D&D 5E Healing Surges, Hit Dice, Martial Healing, and Overnight recovery: Which ones do you like?

[LostSoul]

The problem I see with fast healing - overnight or close to it - is that it makes it difficult for the actions of the PCs to percolate through the setting. Which means that the players make choices, their PCs take actions, but there's little response to those actions except in the immediate. A slower recovery cycle allows the game world to change in response to the player's decisions/PC's actions, and for the players to see the consequences of their actions on the setting.

This doesn't mean that you can't show or have consequences with fast healing, but I think it's a little trickier - or maybe that your options (of consequences) are limited?

I guess it's a matter of pacing.

 

[Hussar]

Now that's fair. With fast healing the pcs have a lot less down time to heal.

Although again IME there was far more down time due to travel or training than there ever was due to healing needs.

I think you can keep faster healing and still get time to pass.

 

[LostSoul]

Now that's fair. With fast healing the pcs have a lot less down time to heal.

Although again IME there was far more down time due to travel or training than there ever was due to healing needs.

I think you can keep faster healing and still get time to pass.

The other issue is that, if you start to codify time as a resource, you're shutting out a lot of play styles. Maybe you could create some kind of conversion between game styles, but I don't know if that's possible. Anyway, it's a big challenge to design that properly. (And I don't think "leave it up to the DM" is a good design decision - in this case.)

 

[Hussar]

I think your right. There are too many variables to codify time passage in the game. Although, I do think you could give lots of guideline advice.

At the very least a discussion in the DMG about how differing rates can affect the experience.

 

[pemerton]

Fast healing completely removes the thrill of beating some creature when the fighter has a 3rd of his hit points, the magic user is hanging on to one hit point, and the thief is prating he gets a nat 20 on his backstab because if he gets hit, he's dead. I'm not saying all encounters should run that way, but some should.

I tend to prefer play where encounters tend more towards this "skin of the teeth" style. In my experience, healing speed has little to do with it.

Five Minute Healing and decent balance simply makes such situations more likely because you can go for them at a math level rather than have them as a near coincidence caused by attrition.

These things happen all of the time ... in my 4E games. With 5 minute short rests.

They even happen when the party enters combat with all of their HP, and at all possible amounts of surges (full, partially used, entirely exhausted).

<snip>

In one now defunct campaign, the rule of thumb was that if the dwarf hadn't been on the brink of death, then it wasn't a real fight.

My own experience with 4e is similar to these two posts. It reliably provides nail-biting encounters.

In my own game, the dwarf is a fighter with a Cloak of the Walking Wounded (spend two surges on second wind when bloodied) with the epic dwarven feat that lets him second wind twice per combat plus other feats to buff his healng surge value. He also has a daily Healing Word (multi-class cleric), a daily surgeless healing (dwarven armour) and a daily return-from-death ability (phoenix ring). It's only a "real" fight if he takes more than twice his hit point total in damage before the enemy are defeated!

 

[pemerton]

The problem I see with fast healing - overnight or close to it - is that it makes it difficult for the actions of the PCs to percolate through the setting.

<snip>

A slower recovery cycle allows the game world to change in response to the player's decisions/PC's actions, and for the players to see the consequences of their actions on the setting.

IME there was far more down time due to travel or training than there ever was due to healing needs.

Adding to Hussar's comment: I've never experienced this particular aspect of the passage of time in D&D, because in low-level classic D&D the PCs don't really do things that impact on the setting in a major way, and beyond the lowest levels resting/healing never takes much time, because the cleric just memorises and uses the required number of Cure spells.

I have experienced this in Rolemaster, in which magic healing typically increases recovery rates but doesn't eliminate them, and so it's not too uncommon to have a character needing days or even weeks or months of healing. Unfortunately, Rolemaster doesn't really make time into a full-fledged resource because it has no training rules. Runequest, by contrast, does have training rules but has quicker magical healing times.

Burning Wheel is one system I know of designed to make downtime a full-fledge resource, by combining resource recovery, health recovery and training rules. But it still leaves the issue of how the campaign world evolves in the hands of the GM (with some pretty standard sorts of advice in the Adventure Burner).

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.

I don't think you know what you mean because I know exactly what I was saying.

I just love it when people on these boards think they know more about what goes on in your own head than you do.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

The problem I see with fast healing - overnight or close to it - is that it makes it difficult for the actions of the PCs to percolate through the setting. Which means that the players make choices, their PCs take actions, but there's little response to those actions except in the immediate. A slower recovery cycle allows the game world to change in response to the player's decisions/PC's actions, and for the players to see the consequences of their actions on the setting.

This right here!

I taught my players that it was never a good idea to think you could rest every time the casters blew through their spells. My dungeons didn't sit there in a vacuum while the PC's took off to rest. A few days later can change a dungeon entirely. This caused players to actually use their resources carefully instead of going nova, leave, nova, and rinse and repeat until the dungeon was cleared. They also didn't go in fighting the BBEG with full spells and full HP ready to roll.

It actually made the game more exciting instead of a boring grind fest.

 

[Balesir]

Run or die are not the only options. Fast healing completely removes the thrill of beating some creature when the fighter has a 3rd of his hit points, the magic user is hanging on to one hit point, and the thief is praying he gets a nat 20 on his backstab because if he gets hit, he's dead. I'm not saying all encounters should run that way, but some should. I'm not saying fast healing shouldn't be an option, I'm saying it shouldn't be the default merely to please 4e players. If people were satisfied with 4e, there wouldn't BE a 5e for years yet. There has to be a default and adventure modules will be designed around that default. Fast healing can be a module for those who like it. Lots of games have an easy difficulty setting, but few have it toggled on by default.

Others have already said it, but I'll chime in that my experience of 4E includes a fight (as part of the Trollhaunt Warrens published adventure, no less) where one character was down to one hit point (and no surges) and the remainder were very low on both surges and daily powers/spells, magic item uses and just about everything else. They were hit by would-be assassins during a long rest, while guarded by local watchmen (minions); the players took great joy in pointing out that the Ranger (with 1 hp and no surges) was just as well off as their watchman guards...

Other battles have featured characters on less than full hit points with no surges left. The idea that this sort of situation does not happen in 4E is simply incorrect. We haven't had a TPK (yet), but PC deaths are far from unknown (although now, in Epic tier, they seem unlikely to be commonplace!).

 

[ren1999]

I think that healing should be ordered in this way.

healing spells by clerics, paladins, monks
healing by druids, witch' sand wizards
healing salves and potions(teas) prepared by rangers
healing after a long rest
healing after a short rest

My game tends to be deadly.
After an encounter, I allow for a short rest,
Healing Items are used first,
Healing Spells are then cast if the healers have remaining spells.
The Healers then recover all spells for the next encounter during a short rest.
The party then spends their long rest preparing healing items again.