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

[Fanaelialae]

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.

It doesn't add up though. There's no circumstance where a single digit character (which includes both commoners as well as most 1st level adventurers) takes non-life-threatening injuries and needs more than a few days to heal naturally. Whereas a high level character may require weeks or even months.

I don't know about you, but I've certainly had non-life-threatening injuries that took weeks to heal. So either I'm the equivalent of a high level character, or that system is far from perfect.

 

[Neonchameleon]

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.

In short if you have a cleric you aren't so much spending weeks to recover as you are taking time off after the adventure. You're at full physical capability and could get your hit points back in about a day at any point - you just choose not to.

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.

Start with the Harm spell?

And the big issue with D&D hit points is that at 1 hit point someone is as capable of most things as they are at full hit points. Meanwhile someone who's been through a physical ringer and is actually wounded is slower and weaker. And real healing takes time - a broken bone takes weeks. In the real world a month (which from memory is an explicit maximum time needed) is the time it takes to recover from running a marathon. Professional boxers who go 10-12 rounds rarely fight more than once every couple of months in part because it takes that long to recover from a good fight - and boxing has very minimal blood and broken bones.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It doesn't add up though. There's no circumstance where a single digit character (which includes both commoners as well as most 1st level adventurers) takes non-life-threatening injuries and needs more than a few days to heal naturally. Whereas a high level character may require weeks or even months.

I don't know about you, but I've certainly had non-life-threatening injuries that took weeks to heal. So either I'm the equivalent of a high level character, or that system is far from perfect.

I never said it was perfect, but treating damage quantities as objective rather than relative is much more consistent. It does mean that only high-level characters can survive wounds that take weeks to heal, because low-level chumps die from fairly minor scratches, but that's a small price to pay to bypass so many other problems.

 

[Fanaelialae]

And the big issue with D&D hit points is that at 1 hit point someone is as capable of most things as they are at full hit points. Meanwhile someone who's been through a physical ringer and is actually wounded is slower and weaker. And real healing takes time - a broken bone takes weeks. In the real world a month (which from memory is an explicit maximum time needed) is the time it takes to recover from running a marathon. Professional boxers who go 10-12 rounds rarely fight more than once every couple of months in part because it takes that long to recover from a good fight - and boxing has very minimal blood and broken bones.

In fairness, IMO, 5e does circumvent this issue. It does so by making damage non-wounding (no more than superficial injuries). Which is, I think, the best fitting approach a system like D&D (which uses an hp system without penalties) can take.

I think it's reasonable to infer that characters fully recover from damage overnight because they don't suffer the kinds of injuries that can't be healed overnight. Occasionally they might have an especially rough day that leaves them a bit worn down for the next day (spending more than half your hit dice or suffering exhaustion) but nothing beyond that.

The alternative is to assume that PCs are incredibly superhuman, able to shrug off being pincushioned with arrows without breaking stride, and healing such injuries overnight. To me though, that doesn't match the fiction that D&D seeks to emulate.

If you want to model longer lasting injuries in 5e, you need to add something like the Lingering Injuries rules. The hit point rules don't cover it, and they don't try to. However, the hp rules do function fairly coherently within their own context.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

In fairness, IMO, 5e does circumvent this issue. It does so by making damage non-wounding (no more than superficial injuries). Which is, I think, the best fitting approach a system like D&D (which uses an hp system without penalties) can take.

I think it's reasonable to infer that characters fully recover from damage overnight because they don't suffer the kinds of injuries that can't be healed overnight. Occasionally they might have an especially rough day that leaves them a bit worn down for the next day (spending more than half your hit dice or suffering exhaustion) but nothing beyond that.

The alternative is to assume that PCs are incredibly superhuman, able to shrug off being pincushioned with arrows without breaking stride, and healing such injuries overnight. To me though, that doesn't match the fiction that D&D seeks to emulate.

If you want to model longer lasting injuries in 5e, you need to add something like the Lingering Injuries rules. The hit point rules don't cover it, and they don't try to. However, the hp rules do function fairly coherently within their own context.

Except that it doesn't. Look how poisoned weapons and venomous bites interact with HP. If a character is struck by a poisoned weapon (or venomous bite), the character takes or has a chance to take additional poison damage, meaning the character was struck by an actual wound from the first weapons.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I never said it was perfect, but treating damage quantities as objective rather than relative is much more consistent. It does mean that only high-level characters can survive wounds that take weeks to heal, because low-level chumps die from fairly minor scratches, but that's a small price to pay to bypass so many other problems.

I disagree.

It's unreasonable for anyone to die due to "fairly minor scratches". To me, that's an absurd outcome. A system that produces absurd outcomes regularly is not a good system, IMO.

I've suffered fairly major scratches (stepped in to protect a cat from another cat that was being extremely aggressive and got a number of scratches from both, including one that started on my neck and ran down most of my torso). I wasn't at all happy about it, especially since I had to take one of the cats to the vet and didn't even have time to clean them with antiseptic, but I was fine.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Except that it doesn't. Look how poisoned weapons and venomous bites interact with HP. If a character is struck by a poisoned weapon (or venomous bite), the character takes or has a chance to take additional poison damage, meaning the character was struck by an actual wound from the first weapons.

I said non-superficial injuries. Can you be poisoned by a superficial injury? Absolutely. It's not the snake bite that kills you, it's the venom.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I said non-superficial injuries. Can you be poisoned by a superficial injury? Absolutely. It's not the snake bite that kills you, it's the venom.

It doesn't need to be a snake bite. It can be a poisoned morning star. Or a poisoned boulder falling on the character's head. The rules make no distinction.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In short if you have a cleric you aren't so much spending weeks to recover as you are taking time off after the adventure. You're at full physical capability and could get your hit points back in about a day at any point - you just choose not to.

If you have a cleric, which has never been an assumption in any edition ever.

And the big issue with D&D hit points is that at 1 hit point someone is as capable of most things as they are at full hit points. Meanwhile someone who's been through a physical ringer and is actually wounded is slower and weaker.

No, someone with 1hp is very unlikely to complete any dangerous task, because they'll collapse before they succeed. There's no real benefit to modeling the degradation caused by wounds with any greater detail than that, because it shouldn't come up during the course of play. And if it does come up, then the DM can adjudicate it.

And real healing takes time - a broken bone takes weeks.

Nobody said anything about broken bones. You don't need to break any bones in order to die from your injuries.

 

[Fanaelialae]

It doesn't need to be a snake bite. It can be a poisoned morning star. Or a poisoned boulder falling on the character's head. The rules make no distinction.

A poisoned morningstar can graze you. A poisoned boulder is just silly, IMO. AFB, but pretty sure injury poisons require a piercing or slashing delivery.