D&D 5E Healing Options Poll

[Kinak]

So a healthy dose of balance is needed. 1 week? Heh, the 5 minutes work day is now the 5 minutes work week. Not exactly better.

Yes and no.

The town guards probably have a five-minute work week. You get into a real fight, one you can't Hit Dice out of, you lay around for a while and recuperate. No big deal.

If your PCs can kick back a week in safety after every fight, it's obviously in their best interests to do so, just like it is to sleeping off every fight now. But, by increasing the "cost" of long rests, it makes it easier to take them off the table without breaking immersion.

If they need a safe place to rest for a week, are they going to use long rests in a wilderness adventure? Probably not. Are they going to take a week to rest while the orc hordes are coming down out of the mountains? Not if they can help it.

In both cases, though, they're probably still going to stop and sleep. Maybe sometimes you'll push them and prevent that, but I personally find that gets old really fast.

So, it lets you pace your campaign differently, grouping challenges over multiple days, instead of just within a single day. You don't need to justify it with sleepless nights, it's a natural outgrowth of setting the long rest to a week.

As an added bonus, when you're spending a week taking a long rest, that strongly implies some sort of settlement. It makes friendly places to rest important mechanically, adding weight to every interaction with NPCs and towns.

Now, I totally get that not everyone would want to mess with multi-day challenges and finding safe places to rest, but they can set full rests to eight hours if you want or even five minutes in a very cinematic game.

The rules don't care, that's the beauty of it.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Gadget]

Grydan,

I can't give XP, but your words make so much sense it's scary. I always thought the 4E disease track was a good model for various debilitation conditions, including wounds. Maybe every time you suffer a crit or go below zero HP you suffer a wound. I'm not sure you can't have the 'wounds separate from HP' model and still have HP reset a little less quickly though. That could easily be a dial that is set, based upon your preferred resource recovery model. It would also be easier to have various other things cost HP in this system as well. Maybe special maneuvers or Rituals could cost HP.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

None of the above. 1 hp per night's rest. I could live with 1hp per character level.

 

[jrowland]

HP reset between fights.

You always start a fight at full HP... unless you are subject to some condition that prevents you from being at full HP.

Conditions could include fatigue (insufficient rest, too many combats), various illnesses (Filth Fever! Moon Frenzy! Lycanthropy! ...oh wait, not usually transferable in D&D, but oh well), poisons, and yes, injuries.

Excellent!

Become "Bloodied" ==> Gain 1 Injury
Go to 0 or less HP ==> Gain 1 Injury
A single Hit is at least 1/4 max HP = Gain 1 Injury
Hit with a Critical = Gain 1 Injury

All effects cumulative (ie if you have 30 HP and get hit on crit for 35 dmg you gain 4 Injuries.)

If you have no injuries you are not wounded
If Injuries are less than or equal to Con Modifier (minimum 1) you are lightly wounded (some condition applies: -1 skill checks and speed, eg)
If Injuries are greater than Con Modifier but less than twice Con Modifier you are Moderately Wounded (some condition applies: -2 skill checks and speed, -1 attack and saves eg)
If Injuries are greater than twice Con Modifier but less than Con Score you are Seriously Wounded (some condition applies: -4 skill checks and speed, -2 attack, saves, and AC)
If Injuries are greater than Con Score you are Critically Wounded (some condition applies: Incapacitated)

Healing
In-combat healing heals HP as normal.
Out-of-combat magic healing heals injuries.
Out-of-combat non-magic healing heals injuries at a long rest rate (1 injury per day, 2 with herbalist care or in 'restful' locale, 3 with herbalist care and restful locale)

Potions could recover HP, or allow one to ignore wounded penalties (adrenaline boost) etc

It has good potential.

It allows for the "second pool" that most agree is needed (fatigue/wounds) but keeps things tied mostly to HP. Rather than a pool that you lose points from, "Gaining" injuries is a way to spread out what some critics might call a death spiral. Making each turn of that spiral shallower (Care Bear Mode) or steeper (Iron Man Mode) can be done (ie, change wound thresholds when penalties kick in. Care bear lightly wounded might mean injuries = Con score. Iron Man Mode might mean Each threshold is precisely 1 more wound.)

Drawbacks
Its more complicated. Players/DM would need to know the thresholds and remember to apply the penalties as well as keep track of HP/Injuries/ and whether or not they get bloodied. Mods to healing spells might be needed: Ritualized Cure spells might heal 1 injury per spell level eg, so that kind of tweaking in exands the scope of such a change.

As a module, I think its doable. Probably not as core though.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't particularly like any of what I've seen thusfar.

 

[darjr]

I'd drop the overnight healing.

 

[GX.Sigma]

In theory, I think I'd prefer a quite slow natural healing process. In actual play, the current default system is good enough that I don't feel like messing with it.

 

[Raith5]

I would like something faster in terms of HD recovery and more healing in combat rather than in rests. I like there to be healing options in combat so as to make a healing a tactical rather than strategic choice, but think the recovery option in option 2 is too little healing to be worth an action.

These days I dont get to play a whole lot, so when I get a group together I want rock and roll, not camp.

 

[timASW]

Excellent!

Become "Bloodied" ==> Gain 1 Injury
Go to 0 or less HP ==> Gain 1 Injury
A single Hit is at least 1/4 max HP = Gain 1 Injury
Hit with a Critical = Gain 1 Injury

All effects cumulative (ie if you have 30 HP and get hit on crit for 35 dmg you gain 4 Injuries.)

If you have no injuries you are not wounded
If Injuries are less than or equal to Con Modifier (minimum 1) you are lightly wounded (some condition applies: -1 skill checks and speed, eg)
If Injuries are greater than Con Modifier but less than twice Con Modifier you are Moderately Wounded (some condition applies: -2 skill checks and speed, -1 attack and saves eg)
If Injuries are greater than twice Con Modifier but less than Con Score you are Seriously Wounded (some condition applies: -4 skill checks and speed, -2 attack, saves, and AC)
If Injuries are greater than Con Score you are Critically Wounded (some condition applies: Incapacitated)

Healing
In-combat healing heals HP as normal.
Out-of-combat magic healing heals injuries.
Out-of-combat non-magic healing heals injuries at a long rest rate (1 injury per day, 2 with herbalist care or in 'restful' locale, 3 with herbalist care and restful locale)

Potions could recover HP, or allow one to ignore wounded penalties (adrenaline boost) etc

It has good potential.

It allows for the "second pool" that most agree is needed (fatigue/wounds) but keeps things tied mostly to HP. Rather than a pool that you lose points from, "Gaining" injuries is a way to spread out what some critics might call a death spiral. Making each turn of that spiral shallower (Care Bear Mode) or steeper (Iron Man Mode) can be done (ie, change wound thresholds when penalties kick in. Care bear lightly wounded might mean injuries = Con score. Iron Man Mode might mean Each threshold is precisely 1 more wound.)

Drawbacks
Its more complicated. Players/DM would need to know the thresholds and remember to apply the penalties as well as keep track of HP/Injuries/ and whether or not they get bloodied. Mods to healing spells might be needed: Ritualized Cure spells might heal 1 injury per spell level eg, so that kind of tweaking in exands the scope of such a change.

As a module, I think its doable. Probably not as core though.

Like this, but I would like to see it even more granular ala WHFRP 2e. Where at 0 HP you begin taking "critical hits" to specific body parts that have specific injury conditions and levels of seriousness depending on where your hit.

 

[jrowland]

Like this, but I would like to see it even more granular ala WHFRP 2e. Where at 0 HP you begin taking "critical hits" to specific body parts that have specific injury conditions and levels of seriousness depending on where your hit.

That's sort of where I was going...I modified to fit what the other guy was saying.