Hit points & long rests: please consider?

[Kzach]

This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.

I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points. I would ask that those reading this look at my arguments and try to view the matter from a holistic rather than personal viewpoint.

I completely understand people who say they dislike the mechanic. What I disagree with is on the fundamental nature of injury in D&D. I feel that those who oppose the mechanic don't agree with the statements made about injury and the goals of the injury system. Disagreeing with it is your prerogative, of course, and I wouldn't want to tell anyone how to run their games. What I'm asking people to consider is the way in which D&D has always MEANT to be run, from its very inception and throughout every edition. This is what the long rest mechanic is designed to represent.

So before people say it's a horrible mechanic and they want to get rid of it, I'd propose that they consider that to change it is inconsequential to their own games. It's little more than a hand wave. But the tradition and impression of the game on new players is important and should be kept intact regardless of personal preference.

To this end I would like to refer people to Mike Mearl's stated team design objectives when creating the mechanic:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Hit Points, Our Old Friend)

A creature with more than half its maximum hit points has nothing more than the superficial signs of injury. There might be a few tears in its armor or clothes, or it could have a dent in its shield, and it has not yet suffered any serious physical harm beyond a scrape, light cut, or bruise. Anyone looking at the creature likely doesn't notice that it has been involved in a fight.

A creature with less than half its maximum hit points has suffered a few noticeable cuts or bruises. A casual inspection or quick look reveals that the creature has taken a few hits, so it is noticeably injured.

A creature that is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points has suffered a direct hit—enough to knock it unconscious. The attack that dropped it caused a serious injury that might crack bones and cause heavy, ongoing bleeding.

EDIT: Sorry, I wasn't clear.

What I meant was that hit points have always been 'luck, skill, near misses' until you got to 0 hit points.

Remember that taking a 'long rest' only works if you're already on at least 1 hit point. So if you're 0 or lower, it won't work. It requires 2d6 hours to get to 1 hit point from stabilised and it requires three successful death saves (irrespective of the fact that death saves are a low DC) to become stabilised. Either that, or you need magical or mundane healing of some type which burns a HD.

 

[Lanefan]

This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.

I'm already considering it, and I'm afraid it won't be pretty.

I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points. I would ask that those reading this look at my arguments and try to view the matter from a holistic rather than personal viewpoint.

I completely understand people who say they dislike the mechanic. What I disagree with is on the fundamental nature of injury in D&D. I feel that those who oppose the mechanic don't agree with the statements made about injury and the goals of the injury system. Disagreeing with it is your prerogative, of course, and I wouldn't want to tell anyone how to run their games. What I'm asking people to consider is the way in which D&D has always MEANT to be run, from its very inception and throughout every edition. This is what the long rest mechanic is designed to represent.

Not every edition. In 1e an overnight rest got you back 1 h.p.; it took something like a week in town to recover everything. Hit points were way harder to rest back even though the philosophy behind what they represented may, as you say, have been similar.

To this end I would like to refer people to Mike Mearl's stated team design objectives when creating the mechanic:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Hit Points, Our Old Friend)

The disagreement comes from whether it should be relatively easy or not to recover those hit points - whatever they represent - by simply resting. I say it should take either time or magic, and by 'time' I mean more than one night's rest.

Lan-"still pulling for a body-point fatigue-point system"efan

 

[Kzach]

Not every edition. In 1e an overnight rest got you back 1 h.p.; it took something like a week in town to recover everything. Hit points were way harder to rest back even though the philosophy behind what they represented may, as you say, have been similar.

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

What I meant was that hit points have always been 'luck, skill, near misses' until you got to 0 hit points.

Remember that taking a 'long rest' only works if you're already on at least 1 hit point. So if you're 0 or lower, it won't work. It requires 2d6 hours to get to 1 hit point from stabilised and it requires three successful death saves (irrespective of the fact that death saves are a low DC) to become stabilised. Either that, or you need magical or mundane healing of some type which burns a HD.

 

[FinalSonicX]

I think the overnight healing should be changed so that it doesn't heal players back to full - make it require a longer amount of time while still remaining reasonable (a month is way too long but a week is acceptable I think). Make the overnight healing an optional rule listed with the advice that this will make it so that play progresses more quickly in-game for those who care less about tracking the progression of time.

The reason that I say this is that it's very rare for my to see a piece of fiction where a hero is dropped and somehow recovers after a night's sleep. Imagine a siege scenario where an attempt is made to break the siege by the party. They go out and have a huge battle and nearly die so they retreat into the castle. Now they think they have a better idea of how to go about their tactics next time - so they hop in bed and sleep 8 hours and they're good to go tomorrow! It doesn't "feel" right to me - our heroes can be heroic even if it takes a few days of rest after a particularly tough day of battling. I don't see the gains from making players heal fully after a day.

My question is - why is it unreasonable to say "we rest for 4 days" as the default for the rules and get back into the game? The exact number of days you rest doesn't matter in terms of actual playtime - but it does give a sense of time progression - like the world is moving around you.

 

[babomb]

You tell that to an American Football player. I've never seen any of them get reduced to 0 HP (unconscious and bleeding out). Less than 50%, probably, but not 0. Yet sometimes they take injuries that take weeks to recover fully. Sometimes an injury ends their season, or even career, and that's AFTER surgery. Even when a player isn't injured enough to sit out a game, his performance often drops as the season drags on, because his body's being battered week after week.

This is a heroic fantasy game, so I'm not suggesting the PCs ought to have to sit out a year because of a concussion or torn ACL. But I don't think a week in the absence of magical healing is too much for a character literally one punch from being KOed.

My preferred rule would be a long rest gets you 1 HD back, which you may spend immediately. I would settle for a long rest gets you all HP if you're at less than max or 1 HD if you're at max.

 

[delericho]

This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.

I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points.

Fair enough. I'm not.

What I'm asking people to consider is the way in which D&D has always MEANT to be run, from its very inception and throughout every edition. This is what the long rest mechanic is designed to represent.

Unfortunately, the original designers are no longer around to ask their opinion. However, given that neither OD&D, BECMI D&D, nor 1st Edition AD&D featured healing at anything close to the 4e/5e rate, I would dispute your assertion that it was always meant to be that way.

So before people say it's a horrible mechanic and they want to get rid of it, I'd propose that they consider that to change it is inconsequential to their own games. It's little more than a hand wave.

The converse is also true - in all pre-4e editions, introducing a house rule that an overnight sleep heals all injuries is likewise trivial.

But the tradition and impression of the game on new players is important and should be kept intact regardless of personal preference.

That's fair. But is it really the right impression that characters can suffer horrific, debilitating injuries, taking them to the very edge of death, and then bounce back overnight as if nothing had ever happened?

To this end I would like to refer people to Mike Mearl's stated team design objectives when creating the mechanic:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Hit Points, Our Old Friend)

The problem is with the edge case, specifically where a character was reduced to 0 hit points, and so takes a serious injury, is then healed to 1 hit point through mundane means (so he doesn't die), and then sleeps overnight and is absolutely fine.

Now, I haven't yet seen the playtest materials, so it's possible that they've introduced some sort of persistent "Wounded" condition that debilitates such a character for a time. In which case, fair enough. But without it, I'll remain opposed to the notion that an overnight rest heals all damage.

 

[delericho]

You tell that to an American Football player. I've never seen any of them get reduced to 0 HP (unconscious and bleeding out). Less than 50%, probably, but not 0. Yet sometimes they take injuries that take weeks to recover fully.

Heck, even sportsmen who don't get injured don't recover fully after an overnight rest - they simply can't play match after match, day after day after day, because the exhaustion gets to them.

Indeed, in most sports, despite the players playing relatively few times in the year, fatigue is still a significant factor across the length of the season.

(And so, there's actually some considerable justification for an overnight rest restoring some fraction of lost hit points/powers, and for it restoring a progressively smaller fraction as the adventure wears on - if nothing else, that should cut down on the 15-minute adventuring day, because suddenly taking that rest means that everything going forward gets that bit harder.)

This is a heroic fantasy game, so I'm not suggesting the PCs ought to have to sit out a year because of a concussion or torn ACL. But I don't think a week in the absence of magical healing is too much for a character literally one punch from being KOed.

It is, genuinely, a tricky question. Because if a couple of bad rolls take a PC out of the game, and then it takes a long time to heal, then that can lead to that player just not having any fun for a considerable length of real-time - either because his character is out of action, or because he has to take extreme care to protect him from further damage. In extreme cases, it can simply end the adventure, which may or may not be something the group is willing to see happen.

So I'm inclined to have healing be pretty generous, even unrealistically so. I just feel that having an overnight rest healing everything swings that pendulum too far the other way.

My preferred rule would be a long rest gets you 1 HD back, which you may spend immediately. I would settle for a long rest gets you all HP if you're at less than max or 1 HD if you're at max.

It would depend on how many hit points the characters have, and how big the hit dice. However, if a Fighter had, say, 60 hit points and were using d10 hit dice, then I'd be inclined on the first overnight rest to give maybe 8 dice - enough to restore him to full on a decent roll, or enough for several smaller heals during the day.

On the second overnight rest, though, that would get reduced to 6 dice, then to 4, and thereafter to 2. Or something like that. (It would then reset "between adventures" - if the character spends a few days in downtime, takes a holiday, or just goes on a massive three-day pub crawl.)

But those are, of course, numbers I've just pulled out of the air - I haven't given the matter a lot of thought, and it would of course depend on how the rest of the system is set up.

 

[Brix]

Actually I like the system. Nothing is more ennerving than a weeks rest period in a time critical adventure.
I'd keep it as is.
Maybe as an option you can rule that after the character suffered a critical hit, this damage is not reverted after a long rest periode. This kind of damage would need some special treatment.

 

[Walking Dad]

I'm with Kzach. Having characters out of a town siege adventure because they received a crit on the first day sounds like pretty bad game design to me.
As does the idea to absolutely need a magic heal bot to avoid such a fate.
Long healing times are might be realistic or good in fiction, with the pace controlled along with all story elements and combats by the same person, but not in a game of chance using dices.

 

[Li Shenron]

This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.

I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points. I would ask that those reading this look at my arguments and try to view the matter from a holistic rather than personal viewpoint.

Sorry, no.

We've had plenty of discussions in multiple threads in the past months, and it is OK to have one more. But now that we are playtesting, I personally think we should NOT throw pleads at each other to support our pet peeves or favourite ideas (I have plenty of my own, I'm not criticizing you for having your own!).

Most importantly, now it's time to playtest which means play the damn thing Of course some speculation of long-range consequences of these rule drafts is inevitable, but we are thousands of playtesting groups running the same adventure with the same pregens, so we'd better just stick with our test results and provide feedback based on direct experience.

Which means to me... let's play and gouge our feelings rather than think too much.

Happy playtesting!