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

Which means the game mechanics aren't telling us anything useful. We're wasting a lot of effort and table time on intangibles that will be rendered irrelevant after the next short rest, and any sort of lasting injury is relegated entirely to DM fiat and meaningless flavor text. The priorities for such a model are absurd.
Absurd to you maybe. Not to me. What's absurd to me is that you think that hp loss telling you the fighter was scratched is useful information. To each their own.

As I see it, it's a simple system that works. They aren't rendered irrelevant after a short rest because they drain hit dice or healing surges, depending on the edition. Once you're out of those the well is empty. It's a different dynamic from AD&D, but that doesn't make it useless. If you make short rest overnight and long rests a week, then you're much closer to AD&D (although with a cleric, the AD&D party will recover significantly more quickly in most cases).

I think they are quite useful. They tell us how close each character is to being taken out of the fight. If you think that's useless, try running a D&D combat without hp. It will quickly become apparent that without hp, it is unlikely that there will be a victory to the battle. The two sides will simply clash ad infinitum.
 

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@Saelorn

If you play 5e, I definitely recommend checking out 'gritty realism' and 'healing kit dependency' optional rules in the DMG if you aren't using them already. They will calibrate the game more for your liking.
 

If you play 5e, I definitely recommend checking out 'gritty realism' and 'healing kit dependency' optional rules in the DMG if you aren't using them already. They will calibrate the game more for your liking.
Trust me, I'm more than familiar with the so-called "options" in the DMG, and none of them actually solves anything. Not only do the default rules fail spectacularly to strike any sort of balanced middle ground; they're so far biased toward one extreme that you can't possibly reach a balanced position from there. No matter which combination of optional rules you use, there's no way to stop someone from recovering up to full during a single eight-hour short rest. The only thing that those options control are the frequency with which you can do so. And since it's always possible for someone to recover fully within eight hours, it places a hard cap on how severe any damage can possibly be.

Except for the healing kit dependency, of course, which slams all the way to the other extreme by completely shutting off the ability for anyone to heal whatsoever in the absence of medical attention.
 

Trust me, I'm more than familiar with the so-called "options" in the DMG, and none of them actually solves anything. Not only do the default rules fail spectacularly to strike any sort of balanced middle ground; they're so far biased toward one extreme that you can't possibly reach a balanced position from there. No matter which combination of optional rules you use, there's no way to stop someone from recovering up to full during a single eight-hour short rest. The only thing that those options control are the frequency with which you can do so. And since it's always possible for someone to recover fully within eight hours, it places a hard cap on how severe any damage can possibly be.

Except for the healing kit dependency, of course, which slams all the way to the other extreme by completely shutting off the ability for anyone to heal whatsoever in the absence of medical attention.
Well if those both option are too extreme, you could easily set some other limit how many hit dice one can spend during a short rest. Half of them, third of them etc.
 

I wouldn't assume that they're fine.
The rules do. In 3e there’s the rule of rolling a nat 1 on a save and one (and only one) item you’re wearing getting damaged. But it doesn’t apply if you’re taken out just by taking damage from a breath weapon, regardless of a nat 1. There’s also the hilarious rule of unattended objects taking damage, but if someone is carrying said object, it’s not affected by a cone of cold or a breath weapon. That rose in your hand? Just fine after 56 fire damage you took from the dragon. The same rose on the ground? Incinerated.
 

Well if those both option are too extreme, you could easily set some other limit how many hit dice one can spend during a short rest. Half of them, third of them etc.
If it's half of them, then someone can return to full after two short rests, which again places a hard cap on how bad the damage can be. If it's a quarter of them, then they're back up to full after four short rests. For much of the game, even spending one hit die is too much for a short rest, and the mechanics can't handle fractions of a hit die. That's to say nothing of Second Wind, or other non-magical healing effects, which would need to be reworked entirely.

It's not a matter of tweaking some numbers to make it fit. The language of 5E is just plainly insufficient to describe things that the significantly-less-complex rules of AD&D had no problem with.
 

The rules do. In 3e there’s the rule of rolling a nat 1 on a save and one (and only one) item you’re wearing getting damaged. But it doesn’t apply if you’re taken out just by taking damage from a breath weapon, regardless of a nat 1. There’s also the hilarious rule of unattended objects taking damage, but if someone is carrying said object, it’s not affected by a cone of cold or a breath weapon. That rose in your hand? Just fine after 56 fire damage you took from the dragon. The same rose on the ground? Incinerated.
There cannot be rules for everything. If you assume that nothing except what the rules specifically says happen, ever happens the game world falls apart instantly. Furthermore, it doesn't need to be that the items become so damaged that they become unusable, the damage can be cosmetic. But if you get hit by dragon's breath your clothes certainly will not be presentable any more.
 

If you get hit by dragon's breath your clothes certainly will not be presentable any more.

Well, we already have the debate on whether taking 56 "hit points" actually is any form of damage. If you have 100 hit points, then you are not affected at all by it, so it seems reasonable that neither would your clothes. Or they could be destroyed. Or mildly singed. It's up to you since hit points are an abstract game mechanic and you can describe it to fit your preferred story.
 

Generally I use the half HP threshold for physical injury, assuming physical weapon attacks. Still, HP are always super abstract and handwavey. Hit by a fireball? Why’s your cloak, bags, clothing, etc. all fine?
This is why these things - cloak, bags, clothing, etc. - should all need to make saves if you fail yours.
 

The rules do. In 3e there’s the rule of rolling a nat 1 on a save and one (and only one) item you’re wearing getting damaged. But it doesn’t apply if you’re taken out just by taking damage from a breath weapon, regardless of a nat 1. There’s also the hilarious rule of unattended objects taking damage, but if someone is carrying said object, it’s not affected by a cone of cold or a breath weapon. That rose in your hand? Just fine after 56 fire damage you took from the dragon. The same rose on the ground? Incinerated.
Yes, and those rules that say only 1 item gets damaged are garbage. Chuck 'em out and, if the bearer fails his-her own save, force everything carried to save.

And yes this takes longer at the table. So be it.
 

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