I guess I will try initially to just stick with the book, and show the danger of disregarding a fallen ally by making an enemy finish them on the ground. I will not use that in any fight, but will wait until they get to one against smart foes, who can plausibly respond to their preferred "whack-a-mole healing" tactic. Hopefully, it won't take more than one casualty.
Just some comments:
Yes, I've even gone there. I've also consistently seen it backfire. You make a huge deal out of once-in-a-campaign-level resurrection, and, then that PC just up and dies again out of the blue, or another PC as or more deserving/central-to-the-plot/whatever does, or the player moves away or otherwise becomes unavailable.
I think I miss-expressed myself somehow. In our table, we don't care if someone dies out of the blue and there is no way to bring them back, and I specially do not care if someone central to the plot meets their maker before time. S*** happens, that's fine. What bothers the table is when resurrection is "normal" or does not cost a whole deal (and I do not mean in GPs, but in risks), because the whole world-building gets more complicated in order to accommodate easy resurrection and making sense in general. And it also bothers if someone dies in an easy fight and it was not just cheer bad luck and bad calls from the "victimized" player, but a result of complete recklessness from the rest of the group, as this can be upsetting between them on a more personal level.
That can tend to get you a game of Paranoid Fantasy Roleplaying rather than Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying - "not that there's anything wrong with that..." ;P
Well, my players are not really in need of walking around pocking every in with a long pole, by no means. But we do reserve ourselves the option of including in our games some extreme-risk/extreme-reward scenarios every now and then. We find these scenarios suit well the trope we aim for, and do not find it necessary to go all the way 5e did getting (almost?) totally rid of them.
"Whack-a-mole healing," we call it. It's always been an issue in any past edition or variant that had any dying options beyond instant-death-at-0-hps, because healing an ally in combat could always be 'wasted' if that ally didn't take any more damage that fight. Heal-from-0 and very generous dying rules (being dropped is even less life-threatening in 5e than it was in 4e), certainly build upon that incentive to a greater degree than ever, though.
Thank you very much for bringing the common slang, "whack-a-mole healing". I was aware there was a specific term used around, but I completely forgot it. Before I started the thread, I even tried to find it without success.
Then once someone is dropped they can forget about being healed, because it's a 'wasted' action in the action economy (and a wasted slot), and the efficient way to go is to let the ally recover using HD after the fight. Trying to heal to stay ahead of enemy damage is also still a losing proposition, so, again, full-on offense would seem like the winning strategy, leading to rollovers that don't feel 'dangerous,' leading to the DM upping the difficulty...
Yes, that's why I come here to post. I might miss some ramifications of my ideas, and other people notice and bring them to light.
I might say, though, that even with the somewhat weak healing of 5e, it is not always a losing proposition to heal. There are some good cases when healing does come ahead. This might happen when the enemy has better defensive capabilities (high AC, resistances, defensive reactions, evasion, good saves) that reduce overall damage output from the party, making offense weaker than what the numbers would suggest in the first place, combined with the adventuring group itself also having good defenses (here mostly represented by high AC, HAM at lower levels, barbarians halving all damage but still getting full heal, etc.). These cases do occur often enough when I am running the game for my friends that they would be better off reacting accordingly than just sticking to what works on the other more common encounters.
She may not have been that wrong, if no one else could heal.
There are other consequences to this kind of behavior. Half of the party (mostly the other front-lines) eventually disregarded her healing capabilities as something they should never take into account when deciding which strategy they would partake at all. This lack of confidence on a part member hurts the game in general.
6-8 hps making a difference vs the damage dished out by a giant?
It is not enough to absorb even one full hit, for sure. But as I mentioned, the players get the average damage output of the enemies as the fight unfolds, along with other information. They did see that the rogue would almost surely avoid one attack by using uncanny dodge, but his HPs would not be enough to absorb a second hit. 6-8 HPs were most likely enough to keep him on his toes for an extra round, which would definitely have been more effective, as the rogue's attack was way superior.
Assuming no healing... That depends on the damage output of the enemy, too. If the healing buys an ally an extra round of attacking, and the ally is about twice as good at attacking as you would have been attacking with the same-level slot, maybe. If the heal stands a decent chance of making no difference (you don't know which wounded ally is going to be attacked next, heal one, and the other gets dropped, for instance, or you heal an ally and the next hit drops him, anyway).
Which just reinforces the point that different scenarios have different optimal choices. This is good, in my opinion, as the game gets less boring when the players should actively evaluate circumstances and react to them.
It may seem to generate weird fiction, but what you describe is a pretty reasonable way of managing hp resources, given that the Paladin is the prime/only source of in-combat healing. She can't afford to drop, the most efficient use of her healing on behalf of allies is to stand them up when they've been overkilled to leverage the heal-from-0 rule while preserving their actions (though in some cases, that might not work out so well, depending on the initiative cycle).
"Early healing" is kinda a guessing game. Who will be attacked next? Will they be hit? For how much damage?
All true. But trying to get that desperate last hit to stop the damage from coming is kinda guessing game too. And one that they are most often quite eager to try, even on some situations that they already know the odds are heavily against them.
Yeah, it can be easy to get blinkered into forgetting anything other than dps .
If the problem is just wonky narrative, you could always make zero hitpoints less punitive, or implement some sort of choice. Something like 3e where you can choose to continue acting in a reduced manner, but suffer a failed death save. Something as simple as "while bleeding out, you can crawl 1 square" moves 0 hps from "unconscious" to "at the edge of your limits", which reduces the 'feel' of 'bouncing'.
Yes, I have described someone in mid-melee getting down and being healed before even having the chance to have their own turn as not even falling at all, as the player would not bother to move, and the only penalty the situation would have resulted (the loss of movement to get up) would not have been relevant.
Anyhow, I am inclined to give a try on one of the several suggestions posted earlier related to that, if my first option fails.
Well, playing to their strengths will make them feel good: fights that have damage races are good ideas. Monsters that grow more powerful with time, rituals that must be disrupted via destruction before they complete, fast regenerating enemies will all suit that. Scenarios where there is a need for damage in order to prevent incoming damage or events.
Sure. And this already happens. I make sure they face different scenarios, to keep things interesting, and I has worked so far, for the most part, at least.
You can also encourage them to use some of their defensive resources with fights that telegraph a need to defend for part of the fight. Switching around dragon breath so that you can tell they're going to do it on their next turn, foes that wind up for big hits, environmental effects with obvious wind-ups, or that deal gradual damage over a period of rounds, but have points where they stop to allow offense to continue.
Interestingly enough, this has happened sometimes. There was at least one fight against a dragon that took more than two hours of "in-fiction" time, with them clashing the beast in three different grounds. The final result was a partial victory, as they did not manage to kill it, but took the position being defended by the dragon. Actually, thinking back, this was one very unusual fight, in the sense that it was one of the very feel they were really scared to even engage, which made them fight much more defensively. It was very lucky, I would say, because fighting recklessly and purely offensively would likely have resulted in some deaths, or even a TPK.
You don't need to make every fight like that, but some set pieces can be nice.
Keep up the different challenges, and make sure you give the players information during or prior to the challenge to indicate that the typical tactics might not work.
I guess the best you can do is point out to them what happened last time before they take such an action. They might just be forgetting in the heat of battle.
Thank you for the advice. Maybe this tipping can be quite handy if I can manage to do it in a non-intrusive fashion.
