Clerical healing not stepping on clerical fun (also, an edition with no healers)

[BobTheNob]

Though at times I feel remarkably alone in this, I always liked 4e healing surges. As a mechanic, it did things right in a number of ways. In the sense of this argument it put the resource (and therefore the emphasis ,for investment in recovery) onto the player, rather than the cleric (/leader), leaving the cleric free to enjoy there character as they liked without demanding they become the partys "bag of backup hitpoints"

Forgetting all else you may or may not have liked about them, that was a good move.

Thats what I think they wanted to maintain going forward with the "hit dice = healing" approach they offered, that players carry their own between fight healing capability, leaving clerical healing free to be an in-fight emergency button, which is exactly where I want it to be.

 

[Texicles]

The lesson here is, the deadlier you want the system to be, the more you're requiring the presence of healers.

This is something that I can't avoid thinking about in the midst of this thread. I'm not opposed to "fast and furious" combat as t'were, at least not entirely. What I'm also not entirely comfortable with is making all combat play that way as a baseline.

If players know that 9 of 10 encounters are either something they can blast through in a few quick rounds, or are so scary that they have to cut and run, that leaves little room for those real struggles. If I'm a metagaming player, too little in-combat healing will cause me view fights as a dichotomy: easy-peasy or way too risky for the reward.

I'm not saying that I disagree with everything in this thread by any means, I would just caution that getting something like this balanced correctly would be really tough. I just want whatever solution that gets implemented to leave lots of room for swings in combat and near-TPKs.

 

[MoonSong]

I don't question many of the concerns expressed on this thread, I just don't get them. To me clerical fun means clerical healing rather than trying to go Codzilla. The more a game focusses on making healers uneeded the more hostile it becomes to them.
A simple example regarding two similar (and real) situations on two games on two different editions at the same level:

3.5
Cast a healing spell on the half orc frontliner, heal for 7 hp. His reaction:
"Good! I'll be at full health by tomorrow"

4e
Use healing word on the frontliner, use up a surge and heal for 14 hp. His reaction? "Meh, why bother? I'm taking a long rest anyway"

In 3e/3.5 being the party healer was enough to carry your own weight, in 4e it isn't the case anymore since you are moot half the time and doing anything in combat other than attacking for maximum damage is like a crime. All of this discussions about how to further reduce clerical healing makes me worry about Next being even more hostile to dedicated healers.

 

[MarkB]

I don't question many of the concerns expressed on this thread, I just don't get them. To me clerical fun means clerical healing rather than trying to go Codzilla. The more a game focusses on making healers uneeded the more hostile it becomes to them.
A simple example regarding two similar (and real) situations on two games on two different editions at the same level:

3.5
Cast a healing spell on the half orc frontliner, heal for 7 hp. His reaction:
"Good! I'll be at full health by tomorrow"

4e
Use healing word on the frontliner, use up a surge and heal for 14 hp. His reaction? "Meh, why bother? I'm taking a long rest anyway"

In 3e/3.5 being the party healer was enough to carry your own weight, in 4e it isn't the case anymore since you are moot half the time and doing anything in combat other than attacking for maximum damage is like a crime. All of this discussions about how to further reduce clerical healing makes me worry about Next being even more hostile to dedicated healers.

Well, the 4e example doesn't ring true there. Since the 4e frontliner is about to get all his surges back in a long rest, his reaction should be "Cool, thanks - that way if we get ambushed overnight I'll be at full health."

And since 4e combat healing is near-universally based on Minor actions, it's never something you need to do instead of attacking.

 

[pemerton]

I speak from experience as a DM when I say that a party with three strikers and a high damage controller (Hunter) is more than viable. As are other parties with no leaders.

For the first 6 or 7 levels of my game the party had not leader - though there was a dwarf fighter with Comeback Strike, and a Paladin with 2x/day Lay on Hands.

Then the player of the archer ranger rebuilt his PC as a hybrid ranger-cleric (a process known as "Operation Have My Character Do Something Other Than True Strike").

The extra healing (1x/enc Healing Word, plus another encounter utiity) definitely helps. But I'm sure without it the party would cope. But they would pack more of their own healing. Do the PCs in your striker/controller group have healing utilities or items?

 

[pemerton]

What if the game were structured around parties not needing a healer?

What if standard play involved more caution regarding getting into fights, and more caution about not getting hurt?

In my own view, it would have to supply other places for exciting things to happen (chases, negotiation, etc), and also support stakes for conflict (including martial conflict) other than "live or die".

A game in which those other stakes and activities are not prominent, but in which combat is not common either, sounds like something in which the players engage in operational play to avoid conflict, because any conflict risks killing their PCs. This is classic Advanced Squad Leader style D&D. I don't object to others playing that sort of game, but I think it would provide a very narrow focus for the design of the new D&D ruleset.

I'm not opposed to "fast and furious" combat as t'were, at least not entirely. What I'm also not entirely comfortable with is making all combat play that way as a baseline.

<snip>

I just want whatever solution that gets implemented to leave lots of room for swings in combat and near-TPKs.

Games like RM and RQ have healing that is fairly low-key compared to D&D, and they rely on other mechanical devices to make combat "fast and furious" - active defence, for example, rather than ablative hit points, as the buffer against PC death.

But to change D&D in that directin would be a pretty big deal. And while D&D retains hit point ablation as its central combat mechanic, healing is (I think) going to remain a pretty big deal. Unlike RQ or RM, D&D combat is premised on the assumption that PCs will be hit, and therefore will suffer hp loss, and therefore will need those hp restored somehow.

 

[Li Shenron]

So how do we design a game with no magical healing?

...

What if healing was broken into:

1. After combat patchups.
2. A night of rest.
3. A week of rest.

I think you are taking a totally wrong approach to design.

You are categorizing your design already by the solutions, if you do this then you're stuck with these solutions and will find it hard to think out of the box.

Instead, try to categorize it from the point of view of the problems, i.e. the challenges: when and why is healing needed?

1. During combat, to save yourself from imminent death
2. After combat, to restore your capabilities before the next danger

and perhaps you can further break down the second point:

2a. After combat but quickly, because you're still potentially facing danger again soon
2b. After combat but safely, because you are most likely done with dangers for a while

It's quite obvious to see that since "natural healing" takes time, then healing naturally is more useful for 2b than 2a than 1, and therefore the abilities of a healer will become more important in 1 than 2a than 2b.

The crux of the problem is as usual how to interpret HP while you study a solution for these problems. How much do you want HP to represent significant injuries, minor injuries, or fatigue? Your choice on this will affect your design of natural healing, so it is very important to choose wisely according to your preferences, because how fast natural healing works will dictate how powerful a healer character needs to be to balance the two things against the game's ultimate purpose.

Of course, you have to first decide what is the ultimate purpose... And this is about the adventure types you want to have in your campaign:

[URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1]#1 -[/URL] Do you want dungeon crawls? A dungeon crawl is essentially a series of many fights and traps/hazards in more-or-less rapid succession. Unless you consider camping/resting in the middle of a dungeon (some old-school gamers like that, but others find it repulsively unrealistic), a dungeon crawl is cool if it's long enough... one room per day dealt with the 15-minutes-day tactic is not really cool, is it? Thus if this is what you want your adventures to be, the best gift you can give yourself is treating HP as fatigue and let natural healing take care of that after each encounter, while design the healer's abilities to shine during the encounter.

#2 - Do you want story-based adventures with investigations, social interactions, explorations and only sparse physical confrontation? Are you happy enough with one or two significant (but then, really significant) encounters per day? Then you can afford to treat HP as physical injuries.

Here's another fork tho...

#2 a - Do you prefer high-speed adventures, where each day there is something to do for the PC, including potential threats? Then you specifically treat HP as minor physical injuries, let natural healing be fast enough so that next day you're fine, and design the healer to shine between encounters (still also during of course).

#2 b - Do you prefer low-speed adventures in a Tolkien style, where encounters are often spaced by many days? Then you can even afford to treat HP as major injuries, and slow natural healing a lot, and a healer character will be useful at every time scale.

Of course the key problem here is that different gaming group like different types of adventures!! Not to mention that even the same group may actually want a mix of #1 , #2 a and #2 b in the same campaign...

But my bottom line is that you should start your design from identifying the "business case", i.e. what is the purpose of your game, and then think how healing should fit in.

I hope my loose considerations here can be useful somehow...

 

[Neonchameleon]

3.5
Cast a healing spell on the half orc frontliner, heal for 7 hp. His reaction:
"Good! I'll be at full health by tomorrow"

4e
Use healing word on the frontliner, use up a surge and heal for 14 hp. His reaction? "Meh, why bother? I'm taking a long rest anyway"

Healing word wasn't meant for that. Healing word is a panic button for someone on low hit points or even negative. Throw a healing word at them in the middle of combat and they will thank you.

In 3e/3.5 being the party healer was enough to carry your own weight, in 4e it isn't the case anymore since you are moot half the time and doing anything in combat other than attacking for maximum damage is like a crime.

Guess what? Healing word is a minor action. Meaning it doesn't prevent you attacking in combat. And you can then go on to attack with Astral Seal (no damage) and no one will complain - Astral Seal rocks.

All of this discussions about how to further reduce clerical healing makes me worry about Next being even more hostile to dedicated healers.

Good. The pacifist healer is IMO fundamentally annoying. It clogs everything up, slows the game down, and reduces the tension.