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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KesselZero" data-source="post: 5921468" data-attributes="member: 6689976">There's a lot of debate here about what HP represent. I think this somewhat misses the mark regarding the long-rest healing rule. Hopefully we can all agree that to a certain extent the very idea of hit points is a necessary game artifice. Because of that, there can never be a solid answer to how HP must be regained, because they mean something different to each player. Some argue that you can't heal all your cuts in a night; others argue that there's no right or wrong way of measuring how much luck or fate or destiny you can get back; etc. etc. So I think we should instead focus on how HP recovery affects how the game actually plays. A game where PCs start totally fresh every day and a game where they get 1 HP back per day will play very, very differently. In the Caves of Chaos, a party that heals fully every day will be able to clear out entire tribes much faster since the poor monsters will hardly get a chance to set traps, call reinforcements, etc. and will be up against a full-functioning team of adventurers during every sortie. A party that heals more slowly will find that they must make a tough decision-- do we rest for a week and heal up if it means that our enemies will also be more rested, more prepared, more numerous? A game with full overnight healing will also have far fewer PC deaths and TPKs, for obvious reasons. If you play in a style that prefers PCs only die at dramatic moments, or is more focused on long-term character development, this option may make sense for your group. If you play a game that's more about regular people going up against impossible odds, a more dangerous low-healing game would likely give you a fuller sense of accomplishment when you do survive. Finally, I would argue that overnight healing will increase (or continue) the prevalance of the "15-minute workday." Not only will your casters get all their spells back, but your fighters will get all their HP back. This strongly incentivizes going all out in a single combat then retreating to heal up, day after day. Perhaps this will give your foes time to prepare for your return, but there is only so much a tribe of kobolds can achieve in a day, and anyway that method of balance works mainly in sandbox-dungeon games such as the Caves of Chaos, and less well in story-oriented games where events tend to move at the speed of plot no matter what. These are the issues that are more important to me than what exactly HP represent. It doesn't much matter to me at what rate a hero regains his luck. What matters is what style of play the game will support. As an aside, I believe it would be easier to have low healing be the default and have high healing be a house rule or optional module. It seems to me (and I will readily admit that I've not tested this theory much) that it would be easier to balance monsters against low-healing PCs and then have the option to make survival easier through maxed healing than it would be to balance monsters assuming max healing then take that away from the players. It's not exactly the same, but I once tried to run a game of 4e where the players rolled for their stats. It was a bloodbath, because the game is balanced for a certain level of optimization.</blockquote>

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