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

[Marandahir]

The issue I had was that non-combat stuff was entirely pushed into fiddly skill usage, non-emphasized but explicitely magical rituals, and finally later with the not-magical martial practices and a rare few class & theme features.

This is a direct result of healing being so darn good in 4e, because combat was so darn good in 4e.

 

[Garthanos]

The issue I had was that non-combat stuff was entirely pushed into fiddly skill usage

Skills application in 4e were presented and implemented with big story bang and as a basic problem solvers AND a source of experience when used in challenging significant ways. 5e skills are inconsistent fluff and the ultimate in FIDDLY (all uses requiring DM attention) since to do anything with them its just a game of Mother May I with virtually nonexistent guidelines. 4e still has the DM negotiation for some things don't get me wrong but 4e also had context to establish expectations between players and DMs alike for instance skill powers and the use in Skill Challenges (which also reinforced how much could be accomplished they could rival the use of rituals in that context). In 4e skills even determine what rituals and martial practices you have access to. To me they are just far more important than in 5e. Skill powers are like being able to swap out a class feature for something related to those skills (even if they are often a combat function of them). 5e characters feel in lock down to me and that is one of the reasons. Treating skills as minor things in 4e is on you. Skill challenges encouraged adaptive usages even with all the example applications ie they remained open ended.

 

[Tallifer]

Furthermore, imaginative usage of Skills, Rituals and creative problem solving out of combat was explicitly encouraged and rewarded in 4E by XP rewards for Skill Challenges equal to the XP for a combat encounter.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Or using the optional rules for long rests in the DMG like I do. I think 5E is far more flexible than 4E and doesn't require a ton of house rules to change the tone and pace.

Unfortunately, the default rules are so ridiculously far over to one side that there's no way to get back to normal, even using every option that was included for that explicit purpose. Even if it takes eight hours for a short rest, and a week to recover your healing surges; and even if you only get back half of your healing surges per long rest, with no free healing at any point; you can still go from 1hp to full over eight hours. That places a hard limit on what damage is, which puts it exactly into line with 4E, and makes it completely distinct from everything before that.

And that's intentional. You're supposed to have free healing, because you're supposed to be hit. Fixing that would require a complete overhaul of how AC works, in addition to spot-fixing things like the fighter's second wind. It's not remotely trivial to house rule. You'd be just as successful in replicating the feel of 4E tactical combat, by including the optional rules for marking and flanking. The tools they give you are simply insufficient.

 

[Oofta]

Unfortunately, the default rules are so ridiculously far over to one side that there's no way to get back to normal, even using every option that was included for that explicit purpose. Even if it takes eight hours for a short rest, and a week to recover your healing surges; and even if you only get back half of your healing surges per long rest, with no free healing at any point; you can still go from 1hp to full over eight hours. That places a hard limit on what damage is, which puts it exactly into line with 4E, and makes it completely distinct from everything before that.

And that's intentional. You're supposed to have free healing, because you're supposed to be hit. Fixing that would require a complete overhaul of how AC works, in addition to spot-fixing things like the fighter's second wind. It's not remotely trivial to house rule. You'd be just as successful in replicating the feel of 4E tactical combat, by including the optional rules for marking and flanking. The tools they give you are simply insufficient.

Is that really all that different from previous editions? Unless you go back to OD&D? It took more magic to get back to full in previous editions, but I don't remember hardly ever starting the day out not at or near full. YMMV of course.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Is that really all that different from previous editions? Unless you go back to OD&D? It took more magic to get back to full in previous editions, but I don't remember hardly ever starting the day out not at or near full. YMMV of course.

Back in my day, we routinely spent weeks to recover after a fight. It mostly worked out fine, because there was no expectation of combat every day, especially during travel. Of course, if you did get hit, you'd be much more cautious until you could recover; and everyone was careful to not take on any more risk than they knew they could handle.

Which is entirely a right and in-character way of thinking! Nobody should ever be indifferent to the possibility of being shot with an arrow, or stabbed with a sword.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Is that really all that different from previous editions? Unless you go back to OD&D? It took more magic to get back to full in previous editions, but I don't remember hardly ever starting the day out not at or near full. YMMV of course.

This is one of those issues where the designers of 3.0 really didn't know what they were doing and created unforseen side effects. In particular they added the Wand of Cure Light Wounds as an item that cost less than a third of a simple +1 sword (counting the cost of the base masterwork weapon) and that could be made by the PCs. On paper there is only slightly more healing available in 3.0 (and 3.5) than in AD&D but in practice the difference is overwhelming and healing is almost free. 4e has significantly less healing than its immediate predecessor becuase for most purposes healing surges are a cap on the amount of healing available. (One that can be worked round but this takes effort).

As for AD&D healing, Saelorn is talking about the 1hp per day natural healing to recover. This was however a theoretical number that assumed that you had that amount of time to spare and the party cleric wasn't champing at the bit to get everyone back to full health in which case only a couple of days of rest were needed.

And I fully agree with Saelorn that nobody should ever be indifferent to the possibility of being hurt. I trace that degrading back to the 2e decision to take XP for GP out of the core rules making combat a comparatively far better source of XP. Or possibly to the Obscure Death Rule for the low level Dragonlance modules.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Back in my day, we routinely spent weeks to recover after a fight. It mostly worked out fine, because there was no expectation of combat every day, especially during travel. Of course, if you did get hit, you'd be much more cautious until you could recover; and everyone was careful to not take on any more risk than they knew they could handle.

Which is entirely a right and in-character way of thinking! Nobody should ever be indifferent to the possibility of being shot with an arrow, or stabbed with a sword.

This approach had serious issues though. A seriously tough character with a high hit die and good Constitution who was reduced to 1 hp would take an absurd time to heal compared to a frail wizard who'd been reduced to 1.

Certainly the argument could be made that because the hearty character took more damage, that their wounds were more severe. However, given that those wounds didn't impair them, they couldn't be that bad. And it really didn't make much sense that the toughest man in the world would take weeks to recover from being near death (but never actually at or below 0 HP) while an incredibly frail character with 2 HP would be back to full the next day.

Ultimately though, I agree with @Oofta . We always had a cleric with us and relied on them to heal. We were never down for more than a day or three.

 

[Oofta]

This approach had serious issues though. A seriously tough character with a high hit die and good Constitution who was reduced to 1 hp would take an absurd time to heal compared to a frail wizard who'd been reduced to 1.

Certainly the argument could be made that because the hearty character took more damage, that their wounds were more severe. However, given that those wounds didn't impair them, they couldn't be that bad. And it really didn't make much sense that the toughest man in the world would take weeks to recover from being near death (but never actually at or below 0 HP) while an incredibly frail character with 2 HP would be back to full the next day.

Ultimately though, I agree with @Oofta . We always had a cleric with us and relied on them to heal. We were never down for more than a day or three.

I remember back in the day playing one of the gold box D&D computer games, maybe Pool of Radiance? The game had a "rest and heal until full" function. It could be interrupted if you were attacked or took damage, but you just clicked the button again.

Towards the end you're climbing a tower and it's collapsing around you. I probably had to click that dumb "rest and heal until full" button a half dozen times. Stupid falling rocks.

Anyway, that's pretty much what I remember us doing in our home game as well. With 5E they just got rid of the extra downtime and reliance on wands of cure light wounds.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As for AD&D healing, Saelorn is talking about the 1hp per day natural healing to recover. This was however a theoretical number that assumed that you had that amount of time to spare and the party cleric wasn't champing at the bit to get everyone back to full health in which case only a couple of days of rest were needed.

Which is a perfectly valid assumption that comes up all the time, barring some very specific campaign styles which involve a lot of mandatory combat and imposed time constraints. Especially if there is no cleric in the party.

Certainly the argument could be made that because the hearty character took more damage, that their wounds were more severe. However, given that those wounds didn't impair them, they couldn't be that bad. And it really didn't make much sense that the toughest man in the world would take weeks to recover from being near death (but never actually at or below 0 HP) while an incredibly frail character with 2 HP would be back to full the next day.

Is it really integral to the model that we represent the severity of those wounds in more than one way? If the world's toughest hero sustained sufficient injury that it would take them weeks to recover, then anyone else in the world would be dead in those circumstances, so the hero is still much better off.