Healing

[Thornir Alekeg]

Reading the "Warlord - end of the Cleric" thread got me thinking about healing in D&D. Somehow I have never really felt satisfied with the way it has been handled in D&D. I have not seen much in the way of discussion about healing in the new edition, so I was wondering if anyone has any insight into changes they might be considering.

Things I would like to see:

• Parties able to adventure just as well with or without a cleric due to better healing options from other classes.
• Less "incremental" magical healing - rather than cure light, cure moderate, cure serious etc., I would prefer to see "small" spells, perhaps on a per encounter basis, that can be used to stabilize a dying companion, and "large" spells on a per day basis that restore 50-75% of a character's total HP.
• Changes to the Heal skill. Checks can be made to restore a small amount of HP, say up to 20% of lost HP immediately. The more damage the injured character has sustained, the higher the DC is. e.g. 100 HP Fighter loses 20 HP in a fight. Heal check at DC 15 will restore 4 HP. If the fighter waits until he is at 50 HP, the DC is 18 but it heals 10 HP.
• Resting similar to current - 1 HP/lvl for 8 hours rest, 2 HP/lvl in better conditions, and under a healer's care (with successful check) restore 50% of remaining lost HP.

With magic healing based upon the healed PCs total HP, it adds incentive to wait to heal, at least until the PC is down below 50%. With Heal checks and resting based upon the amount of lost HP, by themselves they likely won't restore people to full HP each and every day, so the extended dungeon grind may have some impact upon the party and make things more dangerous the longer it goes on.

 

[hong]

What might be interesting is the ability to auto-heal after each fight. Everyone rolls a check of some kind, and if it's high enough, you get back some number of lost hit points. If you roll well enough, and didn't take a lot of damage, you might be back to full. Otherwise, you keep going at diminished strength.

The presence of a dedicated healer would give you a bonus on the check.

The "second wind" thing in SWSE is somewhat like this, but limited to 1/day.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

My biggest hope is the introduction of percentage based healing.

It never made sense that a 1st level character could be reduced to zero hit points and then restored to max with one cure light wounds potion. But the same character, at 20th level, could be reduced to zero and that same potion barely does squat for him.

 

[italianranma]

My biggest beef with the system was (as a DM) I always felt I was playing Whack-a-Mole with the players. A pet-peeve of mine was to make encounters that were exciting and challenging, and had the players fearing for their lives, while making character death relatively rare. It was hard to get a monster to deal "just the right amount of damage" to bring a character down to -1 to -9, and I don't think it was very satisfying when that character bounce back to full action as soon as it was the clerics turn.

I DM an Exalted game, and that is a much better health system IMO: Your characters get progressively worse as they take damage: having someone at half health almost forces them to use up their essence and willpower to stay in the fight. Most of the time that signals the start of a retreat. I like that: it makes for better options than most fight to the death battles. Oh and by the way, if you die in Exalted, that's it. You're dead: no resurrection.

Personally, I like that aspect of the game too: when resurrection is available to the players, it really de-emphasizes death. Sure the level drain and gold that accompanies it hurts, but it's hard to really fear death for most players.

Hit Points as a mechanic are too much a part of D&D I think, so I'm not expecting them to "revolutionize" that system. I'm not familiar with the Star Wars Saga ed, but I've heard about the condition track. If they really reduce healing spells potency, I think that'd be a good thing.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

My biggest hope is the introduction of percentage based healing.

It never made sense that a 1st level character could be reduced to zero hit points and then restored to max with one cure light wounds potion. But the same character, at 20th level, could be reduced to zero and that same potion barely does squat for him.

It's a good idea in principle, but I think the practical execution might be difficult.

 

[Jer]

My biggest hope is the introduction of percentage based healing.

It never made sense that a 1st level character could be reduced to zero hit points and then restored to max with one cure light wounds potion. But the same character, at 20th level, could be reduced to zero and that same potion barely does squat for him.

My biggest hope is that they'll somehow finally make the hit point mechanic what they always say it is - a measure of luck and health rather than a real "wound track".

I'd be very happy if they somehow built the system so that hit points were mostly something tracked "per encounter" and for real wounds there was a condition track of some kind. Or only your last X hit points count as real wounds. Or something.

 

[Arkhandus]

With magic healing based upon the healed PCs total HP, it adds incentive to wait to heal, at least until the PC is down below 50%. With Heal checks and resting based upon the amount of lost HP, by themselves they likely won't restore people to full HP each and every day, so the extended dungeon grind may have some impact upon the party and make things more dangerous the longer it goes on.

Not a good idea. Every adventurer would keep a cadre of 1st-level Cleric hirelings, followers, or what-have-you, following him or her around to easily restore a significant chunk of his or her HP at a moment's notice, even when the adventurer is 20th-level and has 200 hit points or whatever.

 

[Zurai]

Not a good idea. Every adventurer would keep a cadre of 1st-level Cleric hirelings, followers, or what-have-you, following him or her around to easily restore a significant chunk of his or her HP at a moment's notice, even when the adventurer is 20th-level and has 200 hit points or whatever.

Yeah, this is one of those game vs reality divides. It doesn't make logical sense for the same spell to be less and less effective at healing you as you level up, but at the same time it makes for horrid gameplay for it to maintain effectiveness.

 

[Stalker0]

My biggest hope is the introduction of percentage based healing.

It will never happen, the math is too complicated for some people.

 

[Hand of Evil]

HPs are the issue, not healing. Get away from the pool and delvelop something else.