D&D 5E Healing in 5E

[Crothian]

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

Healing was always scarce so you would have a row of hirelings be the first guys in and then the PCs would try to either fight from behind them or with missile weapons. We also ran a lot when things got bad.

And the idea of only doing two or four encounters before a rest is pretty alien to me. In the Pathfinder game their first day out they had a good half dozen encounters.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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.

In my experience, they were never a limit. I can count the number of times in the last 5 years that someone ran out of Healing Surges on one hand. That was from playing 3 Living Forgotten Realms adventures a week as well as 2 weekly D&D games for a while.

Most of the time, there was plenty of non-surge healing on hand and the damage was spread out enough to make no one PC run out. Or the damage was so focused on the Defender who had more than enough Healing Surges.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Healing was always scarce so you would have a row of hirelings be the first guys in and then the PCs would try to either fight from behind them or with missile weapons. We also ran a lot when things got bad.

That must have been some other 2E, because I've never even heard of a real 2E game that worked like that. I think it's safe to say that's not representative of 2E.

1E, sure. I dunno.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Most of the time, there was plenty of non-surge healing on hand and the damage was spread out enough to make no one PC run out. Or the damage was so focused on the Defender who had more than enough Healing Surges.

I agree that it was often spread out (usually by good tactics from the PCs, or baaaaaaaaaaaad play from the DM), but "non-surge healing"? Wat? Non-surge healing was very rare and very weak in 4E in my experience, to the point where it was basically irrelevant.

In my home game, which I think has much harder encounters than LFR/Encounters sessions (which always sound fairly trivial, especially as LFR/Encounters PCs trend strongly towards the CharOp side of things, to the point where some people found it oppressive), I've seen more than a handful of people run out, but the good thing is - it was always their fault - always bad tactics, bad decisions, stupidity and so on. I've never seen a party where everyone worked together really well all adventure run out.

I do think they should have had about 25-33% less HSes overall, though - then we'd have seen them as much more of a limiter.

 

[jodyjohnson]

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?

I think the core default adventuring experience will be very 1e/2e-like.

It is very much Combat as War. Scouting is important. Surprise is critical. Avoiding fights when you can is rewarded. Creative non-combat resolution is rewarded. I would even say morale should be roleplayed.

For example my 4e>5e group was warned about this and adapted well. We finished the entire first chapter in one day, with one short rest. We also had a death due to lucky roles at the end.

If the group doesn't want to play that way, we have several options to make healing harder or easier. Faster or slower. With 5+ editions we have that many options purely within D&D.

 

[jodyjohnson]

I do think they should have had about 25-33% less HSes overall, though - then we'd have seen them as much more of a limiter.

I wish I had felt more empowered to house rule this kind of thing earlier in the 4e edition era. We still saw house rules as fixes rather than shifting the game toward our preferred style.

 

[Agamon]

Interesting theory, but it's not that bad in my experience. For example, my group is currently searching for something in a goblin lair. 5 encounters and they still haven't needed to stop. They've been quite sneaky and efficient.

 

[KarinsDad]

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.

And if normal monsters are the equivalent of minions (or like my version of tough minions in 4e which require two hits to take out), then 5E would appear to be too easy.

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

I do not want trivial encounters for the most part. Same issue that I had with 4E minions. No threat. No risk. After a while, I might as well be playing PvE WoW if the group wants to just farm mooks.

One hit an encounter by the NPCs sounds really boring.

In my home game, which I think has much harder encounters than LFR/Encounters sessions (which always sound fairly trivial, especially as LFR/Encounters PCs trend strongly towards the CharOp side of things, to the point where some people found it oppressive), I've seen more than a handful of people run out, but the good thing is - it was always their fault - always bad tactics, bad decisions, stupidity and so on. I've never seen a party where everyone worked together really well all adventure run out.

I do think they should have had about 25-33% less HSes overall, though - then we'd have seen them as much more of a limiter.

In my most recent 4E campaign which has gone from level 1 to 5, I've increased the healing surges by having PCs get one back during a short rest if they had used one in the previous fight. This allowed me to have more encounters per adventuring day and also allowed me to have a few more tougher fights as well. And, we still had one PC die (attacked by one striker which took him to low single digit hit points followed immediately by being attacked by another striker who criticaled).

 

[Agamon]

I do not want trivial encounters for the most part. Same issue that I had with 4E minions. No threat. No risk. After a while, I might as well be playing PvE WoW if the group wants to just farm mooks.

Encounters are as difficult or easy as they are made. The party I noted above has had a couple close calls before reaching the goblin lair, as well as a do-not-pass-go, no-death-save, outright death.

I can see where reading the rules it might seem work a certain way, but it doesn't play that way.

 

[KarinsDad]

I think the core default adventuring experience will be very 1e/2e-like.

It is very much Combat as War. Scouting is important. Surprise is critical. Avoiding fights when you can is rewarded. Creative non-combat resolution is rewarded. I would even say morale should be roleplayed.

For example my 4e>5e group was warned about this and adapted well. We finished the entire first chapter in one day, with one short rest. We also had a death due to lucky roles at the end.

If the group doesn't want to play that way, we have several options to make healing harder or easier. Faster or slower. With 5+ editions we have that many options purely within D&D.

Yeah, I get it. But, D&D is escapism. There are many players who just want to kick down the door and beat the crap out of what is behind it and take its stuff. Having the default mechanics of the game prevent that type of gaming seems backwards.

Every edition of D&D has been more about fighting than it has been about scouting and avoiding. If 5E is leaning towards making PCs avoid half of the fights, I know that most of the people that I've ever played with would be bored by that. As an occasional thing, sure. But not as the default.

I do want to finish watching the 5E podcasts to see how the game designers are playing. Are they really sneaking past stuff, or are the encounters so easy that the PCs tend to win by default?