D&D 5E (2024) Hit Dice as an alternate resource?

[Horwath]

I would like to see return of healing surges.
25% of your HP healing per use.

When you take Dodge action, you can use a healing surge.

You have 2×prof bonus of healing surges per long rest.

 

[Mistwell]

Hit Dice have been mainly used as a resource for healing during short rests, and in the playtest can be used outside of short rests with the Durable Feat. I think the rest place they tried to have Hit Dice power something else was in the Dragonlance UA playtest, but I don't think those uses stuck.

But could we see more uses brought forward with Hit Dice as a resource to power things? It would fit into the "expend some of your life force to do something".

I hope so. It's a mechanic I like which I think is underused. I agree it sort of has an "exhaustion" feel to it. I wouldn't mind a subclass of sorcerer that could upcast their spells with hit dice usage, or access more spell slots with hit dice, for example. Maybe a barbarian which could access more rages with hit dice or a monk that could access more Ki with hit dice. It's an interesting trade off - more power in a brief spurt in exchange for more risk of being unable to heal from damage later. Particularly if healing spells and powers start getting linked to hit dice more often.

 

[bulletmeat]

When I ran 5e my enemies used hit dice for a bonus to attack (each gave a +1), damage (added HD roll to damage), AC bonus (each gave +1 for one turn), or an extra regular attack (limit 1 xtra per turn for minor enemies, 2 xtra per turn for larger enemies). I regulated it to 2 or less non-class enemies to keep up w/all the PC bells & whistles.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Whether or not spending HD on other things will cause an issue with healing and makes Clerics "more necessary" will be entirely table dependent. Those tables that tend to only have one or two combats per "adventuring day" will not see any healing issues, because those tables can tend to just rejuvenate with regular spell healing and don't have short rests often enough to bother with HD anyway. As a result they leave piles of unused HD on the table all the time. Those are the tables for which having an alternative spending method could be useful, so long as they were judicious on what they could affect.

But it's the kind of thing where I don't think you'd want to bake it into the base rules since many tables might actually make use of daily HD frequently and you wouldn't want to hamstring them by making them choose. However, as a Variant Rule subsystem you could certainly put it in the DMG-- create several different things that you could spend HD on to activate for those tables that don't use them. Just off the top of my head as possible options...

...after the completion of a Long Rest, spend a HD to reduce your Exhaustion by 1 level.
...spend 2 HD as an Action to gain a use of an ability that refreshes on a Short or Long Rest that you are currently out of.
...after rolling the damage on a weapon attack critical hit, spend an HD and roll and add it on top of the damage (does not roll twice).

No idea how balanced any of these are... was just spitballing... but if the Variant Rule has a list of like 10+ options, a DM and table could decide which (if any) of the options could be made available to the players. That way each DM could decide which options might be most useful and least disruptive for their individual gaming styles.

 

[John R Davis]

Always thought HD could be used for a whole range of things

 

[Clint_L]

I'd prefer to see them gone from the game entirely as they kind of seem like an inelegant solution to the self-created problem of trying to balance adventuring around 6-8 encounters per day. But if they are going to stick around, yeah, there's a lot more you could do with them.

I tend to rate game mechanics by how intuitive they are to new players. For instance, most kids get armour class and hit points right away. To hit rolls vs. damage dice causes a bit of confusion, but not for long. Spell slots vs. cantrips similarly takes some explaining but they mostly pick up the idea before long. Action vs. bonus action vs. reaction takes a long time to sink in. And hit dice are really hard to explain and for beginners to remember, because they don't really make sense. Mostly I just tell them that it's a thing they can do during a short rest and not to worry about the logic. Hit dice are a weird, clunky resource and I think WotC know it.

 

[FallenRX]

I'd prefer to see them gone from the game entirely as they kind of seem like an inelegant solution to the self-created problem of trying to balance adventuring around 6-8 encounters per day. But if they are going to stick around, yeah, there's a lot more you could do with them.

I tend to rate game mechanics by how intuitive they are to new players. For instance, most kids get armour class and hit points right away. To hit rolls vs. damage dice causes a bit of confusion, but not for long. Spell slots vs. cantrips similarly takes some explaining but they mostly pick up the idea before long. Action vs. bonus action vs. reaction takes a long time to sink in. And hit dice are really hard to explain and for beginners to remember, because they don't really make sense. Mostly I just tell them that it's a thing they can do during a short rest and not to worry about the logic. Hit dice are a weird, clunky resource and I think WotC know it.

The hit dice are the reason for the 6-8 encounter day, the reason it exists is because the game is balanced around HP resources, where after about 2-4 medium or hard encounters, you can regain all your HP from Hit Dice, and keep going.

 

[squibbles]

I'm ambivalent about hit dice being used as a resource to power more things.

I agree with @Kobold Avenger and @codo that it would fit the fiction of expending life force or pushing beyond normal limits to do something, which is cool, but I don't think that kind of feature would work very well with the current implementation of hit dice and resting.

In my mind, the biggest issue with hit dice is the way they fit into the resting rules. They have no value during long rests, since long rests fully recover HP, and can only be spent on short rests, which most classes don't much care about and a lot of groups don't take very often. As a result, they're a mechanic that, depending on party composition and playstyle, is pretty forgettable, "vestigial" as others have said. That means that new functionality for hit dice is gonna be inherently kludgy--and will also vary a lot in usefulness by party composition and playstyle.

Ideally, I think, PCs should be able to spend hit dice to recover HP whenever they're out of combat to keep their HP topped off (which necessitates you to think of HP as luck points or not getting hit points, but no need to rehash that debate). And, since that would functionally eliminate short rests for several classes, it would be best if paired with short rest classes transitioning to proficiency times/day, at will, and/or encounter features (a direction WotC sometimes seems to be moving toward anyway).

If those changes--or some other substantial revision of the resting rules--were made, then I think it would be cool to give hit dice further functionality.

I am not a big fan. My biggest issue with it, is that making hit dice a pool of dice you can spend for more power, makes have a dedicated healer character necessary. One of the best things about 5E is a party not having to worry about who has to play the cleric. [...]

Ya, any new set of hit dice expenditure options would need to mostly avoid replacing their HP recovery functionality, and definitely shouldn't obsolete it. I think the best alternate way to expend hit dice would be the recovery or enhancement of class features that are defensive in nature, with a bespoke hit die cost specified by the ability, i.e. a fighter below half HP could roll X hit dice when using second wind or a monk with no Ki left could expend a hit die to use patient defense.

Hit Dice were pretty clearly intended to do more than they did in 5E, but at this point, I suspect we're stuck with them being a weird little vestigial subsystem. I'm not sure you should be able to spend them to get more offensive punch though. [...]

Agreed on both points. I would want to mostly avoid having hit dice deal be used to power features that deal damage, raise DC, improve attack rolls, etc.

[...] Personally I'd really like to see most levelled healing spells give you an opportunity to spend 1 or more HD in addition to the healing they do, at a minimum. [...]

I like the elegance of that idea. Though, depending on the group, it could lead to other players expecting PCs with leveled healing spells to share their hit dice, which might not be fun.

I'd prefer to see them gone from the game entirely as they kind of seem like an inelegant solution to the self-created problem of trying to balance adventuring around 6-8 encounters per day. But if they are going to stick around, yeah, there's a lot more you could do with them.

I tend to rate game mechanics by how intuitive they are to new players. For instance, most kids get armour class and hit points right away. To hit rolls vs. damage dice causes a bit of confusion, but not for long. Spell slots vs. cantrips similarly takes some explaining but they mostly pick up the idea before long. Action vs. bonus action vs. reaction takes a long time to sink in. And hit dice are really hard to explain and for beginners to remember, because they don't really make sense. Mostly I just tell them that it's a thing they can do during a short rest and not to worry about the logic. Hit dice are a weird, clunky resource and I think WotC know it.

This is the biggest problem, for sure. Hit dice are kludgey. And I'm not sure if my idea above would address their counterintuitiveness, or just make them more kludgey. But I think the rest rules would definitely need to change to fix their kludginess.

 

[Simplicity]

Hit dice as a resource should not exist. The whole term is completely overloaded, and that makes it hard for people to understand or use. Call them "rest points". Call them "exertion". Don't name a resource hit (why?) dice (what?). In my dad characters had levels and monsters had hit dice.

 

[James Gasik]

So I was just flipping through the Tome of Heroes, by Kobold Press, including some neat options for Hit Dice, like a Feat that gave Monks the following benefit:

"If at the start of your turn, you have 0 ki points, you may spend and roll a HIt Die, adding your Constitution bonus. You recover ki equal to half the result (minimum 1). You cannot ever have more ki than your maximum."