Pathfinder 2E Discussing a new PF2 healing paradigm

[CapnZapp]

Then... don't press on until you're healed? Assuming of course that situation won't press on you rather than wait politely in designated encounter areas.

I'm going to assume you aren't familiar with the fundamental challenges imposed by Paizo's design choices...?

 

[Emerikol]

I don't agree that PCs being fully healed between every encounter is desirable. I mean people are playing PF2 because they don't want D&D 5e. Why bring in the 5e assumptions?

 

[meltdownpass]

I'll just add as a point of order that you can't Refocus three times in order to get all your Focus points back. The Refocus activity can only restore Focus spent since you last Refocused or had your daily preparations. So a character with two Focus points but nothing that lets them recover both essentially has one per-encounter Focus point and one per-day Focus point.

This itself seems like a really poor and finicky rule that'd I'd encourage people to ignore. Focus spells aren't powerful enough that additional limitations are needed.

I don't agree that PCs being fully healed between every encounter is desirable. I mean people are playing PF2 because they don't want D&D 5e. Why bring in the 5e assumptions?

I don't think it has anything to do with 5e assumptions, but rather about the mechanics of PF2. My group has learned the hard way that you can't simply press onward, assuming that being at 80% HP is going to cut it. Hit points are easy to restore out of combat, so walking into a fight without full healing immediately puts you on the backfoot. Even if you're in a dungeon and the next encounter is literally opening the next door over, you should never open that door until you've spent an hour+ doing the Treat Injury minigame. Failing to do so is pretty likely to result in character death or total wipe.

 

[payn]

Seems ok, it would need playtesting to find the right amount of surges per level as im not sure 6 is right.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't agree that PCs being fully healed between every encounter is desirable.

If we're talking role-playing games in general, I kind of agree. I have no problems with games where you can keep adventuring while at half health.

I mean people are playing PF2 because they don't want D&D 5e. Why bring in the 5e assumptions?

I'm not. Put simply, the Pathfinder 2 game expects you to go into each combat at full health. Combat is calibrated with this in mind. Medicine and focus healing is provided to give heroes the ability to heal up fully between encounters. Combats are difficult enough when you start with all your hit points, and there's normally no reason to not do this.

tl;dr: It's not me pushing for fully-healed characters, it's the game.

 

[CapnZapp]

Seems ok, it would need playtesting to find the right amount of surges per level as im not sure 6 is right.

You have 6 surges always. The number does not change as you level up. But you always heal back up fully with those six surges. If you have 60 hp a surge is 10 hp. When you level up a few times and gain another 30 hp, a surge is 15 hp.

The number 6 could have been 5 or 8. Why did I choose 6? Reasons include:

• I wanted you to heal back up in about thirty minutes time. You can have up to three focus points, each rest activity (refocus, repairing your shield, whatever...) is ten minutes. So thirty minutes seems to be the sweet spot. Rest much longer than that, and the "choose your rest activity" minigame goes away; you can simply take all the rest activities you want. Rest for only 10 minutes, and some classes suffer for it. So I wanted a number that was evenly divisible by 30. Three surges is too coarse, too chunky. Six is just about right
• since you spend one action per surge, the amount of healing should be comparable to what Battle Medicine used to give you. That is, a nice chunk of healing, useful enough that you might actually use it in combat, but not overwhelmingly much. You heal half your hp each time you spend your full three-action turn. This seemed about right. Not too slow, not too fast...
• since each condition removes one surge, I needed to consider the effective maximum. As far as I can see, you almost never gain more than 4 levels of a condition. So I wanted more surges than 4, but not many more. I settled on 6

 

[payn]

Ok, I get that. Does it feel right at every level tho? One of the things I love about the old resource attrition is that it changes as you level. Its easier to keep pressings your luck at higher levels. Or is this more like the 5E assumption of 6-8 encounters per day no matter what level expectation?

 

[CapnZapp]

Ok, I get that. Does it feel right at every level tho? One of the things I love about the old resource attrition is that it changes as you level. Its easier to keep pressings your luck at higher levels. Or is this more like the 5E assumption of 6-8 encounters per day no matter what level expectation?

Interesting thoughts.

I totally get the "why not start heroes off with few surges and give them more later for that epic feel?" vibe. And indeed that would not be wrong. My own answer, though, is "the game is already tilting easier at higher levels; I don't my rule to reinforce this".

It's at low level you would need more surges. At higher levels you have enough gold and spell slots to manage by other means. But I can't take away a surge once I have given it out, so "the number stays the same" is what I went with. This is also the easiest design.

Regards

 

[dave2008]

I don't agree that PCs being fully healed between every encounter is desirable. I mean people are playing PF2 because they don't want D&D 5e. Why bring in the 5e assumptions?

That is more of 4e assumption than a 5e assumption IME.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

Having 6 surges that each heal 1/6th of your hit points means you get go from full health to 0 twice. Or from half to full health four times
It means that one battle where you get dropped you can fully heal and then you're tapped for healing for the day. You might get two encounters
Is that enough?

Why even have a cap on the adventuring day? Players are going to want to rest to regain spells fairly often. A cap on healing encourages a fifteen minute work day