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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barolo" data-source="post: 7134630" data-attributes="member: 61932">Thank you guys for the contributions, you have made fair points, and do anticipate some issues I was not foreseeing.Maybe I am just facing an odd problem. Some of my players have been complaining about that "bouncing heroes" feature for quite some time already, and this complaint even crosses edition boundaries. Still, the group as a whole keeps doing this "strategy", contrary to their own expressed perceived preferences. As I mentioned, I don't like it, and the reason might as well be purely aesthetical, but sometimes it really annoys me, as a DM, to see one of my players' PC die because the others are "gaming the game" too much (for lack of a better expression), or being just plain egotistical. Also, if I can somehow tweak the rules to change this dynamic, I will.Some anecdotes from my games:In one session, after cleaning up pretty much the whole dungeon and fulfilling all their goals, the adventurers decided to leave the area by crossing a small section of corridor they managed to avoid when they entered, because they suspected (with good reason) that that area was a small hazard. By going out through the path they knew better to avoid when they arrived, they managed to awake some small threat that was hidden there. They could have just left the area right away after taking some minor damage, as the threat was almost immobile, but they decided to exact revenge upon the "insolent enemies". The party was already battered, so that small threat could actually pose some risk. One of the heroes, who was already heavily damaged from previous encounters, fell. The others kept to the killing. He failed the first death save. The others kept to the killing. He passed the second save. The others kept to the killing. On the third round, he had a "1" on the save, and died. This happened early in the campaign, when they were lowish level, and in an easy fight they sought themselves into and that had nothing to offer them except to quench their curiosity. Still, after that, they would keep not acting upon the threat on some ally's life just to have a chance at "just one more attack", which would, more often than not, put them in bigger difficulties.Later in the same campaign, as they were already on the higher levels, the group's paladin (who would usually waste every single spell slot trying to maximize critical hit damage) had this modus operandi that she would not care to heal anybody but herself, and considering that she had by far the best AC in the party and a huge HP pool, she could very often spend the day not using her lay on hands at all, except for the occasional 5 hp heal to stabilize (and precariously send back to fight) a fallen ally. The group tried to talk to her, and I tried too, on different occasions. Her rationale was that if everybody could barely survive, they could inexpensively recover HPs on a short rest, and her lay on hands was too valuable to be spent on anybody else, as she was the paladin, who could rescue everybody else if things went wrong. Suffice to say that before the end of the campaign, more PCs died.On yet another campaign, a light cleric would always try to concentrate all his spells on offense. This would even mean he would rather burn a 1st level slot at an enemy to deal 4d6 @ 70% hit chance (average damage expected ~10) in place of healing the rogue for 1d8+4 (average 8.5). Some might say this is sound as he could potentially drop the enemy, and the heal was smaller than the expected damage, but he would do this even when he didn't really have any expectation to drop an enemy (for instance when fighting a giant, while only halfway through the battle), while he knew by the rogue's remaining HPs that a 6-8 HP heal was good enough to keep the she standing for at least one more round, and the rogue had 85% chance to hit with her magical dagger for 1d4 + 6d6 + 6 (averaging just over 25 damage). Luckily the giant missed more than his fair share on this encounter, but it got way more tense than what I anticipated.One observation on regard to healing amounts and damage amounts, when a party has a combined HP total of, let's say, 150, and the enemies have a combined HP total of 450 (not at all unusual at my table), to be able to win, the party must be able to output more than 3x as much damage as they can withstand. That would also mean that a healing of around 1/3 of the expected attack output usually breaks even in the end of the fight, if the damage that was not dealt did not also slow down dropping an enemy one round earlier. If a healing actually manages to at least 1/2 of the sacrificed attack, it might as well be the best strategy already, specially if it can be redirected to a frontliner who is really good at mitigating damage (as with HAM, raging barbarians, or smart use of blade ward from eldritch knights)Would you mind to elaborate? I did not understand your suggestion.</blockquote>

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