D&D 5E Healing in 5E

[KarinsDad]

I read most of the basic rules and am still confused.

From what I can tell, a first level group of PCs without a Cleric can handle about 2 encounters and a first level group of PCs with a Cleric can handle maybe 3 encounters (and by encounters, I mean combat fights, not to be confused with combat fights that were avoided).

Since I did not have a group to do the playtests with, I have not had the opportunity to see this first hand.

As an example, the party Rogue goes down to 2 hit points in the first encounter. Without a Cleric, he then heals himself up most of the way after the fight during a short rest (assuming that a short rest is viable) and then gets knocked down to 3 hit points in the second encounter.

Isn't he out of healing at this point (assuming that first level PCs cannot afford 50 GP potions of healing)? Is he really going to want to go adventuring with 3 hit points?

What am I missing?

Granted, 1E and 2E had many similar issues, but it seems that 3E and 4E resolved some of those. Are we really back down to 2 to 4 encounters before we call it a day?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

You are basically correct. So far, it's been my experience that most encounters don't do that much damage to the PC, so 2 encounters might be a bit low. Most encounters with 4 1/4 CR creatures against a party of 5 means that the party gets hit a total of maybe 1 time.

It has been my experience in the playtest(which, albeit has monsters with much lower hp than the final game) PCs were able to easily handle 5 encounters per day at 1st level and it goes up from there. Damage from monsters doesn't increase that quickly but hp on the PCs do.

 

[Capricia]

I don't think that "the party gets hit a total of maybe 1 time" is the design working as intended. That kind of encounter is trivial.

Hit Dice really are lame as a healing mechanic and they work in the exact opposite way as Surges in 4e. In 4e, you had lots and lots of ways to heal. Leader could hit you up for surge+dice, you could spend them during a short rest, use them with your own powers, etc. But once you were out, that was it. Your adventurer's body had a hard limit to just how much healing it could take. You couldn't just spam wand of cure light wounds like in 3e.

In 5e, hit dice are just a tiny bit of extra healing that add about half your hit point maximum to your daily healing. You can still receive spammed low level healing, and low level healing out of combat is again the most efficient way to go, and if you don't have that, you're going to be extremely vulnerable. Clerics are necessary.

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[Ruin Explorer]

Granted, 1E and 2E had many similar issues, but it seems that 3E and 4E resolved some of those. Are we really back down to 2 to 4 encounters before we call it a day?

You're not missing much, based on my playtesting and understanding of the current mechanics. As PCs level up, this becomes less of issue - it's a big one at low levels - but it's still not as bad as 1/2E, because one night's rest = 100% HP, so worst case is "Sleep on it!" (barring horrible poisons, diseases, wounds, etc.). Rather than "The Cleric can heal half your HP tomorrow, then rest another day and he can do the rest, then he can get on to the next PC...".

That said as with Majoru, when I did the playtest, monsters had, what, 30-50% less HP? I'll be interested to see if that makes a big difference. I think it will. Especially as PCs are LESS capable of healing (including healers!) in Basic than the Playtest, broadly speaking.

Hit Dice really are lame as a healing mechanic and they work in the exact opposite way as Surges in 4e.

Quoted For Truth as they say. They literally do work in the opposite way.

 

[FadedC]

Certainly the adventure per day situation is better then third edition, especially at low level. You didn't have healing surges there so even with a cleric you were unlikely to do more than 2 fights at low level unless they were easy. Needing to rest after 1 fight even was quite common if the fight was hard, even at mid levels. If everyone took heavy damage there just wasn't enough healing to get them all back into fighting shape.

Fourth edition was obviously much better, but doing more than 4 fights in a day was generally quite questionable unless they were pretty easy fights.

 

[Crothian]

Quoted For Truth as they say. They literally do work in the opposite way.

I don't know how they worked in 4e but would the opposite way be to hurt the character instead of healing them?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't know how they worked in 4e but would the opposite way be to hurt the character instead of healing them?

Funny but no!

Healing surges determine how much you can be healed in 4E. Everything about healing flows from them. They are the Alpha and the Omega of healing. Some other systems interact with them too.

Hit Dice explicitly avoid being related to any other aspect of healing, or any other ability or system at all. They are simply a minor source of entirely additional and are apparently optional, rather than at the core of healing.

 

[jodyjohnson]

'Literal' is the new way to say 'not literal'.

I know how I want healing to work, we have plenty of examples just from D&D in its various versions plus 5e. At my table that's how it will work.

I will not argue to force my default on everyone else.

 

[Capricia]

I don't know how they worked in 4e but would the opposite way be to hurt the character instead of healing them?

It's the opposite because in 4e, Surges were the limit of how much you could be filled. They were how big your gas tank could be filled up. Hitdice give you extra free healing. They're the soda can worth of gas you can put in the tank.

I don't have much experience with 1e/2e, but in my experience, it goes

Level 1-3 of 3e: Healing is super scarce and you're pretty much done after two fight. Then you get a wand of cure light wounds or infernal healing or whatever and BAM, your 5-minute workday is based around getting the casters their spells back.

Level 1-30 of 4e: Healing is enough to get you through 4 encounters or so. This never really changes, since as the healing powers get better and better, so to do the monsters become more and more lethal.

5e: There's no cheap healing like in 3e and no framework/limit like in 4e. The party needs healing from specific class features or magical items. It's weird.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I don't think that "the party gets hit a total of maybe 1 time" is the design working as intended. That kind of encounter is trivial.

Encounters have been rather trivial in my experience so far. It is likely why hp went up in the final version of the game. However, I don't have a huge problem with trivial encounters. It allows the classic dungeon crawl to work correctly. There's pretty much no way to run a game where the PCs open the door to 20 rooms, each of which has monsters behind it without a bunch of encounters that barely damage the PCs.

I pretty much assume that randomness will take care of the damage over time. One hit an encounter and after 10 or 20 encounters, everyone is near dead.

If I want to use less encounters or make an individual encounter more deadly, I just increase the CR of the particular monster.