Hit points & long rests: please consider?

[Nebulous]

it looks like this is going to be a heated issue no matter what. I'm in the camp that healing fully in a matter of hours is sort of ridiculous. It makes the idea of even having doctors, medicine, clerics, magical healing or bandages just....obsolete. Time is the only friend you need! Which is fine in a video game but i don't care for that kind of abstraction in an rpg.

 

[SageofMusic]

Three key words there. "In a dungeon." The problem here isn't with the dungeon. It's that this sort of narrative ties games to the dungeon. If you're going politicking you can probably have your full spell load out every day. And your full hit point loadout. Hell, if you're defending a villiage from undead as part of a siege you can almost certainly set a bunker up to sleep in - it, after all, makes such a difference.

There's definitely work arounds for this too. For instance, how much of an advantage will the undead have when your party leaves? If they were doing most of the protecting for the village, it will likely be overrun in the 6-8 hours it takes to sleep. However, if the PCs have set up a defense that is so good (placing NPCs at strategic points, setting traps, building better walls and reinforcements) then I'd definitely allow them to rest once or twice.

I think the problem here is the problem with all bad D&D sessions: they're usually caused by a bad DM. A good DM with full-heal mechanics in place will think of a way to disrupt the party just enough so that they're on edge, but not enough to kill them. A bad DM will either swarm the party so that they don't have enough time to heal, or become complacent and allow them to heal fully after every encounter.

It's a balance method that only works for dungeoncrawls. Which is why the 15 minute adventuring day really started to show up only after D&D moved a lot of adventuring out of the dungeon.

I'm curious as to how the mechanics moved a lot of adventuring out of the dungeon. It seems to me that's an area reserved exclusively for the DM.

 

[Storminator]

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 agree with you completely on the rule. I completely disagree on the idea of modifying the feedback. People shouldn't base their feedback on their perception of what other people like. There's too much error and assumption there. If everyone just says what they like, the developers will get an honest appraisal of their work, and can modify it or not in an appropriate way.

I'd hate for people to start giving misleading feedback and have the developers start assuming the feedback is misleading.

PS

 

[Kinak]

I'm in favour of the same houserule I use for 4e.

Long rests heal everything. They just take the best part of a week somewhere safe rather than a night camped out in the middle of nowhere. What this means, however, is that the wizard also only regains spells with a week with a library or lab rather than camped out in the middle of nowhere. I consider this an improvement - not everyone does.

Yeah, the length of a long rest seems like the easiest dial for this. It also doesn't throw the game out of whack in relation to caster power.

And it really drives home the importance of a home base, which is nice. Go to your lab to get spells back, go to the temple to pray, and so forth.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[nnms]

Great how people discuss getting back to fully operational after some cuts and bruises (that is HP between half max and 1) is totally unrealistic, even than using fantasy herb medicine and a healer's kit, but regaining all magical might to throw balls of flames or resurrect the dead should be regained on daily base...

There's an important principle to fantasy fiction that many people miss. The post above is a classic example of missing it.

You use the mundane to make the extraordinary stand out in contrast.

In 5E, the mundane is more extraordinary than the magical. The best a magical miracle from the gods can do is heal 13 HP. Take a nap for 6 hours? Unlimited HP are instantly restored.

 

[Plissken]

I like the mechanic the way it is - but probably because I view HP to be nothing more than light cuts, knicks and bruisers until at 0 hp. Just to clear up a misunderstanding by some people who posted here - you cannot use a long rest more than once in a 24 hour period, therefore you cannot heal up full HP after every encounter. Most gaming groups I've been in use a long rest once per 24 hours to regain abilities and get back some HP, where the cleric usually get chars back to near full health.

 

[synthapse]

There's an important principle to fantasy fiction that many people miss. The post above is a classic example of missing it.

You use the mundane to make the extraordinary stand out in contrast.

In 5E, the mundane is more extraordinary than the magical. The best a magical miracle from the gods can do is heal 13 HP. Take a nap for 6 hours? Unlimited HP are instantly restored.

Yet you also miss his point, that the "magical miracle from the gods" are handed out twice a day to the most basic of his clergy... thus slightly devaluing the term "miracle".

And, a single HP from the gods can do what it takes a normal hero 2-12 hours to recover, depending on how hurt she is...

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think it's safe to assume that there will be multiple HP/recovery modules you can select from to set the pace/style of the game to what you like.

Or at least there SHOULD be!

 

[Kzach]

In 5E, the mundane is more extraordinary than the magical. The best a magical miracle from the gods can do is heal 13 HP. Take a nap for 6 hours? Unlimited HP are instantly restored.

For someone so uninterested in 5e, you sure seem to like denigrating it a lot.

Those 'magical miracles' are far more miraculous than you seem to realise. They get you up and going at the click of some fingers. But yet again, people like you seem to misunderstand the entire concept of hit points.

Here's a very basic sentence to convey what seems to be a very difficult to understand concept: the ONLY time when your character is close to death is when they're at or below 0 hit points and they're rolling Death Saving throws with a very small risk of losing more hit points and dying at minus Con + Level. EVERY other instance of damage is INSIGNIFICANT.

I can understand not LIKING that concept but what I can't grasp is how people can't GRASP that concept. People arguing against 'rapid healing' seem caught up in this notion that ALL damage is SIGNIFICANT damage when it simply isn't. Getting 'hit', doesn't mean you've got a gaping wound in your chest and you're spurting blood twenty feet into the air. Hell, it doesn't even mean that when your character's Constitution plus Level equals 20 and your character is at -19 hit points. When you're at -20 hit points, THAT is when your character's guts are strewn about the floor or their pectoral artery is spraying the roof with their blood. Until then, just about every injury is basically insignificant.

 

[El Mahdi]

...snippy snip snip...

I Agree completely. For the base system, I think it's just about perfect.

I know I'll likely want something like a Vitality or Condition Track type mechanic as a module, but for the base system I think they've got it just about perfect.