D&D 5E Hit Point Recovery Too Generous

[Blackwarder]

I'm running a group through lost mines using the pregens, they started with 4 players and now they are down to 3 (due to one of the players tarting a new job ) non of the pregens is a cleric and this being started as an Intreduction game I run it RAW and I find that the the current healing rate is quite good.

When we will start our next campaign I will probably incorporate some variant rules from the DMG, probably lingering wounds and that long rests replenish only HD with no HP (long rests in a civilized place will also replenish HP).

Warder

 

[GX.Sigma]

"Everybody" doesn't get less and less effective if the party needs, for whatever reason, to push on. "Everybody" isn't often the reason a long rest is required. Which means it will almost always be the player of one of the spellcasters who has to decide "Do I insist we go back, and thus fail in our objective? Or am I willing to do nothing but throw cantrips for the next two hours of actual game play?"

Some measure of that sort of dilemma is okay and even encouraged. But a campaign where that's almost always the choice to be made is going to get very frustrating for a lot of people. Especially when doing so has become an automatic "we lose" button--something many players, even those who are into the resource management aspects, may well find off-putting.

I think that if the spellcaster runs out of resources before anyone else does, that player failed pretty hard at resource management. It seems very selfish for that player to use all his limited-use toys, then refuse to keep playing for the rest of the adventure. That's why you're supposed to save them until the end, dude! Besides, a spellcaster with just cantrips is still pretty handy.

And honestly, I find the idea of only facing dungeons/challenges that can be completed in a single incursion to be quite limiting.

And the above doesn't even address the (quite common) campaign in which PCs spend months nowhere remotely near civilization.

Well, yeah, obviously, don't use this variant if that's the game you want to run. You don't use "death by massive damage" rules in a game of Monopoly, either.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

"Everybody" doesn't get less and less effective if the party needs, for whatever reason, to push on. "Everybody" isn't often the reason a long rest is required. Which means it will almost always be the player of one of the spellcasters who has to decide "Do I insist we go back, and thus fail in our objective? Or am I willing to do nothing but throw cantrips for the next two hours of actual game play?"

Ideally, the spellcasters will learn how to pace themselves. Since taking a week off to recover is such a huge deal, you need to learn how to manage your resources effectively.

If a game is defined as a series of interesting choices, then making the choice to rest much less favorable should make a lot of other choices - whether to spend a spell slot in any given instance - much more interesting.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And the above doesn't even address the (quite common) campaign in which PCs spend months nowhere remotely near civilization.

Actually, since most classes have a mix of short-rest and long-rest resources, it would take surprisingly few changes to play that campaign. Using a long-rest ability would be a desperate measure, and you would normally try to get along without spending more than your short-rest abilities on a day-to-day basis.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Does anyone else think hit point recovery through rests is way too generous in this edition? In AD&D a character would get back one hit point a day after what is now termed a long rest. Now, rest an hour and you get to roll a full hit die, rest a few more hours and you get all of your hit points back. While this is a game of fantasy, some realism is still nice. AD&D was probably too stingy, but 5E is videogame-like in its ridiculously fast recovery of hit points.

In a similar vein, it is equally unrealistic that a character gets knocked out, is on death's door, manages to get one hit point back and just springs back into the fight as if nothing terrible just happened. Again looking back to AD&D, a character, after being knocked unconscious, needed a full week of rest before being able to undertake any activity. This was likely too strict - but I feel like there should be a happy middle.

Does anyone else have an issue with the absurdly rapid and easy hit point recovery/no negative lingering effects from serious injury in 5E? It might just be me. I'm about to start a new campaign; I think I'm going to try to come up with something that feels more realistic, without making the players feel like they are being punished. Has anyone come up with a system they like?

Yep, I completely agree and feel like the standard healing rules create an "easy mode" DnD. I believe the devs stated this was intentional, so as not to scare off new players and help grow the player base, and they also said early on that DMG would have healing variants to cater for "grittier" games.

The solutions for more "realistic" (ha!) healing are in DMG: (i) slow healing (ie you dont get HP on a long rest, just half your HD back, which you can then spend for HP) and (ii) Injuries table activating off being reduced to zero hp. We have an expanded "Injuries and setbacks" table to specifically discourage the "yoyo" effect and make being reduced to zero hp more meaningful.

With these two rules in effect, you get a a nice medium of danger between AD&D and 4e/5e. Every combat has a degree of HP attrition to it, is potentially quite dangerous, and a long rest is not a super-reset button.

 

[MerricB]

And the above doesn't even address the (quite common) campaign in which PCs spend months nowhere remotely near civilization.

And with your spellbooks affected by rot...

(Thank you, Gary, for Isle of the Ape! Possibly.)

I assure you, Mouseferatu, that if I ever were to slow down healing in 5E, I would *not* do the same for regaining spells.

Cheers!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

This gets back to the old, old, old argument over D&D as war vs D&D as a sport. I prefer the latter, so the quick hit point recovery in 5E bothers me. However, in this edition they included a superior tool for D&D as war. If I were to tweak the rules, I'd probably use the exhaustion track rather than hit point recovery. Off the top of my head, a rule that if a PC goes under 1/4 total hit points at any point in an encounter then he takes a point of exhaustion at the completion of the encounter might get the job done.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I assure you, Mouseferatu, that if I ever were to slow down healing in 5E, I would *not* do the same for regaining spells.

That just makes spells the most readily available healing resource. So you go through some extra spell-recharge cycles to heal everyone up. The more casters you have with cure..wounds on their lists, the faster you heal. The slower 'natural' healing rate becomes largely theoretical.

That's nothing new: natural healing rates were irrelevant in 3.5/Pathfinder and the classic versions of D&D before it, as well.

 

[MerricB]

That just makes spells the most readily available healing resource. So you go through some extra spell-recharge cycles to heal everyone up. The more casters you have with cure..wounds on their lists, the faster you heal. The slower 'natural' healing rate becomes largely theoretical.

This has been true of every edition of D&D.

Cheers!

 

[JWO]

I have a question for [MENTION=42043]Eric[/MENTION]42 (the OP):

How many hit points do you normally recover when you wake up in the morning? If you want realism, just use that number to inform your house rules.