you still have any HP, it's a Light Wound. If after the crit you are at 0 HP, you make a Con save. If you succeed, it's a Serious Wound. If you fail, it's a Critical Wound.

Light wounds heal on their own after an hour's rest.

Serious wounds heal after a day's rest.

Critical wounds never heal on their own.

Cure Wounds spells can fix wounds, though. Cure Light is 1st level, Cure Serious 3rd, Cure Critical 4th. Those don't restore any hit points, though. Nothing restores hit points other than resting, because it's bad game design to have character roles devoted to healing; that's reactive, and generally unfun.

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In this way, PCs will tend to get some light wounds that might change their tactics during combat, but afterward they can rest and heal. If the scenario puts pressure on them, they might rest five minutes to get some HP back, and have to deal with the wound lasting a while.

although your homebrew sounds quite solid and has some appeal, i only use the hp are rather fatigue concept.
there are game systems like dsa where the hp= blood, flesh and bones works closer to realism.
d&d imho is better played with hp being pretty abstract an only the hit bringing you to zero causes injury or dead.