Balancing fast healing

[Cheiromancer]

I was thinking about how you would balance fast healing from a template. Like suppose you wanted to make a homebrewed half-troll template that had fast healing 1. Aside from giving it a substantial LA, could you instead give a Con penalty? Flavorwise you would say something like "Your skinny, rubbery body has a messed up metabolism that is readily incapacitated; it recovers quickly, but it succumbs easily to injury, disease and poison."

Maybe -2 to Con for fast healing 1? If you want fast healing 2, then it's a -4 to Con, and so on.

From a combat perspective, such a character would fall down in combat more often, but would automatically recover hit points in between combat. And he would also succumb more often to effects that require a fort save.

Anyways, assume that I have a home brewed half-troll template that is perfectly balanced, but does not modify Constitution or the rate of healing. But I want to add fast healing. Could I do so by applying a penalty to Con?

 

[gamecat]

I, personally, wouldn't let it happen. I've watched 3rd-4th level pcs torn to shreds by "Dekanter Goblins" which are essentially goblins with a few extra strength points and Fast Healing 2.

I'm kinda scarred on that one. Plus it seems like too cheap of healing - a clw potion'll run you 50 gp for 1d8+1 hp, something someone with fast healing 1 could recover in 2-9 rounds.

 

[Cabral]

Con penalty might be the best thing as it offsets the HP regen with a lower max HP. However, a con penalty can be circumvented fairly easily with con bonus items or just putting your highest rolled stat into Con.

Another option is put a fairly common damage that Fast Healing doesn't appy to, such as "all magic damage". (or does only regen specify damage that it does not heal?)

Hmm ... have to throw some decanter goblins against my PCs

 

[the Jester]

Look at it this way: fast healing 1 is much, much better than a +2 con bonus. Therefore a -2 con penalty doesn't balance it.

Really, fast healing is very powerful; I'm not sure what you'd have to do to balance it for a pc race.

 

[Sigurd]

How bout blindness, or limbless

Seriously, Fast healing is a huge benefit. What are your objections to the Level Adjustment? To me this seems just the sort of thing for the LA.


Sigurd

 

[Cheiromancer]

What are your objections to the Level Adjustment? To me this seems just the sort of thing for the LA.

No objection to it in principle, I just don't want the LA to be too big. I would have to tinker with it so that the fast healing would not work if the subject became a construct or undead (or otherwise managed to avoid the Con penalty). And if I can do that successfully, it should be hard to min-max a combat build. Anything that relies on the fast healing to recover hit points faster will be inconvenienced by having lower maximum hit points. Or, to look at it another way, any character who would benefit from havign fast healing would be hurt by having a lower Constitution. (Again, excepting undead and constructs). And then I can get by with a lower LA than if I tried to balance the fast healing with a dexterity penalty or something.

 

[Pyrex]

How about going the 3.0 Forsaker route and placing a daily cap on it?

Something like Level+ConMod or (Level*2)+ConMod would still be very useful but be significanly less broken.

 

[Geoff Watson]

I'm playing a Barbarian with Fast Healing 1 (basically a homebrew race), and while nice, it hasn't helped much in combat (automatically stabalising at negatives has been the main benefit). It has helped out of combat (save money on healing potions) though.

Extra hit points from higher Con would help more, except at low levels.

Geoff.

 

[Nyeshet]

I think the best way to 'balance' Fast Healing would be to increase the durations between healing. Thus, instead of FH 2, FH 5, etc, you would have FH 1 (1 minute), FH 1 (1 hour), FH 1 (2 rounds), or FH 1 (5 minutes). Thus, it ceases to be as major a concern for encounters (except when of startling short duration) and becomes instead more useful as a means of healing between encounters.

I doubt most on these boards would consider FH 1 / hour as broken. You may even be able to get away with FH 1 / 10 minutes befor having to seriously consider an LA adjustment. Once it gets to FH 1 / minute it becomes a matter of concern, however, as 1) some encounters may last long enough to take advantage of it a few times, and 2) the character will almost certainly be fully healed at the start of any encounter - even at higher levels. FH 1 / 10 minutes is less likely to result in such - especially at higher levels. FH 1 / hour is more flavor than anything else, especially in a world with readily available magic healing, etc.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Nyeshet said almost exactly what I was going to say.

One way players could then decrease the time between HP recoveries is taking levels in a template class (or the like) - I'm thinking more paragon class, actually, but anyway.