D&D 5E Alternatives to HD Healing

[Ashkelon]

So I am not really a fan of HD Healing. Something about them just rubs me the wrong way. I want a group of PCs to be capable of multiple combats throughout the day, but I don't think HD healing is the way to do it. So I propose an optional alternative to HD healing.

During a rest, you recover your energy, bandage minor wounds, and catch your breath. This allows you to recover some of your HP. How much HP you recover depends on how long of a rest you take and the location of your rest. If you are in a secure, comfortable location such as an inn, double the amount of HP you would heal up to.

Short Rest: Standard length - 1 hour up. Heal to 25% of your max HP.

Long Rest: Standard length - 8 hours. Heal up to 50% of your max HP.

Rangers might possess an ability that allows them to make wilderness into a secure location. Otherwise while travelling, your max HP is effectively halved. I like method of HP regain as it means you do not have to keep track of HD and instead automatically heal up whenever you take a rest. The cap on amount you can heal still makes it difficult to press onward when you get low on resources. It is also really easy to modify.

A heroic game might have a short rest be 10 minutes and a long rest be 1 hour. A gritty game might have a short rest be 8 hours and a long rest be 1 week.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The thing I don't like about that is how it doesn't matter whether you're at 1% or 24% and you always recover to exactly the same point in the same amount of time. It just doesn't seem right. Sometimes, you might get stabbed for 5 damage that literally doesn't matter, because you're going to heal up to exactly 17 regardless of whether you're at 9hp or 4hp.

What if it was a flat amount that you heal? Like your Hit Die value, or your level, per short rest? I guess that would create the problem of wanting to chain together short rests, though, unless you included some artificial limit to how often you could do it.

It's an interesting question.

 

[Ashkelon]

The thing I don't like about that is how it doesn't matter whether you're at 1% or 24% and you always recover to exactly the same point in the same amount of time. It just doesn't seem right. Sometimes, you might get stabbed for 5 damage that literally doesn't matter, because you're going to heal up to exactly 17 regardless of whether you're at 9hp or 4hp.

What if it was a flat amount that you heal? Like your Hit Die value, or your level, per short rest? I guess that would create the problem of wanting to chain together short rests, though, unless you included some artificial limit to how often you could do it.

It's an interesting question.

Well if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense that it does work that way. Let's say you are an armored warrior and you are being attacked by an ogre with a club. He bashes you on your right side leaving a minor bruise. Let's say the bruise is minor enough that will be fine after an hour of rest. The ogre then bashes you on your left side leaving another minor bruise. It will not take 2 hours rest just because you got two different bruises. The body doesn't work like that.

Think of the rest as relating to how much energy or fighting capability you get back more than how much you heal up. That bruise may be present for a whole week, but it isn't going to impede your ability to move about even later that day. The short rest simply means you recover as much energy as you can during an hour. The long rest means you recover as much energy as you can during 8 full hours. Sure your wounds will slowly heal up over time, but they won't affect your performance, even if they still exist.

So taking that 5 damage dagger strike when you are at 9 HP doesn't matter if you immediately decide to rest after that combat (it certainly matters if you don't decide to rest). You will heal up to 17 HP with your short rest. But this makes sense because a single minor 5 damage scratch on your 70 HP fighter won't affect his long term performance.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Right, except that it does matter if it puts you over the line. If you're down to 22, then an additional dagger hit for 5 is one that is never going to heal; if you're at 17 and the dagger hit drops you to 12, then it will heal in an hour.

I think basic HP and damage in D&D might be too abstract to try and make perfect sense of it.

 

[Dausuul]

The thing I don't like about that is how it doesn't matter whether you're at 1% or 24% and you always recover to exactly the same point in the same amount of time. It just doesn't seem right. Sometimes, you might get stabbed for 5 damage that literally doesn't matter, because you're going to heal up to exactly 17 regardless of whether you're at 9hp or 4hp.

What if it was a flat amount that you heal? Like your Hit Die value, or your level, per short rest? I guess that would create the problem of wanting to chain together short rests, though, unless you included some artificial limit to how often you could do it.

It's an interesting question.

Simple house rule to address these issues: Hit die healing works as normal, but can't take you over 25% of your maximum hit points without a long rest, and can't take you over 50% of your maximum without rest in a safe area.

 

[Ashkelon]

Right, except that it does matter if it puts you over the line. If you're down to 22, then an additional dagger hit for 5 is one that is never going to heal; if you're at 17 and the dagger hit drops you to 12, then it will heal in an hour.

I think basic HP and damage in D&D might be too abstract to try and make perfect sense of it.

I agree that HP and damage are far too abstract to ever be used as a sensible model for reality, but that doesn't make my suggestion any way worse than HD healing.

As for your issue with the threshold, it actually does have some basis in reality. If 25% of your HP is 17 and your max HP is 70, at the start of the adventure you are full spirited, full of energy, and fully capable in combat. After a few fights, you are done to 30 HP. You are bruised, beaten and tired. Unlss you can find an inn or somewhere else that is "comfortable" resting for the night will only heal you to 35 HP. It is hard to get back to peak fighting condition if you are camping on hard rocks in the cold afterall.

Lets say a few more fights go by and you get knocked down to 17 HP. At this point short rest won't do anything for you unless you find a comfortable place to rest. That might actually be a good plan at this point as you are aching, tired, and have a few minor scrapes and scratches. In your stubbornness, you continue onward and are ambushed by a goblin patrol. You easily dispatch them, but not before suffering 10 more points of damage. You now decide to take a short rest in the wild. You heal back up to 17 HP.

The above might seem non-sensical that only a moment before taking a short rest would have not healed you at all. Well, think of the long distance runner. He runs for a marathon and is then rather exhausted (think of this as very few remaining HP). He rests an hour and he gets back a good amount of energy, but he isn't going to be running another marathon that day (he is back up to 25% of his max HP). This is exactly like the threshold that is crossed when going from 22 HP to 17 in the above example. Once you cross that threshold, it requires a longer rest to get back to where you were. Before you reach that threshold, you simply aren't harmed enough that a rest will do anything for you. That makes about as much sense as anything else related to HP.

 

[The Human Target]

The thing I don't like about that is how it doesn't matter whether you're at 1% or 24% and you always recover to exactly the same point in the same amount of time. It just doesn't seem right. Sometimes, you might get stabbed for 5 damage that literally doesn't matter, because you're going to heal up to exactly 17 regardless of whether you're at 9hp or 4hp.

What if it was a flat amount that you heal? Like your Hit Die value, or your level, per short rest? I guess that would create the problem of wanting to chain together short rests, though, unless you included some artificial limit to how often you could do it.

It's an interesting question.

You just invented Healing Surges.

 

[Mistwell]

So I am not really a fan of HD Healing. Something about them just rubs me the wrong way. I want a group of PCs to be capable of multiple combats throughout the day, but I don't think HD healing is the way to do it. So I propose an optional alternative to HD healing.

During a rest, you recover your energy, bandage minor wounds, and catch your breath. This allows you to recover some of your HP. How much HP you recover depends on how long of a rest you take and the location of your rest. If you are in a secure, comfortable location such as an inn, double the amount of HP you would heal up to.

Short Rest: Standard length - 1 hour up. Heal to 25% of your max HP.

Long Rest: Standard length - 8 hours. Heal up to 50% of your max HP.

Rangers might possess an ability that allows them to make wilderness into a secure location. Otherwise while travelling, your max HP is effectively halved. I like method of HP regain as it means you do not have to keep track of HD and instead automatically heal up whenever you take a rest. The cap on amount you can heal still makes it difficult to press onward when you get low on resources. It is also really easy to modify.

A heroic game might have a short rest be 10 minutes and a long rest be 1 hour. A gritty game might have a short rest be 8 hours and a long rest be 1 week.

I like your idea. I like it a lot. I wish the base game had been done this way.

 

[GMMichael]

Why not just give the PCs all their HP back if they survive an encounter?

Or resurrect Forry?

Why not just give each PC 10 times the hit points that the rulebook says?

So I am not really a fan of HD Healing. Something about them just rubs me the wrong way. I want a group of PCs to be capable of multiple combats throughout the day, but I don't think HD healing is the way to do it.

The problem is right here. What kind of character is capable of multiple combats throughout the day?

- Conan
- Peter Jackson's Gimli
- anyone in an R.A. Salvatore novel.

In these examples, the heroes are almost always fighting the equivalent of Forry's minions (mooks?): one hit point enemies. One swing of your weapon, the enemy doesn't defend, and just dies. So maybe you want to only use enemies with one hit point?

Let's look at some more realistic heroes:

- Eddard Stark
- Rob Roy
- Mel Gibson's William Wallace

These guys try to get into less than one fight a day. Why? Because fighting is lethal. Yet they're still heroes. I'd like to say they're more in-line with the hit-dice-as-healing model, but they're probably closer to I-will-only-ever-have-four-hit-points.

So do what you want with healing, but first pick out your style of hero, and then include all the relevant rules implications.

 

[ExploderWizard]

You want multiple combats per day capability. No matter what rules you have to bend and twist to get this outcome, those fights are going to feel more like a WWE pay per view than life or death struggles.

Hp were originally designed as a strategic resource. If you seek to engage in frequent combat then either find a way to do so that doesn't cost very many or prepare for a short career.

Making HP a tactical per-fight resource is the largest contributing factor to making D&D feel like a supers genre game rather than fantasy. Hit points feel like stun points, used up like theres no tomorrow and replenished in a jiffy. That doesn't feel like a fight Conan would take part in to me. It feels more like a combat with The Incredibles.

Being able to absob damage like a super isn't required to be heroic. Firefighters are real heroes every day and they don't get extra HP or HD recovery because they respond to multiple emergencies a day.