Healing during a short rest with leader healing

[bardolph]

With a 5-minute rest and no leaders: players can spend as many healing surges as they like, but with no bonuses.

With a 5-minute rest and a leader: players can use up any unused Healing Word/Inspiring Word abilities, getting the +1d6 (+ cleric's WIS modifier) on each. Then can spend healing surges on their own, with no bonuses. After the rest, the leaders have their full complement of encounter powers.

With 10 or more minutes of rest: leaders can regenerate their encounter powers every 5 minutes of rest. Unless it really matters, the DM should just assume that every healing surge spent gets the leadership bonus, and get on with it.

 

[bardolph]

If it doesn't take more time to find out who needs healing and make the rolls for those people (which are random, so can fluctuate the number of rolls needed), that's _amazing_. I mean, it's only an extra minute or so per encounter... but hey, that's 3.5 hours a year

That's 210 encounters per year? If only I were so lucky...

 

[keterys]

To give an example house rule for how I'd rather it worked (since I think I'm also being partially misunderstood as objecting to the balance):

Alter Healing/Inspiring Word to have the bonus dice added 'when in a combat encounter against a challenging foe' (see Bag of Rats)

Add 'Healing Presence: Allies within 20 squares spending healing surges for a short rest add your (Cha/Wis) + level as a power bonus to the amount healed.'

It's a set #, you just tell people it and they can figure out their healing on their own, and you move along.

 

[keterys]

That's 210 encounters per year? If only I were so lucky...

I may play more than many other people, it's true... seeing it come up in 3 separate groups has irked me a little each time. Proud Nail as it were.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Personally, I wish that leaders just provided a static bonus to healing surges during rest and the words didn't enter into it at all somehow.

I agree. The nitpicky bookkeeping of exactly how long you're resting - how many sets of 5 minute rests you have to take, and how is down how many hps relative to the dice you're rolling to heal them, just to maximize the efficiency of your healing surges - is contrary to the spirit/design objectives of 4e. A static bonus - the average or maximum of the healing being used, maybe, to discourage trying to start bonus 'encounters' - would solve the problem.

 

[bardolph]

I agree. The nitpicky bookkeeping of exactly how long you're resting - how many sets of 5 minute rests you have to take, and how is down how many hps relative to the dice you're rolling to heal them, just to maximize the efficiency of your healing surges - is contrary to the spirit/design objectives of 4e. A static bonus - the average or maximum of the healing being used, maybe, to discourage trying to start bonus 'encounters' - would solve the problem.

Why not just give players the benefit of the doubt? Every healing surge spent while resting heals Surge Value + the cleric's WIS bonus + 1d6. Who cares if the rest is 20 minutes rather than 5?

 

[keterys]

I believe that's roughly the proposal - but turn the 1-6d6 into a static #.

 

[bardolph]

I believe that's roughly the proposal - but turn the 1-6d6 into a static #.

OK. Round it up to 4. I like the d6. Appeals to the "roll-player" in me.

 

[malacapricornis]

As an experiment, roll the d6 and add the number to the base healing surge. How much real time does it take? Out of the 3-5 hrs of real time play the extra 3 secs per die roll doesnt matter and is part of the intent of having a leader. You don't really sit for 5 real time minutes per short rest I hope.

Read page 263 of PHB under the section short rest. It's clear that using healing powers during multiple short rests is intended. The bookkeeping is minimal and lends itself to a better conservation of resources. Otherwise, players are going to take extended rests more often which means they get to use dailies and be fully healed more often. Which makes encounter balance more difficult.

 

[MarkB]

Allowing the Healing Words may increase the real-world time spent taking short rests, but disallowing them decreases the number of encounters that can be completed between Extended Rests.

Since Extended Rests take a lot of time both in an out of gameworld (either finding a defensible area and making all the checks required to scout and secure it, or retracing your steps out of the dungeon, tramping back to town, renting rooms, talking to the locals, stopping off at the shop to buy & sell, etc.), and can impose serious strains on suspension-of-disbelief when attempted within a dungeon or during a time-sensitive quest, anything which causes them to occur more frequently creates a greater disruption to the game than an extra 30 seconds rolling dice between encounters ever could.