D&D 5E Does “Whack-A-Mole” Healing really happen in games?

[cbwjm]

Never happens on purpose, normally in the groups I play in, the players look to keep people up. Whether that means dropping a heal or smacking down the enemy depends on each situation.

 

[Rockyroad]

It's hard to find a good-balance middle ground IMO. Most house-rules either nerf things into non-use or make the game super-lethal. Like many, I find the 0 HP to 1 HP and suddenly up and fighting a bit too bizarre, but DM's who play hard will tap-tap downed PCs to death.

Could we have a "recovery" mechanic for PCs who reach 0 HP and are down/disabled, that allows them to slowly get back into the fray, hopefully maybe encouraging further healing? Something like:

Round 1 (after being restored from 0 HP): disadvantage on attacks, ability checks, and saves. half speed. (this way you can ONLY stand with your movement)
Round 2: half speed still, disadvantage on ability checks (you're still shaken)
Round 3: disadvantage on ability checks
Round 4: you're good to go!

Penalties would last until the start of the next turn. Each spell level of healing or level of strength of a potion of healing speeds up the process by 1 round maybe? A successful Wisdom (Medicine) check (DC 15 or 20?) could also remove 1 round of penalties?

Example. Suppose you have 0 HP and another PC casts Healing Word from 20 feet away. You gain 7 HP. But you have all the penalties listed above (disadvantage on attacks, ability checks, and saves. half speed) so the PC moves 20 feet to you and also uses their action to help you drink a potion of greater healing ("level 2" in strength), giving you 16 HP more. The potion also reduces your penalties as if you had already recovered two rounds (so you only have disadvantage on ability checks) on the next turn when you act.

One solution I posed to my players is the idea of when getting dropped to 0 hp, you instead go to 1 hp but take a level of exhaustion. Every hit you take after that gives another level of exhaustion. Only after level 4 exhaustion do you go unconscious. The idea here is that the player has some time before getting knocked out to get themselves out of danger giving the player a little more agency. When you get knocked out, all you can do is make death saving throws while you wait for someone else to heal you. You may say that the player should have gotten themselves out of harm's way before going down to 0 hp, but sometimes you get hit with massive damage and you can't avoid getting knocked out. This mechanic would put some urgency into the player to get to safety while still giving them the opportunity to do so on their own. Getting knocked out should be something that happens just short of deaths door IMO.

Of course my players balked at this mechanic because they hate exhaustion !

 

[Dave Goff]

LOL.
I was away from D&D for a few years for various reasons and then got in a group that was part of playtesting 5E. At the time Spare the Dying actually brought a character back to 1 hp. I was in a situation where my low-level cleric with only cantrips left and a Dwarf fighter were in an unwinnable battle separated from the rest of the group and the Dwarf got knocked out. I managed to avoid getting hit and used StD to bring him to 1hp and he got up and knocked out one of our opponents and then got knocked down again, so I Spared him again, rinse, lather, repeat.
He got knocked down and came back swinging 5 times before they managed to stop us. It was ridiculous. We almost won.

 

[Rune]

Now that I’m thinking of it, I was running a game in 3.5 back in the day, where the fighter was at 0 hp and repeatedly kept taking actions (and dropping to -1) only to be repeatedly healed with Cure Minor Wounds (back to 0) by the cleric.

The action he kept taking: using a crowbar to pop off pieces of an altar in the Temple of WORM, while the Wraith King flew overhead, out of reach.

That was a long time ago. Details may not be represented accurately.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I’ve experienced a lot of 5e D&D over the years with players of varied play-styles, and at every level. I have never once seen players purposefully wait to heal someone until they drop to 0 hp, nor has dropping to 0 hp ever felt like a trivial matter.

It makes me wonder if the whole phenomenon is just a white-room scenario that doesn’t actually/usually come up in play.

So I voted "no", but no in the sense that the "problem we NEED to solve" Wack-A-Mole doesn't really happen in my experience. I certainly encounter players saving a spell slot or two for if someone goes down to zero and even once had a Druid say he didn't really want to heal people unless they went down because it was inefficient. I've seen the same character go down and be healed in the same battle. But the never heal unless someone goes down mentality and the going to zero doesn't matter mentality are not things I really see in actual play. Ongoing up down up down does not happen frequently because by time someone is down there is usually only a round or two left to the battle. Even the Druid who preached stinginess would throw healing someone's way if he thought it was likely to make the difference between them standing and fighting another round and being out of commission, or if it just seemed in character or to keep another player happy.

 

[Mistwell]

FWIW, we have a bigger issue with Goodberry. Cast it the night before, and give everyone 2 or so berries. If someone goes down in battle, feed them a berry and BOOM! 1 HP, no more failed death saves, and they get right back into the fight...

Healing Word has not been nearly an issue IME because you don't get 10 uses potentially with a single casting.

A PC has to spend both a move and an action to use it that way though.

 

[DND_Reborn]

A PC has to spend both a move and an action to use it that way though.

Sure, but that usually isn't an issue. Anyway, it is also more useful because any PC carrying a berry can restore the downed PC--it doesn't have to be the one PC with Healing Word. So, the rogue can move, cunning action dash, free object get the berry out, and use an object action to feed it to the cleric/druid/healer-type that is at 0 HP. If the rogue has 4 berries on him, he can feed all 4 at once even if the DM allows it (most do, IME). And again, 1 use vs. potentially 10 makes goodberry MUCH more of an issue IME. I've never had an issue with Healing Word, frankly.

Goodberry is a spell I will probably remove from future games or at the very least rewrite. It makes requiring rations pointless and getting PCs back to consciousness ridiculously easy. If you want high magic-high power games, it is perfectly fine as is, but that isn't the style of D&D I enjoy playing or running.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Could we have a "recovery" mechanic for PCs who reach 0 HP and are down/disabled, that allows them to slowly get back into the fray, hopefully maybe encouraging further healing? Something like:

With the intended rapidity of 5e combat, such rules as presented are equivalent to "no, you can't be revived until combat is over," especially since the PC in question will actually be an enormous liability on turn 1 here. Taking 4 rounds to revive is equivalent to sitting most (if not all!) of a 5e combat on the benches anyway, and would absolutely be a waste of a spell. I'm not at all a pro-caster kind of guy, but this makes in-combat healing of the incapacitated worthless, which I don't think is a good plan.

Makes me wish they hadn't gotten rid of Healing Surges...

Edit:
I basically see the "speed it up" mechanic as just saying that only "serious" magic whack-a-mole healing works. Since 5e spells can always be upcast, it just sets the bar higher than 1.

 

[DND_Reborn]

With the intended rapidity of 5e combat, such rules as presented are equivalent to "no, you can't be revived until combat is over," especially since the PC in question will actually be an enormous liability on turn 1 here. Taking 4 rounds to revive is equivalent to sitting most (if not all!) of a 5e combat on the benches anyway, and would absolutely be a waste of a spell. I'm not at all a pro-caster kind of guy, but this makes in-combat healing of the incapacitated worthless, which I don't think is a good plan.

Makes me wish they hadn't gotten rid of Healing Surges...

Edit:
Unless something else applies that alleviates these penalties early?

I don't think it would impact things as much as you imagine...

Another option would be:
Round 1: You can move, take an action, or take a bonus action.
Round 2: You can do two of the three.
Round 3: You're good to go.

Since most times getting up would be your first priority, that is basically all you would likely do in Round 1. But, if I did this I would not allow magic/healing to speed it up.

At any rate, it would take further thought and play-testing to see exactly how much impact these types of mechanics would have.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't think it would impact things as much as you imagine...

Another option would be:
Round 1: You can move, take an action, or take a bonus action.
Round 2: You can do two of the three.
Round 3: You're good to go.

Since most times getting up would be your first priority, that is basically all you would likely do in Round 1. But, if I did this I would not allow magic/healing to speed it up.

At any rate, it would take further thought and play-testing to see exactly how much impact these types of mechanics would have.

at first glance that looks meaningful, but nine times out of ten the players is going to either get up & attack the thing that just dropped them or get up & move to safety. The only "Now that I'm up, on my turn I..." that would be affected is if the player would have said "disengage & move away." Having a cost of something you probably weren't going to use is effectively not a cost at all