D&D 5E Hit Dice and How To Get More From Them

[Flamestrike]

Sure, but if that limit lasts for any realistic adventuring day, then the limitation is only hypothetical, not actual. If the PCs only run out of HS after the BBEG is dead (which is when you intended for them to rest anyway) the limit hasn't limited their adventures in the slightest (beyond preventing them from haring off immediately on another adventure).

How are HS different from any other resource?

By capping PC healing during the day, it's no different from capping any resource to the end of the day (spell slots, rages etc). PC tendency (short of the DM policing the AD somehow with doom clocks or whatever) is to seek to rest as soon as those daily resources are expended.

Personally I wish 5E had gone with a system where resources are 'per encounter' as much as possible (similar to ToB and SWSE) to remove the temptation for players to Nova, mitigate the 5MWD and to make the adventuring day encounter number agnostic.

 

[Flamestrike]

I already don't reward XP for combat. But defaulting to combat is easy, and most of the tools in the D&D player's toolbox are for killing things.

All of them are. Literally there is a class called the Fighter and all it does is kill things. Its in the name of the class!

Im not sure why you would seek to disincentivise combat in a game you acknowledge is almost solely combat orientated.

 

[Garthanos]

For me the idea is about having a resource to represent extraordinary exertion useful generically NOT necessarily in combat. That isnt CAST A SPELL

 

[Garthanos]

True; technically second winds did that.

In almost all cases very very inefficiently its really a back up situation for if you have no healer

 

[BrokenTwin]

@Flamestrike I'm in this thread to help the OP theorycraft a system to bring 4E Healing Surges into 5E. We obviously disagree, and there's zero to be gained from going around in circles and derailing this thread. So unless you have something constructive to contribute, I'm going to stop responding to you.

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Back to the point...

My math is running under the assumption that the average adventurer has a d8 Hit Die and 14 Con. I'm also looking at Cure Wounds as my healing benchmark. By converting it to spend Hit Die instead of rolling a d8, the following changes occur:

Cure Wounds becomes less effective for wizards and sorcerers, and more effective for martial classes. Since martial classes are more likely to take damage, I'm okay with this. It makes combat healing slightly more powerful for the characters that it would actually matter on.
On the other hand, on a character with no hit dice remaining, Cure Wounds becomes significantly less effective (only restoring the spellcasting modifier value). That makes the timing of healing magic more important, and complicates the decision as to when to use healing magic and when to push through and try to heal naturally later.
At first level, assuming the above averages, a cleric can cast Cure Wounds twice, and the average character has two additional hit die, so that breaks even. But thinking about it, the Con bonus hit die should probably be d8, not d6.
Overall, magical healing becomes more useful inside combat, and less useful outside combat (where it now directly competes with the resting recovery mechanic).

Related, I like the idea of giving life clerics something similar to the Bard's Song of Rest. Even a single bonus point keeps some of that Life Cleric flavour.

In terms of number of hit die, there's a number of different methods we could use, depending on what feel we're going for. Giving them most or all of their total hit die up front makes early characters more survivable, but also front loads said surviability, and makes it harder for more durable classes to be represented in the mechanic. My current idea ( class hit die + [Con mod]d8 ) gives a smaller pool up front, but keeps the different between healing a wizard and healing a barbarian intact without massively overpowering level 1 martial dips, which I personally prefer.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The problem with using HD (IMO) is the way it scales. At 1st level, a HD is worth 100% of your HP pool (very roughly speaking). By 20th level, it is only worth 5% of that pool. IOW, an individual HD becomes worth less as you go up in level. Unlike a HS which is a fixed percentage (25%) irrespective of level (barring feats and the like which might bump that by a small amount).

Yeah, this is the killer point and the one I have yet to see any good way around.

While also providing a mechanism to heal inside of combat, and removing the need to hole up for an hour or so just to get some HP back.

I dunno how much 4E you played but the inability to use HSes freely in combat, and the hard limits on the Leader classes (and others) to access them in combat were a big part of what made 4E combat work and be balanced. You couldn't just keep pumping healing into people like you could in a video game or in some other editions (looking at you wand of Cure Light Wounds). Simplification but Leaders were pretty strictly limited to triggering 3 Healing Surges/battle, and people could trigger 1 on themselves (Second Wind). Anything that got around this was a Big Deal (and usually a Daily, or some kind of incredibly major Encounter power).

Also, 4E's problem wasn't the 5MWD. It was more like a potentially infinite work day without HSes. Whilst Dailies were amazing, At-Will and Encounter powers meant that, without some kind of mechanism to limit how much healing could be done in a day, it could be infinite.

It actually worked extremely well - the limited combat healing meant that Leaders spent most of their time (4E combats ran to many more rounds than 5E) actually using leader-ly abilities, rather than being a "healbot" or whatever, the daily limit prevented the change to AEDU making an infinite work day, and the fact that you could trigger them as a non-healer meant healers/leaders weren't hard-required in parties in the way it felt like they were in earlier editions (only to be semi-replaced by a wand of CLW at some point!).

It's kind of a fundamentally different design to 5E's HD.

5E's HD really only link up well with preventing the requirement of a serious healer in the party, by allowing PCs to heal themselves out of combat. There's no chance of "infinite work day" because no AEDU, so that's not a concern. There's little need to limit in-combat healing because it's not very strong anyway in 5E (generally speaking), as compared to the other spells healing-capable classes can cast in 5E.

 

[Flamestrike]

I dunno how much 4E you played

One session. I was in the PF camp.

Had some good ideas, but It wasnt DnD for mine.

 

[Garthanos]

Best translation for combat healing in larger longer fights I have thought of is not a direct one but I kind of like it. Allow the subject of a heal or gaining temp hit points to spend there hd as normal for a rest (only perhaps a limited number just like the DMG HS thing perhaps).

The rest for me is coming up with a value to do other stuff with them.

 

[Garthanos]

You couldn't just keep pumping healing into people like you could in a video game or in some other editions (looking at you wand of Cure Light Wounds). Simplification but Leaders were pretty strictly limited to triggering 3 Healing Surges/battle, and people could trigger 1 on themselves (Second Wind). Anything that got around this was a Big Deal (and usually a Daily, or some kind of incredibly major Encounter power).

When you can only heal a portion of a days healing in an encounter you can challenge the party a predictable amount. Its like limited amounts of nova because part of ones power is in encounter resources. Having a predictable amount of party response allows one to better control the amount you push on that...

 

[Garthanos]

Having not so combat applications for HD allows one to have a fight after doing other things and still challenge the party with a lot less damage being required. AND this is useful for games with fewer not necessarily huge combats in an adventuring day. (regardless of how long that is in game time)