Healing Fully With Rest - Is It Really That Big of a Deal?

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Honestly, it's not a game-breaker for me.

I'm not comfortable with the idea that there's no level of wounds or fatigue that 8 hours of rest won't cure -- it's a bit too superhero genre for me and snaps the assumptions of what I prefer to be slightly more gritty fantasy -- but it probably makes the game adequately playable. Overall, playability should probably trump "realism". It's too soon to tell, though, if will be negative second order effects to a campaign of the rule.

 

[Blackwarder]

I think that it's promote a certain way of playing, for example in the current playtest advanture, if the the characters can fully heal after an 8 hour rest the players might think that getting into combats is the best course of action because they can just hole up somewhere to replenish their resources over night...

Warder

 

[howandwhy99]

In game terms it's about the exploration phase of gaming. It's a different time scale, not the combat round scale (whether you use 6 seconds or 1 minute).

Let's say you avoided all combat and just dealt with the environment. Tomb and trap adventures are sort of like this. In the Tomb of Horrors you've probably supplied up with food and water and all sorts of tools not to mention henchmen. Now exploring a dungeon like this is still in the Turn-based pace most of the time, but sleeping in safe areas can mean days even weeks come into play. Knowing when to back out and come return matters too, all while expecting (especially in populated areas) that stuff is going to change before you get back.

Healing to maximum for every kind of consequence the PC can suffer after only one 8-hour rest really does short change this type of adventure. I'm not saying that the players shouldn't be able to heal while resting, but it was largely about spending resources, renewable or otherwise.

1 HP / 24 hours of total rest (or light activity, which does not mean dungeon delving). Add on to that early DMs and some rule sets which did not allow natural bed rest healing while in a dungeon and certain play styles can be seen to desire a feel of come and go, back and forth to town to rest, recuperate and resupply.

A lot of play sounds like monster, monster, monster hack and slash to me or freeform RP with quick, exciting combats mixed in. For me the exploration phase is most of the game, so healing rates, like walking rates, and food & water effects, and fatigue, and lots of other stuff all mean a lot more over the scope of play. (Now it's not only what I play, but it doesn't get hand waved away just because the players are focused on other elements).

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

As a practical matter, if you have "enough" clerics in the party, you got a refresh that is 80% as good as this every 24 hours anyway, without even touching the wands and scrolls. At some point the wizard calls it a day because he spell selection is now screwed, and the cleric has useless spells to convert to healing.

Firelance (above) nails this one.

It is a style choice that a wizard or cleric gets all their slots back every day. If we really care about grit and consequences and the thrill of resource management why shouldn't a spellcaster take a week or two to get back to full power? If the Fighter "should" suffer with fewer HP in the morning maybe the Wizard "should" suffer witha less than full load out, as well.

It boils down to (1) hassle and (2) we want the spellcasters to get to play their full characters pretty much every day. Well, the Fighters want to do that, too, without the bother of cajoling their friend into playing the boring healbot.

I think this is a topic ripe for a sub-system module, where we add dials to add grittiness, etc.

 

[Sunseeker]

One day or one week. Real injuries would take months to recover from, if they didn't outright kill you.

 

[Kinak]

To me, it's less a question of verisimilitude in the moment and more just about the pacing of campaigns. Particularly in urban settings, games can move forward at an incredible pace.

Adding regular periods of downtime, even if they only take moments of narration, spread out a campaign's events so seasons and years can pass. It also has a side benefit that the downtime needs to be spent somewhere, tying PCs to the world.

Now, other campaigns are set up as a race against time, where a night's rest might be all the party gets. I'd just add a temple or the like, but it's important that the rules can support that sort of play as well.

Personally, I think the long rest mechanic actually works well for this. Pinning spells to the same recovery time as HP is actually a good thing, as otherwise clerics grow exponentially in importance as you slow down healing.

I'd rather they defaulted to a week's rest rather than eight hours, but it should be a trivial change as long as they keep it in mind for spell durations.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't like this quick healing either, but I totally recognize the point that if have a Cleric in the party you can just take one day off adventuring (sometimes you don't even need that) and heal everyone back to full HP.

To partially avoid scenes like that, I use a little trick in my homebrew adventures: I place significant events many days away from each other and significant locations many days of travel away from each other Of course it doesn't always work, particularly when the party is high-level enough to use long-range teleportation

 

[Walking Dad]

...

Now, other campaigns are set up as a race against time, where a night's rest might be all the party gets. I'd just add a temple or the like, but it's important that the rules can support that sort of play as well.

...

The "as well" is the key. But I don't think week long rests should be the baseline.
I play mostly in PbP environment and my expirience is that most people will use the base rule for any game instead of options presented later (this is somewhat different if a setting is specifically tied to an option, like defiling, low treasure and sparse metal in Dark Sun).

So, what should the baseline be?

 

[eamon]

But doesn't it just end up coming down to "how long does it take for the party's cleric, sacrificing as many spells per day as he is willing, to fully heal the injured character(s)" as opposed to "how long it will take them to recover from rest?" In my experience, that will never be more than one day. Even at low levels when clerics have few spells, characters have few hit points.

Not at all! Cure Light Wounds only heals a rather small number of hit points. It's not going to be able to heal everyone fully every day.

Not to mention the fact that you'd need to reserve a significant potion of your resources just for healing. In my experience people will try to avoid that by being careful. Especially if healing is somewhat scarce and it's impractical to just heal everyone it's almost necessarily not more than a fallback safety net: use healing to heal the worst of the wounds when things go wrong but that that's not the default choice.

Also, in most games I'd run time is at least a background factor. There's a tribe shaman, a evil overlord, a scheming dragon, a lich, a spreading curse or whatever that's gaining ground, and the longer the PC's dally, the harder it's going to be to avert disaster. Even in the short-term, a tribe might not notice if it's outpost is empty for a day, but likely will if they don't hear of anything for a week.

I'd like the rules to allow for this kind of a little more careful play. I don't really care if it's default or not, but it is the kind of thing that might impact balance so I hope it's at least considered. I wouldn't want healing to be a major class feature of a core class or race in a way that makes it hard to take away without affecting balance.

 

[steeldragons]

Before getting into what could be done instead...I want to make sure I have everything correct in my brain. [I don't have the play test and have been piecing bits together based on all of the threads coming out about it.]

So, let me know if I have this right or not...
1) With a short rest, you can use one of your mundane healing kits to use existing HD to heal yourself (+Con mod).

Question 1: Is a "short rest" 5 minutes or 10? OR open ended/just shorter than a "Long Rest"? That will play into the narrative/believability of it for many people. "I got back 40 HP in 5 minutes. Let's go!" isn't going to fly for too many.

Comment: I think this makes sense, in a story and game/HP abstraction way. You take a breather. You apply a salve or poltice (possibly anasthetic), bandage up some cuts and scrapes, possibly even get a few stitches if necessary. From a "HP are physical damage" and "HP are abstract qualities" perspective, I think it works. Patch up a few scrapes and get a...well...a short rest, to bolster/mitigate your "resolve, fatigue, ephermal skills or luck"...get your "head" back in the game, as it were.

I MIGHT suggest the restriction (if it doesn't already exist) that a short rest allows you to use ONE [application of a] healing kit and thus regain ONE HD +Con...or saying you can use 1 per 10 minutes of the "Short Rest." (so a short rest might be a "half hour" so the party can expend/apply 3 HD?) But allowing it to be more than 1 does not break anything for me...from what I'm reading...unless a short rest is 5 minutes.

2) Is it with a "long rest", which equals a "full night's [8 hours min] sleep" (?), you regain all of your allowed HD and can use them/as many as you want...without a healing kit use...(+Con mod) in the morning? Or with a long rest, you just wake up with full HP AND your allotment of daily HD (to use later in the day)?

The former is better than the latter...imho...but it still flies in the face of any level of narrative that a bunch of serious wounds (or great exhaustion/serious depletion of personal reserves, if you're going from the abstract pov) are just gone!

Perhaps, after a long rest, you regain all of your HP but still need to use the healing kit to use them at the beginning of the day (reapply salves, change bandages, drink an infusion of Red Bull, etc)? Would that sit better, for folks? You can still bolster yourself with a buncha HD in the morning and very possibly be at full HP again, but it's not a guarantee...but you could be close?...conceivably with a short rest later in the day, you might get back up to full on your own/without needing magical healing.

Resource management is still in play 1) in "in game" time expended to rest and 2) in using up.number of healing kits you possess.

Naturally, and I don't believe anyone has an issue with this, magical healing works whenever and heals up however many HP it does (but does not renew HD, right?). But there's another element of resource (healing spells or potions) that are being taken into account.

So, seems to me, between short rests (with mundane healing) and long rests and only an "emergency" kind of sprinkling of healing magic, you shouldn't really want for HP all that often...but could, conceivably, not be starting every day "automatically at full."

I think that last bit is what really is sticking in many people's craw. That it's "automatic" without concern for story or any level of "realism"...no matter how you want to interpret the amount of physical v. abstract HP in your games.

I'm probably rambling...but do i have this right (existing rules-wise) and/or any of this sound reasonable? Just having my first cuppa joe.
--SD