Healing too powerful?

[Sir ThornCrest]

healing and attrition...

All combat/war will come down to attrition. Loss of arms, armor, hit points, offensive or defensive spells and of course healing. The ability to heal troops or party members is probably one of the most powerful. If the day after a huge battle a large % of your wounded are back and ready to fight and your enemies are down for the count....major advantage!

Thorncrest

I

The problem with limiting magical healing is that it really slows down play

The games go from fight till we are low on resources, often 2 or 3 battles enough for an an evening -- to Fight till you hurt than run away and recoup.

It also makes field recovery a pain. A badly injured group in D&D may only need to rest 2 days in the field -- 1 to get back spells and cast em -- another for full recovery and its back to the game

Changing this means you get a lot more run away from the monster/dungeon/plot and rest for 2 weeks in a safe location -- not a good outcome

 

[Boojum]

Currently the only healing in the game I'm running is a medic, a class I wrote that takes a full minute to accomplish any healing, and converts damage to subdual damage rather than removing it entirely, so it takes a couple hours to fully recover. It definitely changes the dynamic, since the party has to wait for a while to recover between fights, and if someone goes down in a fight, they aren't going to be getting back up and rejoining the battle (unless they use a potion or something). I've found it to work pretty well so far, and battles have stayed pretty tense, coming down to the last party member standing before finally finishing off the last enemy.

 

[Saeviomagy]

DMs already complain that players suck because they retreat from a dungeon to heal and regain spells.

Yet you want to remove the biggest thing that can keep a party going?

And the only reason that clerics memorised ever spell as a heal... was because they're the only people who could heal, and the rest of the party clamoured for it. My party right now clamours for haste each fight, and so I (basically) have to memorise a few. If everyone could cast haste, it wouldn't be a problem.

 

[Reynard]

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.

Except that this is exactly what hit points are for. A D&D character, regardless of level, doesn't get a sword through the ribs or a mace between the eyes ntil the hit that drops him below 0. Everything else is a minor cut, a near miss, or a sever jostle. Given this, the cure sells really ought to be referred to as Invigorating spells or some such. By saying they cure wounds, it implies that a sword thrust is a minor wound, while a hell hound's breath is a serious one, when really the severity of the wound is entirely relative to the victim.

 

[Doctor Shaft]

Good point.

However, while hitpoints is more like a vigor, it's still a rather "poor" abstract mechanism.

We can argue that HP's don't involve my character getting stabbed through, etc., until I finally hit the ground, with negative hitpoints, or even just one.

And the big thing is that healing spells then turn around and simply "wisk away" all kinds of damage, and then I start fighting again.

So it almost isn't really vigor at all. And if it is... then why don't the deities, and everyone else, stop working on "Fireball spells" and learn how to make more and more potent "Vigor spells" so that they could conceivably keep fighting forever?

Removing healing doesn't ruin the game so much as it changes how the game would be played. Its like looking at the base classes and deciding what you want in your game. If you don't like monks, you ban them. This doesn' destroy balance at all. It might change it depending on how heavily you used em in your last campaign.

Same with the original four classes. No campaign needs wizards or fighters... but if the DM totally scraps them for something totally different, the game type changes.

Healing as it is now is like "Machine gun healing". I still play that way, even now in the campaign I am involved in. I guess HP's have always bothered me, just the same as "Magic Points" or MP always bothered me in CRPGs like Final Fantasy.

I still play em, I just never liked em.

I prefer systems where I get to make some semblance of tactical decisions as to how I will defend or fight in a combat situation, and if I happen to fail, I have to be prepared for whatever heavy consequences that brings. Obviously, the DM would have to tailor the game around that though. You can't change the core book like that, and then send core monsters, as is, after a party.

 

[DragonLancer]

I've had at least two memorable moments in "battle" where healing spells just basically killed the experience. Once, we were fighting in a cave, and someone accidentally set off a poison trap. So we're all coughing and suffering con penalties, then undead soldiers come in to kill us. And at one point, I basically watch my character get cleaved to the ground from a max crit. Wounded. Now, healing spells are cool in the fact that they let you live longer than you should. So it was cool that I got healing and stabilized from what I would otherwise would have just bled to death from while the battle raged on. But... it sucked that I was able to just get right back up, wipe my chest off, and then wade back into the fight like it never happened.

I don't think your "character" just stood up and waded back into the fight. By game terms yes, but within that he probably staggered to his feet, coughed up a little blood, and wincing from from the pain hefted his sword up and went back in to assist his friends. Think of it in RP terms (true, you don't go into them in this detail probably) rather than game mechanics.

Healing is unbalanced... it's just that nowadays it seems a bit silly. But that's only because people have come forth with different systems that work just as well, if not better. But HP/healing magic has been such a staple of Roleplaying Games, I'd be surprised if any official system like D&D would ever let it go.

You have to have such rules even if they are a little unbalanced towards realism.

 

[Doctor Shaft]

I do tend to heavily rp hitpoints and such all the time. And the solution you offerred was essentially what I did, in roleplaying terms. It was the close brush with death, etc.

However, as a player, I was personally just a little bit dissastified, even if I did get to go on the rest of the mission kicking some butt.

On another note, i just read that other passage you quoted me, and the word there said unbalanced. I know this s going to sound silly, but that's a typo of mine. I actually meant to say "balanced". I'll have to go back and edit that.

I really think healing is balanced... but kind of silly. I still work around it, I just really don't like it. It has that "ooh, you can "hit" me or drain my vitality with 30 hits or so" feeling to it. I feel I'm more partial to the rolling the dice to block, then doing grievous damage when someone finally connects kind of deal. But that's just me.

 

[Sir ThornCrest]

Here is how we seperate the light hits from "your bleeding a lot and in pain"

All classes that gain +1 BaB per level (combatants/tough guys) take their con mod x level as there actuall body hit points. The d10/12 roll for hit pionts that are added are that players skill at making blows glance, rolling with the punch etc. example A 10th level fighter with a 18 con and 10d10 of hit pionts for lets say a total of 100 hit pionts. Would have 40 pionts from his con bonus and 60 from his rolls.

#1) no matter what level a blow that causes half your existing hit pionts will force pc to make fort save or lose next action. We dont do the 50 hit points in 1 blow = you might die. Because that rule does not take into account the total hit pionts of the player. If he has 200 hit pionts or 51.....there is a big difference.

#2) This sample 10th level fighter would have 40 pionts from con bonus, this 40 represents his tough guy hit pionts. the other 60 from the rolls is his skill to move out of the way. When he takes a total of 61 pionts he is now noticable jacked up, and he aint dodging any more he is obviously injured and getting more injured per blow. The blows he was moving out of the way of he is now getting hit solidly by.

All other classes play by normal D&D rules, they start getting jacked up the first hit against them.

Thorncrest

 

[Seeten]

Our fix: We play in a world with no clerics. There are no traditional gods, and thus, no clerics. This savagely nerfs healing, as clerics are the primary source of it. There are druids, but not that many of them, and there are berries/loams/ointments, but it isnt the same.

I, of course, break the system by being tomb tainted soul with access to inflict spells, but thats because I am a big cheater.