Hit points & long rests: please consider?

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The issue here, is that it cancels the ability to model being moderately to seriously wounded, while still conscious and capable of fighting.

... except that [the base rules of] D&D has never, in any version, modeled this.

PCs are either completely competent, or they're unconscious (or dead). There's no in-between state; a fighter at 1 HP out of 100 fights just as well as a fighter at 99 HP out of 100. He takes no penalties to his attack rolls, damage rolls, speed, skill checks, Armor Class, ability to use items, etc.

He is not, in any meaningful sense, suffering a "moderate to serious wound."

A serious wound - a broken arm, a cut major blood vessel, a concussion - should have some measurable in-game effect if you are going to claim that D&D is "modeling" it.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Why is "relying on magical healing" equate to "stronger non-magical healing"? What is the rationale there?

If the baseline (e.g., what most people are currently playing) is that most parties are at 100% of their normal max hit points all the time anyway (because potions and wands or clerical healing are plentiful, for instance), then by making D&D Next just skip the intermediate step and have players heal to full anyway makes sense and reduces book-keeping.

 

[Mercutio01]

If the baseline (e.g., what most people are currently playing) is that most parties are at 100% of their normal max hit points all the time anyway (because potions and wands or clerical healing are plentiful, for instance), then by making D&D Next just skip the intermediate step and have players heal to full anyway makes sense and reduces book-keeping.

Honestly, if that's the baseline, I'm glad I don't play with the baseline folks. Also, as I've noted before, those at least require some investment, and this does not.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Honestly, if that's the baseline, I'm glad I don't play with the baseline folks. Also, as I've noted before, those at least require some investment, and this does not.

Did you play 3.0 or 3.5?*

If so, and if your players were reasonably on the ball, that should've been the baseline. Healing wands are cheap and plentiful, so there's no reason not to have a lot of them, and non-item-healing is pretty plentiful as well (with spontaneous cures, druids, and bards).

* As in, without house-ruling away the magic item availability rules.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If the baseline (e.g., what most people are currently playing) is that most parties are at 100% of their normal max hit points all the time anyway (because potions and wands or clerical healing are plentiful, for instance), then by making D&D Next just skip the intermediate step and have players heal to full anyway makes sense and reduces book-keeping.

For me, the question is: was that a desirable situation to begin with?

I don't think it was. I think HP should be a long-term resource, not a short-term resource. It evokes a survival feel a lot more viscerally.

 

[Mercutio01]

Did you play 3.0 or 3.5?*

If so, and if your players were reasonably on the ball, that should've been the baseline. Healing wands are cheap and plentiful, so there's no reason not to have a lot of them, and non-item-healing is pretty plentiful as well (with spontaneous cures, druids, and bards).

* As in, without house-ruling away the magic item availability rules.

Sure, but there was never more than one wand of CLW or so, and the healing from characters burned into casting resources.

As far as magic item availability rules, since most of the games I ran were outside of metropolitan areas, it didn't really matter if they could by a wand in (insert major game city) since the characters didn't tend to be in those places. Random thorp on the edge of civilization, even following the rules limited the availability of such things as wands and potions, just didn't have them.

And, again, those used resources. It wasn't a simple magical nap.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Sure, but there was never more than one wand of CLW or so, and the healing from characters burned into casting resources.

As far as magic item availability rules, since most of the games I ran were outside of metropolitan areas, it didn't really matter if they could by a wand in (insert major game city) since the characters didn't tend to be in those places.

Then there's a good chance your players were not reasonably on the ball, or you were not using the actual magic item availability rules.

A wand of cure light wounds only costs 750gp (375 if you wanted to spend a feat to make it yourself), and that's available in any town of even moderate size. It's also a vanishingly small percentage of the party's wealth past level 3 or so.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's probably been said already several times but:

Rather than making hps do double-duty as both luck/skill/fate/endurance and actual physical injury, break them up.

No, I don't mean another track of hit points that are harder to get back or more lethal, like stat damage or vitality or whatever. If an attack does 24 hps and if you're out of hps it does 24 something else damage, that's really still hit points with a different name.

I mean a separate, optional system for tracking serious wounds. So, if you're critically hit or dropped to taken to a specific negative hp value, or hit while at 0 hp or fewer or whatever else seems like an appropriate trigger to indicate 'real' damage, you take a 'wound.' A wound wouldn't be a generic number like hp damage, but a function of the attack that wounded you. A spear would cause deep, bleeding wounds, a mace broken bones and concussions, a mummy's touch disease, etc...

Each sort of wound, maybe based on damage type and a saving throw, or a special quality of the attack, would have a 'track,' imposing penalties until it heals, or risking greater penalties or death if not healed, treated or if re-opened by exertion.

That would add grit and realism to games that want it, without having to have multiple hit point systems that whipsaw game balance and dictate campaign pacing.

 

[RigaMortus2]

Sneak Attack is defined as striking a vital spot, such as jugular vein for example. If a Rogue deals Sneak Attack damage, but only deals 10% damage to targets HP, then did he really hit? Is it real damage or "luck" damage? If it is NOT real physical damage, then he should also not be applying Sneak Attck damage since he obviously didn't hit his target, let alone a vital spot.

 

[Mercutio01]

Then there's a good chance your players were not reasonably on the ball, or you were not using the actual magic item availability rules.

So, pray tell, explain to me how I'm playing D&D wrong, or they are? There's nothing in any of the three core books that says all magic items are available in all places. In fact, until you get to a "small town" (population 901-2000), nothing smaller can have even one wand of CLW, and a small town can literally only have one on hand, and that's assuming it's got nothing else to sell, or that they'd be willing to part with it. I'd say I was using the rules exactly as written (and intended).

A wand of cure light wounds only costs 750gp (375 if you wanted to spend a feat to make it yourself)

Sure, they can make it themselves, provided they have the feat, a workshop, tools, time, and the expenditure of experience points. I've got no problems with that.

Again, it's not just taking a long nap and mysteriously healing all hit points. It takes active investment and the expenditure of resources.

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] made the point that Hit Points should be a long-term resource, and I agree completely. And the only way they should be healed is through the expenditure of resources that diminishes the ability to use those resources somewhere else.