Healing Rules changes playtest

[smbakeresq]

I made a few changes to healing rules in 5e and have taken two groups of 4 from 1-10 level with them and are still going. Simple things that are better IMO, that smoothed our healing process and were more “realistic.”

I always thought 4e had a good idea with healing surges, healing based off your actual HP and not a flat random die number. It made it relevant to your particular PC. I really thought it worked well for Paladins in 4e since they used their surge value to heal another Pc with Lay on the Hands, they were transferring their life force to you, more thematic.

I also never liked healing consumables like potions that healed a random die number that had no relevance to any PC. That made a healing potion more cost effective for a low HP/low CON PC since it healed a greater percentage of HP compared to a high HP/high CON PC.


So I ran the two groups with the following changes.

1. Healing kit with Healer feat is targets hit die size + users medicine skill + targets level. Make medicine skill count for more, it should scale as you get better at it. This doesn’t count as hit dice being spent to heal.

2. Potions. Use your hit die plus your CON modifier. These do not count as your hit dice being spent. It’s 1-4 HD depending on level of potion.

3. Both changes above make durable feat more useful so it might be taken.

4. Long rests do not restore all HP. They do restore half of your HD that were spent on healing as usual. A good nights sleep is never that good. This encourages players to manage resources better. Remember you can use healing kits (medical attention) before and after a rest. This means after a long rest you need to spend HD to heal up if you need it. Also the downtime rest rules in Xanthars apply as appropriate.

5. Spell healing is unchanged as it is a magical effect. I was thinking about changing this but PC are just as effective at 1 HP as they are at full HP and in combat healing is in general not action economy effective.

6. Paladins lay on the hands is 1d10 (the Paladins Hit Die) + Paladins CHR mod per level instead of a flat 5 HP. To balance this out they get back half of HD used per long rest just like regular use of HD healing. It takes 1 HD to clear the conditions as stated in Lay on the Hands. Durable on the Paladin works to increase this.

7. Other small changes along the same lines.

The idea is to make your HD and Con count more and healing more PC dependent. I grind PC through more encounters then most.

The players liked it as their HD and CON meant more, it was more of a consideration in PC creation. Many times the PCs started the day at less the full HP and not much Healing on the horizon, forcing the PCs to choose how to keep the assault going.

Durable suddenly made an appear as a feat.

Healers kit became a searched for item, and its appearance in treasure hordes was never wasted. Someone always got the proficiency in a background and took the Healer feat.

PC chanced it more, the carry over from video games (leave past spawn point, heal up, then come back at full strength) doesn’t work as well as more time would have passed so the environment would change. Sometimes all the PC went in around half health to clear “one more room.” This added more tension.

Monster attacks that reduce your max HP totals like Chasme became much feared.

Low HD/Low Con PCs played very carefully. Tanks responded by actually stepping in and tanking. Spells and tactics that kept enemy off squishy’s were used more often.

Oddly both groups blew away minions first to cut down on attacks against them before concentrating on BBEG. This had the effect of making the BBEG encounters easier in the long run. This could be though they concentrated on one task instead of the group “I will hold off the BBEG while you guys deal with the minions first and then come help.”

Wizards didn’t hesitate to bring out big spells early in the adventuring day to conserve HP and other resources for later.

Changes work both ways. It is possible to encounter a high health bad guy that could not heal all the way up before the PC encountered them again. Generally this benefits PCs as they have access to more healing then the bad guys do. As a side note I also sometimes restrict access to healing magic for clerics/priests/shamans of evil gods.

It seems to be working well. The PCs like it and have made subtle changes in the way they play. They pay more attention to playing as a group. It adds tension, which is good.

 

[Harzel]

Thanks for sharing your changes and results. If I understand correctly, your changes could be summarized as
1) Many healing effects generally restore more HP. The exceptions are long rests (none), using HD (same), and healing spells (same).
2) Healing other than spell healing generally scales with HD size and CON mod.

I have several issues to explore:
a) (Really just a clarification question) If you allow MC, how does that work with your formulae that depend on HD size?
b) Since your experiment implemented both (1) and (2), it's not always clear whether the effects you noticed are attributable to (1), (2), or both. Your implementation does both at once in many cases, but these are still different effects that could be accomplished separately.
c) For (2), I don't understand why it is better in principle, and for the effects seemingly attributable to (2), I don't see why they are improvements. To me they seem different, but not necessarily better or worse. Specifics below.

I made a few changes to healing rules in 5e and have taken two groups of 4 from 1-10 level with them and are still going. Simple things that are better IMO, that smoothed our healing process and were more “realistic.”

I always thought 4e had a good idea with healing surges, healing based off your actual HP and not a flat random die number. It made it relevant to your particular PC. I really thought it worked well for Paladins in 4e since they used their surge value to heal another Pc with Lay on the Hands, they were transferring their life force to you, more thematic.

I also never liked healing consumables like potions that healed a random die number that had no relevance to any PC. That made a healing potion more cost effective for a low HP/low CON PC since it healed a greater percentage of HP compared to a high HP/high CON PC.

This seems to depend on what you think the appropriate measure for effectiveness is. My take is that your changes make potions more cost effective for a high HP PC than for a low HP PC. Put differently, why is % of HP healed a better effectiveness metric than absolute # of HP healed? I get that you prefer it and that's fine, but "more cost effective" sounds like an objective claim.

So I ran the two groups with the following changes.

1. Healing kit with Healer feat is targets hit die size + users medicine skill + targets level. Make medicine skill count for more, it should scale as you get better at it. This doesn’t count as hit dice being spent to heal.

2. Potions. Use your hit die plus your CON modifier. These do not count as your hit dice being spent. It’s 1-4 HD depending on level of potion.

3. Both changes above make durable feat more useful so it might be taken.

Are you saying that Durable as-is is not good enough to be taken? I don't have an opinion one way or the other on that, but just making a feat better isn't an absolute good. Bring it up to par with others is, but there would be other ways to do that.

4. Long rests do not restore all HP. They do restore half of your HD that were spent on healing as usual. A good nights sleep is never that good. This encourages players to manage resources better. Remember you can use healing kits (medical attention) before and after a rest. This means after a long rest you need to spend HD to heal up if you need it. Also the downtime rest rules in Xanthars apply as appropriate.

I could not find anything in X's that pertained to regaining HP during downtime. Did I miss something?

5. Spell healing is unchanged as it is a magical effect. I was thinking about changing this but PC are just as effective at 1 HP as they are at full HP and in combat healing is in general not action economy effective.

6. Paladins lay on the hands is 1d10 (the Paladins Hit Die) + Paladins CHR mod per level instead of a flat 5 HP. To balance this out they get back half of HD used per long rest just like regular use of HD healing. It takes 1 HD to clear the conditions as stated in Lay on the Hands. Durable on the Paladin works to increase this.

7. Other small changes along the same lines.

The idea is to make your HD and Con count more and healing more PC dependent.

Your changes seem very likely to achieve that. It's different, but I don't understand why it is better.

I grind PC through more encounters then most.

The players liked it as their HD and CON meant more, it was more of a consideration in PC creation.

If your players liked it, that's a benefit that is hard to argue with. They certainly don't have to have a particular reason for liking it, either. I guess I'll just say it doesn't resonate with me as something that I would find more (or less) fun.

Many times the PCs started the day at less the full HP and not much Healing on the horizon, forcing the PCs to choose how to keep the assault going.

Durable suddenly made an appear as a feat.

Healers kit became a searched for item, and its appearance in treasure hordes was never wasted. Someone always got the proficiency in a background and took the Healer feat.

Yes, that all makes sense.

PC chanced it more, the carry over from video games (leave past spawn point, heal up, then come back at full strength) doesn’t work as well as more time would have passed so the environment would change. Sometimes all the PC went in around half health to clear “one more room.” This added more tension.

This is interesting to me because at my table this would be a desirable effect. However, I'm not sure that I see the reasoning that would cause the players to do this based on your changes. If they had healing resources such as HD, healing kit, lay-on-hands remaining, wouldn't they use them prior to combat and thereby go in at more than 1/2 health? And if they were out of such healing resources, then your changes wouldn't make any difference in their situation. I feel like I must be missing something.

Maybe I'm making the comparison wrong. I guess if the party was close to empty of HP, your changes might let them get back to 1/2 health instead of maybe 3/8 health, and so feel that they could take on one more battle. Is that more like what you were seeing?

Still, if you look at what is going to happen the next day (assuming they only get one long rest before they must continue), then it seems like they are going to be worse off compared to having the long rest restore all HP, and therefore have to scale back their activity - unless it is turning out that in terms of total HP available your changes actually more than make up for long rests not restoring all HP. Is that part of what you saw?

Monster attacks that reduce your max HP totals like Chasme became much feared.

Low HD/Low Con PCs played very carefully. Tanks responded by actually stepping in and tanking. Spells and tactics that kept enemy off squishy’s were used more often.

I can certainly see that tanks might be emboldened. But are you saying that in addition to High HP PCs being better off, Low HP PCs are worse off (more fragile compared to themselves without your changes)?

Oddly both groups blew away minions first to cut down on attacks against them before concentrating on BBEG. This had the effect of making the BBEG encounters easier in the long run. This could be though they concentrated on one task instead of the group “I will hold off the BBEG while you guys deal with the minions first and then come help.”

IMX, this is standard procedure. Unless there is a special circumstance, take out the adds/trash first. Can you expand on why you consider it odd?

Wizards didn’t hesitate to bring out big spells early in the adventuring day to conserve HP and other resources for later.

So even though they have better healing resources, they are trying to conserve HP and healing? I feel I'm missing something again. Is it because their total HP and healing resources over the course of several days is actually less?

Changes work both ways. It is possible to encounter a high health bad guy that could not heal all the way up before the PC encountered them again. Generally this benefits PCs as they have access to more healing then the bad guys do. As a side note I also sometimes restrict access to healing magic for clerics/priests/shamans of evil gods.

It seems to be working well. The PCs like it and have made subtle changes in the way they play. They pay more attention to playing as a group. It adds tension, which is good.

Ok, thanks again for reporting on your experiment.