Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
House Rule: Con mod HD Recovery instead of Full
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9762907" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>There's two different things here that you would need to figure out for yourself with regards to the success or failure of instituting your house rule-- the "in-world reality" you are trying to mimic, and the "characters having less mechanics strength" at the start of each "day".</p><p></p><p>If you are trying to mimic some in-world reality where you feel like a person should really take more than single day to naturally recover from their "injuries"... I can understand why you would want to try and put in a "slow healing" variant into your game. Players have been doing that since the beginning of 5E. Their belief that there should be some semblance (or at least a little nod) to verisimilitude when it comes to natural healing in D&D, so they find various rules and house rules to not allow for "overnight" or Long Rest full recovery. So in that regard, your spitballing of this rule is just as valid as any other house rule that has been invented. Now <em>personally</em>... I don't think any of that actually accomplishes anything because all of the various "slow recovery" rule options that have been invented-- NONE of them even come close to mimicking any sort of reality in how long it actually takes to recover from injury. So it's all just putting lipstick on a pig in my opinion. So I have given up caring about "mimicking reality" in-game a long time ago because none of these rules are trying to do that. These are rules that exist merely to play a game. That's it. Not to truly <em>simulate</em> anything, but just to give us rules to play our little dice game <em>upon which</em> we flavor that dice game with what these rules represent in some sort of fictional story.</p><p></p><p>But that's just me. I merely handwave all of the disparities and accept it all merely as the tenuous connection between game and story.</p><p></p><p>Now if you hoping for the latter part of my original statement-- that you are just wanting the PCs to start each day not at full-strength because of <em>game</em> concerns... that is also understandable. If you are having a hard time challenging your players because when they are at full strength and capability they have too much "stuff" they can do to run roughshod over your built encounters... forcing them to start more encounters with less "stuff" is one of the easier ways to make encounter-building easier on you. For a lot of people they just stop allowing characters to take Rests as often... rather they force their players onto the next part of the adventure via time pressure or the lack of safe spaces to Rest. Thus the PCs start many of their encounters at less than full strength. Cutting down on the number of hit dice they have is certainly one way to do that... but I will be honest, I myself do not expect that this <em>particular</em> house rule will properly accomplish this hope, for two reasons. One, players are notoriously risk-averse. As [USER=6801299]@Horwath[/USER] said above... if they can't get back to full-strength overnight... they'll just sit around taking as long as they need until they are at full. At which point you as the DM have to institute time pressures and lack of safe space to Rest anyway just to force them to get back to the adventure rather than wait until they are healed. And two... hit dice are actually some of the least important mechanics to curtail if one hopes to reduce PC power during a gameday. Because they only affect things after the encounter is done. If you don't inhibit any PCs active abilities, then they will still be fighting in every encounter with their entire suite of features, and thus making your encounter design still difficult for you. You'd actually be better off not slowing down HD recovery, but HIT POINT recovery instead. Have the PCs lose a point of their "Hit Point Maximum" (like what happens when fighting a Wraith for example) from every single hit they take. That would actually reduce the PCs strength in subsequent encounters and allow you to challenge them more.</p><p></p><p>So the long and the short of it is that your reasons for doing it are valid for whatever you think you want... but I just don't know if this particular house rule you've come up with is the best way to do it. My instinctive impression is just that it isn't going to accomplish what you want it to. But hey! This is why we playtest! Try it out at your table and see if it does indeed give you what you want. And if it doesn't? Go back to the normal rules. I do that all the time myself... try out house rules to see if I feel better about the game when using them. And if I do, I'll keep them (like the Variant Ability Score for Skills house rule) and if they don't really improve anything in the game I drop them (like rolling 2d10 instead of 1d20 for skill checks.)</p><p></p><p>Good luck!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 9762907, member: 7006"] There's two different things here that you would need to figure out for yourself with regards to the success or failure of instituting your house rule-- the "in-world reality" you are trying to mimic, and the "characters having less mechanics strength" at the start of each "day". If you are trying to mimic some in-world reality where you feel like a person should really take more than single day to naturally recover from their "injuries"... I can understand why you would want to try and put in a "slow healing" variant into your game. Players have been doing that since the beginning of 5E. Their belief that there should be some semblance (or at least a little nod) to verisimilitude when it comes to natural healing in D&D, so they find various rules and house rules to not allow for "overnight" or Long Rest full recovery. So in that regard, your spitballing of this rule is just as valid as any other house rule that has been invented. Now [I]personally[/I]... I don't think any of that actually accomplishes anything because all of the various "slow recovery" rule options that have been invented-- NONE of them even come close to mimicking any sort of reality in how long it actually takes to recover from injury. So it's all just putting lipstick on a pig in my opinion. So I have given up caring about "mimicking reality" in-game a long time ago because none of these rules are trying to do that. These are rules that exist merely to play a game. That's it. Not to truly [I]simulate[/I] anything, but just to give us rules to play our little dice game [I]upon which[/I] we flavor that dice game with what these rules represent in some sort of fictional story. But that's just me. I merely handwave all of the disparities and accept it all merely as the tenuous connection between game and story. Now if you hoping for the latter part of my original statement-- that you are just wanting the PCs to start each day not at full-strength because of [I]game[/I] concerns... that is also understandable. If you are having a hard time challenging your players because when they are at full strength and capability they have too much "stuff" they can do to run roughshod over your built encounters... forcing them to start more encounters with less "stuff" is one of the easier ways to make encounter-building easier on you. For a lot of people they just stop allowing characters to take Rests as often... rather they force their players onto the next part of the adventure via time pressure or the lack of safe spaces to Rest. Thus the PCs start many of their encounters at less than full strength. Cutting down on the number of hit dice they have is certainly one way to do that... but I will be honest, I myself do not expect that this [I]particular[/I] house rule will properly accomplish this hope, for two reasons. One, players are notoriously risk-averse. As [USER=6801299]@Horwath[/USER] said above... if they can't get back to full-strength overnight... they'll just sit around taking as long as they need until they are at full. At which point you as the DM have to institute time pressures and lack of safe space to Rest anyway just to force them to get back to the adventure rather than wait until they are healed. And two... hit dice are actually some of the least important mechanics to curtail if one hopes to reduce PC power during a gameday. Because they only affect things after the encounter is done. If you don't inhibit any PCs active abilities, then they will still be fighting in every encounter with their entire suite of features, and thus making your encounter design still difficult for you. You'd actually be better off not slowing down HD recovery, but HIT POINT recovery instead. Have the PCs lose a point of their "Hit Point Maximum" (like what happens when fighting a Wraith for example) from every single hit they take. That would actually reduce the PCs strength in subsequent encounters and allow you to challenge them more. So the long and the short of it is that your reasons for doing it are valid for whatever you think you want... but I just don't know if this particular house rule you've come up with is the best way to do it. My instinctive impression is just that it isn't going to accomplish what you want it to. But hey! This is why we playtest! Try it out at your table and see if it does indeed give you what you want. And if it doesn't? Go back to the normal rules. I do that all the time myself... try out house rules to see if I feel better about the game when using them. And if I do, I'll keep them (like the Variant Ability Score for Skills house rule) and if they don't really improve anything in the game I drop them (like rolling 2d10 instead of 1d20 for skill checks.) Good luck! [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
House Rule: Con mod HD Recovery instead of Full
Top