D&D 5E CHALLENGE: Change one thing about 5e

[The Crimson Binome]

Ah, ok, well maybe I should clarify I am not putting so much weight on the difference between magic and not.

Which is the issue at hand, is that the designers just don't care. The whole point of AD&D 2E, and why it was so popular, was that it told you how the world worked. It gave you lots of detailed worlds, with key differences between them, and extrapolated those changes out into the larger scale.

The reason why Dark Sun is scary is that there's not really any access to divine magic, which explicitly means there's no magical healing available, which means you're much more likely to die if you get into combat. Getting hit by a sword is a serious thing! You should avoid that!

The mechanics of an RPG reflect how the game world actually works. If getting hit by a sword is something that you can sleep off overnight, then that represents a game world that's substantially harder to buy into, compared to a world where you need a week of bed-rest (or magic) before you can recover from a sword wound.

Most players, I think, certainly since 2000 and the advent of d20, would say the primary rule is for the game to be fun, and long periods of downtime isn't that. In short: nobody wants to keep going when a) they aren't at full hit points and b) it's so easy to rest

Some people have fun killing monsters, and 4E was good for that. Some people have fun pretending to be a cool hero who goes on rad adventures, and 2E was good for that. You're right, it's silly to go on when you aren't at full health when it's so easy to rest; so in order for combat to have any real meaning, so that it changes how you play and creates a dynamic adventure, it's imperative that it not be so easy to rest - that characters have a reason to continue on while they aren't at full health! If you have to wait an hour before you're back at full, then that's not much incentive to press onward; if you have to wait a week or more, then that starts to get to the point where you can't afford to lose that much time.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Um, yes it is (or was). D&D was exactly that type of game for 25 years. Extremely slow non-magical healing

In a practical sense, no non-magical healing. Magical healing was instant, and could be re-charged every day. Low-level spells after as little as a 4hr rest, in 1e, when even a 1st level Cleric with a good WIS out-paced natural healing by enough to make it irrelevant.

Obviously it has already proven, in spades, that it can be that type of game.

D&D can be whatever you make it, even 'not D&D.' ;P But the traditional pacing of the game was of attrition over multiple encounters spread out (whether through a dungeon or not) over a 'day' constituting a resource-management challenge (and any pretension of balance collapsing under the obvious 5MWD deviation from that). That's how the game's always worked (even 3e rocket-tag and 4e tight balance didn't get that far away from it), that's what 5e is designed to emulate, as its starting point, with the standard player options in the PH and the encounter guidelines in the DMG.

That's not how any given DM needs to run it, though. It's certainly possible to have a grimmer, grittier campaign, with hps + healing constituting a resource apportioned over a much longer time frame, it just requires adjusting all the resources available to PCs - hps, HD, natural healing, spell slots, & other uses/period abilities.

But seeing as many people (including you, if memory serves me correctly) don't always enjoy the "6-8 battles a day, attrition" style of play, perhaps it may be worth it to consider why the "bag of hit points, multiple battles necessary" model is in there?

 

[Sacrosanct]

In a practical sense, no non-magical healing. Magical healing was instant, and could be re-charged every day (low-level spells after as little as a 4hr rest, in 1e). Even a 1st level Cleric with a good WIS out-paced natural healing by enough to make it irrelevant. .

Pedantic point: Depending on your edition, clerics didn't get spells at 1st level. But I suppose my overall point is that for most of D&D's history, the game was very much like he said it couldn't be.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[The Crimson Binome]

EDIT- All that said, I do agree with the basic point that with a cleric in the party, the actual use of non-magic healing was not common, since it was so ineffective in comparison over the similar lengths of time.

Of course, that's still limited to the sub-set of campaigns where someone was actually playing a heal-bot style cleric. If you didn't have a cleric, or if you had a cleric of a deity who wasn't all about healing, then natural healing would play a larger role at the table.

And the main point still stands, that spellcasting clerics have always been in the minority of any game world, so random farmers and town guards could be put out of action for days at a time since they didn't have access to magical healing. Changing how the entire world deals with injury, just to make things slightly easier for the PCs (who probably had magic healing anyway), is showing a fantastically skewed sense of priorities.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[jasper]

Hit points. Every PC class uses a D6.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It was common place, IME, to have adventurers regularly start a new day at below-max.

Sure. With the randomness of the d8 it was inefficient to go healing those last few hps, especially if everyone was down a few, rather than one person in particular badly injured. Not as inefficient as waiting an extra day for everyone to heal 1hp, but often not deemed worth it.

EDIT- All that said, I do agree with the basic point that with a cleric in the party, the actual use of non-magic healing was not common, since it was so ineffective in comparison over the similar lengths of time.

That's the take-away.

Extremely slow non-magical healing doesn't introduce grittiness or anything else, it just becomes irrelevant as long as magical healing remains fast & readily renewable. Actual 'grittiness' would require adjusting other PC resources to match the slower time-frame, or simply removing most magical healing (or, indeed, most magic).

 

[knasser]

Thing done incorrectly: Humanoids and other monsters being overly-generic. I.e. goblins are 1HD creatures, Orcs are 2HD, et al., whilst humans can be anything from a level 0 peasant to a 20th level wizard.
Proposed Solution: All races have a base type, a set of abilities that they gain access to as they level up and a set of templates that can be added for any given level or category. Why category instead of class? For ease of play - so ill-disciplined warrior, soldier, priest, etc. Leader of the hobgoblins? Pick the race, the level and Soldier and slap them together. His wife, pick hobgoblin again but this time pick a slightly different level and maybe "Assassin" or whatever. Job done.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*