D&D 3E/3.5 Healing Surges in 3.5

[Mercule]

Has anyone ported healing surges to their 3.5 game? How did you do it? How'd it work?

My group has a druid, rather than a cleric, so healing isn't easy to come by. What healing they do have seems to be the main factor in when their adventuring day ends. I like the basic idea of the healing surge, but I'm not sure how to roughly balance it in 3.5.

The 1/4 hp return 1/encounter seems plenty fair. How many times should I let 14th level characters do it, though? Should the cure x wounds spells the druid casts be tweaked at all?

Thoughts?

 

[Wystan]

I would allow the following:

d4 Hit Dice 6+con Modifier Surges
d6 Hit Dice 5+con Modifier Surges
d8 Hit Dice 4+con Modifier Surges
D10-D12 Hit Dice 3+con Modifier Surges

(Edit) One Personal Surge per combat - Heal to full if needed with surges between combats.

Paladins can spend a Surge to use it on any character once per encounter - Instead of Lay on hands (in addition to his personal surge - see above)

Healing spells drop 1d and allow a healing surge plus bonus. (so cure light would be Healing Surge + 1 HP per Level)

Just my 2 copper

(Edit to answer tat there next poster)

I did that as they gain more per surge and usually would have the higher con for bonus surges. I realize that 4th is different, but this is what I would do for 3.5....

 

[Mercule]

Out of curiousity, why the negative slope on surges vs HD? The 4e preview characters looked to go the other way (with the exception of the ranger, which really confuses me).

 

[Baka no Hentai]

If you are leaving Cure Wounds spells as is, then I would be wary to implement healing surges into your current game, or if you do drastically limit the amount of times that they can be done.

If you are tying the Cure Wounds spells to surges as they do in 4E, then thats a different matter entirely

 

[Stalker0]

Perhaps leave out the healing surges, but simply allow second winds in your game. That would eliminate the complexity of how healing surges should interact with magical healing.

 

[Li Shenron]

If you are leaving Cure Wounds spells as is, then I would be wary to implement healing surges into your current game, or if you do drastically limit the amount of times that they can be done.

Even if you leave cure spells as is, the fact that healing surges can be used only once during a battle is enough to keep cure spells useful.

Then, out of battle healing surges are generally better than cure spells.

 

[Remathilis]

Perhaps leave out the healing surges, but simply allow second winds in your game. That would eliminate the complexity of how healing surges should interact with magical healing.

That's what I did: I added Second Wind (1/day, below 1/2 hp, add 1/4 back) from Saga and its worked ok.

 

[jstater]

In my C&C game I allow the PCs to rest for an hour after a battle and regain 75% of the hit points they lost in that battle. If they don't rest right after the battle, they don't recover the hit points later without natural healing and magical healing.

The hour rest period usually allows for a wandering monster check (if you're into that sort of thing), making the decision to rest potentially dangerous.

So far, this rule hasn't unbalanced anything - they still need the cleric, they still die once in a while, and they still end the day with fewer resources than when they entered the dungeon. On the plus side, the adventure day is longer and the cleric can devote more spell slots to non-healing magic.

 

[Zaruthustran]

We've played the entire Savage Tide with healing surges. We called them "reserves" but the idea was the same: a certain number of times per day, you could spend a full-round action to recover some hit points.

The total recovered was = character level + con bonus. You could do this a number of times per day = 1/4 level (round down, as always).

The purpose of our house rule was to spend less time on HP management, and more time on playing. Also, the party didn't have a cleric--the closest thing was a Dragon Shaman, with some healing provided by a warlock with a wand of cure wounds (essentially: spend a standard action and some gold to heal someone).

It worked like a charm.

 

[Li Shenron]

That's what I did: I added Second Wind (1/day, below 1/2 hp, add 1/4 back) from Saga and its worked ok.

I think that 1/day is a bit too little to even be noticed

At least make it 1/encounter as in 4e. Then if not wanting to allow healing surges out of combat (thus avoiding the need to figure out how many you should have per day), just allow them as a second wind.

Unless the number of combats is more than 6 (I doubt), you're not giving more surges than the minimum.