Healing too powerful?

[TimSmith]

I've looked at Grim n' Gritty but its too grim for my tastes and too radical a variant (IMHO it re-tools d20 to the breaking point). Has anyone tried a Star Wars style Wound/Vitality system with D&D. My thought is that cure spells would heal Vitality at the standard rate but would be less effective at healing Wounds (1/2, 1/3?). I want a variant that makes players actually "feel" the pain of grave injuries.

Yes, I would be interested in people's experiences of any of the alternate wound systems in Unearthed Arcana. I haven't had the chance to try them. The star wars one sounds interesting, and characters get penalties for "proper" wounds. What about the Mutants & Masterminds system?

 

[Dalamar]

If in-combat healing is the worst beef one has, just increase the casting time of the cure line of spells to 1 minute, or keep the casting time and amount of healing the same, but make it so that the healing is only the healer's Wis (or perhaps Cha would be more fitting) mod in a round.
Or if you want another angle to it, rule that a character can't benefit more than one-half their maximum HP from healing spells in a given day, past that their body is too suffused with positive energy to actually heal (if you want to make it dangerous, you could keep counting the positive energy infused in a character, and when it exceeds their current HP, they're at a risk of dying from that).

Personally I have not had problems with healing magics, mainly because neither of my players enjoys playing divine casters. We did end up in a bit of a funny situation where a character was making an in-the-negatives character drink a healing potion, and when the character recovered, the player asked if he could now pour down the other characters throat another potion of his own. We thought that the two characters having each other drink potions seemed a tad silly in the cinematic view, so we gave that one up

 

[MonsterMash]

I don't really regard it as too powerful, but like many things in D&D its effects on society rarely seem to have been taken into account. Generally I limit the availability of healing by limiting the amount of Clerics and Adepts in the game and putting up the spellcasting costs, making the wealthy and powerful more likely to get it.

The Conan RPG is far more realistic for this, because of its setting.

 

[Reynard]

I don't think the presence of magical healing is going to have a huge impact on war, actually. you figure most of your troops (conscripted commoners) are going to have few hit points, on average, than damage dealt -- so healing isn't going to fix them. They are already dead. For higher level leaders, elite troops, etc... it is a matter of distribution of resources. The army that loads up on healers is going to be light on offense and therefore going to get massacred. Eventually, a balance will occur where, while what large scale conflicst in a D&D world would look like doesn't resemble 'normal', the end results will be the same.

The thing that causes problems with D&D war is that death is the only long standing result of injury. Even a greivously injured (-9 hp) commoner is going to be back on his feet in a week and a half. No infection. No crippling. Not even a twisted ankle. I am not myself a fan of adding this kind of thing to D&D, as it bogs the game down, but the presence of secondary injury effects would go a long way in making the world seem more 'realistic'.

Really, this is an example of having to ask yourself whether the rules of the game serve as the laws of nature in the world. If the rules are just an abstraction to facilitate play and let everyone have fun, then the impact on 'realism' is reduced. NPCs and peasants do get sick and do suffer long term effects from massive injury. PCs just happen to be too cool for that. If, however, the world really works this way, and people don't suffer from such effects unless it is caused by something else, or don't react to injury until near death, everything starts to change. Throw in the hit point bloat, healing magic, and increasing saves (particularly versus mundane diseases and toxins) and even non adventurers are supermen. i like option 1, but the second could be used to create a very interesting, very different, and ultimately very cool world.

 

[Pyrex]

Instead of trying to all-out swap to a Vitality system or significantly re-tool the Cure line of spells a fairly simple variant I was looking at for powering down healing magic in one game was to change Cure spells (and any related healing magic) such that instead of straight-out curing HP damage, they instead convert Lethal damage to Non-Lethal damage.

Ex:
Bob the Ftr has taken 32hp of (lethal) damage from a Fireball.

His buddy Jim the cleric hits him with a Cure Moderate Wounds for 15.

Bob now has 17hp of Lethal damage and 15hp of Non-Lethal damage.

The net effect is that it slows down magical healing quite a bit and simultaneously makes combat both more dangerous and less lethal.

 

[drothgery]

I don't think the presence of magical healing is going to have a huge impact on war, actually. you figure most of your troops (conscripted commoners) are going to have few hit points, on average, than damage dealt -- so healing isn't going to fix them. They are already dead. For higher level leaders, elite troops, etc... it is a matter of distribution of resources. The army that loads up on healers is going to be light on offense and therefore going to get massacred. Eventually, a balance will occur where, while what large scale conflicst in a D&D world would look like doesn't resemble 'normal', the end results will be the same.

Healing's another one of many factors that mean smaller, more professional armed forces are probably the rule rather than the exception in D&D worlds. I can't see an army of 1st-level commoners having much success in a D&D world; put them against a tenth of their number of 3rd-level warriors, and the commoners will probably be massacred.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Easiest fix for healing spells is to up the casting time.



RC

 

[Trainz]

If it wasn't for the cleric being able to instantly heal a heavilly wounded character in any given round, all the games I play in and that I DM would end with a TPK within 3 gaming sessions, at whatever level the party is.

Nerf or remove healing at your own risk.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If it wasn't for the cleric being able to instantly heal a heavilly wounded character in any given round, all the games I play in and that I DM would end with a TPK within 3 gaming sessions, at whatever level the party is.

Nerf or remove healing at your own risk.

Well, you'd sure as hell have to adjust other parts of your game to compensate, anyway.

However, if you found that you couldn't suspend your disbelief of D&D healing, that would be the quickest fix.....

.....Of course, you could just up the casting time of the higher-end healing spells. OR you could give them an XP point cost equal to the average damage healed (which would mean that you could use them, but that you'd think twice).

IMC, I have a sect devoted to healing, and it does mean that people are generally a lot more healthy than in the closest real world historical periods.



RC

 

[Doctor Shaft]

Well, the nerfing or absence of healing wouldn't really result in TPK unless the style of play the DM puts up front encourages such an environment.

If I run a campaign that consistently sends armies of monsters that are essentially stronger than my party, or basically able to beat and wear down my party with just a few groups of men, then the absence of healing spells is a serious risk, and make the campaign unplayable.

With no instant healing available (or a healing mechanism that doesn't allow you to get up after having your ribs smashed in two), the campaign dynamic has to be more, and I hesitate to make the reference, Lord of the Rings in style. Where the orcs are plentiful, but our heroes' skills are high enough that they could conceivably fight them, coming to only minor injuries in each encounter, as opposed to cracked ribs, and serious stab wounds.

Healing doesn't really have to be such a big influence or presence to make the game. It would just change how the CR's work. No more fighting near-equal opponents. Or if you do, things can get serious and messy.